Well, I was reading the Hallows for the third time and I thought I'd write a little piece set at Grimmauld Place, leading off of a few JK's Ron/Hermione hits thrown in there. It kind of my take on what could/should have gone on in a perfect shipper's world. I apologize for typos early. I've read through it numerous times, but for some reason I still find them slipping through my fingers.
It had been what seemed to be the longest day she had ever experienced in her eighteen years. The wedding, the restaurant battle, ghosts of Dumbledore appearing out of thin air, and then the knowledge that the Weasley's at the Burrow were being watched; it all had wore her out both physically and emotionally. She crashed upon the worn and tattered couch in the Black's old home right beside her ginger haired best friend exhaustedly. At least she knew that they were indeed safe following the ambush back home, but just the idea that they'd never be able to return until this fiasco was over hit her a little too hard.
She didn't know what caused her to cling to his arm so tightly, but she didn't intend to release her fingers any moment too soon. Maybe it had a hint to do the oh so recent memory of the Bill and Fleur's wedding, of the mob of people running this way and that functioning as perfect barriers between Ron and where she still stood alone, lost in the middle of everything. For a moment then, she wondered whether Ron had been able to follow them as they disapparated to the middle of nowhere. She could remember calling into the madness hoping that he could hear her and move faster before they were separated for good. She could remember what a relief it was to feel his hand tightly around hers, to know that where ever they were going to land, he was going to be there right by her side when they both arrived.
She couldn't bear to think of how things would be had Ron not been there with her, so perhaps, she still, even now, felt the same way about it. Even though she was safely within the walls of Harry's inherited house to stay, at least until the morning, no one was leaving her; they were all stationary, but maybe, just maybe something inside her still felt so much more secure while she clung to him. She found it so impossible to let go of the one speck of stability that she had left.
She did how ever release him as Harry spoke and woke her from her thoughts. She didn't need a round of odd looks guided towards her from her two traveling companions. Her fingertips jumped from their home firmly around the lower part of his bicep, as if she was a child caught in the cookie jar, and returned to rest them safely upon her lap. No one except herself noticed thanks to the apparent pain spread across Harry's face.
He excused himself to the bathroom, most likely because he wasn't comfortable tapping into the Dark Lord's thoughts in front of his companions, but also he expected a scolding from Hermione for not pushing the thoughts far away as he had been advised to do, if he stuck around her for too long. The couple on the couch watched as Harry and his frazzled black hair scuttled up the stairs.
Ron was the first to speak as he glanced to his side as soon as Harry vanished from sight. He found Hermione, in silence, her face buried in her hands. He couldn't tell whether she was crying, but something in him sensed that she was, or was somewhere near it. "Hermione… What's wrong?" He questioned, his soft voice mirroring the quiet air that hung in the living room.
She sat back upright, her elbows still resting firmly on her knees, but didn't speak for fear that she'd find herself shedding tears instead of words if she tried. She felt his arm snake around her shoulders and gently pull her against his side as he settled into to the marshmallow like embrace of the broken piece of furniture. "It's all real now…no turning back." She felt his cheek rest against her head, displacing a few select curls in the process. "It's not that I don't want to do this…it's just nice to know that there's an option. You can't even talk to your parents, let alone go back home again."
When he thought about it however, even though he couldn't go home until everything came to an end, at least his parents remembered him. They knew he existed, they missed him, whereas her family wouldn't care whether she lived or died because as far as they knew, they didn't have a daughter. Ron couldn't imagine how she felt about it, he couldn't fathom how painful it had to be for her at this point. "Everything is going to be okay…" he whispered into her hair hoping that he could convince himself of the same thing by saying it.
Hermione was too intelligent for her own good. "You can't promise that…" She turned towards him reluctantly, revealing the tiny trails of silvery tears traveling down from the corners of her eyes. She raised a hand to wipe them away before he could notice their existence, but he beat her to it. His hands felt soft as his thumb brushed her skin.
