Brave Enough

Disclaimer: All things HP belong to JKR; I’m only borrowing to fix her stupid mistakes.

Author’s Note: Written for the H/Hr ficathon sponsored by anythingbutgrey on LiveJournal, for winterpolaris who requested post-DH angst, H/Hr from another character’s point of view, and the quote: "Love the heart that hurts you, but never hurt the heart that loves you." - Vipin Sharma. Ignoring the Crapilogue because it doesn’t deserve to be acknowledged anyway.

Brave Enough

Chapter 1

“Hey, Hermione. How’s my favorite Healer?” Harry greeted Hermione with a smile and a quick half-hug with one arm as she stepped inside his flat.

“Oh, busy as always,” she smiled, returning his hug with one arm while her other one put down her bag and unfastened the clasp of her cloak. “The pasta smells great, Harry,” she added, sniffing appreciatively.

“You know, sometimes I can’t tell if you come over because of me or because of the food,” Harry commented with an air of mock injury.

“The food, of course.” Hermione threw him a laughing glance.

Harry pretended to stagger, clutching his chest melodramatically. “You cut me to the quick!” He straightened, dropping the pose, and joined in with her laughter.

“Prat,” Hermione accused him, the word belied by her smile and her indulgent tone.

Harry pretended hurt. “Prat, am I? Well, that’s fine thanks I get for risking life and limb to save the world.”

“Was it that serious?” Hermione asked, sobering, even though she knew Harry had been jesting.

Harry had just returned from a week he had spent in Cornwall, where there had been growing rumors of increased suspicious activities and a few troubling disappearances. Harry was a sort of adjunct Auror—a special position created essentially for him. He was nominally under the authority of the Head of the Aurors but in reality, he tended to answer directly to the Minister of Magic and when there were any suspected rumors of Dark activity, it was usually Harry who was sent to look into it, for the obvious reason.

And before that, there had been an epidemic of Dragonsbreath Virus which had kept Hermione so busy that she and Harry had actually not seen each other for almost a month.

“No, it wasn’t. It was just a few idiots playing at being the next Dark Lord, basically.”

Hermione studied Harry for a moment but didn’t contradict his light words. She could tell that it hadn’t been quite as easy as he made it sound but she could also tell that it really had not been that serious a threat.

Harry shrugged. “There was really no need for me to go; a regular team of Aurors would have been fine. But you know how Minister Hamlin gets.”

“You can hardly blame her for that,” Hermione responded.

The new Minister of Magic, Linda Hamlin, had lost her husband in the War; he had been murdered by Death Eaters. Minister Hamlin had been Minister for just over a year now and while she was highly regarded and Harry respected her quite honestly, it could not be denied that she had a tendency to over-react to the smallest rumors of Dark activity. “No, I don’t blame her.”

They exchanged small, sober smiles, smiles of understanding, before they settled into the easy conversation of two old friends, while he told her more of what had happened in Cornwall and she told him about her work at St. Mungo’s and her a new project she was starting to research the causes of the Dryditch Fever.

It was later, after they had eaten and were relaxing over their drinks that Harry looked over at her and asked, “Has anything else happened lately?”

“No, nothing in particular. Except…” she paused and then finished, “Vince Williamson asked me to go on a date with him.”

Harry stilled in the act of lifting his bottle of butterbeer to his lips. “What did you tell him?” he asked, more by rote than as if he really was unsure of the answer. He knew what she would say and he was proven right when she gave him an odd look.

“I said no, of course. It would just make things awkward, dating someone I worked with, and I wouldn’t want to do that to our friendly working relationship.”

Harry studied Hermione for a moment, noting the way she kept her gaze studiously fixed on the tabletop as she traced idle patterns on it with one finger. This was predictable, expected; he’d seen it several times in the past few years since Ron and Hermione’s divorce. There had been a few fellows who had been courageous enough to ask her out, unmindful of the coolly professional demeanor she cultivated like a shield of armor and the long hours she kept, but Hermione had rejected them all with the same ease and certainty as she’d rejected Vince Williamson. And it was getting damnably irritating. “Is that the real reason?” he asked quietly.

She looked up at him, her expression changing. “What do you mean by that? Of course it’s the real reason! What other reason would there be?”

