Written for Hogwarts' OTP War: (object) heirloom ring and the Auctioneers Day: write a story about an old item.
Word count: 421
From The Attic
When they're five, Ron meets Hermione in the park, and he hates her instantly. The girl is a tattletale, who tells on Ron when he pushes his little sister Ginny in the sandpit because Ginny had been mean and had tried to steal Harry, Ron's very best friend, away from him.
(of course, today everyone laughs at that story, and how ludicrous it sounds: Ron and Hermione, being anything but the couple they are today? unbelievable)
What didn't help was when they found themselves in the same class, and worse than that, sitting next to each other. And they might very well never have become friends, if it wasn't for the fact that two weeks later, bullies stole Hermione's book and refused to give it back.
What happens then is this: Harry sees someone in distress and rushes to help, jumping over the back of the bully in a choke-hold that would have been effective had he only been bigger or stronger. Ron, never one to be outdone, jumps right after him and in the end the two boys have collected a series a bruises and scraps, but they've gotten Hermione's book back and beaten the bullies, and to them that's all that matters.
But it isn't until Hermione stands up to their teacher and tells the woman that the boy who had told on them had been the bullies and that Ron and Harry had just been trying to help her, that 'Ron and Harry' become 'Ron, Harry and Hermione', that the duo becomes an inseparable trio.
Hermione's grandmother's dies the summer before she turns ten, and for some reason Hermione inherits all of her things. They get stored up in the attic, trunks upon trunks of old clothes and tarnished jewelry that smell of age and rusted metal, and of course the attic immediately becomes the children's favorite hiding place.
That's where Ron finds the ring. It's old, clunky and honestly, to him it's kind of ugly, what with it's tarnished silver and the somewhat cracked blue stone on top of it, but the moment Hermione sees it she gasps and cradles it in her hands like it's something infinitely precious.
Which it is, at least to her, being his great-great-something-grandmother's wedding ring.
"She always said it could be mine one day," Hermione confesses that day, and her eyes are sparkling with a mix of grief and fondness, and in that moment Ron knows that he'll marry her one day.
God, he is so screwed.