Harry was asleep within seconds of his body hitting the mattress of his four-poster bed in the Gryffindor Tower. As Hermione and I walked into the boy's dormitory, Hermione let out a soft chuckle.
"He's out like a light," she murmured, moving around Harry's bedposts to pull his glasses off his face, folding them gently and placing them on his night stand.
We stood and watched our best friend for a moment, eyeing the rise and fall of his chest to make sure he was still breathing. Each breath was a soft exhale, a sigh of relief.
Harry could finally sleep at night. No longer plagued by nightmares, a threat no longer hanging over their heads.
"I'm so mad at him," I told Hermione, reaching down to pull the bloody, dirty trainers of his feet. They feel to the floor with a gentle thud. I could feel Hermione's gaze on me.
A house elf, probably Kreacher, had lit the fire in the dormitories already, casting a warm orange glow across the red curtains and stained glass windows. The flames cracked in a soft, comforting rhythm.
McGonagall was insistent. The three of us were to get some sleep. A platter of sandwiches and chips were sitting by a table in the common room upon our arrival. We were to get a dormitory to ourselves. We needed the privacy, she said.
"Mad at him?" Hermione asked softly.
"Bloody prick went by himself," I told her. "He didn't tell us. He didn't say goodbye. He had the chance to say goodbye and he didn't." I paused and took a deep, shivering breath.
"Not everyone got that chance," I added in a small, scratchy voice.
Hermione let out a small breath of understanding and I felt her hand on my sleeve, holding my jacket at the elbow with the slightest of touches. I turned to face her and felt the warmth of her presence fill me more than the fire ever could.
Her hair was tied into a plait but the curls had broken free, framing her dirty, tear-streaked face. A cut at her hairline had caused a trickle of blood down her right ear and neck. The blood had dried, casting a burgundy shadow along her profile.
"What can I do?" she asked, a hint of panic in her soft voice.
"Nothing, right now," I tell her truthfully. "I just …. I don't know what I need right now."
Hermione nodded, the corner of her mouth curling up in a soft smile.
"Well, right now I could use a shower," she said looking down, tugging on a hole in her sweatshirt that had been charred by the Fiendfyre.
I keep my eyes on her and I raised my left arm over my head and took a big dramatic sniff.
"Merlin's beard," I laugh with a huff.
I had accomplished what I wanted. Hermione laughed. A tinkling, exasperated, so effortlessly Hermione laugh directed at me. She shook her head at me, like she's been doing since we were eleven.
She reached over across her body for her beaded bag but paused for a moment, her hand clutching the chain before reaching in to pull out a fresh pair of clothes for me. She doubled back for a clean pair of wool socks.
"Here you are," she whispered.
"Well, come on then," I told her, turning toward the bathroom. "There are stalls, don't worry."
I tried to say it with confidence but I felt the ears rush into my head.
This is what Hermione deserved. She deserved a man who knew what he wanted and fought for it. I had been fighting my whole life for this — for security, for fame, for comfort, for normalcy. I seemed to get it all in one swoop but now it was time to be the man Hermione deserved. A confident man.
They entered the boys bathroom and she quickly made her way over to a stall in the far corner. I took on eons away to make her feel more comfortable, closing the shower curtain behind me with a loud swish.
My arms ached as I pulled my filthy jumper over my head. My right arm was throbbing and my fingers cracked from all the spellwork I had done, holding onto my wand for hours with white knuckles. I heard Hermione turn the shower in and steam began to fill white-tiled room. I put my wand along the edge and stripped my jeans, kicking them over to the bench.
If only the hot water could wash away the last few hours.
I scrubbed at my pasty, freckled skin until I felt raw, washing the dirt and maroon-colored water race down my legs and circle the drain.
With my back pressed against the tiles, I closed my eyes and let my muscles relax under the pelting shower water. Hermione's shower turned off and she now doubt was reaching up for the fluffy towels left by house elves each morning.
"Don't think about her naked wet body," I thought to myself. "Not now, you pervert."
The soft patter of her bare feet on the floor stopped near my shower curtain.
"You okay?" she asked, her voice cracking with concern.
"'M fine," I told her, pushing myself up off the wall to stand at my full height again. I could see over the shower curtain, designed to accommodate young students, and peered down at her.
She was wearing one of my old Gryffindor T-shirts and a pair of shorts. My heart leapt. Her long, brown wet hair was slicked back, cascading in dripping tendrils down her back. Her cheeks grew shaded when she saw me looking at her from the shower and she threw me a coy smile.
"I'll be out in a mo'," I told her. She nodded and made her way over to the sinks.
I had begun to take Hogwarts for granted while we were living out of the tent. Dispensers attached to the wall were always full of frothy shampoo and citrus-smelling body wash. They were never emptied, magically charmed to remain full for the plethora of prepubescent boys traipsing through the corridors.
When we were on the road, the bottles Hermione packed in her beaded bag slowly diluted away as the weeks passed — slippery and grimy in the cold, canvas-walled bathroom.