Her eyes were flashing dangerously and for a moment, Harry hesitated, as a hasty, “nothing” trembled on his lips, followed by some light comment that would change the subject, avoid talking about something so personal, keep their conversation light and bantering. But even as he hesitated, his gaze dropped to her lips and he knew a familiar pang of longing and instead of his disclaimer, he found himself saying, “I don’t think that’s the real reason. I think you’re afraid.”

“Afraid! Don’t be silly, Harry, I’m not afraid. I’m busy and I’m quite happy as I am.” She paused and then added, the words seeming impelled from her almost against her will, spoken so softly they were more to herself than to him, “Besides, I’m not cut out for a happy relationship.”

“That’s nonsense, Hermione. You haven’t let anyone close enough to know if you could be happy with them. There is no reason why you can’t be in a happy relationship,” he said more sharply, exasperated with her stubbornness.

“You don’t know that!” she burst out, as if finally pushed past her patience. She stood up, pushing herself away from the table and turning away before she continued in a brittle tone, “I couldn’t even make Ron happy, you know that. And I—I did love him and I wanted to make him happy and tried so hard to make it work but I couldn’t. I couldn’t…”

“He didn’t make you happy either,” Harry pointed out, his tone gentler now, feeling an odd, poignant mix of pain and pleasure to see and hear Hermione’s emotion. It had been so long now since she’d really talked about anything so personal; it was almost the first time she’d directly mentioned her divorce since she and Ron had decided to split up. And while he hated to hear the hurt in her voice, he was glad, too, so painfully glad to finally see her showing some emotion. “But that doesn’t mean that you can’t be happy with someone else.”

“No! You don’t understand! I failed Ron; I failed myself…”

“And now you’re so bloody afraid of failing again, so afraid of being hurt again, that you’ve just cut yourself off from anything resembling emotions, let alone romance!” he interrupted her heatedly, standing up in his turn. “Hermione, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you see that’s what you’re doing?! You’ve cut yourself off! Look at your life! You work and then you go home and you work some more! You don’t really have many friends; I’m the only friend you still see on a regular basis and if it weren’t for me, Ron, and the other Weasleys, I doubt you’d ever have any real human contact. And you don’t even see the Weasleys that often as it is.”

“You, of all people, know why I stopped visiting them nearly every weekend!” she flared.

“Don’t give me that, Hermione. They forgave you years ago and you know it and I know it. Now you’re just avoiding them the same way you avoid most people outside of work.”

“That’s not true. I was at the Burrow just a few weeks ago!”

“Ron and I practically had to kidnap you before you agreed to go to Mrs. Weasley’s birthday dinner. And as for anything else, you’ve been on exactly one date since you divorced—one, and you can’t tell me it’s because no one’s asked you!”

“That’s not--” she began but he cut her off.

“Yes, it is. I know you, Hermione; I know how much you hate to fail and I know how much you dislike the idea of anything you can’t learn from books or solve by reading more. But one failure can’t dictate the rest of your life; you need to move on.”

“Don’t tell me that! I have moved on! I’m happy the way I am, Harry; I have my work and I have friends and--”

“I’m not talking about that and you know it!” he burst out, the last remnants of restraint evaporating, as he closed the distance between them in a few long strides. “I’m talking about this!” He grabbed her arm, spinning her towards him, as his lips covered hers. It wasn’t a gentle kiss; it wasn’t about tenderness and it wasn’t remotely platonic. But even in spite of his anger, there was no violence in his kiss. His lips claimed hers, almost demanding a response rather than seeking it. This kiss was about passion, was about need, was about desperation.

She had stiffened in surprise but he persisted until she relaxed. And she responded. For one fleeting, interminable, foolish, glorious moment, she kissed him back, feeling her entire body go up in flames, reacting to his touch like dry paper when a lit match is held to it. And she forgot her own anger, forgot what they’d been talking about, forgot all the reasons why they shouldn’t do this, forgot who she was and who he was… She forgot to be cautious, forgot to feel afraid—and for just that one moment, she simply lived.

It had been so long, so very long and it felt so good; he tasted so good and all the vague feelings, longings she’d ignored and pushed aside for the past few years, buried beneath her work, came surging up to the surface and dear God, it felt good…

But it was only for a moment before sanity—and a good bit of panic broke through her foggy thoughts. Good God, what was she doing?! She tore herself away, one hand automatically going to her lips although she wasn’t sure if it was to shield them from him or to savor the way they still tingled, the way she could still feel Harry’s lips pressed against hers. She stared at him, her breath coming fast and desperately keeping her wide eyes fixed on his eyes and not on his lips. “What—what was that?”

