The Incidentals

"It's just the little things, the incidentals, it's like you wouldn't even notice when you really turn me on."

I think it's his protective side that floors me the most. I've overheard him talking to Neville in the past about standing up for himself and not letting people get away with putting him down so flippantly.

"But what about when you do it?" he had asked him.

"Well I mean it affectionately don't I? You can't get angry with me can you?" he had grinned before forming his features into a 'butter wouldn't melt' pose and fluttering his eyelashes, "I mean look at this face."

This had made Neville laugh and forget all about the spiteful comment Snape had made in that day's potions lesson. It made me laugh as well, although I tried not to let him see it as he was being an idiot over that missing rat of his at the time, and I've lost count of the number of times I've caught him doing things like that to make other people feel better about themselves.

There's something about his change of attitude towards Luna that makes me want to give him a smile that lets him know 'I notice what you do and I think you're brilliant for doing it'. He took a bit of time to warm to Luna at first, it must be said, but I've always thought that it was because of the oblivious state he was in when they met for the very first time. Poor Luna had been laying it on the line for him, letting him know how fantastic she thought he was, and he just didn't pick up on it at all. I suppose he must've thought that no witch would bother with him while the famous Harry Potter was in the same carriage. I almost split my sides at the expression on his face when Luna had gone into a convulsive fit of laughter at his joke. He genuinely thought she was 'taking the Mickey' as he put it, poor Ronald and his low self-esteem.

I love it.

It gives me an excuse to tell him how wonderful I think he is without giving myself away.

And he is y'know? He's wonderful.

For every nasty thing he's ever said to me he's stepped in and defended me from three times as much from the Slytherins. He has done some very irrational things when he's seen my feelings get hurt, the slug episode with Malfoy and even putting Snape in his place in front of the whole class for example.

"You asked a question and she knows the answer. Why ask if you don't want to be told?"

You see he's the only person who can call me a know-it-all. That's what he thinks anyway. That's what I think too, though I could never tell him that.

I like to listen to him talking to people when he doesn't think I'm paying attention. I like to watch him studying, although he hates to do it, and getting increasingly more flustered as he does. There's something that comes over him just before he's about to huff and slam the book shut, declaring he doesn't care any more and gives up, that sends a tingle right through me.

Tired and frustrated Ron can sometimes lead to harsh and snappy Ron but not tonight. Tonight is another one of those wonderful evenings where he sits back in the squishy armchair in front of the fire and yawns. It's quite an elegant yawn, not what you'd expect from him at all, like a cat...well, not Crookshanks, a confident ginger Tom who has just returned from a night on the prowl and is settling down for a well-earned rest. His eyelids were heavy and his voice is low whenever he responds to Harry's questions.

He'd go to bed if it didn't mean having to gather all his things together first.

He doesn't even realise I've been watching him from the past ten minutes. So disbelieving that anybody would find anything interesting in him in the first place. He didn't notice it when Luna made it obvious, he didn't notice any of my million hints over the years, and he hasn't noticed that ever since we came back for our sixth year he's been on the receiving end of a lot more lingering looks and not just from me either.

Thankfully he didn't really take Lavender's subtlety-free flirting at keeper tryouts seriously, what was she thinking? As if my Ron would ever be interested in a giggling bimbo like that.

My Ron?

Well listen to me eh? He is though, he just doesn't know it yet, and maybe it's time I did something about that.

I'm just building myself up to it when the portrait hole opens and Lavender and Parvati step inside the common room. Lavender sees Ron and blushes; Parvati nudges her in the ribs and nods over to him with encouragement.

"Hi Ron" she sighs.

Oh really! She's such a sap.

Ron shook himself out of his sleepy state and sat up in his chair.

"Oh, hi Lavender."

My two roommates giggle and Ron frowns before smiling to himself slightly, seeming to understand something.

"I'll be looking forward to the next quiddich match," Lavender said, with a little more confidence now, "I know Griffindor are in safe hands with you on the team."

