3.
"So, are we ever going to talk?" Ron broke the suffocating silence that had stretched out between them since they'd waved the children off at the station. It was obvious what Ron wanted to talk about from his grim tone, and the way his hands tightened on the steering wheel, as he flicked a cautious glance at her.
"Ron, we hardly have time. I have to get to work, and you have a portkey to catch," Hermione said tightly as Ron pulled the car into the garage. He jerked on the handbrake and leant back in his seat with a sigh, rolling his head to stare at her in the dim gloom of the garage. His hair was as thick as ever, but there were more grey threads through the red than ever, and his eyes were tired and shadowed beneath – he looked old and worn.
"You say that every time we fight."
"Because we don't!" Hermione protested. "If we're not busy with the children, then I've got work at the Ministry, and you're off half the time with the Quidditch team, and...we just don't have time." But her words sounded hollow and sad even to herself, like giving up. She loved Ron, but things were just so hard, right now. They kept fighting and fighting, about the same things over and over – Hermione being too work focused, Ron's long stretches away from home, Hermione's refusal to move closer to the Burrow, and underneath it all, Ron's bloody inferiority complex. Nothing ever got resolved, so the same Merlin-damned arguments just kept happening again and again and again.
"You can't fix a problem by ignoring it, Hermione. I may have the emotional range of a teaspoon, as you so dearly bloody love to say, but even I know that."
"Well, when you figure out how to fix you telling me that my job is pointless and worthless, you can tell me about it," she said, full of bitterness, shoving the car door open viciously.
"That's not fair."
"I think it is," she said, getting out of the car and slamming the door behind her. She stormed past him as he got out, calling her name as she reached the door into the house.
"I love you, Hermione." The words stopped her in her tracks, hand on the doorknob and throat tight with emotion. She looked back, at Ron standing by the car with pleading and apology on his face, and over twenty years of commitment stretching out between them. Her heart wrenched and ached.
"I – I love you too. I do," she confessed. It confused her that saying the words aloud made her heart feel heavier instead of lighter, like shackles on her ankles, hobbling her. And yet she did love him, and his arms folding around her did feel like comfort and warmth and home, and she didn't understand why she felt so...tired. "I'm sorry. I'm just...stressed. What with Hugo starting at school..." she began, not even believing her own excuses. Ron believed though, because he wanted to, and he smiled and nodded and kissed her gently on the mouth.
"We're going to work on things, okay? This year, with both the kids away at Hogwarts – this year can be for us. For – for reconnecting, yeah? Getting things back to how they used to be." He gave her a hopeful smile, and what could she do but nod? She pushed down the part of her that said they were just going in endless, dissatisfied circles, and focused on the small part of her that said that maybe things could be different. That maybe things could be good again, like they had been at the very beginning after the war, and then again when the children were little. Those magical years that had faded to this dull routine and slow-building resentment.
"But now I really have to go, 'Mione." He kissed her again, more thoroughly this time, and he was hot and warm and skilful, just the way she liked, and yet it left her cold.
"How long will you be gone, this time?" Hermione asked as she followed Ron into the sitting room, twisting her wedding ring around and around on her finger. Ron was supposed to mark his trips off on the calendar, but he always forgot.
"Five weeks. But I can come back on the Mondays, and stay the night," he told her, and Hermione nodded dully. Five weeks. That was a little longer than usual, and she told Ron she would miss him, and tucked a magically-compatible phone in his pocket with the instructions to call her every few days, and kissed him on the cheek. Like a good wife. And then Ron went through the floo in a flare of green flame and a puff of soot, and Hermione was left standing in her empty, quiet sitting room, filled with a sense of relief that left her feeling guilty and cast adrift.
Hermione missed the children madly – especially Hugo, who had been Sorted into Hufflepuff – and wrote to them every second day for the first week of term, sitting in the study in the evenings at her desk and scratching away with her quill, the house silent around her. She planned on writing again tonight after the simple dinner that she was eating at the breakfast bar while she read through case files. Or tried to read – with Ron due home for a flying visit the day after tomorrow, Hermione's mind kept wandering to him, and their rather undeniable issues.
She hadn't called Ron once yet since he had gone, nor had he called her – although he'd texted the first day, to say he'd arrived safely in Turkey. He'd been away with the Quidditch team six days now, and Hermione just...didn't miss him. If she was honest with herself, she enjoyed not feeling obliged to be home by five sharp to cook his tea, even if she had work she wanted to finish. She liked not having him take up the couch with the telly blaring on the sports while she cleaned up the house, because when he did it he never got it quite right, so she'd given up on him doing the cleaning.
