Snowy Night
I now hated being in Lord Verloren's presence. The way he smiled at me made my skin crawl and made my guilty conscience throb painfully hard. Weeks passed, and I was only able to tell the difference between them by the steady swelling of Tonks's stomach, and the increasingly worried look on Lupin's face whenever he looked at her. Tonks complained that she looked like a house, but anyone could see that Lupin couldn't have cared less. I nearly scowled, once, looking at the two of them, so worried and exhausted but so happy. When I took a look at the mess that my life currently was, theirs looked absolutely perfect. Malfoy had been sent away on a secret mission the day after that last grim meeting of the Order, and he'd gotten to say a very swift, neutral goodbye to me before leaving. Meanwhile, Verloren was still showering me with affection, although he hadn't kissed me again, perhaps sensing that he'd crossed the line.
Early one morning, I woke up to the sound of someone knocking cautiously on my door. I rubbed my eyes and rolled over, then bolted upright when I remembered what had happened before I'd fallen asleep here; aching from my feet to my head, I buried my face in my hands, hoping that whoever it was would just go away. I'd been out late the night before – until six in the morning, to be exact – on a mission for Lord Verloren, which had turned out to be a wild goose chase. I hated it when that happened, but it seemed that it happened almost every time he sent me out on a mission lately; apparently, he had become so attached that he was fearful of losing me to some member of the Order on a real mission. Like I really couldn't handle it myself, if I was really on his side, I thought scathingly.
The knock came again, a bit more insistent. A voice called through the door, very softly. "Hermione?"
"Ron?" I mumbled, my face still in my hands. Somewhere, in the distant, awake part of my brain, surprise registered. "What the bloody hell are you doing here this early?"
His knock became a bit louder. Grumpy now, I swung my legs out of bed and managed to rise unsteadily to my feet, which ached terribly. I glanced in the closet mirror at my rumpled appearance and sighed, shrugging. It would have to do. Softly, I trod to the door, barefoot, and peered through the peephole. It was Ron, all right, glancing around curiously, and then he knocked again on the door. "Hermione?"
"I'm coming," I said, annoyed, and opened the door to admit my friend. The instant he saw me, he was taking in my completely unprofessional appearance, from the red flannel pyjama bottoms to my wild hair. He frowned.
"I take it my timing is amazing as always," he said wryly, smiling. I managed a smile in return, even though I knew that it didn't quite satisfy Ron.
"Excellent, Ronald. What time is it?"
He glanced at his watch, the one that he'd gotten for his sixteenth birthday. "Nine."
"Morning or night?" I asked weakly.
"Night."
"Oh, honestly," I muttered, and put a hand to my head, wincing at the headache. "Come on in, I'll make some tea, I need to get ready…"
"No, actually you don't," he said mildly, following me into my flat. "The Order's given you a couple of days off." He looked me up and down again as I closed by the door. "And judging on how you look, you need it desperately."
I sighed. "And did they collaborate with Lord Verloren on that?" I set the water on to boil and leaned back against the counter, folding my arms across my chest and frowning at Ron.
"To tell you the truth, I have no idea," he admitted. "They just told me to come tell you that you have until Monday to rest."
"I'd like to see how well that goes, with Verloren sending me on wild goose chases that last until six in the morning," I said grumpily, turning to watch the teakettle. "Sometimes the Order is about as clever as a gnome."
Ron snorted. "I'm just the messenger."
I sighed. "Yes, I know." I was silent for a moment, regarding the teakettle with the air of someone trying to blow it up with heat vision. "You know, it's awful funny; if he loves me so damn much, why does he send me out on these stupid missions that keep me up all night?"
Ron didn't reply. I sighed and shrugged, just as the teakettle began to shriek; I poured the hot water over a tea bag in the first mug and promptly poured some of the water onto my hands. "Ow!" I said, hissing sharply, setting down the kettle and rubbing my hand fiercely. I reached for my wand to heal the burn, but I realized it was on my bedside table; or maybe, on second thought, it was in the front room. I growled under my breath in frustration and turned around, to find Ron blocking my path. He smiled reassuringly at me and then took my burned hand in his, murmuring an incantation, and the skin was healed.
"Thank you," I said gratefully; he ran his thumb once over the place where the burn had been and then quickly dropped my hand, glancing away. "Where'd you learn that?"
"I have learned some things, you know," he said indignantly. Then a slow smile spread across his face as I handed his tea to him. "Though you have a valid point, remember how you always used to help me and Harry with our homework?"
I smiled, too; the mention of Harry wasn't as painful as it had been in the past. "Help you? You mean, do it for you?"
