J.K. Rowling is a genius. Nothing here is mine. I just enjoy playing with the other kids’ toys. No infringement is intended.
Thanks to Natalie for her beta work.
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Scenes From Shell Cottage ~ Chapter Six
Ron sat in the window seat where he and Bill had argued the morning they’d first arrived here. He glanced around the small circular landing. It was dark except for a thin line of light coming from under the bathroom door, and the light of the moon coming in through the window. When he and Harry had parted from Hermione an hour ago, she’d said she was going to finish packing and take a shower before bed. He hoped she was the one in the bathroom now, or he was going to have some explaining to do when someone else found him out here waiting.
Dean and Harry were sleeping down in the living room; the house was quiet. Nothing like waiting until the last minute, he congratulated himself. He and Harry were to meet Hermione and Griphook outside in a matter of hours to put the Gringotts plan into action. He’d had a hundred opportunities to talk to her, not to mention the botched kiss attempt on their first night here, but every time they had either been interrupted, or he’d lost his nerve at the crucial moment. Not tonight though”this was it. In fact, if Luna was the one to walk out of that bathroom, he was going to pluck up his courage and ask her to go wake Hermione because he really needed to talk to her.
Fortunately, this back-up plan proved unnecessary. He heard the click and creak of the bathroom door, saw the white line at the bottom go dark, and then she was walking barefoot the short distance to the bedroom door.
“Hermione,” he whispered, standing.
She jumped, startled. “Ron,” she breathed, meeting him half-way between her room and window. “You scared me to death. Why are you hiding in the shadows?”
“I’m not. I was waiting for you.”
“I thought you’d gone to bed. Is anything wrong?”
“No,” he said nervously, putting his hands in his pockets.
She hesitated, studying his expression. “Did you want to talk about something?”
"Uh, well," he began. He took a deep breath, in and out. “Yeah. I know it’s late.”
“It’s all right. I won't be able to sleep anyway. Suppose I'm a bit wound up about tomorrow,” she confessed. “Are you?”
“Yeah,” he answered. “That too.”
“Too?”
Surely she already knew. She'd been there when they had almost kissed, after all, and truthfully, he hadn’t consciously hidden his feelings in ages. Except maybe at dinner that night when he'd feared she would find out from Luna. Their eyes were locked, Hermione scrutinizing him as if preparing for an exam, and Ron just enjoying the view. He felt suddenly calmer, more capable.
He took her by the arm and guided her to a spot next to the window, a little hallway about the size of a kitchen table at the end of which was the door to a small library. Ron pulled that door closed, and they stood close together in the little hall. It was near enough to the window that light spilled in from the moon, illuminating them so they could see one another.
“I don’t want to wake anyone,” he explained.
“Is there going to be yelling?” she quipped, an eyebrow raised.
He laughed softly. “I hope not.”
The house was utterly peaceful. The only sounds Ron heard were Dean’s snores from down below and the waves outside. He wished for a moment he had the nerve to just kiss her right now, and skip the explanations. That would definitely suit him better. But she deserved to know everything, didn’t she? Besides, considering how Hermione loved words and answers and information and explanations, it would likely go better this way. The question was, where to begin?
“Is it something to do with Harry?” she asked.
He had not expected that. “Harry?” he said crossly, folding his arms in irritation. “Now why would you automatically assume this is something to do with Harry?”
“Because,” she said, surprised by his reaction. “Because nearly every time one of us pulls the other aside in a dark corner like this mere hours before we are about to embark on some elaborate plan such as breaking into Gringotts, it’s because we want to discuss Harry without him knowing about it,” she informed him.
“Oh.” Of course, she was right. “Right, then.” His expression softened and he dropped his arms to his sides. “No, it’s not about Harry.” He gave her a pointed look. “And it’s important you understand that”it’s not about Harry at all, okay? It’s just about you and me.”
She was taken aback. “Oh.”
Ron thought she looked suddenly worried and wished he had not said that last bit. Brilliant. He was screwing it up already and he hadn’t even started. He raked a hand through his hair, trying to think where to start.
“You’re making me nervous,” she said in a small voice.
“Sorry,” he said awkwardly.
“Just tell me.”
He looked at her. She had on the Muggle pajamas”purple plaid bottoms and a long-sleeved grey t-shirt”that she wore most nights in the tent, and no make-up. Her hair was still a bit wet from the shower and fell in ringlets around her shoulders. He remembered how incredible she had looked the night of the wedding, all done up and perfect. He had not been able to take his eyes off of her. But somehow he thought she looked even prettier right now, fresh and uncertain, looking at him with nervous expectation.
