A/N: I wrote the first part of this a long time ago, but then things
happened, and I got sidetracked. I'm sorry to anyone who has been waiting,
but there were matters that couldn't be avoided.
Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter; please review this one, so I know if you're still interested. Thanks!
Disclaimer: Everything here belongs to JK Rowling, Warner Brothers, Scholastics, Bloomsbury, etc. etc.
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Ron was sitting at his window, watching nothing in particular on the ground below. There were several gnomes running around in the garden, but he hardly noticed them at all. His mother had been up several times, knocking on his door and pleading with him to come downstairs and have something to eat. But he'd told her to go away every time she'd come up- as if he could just eat something and feel better.
As if anything could make him feel better.
Harry was dead.
And what else mattered?
Another knock at his door drew his annoyed glare, and he hatefully addressed the intruder. "Leave me alone."
He thought for a moment that whoever was knocking had actually followed his order, but a quiet voice told him differently. "Ron, please open the door..."
It was Hermione.
Sighing, Ron slowly got up and opened the door. He could blow his mother off, but Hermione was a different story. He owed her at least opening the door after he'd been so awful to her earlier. She was standing in his hallway looking quite small and quite timid as she stared silently at him. He didn't say anything, either, and for a long time, there was nothing but a deafening silence between them.
Finally, Hermione glanced at the floor and quietly asked a question. "Can I come in?"
"I don't guess I can stop you, can I?" Ron asked, not bothering to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
Hermione looked up and gave him a rather piercing look. "Don't do this," she said seriously.
"Don't do what?" Ron looked back at her with a raised eyebrow, awaiting news of exactly what it was that he wasn't supposed to be doing.
"Don't shut everyone out like this."
"I'm holding the door open, aren't I?" he said sarcastically. "You're the one who's not coming in."
Hermione just looked at him and shook her head. She stepped inside and watched silently as he shut the door behind them and turned to look at her expectantly. "Did you need something?" he asked coldly. "Or did you just come up here to make things even weirder than they already are?"
She ignored him. "Are you okay?"
"I'm great, Hermione," he said with fake enthusiasm. "This has been the best day of my life."
"Why do you have to be like that?" she asked with painfully narrowed eyes.
"Like what?"
"Like that!"
Ron looked coolly at her. "If you don't like the way I am, then maybe you should just get out of my room because no one asked you to come up here in the first place."
Her face went from painful to confused to angry in a flat second. "God! Why do you have to be such an asshole all the time?!"
Ron was shocked momentarily by her raised voice, but he recovered quickly enough to cross his arms over his chest and look her dead in the eye. "I don't know, Hermione. Why don't you tell me?"
"Fine!" She glared dangerously at him. "It's because you're too macho to let yourself feel anything! You don't have to fucking be this way!" She didn't bother to keep her voice down, and Ron flinched slightly at her tone and at her word choice, as she rarely swore about anything.
There was a long moment in which Hermione glared sharply at him, and he just studied her. Finally, he snapped out of it and turned his own icy glare on her. Raising his own voice to match hers, he said, "Don't you dare fucking tell me what I do or don't feel because you don't know shit, Hermione! You might think you know everything there is to know about anything, but you really don't know a damn thing! Not about me and not about what I feel!"
"Then why won't you just tell me?!" she bellowed back, her face now a bright red.
"Because it's none of your damn business!" He stopped abruptly and looked at her.
She looked different than he'd ever seen her look before. Like him, she hadn't bothered to change out of her school uniform, and though it was the same thing she'd worn nearly every day for the past seven years, she looked completely different. Her hair was the same, her clothes were the same, her body was the same. But her eyes... They were dull and empty, and she looked like she'd aged ten years in the past day. The Hogwarts uniform looked strangely out of place on this woman who looked much, much older than her seventeen years.
It was like he didn't even know her.
All at once, he turned away and quietly said, "Get out," in the most toneless voice he could manage.
There was a long, long moment of silence, and Ron didn't dare look up to see what Hermione's reaction was. He didn't have to, though, because a few minutes later, he heard her start crying all over again. He didn't want to look at her; he didn't want to care.