She flipped her perfect hair over her shoulder and walked to the girls' staircase, arm in arm with Parvati, not taking her eyes off of Ron all the way there. I find myself looking at Ron as he watches her disappear up the stairs with a new kind of smile on his face, one I've never seen before, and it makes my insides boil.

Oh no you don't Lavender Brown!

That's it; I'm going to ask him to come to Slughorn's Christmas party with me at the first opportunity. If he's staring to pick up signals from the opposite sex at long last then he's going to receive mine loud and clear and before it gets drowned-out by Lavender's.

Tomorrow, I'll bring it up in Herbology tomorrow.

Until then I'll watch him struggling not to doze off in front of the fire.

He still hasn't noticed that I'm staring at him.

"I never used to be able to use the right words when I was little" Ron had mused from nowhere.

I sat up on my elbows and stared at him across the floor of the dank cave where we were hiding out,afterour return from Death Eater territory. The three of us had just destroyed Helga Hufflepuff's goblet and Harry had come back and gone to sleep as soon as he lay down. I envied him for that as I tried and failed to sleep on the knobbly rock floor of the cave. Fortunately my magical fire was keeping Ron and me warm enough so things weren't too depressing for us. I assumed that Ron's side of the cave must have been offering him the same level of discomfort I was suffering and put that down as the reason for his need to keep throwing out random conversation starters. I'm kind of grateful for the small talk, however, it kept my worries at the back of my mind for the time being.

"The right words for what?" I smiled as I waited for him to deliver another sweet little anecdote about his past.

"For anything!" he said as he sat up, "I used to end up saying the strangest things without meaning to."

I giggled at this, not a lot had changed really.

"Like what?"

He grinned.

"Well there was this one time when I was avoiding Ginny because she had the measles and I kept telling people that I didn't want to have anything to do with my sister because she was incestuous."

I crumpled with laughter while Ron shushed me and pointed to the sleeping Harry before shuffling a little closer to the fire that was burning between us.

"So how old were you?" I managed to whisper with a chuckle.

"About five I think."

I sat up, cross-legged, and looked at him through the flames.

"Aw that's so sweet."

He looked slightly pleased with himself before lowering his head like a puppy that had just peed on the rug.

"Mum didn't think so at the time. She wanted to know where I'd learned the word in the first place."

"Where had you learned it?"

He shrugged.

"I can't really remember, Fred and George probably, they're the ones who tricked me into telling dad's boss at the ministry I wanted to be an arsonist when I grew up."

I could believe it of those twins but still exclaimed through a second wave of stifled laughter.

"No!"

"Yup," Ron nodded, almost impressed at the twins himself it seemed, "they told me it meant you got to sit down on things and rate how comfy they were...get it? Arse-on-ist. Arse-on?"

I shook my head, the young Ronald Weasley sounded very gullible.

"Dear me."

"It could've been worse, they almost got me to choose a career as a bigamist instead."

I marvel at those two sometimes.

"And what did they tell you a career in bigamy entailed then?"

"Ah, y'see they didn't know they were actually using a real word at the time," Ron said, seemingly eager to point out that they weren't the genius' they made out to be, "they were reading the recruitment section of this muggle newspaper that dad had found at Kings Cross and saw that there was a job called a quantity surveyor."

I nodded at this, it's a very respectable job in the muggle world, and wasn't really following 'Weasley twin logic' with this one.

"Yes?"

"So they thought that a quantity surveyor went around declaring 'Ooh there's a lot of that' and 'well there's not too much of that', y'know like a statistician or something?"

I was taken back briefly by Ron's use of the word statistician; it was kind of strangely satisfying to hear him saying multi-syllable words like that.

No! Stop it! Concentrate!

"Uh-huh" well, it was all I could manage at the time.

I wondered if I could persuade him to say antidisestablishmentarianism without arousing his suspicion.

"So they came to the conclusion that a bigamist made things bigger for a living, like an engorgement charm specialist or something."

She shook her head.

