Title :: We Should, Probably

Summary :: Addressing that whole excited kiss in the Room of Requirement, Hermione and Ron tiptoe around their feelings for each other in the kitchen of the Burrow. Fluffy. One-shot.

Why I'm Doing This, Again :: Oh, come on, they're cute. :D

Sometimes, Hermione still woke up in the middle of the night with a scream at her lips.

The Second War was over. That much was clear. Voldemort had gone. His followers were being rounded up. It had been a week or so since the final battle. She still felt fear. She still felt rage and pain and loss. And sometimes she had nightmares, just like tonight. Well, not sometimes. Every night, more or less. She should have been happier. Hermione Granger still wasn't used to not jumping at every small noise, not looking over her shoulder repeatedly once darkness fell, not acting for all the world as if something bad was about to happen. She couldn't help it. They'd been living that way for so long.

She got up from her cot, draping a blanket around her shoulders; there was a draft in the house tonight, for some reason, and her camisole and flannel pajama bottoms weren't enough to keep her warm. She glanced into the mirror before leaving the room she shared with Ginny. Worried brown eyes stared back at her, her mussed-up brown hair in an unruly ponytail. The younger girl's bed was empty. Probably with Harry, Hermione thought, with a smile and an unexpected stab of pain. She couldn't help but be slightly jealous of how quickly they'd gotten back together. And how she and Ron, well – they still hadn't talked about The Kiss.

With a heavy sigh she tumbled downstairs towards the kitchen, of half a mind to make hot chocolate in an attempt to forget her nightmare. As she tripped through the door, though, she realized that a spot at the table was already occupied by the redhead who had just seconds previously been the obsession of her thoughts. She tried not to make it obvious that she hesitated in coming in. He glanced up at the sound of her footsteps, and, immediately, a nervous sort of smile flooded his face. She felt her heart leap into her throat and smiled back before looking away quickly.

"What're you doing up so late?" his voice asked her as she busied herself pouring some of the hot chocolate that was already made; he had a mug, too.

"Erm...bad dream," she said, a miserable look stealing over her features for a second. She sat down beside him, trying to focus on her mug of hot cocoa. They hadn't been alone – not really – since finding the basilisk fangs in the Chamber of Secrets. It was unnerving. She wanted to touch him; she wanted him to lift his arm and put it around her shoulders.

"Yeah. Me too." She was surprised at how easily he admitted it. He ruffled his already tousled red hair and stared into his mug, too, blue eyes brooding. "It's hard to believe it's over."

"That's my problem exactly. I just can't believe we're not on the run anymore, digging up Horcruxes, practically dying of starvation." She let out a nervous laugh. "It's hard to get used to."

They fell into an uneasy silence. Hermione stared at the table, where Ron's hand was sitting just inches away from her own. Can you just...just hold my hand, or something? she thought desperately. Anything to prove that it meant something...anything...

Finally, she cleared her throat. If he wasn't going to talk about it, well, then, she would just have to. "Erm, well, I was wondering," she began, her voice timid. "We should probably..."

"...go to bed? Yeah, you're right, I mean, it's late." He took a deep drink of his hot chocolate, as though planning on doing just that. She felt extremely put-out. Was he so eager to be rid of her presence?

"Oh," she said, biting her lip. "I mean, sure. If you want to." She took another drink of her cocoa, too.

Suddenly, he shot a glare at her. Even out of the corner of her eye, she could see it. "I wish you wouldn't bloody do that," he said, a hint of fierce annoyance in his voice.

She looked at him, utterly bewildered. "Do...what?"

"You trick me into thinking you want to do something, even if you don't, and then I go along with it because I don't want to hurt your feelings or be an insensitive oaf or something," he rambled, waving his long arm like a windmill. The kitchen was small, and the motion seemed to fill the whole room. "It's rubbish, you do it all the time."

"Uhm..."

She couldn't help but smile at this. He looked at her, dumbfounded. "What're you smiling about?" he demanded. "Blimey, girls are so confusing. I was expecting you to be really mad that I said that." He let his hand come to a rest on the table. "I sound like an idiot."

