She watches him silently from the bedside, sitting with her hands wedged under her thighs. Her right leg is dancing up and down subconsciously and you can see the anxiety in her brown eyes. She can't sleep in the dormitories, so she is down here instead, awake while he lies there, completely oblivious to everything. For the millionth time that day she remembers how badly she had wanted him to just disappear, and how she had almost gotten that wish. Her mind is too full. She knows she will regret staying up, but at the moment she could care less.
It's pitch dark in the hospital wing save for the full moonlight slanting through the blinds of the window above his bed. It glances off of his red hair, making it sparkle slightly – red and gold like a phoenix's feathers. His breathing is slow, hitching at times in his chest. She breathes with him, helping him when he has trouble and a wave of guilt and fear grip her heart each time, that jumpy feeling not unlike the sensation of taking an extra step at the top of a staircase, of falling. He's lying on his side facing her; his long legs are curled up, his knees pulled towards his chest. He looks so vulnerable and it's hard for her not to reach out and touch his hair, or his cheek. She wants him to wake up and to be okay again. She wants them to be okay now more than anything.
It couldn't hurt, could it? Just once. He won't be conscious for a while. She thinks this to herself, summoning up that Gryffindor courage that was characteristic of her house. She wasn't sure if it actually existed at the moment. She reaches out a trembling hand to brush away the crimson tresses lying in his closed eyes and suddenly he stirs. She jerks her hand back as if she had been burned. He rolls onto his back, stretching out and his eyes blink slowly open. Her heart is racing. He groans as though the weak light that barely illuminates his features is too much and he presses his hands to his face. He turns to her again and he sees her for the first time. Brown locks onto blue and the silence persists.
"Hermione?" he asks her blearily. His face breaks into a genuine smile that he wouldn't have been able to hide if he had wanted to. He is looking at her with such relief, such happiness, and with something else she can't place - something that frightens her to death, and exhilarates her at the same instant. It's absolutely amazing and she realizes that she doesn't deserve it. To be looked at like that, by him of all people. His eyes are pleading now and she can read what he is thinking of, and what he is asking for. She hates this stupid situation and she hates how much time they've wasted being stupid. They're both such utter fools and it frustrates her beyond belief. A wave of emotion hits her head on and she feels a familiar stinging sensation starting in the backs of her eyes. Her lip trembles and she bites down on it. Not now.
"Hello, Ron." She chokes on the words as they leave her mouth.
He reaches out to touch her knee, releasing the thousands of butterflies in her stomach that she has tried so hard over the long months to eliminate.
She can't look at him anymore; her eyes are going to flood at any second. She looks up at the beams of the ceiling, pursing her lips, trying to control the quaking of her chin.
"Hermione, it's all right." He withdraws his arm and everything seems so cold now with the absence of his touch. "It's going to be all right now." She nods. She doesn't want to look into his eyes.
She's about to tell him what she has wanted to tell him all of those days of silence and avoidance until she looks down and sees that he is sleeping again. It's a different sort of sleep, not the comatose stupor it was before, but actual natural sleep. It's enough for now. Tomorrow. Hermione tells herself. She leans back in the hard wooden chair and closes her eyes. She doesn't open them again until Madame Pomfrey is shaking her awake unceremoniously, scolding her to get off to breakfast.