A/N: Yes, I know this update is very late, but I've been focusing on the other story I've been writing and so had no time to really do this one. Somehow it feels incomplete, like I've left something out, or lost something that was there in the earlier chapters. I promise that this should never happen again, please do tell what you think anyway.
Disclaimer: Getting bored of writing these, will adopt a standard one soon, for lawyers never tire of lawsuits. Until then, nope, nothing is mine except the plot and those two little kids.
*~***~*
Ron
As expected, Harry was late for their morning visit to Ron in St Mungo's the next day.
When Hermione awoke she was still on the couch, but alone and covered with a quilt from his room. The weak early morning sunlight was barely a whisper across the floor, but the clamour of the world outside had long risen. Hedwig's head was drooping as she succumbed to the call of sleep in her corner, age and the night's hunt finally catching up with her. And Crookshanks had surprisingly left the comfort of her room and soft bed to curl uncomfortably near her feet.
But she barely noticed any of this, Harry was gone.
A note lay on the end table beside her.
"Had something to take care of, meet you there. Sorry, Harry."
She crumpled it in fury and hurled it at the door.
In a strange sort of way this was rather funny. Hadn't she just the night before thought of going to visit Ron alone if she was supposed to be with Harry?
Too bad she didn't want to laugh.
Through breakfast and changing after, she operated on an absent-minded auto-pilot. She barely noticed that she had no milk in her cereal until she was halfway through it and Crookshanks nudged her leg. She was long out of toothpaste before she noticed she was still brushing her teeth. She was reaching for her towel when she realised that she had showered without soap. But what was surely the worst of all, for it rather reminded her of a childhood nightmare, she was nearly out the door before she realised she had forgotten pants.
Then she laughed, but it was mirthless.
As she went back for a pair she tried to reason that her behaviour was because of Ron. Every year when she returned from Hogwarts her guilt would drive her to distraction. What right did she and Harry have to lives of their own when one-third of their whole couldn't?
She ignored Crookshanks accusing eyes, as if he could read her mind, and the fact that the reverse of that argument had been her rationale to move on four years before.
"What would Ron think of us putting our lives on hold just because of him? Luna's already doing it and they were so close, so why can't we?"
This was not because of Harry, it was all about Ron.
Knowing that she was a bit early still, she decided to take the long way to St Mungo's. The long way being the Knight Bus where she would sit among strangers who either pretended or really didn't know who she was, where she would be leered at by the occasional drifter and finally leave feeling and no doubt, smelling, dirty. And even after all of that, when she arrived at the magical hospital Harry would still not be there.
She hoped that that "something" was of the life-threatening, dangerous to the Wizarding world variety.
Not entirely sure why, once she had gotten to St Mungo's (the journey there being just as she expected minus the leering, today she was just ignored) she sought out Ginny. She had told her the night before that she had something to do that day and therefore couldn't visit with them, but that was after her morning rounds.
And besides-Hermione was sure she didn't add-she could visit him any time she wished now that she was training in St Mungo's itself. In fact the only people who actually saw little of Ron in his immediate family were the two people he had considered his closest friends for nearly seven years.
And the youngest Weasley was already on her rounds, accompanying her Healer Instructor and two others around the hospital's wards when Hermione arrived. Hermione just spotted her in the lifts on her way to another floor, and she could only wave and smile before the doors shut in her face. That was probably the last time she would see her all day.
There went that idea.
Now resigned to her fate, Hermione walked to the lifts, waited for another to arrive and took it straight up to the Spell Damage Ward. Ron's room was at the end of the hall on the floor, a private one that had been heavily decorated with objects from his room, pictures of a daughter he never knew and especially chosen for the fact that every morning he would be greeted by the sunrise. It had been Harry's idea, so that when he woke up he would already be oriented to the flat.
Harry always said "when", it never crossed his mind in the slightest that that "when" might never come… or that Ron would want to go with Luna, but that was beside the point.
Four years ago, in the last moments of the Second War, Ron walked into a trap that was intended for Harry. It had been set earlier by the Death Eaters to capture and bring him to Voldemort, but Harry had broached Voldemort another way.
She tried not to think of it as she got to his door and stepped into the room. But the sight of him lying there still, barely breathing, unmoving, his usually bright red hair now limp and dull, his once handsome features sunken, every visible muscle flaccid and his skin deathly pale… it brought it back as vividly as the day as it had happened.
"C'mon! We have to get to Harry! The Dark Mark's gone! Look, it's gone from their arms, Harry's won!"
"Ron! Ron, wait! Stop! We don't-we shouldn't… he doesn't want us to come… he'll come to us-"
"Hermione, you know full well he told you that nonsense to keep you away in case anything went wrong! The mark's gone, Voldemort's gone! Let's go!"
