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TRUST IN ME
by
Tyde
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Disclaimer: I like to have toys to play with. At the moment my toys are JK Rowling's characters. I'll try not to lose their arms and legs in the game though and I will return them safely to their box when I am finished. And there is no way I am profiting from any of this, trust me. The only payment I'm receiving is the swelling of my heart with pride when someone decides to review. It's not much, but it's a life.
Summary: Sequel to Sweeter Than A Nightingale (story id: 1088017) – After a whirlwind romance Ron and Hermione are preparing for their upcoming nuptials. When Hermione starts acting secretive will Ron discover that he can't trust her?
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Chapter One
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"Gerroff Mum!" Ron tried to dodge his mother and her incessant tape measure. It was dancing around merrily in front of his scowling face and trying to desperately scoot in to take the circumference around his head. 'Why do you have to do this now anyway? Wedding is months away and it only takes you an hour or something to whip me up one of those bloody awful maroon jumpers I couldn't imagine that wedding robes would take much longer'
His mother's faced hardened at his last comment. He gulped as he realised he'd said out aloud what he'd always thought about the new jumper she would make for him every year.
"Er...um...Mum I didn't really mean that. I mean to say, they're brilliant really they are, top notch and all that...but maroon? Clashes horribly with my hair you know" Her mouth twitched in irritation and he squeezed his eyes shut for the onslaught of her giving him a right royal telling off. But it didn't come.
"You should have just said you didn't like the colour" she sniffed and bustled out of the lounge room into the kitchen to make sure her wand was stirring the soup for dinner correctly and at the right speed. Ron sat down in the Soothing Chair. It was an ordinary Muggle rocking chair that his father had bewitched to rock softly, constantly. Ginny was often see in it crying over some boy or other who didn't notice that she'd had a crush on them. She'd practically spent the whole summer in it after the incident with Tom Riddle's diary and the valentine to Harry.
The gentle rocking motion soon put him to sleep and he hoped he'd dream of Hermione.
Ron found himself in Diagon Alley, just outside of Quality Quidditch supplies. He was eyeing the latest offering from Firebolt (something called a Streaking Stick) and drooling. Hermione was inside the shop talking in earnest with the shopkeeper who looked an awful lot like Oliver Wood. But the thing was although he looked like the former Quidditch Team Captain, Ron could have sworn it was his brother Percy.
He put his ear to the window and could hear Percy's voice coming from Oliver's mouth which in itself is a fairly odd thing. The window and display melted away and he found himself sitting on the floor in front of Hermione who was facing the other way and refusing to talk to him.
"But Mione" he stopped talking abruptly, his voice sounded just like Harry. What was going on? He tried again "You're mine!"
'Oliver' had stepped in to grab Hermione's arm and was pulling her towards the back of the store. Ron tried to stand up but he was held to the floor by ropes made of tiny quaffles all strung together. Hermione turned to look at him with a sneer on her face worthy of Draco Malfoy.
"Yours Ronald Weasley? Am I a possession that you own? I don't belong to you."
She stepped through the curtain that led to the office out the back of the store and he could see her walking steadily towards a shadowy figure.
"I belong to him" The figure emerged from the darkness and pulled up his hood.
Percy Weasley with the eyes of the defeated Lord Voldemort stared Ron down. Ron's skin prickled.
Hermione had given her hand to Percy and he promised to 'Love, honour and cherish you until cauldron bottom thicknesses were made non-uniform again' and she promised to 'Love, honour and cherish you until they insert a paragraph about house elf enslavement into Hogwarts, A History'.
Of course it was at this point that Ron realised he was dreaming. And what a doozy it was. Hermione marrying Percy?
"Ridiculous really" he muttered to himself in his sleep and as he scratched his nose trying to rid it of the small sprite that had landed on it he promptly fell out of the Soothing Chair, landing hard on his bottom and right at Hermione's feet. He shook himself awake quickly.
"Hello sweetie" his fiancé helped him to his feet. "Active dream?" Her eyebrows wiggled only slightly, something everyone else would have missed, but Ron knew just what was being insinuated at.