“You almost died.” The whispered words flew out of their own accord”not at all what he had wanted to say. “I mean,” he hastened to add, “at the Malfoy’s.”
She glanced down at her bare feet for a moment before responding. “I thought you said we all almost died.”
“We did, but you…” His voice was pained.
“I know.”
He saw from her expression that she understood. “Hermione, I need to tell you something. Probably I should have told you before, maybe after Dumbledore died… I don’t know. But knowing what we were up against this year, helping Harry… and honestly, knowing what you and I both have known all along… we’ve talked about it before… that there’s a good chance we won’t make it…” He shoved his hands back into his pockets again and looked away for a moment, trying to organize his thoughts. “I wanted to wait until this was all over. Then, if we both survived, I was going to tell you.”
She waited anxiously.
“But after what happened at the Malfoy’s…” His voice trailed off, and his eyes pled with her to understand without him having to say it. “As soon as we arrived here, I realized how stupid it was to wait. I’d almost lost you, and”“
But she didn’t hear anything after that. Hope came alive inside her like a match. “Wait,” she interrupted him. “Did you just say that you almost lost me? Didn’t you mean to refer to both you and Harry?”
He looked at her for a long time before answering. “No.”
Her heart began to pound so hard in her chest she thought Luna might poke her head out of their room at any second to ask what the matter was. For once she didn’t try to control what might be visible to him in her expression. “What do you mean?” her eyes implored him. “Ron. Please just tell me plainly what you want to say.”
Several moments passed in silence before he responded. “I should have asked you to the Yule Ball.”
She sucked in a breath. “What?”
“I said I should have--”
“I heard you,” she stopped him. She searched his eyes; he was deadly serious. She glanced away. Three years had passed, yet she remembered it with perfect clarity. Strange really, that a single night could hold the best and worst of memories. Looking at him now, it was hard to reconcile his sober, repentant face with the hurtful words that had come out of his mouth back then.
“Well,” she said sadly. “You sort of did, didn’t you?” The memory humiliated her, and she dropped her gaze.
His voice was low and thick with emotion. “Not properly.”
She jerked her head up, studying his face. He meant it, and it felt as if he had poured water over a memory that was dry and cracked.
“I just keep thinking if I had asked you, and you maybe had said yes… I mean, maybe you wouldn’t have, but if you had… then you wouldn’t have gone with Krum, and I wouldn’t have gone mad with jealousy and behaved so horrib--”
“Jealousy?” she breathed, surprised.
“You knew I was jealous.”
“Yes, I knew,” she said. “I just… I didn’t think you did.”
“Well. Of course I didn’t want to admit it, even to myself, really. But then you called me on it, and I could tell Harry agreed with you.”
“He did?”
“He didn’t say it, but I could… it doesn’t really matter now. What matters is how sorry I am for not asking you. Because if we had gone together… I don’t know…” He watched her, deciding whether or not to finish the thought. “Don’t you think we would have had a good time?”
It seemed to Ron like a long time before she answered.
“Yes. Yes I do.”
He smiled, his courage renewed. “And then maybe I would have plucked up the courage to kiss you good night or I don’t know… something. And then maybe we would have decided to go to Hogsmeade… I don’t know if you would have even wanted to… but if you had wanted to, and we had gone…” he trailed off, sounding sad. “Everything would have been different. Everything, Hermione. And last year I would never have… well.” He shifted uncomfortably. “I wouldn’t have been so stupid.”
Her eyes were on the floor now. Even after these many months, she still couldn’t stand to think about him with Lavender. The images it brought into her mind uncovered all her insecurities.
He tipped her chin up with his fingers and found her eyes swimming with tears. She brushed them away as he dropped his hand. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’ve played it over in my head a million times, imagining what would have happened if I’d just stopped it, if I had just gone to Slughorn’s party with you as we had planned. And that whole thing never would have happened.”
“Let’s not talk about--” she started.
“No, please”you have to listen to me,” he insisted. “I’m sorry there was even one kiss, let alone a whole relationship. If you could even call it that.”
He stopped talking for a moment and she looked up at him. Now he was the one who was looking away. His gaze was focused somewhere over her head, a guilty look on his face. “I’m not proud of this, Hermione, but I didn’t care about her at all. I didn’t feel anything other than friendship for her. And though I never told her otherwise, still… I let her think what she wanted to think.” He found her eyes again. “I don’t even know why. I think I just… I just liked the attention.”
