"You didn't care about my parents at all, did you?" Hermione Granger was crying. Again. At least she wasn't breaking things, Ron rolled his eyes. She caught that, and only Ron's quick reflexes avoided another bout of lacerations as the silverware just missed his face by inches. He'd been hit before, and he didn't like it.
He was through with pretending. He was tired to pretending he could just shoulder his burdens. Pretending his relationship wasn't rushed at all. Pretending he could turn into something he wasn't. Ron loved Hermione, but there was no way either of them would make it work now. It was too little, too late.
"You just let them die there just so you could go to your damn Quidditch" she shrieked. He knew perfectly well he was guilty. He was guilty of a lot. He'd been questioning himself and pillorying himself, but the world couldn't help but bury its claws into him and never let go.
"I went to their funeral. I was there when they were buried. I was there!" Ron shouted back at her.
"Not once were you with me. Harry was there. Neville was there. Ginny was there." Her tears burned him as much as they did her. With that, she turned around and rushed down the hall and into the bedroom, locking the door behind her.
What was holding him back from divorce? Love? No, he loved her too much to keep her in this disaster. Fear? He stifled the thought. He was never a coward, and would never be one. But as her sobs rang in his ears, he couldn't avoid the conclusion that it was all about his pride. All about making all those years count. All about denying his own faults.
It was the last think he wanted to think about. His parents called him a waste. His friends thought of him as a waste. The girl he loved thought he was a waste. And all his attempts to prove him worthy looked like there were crumbling. Bugger.
Maybe I'm trying to be something I'm not, Ron mused, maybe I'm just a failure at not being who I am, and I got the whole thing backwards. But what? He couldn't help but feel like everything he had was crumbling. All he could be was "Harry Potter's best mate", and just be a sidekick. A sidekick, that's what he was. Second rate. Hermione's husband. The Weasley's youngest son. Ron from Gryffindor. It was never "Ron's best friend", "Ron's wife", "Ron's family", "Ron's house".
Maybe he was being selfish, but would it hurt if he was just himself and not anyone's anything? Was that the price of being friends with anyone? He'd be nothing without his friends and family, but Harry was in the same position and he was everyone's hero. Whose hero was he? Not Hermione's, the one person he wanted to be a hero to.
But if he divorced her, he'd be the villain for throwing her away. He'd crush her heart. If they continued this lie, it would still crush her.
It was a stupid idea. A stupid, stupid idea. He didn't want to put the responsibility on Hermione again, but it would have to be her. He'd lost too much. He didn't want to break her heart; he didn't want to be the one who hurt her. Still, his prospects didn't look good. Either break it now, or wait more agonizing years.
Should he just go to her and tell her it's over? No, that would be even stupider. She'd only go deeper into despair, especially now when she was having another breakdown. He considered going into the liquor cabinet for some relief, but he knew it would only get him angrier and more depressed, and it wouldn't last even when it did help him.
Damned it you do, damned if you don't. He sat down in the chair in the living room, staring at the floor. He had to do something, anything. He looked at the bookshelf. Nothing but Hermione's books. A lot of them were for his birthday or Christmas, never opened and gathering dust. The others were the ones he got for Hermione, also never opened. Could they really be so blind to each other?
One book caught his eye. It was the one Fred and George gave him; the last thing Fred ever gave to him. Twelve Fail-Safe Ways to Charm Witches. Of course, he had put a false sleeve and charmed it to look like a biography of Quidditch champion Hylas Julian, but it was the same book.
Where did Harry leave his copy? Ron was the first to admit to being unperceptive, but he knew Harry and Ginny weren't exactly a happy couple either. Maybe it destroyed his best friend and his sister the same way it destroyed him and the woman he loved.
For once in his life, Ronald Weasley was pensive and thoughtful. Then he took the book off the shelf.
"I'm just sick of lying" Ron snarled at the book, throwing it into the fireplace. He knew burning it could never undo the consequences of their decision, but he felt better anyway. He just stared into the fire. He'd just tell Hermione he lent the book to someone else. Another lie, but he knew the truth about that book would hurt her even more. Living a lie was something he was used to. He just wished it would end.