A/N: So the odd thing is, before now I considered myself a big ol' Ron/Hermione shipper. But...I don't know, after re-watching Deathly Hallows 1 & 2, I can't stop thinking about Harry and Hermione. There's something deeper there, I suppose. Anyway, this is my thinking in the form of a drabble.
knowing the stories
Years later, their children knew the stories. James, Lily, Albus, Hugo, Rose—they knew that their parents had lived and fought during the Dark Age, and they even knew that they had been the heroes of their time. They found the tales in Daily Prophet articles and even in the History classes at Hogwarts, because Binns made an exception and taught it anyway, even though it had only been twenty years before.
Yes, the young cousins and their friends knew of their parents' heroism. But what they did not know was the true heart of the stories: the feelings and inner workings of the journey. Harry, Hermione, Ron, Neville, Ginny, Luna and all the others reckoned now was not quite the time to tell them—in fact, it was not something they believed they would ever be brave enough to regale aloud. Someday, when they had grandchildren and great-grandchildren and many more wrinkles, they would write it all down from their very own perspective, and after they died, their posterity could know all about what had really happened. But for now...for now, the stories were enough.
James, Lily, Albus, Rose and Hugo knew that their fathers Ron and Harry had been best mates since the young age of eleven, and of course they knew that Ron and Ginny were siblings. Yes, they knew that Ginny and Hermione had always been friends, if not the very best of mates. Those connections between the two families, the children were sure of.
But there was another connection that they'd never really registered, one that from the outside looked to be insignificant, and that was the one between Harry and Hermione.
Of course the children knew that Harry, Ron and Hermione had grown up as an inseparable threesome, and Ginny had not a part of that. Somewhere along the way they'd learned that actually, it was Hermione who had been the third member of Ron and Harry's group. They saw it, sometimes, in the inside jokes the three of them would keep up from years ago, and the way they would all look up and smile at each other over some secret memory. It was a bit odd to the children to see that Ginny was sometimes excluded, but no matter—it was not very often, after all.
They'd always assumed that Hermione had mainly interacted with Ron throughout the course of the three's friendship, and for the most part, they'd be right.
But what the children didn't learn about—and probably never would, at least until their parents were old and gray—was that there had been a time when Harry and Hermione had been each other's everything. A time when a foolish Ron had abandoned them and for months they lived on their own together, knowing that without the other's company they were bound to go mad. They didn't know that on a cold Christmas night, Hermione had laid a wreath across his parents' grave and held him in the cold. They didn't know of those few months of simple acceptance and mutual love.
On Christmas Eve one night Rose watched from behind the Christmas tree as her mother and Uncle Harry sat side by side on the couch while the others were in the kitchen. They didn't speak, but both seemed content with the other's company; a warm, distracted smile turned up the corners of both pairs of lips.
"Do you remember—?" began Rose's mother, and Harry immediately said, "Yes."
They looked at each other, still smiling, and then Harry laid his arm around Hermione's shoulders and they were quiet again.
Their children knew the stories, but they did not know the moments. And one moment—one Christmas moment by a ring of flowers in a graveyard—was for two people and two people only to share, to remember in silent acceptance until the day they died.
*End*