Boss Beth

Mon, 16 Apr 2007 16:20:06 GMT

I went back to look up something in Chamber of Secrets, noticed a little action, and this drabble was born.

Hey, guess what? They're eating breakfast! It's formally a motif of mine.

Warning: incredibly goofy.

Speaking Volumes
Rating: PG, for the vaguest of suggestions, and snogging.
Summary: Ron can write fanfic, too.
Wordcount: 1280.

She thought she knew every facet of his face. Every freckle, as they came and went with the sunshine; his nose, long and sloping; his eyes, telegraphing his every emotion; his fringe, obscuring expressive brows more and more as the year dragged on; his ears, which stuck out just a touch too much...

One morning in the great hall, out of the blue, she noticed the notch.

There, on the tip.

A tiny chunk of ear was gone.

How long had it been there? She had known him for years now, and she'd never noticed. But now that she had seen it, she could not stop looking at it.

Her finger itched to feel it, the slightest roughness of flesh in a band of smooth.

Her heart ached a bit to think of even the slightest part of him gone. It spoke of other, less visible wounds the conflict had brought him.

She wondered how the scars on his arms are healing. But somehow, she could not bring herself to ask.

Ron was suddenly waving his hand in front of her face, and she realized he had been speaking to her as she dazed off.

"Hermione?" He snapped his fingers just once, sending a flare of irritation up her spine. "Hullo?"

She sat up straighter, trying to keep her eyes focused on his. "Um. Yes?"

He grinned. "Thought we lost you, there."

Her chest contracted ever so slightly at his turn of phrase, and her eyes were drawn to his ear again. Now she could not keep the question from spilling out.

"What happened?"

He blinked at her. "Happened?"

Her hand came up to her own ear, rubbing the shell ever so lightly. "To your ear. It looks like something... You have a bit..."

Ron's eye followed her hand as he cleared his throat. "Damn pixies."

Her hand stilled, her brows knitting. "Pixies?"

Ron cocked an eyebrow at her. "Tiny blue buggers?" He wiggled his fingers. "Fly about?"

She did not want to fight with him. "Ron, I know what pixies are---"

"Second year?"

He was doing this on purpose. "Try a complete sentence, Ron."

He fixed her with a look. "Lockhart's damn pixies, second year. Gave me a nasty nip. You don't remember? You were there. I made a fair stink about it. Bled like mad."

Hermione fixed him with her own look. "I don't remember anything of the sort."

"Ah, well." Ron crossed his arms. "You were fairly distracted that year. Stupid gits with shiny teeth tend to do that."

"Ron, please." He was entirely ruining the fun of his ear. Now, instead of reminding her of indistinct sacrifice, if would forever represent this stupid fight and the twittishness of Ron Weasley. "I was twelve. Gilderoy Lockhart was a famous wizarding writer---"

"No," interrupted Ron. "He was a famous wizarding liar."

"And how was I to know that?" She crossed her arms. "Why should I have suspected the things that he wrote? He wrote them."

Ron scoffed. "Books can lie, Hermione. Reckon you've heard of 'fiction.'"

This was not the conversation she had wanted to have.

"Ron Weasley." She picked up her books and stood from the table. "I'm sorry that, forever ago, when I was a preteen, I had a crush on a handsome, famous writer. I swear to never do it again." She paused mid-huff, and glared at him.

She was so tired of this game.

"Maybe if someone else had even tried to distract me, Lockhart wouldn't've had the chance."

She stormed off, leaving Ron gaping.

He sat there, poking at his food.

"I was only twelve," he said lamely to his pancakes.

Hermione was on the fourth foot of her Potions essay.

"This is ridiculous," she said to Crookshanks, "even for me. Snape only wanted one..."

But the argument had filled her with irrational, angry energy. She had already completed the Transfiguration essay she'd given herself the entire weekend to complete, and had demolished the majority of her Arithmancy extra credit.

Still her finger tapped, tapped, tapped as she wrote. She was even driving herself insane at this point. Thankfully, her dormmates had better things to do on a Saturday afternoon than hide in bed, so Hermione could talk to herself or the cat or to what-bloody-hell-ever all she wanted.