He let his hand linger as he thought of a way to answer that wouldn't be a success at ruining everything in that moment. He couldn't help but notice how her eyes floated closed and how she seemed to draw closer to his slight embrace. It was enough to make his words stumble upon escaping his lips. "I know…" He cracked a nervous lopsided smile. "But it can't hurt for me to try to make it happen…can it?"
She looked up at him, at his furrowed brow and hopeful grin. "I guess not." Just then she noticed how the place she had cautiously left between them had since disappeared. She jumped way and started speaking at a faster pace as a way to quickly refocus their little conversation, as a distraction. "I'm crying…I am seriously crying?" She shook her head furiously as she laughed at the hysterical blubbering fool she had become. "I'm not supposed to do that kind of thing. I'm supposed to have things all put together, to have a plan for everything…and I now…I'm just lost. I don't know what to do, or how this all is going to work…or if it will at all." She looked up to him in search of a little honesty. "What are we getting ourselves into?" She gave up fighting the space between them and let herself melt into his form, her face buried in his chest.
He hated to see her this way. Hermione had to be the single strongest woman of her age that he knew, actually, he couldn't think of anyone else that even slightly compared come to think of it. She wasn't the type of girl to let herself cry about everything, especially in anyone else's presence. She wasn't over emotional, and usually, given any other situation, she'd just keep it all to herself and pretend it was all okay, because she always had a plan, one of her perfectly researched, fool-proof plans, but everything was different this time.
It hurt him nearly as much to have to see her in such as state, to see her broken in front of him and have no permanent way to make things better. He was bad with words. He always had been, especially in regards to Hermione. He had a million different things that he wanted to tell her sprinting through his mind, so many that he just knew that they'd all turn into a mangled mess when he tried to release them one at a time. Every word that sounded comforting in his own mind would morph into the biggest insult that she could ever hear, no matter how much of an effort he made to keep them from getting lost in translation.
"I don't know either, 'Mione…" He whispered as he still held her in his arms, not about to let her go. "…But I've got you."
"Oh, so you don't have to worry about things as long as I tag along with my stupid books, and figure everything out?" He hinted a twinge of anger hanging in her voice as she spoke; the last thing he wanted to hear. The warmth in her eyes left him for a moment as they scoured the rest of the room, anything to keep from focusing on him.
"No!" He lowered his voice, taking on a softer tone in contrast with hers. "No, I meant that…when I'm with you I just feel like things are going to be okay. You don't have to fix anything or even say a word…just being here with me makes all the difference."
He hadn't succeeded in fixing much himself. When she looked back in his direction, his eyes met with the increased amount of tears tempting to fall in her own. He wouldn't admit it to anyone else had they been there too, but he felt like following suit. He could feel the salty moisture stinging his eyes as he soaked up every fine detail of her face, all smudged and blotchy like a painting at the moment, but still beautiful. It was good thing they were alone in that case.
He could feel himself being drawn closer to her, but it felt more as if some other power was responsible; some random magnetic force or maybe he was under the imperious curse, though he doubted either theory. He felt his arms envelope her tiny frame and her tears dampen his neck as she buried her face there. Merlin, how he wanted to just kiss her then and there. He bit his lip nervously as he contemplated it. Her lips, they always looked so soft, supple, and staggeringly pink. They called to him, teased him every time he spoke to her. He often found his eyes following them with every word they formed, rather than staring her in the eye. It always felt safer to him, until now. He knew that if he could see them now, if they hadn't been buried against him, they might have just spoke to him a bit too loudly, and for once he was afraid he would listen too well.
He pressed a slight kiss to the top of her head, taking a detour to catch the sweet scent of her hair. Despite the fact that the carefully pieced updo she had worn for the wedding had since fallen into shambles, he found her more beautiful knowing what all she had suffered to find herself in such a disheveled condition.
