Hermione ran up the stairs to Harry's flat and thunder boomed ominously overhead. The sidewalk was splattered in raindrops but Hermione didn't pause until she got to the door. She knocked on the door and anxiously awaited for an answer.
It took a few minutes for the door to crack open and she could see part of Harry's face through the door.
"What are you doing here?" he asked somewhat angrily "Ron's here." Hermione nodded, she knew that she wasn't supposed to be there but she was worried about Ron.
"I'm worried about him. He won't floo, and he won't answer any my owls." Harry gave a look that she easily interrupted. The one that said that since she was the one who had broken up with him it was all her fault that Ron wouldn't talk to her.
"Just because we're not dating anymore doesn't mean I no longer care about him!" Hermione shouted heatedly. They had been friends for far longer than they had dated. She knew that dating complicated things but it didn't change how much she cared for him.
"I didn't break up with him because I don't care about him!" she shouted her normally curly brown hair was getting plastered to the side of her face as she stood out there in the rain but she made no move to stop from getting wetter. Harry hesitated, then his face softened, and he opened the door a bit more.
"Ron's in his room. You can come in if you're quiet." She nodded and stepped over the threshold into the dry living room. The room was fairly large, much longer than her own flat but most importantly it was warm. She hadn't realized how cold standing in the rain for so long had made her. She felt something being wrapped around her and saw that Harry had wrapped a red blanket around her which made her even warmer.
"Thank you, Harry," she said softly. She knew this breakup was almost as hard, if not as hard on Harry as it was on the two of them. Harry had been trying his hardest to remain neutral in all of this. In fact, he had always tried to remain neutral from the very beginning. Harry's one real demand, when they had started dating in earnest, was that he wouldn't be placed between the two and that they both would let him remain neutral. Harry had first asked when both and Hermione and Ron tried to get him on their side after an argument. They had tried their hardest to let him remain neutral, but weren't always successful.
Now it was even harder since Ron was living with him and Hermione was in his house. Hermione wouldn't be there though, except for the sour feeling she had in her gut that something was terribly wrong with their red-headed friend.
"Why did you break up with him?" Harry asked quietly. Hermione paused trying to think of how best to phrase it. It wasn't about love because she still loved him. She still wanted to be with him, but the fact was the two of them didn't work as a couple.
They were passionate. They were extremely passionate. Passion had never been a part of the problem, but it was the ways that they were passionate that were the problem. They would fight all the time, sometimes it would end in more pleasant passionate activities and other times in tears or anger. The fact was that the two of them didn't work on a romantic level. It had hurt her as much as it had hurt Ron telling him that. The two were just combustible. The two were toxic and Hermione had wanted to get out before any possibly of them remaining close went away. However, considering Ron's response or rather his lack of response she may have already been too late
"We're just too volatile," Hermione tried to explain. "We argue all the time and I can't stand it anymore, but I still care for him," she said. "Is he okay?" she asked Harry who sighed and sat down on the green couch not far away.
"Honestly, I don't know. He's barely come out of his room since it happened. The Weasley's are worried about him too. But he's somehow managed to do an anti-apparition spell in his room and spells on his door to prevent anyone from coming in. I did run into him once in the hall though, he looked pale and even thinner than normal." Hermione nodded even as tears came into her eyes. She had never meant to hurt Ron, she just couldn't handle it anymore.
Harry's eyes flicked to the ceiling as a creaking noise from over their heads was heard.
"What is it?" she asked Harry whose eyes didn't move from the ceiling.
"There's nothing up there," he said and pointed to another section of the ceiling "the floor ends there.
"Maybe the rain got into the roof?" Hermione suggested. Harry nodded but still looked up the part of the ceiling in question. Hermione's eyes flickered back to it as a bad feeling started to churn in her gut.
"Harry?" the question died instantly as they heard another sound coming from the same part. Harry's and her wands were out a second later and they both apparated to the top of the roof.
The rain pelted her again, though this time she was still wrapped in the red blanket. She instantly dropped it when she saw what was on the roof. It was Ron, standing at the edge of the roof looking like he was poised to jump off at any second. The water soaked into his a bit too long red-hair and he didn't seem to have notice them he was staring at the ground in an eerily empty way. Hermione started towards him forgetting that the roof was sloped and started careening down the roof. She managed to stop herself after 3 feet, but it was enough to cause Ron's attention to shift from the street below to her and Harry. A clap of thunder boomed in the air around them.
"Ron, what are you doing out here?" Harry asked, no shouted at the redhead who didn't seem to understand why. Her heart wrenched painfully, as guilt started forging itself through her like never before.
"Ron, I'm sorry!" She shouted over the next boom of thunder and lightning flashed in the sky as well. Being on top of the roof in a lightning storm wasn't the smartest course of action, but there was no way that she was leaving Ron to kill himself, no matter how dangerous it was. His eyes flicked the street below them again and he spoke his voice flat and emotionless.