She stopped tapping her finger, but the sound continued. Looking up, she saw Errol, tapping the window wearily.

She was trying her best to not contemplate irksome redheads at the moment, but Errol looked so put-upon she had to open the window. He dropped a roll of parchment off the ledge, and swooped off with heavy wings straight for the owlery.

Hermione contemplated just throwing the scroll in the fireplace. She wandered over and gave Crookshanks a pat.

"It would serve him right if I did."

Crookshanks stared at her blankly.

Feeling better just for voicing the sentiment, she unrolled the parchment, and began to read. It started off in a loopy, self-aware script, but as it went on, it returned to being so unmistakably Ron.

Once there was this stupendous git named Lockhart, who wrote hundreds of thousands of books about things he wish he did, all of which he made me read because, seriously, he is a stupendous git. But loads of people liked them, so maybe there was something to it.

I reckon there's nothing wrong in wishing things had happened differently. I do that a lot. I sometimes wish I had half as many brothers as I do. I wish I was a little less rubbish at Quidditch. I wish I wasn't a jealous git.

I wish I hadn't gotten this nick on my ear from a pixie.

I wish I'd gotten it from Hermione Granger.

Hermione looked up at Crookshanks.

"Well, that's..." She crossed her legs. "That's one way to broach the subject, Ron."

It was stupid and blatant and a little creepy, and her pulse was racing.

It went on to detail how she could have nicked his ear.

In a number of different ways.

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut. "Oh, God."

Ron was halfway through dinner, listening to Neville tell him and Harry something about some sort of water cress that cures warts on goblins, when Hermione approached. Her face was flushed, but not in the way he had hoped. She looked more than a little cross.

She stormed up to him and slapped his letter face-down on the table. "Seriously, Ron? This is how this is going to happen? Pervy letters?"

Ron could not help but notice that Hermione had the undivided attention of every table within earshot. "Hermione, maybe we could talk about this somewhere else---"

Her eyes flared. "Oh, you bet, Mr. Weasley." She grabbed him by his tie and hauled him out of the Hall. Ron saw the grinning faces on Harry, Dean, and Seamus, and managed to grab the letter on his way out.

"Hermione," he whined as soon as they were alone in the hallway, "I'm sorry. I'm just, I'm no good at this, and you wouldn't stop---"

And she was kissing him.

The letter dropped to the floor as Ron found better ways to occupy his hands.

Hermione rested her chin on his chest, staring up at him with a smirk. "This is not how we are telling our children this happened."

"Children?" Ron could not suppress his goofy grin. "Merlin, Hermione, I had no idea this was going to be this effective."

"Ronald Bilius Weasley." Hermione's hands held the sides of his face, her finger tracing the edge of his ear. "Would you please shut up."

He was more than happy to oblige.

Sat, 31 Mar 2007 18:59:26 GMT

Computer fixed after too many months of turmoil. Time to catch up on the tiny slice of fandom I follow.

Tragically, the Deathly Hollows cover does not feature our team making out---not even a chance of furtive groping in the wretched British kiddies edition. Sadness.

Wed, 08 Nov 2006 18:07:30 GMT

I didn't mean to write two fics in a row that were set over breakfast. But, well, it's the most important meal of the day?

Note - I just sort of wrote this, without intending to. It just all spilled out, and I'm leaving it like it is, unedited, because that feels right. So here we go.

Night and Day

Rating: PG, if that. It's fluff, quiet and soft. A tiny bit of angst.
Summary: There's quiet, even while hunting horcruxes. Ron and Hermione share some observations over breakfast.
Wordcount: A touch over a thousand.

Food was simple, on the move. Basic sandwiches, fruits, transfigured pine cones---when it's her turn to do it, she imagines she can still taste the bark. She wonders if they can, too, and are just too polite to say so.

