Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.
Author's Note: Thanks to all who read and reviewed the first chapter. Here's the second one, with more angst and an explanation as to what happened between Ron and Hermione.
Brave Enough
Chapter 2
Hermione ran blindly, ran desperately, as if she could somehow outrun her thoughts and her emotions, outrun Harry's words that seemed to echo in her mind.
You've just cut yourself off from anything resembling emotions… you're afraid… One failure can't dictate the rest of your life… Feeble excuses… Coward… You're afraid, you're afraid, you're afraid…
How dare he call her a coward? How dare he tell her what she could and couldn't do? What right did he have to say such things to her? He had no right to-
Her furious thoughts were abruptly cut off by memories of other words, words which she hadn't really taken in or reacted to at the time, in her haze of anger and hurt. I know you… I'm your best friend; I'll always be your best friend… I want you to be happy…
And the one thing that stood out among all the rest, the one thing that lingered in her mind and effectively doused her anger: I'm in love with you!
She stopped short, her feet ceasing their motion. He did have the right to say such things; it was a right she had given him, in a sense-because he was her best friend, because he'd always been her best friend, because he cared… Because he loved her…
He was in love with her; he loved her… She'd never imagined-could hardly believe-but oddly, what convinced her more than anything else could have was the way he'd said it, angrily, the words bursting from him as if he'd been keeping them inside for ages and simply could not hold them back any longer. Strange how his very anger was more convincing than any gentleness could have been.
Harry was in love with her-and that scared her more than anything else in the world.
She was a coward; she was afraid, terrified…
She Apparated back to the solitude of her flat and collapsed onto the couch, as she faced the truth.
And the truth was that Harry was right.
That was why she'd fled. That was why she'd been so angry at him, more furious than she could ever remember being with Harry.
Because in spite of her resentment, in some small part of her, unwilling to admit it as she was, she had known that he was right. It had been the sting of truth in his words that had rankled so much.
She had distanced herself from her friends. At first, it had simply been the easiest thing to do, to avoid the awkwardness of being with Ron in the immediate aftermath of their divorce and the resulting awkwardness in her interactions with the rest of his family. But as Harry had pointed out, the awkwardness hadn't lasted forever. The Weasleys had gotten over their disappointment and their anger on Ron's behalf; her friendship with Ron had, somewhat, resumed its normal footing-at least as long as they were with Harry or other people. In the rare occasions when she and Ron found themselves alone, it was still awkward, even painful.
But it hadn't only been a desire to avoid awkwardness. She had closed herself off from emotions, as much as possible; she'd avoided dates or even the possibility of romance with as much assiduity as Ron would have shown for avoiding another visit to Aragog and all his children.
She'd told herself-and everyone else-that she was busy, that she didn't have time, that she simply wasn't interested and she'd believed it. It had been true, for the most part; she was busy, had made herself be busy really. From the time things had started getting difficult with Ron, even before they had split up, she had spent more time working, put in longer hours, simply because it was easier than facing Ron's silences or Ron's irritation or, worst of all, Ron's hurt and his reproaches. When being with Ron, talking to Ron, had become an exercise in self-restraint or endurance, she had turned to work, to the one aspect of her life which she was in control over. She had retreated to St. Mungo's as the place where she knew what needed to be done and where things followed rules and structures which she understood. The rationality of her research had been her solace, her haven, when it had felt like the rest of her life was spinning out of her control.
She had been rewarded by becoming the youngest Head of a Department at St. Mungo's in its history, with greater responsibilities and more freedom in her duties, and she'd been proud of it. She had clung to that pride in her professional achievements, she realized with a clarity she hadn't had before, to ignore and mask the pain of her failure in her marriage.
Her marriage… She had tried not to think of it, tried to push it to the back of her mind-but it was still there, lurking in the shadows of her mind. The memory of it was still painful; it was a wound that hadn't healed, not even in the nearly four years since the divorce.
She'd told herself she'd moved on, that she was happy as she was, that all she needed in her life was her work and her friends and she'd believed it, mostly because she wanted to. She had felt safe, comfortable, in her belief-until tonight.
Harry had ripped the blinders from her eyes, gotten past the barriers she'd put up, and made the wall she'd built up around her emotions and the painful thoughts of her marriage and its failure come crashing down around her. With the clarity of hindsight, without the hurt and anger fogging her mind, she knew that was why he'd set out to goad her the way he had; he'd wanted to make her control slip and, knowing her as he did, he knew exactly how to get past her defenses.
