Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.
Author's Note: Happy New Year, everyone, and I hope you all have a very happy, harmonious 2008! Thanks for reading and reviewing; I hope the Epilogue is worth the wait.
Brave Enough
Epilogue
Perhaps, it should have been an odd day, a day of some awkwardness with some lingering ghosts from long-ago hurts and long-ago mistakes. And yet-it was not.
It was, purely and simply, a day of joy and a day of friendship. It was a day of love, as Ron and a small number of their nearest and dearest friends watched Harry and Hermione be married.
Ron smiled as he watched Hermione lean over to whisper something to Harry and saw Harry smile slightly in response and murmur a few words. And even though he had seen Harry and Hermione in private conversation countless times over the years, he was struck, yet again, by how very… together… they looked. It wasn't something that had anything to do with their sitting next to each other; they weren't even touching overtly, although Ron suspected that their hands were linked under the table. It was something about the way their eyes followed each other, about the way they could-and did-communicate without words, with a look here, a smile there, a nod, a shake of the head.
It was why, even though he had probably been the most surprised bloke in England when they had told him about their new relationship, his surprise had been short-lived and, after a while, in spite of everything, he'd begun to feel as if he'd always known it would happen.
Harry and Hermione were simply right together, in a way that he and Hermione had never been-and it had been long enough now and he was secure enough in his love for Luna and his happiness with her, that he could acknowledge that without a pang.
He had loved Hermione. From the first, almost idle fancy of a boy to the stronger first love of a young man, she had been that girl for him. And he accepted now that Hermione would always own some small corner of his heart, as the first girl he had ever loved, the ex-wife he had once loved so much and had hurt so badly.
But Ron also knew, with the wisdom of years and the clarity of hindsight and distance, that love was not enough; it had not been enough for him and Hermione. They were too different, had expected and wanted different things from their marriage.
He was accustomed to his parents and the way his mother's life had completely revolved around his father, their home, and their family. And he had, almost subconsciously, expected just that from his own marriage. It had taken years and lots of heartache before he had accepted that Hermione could simply not be that sort of wife.
In the end, he had had to accept the fact that he and Hermione were happier when they were not trying so hard to make a marriage work, were happier being best friends.
And Harry and Hermione were happier together, simply fit together until there were times when even Ron found it hard to believe that they hadn't always been together.
It wasn't that they were very physically demonstrative with each other; Harry, especially, was an intensely private person (understandable enough, given his fame) and not at all given to public displays of affection.
It was in the little things, in the small touches, the private smiles, the way Harry's eyes automatically sought out Hermione whenever he entered a room and vice versa. It was all very subtle and Ron had overheard one woman (who obviously didn't know Harry and Hermione) say (soon after Harry and Hermione had gotten together) that she, for one, didn't really believe the rumors that Harry Potter was involved with Hermione Granger because if you looked at them, they still only acted like best friends. Subtle it might be but Ron found that the most obvious evidence of their relationship (at least that they showed in public) was how they touched so often, relatively platonic and chaste as the touches were, her hand on his arm, his hand resting on the small of her back or on her shoulder or, sometimes, on the nape of her neck.
And, oddly enough, he had come to realize that the best evidence of how right this new aspect of Harry and Hermione's relationship was not in the difference at all, but in how much the same it was to what they had always had.
Because they had always been affectionate. Even when they really had only been best friends, there had been the affectionate little touches. He didn't know how many times in their years at Hogwarts, Hermione had put a hand on Harry's arm or grabbed onto Harry's arm, or hugged Harry.
(It was, he admitted now, one reason why he had, always, in some small, barely-acknowledged corner of his mind, been jealous of Harry, why he had always, always, wondered if Hermione didn't, in some way, love Harry too, love Harry more… In spite of his trust in Hermione and his trust in Harry, in some small corner of his mind, he had been jealous.)
And more than the small gestures was the way they could communicate without words, because that too was familiar to him from their years of friendship. They had always, somehow, understood each other, had that sort of bond that almost made spoken words superfluous sometimes. He didn't even pretend to understand it when even now, after years of having been married to Hermione, having been her best friend for most of their lives, there were times when Ron was convinced that the greatest mystery in the entire world was Hermione's mind. He understood her better now; at the best of times, when they'd been married, there had been the occasional moment of knowing what Hermione was thinking but those moments had tended to be rare. For the most part, he had never quite understood Hermione; even when he had loved her, he hadn't understood her.
But Harry did.
It had taken him a little while to realize it, after his initial shock on hearing that Harry and Hermione were together, but now, today when Harry and Hermione had just been married, he knew that it was right and he was very sure that this marriage would last.
He could see the tenderness in Harry's eyes and his smile as he watched Hermione talk to Fleur and Professor McGonagall; he could see the happiness and the calm certainty glowing in Hermione's eyes.
Things were different now; Harry and Hermione's relationship was different now, deeper, stronger, more… settled was the only word that came to mind. But the difference wasn't what made him so confident; no, it was in how it was, somehow, the same…
They had the same connection, the same understanding, the same caring, the same little gestures of affection-and, perhaps most importantly, they had the same honesty. The honesty that allowed them to argue at times but also the honesty that allowed them to mend their arguments and only make their relationship stronger.
(It struck Ron all the more because he had to admit that it was something he and Hermione had never been very good at. They had argued, with increasing frequency, but their arguments tended to end only by virtue of both tacitly agreeing to pretend the argument had never happened and it had never made the relationship stronger. If anything, the arguments had steadily eroded their relationship until they couldn't ignore it any more and all the unresolved disagreements had returned and ripped what remained of their relationship apart.)
Harry and Hermione were different. Somehow. He didn't understand it, didn't pretend to understand it, except to file it away as one of those Incomprehensibles of Harry and Hermione-but he could see that it was there.
It wasn't only that Harry and Hermione were in love and loved each other; it was that they were, still, always, best friends.
His eyes met Hermione's and he felt his smile widen, lifting his glass in a silent toast, and was rewarded for the half-teasing salute when she laughed. Yes, Hermione was happy now; they were both happy now and he knew that this happiness would last.
~The End~