Hermione jumped onto her bed to sit, and thought of everything that had just taken place. Her best friend had finally walked back into her life, hopefully for good this time. Just the thought of his presence in the room down the hall sent chills down her neck. The anxiety spent over the past four and a half years finally released, leaving her to analyze some strange feelings. She fell back onto her bed with her arms out to her side and stared at the ceiling. A big weight had finally been lifted off her shoulders and she could finally rest without the worry of where Harry was this very moment. He was in the same house as her and that was a very comforting feeling.
Hermione quickly changed into her night clothes and crawled under the covers of her bed. The lights were now out, but she wasn't. too many thoughts and feelings were crowding her mind, prohibiting her from getting to sleep right away.
Harry, on the other hand was sitting up in his bed, looking out the window at the night sky. The moon was shining brightly and the light from it flooded his room, bouncing off his body. He finally closed his eyes again, hoping to get some sleep like he was planning on. But being just seconds away from Hermione was nerve racking. He had waited four and a half years to see his friends again and now one of them was just down the hall. Harry finally cleared his mind totally and fell off to a deep and peaceful sleep.
Ron woke the next morning to a heavy, impatient tapping noise outside his kitchen window. Rubbing his eyes as the sunlight danced across his face, he got up from the sofa he had slept on during the night and crept across the cold floor to open the back door. An owl perched on the chair on the patio, staring at him. Ron blinked at the amount of light entering his eyes and waited a minute for them to adjust. Red-faced and tired, he took the note from the owl and absentmindedly shut the door. The owl started tapping wildly on the window and started giving Ron a headache. Ron opened the curtain and waved in the air, expecting the owl to understand he didn't want to be bothered.
Still very tired, he plopped lazily back onto the sofa and began to read as he leaned into the side. His eyes traveled the note slowly, ever so often retracing a few sentences as he wasn't paying attention. The note was rather long and due to this, Ron got up to go get a drink of coffee to wake himself up some more.
His eyes remained glued to the parchment in his hand as he traveled sleepily into the kitchen. Once again, he found himself retracing a few sentences but one in particular caught his attention.
He smiled broadly and his energetic reaction resulted in a holler of joy and then an immediate painful yell as his foot slammed hard into the leg of a table chair. He threw the note down automatically and rushed his foot up into his hands to ease the pain. His face was scrunched in frustration as he tried to calm himself down. Biting his bottom lip hard, the pain started to ease. When it subsided fully, Ron stood in the kitchen, forgetting he needed something to wake himself up because that pain in his foot surely woke him up.
Instead he let realization wash over him as he gazed from side to side on the walls of the living room. He was skeptical to no end about that letter, but clearly he was thinking rather hard as he didn't hear anything but the wheels fiercely turning in his own head. He got up when it finally sunk in and he rushed to his room, quickly throwing on some clothes.
Ron balanced on one foot trying to put his left leg in his pants. He hopped around as his balance slipped and, "Oof!" He hit the floor hard, however, he got his pants on. He lay there on the floor, looking up at the ceiling and finally gathering the strength to get back up again. He put on his socks and shoes and rushed back down stairs again, grabbed a clean shirt off the back of the sofa and slammed the front door behind him.
BAM BAM BAM!
"Coming! Just a minute!" Fayina called out of breath from across her new one-story house. She stood in the middle of her kitchen, suddenly unable what she had been doing. She then spun around in a circle, making sure everything was in place and walked to the door. At the very second before grabbing hold of the gold doorknob, she looked around and eyed her wand and robe, just in case.
Fayina couldn't help but think trouble was standing outside her door. She ran to the coat rack on the other side of the room and pulled out her wand. Again she made it back to the door, this time ready to open it. She gripped the handle.
The door swung open and she pointed her wand at the face of her visitor. She dropped her arm back down to her side when she saw who it was.
"Ron! How nice to see you so early in the morning!" Fayina faked her natural voice. Ron gave her an accusing glare, blew past her and went into her living room, looking impatient.