But he had to.
"Hermione..." he turned his head slowly and saw that she had both hands to her face and was rocking back and forth very slowly as her tears came in quiet, long intervals. He just stared at her as she cried, not knowing what to do and not knowing how to do anything at all. So, he just watched until she lowered her shaking hands and looked at him with a terrified expression etched across her face.
"Everything's falling apart..."
Ron didn't want this. He didn't want to feel anything, but Hermione had always had a way of making this desire a vain one. The only problem was that he didn't know what to feel. He supposed that he should feel upset, saddened, devastated by everything that had happened.. But he didn't.
He was angrier than he'd ever been in his entire life.
He was angry at Voldemort for simply existing. He was angry at the Death Eaters who had found out Harry's hiding place and attacked. He was angry at Sirius for not protecting Harry.
But most of all, he was angry at Harry for going and doing the one thing they'd all always sworn never to do.
For leaving.
"God damn it!"
Ron had never felt so horrible, and he'd never yelled as loudly as he did at that moment. Hermione jumped at his outburst, and he fully-expected his mother and father to run up the stairs and burst into the room. But he didn't care about any of that. He was far too angry to care about anything at all.
He wanted to hit something. To kick something. To hurt something.
He grabbed the first thing he saw, which happened to be an old Muggle lamp that had sat in his room since his dad had brought it home to him on his ninth birthday. Without thinking twice, he hurled the lamp as hard as he could straight across the room, releasing a good amount of the fury he could feel building up. It shattered instantly upon impact, and glass went shattering all over the floor, mere feet from where Hermione was still standing. No longer crying, she looked at the broken glass and then turned her now frightened gaze back to Ron.
"Ron..."
He didn't allow her to finish. If she wanted to see feelings, then he'd give her everything she wished for.
"This is such shit!" he yelled without waiting for her approval. "I hate him for this!"
Hermione now looked as if she didn't know whether to burst into tears or to run away in fear.
"I hope he fucking burns in hell for doing this!"
"Ron! You don't mean that!" Hermione now looked sickened by his statement, but he didn't care anymore about that than he cared about anything else.
"No!" he shouted just as loudly. "It's the truth- I do mean it! I hate him! Best friends aren't supposed to lie like that!"
A loud pounding at the door momentarily interrupted the outburst. "Ron!" It was his mother's voice. "What's going on?!"
"Go away!" he shouted at the wood that divided them from the hallway. "I told you to leave me alone!"
"Ron, open the door." His father's voice now joined the other, and it was an unquestioning tone of authority.
But who cared anymore.
Ron turned angrily to Hermione and yelled at her. "Tell them to get the fuck away!"
Hermione stared at him nervously for a moment before turning to the door and speaking in a shaky tone. "We're fine..."
"Hermione?" Mrs. Weasley knocked again. "Honey, open the door."
Hermione slowly glanced at Ron, who was glaring at her, as if daring her to open the door. However, she was smart enough to know that if she didn't do as the adults said, they would simply let themselves in. Taking a nervous breath, she carefully unlocked the door and opened it a crack. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were both looking rather anxious as they tried to see into the room.
"We're fine," she repeated quietly, not opening the door all the way.
"What was that crash?" Arthur Weasley strained his neck to try and get a better view into his youngest son's bedroom, but Hermione moved so that it was harder for him to see.
"It was nothing," she answered timidly. "We're okay, really..."
"But..." Mr. Weasley's protest was cut short by Ron, who had now stepped behind Hermione and was glaring at his parents.
"It's none of your fucking business what it was!" he said venomously. "Just go away!"
Molly and Arthur both looked quite shocked, and Hermione flinched as he said the words. Tears started to glisten in the corners of his mother's eyes, and Hermione looked down at the ground.
"Please, let us in," pleaded Mrs. Weasley pitifully. "We only want to help you." She sounded desperate, and Hermione wanted nothing more than to open the door and grant their request. However, Ron had other plans.