And now, her comforting delusions exposed for what they were, she was left alone-alone with all her crushing loneliness and her sorrow and her regrets and her guilt.
For a moment, she thought she could hate Harry for having done this to her. She had been perfectly content until he had made her see the stark truth of her life-why couldn't he have just let her alone?
But her spurt of anger was over almost as soon as it had begun. She couldn't blame him--- but oh, it hurt.
She felt as raw and vulnerable as if her skin had been peeled away, leaving her with no protection, no defenses left, and all the painful memories from the slow crumbling of her marriage came rushing into her mind.
And that was when she began to cry.
She curled up on the couch, burying her face in a cushion, and cried all the tears over the divorce which she hadn't allowed herself to cry until now. She cried for all the hurt which she and Ron had both felt; she cried for the disillusionment; she cried for all her lost dreams of a happily-ever-after; she cried for the loss of love. She cried for herself, for her loneliness and for her failure and her abject terror at the thought of risking her heart again.
She cried until she felt hollowed out and empty, cried until she could cry no more.
Afterwards, her throat hurt, her eyes were puffy, and she had a pounding headache-but she also felt cleansed, in some odd way, as if her tears had somehow expelled the poison from her memories, from her failure.
And she knew what she needed to do.
Ron stared and only just managed to keep his jaw from falling open when he opened the door of his flat to see Hermione.
He felt uneasiness curl through him as awkwardness settled over them. She had never, in all the time since their divorce, come to see him at his flat alone. She certainly didn't seek out his company. Tonight, she was doing both.
Their friendship had been mended (thanks, in large part, to Harry's insistence), but not completely; it had been mended enough to allow them to spend time with each other, as long as there were other people around to provide a buffer of sorts. But it had been a temporary measure, as if a bandage had been patched over a gaping wound, just enough to still the bleeding but not closing the wound entirely.
And when they were together, they avoided talking about any subject that verged on the personal, tried very hard to act as if the years of their marriage had never happened. Ron had the unsettling feeling that that embargo on personal subjects was over now and couldn't decide if he were more apprehensive or relieved.
"Er- hello," he finally settled for saying, rather lamely, as he stepped back to allow her inside.
"What went wrong between us?" she asked without preamble.
Ron almost flinched at the directness of the question. "What?"
"I just realized that we never really talked about why; we agreed that it was the only thing to do, the right thing to do, but we never really talked about the reasons."
He sighed as he sat down across from her. "I think… at the time, it hurt too much to talk about it."
"Yeah," she agreed softly. "But I need to know now, what went wrong?"
"Nothing-everything-I don't know how to put it."
"It was-wasn't it me? It was my fault… I know I spent a lot of time at work and you… didn't like that," she finished, avoiding the repetition of what he had yelled at her one day towards the end. "You're always working; that's all you ever do, all you ever think about! You love your work more than you love me so why don't you just marry it! Go off and shag that Russell bloke more since clearly you'd rather spend time with him than with me!" It was the first time that Ron had put his jealousy of her then-partner (before she'd been promoted), Albert Russell, into words, the first time he had thrown the accusation of infidelity in her face. The accusation had stung, stabbed at her heart with its implication of distrust, and infuriated her with the utter injustice of it. Even now, thinking of it, Hermione couldn't help but flinch at the memory of those words. Of all the arguments-and towards the end, there had been many of them-that one had hurt the most.
Ron shifted, before he met her gaze and she knew that he was remembering that fight as well. "I'm sorry," he blurted out. "I didn't mean it; I know you'd never-I didn't even think it at the time but I was angry and it just came out. I'm sorry; I should never have said that."
She tried to smile but didn't manage it. "I thought you trusted me."
"I did! I do trust you but-but I never said I wasn't an idiot when I'm angry about something. And it was my fault too," Ron admitted candidly. "I always knew how much you loved your work; it was my fault for wanting you to be different, wanting to change you into something you weren't."
Hermione felt something soften inside her, an old wound from the thought that he distrusted her finally healing (he did trust her; he had trusted her; he hadn't really thought that she had cheated on him…), and his confession of his fault prompted her to concede her own fault as well. "I should have tried harder, should have made more time for you. And if I ever made you think that work was more important to me than you were, I'm sorry. It wasn't true, you know; it was never true."
