Written for the 2019 Ron/Hermione Fluff Fest on tumblr
The sun hadn't yet risen as the beep of a charmed alarm clock sang out steadily in the darkened room, signalling the early hour. A large, freckled hand snaked out from underneath a voluminous white duvet and felt haphazardly along the surface of the nightstand, finally closing around smooth polished willow.
"Finitum," came the gravelly incantation that, coupled with a practiced tap, effectively silenced the persistent tone.
With a satisfied grunt, Ron dropped his wand, pulled his arm back under the covers and wrapped it once more around the soft form of his wife. He squeezed his eyelids tighter as he pressed closer to her warmth, confident that her finely tuned internal clock would shake them out of bed and into their pre-work morning routine all too soon.
When his eyes finally cracked open, it was to the sound of wind rattling the tree branches outside the window and a bright beam of sunlight slipping through the side of the shade and slicing across the room. A feeling of disorientation muddled him as he craned his neck up to peer at the clock, the beginnings of dread setting in as he saw the hour.
Bollocks, he thought gloomily as he dropped his head back to the pillow.
"'Ermione," he murmured into her hair, "I think we had a bit of a lie in."
Instead of the jolt and panic he anticipated, his news was met with a pitiful moan. Concern rapidly clearing his cottony head, he propped himself up to look over her shoulder, realizing that the skin beneath his hand tucked under her worn t-shirt was actually uncomfortably warm.
"Hermione?"
Untangling himself from the bedclothes and tipping his long form onto the floor, he quickly padded around to the other side of the bed and knelt beside it in only his pants. Hermione, still curled up, blinked at him blearily with unfocused eyes.
"You're burning up," he said, pressing the back of his hand to her forehead.
"Huh?... no… I…" she began, shaking off his hand. Ron sat back on his heels as she pushed herself to a sitting position. "It's late?" she asked confusedly as she pushed off the covers. "We have to… uhhhh."
Ron lunged awkwardly to catch her as she staggered. "You have to lie down," he said firmly as he helped her back to the bed. "You're not well. I'll just get the Pep… damn," he cursed, belatedly remembering the incident a few years ago whereby they learned she had developed an allergy to Pepper-Up potion. It had involved a few minutes of genuine alarm and then several days of an uncomfortable yet ultimately harmless brilliant blue smoke issuing continuously from her ears.
"I'll get the muggle medicine, yeah?" he asked, and she nodded miserably.
Ron rifled through the boxes in the medicine cupboard, pulling out the unfamiliar flat rectangle with the funny green pills. He started back before remembering that she would need water to take them, turning to fill a glass at the tap.
Hermione was still perched on the edge of the bed when he emerged from the bathroom, her head propped up on her hand with her eyes closed, elbow resting on her knee. She opened her eyes heavily as the mattress dipped beside her.
"Here," he offered, holding out two tablets. "Er, I think this is the right dosage. S'what the box says, anyway."
He watched uncomfortably as she tossed the pills into her mouth and took a swig of water. Muggle pills always reminded him of bezoars, although these were blessedly smaller.
"Now lie back down, and I'll let your office know you won't be in today," he instructed.
Hermione looked at him pitiably. "But…"
"Hermione," he forestalled her. "That stuff takes time to work, you told me yourself."
She huffed a sad, sniffly huff. "Fine," she conceded mutinously as she slid her feet back between the blankets. Ron bunched the duvet up around her shoulders as she shivered and reached for a tissue. "I do feel rather terrible," she admitted in a sad little voice that struck his heart.
"Sleep, love," he said tenderly, kissing her forehead. He waited for her eyes to close before heading downstairs to make two floo calls, remembering at the last moment to grab a shirt and trousers.
It was mid-afternoon when he heard her begin to stir. Arming a small tray with tea and toast he made his way upstairs and gently cracked the door to their bedroom, watching as she shifted herself up to sit against the headboard.
"Ron!" she croaked in surprise as entered the room. He was relieved to see how much clearer her eyes looked. "I assumed you had gone in to work."
"When I had such a good excuse to skive off?" he joked, setting the tray on her bedside table.
She rolled her eyes as she cleared her throat. "It's just a cold," she chided, but she accepted the tea he offered with a grateful look that told him how much it meant to her that he had stayed.
"Budge up," he told her, climbing over her legs to sit next to her on the bed.
"Oh Ron, don't! It's probably catching!" she cried, hastily setting down the mug and gathering up the small mountain of tissues that had accumulated by her side.
"Hermione, my tongue has been in your mouth many times in the last few days. If I'm going to catch it, I'll catch it," he replied philosophically, leaning back against the headboard and tucking her under his arm. She wrinkled her nose in exasperation as she burrowed into his side, laying her head against his and wrapping an arm around his middle, hand still clutching a tissue.
"Are you feeling any better?" he asked, dropping his head to rest on hers.
"Yes, much," she murmured. "All that sleep must've helped tremendously." She sniffed congestedly. "I do wish I could've gone in today. There was a preliminary hearing on werewolf employment protection and I just know Rivington's committee will try to undercut it while I'm not there."
"The more fools they," he remarked, rubbing her arm. "You'll be back in tomorrow, tearing everyone a new arsehole."
Hermione snorted, then grabbed a tissue to deal with the resulting aftermath issuing from her nose.
"You should have some toast."
"I will," she promised, "Have there been any owls for me?"
"One or two," he prevaricated, thinking of the several large Ministry owls that had muscled up to the kitchen window around lunchtime. "But none of them marked urgent. Let it wait," he said with a look, as she motioned ever so slightly to get up.
She sighed back into his side. They sat contentedly, the silence punctuated only by Hermione's frequent sniffing and occasional cough.
"Tell me something cheerful," she hummed after a while.
