Returning to Ron (Part One)


Present Day

Ron sat in his comfy chair. Gods, how Hermione hated this chair. Held together by beer, firewhisky, and mustard, she had claimed. Ron thought it smelled of sausages. Its springs were broken, and the cushions had gone soft; sitting in the chair was like getting the hug that he couldn't get anywhere else. His right hand held his head, elbow sunk deep in a split-seemed arm; his left hand was draped over a glass with his middle finger drawing circles around the mouth.

Ron coughed. His head was halfway between buzzed and aching enough to split. He grasped at a bottle of aged firewhisky that he'd purchased for himself for a birthday—the one he'd had since she left.

Filling the glass halfway, Ron waited a tick before changing his mind and pouring more of the amber liquid to just before spilling over. He wiped the dust from the neck of the bottle off on his trousers, putting his hand in the inside of his knee and closing his leg to pinch, thus saving a second go at a wipe. He pitter-pattered his fingers on the top plane of whisky, flicking the excess wet away, drying the fingertips on the left armrest.

He looked at the ripples left in his drink and sighed, reminded of the last night he thought he'd had a faithful wife: a year and a half ago.

Hermione had been working very hard at the Ministry. Ron had never seen her working so hard except maybe back during their third year at Hogwarts when she'd been using that damned Time-Turner. She'd been working in Magical Law Enforcement and, yet again, that fucking snake, Draco Malfoy had been in trouble with the law. Malfoy had been accused of less than ethical activities while he was working to regain his family fortunes after their vaults had all been seized following the Battle of Hogwarts for war reparations.

Six months before Hermione started dealing with Malfoy, Ron's mother had passed away. No Dark Magic had been involved. Her health hadn't ever been quite what it had been before the war and one day, she just quit. She'd been helping to plan a wedding for Fleur's sister and had over-exhausted herself in the effort. Molly Weasley had made herself quite a terror, many times as controlling and overly-stressed as she'd ever been when her children were younger. The people who had been around her the day she died, had recounted detailed arguments with decorators, seat-arrangers, those hanging streamers, one house-elf, and even those gods-be-damned garden gnomes.

Molly passed on and left behind a collection of cookbooks for her daughters in law, a bit of money squirrelled away for her children, a collection of family heirlooms for the grandkids, and she left her famous temper behind to Ron, who mixed that and his grief in a bottle of firewhisky and refused to resurface.

There had been arguments before his mother died. He and Hermione had always had a bit of passionate relationship and they differed greatly in opinion on a lot of subjects. However, before Molly's death and Ron's subsequent reliance on drinking, the fights were becoming less heated and more . . . tired, as though each was wondering when the arguing would ever just stop.

And then Molly died and Hermione hadn't seemed very broken up about it. At least, not as broken up as Ron had insisted she be. Then again, who could blame Hermione after what had happened with Molly before the wedding?

Oh yeah. . . Drunk Ron could blame her.

He was a mean drunk, but he dealt blows with words and accusations the same as he'd done when they were children. Never one for pugilism, in or out of the bedroom. With whisky, though, came whisky dick. So there wasn't really anything at all happening in the bedroom those days.

Then there were the children. Gods, the children. Rose and Hugo had started leaving him notes, scribbled in quill on scraps of parchment: Daddy, please don't drink. Guilty, Ron began hiding his bottles in the garden or the shed, anywhere he thought was safe from prying child eyes. That's when they'd started sending him Howlers.

Eventually, he sent the kids to stay with Bill, telling his brother that he and Hermione needed some peace and quiet to work it out.

The Ministry, to be honest, had been very helpful in their own way. They had Ministry therapists that Ron and Hermione had been to see, trying to save what relationship they might've had left.

Hermione had cried. Every time.

Ron hadn't. Not once.

At one of the appointments early on, Ron had truly tried to be there to listen. That was when he heard it: Hermione—the eternal swot, the study—had failed to answer a question asked by their Ministry-appointed Wizard therapist. Well, she hadn't failed so much as she had said, "I don't remember."

The therapist had asked, "Why not?"

Ron had looked up suspiciously and said, "Wot?" Hermione didn't remember something? She remembered everything! She'd always remembered everything. She remembered ingredients to potions she hadn't brewed in ten years. She remembered the birthdays of every one of his nieces and nephews, the anniversaries of each of his siblings and their spouses. She could recite Hogwarts, A History from beginning to end by memory! He'd never once, in the history of knowing her, heard her say that she couldn't remember something. It had felt like the first time he was lucid in months.

