Work Text:
Hermione hunches over the desk, her eyes skimming the familiar words for what feels like the thousandth time. Victim: Brendan Hughes. Found alone in his flat. Avada Kedavra. Nothing peculiar about the scene. No witnesses.
She can’t remember the last time she was this frustrated by a case. They’ve been working on this one for over a week with absolutely no forward progress. Any leads they had were exhausted as dead ends within forty-eight hours, so she’s sent Dean and Seamus out to do yet another canvas of the victim’s neighborhood, hoping to find something, anything they might have missed. Meanwhile, she’s back at the DMLE poring over the paltry case file, looking for any insignificant detail that may offer a clue as to what happened.
Ron returns from his coffee run and flops into his usual chair beside her. He sets two paper coffee cups on her desk, the smell of the hot beverages warring with his woodsy cologne over which is the more intoxicating scent. “Anything?”
Forgoing her usual no-caffeine-after-four-pm rule, Hermione takes a large sip of the coffee. If nothing else, letting the nutty aroma hit her nostrils might help distract her from her partner-in-crime-fighting.
“No, nothing,” Hermione replies with a sigh. She flips the case file shut and hands it to him. “Maybe you can work your magic on it. See if there’s a story in there somewhere.”
The pages flutter as Ron gives a perfunctory rifle through them. “I’ve tried. But this is seriously the most boring case ever. Even the bloke’s life was boring. Maybe he Avada’d himself just for something to do.” His blue eyes flicker up at Hermione, pursing her lips in thought, and he laughs. “You’re not really going to check his own wand, are you?”
“Well, it’s about the only thing we haven’t checked,” Hermione says defensively. “You never know.”
“Hopefully Dean and Seamus will turn something up.” Ron sets the file down and Hermione reaches for it again immediately, even though it won’t tell her anything she doesn’t already know. She scans the words again, willing them to make sense in her head. Ron, now idly twirling a quill around his fingers, seems to have abandoned all effort to do any work on the case—not that he actually works here in the first place. He’s generally more helpful than this, but they also generally have more to go on.
Hermione is about to surrender for the day as well, when the sound of heavy, booted footsteps alerts her to someone approaching her desk. “Detective Granger?”
She looks up to find one of the junior Aurors approaching her desk and does a quick glance at the shiny badge pinned to the younger man’s uniform. “Yes, Auror Casey? How can I help you?”
Casey motions to the far side of the room, where a witch about her age is waiting. She’s bundled up in a heavy coat and several scarves, though the weather is mild today, and dabbing at her red-rimmed eyes with a handkerchief. “I think you’ll need to talk to this woman.”
“Auror Casey,” Hermione starts, trying to temper the irritation in her tone. It’s not his fault that she isn’t making any progress on her case, but the interruption isn’t going to help. “They’re still teaching you how to take witness statements in the Academy, I presume?”
“Of course.” The young Auror straightens his spine as if to prove his merit. “But she, uh…she says she witnessed that murder you’re working on.”
Ron, who had been tipped back in his chair staring at the ceiling, sits up abruptly, and the legs of the desk chair make a resounding clatter against the tile floor. “That’s great news!” he exclaims. “I mean, not for her, of course, but you know.”
Hermione shoots him a brief but withering look before she turns back to Casey and lowers her voice. “None of our evidence suggests that there were any witnesses to the crime. Are you sure she’s credible?”
She’s never one to turn up her nose at a lead, but Hermione also has no patience for wasting DMLE resources on false claims. For a witness to suddenly come out of the woodwork, she can’t help but be suspicious.
“We haven’t released any details to the press,” Casey replies. “So if nothing else, she knew our victim.”
Hermione sighs but shifts her gaze back to the woman and offers a reassuring smile. It’s not like she has any other work to do on this case, anyway. “Could you set up Ms…?”
“Davis,” Casey supplies. “Lizzie Davis.”
“Set her up in interrogation, please. We’ll be there in a minute.”
