Well hello there! Back again!
So let me whine for a moment, because, ugh, I dislike writing chapters stories. Suppose I am an instant gratification kind of girl, but I've decided not to make this a one-shot. Because that would make me a not very nice kind of girl, which I would like to think is not the case...but there is an end in sight...if not one on paper (yet).
But I own nothing and all that, so on with the show (story)!
"We're older now, the light is dim
And you are only just beginning."
Her head was spinning.
In fact, everything was spinning, a topsy-turvy, stomach-turning sort of experience of the most unpleasant kind. All of it, her yet-untouched glass of whiskey, the tiny room, his stony face, they all swam before her in a dizzying haze of colors. She felt as though her whole world had been tilted off its axis, and as a result everything was on the verge of tumbling off of the edge and into oblivion. But to put things in perspective, her world, this sad, strange little world she had been living in for the past three years, had never really been aligned correctly. Nothing that happened here could have ever transpired in the universe everyone else lived in…especially not in the one Ron lived in.
She wouldn't let it.
Not again. He said it, but if he knew, if he truly knew what it meant, he wouldn't mean it. Didn't he see this was the only way? That there was no way they could never move on from this point of here and now, this utterly dreadful moment in their lives? How could he not know that his life could never have any semblance of normalcy again unless he let her erase this entire debacle?
Of course he couldn't. He wouldn't. That was why she had done it in the first place. It had all been for him…everything had always been for him.
She swallowed several times in her attempt to speak, wanting desperately to break the awful silence with something more than the gasping, broken sobs that had overtaken her. "Ron, I-"
"You don't deny it?" He said curtly, tightening his grip on the wand he held, eyes having never once left it.
She took a deep breathe, mustering all her strength to speak without letting her voice waver. "I've deceived you enough."
He looked to her sharply then, and she was relieved to find his eyes were no longer the bitter shade of blue that had chilled her to the very bone. The respite was brief though, as the coldness had been forced out by a stark look of betrayal. It was the look that crept into his eyes after Dumbledore's death whenever anyone mentioned Snape's name. It aged his face a decade, but he only held her gaze a moment dropping his chin and hiding his hurt from her once more.
"Yes." He said, choking on the single word.
"Yes." She agreed. Her betrayal was irrefutable, but necessary all the same. She longed to tell him that, but knew the only answer he wanted was the one he had come here in search of. All her reasoning and justification wouldn't soothe him until she gave him what lingered in the air between them.
Why?
Oh Ron, if only she could tell him! If only he would understand! She was filled with longing, but managed to string together words in another direction.
"How did you find out?"
Her diversion was obvious, but he seemed to welcome it. He exhaled deeply, and ran an absentminded hand through his hair. The ginger locks were shorter than she had ever seen it, trimmed neatly and close to his head as was required for an Auror. Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered what the ministry was doing to cope with Harry's unruly mane that never seemed to stay cropped for longer than it determined necessary. But right now, Ron was all that she could think of, and she watched intently as his hair fell back into place after his fingers passed through it. He dropped his wand on the counter-top, and it rolled a few times across the slick surface before he laid his hand on top of it to hold it still. He glanced at her as he did so, skeptical, before picking it up again defensively. Opening his coat, he placed his wand alongside hers in that oddly shaped, and yet so convenient, pocket that accompanied wizard clothing. Her own wardrobe had been devoid of such things since she had come to America, and she felt a twinge of homesickness...along with sometime else. She would have been hurt, offended that he did not trust her, one of his very oldest friends…that is, had she not been planning to snatch the wand up as soon as it sprang free of his fingers.
Yes. She meant what she had said, that she had deceived him enough. But she still wouldn't hesitate to do so again.
"Work." He grunted. "They were preparing to send our team on a mission to…on a highly classified mission."
His hesitation spoke volumes. Again, she obviously wasn't to be trusted. She bit her lip and pretended like it didn't effect her in the slightest. It was better, easier, if he hated her anyway.
"Had detection charms cast on the whole lot of us before we could be granted clearance to proceed with the details. Mainly to check and make sure that none of us were under the imperious and would give up information that might be a danger to the Ministry, but they checked for all the unforgivables." His voice was acquiring more and more of a sarcastic tone and she could feel his anger remounting as he spit the last word out as if it left a bad taste in his mouth. She was sure that his definition of what qualified as an "unforgivable" had changed since she left, and he was counting a forth spell to join the usual trio.
"I see." She murmured, lips tightening around the phrase. Let her be an unforgivable. Let him loathe her. As long as it meant he would leave. As long as it meant he would stay away…this time.
"No you don't. You didn't. You didn't see any of it, Hermione, because you weren't there. You haven't been there, not for any of us, not in three years." He seethed at her, his voice dangerously quiet. She said nothing, it was all true. He picked back up as though not interrupted. "They took us into different chambers to perform the charms, and put up wards that would dissolve once the reading came back that we were free from spells."
She knew what was coming next, knew how the story he was telling would conclude even more than even he did. She knew it all, the what, the why…the who. And she knew better than to hope for a happy ending. It wouldn't be, and she had been fooling herself for years to ever even hope for one. But this time she would be strong, and she mentally prepared herself to make it through the storm that was brewing inside him, one that was surely to be unleashed at full force upon her. He was looking at her again now, eyes narrowed and dangerous, and with a cool aloofness she made herself meet his gaze without tears. Those had stopped now, and determination was slowly replacing her overwhelming sorrow.
