Chapter 2: Blood and Water
AUTHOR: Mnemosyne
For Disclaimer and other information, see Chapter 1
WARNING: This chapter involves blood. Not violence or gore, but there is blood shed later in the story. If this kind of thing makes you squeamish, please take note of this warning and be prepared! I don't want to freak anyone out unnecessarily. :-D
And the moon is a mother to both of us;
We both understand this.
Marriage is an old and tired religion,
And I love all the traditional things…
-"Charge" by Splendid
It was dark, and the wind was high, howling through the Burrow's rafters and making the old house creak and moan. Narrow, many-fingered clouds skimmed across the moon, patterning the ground in an ever-changing kaleidoscope of shadow and light. Long, unkempt grass billowed like water, and the Otter River seemed to flow faster down it's winding course, urged on by the wild wind.
"What was that?" Hermione whispered, casting a worried glance over her shoulder as a particularly loud creak tore through the house.
"Nothing," Ron said, taking up her hand and squeezing tightly. Hermione turned her attention back to the young man sitting cross-legged on the bed in front of her. He was staring at their entwined fingers, and she felt her misgivings begin to melt away as he rubbed her palm with his thumb. "Old houses make noise. You get used to it, when you've lived here long enough."
They were silent for several long minutes. It was not companionable silence, but it was not uncomfortable either. Hermione watched as Ron raised her hand to his lips, kissed the palm, and lowered it back to the bed.
"They'll never understand, if we get caught," he murmured, tracing her lifeline with a fingertip.
"I think you underestimate them," Hermione whispered, lifting her hand to touch his chin and tilt his head up. Their eyes met: tender brown and worried green. "I think they'd understand more than you know."
"Not this." Shaking his head, Ron tugged her hand down from his face, using the momentum to pull her towards him so their foreheads touched. "They give me hell if I don't comb my hair in the morning. This is much bigger than that."
"Much bigger."
"Hermione, I… I mean, you don't have to do this, if you don't want-"
She covered his mouth with her palm before he could go any further, and gave him a stern look. "Ronald Weasley, how many times do I have to tell you? You're not forcing me to do anything. I suggested it, remember?"
"But if you wanted to wait… Someone else…"
"Stop." He did, and she pulled back so she could cup his face between her hands. "Look at me." He raised his eyes; wounded green eyes. Running her thumb over his cheekbone, Hermione sighed. "I wonder sometimes if you're as thick as you make out, or if it's all just an adorable act."
At his hurt look, she smiled and leaned forward to kiss his forehead, then wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed their cheeks together.
"I want this as much as you," she whispered, stroking the back of his neck, "and you are not a consolation prize."
It took a moment before he embraced her - as he always did - crushing her ribs with incredible strength, coming from such a wiry body. He'd grown in the month since the horrible events at the Department of Mysteries. Hermione's mind shrank away from those memories, though she couldn't shake the image of Harry's hollow eyes when he told her about Sirius. Squeezing her eyes shut, Hermione cleaved to Ron tightly, letting his long arms eclipse her totally, wishing she could be swallowed up by his warmth.
"Are you sure Ginny won't wake up and miss you?" he whispered into her hair. Hermione had been staying with the Weasley's for much of the summer. She'd told her parents it was so the Weasley's could show her around the magical sites of Britain, but in actuality it was because she couldn't bear to be out of the loop where the Order was concerned.
And, of course, there were other reasons.
Hermione shook her head against his shoulder. "I put a little powdered lilywhite in her milk at dinner," she assured him quietly, shivering with the enormity of what they were about to do. "She'll sleep through till morning, and dream the most beautiful dreams."
"Good."
There would be no dreaming for them tonight. Hermione's blood was roaring in her ears, louder than the wind in the trees outside the window of Ron's cramped bedroom. Her heart was beating so fast, she thought for sure it would shatter against her breastbone.
"Are you ready?" she heard him murmur, his fingers buried in her hair.
The heart in her throat kept her from answering, so she nodded instead.
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It had begun a month beforehand, in the Hogwarts' hospital wing.
That wasn't true. Not even close. Truth be told, it began years ago - five years, in fact - on the Hogwarts Express, fresh out of London, searching for a toad. Trevor might have been pleased to know - if toad's were interested in the affairs of humans - that his aimless wandering had such a direct affect on the course of two very different lives.
