THC/The Houses Competition

House: Gryffindor

Class: Ancient Runes

Category: Themed: [Reconnecting] Reconnecting with something/someone.

Prompt(s): [Action] Dragging something heavy across the floor

Word Count: 1143

Hermione was wrapped snugly in a blanket in her favorite armchair with a large mug of tea on the side table and a deliciously thick book balanced on her knees when her doorbell rang. It was sort of a halfhearted ring, like someone had only hit the bottom edge of the button. Hermione sighed.

"Probably some kids," she muttered as she disgruntledly untangled herself from her warm blanket. It was the most perfect rainy day, and she'd just gotten herself situated and ready to enjoy it.

Internally grumbling about the disruption, she made her way to her front door. She looked through the peephole, not wanting to bother opening the door and letting the rain come in if it were just some kids playing ding-dong-ditch, but to her surprise, she saw that there was a body on her porch. She couldn't see its face, but its clothes looked wet and tattered, and it was lying far too still for her comfort.

Hermione jerked back from her door and drew her wand. "Expecto Patronum!" Her silver otter floated in midair expectantly. "Go to Harry," Hermione told it quickly. "Tell him I need help, now!"

The otter twisted and darted off to deliver the message, and Hermione opened the door.

It was Ron. Hermione inhaled sharply and fell to her knees in her haste, pressing her fingers against his neck and hoping to Merlin she'd find a pulse. His skin was cold and wet from the rain, and her fingers slipped and shook, but at last she felt it, faint and fluttering. Hermione almost felt like she could breathe again, but she knew he wasn't out of the woods yet.

Carefully, she turned him face up and worked her arms beneath him, cradling his head against her chest and grasping his armpits with her hands. Despite how thin Ron was, Hermione struggled to stand with his weight, and couldn't manage to get fully upright. She started walking backwards into her house, dragging his lower body across the threshold.

Hermione tried her best, but she was in such a hurry to get him inside that she knocked his feet against the door frame and several times against the walls as she pulled him into her living room. She stopped when she got to the sofa and stared at it in despair. She'd barely managed to get Ron all this way; she didn't know if she had the strength to get him up on the cushions.

Suddenly, a loud, sharp cracking noise came from outside, and Harry, slightly disheveled, ran inside.

"What's wrong?" Harry said, wand up and eyes scanning the room.

"I'm alright," Hermione told him, "but he's not."

Harry came around the sofa, which had been blocking his view of who Hermione was holding.

"Bloody hell, Hermione!" Harry cried.

"If you could just help me get him on the sofa…?" Her arms felt about ready to fall off.

Harry jumped to her assistance and immediately tucked his wand away and picked up Ron's legs. Once he was on the sofa, Hermione quickly cast drying and warming charms, and thought she could see Ron's complexion take on a bit more of a pink tone.

"How'd you find him, Hermione?" Harry asked. He didn't look at her, watching Ron instead with wide eyes. "Where did you drag him in from?"

"He just turned up at the door like this," Hermione said, unable to explain it. "I don't know how he got here, or where he's been —"

She cut herself off on an aborted sob.

"Two years, isn't it?" Harry asked.

"Two years, three months, and one week." Hermione shivered. It was one of the worst days of her life. That morning she'd sent him an owl to confirm their date at a Muggle restaurant — much easier to avoid eager fans and Prophet reporters that way — and he hadn't responded. Hermione had brushed it off at first as him being busy, but as the day dragged on with no response she began to worry. And then her owl had returned, letter undelivered.

She'd immediately gotten the Aurors involved, but they had found nothing.

Hermione had a multitude of fears about what had happened to him after he disappeared, and she didn't think she could live with herself if any one of them were true. Now that he had shown up alive after all this time, she couldn't help but think there was something she could have done to find him sooner, or prevent it in the first place.

Harry pulled his wand out and wordlessly waved it briefly over Ron. A variety of colors began to light up on certain areas of Ron's body — pink, green, blue, yellow. Hermione didn't know what any of them meant, and glanced at Harry in question.

"It's an Auror field medic spell," Harry explained. "Colors are for the type of injury, and the darker the color the worse it is. None of those look urgent; he'll be alright."

Hermione let out a breath of relief and sat on the sofa, lifting up Ron's head as she did and resting it safely in her lap.

"Where have you been, Ron?" She whispered, running her fingers through his grown-out hair as Harry stood quietly above them. "What happened to you?"

"You know," Harry said, "we just took down most of the Heirs of Death hate group last week…"

Hermione looked up at him. "You think…they had him this whole time?"

"The timing fits," Harry shrugged. "I s'pose he'll tell us when he wakes up."

Hermione nodded, looking back down at Ron's too-thin face. It was too much to hope that he'd wake up just then, but the slightest flutter of one of Ron's eyelids made her gasp and freeze in place.

"Hermione?" Harry evidently hadn't seen it, but she ignored him.

"Ron?" For a long moment Hermione thought she had imagined the movement, but then it happened again. "I'm here," she told him eagerly, cupping his face in her hands, "Ron, I'm here."

Sluggish at first, his eyes began to open, although it was clear his own body was fighting him.

"My… knee…" Ron croaked as he tried and failed to keep his eyes open for more than a second at a time.

"Your knee?" Hermione asked, worried. "What's wrong? Does it hurt? Harry, pull up the legs of his trousers and —"

Harry was laughing.

"Harry! Ron's hurt!"

"He's just…trying to say…your name." Harry managed to say in between giggles.

"Oh." Hermione felt a bit silly. She looked down at Ron and smiled. "Yes, Ron? I'm here."

Ron's eyes were nearly closed again. "L've oo."

Hermione's eyes watered and her throat grew tight. Neither of them had said it before he'd disappeared, and she'd regretted it many, many times in the last two years. It seemed perhaps he had, too.

"I love you, Ron."