"Everyone's wards wore off quickly, and they gathered at headquarters to begin the briefing. That is, all except one. Do you want to guess who that lone person was Hermione?"
She spoke quietly, levelly. "Why are you doing this Ron? Why do-"
And that was all it took.
"WHY!"
And finally, the word they had both been dancing around, the one they had both been too scared to say, was out in the open. The mention of it snapped the flood gates holding back his fury, and as his volume rose she felt her temper do the same.
"You are the last person in the world who is allowed to ask me why!" He shouted.
"Don't you dare tell me what I am or am not allowed to do Ronald! We aren't in school and I can make my own decisions now, my life doesn't revolve around you anymore!"
(But of course it did. Of course it always had.)
"Yeah, you made sure of that, didn't you? You know, if you wanted me out of your life there were other ways to go about it. Do you have any idea what it was like, sitting in that room, waiting for wards to go down and then realizing they wouldn't? Realizing that something was wrong with me?" She opened her mouth to defend herself, but he brought up a hand to stop her. "Dammit, let me finish would you! You at least owe me that, after all these years, just let me say what I need to say."
"It hasn't been years, Ron, not for you." She snarled, but he continued on as if he had not heard her. And maybe he didn't. Either way, it wouldn't make a difference.
"Once they knew I had been put under a spell they took me aside for further interrogation. Quite the scandal, it caused, Ron Weasley, war hero, being put under observation by the very men and women he had worked alongside to battle evil. I was on leave for over a week, and no one would tell me what they had found. Or rather, what they hadn't. Kingsley, the Minister of Magic himself, came to question me. A lot of bloody good that did, what with me having been obliviated and all. They were able to put a time-line on it, after hours and hours of intensive casting. When it came out they discovered what you already knew, what you've known the whole time, haven't you? Found out I had about a month or two of my memory wiped and altered three years ago. Guess I don't have to tell you what else happened three years ago, do I?"
Of course he didn't, but she knew he would regardless, that he needed to. That despite all of his bravado, he was terribly lost and afraid right now, and he was clinging desperately to the fact that she had answers for him, answers that would take away all the pain and set them to rights once again.
She didn't.
"You left Hermione, you left Ginny and Harry and me. Surely you can understand the conclusion I came to, someone obliviates me and you vanish out of our lives without so much as backwards glance. You were gone the day after I was accepted into Auror training, off to America for school. Or at least that was what you told me. God only knows what really happened…or rather, you only know. I tracked down that university in the states you claimed you had received a scholarship from, but they said they had never heard of you. I looted the ministry for any hint of you, but it was like you disappeared, right along with my memory. Smartest witch of your age, after all, aren't you? But not smart enough. It took me damn well long enough, but I've found you, haven't I?"
"Ginny?" She questioned, lifting an eyebrow as though she didn't care in the slightest how he had come to discover her.
"No." He said darkly. "No, she didn't help me. You did a bloody good job on her too. Obliviated a little more than a year ago, Kingsley said. They checked Harry as well, but you hadn't got a hold of him yet, had you?"
If she could keep her voice cold, if she could make him think she didn't care, then she could make him believe anything. She could make him believe a lie. "No reason to."
"And Ginny? What was your reason for her? Did she find you? Did she discover your dirty little secret?"
She tried not to, but she couldn't let the shiver than ran down her spine at just how accurate his guess was. She couldn't stop the vision that lit up behind her eyes, of Ginny enraged and shouting on the doorstep of her old apartment, looking just like her brother in her anger and causing quite the scene. That is, before her fiery eyes went blank and her body slack. Before Hermione did some quick spell work and damage control, before she shifted her whole life yet again, moving across the country to start another new life with a new name in a new state. Before her dream come true and worst nightmare all rolled into one showed apparated back into her life. Uninvited.
"Struck a chord with that one, didn't we?" He mused, mocking her pain. "Hit a bit too close to home, didn't it?"
"Fuck off Ronald." Her voice was deadly, and sounded as though it belonged to a stranger. It burned her mouth as she spoke and she hated the words as they flew from her lips. "Fuck you and get the hell out of my house!" She howled, stomping her foot and hearing the crunching of glass underfoot from his earlier outburst. Suddenly she was struck with an idea, a stupid, childish idea, but the only one she had. It was still there, her full tumbler, and she snatched it up from the counter in an instant and slung the liquor directly in his face like a catty girl at a bar. He cursed as it drenched him, and at once she was running, headed for the door with single-minded pursuit of escape, when she felt them.
Arms. His arms, strong and safe and familiar, colliding with her waist, stopping her dead in her tracks. It was all too much, he was all too much, and at the feel of his skin upon hers she was overcome. Wobbly legs gave out from under her and she felt her tired body collapse upon itself and crash into the linoleum, a vague registry to those arms tightening around to middle to keep her head from hitting the floor.
And then black.
Yes, yes? Or no, no? I totally made up this whole detection charms bit, I believe, so don't get too technical on that stuff...otherwise, lay it on me!