He let out a weary half-sigh, a mixture of lingering anger, frustration and apprehension and regret and desire roiling inside his chest in a confused, chaotic mass of emotion. He was almost glad that she had covered her lips with her hand so he couldn’t see them, swollen as he was sure they must be after that kiss. Dear Merlin, that kiss! That kiss that had been the impulse, the madness, of a moment, that kiss that had started in anger but had turned into something warmer, something deeper, from the moment his lips had touched hers. He had wondered for so long now what it would feel like to kiss Hermione and now he knew the passion that could be between them, had tasted it, experienced the searing sweetness of her—and all he could think was that he wished he hadn’t. It was going to hurt so much more now…

Part of him—the part of him that never wanted to hurt her and hated to see her upset—wanted to apologize; the word, sorry, hovered on his tongue, but another part of him was still angry. Another part of him knew that if he backed down now, she would retreat behind her self-constructed barrier of the rational, the familiar, the safety of work. And he knew he couldn’t let her do that, couldn’t let her retreat again. He missed her, damn it! He missed the real Hermione, the Hermione that was the cleverest person he’d ever met, yes, but was also the kindest, the Hermione who didn’t barricade herself behind her work but who had put all her work aside for a weekend because she wanted to make sure he was okay after he and Ginny had broken up. The Hermione he’d fallen in love with.

“I think it’s called kissing, or don’t you remember what that is anymore,” he said, deliberately misunderstanding her. He was being snide, goading her, and part of him hated himself for doing it, but he was just so damn angry at her for doing this to herself, at Ron for having hurt her, at himself for having waited so long without saying anything, at St. Mungo’s (irrationally) for recognizing her brilliance and relying on her so much. He was angry and frustrated and tired of it; he was tired of waiting for her to move on, tired of waiting for her to realize what she was doing, tired of having to try so hard to make sure that she never pushed him away, tired of loving her and only being her best friend.

He’d been waiting for years, wanting her for years, watching her close herself off and become this other version of the girl he’d always known and loved so much. This was Hermione and he, of all people, knew how diligent she’d always been, knew how hard she’d always studied and worked—so it should have been natural; even Ron hadn’t really seemed to notice just how different Hermione was, how unnaturally focused on work she had become. Yes, she’d studied hard and thrown herself into her studies-- but she was also the girl who had broken more school rules than he cared to count in order to help him, the girl who had been taking so many classes that she needed a Time-turner to get to them all but still cared enough to risk his anger and have his Firebolt confiscated, the girl who had given up her 7^th year of school to help him. This new Hermione hardly had time to see her best friends anymore, had to be cajoled, teased, persuaded and even forced into spending time with him and Ron and it was nearly as difficult to convince her to spend time with him alone.

And he had had enough. Enough of waiting, enough of silence, enough of patient sympathy.

Her eyes flashed dangerously. “Don’t be stupid, Harry,” she almost snapped. “Why did you do that?” Her voice rose on the question until she ended on a near-hysterical note.

“Because I wanted to! Because I’ve wanted to do that for years now! Because I’m in love with you!”

She sucked in a sharp breath, all color leeching from her face, as she stared at him, shaking her head in almost unconscious denial of his outburst. “No. No, you can’t.” Her voice was quiet, too quiet, until she burst out, “Don’t tell me that! Why did you tell me that? I don’t want to hear it—I can’t—you can’t--” Irrationally, she covered her ears with her hands in an uncharacteristically childish gesture that, at any other time, might have made him laugh, but he was too far gone for that. It only made him angrier.

He caught her wrists in his hands, forcing her hands away from her ears. His grip was firm, not enough to hurt her—even in his anger, he wouldn’t, he couldn’t, hurt her—but too firm for her to free herself. His eyes held hers, burned into hers. “No, you are going to listen to me! You’ve been hiding too long and I’ve been waiting for too long and you are going to listen. I. Love. You.” He clipped out the words precisely, emphasizing each one, ignoring the look in her eyes as if something had shattered inside her, even as it made him flinch to see it. His voice gentled, became softer. “You can tell me no; it won’t really change things. I’m your best friend; I’ll always be your best friend. But you are going to listen and if you say no, say it because you don’t love me, because you know you can’t love me. Do it because you honestly don’t feel that way about me.” His tone was amazingly steady, given that each scenario lashed his heart like a whip, tearing him apart at the possibility—the probability—of rejection, of losing her forever with not even hope to keep him going