Hermione couldn't say with any assurance that she'd loved Ron immediately, though she knew the seed had been planted at that first meeting. Ron, on the other hand, knew unequivocally and without a doubt that he DIDN'T like her at all; not even remotely. No chance whatsoever.
Which, in young-boy-speak, meant that he loved her madly the first time he set eyes on her, and didn't know what on earth to do about it.
The obvious thing to do was STOP loving her, which was very difficult, since he didn't really understand at the time that love was his problem. He tried teasing her, poking fun at her obsession with books, letting her know in no uncertain terms that she was a know-it-all. None of this worked, of course, because all Hermione had to do was sniffle and give him a hurt look, and he'd feel like the last apple in the barrel: rotten.
The next course of defense was to bicker with her at every given opportunity, and he excelled at that. Here was something he could really sink his teeth into. Quarrelling was a Weasley-family tradition; in a house with seven siblings, even something as minor as shutting a door could turn into a full-blown row at the drop of a hat. It was the one thing Ron could do better than Hermione - an only child - and he thrilled to the challenge.
But there was something different about fighting with Hermione. When he fought with Hermione, the things he said really mattered. And furthermore, when he fought with Hermione, the things she said really hurt. This was uncharted territory for the youngest Weasley son; he was used to having his opinion not matter, or at the most, be listened to and then forgotten. He could fight with his brothers, and even his sister, and still know they'd be there tomorrow. But with Hermione, there was no such guarantee.
He'd told her all of this a month ago, during a tumultuous night in the hospital wing. He'd woken up - sweaty and screaming from his nightmares - and found her sitting next to him, brown eyes wide with concern, asking him what she could do to help. And he told her; told her everything. How he loved her hair; the way it framed her face and accented her eyes. How he loved to hear her speak, even when she was telling him what a woolhead he could be. How much he worried for her, and how he hated being the one who always seemed to need protecting. How he wanted to be the one protecting HER. How afraid he'd been when he woke the first night and saw her sleeping, white and still as a ghost, in the hospital bed beside his, and how he never wanted to feel that way again.
To Hermione's credit, she hadn't blinked an eye as he spilled his emotions into her lap like an overflowing Pensieve. True, her eyes had gotten wider, and her breath had caught a few times in her throat, but she never let go of his hand. If anything, her grip tightened as he talked on and on; five years of pent-up emotion that had finally reached a critical mass.
When it was all over, Ron had closed his eyes and waited for the worst. After all, he'd just blabbed to her every secret he'd kept since First Year, and that was a lot for any one person to digest all in one go. He was fully prepared for her to slap him, or at least shrink away from the bed in confusion and disgust.
He'd never expected the kiss.
And he'd NEVER expected what she proposed next.
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They left the house on quiet feet, the creaking of the stairs masked by the groans of the house in the wind. It was unseasonably cold outside - more like October than early July - and Hermione shivered as she clutched Ron's arm and followed him to the river.
Frantic ripples on the surface of the water made the moon a schizophrenic reflection of shattered light as the pair pushed their way through reeds and weeds, heading for a stand of hunched over trees that sheltered the river with a natural canopy. In her free arm, Hermione clutched a book as thick as it was wide, while Ron carried her widest, deepest potion cauldron. Shoved under his belt, like a renegade's sword, was a knife.
They found some respite from the wind as they ducked in amongst the trees. Willow branches brushed Hermione's face as she followed Ron to a clear patch of earth at the river's edge. There had been a time in her life when Hermione was dreadfully afraid of water, and for a moment, all her old fears came floating back as she watched the frothing black water sluice by. But then she felt Ron's hand in her own, warm and strong, and made herself forget fear and regret and think only about the here and now.
"It feels weird, doing this with nobody around," Ron observed as they knelt together on the riverbank. "Like it's not real somehow."
Hermione set down her book and opened it to the appropriate passage, holding the pages open with a handy rock. "It's real," she assured him as she watched him lean over and fill the bowl with water from the river. "Perhaps a bit outdated, but just as legal as the more modern methods. Wizards are frightfully lazy, I'm afraid, when it comes to updating their laws and legalities. I think they prefer to forget certain laws exist rather than going through the trouble of actually banning them. They just let nature take it's course and follow along. It's… organic of them, to say the least."
"What do you mean, of them?" Ron asked as he set the bowl on the ground between them. "You're a them too, you know. Or had you forgotten?"
She laughed at his grin. "Of course I haven't forgotten," she argued, playfully smacking his arm. "It's just very difficult to believe sometimes."
