A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed the last chapter. I love that you
guys enjoy this and want to read more. Thanks!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters depicted in this story. They all belong to J.K. Rowling, Scholastics, Bloomsbury, AOL Time Warner, and anyone else who has claim on them. Not me!
**********************************
Hermione had only been to one other funeral in her entire life; she'd been six years old when her great-uncle Marty had died, and she'd gone to the funeral with no real grasp of what was going on. She certainly hadn't fully understood death.
Eleven years later, she wasn't sure that she did now.
Her best friend was dead. There was no other way to state it any simpler; Harry Potter was dead. It was something that had always been a threat but that she'd never really let herself think about. If the thought of death had passed her mind at during the seven years since she'd known Harry, it had been in the context of a huge, heroic battle where she and Ron had been right by his side.
But that's not at all how it happened.
They'd found out the details because Ron had demanded them from his father when he'd come downstairs the morning before the funeral. Apparently, everyone thought it would be better if they weren't subjected to the way it had happened, but Ron had flat out stated that that was "bullshit" and quite forcefully demanded to know what had happened.
Harry hadn't been involved in any such heroic battle that resulted in his death. He'd been asleep. Yes, that's right- asleep. A group of six Death Eaters had broken into the old house that Sirius and Harry were staying at and found Harry asleep in his bed. Without making a sound, they'd stood around and all six of them had sent "Avada Kedavra" on him at the same time.
He'd died instantly.
Maybe it was better that way; he certainly hadn't had a chance to feel any pain, so maybe it was better. But, on the other hand, he was Harry Potter; he deserved some sort of huge battle.
But, instead, the Boy-Who-Lived had been reduced to the Boy-Who-Died-In-His- Sleep.
Hermione was so utterly disgusted. The Death Eaters that had killed her best friend were probably being revered as some sort of great heroes by the rest of the Dark Side. Dark wizards and witches all over the world were probably toasting their names at that very moment. And what had they done? They'd killed a seventeen year old boy while he was asleep in his bed.
Ruddy cowards.
The funeral had been the weirdest experience of her life. It had been at Hogwarts because, apparently, the Dursleys had no real interest in anything having to do with their nephew- especially now that he was dead. Classes had been cancelled, and, as a result, a good majority of the student body had attended; there were some who chose to spend the time elsewhere, of course- Draco Malfoy and his lot, of course, but no one missed them. Hermione had sat tucked in between Ginny and Mr. Weasley and had tried very hard not to notice the way Mrs. Weasley seemed to be losing it all together in her seat on the other side of Ron's father. Ron himself had sat at the end of their aisle, a little ways off from the rest of his family. Of course, no one had expected any difference. It was almost symbolic of the way he'd been acting since the moment they'd heard the news on Harry's death- he was sullen and cut off from everyone else.
Neither she nor Ron had discussed the moment shared in his bedroom the first night they'd come back from Hogwarts. In fact, they'd done a pretty good job of steering clear of each other all together; when one entered the room, the other always had an excuse to leave. Of course, Ron didn't spend too much time outside of his bedroom at all, so avoiding each other wasn't very difficult. It was so weird, though; things were completely different between them. They needed each other more than they ever had, and they should have been relying upon each other for support.
Instead, they weren't even speaking.
Hermione was surprised at herself. She hadn't shed a single tear during the entire funeral. Perhaps, she was all cried out, or maybe she didn't actually register with her mind that this was the last time she would ever see Harry.
Or his body at least.
She'd looked at him there in his coffin, and, of all the emotions she could have felt, she had been a bit frightened. Why she was scared of her best friend, she had no idea. But she had been. He'd just looked so incredibly normal that it was creepy. His eyes were closed behind the glasses that were as much a part of him as the still present scar on his forehead. He didn't look any different than he had on the several occasions she'd caught him napping in Professor Binns class.
He'd been killed in his sleep.
And he still looked as if he were dreaming.
After looking at him for a few moments, she'd had to turn away and return to her seat. She didn't want to see him like that- not looking so peaceful and normal, as if he would wake up at any moment and ask if he could copy the notes he'd missed. It just didn't seem real. If he was supposed to be dead, he shouldn't look like he was asleep.
It was terrifying.
