Prompt by: @lilhex - I hope you like it!
A/N: Yes, I’m aware it’s January. No, I do not care.
Warning: Ron’s potty mouth, predictably.
“I’M GOING TO MURDER BOTH OF YOU IN YOUR SODDING SLEEP!”
This was decidedly not going to be Ron’s favourite Christmas.
It was bad enough that he was spending the entirety of his holidays in miserable, mouldy 12 Grimmauld Place, that his mother was exponentially more weepy than usual (which, all things considered, was quite an accomplishment, he’d give her that), and that he had piles of homework enough to fill several weeks of holidays – on top of all that, as if his plight wasn’t already terrible enough, he was now permanently glued to the kitchen floor.
Several floors above him, Hermione found both Weasley twins leaning smugly against the railing, with identical expressions of pure joy at the sound of Ron’s exclamations on their faces.
“What’s this?”, she asked, narrowing her eyes.
The twins looked alarmed.
“Don’t tell Mum”, they said in unison.
“We’ll glue you on the next doorstep.”
“We’ll glue you in Kreacher’s cupboard.”
“We’ll glue you in Harry’s room, see how you deal with his tantrums.”
“Aw, that’s harsh, George.”
“What did you do to Ron?”, asked Hermione, crossing her arms in front of her chest.
Sheer delight erupted on their faces.
“It appears”, said Fred, “that dear Ronniekins ran into a Mushy Mistletoe.”
“Quite successfully so, mind you.”
“I’LL HEX YOU INTO OBLIVION IF MUM DOESN’T GET THERE FIRST, YOU PISS-STAINS!”
“Matter of perspective”, said Hermione, peering down the spindly staircase to the ground floor. The kitchen was out of sight. “What did you say they were called?”
“Mushy Mistletoes”, said George, gracefully wiping his perfectly dry eye with a single finger. “A little treat for the festive season. We have rarely been prouder.”
“It’s a regular, good old mistletoe”, explained Fred, “with the added fun of it Spellotaping you to the ground below your feet should you er, encounter one.”
“We’re working on the name”, added George.
Hermione was scandalised. “It’s one of the products for your stupid joke shop? And you let Ron run into it? How do you even know it’s safe? Did you tell him the counter-spell?”
“Hermione”, said Fred indignantly, “as much as we appreciate you having Ron’s back and all that, you aren’t seriously telling us you don’t know how mistletoes work, now, are you?”
“FUCK YOU, FRED WEASLEY!”
The twins erupted in sniggers.
“Really”, snapped Hermione and marched down the staircase, cheeks flecked with pink.
“What’s funny?”, asked Ginny, peeking out of the living room.
“Ron stepped under a mistletoe that glued him to the kitchen floor”, said Hermione.
“SHOUT A LITTLE LOUDER, HERMIONE, WILL YOU!”
Hermione had realised her mistake immediately, but it was too late – Ginny bolted towards the kitchen and was laughing heartily when Hermione followed two seconds later.
“Thanks, Hermione”, Ron said sourly. “Great, thanks. I always appreciate having an audience in moments like these.”
“I’m sorry, Ron, I didn’t think – oh, give it a rest, Ginny –”
But Ginny had already left to join the twins, leaving the door open behind her just an inch, and Hermione turned to look at Ron.
As much as she wanted to deny it: there was something undeniably funny about the look of tall, gangly Ron, a murderous expression on his face, standing under a single mistletoe which had now, of all things, started to holler cheesy Christmas songs.
“These seem a little off-key”, said Hermione into the silence, fighting silently to try and keep the corners of her mouth from twitching – and was this really the time to think about how cute he looked when he was angry?
Ron took a deep breath. “Right. Tell me. How long’s this gonna take to wear off?”
“I – er – I don’t think it will. It – no, look, I’m not saying that you’ll be stuck her forever, Ron, you won’t obviously, I mean, the charm will have to wear off eventually, and you do have to go back to school and all that … the twins said it just worked like a regular mistletoe”, she finished, her voice several octaves higher than usual.
“Well”, grumbled Ron, “then I guess I’ll just –”
Then he understood, and his eyes widened.
“Oh. Oh. I – bloody buggering pricks!”
“Yeah, well, Ron, I agree, but insulting them isn’t going to get us anywhere, so –”
“It’s alright, really, I’ll just – go get Pigwidgeon –”
“Oh, don’t be silly”, said Hermione.
But he was – as much as she tried to deny it, he was undeniably the silliest thing she’d seen all day, with his gloomy expression and a mistletoe now enthusiastically dumping buckets of fake snow on his head, and she wouldn’t have him or the way he was now angrily wiping snow off his shoulders any other way.
“It’s OK”, said Hermione, “That snow’s just a spell – it can’t be real now, can it? – I don’t think it’s going to melt on you.”
Their most awkward silence yet fell. Hermione’s brain was working furiously: she could tell he was annoyed and upset and embarrassed, muttering insults under his breath – the rest of the family could come running into the kitchen at any moment, and she really wanted to save him from this embarrassment, and maybe she kind of, kind of wouldn’t mind …
Muffled voices came bubbling in from outside the kitchen – Ron tensed up and closed his eyes as he swore to the kitchen ceiling.
“Yeah, well, he’s not getting out of there until February”, said Fred or George.
“Is Hermione in there with him?”, said a new voice.
Ron’s expression changed from mortified to deeply offended in the fraction of a second. “Not Harry, too”, he whispered.
“OK”, said Hermione, whose heart was inexplicably speeding up. “Hold still.”
“You’re sleeping in the kitchen then?”
Hermione was painfully aware of her burning cheeks as she stepped closer, abashed, but determined. God, he was tall. He’d have to bend down, and he appeared to be frozen in shock.
She grabbed his shoulders for balance and pulled herself up on the tips of her toes, pressed her closed mouth on the corner of his – lingered, for the fraction of a second – , and took several steps backwards. Ron blinked. For a single moment there, she thought he might’ve closed his eyes.
“So?”, she asked, her voice reverberating oddly in the silent kitchen and her buzzing head.
“No, I meant, can you move?”, she said quickly.
“Oh! I – yes! Yes, I can – thanks, Hermione.”
“Sure”, she said, awkwardly patting his shoulder. She pulled away the moment she realised what she was doing. “Uhm – Ron?”
“This – it’s not going to make things between us weird, right?”
“What – no! Absolutely not. I mean this … this …”, he laughed nervously, “this isn’t changing anything. I mean, it was just – it was just a – right?”
A peck on the corner of his mouth barely counted as a kiss, she reasoned with herself. It didn’t really count as anything.
When they opened the kitchen door, both Weasley twins, Harry, and Ginny were sitting on the staircase. Ginny, Fred and George looked disappointed at the sight of Ron’s freely moving feet – Harry stared incredulously at Hermione, not quite smiling, but not too bothered, either.
Both Ron and Hermione bolted from the hallway.
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