Hermione didn’t know how she should feel. On the one hand, she was disappointed in him for using Lavender in this way. She may have gone round the bend a bit, but she seemed to have really cared about him in her way. On the other hand, Hermione couldn’t help but feel profound relief that he had not cared for someone else after all. Did that make her as guilty as he was? She found her voice. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Because I’m telling you everything now. I liked you. More than liked you, Hermione, but I didn’t think for a minute that you felt the same way. It never occurred to me that you might until I was already with Lavender and you were so upset. I could tell Harry didn’t approve, and I thought maybe it was because of you. Then of course there were the birds,” he emphasized, waiting for her smirk before he laughed softly. “That ought to have clued me in, I reckon.” A moment later, his voice was sober again. “And then you were just never around. I missed you. I suppose that’s when I really started figuring things out for good, getting my head on straight. I mean, I could handle you being mad at me”we’ve certainly done that bit before. But when you were just never there… it was bloody unbearable.”
Neither of them said anything for what felt like a long time.
“I was almost happy to be poisoned because when I woke up, you were back,” he finally said.
She almost never let herself remember that day: Neville telling her Ron had been poisoned and was still unconscious, her breathless run to the hospital wing, Harry’s white face when she arrived, and Mrs. Pomfrey refusing to let them see him. “Absolutely terrifying, that was,” she said without thinking, her voice full of the memory.
He looked at her hopefully.
Her head snapped up and she met his eyes, realizing what she had just admitted. She tried to discern from his expression if he had picked up on the whole truth. She suspected so, because he stepped an inch or two closer to her and took both her hands in his. They hung down on either side of them, fingers brushing against legs. Hermione’s breath caught in her throat at this closeness, and though she grew redder by the second, she could not have pulled her eyes from his face had she been Imperiused.
“Hermione,” he said, smiling. “The point of all this, what I’m really trying to say… is that I’ve cared about you since we were kids. Even in first and second year, there were these moments… but I didn’t understand what it was, and I certainly didn’t consider that it could be anything but a passing fancy. And then… I think it was third year,” he said, trying to remember. “Wasn’t it third year when you punched Malfoy? Because that was the moment my fate was sealed.” He grinned. “You were just brilliant, you know… not just brilliant in school and nice and a good friend, but… but you just hauled off and… you were amazing! I couldn’t figure you out, and strangely, it was cool that I couldn’t figure you out. Even though we knew each other so well, you were still sort of a mysterious girl, really.”
She grinned self-consciously.
He continued. “Well, I knew I was falling for you then. But I’d never felt anything like it before, and to be honest I really didn’t want to, especially with you, because--”
“Excuse me?” she interrupted, put out.
“Because of our friendship,” he explained. “And Harry, of course. I knew you wouldn’t feel the same way… but even if you did, what about Harry? He would feel weird, wouldn’t he? I didn’t see how that could ever work. But it didn’t matter because you didn’t feel the same anyway, I thought. So I just sort of tried to ignore it, but that really didn’t work either. So instead, it just made me, well, rather stupid about it all.”
She said nothing, but pulled a face indicating she did not disagree.
“I know,” he confessed, agreeing with her expression. “I was mean to you, and picked fights with you… I didn’t know how to handle it.” He paused, hoping she might jump in and say he hadn’t really been as bad as all that, but she made no such comment. He smiled tentatively and added, “Feel free to jump in and accept some responsibility any time.”
“Me?” she asked, surprised.
He raised an eyebrow.
She sighed. “Oh, all right then. I was mean, too. I picked fights, too.”
He grinned gloriously at this admission, and she had to laugh.
“Go on then,” she prodded, her hands warm in his.
“And then,” he said quietly, serious again, “I should have asked you to the Yule Ball.”
Her voice was a whisper. “So you said.”
His face changed, and it reminded her of everything they had been through over these past months. There was a maturity there, a sort of weary understanding that they were really too young to possess, any of them. And yet they all three carried it around in droves these days. He was quite serious, quite grown-up. “For months and months now, my mind has been clear. I know how I feel about you, Hermione, how I’ve always felt really. But it’s different now because I’m not afraid of it anymore. I see now that it’s good. It’s pure and it’s good, and it’s nothing to be afraid of or nervous about. I’m quite in love with you, and I want you to know it. I was as terrified as I’ve ever been at the Malfoy’s, and I never would have forgiven myself if I had lost you without ever telling you what you mean to me.”
Her eyes were glistening, glued to his face.
“And you know… I don’t see any dances on my immediate calendar. A day trip to Hogsmeade also seems unlikely; what with breaking into Gringotts, finding and destroying the remaining Horcruxes, and helping Harry finish off You-Know-Who all on the agenda.”
They both laughed quietly, Hermione brushing away another tear.
He continued. “I don’t know what it would even look like now”maybe not much different than how we already are. But we would know, wouldn’t we?” Then he said so simply, “I want to be with you. I want us to be together.” He hesitated, glancing at his shoes for a moment before finding her eyes again. “But that would sort of depend on how you feel.”
