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Hermione wasn’t really expecting to sleep soundly tonight. Hoping, yes, for her body needed a restful night for once—had longed for it all these many months that they’d been on the run. Funny how well one could adapt when given very little choice; she’d read all about it in a book a long time ago. A lifetime ago now. And indeed, she had adapted. They all had. They learnt to function on a few hours of rest—if it could even be called that—and get by on barely edible food and ignore the multitude of aches and pains that grew dull with time and defiance.
It felt strange to be back in a bed again—a proper one, anyway, with warm covers and the heavy hangings that blotted out the moonlight that had fought its way through the windows. It felt even stranger to be here alone, to hear the silence and be without the oddly comforting sounds of Harry’s breathing and Ron’s light snores. And she found that although sleep beckoned, although her body ached for that release, she simply couldn’t.
She slipped out of bed, the shock of cold floor making her shudder for a moment before her feet found the slippers that had somehow got shoved under the bed. Without really thinking, without really knowing where she’d go, she found herself climbing down the girls’ staircase, waiting for her eyes to adjust to the shapes of the dark, empty common room before she quietly slipped through the portrait hole and into the still, deserted halls of the castle.
Her footsteps echoed on the marble. The sound was unnerving and comforting all at once. Her hand closed around the wand she’d slipped inside the pocket of her dressing gown. It would be a while, she thought, before she’d break that habit. Months, maybe even years. And as she wandered down the dim corridors, her breath caught in her throat at the sight of a sliver of light just up ahead. Instinctively, she took out the wand, gripping it ever more tightly when she saw that the light was coming from a gap in the entrance to the prefects’ bathroom.
The door had been left ajar.
“Who’s there-”
The figure that had been bent over a sink jerked up straight and whipped around; a wand clattered noisily to the floor. Hermione let out the air that had been collecting painfully inside her lungs and she loosened her grip on her wand at last and lowered it, then stepped inside.
“Ron?”
“Blimey, Hermione... I was this close to jinxing you.”
She grinned. “Next time, you might want to close the door.”
He didn’t return her smile straight away; for a moment, she was afraid that she’d offended him, but after a while, she heard a distinct chuckle as he bent down to retrieve the wand. It was at this moment that she happened to notice he was clad only in his pyjama bottoms; the top was slung unceremoniously across a neighbouring sink.
He must have felt her stare, because his ears turned that unmistakable shade of maroon and he looked away, reaching for something on the shelf above the sink.
“Couldn’t sleep either, then?” he said.
“Not exactly.”
She craned her neck ever so slightly to try and catch a glimpse of what he was holding. She’d tried to be subtle about it, but he seemed to have caught the motion anyway; he turned and held up his hand.
“Dittany?” she said, coming closer.
He nodded, tipping the bottle into his hand and ran his palm all along a constellation of cuts on his breast bone. She heard a hiss and realised it had come from her; he looked up at the sound and smiled.
“Not so bad,” he said. “I always forget that it stings, though.”
Without a word, she stepped forward, taking the bottle from him and leaning back against the sink. He was eyeing her curiously, then seemed to understand when she poured a few droplets onto her index finger and looked up at him in a silent request for permission. He granted it with a nod, and she touched her finger to a burn mark on his forearm, running it along its jagged shape and watching the scar turn faint, but not quite vanish. Fiendfyre meant that it would never truly fade; she felt her eyes start to sting as she stared at it.
“I s’pose I’ll get used to it,” he said. “At least it’s a conversation starter, innit?”
Hermione let out a shaky laugh, tears blurring her vision as she looked up. Ron touched his hand to her cheek, his thumb catching a tear as it slid down.
“You’re good at this.”
“What?”
“Applying the Dittany,” he said, his face turning slightly pink. “I’m rubbish at it. Been trying to put it on myself for the last twenty minutes...”
She smiled, thinking about the tender, gentle way he had tended to her wounds at Shell Cottage, sweeping the potion all over her wounds where the Crucio curse had touched her, and watching with awe has they faded, almost—but not quite—blending with her flesh.
“I don’t think you give yourself enough credit,” she said, and she knew from his shy smile that he knew exactly what she meant.
Her eyes caught a mark just above his shoulder. It looked different from the others—not a surface cut or a wound, but something deeper, etched onto his skin, as though it had been branded there with magic. She reached up to touch it before she realised it, feeling a tremor run through her body as her skin made contact with his, as though she already knew what it was before he even told her.
“Riddle’s curse,” he said. “That Horcrux put up a nasty fight.”
Her thumb was sweeping back and forth across the scar. Both of them became aware of the motion at the same moment; Hermione felt the heat of his stare, but slowly raised her eyes to meet his.
“You never told me what happened,” she said softly. “How it fought.”
His reaction was swift and abrupt. Without warning, he reached around her for his pyjama top and shrugged it on.
“I-I’m sorry,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t have asked, but-”
“Forget it,” he said. His fingers were making quick work of the buttons. Hermione couldn’t help but feel a pang of disappointment settle in the pit of her stomach.
“Ron...”
She laid a hand on his arm. He stopped in mid-motion, eyes falling on her hand, then eventually trailing upwards to her face.
“It must have been bad, if... You don’t have to tell me, but... I just wondered...”
For a long time, there was silence. Hermione wasn’t sure if he was angry, but it was already too late, she knew; the words hung in the air, having made their escape, and there was no way to take them back. At length, she placed the bottle of Dittany back on the shelf above the sink.
And to her surprise, he closed his hand over hers.
“I saw you,” he said, his voice barely a whisper.
“Me?”
He nodded.
“You and... and Harry...”