"Uh, won't you come in?" Fayina added as she flung the door from her fingertips to shut it.
Ron had his arms folded and was staring at her, waiting for an explanation. She shot a cheesy smile at him and looked down to see his shirt unbuttoned almost completely, except for three buttons at the bottom. She laughed into a closed fist that she rose up to her mouth to stifle her giggles. Ron rolled his eyes, knowing she was eyeing him up and down.
"Fayina!"
She stared at him again, forcing herself to keep contact with him so she wouldn't start laughing again.
"Well, at least I know you read the note!" She said sarcastically. Ron let out a heavy sigh and hunched his shoulders in a pleading fashion.
"Fayina, cut it with the games and just tell me what's going on." Ron drawled, once again sounding tired as he did an hour ago.
Fayina intertwined her fingers and paced around the room, every once in a while biting her bottom lip. Ron's eyes followed her everywhere she went, but he was getting impatient.
"Ron, I told you what I thought was going on. I'm not sure but I think we can find out another way." She suggested. Ron looked at her thoughtfully, taking in everything she was saying.
"Well what are we going to do if you're wrong?" Ron asked insultingly. The corners of her mouth twitched as if she were going to smile. She didn't.
"Look, I just thought I knew something is all. We've got some work to do," Fayina decided, grabbing her robe and wand and heading for the door. With her robe still in hand and hanging down to the floor with it at her side, she looked back at Ron as she opened the door.
"Coming?" She asked quickly, letting her arms fly out to rush him along. Ron grinned then followed her out the door. It slammed with a loud thud and they were on their way.
Hermione was just barely waking up as the sun blasted through her window at the early hour of seven sharp. She rubbed her eyes a bit then put her arms back down at her sides on the deep purple velvet comforter that covered her from the chest down and also decorated her four-poster canopy bed. She stared helplessly at the ceiling, not making an effort to do much of anything.
Gradually, everything was coming into focus. Hermione sat up in her bed and looked around with slumped posture, glancing at her open closet doors. She immediately spotted the outfit she would wear. Her eyes stung badly from sleep, or rather lack thereof. She leaned back against the headboard to rest her shoulder blades and neck against it and sighed, still not wanting to move.
She slowly sat back up straight a few short minutes later and twisted her body to put her feet on the floor, the very cold floor. The room was freezing and Hermione was dressed in a light blue tank-top and white shorts. Also very slowly, she walked to her bedroom window to be sure it was latched. It was and the sheer-curtain veiled window revealed that it was shaping up to be a beautiful day. Then she walked to her mirror and stood in front of it in a bored fashion. She looked herself up and down, trying her best to ignore the rude remarks coming from the enchanted mirror.
She reached over onto her dresser, which was next to the closet and pulled off a loose hair tie. She pulled her hair back in a loose low ponytail and afterward, rested her hands on her hips, enjoying the beautiful sun-bathed scenery outside her window as she turned to look. A sudden thought washed over her. Something she had nearly forgotten about. Her facial expression changed immediately from content and sleepy to downright frantic.
"Harry," She said in a gasp to herself as she put her hands on her forehead. Hermione went to her full-length mirror on the back of her door and made sure she didn't look like a mess.
Being the self-conscious person she always was, Hermione adjusted the straps on her top to straighten them and she pulled at the hem of her shorts, being sure she wouldn't attract too much attention. After all, they were shorts. Short shorts, bedtime shorts. No matter how hard she tried, the shorts just popped back up to the length they were, just covering her upper inner thigh.
She let out a sigh, "They're decent enough." She said encouragingly to herself. Hermione glanced again in the mirror before opening the door with a sigh that hid behind it. She stepped into the hall and was taken aback for a few short moments.
A very different sort of noise was issuing from down the stairs in her once quiet house and living room. Hermione tilted her head in comprehension and curiosity as she stepped softly down the stairs barefoot.