I turned off the tap and quickly wrapped myself in the blanket which smelled of the comforting Hogwarts laundry.
I pulled on my clothes and exited the shower, running the towel through my exceptionally long ginger hair.
Mom will need to give me a haircut soon.
As I approached Hermione, I saw she too was mimicking my movements, wringing out her long with a towel.
"I don't think I've ever seen your hair this long," I told her suddenly, realizing that while she had given Harry and I mild trims in the tent, she had not gotten her hair sorted out since before the wedding.
"I know," she said to me while looking through the mirror with a sigh. "And unfortunately it looks like it may have gotten caught during the fire."
She pulled back the towel to show me a large chunk missing from the ends, which appeared to be slightly blackened even though her hair was wet.
"Oh no," I told her with a sigh.
I was standing behind her, looking into the same mirror as her and watched her shrug.
"It's just hair. It grows back," she said in a quiet voice. "At least it wasn't an arm."
We were silent for a moment, gazing at each other in the Gryffindor bathroom mirror.
I took a few small steps until I was right behind her and watched, almost like having an out-of-body experience, as my freckled arms tossed my wand onto the counter and came around her sides to hug her from behind.
Her smile grew and she closed her eyes, leaning her wet head back into my white cotton shirt and laying her hands over mine.
I pressed my cheek against her curls and inhaled the scent of her — clean, alive, and in my arms.
We made it.
For so long, I didn't let myself think I could have a life with Hermione. It had been a driving force, a light at the end of the tunnel, a constant "what if" that pushed me when all looked hopeless. She had always been an end goal, a hope, a wish.
I never thought we would both make it out alive. I had pushed aside my feelings, stifled them so they wouldn't get in the way of what we needed to do.
In the tent, before I left, we would laugh and talk and read together while Harry was on watch. We would brainstorm and research in a content silence, listening to my old radio.
Even years before that, when we would patrol the corridors together as Gryffindor prefects, I knew I had a relationship with her outside of Harry. I knew the feelings were bubbling up but life, school, Lavender or Death Eaters always seems to intrude.
I never thought we would both make it out alive.
But now that we had, I had to let myself feel every emotion for her that I felt. It came over me like a wave, standing there under the flicking lights of the lanterns mounted along the bathroom walls.
I was so in love with this woman.
This brainy, wicked, fierce, loyal, maddening woman.
This woman I had known since I was 11, who I grew up with. I had cried with her. Fought with her and next to her. Laughed with her. Held her. Yelled at her. Yearned for her.
She was here and for the first time ever, let myself feel what I had always suppressed.
"I love you, Hermione," I said in a husky voice against her hair. I sounded more confident, more mature than I had ever in my life.
She also seemed to notice that.
I expected her eyes to pop open, for her to whirl around and face me in this bathroom. But she didn't.
Her breath hitched and her chest filled with a deep breath. I watched the grin spread across her cheeks in the mirror as she gripped my arms even tighter across her stomach.
She didn't even open her eyes but I could see the tears gathering in the corners.
"I love you too, Ron," she said in a breathless voice as a single tear made it down her cheek.
I guess she didn't expect us both to survive either and the smile that grew felt foreign on my tight cheeks.
And with that, I let out the heartiest laugh I had in years. The laugh she met with me with music to my ears.
"Bloody hell," I hollered as I spun her around.
I looked down at her brown shimmering eyes for only a moment before I captured her lips on mine.
Compared to the rushed frenzy our first kiss was, this is how I always imagined it would feel like kissing Hermione.
It was deep, tender and impossibly soft.
I could feel her smile against me as our lips worked in perfect synchronization — like we had been practicing for years.
Like we had waited years.
She reached her arms up and around my neck, gripping her fingers in my hair as I took a step forward and pressed her against the counter. My body felt light a lightening bolt, rushed with energy and power.
I was kissing Hermione. I was fucking kissing Hermione.
Every nerve felt raw and goosebumps covered my arms, pulling a rush of feeling down into my toes.
As the seconds passed, the kiss grew organically.
She was on her tip-toes, caressing my face and my neck with a urgency I matched against her hips and her back. I pressed my hands against her shoulder blades, feeling the smoothness of her skin through the thin cotton shirt. She wasn't wearing a bra.
Without thinking of the consequences or her reaction, I went to lift her at the hips and she immediately let me hoist her onto the top of the bathroom counter. She opened her legs and I stepped into her, my hips aligning with hers automatically.
Hermione pulled back for a moment and let out a breathless laugh before capturing my lips again, grasping the front of my shirt in her fist.
Harry once joked at he could sometimes feel the sexual tension around Hermione and I. If he had any idea how we felt …
I didn't even have time to feel self-conscious about my now-raging boner or my hands wandering too close to her bum before a loud bang sprang us apart.
We both instinctively reached for our wands and turned toward the door. The exploding noise was followed by another and another.
