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Hermione had never thought Harry’s efforts more fruitless. Unfortunately for her need to prove others wrong, he was right. Some good did come out of talking to Griphook and Olivander. Walking through such a small cottage had, also, never seemed like such a hard task. There were four bedrooms, one downstairs that belonged to Bill and Fleur and then three upstairs. It had been settled that one would be occupied by Olivander, another by Griphook, and the final one had been designated for her.
She lay in the bed now, in a nightgown too big because Fleur was taller than her and a duvet pulled to her chin. Ron sat beside her in a chair that she could tell was not made for somebody with limbs as long as his. He had been with her since she lay down, in the same chair. They had sat in silence and salty air except for when Harry, Bill, Fleur, or whoever else came in (she had lost track of who all was at the cottage) to say goodnight, or wish her better.
But she has questions, a handful really. About who all is there, and why. About why he had to pick shards of glass out of her hair, why Fleur had pulled some from her back. About the peculiar wound on her neck that Dittany hadn’t resolved, much like the one on her forearm that she did know the origin of. He shifts in the white wicker chair, a very beach-y piece of furniture, she thinks, and sits up a big straighter with a small sigh.
“Ron,” her voice calls out, barely above a whisper despite them being alone in the room.
“Yeah?” his own voice sounds just as horrible as hers.
“May I see your hands?” The question seems odd, but she had seen glimpses of them earlier when she awoke as his hand was intertwined with one of hers.
He offers them, palm up, but with her own hands she turns them over. They’re freckled and long, as they always are, but they’re bruised as well and have cuts and scrapes along them. He clears his throat, “A bit fucked up, aren’t they?”
She fights back the urge to crack a small smile, “Yeah, a bit,” she lets the smile through. “But why?”
“Well, I was hitting the walls,” he replies after a beat. “At the Manor, I mean.”
Hermione swallows and lets one of them drop, keeping the one in her left hand which is nearer to her when she turns onto her back. He doesn’t say anything, and she’s very thankful for that. She just wants a hand to hold onto for a moment, even if she has to chance him pulling away. For some reason he does not. He doesn’t even flinch.
“My neck,” she speaks out again. “Well—my throat, really—why’s that there?”
It seems like the most important question on her mind. She doesn’t remember where it may have come from, but hopefully he would. For several seconds, it seems like he doesn’t know the answer that she desperately wants.
“When Harry and I got out, I had Wormtail’s wand. We got up there and… s-she was going to turn you over to Greyback,” he swallows. “Me and Harry attacked at that time. While we were dueling the Malfoys and whoever else was there she picked you up off the ground. Held a knife to your throat. That’s when Dobby came back, on the damned chandelier. It fell, she dropped you there, and it landed on you.”
She has a lot of words on her mind, and still more questions, but her throat burns where the small line is printed in her skin. She blinks a few times before she attempts to speak. It takes her a few tries to open her mouth and actually get words out, but Ron waits the entire time.
“I think the dagger is cursed, or something of the sort,” she tries to discuss it like it had just cut rope, not dug into her skin or killed Dobby. “It would explain why the wounds from it won’t heal with Dittany.”
“We can see if Bill and Fleur can detect anything, being curse breakers and all,” he shifts again, hand still gripped around Hermione. “On the dagger. Not on you.”
She nods but goes back to thinking about his words, “She was going to… hand me over to Greyback?”
“In simple terms, yes,” he takes a shaky breath. “He… Merlin, Hermione. I couldn’t let him, he was going to—”
“I know,” she says smally. The thought of it makes her nauseous. It’s a growing pit in her stomach and she’s truly glad it’s something Ron will never have to worry about happening to himself. “I’d probably be worse off if you—or you and Harry, however it happened—hadn’t… interrupted.”
He nods, with no words. He swallows again, closes his eyes, and presses his forehead against their knuckles. She knows exactly what he’s thinking about because she’s thinking about the same thing. She feels uncomfortable, not because of Ron or his hand or his forehead against hers, but because of the idea of what could have happened. She could be dead right now. She could have still been being tortured right now, but instead she was somewhere on a grey-ish beach with Ron and countless other people on the floor below them.
