A/N: Well we are very near to the end now! I am 95% certain there will be only one more chapter left of this story, and hopefully I can get it out to you all fairly quickly!
When I first started this story (which I hate to admit was ages ago [because that would highlight my horrible updating schedule, or lack thereof] but it was) this was one of the chapters I was most looking forward to writing: shell cottage. I am pretty sure everyone who loves Ron and Hermione have their own versions of how these events went down, and I know there are writers who have done a better job at capturing it than me (because I have read them), but I am thrilled to have finally written out my own interpretation. I hope you enjoy this chapter as much as I enjoyed writing it!
This chapter takes place during chapter 25, "Shell Cottage," of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. If you're able, please leave me a review, because I love hearing your thoughts.
DISCLAIMER: I do not own Harry Potter. Nor will I (unfortunately) ever.
They landed with a thud outside of shell cottage, and Hermione's dead weight brought him immediately to his knees. It only took moment to adjust to the surroundings before he began scrambling to his feet. He could see movement in front of the little house ahead of him and began hurrying towards it as quickly as possibly, clutching desperately at the figure in his arms. Hermione had never before so looked so pale, and even in the dim light he could see tiny droplets of blood emerging from the thin cut across her throat. Ron had to will himself to stop trembling, pulling her closer in an attempt to steady his movement until finally he saw Bill, running towards them up the path, Fleur trailing close behind.
From the look Bill was giving him he could tell what he was thinking, and shook his head desperately. "She's—she's hurt," he rasped, looking past his brother towards Fleur. "You have to help her, please…."
"Zere is still an empty room. Take her inside," Fleur instructed.
Ron nodded, turning back to Bill, "Harry. He's coming, he's on his way…."
Not waiting for a response, he hastened towards the cottage, past Luna and Dean, who were holding the door open for him, and up the stairs to the tiniest bedroom, where he set Hermione down as gently as possible on Fleur's crisp white sheets. Hermione seemed to sink right into them, looking impossibly small. He pulled over the wooden chair from the desk and grappled for her hand, squeezing it in his own.
"Wake up Hermione," he whispered, "please wake up." As he leaned over her he could hear her breathing, but feared it would stop at any moment, that they had only gotten to her when it was already too late. For an instant, he was back down in the cellar, calling for her. Her screams consumed him, resounding in his mind over and over…. And desperately, he prayed for them to continue, panicking when his calls were met with silence, filled with relief when he heard her in anguish once again. He suddenly felt sick, for how could he be so relieved to hear her in pain? I was a twisted sort of logic, but as long as she was screaming, he at least knew she was alive, and as the noise sounded up again, he was nothing but relieved.
But no, she was safe. He could feel her pulse, he could see her chest rising and falling to the gentle sounds of her breathing. They were at Bill and Fleur's, she would be all right. Against all odds, they had gotten out. He felt tears stinging his eyes and did nothing to try to stop them, letting them roll down his cheeks in waves as he looked at her, more aware then ever how close he had come to losing her. He needed to hear her voice again, to see her beautiful brown eyes, to feel her hand come alive against his. He needed confirmation, to abate the still present voice whispering to him that she could drop off at any second. "You've got to wake up, Hermione," he choked. "We can't make it without you. I can't make it without you. I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. There was nothing I could do, I tried everything. Please just wake up…."
Fleur had appeared by the bedside, clutching a tray covered in vials of various potions. "What has 'appened to her?" his sister-in-law asked sadly, staring down at the broken figure on the bed.
"Cruciatius," he admitted raspily, "More than once…um…a lot…a lot of times. And the chandelier fell, that's what all the marks are. Except, um," It was hard to talk, to concentrate on getting out the words, "Except her neck. That was a knife. I don't know, if there was anything else…."
He trailed off, but Fleur seemed to understand well enough, for she was already busily pulling certain potions out from the rest and setting them aside. He didn't even notice his older brother appearing in the doorway until Bill spoke, his voice firm, but gentle. "We need to talk Ron, in the hall."
"No! I mean…no, I have to stay with her." He gripped Hermione's hand a little tighter, willing her to just wake up….
"Go," Fleur was saying, "I 'ave to change her." Apparently sensing Ron's hesitation, she added gently, "She will be all right."
Reluctantly, he dropped Hermione's hand, sensing the loss immediately. It felt horribly wrong to leave her alone again… No, not alone. With Fleur. She was fine. Swiping his hand across his cheeks to offset the tears, he followed his brother into the hallway, shutting the door behind him.