He sighed. "I knew that but knowing wasn't the same as feeling it. I should have been more understanding, too. I was expecting too much, asking too much, and it wasn't fair to you. It wasn't your fault-not really. I--"
"Yes, it was," she interrupted. "I wasn't fair to you either. I--"
"Ok, then if it was your fault, it was my fault too. It was both our faults-can we agree on that, at least?" he asked, the hint of a smile in his voice and on his lips for the first time.
"Yeah, I suppose so," she conceded with feigned reluctance, the ghost of a smile curving her own lips.
They were silent for a few minutes but this time, for the first time in years, the silence was a comfortable one.
It was finally broken by her shuddering sigh. "I did love you, you know," she said very quietly.
"I know. Me too."
"I guess it really is true, that love isn't enough."
"Yeah."
"I'm sorry, Ron, for everything. Forgive me?"
He met her eyes and then, after a moment, reached over and took her hand in his, giving it a brief, friendly squeeze. "If you'll forgive me."
She managed a small smile. "It's a deal."
Hermione looked at her hand in Ron's and felt a small, hard knot that had been in her chest for years, loosen and vanish, as she finally forgave herself for her part in the divorce.
She had not been faultless but neither had he. They had both said and done things they shouldn't have, or had not said and not done things they should have. But now, finally, she could forgive herself and begin to heal.
In the end, Hermione thought, they had simply stopped making each other happy. She and Ron had loved each other; she didn't doubt that-but it wasn't enough. They had loved each other, but in the end, they couldn't live together and be happy. It had been easier to be in a relationship when they were fighting a war, when the more important things had been so clear and so ever-present. And in some way, she couldn't help but think that maybe, after all, they had always been meant to end. Somehow, looking back on it now with the clarity of the intervening years, she could see and understand that all the petty bickering and the silences, interspersed with the more heated and increasingly hurtful arguments had almost been the pattern of their entire relationship. Not because they didn't care about each other-sometimes it was because they cared-but in the end, not all the love in the world could overcome their differences. All the love and all their efforts-and they had tried-couldn't bridge the gap between them.
They had both been at fault in different ways-but in another way, somehow, neither of them had been at fault. And for the first time, Hermione admitted that to herself.
She looked up at Ron and met his eyes, seeing the regret and the affection in them, the frank, steady affection of a best friend. He had moved on, had found what he needed in Luna, surprisingly enough (or not). "I am happy for you and Luna, you know," she told him, quietly, for the first time.
His eyes softened, as they tended to whenever Luna's name was mentioned. "I know you are."
She stood up and he stood up with her, giving her hand a last pressure before releasing it.
She smiled at him as she paused before the door. "I am glad; I want my best friend to be happy."
"Still best friends, then?"
She met his eyes. "Always." And for the first time in more than four years, she moved to hug him, a hug which he returned, and she knew that it was true. She and Ron were best friends again, still, finally. The lingering poison in the memories had been expelled, allowing it to heal, allowing their friendship to return to something like what it had been, before it had been complicated and almost destroyed by their marriage and divorce and all the hurt that they had caused each other.
They had hurt each other but they had also forgiven-and more importantly, she had finally learned to forgive herself.
It was time to move on.
~*~
"Good morning, Hermione."
Hermione looked up from her desk to see Vince Williamson smiling at her from the doorway of her office. She returned his smile even as she felt herself color a little from the memory of his asking her out. ("Hermione," he'd said, stopping her as she turned to leave his cubicle, "would you care to have dinner with me sometime after work?" The words had come out in something of a rush, before he'd continued on a little less fluently, "I like you. I find you attractive and I'd like to get to know you better.") She fought a blush at the memory. "Morning, Vince."
"I've got a patient coming in who took a Headache Potion while he was just recovering from a bout of the Gillswater Fever. The first time I saw him, it didn't seem to be an unusual case, just another of those bad reactions which people sometimes get to that combination but now, he's exhibiting some unusual symptoms that are troubling me. I was wondering if you could take a look at him too, let me know what you think. In your hours of spare time," he added with a teasing smile.
"I'll make time to fit him in; it's not a problem. What time will he get here?"
"His appointment's at 11."
"Then I'll stop by a little after that and then get back to you."
"Thanks, Hermione."
Vince grinned at her and Hermione couldn't help but think that he really was a handsome man with his brown hair and blue-gray eyes. His expression tended to look serious to the point of melancholy, in repose, but when he smiled, his entire expression lightened, lending charm to his otherwise rather ordinary features. More importantly, he was smart and good-humored and rather good at making her smile. He'd become one of her closest friends at work but she'd never thought that he might want more than simply friendship from her.