Ron looked down at her and his heart constricted. She looked pale except for her bright red nose, with dark smudges under her closed eyes and her hair frazzled and unkempt. She was always beautiful to him - and yet seeing her sick reminded him of nothing so much as some of his worst memories over the years. Seeing her petrified from the basilisk's stare, lying in the infirmary with her chest bandaged from Dolohov's curse, in a narrow bed at Shell Cottage…
He mentally shook himself and tried to cast his mind back to something lighthearted.
"D'you remember when we went to that Death Day party for Nearly Headless Nick?"
"Of course!" she answered with a laugh. "Although I'm not sure I'd call that cheerful," she added.
"Mmm, dunno why I thought of it," he reflected, stroking the hair from her forehead. "It just popped into my head."
"I thought it would be so fascinating at the time," she reminisced.
"And then to see all that manky food!" He pulled a face as he recalled the intentionally rotten spread.
"I was sure I'd never see you so disappointed," she giggled. "Of course, that was before I'd ever been to a Cannons match with you."
"Ha bloody ha," he replied good-naturedly, glad at least that she was smiling.
"Did I ever tell you about the time in fifth year when Seamus tried to get Neville to help him study for his herbology OWL, and Neville gave him a dragon wort ointment?" he said after a few moments. He felt her shake her head in a negative against his side. "It was for the plant, but the ruddy fool thought it was for himself - rubbed it on his skin and came all over bark."
"No!"
"On my honor," he grinned. "Don't even want to know what Madam Pomfrey had to do to get it off."
"Poor Seamus!" she laughed wheezily, plucking another tissue. "We were all a bit manic from those OWLs, I think," she said thoughtfully as she wiped her nose. "I don't know how many times I fell asleep in the Common Room." She eyed him calculatingly. "Most of the time, I'd wake up and find someone had covered me with a blanket and moved my inkwell so I wouldn't knock it over. Who could that have been?" she asked meaningfully.
"Could've been the house elves," he deflected, shifting uncomfortably.
"But it wasn't, was it," she insisted, looking up at him owlishly. "It was you."
"Mostly me," he acknowledged.
"And you used to bring me toast and marmalade in the library when I missed breakfast for studying, even after Madam Pince bawled you out over it."
"Well, you needed to eat. Anyone would've done that," he scoffed, feeling his face redden.
"Not likely. Hardly anyone could stand me by that point," she argued.
"Not quite," he grunted. He may not have had a good memory for obscure facts from History of Magic, but he had an encyclopedic recall for any admiring comments other blokes had made regarding Hermione.
"You take such good care of me," she said lowly, pressing her cheek to his chest.
"I think there was something in the vows about that," he said lightly. "In sickness, all that."
"There wasn't, and you know it," she said firmly. They had eschewed the traditional vows for heartfelt ones of their own. "I mean, you've always taken care of me, even before."
"Before what?"
"Before you loved me," she said in a small voice, self-consciousness tinging the words.
"Hard to remember a time, really," he admitted quietly. She looked up at him with watery eyes.
"And after," she said softly, holding his gaze. "I'm so lucky."
There was so much there, so much pain running underneath those memories like a powerful current tugging at his sense of self. Sometimes it still felt like opening the door to those recollections, just wading gently into that past, was an invitation to drown in the feelings of guilt and regret that saturated them. But time, and the vows he had made to himself - to do everything he could to protect her, to give her everything he had - had planted a certainty in his heart that, no matter his shortcomings, there was no one on earth that could love her better. And when she looked at him like this, like he had hung the moon in the sky and half the stars, he could very nearly convince himself that he deserved it.
Her fingers tucked under the hem of his shirt, lightly stroking the skin of his stomach. The irony of having a rare afternoon in bed with his wife only due to her fighting off a cold was not lost on him, and in spite of the circumstances, of the growing pile of tissues, of the near-certainty that nothing could or should currently come of it, he nonetheless felt the familiar stirring of his body in response to her touch.
"Did you know," she started, and he grinned unconsciously at the familiar opening. "Did you know that, when aroused, the human body actively suppresses sensations of pain and discomfort?" She slid her leg higher against his and he became even more acutely aware of her breasts pressed invitingly against his side through her threadbare t-shirt.
"If you're trying to tell me that shagging feels good, then yes, love, I had figured that out for myself."
"Not just feels good," she corrected. "It can be good for you, when you're not feeling well."
"Just what kind of books have you been reading, Ms. Granger-Weasley?" he murmured, trailing his fingers up the leg resting on top of his as he lowered his face towards hers. The last thing he saw was her feline smile before his eyes slipped shut and their lips met, moving together languidly as he palmed the bare skin just below her knickers. Her fingers slid into his hair as her mouth opened beneath his, her body arching into his as his torso moved to cover hers… before she pulled back sharply and sneezed violently, only inches from his face.
They both froze, something wet sliding unpleasantly down his cheek, before Hermione's hand flew to cover her mouth in horror.
"Ron, I'm so sorry!" she blurted, snatching a tissue and scrubbing at the side of his face as he leaned back, his shoulders rocking with silent mirth.
"No, s'my fault," he laughed, shaking his head. "I couldn't resist you, bloody siren."
"Hardly," she fretted as she balled up the tissue. "You must think I'm absolutely revolting."
"I don't, but let's give it a few hours before we try again, yeah?" She looked up at him forlornly. "C'mere," he said, sliding down on the bed and motioning for her to join him. "I'll settle for doing my second-favorite thing in bed with you."
As she settled against him, her head fitting perfectly into the hollow of his shoulder as it always did, all he could think of was how lucky he was - that he was the one who got to take care of her, that four years after the most painful experiences of his life he had built this life with her, that he got to love her and wake up next to her every day - snot and all.