Chapter 42

This, Ron thought, unable to stop the grin spreading across his face, was why he loved living with Hermione so much.

It was night's like these, when they had no interruptions, no one visiting them, and they weren't being asked to visit anyone else. Just a plain old regular evening after work where one of them cooked dinner, they ate at the kitchen table — just the two of them — and then spent the evening in the living room together. Sometimes Hermione got a book out, other times she'd bring some work to do (if Ron had some to do as well), and they'd just sit together in each other's company. Sometimes they didn't even do anything other than sit together, Hermione leaning against Ron and just feeling… happy.

They'd talk about things that didn't really matter, like what work would be like the next day, what they were going to do on the weekend, or sometimes Ron would even tune in the old wireless he'd borrowed from his parents to listen to the Quidditch commentary if a game was still going, and they'd talk about that.

It was pleasant, it was wonderful, and it was so normal that they were Ron's favourite nights.

But what made this one just that little bit better was they were finally starting their wedding plans. Like everything else in their relationship, getting to the actual planning had taken a very long time. There was always something popping up that prevented them from doing it — Ron starting with the Aurors and being slammed with paperwork he needed to have completed; Hermione's hours being a little scattered as her office worked on passing laws; and then the excitement of Harry and Ginny's ever looming wedding and having to help them with the final preparations.

They'd made it to June before they'd even had a chance to think about what they would want to do, and then that involved contacting locations to have a look at, working out if they were catered locations, then working out what date they were going to get married, then the time they were going to get married at. Not to mention who to invite, who not to invite, how many people the place they hadn't yet chosen could hold, and what would happen if some of those people couldn't come on the date that they hadn't yet picked?

It was now the beginning of August — less than three weeks before Harry and Ginny's wedding — and they'd only just finished looking at the shortened list of places.

So now Hermione — he loved her so much for being so organised — had brought all the stuff she'd collected into the room and had laid them out on the floor between them. They each sat cross-legged on the rug by the unlit fireplace, staring at the abundance of pamphlets, scribbled notes, and folders of things.

Neither of them had a clue where to begin.

"Maybe… maybe we could start with picking a date?" Hermione asked. She picked up a list of dates they'd briefly brainstormed, ranging from December of this year, all the way through to the December of next.

"The sooner the better," Ron said, grinning at her.

"But we need time to organise everything…" She scanned the list. "So I guess that cancels out any of the dates this year." She picked up the quill and drew lines through four dates.

Ron watched her do it with a small feeling of disappointment. He'd been hopeful that it would be this year.

"Maybe even January and February are too soon…" She crossed them out too.

"What about March?" Ron asked. He pointed to the two dates they had selected for that month. "That's not too soon, is it?"

"No, I don't think so, but…" She picked up one of the pamphlets of a location they'd looked at. It was a small Muggle pub with a really beautiful garden out the back. They hosted weddings every Saturday there. "They don't have any availability until June next year."

"Well, let's not get married there," Ron said. "I didn't really like it anyway."

Hermione bit her lip. "But I really liked it there… it was my favourite."

They looked at each other for a moment. Ron had no response. She really had liked that place more than any of the others — he'd seen it on her face the moment they'd stepped inside. It was small, intimate, and he knew it was exactly what she was looking for.

Except, it hadn't really been for Ron. The only weddings he'd attended were Bill and Fleur's and Percy and Audrey's, and he'd kind of imagined that Bill's was how his wedding would be, too. It was how Harry and Ginny's was happening, with all the protections around the Burrow to stop snoopers. But Hermione wanted something different, something that was special to them and not what everyone else was doing.

He watched her for another moment. "What about by the lake?" he asked eventually.

Their favourite lake, the lake they went on dates to, or escaped to. The place that was special to them.

"They have no time restrictions on that," he continued when Hermione said nothing. "You can only get there via Apparition."

"Which means Mum and Dad can't," Hermione said gently.

"I'm sure we can get some special leeway to Apparate them there for the day?" Ron asked.

Hermione looked at him.

Ron sighed. "Not the lake," he muttered.

Hermione crossed that off the list.

"You didn't cross the garden pub off," Ron noted.

"Because I still think it's a logical option," Hermione replied.