"You wish" he strung his arms around her waist and buried his face in her hair. "Is this wedding prep stuff giving you nightmares too?"
"You're having nightmares?" she pushed him backwards so he was sitting in the chair again and she curled up on his lap. "What about?"
'Well you're ignoring me and wanting to marry Percy who has eyes like You-Know-Who and you're saying how you don't belong to me"
"Well I don't belong to you Ron"
"What?" he pinched himself hard in the arm to make sure he wasn't still dreaming.
"I don't belong to you and you don't belong to me, not yet anyway. After the wedding for sure" he breathed a sigh of relief as Hermione burst out laughing. "And why would I want to marry Percy?"
"Well, he's smart, isn't he? Like you"
"Sure. But he's not sexy like you" She ran one of her fingers along his jaw line depositing little kisses where she'd touched him.
The Soothing chair soon started rocking faster than normal. Thank Merlin Mrs Weasley was outside, or she might have seen a little too much of her future daughter-in-law than she wished.
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He loved Hermione with all his heart but her habit of Apparating into his bedroom at an hour when most respectable people were still asleep was starting to get a little annoying.
"Ron, get up! It's half eight already. We've got loads to go. I've drawn up a schedule for us. Look here. The ones highlighted in yellow are for the reception venue and-"
She nudged the pile of blankets in front of her that contained her finance.
"Ron! Come on!"
He just grunted in reply.
"We don't have all the time in the world you know! The Ministry don't give out time turners to people just to use for preparations for weddings."
Ron shifted slightly under the blankets but still his face didn't surface. Putting her hands on her hips she tried to come up with a good threat.
"Ronald Weasley if you don't get out of that bed now I'm going to make sure your mother makes you wear maroon robes, with a lacy ruff collar and mouldy stains on it"
"No you wouldn't," he mumbled, although sounding just a bit more awake than his still form would suggest.
"Oh yes I would and what's more, I'll invite Malfoy to the wedding and get him to walk me down the aisle"
Ron sat straight up at this point, struggling with the bed linen covering his face. She could almost see the angry redness of his cheeks through the white sheet. Finally his face surfaced and she knew she'd managed to push the right button.
He leapt out of bed and she noticed his fists balled up at his sides as if Draco had appeared and was calling Ron out for a fight.
"You wouldn't dare!" It had been six years since the Yule Ball in their last year when he'd caught Malfoy using his filthy eyes to look her up and down but it still filled him with ire. He had been surprised at the time that she couldn't feel him undressing her with his nasty Slytherin eyes.
"You're right Ron, I wouldn't. It's an empty threat but it did get you out of bed didn't it?" her smile made his anger melt away.
"Hmmprh!"
"Don't you hmmprh at me. Hurry up and get dressed, as you can see we've got a nine o'clock appointment with the manager of the Roaring Raven function centre in Glastonbury".
"Muggle or wizard?"
"It's a mixed town. Roaring Raven is wizard though. It's cloaked so most Muggles would think it was a derelict building"
"Just like Hogwarts"
"Exactly. Although I haven't quite figured out how my Muggle relatives are going to be with this wedding. They'll get awfully confused"
"Well we could always have two ceremonies. One Muggle based one and another traditional wizarding one"
"Two weddings?! As if I don't have enough to organise. Honestly Ron, use your noggin"
She pulled open his wardrobe to find something decent for him to wear to the function centre because his pyjamas certainly wouldn't do.
~*~
Ron was exhausted. They'd been to see ten different function places that day and Hermione seemed no closer to settling on one.
When he was a little kid and his mum and dad would Apparate around the house always catching the twins up to some mischief he thought it was a brilliant idea. He was impatient to get his licence and when he finally did he found that although it was a handy thing to have, Apparating all day around the English countryside could become very tiring, even more so than if they'd walked the whole way!
Hermione however wasn't relaxing on the couch with him and was pacing his bedroom whilst wringing her hands and muttering under her breath. "Eleven weeks to go, only eleven weeks!"
