Peace by luvscharlie
You wonder when it might stop hurting, when the pain might subside enough to allow you to remember him with less than the unpleasant tilt of your stomach and the dizzy spin of your head, and a need to empty your insides onto the floor that far surpasses them all. You wonder when—make that if-- you wonder if that might happen. You pray it comes soon.
And the days drag on. Minutes pass as though they were hours, hours as though days, and you wonder if you might ever feel that elusive cheerfulness again. If you do, will you recognise it? It's been so long since happiness was an emotion you associated with yourself that even the word is foreign to you now.
It has been five years since the War ended and took his life. You have lived every minute as though it were a lifetime. A painful, heart wrenching lifetime that you wish had never been. What you wouldn't give if you could just go back to that day and die beside him. You think, perhaps, that you married Harry for no other reason than that he was the closest thing to Ron you could find. And you were so desperate to find him…
You wonder if the man beside you, your husband now, knows he is a substitute for his best friend… the man you so desperately wanted…the man you loved so deeply it hurt… the man you watched die.
He does. You know that somewhere, deep down, he knows. He knows that he will never be anything more than your second best.
Harry looks at you and says your name—or at least you think he does.
"Hermione." It's a whisper that barely reaches your ears, but it's certainly your name. He takes your elbow and turns you toward that all too dreaded place. Harry, however, is the only one who understands how hated this place is now. Or, rather, the only one who hates it perhaps as much, if not more, than you.
How was it that simple swing hanging from that old tree signified so much? When would you be able to remember it with the fondness that it once brought you? When would you not hurt at the memory of climbing onto that old swing during that fateful summer when you were only seventeen and so many things teetered on that precipice of change; some would go back and some things simply never could. They had changed too significantly.
He pushed you high into the air on that old wooden swing. Oh, the freedom when you released your hold on the ropes and plummeted into the icy, cold pond water below. You had never known such a feeling as that. The way it felt when you came spluttering, laughing to the surface, to find that he was already there encircling you in arms that were strong and sure; arms that would never fail you; arms that had never failed you. Tried and true, that was your Ron.
And he kissed you, and your world stood still.
That night as you lie down in your bed next to the man you married with the glass tube that so recently held the Draught of Living Death dangling from your fingers, it comes over you. It is peaceful, this sleep that takes over your body. Then Ron's face is before you, his hand outstretched welcoming you into that place where happiness awaits you, where you may well find peace at last.
And you are together…finally.
Fin.