"No, you don't, I just...wish you'd told me that, er, about seven years ago," she said sheepishly, staring back into her cocoa again. "It would have, you know, helped me to...not do that."

He took a deep breath. "Right. That's settled then. So what were you actually going to say?"

"I was just thinking that maybe we should talk about what happened in the Room of Requirement, that day of the final battle." Her voice was more confident. He'd made her smile, and Hermione always seemed to be more confident when she was happy.

There was silence. She looked up, unnerved. He was staring at her again, quite as though he'd never seen something like her before. He cleared his throat, looking supremely uncomfortable. "Er...I suppose we should," he said, and even the tone of his voice was awkward.

"I mean," she stammered, utterly mortified once again, "if you don't want to, I understand, I mean, maybe it was just the overall atmosphere, the excitement of the moment, I did...throw myself at you...so if it didn't mean anything..."

"You're bloody doing it again!"

He'd jumped to his feet; his mug toppled at the sudden motion, and its contents spilled over the table. She didn't look at him, lifting her wand to clean up the mess before it spread, but –

"No," he growled, and grabbed her wrist to pull her away from the spill. "Stop it." He took her wand from her hand and set it down, hard, on the table, well out of reach of the spreading liquid. She was vaguely aware that she was standing now, and very close to him, looking up into his face. The blanket had slipped from her shoulders, puddled on the floor beneath them. His hand was wrapped around hers. Distantly, she thought she might hear his heartbeat thrumming in his wrist. She hoped she could, anyway. "Listen to me, Hermione Granger. For once, can you just say what you mean?"

She wanted to look anywhere but his face, but the hand that wasn't holding hers placed firm fingers beneath her chin and tilted her head up, so she had no choice but to stare into his blue eyes. Blue, blue eyes. "I...um...well," she said, lamely. She realized that her feet were scuffing, rather uselessly, against the ground. "It's just, it...it meant something, to me. Kissing you."

There was a moment of silence as he let go of her chin. She stared blankly at the floor. In a small voice, she continued, "Well, actually, it meant everything, to be honest."

His hand let go of hers. Well, this wasn't going at all how she'd planned it. Merlin's pants. She was ruining a friendship over one kiss.

"The thing is, I really, really, really like you," she added, as though she couldn't stop herself. "I've liked you for a while now."

Another pause.

"About, four years, maybe. Give or take a few weeks."

She felt her eyes welling up with tears. He still wasn't talking. "Well, actually, I probably love you, just to be perfectly honest," she told his feet.

He appeared frozen, or at least, that was the state his ankles seemed to be in, since that was really the only part of him she was looking at.

"So," she finished, very quietly, "that's what I meant."

She felt his hand slide around her waist; his palm pressed against the small of her back, forcing him close to him in a marvelously warm, comfortable hug. She buried her face in his shoulder, trying not to cry. This is it, she thought to herself. The moment he tells me he just can't see me like that.

He let his arms fall to loop around her hips, drawing back a bit to see her face. To her immense surprise, he was grinning. Am I missing something? she thought, dimly, distracted by the wattage of that smile. "That wasn't so hard, was it?" he told her, his hand sliding up her bare arm to her neck, then to her face to brush a few strands of hair away from her cheek, and then his fingers were drawing her irresistibly forward; his lips were kissing hers.

She felt a happy sort of pressure growing in her chest, like a balloon was being blown up in there. Her arms went up to wrap around his neck, her fingers sliding into his hair. His arms wrapped around her, pulling her closer, closer, closer, until there was no space left between them.

When the kiss finally broke, she lowered herself slowly down from her tiptoes, her eyes still closed. She was smiling, probably a bit foolishly, but she'd never felt so good as she did in the afterglow of snogging Ronald Weasley. "You look really, really beautiful when you're happy," his voice told her, and she opened her eyes. They grinned at each other, still a bit stupidly, and he gestured toward the door. "Want to go for a walk?"

Her eyes went back to his, puzzled. "Er, sure. But why? It's three in the morning."

He looked a bit offended. "I just thought it would be nice, in the moonlight and under the stars and all, to tell you that I probably love you, too."

She stared up at him, speechless. His grin returned, a bit huger now, a bit sillier, but Hermione wouldn't have had it any other way.