Title: The Brink
Keywords: Hermione, Ron, Harry. Harry/Hermione. Angst.
Synopsis: She'll never leave him.
Rating: PG13
Spoilers: Books 1-6
Word Count: 1, 521
Dedication: Originally written for Victoria Tonks for her birthday.
***
Snow stings her face as she hurries down the crowded streets. She tightens her scarf over her nose and bows her head. Too many people. She elbows by them, huffing impatiently. She doesn't want to be late.
Into St. Mungo's, up the staircase, around the corner, down the hall. Familiar to her by now. Healers wave as she goes past. The old man in room 400 stumbles out and lifts his cane in her direction. She smiles, touches his hand, and continues on.
Ron. Waiting for her.
They don't touch when they see each other. They never do.
"You're late."
"You're early. I'm never late."
"I'm never early."
She shrugs and fishes her needle and yarn out of her bag. "Does it matter?"
"S'pose not. Not like he's going anywhere."
She ignores the hint of bitterness in his tone. She gives him a severe look and pushes past him.
Their first kiss was almost an accident.
Sitting in the middle of the Burrow's living room, dizzy from hot cocoa, and flushed with the exertion of endless chatter and food..
It was the last truly happy Christmas they would have.
"Mistletoe," Harry said, pointing upwards, grin slow and smug. "Think it's full of Nargles."
"There are no such thing as Nargles, Harry," she said absently, warmed by his smile and the house around them. The Burrow always made her feel lazy and torpid, turning the outside world into a sort of hazy dream.
"I'm telling Luna you said that."
"Oh, honestly," Hermione said. "I'm hardly terrified by that notion."
Harry shrugged. "Kissed Cho under mistletoe, you know."
She felt a flash of irritation. "Yes, I was there. I distinctly remember. It was wet."
Harry rolled his eyes. "Because she was crying. How come no one ever remembers that part of it?"
"Oh, Harry," she said, using her best you-poor-misguided-soul voice. She knew he hated that voice.
He paid her no mind and was suddenly uncomfortably close to her. Butterflies hurtled around in her stomach, but she didn't back away. It was Harry, after all, her best friend Harry.
He kissed her. And she let him. From somewhere far away, they could still hear the Weasleys' jovial partying.
He tasted like cocoa.
Hermione kicks off her snowy boots and takes a seat by the window. Winter light streams across the floor, harsh on her eyes, but she welcomes it, tilting her head back and letting it warm her face. She arranges her knitting in front of her, humming softly.
"You're going mental, Hermione," Ron says, from the doorway. "Honest to Merlin, they should shack you up in the room next door. Might do you some good."
"How are Ginny and Neville doing?" Hermione inquires, keeping her tone polite. "Are they still trying to get pregnant?"
Ron waves her away. "They're fine, and I'm not talking about them. I'm talking about you."
"Oh," Hermione says, returning her attention to her knitting. "Do you think I should redo this line? It looks a little untidy."
Ron makes a choked noise in the back of his throat.
Their second kiss was a blur.
They were fresh off destroying another Horcrux. Christmas and the Burrow had long faded from their minds. The only thing they had were the endless weeks of searching and mind-numbing exhaustion.
Her eyes hurt to stay open. Her wrist ached from gripping her wand. Her throat itched from too little to eat.
But Harry was there-solid and hopeful and determined. And when they kissed, it was like they were reaching for their sanity. They were beating back Voldemort's shadow, creating their own warmth, their own place to hide.
She felt closer to Harry in that moment than she ever had before, like he was the one thing letting her go on, letting her still be real. It made everything else bearable.
"It's not healthy," Ron says, pacing back and forth. He folds and unfolds his arms over his chest. "Can't be bloody healthy."
Hermione sniffs. "And how are your parents?"
"They're fine!" Ron says. "They're all-bloody-fine! The only one that isn't fine is you! You're obsessed, Hermione! Spending all your time in here, waiting on something that isn't… he is gone, Hermione!"
Her knitting drops down to rest in her lap. Her voice is quiet. "No, he's not."