He swallowed and forced himself to continue. “Vince Williamson fancies you; he respects you and he might be good for you. I know how much you like him and how well you get along. But you have to choose; you have to face it. You can’t hide or run from the possibility of romance anymore. If you really, truly, in your heart, don’t want to date anyone right now, then don’t. But don’t hide behind feeble excuses of being busy because you’re too scared of getting involved with anyone again, because you’re too scared of failing, as I know you have been doing.” He paused, his grip tightening slightly as he shook her once, with an odd gentleness (and it should have been impossible but his touch was gentle as he shook her—somehow, in spite of the strength of his grip, with all the gentleness lacking in his tone and in his eyes). “I want you to be happy—not just content as this shell of the girl I once knew which you have been. I know you and you’re not the coward you’ve been acting like.” He paused and the ghost of a smile glimmered in his eyes, curved his lips, humor-less as it was. “You’re a Gryffindor; you faced down Voldemort; you’re not going to run from emotions anymore.”

He stopped, running out of words after his long speech of everything he’d been thinking but never saying for so long now, his anger spent. His throat was tight with anxiety and apprehension and love and painful, tentative hope, as he waited for her response. Had he gotten through to her? Would she listen? Had he been too harsh? Would she forgive him? Could she love him?

He got his answer in her tone even more than her words as she finally spoke. “Let go of me!” Her tone was cold, dangerously so, and with an edge of so much pent-up fury it sliced straight through him.

He released her wrists as if they’d burned him, stepping back as his hands fell to his sides.

And she left, without another look or another word. She hardly paused to grab her cloak and her bag before she fled, letting the door close with a chilling finality.

She was gone.

And if her tone had been any indication, she wasn’t going to be back.

He had lost her.

Damn it! Sodding, effing, bloody hell!

He almost welcomed the sudden flare of anger, that drowned out the hurt he knew was coming.

Damn it! Damn her stubbornness and her certainty in her own rightness! She had cut herself off; she had pushed everyone away while she threw herself into her work at St. Mungo’s with a single-mindedness that left no room for anything else in her life. He’d been right in what he’d said—he just wished he hadn’t said it.

As quickly as it had come, his anger dissipated, leaving only the hurt behind.

He’d been right—but that was poor comfort now. To know that Hermione was angry at him—justifiably angry at him, because he had been harsh (and he, of all people, knew that she didn’t react well to being lectured at)—to know that she was hurt—was a high price to pay for having told the truth.

He had lost her. He had never really had her—and now it looked like he never would.

Bereft of hope, bereft of the most important friendship of his life, Harry slumped down on the couch and buried his head in his hands. He had lost her—and what was he going to do now?

~To be continued…

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…~

Disclaimer: See Chapter 1.

Author’s Note: I hope this chapter satisfies. The last chapter, except for a very short Epilogue. This chapter is rated a soft R, just to be safe, and the reason the fic was rated R in the first place. Enjoy.

Brave Enough

Chapter 3

Harry knew who it was the moment he heard the knock on his door. It was as if he had some sixth sense that allowed him to recognize Hermione’s knock—or more prosaically, it was simply that he had been expecting (half-dreading) her knock for the past two nights since she had stormed out of his flat. His entire body tensed as if in expectation of a blow as he got up and opened the door.

He had been right. It was her.

She looked somber, something of the shattered look which he’d seen that night lingering in her eyes, and his heart twisted in his chest. He had hurt her; he knew he’d been harsh, even if he really had not had a choice. But it was a hard thing to have to deliberately cause pain to a loved one, to have to knowingly cause her pain—her, when there were times he thought he would give up everything he owned just to bring a smile to her face, when he knew he would willingly spend the rest of his life keeping her happy and safe…

“Hi,” he finally managed to say, lamely, through the sudden obstruction in his throat. He stepped back to let her in.

She didn’t sit down, remained standing—and he wondered at the ridiculousness of his heart when even that most-trivial choice caused a pang of hurt because of the discomfort and the wariness it seemed to show.

Hermione swallowed before she turned around to face him. She’d never been so ill at ease with Harry and it hurt.