"Mione, love. Sit down" he reached out a hand and grabbed hold of her arm. "Please. You need to relax or you'll give yourself a heart attack or something"
She turned to him. "Relax?! But there's too much to do, we've hardly got started on anything"
He pulled her next to him onto the couch. "One night off, love. That's all. One night, I take you out to dinner, we talk about everything that isn't wedding related. Deal?"
"Sweetie-" but she didn't get to finish that sentence cause he'd clamped her mouth shut with his lips.
"No more talking," he mumbled through her lips, his hand stroking the side of her face.
"Okay" she mumbled back, melting into his arms. He felt her instantly relax and he smiled, interrupting the kiss.
"Don't stop" she cooed into his ear. Their stroking and noises got to a level of intensity that always seemed to result in someone interrupting them.
This time it was Harry.
He had bounced through the open doorway ("Not my fault really, as you had left the door open") and invited them out for the night as if he hadn't just interrupted them in various stages of undress.
"Lucky you didn't interrupt us the other day, right in the middle of the lounge room. Might have had to curse you if you did" Hermione slyly told him.
Harry shook his head. "I fear you two are really starting to rub off on each other"
Ron pulled Hermione onto his lap and started nibbling her neck.
"And I meant that in the non-sex way thank you very much" Harry reiterated looking at the two of them with a raised eyebrow.
"Just cause you're not getting any Harry, doesn't mean we can't" chuckled Ron.
"Yeah but not in front of me Ron, geez" he paused for a second and then remembered the other part of his best friend's statement "HEY! Who said I wasn't getting any?"
Extricating herself from Ron's grasp Hermione stood up to face the black haired young man. "Well you have been up-tight lately Harry. It's sort of obvious"
"So whenever someone acts a little cranky or stressed then you think they aren't getting any? So that means that Snape has never had sex, I suppose"
They all cracked up at that until little visuals of their old Potions master going at it hammer and tongs invaded their minds.
"EW!" Hermione ran from the room towards the bathroom burbling something like "I need to freshen up"
"Geez Harry, why did you have to say that? Don't think I'll be able to stomach any food after that picture did it's little bump and grind dance in my head"
"Bump and grind?" he quizzed the redhead.
"Yeah. Mione's been taking belly dance lessons. Ever since that trip to Egypt to visit Bill and the new baby she's been fascinated with exotic dancing. Can't say I'm complaining, nice hip movements, round and round"
Spellbound by the idea of scantily clad women wiggling around in front of him Harry went into a sort of trance, his eyes glazing over. Ron had to whack him in the face with a pillow.
"Oi! Harry! You better not be thinking about my Mione with that drooling look on your face"
"W-w-what? Oh no" Harry adjusted his glasses which had gotten a bit skew-whiff. "Ron, have you decided what you want to do for your Buck's Night? Seamus and Dean are quite happy with the Voluptuous Veelas club idea and Neville will go along with anything you say, although I don't think I'd like to see what he'd try to do under the thrall of a Veela, it could only spell disaster. There is also that Go-Brooming track outside of Hogsmeade which is really popular too. What do you think? Strippers or race flying?"
A cold voice spoke from the door way "You say strippers Ronald Weasley and you can forget about ever marrying me. Really Harry, Veelas?! You know what they'd do to him. He'd go all silly"
"You know what they do to me too Mione but you don't seem so concerned about me"
"Well I'm not marrying you, you silly git"
"My bad luck" he sniggered under his breath.
"Don't think I didn't hear that" she spun on her heel and headed downstairs to talk to Molly about catering and how was it that they could possibly stop Fred and George from adding products from their shop to the finger food.
"Hermione seems tense," Harry's grin was about a mile wide. "She doesn't seem satisfied Ron"
"You wouldn't be saying that if you'd heard her last night" was all he said in response.
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Author's note: This is for all those people (especially animegirl-mika) who said 'There's definitely enough bloody interest' for a sequel. Mind you I didn't have a sequel in mind so this one will probably take longer to write. I do have a vague idea of where it is going though.
I warn those that wish to say 'HURRY UP AND WRITE MORE GOD DAMNIT YOU STUPID CONSTIPATED WEINER DOG!' will only be ignored.
