I think this chapter is a bit sad. I really do like Hermione and Ron as a couple, and it's always sad to see them fall apart. Sigh. The things that must be done for the sake of plot.
Anyway, on a lighter note, thank you for all the reviews and interesting questions & comments. Hopefully some of the questions will be answered in this chapter. Enjoy!
Declaimer-o-Doom: Still not mine, whoo!
Amour de la Lune - Chapter Seven – Hermione's Broken Heart
In the days that followed Hermione's flight from the Potter's kitchen, Ginny gave up on her crusade to prove her love for Harry. Instead every inch of her yearned to reach out to Hermione and make sure she was okay, but something in Ginny stopped her from giving into the urges. If the wounds that had appeared that day had caused any permanent damage, Ron would tell her, and Harry said he hadn't mentioned a thing. As the days started to turn into weeks once more, Ginny tried her hardest to not worry about Hermione, or think of her, hoping that doing so would deter the wolf and help Hermione more than Ginny being constantly near.
While Ginny cooped herself up in the house and refused to talk to her brother or his wife, Harry tried to pry information from Ron everyday at work. Still thinking that Ginny was upset from the fight between her and Hermione at the dinner weeks before, Harry used every tactic he knew to get Ron to talk. It wasn't until Harry had brought Ron his fifth box of chocolates that Ron finally let slip some information, and he hadn't even said anything Harry didn't already know.
"Look mate, Hermione's fine. She's over the spat, she just needs some space at the moment. Nothing to worry about really. She and Ginny will talk when they're ready."
Harry had let Ron's half-hearted answer slide, until a week later when he heard whispers about Hermione around the office. Waiting for the lifts one morning, Harry turned pale as he heard two witches gossiping about his bushy haired friend.
"Did you hear?" Said the first witch, leaning into her friend with a gleam in her eye, "They say Hermione Granger has been coming to work in tatters lately!"
"You mean the one who helped Harry Potter defeat the -"
"Are there any other Hermione Grangers in the Ministry?" The first witch snapped, then composed herself, "Yes, the very same one. People say her left arm is bandaged from her elbow to her wrist! And she has a large cut running along one side of her face. Everyone's been absolutely buzzing about it!"
"That's kinda scary!" The second witch whispered, looking frightened, "What could have done that to her?"
"Who knows? Maybe that Ron fellow she's married too..."
Harry had coughed loudly at that point as he walked into the lift, and they had both looked away in shame from his vicious gaze. Ron hadn't mentioned Hermione being injured, and when Harry confronted his best friend about it back at the office, he had simply shrugged the question off again like last time.
"Job's tough you know? We get hurt all the time."
"Ron, we're Aurors, getting hurt is part of our job, not Hermione's. Why doesn't she heal the cuts herself? Or even go to see some of the mediwitch's here?"
"She doesn't need to Harry, they aren't anything life threatening. She'll heal fine in a few days, no worries."
But Harry had plenty of worries when he returned home that night, and they only seemed to deepen when he brought up the subject with Ginny and she instantly changed the topic to the return of their sons in a week's time. Harry played along until they had gone to bed that night, and then he had brought the subject up again. Ginny instantly went stiff on her side of the mattress when he said Hermione's name, and she refused to look at him when she talked.
"I'm sure she's fine Harry," Ginny said, trying desperately to keep her voice steady, "She probably just needs space, and I think we should give it to her right now. She's going through something...tough with this work thing. If anything is really wrong, or goes really wrong, we'll be the first to know. Until then, we should just focus on other things, okay?"
Harry hadn't liked the answer, but he had promise to stay out of Hermione's affairs for a time. Reassured, Ginny fell asleep on the verge of tears, trying her hardest to keep the waterworks hidden from her husband.
x.X.x
While the Potter's struggled in their lives, so too did the Weasley's.
In between worrying about his wife and trying to keep Harry from Hermione's secret, Ron had been researching day and night for answers to questions he hadn't been able to ask. Hermione didn't talk much about the werewolf stuff, and Ron respected that. It had been difficult adjusting to Hermione's new condition, but they had both handled it differently, and who was Ron to question how Hermione dealt with it? They had faced worse things in their lives, and this definitely ranked low on the list. Still, Hermione had become increasingly distant lately, and it made Ron extremely anxious.
It had started the day after her first full moon, when she returned home to Ron distraught over destroying Harry and Ginny's house. At first Ron hadn't believed her, but once he saw the evidence with his own eyes he hadn't been able to think of any words to sooth Hermione about what she'd done. For weeks afterward, all Hermione did was research werewolf lore, trying to understand why she had attacked people she cared about so deeply. To Ron, it seemed like the researching and the constant battle with the wolf in her mind drained the life from Hermione. He tired to help her, but it just seemed to make things worse. Ron had been about to snap and tell somebody, anybody what had happened so Hermione could get help when she had disappeared for the day to Diagon Alley. The trip had been short, but when she had come home Hermione had been...different. The colour started to return to her cheeks, the researching stopped and life returned.
