Disclaimer: I do not own Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy, Lavender Brown, Quiddich, Slytherin, Gryfindor or Hogwarts. If I've missed something, I probably don't own that either.

AN: Not much to say, really... enjoy!

Beyond

It wasn't until our seventh year at Hogwarts that I realized I loved you – I'd probably loved you the entire time, but it wasn't until then that it clicked. We were lying side by side on the cold stone floor in some abstract corner of the school. The place was so unused that the dust almost made for a comfortable bed. Or at least I told myself that it did, when really, our last years at Hogwarts were some of my most painful physically, if only because of our awkward "beds".

Your head was rested on my shoulder. Your hair, though dulled by the stuffy atmosphere of our hideaway, still shone with the brightest highlights, red, blond and brown. And you were crying, Ron. I'd never seen you cry before.

You were worried, I could tell. Your shivers – from fear, not the cold – were haunting. You asked me, "Can this work, Draco?"

I was so used to being comforted by you. I'd never had to tell you it was going to be okay. You just knew. I said, "It'll work, Ron."

"But I'm a Gryfindor and you're a Slytherin."

Just a day earlier, I might have agreed that that could be a relationship killer. I'd worried about the very same thing myself in the past, but I'd changed that day. Maybe it was the help Lavender Brown had given me in divination or the box of sugar quills that your sister had given me for my birthday, just because she could. It's more likely that I'd discovered something in myself through you. Discovered that I was something beyond my Hogwarts House.

I had never thought that I could say anything like this and mean it, "Do you really think that our houses are going to mean anything after we graduate?"

It was then that I outgrew Hogwarts. I was beyond Hogwarts Houses; Hogwarts classes; Hogwarts feasts, Quiddich and petty hierarchies.

I was beyond my father's rule.

"And besides that, I love you Weasley."

And I did.