Prompt 2: Middles

Ron awoke with a start in the middle of the night. His mind racing as he evaluated his surroundings. It took him a few moments to realize he was at number 12 Grimmauld place, he was in the room he and Harry used to share, Harry had taken to sleeping in Sirius's old room so that meant... A soft chuckle interrupted his realization. 'Crap' he had just woken up in the middle of the night after having had an erotic dream about the person laying in the next bed. How was he suppose to clean this up? He certainly knew the spell for it, but he wasn't prepared to attempt it non-verbally for the first time on little Ron in front of Hermione's watchful eye.

"You awake?" Ron asked, trying to buy his brain more time. 'Would she notice if I grabbed my wand and headed to the bathroom?'

"I would be even if I hadn't been up reading, you were uhm... making noises." Hermione didn't take her eyes off 'Tales of Beetle the Bard'.

'Noises? Think brain, think!'

"Nightmare... yeah just a nightmare, about uhm... spiders, hairy little gits... they're scary ya know and uhm... yeah spiders." Ron choked out what he knew was a pathetic excuse while he prayed to who ever in the universe might be listening that his brilliant best mate slash girl of his dreams didn't catch on.

"Well if you're making those sorts of noises in conjunction with a nightmare about spiders I really don't want to know what they were doing to you." Ron sat in horror as he watched Hermione's mouth turn up in a smirk.

Ron wanted the bed to swallow him up. Really? Was she really not going to let him weasel out of this? 'I would let her out of this if the situation were reversed, wait no, no I wouldn't. I'd take the mickey out of her for sure.' His mind lingered on thoughts of Hermione moaning asleep on her bed and he felt a small twitch in the area of little Ron. Which brought Ron's mind back to his first dilemma, how to clean up this predicament without humiliation, well further humiliation at least.

Hermione's words interrupted Ron's reverie. "It's perfectly natural Ron, 83% of males experience nocturnal emissions. It is merely an indication of your virility and ability to..."

"Stop talking, please! Merlin's pants, please stop talking right now." Ron's hysterical shouting cut off any explanation of what ability his situation was an indication of. He grabbed his wand off the nightstand accepting that doing it there would be less embarrassing than her seeing his soiled pajamas from her lamp light as he got up to leave the room and muttered a well known cleaning charm.

An awkward silence hung between them as Ron settle back onto his pillow with a sigh. Never in his life had he wanted to be alone more in his life. He had even been delighted when Hermione had sheepishly admitted she didn't want to sleep alone after Harry had claimed Sirius's room for himself. They weren't in the most romantic of settings but he hoped long talks into the night would help him win her heart. These were not the sort of long talks he'd envisioned.

Guilt began to bite at him as he lay there. She hadn't done anything to deserve being shouted at and he knew that as horrifying as her speech had been it was only her way of trying to make him feel better.

"I'm sorry I yelled at you Hermione." He said softly, keeping his eyes fixed on the ceiling.

"Under the present circumstances it's quite understandable." She was quiet for a moment and Ron considered just rolling over and getting more sleep. "Spiders? Honestly Ron, you could have at least said something that would be plausible." Ron's anger was kindled again as he heard her chuckling behind her book. Ron sat up, resting his weight on his elbow and looked at her like she'd been possessed.

"What the bloody hell was I supposed to say?" His voice cracked a little in irritation.

"My first thought when you started moaning was that you were dreaming of food. What with all the more's and so good's."

'Kill me now' Ron thought.

"I didn't really cotton on until things started to," She paused, searching for words. "progress. I had no idea you were such an exhibitionist, wanting of doing THAT in a library."

Ron slammed back down on the bed and covered his face with his pillow. "You are sleeping in your own room from now on!" He shouted to her through his downy hiding place.

"Stop being such a baby Ron, it's not like you're the only one's whose dreamed of getting intimate in the school library." Ron lifted his pillow just enough to look at her. Her voice had been steady and un-phased but he knew her better than that. She had a slight flush to her cheeks and was chewing on her bottom lip. She was embarrassing by her admission. He sat up on his elbow again.

"Really, this brings your love of revising into a whole new light." he teased.

"Come off it Ron, I doubt there is a single student that has or will matriculate through Hogwarts that hasn't envisioned being ravished in the deep stacks of the muggle literature section." Ron was stunned. Not to mention what was happening with little Ron as she painted the mental image. He couldn't help but picture her there with swollen lips gasping for breath under his minstrations. It was just like third year all over again when she'd punched Malfoy in the face. Completely changing his entire perspective on her.

"Who are you and what have you done with my Hermione?" Ron had to check that this was in fact Hermione saying this, his book obsessed best friend Hermione was having no objections to talking about something he would have assumed an unforgivable desecration in her eyes.

"It's hardly a secret seeing as the entirety of my relationship with Victor took place in the Hogwarts library." And that did it for him, his visions of her and the Bulgarian predictor over took his fantasy and he fought his jealous inclination to yell and break things. To her credit Hermione seemed to realize what he was struggling with and continued talking. "I finally learned to cough a lot and shuffle my feet loudly every time I wanted to indulge in Jane Austen."

'What year was Jane Austen in and would they mind if I watched' Ron's thoughts must have been written on his face because Hermione's book was soon flying at Ron's face.

"She's an author. You randy little pervert."

