Just a little something extra! I was originally planning on making a series of vignettes, and this was one of them, but the chess story suddenly grew to a oneshot and this one was pushed aside. Hope you like it!

There's something beautiful about the world in the little moments between midnight and dawn, where time flows sluggishly or doesn't seem to exist at all. It's here that Ron finds himself lying on the cool stone of the Astronomy Tower, watching the stars and thinking and contemplating. It's been a bit of a hectic night for him, and the deafening silence surrounding him is like a comforting blanket. It's a force of habit from his younger years, where he would hide out in the attic alone; because there is a limit to the amount of activity and excitement he can handle in a day.

He finds his thoughts drifting over to Hermione, as they have been wont to do for the past couple of months. (Or was it years? He can't quite pinpoint when this obsession started.) Closing his eyes, he can picture how she looked tonight at the Yule Ball; all dressed up, face flushed in excitement and happiness as she dangled off the arm of Krum. His stomach churns briefly in anger, and something else, but he feels it quickly slip away in the serenity of the night.

Unbidden, a quote drifts through his mind. "Anyone can love a rose, but it takes a great deal to love a leaf. It's ordinary to love the beautiful, but it's beautiful to love the ordinary."

Ron finds it oddly fitting. It suits Hermione, he thinks.

He knows how insecure she feels about herself– can see it in her eyes, because it's something he's experienced his whole life. He knows that tonight was perhaps the only time she's received shocked, appraising looks. The one time she had the opportunity to be the rose, instead of the leaf.

He prefers her as a leaf though. Ron likes the strong, short-tempered, brilliant Hermione better than the shining jewel she portrayed herself as that night. (A weird feeling grows throughout him at the word 'like', and he promptly ignores it.)

And maybe, sometime in the future, when he's gotten over his own insecurity, he'll build up the courage to tell her that. For now though, he'll laugh, and learn, and live to his full capacity.