Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.
Notes: I swear to god, this was supposed to be fluffy. Really. Sarah, don't kill me. *cowers* :D
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There is thunder and lightning outside in the sky, and Ron feels it reverberate in the air between them. Hermione, beautiful in her blush-cheeked anger, clenches her fists and screams at Ron, sharp, incisive words hurled like knives. Ron is no longer the teenager that chokes helplessly on his fury; he yells back in equal vitriol to what he receives, feels rage pound its way down his body with heavy, stomping feet.
They fall into bed together that night, with nothing really resolved, weighed down with the feeling of what has happened, is happening, will happen again. That is the way they live together, volatile like only people who know intimately each other's vulnerable spots can become.
"I love you," Hermione whispers softly into the still of their room. "I love you, but you make me tired, Ron."
Ron says nothing. There is nothing to say.
-O-
It starts as something small; it always starts as something small. They don't start fighting with the intent to fight, but sometimes it feels like that's all their life is: each battle rolling into the wake of the previous one, never-ending like waves in the sea.
The trouble with Hermione is that she always thinks she is right, and the part that is so bitter to swallow is that she almost always is. It is hard to live with someone who throws into sharp relief your mistakes, simply by the absence of their own. Ron does not want to be told what to do; he doesn't want to be told what he's doing is wrong. He wants to make his own mistakes, and learn from them all he possibly can.
"I'm only trying to help you," Hermione tells him, tears of frustration sparkling in her eyes. She wants to help him with his life and his decisions, like once upon a time she helped him write his essays and study for his exams. Maybe it's a little bit Ron's fault. Maybe he should have started trying on his own then itself.
"I love you." Ron's voice is weary, flat. "I love you, but sometimes you just don't listen."
Hermione turns away. She has no chance to listen after that, because they do not speak for the rest of the day.
-O-
Ron has aggravation down to an art; after seven years at school and two years living together after that, he knows what to say, what to do (or not do), how to act so that Hermione's mouth tightens in frustration and disapproval. It isn't right, he knows it isn't, but still he takes pleasure in the fact that he can make Hermione's vast vocabulary dissolve into furious variations of his name, angry half-noises that no one else can draw from her.
So he stuffs his food into his mouth and writes notes without checking his spelling; he leaves his socks around the house, hanging from a lamp or lying on the table; he talks with his mouth full and spills tea on the rugs. Maybe Hermione could ignore it all if it weren't done so deliberately. So like the lines of a battle being drawn.
Hermione tells him, voice cracking in frustration, "I love you, Ron, but you drive me mad."
And that is what Ron wants, isn't it? To make Hermione feel like he does in the face of her calm, her surety that her way is the right way. It is what Ron wants, but his pleasure tastes bitter in his mouth, like ash, like something burning before him that he cannot save.
-O-
There are times, more than a few of them, when Hermione's mouth runs away from her and says something cutting, sharp, before her prudent brain can rein it in. She is not a saint, and Ron would try the patience of one, and sometimes she is just not careful enough. It isn't even as if she means what she says, at least not outside that one heated moment; but the voicing of it alone does the damage.
There are things they do not talk about, the two of them. They don't speak of their insecurities, how Hermione stays up nights reading and re-reading her work, habits left over from the days when books were the only friends she had, and her brain, she believed, was her only asset. They don't speak of that invisible, extra limb Ron carries around: jealousy, that he tries and tries to cast away, but that drags him down sometimes when he cannot help it.
So it shocks even Hermione herself, when she says bitingly, "Maybe I would be more supportive of your daredevilry if I didn't suspect it was a misguided attempt to emerge from Harry's shadow, yet again."
Ron looks at her, white-faced. Hermione covers her mouth and closes her eyes. She didn't mean it; of course she didn't mean it. Ron is a wonderful Auror because it's all he wanted to do, and if she has objections to his fighting Dark wizards with less caution than she would like, it's because she's worried about his wellbeing. It's only that she knows, all too well, exactly what to say to twist into Ron's hurts and insecurities, and sometimes she is just angry enough to say it.
"I love you, Hermione," Ron says evenly, eyes shadowed. "But sometimes I don't like you very much."
Hermione holds in her apologies, her still-burning anger, her fear of what is happening to them. Now when her words are most needed, most useful, she can't bring them to her lips, can't find a way to say them.
Maybe it tells her something, a small warning of the future to come, easily brushed aside but always circling back.
-O-
They know when it is the end; they've been living in the midst of the beginning of the end for years now. Maybe they were happily in love once, in a time when all that was expected of them was to study well and grow to be good people, examples of the future of the wizarding world. The reality of living as an example is harder than they thought it would be. There are eyes always watching, people grasping at them for their stories and, more often, Harry's. Somehow their childish, comfortable bickering warped into something unsteady, something they must tread across carefully for fear of the next explosion.
It's no life the way they're living it.
Face flushed in anger, hands clenched, Hermione stares at Ron and feels something break in her chest, feels her breath stutter hard.
Ron swallows, closes his eyes. The silence around them is painful in the things it does and does not say.
"Ron," Hermione says quietly, "I love you."
Ron, eyes still shut, twists his mouth wryly. "But," he says, not a question. "But."
"But it's not enough," Hermione tells him, mouth wavering. Ron opens his eyes, anguish-bright, reaches out to her. She falls into his arms with the ease of someone eminently familiar with the hold of his body, and the knowledge that it is for the last time sweeps through them both like an unshakable, inevitable flood.
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