Ron hadn't even gotten up when everyone else had to take their turns paying their last respects to the body. Hermione wasn't sure that he'd even looked at Harry's body at all. He'd simply sat on the bench with his arms crossed over his chest and a very, very distant look on his face. It was almost as if he wasn't there at all.
Ironically, Hermione, who had a knack for remembering every single detail of every class lecture ever given to their class for the past seven years, couldn't remember one single thing that had been said at the funeral. She couldn't even remember who all had spoken. Professor Dumbledore, of course, but he was the only one she could recall. And she had no idea what he had said.
It somehow didn't matter.
Nothing that anyone said was going to make her memories of Harry any different. No one else, besides she and Ron, could possibly know him well enough to say anything worth hearing. And she wasn't talking. Ron wasn't, either.
People expected them, too, though. For some reason, everyone had simply jumped to the conclusion that they would have beautiful and elegant eulogies for their best friend. Everyone had seemed surprised when neither of them had stepped forward to speak.
But they weren't even speaking to each other; they certainly weren't going to spill their emotions to a crowd full of people- especially a crowd full of people who only knew the "Famous Harry Potter" part of their best friend. Most of the people filling the Great Hall didn't even know that Harry's favorite meal was pork with roasted potatoes or that the subject which gave him the most trouble was Charms. They didn't know the real him.
No one did.
Not the row of third year Hufflepuffs sitting in the back of the room. Not the group of reporters that lined the left side of the hall. Not the five or six ghosts, which floated quietly toward the back of the Great Hall. Not Professor McGonagall. Not Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Not the headmaster. Not Hagrid.
No one- except for herself and Ron.
And they weren't going to give anyone else the privilege of knowing the real him, either.
After the funeral, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had taken them back to the Burrow for one last night. Ron had gone straight up to his room and hadn't been heard from since. Hermione had done her best to avoid Ginny's room, as Ginny had spent a good deal of time lying in her bed crying. So, knowing that the way they were acting wasn't helping anyone, Hermione had once again climbed the stairs to the top floor of the house and knocked on Ron's door. No answer came her way, so she tried again.
"Who is it?"
Well, at least it wasn't the usual, "Go away," that Ron had become so known for giving over the last few days. Suddenly a bit apprehensive, she managed to get her name out. "Hermione."
Another moment of silence gave her the response she expected. Just as she was about to turn away, though, the door opened, and Ron peered out at her. He didn't say anything, and she shifted her weight nervously from one foot to the other. "Can I come in?"
Ron, still not speaking, pulled the door open a bit and stepped aside while she walked in. She looked around his room as she heard him click the door back into place and turn around to go back to his previous task at hand.
Looking from the pile of clothes on his bed back to him, she wrinkled up her forehead a bit curiously and said, "What are you doing?"
Ron didn't even look up from the shirts that he was removing from his drawers. "Packing."
Hermione was quite confused. "Ron, you don't need all this stuff at Hogwarts. You've already got all the clothes you need there."
"I'm not going back to Hogwarts." He still didn't look up as he dropped this statement as casually as if he'd just informed her that it was raining outside.
"What?" Hermione was definitely bewildered now. She crossed the room to stand beside him until he finally got sick of her staring and looked up. "What do you mean you're not going back to Hogwarts?"
Ron rolled his eyes slightly but didn't look away. "I mean I'm not going back. How difficult of a concept is that to grasp?"
She ignored the sarcasm. "Well, where are you going?"
"I'm leaving."
"Leaving where?" she demanded, her voice rising just a bit.
Ron sighed and looked at her rather contemptuously. "I don't know," he said haughtily as he stood up and started placing the clothes into an open suitcase in a rather unorganized fashion. "Just not here. And not Hogwarts."
"I don't understand." Her eyes were now very alight, and she was trying desperately not to lose her cool.
"How can you be so smart and have no common sense?" he asked her in a rather hurtful tone. He rolled his eyes again and spoke to her as he continued his packing. "I. Am. Leaving. I. Am. Not. Going. Back. To. School. Do. You. Understand?"
Hermione glared at him but surprisingly wasted no time on bickering with him over his childish behavior. "Why are you leaving?"
Ron apparently gave up on the packing momentarily because he sighed loudly and turned around to face her. "Hermione, Harry is dead."
The words hit her like a slap in the face. He'd said them so forcefully without any sort of hesitation that it just made the whole sentence sound even worse than it would have normally. Looking back at him with yet another confused and upset expression, she mumbled, "I know that."