"What?" he said wearily, looking into the deeply scarred face before him and trying to read it.
"What? What the hell, Ron? There are three nearly dead people in my house and a dead elf on my lawn and you say what?"
"She's not…she's not dead—" he paused, the second half of Bill's sentence suddenly sinking in. Dead elf? "Dobby? No…no, he's fine. He saved us, then he…then he apparated away with Harry. He's okay. Everyone got out."
But Bill's eyes had softened, and the answer was written clearly even across his scarred face. "No," Ron whispered to no one in particular, his voice thick. It couldn't be. Not Dobby. Not the elf who had saved them just when he had lost all hope…. No. The tears were back and he averted his eyes. "I have to get back to Hermione," he muttered, his hand already reaching for the door knob. He had seen Dobby, perfectly fine, just minutes before. Hermione could still….
But Bill had blocked his way, shifting smoothly in front of the door. "Not until you tell me what's going on."
Ron glared at him. "What do you think, Bill?" he snapped, "We were caught! Now get the hell out of my way before I hex you!" He tried to push his way past his brother, but the man stood firm, grappling with him until he had him pinned at arm length.
"Calm down Ron! Whatever's happened, The Order needs to know…."
"DO YOU THINK I GIVE A FUCK ABOUT THE ORDER RIGHT NOW?" yelled Ron, hysterical now, "THEY TORTURED HERMIONE, IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT TO HEAR?" THAT—THAT BITCH KEPT CURSING HER, OVER AND OVER, AND I COULDN'T DO ANYTHING." His voice faltered, "She just kept screaming, until she…she….she nearly…."
He could feel Bill pulling him closer and suddenly he was sobbing into his brother's shoulder as if he was once again a little boy, running to Bill when he had scrapped his knees…. "I was supposed to keep her safe," he cried helplessly. "I tried. I tried everything. I wanted her to take me. Why didn't she just take me?" Bill didn't answer. He probably didn't understand enough to answer. He simply hugged him tightly, and let him cry.
Ron wasn't sure how long he stood there, feeling as pathetic as he must have looked, crumbling in his brothers arms, but he didn't pull away until the door beside them shot open and Fleur emerged. "She is awake, and asking for you," she said, turning to Ron. "I should fix up your eye first," she added, gesturing at the bruises that had formed as a result of the blows he had taken. But Ron ignored the offer, pushing past her in his haste to reenter the tiny bedroom.
Hermione was sat up in the bed, leaning heavily against a pile of fluffy pillows. She was wearing one of Fleur's nightgowns, a silky pink thing that he knew was something she'd never wear of her own accord. The bruises and cuts that had covered her now appeared several days old. Some had even disappeared altogether. All in all, she appeared relatively unscathed. From an outsider's point-of-view, no one would probably be able to guess that she had just undergone unimaginable measures of torture. But Ron knew, from the shaking of her hand as it rested on the sheet, and the distant look in her eyes, that the deepest scars could not be seen.
"Hermione?" he all but whispered, staring at her in disbelief, as if he couldn't quite believe she was really there. Someone had shut the door after he'd entered, and he glanced back at it for but a moment before hurrying to Hermione's bedside and snatching up her hand in his own, where it shook against his palm.
"Ron," she breathed, "Ron..." Her eyes looked somehow older, like they had aged several years in only a few hours. He couldn't look away. "We got out," she whispered, and he could hear the question behind it as he realized she had no idea how they had done it. She didn't know about Dobby, for how could she? He gripped her hand a little harder.
"Yeah...yeah," he murmured, his voice thick, "we got out. Harry, um—Harry was looking in that mirror bit and Dobby showed up—"
"—and house elves can apparate even from seemingly inapparable places," Hermione finished, her lips curving into a smile, "Brilliant."
"Yeah, it was. Only—when we reached you, you see—Bellatrix wasn't exactly...pleased. That's when she cut you, but Dobby untwisted the chandelier and she let go and as we were disapparating, she threw the knife..." His voice faded. Hermione's face was already dawning in realization.
"No."
"He didn't make it," Ron whispered, his eyes prickling. Hermione shut her eyes and fell back against the pillow, taking a few moments to compose herself.
"He saved us," she croaked out eventually, "I was so sure I was going to die up there, so sure she was going to kill me..."
"You were amazing, Hermione."
"Well, I heard you. I was about to give up, to just let her do whatever she was going to do to me and get it over with, but then I heard you, saying my name. You kept me fighting." She was looking as him so sincerely that it made him want to cry again. He felt that he'd cried more today than in the rest of his life put together.
