A/N: I realize this could have been a really, really long oneshot but I'm mean and making people wait for the proper conclusion just gives me giggles. Plus, it gives me an excuse to have cliffhangers – painful ones at that. Now, onto the tale!
He stared and stared, trying to forget what had just happened – she had said no. Ron didn't know how to describe it exactly in words, but the feelings of a thousand pounds dropping from your head straight down through your whole body, and a mild stomachache setting in, were enough to point him in the right direction. She had said no and she was still shaking her head when she pushed past him and turned off toward St. Peter's Street, heading on the pavement seemingly as far away from him as possible.
He tried speaking to her when she shoved him aside, but the cottonmouth that felt like he had already spilled a whole bottle of the vodka down his throat was restricting his speech. It even took him a second of heavy breathing to realize he was still on his knee and staring at the box in his hand, crushing it in his grip. He released it to see the molded material had crumpled a bit and a sliver of felt had been pulled clean off the hinges.
"Pity, the bloke seems all right…" Ron heard someone say from beside him.
"Did you see him eat? A pig, from the looks of him… I don't blame the girl - she got away just in time." If his throat weren't as dry as sandpaper he might have told the woman off, but again he couldn't speak. Standing up, Ron grabbed the small glass of vodka and downed it in one gulp, savoring the searing heat and unusual taste. It took a great deal of his courage to turn around and follow the woman that was running just across the street and not sit down and partake in every last bottle of liquor until his vault emptied. Even as he ran towards Hermione, every inch of his body was screaming out to him to go back and take a bottle with him, because as much as he wanted to know why there was the looming threat of learning that killing him.
It didn't take him more than a dozen strides to match Hermione, owing both to his being much larger and still retaining a relatively fit physique - if one doesn't count the beginnings of a beer gut. As he approached there was a strangled combination of chokes, sobs, whines, and hitched breathing coming from her direction that was masked only lightly by the traffic along the street. She had picked the least public route to go cry along, he thought.
"Hermione, why…? " was all Ron could gasp out before Hermione turned around and, with no hesitation, shoved him backward onto the hard walkway backside first.
"What the… what on Earth were you thinking!?" She spat out at him, flaring up and face covered in still flowing tears.
"The hell d'you mean, 'what was I thinking?' I thought I made it pretty clear!" Ron didn't even rightly know what he was saying – the words just happened to tumble out of him in an aggressive voice. Old habit, he guessed, "I thought the whole asking you to be my wife thing was fairly obvious."
"I-I get that part, you lout! I m-meant, why there? Why in front of all of those people?" Ron truly had no immediate response for that. He couldn't really recall why he had waited nearly two weeks for a date when he could have just as easily done it at the flat the day after. Then, he remembered what had happened when he tried to do it that day.
In truth, he couldn't recall much because he had taken a small drink of a bottle of Firewhiskey he had held on to ever since moving to London – a house-gift from his father. The small drink turned into a glass, which turned into a few more, and before the night was out he had shambled over to roughly where Hermione had been in the previous hour. She told him that he professed his love to her and passed out immediately, face first into the carpet before she had to drag him back to the bedroom. Hermione had kindly not mentioned it the next morning.
"I was going to earlier, and then I had that drink last Saturday and kind of messed that one up. Why do you care, anyway? I figured it would be more… I dunno, romantic?"
"I don't… I saw the ring last Saturday," Hermione responded.
"So, you weren't going to say yes then?" Ron asked and he didn't know whether he wanted to hear the answer. From the looks of it, Hermione was having similar difficulties and the evidence before him was starting to line up. His brain kicked back into gear in the interim, and it started making sense – the lack of argument over the drinking, the need to bring up trivial matters that he never heard her complain about, the suggestive glances between the servers' usual jokes, and finally the kicker of saying no in public. He couldn't say with one hundred percent certainty what his brain had pieced together, but the most likely scenario was that she was calling it quits.
"That's… that's a totally unfair question." Hermione folded her arms and looked downward, which was not the reply he expected. It took Ron a second to figure out what she was trying to say.
"So, you were just going to string me along until I asked the question? Were you just hoping I would do it back at the flat so that you could let me off easy?" His stomach turned around in a multitude of directions when he finally had the words pour out of him. He realized then, in that moment, that he had been right. He had been right all along – everything from worrying over a first date, to worrying about the first time they took a break, and now finally when he had thought she would decline him. He had been wrong about one thing, however, and that was that she considered the same things he did. He doubted if she ever thought him an inseparable part of her like he did.
The thoughts came like a deluge, washing across every centimeter of his confidence and dousing his nerves like liquid death, and before long he didn't know whether he was glad he knew that she felt nothing for him in the same way he did. He may have wanted to avoid the post-Hermione life, but she was clearly thinking about a post-Ron life. The revelation both relieved him and made his insides shift painfully.
