Author's Note: Hello everyone! I have been in SUCH a romantic Romione mood that I had to get a bit of it out in writing! Plus, it's been a while since I've written a one-shot.

Enjoy!

Faults

When Hermione was five years old, her mother walked in and found her daughter attempting to iron her hair. Jean Granger had stepped out of the room to fetch another load of laundry to iron, and in the time she was gone, her young daughter had draped her long hair over the ironing board and had attempted to straighten it using what had just been fixing wrinkled collars. Naturally, her mother screeched and took the hot iron away from her daughter and held it out of harms way. Hermione had taken her head away from the ironing board and stood back, looking guilty.

"Hermione, darling, what on earth were you doing?" her mother cried, her heart still beating rather quickly after witnessing the scene she had just walked into. Hermione's eyes welled with tears, and she twisted her hands together.

"I was trying to fix my hair," she wailed. Jean Granger softened at once and sat down on the bed, holding a hand out to Hermione so that she would sit down next to her. Hermione followed her mother's example and hopped up on the bed, her legs swinging off the sides.

"Why would you try to do that?" she asked, looking down at her daughter's now burnt hair.

"Because it's awful, and I hate it, and everyone at school makes fun of it," Hermione cried angrily.

Jean wrapped an arm around her distraught daughter's shoulders and kissed the top of her head. "Darling, I love your hair. You have your father's hair," she said.

Hermione sniffed. "But Daddy's is short so you can't tell; it looks fine! I hate mine!"

"What do you hate about it?" her mother asked her gently.

"It grows everywhere and never in the way I want it to, and it's so bushy!" Hermione cried, tears running down her face. "I thought that if I could make it straight like Emily Simon's from school it wouldn't look so bad and people would stop making fun of me," she said, holding up the hair she had attacked with the iron.

"Well, the people that make fun of you aren't really your friends. And you shouldn't feel the need to please them. One day you'll meet friends who like you...who like all of you, and they won't make fun of your hair because it's part of who you are," her mother said soothingly.

Hermione sniffed and gave her mother a disbelieving look. "That will never happen," she said.

Jean wiped the tears off of her daughter's face gently. "Yes, it will," she said softly, trying to placate her daughter. "And one day you'll meet a boy who loves you, and do you know what?" she added.

Hermione looked up at her mother, her eyes glassy from crying, "What?"

"Your hair, and all of the things you don't like about yourself, well, they'll be the things he loves best," Jean Granger told her daughter, who didn't believe a word of it.

OoOoOoOoO

Thirteen years later, Hermione stood in front of the little cracked mirror in the upstairs bedroom in Shell Cottage she was sharing with Luna. She was trying to braid her massive amounts of hair, though it had turned into something of a wrestling match. And her hair was winning. After ten minutes of pointlessness, Hermione gave up and unwove her hands from the endless brown curls, giving a loud groan of frustration to her reflection. Her hair was everywhere; it looked as though she had been dragged out of a forest backward.

"What's wrong?" came a voice, and Ron came into view, first his head, then the right side of his body as he peeked into the bedroom. She turned from her reflection, her cheeks pink with embarassment, and turned to face him. His face was wrinkled with concern and his eyes traveled up and down her body. "Is everything okay, are you all right?"

She smiled at his concern for her. "Yes I'm - I'm fine," she said, wishing she hadn't groaned loudly enough to attract his attention, and painfully aware that she looked absolutely ridiculous right now. She put a hand up to her hair to try and flatten it down a bit, but it was no use. "I was, erm, trying to fix my hair," she said, blushing harder.

Ron's eyes rose to her hair, and then back to her face. "Why would you do that?" he asked curiously.

Hermione bit her bottom lip and took her hand away from her hair. "Well, it was a bit...a bit...well, all over the place," she said, wishing she could stop drawing attention to the part of her she liked the least. She hated her hair; she always had, and talking about it with Ron wasn't helping.

"I like it," Ron said quickly, and his ears immediately turned their tell tall red. Hermione stared at him, her eyes wide and her lips parted in awe.

"What?" she asked softly, sure she hadn't heard him right.

Ron cleared his throat uncomfortably. "Your hair, I...erm...well, I think it's nice." he said, and now the blush had crept to his cheeks.

"Do you?" she asked, surprised. She felt an inexplicable and strong surge of happiness and something she couldn't quite place.

Ron seemed to gain a bit of confidence from her positive response, because he nodded. "I've always loved your hair," he said, blushing quite hard now, so that his face nearly matched his hair. But Hermione didn't mind. She beamed at him, remembering the time when she was five years old and she had tried to iron her hair flat. She remembered what her mother had told her many years ago, though at the time she had thought her mother was making up stories to try and make her feel better.

