Me, for Once
30 Days of Shipping Day 18: Most annoying character that tried to come between a ship
Title: Me, for Once
Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Pairing: Ron Weasley/Lavender Brown/Hermione Granger
Rating: PG
Orientation: Het
Word Count: 622
Prompts: Dark Bingo Fill: “Just This Once”
Love Bingo Fill: “Making Out”
People tended to think that Ron was a heck of a lot stupider than he actually was. At times it annoyed Ron. But sometimes it was an advantage. He could get away with stuff that he might ordinarily get called out on. For example, continuing a flirtation he had no business being involved in.
He wasn’t completely oblivious to the fact that Hermione had her knickers in a complete twist over all the attention Lavender Brown was showering on him. If she wasn’t always so mean to him, he might not have encouraged Lavender as much as he did. Hermione was such a smarty; she almost always made Ron feel small and stupid. Not Lavender, she fawned over him, she made him feel wanted and special and as important as Harry. It wasn’t easy, being Harry Potter’s best friend, walking in his shadow. He knew that Lavender probably only liked him because he was Harry’s friend, but he liked the way she made him feel so he ignored it.
Just this once, Ron wanted to be the big man, the one that someone gushed over and treated as special. The snogging didn’t hurt either. He found that he liked kissing, a lot. So long as he was kissing her, Lavender wasn’t talking. That was good, actually. Unlike Hermione, the things that Lavender talked about were rather stupid and unimportant and boring. Sure, Hermione was a little odd, especially when it came to elf rights and her obsession with studying, but Lavender didn’t seem to think in depth about things, or at all, actually. He tolerated the chatter because there was usually an opportunity to kiss, if he nodded and smiled enough.
It wasn’t like he’d be getting any kisses from Hermione. He wasn’t Harry. He wasn’t book smart. And he certainly wasn’t anything like Viktor Krum, so there was very little chance of his affections being returned.
So, he would put up with her. If he played his cards right, maybe kissing might lead to more. Lavender seemed to like him enough to indulge a little exploration. So he let his hands drift little by little each time they were snogging. He had found several dark alcoves around the school and would pull Lavender to them whenever the chance arose. He actually touched skin in their most recent meet up outside the history classroom after class. His hand had lifted her skirt, bit by bit, and he had stroked her soft thigh. He let his hand inch up, tiny bit by tiny bit as he kissed her.
She was so warm and so eager and kissing her was not a hardship. Her skin was so soft and she smelled like her namesake. His mind drifted away with thoughts of what the skin he was touching looked like, what they looked like, entwined as they were with Lavender straddling one of his legs as he leaned back against the wall. Her hair tickled him as he broke off to get air and nuzzled his way over to her ear. He liked kissing her ear; it made her wiggle deliciously against him.
In the dark, when she wasn’t speaking, and he wasn’t thinking too much about it, he could imagine that it was Hermione that he held in his arms, he could almost believe that it was Hermione’s lips that he kissed, her soft skin that he stroked with his fingers.
But eventually, Lavender would speak and the spell he had woven for himself in his mind would snap and the moment would be spoiled. She wasn’t Hermione, and she really was a poor substitute. But he continued to see her, just because he enjoyed the attention he was getting for once.
The End
Originally posted at http://rinkafic.dreamwidth.org/