Title: Failure to Communicate
Author: Aeryn
Summary: You wonder if she even attempts with him anymore, or whether she simply Apparates to your door the moment things explode. [Written between HBP and TDH.]
Characters: Harry, Hermione, Ron
Rating: PG
Author Notes: For some reason I almost always seem incapable of leaving out Ron when I try to do H/Hr. Which just seems to up the angst factor. Then again, that potential's part of what I do find enjoyable about this pairing. ;) Written as a long-ago LiveJournal Christmas gift for annearchy.
Disclaimer: It's Jo's sandbox. I'm just knocking down her anvils - er, castles.

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She's at your door again.

The first time this happened, you asked what was wrong before you invited her in. The second time, you escorted her right to the couch. Now, months later, the time, you simply go to the kitchen to get her a cup of her favorite tea, and she spills everything to you.

She always comes to you.

You wonder if she even attempts with him anymore, or whether she simply Apparates to your door the moment things explode.

You don't know who to be angry with at these times; you never have. You sit, she vents, sometimes you awkwardly pat her shoulder, your own shoulder catching a tear or two, the cup of tea forgotten. You wait for her to finish. Sometimes she stays over, sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes she seems better after talking to you. Sometimes she seems worse.

But even then she still comes. You get the impression at the end of these times that she's waiting for something more from you, something other than a squeeze of the palm or a peck on the cheek, you don't know what. She lingers just a little longer on your doorstep, her lips hang open just a moment too long before the words good-bye actually emerge from them.

The third time, Ron followed her. You wondered how he hadn't caught on to where she was going before - and you wondered why you hadn't ever told him. He spared you one betrayed look as he went to sit on the couch next to her, leaving you to find a place to hide in your own flat for the next hour while he tried to get her to do the same thing she'd just spent the previous hour doing with you. You never knew if she did eventually talk to him.

You were always in the middle. That has never changed. Always between them. Either as something to hurl barbs at one another over, or as the only thing keeping them from doing so.

You know he's been just a bit suspicious of you two, or at least her about you, since fifth year, even though you thought it was clear you yourself never had any interest in her that way. But you never spoke of it, and nor did he. And you never spoke about their fights.

He finally does at breakfast the morning after this last time she'd come to you. She had not joined you two this morning.

It all boils down to, it's because she doesn't want me.

"You're her boyfriend," you remind him, surprised at your mouth's reluctance to do so.

"But I've never been her best friend," he says, and his sheer blankness cuts you. "That's always been you. That's what sh..."

He trails off, his coffee cup trembling under the sudden intensifying of his grip. And you can't place your hand on his shoulder, can't say the words to protest, because you know the protest isn't there.

As the memory of her waiting on your doorstep, staring at you, flashes in your mind - you wonder if you actually want it to be there.

And you think you know what something she was waiting for.

-

[end]