She didn't stop to think, because she knew she'd lose the courage if she did. She crossed the room and hugged Ron tightly. After a few seconds of getting over the initial shock, he hugged her back. She could feel his hands shaking as he gently put them around her. Then she stood on her toes and kissed him on the cheek. His ears turned bright red again, and she smiled as she pulled away from him. He looked dazed and indecently happy, as if all of his birthdays had come at once.

"What - what was that for?" he asked, grinning down at her.

Hermione took a curl of her hair and wrapped it around her finger, eyeing it. Here was a boy, a boy whom she loved, who had just told her that he liked her hair. Maybe what her mother said was true after all. She smiled up at him.

"Just because," she said simply. Ron raised his eyebrows.

"Whatever it is, I'll do it again," he said feebly, and Hermione laughed. He didn't have to say it again; once was enough. She loved him, she had known it for years, and he loved her. He loved her even though she bossed him around, and corrected him when he used incorrect grammar, and told him to stop swearing, and scolded him for his complete lack of table manners. He loved her and he even loved her crazy mass of curls.

OoOoOoOoO

When Ron was six years old, his mother walked into the kitchen and found her youngest son fervently rubbing his forearm with a piece of sandpaper he must've found in his father's shed. Alarmed, she took the scrap of paper away from him, examining the abraison he had made, about an inch long, and immediately fixed it with a quick charm. After his arm had been taken care of (and the cut on his leg, which had been made before he had attacked his arm) she sat him down at the kitchen table with a large mug of cocoa, face wrinkled with concern.

"What in heaven's name were you trying to do Ronnie?" she asked as the young boy peeked anxiously up at her from over the top of his mug.

"I was trying to get rid of my freckles. Fred and George said that if you rub them hard enough you can get them off," came his quiet reply.

Making a mental note to reprimand her most troublesome sons later, Mrs. Weasley took Ron's hands in hers and said, "And why would you want to get rid of your freckles?"

Ron scrunched up his nose and narrowed his eyes. "Because I hate them," he said forcefully. "I wish I didn't have any," he added.

"I didn't know you don't like having freckles," Mrs. Weasley said. "Why don't you like them?"

"Because they're everywhere," Ron whined.

"Everyone in this family has freckles, Ron," Mrs. Weasley said, trying to wrap her head around this peculiar distaste.

Ron rolled his eyes, eschewing much more emotion than she'd thought possible from the little boy sitting in front of her. "But not as many as me. So I thought I'd rub a few of them off and then I'd have a normal amount and it wouldn't be so bad. Fred and George said they'd come right off, just like dirt when you're taking a bath. But they didn't," he said sadly.

Mrs. Weasley tried not to smile at the strangeness of the phrase 'normal amount of freckles,' lest Ron think she was making fun of him. She squeezed his hand and said, "Fred and George were lying dear, you can't rub of freckles."

Ron's face fell. "I didn't think it would work. I kept rubbing and nothing happened."

Mrs. Weasley touched a hand to her son's face and lifted his chin with her finger. "Even if it would work, Ronnie, you should never do something like that."

"Why?" came Ron's indignant reply.

Mrs. Weasley sighed. "Because your freckles, all of them, are part of you. And you should never try and change them," she said forcefully, and Ron nodded, though she could tell he didn't agree.

"I just wanted to get rid of a few," he mumbled stubbornly, and Mrs. Weasley, at last, chuckled. She stood up and kissed the top of her son's head.

"Don't ever change anything about yourself Ronnie, because we all love you the way you are," she said and Ron rolled his eyes and pulled a face. He must be learning from the twins, she thought. "You know, when I was younger I never liked my nose," she added thoughtfully.

Ron looked up at his mother, confused. "What's wrong with it?" he asked curiously.

Mrs. Weasley smiled. "Nothing, but I thought it was too long," she said, and Ron furrowed his eyebrows, examining his mother's nose. "But do you know what, Ronnie?" she asked.

"Sandpaper didn't make it any smaller?" Ron asked brightly, and Mrs. Weasley laughed.

"No, I never tried to erase it with sandpaper. But your father loves my nose; you'll find that that happens a lot," she said.

Ron touched his own nose. "People like your nose?" he asked confusedly.

Mrs. Weasley smiled softly. He had missed the point. "No, Ronnie. The thing you like least about yourself is often the thing the person who loves you loves the most about you," she said, squeezing her son's hand again.