Ron looked satisfied that they at least were on the same page about something. However, he was sure that she didn't fully understand or she would have said something else. "Do you know what that means?"
Hermione just looked at him.
"It means they've won!" he said exasperatedly. "Harry's dead, so they've officially won. They've gotten the main thing they wanted, and now they won't hesitate to take everything else they desire." He stopped for a moment and studied her. "And, Hermione, that probably means us."
It was clear that the words finally settled in and made sense by the way her face darkened slightly. However, she shook her head and glared at him. "So, you're just going to run off and leave because you're afraid they're going to come after you?" She looked quite disgusted. "That is the most cowardly thing I have ever heard."
Ron glared right back at her and looked as if he wanted to say something really horrible. He opted to go with, "That's not why I'm leaving. Hermione, why don't you open that huge brain of yours and think for a damn minute?"
She just continued to look at him with narrowed eyes, still not catching onto his hidden meanings.
He rolled his eyes at her stupidity and continued. "They'll be after us next. And not just us but everyone we know and care about." He said the next words with a rather biting tone. "And I don't know about you, but I'm not going to sit around and let my friends and family get killed just because some idiot Death Eaters are looking for me. One death is enough, thank you."
Hermione blanched at the words. Everything finally set in, and she had the strongest urge to suddenly start sobbing. Everything he'd just said was true; it all made perfect sense, and she couldn't believe that she'd been too stupid to see it at first. Not knowing what else to say, she just muttered a quiet, "Oh, God..."
Ron studied her for a moment before shaking his head slightly and turning back to his packing. "That's why I'm leaving."
Hermione looked up and, without thinking, grabbed the shirt he was about to fold away from him. "But you can't just run away!"
Ron stopped and looked up at her when she took the shirt from him. Carefully, as though he were addressing a child, he said, "I can. And I am."
"No, you can't!"
He just stared at her dumbly. "Are you going to hold me down and stop me? Because, Hermione, sweetie, I don't think that's going to work..."
Hermione still felt like she was about to burst into tears at any given moment, and she struggled desperately to control them. "You just can't leave, Ron! You just can't!"
"And why not, Hermione?" he demanded, suddenly not sarcastic at all. "Because you think it's the cowardly thing to do? Well, I'm sorry, but I don't see it that way." He reached forward and yanked the shirt away from her.
She was desperate. Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed his shoulders and forced him to look her in the eye. "You can't leave ME!"
Ron didn't say a word; he was obviously shocked both by her sudden hands on contact and by her words. He just looked at her with timid eyes.
Hermione wasted no time in telling him everything. She wasn't about to let him run off and leave her all alone, and if she had to tell him all the reasons why, she was prepared to. "Ron, I need you. I need you more than I need anything. Please don't do this... Just don't leave me." Her voice started to crack on her final word. "Please?"
Ron's blue eyes softened a bit, and they both stood perfectly still and silent as they looked at each other. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of Hermione pleading with her eyes and Ron searching with his, he slowly raised a hand across his chest to rest on the hand of hers that was gripping his opposite shoulder. Looking straight into her eyes, he quietly said, "Then come with me."
Hermione felt his fingers curl under her hand and tried desperately not to let the feeling get to her. She never fully trusted herself around Ron, but this was a time when logical thinking was a definite must-have. Struggling to think properly, she registered what he'd just said.
"Come with me..."
He'd just said it again. And she had no idea what to say back. How could he ask her to do that? There was another answer; she was sure of it.
But she couldn't think of it...
Swallowing once to gather her voice, she managed to say, "I... I can't."
His eyes fell immediately. She couldn't quite tell if he was angry or saddened by her reply; she couldn't quite decide which one she wanted him to be, either.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "But... I can't do that."
Realizing that she was still touching him, she moved to take her hands away from his shoulders. Just as she took a step back, though, Ron caught the hand he'd recently been caressing and pulled her back to him. So close, in fact, that she was pressed right up against him. Frightened both by the fact that she had no self-control at all around him and by the way he was staring at her so intently, she immediately moved to get away. But he held her in place by gripping the one hand and using his free hand to hold her chin in the upright position so that she had no choice but to look at him.
Without hiding his emotion at all, he spoke to her in a whispery sort of voice that was enough to send her into shivers.
