A/N: This little bit is actually split, the first part, the argument is the fight that Ron references in the middle section, which is actually in Circle. The end, after that is the makeup :) Ron isn't taking Hagrid's death well here, nor is anyone else, but he gets concerned for Luna, trying to emulate Harry a bit, frankly. Here's the chapter: http://fanfiction.portkey.org/story/4941/39 Thanks as usual to Lady Starlight.
Chapter 39: Playing Politics...
*******************Gryffindor Tower************************
February 11, 1998
7:50 pm
Ron trailed Luna down from the boys stairs, his eyes wide and slightly manic as he caught up to Luna and grabbed for her arm, "Luna, please, I..."
Ron ducked, barely catching her counter as she snapped her elbow around, aiming for his head. For just an instant, her eyes softened, as she fought the urge to apologize profusely, even though the act was, by now, well-honed instinct. She shook her head slightly, and stepped away, any momentary apology swept away as she remembered a few minutes ago. "Leave me alone, Ronald," she growled and stomped out of his reach, stopping next to the exit hole, leaving him by the base of the right-hand stairs.
"Damn it, Luna," Ron snapped across the breath of the Common Room, "I just don't want you to get hurt." Luna bristled as she stared at him across the room. Several small first and second years ran for cover, disappearing up their respective stairs. "Don't you understand, I don't want to have to find you spread out in some field somewhere."
"That's not your decision, Ronald," Luna shot back, her eyes glinting. She looked down at her hand, fingering the ring there, "Perhaps you should have thought of that before you asked me to marry you." She looked around the room, the now otherwise abandoned room, "What did you want when you asked me, Ronald, a bedmate, or a partner? When you decide that, maybe then you can let me know." Luna rushed out of the portrait, and it slammed shut behind her.
Ron looked after her, slowly sliding to the stairs as he held his head in his hands for a long, long moment. With a degree of effort, he stood again and flicked his wand back up the stairs, catching after a brief pause his cloak and a large sack from which the sound of clinking glass could be heard. With a sudden determination, he swept the cloak around his shoulders and marched from the room, almost knocking down a third year as he entered the dorm.
*****************************Hogwarts**********************************
February 11, 1998.
10:00 pm.
Harry and Hermione slipped out onto the windswept roof of the Astronomy tower. Or at least it should have been so, but as they exited the thick, oak door that guarded the exit onto the battlements, they immediately felt the wards fighting their passage, and the strong, warming charms cast in a dome over the top of the tower. They shared a tired, worn look as they moved around the center tower.
Ron looked up, and saluted them with the fifth of Firewhisky he held in his tightly clenched fist. He took a sip as they slid to the stone floor opposite him, "How did you find me?" he asked after a moment.
"Luna sent us, mate," Harry replied, reaching forward and taking the bottle from his friend. He took a small sip, before handing the bottle to Hermione. She looked at it disdainfully for a long moment, before she took a swallow.
Ron shook his head, "Aw yes...she didn't throw her ring at you and tell you to make me eat it, did she?" he asked with utterly fake lightness.
"You know better than that, Ron," Hermione replied, reaching out and patting his knee lightly, "she was concerned about you."
"I didn't mean to yell," Ron muttered, taking the bottle from Hermione and taking another drink. Beyond the confines of the spell enclosing the roof of the Astronomy Tower, a light snow began to fall, the flakes adhering to the spell like a large, material dome. "I just, I dunno..."
"She's about as likely to not follow you into battle as Hermione is to me, Ron," Harry said with a slight rueful shake of his head. Hermione just nodded, this fight had long since been dropped with them, the feelings might remain, but they both knew the outcome. She looked over at Harry, content to let him talk to Ron, Harry grunted and gestured for the bottle, "She loves you, Ron, she'd do anything for you, but don't ask her that..."
"But how do you deal with it, Harry, the thought that Hermione could get hurt or killed, or?" Ron sighed; his words dangling as he carefully didn't say the fate that had been known to befall certain people when they were captured by the forces of darkness.
Hermione rested her head on Harry's shoulder, as he looked down at the bottle in his hands. "Very, very poorly, mate," Harry replied in a slightly tortured whisper after a moment, "very poorly. Of course it doesn't help that I carry around a guilt complex a league wide," he shrugged, "but I deal." He turned his head and gave Hermione a small, wan smile, "Or rather she makes me." Hermione smiled at him, brightly for an instant, before the look faded away. Smiles seemed harder to hold than frowns these days.
