We're almost there! Just an epilogue and this story will be finished. Hope you've all enjoyed the ride so far!
Hermione laughed uproariously at Pansy's antics as they all sat together in the new Wizarding club just off of Diagon Alley. Tarantallegra had been an instant success when it had opened a few weeks earlier, and it had become the girls' favorite place to hang out. The music was good, but the drinks were even better and, with the rather snobbish witches and wizards that composed their friend group, that was always the most important consideration when picking a new hang out spot.
It had been two months since they had last been together in a bar; since her disastrous breakup with Ron. Two months since she and Draco had begun to spend almost every free moment of time together. A little under two months since they had admitted that they had loved one another for years. It was amazing how different things could become - how much happier she could be - over a short two months.
Right now, Pansy was currently regaling the group of witches – sans Daphne, who had given birth to Theo's and her son only a week earlier – with a story about her coworker at the apothecary she worked at just down the street from Tarantallegra.
"And then I told Posy that the only thing she could brew even halfway decently was trouble!"
Their gales of laughter were interrupted by a familiarly scathing voice.
"Still picking on younger witches I see, Parkinson."
The six witches looked up at the tall, bulky redhead that stood above their table. Ron currently had his arms crossed over his broad chest and was glaring down at Pansy with a disgusted snarl twisting his lips.
"Get lost, Ron," Ginny hissed at her brother.
While the two siblings had once been close, time had driven a wedge between them. First, it had been Ron's dismissive attitude toward his little sister when they had been in school, and the chasm had only grown in the face of his fame-hungry actions following the end of the war. The final straw had been his repeated unfaithfulness of her best friend. While she would always love her brother, she didn't much like him anymore, and Molly Weasley was lucky to get them in the same house for family dinners anymore.
"Fuck you, Ginny," Ron snarled back at his petite sister before turning his scathing glare away from Pansy and his sister and onto the others sitting around the table: Hermione, Luna, Hannah, and Padma.
"I would have expected you all to have better sense than to let yourself be fooled by those snakes," he hissed the word as if it were the vilest curse he could think of. "I'm ashamed of all of you."
Before anyone else could speak up, Luna rose to her feet. While the diminutive blonde had always been easygoing and patient, anyone who really knew her was familiar with the streak of iron-clad determination that braced her spine, and she allowed it to shine through now.
"You should be ashamed of yourself, Ronald Weasley," she said, her lilting voice sounding cold and hard. "If you were too thick to understand what you had while you had it, that is no one's fault but your own. You need to leave us all, and particularly Hermione, alone. For good."
As Ron sputtered angrily, his cheeks bloomed crimson in his embarrassment over being called out by Luna Lovegood.
"It's not my fault that you're all stupid enough to believe that those filthy Slytherins," he motioned carelessly toward where Pansy sat at the table, "and Death Eaters that you hang out with have actually changed. You're fooling yourselves if you think that they aren't all using you to make themselves look better."
"Ron."
The redheaded wizard spun on his heel at the sound of his name being stated flatly in a familiar voice that had gone colder toward him than anyone had ever heard it.
Harry stood behind Ron, Draco at his side. Harry's arms were crossed over his chest while Draco's hands were shoved into his pockets. While Draco made no move to approach or interact with his girlfriend's ex, the anger was clear to see in his eyes, which had gone as cold as shards of ice. Behind the two men stood Blaise, Dean, Neville, and Seamus.
"Oh, Harry, um…"
Ron floundered as he tried to backpedal his way out of the mess in which he had solidly landed himself. While he had never made much of an issue over hiding his distrust in the Slytherins, he had always been cautious to avoid being overly antagonistic toward Pansy. Harry had proven time and again that he would not tolerate anyone being disrespectful toward his girlfriend, and Ron had always successfully toed the line of disrespect to stay on his friend's good side...until today.
"No need to repeat yourself there, Ron," Harry said calmly, in a tone as hard as granite, "I heard you just fine. Actually, I'm glad you're here right now. There's something I want you to know."
Turning his cold green eyes away from Ron, Hermione watched the sizzling heat that filled them when his eyes locked with Pansy's. Harry brushed past Ron as he walked over to Pansy's side, and he dropped to a squat beside her chair.
"I was planning on doing this today anyway, and while the mood may have been shattered by ignorant naysayers, I'm still going to do this the way I planned."
Pansy's eyes showed her confusion, but she placed her hand on top of Harry's, which had rested atop her knee when he had kneeled down beside her.
"Pansy, in the months following the end of the war, I saw you everywhere. And every time I saw you, it killed me a little more inside. Seeing the once proud and confident witch that you had been, turned into a sorrowful and repentant shell of a woman made something in me scream in denial and rebellion. That first time I kissed you – standing in Flourish and Blotts with Hermione at my side – I knew. I knew that you were the witch that I had wanted for all of my life…I just hadn't realized it until that moment."
Harry ignored the tears that were welling up in Pansy's wide hazel eyes, as well as the gleeful expressions on the faces of the rest of the women at the table and the men, excluding Ron, that stood behind him.
"When your parents kicked you out of your home for loving me, when your father struck you for daring to be with me, it took no thought for me to decide to invite you to live with me. Why would I hesitate, when I knew that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with you, anyway?"