On occassion, they get the luxery of canned soup with a quick heating charm. It's silly, how grateful she is for hot soup. It warms her in her bones, and deep in her belly. Harry can't help but smile, really smile---his hands cupped around his can just so. And Ron has cut himself twice licking remnants out of the can, catching his tongue and lips and nose on the ragged edge. She laughed at him as she tended his wounds, his eyes all dreamy as he told her "It was worth it."

Everything was simple, really. There was a goal---four goals, to be precise---and they did what they needed to do. And that meant moving, moving on and on from place to place, from library to ruin to cave...

And it meant hurried kips in flimsy sleeping bags and breaking fast with stolen apples and horrible coffee and bread and spread from who knows where.

She was slicing the apples when her boys finally woke, Harry just taking a whole one and was off for a run to clear his mind. She had stopped trying to tell him it was dangerous, that he needed them close at all times, that it wasn't safe, it wasn't fair. But he hadn't even tried to argue. He just starting waking before she did and ran anyway.

So she gave him his breakfast and let him go without a word. At least this way, she knew he ate. Sighing, she started to peel Ron's.

As if on cue, the redhead rolled out of his sleeping bag and over towards the fire. His hair was mussed in a thousand different directions, gone ragged and long and wild in the months of the search. Her hand twitched on the knife, imagining shearing him close so she could see the hundred expressions of his face again. But that would mean she would lose this perfect moment, with his face all scrunched up at the cold and his hair a crown of cowlicks around his face. She smiled and guided the knife back through the apple.

He sat across from her, legs crossed, hands shoved under his armpits, eyes closed and still. She laid the last of his apple on a kercheif and passed it to him, and he began to chew lazily.

At last he succumbed to a great yawn, showing a mouth full of half-eaten food. She couldn't stop the "Honestly, Ronald," but she could cap it with a laugh.

"What," he said blearily, rubbing the heel of his palm into an eye. "Bloke c'n yawn, what with..." But Hermione was never to know what with, as his mouth went wide with a second yawn and the words were lost.

She laughed again, and wiped some apple juice with her wrist as it escaped from her mouth. "I'm not surprised you're so sleepy, the way you sleep."

Ron scowled at her from underneath a mess of fringe. "What's wrong with the way I sleep?"

"Well, you sleep like a..." She stopped herself, about to say 'like a torpedo.' She thought for a moment. "Like a wand, all straight. On your stomach, with your arms tucked all underneath you, and your feet all balled up."

He frowned at his feet. "I get cold. Gotta do what I can." He directed his frown at her. "At least I'm quiet nights."

She went still, heart beating fast, hand frozen around a bad cup of coffee. "And what is that suppossed to mean?"

Ron took a great bite of bread. "All night long, you mumble. And murmur. Nightmares, I reckon. About Harry." He swallowed, eyes on her hands. "About me." He seemed about to say something, but changed his mind. Instead he looked up at her. "You can't stop worrying, can you?"

She let out a tiny smile. "No. I can't."

And they ate in silence.

That night, the search took them in to a town, and they slept in beds---actual beds. She couldn't fathom it. She got her own room, and a hot bath, and a change of clothes, and a meal with real food. Sure, it was from some miserable diner, and sure, the bed smelled funny, but she couldn't bring herself to care.

Instead she thought of the boy two rooms over, made all of freckles and elbows, laying hunched and ramrod straight. She thought that she could manage the walk two rooms down---just a long stretch of cheap rug in a dimly lit hallway. She had faced worse than that before. She had faced worse than that recently.

She could slip into his bed, and wrap herself around him, and hold his cold hands against her body, and entwine his legs in hers, and share with him all of the warmth she had.

But it was easier to just fall asleep.

It's strange to sleep with a pillow, a real pillow again. Somehow it's not as comfortable as the ones that Hermione has transfigured---even though he sometimes imagines he can feel the prickle of pine cones deep inside the down.

He tried to just be still and let sleep take him, but he knew that she was just two rooms down. And he halfway thinks he can hear her, tossing and turning, her voice coming out a quiet whisper. Some nights, she cries. Was she crying tonight? It would be so easy to find out, to let his cold, bare feet take him the short distance, and hold her close and muffle her voice in the crook of his neck.