While Auror Casey escorts their new witness into one of the interrogation rooms, Hermione gathers up her notes and some fresh parchment to prepare for questioning. When she turns to Ron to ask if he’s ready to go, the amused look on his face stops her short. “What?”
“This is the least excited I’ve ever seen you about a lead,” he teases. “What’s wrong?”
Ron knows her entirely too well. It’s a wonder she’s able to hide anything from him anymore. “I suppose this case has just brought out my inner pessimist.”
“Inner?” he snorts, and Hermione narrows her eyes at him.
“The whole thing has been one giant dead-end,” she huffs. “My gut is just telling me this will be more of the same.” Hermione shrugs and gets to her feet. “But let’s go find out.”
The conversation begins the same way Hermione always starts her witness interviews, with basic information about the person in front of her. But she only gets one question further—how do you know the victim, still an easy one—before she’s completely thrown. Her pen hovers over the parchment, halted from writing the answer as she stares back at the woman across the table. “I beg your pardon?”
“He’s my soulmate,” Lizzie repeats, but the words don’t make any more sense the second time.
“You mean you were involved with Mr. Hughes?” Hermione clarifies. “Romantically?”
Lizzie shakes her head, her eyes wide. “Oh, no, we never met.”
Never met? How in Merlin’s name would this woman have any idea that their victim is her soulmate if they never even met? More importantly, how is she supposed to have witnessed his murder? Hermione sighs heavily. This is a waste of her time, just like she was afraid of. “Ms. Davis—”
Before she can get the words out to conclude the interview and offer her opinion on wasting law enforcement resources, Ron’s hand darts out under the table and squeezes her leg just above the knee, dumbfounding her into silence. The witness momentarily forgotten, Hermione turns her head to gape at Ron, but his attention is elsewhere.
“That’s terrible,” he says sympathetically to Lizzie, leaning forward to offer the woman a fresh handkerchief with his other hand. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“It is,” she agrees, taking the kerchief as a fresh round of sniffles surfaces. “Thank you.”
While Lizzie swipes at her teary eyes again, Ron looks pointedly at Hermione. Her shock at his unexpected touch has given way to indignation, and she merely quirks an eyebrow back at him. He’s on his own if he wants to play good cop to her bad cop.
Taking the hint—and finally removing his hand from her leg, leaving it cold—Ron turns back to their witness. “Had you been aware of your connection to Brendan for very long?”
“Brendan,” Lizzie sighs with longing, and Hermione forces herself to hold back an eye roll. “No, I don’t think I realized it until he was gone. But then I just knew.”
“You felt his absence?”
Lizzie nods, clutching a hand to her heart. Ron slides the parchment and pen out from underneath Hermione’s clenched fingers to jot down a note before continuing his questioning. He’s been with her—working with her, she corrects herself—long enough now to conduct a decent interrogation without her guidance, but it’s hard to consider it a worthwhile contribution to the case when the person they’re interviewing is clearly delusional.
“You told Auror Casey that you witnessed the murder,” Ron prods, bringing them back on topic. “Did you have plans to meet Brendan?”
“Meet?” Lizzie asks, puzzled, then repeats, “No, like I said, we never met.”
Ron shoots a questioning look at Hermione as he touches the corner of the case file. She gives him a brief nod in answer, prompting him to reveal, “He was killed in his flat.”
“Yes.” She seems neither surprised nor confused by this fact.
“So…you were there?”
“No. But I saw it.” Lizzie taps her temple with a slender finger.
It’s clear that despite Ron’s silent request to continue the interview, he’s struggling to make sense of what they’re being told. Hermione can practically hear him in her head as he turns to her again with a pleading look. A little help here?
Hermione smirks back at him. She’s your witness now.
Ron takes a deep breath and slides the parchment back to Hermione, who picks up the pen again, ready to take notes on the off chance that Lizzie says anything worth retaining. Ron folds his arms against the table, the muscles in his forearms belying a tension that isn’t evident in the patience of his tone. “Let’s start at the beginning,” he suggests softly to Lizzie. “Why don’t you take me through the last two weeks?”