"It's been…" Ron waves his arm around and his face contorts, but he presses on. "Years and you have-nothing-to show for it. Nothing but your stupid elf-hats and scarves and whatever-the-hell-else. Hey, Harry, you hear that? You vanquished Voldemort only so Hermione could spend the rest of her life pining in a room over something that's never going to happen!"
"Ron-"
"Don't sush me!" he screeches. "I'm trying to do what's best-this hasn't been easy for me either, but I go on-"
"You're a drunk," Hermione whispers.
Ron stops and balls his fists. "What?"
"You're a drunk, Ron," she snaps. "You're a drunk and you're a whore and everyone knows so I don't see why you're all up my arse about it."
His eyebrow twitches and his cheeks turn red. She hopes he'll turn around and leave her alone, but he pushes on. He's not finished yet.
"At least I have a life."
"I have one too."
"This is not a life!" he spits.
There were a million and more kisses and she lost track after a while. They chased after Horcruxes. And they learned things-terrible things-spells no teenagers their age had any right knowing. But sometimes they took the time to laugh and remember who they were. She clung to those moments because it made them human.
Their last kiss was on the Battlefield-desperate and full of promises.
He told her he loved her, and tried to make a joke about last minute confessions, but it fell flat. Ron made gagging noises.
"How's about we get a round of Butterbeers at the Three Broomsticks after this is all over?" Ron offered. "Harry can pay. He stole my girlfriend."
"I was never your girlfriend."
"Semantics. You were a potential girlfriend."
"I was… Ron Weasley, you ought to take that ego down a notch or two."
"If I live through this," Harry interrupted. "I'll buy the entire wizarding world a round of Butterbeer."
"Ron, please…" Hermione says. "Please, don't."
Ron sighs and collapses into a seat next to her. He buries his face in his hands. "It's not natural, Hermione. It's not… it's not what he'd have wanted for you."
"He'll wake up one day, Ron."
"The chances-"
"I know the chance. I've heard the lectures. They've had all the best Healers from all over the world pop in and look at him. And they don't know. They don't know what he had to do to kill Voldemort. But the first thing he sees when he wakes up is going to be my face and he will know that I never gave up on him."
She considers their conversation over. Ron's fingers play with the edges of his chair and he fidgets uncomfortably.
"I'm not a drunk," he finally says. "Is that really what you think of me?"
Her smile is small. "You think I'm an obsessive idiot, Ron."
Ron nods and stares off into space. She watches his eyes glance over at where Harry is resting immobile. His is the largest room on the floor. The bed hardly seems to take up much room at all. He used to have so many visitors, at first…
"Why did you love him and not me?"
"He's not moving."
The whispers. Insistent. Growing louder. Frantic.
"Someone call a Healer."
"He's not responding."
"Heart's beating."
"He's not waking up."
"Why won't he respond?"
"This is unnatural!"
"He did it… why won't he wake up if he did it?"
"What happened? Did anyone see what happened?"
"Where are the Healers?"
She has no answer for him. So she knits. Knits. Knits. Knits. It's an easy and practiced movement. She doesn't have to think.
Sometimes she talks to him. Tells him about their friends. Ginny and Neville. Fred and George living in different flats. Ron, dear Ron, so unable to pull his life together and find direction.
Once she tried reading, but her voice broke and scratched and she had to stop.
"Can't ruddy believe he's letting himself rot away in that coma," Ron mutters. "Thought he was s'posed to be the brave one or something. Idiot."
Hermione hates that a small part of her agrees with Ron's words.
"He's… stable, but unresponsive… it's a coma…"
Coma.
She stopped listening after that.
But something built in her. Something like the way she felt when she was eleven-years-old and she watched Harry go off after the Philosopher's Stone. Or when she and Ron left Hogwarts and vowed to help him destroy the Horcruxes.
She could have left a long time ago. If she chose. But she stayed. In that moment, the Healer standing over her, the echo of the word "coma" around her, she made another promise.
She'd be with him until he woke up.
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