“Ron,” she repeats the word, or rather the name, that had started this conversation. “Lay with me.”
He looks up, an expression on his face asking her if she’s serious. It makes her feel giddy all over.
“You’re close enough, and I know I won’t convince you to leave me here,” Hermione smiles a bit. It feels odd considering the events of the day. “I can’t let you sleep in that chair all night. You’re taller than three of them stacked together.”
He smiles back, and Hermione pulls back the corner of the covers to let Ron slide in. He’s still in jeans and a shirt that Hermione can’t remember the color of. The only color she can really see is that of his red hair, bright blue eyes, and the purple bruise on his cheek. A testament to his defense of her.
“You didn’t have to do all you did,” she turns to on side despite the slight pain it brings her. Ron’s face turns toward her.
“I did,” says Ron quickly. “I did, ‘Mione.”
“Screaming my name, I am glad you did that,” she ignores him, but does notice the shortening of her name. “I think it would be worse without it. Me, I mean, I would be worse without it.”
His eyes dance across her face, making her feel hot all over, “There was nothing else I could do. I just wanted to make sure you knew I was there.”
“I’ve been thinking a lot about Frank and Alice Longbottom, Neville’s parents,” she begins. “They went insane. From the same curse, the same wand, the same person. I don’t think that I would be too far from their state without you. So, well, thank you, I guess.”
“I wish I could have done more,” he frowns.
“And got yourself killed?” she asked incredulously.
“They would have killed you,” Ron corrects her. “At least you first. Then, maybe me. That’s why I didn’t do anything too stupid.”
She pauses. There were two separate reasons why Bellatrix and Greyback had wanted her as their subject. Bellatrix’s for her being a Muggle-Born, Greyback’s being the fact that she was a woman. The wound that had her blood status described in the most heinous way burned and itched under its wrapping that were far from the same shade of her skin.
“The dagger had to have been cursed—or maybe I’m just paranoid,” she shakes her head slightly. “Most likely both. It itches every time I think about it.”
“Don’t bother it,” he takes the hand of the arm with the bandage around it into his own. “We can put more Dittany on it, if you’d like.”
She shakes her head, “It just makes it burn. It doesn’t heal anything.”
Ron breaths hard in and out of his nose beside her. His eyes are on the place where their fingers wrap together, Hermione’s a bit weakly, but still gripping his lightly. Her own eyes travel down his forearm as his sleeves are now pulled up to his elbows, eyes following the tendrils of scars left by the tentacles he had been attacked by nearly two years ago. They were still there, and had been there, and will probably always be there.
“Do they hurt?” she blurts, a bit randomly. “Your scars, I mean. I know Harry’s does… but his is different, I suppose.”
“Not really, but it was bad when I got splinched,” he looks a bit taken aback at the question, but not offended in the slightest. “Why do you ask?”
She doesn’t say anything, but he knows the answer. Her mind wants to form words to speak to him but her mouth won’t let her.
“It’ll fade, both of them,” he reassures her, but his voice falters and it’s not just from how sore it is. “Everything fades.”
She thinks of the cheesiest, most cliché thing that she would have mentally degraded herself for at any other time, but all she could think about was the fact that what he said was a lie. Everything did not fade. Scars maybe, but not actually everything. Ron never faded, ever. Even when he wasn’t there or was too busy or angry at her he had never once dulled in her mind. Ever since she was fourteen in her third year Ron had not left her mind, he had never faded from her thoughts nor her life. He was the most consistent thing in her life at this point, and his everlasting hold that he seemed to have on her. She doesn’t say it, not a word. The silence and soft voice was enough for her at the moment. Too many emotions were already brewing in her chest and she did not need another thing to feel with everything she had within her already.
There’s another thought on her mind, one that’s filled with just as many emotions but it’s bubbling up her throat and forcing its way out before she can stop herself, “You’re the best person I know.”
“The hell I am,” he scoffs.
“Don’t be like that,” she says quickly. “I’m not arguing with you over this. Not right now, at least.”
“I’m not,” he adds again. “You know so many people who have fucked up a lot less than I have.”