She stared back at him, unsure of what to make of his words, not really letting herself follow the thought to conclusion, because she had an inkling that she knew where this was headed.
His face said it all.
“You were... you were with him... kissing him...”
She closed her eyes, feeling tears press against her lids, wanting release. His hand let go of hers, and when she opened her eyes again, she saw that he was bent over the neighbouring sink, gripping the edges tightly, as though they were the only things keeping him upright.
“You said I was nothing compared to him. That you were happier when I was gone...”
“Ron, that wasn’t... I would never...”
He straightened without looking at her and reached for the Dittany, looking down on it in the palm of his hand. Silence fell on them again and she wondered whether he’d reject her touch, whether he’d shrug her off if she placed her hand on his shoulder.
But before she could work out what to say, he spoke again, his words completely knocking her for a loop.
“I’ll never be him, Hermione,” he said, head hung low. “If you haven’t figured that out by now...”
His voice was raw and stripped, and it scared her to hear it sound like this—scared her more so than the actual words he’d said.
“I don’t-”
“Look, I know we’ve all been through the wringer these last few months... People do and say things they wouldn't normally have done when there’s a war going on-”
“What are you saying?”
He pushed himself off the sink and looked at her. There was resignation in his eyes, like the acceptance of some sort of defeat.
“I’m saying... I’m saying that I’m not holding you to anything. Now that it’s all over, maybe... maybe our heads will be on straight for the first time in a year, and-”
“And what?” She felt anger rise up inside her, that familiar fire that always seemed to build with him and only him. “What, that you’re going to take back...”
She almost said it. Almost. The words had been on the tip of her tongue, but she managed to stop herself just in time. Just in time.
The kiss. Their kiss.
“... everything? That you’ll take it all back, as though none of it had ever happened?”
The words had their desired effect. After all these years, they knew exactly how to level a blow at each other, exactly how to hurt each other the most. Why did it always come to this?
“I didn’t say that-”
“Well, then what??”
Tears had broken through the dam, despite her best efforts to resist. For a moment, he looked as though he would reach out to touch her but held back, his hands gripping the sink behind him.
“I thought... I thought that things would be different now...”
She heard the longing in her own voice, and she hated herself for it. Hated that she could be this exposed in front of him, that somehow, he always left her with her guard utterly stripped down.
That she could never really hide anything from him, no matter how hard she tried.
He broke the eye contact and stared hard at the ground. She should have walked away then and there, but she couldn’t. It would have been easier to do so—and before today, she might have done just that, walked away before he could hurt her any further, before her heart could break any more than it already had.
But she didn’t.
Instead, she came closer, noticing the tension in his muscles as he willed himself not to cry, and she reached over to tilt his chin up.
“Do you have any idea what it was like when you left?” she said. “How it felt when you were gone-”
“That’s not fair, Hermione,” he said, flinching from her touch as though he’d been stung. “I’d do anything to take that back, you know that-”
“No, that’s not... Ron, I’m not saying this to punish you all over again. I’m just trying to get you to understand...”
“Understand what?”
She took his hand in hers. This time he didn’t resist. She took a deep breath and decided to make that leap.
It was time. It was finally time.
“I love you,” she said softly. “It’s always been you. Not Harry, not Viktor, not Cormac... You.”
He stared at her for a long time, as though absorbing the words, feeling their weight and their meaning, their different shades and nuances. She watched him in silence, waiting, wondering, trying to gauge from his reaction how the words would change things between them. And then he took her by surprise, taking her face in his hands and kissing her, with the same intensity and fierceness of their earlier kiss, as though years of longing and doubt and hope were suddenly colliding in this one moment.
Before, it had been the rush of battle, the exhilaration of facing the unknown, of knowing that that moment could have easily been their last. But here and now, it was about them at last, about acknowledging something that long needed to be voiced—saying out loud what should have been said so many years ago.
When they finally broke apart, Ron continued to cradle her face, thumbs languidly caressing her cheekbones, forehead resting against hers. His eyes were still closed, as though scared of what might happen if he opened them.
Was he scared he had just imagined this moment? That she would vanish the instant he dared to wake up?
Hermione reached up to cup his cheek, the beginnings of stubble grazing the sensitive skin of her palm. Her touch must have finally assured him that this was real; at last he opened his eyes to look at her.
“I love you, Hermione,” he murmured, and she felt her heart leap against her ribcage. “I'm... I'm sorry I couldn’t say it before now. I know I should have said it when I came back—you needed me to say it, I know, but... but I just couldn’t yet...”
She smiled up at him. “Better late than never.”
He laughed softly, then fell silent once again, his eyes skimming her face, as if taking in every angle and curve, committing every detail of it to memory. As if he could never get enough of looking at her.
“I do, you know,” he said. “Love you. I know I haven’t much emotional range...”
She laughed out loud. He gave her that teasing grin that she’d come to know so well.
“... but I am capable of depth in certain things, and... and this is one of them.”
“I know,” she said. Then, unable to resist teasing him with her own loving jab, she said, “Even if it did take you seven years to show it-”
“Hey!”
She silenced him with a kiss, more tender and less frantic than either of their other kisses, a promise of all the other kisses that were yet to come.
“Say it again,” he murmured into her mouth.
“I love you,” she said. “I love you, even when you’re being an infuriating prat.”
He laughed. “And I love you, even when you’re an insufferable know-it-all.”
She pulled away slightly to look up at him and grinned.
“So it seems we’re stuck with each other, then,” she said.
“Reckon so.”
“Good, I’m glad.”
He kissed her again, and she could feel the shape of his smile.