"Hermione, I need you, too."
She hated him for knowing how to get to her so deeply. She hated him for being the only person in the world who could make her think so illogically. But she was Hermione Granger- logic overrode everything else in her mind.
Dimly aware that she actually was trembling slightly, she tried to keep a straight mind. "But... We have to go to school. We have to... take the N.E.W.T.s. And... We have to graduate."
Ron closed his eyes for the briefest of moments before letting go of the hand he had a hold on and moving it to the side of her neck. His fingers were long enough so that his index could trace a slow and agonizing line up and down the back of her neck.
In a voice just as quiet as the last one he'd used, he tried once again at convincing her. "I already told you that they've won, Hermione. Once they get to full power, it's not going to make a damned difference how many N.E.W.T.s we got or even if we graduated at all. It won't matter."
He was right, of course. She always hated it when he was right- especially about important things. And she hated the way he was making her feel like her brain couldn't function properly. If he'd just quit touching her and if he'd just quit talking in that voice, then maybe she could think rationally. As it was, though, all she could concentrate on was the way his finger was moving so meaningfully up and down the center line of the back of her neck. And she couldn't think of anything to say.
Ron looked at her deeply, as if he could see straight to her soul. "We don't have to pretend anymore," he told her thickly. "There's no use in it." Little by little, she could feel each functioning part of her brain shutting down. He leaned closer to her and whispered into her ear, successfully breaking off any and all coherent thinking she had a shot at the second his hot breath hit her ear. "You know that we need each other. I need you. You need me. We need each other... In every way."
Her eyes fluttered shut, and she hated herself for feeling this way when the situation was so serious. Their best friend was dead, and all she could think of was how she was sure to die from the torture Ron was inflicting upon her. They'd been denying these feelings for so long that it was almost second-nature. It was just the normal thing to do.
But nothing was normal anymore.
Gently brushing his palm up and down her cheek, he whispered his plea one more time. "Just come with me."
And Hermione, not knowing what else to do, mumbled the only coherent statement she could make out.
"Okay."
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Well, there you have the third chapter! I hope you all enjoyed it.
Feedback and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Disclaimer: I don't own any of the characters depicted in this story. They all belong to J.K. Rowling, Scholastics, Bloomsbury, AOL Time Warner, and anyone else who has claim on them. Not me!
**********************************
Hermione had only been to one other funeral in her entire life; she'd been six years old when her great-uncle Marty had died, and she'd gone to the funeral with no real grasp of what was going on. She certainly hadn't fully understood death.
Eleven years later, she wasn't sure that she did now.
Her best friend was dead. There was no other way to state it any simpler; Harry Potter was dead. It was something that had always been a threat but that she'd never really let herself think about. If the thought of death had passed her mind at during the seven years since she'd known Harry, it had been in the context of a huge, heroic battle where she and Ron had been right by his side.
But that's not at all how it happened.
They'd found out the details because Ron had demanded them from his father when he'd come downstairs the morning before the funeral. Apparently, everyone thought it would be better if they weren't subjected to the way it had happened, but Ron had flat out stated that that was "bullshit" and quite forcefully demanded to know what had happened.
Harry hadn't been involved in any such heroic battle that resulted in his death. He'd been asleep. Yes, that's right- asleep. A group of six Death Eaters had broken into the old house that Sirius and Harry were staying at and found Harry asleep in his bed. Without making a sound, they'd stood around and all six of them had sent "Avada Kedavra" on him at the same time.
He'd died instantly.
Maybe it was better that way; he certainly hadn't had a chance to feel any pain, so maybe it was better. But, on the other hand, he was Harry Potter; he deserved some sort of huge battle.
But, instead, the Boy-Who-Lived had been reduced to the Boy-Who-Died-In-His- Sleep.
Hermione was so utterly disgusted. The Death Eaters that had killed her best friend were probably being revered as some sort of great heroes by the rest of the Dark Side. Dark wizards and witches all over the world were probably toasting their names at that very moment. And what had they done? They'd killed a seventeen year old boy while he was asleep in his bed.
Ruddy cowards.
