I Just Know You're Far Away
Ron lay on his bed in Shell Cottage. He was thinking about her again. I hope she's alright, he thought, desperately.
Snippets of his last argument with Harry kept coming back to him—
"Don't expect me to skip up and down the tent because there's some other damn thing we've got to find. Just add it to the list of stuff you don't know."
"I thought you knew what you'd signed up for," retorted Harry again, in Ron's mind.
"We thought you knew what you were doing! We thought Dumbledore had told you what to do, we thought you had a real plan!"—
If Ron was honest with himself, he knew that the real reason he was scared to go back wasn't the prospect of being tortured or murdered if (no, when) You Know Who found out they were hunting Horcruxes. He was afraid to face Harry after what he'd said that night. It was the main reason he stayed away the night he had left.
But Hermione was a different story. He loved her. He missed her terribly. And there was always the possibility that something would happen to her and he wouldn't know. He knew that if anything happened to Harry he'd know about it straight away, but if Hermione was hurt or de— no, he wouldn't let that thought enter his conscious mind. Hermione had to be alright. She just had to be.
The radio clicked on upstairs. Fleur was listening to a Muggle station, playing popular Christmas music. "And now," the radio announcer said, a little faintly through the floor, "we bring you 'Ornament' by the American band Trans-Siberian Orchestra. Enjoy, music fans!"
There is an ornament lost inside the night…
The music played on, and Ron listened, more because he had no choice than because he actually wanted to. But then, the chorus of the song expressed exactly what he was feeling:
I don't believe I can say what had happened.
All of those words that we put into play
No longer matter, I should have known that then.
I just know you're far away…
On this Christmas Day.
Almost at once after the chorus, something else sounded in Ron's ears. It was…Hermione's voice!
"…Ron? When he broke his wand, crashing the car…"
No, it couldn't be. He had imagined it because he had been thinking about her. But then it continued:
"It was never the same again, he had to get a new one."
That was definitely Hermione's voice! Coming from…his pocket? Ron pulled out the Deluminator and looked at it. He was sure her voice had issued from it, but now everything was quiet again. He clicked it. As he had expected, the lights in his room went out. Outside in the garden, however, a little ball of light, almost like a Christmas bauble, had appeared.
Ron grabbed his rucksack and went out into the garden. The cold winter air stung his face after the warmth of the cottage but he didn't care. He had a feeling the "bauble" would lead him where he needed to go. To find Hermione. To go back to her. As he stepped out into the night, the "bauble" (or whatever it was) seemed to hover in front of him for a moment, and then went into him at his chest.
Ron knew what he was supposed to do then. His heart considerably lighter than it had been just fifteen minutes ago, he disapparated.
Author's Notes: Originally written for the LJ Community flashfic_rhr's prompt winter in December 2007.