"What put all this in your mind in the first place may I ask?"

Ron glanced down at the sleeping Harry and shrugged.

"I was just thinking about our mission and realised that it was a tongue twister, then that got me thinking about mixing words up in a comedic fashion."

I wasn't following his logic, as I am never able to generally.

"How is our mission a tongue twister?"

"Helping Harry hunt hidden horcruxes, helping Harry hunt hidden horcruxes, helping Harry hint hudden horcruxes helping honey hant hidden crorhuxes..."

"Ron...please...sleep...I'm begging you!" Harry's weary voice groaned as he rolled over onto his side.

I couldn't laugh out loud, it was actually causing me physical pain that I couldn't laugh out loud, and looking from Harry to Ron just seemed to make the need to even worse.

"Sorry mate I didn't mean to wake you."

Ron looked at me guiltily before smirking at my internal struggle and lying back down.

" 'S all right," Harry muttered as he drifted back off to sleep, "no wonder me and Ginny were doomed to fail eh? I wasn't enough of a brother to her I suppose."

Ron's eyes were wide and I couldn't hold in the laughter any more as I saw a mischievous grin break across Harry's face, though is eyes remained closed.

"You don't want to get on my bad side, I'm a future arsonist remember?" Ron warned.

Harry gave a lazy snigger.

None of us made a sound for the next couple of minutes and Harry had soon drifted away again. I could see Ron's eyes through the flames, he was looking at me and smiled when he saw I was looking back at him, and we watched each other until my magical fire shrank into a ghostly ball of blue flame and fizzled out completely. I couldn't see him at all now, but I still looked into the patch of darkness that had swallowed him up and knew that he was doing the same back at me. It was then I heard a whisper.

"Night Hermione, see you in the morning."

"Night Ron."

I'll see you in my dreams.

You know what I love about sharing a bed with Ronald Bilius Weasley? Well apart from the obvious of course. I love 'spooning'. Who knew our bodies fit together as well as they did? Who could have prepared me for the fact that having Ron Weasley at my back would ever have meant more than him protecting me in battle?

I can feel his heart beating against my back and hear his slow, deep breaths and it's like a soothing rhythm lulling me to sleep. His arms curl around me and his knees are tucked up beneath my own and we are like the final two pieces of the world's most complicated jigsaw puzzle finally completing the big picture. The picture of the perfect world you never thought you'd get to see when you first started working on all those tiny fragments years ago.

My perfect world.

Neither of us is rich or famous, and neither of us wants to be, we don't have glamorous or thrilling jobs. Witches and wizards of pure blood and muggle born backgrounds do not skip hand in hand through the streets of Hogsmeade, it would be quite nauseating if they did really, and house elves are still treated like vermin by the snobbier wizarding families and probably will be for ever more. Some of our friends were killed in the final battle before Voldemort was finally defeated. Fred lost a twin and Ron lost a brother...but regained one when Percy came back to the Burrow to support his widowed mother. Harry and Ginny decided to disappear from the spotlight that threatened to illuminate him for the rest of his life and has been travelling the world, visiting places where nobody knew of him, for the last two years. Everybody still had their problems and their pain.

It was a perfect world indeed.

We have survived. We have lived to see this day. We have earned the right to experience this sunset and this beautiful clear night ahead of us and the crisp Sunday that would dawn in the morning. The two of us could go anywhere we wanted without fear, we could do whatever we wanted and we have lived longer than either of us had hoped we ever would.

We won't watch the sunset though, or the starry night, we won't even see Sunday morning at all.

I smiled as Ron's breath warmed the back of my neck. Of all the freedoms we had earned the wizarding world I treasure this one the most.

I had earned the freedom to spend the whole day in bed with my boyfriend...doing absolutely nothing.

It's the little things like that we had all been fighting for after all wasn't it?

"It's those little sparks that fly and then land like dynamite."

I am aware this is amazingly sappy for me but I can't torture these two every time I write a story can I? That would make me very mean!