“Ron,” she huffs in a warning voice that he knows all too well. His expression softens and she knows he won’t be starting with it again. “Don’t, please. Just believe me.”
“Is your head hurting?” his voice is hushed as if he’s trying to hide their conversation from someone. Hermione nods yes, not mentioning that her entire body is still beating and throbbing in pain. If she had said that Ron would not sleep that entire night. “You may need more of the pain potion.”
“I don’t think it helped much,” Hermione’s face falls. “It just tasted bad.”
“Just a big gulp or two,” he moves to sit up and find the wand that had belonged to Wormtail. He lights the wand, grabs a vial on the bedside table and the empty glass. He mutters an aguamenti and hands both the water and vial over to her. “Maybe it just didn’t work earlier because you had a handful of other things, too.”
Hermione moves to get up, Ron’s hands guiding her slighting, “What exactly is this?”
“Well, um, I couldn’t exactly make out what Fleur was saying, with her accent and all, but she said the red one is for pain,” he points the illuminated wand tip at the vial so she can clearly see that it’s bright red. “Bubotuber pus and Dragon liver are in it. I didn’t even know Bubotuber pus was something we could consume.”
Her lips upturned slightly as his comment. It smells vile, but if it helps with the pain at all it would be worth it. Silence settles for a moment before she tips the vial back into her throat and then throws the glass back with it. It tastes horrible, worse than Polyjuice Potion. Maybe it was the Bubotuber pus or some other ingredient but it tasted like it was not made for any sane person to drink.
“Do you want Dreamless Sleep? There’s Calming Draught, too, but you seem mellow enough, to me at least, unless you feel otherwise,” Ron begins to speak before she’s done coughing, but a supportive hand rests on her back.
“No, I’m good, I’m fine,” she hacks out.
When she’s done getting over the taste of the medicine, Ron’s hands are already guiding her back to lay on her back. Her head hits the pillows which seem more defined now, and Ron suggests she take another from his side but Hermione’s wasted all her energy already on talking, so when Ron places a hand behind her head and brings up slightly to slip a pillow beneath her she doesn’t protest at all.
His face looms over her for a second and she hates the way it makes her feel. He is her best friend, taking care of her because nearly died and she may be better off if she had, but he, which she also hated to think about because it made her seem like a damsel in distress, had saved her. The idea of what would have happened otherwise sent chills down her spine but it wasn’t even the death part she was worried about, but more so what would happen to her body.
“Ron,” her throat burns. It burns horribly from the rawness of it due to her screams and from the pressure of what she’s about to say. “I love you.”
Ron softly smiles, and shakes his head like he doesn’t believe it before he climbs beside her and says, “Did I give you the right potion?”
“You thick-headed prat, I love you,” she repeats. “I’m not just saying it to say it.”
Perhaps it was the amount of medicine running through her, or the adrenaline. It had really sunk in over the past thirty-six hours that they could very much die. She did not want to do so without Ron knowing how she felt, especially now considering there was something tugging on her heart that made her believe he felt the same.
“I love you, too,” his voice is hushed like it hurts him to say. Hermione turns her face toward him, his bruised eye facing her. He had said those words to her before, but not in the way she wanted to hear them. “You’re my best friend. I’ve always loved you and I always will.”
Something within her wants to say he’s just sympathizing for her because she was just tortured, after all, but his voice is low like he only wants her to hear the words. Maybe he was scared of Harry thinking he favored her over him, but the idea of that made her heart feel all weird. She had never thought of herself as someone's favorite before, other than a professor’s, and the idea seemed a lot more intriguing than she had imagined.
“Come closer,” Hermione’s voice is small because she’s a bit embarrassed about the request. She doesn’t want to feel alone in any way, shape, or form. If Ron must breath down her back the entire night, then she wouldn’t mind it. Reaching out to wrap herself around him felt far too intimate, but everything in her body wanted it so bad.
It’s almost like a weight is lifted off her chest and she feels Ron shifting closer. There’s an inch, maybe two between the sides of their faces but it feels like much less. The sides of their legs touch and for a moment she can hear nothing except his breathing before the ringing creeps back in after the silence settles.