Her eyes seemed to focus on his lips of their own volition and she felt herself flush at the memory of his kiss, of his words. I’m in love with you… I love you…

She forcibly wrenched her gaze away from his lips—but that didn’t help much either because they fell to his hands hanging by his side and she was suddenly filled with the memory of how he had gripped her arms. And oddly, that memory, more than even the thought of his kiss, was the one that made her heart fill with a dangerous warmth. Even in his anger—and he had been angry—he hadn’t hurt her. His grip on her arms had been firm but never, not even when he had shaken her, had he hurt her; she had felt and been aware of his strength but his touch had been gentle, in spite of everything.

And maybe, after all, that very gentleness was what made him so dangerous to her heart and her soul…

She finally looked up at him and met his eyes when the silence had become oppressive, only to find that her mind had gone completely blank of what she’d planned to say.

“I- I wanted to hate you for what you said,” she blurted out.

Harry fought to control his flinch. He’d expected nothing less but it still hurt to hear her say the words. He nodded numbly. “I thought you would,” he said, rather inanely, as he tried to steel himself for the rejection he knew was coming. She didn’t love him; she couldn’t love him… He had lost her…

How did one prepare oneself to have one’s heart broken, he wondered desperately. Knowing it was coming, expecting it, didn’t make it any easier to face her.

She swallowed and went on bravely. “But you were right. I had closed myself off and I was afraid of failing. It had hurt so much to end things with Ron and I just didn’t know how to deal with it all, so I ran away and told myself I didn’t need anyone else. Now… I don’t know. I’m still afraid but I don’t want to be a coward anymore.”

“You’re not a coward, Hermione,” he sighed. She was still the bravest person he’d ever known—and he loved that about her. He loved her courage and that had been why it had bothered him so much to see her hiding behind the walls she had put up. It had almost physically hurt him too, to know that she was hurt so badly, to know that her fears were so deep as to over-ride all her customary courage and her will.

Hermione opened her lips to tell him what she’d really come here to tell him, that she couldn’t love him like that, that she wanted to only be friends with him—but at that moment, she met his eyes and really saw the look in them and her words died in her throat.

He looked… resigned. There was no hope in his eyes, no expectation. There was only a mute sadness, mingled with so much caring it made her heart twist and her breath catch. She hadn’t seen his eyes look so bleak in years—since those first days after Sirius had died, since Dumbledore had died—but even so, this look was different; it was deeper, somehow, more poignant, more powerful.

At that moment, looking at him, a torrent of memories from the past decade and half of friendship, of loyalty, of trust, flooded her mind and her heart.

Oh God, what was she doing? She was doing it again, letting her fears and not her desires dictate what she did; she was being a coward when she’d sworn she wouldn’t do that again. She was being a coward—and she would be breaking Harry’s heart in the process, as well as denying her own.

How could she do this?

She couldn’t.

She was still afraid of losing her heart to Harry, afraid of what would happen if she failed again, every cautious instinct in her body shrieking out a warning. She knew how devastated she would be if she failed again, if she lost his friendship, and it would be the height of stupidity to knowingly open herself up to that sort of devastation. And Hermione had spent her entire life trying to be the smart one.

But at that moment, something deeper, something stronger, something infinitely more powerful than all her instinctive caution surged up inside her, drowning out any other protest. It may have been folly but it felt like wisdom, a truer wisdom from her heart rather than her mind.

She might be risking her heart but if she chose, if she had the courage to choose it, she could gain so much more… Not the happily-ever-after which she no longer believed in, but something much simpler, in some ways, and yet much more profound at the same time: happiness. Not the perfect happily-ever-after of storybooks and childish dreams but the mature happiness that came from experience—the happiness that could withstand all the inevitable bad times, all the arguments and the fights, the bad days, the illnesses, even the tragedies of life, the happiness that came from trust and hope and, above all, love…

“I’m still afraid,” she finally admitted, her tone faltering ever so slightly before she forcibly controlled it. “But,” she met his eyes directly, taking one small step closer to him, “I’m willing to take the chance. I’ll risk it.” She paused and then finished with some hesitation, “that is, if you still want me to.”

