A/N: Back on Hermione's birthday, this year, I started a story I had planned to post later that day. But it quickly turned into something much longer than originally intended, and I wasn't able to get it online in time. So, at the very last second, at the end of the day, I drabbled this short bit, which takes place on Hermione's 19th birthday, and posted it on Tumblr. Just now getting around to uploading here!
She wanted to sleep all night. She had done it, for a bit, in his arms. But books and revisions and exams had taken her away from him. And now she was here, without him.
Hogwarts felt close to the same, in ways that surprisingly upset her. And she'd shut her eyes and try to imagine he was there, with Harry, across the tower from her. But he wasn't. And whether it was a nightmare or something else that woke her, she'd begun to grow accustomed to the feeling of exhaustion never quite escaping, living in her bones.
Tonight, her window was open, a feathering breeze tickling her hair against her cheek, the side of her neck. In minutes, she'd be nineteen. The number sounded so foreign, distant. It had once seemed quite adult, to be nineteen. And though she'd lost a good deal of what she imagined others might call innocence, in her years-long quest with Ron and Harry, she felt quite small and, maybe, exactly her own young age, honestly.
Maybe nineteen wasn't as old as she'd thought.
She shivered, and she had just considered getting out of bed and closing the window when a gust came through, shocking her as she clutched her quilt to her chest. And as she stared, a dark figure on a broom whizzed by… then again, in the opposite direction.
Gasping, she reached for her wand and slid out of bed, approaching.
The figure passed by again, only this time, she caught the glint of a shaggy copper head and nearly dropped her wand as she lunged for the window.
He turned quickly, spotting her, and with a grin of relief, he zoomed forward and clattered a bit too noisily into her dorm room.
"Ron?!" she questioned frantically, heart pounding furiously even as her body melted at the more-than-welcome sight of him.
His face fell slightly as he dismounted and balanced his broom against the wall.
"You haven't been sleeping, have you." He sniffed and began to remove his gloves. "Ginny told me she reckoned you weren't."
"Hello to you, too…" she breathed, eyes wide.
He sighed, smile returning.
"I haven't, either," he added, tossing his gloves on her bedside table and stepping closer. "Bloody hell, I love you."
"You came here just to see if I've been sleeping?!"
"Well. It's your birthday. I thought… maybe I could help?"
He toed off his boots, but paused, raising an eyebrow.
"Is it ok I'm here?" he asked at a suddenly-nervous whisper.
"Ok?!" she squeaked. In a rush, she'd caught up to the world around her, her dormmates possibly waking to the sight of Ron standing in the middle of her room, against all sorts of rules… But at the same time, she was becoming acutely aware of the sheer miraculous fact of his presence. Sod why or how. "Get in here," she instructed, pulling back her bed curtains as relief washed down his face.
They crawled in together, and she helped him remove his jeans. And then they were there, lying on her bed in the dark, a sense of peace covering her like the warmest blanket. She blinked at him. And then the tears came, flinging her arms around him and burying her face against his neck as he held her, his nose in her hair and legs twining together.
"Thank you," she whispered.
"For risking you getting in trouble?" he muttered into her curls.
"No," she sniffed, and she couldn't explain it, the need to feel alive through his presence. But he had been making her feel that way for longer than she could admit.
She breathed the earthy scent of his skin, slid her hands up under the back of his shirt, and closed her eyes.
"For not giving up," she said, because it suddenly felt like the words that made the most sense. They'd survived a war. And they'd survived each other, years of bickering and misunderstandings. And worse, that feeling of deepest loss, of aching for a need that could never be fulfilled. Not without relief. And he was hers.
They would sleep tonight.