(I am aware Hermione's copy of Beedle the Bard was in runes, but Ron obviously cannot read runes, which essentially ruins my story. Let's pretend, shall we? I don't own Harry Potter or Beedle the Bard, they're all thanks to dear Jo Rowling!)
He always got nervous when she kept watch at night. He knew she was brave and tough and strong, but there was the constant, looming threat of danger that he couldn't shake off. What would he do if he lost her? He thought about losing her…the thought was so dreadful that he ripped the blanket off of himself and sprinted outside, just to check that she was still there.
"What on earth are you doing up, Ron?" Hermione looked up from The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
"Uh…couldn't sleep." Ron murmured. It was partially true.
Hermione was sitting with her knees up, the worn blue children's book propped against her legs. Her skin was pale but flushed from the cold, her eyes were dark with lack of sleep, her body was weary and limp. After weeks of masking her fears with a confident, brave façade, she now looked scared, drained. Ron let his eyes linger over her for a second too long. She had done so much. He lowered himself to sit next to her.
"You've really been amazing, Hermione. Really."
She squeezed her eyes shut, bit her lip to hold back tears.
"Thank you…I'm just…exhausted." Ron could tell she was fighting back tears, but soon she couldn't any longer. Tears spilled from her eyes and dripped down her cheeks. Gingerly, he wiped them from her face and put an arm around her. She sunk into him and breathed out a long sigh. He scooped up Beedle the Bard, abandoned next to Hermione's foot, and opened it.
"These were my absolute favorite when I was a kid." Ron mused. Hermione looked up at him and smiled.
"Which was your favorite? I'm sure I'm familiar, I've been reading that book inside out for the past three weeks." She sounded exasperated.
"Babbitty Rabbitty. I would make Mum read it to us every night, and Fred and George always wanted to hear the Wizard and the Hopping Pot, but I wouldn't let her." He laughed at the memory, and turned to his favorite story.
"Read it." Hermione said suddenly.
"Aloud?" Ron was baffled.
"Yes, aloud, read it!"
Ron was not about to argue with Hermione, which would most definitely push her over the edge. So he read, his chin perched on top of her head.
"A long time ago, in a far-off land, there lived a foolish King who decided that he alone should have the power of magic. He therefore commanded the head of his army to form a Brigade of Witch-Hunters, and issued them a pack of ferocious black hounds. At the same time, the King caused proclamations to be read in every village and town across the land; "Wanted by the King: an Instructor in Magic.- of course, at the time, we children were very confused, "Why can't he just go to Dumbledore? Dumbledore could teach him, send him to Hogwarts!"
And Ron told the story of old Babbitty the washerwoman and how she laughed at the charlatan and the king spinning their twigs to try to make magic, and how she took revenge for the persecution of the Muggles. Between sentences, he would interrupt himself- babbling about how Percy used to insist that the book was his and that nobody was ever to touch it, the prat. He told of how this story was how he first learned about Animagi, and told her how he had so much wanted to be able to turn into a dragon or a hippogriff after he heard it for the first time.
She was finally smiling. He loved that he could make her smile. He had finished the story and finished all of his stories, and she was smiling.
"So we read all of this," Ron waved the battered copy of the book, "what do the Muggle kids read? You told us the names of that Cinderfeller nonsense, but what is it about?"
"It's Cinderella, and it is quite the celebrated fairytale in the Muggle world."
"Well, tell it to me then! It's only fair." Ron nudged her encouragingly.
"I don't have a book!"
"All the better. Tell it. Now!" Ron slammed his fist on the ground in pleading.
"Fine, but it will be heavily paraphrased." Ron gave a satisfied grin, pleased that he had won at least one battle with Hermione. It rarely happened.
"So there was a widower who married this awful, awful woman with two equally awful daughters. But the widower had a wonderful, beautiful daughter who the second wife and stepsisters forced to do all of the housework. They called her Cinderella. She had to sit in the cinders after she did her work, that's why they called her that." Ron was already confused, and he wasn't sure why. He supposed the lack of wizards was throwing him off.
And it went on the same way. Hermione told about the ball that the Prince held to choose a wife, and the Fairy Godmother (Ron began to understand a bit more when she came to the Fairy Godmothers' transfiguration of a pumpkin into a carriage and mice into horses. He knew transfiguration.), and the search for the woman with the foot that fit the glass slipper. And like Ron, she wove in stories from childhood. She explained how she had once hunted for stray bits of glass that she intended to fashion into a shoe, until her parents caught her, horrified and distraught. She told him that while reading the Hogwarts course offerings when she first got her letter, Transfiguration caught her eye because she wanted a fairy godmother so desperately, and if she couldn't have one to make her pumpkin-carriages, then by God, she would do it herself.
oOo
They were sitting in the freezing cold, as they had been for hours, and they laughed too much to care. Ron had laid down, and Hermione was sleeping with her head on his chest. Ron still couldn't sleep- it could have been because the girl he was madly in love with was sleeping on his chest, it could have been because he was still high off of the way she made him laugh, and the way he made her laugh, but it also could have been because there was still a war. There was a war, and the world seemed to be falling apart, and nowhere was safe- nowhere except where he lay then, with Hermione breathing rhythmically against him.