He wanted to imagine more, but even in his fantasy, he didn't have the nerve to kiss her. His laugh comes out as a cold, bitter bark, filling the empty room.

It was easier to just fall asleep.

Harry was running, of course. Some days, it seemed that Harry was always running.

She sat at a table in the lobby, gnawing on a stale bagel. He sat next to her, tucking his feet up under him, and reached for an apple, handing it to her wordlessly.

She pulled out her knife. "There's a simple spell for this, you know. It'd take me just a moment to show you."

He shook his head groggily, grateful that his hair hid how he looks at her. "You do it better."

And the day began.

Sat, 19 Aug 2006 23:59:46 GMT

I just finished re-reading the whole series to sort of take a canon refresher, and there's no denying one thing. Ron has absolutely no clue about Hermione until HBP. Sure, he's all a-twitter in GOF. But that's not concious jealousy. That's knee-jerk. Hermione, however, is obviously aware and into him reasonably deep by then, if not a little earlier.

Poor, poor Hermione, is my angle here. As fond as I am of Ron Weasley, he's sort of a git and an idiot. While I ship them even harder after this excercise, now I'm reading some fanfic and going, "Come ON. This boy barely knows what color her eyes are."

Fri, 12 May 2006 09:41:39 GMT

Well, God, here we go. When I talked myself into starting this journal, I didn't see what the harm was. "So you're watching a fandom again," I thought, "so what? No harm in lurking."

And here I am, having written my first fanfic in, christ, six years? Seven? I'm not proud of this relapse, because I reckon it's just the first drop of a deluge. But I guess I'm slightly more eligible than some to write for these characters as I actually wore a uniform to school for, um, far too many years. Really, that means I'm obligated. ...yes.

Anyway, here we go. Let's see if I can remember how to do this.

Title: Tights.
Pairings: Oblivious R/Hr, H/G (I didn't plan on the latter, but there you go).
Rating: PG, for fluff rated Pretty Goony.
Summary: It's morning in Hogwarts, and an exam is looming. But Ron, Harry, and Ginny have far more interesting things to discuss than Potions---to Hermione's chagrin.
Technicalities: Just a touch over 1600 words, filled with people belonging to J.K. Rowling.

Somewhere in the regulations of Hogwarts, one could find that one rule had gone unbroken for decades: The closer the exam, the quieter the breakfast. Honestly, Hermione preferred the morning quiet. By no means did she enjoy the funereal gloom, the hangdog looks... But cocoa, toast, and silent study were the perfect start to a day by any account.

A good amount of pleasure had been wrenched from the experience since the exam in question was a particularly heinous Potions midterm. But one did what one could.

She glanced across the table to her friends. Harry seemed to have given up on studying long ago, and instead was caught toying with his oatmeal, one hand poking at it fitfully with a spoon, the other cradling his head. And as for Ron---

Ron was staring at her curiously.

She felt a flush begin to sneak up her neck, and did her best to will it away. "Ron? Can I help you?"

He looked at her thoughtfully. "So, is it a SPEW protest thingummy?"

Hermione sighed. "I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Your tights." He nodded to the table, to her legs tucked neatly underneath.

She couldn't help but boggle at him for a moment. "And I still have no idea what you're talking about."

Ron brushed his bangs out of his eyes. "Tights. You've been wearing tights for weeks now. Normally, you wear those, you know, those socky things."

A fight hadn't even started yet, and she found herself getting angry at him. He didn't have to be so deliberately mysterious, did he? "I wasn't aware that you paid such close attention to my footwear."

The tips of his ears turn pink. "I don't! I'm not--- I mean---" He swallowed nervously, and in the corner of her vision, Hermione saw a grin settle onto Harry's face. "It's just, you know---" Ron's eyebrows suddenly gave a quirk, and his whole face seemed to relax. "Uniforms and all. There's only so much chance for... individuality, right? I mean, you can't do much to dress different other than socks or stockings. It sort of jumps out at a bloke." He settled back into his seat. "Normally, 'Mione, you wear those blue, stripey wool socks, but lately you've been wearing these tights---"

"So, Ron," interrupted Harry, his grin razor sharp, "you just sort of generally notice how girls dress unique from each other?"