"I don't want your damn help! I just want you to go away and stop bothering me!" He continued to glare at them as he kept yelling. "Didn't you fucking hear her?! She said we're fine, now get out!"
Hermione knew that this was only making things harder on everyone, so she swallowed nervously and looked back up at the Weasleys. "We're okay. Really."
"But..." It looked as if it were literally tearing Molly Weasley's heart out to watch her youngest son in such a state.
Hermione, though, simply looked at the other woman meaningfully and shook her head, muttering a very quiet, "Please?"
Mr. Weasley looked once more into the room before sighing softly and gently leading his wife away from the door and back to the stairs. Hermione watched until they were out of sight before carefully shutting the door and turning around. Ron was now much closer to her than he had been before, and his glare was just as dangerous.
"Why did you open the door?"
Hermione looked away. "Ron..."
"I know my fucking name, Hermione," he shot back fiercely.
She bit down on her lower lip and looked back up, silently awaiting whatever he was going to say next.
When she gave no reply, he narrowed his eyes and said, "Why aren't you mad? Don't you realize he outright lied to us?"
"He couldn't help it," she said quietly.
"He bloody well could have!" Ron was getting angrier by the second, and he was dead-set on conveying this. "He obviously didn't give a damn about your or me or anything else! He never would have done this if he did!"
Without thinking, he raised his fist and prepared to punch a hole straight through the wall. "I hate him!" Hermione caught his hand out of instinct right before it crashed into the wall and took his brief bout of shock as an opportunity to grip his shoulders tightly and steady him against the wall.
He was a lot bigger than her, as they were both seventeen and quite fully grown. He probably outweighed her by sixty pounds and was a good eight inches taller than her, so he could have easily shrugged her off. But he didn't. He let her hold him to the wall as he tried desperately to follow her instructions as she told him to calm down and breathe.
It was no use.
"I can't calm down!" he finally shouted. "I just... I just..." He broke off in a frustrated huff.
"It's okay," she promised quietly. "Ron, you can tell me, I swear..." She was trying through much difficulty to convey with him through open and honest eyes that she was telling the truth.
But he didn't want her honesty. He didn't want anything from anyone because nothing mattered anymore. In a voice that surprised him, he looked at the floor and muttered, "Why would he do this?" as both his voice and his body started to shake .
Hermione was undoubtedly terrified, seeing him in this state, but she didn't let on. Quietly, she tried to soothe him again. "Just let it out," she whispered to the top of his head, which was tipped toward her. "Just let it out."
"I..." Ron broke off and looked somewhere past her shoulder. "I don't hate him... I didn't mean that..."
Hermione's heart was breaking in two, but she knew that Ron needed her now more than she needed herself. Allowing one hand to leave his shoulder, she slowly raised it to his forehead and pushed some of his bangs out of his face, letting her hand linger there as she spoke in her same soft tone. "I know you didn't. It's okay."
But Ron shook his head slowly. "It's not okay... Nothing's okay..." He finally looked back and met her eyes. "Nothing will ever be okay again..."
Hermione didn't say anything; she simply moved her hand ever-so-slightly and let the pad of her thumb slide slowly across his cheekbone. She watched as Ron's eyes closed and he muttered a few things she could barely make out.
"This can't... It's not... Oh, God... Why?"
She could tell that his knees were giving way, and she followed him to the floor as he slid slowly and shaking down the wall. She never let go of his shoulder, nor did she remove her palm from his face until she was seated on her knees in front of him as he leaned back against the wall with his eyes still closed. Carefully, she placed her hands on either side of his neck and whispered to him.
"You can cry with me. It's okay."
Ron's eyes opened slowly as he looked at her, now on eye level as they were both seated on the floor. In a voice quiet to match her own, he barely shook his head and said, "I don't want to cry."
She bit down on her lower lip and nodded slightly, whispering, "But you can. It's okay."
"Why did he do this?" Ron's question was barely audible, it was so weak and broken.
She shook her head and mumbled, "I don't know." It was ironic that one of the only things she couldn't claim to know was the one thing that really mattered.
"I want this to be a nightmare," he muttered, never breaking eye-contact with her. "I just want to wake up."