Their lovely old three bed, two bath home in Wandsworth felt empty without the children clattering about – especially with Hugo gone – but Hermione didn't pine for Ron one jot. She told herself that nearly every marriage was probably like this; it had been 19 years now, since they'd tied the knot in the Burrow's garden. Things were bound to get stale after so long. Weren't they? But Ginny and Harry seemed just as sickeningly in love as ever, and Percy worshipped Audrey, and George and Angelina seemed perfectly in sync in their own way.
Hermione wondered what she and Ron looked like from the outside – did they seem happy, or did they appear as discontented as Hermione felt? Were the others content, or were they too hiding unhappiness? Hermione had no idea. But given the amount she and Ron kept rowing whenever they tried to discuss their issues, Hermione couldn't see a way to repairing things that wasn't just another plaster of denial and avoidance. Except ignoring the root cause of their unhappiness was precisely the approach that wasn't working; it hadn't been working for years and wasn't likely to start now.
Dinner gone, Hermione sank her head into her hands and groaned. If only things could be how they had been when the children were little, Hermione was a stay-at-home mum, and Ron had just gotten his first really promising job, as assistant coach to a proper professional Quidditch team. They had been happy then; in their tiny two up, two down house, with Ron gone over a week at a time, and Hermione caring for first one baby – then a pre-schooler and a baby – on her own, having given up the work she loved because everyone insisted the babies needed their mother, not a nursery, and even part-time work was out of the question. And they hadn't had enough money, and Hermione's mother had unexpectedly and devastatingly died of a heart attack when Rose was four, and Molly had been too involved, and Hermione had known she was only trying to help, except it hadn't been a help, and...
Well, when she put it that way...then no, as much as she wanted to only remember the good, golden memories – and there were many – she hadn't always been happy back then. Things had always been somewhat fraught between her and Ron – different perspectives, different goals in life, different interests – but it was that there had always been other things to distract her from their differences. But now, with both the children off to Hogwarts, and a relatively uneventful, easy life, there was nothing to distract Hermione from what suddenly seemed like a fundamental incompatibility. Fundamental incompatibility; the words caused a sinking, sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as they whirled through her head.
Hermione sighed to herself as she washed up the last of the dishes from her small meal, drying them with a spell and sending them to float into the crockery cupboard. She wished dearly that she had someone to talk to about her growing feelings of dissatisfaction, but all her friends were Ron's friends too. And with her mother passed away, Hermione didn't have anyone to ask if she was being unfair to Ron or expecting too much of their marriage after so many years together. So like always, she told herself very firmly that she loved Ron, and they had built a life with each other, and so she would not bottle things up and let them fester any longer, but would talk very calmly to him on Monday about working on their relationship.
The talk didn't go well.
Ron had texted Hermione the night before to say he'd be flooing in by 7pm at the very latest, and she'd decided to cook a pasta for dinner. She'd finished it at precisely seven, and then began wishing that she hadn't when the fireplace failed to flare the green that would herald Ron's arrival. After spending a good fifteen minutes pottering about the lounge straightening the ornaments on the mantel and plumping the settee cushions, so as to hover anxiously near the fireplace, Hermione gave up on the hope that dinner would be salvageable. She wasn't a very good cook at the best of times, and she was at an utter loss for how to either preserve or revive the pasta.
So Hermione sat down at the dining table in the elegant cowl neck Gryffindor-red dress she'd worn to surprise Ron, and poured herself a large glass of nettle wine, propping her elbows on the table top and heaving a sigh. She polished off three glasses of the wine as she waited, growing ever more angry with each passing minute and no word from Ron, dinner turning gluggy on the table. By 8:30 she was miserable and on the verge of tears, wondering why in the hell she had ever hoped they could have a romantic evening.
And the evening didn't really get any better from there.
Ron turned up at ten o'clock, tumbling through the floo all sooty and a bit worse the wear for drink. "'Mione! I'm home!" he bellowed cheerily, and Hermione flinched, jaw twitching and fingers tightening on the stem of her wine glass. He was grinning, blue eyes bright and mellow as he came into the dining room, but when he saw the way Hermione stood up to face him all stiff and furious, glaring at him, his grin faded. "'Mione? What's wrong?"
"What's wrong is that you turn up three bloody hours late, you great drunken git! Dinner is ruined, and so is the whole Merlin-damned evening, so good job, Ron. Good. Job."