"But I said I didn't like it. You were more than happy to cross the lake off, though. The one you didn't like."

"That's different," Hermione said. "The lake's not possible."

"But I liked it, and you crossed it off. But the one I don't like, but you do, you leave on."

"Well, forgive me for wanting my parents to actually attend our wedding, Ron," Hermione said sharply.

"I don't care about you crossing it off. I just want it to be fair. We both have to like where we get married."

Hermione glared at him for a moment before she snatched up the quill and crossed off the pub as well. She punctured a hole through the parchment in the process.

Ron looked down at his hands, feeling a mild wave of guilt wash over him. He was remembering the way her face had lit up as the person had shown them around, how every corner of that place had convinced her that that was the place. He'd loved seeing her so happy, so excited, and for a while he'd told himself that her happiness was what mattered the most. As long as she was happy, then so was he. But now that it came down to it… well, it was his wedding, too. He needed to be happy with the decisions they made, and he just hadn't liked that place at all. It was small and cramped and rather old. Not a place he saw himself marrying Hermione.

"Well, I don't think we can get married until at least May."

"Why?" Ron asked, looking back up at her. That was practically a whole year away.

"Because there's a lot of planning involved, and in case you haven't noticed, we still haven't decided on anything. We've been engaged for months, and we haven't even begun to plan."

"We're planning now, aren't we?" Ron asked, his tone shorter than he wanted it to be. Why was she making such a big deal about the pub? Why was she upset about it? Why was he upset about it?

"And we haven't gotten anywhere other than deciding what we don't want," Hermione replied, her voice just as short.

"We've narrowed the list down, haven't we?" Ron asked.

Hermione said nothing.

"I don't want to wait another year to marry you," Ron said. "Do you know how hard it was to wait to get that ring? When I just wanted to ask you, but couldn't —"

"I never asked you to spend so much," Hermione said. "In fact, I never asked you to get a ring to begin with. That was your decision, not mine. I would have gladly married you with or without one."

Ron stared at her, stung by the harshness in her voice. He looked back down at his hands, unsure on how to respond.

He heard Hermione sigh. "Ron, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. It's beautiful, and I love how much effort you put into it… sorry. I'm just feeling frustrated. I feel as if we aren't getting anywhere, and I just want us to get married."

"I don't want to wait a long time to marry you, Hermione," Ron said again, looking back at her. "March next year. That's my limit. Any later will drive me mad."

Hermione's shoulders dropped as she released another sigh she'd apparently been holding. "Ron, I just don't see it as doable for what we want —"

"For what you want, you mean?"

She paused again, her eyes moving from the spread in front of them, then to him. She did this a few times before she spoke. She sounded upset, and Ron pushed down another wave of guilt and waited for her to respond.

"No. I thought we both wanted the same thing. To get married. But Ron… what about the wedding we talked about? All the things we said we wanted? I'm just trying… to make that happen."

Ron picked up a second quill and began twirling it in his fingers. He didn't really know why he was so upset with her. He suddenly just felt angry. Some part of him had thought that their inability to get started on planning was due to their busy lives. But maybe it was because they couldn't actually agree on anything. Whatever one wanted, the other seemed to reject. He hadn't noticed, but he suspected it had been like that all along, which was why they were only getting to planning it now.

Suddenly, his excitement at doing this wasn't there anymore. He felt defeated. "Why don't you want to marry me as soon as possible?" he asked.

"Ron —"

"Have the damn thing at the pub if that's what you want," he snapped. "If it's going to make you delay it, then I don't care where it is. I just want to be married to you."

Hermione didn't speak, but watched Ron with a sympathetic expression. Then gently, she said, "Of course I want to marry you as soon as possible. But I also want our wedding to be special. It's only going to be one time that we do this. I want us to remember it."

"I'll remember marrying you no matter where it is or who's there, just as long as you're there."

She smiled at that, but it still didn't seem to convince her. "It took us a while to find the right house, remember? Then we found this one. It'll be the same for this. We… just haven't found the perfect venue for us yet."

He stared at her. Then said, "Alright. So no date, no place. Anything else we can do?"

Hermione shuffled through the things on the floor and extracted another bit of parchment. "We can maybe decide on a time to get married. As in time of day."

"Midday?" Ron said.

