The Thing About Friendship

Disclaimer: All things HP belong to JKR.

Author’s Note: This started as something of an experiment with 1st person POV and to see if I could get into Ron’s head and get his voice right. AU, as there’s no way I can write a Ron who’s in love with Hermione, let alone the other way around.

The Thing About Friendship

It’s in watching them that I finally understood.

I wasn’t thrilled when they told me, to put it mildly. Would you be thrilled to find out that your best friend is dating your ex-girlfriend? I wouldn’t think so.

Sure, Hermione and I broke up months ago and to be honest, even when we were dating, most of the time it felt more like we were friends trying to act like boyfriend and girlfriend than anything else. Oh hell, to be really honest, there were some times—I’m sure Hermione would say this—that it didn’t even feel like we were friends anymore, just two people who didn’t particularly like each other but were somehow acting like boyfriend and girlfriend. The best part—by the end, it was the only good part—was the snogging. But then again, by the end, not even that helped because it seemed like when we weren’t snogging, we were fighting and frankly, it’s less fun to snog because it’s better than fighting than it is to snog for snogging’s sake. Not that that made much sense.

Anyway, that wasn’t the point. The point was that even though Hermione and I had broken up and there were times I barely remembered that she and I had ever been anything more than friends, I still wasn’t thrilled when they told me.

I was mad at him for telling me, annoyed at them for being together, even though I was also weirdly glad that they had told me and weren’t going to try to hide it or go behind my back.

I mean, I’d wondered about it before, a few times, but always dismissed it because after all, Harry and Hermione had always been close and Harry was my best friend and he wouldn’t date my ex-girlfriend. I knew how important friendship was to Harry—more specifically, I also knew how much my friendship meant to Harry. (I’m not that much of an insensitive git not to know it, thanks very much, Hermione.) And it’s not like they were acting that differently. Sure, when we went out, they always ended up sitting next to each other, but that wasn’t that strange. Except for when Hermione and I were dating, they usually sat next to each other. And sometimes, they would exchange these looks or smiles when I didn’t know what they were smiling at, but again, that wasn’t unusual for them either. Frankly, I was always half-convinced that Hermione could read minds because she almost always seemed able to read Harry’s—and wasn’t terrible about guessing what I was thinking either when we were dating. She was scary that way.

But I was still surprised when he told me. And mad at him and annoyed at them both and annoyed at Hermione more specifically because I could tell just from looking at her that she was worried about my reaction—which would have been fine except I could see it was for Harry’s sake. I mean, honestly! My ex-girlfriend—who was also one of my best friends— was worried about how my reaction would affect the best friend who’d just broken one of the unwritten laws of friendship—that you don’t date your best friend’s ex—but she wasn’t worried about what I felt.

Harry had looked uncomfortable—as he bloody well should have—as he’d said, “Say, Ron, Hermione and I—well, uh—we’re… uh… we’re together now. I just… you need to know because we didn’t want to hide it from you or… or anything.”

In my defense, I’d just say that I did not punch him.

I admit I rather wanted to—but I wouldn’t have put it past Hermione to hex me if I had. (I might have been angry but I wasn’t suicidal. An angry Hermione was high on my list of things to avoid.)

Instead I just exploded. “Bloody hell, Harry! You could date any girl in the sodding country but of all of them, you really had to decide to date my ex-girlfriend?!”

“I didn’t decide anything! I just—this wasn’t about you; it was about her.” And then he actually reached out and took her hand—which pretty much killed any chance he might have had that I would cool down. Really! Was he trying to rub it in?

“Well, fine then! I’m only your best friend; why should you care what I think? I can’t stop you but if you wanted me to throw a party, you can bloody well think again!”

I heard Harry call out my name as I stormed out of our flat but ignored him.

Bloody Harry. So much for friendship. I was his best friend—his first friend, too. And friends don’t date their friend’s ex-girlfriends. It was one of those unwritten rules of friendship that were nonetheless binding.

And Harry of all people could date anyone he wanted. Hell, he only had to walk into any wizarding pub in the country with his forehead showing to have girls throwing themselves at him! (And being the hero’s best friend? Not nearly as good for getting girls, let me tell you.)

But no. Harry never did take any of the girls up on their offers—don’t ask me why—and then he starts dating my own ex-girlfriend.

Honestly, Harry was lucky he was my best friend. There were times I thought I could easily dislike him.

But then every time I thought that, I remembered all we’d been through together. If fighting a cave troll had been what had made Hermione friends with me and Harry, then everything else that had happened since then was what made sure that we would always be friends. We’d been through too much together; seen too much together; faced so much danger together.

