a/n: because i decided that maybe it was time for some romione again, because it still stands amongst my favourite ships.
The morning after the battle, a steady sort of peace lulls over the castle. It's bizarre and unexpected, yes, but maybe, Hermione thinks, that this is what was needed.
The last year has been a non-stop, mind numbing blur – a blur of shooting green light and constantly looking over her shoulder, a year of revelations and heartbreaks and most importantly, a year of growing up.
The last year has been hectic, a sharp contrast to the stupidly unsettling silence that today rings with. Of course, there are people out there laughing jubilantly – celebrating, giggling with joy over the happenings and the dead body of a monster- no, a man in a faraway castle in Scotland. Of course there are people out there, who have been partying all night and will party into the night again because he's gone, he's finally gone for good and they can't imagine ever feeling freer.
But, here, where the defeat actually happened and the war won, it's a completely different story.
Fighters trudge slowly through the dusty castle walls, their creaking limbs slowly shaking off persecution and hiding, their weary eyes blinking and adjusting to the sunlight they haven't seen for the past three years. They wander around in awe, not quite yet believing that this is finally it – they half expect him to emerge from the shadows and curse them dead.
People sit in corners, and they mourn. They mourn for the people they lost and the people who lost themselves: they mourn for those who fell and those who were pushed. But, today, their wails don't pierce through the crumbling stone walls – today they sit numbly and they remember the sound of the fallen's laughter, they remember how they used to dance through life: they remember what it felt like to lose them.
And some silently but diligently try to move on. They walk the corridors and look at the damage that the death and destruction has caused: a broken wall here, a blood-stained flagstone there. They help to carry the broken bodies of the fallen – tears trickle down their pale cheeks as they observe the broken souls and the blank eyes of the comrades they loved, but they continue, because it is time for them to leave the horrors of their past behind.
The castle is almost completely quiet and the golden, early morning mist seems to ring of peace and quiet, and it feels so wrong and disrespectful that after everything that has happened, they are expected to move on, but all Hermione can think of is that perhaps the peace is what she needs.
She sits by the lake and the only sounds she can hear is the constant lapping of the water in the Black Lake and Fawkes' lamenting song, and she knows how wrong it is, she should be thinking of Fred, Lupin, Tonks, Colin and all the other brave souls who died fighting for the greater good. She should be thinking of everybody she's lost and everybody she didn't lose, but all she can think of is how this is the first oasis of calm she's found in a long time.
And him.
That's the other thought that seems to fill her every moment – Ron, and the way his lips felt pressing urgently against hers, and how it felt like the best thing that had ever happened to her, and how that's all she wants: him.
But yesterday, he kissed her back in the heat of the battle when they didn't know whether they would make it out alive and, today, he is a survivor with one less brother and a grave to dig.
.
At some point, Hermione hears footsteps behind her, and the next thing she knows, Ron is sitting down next to her, his flame-red hair glinting in the early morning sunshine, his eyes rimmed with red and a gash running across his chin.
She turns to look at him and as she stares into his blueblue eyes that sing of fresh childhood days, circling above orchards on brooms that smell like home, tinged with the crimson losses of so many for someone so young, she thinks of the past they have lived and the future that is to come.
She thinks of their kiss and the years of longing and lusting after him, and the mixed signals and the heartbreak, and the wondering when it was going to happen. And she thinks of the future she wants with him – the life she wants to lead and the fact that she wants him to hold her in his arms forevermore.
He is gazing expectantly at her as well, and she doesn't speak, she just leans in and kisses him again, his lips coming to life beneath hers, tasting of salty tears and unflinching desire, and he kisses her back with just as much desire and force and energy.
When they finally break apart, Hermione realises that she – the brightest witch of her age – has been so, so stupid, because her and Ron are going to work – it may be hard, but her future is intertwined with his and nothing can change that.
As they break apart and smile shyly at each other, Hermione realises what she's known all along: it's going to take a lot more than a war to tear them apart.