For one second that seemed to last an interminably long time to Hermione, Harry didn’t react, only stared at her, his face wiped clear of all expression. She knew a flicker of doubt—maybe he’d only said what he had in order to shock her out of her self-imposed isolation; maybe he hadn’t really wanted her after all; maybe he was having second thoughts…

For one second, Harry doubted the evidence of his ears. He had been prepared for rejection, had braced himself for pain, and he could have sworn he’d seen that decision to tell him, no, in her eyes—but then she spoke. And he, apparently, lost his ability to comprehend the English language but then he saw the look in her eyes, all the courage of her heart, the same courage he had seen so often in situations when their lives had been in danger. His heart squeezed in his chest with an aching tenderness; God, he loved her… He wanted to tell her that, wanted to tell her that he knew what it was costing her to face her fears and accept the risk, but all that came out of his mouth was one word that caught at his mind. “If?”

He yanked his feet from where they seemed to have taken root to the floor to close the distance between them, slowly, until he was close enough to touch her, until he could lift his hand to cup her cheek. “If?” he repeated again, softly. “God, Hermione, I’ve wanted you for years; I don’t think that’s ever going to change.”

Her eyes drifted closed for a moment at his touch, her heart softening, sighing. He touched her the way every woman dreamed of being touched, with infinite gentleness, boundless tenderness, and with a hint of reverence as if she were a miracle. And that was when her last reservation melted away. How could she not risk everything for this? From some dim corner of her mind, a line she had read somewhere years ago drifted through her thoughts: A woman would run through fire and water for such a kind heart.

“Hermione…” he breathed. “Can I kiss you?”

She smiled, in spite of herself, in spite of the seriousness of the moment. “You didn’t feel the need to ask the first time.”

His lips curved slightly. “Well, I’m asking now. It’s your choice to make.”

You have to choose…

Her breath stilled in her chest as she understood why he was asking, what he meant. He was truly giving her the choice; it was up to her and she knew that if she said no now, he would leave and that would be it. He was asking for permission not only to kiss her but for permission to love her, asking for the chance to make her love him…

At that moment, there was only one answer she could give, only one answer she wanted to give. And she didn’t bother to speak the word. All she did was to rise up on her toes and press her lips to his. She kissed him.

One of his arms slid around her waist, holding her to him, while the other, the one that had been touching her cheek, slid behind to cup the nape of her neck. He kept the kiss gentle at first, his lips moving over hers with so much tenderness it almost made her heart ache. It wasn’t enough. Slow heat was spiraling up inside her, enveloping her, and she yielded to it, kissing him back with a passion that incited his. He deepened the kiss with a muffled groan, kissing her hard, with all the desperation of years of love and wanting.

He wanted her, he wanted her, he wanted her… She could feel it in his kiss, in the strength of his arms around her, in the way his hands clutched her to him—and for the first time in years, she gloried in the feeling of knowing that a man—that Harry—wanted her… The vague thought drifted through her mind: she was risking her heart but, after all, wasn’t the risk worth it just for this?

And then she stopped thinking entirely, in favor of all the sensations he was calling forth, the pleasure of wanting and being wanted…

~~

One must be particularly careful in diagnosing—where was he? It had been more than a week now—the Lympanary Infection as its symptoms are very similar to—dear Merlin, if anything had happened…-- those of the Malarum Fever. But the—a week and there had been no word…-- Potion which is used to treat the Malarum Fever can—why had there been no news?-- have nearly fatal effects—fatal… if anything had gone wrong…-- if it is wrongly administered to a patient suffering—Harry, where are you?!-- from the Lympanary Infection. Healers Caravelli and Lebisky have—Harry…-- been instrumental in devising one test to distinguish between the two…

Hermione pushed herself away from her desk with a strangled sound of frustration. She could not concentrate. She had just spent the last half hour reading the same paragraph over and over again and she still could not have told what the paragraph had said. Her thoughts were too fragmented and too consumed with worry over Harry to pay attention to her work.

He had been sent to investigate more rumors of Dark activity, this time in Slovakia, by Minister Hamlin. These investigations were never on a set time-frame, of course, and she knew he could never tell her exactly when he would return home, due to their very nature. But he had said that, at the longest, he expected he would be away for a week and half to two weeks.

It would be 23 days since he had left tomorrow. She had refused to allow herself to worry too much until 17 days had gone by, but then she hadn’t been able to help it, worry seeping into her mind until by now, it had nearly become full-blown panic.

She was guiltily aware that she hadn’t been giving her patients the attention they deserved, the attention she owed them, in the past few days, too preoccupied with her all-consuming fear for Harry to completely devote her mind to work. She was only lucky that none of her patients at the moment were in critical condition, but that didn’t lessen her guilt for her distraction.

