[ for ;; dragonsareourfuture]

The past few weeks had been a total, complete, absolute mess.

Of course, what else could be said when you've been keeping secrets from your closest friends? Yes, Hermione had indeed reminded me that we hadn't really a choice, but with all due respect to her, sometimes she spends too much time concerned about the small details, critically and meticulously, that she forgets the big picture. Even if it may have kept Harry safe at the time, we all know him. Whether he means to or not he'll nearly end up dead again this year. At this point, all we're doing is prolonging the inevitable.

Nevertheless, I went along with it; if not exactly for my friend's persuasion, then for that of the rest of the Order's. I followed all their rules and instructions - with the exceptions of those few times that my brothers had listened in on their conversations, but I'd like to stress the word few, and also present the fact that they were just testing their products. You can't have a good brand if what you're selling is complete rubbish. Trust me, I know this.

But I'm getting rather beside myself. In the end Harry did find out about the whole ordeal, and needless to say he wasn't very...pleased. Yeah. Let's just go with that. Very displeased. And, of course, it didn't exactly help that we couldn't ride on the train together, either. What with the whole Prefect business - yes, that's right, 'Ron the Prefect' is now a statement that has been made - and the separate debriefing of my new responsibilities, I wasn't able to be in two places at once. See? That's a spell someone needs to make. Or at least make more well-known.

"Oh, hello there. What're you doing up at this time?"

At the sound of a familiar voice, I nearly jumped out of the red-and-gold patterned armchair, head twisting round to face the source. My heart somehow managed to calm itself as I saw her face for the first time this year.

She shifted in her place, moving her weight from one leg to the other rather impatiently, a surprised but relatively neutral expression on her face. "If you're going to ask me if I'm talking to you, don't. It's three in the morning and you're the only person in this room." Sighing, she tucked whatever she held in her hand up in the crook of her elbow and strode over to me. "You can't play that card."

It took me a moment to process who exactly it was; though, in retrospect, I'm not quite sure who else I expected it to be. The American accent should've given it away. Sure, we'd written often during the summer, but she'd gone home to visit family - had it really been that long since I had last seen her? "And I suppose it's too late to play the 'you-nearly-gave-me-a-heart-attack piece, too?"

Her head was a honey-colored blur as she nodded enthusiastically. "Yup."

"Well, it's good to know that someone's stayed the same," I muttered under my breath, inhaling slowly and readjusting my position to face her.

She brushed a few stray locks of her long, golden hair behind her back, taking out the object she'd been carrying - a sketchbook - and retrieving a pencil from its ringed spine. "Oh, but you've changed quite a bit, haven't you, Mister Prefect?" It was evident that she'd attempted to keep her eyes glued to her paper. After all, her cold nature usually took a little bit longer to melt through before one could reach her warmer side, but what could I say? Kira must not have been immune to my Weasley charm that day, because she couldn't help but cast a daring glance in my direction.

My voice came out deep and loud, just like that silly mock-Quidditch-reporter tone I'd always done as a kid while narrating my brother's home matches. "That's no way to talk to your superior."

For a few moments we both sat like that, she placing the first few marks of her pencil down on the paper, me with my chest puffed out as a nice accompaniment to the low voice, in complete silence.

And then we burst out into simultaneous laughter.

I prided myself on lasting longer than she did, but I knew full and well that whenever Kira giggled, it was infectious, and it spared no one. Just like that, we'd fallen back into our old rhythm - pauses and jokes, laughter and faux criticism. It served as a good reminder of what I'd missed out on all summer. Her. Kira.

"So I take it things haven't been going too well," she assessed. Whether she gathered this from my strewn-about homework - someone had better curse Professor Umbridge for assigning an essay on the first day -, or my messy (well, extremely messy, as in even more so than on a usual day) hair, or the bags under my eyes, or the fact that I was up, alone, sitting in the Gryffindor Common Room in nearly pitch-darkness at three-fifteen in the morning with the only flicker of luminescence emanating from my wand, I didn't know.

Actually, that's sort of a lie. Looking back on that, it was probably a vast accumulation of those things.

I exhaled in exasperation. "Then you know first-handedly the horrors of the first day?"

She snorted, shaking her head. "We both know that's not what I'm talking about." Her voice was chillingly soft, lilting and melodic, following along to some unseen sheet music that played the precise notes to cut deep past the small talk.