Ron ducked and chuckled a little, embarrassed by his hormonal thinking being so obvious. He loved it when she got all hot and bothered. It got him, well all hot and bothered.

"It's not my fault, you were going on about loudly indulging someone in the stacks. You can't throw a book because of an innocent misunderstanding."

"If your thoughts were innocent just then I'll never ask you to join S.P.E.W again." Her look was challenging him to attempt the bold face lie he was preparing in his head. It was useless though, he knew he wouldn't be able to get it out without giving it away.

"All right you win, I am a dirty teenage boy." Something sparked in Ron's memory. "Speaking of, 83% is pretty specific. Where do you get these statistics from, it's definitely not in anything that's ever been on my start of year book list. I swear sometimes you just make up a number because you know nobody will argue with you."

"Don't be daft Ron, I don't just make up numbers to be impressive. I googled it." At the blank look on Ron's face she went on. "It's a muggle thing, it's a search engine on the Internet. You type in something and it brings up various references to it from different web pages."

"Okay, first it's like you're speaking greek sometimes. Second, why exactly were you oogling something like that." Hermione's cheeks reddened again.

"Googling Ron, the search engine is called google. You really should have taken muggle studies, no one in the muggle world won't have understood that sentence."

"You haven't explained why you were looking up, looking up," Ron paused struggling for words. Even though he was doing his best to embarrass her it still didn't mean he found it easy to say some of this in front of her. "THAT sort of thing."

"I like to understand things. When I hear references to things I don't know about I make a mental note to look it up at the earliest convenience. With Lavender and Pavarti sleeping in the same dorm as me, it's unavoidable that I don't engage in the occasional conversation." She was looking down at her bed spread as she said this.

"Girls talk about those sorts of things!" Ron was shocked. Didn't girls just talk about clothes and that goop they put on their eyes?

"You're joking right? I've been privy to every detail of every relationship that's gone on in my year, the year above and the year below. Not to mention the hypothetical conversations they engage in." Ron choked a little.

"Every relationship?" Ron asked quietly, not daring to look at her.

She seemed to understand his reference. "Yes Ron, every relationship and that does indeed include you and Lavender Brown." Ron was fighting his desire to know what exactly his ex-girlfriend had said about him and his avoidance of the entire Lavender topic. She must have seen his internal struggle and took away his having to come to a decision on the matter. "Apparently she was very fond of your rather large hands but it did take a while for you to get the slobbering under control."

Ron once again wished the mattress would just swallow him. "Girls are evil you know that. I can't believe Lavender was prattling on about snogging me but I couldn't get a bloody word out of McLaggen about his date with you."

Hermione broke out is a fit of giggles and a wide wicked grin at this. "Yes, well I can inform you that after McLaggen got overly handsy under a sprig of mistletoe at Slughorn's party he was on the receiving end of a particularly nasty hex that made his little friend rather useless to anyone for a while."

He loved this girl. Seriously and without a doubt he was madly in love with her. "That is brilliant. You are honestly the smartest witch in the world. No wonder he refused to talk about it."

"Wait a minute, I can't believe you asked him. You should be ashamed of yourself checking up on me like that."

"But you just said you talked to Lavender about me."

"No I believe I said I was privy to the information not that I talked about you with them. I'll have you know I never once asked Lavender about her relationship with you. She did seem to enjoy going over the details of it every time I was in the dorm though." An awkward silence quickly came between them and Ron knew he needed to say something. He had ardently hoped of it never coming up again but with the dangerous mission they were on he didn't want anything to happen to either of them with out something being said.

"Look, Hermione about that whole Lavender thing, it was stupid. I didn't even like her. It's just, well it's just Ginny, ya know, well she said something or yelled it really, well she said somethings about me not ever having snogged anybody after Harry and I caught her and Dean behind a tapestry." He felt like an idiot bring up his lack of experience with her. "Lavender was just, well she was there. I just meant to do a bit of snogging so, well so I wouldn't be the only one who hadn't ya know. It wasn't suppose to be anything more than that. I can't tell you how much," he paused struggling for words. "I can't tell you how much I just wish I'd, that I had waited for, waited for," his eyes flicked over her. She had an unfamiliar look in her eyes, a little vulnerable and eager. "That it had been someone else, someone very special." his voice barely a whisper at these last words.

A moment hung between them again. Ron wishing she would say something.

"I shouldn't have send those canaries after you. I had no place, it wasn't right to attack one of my best friends." Her voice was sad and she had begun to pick at her bedspread again. "I'm sorry." She pointed her wand at the light on her nightstand.

Her turning off the lamp seemed to be some signal that she didn't want to talk about it anymore but Ron couldn't get his brain to stop nagging him to answer her.

"It's okay, I deserved it. Snogging someone in the common room after agreeing to go to that Slug club thing with you. I wished I hadn't. You're very special to me Hermione" He wondered if he was catch the reference. The darkness of the room made him feel bolder and he continued confessing. "If I hadn't then maybe it would have been me you'd were hexing the bits off of for getting too handsy under the mistletoe."

More silence and Ron wondered if Hermione had been asleep for the bravest moment of his life.

"I don't think I would have been hexing anything had that been the case." Her voice was quiet but he heard every word clearly and his chest felt as if it were going to explode. It didn't seem possible his body could contain this much joy.

"Night Hermione."

"Good night Ron." She giggled wickedly before continuing. "Sweet dreams."

'She really is evil isn't she?'