A/N: I swear I'm writing Thieves! This was just a little pre-Lavender, sixth year ONE-SHOT that I wrote a while back and never posted. Nothing but fluff! Rated K+ for one naughty word :)

Chapstick

It was definitely, completely, one hundred percent nothing.

Except for the fact that it was making his chest explode and his head spin and his lips tingle and his feet turn to jelly.

But other than that! It was definitely, completely, one hundred percent nothing. Definitely.

It had started less than an hour ago, walking down to the courtyard for a Hogsmeade trip. It was freezing, and he'd been chewing on his lips, listening to Hermione tut beside him.

"You're going to make it worse," she chided, raising eyebrows at him as they turned the final corner before the archway to the snowy outside.

"Huh?" he grunted, still half-asleep, at nine o'clock in the morning. He blinked a few times and set to work on his bottom lip again. It was starting to feel a bit like brittle sandpaper...

"That!" Hermione shouted, pointing at his mouth as he ducked slightly, automatically, to avoid hitting his head on the sloping right side of the stone archway through to the courtyard. He really was too damn tall. "You're tearing your lips apart doing that. You'll make them bleed."

"Oh," and he cleared his scratchy throat. "Well, they're falling apart anyway."

"Sometimes I question if you and Harry have got any sense at all between you," she sighed, rolling her eyes, but almost smiling.

Ron grinned halfway as Harry chuckled to himself, passing through the arch a few feet behind Ron and Hermione.

Ron yawned, shrugging.

"What'm I supposed to do about it?"

"As you may have noticed, you've got a person with you nearly all day, every day, who uses pure logic to solve every problem."

Ron blinked, staggering a bit as he navigated around a patch of ice in the centre of the courtyard, noting that most of the rest of the student body was already gathered at the exit on the other side.

"I've no idea what you're on about, Hermione," he sniffed. "It's far too early for riddles."

"You idiot," and she shoved her shoulder into his upper arm as they carried on a bit quicker, to catch up.

"Thanks," he grinned, rubbing his nonexistent injury with a gloved hand.

Hermione huffed out an exaggerated groan of annoyance before stuffing a hand deep inside her cloak pocket and removing what looked like a small tube of... lipstick?

Ron raised his eyebrows down at her as they came to a stop behind the last bottlenecked clump of students being accounted for and checked off the list for Hogsmeade.

"Right," Ron started, very poorly holding back a grin of self-amusement, "contrary to what you may believe, I am not actually a girl."

Hermione shook her head at him, pressing her lips together tightly against her amusement.

"It's lip balm, Ron. When was the last time you saw me wearing lipSTICK?"

"First, you've read my mind, which is amazing... but also terrifying. And second, I've seen you wearing lipstick. At... the Yule Ball." He nearly grimaced to even broach the topic, but she didn't seem to mind, as she pressed on.

"That was two years ago."

"You just said 'the last time'. Not 'the last time this week'," he teased. But he was immediately caught off guard by another group of late students shuffling up behind them, causing Hermione to step up closer to Ron, briefly brushing against the front of his coat.

He cleared his throat as she smoothly readjusted, popping open the cap of her chapstick and applying it to her own lips.

Rather slowly.

Without looking directly at him.

Yeah, he was staring. His ears were also ringing a bit. Must have been... the cold. Affecting his mind.

Yeah. Yeah, that was it...

He swallowed. Much to hard. She had to have heard...

Were her cheeks a bit pinker now than they'd been before?

He was definitely imagining things.

Rubbing her lips together, she finally looked up at him and reached for his hand. He extended it, palm up, like a puppet obeying its master. And she pressed the chapstick tube into it, dabbing at the corner of her lips with her index finger, to smooth out the balm that had smudged too far over.

"Either that," she said, in a lower voice, "or you can go on picking at your lips and regret it."

"Thanks, Mum," he managed to almost-whisper. She rolled her eyes casually and stuffed her hands into her pockets.

And that was when it fully hit him. Like someone under a very bizarre imperius, he swallowed again, rolled the thin plastic tube of clear-ish paste between his fingers, and made what could have resembled a kiss shape with his lips, swiping them with Hermione's chapstick.

Hermione's.

Hermione, who had just had her lips against the same thing that-

He felt lightheaded. And his lips were suddenly like silk. She was brilliant.

Oh, and she was also staring at him now. This one, he wasn't imagining.

His face flashed a million degrees.

He reluctantly handed her chapstick back, rubbing his lips together unconsciously.

He hadn't noticed the students in front of them moving forward. But before he could comprehend what his legs were even doing, he had followed Hermione and Harry, through the exit and on down the hill, away from the castle.

It shouldn't mean a thing. They were friends. Surely he'd shared a glass with her. A fork, even. But this… was fucking different.

This made him feel.

And it was thus that he found himself being ushered from shop to shop throughout Hogsmeade, mind whirling.

Hermione looking over her shoulder to be sure he was alright.

He couldn't remember the sound of his own voice.

But soon, he found himself stalled with her, waiting past a checkout line for Harry to make his purchase. And she was standing close enough for him to feel, heat radiating from her...

"Worked well, didn't it?" she said, softly.

"Mm?" he managed.

"We'll get you some of your own," she breathed. "Shouldn't we?"

He couldn't piece it together. Couldn't quite breathe normally. Harry was moving towards them, distracting Hermione away from whatever he might have been able to muster up to try and say...

But by the time Harry had led the way back outside, Ron's mind had caught up with his racing heart, and he'd concluded three things.

He would do whatever it took to avoid any attempts to buy him his own tube of magic-lip-healer.

Hermione's cheeks had absolutely turned pink back at the castle before.

And it was, of course, definitely, completely, one hundred percent... nothing…