I Learned Your Pulse

"Hello, Astoria."

"Come on, Ronald, if you want to make the portkey."

They were taking a portkey this year instead of the Hogwarts Express; everyone going to Hogwarts from The Burrow were prefects, and were safe to trust with a portkey.

Ron groaned and rolled over in the bed. "Ten minutes."

"In ten minutes, the portkey will be leaving," Hermione informed him, leaning up against his door frame, her mass of bushy hair tied back in a ponytail.

"Ugh. Five minutes?" was the muffled reply.

"Must I get your mother?"

"I'm up, I'm up!"

Hermione grinned as the red-head fell out of bed, but then he looked at her, an she saw his eyes were red and puffy and his pillow case stained. She kneeled, the smile slipping off her face. When she was right next to him, she let her han cradle his cheek. "Ron," she said, "It's okay."

He nodded, but didn't say anything. Hermione leaned back and watched her boyfriend stand up, shaking out his mass of fiery hair like a lion's mane. Truth be told, this was normal behavior for him. He refused to get a haircut, he said, because he wanted his hair to look like Bill's, long and untidy, so he could put it in a ponytail. Whenever Hermione asked why, he'd just said it looked cool. As good a reason as any, she thought, but she liked his hair.

"Oi! Are you up yet?" Harry called from below.

"He's up!" Hermione shouted back, giving Ron one last smile before turning away so he could get changed. She closed the door behind her and then turned to her left, where her door was. She opened it, grabbed the huge bag of books and then her school bag, and closed her door again, lugging the heavy things down the three flights of stairs to the kitchen.

It was warm and would have been cozy, if not for the chaos. Harry's new owl, Crummel, was soaring around, clutching a piece of bacon and hooting like mad. It was a rather large tawny owl, its golden eyes searching the room for a place to land, and finding none. Harry himself was trying to grab Crummel and get the bacon back, but it was difficult. He was red in the face and sweating. Ginny was trying to eat, but kept choking with laughter every time Harry muttered a particularly foul word at the bird. George was sitting in the corner, moping a usual, but the corners of his lips twitched as he watched the spectacle. Mrs. Weasley would shriek and duck every time the bird came close to her, and Mr. Weasley was aiming Petrificus Totalus at it, without much success. Hermione laughed when she saw this, and her hand flew to her chest, dropping her school bag (but never the one holding the books - how on Earth could she have ever dropped so many valuable, wonderful books?!), and her fingers brushed her Head Girl badge.

She immediately sobered. She whipped her wand out of her pocket, aimed, and said, "Accio bacon!"

The strip of meat tore itself out of the talons and flew into her waiting palm.

"Thanks," said Harry, over the sounds of Ginny laughing and Mr. Weasley congratulating Hermione on her quick thinking. He wiped some sweat off his brow. Hermione smiled and handed him the piece.

Ron entered, carrying his trunk and Pigwidgeon in his cage. His hair was dishevelled and his eyes were still puffy, but better. His prefect badge glistened on his chest, as did Harry's.

There were more prefects that ever this year. Ron had been re-made a prefect, and Hermione had been named Head Girl, though on the list they all recieved she was simply listed as a prefect, as were Ginny and Neville. Luna and Cho had been made prefects for Ravenclaw, and Ernie Macmillan, Hannah Abbott, Zacharias Smith and Susan Bones were all Hufflepuff prefects. There were more prefects than ever before, and McGonagall was abandoning the one-of-each-gender rule. There were also the slytherin prefects, Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, Blaise Zabini, Astoria Greengrass and Millicent Bulstrode being them. Really, there were enough prefects to make up an entire new house. If there continued to be an abundance of them, Hermione would suggest that to whoever the Headmaster was at the time.