"Fireworks," she said breathlessly. "I guess Hogwarts people are celebrating."
"Bloody fireworks, more like bloody interruptions," I chuckled, turning toward her with a sheepish shrug.
Her legs dangled from the counter, disheveled hair from my hands. Her lips were bright red from the pash rash of my lips.
I opened my mouth to make a joke in an effort to diffuse the now-awkward cloud that began to fall over us like a blanket but I noticed the cut on her head had begun to bleed again. The electric wires in my veins had slowed down and seemed to switch off out of worry.
"Do you have any dittany?" I asked.
Hermione's eyebrows went up and she started from my abrupt conversation change.
"Dit — dittany?" She questioned with a tilt of her head.
A small smile returned to my tender lips.
I stepped forward again but maintained a more polite distance. I reached up and gently pressed my thumb to the teardrop of blood forming on her temple. I pulled my hand back to show her the scarlet stain.
"Oh!" Hermione gasped, turning on the counter's edge to look at herself in the mirror. She instantly reached for her beaded bag but I beat her to it, pulling the strings out of her hands and quickly casting a nonverbal spell with my wand.
She sat back up straight with a smile on her face as I unplugged the potion bottle, now almost empty, onto her gash. With a small sizzle and a puff of smoke, the wound began to close. I took her damp towel and gently dapped away the excess blood.
This little wound was nothing like the cuts etched across her body after Malfoy Manor.
Bellatrix Lestrange had used her wand like a pencil, creating slashes across Hermione's back, legs, chest. When the chandelier crashed over us, we both received dozens of nicks and cuts from the crystals.
By the time we got to Shell Cottage, I couldn't tell which blood was mine and which was Hermione's.
I had undressed her on a bed in my brother's spare room, ripping off her coat and her shirt so my sister-in-law Fleur could quickly cast healing charms over her bruised and battered skin.
I didn't even tend to my own wounds for hours, after she had fallen asleep with the help of a Dreamless Sleep potion.
In the small bathroom by the sea, I had cast a silencing charm and sobbed for the broken, fragile heroine I had almost lost.
Although Hermione looked malnourished and exhausted in the Hogwarts bathroom now, she was still my know-it-all best friend who once accidentally turned herself into a cat.She was alive and besides from the obvious mental trauma we would all have to face tomorrow, she was OK.
Hermione took a deep breath and sighed the air out slowly, looking at me expectantly.
"How long?" She asked me softly.
"How long what?"
"How long have you loved me?"
I reached up to run a hand through my almost-dried hair and shrugged.
"Honestly, I have no idea," I told her truthfully. "I don't remember when it was even like before I had feelings for you."
Hermione beamed. "Me either," she told me with a sheepish smile.
"What took us so long?" I said curiously.
"There was a war going on up until about two hours ago," she said in her bookworm voice. But her gentle smile gave away her teasing nature.
"Oh yeah, that's it," I nodded, taking a step closer to her again. I reached up and cupped her chin in my hands, allowing myself to swim in her deep chocolate eyes.
"I was also scared," she admitted. "Scared of losing you. Scared of ruining our friendship."
"I know, I've been bloody terrified," I told her as I brushed my thumb along her cheek.
"Are you still scared?" She asked just barely in a whisper.
What do I tell her? That every cell in my body is still filled with terror, worry, anxiety and rage. My brother had just died. Death Eaters were being rounded up around the country. I have to face life post-war.
"I'm scared shitless. But no longer about this," I told her, closing the gap between us to press my lips against hers with excuriating softness.
I stepped back then and reached my hand out to her, encouraging her to jump down from the counter.
"Let's go to bed," I told her and the flush returned to her cheeks.
Hand-in-hand, we walked back into the Gryffindor dormitories where Harry was snoring peacefully for the first time in years. We stopped in between my bed and Neville's empty one, eyeing the gap between the two structures. The question hung over both our heads — separate beds or one?
"I can't be away from you tonight, Ron," Hermione answered in a voice so tender, I almost lost my breath.
Wordlessly, we both moved toward my four-poster bed and pulled back the fresh, crisp sheets. She climbed in and turned her back toward Harry. I nestled in next to her, twisting on my side so we could face each other.
"We have a lot to talk about," she said after a tense moment.
"I know. But it can wait until tomorrow," I said as a deep yawn came through, causing me to flip over onto my back.
"We have plenty of time now," Hermione said softly and my chest filled with happiness.
My brother was dead, along with dozens of others. The castle was destroyed. Hermione's parents were in Australia. Teddy Lupin was an orphan. Every inch of my body ached.
The world was impossibly cruel and in the morning — or later in the afternoon, technically — we would have to face the pure depression and hopelessness that came after a war. But for now, I let myself feel happy, alive and in love with Hermione Granger.
"Yes, we do," I told her as I pulled her closer to me.
She curled up against me with her head on my shoulder like Crookshanks would, a natural fit against my body that seemed to surprisingly easy.
And then we slept.