Detention

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Chapter the First: In which there is toothbrushes and cursing

After Potions that morning, Snape had wasted no time in organising Ron and Hermione's detention. They had both received notes from Professor McGonagall at the end of lunch, informing them that their detentions would take place at 10:00 that night, in the Hospital Wing ("Oh great!" said Ron, sarcastically, "bedpans again!")

Fortunately for them, when they turned up at the Hospital Wing that night, they were simply given a bucket of water, a toothbrush and a cake of soap each, and told that they were to wash the floor with these, and since they were prefects, they could supervise themselves. At this, Ron had said a few things which had made Hermione say "Ron! Don't swear!" But soon they set themselves down at one end of the room, and started scrubbing.

"Calm down, Ron. At least it's not anything disgusting." Hermione said coolly.

"You don't call having to clean this whole bloody floor with toothbrushes disgusting?!" Ron shot back.

"You know what I mean. Don't swear." said Hermione, scoldingly.

"I'll swear when I bloody well want to, thanks." an agitated Ron replied quickly, making Hermione scowl.

"Fine. I'll start scrubbing at the other end of the room." she snapped. She picked up her bucket and stated to walk off.

"No Hermione," Ron said, exasperated "I'm sorry. Don't go. Please?" He looked up at her, and she could tell he was genuinely sorry, remorse showing in those sparkling blue eyes, making her feel sorry for snapping at him, even though he knew she hated it when he swore.

She smiled at him, and he smiled back as she retraced her steps and plopped down beside him to continue scrubbing.

"You know," Ron began, "I suppose this isn't that bad. I mean there aren't any patients so we don't have to be quiet, and Madame Pomfrey's letting us supervise ourselves," he said.

"That's the spirit." said Hermione, happily. She liked it when Ron was in a good mood, and she liked it when she was right.

"I guess being a 'responsible Prefect' does have some good points." he finished.

"Ron," said Hermione, obviously annoyed. "You know there's more to being a Prefect than getting away with things."

"I know," he replied with a grin. "Just kidding." As if to further illustrate his point, he then held up his toothbrush and flicked it with his finger, causing a shower of soap bubbles to settle all over Hermione's robes and hair.

"Ron!" she yelled. "Now look at me! I have soap all over me!"

"I think it suits you." He grinned, teasing her.

"Oh yeah? See how you like it then!" she dipped her hand into her bucket, and flicked it out quickly. A large amount of soapy water splashed out of the bucket and landed in Ron's face.

"Oy! No fair! My eyes!" He yelled, rubbing them furiously in an attempt to get the soap out of them.

"Oh, I'm sorry Ron! I for got about the soap. Here, let me look at them."

She grabbed his wrists and tried to pull them away from his eyes, but he pulled away from her grip, grabbed his toothbrush, and did the first thing he thought of. He shoved it up her nose.

"Aaah, Ronnn!" She screamed as she pulled the toothbrush out of her nose. "Ron, that was horrible!"

Ron looked down, ashamed, bracing himself for the imminent lecture, but it never came. He slowly looked up, and was surprised to se Hermione grinning.

"I am going to get you so bad, Ron Weasley." she said quietly, eyes flashing.

He hardly had time to think how sexy she looked when she was like that, before she was on her feet, chasing him across the room. He ran behind a large cupboard, hoping to hide form her, but she was right behind him when he reached the end of the aisle, and there was a dead end. He backed up until he was standing against the wall, whilst Hermione advanced on him, menacingly brandishing her toothbrush.

She got closer, until she was standing about a foot away, apparently trying to figure out the most horrible thing she could do to him with the toothbrush at that moment.

Not waiting for her to figure it out, Ron again did the first thing that came into his head (you would have thought he'd learned, but this is Ron we're talking about…), he kissed her.

At first she just gasped, seemingly unable to move from shock, but slowly she warmed to him and began to kiss him back. Ron couldn't believe it. He was kissing Hermione Granger. HE was kissing HERMIONE GRANGER!! And she was kissing him back! It was the most wonderful feeling he had ever experienced, and he wondered why he hadn't known until this moment that he, Ron Weasley, fancied Hermione Granger. Hell, he was crazy about her! He smiled inwardly.

When she pulled away after a few seconds, Ron looked down and smiled, and was surprised to see Hermione looking down at the floor, a concerned expression on her face which made him nervous. Had he done something wrong? Was he a bad kisser?

"Umm," she said, not taking her eyes off the floor.

"Err," he replied, confused. "Yeah,"

"I think we should get back to our detentions." she said, before hurrying back to their buckets and resuming scrubbing, deliberately not looking at Ron.

Ron followed, inwardly slapping himself for being so stupid. Why would a fun, intelligent, pretty witch like Hermione want to kiss poor, gangly, stupid Ron? She was so far out of his league that it wasn't funny, and the worst thing was – now he thought he fancied her. Really fancied her. A lot.

He'd ruined their friendship forever, they would never be able to talk, laugh, or do any of the normal things friends do together, without things being horribly awkward now. And Harry would find out. He would know something was wrong, and Hermione would probably tell him the whole story – of how horrible, stupid Ron had taken advantage of her, and how she hated him and she never wanted to see him ever again.

He nearly cried at that thought, but he bit back the tears. If she hated him, then so be it. But he wasn't going to let her see him cry. He scrubbed harder, determined to finish their task and get out of there, even though he thought gloomily to himself that it would probably be the last thing they would ever do together.

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They finished scrubbing the floor relatively quickly, as they would appear to a passer by to be too focussed on the task at hand to muck around, although both Ron and Hermione knew that this was not true, as they each had their own reasons for wanting to finish.

Every now and then one of them would look up, see the other looking at them, and quickly look away again. This continued until Madame Pomfrey entered the room at around 12:30, to tell them that they had done enough, and that they could empty their buckets and go to bed.

Ron was first to the sink, and as he walked away Hermione called out to him.

"Ron?"

He turned around.

"I think we missed a bit behind that cupboard. We'd better go clean it up." she said, a little uncertainly, but at least she was talking to him. Maybe she didn't hate him as much as he thought.

He followed her around the corner, and stopped to look at the floor. It was spotless.

"What do you mean?" he asked her. "It's fine."

Hermione, who was now standing next to him, blocking his escape, looked up at Ron, a lopsided grin on her face.

"Oh," she said, nonchalantly. "My mistake."

And with this she closed the gap between them, kissing a now very confused Ron again; winding her arms around his neck as she kissed him harder. She was overjoyed, her plan had worked, and by the way Ron was kissing her back, he was pretty happy too. She congratulated herself for having the guts to trick Ron, after reacting as she had the first time he kissed her, purely out of shock.

As they stood there, all the passion they had been suppressing over the last six years being poured out into their kiss, for the first time in their lives they both knew that this was what they wanted. Each other.

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AN: Awww, sweet. But what will happen next? Will things be different in the morning? How will they tell Harry? And what have Harry and Ginny been doing while Ron and Hermione have been in the Hospital Wing snogging?

Should I leave it there, or continue? Review if you want more, I need ideas.

    ~Ninny Weasley~