"I don't quite have that luxury, Harry," Ron retorted with a snort, he waved away Harry and Hermione's sudden concerned looks, "I'm not jealous, reall... alright, I am jealous a touch that you two get a private suite here," Ron admitted, wryly.
"Oh, bullocks, Ronald Weasley," Hermione replied in an utterly convincing imitation of Molly's dulcet tones, "We know bloody well that that girl spends more time in Gryffindor Tower than her own bed."
"That's just not fair," Ron whined slightly, "every woman in my life does the 'Molly' voice...does she give lessons?" he asked rhetorically and Harry shrugged. "She has to sneak in, though."
"She's of age at the end of the month," Hermione supplied, and Ron nodded, "you could? McGonagall would give you one of the married quarters, there are like twenty or thirty free in the tower, no one's used them in fifty years."
Ron took a deep breath, rolling the drink between the palms of his hands as he watched the light from an ever-lasting candle he had conjured earlier dancing in its depths. "We've talked about it, sis," Ron said softly to the only woman he was right now granting that title, she reached over and took the drink from him, took a small sip herself and set it down next to her. "Mum told me that we have to wait until we were both out of school, 'it wasn't proper'," he muttered in a perfect imitation of the Weasley matriarch, better in fact than Hermione's from a moment before. "Guess it's good that you haven't let them in on it, she'd be awfully disappointed."
"Maybe I'll go tell her then," Hermione replied flatly, "I'm already a scarlet woman anyway." Harry gave her a concerned look; he thought Molly had stopped with the aspirations on Hermione's character since Ginny had returned, partially anyway, to the fold. "She hasn't Harry, not in so many words, since we brought Ginny back, but it's still there. I can at least have a more or less civil conversation with Ginny, and we were at wand tips only a few months ago."
Ron laughed at the sudden image of Hermione standing up to Molly, which was always entertaining to the bystanders anyway, before he took a deep breath and stood, leaning his elbows on the parapet. He pushed aside a brass telescope and looked down towards the dark, cold cabin where Hagrid had once lived. "What are they doing with Fang?" Ron asked suddenly, "And Buckbeak?"
"Bill and Fleur are taking Fang, she evidently fell in love with the mutt," Harry replied as he stood up and leaned against the low wall at Ron's right as Hermione came up and did the same on his left. "I don't know what anyone has decided about Buckbeak." He glanced back towards the castle, "McGonagall hasn't decided what to do about Creatures, there may not be a class for the remainder of the year. Grubbly-Plank has refused to return here and her next most favorite candidate..." Harry shook his head, not mentioning in words that McGonagall had wanted Charlie Weasley to fill that post when Hagrid finally retired in several years.
"I always thought that Hagrid and Mad-Eye were indestructible," Ron mentioned in a tight voice. "Sure, I've seen them hurt, Merlin knows that Mad-Eye carried around the scars...but I never thought..." he reached up and ran his hands through shaggy red hair. "I always thought, somewhere in the back of my mind...every time that I came back to Hogwarts, that he'd be here."
****************************Room of Requirement************************
February 12, 1998
1:45 am
Ron sat aimlessly, staring at a fire in the brazier that the room had summoned at his request. He sat on a large, slightly decrepit couch, only a few shades darker than the flames. The rest of the room, which he had only peripherally noticed as he walked in, in an by now automatic search of his surroundings, was a cozy version of one of the tower common rooms, neutral for the most part except for the couch perhaps. He sighed to himself, and took a drink of the pumpkin juice he had switched to at midnight, when Hermione had forced him, nearly at the tip of her own, slightly drunken, wandpoint to leave the tower and go to bed.
He had listened as far as the "leave the Tower" part. He took another drink and set the goblet down on the table, where it automatically refilled, before stretching his long legs out onto the top of the table. It's not like I can sleep tonight anyway...Maybe I should do some homework or something...he shuddered slightly at the thought, and glanced down at the table to find that a chess set had appeared. He made a move, and waited as the room moved a pawn...
