Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

A/N – At the moment, this fic will mainly be made up of a lot of little chapters about what happened after that kiss. I'll guess I'll update when I feel like it, and if people seem to want me to continue. It's mainly just to keep me going through these long summer months where it's doing nothing but rain where I live. Grrrrr.

One.

Ron Weasley lay back on his bed, his hands behind his head. He was back home, after so long. It felt so weird, there was just too much to think about. He wished he could escape out of his head for a while.

Hermione had once said he had the emotional range of a teaspoon. At the time she'd probably been right, as she always was, but it certainly wasn't true any more. He had too much emotion to deal with now. There was the grief, after losing his brother Fred, there was jubilation at having defeated Vol…You-Know-Who, the disbelief at everything that had happened, and there was also a little bit of complete and utter shock.

He couldn't believe Hermione had kissed him. Maybe it had been a dream. That would certainly make a lot more sense. Everything to do with the final battle seemed to merge together whenever he thought about any of it, so maybe he'd imagined the single best moment of it all. But then again, when he closed his eyes, he could hear basilisk fangs falling, he could see the determination in her eyes, and he could feel her lips on his, he could feel his face getting hotter.

Love. It was a weird thing really. Who even invented love, he thought to himself. Obviously some stupid sadist who had made it his life mission to torment people. And whose idea was it to make girls how they were? Ron shook his head. He had never understood them. One second they were all over you (well, kissing you on the cheek at least) and the other they'd be sending bloody canaries at your head when you tried to move on.

He'd never liked Lavender like that though. He'd just felt he needed to, well, show he wasn't totally pathetic when it came to snogging and stuff. Even though he was. He realised now he just hadn't been kissing the right person.

Hermione. He didn't know what it was about her that drove him crazy. She wasn't a Veela or anything, and no one else really seemed to like her as much as he did, if he didn't count Krum (and Ron did not, he thought bitterly.) It wasn't just her looks, even though, of course, she was beautiful. He'd first started to like her in second year, he thought. Except then it had been sort of subconscious, like he found himself staring at her for no apparent reason, and when she smiled, it made him forget whatever he had been saying or doing. And seeing her in the hospital wing, Petrified. That had been it. He had wanted to protect her, he didn't ever want to see her like that again.

They'd still argued of course. That was just how they were. And yes, sometimes Ron started the rows on purpose… He didn't know what it was about it, but whenever she yelled at him her eyes would sparkle and she'd look more amazing than ever. It was like that old Muggle cliché phrase – "You're beautiful when you're angry…" Unfortunately, Ron had never really been able to say that to Hermione, as he'd always bottled it at the last second. Mainly because in those old Muggle films where they said it, the hero always kissed the woman after, and that was the bit Ron had trouble with.

Kissing Hermione. He couldn't think of anything that would be more pleasurable, or more terrifying. He'd wanted to for so long, but there was just so much to lose. So that was why, during the battle, he had responded so fiercely when she'd kissed him. It couldn't have been a dream, surely. He'd had dreams about it before, and none had been so great…

Ron was interrupted from his daydream about Hermione's big brown eyes when the door opened. He straightened up, his ears tinged red. It was Hermione. Would she be able to know he'd been thinking about her? Would she be able to tell from how he was stuttering over his words and how his entire head was a strange shade of scarlet?

"Umm, Ron? Can I talk to you a second?"

"S-s-sure, 'Mione. I'd be, urm, happy to, yeah?"

Oh excellent. He sounded like some kind of deranged snake who had never heard English before in its life.

"Ron, erm, I think I made a mistake."

"What?"

"Well, during the battle, I kissed you, and well, I'm sorry, and I apologise for that."

"What?!"

"I did it for all the wrong reasons, and it was stupid, and can we forget it never happened?"

Ron nodded blindly, as everything in the room seemed to blur before his eyes.

"Well, good. See you at dinner?" Hermione replied, a look of relief flushing across her face.

Ron nodded again, trying to seem unbothered. She smiled broadly, before turning and exiting the room.

Ron fell back on the bed, a strange feeling washing over him. It was as if someone had just emptied an entire bucket of cold water over his head. He couldn't have got things so wrong, surely. It didn't make any sense. But she'd said it. She'd said it all, and she showed no signs of lying or trying to deceive him. Maybe she'd been joking. Yeah, that was it.

The door creaked opened again. Ron looked up, hoping with all his heart (and pretty much every other part of his body) that it was Hermione, coming to tell him that she was joking of course, and she couldn't believe he would fall for that, and then she'd kiss him again, only it would be so much better, and he'd kiss her back and he could hold her and make her smile. It was her! Ron grinned, but her face was deadly serious.

"Ron, can you not call me Mione please. That's not my name."

Oh well, Ron thought. He had been imagining things again.