"Me, too..."
There was silence until Ron tried to speak again. His voice was so quiet, as if he didn't trust himself to speak. "He was..." His face twisted up before he managed to get the rest out. "He's my best friend..."
His voice broke on the last word, and before either of them could comprehend what was about to happen, his head dropped and he started convulsing in thick, shaking sobs. He was crying in a way that he couldn't ever remember crying before, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he should have been embarrassed. He wouldn't even cry like this in front of his mother, and he was doing it in front of Hermione.
Hermione.
Who had never seen him do anything that he hadn't wanted her to see. He'd been careful never to show too much of any sort of emotion around her. Careful never to let on just how much she really could make him feel. Because feeling things was a sign of weakness; if he ever allowed himself to give in to any of the things that he felt around her, he would be all the worse for it.
Because no one could play with his emotions better than the girl now sitting right in front of him with her hands still resting against the sides of his neck..
And he didn't want to cry in front of her.
He didn't want to cry at all.
But he couldn't help it.
She was there, and that was all that mattered. The mere presence of her palms pressing so carefully against the skin of his neck, the mere presence of her words whispered soothingly, the mere presence of her just somehow made it okay.
And he cried. Without really meaning to, he let his head drop forward onto her shoulder. Vaguely, he could feel her hands running mindlessly through the hair at the nape of his neck as she muttered quiet things that really said nothing but somehow meant everything.
Neither of them had any idea of how long they sat like that, with him crying into her shoulder and her simply being there as a brace for him. It could have been hours, or it could have been minutes. Time seemed to have stopped.
When Ron had finally cried all of the tears he had, he let his head rest against her shoulder soundlessly for another moment before turning his head just slightly and whispering as closely to her ear as possible.
"I'm sorry I hurt you earlier... In Dumbledore's office."
She was confused for a moment before she finally remembered what he was talking about. She shook her head just barely and muttered, "It's fine."
"I'd never hurt you," he whispered, his voice deep and thick, and it was doing all sorts of things that she didn't want it to do. "I've never meant to hurt you... Ever. I'm sorry if I have."
Hermione didn't trust herself, and for that reason, she pulled back slightly from him. She wanted to take her hands away from him and get up, but the look in his eyes made it impossible to do anything. Instead of being flushed from the sobs, his skin was ghostly pale, and his eyes were so completely open and honest, as if he were a child- the eyes of childhood innocence.
Except they weren't children.
"Ron..."
"I would never intentionally do anything bad to you, Hermione..." His eyes didn't betray his earnest words. "Just know that, okay?"
She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came. She wasn't even sure what she wanted to say because nothing seemed enough. And so, not knowing what else to do, she did the one thing that made sense.
She kissed him.
With her hands on his chin, she brought her face to his and softly pressed her lips to his. And she kissed him. She heard a barely audible sigh come from him before she let her eyes close and felt him kiss her back. His hands went to the back of her hair and tangled in the curls there. All other thoughts drifted from her mind as years of pent up desire and mixed emotions came through in their kiss.
Nothing had ever been so incredibly right in her entire life.
But then she remembered where they were and what had happened and she wondered why in the world she was kissing Ron at a time not hours after they'd just been told that Harry was dead.
Dead.
Harry was dead.
Using every ounce of will-power she could find, she pulled back from the kiss. Ron's eyes, which had been closed just as hers had been, opened, and he looked at her. He looked just as confused and befuddled by their actions as she felt, and for a long, long moment, they simply regarded each other and spoke no words.
Finally, Ron managed to say the only thing that made any sense to him at the moment. "Hermione..."
The sound of her name from his lips jerked her back to reality, and she managed to shake her head nervously before standing up and backing toward the door, mumbling apologies. "I... I'm sorry... I have to go."
And she did go.
She walked out of his bedroom, and as he watched the door shut behind her, he mumbled one more thing.
"I would never hurt you, Hermione."
**************************************** Well? Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long. This one was a whopper to write, but I happen to love angst, so... Anyway, please leave feedback! It's the only way I'll know if anyone's still interested in this story and wants to read more.
Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter; please review this one, so I know if you're still interested. Thanks!
Disclaimer: Everything here belongs to JK Rowling, Warner Brothers, Scholastics, Bloomsbury, etc. etc.
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Ron was sitting at his window, watching nothing in particular on the ground below. There were several gnomes running around in the garden, but he hardly noticed them at all. His mother had been up several times, knocking on his door and pleading with him to come downstairs and have something to eat. But he'd told her to go away every time she'd come up- as if he could just eat something and feel better.
As if anything could make him feel better.
Harry was dead.
And what else mattered?
Another knock at his door drew his annoyed glare, and he hatefully addressed the intruder. "Leave me alone."
He thought for a moment that whoever was knocking had actually followed his order, but a quiet voice told him differently. "Ron, please open the door..."
It was Hermione.
Sighing, Ron slowly got up and opened the door. He could blow his mother off, but Hermione was a different story. He owed her at least opening the door after he'd been so awful to her earlier. She was standing in his hallway looking quite small and quite timid as she stared silently at him. He didn't say anything, either, and for a long time, there was nothing but a deafening silence between them.
Finally, Hermione glanced at the floor and quietly asked a question. "Can I come in?"
"I don't guess I can stop you, can I?" Ron asked, not bothering to keep the bitterness out of his voice.
Hermione looked up and gave him a rather piercing look. "Don't do this," she said seriously.
"Don't do what?" Ron looked back at her with a raised eyebrow, awaiting news of exactly what it was that he wasn't supposed to be doing.
"Don't shut everyone out like this."
"I'm holding the door open, aren't I?" he said sarcastically. "You're the one who's not coming in."
Hermione just looked at him and shook her head. She stepped inside and watched silently as he shut the door behind them and turned to look at her expectantly. "Did you need something?" he asked coldly. "Or did you just come up here to make things even weirder than they already are?"
She ignored him. "Are you okay?"
"I'm great, Hermione," he said with fake enthusiasm. "This has been the best day of my life."
"Why do you have to be like that?" she asked with painfully narrowed eyes.
"Like what?"
"Like that!"
Ron looked coolly at her. "If you don't like the way I am, then maybe you should just get out of my room because no one asked you to come up here in the first place."
Her face went from painful to confused to angry in a flat second. "God! Why do you have to be such an asshole all the time?!"
Ron was shocked momentarily by her raised voice, but he recovered quickly enough to cross his arms over his chest and look her dead in the eye. "I don't know, Hermione. Why don't you tell me?"
"Fine!" She glared dangerously at him. "It's because you're too macho to let yourself feel anything! You don't have to fucking be this way!" She didn't bother to keep her voice down, and Ron flinched slightly at her tone and at her word choice, as she rarely swore about anything.
There was a long moment in which Hermione glared sharply at him, and he just studied her. Finally, he snapped out of it and turned his own icy glare on her. Raising his own voice to match hers, he said, "Don't you dare fucking tell me what I do or don't feel because you don't know shit, Hermione! You might think you know everything there is to know about anything, but you really don't know a damn thing! Not about me and not about what I feel!"
"Then why won't you just tell me?!" she bellowed back, her face now a bright red.
"Because it's none of your damn business!" He stopped abruptly and looked at her.
She looked different than he'd ever seen her look before. Like him, she hadn't bothered to change out of her school uniform, and though it was the same thing she'd worn nearly every day for the past seven years, she looked completely different. Her hair was the same, her clothes were the same, her body was the same. But her eyes... They were dull and empty, and she looked like she'd aged ten years in the past day. The Hogwarts uniform looked strangely out of place on this woman who looked much, much older than her seventeen years.
It was like he didn't even know her.
All at once, he turned away and quietly said, "Get out," in the most toneless voice he could manage.
There was a long, long moment of silence, and Ron didn't dare look up to see what Hermione's reaction was. He didn't have to, though, because a few minutes later, he heard her start crying all over again. He didn't want to look at her; he didn't want to care.
But he had to.