The funeral had been the weirdest experience of her life. It had been at Hogwarts because, apparently, the Dursleys had no real interest in anything having to do with their nephew- especially now that he was dead. Classes had been cancelled, and, as a result, a good majority of the student body had attended; there were some who chose to spend the time elsewhere, of course- Draco Malfoy and his lot, of course, but no one missed them. Hermione had sat tucked in between Ginny and Mr. Weasley and had tried very hard not to notice the way Mrs. Weasley seemed to be losing it all together in her seat on the other side of Ron's father. Ron himself had sat at the end of their aisle, a little ways off from the rest of his family. Of course, no one had expected any difference. It was almost symbolic of the way he'd been acting since the moment they'd heard the news on Harry's death- he was sullen and cut off from everyone else.
Neither she nor Ron had discussed the moment shared in his bedroom the first night they'd come back from Hogwarts. In fact, they'd done a pretty good job of steering clear of each other all together; when one entered the room, the other always had an excuse to leave. Of course, Ron didn't spend too much time outside of his bedroom at all, so avoiding each other wasn't very difficult. It was so weird, though; things were completely different between them. They needed each other more than they ever had, and they should have been relying upon each other for support.
Instead, they weren't even speaking.
Hermione was surprised at herself. She hadn't shed a single tear during the entire funeral. Perhaps, she was all cried out, or maybe she didn't actually register with her mind that this was the last time she would ever see Harry.
Or his body at least.
She'd looked at him there in his coffin, and, of all the emotions she could have felt, she had been a bit frightened. Why she was scared of her best friend, she had no idea. But she had been. He'd just looked so incredibly normal that it was creepy. His eyes were closed behind the glasses that were as much a part of him as the still present scar on his forehead. He didn't look any different than he had on the several occasions she'd caught him napping in Professor Binns class.
He'd been killed in his sleep.
And he still looked as if he were dreaming.
After looking at him for a few moments, she'd had to turn away and return to her seat. She didn't want to see him like that- not looking so peaceful and normal, as if he would wake up at any moment and ask if he could copy the notes he'd missed. It just didn't seem real. If he was supposed to be dead, he shouldn't look like he was asleep.
It was terrifying.
Ron hadn't even gotten up when everyone else had to take their turns paying their last respects to the body. Hermione wasn't sure that he'd even looked at Harry's body at all. He'd simply sat on the bench with his arms crossed over his chest and a very, very distant look on his face. It was almost as if he wasn't there at all.
Ironically, Hermione, who had a knack for remembering every single detail of every class lecture ever given to their class for the past seven years, couldn't remember one single thing that had been said at the funeral. She couldn't even remember who all had spoken. Professor Dumbledore, of course, but he was the only one she could recall. And she had no idea what he had said.
It somehow didn't matter.
Nothing that anyone said was going to make her memories of Harry any different. No one else, besides she and Ron, could possibly know him well enough to say anything worth hearing. And she wasn't talking. Ron wasn't, either.
People expected them, too, though. For some reason, everyone had simply jumped to the conclusion that they would have beautiful and elegant eulogies for their best friend. Everyone had seemed surprised when neither of them had stepped forward to speak.
But they weren't even speaking to each other; they certainly weren't going to spill their emotions to a crowd full of people- especially a crowd full of people who only knew the "Famous Harry Potter" part of their best friend. Most of the people filling the Great Hall didn't even know that Harry's favorite meal was pork with roasted potatoes or that the subject which gave him the most trouble was Charms. They didn't know the real him.
No one did.
Not the row of third year Hufflepuffs sitting in the back of the room. Not the group of reporters that lined the left side of the hall. Not the five or six ghosts, which floated quietly toward the back of the Great Hall. Not Professor McGonagall. Not Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Not the headmaster. Not Hagrid.
No one- except for herself and Ron.
And they weren't going to give anyone else the privilege of knowing the real him, either.
After the funeral, Mr. and Mrs. Weasley had taken them back to the Burrow for one last night. Ron had gone straight up to his room and hadn't been heard from since. Hermione had done her best to avoid Ginny's room, as Ginny had spent a good deal of time lying in her bed crying. So, knowing that the way they were acting wasn't helping anyone, Hermione had once again climbed the stairs to the top floor of the house and knocked on Ron's door. No answer came her way, so she tried again.
"Who is it?"
Well, at least it wasn't the usual, "Go away," that Ron had become so known for giving over the last few days. Suddenly a bit apprehensive, she managed to get her name out. "Hermione."
