Title: Cheater
Summary: Ron was desperate to complete his Charms essay.
Rating: G
Warnings: None
Featured Characters: Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Harry Potter.
Word Count: 626
Beta: The magnificent queenb23more. Any and all remaining errors are my own.
Author's Notes: Written for the 50 Kid Stories table at the yay_potterkids community on Livejournal, with the prompt of cheater. I imagine this piece as a missing moment taking place some time in the trio's first or second year of Hogwarts. I hope you all enjoy:)

ETA: Now with Beautiful Art by leochi, which can be found here!

Cheater

They had been given a week to complete their Charms essay. Ron knew that he should have started on his ages ago, but with so many more interesting things to do like playing Wizard's Chess or talking about Quidditch with Harry, a week seemed like plenty of time. The problem was that now he was out of time because the assignment was due tomorrow and he hadn't even written one word!

He knew there was no way that he was going to be able to finish in time, so that night, when Hermione wasn't looking, Ron quickly nicked her essay out of her bag and fled with it back to the safety of the dorms. It was wrong. Ron knew it was wrong. But desperate times called for desperate measures, and Ron was desperate.

He moved quickly. Hermione had written nearly twice as much as what was required for the assignment, so Ron copied some of the more important sections into his own handwriting while switching around a couple of words and sentences so it wouldn't be noticeable. Hermione's writing was very thorough so it didn't take him long to finish. Smiling, he put his copy away in his bag, carefully hid Hermione's essay under his jumper, and headed back down to return it.

But his smile disappeared when he got to the common room and found Hermione crying against Harry's shoulder.

"What's wrong?" Ron asked as he approached.

Harry looked up at him and answered, "Hermione lost her Charms essay."

"I can't find it anywhere!" Hermione sobbed as she buried her face further into Harry's shoulder. "I'll never be able to re-write it in time, it took me all week!"

Harry gently stroked Hermione's hair in an attempt to console her and offered, "You can copy mine if you want. I know it's probably not as good as yours was but if you rearrange the words, I'm sure you could make it look like you wrote it."

"Thank you, Harry," Hermione said as she finally looked up. "But I can't do that. I'm not a cheater and neither are you."

Ron felt horrible. He had been so busy worrying about his own problem that he hadn't even thought about what he was doing to Hermione. But looking at her now, tears streaking down her face yet so determined not to copy Harry's offered assignment, Ron knew what he had to do.

"Don't worry, Hermione, I'll look for it," Ron said as he moved to the other side of the room where they had been sitting earlier. He looked around for a moment before asking, "Did you check under the seat cushions?"

"No," Hermione answered softly. "I didn't."

Ron knelt down on the ground and as he removed the cushions off the sofa, he carefully slid Hermione's essay out from under his jumper. "I found it!" Ron cried as he held up the parchment.

Hermione beamed at him as he handed her assignment back to her, and a second later he found himself caught in a crushing hug. "Thank you, Ron! I don't know what I would have done without you."

Feeling guilty, Ron blushed and said, "I'm sure you would have been fine."

"Well, thank you all the same," Hermione said as she pulled away.

He sat and talked with Hermione and Harry for a few minutes before he said goodnight and headed back up to the dorms. Walking over to his bag, he took his copied assignment out and, with a sigh, threw it into the fire. Then he picked up his quill and began to write. It was going to be a long night but Ron knew that he had done the right thing.

Hermione wasn't a cheater, and now, neither was he.