He didn't say anything about his asking her out, was treating her with the same ease and friendliness as always, but something in his smile told her that he was still interested, still attracted, and would welcome a change of mind on her part. Something in his smile made her flush-I find you attractive-and feel a small thrill of feminine pleasure at knowing that a man, and a handsome man at that, found her attractive.
For a fleeting moment, as she looked at him, she was tempted to say something, that she had changed her mind, that she would go out with him. She did like him, suspected that they could have a good time together…
But even as she wondered, she saw another face in her mind's eye, remembered another voice. I'm in love with you. I love you…
She jerked her mind back to the present to see Vince giving her an odd look. "Hermione?"
She managed a smile. "Sorry; I was thinking about my first patient this morning. I'll come by a little after 11 to take a look at your case."
"Thanks. I'll see you later, then." Vince gave her a last smile and a small wave before he strode down the hallway, leaving Hermione to try to get her thoughts in order.
She could not think about her personal life now; she had to focus on her work, give her patients her full attention. She couldn't think about the mess she'd made and the choice she needed to make-not now, not until tonight. Tonight, when she would make a point of leaving St. Mungo's by dinner time, rather than stay until 9 or 10 at night, as she tended to do. She had been hiding behind her work for too long; she could not, would not, hide any longer.
You have to choose; you have to face it. You can't hide or run from the possibility of romance anymore.
Harry's flat statement came to her mind again, as it had intermittently throughout the day.
She had to admit the truth; she had to choose.
And the truth was that she was lonely. She had tried to deny it, had ignored it as if ignoring the hollow feeling in her chest sometimes would make it go away-but she was lonely. It was another reason why it had been easier to avoid going out much, avoid visiting the Weasleys, with Ron there as a poignant reminder of what she'd lost and what she didn't have, what she thought she would never have… It was easier to ignore her loneliness when she didn't have to see happy couples. It was easier to forget her loneliness when she buried herself in work.
But no more. She didn't want to be a coward anymore; she couldn't run from it or deny it any longer.
She was lonely and she did want to be in a relationship, be happy with someone. She missed having someone in her life. It wasn't so much the physical part, although she admitted now that she missed that too, missed being kissed by someone, missed the comfort and the pleasure of being held by someone, missed the pleasure of being desired…
Without conscious thought, her fingers came up to touch her lips, remembering Harry's kiss-allowed herself to remember it without the flare of panic that had made her break away--that one heady moment when she'd forgotten everything but the feeling of his lips on hers…
But it wasn't the physical part of a relationship she missed the most. She missed coming home to someone, missed having someone to share her life with, all the silly or serious, mundane or important, happenings in her life.
Vince fancied her; he was a good friend and she knew they got along well, suspected she probably could learn to care for him. With him, she could risk their working relationship and her heart, too. She was relatively sure she could be happy with him without being overwhelmed by the feeling.
Unlike Harry. The thought of being in a relationship with him, of letting herself love him-just knowing that he was in love with her-terrified her.
Harry was… Harry… He was her best friend, the one person who had always been her best friend, in spite of everything or perhaps because of everything they'd been through; he was the one person who had always been there for her. When she and Ron had started having troubles, Harry had been the one she turned to; when she and Ron had finally split up, Harry had been the one to hold her as she cried, had told her she was strong, that everything would be fine. Harry was the person who had kept her sane in the first bleak months after her divorce, who had forced her to take a break from her work, who had made her laugh and feel happy. She needed him in her life, needed him as her best friend, didn't know what she would do without him.
And if they started dating, let their relationship change to become more than the platonic friendship they had always had but then it didn't work out-if she failed again… she didn't know how she would bear it.
She had survived breaking up with Ron but she somehow felt that she wouldn't get over breaking up with Harry.
Her friendship with Harry was the most important, most precious, friendship of her life-could she risk ruining it, losing it?
What if she failed again…
The cautious, rational side of her mind told her to deny it, to stay in the safe familiarity and comfort of their current friendship.
It was no crime to want to be safe. She'd already been hurt enough, had already nearly lost one best friend. She couldn't risk losing her friendship with Harry; she couldn't…
Risking her heart was one thing-but Harry, saying yes to him now, getting involved with him on this level, that was risking her soul, in some way-and she could not do it.
~To be continued…~