Another moment of silence gave her the response she expected. Just as she was about to turn away, though, the door opened, and Ron peered out at her. He didn't say anything, and she shifted her weight nervously from one foot to the other. "Can I come in?"
Ron, still not speaking, pulled the door open a bit and stepped aside while she walked in. She looked around his room as she heard him click the door back into place and turn around to go back to his previous task at hand.
Looking from the pile of clothes on his bed back to him, she wrinkled up her forehead a bit curiously and said, "What are you doing?"
Ron didn't even look up from the shirts that he was removing from his drawers. "Packing."
Hermione was quite confused. "Ron, you don't need all this stuff at Hogwarts. You've already got all the clothes you need there."
"I'm not going back to Hogwarts." He still didn't look up as he dropped this statement as casually as if he'd just informed her that it was raining outside.
"What?" Hermione was definitely bewildered now. She crossed the room to stand beside him until he finally got sick of her staring and looked up. "What do you mean you're not going back to Hogwarts?"
Ron rolled his eyes slightly but didn't look away. "I mean I'm not going back. How difficult of a concept is that to grasp?"
She ignored the sarcasm. "Well, where are you going?"
"I'm leaving."
"Leaving where?" she demanded, her voice rising just a bit.
Ron sighed and looked at her rather contemptuously. "I don't know," he said haughtily as he stood up and started placing the clothes into an open suitcase in a rather unorganized fashion. "Just not here. And not Hogwarts."
"I don't understand." Her eyes were now very alight, and she was trying desperately not to lose her cool.
"How can you be so smart and have no common sense?" he asked her in a rather hurtful tone. He rolled his eyes again and spoke to her as he continued his packing. "I. Am. Leaving. I. Am. Not. Going. Back. To. School. Do. You. Understand?"
Hermione glared at him but surprisingly wasted no time on bickering with him over his childish behavior. "Why are you leaving?"
Ron apparently gave up on the packing momentarily because he sighed loudly and turned around to face her. "Hermione, Harry is dead."
The words hit her like a slap in the face. He'd said them so forcefully without any sort of hesitation that it just made the whole sentence sound even worse than it would have normally. Looking back at him with yet another confused and upset expression, she mumbled, "I know that."
Ron looked satisfied that they at least were on the same page about something. However, he was sure that she didn't fully understand or she would have said something else. "Do you know what that means?"
Hermione just looked at him.
"It means they've won!" he said exasperatedly. "Harry's dead, so they've officially won. They've gotten the main thing they wanted, and now they won't hesitate to take everything else they desire." He stopped for a moment and studied her. "And, Hermione, that probably means us."
It was clear that the words finally settled in and made sense by the way her face darkened slightly. However, she shook her head and glared at him. "So, you're just going to run off and leave because you're afraid they're going to come after you?" She looked quite disgusted. "That is the most cowardly thing I have ever heard."
Ron glared right back at her and looked as if he wanted to say something really horrible. He opted to go with, "That's not why I'm leaving. Hermione, why don't you open that huge brain of yours and think for a damn minute?"
She just continued to look at him with narrowed eyes, still not catching onto his hidden meanings.
He rolled his eyes at her stupidity and continued. "They'll be after us next. And not just us but everyone we know and care about." He said the next words with a rather biting tone. "And I don't know about you, but I'm not going to sit around and let my friends and family get killed just because some idiot Death Eaters are looking for me. One death is enough, thank you."
Hermione blanched at the words. Everything finally set in, and she had the strongest urge to suddenly start sobbing. Everything he'd just said was true; it all made perfect sense, and she couldn't believe that she'd been too stupid to see it at first. Not knowing what else to say, she just muttered a quiet, "Oh, God..."
Ron studied her for a moment before shaking his head slightly and turning back to his packing. "That's why I'm leaving."
Hermione looked up and, without thinking, grabbed the shirt he was about to fold away from him. "But you can't just run away!"
Ron stopped and looked up at her when she took the shirt from him. Carefully, as though he were addressing a child, he said, "I can. And I am."
"No, you can't!"
He just stared at her dumbly. "Are you going to hold me down and stop me? Because, Hermione, sweetie, I don't think that's going to work..."
Hermione still felt like she was about to burst into tears at any given moment, and she struggled desperately to control them. "You just can't leave, Ron! You just can't!"