In some tiny corner of her mind, a small voice spoke up insisting that this was partly what she had feared before she had gotten involved with Harry and, in her moments of stark honesty, she had to admit that it was true. She had feared how all-consuming her feelings for Harry would become, had feared how necessary he would become to her happiness.

It was odd; he had probably been the central figure in her life for years and one wouldn’t have thought that it would make that much of a difference to love him, to be with him, but it did. Oh, it did. Before, he had been important to her happiness. Now, he was vital to her happiness, to her life.

And she didn’t know where he was or if he was safe. If he was even al—but no, she refused to think of that possibility, her entire being shuddering away from it.

She stood up, pushing herself away from her desk. She had to get away. She was clearly not going to get any work done here but even so, more out of habit than not, she gathered up a stack of files and her notes which she needed to go through and put them in her bag.

“I’m going home now,” she told her assistant, Irene, ignoring Irene’s unconcealed look of surprise at her leaving so early, when it was barely 5 o’clock. “I’ll see you in the morning.”

“Of course. Have a good evening, Hermione,” Irene managed to say but Hermione was aware of Irene’s gaze on her back as she strode quickly down the halls of St. Mungo’s.

She went to her flat first but she spent all of three minutes in it before she gave up. Her flat felt cold, somehow, empty. It was too dark, too big (irrationally). And—she admitted to herself—it no longer felt like home anymore.

Harry’s flat was home now.

She had stubbornly insisted on keeping her own flat, even though she spent the majority of her time at his flat (she could count on one hand the number of nights she had spent in her flat in the past two months, count on two hands the number of nights she had spent in her flat in the three months before that) and slowly but surely, an increasing amount of her belongings had taken up residence in his flat, alongside his.

He had never commented on it but she had caught him staring into his closet where her clothing now took up nearly half the space in it with an odd expression on his face or in the shower, where her toiletries resided next to his as if they had always been there. She had almost been able to see him swallowing back the words and part of her had wanted to give in, had wanted to tell him that she would give up her flat and move in with him, but something had always held her back from taking that final step.

It was that same something that had kept her from telling him she loved him.

And she did love him. She was in love with him. She didn’t even try to hide that fact from herself anymore—but she had not said the words.

Some tiny part of her—a part she’d thought she’d conquered—had held those words back, just as that same part of her had insisted she keep her own flat.

Just in case. In case she failed again… In case anything happened… In case he’d been wrong and she really could not be in a happy, lasting relationship with anyone…

Now, staring around her at Harry’s flat, she acknowledged the lingering cowardice that had held her back—and hated herself for it.

What good had it done? It hadn’t kept her from falling in love with him. It hadn’t kept her from needing him; it hadn’t made her happier in any way. All it had done was keep her from telling him she loved him—and now she didn’t know if she would ever be able to tell him.

No! She refused to think like that.

He would come back; he was safe. Of course he would return. She was being ridiculous and paranoid and irrational. Harry would be back and then she would tell him.

She wandered through his flat restlessly, too anxious to stay still and every room in the flat seemed to torment her with thoughts of him, memories from the past five months.

She went into the kitchen and she was assailed by the mental image of Harry standing at the stove, grinning at her as he teased her about her inability to cook. Of him, wearing only a pair of jeans, bending over to peer into the fridge, giving her a lovely view of his decidedly well-formed backside, until her hands had practically tingled from the urge to run them down the smooth skin of his back. (And then she had given in to the impulse, surprising a laugh out of him that had quickly turned into a groan.) Of them standing at the sink together, washing the dishes—or trying to, before they had given up on the attempt as he had started to kiss her neck, his soapy hands wetting her shirt as they had come up to cup her breasts.

The bathroom was little better. She remembered standing beside him at the sink as they brushed their teeth. Remembered scolding him mildly for not hanging up his used towel and remembered the way he had smiled and kissed her into good humor. Remembered showering with him, the heat of his body making the warm water seem almost cool by contrast, their wet bodies sliding against each other…

The bedroom—she wasn’t sure why she ventured into it but she couldn’t seem to help herself. It seemed to draw her, in spite of the fact that she knew, all too well, just how vast and desolate his bed would seem without him. It was the same way her own bed felt in those few nights she spent in her flat.