A warm feeling was spreading out in Hermione’s chest, filling up all the empty places. He loved her. No more wondering, no more hoping. He had said the words.
“How can you possibly not know how I feel?” she whispered.
He didn’t answer. He only hoped she would say something to confirm what he felt sure he saw on her face.
“Ron Weasley.” Her voice was thick with emotion. “Since I was thirteen,” she said, “I have only fancied one boy.” In a surge of boldness brought on by everything he’d told her, she raised an unsteady hand to his face and touched her fingers to the line of his jaw. “He just kept breaking my heart,” she finished with a little smile.
“Me?”
She laughed softly. “Of course you. Who else?”
There was a moment when they saw together the possibility of a happy ending, and in the next moment his lips were on hers. Ron released her hands and slid his own up her arms until they found her hair. Her hands met behind his back as they held each other closer. So softly, they kissed again and again. It was everything either of them had hoped or imagined and nothing they might have feared. Not one bit of awkwardness, even after so long as friends. Their kisses felt perfect, and they contained everything… every fight, all the laughter, every moment of jealousy, all the adventure, every honor-defending action, all the love, faith, and loyalty of almost seven years.
Several moments passed before Ron pulled back a couple of inches, thinking. “Wait,” he said quietly.
“What?” she whispered, beaming at him.
“That can’t be true, Hermione.”
“What can’t be true?”
“That you never fancied anyone but me.”
“Of course it’s true,” she said, a little indignant.
“You liked Krum.”
“Only as a friend. I was never interested in Viktor.”
“But I thought…”
“You were wrong. In fact, he knew I was really interested in someone else.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously,” she confirmed, tip-toeing up to kiss him again.
“And all those letters?”
“He’s never been more than a friend, and I’ve never wanted him to be more.”
“But he did.”
“What does that have to do with us?” she asked simply.
“Oh,” he said, quite happy about this new information. “Right, then.” He brushed her lips again and felt her arms tighten around his back, drawing them closer to one another. His hands could not get enough of her hair”still damp from the shower. She smelled incredible, like soap and toothpaste. Everything was perfect.
But the wheels in his head would not stop turning. “Hold it,” he said, pulling back again between kisses. His face was still close enough to feel her breath.
“Yes?” Hermione asked softly.
He screwed up his courage. “What about Harry?”
The question knocked her out of the romantic haze. “Harry?” she asked incredulously, her voice far too loud in the silent hallway.
“Shhh!”
She lowered her voice. “Harry who?” she demanded in a harsh whisper.
Ron dropped his hands, stepped back slightly, and pulled a face.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “Harry Potter? Are you mad?” she asked with an ironic little laugh. “Is this the reason its taken four years for us to have this conversation? You thought I was interested in Harry? For heaven’s sake, Ron, why would you ever think such a thing?”
“Why?” he asked, as if this were the most ridiculous question he had ever heard. “How about because he’s the Chosen One? Or the fact that he’s got to save the entire wizarding world? Or because he’s an amazing athlete?”
“Quidditch?” she interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Do be serious.”
“Because he’s smart and funny, and he’s the most popular bloke in school? Hermione,” he emphasized, trying to make her see. “Every girl at Hogwarts has tried to smuggle him a love potion at some point or other.”
“So?” She looked at him for a long moment, marveling that he still couldn’t see everything in himself that was so plain to her. “I’m not like other girls.”
“That’s right,” he said, as if this proved his point. “You’re his best friend.”
“So are you.”
“I mean that you are closer to him than any of those other girls, and you know for yourself what a great bloke Harry really is. So surely you can see why it’s hard for me to believe you are the only girl in England who hasn’t been interested in him. I’ll understand if you have been… just tell me.”
She reached up and pushed back a bit of hair above his eyes, then put her arms around his neck. “Okay, I’ll tell you: I don’t think I have ever considered Harry in that way for a single second over all these years. And honestly, Ron, I really do not want to talk about Harry Potter at a time like this.” She smiled and pulled his face down to kiss him again, more deeply this time.
His hands found her waist. “But why?” he whispered when she pulled back to look at him. “Why didn’t you?”
“Why didn’t I what?” she asked, her voice so dreamy she might have been impersonating Luna.
“Why didn’t you ever fancy Harry?”
“I don’t know,” she smiled easily, holding his eyes. “Perhaps Harry has never captured my attention that way because he so often finds himself standing next to you.”
He let this sink in, relishing the words, and in spite of all his instincts, believing them. “I love you,” he said quietly.
“I love you, too.”
“No, seriously,” he whispered, his voice earnest.
“Seriously,” she said as he moved to kiss her again. “Me, too.”