"And why not, Hermione?" he demanded, suddenly not sarcastic at all. "Because you think it's the cowardly thing to do? Well, I'm sorry, but I don't see it that way." He reached forward and yanked the shirt away from her.
She was desperate. Not knowing what else to do, she grabbed his shoulders and forced him to look her in the eye. "You can't leave ME!"
Ron didn't say a word; he was obviously shocked both by her sudden hands on contact and by her words. He just looked at her with timid eyes.
Hermione wasted no time in telling him everything. She wasn't about to let him run off and leave her all alone, and if she had to tell him all the reasons why, she was prepared to. "Ron, I need you. I need you more than I need anything. Please don't do this... Just don't leave me." Her voice started to crack on her final word. "Please?"
Ron's blue eyes softened a bit, and they both stood perfectly still and silent as they looked at each other. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity of Hermione pleading with her eyes and Ron searching with his, he slowly raised a hand across his chest to rest on the hand of hers that was gripping his opposite shoulder. Looking straight into her eyes, he quietly said, "Then come with me."
Hermione felt his fingers curl under her hand and tried desperately not to let the feeling get to her. She never fully trusted herself around Ron, but this was a time when logical thinking was a definite must-have. Struggling to think properly, she registered what he'd just said.
"Come with me..."
He'd just said it again. And she had no idea what to say back. How could he ask her to do that? There was another answer; she was sure of it.
But she couldn't think of it...
Swallowing once to gather her voice, she managed to say, "I... I can't."
His eyes fell immediately. She couldn't quite tell if he was angry or saddened by her reply; she couldn't quite decide which one she wanted him to be, either.
"I'm sorry," she said quietly. "But... I can't do that."
Realizing that she was still touching him, she moved to take her hands away from his shoulders. Just as she took a step back, though, Ron caught the hand he'd recently been caressing and pulled her back to him. So close, in fact, that she was pressed right up against him. Frightened both by the fact that she had no self-control at all around him and by the way he was staring at her so intently, she immediately moved to get away. But he held her in place by gripping the one hand and using his free hand to hold her chin in the upright position so that she had no choice but to look at him.
Without hiding his emotion at all, he spoke to her in a whispery sort of voice that was enough to send her into shivers.
"Hermione, I need you, too."
She hated him for knowing how to get to her so deeply. She hated him for being the only person in the world who could make her think so illogically. But she was Hermione Granger- logic overrode everything else in her mind.
Dimly aware that she actually was trembling slightly, she tried to keep a straight mind. "But... We have to go to school. We have to... take the N.E.W.T.s. And... We have to graduate."
Ron closed his eyes for the briefest of moments before letting go of the hand he had a hold on and moving it to the side of her neck. His fingers were long enough so that his index could trace a slow and agonizing line up and down the back of her neck.
In a voice just as quiet as the last one he'd used, he tried once again at convincing her. "I already told you that they've won, Hermione. Once they get to full power, it's not going to make a damned difference how many N.E.W.T.s we got or even if we graduated at all. It won't matter."
He was right, of course. She always hated it when he was right- especially about important things. And she hated the way he was making her feel like her brain couldn't function properly. If he'd just quit touching her and if he'd just quit talking in that voice, then maybe she could think rationally. As it was, though, all she could concentrate on was the way his finger was moving so meaningfully up and down the center line of the back of her neck. And she couldn't think of anything to say.
Ron looked at her deeply, as if he could see straight to her soul. "We don't have to pretend anymore," he told her thickly. "There's no use in it." Little by little, she could feel each functioning part of her brain shutting down. He leaned closer to her and whispered into her ear, successfully breaking off any and all coherent thinking she had a shot at the second his hot breath hit her ear. "You know that we need each other. I need you. You need me. We need each other... In every way."
Her eyes fluttered shut, and she hated herself for feeling this way when the situation was so serious. Their best friend was dead, and all she could think of was how she was sure to die from the torture Ron was inflicting upon her. They'd been denying these feelings for so long that it was almost second-nature. It was just the normal thing to do.
But nothing was normal anymore.
Gently brushing his palm up and down her cheek, he whispered his plea one more time. "Just come with me."
And Hermione, not knowing what else to do, mumbled the only coherent statement she could make out.
"Okay."
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Well, there you have the third chapter! I hope you all enjoyed it.
Feedback and constructive criticism are greatly appreciated. Thanks!