Oddly, though, it wasn’t even the memories of all the passion, all the joy, they had found in his bed that tormented her the most, although those memories lingered too, like old ghosts. But what she found herself remembering more were the few times they had argued, the scant few times when they had fallen asleep on either side of his bed, even though they had usually ended up curled up together by morning, their bodies seeming to automatically move together in their sleep, recognizing what their minds were too stubborn to admit sometimes. She remembered the searing tenderness of his kisses and his touches when they had made up after one of those rare arguments. She remembered the occasional nightmares he had and the way he clutched her afterwards, as if she were all that anchored him to the world.

A slight shudder went through her and she fled his bedroom for the living room.

She fell onto the couch, noticing that he had left a jumper thrown haphazardly over the back of a chair and that there was a pair of dirty socks still lying on the floor. For the first time, though, she noted these things without the flare of annoyance she usually felt.

Oh, she missed him, missed him so much she almost ached with it. And she loved him, loved him with a depth and an intensity that frightened her because of how much more it was, compared to the love she had once felt for Ron. Ron had been her first love; Harry had become a part of her, a part of her very soul. Oh, why why why had she not told him that? Why had she been so stupidly afraid to put her feelings into words and tell him that she loved him?

She had been waiting for him to say the words to her too. He hadn’t, not since the night he had first blurted out his confession. She guessed that he had been waiting for her to say them—and she was honest enough to admit that he had already said them. He had already put his heart on the line and she didn’t doubt that he did love her. And yet, somehow, she had not said the words. As if, in some tiny, misguided corner of her mind, she had thought that as long as she didn’t say the words, she would not need him quite so much.

Coward, coward, coward! Stupid coward, at that, she berated herself now. And after she had promised herself she wouldn’t let fear dictate her actions anymore—but after all, it was hard to break what had become the instinctive, automatic reaction.

Then she heard it, the most welcome sound she had ever heard in her life: the sound of a key turning in the lock.

He was home. He was safe.

Her heart lifted, as if a part of it that had been missing for the past 22 days settled back into place.

She barely had time to process that he looked exhausted, shadows under his eyes, even as he gave her a slight smile. “Hermi--” he started to say but his words were cut off by her lips as she flew at him and kissed him.

She kissed him with every particle of the love and worry and regret she had known over the past three weeks, kissed him with perhaps more energy than finesse, but it didn’t matter because his arms had closed around her and he was kissing her back as if he never wanted to let her go again.

She drew back only when the need for air became imperative and even then, it was only to scatter quick kisses haphazardly over his face, his nose, his chin, his ear, his eyebrow, his scar.

But after a moment, she recovered a little from her overpowering relief and stopped even those hasty caresses, flushed from all her emotions, as she met his eyes.

“I’m so glad you’re home,” she finally said, entirely unnecessarily, and saw the slight flicker of humor in his eyes.

“I can see that.”

“I’ve been so worried. What happened? I thought I would go insane with worry and oh, Harry, I missed you so much.”

He opened his lips to explain or to apologize, she didn’t know which and never found out what he had been about to say, because she hurried on before he could speak.

“I love you, Harry. I’m in love with you. I- I have been for months now but I didn’t say it because I’ve been an idiot but I need you to know. I love you.”

He sucked in his breath a little and she saw the joy flare in his eyes and she knew a moment of poignant regret that she had made him wait so long to hear the words. His arms tightened around her and his lips came down on hers to kiss her with enough passion to make her knees go a little weak before his lips left hers to leave a trail of soft kisses along the line of her jaw and across her cheek, his lips unerringly finding the sensitive hollow right before her ear. “I love you!” he whispered almost fiercely into her ear.

Her eyes closed, her lips parting on a small gasp. “I love you too.”

His lips returned to hers as he kissed her again, this time in a long, slow, tender kiss, a kiss that drew her very heart and her soul out of her body, the sort of kiss women dreamed of, a kiss she could not have broken if her life depended on it. Her head spun, her thoughts scattered, her body heating and melting against him, and somehow, she knew that she would love him for the rest of her life. No matter what happened, at this moment, with this kiss, he had claimed some part of her soul, irrevocably, and some small part of her would always love him, belong to him.

And for the first time in years, she was not afraid. At that moment, with his arms around her, his lips on hers, she felt brave enough for anything, for this passion, for this joy. Brave enough for this love.

~To be continued, with a very short Epilogue…

A/N 2: The line Hermione thinks of, about such a kind heart, is by Shakespeare.

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~