"You kept yourself fighting, I don't deserve any of the credit. It was all you."
He stared at her, wishing they were in a different time, a different place. Somewhere, anywhere, where there wasn't a war, where they weren't caught in the middle, teasing death at every turn. A place where they could just be, and not have to worry about would happen tomorrow. Because if they had been in such a place, he really believed he would have done it. He would have leaned over and kissed her by now. Finally, he thought he had the courage to just go for it. But it was not the time, or the place. And, as her screams floated back to him, all he could do was hope that they'd one day get the chance to try. When this was over, he wasn't going to waste any more time. He felt suddenly unafraid of making the declaration as he looked at her. There were, after all, far worse things than being rejected, and not ever knowing what could have happened between them was one of them.
Hermione was looking past him out the window, her eyes glistening. At his questioning gaze she whispered, "Harry." Sure enough, he was out there, in the fading light of the evening, digging a small grave with an old shovel, his wand forgotten. "I've got to go help him," Ron said immediately, looking back towards Hermione and hoping she would understand. She did, of course. Hermione almost always seemed to understand.
He had nearly reached the door when she stopped him, her voice a tone that didn't immediately register. "Ron? Could you sleep in here tonight? I don't want to be alone."
Her voice sounded impossibly small, and he realized why he couldn't recognize the tone, because she had so rarely ever used it in front of him: it was vulnerability. He felt his heart drop. Hermione had a brilliant mind, the brightest in their whole year, yet she hadn't been sorted into Ravenclaw. When he had been eleven, he had sometimes wondered why. She seemed like such a perfect fit. But it quickly had become clear: Hermione had a strength that never seemed to deplete. A resilience that couldn't be matched. She may have the brains of a Ravenclaw, but she was a Gryffindor at heart. Sure, she might disappear for a good cry every now and again, but then she would come springing back, more determined than ever. She was a fighter. Only she didn't look it, in the instant that her eyes pleaded with him, as she lay there broken on the bedsheets. He could picture her clearly through the years, vehemently arguing her case for Buckbeak, later for S.P.E.W., for Dumbledore's Army. Her face ablaze as she raised her hand to question Umbridge…her eyes set as she took off from the ground on the back of a threstral, despite her deep seated fear of flying…the conviction in her voice as she snapped at him for asking her to watch over his family, if anything happened…the sheer will to live that was so powerful she never wavered in her belief they would all make it out alive. Now she looked unsure. She looked tired. Bellatrix seemed to have pulled the fight right out of her, drained her of that always present strength. The spark was gone from her eyes.
How long would it take for it to come back? He didn't doubt that it would. She was still Hermione, after all. That was something Bellatrix hadn't been able to take from her. "Yeah," he managed to say, "'Course."
The first nightmare didn't come until 4 nights later, when Fleur's stock of sleeping drought had finally depleted. It was the first night Hermione had to go without it. In the daytime, she had already sprung back for the sake of the mission, launching almost immediately into planning with him and Harry. But Ron noticed how her eyes sometimes glossed over, how her body occasionally seized up for just a second, how she excused herself to the loo and took ages to return. After the first night, Bill and Fleur hadn't approved of Ron sleeping in her room (and weren't dissuaded by the fact that they had, in fact, been living in the same tent for months), but he always sat up with her until the sleeping drought kicked in before he returned to the sitting room. He could tell it made her anxious to be alone.
On that fourth night, after he had returned to the boys' makeshift bedroom he shared with Harry and Dean, he found it especially difficult to fall sleep, lying awake and hoping she'd be okay without the drought. A panicked look, though briefly lived, had crossed her face when Fleur had broken the news. His worries were not unjustified. Shortly after he had dozed off, or at least it seemed like shortly afterwards, the house was awoken by her screams. Hearing the harsh noise resounding from the room above was gut-wrenchingly familiar. It took him a minute just to compose himself before he scrabbled to his feet. Harry was standing up as well, and Dean was looking between them with wide eyes. "Let me," Ron muttered to Harry, already moving past him to the stairwell. Luckily, Harry seemed to understand, because he didn't follow. Somehow it had to be Ron, and only him.
By the time he had gotten to her door, he nearly ran headlong into Bill and Fleur, who were emerging from their bedroom with both their wands held aloft, looking stricken. "Hermione's just had a nightmare," he told them needlessly, "I've got it covered. You two should go back to bed." Bill opened his mouth as if to argue, but Fleur's touch on his arm stopped him short, and he merely nodded. Fleur guided him away again, and Ron pushed through the door. Hermione was thrashing around on the bed. Her screaming had become ragged gasps, and he froze as her voice rang out helplessly between gasps, "NO, no…please…don't touch me, don't touch me…."