She startled him as she stirred in his arms. Had he gotten himself in trouble with her once again, for something stupid he had done without thinking first, for moving in a direction that she never intended for him to take? He silently cursed himself, but stopped when he realized she still had not left him entirely. "Ron…" She spoke, and then tailed off, but it was enough to redirect his attention. Whereas he normally avoided her eyes, he avoided her lips, this time, as if they could turn him into stone any second. Though when he looked into her eyes, he didn't know what she was thinking or what she wanted, but he could feel it. He didn't know what exactly it was, or what he too was feeling at the time, but something was screaming to him that they were one in the same and her gaze burnt straight through him. His breath was caught in his throat as he felt her nose lightly graze his, her forehead coming to a rest against his own.
A loud crash from upstairs shook them from their moment. Not only, the fear of being caught in such a compromising situation, one that would command dreadful questioning from Harry or anyone else for that matter, but the heightened sense of paranoia that had come from their newly embarked journey. They jumped apart from each other in an instant, and off the couch the second it registered to the two of them that something was wrong with Harry one way or another.
Ron struggled once again to extract his wand from his pocket, thanks to Hermione's mistake in packing, one of her only mistakes in what seemed like ages, but he managed after a few short struggling attempts to free it from the denim. He quickly joined an armed Hermione on the stairs. He pushed ahead of her, not of a lack of patience, but as an act of protection, of chivalry, which he had dabbled in lately. Neither of them had noticed how their hands had still remained loosely in each other's grasp.
Upon arriving, they found the door open, Harry's red toothbrush upon the floor along with Harry's form, slumped against the far wall. Ron proceeded forward and hoisted his friend from where he lay up and back on to his feet. "What happened?" Ron asked, though at a second thought, realized that he probably didn't want to know after all, at least with the Voldemort connection. Harry must have read in to such, because he left the question unanswered. He tried to fend for himself, but Hermione grabbed his other side as the two aided him back down the stairs and on to the sofa below.
Once the boy had gained back enough strength, he had gained back a sense of pride as well, and forced himself off the couch and in his own sleeping bag on the cold hard floor on the other side of the room. He had told the two that he would rather slumber at a distance in case he suffered one of his dreams again. He didn't want to kick or knock anyone out in a sound sleep anytime soon or disrupt them if he was to yell in response to the horrible vision he knew he would see. The look that Ron caught in his eye gave him the idea that Harry perhaps had another motive hidden a little deeper of which he chose not to speak of in their presence.
When he turned way from where Harry lay, nearly asleep already, he watched as Hermione scurried in circles in the middle of the room carefully setting up her place to sleep for the night. She had to make sure the corners were all flattened across the area rug and that it was positioned just right so if she moved her head slightly she would be able to see the front door and anyone who might barge through it unwanted. It then occurred to him that she had also fixed his as well, and within a foot of hers, which he found strange. He looked over his shoulder at Harry before he spoke. He was asleep, so he kept it to a partial whisper. "What are you doing? I mean…you can take the couch if you like. It would be far more comfortable than the floor." He took a seat on his make shift bed as she continued to tidy up the place in a whir around him.
"But that wouldn't be fair to you, Ron…" She spoke softly as she floated to her place at his side. She moved closer, carefully, unsure of whether he wished as she did to start up where they left off. "Plus…I just…I don't want to be by myself." She spoke cautiously as well, worried as to how he would take her words.
It was a different side to Hermione, such vulnerability and bruised confidence. It didn't make him think any less of her. Sure her strength was one of the things he loved most about her, but anymore, as his uncertainty of all that was to lie ahead grew, he found it increasingly more comforting to know that he wasn't alone, that he wasn't the one lost in the dark while Hermione and Harry ventured out in complete conviction. "What if you used the couch cushions…to prop you up or something?"
"Or I could just sleep here on the floor just like everyone else. You know I don't like special treatment…" She toyed with his hand that had lain listless in her own; his fingertips slightly callused from his days of Quiddich keeping and his apparent hobby of escaping death along side of his two friends. She could only hope that the scars he had at this point would be last for him to receive for a while, but she had an aching sense that it wouldn't end up that way.
"I know…but don't you think it more appropriate…or proper…I mean, we're already in the same room…" He sputtered in his awkward Ron-like way.
