Ron sighed, turning over in his bed. He wondered how in the world he was supposed to just go back to sleep knowing that she’d just had a nightmare less than three feet away.
It was always so fucking cold, now. He wondered how a tent could be that cold. He was shivering a little, and the warming charm he’d cast a few hours ago was barely still working.
“Are you sure?” he asked, rolling over to face her direction. It was almost too dark to see her, but he could still make her out. “I can make you some tea or something. I can’t just lie here and pretend that I didn’t hear, though. Do you want to talk about it?”
Ron supposed, in all honestly, that there were worse things that he could have been doing when Hermione burst through his bedroom door. Still, though, it didn’t make him feel any better about the fact that he was standing on the end of his bed, sweeping broom in hand, trying to use the end to smash the giant spider that had crawled out of a hole near his window.
“Er. Hullo,” he attempted, casually, while trying not to take his eyes off of the spider. They were crafty fuckers, spiders. The minute you stopped seeing them, they scuttled off and then he’d never get to sleep knowing it was in there.
He was sitting on that deep windowsill that he loved in the second floor corridor. The one where you could almost always feel the warmth from the sun through the stained glass window, even if it was only ten degrees outside. Although, on this particular day it was a lot warmer. The sun felt good against the bare skin of his arms while he paged his way, lazily, through Quidditch Teams of England and Ireland for the 9,875th time.
He wasn’t supposed to meet up with Lavender, per se, but he had absolutely no doubt that she’d be along eventually. She always seemed to know where he was, and this particular favourite spot was not actually a secret. And, surely enough, he thought that he could detect that unmistakable smell of vanilla and blackcurrant that meant that she was somewhere close at hand.
“I fucking knew it!” Ron could not have been happier if he tried. The look on Hermione’s face was a pretty great surprise. She looked embarrassed and shocked and, even though she tried to cram the evidence of what she was doing back into her school bag, he wasn’t going to be thwarted. He had caught her red-handed and she was going to answer for it.
“Ron! You’re being ridiculous!” She sputtered like a tea kettle. He grinned from ear to ear, happy to have the luxury of being in the right for once. He didn’t intend to let her off easy, either.
“Am I? Because it seems as if I’ve caught you flagrantly violating the rules of this school and, more specifically, this library. And, as a Prefect, I really should be turning you in to the proper authorities. Possibly even taking house points.” He folded his arms across his chest and smirked smugly. “Of course, I could decide to let it go this one time.”
“I see,” she rolled her eyes, apparently not amused by his antics. “And what would I need to do to achieve that sort of immunity from your gracious self?”
“Well, for starters, you’d have to share.” He dropped into a chair next to her and reached out a hand across the table.
She sighed heavily before reaching into her bag and pulling out the snacks she’d been eating. She passed a chocolate frog across the table to him and he unwrapped it, still smirking. “I just knew that it was impossible for someone to spend as much time as you do in the library and not eat anything. I mean, Merlin, you’d die of malnutrition.”
“Mmhm,” she grumbled. “So, does my noble sacrifice mean that you’re not going to turn me in to Madam Pince?”
“It all depends,” he shrugged, still struggling to liberate the frog from its packaging.
“On what?” Evidently having nothing to fear any longer, she unwrapped a sugar quill for herself.