Until that party at Harry's.
When he had been dragged out by Harry with the kids to 'get ice cream,' he knew something was going to happen. When Ron returned to the house to find Hermione gone, it was all he could do to not scream aloud. It had taken all night to find her, and a whole morning to get her talking once more. Ron didn't dare ask what had happened, or why he had found Hermione covered in blood. Instead he tried to say the right words, held his wife in his arms and tried to wish away the pain for her. Something about it hadn't felt right, and it had unsettled Ron. At that moment he decided it was time for him to do some research of his own.
Hermione hadn't left any of her own notes lying around the house when Ron started looking for answers. He went over their home with a fine comb on Hermione's second moon, hoping to find something to start his studying off but to no avail. The only good thing about that night had been Hermione returning the next morning, practically naked and refusing to say a word about where she'd been, but happier. It gave Ron hope and determination to find something and to help her.
At first he found bits and pieces; the basics of living as a werewolf, how the change occurred, that the wolf and its host were the same but different entities. As Ron started to understand little things, like why Hermione had started to sleep facing the door (werewolf's liked to be prepared for attacks,) and why she had become even more protective of their children (werewolf's placed priority of their pups above almost everything,) Ron felt like he actually knew Hermione again. Even then it didn't seem like enough. Ron spent days trying to capture Hermione's attention and feeling like he was nothing more than an annoyance to her. He failed to register on his own wife's radar. It hurt that they hadn't kissed for days, touched for weeks, been intimate for months. Ron researched harder as his feelings grew, but still he found nothing.
It wasn't until a few nights before Hermione's third moon that Ron found what he was looking for. He had been researching more frequently since Hermione had gained three huge wounds from seemingly nowhere. She refused to talk about them, told him she couldn't heal them, and Ron knew it had something to do with the wolf inside her. Knew he had to find out what that something was and try and help.
Ron had been sitting in the bedroom when he found the book, tucked under Hermione's pillow, practically out in the open. At first Ron had been afraid to open the little battered tome entitled 'Were the Wolf Resides,' simply because he could feel the answers he was seeking in its pages, and he was suddenly unsure of whether he really wanted to know them or not. It had taken a dozen or so whispers of "It's for Hermione" before he had even glanced at the first page, and another six to actually read it.
The book was complicated and fascinating. By the looks of the dog eared pages and the creased pages, 'Were the Wolf Resides' had been Hermione's novel of choice every night since her return from Diagon Alley. It was no wonder why. Of all the books and scraps of information Ron had come across so far on werewolf lore, nothing had been as detailed and accurate as the book currently held in his hands. As the words flowed from the pages and into Ron's mind, he understood more and more until he could hardly bare it all. He had almost stopped reading when he came across one of the last chapters, 'Love and Mates.'
Ron hadn't been sure why he read it. He should have assumed that the chapter would simply tell him how Hermione's love for him would be slightly changed now and nothing more. He shouldn't have even glanced at the title. Should have saved himself the hurt.
When Hermione returned that night after Ron had finished 'Were the Wolf Resides' and hidden it once more beneath her pillows, it was all he could do to not break down as she tried to keep up a conversation with him. The test in the book played in Ron's mind like a song he hated. He wasn't Hermione's wolf's mate, not her soul mate. After everything they had been through, the family they had created from what he had thought was shared love...it seemed like they should have just stayed friends. When Ron disappeared back to his and Hermione's room after dinner he couldn't believe how he'd kept his composure with the weight of this knowledge on his shoulders. It should have been too much, because really it was. Yet somehow, though it hurt, it was almost like he'd known since that first night...
"Ron? Are you up there?" Hermione called to him, snapping Ron from his thoughts suddenly.
"Uh, yeah, in the bedroom."
It taken a moment for Hermione to walk upstairs and into the room Ron occupied, her face blank and pale, making the semi healed wound on her face shine an even brighter red. Her mouth opened and closed for a moment, before she came and sat next to Ron on the bed. He had looked away as soon as her weight had shifted the mattress beneath him, and Ron instantly berated himself for it.
"Ron I..." Hermione started, and then stopped. Ron wondered if she had noticed him acting strangely at dinner. He hoped not.
"Hugo's been put to bed, and it's still early...I was wondering if we could talk."
"What would you like to talk about?" Ron asked stiffly, afraid of where the conversation was going. He couldn't talk about the werewolf stuff now; not without giving his information away.
"We've been distant lately, haven't we?" Hermione asked softly. Ron felt the colour start to drain from his cheeks, "With everything that's going on...me being attacked, work, looking after Hugo, Rose coming back in the next few days...I feel like I haven't seen you for months."