"Ron, I don't think-"
Without warning, in the midst of her protest he simply fell. And four years later he still hadn't woken up.
A subsequent interrogation of the Death Eaters who had set up the trap revealed why. Poison, delivered by a dart that struck him directly in the neck, and the only reason he hadn't died was because the dosage wasn't strong enough. The intention had been to incapacitate Harry, not kill him… and instead they got Ron.
Surprisingly, Harry hadn't blamed himself for it happening. She had been absolutely convinced he would, had been preparing for it, waiting for it, but it never came. Instead his depression found ground in the number who had died before they managed to reach Voldemort. And it was officially in their name that he signed up with the Aurors.
Of course, if she thought about it, maybe he had blamed himself.
It wasn't long after that that they broke up, his excuse being that he didn't want his career to get in the way of her dreams. That he didn't want her to be worrying about him when she should have been planning her class schedules and tests (the same tests he teased her about). And he gave her no choice in the matter when he began to exclude her name in interviews, said a little too much to her father one night at dinner (which got her nineteen year old self banned from the Wizarding world forever) and did his very best to avoid her.
She was too weak then, too drained from it all to put up much of a fight.
And so it had come to this: Ron comatose and she and Harry once more "very best friends" who just happened to share a flat. It was only in the name of civility that she pretended it never happened and all was well… but she couldn't pretend about Ron.
Walking to his bed now, Hermione stopped, as she always did, just away from him and commanded, softly, "Ron… wake up! Wake up, Ron! It's a beautiful day outside, the Chudley Cannons are still playing Quidditch, Gemma's in preschool and I think Ginny's got a new boyfriend, so you get up! Get up!"
No response.
But she would have been greatly surprised if she had gotten one, all the Healers agreed that he would eventually wake up on his own. As far as she could see though, that was not happening.
Her ritual done, Hermione drew up a chair and sat down. Closer now she could hear his breathing, low, even, hypnotic, hear the rhythmic beat of his heart, and just catch the last traces of his scent: dirt, old socks and broomstick polish. It was an almost completely stereotypically male combination, where, when he was awake, one of the three main would be replaced by his last meal or the old wood of his Wizard's Chess board. Now though, it never changed, no matter how many times he was cleaned and swathed in Mrs Weasley's knitting or covered in something Gemma made. That was good; Hermione knew only too well now that not all change was for the best.
Curiously, she was suddenly assaulted by the memory of Harry's scent, overwhelming her as she lay in his arms on the couch….
She sat silently staring at him like this for a while, and then began, "So here's what I did this year. And unlike Harry I know you're going to sit around and listen to the whole thing."
She was halfway through her recount of a particularly humorous incident involving her First Years, where a rather Neville-like boy got his hair turned green, when she noticed him.
He had been standing in the doorway, dressed in the Aurors' trademark black work robes (which explained where he had been, "Oh Harry!") listening intently. She only noticed him when he shifted, apparently so that he could hear her better, but the door got away from him and he stumbled into the room. Or rather, when somewhere in the back of her mind she realised that Ron most certainly did not go "Meep!"
She stopped mid-sentence and turned at once. Still bowed slightly, he immediately straightened and grinned sheepishly at her. She did not return it.
"Ginny told me you were up here," he explained, grin reduced to a half-smile, "When I heard you telling your story I didn't want to disturb you."
"If you were a little earlier you could have heard it all from the beginning," she said.
"Had something to do," he replied, echoing his note. "Besides, you've been away all year, you needed the extra alone time."
He walked closer to the bed, took the opposite chair where the sunlight gilded his hair gold and white, and for a time just sat staring at Ron. Then he reached up, took his hand and gently squeezed. It was an action he would not have taken were he awake, but she had her ritual, and he had his.
She waited until he let him go again, to ask quietly, "Are you going to tell me where you were?"
She stood to fix Ron's sheet a little higher up his chest, though he never moved it always did.
"Tonight, at the pub," he replied.
"You're actually going to make it there this time?" she asked, but nothing in her tone indicated real interest. After all, she didn't know they were going to the pub that evening, and on that alone she definitely wasn't going. And what was his fascination, his insistence that they go to the pub anyway? He knew she didn't really like it.
He inhaled sharply, stung, and replied, "I guess I deserved that… but yes, I'm going to make it this time, and we're not going to leave until we're both completely pissed. Do you know I haven't had a drop of firewhiskey since… the night before I met Voldemort?"
Hermione looked down at her hands in her lap, "Yes… it was the last time I had any too…."
And why should she drink any more, by the next afternoon Ron was on his way to St Mungo's in a stretcher.
Harry was in a teasing mood though, "Don't make it sound so bad, we had fun."