"Hermione..." he turned his head slowly and saw that she had both hands to her face and was rocking back and forth very slowly as her tears came in quiet, long intervals. He just stared at her as she cried, not knowing what to do and not knowing how to do anything at all. So, he just watched until she lowered her shaking hands and looked at him with a terrified expression etched across her face.
"Everything's falling apart..."
Ron didn't want this. He didn't want to feel anything, but Hermione had always had a way of making this desire a vain one. The only problem was that he didn't know what to feel. He supposed that he should feel upset, saddened, devastated by everything that had happened.. But he didn't.
He was angrier than he'd ever been in his entire life.
He was angry at Voldemort for simply existing. He was angry at the Death Eaters who had found out Harry's hiding place and attacked. He was angry at Sirius for not protecting Harry.
But most of all, he was angry at Harry for going and doing the one thing they'd all always sworn never to do.
For leaving.
"God damn it!"
Ron had never felt so horrible, and he'd never yelled as loudly as he did at that moment. Hermione jumped at his outburst, and he fully-expected his mother and father to run up the stairs and burst into the room. But he didn't care about any of that. He was far too angry to care about anything at all.
He wanted to hit something. To kick something. To hurt something.
He grabbed the first thing he saw, which happened to be an old Muggle lamp that had sat in his room since his dad had brought it home to him on his ninth birthday. Without thinking twice, he hurled the lamp as hard as he could straight across the room, releasing a good amount of the fury he could feel building up. It shattered instantly upon impact, and glass went shattering all over the floor, mere feet from where Hermione was still standing. No longer crying, she looked at the broken glass and then turned her now frightened gaze back to Ron.
"Ron..."
He didn't allow her to finish. If she wanted to see feelings, then he'd give her everything she wished for.
"This is such shit!" he yelled without waiting for her approval. "I hate him for this!"
Hermione now looked as if she didn't know whether to burst into tears or to run away in fear.
"I hope he fucking burns in hell for doing this!"
"Ron! You don't mean that!" Hermione now looked sickened by his statement, but he didn't care anymore about that than he cared about anything else.
"No!" he shouted just as loudly. "It's the truth- I do mean it! I hate him! Best friends aren't supposed to lie like that!"
A loud pounding at the door momentarily interrupted the outburst. "Ron!" It was his mother's voice. "What's going on?!"
"Go away!" he shouted at the wood that divided them from the hallway. "I told you to leave me alone!"
"Ron, open the door." His father's voice now joined the other, and it was an unquestioning tone of authority.
But who cared anymore.
Ron turned angrily to Hermione and yelled at her. "Tell them to get the fuck away!"
Hermione stared at him nervously for a moment before turning to the door and speaking in a shaky tone. "We're fine..."
"Hermione?" Mrs. Weasley knocked again. "Honey, open the door."
Hermione slowly glanced at Ron, who was glaring at her, as if daring her to open the door. However, she was smart enough to know that if she didn't do as the adults said, they would simply let themselves in. Taking a nervous breath, she carefully unlocked the door and opened it a crack. Mr. and Mrs. Weasley were both looking rather anxious as they tried to see into the room.
"We're fine," she repeated quietly, not opening the door all the way.
"What was that crash?" Arthur Weasley strained his neck to try and get a better view into his youngest son's bedroom, but Hermione moved so that it was harder for him to see.
"It was nothing," she answered timidly. "We're okay, really..."
"But..." Mr. Weasley's protest was cut short by Ron, who had now stepped behind Hermione and was glaring at his parents.
"It's none of your fucking business what it was!" he said venomously. "Just go away!"
Molly and Arthur both looked quite shocked, and Hermione flinched as he said the words. Tears started to glisten in the corners of his mother's eyes, and Hermione looked down at the ground.
"Please, let us in," pleaded Mrs. Weasley pitifully. "We only want to help you." She sounded desperate, and Hermione wanted nothing more than to open the door and grant their request. However, Ron had other plans.
"I don't want your damn help! I just want you to go away and stop bothering me!" He continued to glare at them as he kept yelling. "Didn't you fucking hear her?! She said we're fine, now get out!"
