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“What about this one?” Harry asked even as he opened the unlabeled box.
Going from two bedrooms to only one hadn’t been very painful, but Ron had to admit that he was more than ready to leave the cramped flat that barely fit the three of them. It’d served them well the past two years, generated plenty of memories, but the Potter home they’d restored in Godric’s Hollow had been long thought of as home and Ron was itching to start their next chapter there.
“The office,” Hermione said without really looking up.
“Might as well just label it Hermione’s room” Ron joked, finishing with the marker he’d just finished using to write those very words on a rather heavy box of books he’d be putting a feather-light charm on next. He turned the box to show off his work. “I swear that’s what we agreed on.”
Hermione, typically, rolled her eyes affectionally at him and Ron looked up to see Harry’s grin only to find a frown on his face as he read a piece of muggle stationery. He’d seen the paper before and for some reason it sent a nervous chill down his spine.
“Harry?” Ron asked hesitantly and he looked up, confused.
“What’s this?” Harry asked, holding up the letter for them both to see.
And all of the sudden Ron remembered where exactly he’d seen the paper before. For the letter grasped in his hand wasn’t in Hermione’s parents' handwriting, but his very own.
“We can explain,” Ron said at the same time as Hermione.
Harry looked at them expectantly and when they didn’t launch into explanation demanded, “Well?”
“We haven’t sent one in ages!” Hermione pleaded. Ron spared her a glance and found her face was drained of color.
“But you had?” Harry asked, reading through the letter again. “You had been sending them letters?”
“It’s not what you think!” Hermione shouted.
“And what am I supposed to be thinking?” Harry demanded. "It's addressed to the Dursleys!"
Since they’d all gotten together Harry hadn’t so much as raised his voice with them. There hadn’t been much need for disagreements and those disagreements Ron and Hermione usually took care of on their own. But now, the letter gripped tightly in his fist, Ron knew that their streak of getting along was ending.
“Well!”
Ron came to his senses and stood, trying to reach out and comfort him but Harry refused by taking a step back.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Harry demanded.
“We were worried that you’d react…” Ron stopped, failing to come up with the right word. “Well, that you’d react like this.”
“So you went on and did it anyway?” Harry shouted, “Knowing that I’d be upset about it?”
Ron stared down at the ground in shame.
“How many?” Harry asked in a low, dangerous voice. “How many letters did you send?”
“A dozen, maybe,” Hermione said in a squeak. “But please, you have to understand-“
“Understand what?” he interrupted.
“How long we wanted to.” Ron said. Harry turned on him but Ron knew he had to speak and fast. “We’d been talking about it for years, what we’d say to them if we had the chance. And then, dad told us one evening, that they were home and gave us the address should you ever want it. We’d been writing to them as a way to cope with it only one night we were both angry about something and rather than take out our anger on one another we decided to take it out on them.”
Harry looked too stunned for words and Hermione took advantage, speaking in that high pitched voice she got whenever she was upset and nervous.
“It started out as one drunken letter. Letting them know how horrible they were and that it wasn’t forgotten. That was going to be it, we swear,” Hermione pleaded. She was approaching him slowly and he didn’t jump away when she reached for this hand. “But it just felt so good, to be able to tell them off. And then there was this night you were in the hospital because you’d been injured and you refused to let us touch you even to help you drink water or check your bandages and it was so emotional and it just came out of us again.”
He looked between her and Ron as if searching for guidance on an appropriate way to react.
“We didn’t mean to hide it from you, honest. We just thought it was a one-time thing but then it kept happening and we didn’t know how to bring it up.”
“I’m the one who had to suffer,” Harry said, sounding conflicted. “It wasn’t your job to make them feel bad.”
And despite the gravity of the situation, Ron couldn’t help but laugh a little. “Mate, it is our jobs, as your best friends, to protect you. Always has been. And seeing as I can’t actually go and punch them in the face, writing to the Dursleys is the next best way to get back at them.”
Something in Harry’s expression suddenly shifted and he looked up at them with a blazing look in his eyes. For a moment Ron thought he would understand but his hopes were dashed when Harry said the very thing that Ron had always feared he’d think of them.
“Can’t you hear what you both are saying?” Harry snapped, snatching his hand out of Hermione’s. “I spent most of my life with people trying to protect me making decisions because they thought it was best.”
Ron winced at his words, “I know, I know-“
“Do you!”
“It wasn’t just for you mate,” Ron begged. Harry glared at him. “I mean it was, of course, it was, but it was for us too.”
He looked at him strangely and then over to Hermione for clarification.
“It was painful, sending you back to them every summer. And we were so young, we didn’t even really understand, not until it was too late to do anything about it. It made us feel so powerless.”
“And every summer, you’d come back a size smaller and you always had this haunted look in your eyes that took a few days to shake.”
Harry’s face grew red and he looked away, furious. Ron, unable to stand him looking so upset, so ashamed, struggled to resist his urge to wrap Harry in such a tight hug that it took all of his pain away. Ron glanced over at Hermione and found her in tears.
“You told me once that the first time you felt something was when we came and broke you out of Privet Drive after our first year,” Ron said quietly and Harry looked up at him. “That you were afraid that no one was going to come for you until you didn’t show up on the platform and they’d discovered you’d starved to death. Those weeks we were apart, when you weren’t getting our letters and we hadn’t heard a thing, all I could picture-“
Ron swallowed past his own tears, “I never would have let that happen. But I can still remember, watching you sleep through the window and for just a moment I thought—“
Hermione whimpered as Harry without a word or sound, reached over, putting their hands together. Unable to resist any longer, Ron reached forward too, laying his hand on Harry’s shoulder, thumb resting against his neck, feeling for a pulse.
“You may have forgiven them,” Ron murmured, “But I’m not so sure that I’m ready.”
“We should have told you,” Hermione whispered, coming to Harry’s side and wrapping her fingers loosely around the wrist that was still holding Ron’s hand. “We should have, I’m sorry.”
“They probably just threw them away,” Harry excused quietly.
“Well, not exactly,” Hermione said quietly looking pleased with herself.
Harry looked down at the muggle parchment and then up at her in confusion.
“You see, the charm that the Howler paper is on?”
Harry nodded looking impressed.
“Well, it wasn’t that complicated to sort out.” She finished modestly. “I thought that if we sent an owl they’d be on guard but through the muggle post?”
“You know,” he said slowly, reading over the half-finished letter once more. “This might be the most Slytherin thing you’ve ever done.”
They all let out a little laugh as Harry crumbled up the letter with one hand and tossed it aside. He leaned in, ever so slightly and they took advantage, wrapping their arms around him and huddling together.
“We haven’t sent them one for ages,” Hermione told him as Harry wiped the tears from her eyes. “Not since before we were together.”
“No more letters,” Harry muttered quietly.
“No more,” they both promised hastily.
Harry fidgeted as Ron kissed his temple. Then he whispered. “Except maybe one final one. Letting them know exactly how happy I am.”