"Late? But I said seven..." Hermione felt sorry for him as he stammered out the words, his happiness giving way to the same helpless misery she was feeling. But his idiocy and her anger outweighed her sympathy.
"It's ten o'clock, Ron!" she cried, flinging a hand in the direction of the clock. "Ten o'clock, not seven! I've been waiting all bloody evening." Ron's expression suddenly dropped in horror.
"Oh shit. Oh shit. I can't believe it. I'm such a fucking idiot –"
"Yeah, you are," she muttered darkly and Ron shot her a hurt look and went on, an odd mix of pleading explanation and irritation in his tone.
"I meant seven in Turkish time, Hermione. Turkish time. Merlin, I'm sorry, I didn't even think about the bloody time difference." Ron seemed sincerely sorry as he stepped up to Hermione, blue eyes beseeching, reaching out to her. She let him grip her upper arms in his large, warm hands, fingers curling gently around as he met her gaze, rubbing his hands up and down her arms. "I'm so, so sorry." And maybe she should have laughed and forgiven him, and they could have gone down the local chippy for dinner, but all Hermione felt was tired. She should have realised then, but she didn't, not yet.
"I forgot about the time distance too, Ron, to be fair," Hermione said wearily, looking up at him. "I can't be angry with you for that. But even allowing for the time difference, you're still an hour late!" Her voice shot up and wavered, and she had to stop and take a breath and reign herself in. Ron looked nothing but sheepish now.
"I – I stopped at the pub for a drink with the boys," he mumbled, head ducked as he let go of her arms and ran a hand through his hair, shuffling his feet on the floor like a boy that had been caught in mischief and not a 39 year-old father of two. "It was only s'posed to be a quick one. I guess I lost track of time."
"I guess you did," Hermione answered coldly, because wasn't that always the way? It had happened more and more as the years had gone by. Whenever Ron got the chance he was out of the house – when he wasn't away with the team he was down the pub with 'the boys', or off with Harry doing their stupid male bonding thing, Because somewhere along the line, it had gone from the trio always hanging out together, to Ron and Harry going off while Hermione was stuck home minding the children. Oh, the three of them saw each other regularly at the Burrow, and Hermione had occasional lunches just her and Harry, and Ron spent loads of time with the kids, and with all four of them together... But the last time she and Ron had gone on a date, just the two of them, had been the Ministry Christmas do.
"I'm sorry, 'Mione, honestly. I didn't know you were going to any kind of trouble, or I'd have... I mean, you never usually bother with anything fancy." Ron sighed in frustration. "Look, why don't we just order in pizza, and never mind the dinner? We can snuggle on the couch and watch a movie – your choice." He waggled his eyebrows suggestively as he said 'snuggle', and gave Hermione a hopeful, cheering kind of expression, and she felt herself unbend a little. "Go on, get out of your kit and put on your jimjams while I call for the pizza." Hermione stiffened up again at his dismissal of the – expensive – red dress that the sales clerk had insisted looked 'right fit'; Ron hadn't even told her she looked nice, come to think of it.
"But I dressed up for you..." she said falteringly, and Ron swore under his breath and looked rather like he wanted to facepalm as Hugo's friend Skye would say.
"Oh Merlin's saggy left testicle, 'Mione, you know I don't give a fig about what you're wearing – I'm only going to take it off anyway. There's no point to it, is there?"
"I suppose not," she snapped, stupidly on the verge of tears – she blamed it on the wine. "God, Ron, all I wanted was a nice romantic evening! If I'd wanted to sit around on the couch in my ratty old pyjamas and stuff my face with greasy pizza, I wouldn't have bothered with all this." She'd tamed her hair into soft curls and pinned it half up, leaving some loose curls to drape over her shoulders and neck, and actually bothered with makeup for once – with striking red lippy to match her dress and her one pair of Louboutins. Ron of course, had noticed none of it, and Hermione thought perhaps she should have known better than to think he would.
"Oh...yeah. Right. I'm s–" Hermione cut Ron off before he could finish, because if she heard one more mumbled 'I'm sorry' she would scream. And hex him.
"I thought you said this was our year to – to reignite things between us, to rekindle the bloody spark, and focus on us!"
"Yeah, well – well not now," Ron said stupidly, and Hermione fisted her hands at her sides and bit her tongue hard before she answered, trying desperately to stay calm.