He was shaking her awake in an instant, her screams regenerating at his touch, her arms flailing around to hit him, making it particularly difficult to shake her—"Get off me, get off me! Stop…please!"—he was beginning to panic, what if he couldn't wake her? He couldn't just sit here and let her endure this…. But her movements stopped abruptly as he finally succeeded in pulling her from sleep, and she shot up so fast he had to leap out of the way to avoid getting head-bunted. Hermione was looking around wildly, frantically pulling her wand out from beneath her pillow and raising it—
"Stop! Hermione, it's me, it's me!" He raised his hands in defense, hoping she'd be able to make him out through the semidarkness.
She seemed to come to her senses all at once, and dropped her wand in mortification. Then she began to shake. He didn't even hesitate, plopping down on the other side of her mattress instantly and drawing her towards him. He could feel her hot tears staining the sleeve of his t-shirt as she shook against him, and he stroked her hair as she let them all fall. A shaky voice sounded out from his shoulder, laced with apology, "Did I wake you?"
"More or less, but don't worry about it, I don't mind."
She apparently ignored the second half of his sentence, because she was already pulling away from him, swiping at her eyes. "I'm really sorry…being silly—"
"No," he said firmly, "You are not being silly, Hermione. You were just bloody tortured, and now she's gotten into your dreams too…I'd be more concerned if you weren't having a reaction—"
"It wasn't her," Hermione cut across him, so softly he'd almost missed it. She averted her eyes and drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms tightly around them. "In the dream, it wasn't her. It was Greyback." The words came out as more of a choke.
He froze. Her cries from before he'd woken her ricocheted around in his mind. Don't touch me, don't touch me! But that made it sound like— His blood ran cold. No. That monster couldn't possibly have... He had heard Bellatrix screaming out curse after curse up until they had burst in, finally, to stop her, there wasn't the time...
Hermione must have noticed him tensing beside her, because she added quickly, "He didn't do anything...at least in reality. Bellatrix only made the threats" she shuddered and looked quickly away.
He gulped as the full weight of what her nightmare had been about hit him. Then he pulled her back over to him, relieved to find that she didn't push him away, and rubbed her back in rhythmic circles. How dare that woman. He could imagine it, Bellatrix snarling out threats as Greyback leered at her from the corner, keeping her in fear that the worst was yet to come... "I'll talk to Fleur tomorrow, maybe she or Bill can make a trip out to Muriel's, Mum's got a whole stash of sleeping drought..." Hermione sniffled, snuggling closer to him. "It's gonna be okay," he whispered, in what he hoped was a reassuring way. He could tell his own voice was shaking.
"What if we die Ron?" He cringed at the words, it was the exact opposite of Hermione's usual tune. He hadn't heard her talk like that since the day she'd shown up at the Burrow in tears after wiping her parents memories. It wasn't that she was naïve. Of course she knew the risks, she just didn't see the need to dwell on possibilities when they could focus instead on how to keep living. That's what she'd always told him whenever he'd brought it up in the tent, anyway. This is Harry, and Dumbledore, she'd said confidently one night, I really think we're going to make it. We can do this. But he couldn't ignore her question, because he wondered it too. What if they did die? He knew they would both do whatever was necessary to go before Harry, but then what? Harry could lose, and where would that leave everyone else? All the people he loved? His family? What if Voldemort won?
"We've managed to avoid it this far," he said weakly. "That's a talent, that is." She didn't even crack a smile. "We could live," he reminded her, unable to avoid the seriousness of the subject, "It's not over yet."
There was silence, but for the muffled sound of her sniffles, for a long time. They held each other tightly, legs intertwined, his fingers laced in hers, neither saying another word, but the meaning of it all clear between them. It was a new sort of intimacy he knew neither of them would have risked in the daytime. After all, there were some conversations, and some actions, that could only take place after someone had had a nightmare, days after nearly dying, in the dead of night.
A/N: If you're looking for a gloriously long, angsty, Ron-centric fanfic to read in between this chapter and next, I highly recommend Stay Standing, by Windschild8178. Its not finished and updates are extremely sporadic, but it has not been abandoned and there are 19 absolutely amazing chapters to read in the meantime. I just re-read it and wow.