It's because you haven't, Ron wanted to say, wanted to scream at her, Every time you look in my direction, it's like I'm part of the scenery!
"So I was thinking maybe we could..." Hermione started, then stopped again. Ron was about to ask why she had stopped when he felt her breath upon his neck. His whole body jolted at the sensation, craving the pleasure as Hermione started to kiss down the column of his throat and remove his shirt, but something about it felt wrong. If what Ron had read was true, if for the past few moons Hermione had been going to see her mate, she didn't really want this. In fact, it would hurt her.
Yet still Ron found himself giving in, moving up the bed and kissing his wife deeply, moaning blithely as she ran her hands up and down his stomach muscles like she always had. He played with the bottom of her blouse, running a hand over her hips gently. For a moment or two he let himself believe that maybe the book had been wrong, prayed the book had been wrong. Then a strange wetness dampened his fingers and fear struck his heart.
Pulling back from the kiss and opening his eyes, Ron gasped. The wound on Hermione's face had reopened, blood mixing with tears he wasn't sure Hermione knew she was shedding. Looking down he saw the wetness on his fingers was more blood, this time from the slash on her stomach. Even the cut on her arm had reopened; the bandage covering it going bright red.
"Hermione, you're bleeding," Ron whispered, his own tears threatening to fall. Hermione clutched at his arms as she stiffened beneath him, her eyes screwed tightly shut.
"I know," She whimpered, flinching as the pain coursed through her, "But I can't let it...I have to do this...I have to..."
Ron sat up, gently bringing Hermione with him and coaxing her eyes open. Her pupils were extremely reflective from unshed tears, and Ron could see his own sad face in Hermione's sad eyes.
"Hermione, I'm not your mate. If you force this you'll just keep getting hurt," Ron said quietly, and Hermione flinched once again in his grasp, her eyes fearful and frantic.
"How do you know about -"
"I found the book. Under your pillow. It's true isn't it? You found your wolf's mate...your real soul mate. Being with me is impossible now isn't it?"
Hermione looked away and together they sat in silence. Ron felt like he was watching from above their heads as his heart slipped from his hands and smashed into the cold floor, breaking into a million pieces forever. It was true. It was all true. Hermione had truly found her...
"I don't care," Hermione whisper broke into his thoughts suddenly, "I don't care what the book says, what my wolf screams...it's wrong, it has to be, because she didn't -"
Hermione cut off and clasped a hand ever her mouth, wishing desperately she hadn't said those final words. Ron felt almost numb to the shock now. It was another woman. Hermione's soul mate was another woman. Ron supposed it was probably mature that he didn't care about the gender, but more that someone other than him had claim to Hermione's heart. There was only one last question in Ron's mind: who was this mysterious woman? From all the knowledge the book had given him, Ron still hadn't been able to figure that out. Hermione hadn't been acting strange around anyone, had she?
"Damn it!" Hermione suddenly interrupted Ron's thoughts again, leaving him alone on the bed as she made towards the bedroom door only to stop inches from it.
"I hate this...thing inside me! I don't understand why this had to happen. Everything was perfect. Ever since Voldemort fell all I wanted was life to be perfect and it was and now...now everything is destroyed again!" Hermione grabbed a picture of Ginny and Harry from the small dresser next to the door, throwing it viciously at the ground beside her. The glass smashed and the frame of it shook, yet still the occupants in the picture inside still waved merrily at the raging werewolf. Ron jumped from the bed and made to grab Hermione, but she danced from his grip easily, continuing to boil with anger.
"I hate the people who did this to me. I hate myself for walking so easily into a trap. I hate that my mistake is ruining my life!" Hermione hissed, the first trails of new tears appearing on her cheeks, "I hate that even now all I can think about is her and how much it hurts that she rejected me when she had every right to! Why does my wolf think it's so bad that I let her lie and slip away from me, when all I was trying to do was protect her and make sure her life stayed perfect...?"
Hermione hiccuped, then suddenly dropped to the floor and started sobbing uncontrollably. Ron was there in an instant, gently shushing her and trying to sooth her. It took almost 20 minutes for Hermione to calm down enough to talk again. It pained Ron to see the tears, the agony, the fear she had been holding back. It pained him even more knowing that they had only scratched the surface of it all. Who was this woman causing so much pain, rejecting Hermione when they were literally made for each other? Ron felt a coil of anger growing for this woman. She didn't deserve Hermione's love if she so easily let it slip away, even if Hermione had wanted her to do so. If he just knew who she was he would go and...
Ron turned his head slightly, looking back towards the photograph Hermione had smashed moments before. Of all the pictures on the dresser, why had she smashed the one of his sister and Harry? It could be coincidence or...