"Of course. It's kind of hard to miss. Like Luna and her thingies." Ron gave a vague wave and took a confident pull of his juice. "Can't miss it."

"What's Ginny wearing?"

Ron's glass froze in its arc back to the table. "What?"

Harry made eye contact at Hermione and winked. She rolled her eyes in response, gave up on the conversation, and went back to her book. "If you're paying so much attention to all the girls' accessories all the time---what's Ginny wearing this morning?"

Ron began to blink a little too rapidly. "I haven't, uh. I haven't seen her this morning, so I don't---"

"So what do I usually wear, then?" Ginny appeared at his shoulder, leaning over him cheerily. "Hermione wears blue socks, yeah, with stripes? What's my unique fashion touch?"

The blush had spread to his cheeks now, his freckles fading into the greater sea of red. "That's besides the point. The point is that Hermione has been wearing stockings for yonks now, when normally it's socks, and it's gotta be a SPEW protest, right? She's not wearing socks until they all can wear socks, right?"

"House elves can't wear tights?" Harry pursed his lips thoughtfully.

"Oh, thanks, Harry." Ginny groaned around her morning donut. "I really did not need to imagine Dobby in tights while I'm eating."

"Honestly!" Hermione could only take so much of this. "There's an exam today! Potions, remember? Don't you think this time would be better spent studying? At the very least, you could be having a good breakfast. Or shall I explain to Snape that we're not totally prepared because we spent breakfast discussing---discussing hypothetical elf hose?"

At the professor's name, both Harry and Ron returned to their pre-exam solemnity.

But Ginny simply narrowed her eyes at her friend. "That's not why she's been wearing tights, Ron. Not on account of elves."

"Ginny." Hermione let a note of warning in her voice.

"She's been wearing tights---"

"Ginny!" The warning was gone, leaving desperation in its stead.

"---because she's woolly enough without any socks."

Harry and Ron stared at each other blankly until realization crept in. Slowly, Harry turned his face to hers, but Ron merely erupted into riotous laughter.

"Honestly," she huffed angrily, "if I choose not to shave my legs, it's my business."

Harry's oatmeal was long forgotten at this point. He pushed it aside as he subtly scooted forward, as if a great hairy leg were about to peek out from under her side of the table. "It just seems so unlike you."

Ron was gone, far gone, the initial clap of laughter now turning into mute, body-wracking heaves of mirth. Hermione's whole face felt like it had been dunked into scalding water.

"For your information, it's part of... of a motivational system."

"Wait until you hear this," said Ginny to Harry around her brother's shaking form. "It's absolutely bonkers."

"It is not bonkers. It's something my mother did when she was in college." Hermione felt herself calming at the memory of her mother's face as she shared her secret stratagem with her daughter. "Whenever an exam she was nervous about was announced for a month or so down the line, she would stop shaving her legs---"

Harry turned to Ron in shock, but his friend was only just winding down his hysterics. Instead he leaned forward and addressed Ginny. "Did Hermione just admit she was nervous about an exam?"

"Gasp," said Ginny, eyebrows raised in mock horror.

But Hermione was too lost in her own thoughts to pay them any heed now. "She would wait, and wait, and then, the day of the test, when all the anxiety and doubt of the day piled up on her until she couldn't bear it any longer---she would go take the hottest bath possible and, at last, shave her legs.

"And after all that time, the sensation was so---so very real. It's like you've shed a layer of skin, and the fresh one is so keenly aware. Suddenly every bit of breeze, every slightest touch... It's like you're feeling for the first time. The shaving itself seems to take ages---you have to do it the Muggle way, with lather and a razor, or it doesn't count; the ritual's important somehow---but it's so worth it, for that newness." Her voice grew soft as she anticipated the moment. "The fabric of your clothes, of the sheets in your bed---just your fingertips rubbing your shin---it feels so absolutely, profoundly lovely. As if you've never felt a touch before. And all throughout the feared exam, you have that newness there to comfort you, to keep you cool and content, come what may."