Oh, yes. This was Kira, all right. The same Kira that left me speechless on a multitude of occasions - something which nearly everyone around me had noted. The same Kira that left me speechless then. My eyes caught on her blue irises, flecked with silver, usually cold and hard but now like pools of pity. Pity that I never would've used to need. "So then, you actually want to talk about all that?" I kept an unchanged front, merely raising an eyebrow in her direction.

She shrugged, then cast her gaze downwards. Her lips remained motionless for a few beats. "I want to see you happy again."

"I'm still happy."

Her eyes were ice. "Because happy people don't sleep whatsoever, and throw their homework on the floor, and sit in darkness in the early morning hours." It was amazing that her voice could still sound so truly and honestly genuine, even when in the depths of her sarcasm.

Kira was a fairly unique person at that - most of her compassion was expressed through that deadpan humor. And, to the reality presented to me upon a silver platter, I began to reveal the layers of tarnishing that lay beneath. "I mean - there's not much to say, is there?"

I let myself fall short of saying anything else. Perhaps, I thought, she'll leave it here.

After a few moments of nothing but her unbudging stare, I ran a hand through my matted hair and began down the road that I'd been walking alone for far too long. "Well - let's start with today, I suppose. Professor Umbridge is about the closest thing to a human pig I've ever met."

Her laughter interrupted me, and I couldn't help but offer a small smile back in her direction.

"See? You agree with me, there. I mean - the class is called 'Defense Against the Dark Arts.' Not 'Sit and Read and Do Nothing While The World Around you Ends.' No; I know for a fact there's no SRDNWWAYE."

"Sardine-way." Kira's quiet voice caused me to pause yet again. Maybe this wasn't so bad. Maybe I didn't need everything to be resolved in an instant. Maybe I didn't always have to be around Harry or Hermione, or my siblings, or anyone else, for that matter, besides the girl that sat opposite me right then and there.

"And then..." I trailed off for a moment. This was entering dangerous waters. I'd kept a promise to the Order before, and it had put me at a disadvantage. Not only had I separated myself from my friend, but I'd hurt him. And maybe now I wasn't ever getting him back. But...as much as I hated it, I found myself swallowing the truth, forcing it down into the back of my mind, on a shelf that was not to be re-opened. If there was any truth about placing those who knew of the real nature of the Order in danger, I wasn't about to do it to Kira. Because...well, why, Ron? Because she was a friend. More than a friend, even. There had always been something else to our friendship. Something more subtle but intimate; unexplored but most certainly there, waiting for its chance.

And it was then when I really first considered myself to be in love.

In love with Kira Fair. The American, blonde, blue-eyed artist, whose wit was sharp as a knife but had only shown kindness to those she truly cared for. And this was when I first began to consider the possibility that she didn't just care for me.

I didn't know many people who would wake themselves up in the early morning hours on a schoolday just in case there was perhaps a small possibility that their friend would be stressed, nervous, upset, and alone in the middle of the night.

My mind completed my sentence for me. And then, Ron Weasley realized he loved Kira Fair, and also perhaps that maybe Kira Fair loved him, too, but he wasn't sure. But he was sure that he loved her. More than he'd ever loved anyone. And he would keep on loving her. For her company, for her friendship, for the possibility for her love to be reciprocated. He would love her because she needed to be loved and he needed to love her.

I needed to love her.

I needed to protect her.

Even if it meant losing her, too.

"...well, I kept something really important from a friend." My voice was considerably softer now. "But in the end he found out - and you, of course, you know exactly who I'm talking about - and it...didn't go over well. So we're at a bit of a crossroads."

That was the truth.

The only truth that I could tell her.

She remained in silence for awhile. Longer than I would've anticipated, and certainly longer than I'd hoped for. Maybe I shouldn't have said those things. Maybe I shouldn't have opened up to her at all. Maybe...

"Harry will come around."

Her sudden vocality tore me from my thoughts.

She stood then, apparently done with whatever it was she'd been sketching, and found herself a place at the foot of my chair. "You just have to trust that. 'Cause...whatever it was you hid from him? I know you." A small, honest grin appeared on her face, and I suddenly felt the need to have no light around me whatsoever, because she smiled like sunshine and cleared the clouds away. "And whatever it was, you had your reason for keeping it from him. He'll realize this at one point or another. And he'll be grateful to you because of it."