Their smiles slowly faded as a new silence sprang up between them. The wind was pulling at Hermione's hair unmercifully, and she wanted nothing more than to reach out and flatten Ron's unruly red mane with her palms. But she was afraid that any movement would break this moment, and she wasn't sure what would happen if it was broken.
"Are you sure about this?" she finally murmured, barely audible over the wind.
Ron swallowed, but nodded. "Yes."
"There's no going back once it's done."
"I know."
"I understand if-"
He reached out and touched her cheek. His fingers were ice cold from a mix of water and wind, and they made Hermione jump. "I woke up a month ago and thought you were dead," he told her firmly, his green eyes clear. "And in that moment, I wanted to be dead, too. Tomorrow I might wake up and find that You-Know-Who's torn this world down around our ears and killed everyone I care about. I hope I don't, but that doesn't mean it won't happen." He shook his head, eyes never leaving hers. "If that happens, I want to know I did everything to be with you while I had the chance. I don't care what anyone else says or thinks; in the end, all I care about is you." He leaned across the bowl and kissed her, warm and passionate and hungry, and Hermione moaned against his mouth.
"Are you ready?" he whispered against her lips as he drew back.
She nodded, an unconscious pantomime of their earlier exchange in the bedroom. "Marry me," she whispered, echoing the words she'd spoken to him a month ago in the hospital wing.
With a nod of his own, Ron pulled away, reached down, and drew the knife from his belt.
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Blood is thicker than water. It is a phrase that always seems to have existed, since time began. Universal truths are often that way. Blood and water are cousins, the same as the apple is cousin to the pear. Water cleanses, while blood sanctifies. Both are sacred, often revered, and frequently feared.
Rituals of blood are as old as history. Shedding another man's blood is as personal as bedding a lover, and oftentimes much more vivid in the memory. Blood is something we all share; it is just as red in the child as it is in the old man and the young mother. The bonds of blood - blood spilled, blood shared - are powerful and fierce. When an oath is sworn on the blood of a kinsman, it is a promise that must be fulfilled.
Then there is water. It falls from heaven, and to heaven it returns, in a constant cycle; ever dying and ever reborn. It can be as gentle as a dewdrop, or as terrible as a storm at sea. It can tear a man to pieces, or wash him ashore in a safe harbor. Water is a beautiful, brutal thing, and just like blood, it unites us. The rain that falls on you today may fall on a stranger tomorrow, and in so doing, it connects you.
Hermione was only partially right when she said wizards were to blame for leaving the old laws on the books into the modern day. Truth be told, even if they'd crossed out whole sections of marriage law and judged them null and void, they couldn't outlaw the sanctity of the act. This was old magic, dating from the dawn of history; as inevitable and impossible to deny as the ocean tide. Perhaps too many modern wizards had forgotten the power of the old ways; but enough of them still remembered, and had left those sections of text untouched in an unspoken salute to dead elders.
Life and death. Water both gives and takes life, and so does blood. When they are united, there is no limit to what they can do.
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Hermione took the blade first. Quietly, she read from the open book at her knee. "By the blood that binds us, I give myself to you." Reaching forward, she took his hand and pulled it towards her, turning it palm upward. For a moment she paused, looking up from the book to find his eyes. Ron was watching her calmly; there was no hesitation on his face. It gave her courage.
Without looking down, she continued, reciting the chant from memory. "By the words that name us, I give myself to you."
Do it, he mouthed.
She nodded slightly, then bowed her head to the task at hand.
Raising the knife, she touched the point to his palm. She pressed down, trying to be quick and decisive and failing. His flesh resisted the blade for a moment, then she heard him suck in a breath as it punctured his skin. Looking up sharply, she saw that his eyes were closed and his jaw was locked; but he didn't pull away.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, then turned back to the ritual.
Working with as much speed as she dared, given her chilled fingers and trembling hands, she carefully carved a letter into his palm. Blood welled around the knife's tip and trickled over the sides of his hand as she drew two long vertical lines, joined by a shorter horizontal one.
H
Hermione set his hand down on the grass, and quickly caught up the other one, resting it in her lap. "In the name of my father, and my mother, and the line of my family since the sun's first rising, I give myself to you." Her voice was shaking a little, but she couldn't tell if it was from the cold or for some other reason. Ignoring it as best she could, she pressed the knife for a second time into his flesh, scoring a jagged half-circle into his palm, and blunting the end of it with a line.