The door opened with a soft creak, and Ron's hand flicked to his wand set on the table next to his goblet. He let it lay as he saw who had entered and swallowed heavily. Luna stood at the door, looking across at him with tired, bloodshot eyes, her mismatched Gryffindor pajama bottoms and long Ravenclaw sweatshirt, both looked as if she had grabbed the first thing at hand. She also seemed to have forgotten her shoes, being barefoot. Ron felt his heart gain about a hundred pounds as he saw the dried tracks of tears still on her face, partially visible through her hair, which was pulled forward to half hide her face. "H...How did you find, me?" Ron asked hesitantly.
"I always know where you are, Ron," Luna replied almost silently. Ron just nodded, not daring to ask more right now. She looked around the room slowly, and swept her hair out of her eyes, with her left hand, which as Ron saw it, a glimmer of hope flushed through his veins. Light from the fire danced in the stones of her ring, the blue sapphire glowing purple in the light of the red flames.
"Would you like to sit down?" Ron waved towards the couch, the only seating in the room, and waited, hoping.
Luna looked at it, then at him, and nodded, "I think I would like that." She walked around the couch, her eyes on his the entire way before she sat, almost daintily, on the furthest end of the couch from him. Ron looked at her, and slowly sat back at the other end where he had been before.
"Luna, I..."
"Shut up, Ron," she interrupted quietly, cutting him off with a voice quite unlike her normal, detached mien. Luna looked straight ahead, watching the dancing flames, and not looking at him. She took a deep breath, "Ron...I love you more than I can say, possibly more than I should, even." She took a breath, catching Ron looking her with a slightly scared look in his eyes, "I will marry you, I'd do it today, if we could...I'll gladly bear your children, though not the seven that you claimed to want," she added absently.
"I was giving you the mickey..."
"I'm not done, Ron," Luna put in, cutting him back off. The fire popped loudly as she gathered her scattered thoughts again, "I will and have, lied, stolen...killed for you and I will do it again...but only as an equal. I am not your mother, Ron, or your sister; I will be your wife...that is a whole different litter of Kneazles. I fully expect you to want to protect me, Ron," her voice broke slightly, "Merlin knows I want to protect you, but locking me away, to wait to see if you return alive or not, will kill me." She turned on the couch to catch his eyes, "If there is a legitimate reason for me to stay behind, for a project or a different assignment, that is only as it should be, but otherwise, I'm not leaving your side...because if I have to, Ron, if you make me...I'm not coming back."
Ron swallowed heavily, knowing without her saying that it was up to him now; he looked down, away from her, as she kept watching him. Ron nodded to himself, and glanced up, "I won't promise that I won't do anything to protect you, Luna, but I'll try to not be daft too often...that's all I can do really innit?"
"Yeah, Ronnie," she whispered, "it is." Luna seemed to teleport across the length of the couch, pushing him back onto the arm of the couch as his arms automatically came up to hold her. "I missed you, Ronnie," Luna whispered as she leaned in, her lips brushing his, even as a few tears fell to his face. She pulled back slightly, looking down as her fingers started to work at the hem of his shirt. She worked her fingers under it, and started to slowly work at prying it off.
"Luna, are you sure?" Ron asked, closing his hands to keep them still. Luna didn't answer as she dropped her fingers from his shirt to unbutton his jeans. "I suppose you are, aren't you, luv?" He reached up and swept her loose locks behind her ear, before pulling her face to his.
"Please, Ronnie," Luna muttered. Ron nodded, and pulled her sweatshirt off, before leaning in to kiss her again. She moaned softly as he started to kiss down her neck, trailing down to lightly nuzzle her bare breast. Luna somehow finished unbuttoning his shirt, and pushed it off, letting her press her skin against his. Luna pushed impatiently at his jeans, making soft, annoyed noises until Ron lifted his hips enough to let her slide them off along with his boxers. She grinned happily, like a child on Christmas morning as she slowly ran her fingers along his erection, causing a low moan to issue from his throat.
Ron pushed her hand away, reluctantly, and reached up, sliding her sleep pants down and off. She smirked softly and started to grind against him, cooing softly as grabbed her hips and let her move against him. "Bloody hell, Luna," Ron whispered as he forced her to stop, panting slightly as he held her still. "Where's your wand?" She shrugged, and forced her lips to his, as she started to move again. Ron groaned, and looked around frantically, finally finding his, still fortunately on the table where it had been.