They spend another half hour with Lizzie Davis despite the interview being filled with increasingly ridiculous claims, and Hermione is not at all sorry to see the lift doors close behind her. She finally lets her eyes roll skyward as she turns to head back to the office. “What an absurd waste of time,” she grumbles as they walk. “Hopefully Dean and Seamus had better luck.”
“What are you talking about?” Ron counters. “She told us who the killer is!”
Hermione stops and glares up at Ron. And here she was, thinking what a good job he had done with a very difficult witness. “You’re not serious.” Ron just blinks at her, and she folds her arms tight across her chest. “Mark Richards—whoever he is—is not a killer. And do you know how I know that? Because Lizzie Davis did not witness Brendan Hughes’s murder.”
Ron puts his hands on his hips, readying his stance for an argument. “Even if she just made up a name to give us, she knew how the victim was killed.”
“He was killed with a killing curse,” Hermione reminds him. “It’s not exactly an earth-shattering guess. And you said it yourself, this case is boring. The crime scene was boring. The details are boring. We could drag any person in here off the street, and they could tell us what happened with as much accuracy as Lizzie did.”
“But it’s not a story for her,” Ron insists. “She knew because they’re soulmates. She felt it.”
“Oh, for Merlin’s sake, of all the ridiculous—there’s no such thing as soulmates.” Hermione starts walking again, in the opposite direction of the DMLE this time with her new target being the coffee cart in the Atrium. She’s going to be awake half the night at this rate, but she needs something stronger than tea to deal with Ron’s outlandish theories.
“No such—” Ron cuts himself off, looking flabbergasted as he follows her. “How can you say that?”
“Honestly, you’ve known me for how long now?” Hermione pauses to order her usual hazelnut coffee from the witch at the cart. “You can’t be shocked by this.”
“I can and I will be,” Ron replies indignantly. He orders a triple espresso, and Hermione shudders at the thought of all that caffeine. “You really don’t believe in soulmates?”
“Oh, come on, you know I don’t believe in Divination and all that rubbish,” she says. “And soulmates? The idea that there’s just one single person out there for everyone—that your match, the person you’re meant to spend your life with, has been predetermined for you— that doesn’t sound crazy?”
“I’m just saying, we’re surrounded by magic.” Ron gestures around them—at the fountain that flows without plumbing, at the interdepartmental memos fluttering past every which way, at the coffee pot that pours itself. “Soulmates is just as crazy an idea as anything else, isn’t it?”
“This from the man who I have seen roll his eyes on multiple occasions about Rose’s mum’s research,” Hermione points out. “So, sure, I’ll give you that one. Soulmates are at least as crazy an idea as the crumple-horned—what is it?”
“Snorkack.”
“Yes, that. And just as likely to exist.”
“So, not at all, you’re saying?”
“Correct.”
They take their drinks from the cart and start back toward the DMLE. “I’ll be the first to admit that Luna has some…interesting pursuits,” Ron concedes, and Hermione snickers. “But soulmates! It’s the magic of love! How can you not believe in that?”
“Okay, let’s say they are real,” Hermione ventures. She’s not sure why she’s even entertaining this argument other than to pass the time back to the Auror offices, though she always enjoys sparring with Ron. “Do you believe everybody has one?”
Ron shrugs. “Nah.”
“Really?” That surprises her. She’s not well-versed in the finer details of Soulmate theory, but the general concept seems to lend itself to a sort of universality. Why wouldn’t everyone have a soulmate if anyone had one? “Then what’s the point?”
“Okay, it’s like Seers. Our Divination professor at Hogwarts—fuck, you would’ve hated her—she made, like, three real prophecies in her life. Real ones—they’re downstairs if you want to go check.” Hermione rolls her eyes again but motions for him to continue. “But then, she was always predicting that Harry was going to die and shit, and obviously none of those ever came true.”