He saw Hermione open her mouth and knew immediately that she didn't agree with that. But a moment later, she smiled and nodded. "That could be a nice time."

But her agreement just upset Ron even more, because she was only doing it to placate him. And he knew that tonight — despite him really looking forward to it initially — wasn't going to work. He didn't want her to agree to anything just because she thought disagreeing would upset him.

They wanted two completely different weddings when it came to the crunch, and he didn't know how to work around it.

"Do you have another suggestion?" he snapped.

"Ron, I said it was —"

"But you're not happy about it. I can tell. I know you, Hermione, and you just said it because you thought it was the right thing to say. What I wanted to hear."

"Well… did you want me to disagree then?" she asked.

"No."

There was more silence. Ron threw the quill back on the ground. Some ink splattered onto the pamphlets and parchment, but he didn't care.

"Ron… I'm really not sure what you want from me right now."

And the truth was, neither did Ron. He sighed.

"Are you okay?" Hermione asked.

"I just thought it would be easier than this, that's all. I thought… I thought because it's our wedding — a really important moment, one I've been looking forward to with you for a long time now — we'd be able to sort it out. I didn't think it would be this hard. It was easier in my head."

Despite herself, Hermione gave him a small smile. "What's in your head, then?" she asked.

"Nothing that you'll like," he mumbled.

"Tell me, and I'll determine that, thank you."

Ron watched her for a moment, admiring her patience for what he knew was him being rather difficult and sulky. It was just something he didn't know how to control in this moment. He didn't always know how to control his emotions. It was the reason he felt so strongly for Hermione… all the time. He didn't know how to rein them in and was much better at just letting himself feel.

"Well, for one, I wanted it to be a year ago, but that was my fault and I know that. Two, I just pictured us somewhere really nice, somewhere beautiful, somewhere intimate. Somewhere like the lake."

Hermione opened her mouth, but Ron cut her off.

"I know why we can't have it there!" he said quickly. "I just didn't think about that. I was kind of just thinking of you. Of us. I didn't know all of this other stuff would be involved. I just… wanted to marry you. That was all I saw, all I really cared about when I pictured it. Just you."

For a moment, nothing happened. They both sat on their living room floor, looking at each other. Then, Hermione crawled towards him briefly and kissed him lightly on the lips.

"We have forever to get married," she said when she pulled away. She was smiling. "It's not something we have to rush or do quickly. Just when we're ready. It's how we've done everything else, isn't it? When we've been ready?"

"The only thing is," Ron began, "I'm ready now. I want to marry you now."

"It doesn't change anything," Hermione said. "Whether we do it tomorrow or in two years. Things with us will stay the same." She sat back on her spot on the floor and picked up her wand from beside her. She tapped each bit of parchment, and Ron watched as all the notes she'd been taking vanished.

"What did you do that for?" he asked, shocked.

"I think we need to start from the beginning," she said.

"Hermione —"

"No, this is our wedding, Ron, meaning that there's no room for one of us wanting something more than the other. We both have to want it just the same. You don't want the garden, so it goes."

"And you don't want March…"

She smiled at him apologetically. "So it goes."

He nodded.

"We'll work it out," she assured him. "And it will be something we both want." She waved her wand and all the parchment, quills, and pamphlets flew into a box. "I want to marry you, too, and I'm very excited about it all. But I'm not going to do it if you're going to be unhappy about everything around you. That's not fair."

"So we're back to having nothing at all?" Ron asked, not feeling overly comforted by her decision to start from scratch again. They'd been at nothing for too long.

Hermione reached forward to squeeze his hand. "We have each other," she said. "And that's good enough, isn't it? The rest will come to us when we find it."

Ron looked down at her hand covering his. It was so warm against his, so soft, and he really liked it when she touched him. Even if it was just holding his hand.

He looked at her again. He loved her, and that was why it was so difficult for him to accept that they still weren't getting married in the foreseeable future.

But, in the scheme of things, he was pretty lucky. He was fortunate. And he could still love her every single day until they did finally get married. And every day after that, too.

He squeezed back and nodded. "It's enough," he assured her. "It's more than enough."

She kissed him again.

I hope you liked this chapter. It's one of my favourites! And, of course they'll eventually have the perfect wedding!

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