A quick flick, a muttered charm and Luna's eyes glassed over for an instant, as she groaned, and leaned against him, as the charm flitted through her nerves as the Contraceptive Spell took hold. Ron held her eyes as he hooked his thumbs in the side of her knickers, sliding them down to her knees, where she took over and kicked them the rest of the way off. Ron groaned louder as she took his hand and moved it down, holding it in hers until Ron smirked and slid one, then two fingers into her, moving easily as she dropped her head to his shoulder.
Luna tasted blood, as she bit his shoulder accidentally. Her hips started to move against his hand, moving faster and faster as she locked her lips to his. A quiet, whimpering sound came from her chest as she felt herself start to let go. Luna moved once more and crashed, bucking hard against his hand and stomach, before dropping bonelessly onto him, her head drooping onto his shoulder listlessly. Ron took a deep breath as he slowly combed her blonde locks, now at least two shades darker due to sweat, behind her shoulders and desperately tried to keep himself from following her right over the edge as well.
Luna raised her eyes to his after a long minute and wordlessly, reached behind her and grabbed him, as she raised her hips. She sat back, cooing softly as she felt him slip into her, and looked down with shimmering, half-lidded grey eyes. "I love you, Ron," she whispered, leaning down to breathe in his ear. She nipped at it, and started to rock slowly, on his lap.
"Oh, fuck," Ron whispered as he watched, mesmerized as she looked down at him, their eyes locked together. He reached up slowly, pulling her head down to his, as his hands moved, sliding down to run the pads of his thumbs over two jutting nubbins. Luna yet out a soft, yip, and started to move faster, in time with his fingers as they moved faster and faster in small, tight circles.
Luna felt herself begin to crest again, her vision going hazy as Ron slipped his fingers down to where they were joined and started to stroke her in counterpoint to her own movements. A pool of warmth stirred in her belly, boiling, and ripping out to her fingertips and toes. "RONNNIIIEEE..." Luna howled and crashed, coming suddenly against him as she paused in her movements. She closed her eyes and panted against him.
Ron held her to his chest, as he pulled himself up into a seated position with Luna still on his lap with him deep inside her. Luna slowly opened her eyes again, blinking quickly to get the sweat from her eyes as she felt Ron begin to rock them both together once again. Luna felt herself start to crest again, and looked at him with eyes even wider than normal as he gently laid her on her back and brought her legs up to lock behind his back and start to move. "F...faster, Ron," she sputtered, and he nodded, speeding up his movements to match hers as she pushed off to meet him.
Luna closed her eyes and pulled his head to the crook of her neck with both hands as Ron grunted loudly, continuously and moved against her quicker and quicker. She took a breath, and screamed incoherently as she crashed once more without warning. Such pretty lights, Luna thought dazedly, as Ron let loose in her with a shout. That's nice...so...warm. Luna let herself watch the pretty lights for another minute and pouted slightly when they went away as her orgasm receded to a pleasant continuous hum.
Ron slowly leaned up to kiss her, as he covered her like a blanket. She panted slightly, her breath long gone, as Ron slowly pulled out to the accompaniment of a loud moan of disappointment from the blonde. Ron worked his way under her on the couch, pulling Luna on top of him. He glanced around the room, looking for his wand or hers, and failing, as his was somewhere unknown and hers seemingly left behind somewhere else. Failing that, Ron concentrated a moment, and a blanket appeared on the top of the couch. He pulled it down, covering them both before wrapping his arms around Luna under the blanket.
They both remained silent for long, fragile moments as if neither of them was brave enough to speak, to ruin the moment they just had. Luna idly traced the lines of his face as their heartbeats slowed together to a normal pace, from the frenzied race they had just been in. She leaned up and kissed him, running her hands through his sodden hair. Finally, Ron broke the silence, "I love you, Luna," he said just loudly enough to carry to her ear.
She grinned slowly, and kissed his nose, "I know you do, me too." Luna yawned hugely and snuggled into his chest, sighing softly as he felt his hands come down to cup her bum. "See you in an hour, or ten," Luna muttered as she felt herself start to slide off to sleep, a warm, happy feeling filling her middle contently.
"Night, Loony," Ron whispered to her, brushing her hair back from an ear to announce the findings. The fire and candles in the room automatically dimmed as Ron slipped away as well, his heart repaired once more.