As Hermione broke out of her own thoughts, she realized she had a rapt audience before her. Harry looked puzzled; Ginny, amused; and Ron...

Ron had his eyes fixed on something just above her head to the right, and seemed to be trembling slightly.

Harry and Ginny turned to one another, saw Ron, and burst into laughter.

Hermione felt all tranquility drain from her in an instant. If they were set to make fun of her ritual, fine. But she would not sit here and listen to them laugh, or watch as Ron seemed to nearly break from the struggle of holding the laughter in.

"Fine!" she snapped, clutching her book to her chest. She could not bring herself to look at Ron. "Laugh all you want. I'm going to take a bath, and then this exam---and I shall have a far more pleasant time of it than either of you." She stood, coming into Ron's eye line. He twitched as she did, and she answered a withering stare. "I hope that I answered your question to your satisfaction, Ronald."

And off she stormed.

Harry knew that she was hurt, but he could not bring himself to chase after her. He couldn't even get himself to stop laughing. Ron was just too pathetic. All the color had drained from his face, save vibrant deposits aglow at the tips of his ear and nose. He trembled so that Ron was fairly vibrating, like a hummingbird in flight. And the toast that he had picked up as Hermione began her explanation had been crushed to dust in his grip.

Ginny wiped a tear from her eye, and then patted her brother's arm. "Really, Ron, you shouldn't ask questions you're not ready for the answer to."

Ron's lips moved faintly.

"What was that, Ron?" Harry leaned forward. "I can't hear you over the sound of Hermione shaving."

Ginny leaned close to her brother's other ear. "Her legs getting oh so smooth with every passing---"

Ron shot out of his chair with a "Bloody HELL" and was gone.

Harry and Ginny laughed and laughed, tears slipping down faces that hurt from smiling.

When at last they finished, they collapsed over the table, exhausted.

"All right, Mr. Potter," said Ginny, rising from the table at last with a muffled giggle. "I believe you have an exam to fail. I'll talk to you later."

Harry watched her walk away, his cheek resting on the sticky surface of the breakfast table.

"House socks."

Ginny stopped, turning to glance at him over her shoulder. "What was that?"

"You like to wear Gryffindor house socks, with little lions along the top." He smiled at her gently. "You must have a million pairs, because you wear them near every day."

She held his gaze for a moment, and he couldn't help but notice that blushing was far more becoming on her than on her brother. "My gran made them for me." And she was gone.

He lay there for a good while, enjoying the rumble of distant, significantly less noisy conversations up and down the dining hall. At last Harry sighed, his breath sending up a little puff of powdered sugar. Gingerly, mindful of the laughter's dull ache in his belly and Ginny's warm pressure in his chest, he lifted himself from his breakfast and set off to class, determined to fail spectacularly.

Assume that I'm always discussing R/Hr, because I will always be discussing R/Hr.

Thu, 11 May 2006 08:20:00 GMT

This was to be my secret!cryptic!journal, but now that, in terms of friending, it's my secret!fandom!journal, I may as well post accordingly. Hang that banner high, and all.

I just read this: cute, oh-so-fluffy fic that was very light and sweet for a good ten chapters... and then ended on a dick joke.

How do you do that? How do you think that ending with a dick joke is a fine idea? I actually said aloud to my computer screen, "You're shitting me." But no; I was not being shat at all.

I don't expect Shakespeare from fanfiction, but damnation, I hope for more than dick jokes. ...not that he wasn't prone to dick jokes, our William, but at least he had an excuse.

Sat, 07 Jan 2006 17:45:56 GMT

One must simply cowboy up and punch rotters. Simple as that.

Sat, 24 Dec 2005 07:09:02 GMT

People for whom writing is easy?

Fuck them.

Sun, 18 Dec 2005 08:01:45 GMT

I like a fellow and I don't know what to do about it. Oldest story ever told. Eve's livejournal said the same thing on day one, I bet.