“When we were kids this was always the room I would sleep in,” he says softly. “It was Bill, Fred, Ginny, and I. Charlie got the better draw, just Percy and George.”
“Four of you slept in here?” she asks incredulously, because it really seemed impossible.
“Well, there were two beds but they were smaller than this, Ginny and I got one and Fred got the other. Bill slept on the floor because of course he would for all of us,” his head moves impossibly closer to hers, as she’s now able to feel his slow breathing on her neck. She loved the feeling, a reminder that she wasn’t alone. “The third room was Mum and Dad’s, downstairs was our aunt and uncle’s.”
“I wish I had siblings,” she speaks absentmindedly. “Not as many as you, probably just one or maybe two.”
“They’re okay, sometimes,” he shrugs awkwardly due to the position. “Except Fred and George. They’re just tossers. Was scared for a bit that Ginny was going to be a bit too much like them.”
“You’re their only younger brother, I think it’s their job to be ‘tossers’ to you,” Hermione smiles in the darkness. She bites back a chuckle as his disappointment, as if she’s taken the opposite of him in an argument. “It’s nice here, though. I wish we could stay forever. It seems… so far away from everything else that’s going on out there.”
“Yeah, I guess that’s why Bill and Fleur are staying here,” he sighs. The window to their right outlooks the sky over the ocean, but there are no stars visible through the cloudiness of the night.
“It’s beautiful, really,” but Hermione isn’t looking out the window, she’s looking at him. “Have you had your face looked at?”
“Fleur already reset my nose,” he looks back down at her. “The bruising should go away. Would hate to walk around like this forever.”
“What about your hands?”
“The least of my worries.”
“Ron, they still look bad,” Hermione groans due him brushing it off. “At least get her to look at them.”
“She has looked at them, they’re broken,” he finally says. “Or, were. She’s no master healer but she did her best.”
“So they still hurt?” she wants so badly to grab one of his hands and just hold it, like she already had.
“Yeah, a bit,” he turns on his side to face her. “It’s not that bad. You need everything—it’s not like if we run out we can just go and buy more. I don’t know how many more ingredients she has, you need them more than me.”
“You still need some,” she rolls her eyes.
“My fingers are a bit fucked and you got hit with the most painful curse known, multiple times,” he grumbles “Don’t act like you don’t need it more than me. I’ll be okay.”
She wants to scoot closer to him. She wants to be against his skin and hold his bruised face and kiss his forehead but the world is far too messed up right now for any of that. Her heart beats at an irregular pace when his eyes are connected to hers and they stay like that, for what seems forever, until he blinks and they flash down to her lips, then right back up.
“You don’t care about yourself enough,” her voice breaks halfway through, but there’s no tears, thank Merlin, yet, because she’s too focused on his eyes and how it feels like they’re illuminating the room. “You care too much about others.”
“I definitely do not care ‘too much’ about you, Hermione,” Ron considers her words for a moment before saying it. The addition of her name sends chills down her spine.
“It looks like it hurts,” her eyes rake down his cheek, purple from the blows of Greyback and Bellatrix. “Your face, that is.”
“It really doesn’t,” he shifts under the lasers of her eyes.
“Please, just put something on it, Ron,” she grumbles. Her hand reaches up to touch the side of his face, right under where she sees the bruise begin in the darkness. “It could be broken.”
He shakes his head slightly, “Fleur’s already checked. Only my nose was.”
Her hand readjusts, now cupping his face. She wants to run her thumb over her cheek bone but she’s scared it may hurt him, and it’s the last thing she wants to do when she’s technically caused all of it. Ron’s face looks so solemn, looking at her with an emotion that she can’t find the words for in her newly corrupted mind. He looks so serious, but as if he’d crack into laughter at the smallest joke. He looks like he could kill somebody, but also like he could fall into Hermione’s arms and lay there.
She wants that last thing to happen.
“How much closer can we get?” she snaps him out of whatever focus he had been in.
“Together?” he asks back, Hermione nodding. “As close as you want, I guess.”
