Forever Knight [Harmione]

Chapter 3: Possibilities

Harry looked up at the sound of the library door opening, his hand twitching to open the prop book he had on the coffee table. 

The book, Troublesome Traps to Thwart Thievery by Clepp Toefingers, had seemed so much like interesting reading, until Harry realized that no book could ever be more interesting than Hermione’s hair falling in a mess on her back and shoulders. 

He’d been running his hands through it in the last ten minutes, enjoying the way Hermione had tried and failed to fend off his attentions.  She had scolded and lectured and plead.  Finally, she was wiling him to stop, and he couldn’t understand how she thought this method could possibly be more successful than her other attempts, because Hermione wiling him to do anything was just a pleasant catastrophe waiting to happen. 

The person standing at the door was just in time to avert disaster. 

Ron stood observing them from his vantage point.  He looked like a giant in the dim lighting, standing there while they looked up at him from the floor. 

“Alright, Ron?” asked Hermione.

His gaze was filled with stubborn irritation, but he nodded. 

She smiled, patting the space beside her delicately to coax him to join them.

Harry was a little relieved to see Ron take the invitation.

Ron did sit beside her.  “Hope I’m not interrupting anything,” he muttered.

She shook her head.  “We were just reading some.”

Ron arched an eyebrow.  Harry wasn’t the type who read out of school and they both knew it. 

“Reading, eh?” said Ron.  “About what?”

“Arithmancy Applied to Quantum Physics and the Calcular Theories of Alleptus…” she replied, biting the nail of her thumb as she grew more and more sheepish.

Ron made a face and shook his head.  “What a geek.”

She frowned.  “Well, you asked!”

“Does it even make the slightest bit of sense to you?”

“Of course it does!  The wave structure of matter and spherical standing interactions can explain the discrete energy states of quantum duality in entanglement solutions—“

“Good lord, it’s like you’re speaking in tongues, witch!  I’m sorry I asked!”

“I take umbrage at being called a geek, by the way.  Only geeks can call each other geeks.  You don’t get to call me—“

“You take what?”

“Umbrage!  Um-brage!  A feeling of pique or resentment at some often fancied slight or insult!”

“Who talks like that?”

“I talk like that!”

“Merlin, this is why you drive me nutters!  I swear by Merlin!  It’s times like this when I seriously don’t know whether to hug you or—or arm wrestle you!”

Hermione blinked at him in surprise and Harry frowned, more perplexed than teed off.

“Arm wrestle?” asked Hermione.

Ron sighed. “Yes.  You know when your brothers or cousins want to settle something without knocking each other senseless?  You offer to arm wrestle to settle the point…”

Her astonished eyes began to twinkle. Ron chuckled, looking more embarrassed by the second.

Harry didn’t quite get it.  “What’s so funny?”