"Not. Now," she repeated crisply. "Not. Now. Well if not now, then when? I'm starting to think you going and getting drunk with your bloody mates is more important to you than our relationship, Ronald. You've always got time to go have a drink with them – you'll make time – but when I want to have a nice evening together, you turn up at least an hour late, half-pissed, don't even notice I've made an effort, and tell me tonight isn't the right bloody night to be – be romantic!"
"'Mione – 'Mione I'm an idiot – I'm sorry, I –"
"You're a fucking arse Ronald Weasley," Hermione shouted at him, blinking fiercely as tears blurred her eyes. "Order yourself in pizza if you like, but I'm going to bed." And she stormed out of the lounge and up the stairs to their bedroom, hauling his pillows off the bed and flinging them down the staircase, before stomping back in and slamming the door behind her. She didn't know why he'd even bothered coming home. Tears pricked at her eyes as she slid her shoes off, pulled the pins out of her hair, and sat down on the edge of their bed with a wobbly sigh. Tonight had been supposed to be a nice night, not this horrid disaster that right now felt like the death knell for their marriage.
Hermione drifted out of bewildering dreams to the touch of a hand on her shoulder, trailing down over her collarbones and her breasts, and Ron nuzzling at her temple. "...up, 'Mione...wake uh-up," he was whispering in a sing-song, and she grumbled as she surfaced into dark, drowsy wakefulness, to find herself curled in their bed with Ron kneeling on top of the covers beside her.
"Wha'?"
"'Mione? Can I come to bed? The couch hurts my back, and I miss you," Ron murmured forlornly, eyes navy in the dim light filtering in through the curtains from the streetlights outside. He sat back a bit, waiting, and Hermione could just barely make out the miserable apology that shaped his face in the darkness. She grumbled incoherently again and shifted onto her back, lifting a hand up to stroke Ron's stubbled jaw, and rub her thumb light over his full mouth. He was in nothing but his shorts, skin shining pale, still quite fit for his age, save an incipient beer gut that threatened round his middle.
"Oh come on then," Hermione relented, shoving at the covers, and Ron scrambled under them, bringing a pillow with him and rolling to face her, arm hooking over her waist. He pulled her close and nuzzled at her cheek, mouthed the sensitive skin just along her jaw, and then drew back and grinned wickedly at her when she shivered in reaction.
"I know it's late and we've both got to be up early tomorrow, but it's been over a month, 'Mione," he said softly, coaxingly, as his hand crept up beneath the short cotton nightie she wore. Hermione had to count back to be sure – but yeah, sure enough they hadn't had sex since they'd gone away on that week long family trip to France with the children, during the summer holidays. God, that made her feel old and pathetic – well over a month since they'd had any sex except the solo kind, and she hadn't even realised. What was wrong with her? So she let her legs fall apart and slid her arms up around Ron's neck, drawing him down to her and kissing him long and gentle.
"Go on then," she said with a sleepy smirk when his fingers beat a questioning drum beat on the flesh of her inner thigh, and he grinned and shifted between her legs without further ado. He shoved his shorts down with haste, before covering her mouth with his own, and sliding his fingers up her inner thigh, finding her clit with his thumb and twirling lazy figure eights over it. Hermione sighed; this was...nice. Comfortable and nice and it felt like a step in the right direction, maybe. But when Ron's – perfunctory and impatient, if she was honest – touches didn't make Hermione slick and wet, instead of sliding down between her legs he pulled away from her and flailed for the bedside drawers.
"Ron? Come back. I want...you know..." she said, wiggling her legs and waiting for his hot mouth on her, because for all of his faults, Ron had always been enthusiastic in bed. Sure, they hadn't had sex regularly for quite a while, between him travelling and them just being too tired at nights, but when they did, it was mostly very thorough. And he liked to make her cum, like he had in France, with her clutching at his hair and gasping expletives, hips arching up and waves of pleasure cramping through her. Just the fuzzy memory was enough to make Hermione desperate to get off. "Ron, hurry up," she whinged.
"Hang on, don't worry, I won't be keeping you up late, you'll get your beauty rest, love," he rambled as he fumbled around in the drawer, and then dug out a condom – easier than a charm – and the lube, holding it up victoriously with a grin, as if he thought she'd be pleased or something. "All set," he said, popping the cap open and slicking a dollop of lube over his hard dick, followed by the condom and more lube, and Hermione sighed inwardly. Right, just a quickie then, and no orgasm for her. Of course. Hermione had no idea why she'd expected anything else, given how the rest of their evening had gone. She let her eyes fall shut, and accepted Ron's gentle kisses with a tired resignation, as he slowly eased into her.
It was all gone wrong.