Hermione laughs at the absurdity of his explanation. “I’m sorry, are you trying to explain why soulmates are real by telling me what absolute nonsense Divination is?”
“Divination is only ninety percent nonsense. That’s the point.”
“It’s a terrible point.”
“Okay.” Ron stops and snags Hermione’s elbow, pulling her around to face him. “Where do you draw the line, then? Soulmates can’t be real, but your gut has magical properties?”
“My gut was right about that interview,” Hermione argues as she shakes out of Ron’s grasp and starts walking again. “It was absolutely a waste of time.”
“We don’t know that yet. You haven’t even looked up this Mark Richards character.”
“We don’t even know he exists. Honestly, it’s more likely that Ms. Davis is our killer and she told that story to throw us off.”
“So, killer comes out of hiding and waltzes into the DMLE without a care in the world to lie to the Aurors about a crime she committed?” Ron rolls his eyes as he holds open the department door for her. “And you say my theories are ridiculous.”
“They are, and I’ll stand by that assessment forever.”
Dean and Seamus are waiting back at the office, and they both look up as Ron and Hermione enter. “What are you two arguing about now?” Dean quips.
“Do you think soulmates are real?” Ron fires back in answer.
“No,” Seamus says immediately. “But if Romilda asks, I never said that. She’s into all that Witch Weekly mumbo-jumbo.”
“‘Witch Weekly mumbo-jumbo’,” Hermione echoes, her tone gloating as she looks at Ron. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.” Ron glares back at her but sits down at Hermione’s desk to face her two partners. “Did you two find anything on the canvas?”
“Yeah, actually.” Dean opens his notebook and Hermione is immediately at attention. “We met one of our victim’s neighbors—he wasn’t home the last time we went door-knocking, so we must have missed him. Anyway, Mr. Richards said that—”
“Wait,” Hermione interrupts. Ron looks positively delighted, and it makes her insides squirm. “What is the neighbor’s name?”
“Richards,” Dean repeats. “Mark Richards.”
Hermione’s head spins. What are the chances?
“Go ahead.” Ron pokes her in the ribs, grinning annoyingly at her. “Say it’s just a coincidence.”
“It’s a common name,” she retorts instead, and Ron snorts indignantly.
“And Lizzie Davis is just a lucky guesser, I suppose.”
Seamus raises his hand as if they’re in school, and the confusion on his face matches Dean’s. “Who’s Lizzie Davis?”
“Nobody,” Hermione says firmly as Ron answers, “Our victim’s soulmate.”
Dean’s eyebrows knit together as he slowly closes his notebook again. “Maybe you two should fill us in on your afternoon first,” he suggests.
Ron, still smirking triumphantly, motions for Hermione to answer. She heaves a sigh and explains, “A woman came into the office claiming to have witnessed the murder. She told us this whole silly story about how she and Brendan were soulmates but they never met, and she saw his murder in her mind because of their ‘ethereal reciprocity’.”
Dean and Seamus both erupt in laughter, and Ron’s face falls. “You, too?” he questions, then sighs dramatically. “I’m surrounded by skeptics.”
“Okay, wait, but how does Mark Richards fit in?” Dean asks once they calm down. “Does this woman know him or something?”
“She, um—” Hermione can hardly bring herself to admit it, but it is awfully odd that their supposed witness could have pulled the name out of thin air, common or not. “She seems to think he’s our killer.”
Despite the disbelief among them, Dean and Seamus both adopt a more serious expression. “We’ll see what else we can find on him,” Dean says. “Just in case.”
“You said you talked to him today, though?” Hermione prompts. “What did you find out?”
“Apparently our victim had gotten himself into a bit of gambling trouble with our old friend Ludo,” Seamus explains. “He borrowed some Galleons from Mark to pay off his debt.”