Hermione knew that this was only making things harder on everyone, so she swallowed nervously and looked back up at the Weasleys. "We're okay. Really."
"But..." It looked as if it were literally tearing Molly Weasley's heart out to watch her youngest son in such a state.
Hermione, though, simply looked at the other woman meaningfully and shook her head, muttering a very quiet, "Please?"
Mr. Weasley looked once more into the room before sighing softly and gently leading his wife away from the door and back to the stairs. Hermione watched until they were out of sight before carefully shutting the door and turning around. Ron was now much closer to her than he had been before, and his glare was just as dangerous.
"Why did you open the door?"
Hermione looked away. "Ron..."
"I know my fucking name, Hermione," he shot back fiercely.
She bit down on her lower lip and looked back up, silently awaiting whatever he was going to say next.
When she gave no reply, he narrowed his eyes and said, "Why aren't you mad? Don't you realize he outright lied to us?"
"He couldn't help it," she said quietly.
"He bloody well could have!" Ron was getting angrier by the second, and he was dead-set on conveying this. "He obviously didn't give a damn about your or me or anything else! He never would have done this if he did!"
Without thinking, he raised his fist and prepared to punch a hole straight through the wall. "I hate him!" Hermione caught his hand out of instinct right before it crashed into the wall and took his brief bout of shock as an opportunity to grip his shoulders tightly and steady him against the wall.
He was a lot bigger than her, as they were both seventeen and quite fully grown. He probably outweighed her by sixty pounds and was a good eight inches taller than her, so he could have easily shrugged her off. But he didn't. He let her hold him to the wall as he tried desperately to follow her instructions as she told him to calm down and breathe.
It was no use.
"I can't calm down!" he finally shouted. "I just... I just..." He broke off in a frustrated huff.
"It's okay," she promised quietly. "Ron, you can tell me, I swear..." She was trying through much difficulty to convey with him through open and honest eyes that she was telling the truth.
But he didn't want her honesty. He didn't want anything from anyone because nothing mattered anymore. In a voice that surprised him, he looked at the floor and muttered, "Why would he do this?" as both his voice and his body started to shake .
Hermione was undoubtedly terrified, seeing him in this state, but she didn't let on. Quietly, she tried to soothe him again. "Just let it out," she whispered to the top of his head, which was tipped toward her. "Just let it out."
"I..." Ron broke off and looked somewhere past her shoulder. "I don't hate him... I didn't mean that..."
Hermione's heart was breaking in two, but she knew that Ron needed her now more than she needed herself. Allowing one hand to leave his shoulder, she slowly raised it to his forehead and pushed some of his bangs out of his face, letting her hand linger there as she spoke in her same soft tone. "I know you didn't. It's okay."
But Ron shook his head slowly. "It's not okay... Nothing's okay..." He finally looked back and met her eyes. "Nothing will ever be okay again..."
Hermione didn't say anything; she simply moved her hand ever-so-slightly and let the pad of her thumb slide slowly across his cheekbone. She watched as Ron's eyes closed and he muttered a few things she could barely make out.
"This can't... It's not... Oh, God... Why?"
She could tell that his knees were giving way, and she followed him to the floor as he slid slowly and shaking down the wall. She never let go of his shoulder, nor did she remove her palm from his face until she was seated on her knees in front of him as he leaned back against the wall with his eyes still closed. Carefully, she placed her hands on either side of his neck and whispered to him.
"You can cry with me. It's okay."
Ron's eyes opened slowly as he looked at her, now on eye level as they were both seated on the floor. In a voice quiet to match her own, he barely shook his head and said, "I don't want to cry."
She bit down on her lower lip and nodded slightly, whispering, "But you can. It's okay."
"Why did he do this?" Ron's question was barely audible, it was so weak and broken.
She shook her head and mumbled, "I don't know." It was ironic that one of the only things she couldn't claim to know was the one thing that really mattered.
"I want this to be a nightmare," he muttered, never breaking eye-contact with her. "I just want to wake up."
"Me, too..."