All I was trying to do was protect her and make sure her life stayed perfect...
Ron felt all his breath leave in one sudden whoosh.
Hermione's mate was Ginny.
"Hermione?" Ron whispered, and she looked up from his tear stained shirt in an instant to meet his gaze, "If I ask you something, will you tell me the truth?"
Hermione looked weary, but nodded her head slowly after only a moment of contemplation. Ron tried to get a fragment of air back in his lungs before asking in a rush:
"Is it Ginny?"
In an split second Hermione had drawn away from her husband, moving backwards until she hit the wall beneath their bedroom window. Ron stayed crouched in the middle of the floor, his heart hammering wildly. Hermione scrambled on the carpet, breathing too quickly as more tears fell.
"Ron I -"
"Don't Hermione. Tell the truth. You agreed."
Hermione stopped moving, her chest rapidly rising and falling as she placed her head in her hands.
"Yes," She whispered, "It's Ginny."
Ron leaned back, his spine hitting the bed frame almost instantly. He thought of a million things to say but each of them sounded wrong somehow. It seemed impossible to say the right thing in this moment. How did one react to the knowledge that your wife and your sister were meant to be? Certainly it wasn't something that happened often.
While Ron tried to figure out his thoughts, Hermione showed her face again and gently started to talk.
"The moment I knew I tried to fight it. I thought maybe if I could avoid her the wolf would calm down and the feeling would fade but...at the dinner..." Hermione looked frightened at the thought of continuing, but Ron's gaze caught her own and begged her to make him understand, so she continued with a shaky voice.
"I marked her, at the dinner. The blood on my mouth...it was hers. It was then I knew I couldn't stop those feelings, but I couldn't give in to them. How could I ruin everything we'd both strived for since we were teens? I thought maybe...if she found out about my feelings, my wolf's feelings...she would reject me and the feelings really would stop. But when I sat in the kitchen with her the other day and she said the words I needed to hear and I just let her say them...my wolf got mad and..."
Hermione gestured at the three wounds on her skin which had stopped bleeding but were still stained deep red. Dimly Ron nodded in understanding. A line from 'Were the Wolf Resides' came back to him, and it suddenly made a new, sick type of sense. Unlike humans who can choose who they love, werewolves do not have the same pleasure...so when Hermione had tried to stop her feelings for Ginny by choice, the wolf's natural instinct had been to hurt her. The wolf didn't have a choice, so neither did Hermione in its eyes.
"It should have worked. All the logic in the world says it should have worked but...it's not working. I still want her so bad it...hurts. Merlin it hurts so much..." Hermione clutched at her chest then, right above her heart. Ron slowly moved forward towards her, taking her hand from its position and kissing the back of it gently. Hermione hiccuped, clutching tightly to Ron's fingers until her hand turned white.
"Hermione, I don't think you can fight this."
Both Ron and Hermione were shocked at the red head's sudden words, and Hermione almost instantly started blabbering about other plans she could try. Ron simply held up a hand to stop her.
"You and I both read the book Hermione. She's your soul mate. Your wolf's mate. Getting rid of those feelings is impossible. You can't fight it. You can't fight your wolf you..."
Ron broke off and paused for a moment, drawing in deep breaths and wondering what to do. He couldn't believe how calm he was about this. How he knew every word to say. Why somehow, he understood. He glanced at Hermione's hand and wondered if maybe the wolf inside was helping him, trying to lessen the blow for him. Hermione does love you, but you're not her...I'm sorry for all of this. So sorry.
Ron stood up, pulling Hermione with him and giving her a gentle hug. She clung to him, still crying, still shaking in disbelief and pain. It broke Ron's heart.
"I think I should move out."
"What? Ron, no! You can't!" Hermione begged, clutching to Ron's shirt with all her strength.
"Hermione, I told you that you can't fight this...and neither can I. We can't be..." Ron closed his eyes in sorrow, "...in love anymore. I need to fall out of love with you. I have to leave."
"No, no, no..." Hermione whimpered, her fingers still digging into his shirt, "Please...Ron you can't..."
"I have to Hermione."
"Please, don't," Hermione begged, her eyes meeting Ron's in desperation, "I need you here I...we can't...love but...I need you. Stay. Please. Even if you just have to stay in another room just...I can't lose you. I can't."
Ron looked at Hermione and not for the first time wondered how someone so beautiful had ever fallen for him. He had once thought it was fate...but perhaps it had just been a miracle. A fleeting moment of love that wasn't meant to last no matter how desperately he wanted it to. Maybe he was just the messenger, leading Hermione to real love, eternal love. Ron's heart clenched in his chest.
"Okay. You won't lose me. You'll never lose me Hermione..." Ron promised, and pulled her into another embrace as the sound of two hearts breaking echoed in his head.