“Let’s see if Harry will put in a word with Mr. Bagman. Maybe Ludo wasn’t the only person Brendan owed money to.” The detectives scatter at Hermione’s instructions, and Ron props his hand on his chin to look expectantly at her. “Oh, stop,” she scolds. “I’m sure the neighbor is just a coincidence.”
Ron chuckles. “Mm-hmm. Just because you can’t explain something—”
“Yet,” Hermione interrupts. “I can’t explain it yet. But there has to be a connection with Lizzie Davis.” Ron opens his mouth to speak again, but Hermione jumps ahead of him. “A real connection. One we can prove.”
“Who needs proof when it’s such a great story?”
“Well, that’s why you’re the novelist and I’m the detective.”
Hermione walks over to Dean’s desk and picks up his notebook to flip through his notes from the afternoon. Ron’s brow furrows as he thinks, turning more serious as he watches her read. “Money is always an odd motive to me.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, how does our killer expect to recover the debt from a dead person?”
“Fair point. I’m sure I’ll regret asking, but do you have a different theory?”
“Mark Richards is not the killer, but he’s involved with Lizzie Davis. Or was. Things ended badly, and so she decides to frame him for her true love’s murder.”
Hermione frowns. “And the actual killer is…?”
Ron shrugs, unbothered by the absence of this detail. “I dunno.”
“Why is Lizzie still mad at Mark about their breakup if her soulmate is someone else?”
“I dunno.”
“A brilliant theory, as always,” Hermione quips, and Ron sticks his tongue out at her.
“Have you got a better idea?” he retorts, his tone teasing.
“Sadly, no.” She replaces Dean’s notebook and grabs her coat off the back of her chair. “And on that absurd note, I think it’s time to call it a day. See you tomorrow?”
“C’mon, a magical love triangle? Now that is a classic motive.” Ron grins at her. “Just think about it.”
Hermione rolls her eyes as she heads for the Floo. “Goodnight, Ron.”
Rather than go straight home, Hermione decides to stop at Flourish and Blott’s before picking up dinner. The bookstore has an extensive section on Divination but relatively few books about soulmates. It seems like even within one of the most speculative branches of magic, the concept isn’t widely accepted. The lack of available reading material on the subject puts Hermione’s mind at ease a little. She doesn’t deal well with the unknown. She’s good with facts and evidence. And if there isn’t any evidence to prove the existence of soulmates, then she’s bolstered in her distrust of Lizzie Davis.
But as much as she doesn’t want to believe the how, there’s no denying that Lizzie knows something about their victim and the murder. It’s impossible that she was there—by her own account, she was vacationing in Tuscany during the entire week of the murder, and the Portkey logs corroborated her whereabouts—so she must have learned of Brendan Hughes’s death by some other means. Possibly even from the killer.
She’ll have to see what else they can find out about their apparently lovestruck witness. Like she said to Ron earlier, there has to be a connection. And an explanation. One that doesn’t involve ridiculous notions of the farthest-flung outlying beliefs of magic.
Until she finds it, though, Hermione is stuck with the inexplicable. She’s never believed in any of this stuff, even before her mother’s death turned her into the frosty cynic that all her friends and coworkers know. It always sounded so ridiculous, like something out of a child’s fairytale or a terrible romantic comedy on the movie channel. Then again, she never would have believed that magic was real either, if she weren’t living it. Maybe Ron is right.
Hermione scoffs at herself. Her thoughts always seem to drift back to him; maybe there’s something to that. Hand-in-hand with the idea of soulmates is the concept of fate, destiny. She had been working in the Auror department with Harry, Ron’s best friend in the world, for nearly three years before the copycat murders forced their paths to cross. Harry could have introduced them any time, but they only met by chance. What was that if not fate?
Not that she and Ron are soulmates—or even some less fantastical version of it. They haven’t even—she can’t bring herself to admit that she has anything but friendly feelings for him, and even those were a very slow thaw from the frozen facade she gave him at first. Every once in a while, she thinks that maybe he’s grappling with the same internal conflict. But if he is, he’s never acted on it. And if he had feelings for her, why wouldn’t he? Act on it, that is.