There was silence until Ron tried to speak again. His voice was so quiet, as if he didn't trust himself to speak. "He was..." His face twisted up before he managed to get the rest out. "He's my best friend..."
His voice broke on the last word, and before either of them could comprehend what was about to happen, his head dropped and he started convulsing in thick, shaking sobs. He was crying in a way that he couldn't ever remember crying before, and somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that he should have been embarrassed. He wouldn't even cry like this in front of his mother, and he was doing it in front of Hermione.
Hermione.
Who had never seen him do anything that he hadn't wanted her to see. He'd been careful never to show too much of any sort of emotion around her. Careful never to let on just how much she really could make him feel. Because feeling things was a sign of weakness; if he ever allowed himself to give in to any of the things that he felt around her, he would be all the worse for it.
Because no one could play with his emotions better than the girl now sitting right in front of him with her hands still resting against the sides of his neck..
And he didn't want to cry in front of her.
He didn't want to cry at all.
But he couldn't help it.
She was there, and that was all that mattered. The mere presence of her palms pressing so carefully against the skin of his neck, the mere presence of her words whispered soothingly, the mere presence of her just somehow made it okay.
And he cried. Without really meaning to, he let his head drop forward onto her shoulder. Vaguely, he could feel her hands running mindlessly through the hair at the nape of his neck as she muttered quiet things that really said nothing but somehow meant everything.
Neither of them had any idea of how long they sat like that, with him crying into her shoulder and her simply being there as a brace for him. It could have been hours, or it could have been minutes. Time seemed to have stopped.
When Ron had finally cried all of the tears he had, he let his head rest against her shoulder soundlessly for another moment before turning his head just slightly and whispering as closely to her ear as possible.
"I'm sorry I hurt you earlier... In Dumbledore's office."
She was confused for a moment before she finally remembered what he was talking about. She shook her head just barely and muttered, "It's fine."
"I'd never hurt you," he whispered, his voice deep and thick, and it was doing all sorts of things that she didn't want it to do. "I've never meant to hurt you... Ever. I'm sorry if I have."
Hermione didn't trust herself, and for that reason, she pulled back slightly from him. She wanted to take her hands away from him and get up, but the look in his eyes made it impossible to do anything. Instead of being flushed from the sobs, his skin was ghostly pale, and his eyes were so completely open and honest, as if he were a child- the eyes of childhood innocence.
Except they weren't children.
"Ron..."
"I would never intentionally do anything bad to you, Hermione..." His eyes didn't betray his earnest words. "Just know that, okay?"
She opened her mouth to say something, but no words came. She wasn't even sure what she wanted to say because nothing seemed enough. And so, not knowing what else to do, she did the one thing that made sense.
She kissed him.
With her hands on his chin, she brought her face to his and softly pressed her lips to his. And she kissed him. She heard a barely audible sigh come from him before she let her eyes close and felt him kiss her back. His hands went to the back of her hair and tangled in the curls there. All other thoughts drifted from her mind as years of pent up desire and mixed emotions came through in their kiss.
Nothing had ever been so incredibly right in her entire life.
But then she remembered where they were and what had happened and she wondered why in the world she was kissing Ron at a time not hours after they'd just been told that Harry was dead.
Dead.
Harry was dead.
Using every ounce of will-power she could find, she pulled back from the kiss. Ron's eyes, which had been closed just as hers had been, opened, and he looked at her. He looked just as confused and befuddled by their actions as she felt, and for a long, long moment, they simply regarded each other and spoke no words.
Finally, Ron managed to say the only thing that made any sense to him at the moment. "Hermione..."
The sound of her name from his lips jerked her back to reality, and she managed to shake her head nervously before standing up and backing toward the door, mumbling apologies. "I... I'm sorry... I have to go."
And she did go.
She walked out of his bedroom, and as he watched the door shut behind her, he mumbled one more thing.
"I would never hurt you, Hermione."
**************************************** Well? Hopefully the next chapter won't take as long. This one was a whopper to write, but I happen to love angst, so... Anyway, please leave feedback! It's the only way I'll know if anyone's still interested in this story and wants to read more.