He looked righteously offended as we moved into the living room. "Well, then, it was your fault that we couldn't do anything, you should have just told us to shove off and do it on our own…"
I laughed; the smile felt strangely out of place on my features, the muscles stretching in a way that they hadn't in a long while. "I did a couple of times, didn't I?"
"Oh, yes," he said, and grimaced. "And we nearly failed everything. Except for Harry and Defence Against the Dark Arts. And me, I just nearly failed everything."
I sipped some of my tea, relishing the steamy tendrils that crept up and licked my face. "Served you right." I spotted my wand lying on the table next to me and picked it up as I set down my mug, twirling it between my fingers idly. Then I pointed at the fireplace and muttered, "Incendio," and a fire sprang up, crackling behind the grates and eating up the logs greedily. We fell silent a moment, staring into the flames.
"So." His voice made an attempt at casualness and failed miserably. "How's things between you and Malfoy?"
"I haven't seen him in a while," I said softly, stirring my tea as I added sugar. "He's on that secret mission for the Order, so…we just haven't seen much of each other," I finished lamely.
It was a mark of how much Ron was determined not to lose control that his face didn't turn red, although his ears were turning slightly pink. Then he said, his tone lightening somewhat, "Remember when Moody turned him into a ferret?"
Even I had to laugh at the memory, and I realized how very little I'd seen of Ron since I'd come back. "Ron," I said softly, suddenly. "Why did I leave?"
He was silent, too; I turned to look at him and he brushed a strand of his vibrant red hair from his face. "It was years ago, Hermione," he said, a frown creasing his brow. "I'm not sure anymore."
"We had a really terrible row, didn't we? The week before? Like the ones we used to have at school?"
Reluctantly, he nodded. I stood suddenly, prowling to the window seat and sitting down there, looking out to where the snow was drifting down in lazy flakes. It was nearly Christmas, I realized. I remembered the Christmases at Hogwarts, the impeccable decorations in the castle, the mistletoe, the suits of armour, and the chill of the corridors…
Then there had been the Christmas, not as long ago, when things had gone so horribly wrong.
"We hadn't had any like that for a long while," I said softly, pressing the side of my head to the cool glass.
"Damn it, Hermione! What do you want me to do? My best friend's dead, there's no war left to fight, and yet everything is just as bad as it used to be! Look at us, look at what's happening to us! We're all falling apart!"
"Ron, they're doing the best they can!"
"They can't fix anything until they admit it's broken! And he left this world just as badly as it was when it was here. Now we're just scurrying around in utter chaos, waiting for something to happen, waiting for somebody to come save us, but there's no one anymore, is there? There was only Harry and Dumbledore, and Dumbledore's long dead and Harry just followed him! Don't you get it, Hermione? The only way we can survive is if we stay together!"
"We can't, Ron," I cried back, feeling the tears welling in my eyes. "We just can't. What if there's another war, what if something else goes wrong? If we're as dependent on each other as we are now, we'd never survive!"
"Fine, then!" he roared. "Leave! See if I care!"
The door slammed and I stood there a moment, staring after him, shocked to hear the sudden silence, and then I fell asleep on my couch, too exhausted, too hurt, to cry.
I found Ron wrapping his cloak around me and looked up into his eyes, such sudden pain running through me that I didn't know whether to cry or to lock it inside. "You're going to get cold, sitting there," he said quietly; though it was difficult, the window seat was just wide enough to fit both of us on it. He wrapped his arms around me, extra protection against the cold seeping through the window, and we stared out on the falling snow together.
He'd apologized the next day, of course, and my resolve had held firm to leave, to get out. I couldn't have told him the truth; that being with him so much was killing me because we were only friends. I had loved him so much. Anyone could have seen it, and I'm sure dozens of people saw at Hogwarts, when we were younger; anyone could have seen how hurt I was in third year, when he wasn't speaking to me because my cat had supposedly killed his rat; anyone could have seen how angry, how upset I was in sixth year when he and Lavender Brown were thrashing like a pair of snakes all over the place, and in front of me. It had been so obvious, but, to my knowledge, he had never seen it.
"Hermione," his voice suddenly murmured in my ear; it was so weak, so much weaker than Ron's voice had ever been. "What's going to happen now?"
I shook my head, sniffed, and brushed away a single tear, because things had just gotten so much more complicated. I just leaned my head against his chest and said, softly, "I don't know, Ron. I was never a Seer."
Outside, the snow fell and gathered around the window, reflecting our pale, drawn faces; I stared in at the mirror of myself and wondered, with a lump in my throat, if I really knew who I was anymore.