But damn it, you would think all that would have meant that Harry wouldn’t go after my own ex-girlfriend! We were best friends! We’d been best friends since before Hermione had said more than a handful of words to either of us!

Bloody sodding Harry. He knew Hermione and I had dated and it hadn’t been that long ago and how was he to know if I didn’t still have feelings for Hermione beyond friendship?

She was always around; it wasn’t as if I’d had a chance of forgetting her or anything.

And you just didn’t date your best friend’s ex-girlfriend. There was a rule, a line that shouldn’t be crossed, because girls had a way of ruining friendships and damn it all!

I finished off my Firewhiskey, scowling at the bottle for being empty, glaring at some of the other people nearby for having the nerve to be laughing and having fun. Nice for them, not having their own best friend decide a girl was more important than friendship.

I shoved myself to my feet and stalked back to the flat. I had left before I’d had a chance to say everything I should have said to Harry for what he’d done. He might have decided that dating Hermione was more important than what I would think but he would bloody well listen to all I had to say about it!

Except when I opened the door of the flat, the living room was empty, deserted.

Well, that figured. The burst of energy and anger propelling me abruptly died at this anti-climactic discovery.

Figured, really. Harry was the hero; Harry was the one that got climactic scenes. I was his best friend, knocked unconscious or off somewhere else to the side during the climactic scenes.

I stalked towards my room but then stopped, a strip of light catching my eye, and I realized it was coming from Harry’s room.

So he was still here.

I changed direction and headed for his room only to stop again as I got closer.

His door was ajar, leaving a sliver of space a few centimeters wide, but it was enough that I could see them. Together. On Harry’s bed.

Not doing anything—thank Merlin—or I might have had to gouge my eyes out and then cast a Memory Charm on myself.

They were just lying there. Hermione’s head was resting on his shoulder and Harry was idly playing with her fingers.

And the last of my anger and my annoyance and the lingering, niggling hurt vanished as I stood there, feeling like my feet had taken root on the floor.

They weren’t talking or snogging or doing anything special. They were just being… together…

And they were comfortable. I could tell just from something about the way they were lying there that they’d been like that for a while, as if they’d been there long enough that Harry’s mattress had taken on their imprint and was molded around them.

It was the sort of quiet togetherness that Hermione and I had never had. I had always thought that Hermione just wasn’t the sort to cuddle; as it was, I could hardly believe what I was seeing.

There was an ease, a contentment, in Hermione’s face I’d never seen before and it struck me as strange and un-Hermione-like before I realized why. It was because for once she didn’t look like she was thinking about 101 different things. For once, she was only thinking about one thing—Harry.

I felt a twinge of something in my chest—oh fine, it was jealousy, plain and simple. Not because I wanted Hermione back—I didn’t—but just because I’d never seen her look like that with me when we were dating. It had bothered me, that I had always somehow felt that I wasn’t the most important thing in Hermione’s life. She’d never told me so outright, of course, but I’m not entirely an idiot and I could tell. I’d never been the most important person in her life; that had always been Harry. Even when we were alone together, she had never been thinking only about me. It was easier not to get angry about it in the beginning because, well, what kind of self-centered git would I be to get angry that Hermione cared so much about our best friend whose life was in mortal danger basically every minute of the day? Towards the end, with the War over, then I did get angry about it and we had several rows about it.

Now, seeing the way Hermione was with Harry, I saw something of what I’d always wished she could be with me. Funny, I’d never really thought about it before but in seeing them together, I suddenly knew that was what I wanted too. Not with Hermione—I knew, now, that Hermione and I were too different to ever reach that level of comfort together—but with somebody.

Because they looked, well, happy. Harry looked happy.

It was something that occasionally surprised me when I bothered to think about it. But Harry just didn’t find it that easy or natural or whatever the word was to be happy. It had gotten better, now that it had been a little more than a year since the end of the War, but I knew that Harry was still bothered by the occasional nightmare and he still double-checked the wards around our flat every time he left and he still tended to react badly to any sudden, unexpected noises.

(Right after we’d moved into the flat, I’d accidentally dropped a plate so it shattered on the floor and before I’d bitten off the first “sod it,” Harry had appeared, almost tackling Hermione to the floor in a protective crouch, before rolling to his feet in one motion, his wand ready. It had been after that incident that Hermione had made a point of casting Anti-Breaking Charms on all our dishware and basically everything else in the flat that was breakable.)