Her right eyebrow rose in response to comment. "Since when have you been concerned about what is proper?"
Well let's see, since I've realized that sleeping next to the girl I dream about could pose some more than minor problems at some point or another, since I've begun to wonder whether or not I can truly trust myself, or since Harry was also in the same room and would find it a huge shock in the morning to find his two best friends had managed to entangle their limbs in their sleep. But he wouldn't dare let that wander anywhere except trapped safely in his own mind, unless she had somehow picked up occlumency in the past months. In that case, he was screwed. "Well…since I thought you liked…proper." He finally answered with a shrug.
"To an extent I do, but…that's beside the point!" Her voice jumped a few decibels and Harry, across the room, stirred and turned over on his other side. She took it as a notion to lower her voice though the fact she was laughing made it that much harder. "I like Ron; awkward, badly-timed, semi-inappropriate, tripping over his own words…Ron. You don't need to change to make me happy."
"But Krum was all polite…" He interjected. "and proper…and…" He continued to "trip," as she would describe, over his words until she pick them up for him.
Couldn't he just leave it at that? She was complimenting him, yet he had to bring himself down again. "Dreadfully boring…don't forget that one." She confessed bluntly, settling into his side, right tight under his arm where she had begun to feel like she belonged. There, she could feel him chuckle slightly to himself.
She caught a glimpse of a grin on his face through the little lamp light that filtered through the room and wondered about what he was thinking at the moment. There was a different light in his eyes all of a sudden, a certain form of mischief swimming in the blue irises to be found there. "So…we're both okay with being improper?"
Something else more devious came to mind when she spoke, but she chose to keep it to herself. "If you think that I'm going to sleep on couch cushions like some kind of prissy girl, then I do believe that you are very mistaken about me." She took a moment to lie back on her sleeping bag. She made no attempt to crawl comfortably into it, but instead, found herself staring up at the dark cobweb riddled ceiling on top of it.
He didn't know if it was a ploy for him to follow her, but regardless, it had worked seamlessly. He rested his back against the slippery cool fabric, yet discovered it impossible to get entirely comfortable. He let his arms lay against his sides motionless, but soon moved them to mimic a pillow, folded beneath his head. He couldn't help but think of how comfortable the couch appeared to him right now. However shabby and broken it appeared, he knew for a fact it was quite cozy, at least more so than the section of hundred year old hard wood upon which he was attempting to spend the night. But she wanted to stay at his side for some reason of safety that still seemed such a bizarre idea to him.
They could always share it. The thought popped into his head, but there would be so little room for two people, which, when he really thought about it, didn't seem all too bad. Sure he'd be slightly crunched for space, but it was excuse enough for him to spend his night with his arms around her, to keep her from falling on the floor. Or there was Sirius' old room upstairs, with a bed right in the middle, a real mattress and everything, but of course he shot that idea down instantly. It was by far too 'improper' regardless of what Hermione would admit or not…or at least for now, he thought with an unconscious raised eyebrow.
"What are you thinking about?" She interrogated suspiciously following his long silence. Her curiosity had produced a smirk on her lips as she waited for him to speak.
"Oh, nothing…" He chose to say, mostly because he knew it would be the one answer that she would hate to hear the most. He found it just too easy to get her mind wandering.
She tried to keep an angered look upon her face, but she couldn't help but crack a smile that kept growing bigger, as if it was under some sort of engorgio spell. She tried to cover it up as best she could, but as he turned on his side to face her, she knew her cover was blown. He let his fingers grace the wrinkles of her shirt along the curve of her side as she lay next to him, her forehead resting against his, just as it had been before Harry suffered his untimely fall. She looked in his eyes hoping to read in them what he was planning, but she found him impossible to predict for once.