He could have—and has had, according to Witch Weekly —any woman he wants, though his appearance in the gossip pages has decreased significantly since they started working together. If he wanted more than their current partnership, Hermione would know.
Maybe that’s the problem with her lackluster love life. Soulmates are real, and she just hasn’t met hers yet. The thought releases an audible chuckle, and Hermione slides the book back into place on the shelf. How ridiculous.
Filled with a renewed sense of determination after a good night’s sleep, Hermione arrives early to the DMLE the next morning, surprised to find the office quiet. It’s not unusual for her to be in before Dean and Seamus—and definitely before Ron—but she would have thought given everything that happened yesterday, they might have wanted to get a jump on things.
Maybe they’re already out in the field. The light is on in the Head Auror’s office, so Hermione makes her way across the room to say hello and check in. Harry has his head bent over a case file—hers, it appears—but he looks up as she enters. “Morning, Hermione,” Harry greets her. “I was just about to owl you.”
“Have we had news about the Hughes case?” she asks excitedly as she sits across from him. “Did you speak to Ludo?”
“I did, but the case is closed. So you can take the day off, if you want.”
“Closed?” Hermione blinks in surprise. “How?”
“Well, Mr. Hughes’s gambling debt was a problem, but only for him. Padma’s ruling it a suicide.”
“You’re kidding.” She almost forgot about Ron’s quip yesterday afternoon suggesting just that before they met Lizzie Davis. “But it wasn’t his wand that we found at the scene.”
“Not his Ministry-registered wand,” Harry concedes. “But Padma checked the spell signature against his wand. He’s definitely the one who cast the AK.”
Harry hands her the case file, with Padma’s forensic report on top. Hermione reads over the test results as Ron’s voice sounds from down the hall, carrying easily across the empty office.
“Okay, I thought about it all night, and I’ve got a new theory. There’s not a huge dragon population in Italy, but they could definitely be using Tuscany as a stopping point along a more prolific smuggling route. Lizzie Davis doesn’t necessarily strike me as the courier type, but I can owl Charlie if you want, and—what?” Ron appears in the doorway halfway through his diatribe but stops short as he takes in Harry’s raised eyebrows.
“Looks like your first theory was spot-on,” Hermione tells him as she hands the file back to Harry to finish. “It was a suicide, after all.”
“Oh.” Ron frowns. “But what about Lizzie? And Mark Richards?”
Hermione shrugs. “I guess their illicit love triangle will have to remain a mystery.”
“But—well, can’t you get her on making false statements or something? It’s so unsatisfying when a case ends without an arrest.”
“So you admit that she was lying about being Brendan’s soulmate?” Hermione teases.
“Not about that, but she obviously didn’t witness his murder if he wasn’t murdered.”
Harry smirks. “We could, yeah. Hermione, you’re the lead on this case. Do you want to press charges on Lizzie Davis?”
“If I never see that woman again, it will be too soon.” Hermione rolls her eyes and brushes past Ron to leave the office. “Come on,” she says, tugging at his sleeve. “We can drown your disappointment in a plate of bacon and eggs.”
“Oh, now that’s not fair,” Ron complains, though he follows her without hesitation. “You know I can’t turn down breakfast.”
Once they’re settled in the Muggle diner across the street and Ron has ordered half the menu, the conversation naturally turns back to their now-closed case. “This one is going to haunt me, I just know it,” Ron says dramatically. “Lizzie Davis accused someone of murder. I feel like that deserves a little more digging. Even if there wasn’t actually a murder.”
“Do you really want me to press charges on her?” Hermione asks as she sips at her tea. “With everything she said, I’m inclined to believe she’s less a criminal mastermind and more so just mentally unstable.”
“Because you’d have to be mentally unstable to believe in soulmates?” Ron challenges.
“To be fair, I’ve known you were crazy since the day I met you, so your belief in soulmates doesn’t really move the needle.”