Once home, he looked at her from across the dinner table and asked, "What did we eat at the start-of-term feast in second year?"

Without glancing up from a worksheet that the therapist had sent them home with, she blurted out, "Roast chicken, mushy peas, and treacle tart. You and Harry weren't there though because you'd missed the feast thanks to crashing the car into the Whomping Willow." Blinking, she looked up, confused. "Why?"

He shrugged. "Just thinking."

Hermione didn't forget anything.

Which meant she was either lying . . . or something much, much worse.

The next day, Hermione had gone to work, and Ron sent an owl to George saying that he needed the day off. He scoured their home. He knew it had to be there. He found it in the parlour. He had walked it so many times without ever really seeing it before: a Pensieve.

Hermione had been so swamped at work lately, that she had felt the need to clear some mental cobwebs and take out the extraneous memories. It wasn't something everyone did, but Ron understood the need, considering the amount of details she needed to keep straight when it came to her job. He remembered from his brief days as an Auror that some solicitors and Aurors kept memories of cases stored outside of their mind so that they could watch and review memories repeatedly to gain an outside perspective. He recalled joking with Harry that he'd like to pull out the memory of winning the Quidditch Cup fifth year so that he could rewatch himself in that final game.

Digging in her things and using counter-charms he'd learned in the Auror Academy—that might've not been entirely legal since he was no longer a Ministry employee—he found a secret compartment in her desk beneath a stack of paperwork on house-elf rights, Wolfsbane distribution, and other boring things from her days working with the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

Ron had found four bottles and hastily began pouring them, one by one, into the Pensieve to view.

The first bottle had the stored memory of their first night together. He watched as his younger self clumsily pawed at her breasts—gods, her young, childless tits had been amazing. He'd been just like all of his life up to that point: overexcited and inadequate for the job at hand. He came quickly. She was clearly left unsatisfied. The grin on his younger face was wide and clueless. Ron didn't blame Hermione for taking this out of her memory rotation. He had forgotten that night himself and without the aid of magic.

The second was a large bottle, nearly three times the size of the others.

It contained every single second of every Quidditch game she had ever watched.

He could see cuts among the memories where she'd purposely left behind things she wanted to stay in her head. When she turned away from the game to speak to people, the conversations were skipped over in the Pensieve memory. When she left to buy food, was distracted by something, or any myriad number of reasons she looked away from the actual game. Everything else revolving around Quidditch was there. Everything . . . except . . . Harry.

The moments up to, but not including, when she had focused on Harry fucking Potter were not there. The first time Harry had caught a Snitch was missing. Every single Hogwarts game was missing, except the ones during fifth year, when Harry had been banned from the game. Even the family events that they'd put together after the war were all there . . . but Harry was missing from the memories.

Which meant that she'd kept those ones in her head!

The third bottle had had every moment Hermione had spent dealing with Molly Weasley. From every summer at the Burrow when they'd been children, all the way up to her death and the stresses of funeral arrangements and arguments with Ron over the unhealthy way he was grieving.

While reviewing the memory of the incident before the wedding, he sighed irritably and walked to the window, looking out into the garden instead of listening to his wife and mother. He'd been dealing with this event for years and still couldn't see why it was such a big deal.

The memory played out behind him, but he focused on two gnomes in the garden, picking a fight with a stray cat that had wandered onto the grounds of the Burrow. One gnome jumped, waving its arms in distraction while the second tackled the cat sidelong. Two more gnomes came out of the weeds, grabbed the cat's legs and dragged it back into the bushes. He remembered seeing smoke rising from the grounds that night, accompanied by a small fire. He'd never investigated before but now knew why the gnomes had been so fat that year.

Ron looked over his shoulder. The memory was still playing, and he groaned. He had lived this all once before, and Hermione—having the habit of never letting anything go—had made sure he relived it frequently, so his interest in watching it all in an out-of-body sort of way was nil.

The fourth bottle's lid was loose; evidence of having been opened and reopened many times before. Curious to see what was so bloody important, Ron poured the memories out and placed his face in the Pensive, feeling the cool liquid touch his temples. The sight before him made it feel like the bottom of his stomach had fallen out, and a chill ran down his spine as though someone had walked over his grave.

He swallowed hard and whispered, "I knew it."