G
Fingers slick with his blood, she scooped his hands up - palms skyward - and brought them close to her face. Placing a tender kiss on the inside of each wrist, she murmured, "What I've sullied, now make clean. What I've wounded, heal. Amora Sempremus." Then she lowered his hands into the bowl of cold river water.
Ron let out a soft yelp of pain and surprise, and Hermione felt tears spring to her eyes.
Suddenly, there was a blinding silver light.
Then, there was dark.
Hermione blinked, trying to clear her vision. Phantom images danced behind her eyelids as she tried to focus on Ron's face. "Ron?" she asked nervously, reaching toward him. "Ron, are you okay?"
He intercepted her hand with his own, and she gasped at the cold touch.
"It worked," he breathed.
Hermione's eyes widened as her sight cleared enough and she could see his triumphant smile. Snatching up his hands, she bent over them and examined his palms.
The wounds she'd caused were completely healed. Only faint pink scars remained; delicate, sensitive ridges nestled amongst his life and love lines.
Raising her head, she could feel herself beaming. "It worked," she echoed him, then squealed and wrapped her arms around his neck. "It worked!"
They hugged for several minutes, each enjoying the closeness and warmth of the other. Hermione let herself drift in a satisfied dream world as Ron stroked her wind-tossed hair. Even the cold wind and the roar of the untamed river couldn't disturb her reverie.
Finally, Ron murmured in her ear, "We aren't finished."
She bit her lip. Of course, she knew they weren't done. Marriage involved two people, after all, and only one had gone through the ceremony.
Sitting back on her heels, but keeping her hands on his shoulders, she nodded. "I'm ready."
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Hermione had never liked knives. It wasn't that she was afraid of them; far from it. No one could handle a scalpel like Hermione Granger. What she didn't like about blades in general was how their edges seemed to disappear into nothing. When she was a child, she had asked her father once where the edge of a knife went when it was REALLY sharp. He'd chuckled and told her about molecules and whetstones and other concrete facts she could have built houses on, but he'd never answered her question. On a really sharp knife, where did the blade end and the air begin?
Ron's first cut answered her question. The edge ended where her flesh began.
Tears stung her eyes as he carefully drew an R into her palm. She couldn't deny the irony that all he'd had to endure was a simple H and G, while she had to sit through the curls and edges of an R and then the neverending angles of a W. Those thoughts were squashed immediately by her conscience; Ron couldn't change his initials just to suit her, even if he'd wanted to. The name was just as important as the blood. And endurance was the point. The pain was a test.
There was no other way, of course. Oh yes, they could have gone to their parents and asked for permission. And perhaps it would have been granted. And perhaps there would have been engraved invitations and seating charts and menu options. And perhaps there would have been slow dancing under paper lanterns and Ginny complaining about the cut of her bridesmaid dress. And perhaps Harry would have given the Best Man's speech, while Fred and George teased Ron unmercifully about his stag night and Mrs. Weasley wept into her napkin about her little man all grown up.
Or perhaps none of it would have happened, and they'd both end up dead in the interim. They were sick of letting things happen to them. It was time to have a say for once.
Her palms felt hot and sticky, and the cold air was making her shiver even harder than before. Had this been what it felt like for Ron? Had he felt feverish and frozen all at the same time? Her hair was lashing her face, whipped by the chill wind. It kept getting into her mouth, brittle as straw.
The first hand throbbed on the ground, palm upward, as Ron finished carving the last arm of his W into the opposite extremity. She thought she heard him let out a shuddering breath as he finally finished, and quickly gathered her hands up to his face. Warm lips kissed her frigid wrists; first left, then right. "What I've sullied, now make clean. What I've wounded, heal. Amora Sempremus," he murmured huskily. She hadn't even heard him speak the rest of the ritual.
The next thing she felt was searing pain, as he lowered her hands into the bowl of icy water. She couldn't swallow a strangled cry, and her eyes flew open. It was all she could do to keep from yanking her hands out of the freezing water altogether.
"I'm sorry…!" Ron whispered miserably, his face a lesson in distress. "I'm so, so sorry…! I've mucked it up, haven't I? I've done it all wrong. I knew I would. Oh, God, I'm sorry…!"
She wanted to tell him it was okay, she understood what had to be done; but she couldn't.
Then there was a blinding flash of silver light.
And darkness.
The pain was gone. Her body was filled with an easy, comfortable lassitude, turning her backbone to jelly and her knees to mush. This felt too good to be a mistake.