Ron smirks at her, and Hermione is hit with a feeling of deja vu. She likes to think she’s gotten to know Ron fairly well over the past two years, but the look he’s giving her reminds her of the early days of their partnership when he was always three steps ahead of her, and his next words confirm it. “I never said I believe in soulmates.”
“You—yes, you did.” As Hermione plays back their conversation from yesterday, though, she can’t pinpoint where he actually said it. He challenged her beliefs, and argued on behalf of Lizzie Davis’s, but not once did he admit to his own. Ron doesn’t even bother to contradict her now, just waits while she comes to the conclusion on her own. “You don’t believe in soulmates?”
“No.” Ron shrugs and reaches for the little bin of sugar packets, pulling out a handful and dumping them all into his coffee without even tasting it first.
“Then why were you arguing with me so much yesterday?” She knows the answer, of course: it’s just what they do. Finding out that they share this non-belief, though, has her more confused than ever.
“You’ve known me for how long now?” Ron shoots back, echoing Hermione’s question from yesterday. The rhythmic clinking of the spoon against the ceramic coffee mug as Ron stirs in his sugar makes Hermione grit her teeth in annoyance, but he misunderstands the gesture. “You’re not seriously mad at me, are you?” Hermione reaches across the table to still his hand, and he flashes her a sheepish grin as he sets the spoon aside. “Sorry.”
“So all the things you said yesterday—about Divination, and the ‘magic of love’, and crumple-horned snorkacks—you were just messing with me?”
“Not all of it. I believe in love.”
A snort escapes Hermione’s lips. “Has that line ever actually worked?”
“It’s not a line.”
As Ron lifts the coffee mug to his lips, Hermione searches his face for any sign that he’s once again taking the mickey, but finds none. Two years ago, when she met the presumed playboy seated across from her, she might not have believed that statement. But despite the—relatively few, compared to his reputation—women that have flitted briefly in and out of his life in that timeframe, Hermione doesn’t think she’s ever seen Ron Weasley in love.
Taking advantage of Hermione’s silence, he continues, “It’s all around you if you know where to look.” Ron tilts his head toward the counter, and Hermione turns just in time to see the waitress tuck an engagement ring back into the pocket of her apron with a fond expression before ducking back into the kitchen. At the end of the counter, an elderly couple are sharing a plate of pancakes, and Hermione smiles at them before turning back to Ron.
“There’s nothing magical about that, though.”
Ron chuckles. “If you don’t think so, you’ve never been in love.”
She hasn’t, but she’s not going to tell him that. She’s definitely not going to tell him how close she’s coming to falling in love now. “Have you?” she deflects, then immediately regrets it. She’s never given much scrutiny to Ron’s romantic pursuits, and she’s not sure how close she can get without getting burned. This current conversation feels dangerously close to the flames.
He lifts his coffee mug to his lips again, obscuring his expression so that all she can see are his intense blue irises over the rim. “Once.” He doesn’t offer any further details, and she doesn’t press. When he lowers the mug back to the table, he rotates it slowly between his hands, and Hermione finds herself entranced by the motion. “You have to at least believe in it, though, don’t you?” Ron asks, both of them staring at the dark brown liquid.
Her internal monologue from the bookstore last night floats back through her mind, mixing in with the present discussion. “In theory, I suppose.”
Ron laughs, breaking the tension of the moment. “‘In theory’,” he repeats teasingly, “listen to you.” The waitress reappears then and sets several steaming plates between them, but other than sliding a plate of toast to sit in front of Hermione, Ron ignores the food for a moment. “You know you can’t prove everything, Hermione,” he says, more serious than perhaps she’s ever seen him. “Soulmates aside, don’t you ever just feel like something is right?”
This. Us. You.
“Sometimes,” she says instead. “But I don’t always trust it.”
“You’re the smartest person I’ve ever met. Trust yourself.” Ron tucks into his breakfast and then shoots her a wink across the table. “And believe in a little bit of magic.”