One moment she felt him move to press an innocent kiss to her forehead and the next her lips had been captured in the sweet embrace of his own. She didn't exactly know how it was possible, but she could, in that instant, feel everything she knew he had to be feeling too; the fire, the five year want for a friend, and how amazing it felt to finally have something to show for some much time they had wasted. She'd never been able to feel so much from one simple kiss before, but then again, she hadn't tried kissing Ron Weasley before. Viktor never affected her in the same way because some where in the back of her mind she knew had been thinking about her best friend the whole time, though sadly she hadn't realized it until now.
She pulled him closer to her form as she felt his touch spread from her lips, along her jaw, to the soft skin at her neck. His hands still braced at her sides felt warm to the touch through her shirt. Hers that had been originally been drawn to the back of his hair, her slender fingers tangled in his ginger locks that, as his mum would say, 'needed a trim,' found themselves suddenly teasing the hem of his thin shirt only to hide themselves beneath it. Without conscious thought from her, she let them travel north to where they stumbled upon the softly rippled texture of his stomach and the firmness residing in his chest, both brought upon by his Quiddich days and kept up by the constant work his mother had delegated to him to do at the Burrow over the summer.
His palms cupped her face as his lips returned home to her mouth pulling the two of them together again; her hands, cold against his apparently warm torso, were trapped between his chest and hers as he hovered slightly over her. It sent a chill though him all the way to his toes. These past few moments, Ron wanted to keep going forever. He didn't want to let her go for the life of him. He wanted to keep her safely in his arms until kingdom come, yet in an instant he found himself pushing away. " 'Mione?"
She quickly stole her hands back from his bare skin in a guilty manner, as if she'd been caught trespassing. "Ron?" She looked at him, an expression of concerned obvious in the way her forehead had furrowed itself and her eyes pleaded with him to just give her some assurance that things were okay.
"What are we going to do about all of this…about us?" They both knew, but neither wished to speak about aloud, of the fear they both had clouding everything else on their minds at the moment. The future. What exactly was in store for either of them, no one knew. In the months, or years even, that it would take to see the end of Dumberdore's crazy mission, would they even find themselves in one piece, let alone, together in the very end? There was a very good chance that either of them could die. Moody already had past and George had thankfully only lost and ear. "I don't want to lose you…" They were just kids; did they really even stand a chance at all?
"You won't lose me…" She spoke before she realized how dreadfully unpractical her words were, but optimism was the only real choice she had left. "I'm not going anywhere if I can help it."
The reassuring smile that played on her lips in that moment made him want to fight that much harder to make way for the future that he wanted to share with her, a life free of fear, free of Voldemort and everything related to the horrible being. He wanted to do it all for her, so she didn't have to be away from her family for their own safety, where she didn't have to jump and grab her wand when triggered by any unfamiliar sound. He wanted her to have a life without a dark cloud looming over the two of them. He wanted to erase the glint of doubt in her eye. He wanted her to have a normal life for once and he was willing to do anything to get to that point.
Whereas before he was apprehensive about what they were planning to do, now he was anxious to get started. Hunting horcruxes; it was a crazy idea and seemed doomed to fail, but he was ready to jump right in and go for it without a second thought. "We can get through this…"
She didn't know whether he meant it as a question, as his confidence wavered when he spoke. "We've gotten through everything else that's been thrown at us before…and I still don't know how that happened." Last year's battle at Hogwarts came to her mind first. They had managed to hold off a dozen or so death eaters, yet it was Dumbledore, the greatest Wizard imaginable, who had come to his death rather than their small group of rookies. She had been convinced that most of what made it happen that way was based more on luck than pure skill, regardless of all logic. "Well…we're going to need our sleep then." She reminded him as she sat up momentarily to slip inside her cozy camping gear and lay back down.
"But…but I'm all…antsy." He was sitting bolt upright all of a sudden with no look of exhaustion to be found in his face as she laid beside him all curled up and yawning widely.
"We'll be leaving soon enough in the morning…" Her words were put on hold to allow a smaller yawn escape again. "So just go to sleep or you'll be sorry you didn't."