"I wasn't meaning to string you along, okay? I just... it happened at the absolute worst time and I didn't know if you would-"
"Did you ever even love me?" His voice interrupted like a dying breath, a whisper that she must have only barely heard. He had to ask it, and if she kept going he knew he would never get the words in edgewise, "Was this all a big joke to you?"
At that he pushed himself upward from the ground and stood staring downward at Hermione. What came next was not one of the scenarios he had figured would happen afterward; she punched him. Not a slap, not a push like before, but a well-wound and inexplicable hook. If the situation hadn't been so dire, he would've laughed at the sight of her standing up on the tips of her toes when she launched herself at him. Instead he went with the punch and just sat there caressing the warm reservoir filling up the inside of his cheek.
"How can you even ask me that question, you idiot? I did this to help you!" She was screaming, apparently having never intended to go down this route for secrecy.
"Wha yoo me, 'elp me!?" Ron could feel his tongue pulsate with each word – apparently Hermione either chipped or broke a tooth and the side of his tongue had slammed into the fragment. Still, the words confused him. What had she meant? Was this all a ruse to stroke his ego? Was it just a well-nourished, multi-year spanning joke?
"Ron, what's wrong?" He looked at her with a completely blank expression. It was obvious, wasn't it?
"Yoo punshed me," he answered flatly. Ron didn't know whether to push her off when she dashed up to him and felt the area around his left cheek, or to just pull her into a deadly embrace and hope she would be won over by the contact. He did neither and simply stood still with her flinging apologies left and right.
"Listen Ron, I meant that… if I had said yes then we would have been totally, and insufferably, miserable. I've been promoted, you see…"
"Tha's wonnerful… wha' does 'at 'ave to do with 'is?" He looked at her quizzically, not seeing where this new information fit into the puzzle.
"It's along with Mr. Diggory, and I'm going to be working with goblins for the next four years," she answered. Ron didn't quite pick up the thread she thought she had so blatantly left out, so she finished, "I'm going to stay with Mr. Diggory and work out treaties for four years, and I'll have so much to do that he's told me it will be sort of like a very extended business trip. Away from home."
This still made less than a lick of sense to Ron. What was she going on about? He could live, maybe vegetate for the first few days, but she'd be back in a handful of years so what was the big deal? They had survived the years where she refused to talk to him in school, the nearly six months they split up after school, her going to absolute workaholic mode at her first job... and it hit Ron. She was totally, and irreparably, dissatisfied with their life and where his being married to her would strap her down and leave her unable to move forward. She would be stuck because he kept her stuck there.
"And…?" He trailed off in expectation of her explanation and in the hopes that his thoughts were horribly off the mark.
"And, that means four years apart Ron. Do you really think we can survive four years of a long distance relationship, especially if you asked me to marry you? It would be torturous to us both."
"I still don't understand you." In between his question and her answer, Hermione had patched up Ron's swollen tongue so that he could at least give completely comprehensible speech. They had moved into an alleyway where the risk of Hermione pulling a wand out would be far less, "Are you saying that we're through because of your job?"
She swayed back and forth In front of him momentarily, and for the briefest instance in the arc of her swinging he wanted everything to just stop. He wanted everything she was saying to make sense to him and for her to stop saying things that she knew were half-truths on her behalf and even more confounding if he had said them. After the need for an answer longed inside of him, and time groaned onward in expectation, Hermione finally spoke up.
"That's not exactly what I'm saying. I'm saying that neither of us deserve to be forced into a situation we'll be unhappy with, and if I had said yes we would both go mad by the time a year-"
"So what you are saying is that I'm holding you back," Ron accused. He didn't want to believe the words, but he had never been less sure of himself in his whole life than he was in this very moment. He almost didn't care about what her answer exactly was, because his dead and crumbling reassurance and confidence were falling down around him and there was only one path ahead of him.
Hermione gaped at him, blinking rapidly and shifting her gaze from him to the ground and back through everything in between. She may as well have said it, as if her actions weren't clear enough he thought. Ron shook his head and turned around, trying to fight back the urge to scream at her and to pound his fist into the nearest wall. He succeeded in the former, but a bolt of pain had shot up through his arm all the way back to his shoulder from the swift contact with the nearest building. He could already tell he had broken something, both by the uncomfortable shifting of his knuckles and the blood seeping from them, but none of it really mattered.
Not looking back, he decided to make his way back to the Duke and order as many glasses of the most violent, fiery alcohol he could find. Maybe he would find answers there, since Hermione had not moved an inch before he heard the familiar, but horrible, sound of Disapparation.
A/N2: I'm having way too much fun being this foul. Shorter chapter, but it's so dialogue heavy and action-packed I thought I would leave you with another gut-wrenching action from Hermione. I promise to whoever you swear religious fealty that I'll try not to upend my schedule so you get to wait between chapters, since I'm so very kind. Reviews would be lovely, even if they're to crucify me.