Harry's right hand slipped into the pocket of his denims and he pulled out a small velvet box. With a twitch of his thumb at the seam of the box, he opened it, and Pansy gasped. Inside sat a beautiful ring. The center stone was a large, cushion cut Emerald, and it was flanked on either side by smaller round cut rubies.
"I couldn't help myself," Harry said with a smirk at her look of bewilderment. "Not only do they represent our birth months, but also our houses. And they fit perfectly together – just like us."
He pulled the ring from the box, which he dropped to the floor with a soft thunk, then took her left hand in his own.
"I may not be able to offer you a position among the Sacred Twenty Eight like your parents always wanted, and I may not be able to offer you a quiet life of normalcy, out of the limelight of the Wizarding world. All I can offer you is my heart and soul, and my eternal love. Pansy Parkinson, will you marry me?"
Hermione squealed with delight as Pansy nodded her head adamantly and allowed Harry to slide the ring onto her finger. With a murmured spell from Harry the ring sized itself to fit Pansy's dainty finger, then Pansy was in Harry's arms and their lips were locked in a fierce embrace. Hermione heard the sound of applause and looked around them to see the other occupants in the bar clapping and cheering at the sight.
A flash of light in a corner let her know that the rest of Wizarding London would know about the engagement of Harry Potter and Pansy Parkinson as soon as they opened the morning edition of the Daily Prophet, but Hermione knew that Harry didn't mind. If there was one single aspect of his life that he didn't mind sharing with the public, it was just how much he loved the witch that was currently in his arms.
A strangled noise of disbelief reminded her of Ron's presence and she turned to look at him. His face had gone, if at all possible, even more red and he was sputtering in disbelief at what had just happened. Hermione knew that Ron had always thought that Harry would 'come to his senses and leave that deceitful snake'; he had told her as much, more times than she could count.
His sputtering reminded Harry of his presence as well, and Hermione watched as her friend broke from the kiss and, after murmuring in his fiancée's ear, rose to his feet to move in front of Ron.
"I'm glad you were here to see this, Ron. I really am. I wanted you to know just how serious I am about Pansy. And since you cannot handle the fact that other people," he motioned to Pansy, then to Draco and Blaise, "have been able to change following a war filled with loss and destruction, I think this is it…for now. I won't allow anyone to remain in my life that will make my future wife and her friends feel less than. If you ever grow up, feel free to reach out. If not…well, I hope you have a nice life, Ron."
Turning his back to his former best friend, Harry went back to his fiancée. He lifted her from her chair and sat down before plunking her back down in his life. Hermione watched as Ron stood, shell-shocked, while everyone else began to move around him as if he were already gone. She watched the way his face blanched when Blaise strode over to Ginny and his younger sister planted a passionate kiss on her own Slytherin's lips. The final straw for Ron, though, was Hermione herself.
Draco strode around the stationary redhead and walked over to Hermione. He held out a hand for her and she took it, allowing him to lift her to her feet before pulling her securely into his embrace. Ron's face went from pale to ruddy in only a second and Hermione saw a flash of movement as he strode over to them.
"Get your filthy hands off of her, you fucking Death Eater scum," Ron growled angrily.
"Just because you were too stupid to realize Hermione's worth, Weasel, doesn't mean I will make the same mistake," Draco said coldly, still holding Hermione against his side as he glared at Ron. "I know perfectly well that I am nowhere near good enough for her, but by some miracle she has forgiven me. I'll spend the rest of my life trying to be worthy of her love, and I won't listen to jealous fools like you that will try to tear us apart. Until the day that Hermione herself tells me to get lost, I'm not going to be going anywhere."
Ron angrily moved to pull his wand from his pocket but, before he could point the thin piece of wood at Draco, he was on the floor. Hermione blinked in confusion as she looked down at him, then back up. Draco stood rubbing his knuckles.
"Did you… did you just punch him?" she asked in confusion. In all the years that she had known Draco Malfoy, she had never once known him to react to anyone or anything in a physical manner. He was the epitome of a Pureblood and relied on his magic for almost everything. But he had struck her ex, not cursed him.
"I have it from a very reputable source," he said with a wink at her, "that sometime the non-magical way is more satisfying."
Hermione looked at him for a moment before bursting out laughing. He was talking about her own attack on him in their third year, of course.
"And did it feel good?" she asked, thinking back to her words to Ron and Harry after she had slapped him so many years ago.
"Not good. Bloody brilliant."
She burst out laughing at his response before rising up on her tiptoes and throwing her arms around his neck, kissing him. She only looked up with a grunt and the sound of shuffling on the floor alerted her to the fact that Ron was getting back to his feet.
"Get out of here, Ron," she said simply, still holding tightly to Draco's hand. "I hope you find someone who makes you happy, someone you can commit yourself to fully like you never could with me. But I am through letting you dictate my life and feelings. I wish you the best of luck, but I sincerely hope not to see you again any time soon."
Ignoring the angry words that he threw her way, she turned her back on him and dragged Draco along with her to rejoin their friends at the large table.
Okay, so this story grew quite a bit beyond what I had initially thought it would, but I hope you've all enjoyed the ride. While I don't usually do the heavy Ron-bashing stories, I couldn't get this particular idea out of my mind without writing it down, which is how this story was born.
So to those of you who dislike the Ron-bashing, I'm sorry, but I really don't plan on having much redemption for Ron this time around.
Hopefully you all enjoyed, just the epilogue left to go!
sbz