"It doesn't matter now," he said with a small shake of his head "You're right. I'm wrong. I'm always wrong. I've always been wrong." Hermione winced as his insecurity seemed to have reached epic levels. But in response to his statement, Hermione shook her head and saw Harry shake his as well.
"That's not true," Harry yelled.
"I left you. I left you when you needed me most and I just left you." That honestly still hurt, but apparently, it had also hurt him and been driving painful self-doubt into him even since that time. However, she didn't know what to say to that so it was a relief when Harry shouted back urgently.
"You tried to come back immediately after you left. You told me that Ron!" Ron's eyes flicked over to Harry which she counted as a small victory because anything was better than his dead eyes looking down at the street below them.
"I still left," he said not dissuaded. She absently felt the rain soaking into her robes and saw the pajamas that Ron was wearing were soaked completely through but Hermione's and Ron's clothes were the least of her worries. "I'm too angry, jealous and bitter and I always screw everything up," he said in the same detached voice. Hermione traded a frantic glance with Harry unsure of what to do how to handle this. She never thought about this. Even after the war when lots of people had been depressed due to their losses, she never thought Ron would come to this.
"What about you guiding us through the chessboard? I would never have gotten to Erised if you hadn't gotten us that far," Harry shouted. His mind was much quicker at pulling up things that Ron had done right than her's was, much to her dismay.
"I can play chess. Being able to play one game doesn't make up for everything else. I spent most of our school years fighting both of you and you're my friends."
"Your passionate!" Hermione shouted finally finding something to say. Ron laughed a bitter laugh.
"Is passionate supposed to sound better than stubborn and angry?" Hermione was at a loss for a response. Even as she scrambled to come up with something anything to get her best friend to step away from the edge of the building. If she failed and he fell, she would never forgive herself.
"You stood up to Sirius!" Harry shouted.
"Who didn't mean you harm anyways."
"You didn't know that!" After another shared look with Harry who seemed to be stuck on past events to bring up she was struck with a sudden inspiration.
"Everyone has faults, Ron. I'm perfect goody two-shoes know it all!" she yelled to him, even though it hurt admitting it aloud.
"I'm arrogant and sometimes I get mad at my friends for things that aren't their fault!" Harry added loudly.
"Our faults don't define us! They just give us things to work on!" Hermione yelled after Harry spoke.
"What if your faults are most of who you are?" Ron asked.
"You are not just an angry bitter person. You're brave-"
"Sure was brave when I ran away." Ron interrupted her before she was able to get further into his good traits.
"You can't change my mind 'Mione, Harry," he said, looking at each of them as he said their respective names. "No matter how simple it is," he added with a bitter smile. "This is my choice." He gazed back down at the street below them and that's when he reached into the pocket of his rain-soaked robes to pull out his wand and pointed it at them.
"Expelliarmus! Accio!." he shouted in quick succession. Hermione's and Harry wands which had been dangling limply from their sides, nearly forgotten, as they had had been focused on their friend, fled from their grasps and into Ron's waiting hands. He quickly pocketed their wands and put the tip of his own wand ,o his head. So Ron was planning a more active death? Not just a fall from a high place?
"Don't Ron! Just because we didn't work out, doesn't mean that you should throw your life away!"
"Think of your mother," Harry insisted loudly. This made Ron's eyes dart to him and for the first time regret scrolled across his features. "She already lost one son, don't make her lose another one."
"She deserves a better son." There was something about his words that nagged at the back of her mind, but she dismissed it because the most urgent thing at the moment was talking Ron off the ledge.
"She loves you. She loves you I know she does. I know you think she doesn't care about you as much because you're not as much as your siblings but she cares. They care they all care. Don't take yet another thing away from them. From us!" Harry yelled and Hermione nodded furiously. Ron smiled a strange smile that made her stomach twist painfully.
"We can start again maybe I ended thing prematurely-" she started desperate to say anything to get Ron to stop himself, only he stopped her before she could finish her sentence.
"Hermione, it may have started out about you but it's not about you anymore. It's about me and this, this I think is the best thing for everybody."
"Even if you kill yourself, there's something after death, so whatever you're feeling it won't go away. Nor will the pain of those who love you and will miss you." Ron burrowed the wand even further into his head and gave the two of them this bittersweet smile.
"It won't matter, cause I won't remember. " Hermione gasped after a moment as she realized what Ron was implicating. Ron wasn't going to kill himself. He was going to apparently obliviate himself.
"Ron no!" Hermione absently noted Harry's gasp but her attention was centered on the redhead in front of her.
"Maybe I'll be a better person." Ok, there was no more time she had to stop this.
"Ron-" Harry yelled as Hermione tried to step closer only to stumble a few feet in the wrong direction.
"Maybe we can start new. Maybe I can be the kind of friend you deserve this time around." Ron said quickly and then shouted.
"Obliviate!"