Pulling her hands out of the water, she held them up in front of his face, dribbling silver droplets of moonlight onto his knees. "It worked," she proclaimed, beaming. Just to convince him, she wiggled her fingers and tapped his nose. "See? You did it."
Ron stared at her hands in frank disbelief for several seconds, his eyes coasting from one to the other and back again. Slowly, a foolish grin spread across his face.
"Wicked," he breathed.
Hermione giggled, and flung herself at him. "You may kiss the bride, Mr. Weasley," she purred against his mouth. "In fact, she rather insists you do."
Ron's eyes twinkled. "Insists, does she? Well, mustn't keep her waiting, I suppose."
"Considering I could curse you quicker than you can say Crookshanks, I think you should speed things up."
He laughed and kissed her; a sweet kiss, like a man to his wife at a family picnic. That gave her pause: it was the first time she'd ever really thought of Ron as a man. Did that make her a woman?
They cuddled together on the river bank for a few minutes, unspeaking. Hermione nestled in the crook of his arm, her head pillowed on his shoulder, and ran her fingertip over and over along the spidery pink ridge of the H on his left hand. If she didn't know better, she'd have sworn it had been there for years.
"I think I'll have to drop Divination now," Ron mused quietly, breaking the silence. "Palmistry would just bring up all kinds of strange questions. Though come to think of it…" He rubbed his cheek against her hair thoughtfully. "Do centaurs do palmistry? Seems a bit below them, really. Besides, if they're going to do palmistry, they'd probably have to do hoofistry, too, and that's just silly."
Hermione laughed and tilted up her head to capture his lips in a quick kiss. "I love you, Ron Weasley," she said with a smile, stroking his cheek with her still tender hand. "Please don't change."
She felt his face flush under her palm. "Are we really married?" he asked.
She nodded. "According to ancient wizarding custom."
"So does that mean we can do… married things?"
This time it was Hermione's turn to blush. "You mean squabble with each other in public?" she joked, with a shaky laugh. She knew that wasn't what he was talking about. "Because we've been doing that for years."
Ron chewed his lower lip. "I meant… other things," he said softly.
Hermione lay still for a moment in his arms, then slid closer, burying her face in his neck and enjoying the scent of him. "Yes, Ron," she whispered beneath his ear, and felt his pulse speed up against her lips. "We can do those things, too."
His Adam's apple bobbed in the corner of her vision as his arms tightened around her midsection. "Do you…?" He let the question dangle.
That was the question, wasn't it? Was she ready? Was HE? They were only 16, for heaven's sake. A few months ago, she would have said no in an instant.
But that was then, and this was now, and she was married, and he was her husband, and he was so WARM, and he smelled so GOOD…
Sitting back on her heels, she took his face between her hands and said, "We have three options, as I see it. First, we can go back to the house. I go to Ginny's room, you go to yours, and come morning, we keep this our little secret and act like nothing has happened. " She rubbed his lips with her thumb and continued. "Number two. We wait here till sunrise, then sneak back to the house in time to change back into our pajamas, then wait downstairs for the others to wake up, and pretend we'd just gotten up ourselves."
She took a deep breath and continued. "Or three." Licking her lips nervously, she plowed on. "We go back to the house. You go to your room, and… and I go with you. And… things happen from there."
Ron's hands were massaging her hips, and she shivered with pleasure. "Do you have a preference?" he asked tentatively.
The heat in her cheeks indicated that if it wasn't so dark, he'd have seen her blushing as red as his hair. "I'm… rather partial to number three," she admitted, casting her eyes down to watch his collarbone.
His fingers under her chin tilted her face up so they were eye to eye. "Me too," he whispered.
It was amazing how those two words could lay all her worries to rest in a heartbeat.
Of course, they couldn't go just yet. There was still the matter of the ritual to finish. While Ron watched, Hermione lifted the cauldron and poured its contents into the rushing river. Holding it open against the current, she let the roiling waters scour it clean, carrying the magic they'd conjured downstream. The next time a rain shower fell along the course of the Otter River, that magic would fall with the droplets, and lighten the hearts of those it touched.
Old magic appreciates witnesses, even if they don't know what they're witnesses to.
TBC…
AUTHOR'S NOTE: The marriage ritual I described in this chapter isn't based on any actual ceremony, be it mythical or historical. It was entirely of my own creation. So if you're sitting there scratching your head, wondering where the heck I'd ever heard of such a thing… Well, now you know. LOL! Now shush, and read the rest of the story. ;)