"No, it wasn't," she replied, still in that depressingly quiet tone, "My head hurt all day, it was a wonder I hadn't-"
"I wouldn't have let it happen," Harry cut her off seriously, needlessly. "You knew then that if anything happened to you I would have probably died."
She offered him a smile, and asked, "And who would have dealt with Voldemort?"
He did not smile when he replied, "You… you were the light in my world of darkness, my reason for breathing, living… if you had gone… I wouldn't have cared…."
For a time she said nothing, just stared at him, and then finally she asked, "When did that change?"
She was about to give him up as unable to find an answer when he replied, "Who says it did?"
*~*~*
When they finally left Ron, it was more than an hour and a half later. Like with a Muggle coma victim, the Healers advocated that it was good for Ron to hear familiar voices, if not speaking to him, at least speaking to each other. But Hermione and Harry had not been speaking at all.
After Harry's declaration of sorts, there was nothing left to say.
Or at least, Hermione could find nothing more to say. In one sentence he had deflated every argument she could have ever dreamed of coming up with, and set her mind spinning.
But the thoughts raging in her head were mostly, and surprisingly, angry.
What right did he have to do this to her? What right did he have to say something like that over Ron's hospital bed? What right did he have to try to sweep back into her life as if nothing had happened?
Okay, they had been living together for the past two years, and she had not made much of a fuss after they broke up the first time, but that didn't give him a right to think that all was well.
It was not okay for him to still care about her after he forced her away. It was not okay for him to shatter the carefully built shield she had tried to put around her heart. It was not okay for him to remind her of a time when his very presence used to fill her with a contentment out of place in their world of sadness. It was not okay, it was just not okay that he reminded her of how very much she loved him with just one sentence.
They took the Floo Network out of the hospital. Once their morning visit with Ron was over they were invited to dinner with the Weasleys at the Burrow.
Ginny had left before they left Ron, and was not there when they arrived. Harry, apparently unperturbed and ignorant of the effect his statement was having on her, whispered after they stepped out of the fireplace into the deserted living room, "It may not be a good idea to mention her absence in present company… she's with Malfoy."
Hermione stopped and turned to him astonished, "Malfoy? Draco Malfoy?"
All at once every thought of his earlier announcement flew out of her head.
He nodded, "The one and only…. His regular Healer is out of town for the while, so Ginny, being her friend, decided to take her place. She swore she didn't know that her friend worked for Malfoy at the time, but…. I keep telling them to look on the bright side though; at least Malfoy's badly off. I wish it was worse than Ron but this will have to do."
Hermione did not answer, just sighed, thinking of how much she had become distanced from the family of their best friend, and followed him out of the house.
Lunch was outside today, in the backyard where Bill, Fleur, the twins, their girlfriends, Luna and Mr and Mrs Weasley were already sitting down to eat. As Harry and Hermione came through the door they looked up and immediately greeted them with smiles. The only children present, Avril, and Gemma, who had inherited her father's bright red hair, which Luna had today pulled into reluctant pigtails, and showed her excitement, also like him, entirely in her ice blue eyes, actually hopped off the bench and ran to them. Both girls squealed delightedly, "Good day, good day Harry!"
Harry swept them up in his arms immediately, kissed their heads and said, "Good day to you two, too! Um… good day everyone, what's for lunch?"
Hermione quietly, and somewhat nervously, murmured beside him, "Good day."
Mrs Weasley smiled, "Good day, Harry, Hermione… come on and eat. Put those children down Harry, they'll ruin your clothes, they've been having quite a day playing in the mud."
"I don't mind," replied Harry, then he turned to Hermione and asked, "Do you mind?"
He pushed the two giggling girls in his arms towards her, she smiled and made a face at them, and shook her head, "No, I don't mind."
"Put them down anyway," insisted Mrs Weasley, "Your lunch is getting cold."
All three groaned and Harry set the girls down again, and as they ran off said, "Well then, at least this one is clean."
Before Hermione had time to think about what he meant, he turned to her, swung her up into his arms and carried her to the table. And he pointedly ignored her protesting squeals and struggles until he set her down at the bench, sat himself, and then turned to Mrs Weasley again, "What's for lunch?"
Hermione looked at him solidly shocked for a full minute, before he placed a ridiculously full plate before her and commanded, "Eat. You've gotten far too thin; I'm going to have a talk with Dobby about what they're serving at Hogwarts nowadays."
She looked to the others for help, but they were just the same, all cheerful and busily talking to Harry. It was as if she wasn't there… and then she was, as if she had never left.
Fred floated a glass of juice her way, Luna drew her eyes with a smile and tried to get Gemma to say her name, Mrs Weasley broke away from conversation with Harry to address her… it was almost as if Ron was still there sitting with them.
But he wasn't, and might never be again.
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