Once again, the nonverbal spells of Kira had left me breathless.

We sat like that for a few moments in mutual silence, taking comfort in the presence of one another, not really caring to speak nor feeling the impulse to do anything, really.

Kira was the one who broke the silence. A sly simper caused her lips to stretch upwards, and she continued, "But I know that's not all. Come on. You're missing one of the most obvious things! I can't go until you talk about that one..."

Oh.

So this was what it felt like for your heart to stop beating, was it? A minute of tensed muscles and wide eyes and a blanched face. A mind that wouldn't stop racing, because there was only one thing she could've meant by that.

Maybe I was a better verbal secret-keeper than an emotional one.

Because, somehow, Kira had seen through my veil of quietness and monotony, and she had found the one thing that I'd only just realized myself. How had I shown it? It had been my face, hadn't it. Curse my mum for those uncontrollable expressions...."Okay." I clasped my hands together, palm against palm, and extended my fingers in a subtle gesture in her directions. I could feel the sudden flood of color to my cheeks and nose, and all of a sudden the room was very, very hot and very, very stuffy. "Then - yes. I...think you're beautiful, Kira Fair. And I also think...well, I do really fancy you."

A look of unparalleled shock passed across her face, and it settled there for a good while. I stared at her expectantly, sweat forming against my temple with every passing second, anxiety increasing as I waited, desperately, for her answer; an answer, good or bad, but something.

"I meant about being a Prefect," she breathed, a small smile forming on her lips and greatly contrasting with her eyes, which still remained two large moons against her face, pale with surprise. "I - I meant..."

"Oh! Oh, yeah, well -"

It took less than a few moments for her to be doubled over, saturation returning to her face, uncontrolled giggles escaping from her mouth, the biggest smile on her face. Time passed like this for a bit.

I was, needless to say, rather paralyzed.

"No." As soon as she had managed to catch her breath, this was the first word to escape her lips, a few stray bouts of laughter occurring from then on every once in awhile. "No, you meant what you said." Her eyes were filled with excitement and joy and things that I'd only ever caught in moderate amounts; but now they were bursting with emotion, with bliss and peace and...was that...? "And I mean it when I say that yeah, I think I love you, too." Love.

Of course I didn't process this. I mean, how could I process that? How was I supposed to even begin, and where, and what? Had those words been real? Was she really there, and was I really there, smiling like idiots at one another and holding in chuckles despite this awful day? Was there really something shoved into my hand at that moment - oh. Yes, there was.

It was a folded bit of paper. I hesitantly opened it, and inside was a small sketch, animated with her typical use of an array of charms, only something about this one was different. It wasn't her gorgeous characters - no. It was just her. Her in all her beauty. And at the top of the paper was written in that artsy handwriting of hers, I like you.

"I was going to give this to you once we were done talking," she chuckled, her face still red with some mix of joy and pleasure and silliness, "but now seemed more accurate, because of...well. All that."

By some miracle the oddity of it all eventually sunk into my mind and became cemented there, concrete forming the bricks of my mind and my next thoughts and my next actions. Because I loved her and she loved me too. And right now, I didn't have to worry about losing her.

Not yet.

She must've sensed I wasn't able to form words yet, because she continued, "But back to the actual topic. Have you told Percy yet? He'll be so proud of 'this miscreant brother of his'..."

"Oh, bloody hell, Kira! Did you really have to bring him up? That's a whole different thing - oi, no, don't...? What are you writing? I swear, Kira Fair, if that is a Howler to Percy-!"

Yeah. Everything would be okay for now.

Even if I did receive yet another Howler in return from Percy, berating me for not writing to him myself, and even if Kira did open it for all of the Gryffindor tables to hear in the middle of breakfast.

Even then.

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Many thanks to dragonsareourfuture for requesting this!  I always feel like Ron deserves more love than he gets, so this was really satisfying to write.  I really had a fun time with it, and I sincerely apologize for the wait. 

I hope you enjoy it~! 

//Also, this is just a bit of a side-note, but it feels good to be writing about Harry Potter once more.//  c:

///And one final note to remind myself to revise the requesting page because my goodness it looks like a mess and I am so sorry for those who have actually navigated through it -///

With love,

   - Petri ♥