He took that as a personal challenge…
He let out a purposely loud sigh before he began to unzip his sleeping bag to crawl inside. She turned over on her side, facing away from him, assuming that he'd finally listened to her. She lifted her head, about to wish him a goodnight's sleep, when with one quick move he had his hands at her waist, the one place that he had discovered a while ago to be incredibly ticklish. She tried to muffle her squeals the muggle way with no time to use the muffilato, but occasionally a few would slip through her fingers. Her feet were flailing, trying to get away from him. Though hindered by her blankets, her feet moved in unison as if she was some lady of the lake flopping on dry land. Her breaths were very audible, slipped in between short bursts of laughter.
She fought back, refusing to lose in a complete massacre. Rather than trying to fight him off playfully with her hands which would do her little good, she headed straight to the nape of his neck, a finger to either side of his spine, right behind his ears. She didn't know if he was completely aware that she held such helpful information, but as soon as she tried it, his shoulders shrugged up to his ears devouring his neck like a scared turtle. She felt his force upon her release as he shuttered against her, giggling uncontrollably like a little first year school girl. She tried to hush him before he woke Harry, but it was too late.
Their messy haired friend sat up and rubbed his eyes as he felt around for his glasses. "What that the hell is going on in here? It sounds like…" His eyes widened once his lenses where carefully at home on the bridge of his nose. He glanced over to their side of the room to find Hermione on top of Ron causing enough racket to wake him from an extremely sound sleep.
They repelled from each other like reversed magnets as they noticed Harry's mouth fall agape. Hermione sat up and pushed herself as far away as she could in a short amount of time and Ron sputtered incomprehensible syllables in attempts to explain his way out of one huge misunderstanding that was a brewing. "It's not what you think!" He spouted finally.
"And what exactly do you think am I thinking?" Harry asked with a smirk to see whether they would say it or not. They had disrupted his precious and rarely found sleep, so he believed it was reason enough to mess with them a little.
"Well…he attacked me first!" Hermione exclaimed, tossing all the blame on Ron. She didn't want to be the one forced to do all the talking.
"But she asked for it!" She had to admit, she wasn't expecting that as a response, but perhaps it was slightly true after all.
Harry cracked a laugh at the serious and scared looks upon his two friends' faces. He knew something was going to happen eventually between to two of them. As at outsider, it seemed inevitable, but to them, he figured that they were just a little too close to see everything for what it was. He felt better knowing that his friends were happy…and that he, perhaps wouldn't have to deal with their constant bickering nearly as often as he usually did, though it was no guarantee. But he couldn't help but feel a small pang of jealousy, not over Hermione of course, but that at least they both had something concrete to keep them hanging on through everything that laid ahead, not simply an abstract idea of what was all still so far ahead of him. Sure the two things were hardly the same, but maybe it was a sign. After the years of ups and downs he'd been dragged through because of them, things had ended happily ever after. Was it too much to wonder whether the ups and downs he had pulled Ron and Hermione through would end up the way he hoped they would as well?
"Now…can you two just go to sleep already?" He asked with a chuckle, before curled up towards the wall, not pausing a moment longer to hear their responses.
"I told you so…" Hermione tried her best to yell in a whisper, playfully hitting his shoulder. For fear that he'd turn on her again, she retreated to her sleeping position beside him, though scooting her sleeping bag closer to where it had been in relation to Ron before Harry had caught them.
When he looked over to her, her eyes were closed tightly as if she was sleeping, but the Cheshire grin screamed otherwise. He didn't protest, but instead settled in himself, his free arm draped over her stomach and his face buried against her shoulder. He hadn't realized until then how nice it was going to be to sleep like this for as many nights as she would allow him. He was really looking forward to it; waking up in the morning with her right there with him, only to know that once the sun set, he'd find himself right here again, maybe not at Grimmauld Place, but there next to her where he was meant to be. He pressed a chaste to her cheek before he whispered his goodnight's to her and followed her off to sleep, feeling a powerful sense of optimism surrounding the road that still lied ahead of them. He could see a light forming at the end. Sure it was flickering, faint, and so far away, but it was still there, and that made all the difference.