She slides closer to him, the nightgown she was wearing scratching against the sheets. She slides closer and closer, until she also turns on her side and faces him, chest to chest. They’re nearly face to face, too but not quite since he’s so much taller than her. Hermione takes a small breath and puts her face completely against his flannel clad chest, not too sure what exactly had possessed her to do such but she was quite relieved when he just wrapped his arms around her and adjusted somehow closer.
It feels like she can’t breathe but she almost doesn’t want to. Ron’s long arms slung around her made her stomach feel nauseous, or maybe it was the medicine, but it felt good so something in her mind told her it was just because of his grasp around her.
For a moment it seems like her pain numbs and the already still world around her slows. She feels something against her forehead—it’s his lips. His lips are against her forehead and she never would have thought it had this effect on her but her chest felt weird and her stomach more nauseous than ever. When they pull away she feels his head turn and his less bruised cheek press against where his lips were.
“I—I really thought… Merlin, Hermione,” he holds her tighter. “I’m just so glad you’re alive.”
She knows, not even that deep inside her, that somehow they’ve crossed a line between being “best friends” to something more. Hermione isn’t sure what it is, but she knows it’s something and there’s no longer anything she can do about it other than let herself want—no, love—him.
Hermione cranes her neck up and looks at him, right into his blue eyes and blond lashes that she spent more time thinking about than she would ever admit. Her focus flicks down to his lips, and she has an absolutely mental thought. She wants to kiss him. She wants to press his lips to hers, just barely, and leave it like that. She doesn’t want to talk about her feelings or anything, she just wants to let him wordlessly know how she feels. She was tortured not even a full day ago, her body still aches, and her head is still pounding but her mind is now so clouded by the thoughts of kissing him that she probably would have forgotten if it weren’t for the random sharp pains she got all over her body.
She’s overcome with love. It boils in her stomach and invisibly pours from her, Ron somehow unable to see how absolutely smitten she is for him—she’s just said the words out loud and he said them but, but because she knows him she knows that he took it in a “just friends” way when she meant so much more than that. Love may not have even been the word. It was so commonly used, but she felt as if what she had with Ron was something new. Something exclusive to them that nobody else had ever felt before, something deeper and more important.
She is still staring at him and he’s still staring at her and she still wants to kiss him. His lips are slightly parted, and through the moonlight she can tell they’re the slightest bit chapped—or maybe busted, all she knows is something’s not how they normally are—and they look so inviting, like they want to be pressed against another pair.
She does it. Hermione does it. She kisses him, softly, wrapped in his long and slender arms in a bed that’s probably too short for him. It’s not fireworks and it’s not like her heart explodes inside her chest. If anything, her chest feels tighter but is filled with the smallest bit of contentment. She’s kissed Ron, but they’re still in the middle of war where they’re being hunted. If they were together together in the midst of this, he’d only become a bigger target for Death Eaters considering then his blood treachery would now be threatening to his entire blood-line, the Sacred Twenty-Eight, and whatever the hell else blood purists rambled on about that Hermione would get in the way of if he was with her and not another pureblood like himself.
“We’ll figure it out,” she says after at least two minutes’ silence where they only stared at each other. “After everything is over. When he’s dead.”
“I really don’t want to wait,” his voice cracks through her like a bolt of lightning. “Hasn’t it been long enough?”
Hermione bites back a laugh, because he is right. He is precisely right, “They’ll want you deader than they already do.”
“They’re going to try and kill us either way,” he reminds her. He’s right again. “I want to die knowing I’m yours.”
“You are mine, Ron, I promise,” Hermione leans her head back into the crook of his neck. “I don’t want to wait, either. I really don’t. It’s just the safest.”
She can hear him grumble, and he shifts a bit but keeps his arms wrapped around her, “Get some rest, you need it. Let me know if you need anything.”
“I love you,” her voice is deafening to herself, or maybe it’s the pain that runs through her randomly.
“I love you, too,” two fingers run through a tangled strand of her hair, still a bit matted from prior events. “I mean it, wake me up if you need anything.”
Hermione only closes her eyes and nods against him. She slips into her subconscious easily—it’s the quickest she’s ever gone to sleep.