Ron nodded unconcernedly and finished his cocoa, hardly giving a second thought to his mother's story. Girls were gross, and besides, he didn't think he'd ever find one who liked freckles. Not as many as he had.

OoOoOoOoO

Fourteen years later, Ron woke up late on a Saturday morning to a cool, but not unpleasant, feeling running up and down his spine. He was lying facedown on their bed, his face turned to her side of the mattress. He opened his eyes and shook hair that needed to be cut out of his face to see Hermione, awake, lying next to him. Her finger was tracing patterns on his back. She startled when she saw that he was looking at her. Quickly, she withdrew her hand.

"I'm sorry," she said softly, "Did I wake you up?"

"Yeah," Ron said, his voice deep from lack of use. "But I don't mind. What were you doing, it felt nice," he added.

Hermione blushed slightly, though she resumed the patterns she had been making. "I was counting your freckles," she said. Ron rolled over to face her, though immediately wished he hadn't, since now his back was away from her. He took her hand in his instead, their fingers meshing together effortlessly.

"Did you finish counting?" he asked, and Hermione laughed.

"No, I didn't have enough time. You woke up just as I was about to finish. I guess I'll have to start all over again," she said, moving a bit closer to him and touching her feet against his. Her toes were always freezing; she liked to warm them against his.

"What number did you get up to?" he asked, blinking sleepily at her and moving a bit closer as well, so that their foreheads were nearly touching.

"About a million," she answered, and they both laughed. When they stopped, Hermione looked down at their woven hands and said, "I've always loved your freckles."

Ron moved his head back a bit so that he could look at her fully. "Have you?" he asked. Hermione nodded as earnestly as she could with her head still resting on the pillow. With the hand that wasn't in Hermione's, Ron propped his head up on the pillow, looking down at his girlfriend of three years. She was amazing; he always thought she looked beautiful, but he loved her best when they were just waking up. He thought it was because he was the only one who had ever seen her like this, and the thought made him feel immeasurably happy.

"Yes," Hermione answered, bringing him back to the present. "Even when we were just friends, I loved them. And now," she grinned widely at him, "I like that I get to see freckles that no one else has seen," and Ron laughed.

"You know," he said, "I tried to take them off once," and he laughed again at the memory. "Fred and George told me that they'd rub off if I tried hard enough."

Hermione's eyes widened. "Why on earth would you do that?" she asked, shocked.

Ron shrugged. "I guess I just didn't like them." He thought back to that day in the kitchen, what his mother had told him. He glanced at Hermione. Her free hand had resumed tracing patterns, this time up and down his forearm. He watched her, and he remembered the rest of what his mother had told him. He hadn't thought twice about it at the time - at six years old romantic relationships had been the farthest of his concerns - but now he was older he found himself dwelling upon it again. A strange tingling sensation rose in him as Hermione ran a finger lightly around his elbow. He took his hand from hers and used it to prop himself above her with one hand on either side of her body and kissed her, making sure not to crush her in the process.

"Hey," she said into his mouth, "You made me lose track," she whispered, with indignation that told him that she secretly didn't mind at all. He lifted himself off of her slightly, her hands finding a way into his hair and massaging his scalp. He wanted more than anything to go back to kissing her, but he had something more important on his mind. He had been thinking it for months now, yet suddenly, after waking up to her fingers tracing patterns of his freckles on his back, the thought was so strong in his mind that he knew he had to let it out. She blinked up at him, smiling softly, her fingers still in his hair. He took a deep breath, overcome with her beauty and the words that were on the tip of his tongue.

"Marry me," he said, and immediately wished that he had found a nicer way to phrase it. You only got to ask once. And he didn't even think that that had counted as asking.

Hermione's eyes widened. She looked intently at his face above her, and he knew she was trying to figure out if he was serious or not. "W-what?" she asked.

"I love you. I love everything about you. I love waking up next to you and coming home to you. I love fighting with you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I know this isn't the best way to ask, but we never do anything the way it should be, do we? So, will you marry me?" he asked, and suddenly he found it very hard to breathe and his hands on either side of her were shaking and his pulse was beating loudly in his ears.

She smiled widely and it was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen. "Yes," she breathed. "Yes, yes, yes!" and she pulled him down on top of her and kissed him right on the mouth, her arms wrapped around his neck. The ring was hidden under his papers in his bedside table as it had been for six months, but he'd get to it later. All he could think of now was that he was kissing the girl he was going to marry; the girl who liked every single one of his freckles.

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