And sometimes when Harry laughed, I caught a fleeting look of surprise on his face as if he was still surprised to have a reason to laugh.

Even as I thought it, Hermione said something—I couldn’t hear what—but Harry laughed and kissed her forehead while she turned slightly towards him and relaxed against him more than she already was—oh, sod it, there was no other way to put it—she was nestling against him.

(Where had this side of Hermione come from?)

And they did look happy. Harry’s laugh had come easily, naturally—and no one knew better than me—me and Hermione, that was—how unusual that still was.

(It was something of a skill Hermione had developed, that of knowing when and how to jolly Harry out of his occasional brooding moments. In those moments, I had learned to stay quiet and out of the way—and to get Hermione. I could make Harry laugh at normal times but in his quiet moods, my attempts to jolly him up usually met with either silent failure or loud annoyance. In those times, I could no more read Harry than I could read one of those old Egyptian curses Bill had once learned for his curse-breaking work.)

They looked happy—and in that moment, I realized what I had forgotten in all my anger at Harry for breaking the unwritten rule of friendship that you just didn’t date or get romantically involved with in any way your best friend’s ex-girlfriends.

There was a more important rule—probably the most important rule of friendship.

Friends wanted their friends to be happy.

Harry was my best friend—and so was Hermione. She had been my best friend long before she had ever been my girlfriend.

And I had been with Harry and Hermione through too many bad things to begrudge them being happy, even if it was with each other.

I sighed and then uprooted my feet from the floor to approach Harry’s door.

“Harry.” I pushed the door open with my hand as they flew apart so quickly that by the time the door was fully open and I stepped inside, they were each sitting primly at opposite ends of Harry’s bed, looking more like very awkward acquaintances than friends, let alone anything more than friends. At any other time, I might have laughed at it.

“Hey, Ron,” Harry ventured sounding both overly casual and very tentative at the same time.

I looked from him to Hermione and then back again, wishing I’d stopped to think of what I was going to say before I’d interrupted.

Oh sod it.

“Er—look—I—uh… Before—when I was being a git—there was something I forgot to say.” I stopped, looking at each of them again, before I finished, “You’re both my best friends and—and if being together makes you happy, then I’m happy for you guys.”

“Oh, Ron…” Hermione gave me a somewhat wobbly smile—and I froze. Oh no. She looked—she wasn’t going to—

“Just—for the love of Merlin,” I blurted out quickly trying to avert disaster in the form of Hermione getting teary-eyed and all, well, girly, “don’t do anything to hurt each other, okay? Or I’ll be forced to hex you both for hurting my best friends and then I’d have no best friends at all and I’d have to make friends with… with Malfoy or something.” I gave an exaggerated shudder and both Harry and Hermione laughed.

Hermione stood up and before I knew what she was going to do, threw her arms around me in a hug.

“Geez, Hermione,” I gave a half-laughing protest even as I hugged her back—quickly—and then pushed her away gently. “If you’re going to cling to someone, cling to Harry. At least he’ll enjoy it.”

Hermione laughed and—for probably the first time in our years of friendship—did what I told her to do. She buried her face in Harry’s shoulder as he closed his arms around her, kissing her hair quickly, before he looked back up at me.

He smiled, a little hesitantly.

I nodded.

“And you two being wrapped around each other like that is definitely my cue to leave,” I announced. “Have fun but try not to be too loud,” I added with a deliberate leer.

And then I closed the door firmly behind me, cutting off the sound of Hermione’s protesting “Ron!” and Harry’s laugh.

My best friends were dating. I tested the thought out, as if probing to see if something still hurt. My best friend was dating my ex-girlfriend. I grimaced—oh, that thought still rather irked me. My best friends were together. Hermione was Harry’s girlfriend.

Harry and Hermione were together.

Harry and Hermione. And that was where my brain stalled. Because I knew them both and, whatever else, they just… fit… together.

And it didn’t matter that Hermione had once been my girlfriend. It didn’t matter that Harry really should not date any of my ex-girlfriends. (I wouldn’t have been pleased if Harry had started dating Lavender either—disturbing was the only word for that mental image.)

What mattered was that they were happy and the idea of them together just seemed… natural… right…

The image of them together came back to me—the unthinking tenderness in the way Harry had kissed Hermione, the trust and the comfort in the way Hermione had nestled against him. They were the picture of caring, of—it had to be said—love.

I found myself smiling and this time, it wasn’t hard.

Because that’s the thing about friendship: you want your friends to be happy.

I wanted my best friends to be happy and if being together made them happy, then that made me happy too.

And that was all there was to it.

~The End~