Work Text:
Hermione was reading over a report a few hours after a lonely dinner when she heard the Floo in the den flare up.
“Ron?” she called, putting aside her parchment. She waited and heard nothing. After a few more moments she called his name again, but still there was no response. She quickly stood, wand at her side, to inspect what had made the sound, when she saw the lights to the den were flicking on and off, an old habit he’d adopted when he was particularly riled.
At a glance Ron normally cut an intimidating figure in red Auror robes, large well-worn boots covered in dust, and a towering frame that became more muscled and strong every month he was with the Aurors. He didn’t have a hint of intimidation around him now. He was hunched over on the sofa, head in his hands, looking far too small and defeated than his build should allow.
“I called and you didn’t answer,” she said with a tentative smile, hoping his despondency was something silly like a quidditch game’s results being spoiled before he could listen to it, or Dawlish being a prat again.
He roughly scrubbed his head from hair to the very end of his thick stubble a few times, then looked up at her with red rimmed eyes.
“Sorry ‘bout that,” he mumbled.
A thousand questions filtered through her mind, but seeing his state she knew to settle for one, couching it as carefully as she could. “Did something happen at work?”
He quietly nodded. She began to sit beside him, but he popped up from the sofa with surprising speed. “I’m- I’m covered in… Gonna take a shower. I’ll be back after.”
She prepared a fresh pot of tea, chocolate biscuits, and found his favorite soft socks (wedged into the corner of the sofa, of course, because he never used the hamper!) and supplied them with a small heating charm. If he was having an off day, little creature comforts like this always seemed to take the edge off. It hadn’t been a natural inclination of hers to do things like this, but after a few years with Ron she could see the allure in it. He’d done it often enough for her, quietly supplying her with food and an open ear.
If not for the charms she’d placed on the tea it would have grown stone cold as she waited for him. When nearly an hour passed and he still hadn’t emerged, she put everything on a tray and went up the stairs.
The shower in their ensuite was still running, and tendrils of thick steam wafted out from under the door, the lights flicking on and off. She rapped on the door before opening it. The room was so steam filled it took a moment for her eyes to adjust. She expected to find Ron parboiled in the shower: instead she found him still fully dressed, sitting on the floor across from the toilet, deluminator in his hand. He was so tall his knees were practically up to his chest to fit in such a position. Despite the fog and heat his hands tremored and he looked pale.
She carefully stepped over him and turned the taps off before kneeling beside him on the tile floor, inspecting him all over for wounds. He only had a few small scratches, and a dark bruise forming on his cheekbone— nothing all that out of the ordinary though.
“What happened?”
He grimaced and turned his head away from her. A silent Ron always made her wary. He was nowhere near as talkative as she, but he always had something to say on a matter, even if it was just a grumbled complaint or offhand joke to lighten the mood. The few times she’d seen him this shut down had been in the most dire of times. It took all her willpower to discreetly wait for him to speak.
“Ron…” she finally let out, unable to take not knowing a second longer.
“There was a raid today…” he began in a low quiet voice. “Did I tell you that?”
She nodded.
“It was supposed to be simple… We had days of prep and surveillance and all the right spells in place. The team had checked multiple times that there weren’t any possible non-combatant bystanders.” His expression hardened. “The crew we were raiding had been doing all sort of dark goods trades, each had a rap sheet a mile long.”
He rattled it off mechanically, as if he’d said it all a few times before. He probably had. If something went wrong at a raid he’d have to speak to internal affairs and report it to several people. The thought of them knowing what Ron had gone through more thoroughly than she made her vibrate in frustration.
“It was smooth operating. Shut down the Floo. Had non-apparition wards in place. Most suspects were a bunch of plonkers who just put their hands up or were disarmed in no time…”
He stopped and leaned his head back against the wall.
“— But we get in this one room that was charmed against homenum revelio and- and this fucker had a mother and a kid we hadn’t known would be there. He was trying to use the kid as a hostage to get out of there. Not just any kid. It was his own kid. Wand to the neck of a seven year old…” His voice wavered. “He knew he was surrounded and then he moved his wand, and I got him with a stunner, but the kid… I was too slow and he used a severing spell and…”
He began to shake, and hid his face, barely containing the sobs forcibly smothered by his large hand.
“Oh, Ron!” She tried to hold back her own tears but her vision shimmered.
She slowly put her arms around him as tight as she could, though she couldn’t quite encircle him given his width. She kept saying small consoling things that felt like utter gibberish, but his arms went about her middle and he leaned into her, hot tears falling down her neck.
She wasn’t sure how long they stayed like this, but by the time they’d both stopped crying, one of her feet had gone numb, and she had a considerable crick in her neck from accommodating his weight on her.
“Any better?” she asked, putting a hand to his stubbled cheek.
“You always make me feel better,” he mumbled into her neck, before looking down. “Fuck, I think I got blood on your clothes.”
“I don’t care,” she said, looking down at the faint smears on her jumper.
“Guess that’s why they make the Auror robes red…” he muttered, taking out his wand to get the stain out of her clothes; his hand shook as he did.
“I’ll take care of it later.”
“I don’t want this touching you. Any of it!”
She stilled his hand before kissing his temple. “I’m fine. It’s you who needs looking after right now, so let me look out for you.”
She turned the shower on and helped him strip off his uniform bit by bit. He seemed too bone weary to protest. She nearly stepped into the shower with him to help but he shook his head.
“I’ve got it, thanks,” he said with a wisp of a smile.
While he washed up, Hermione did the same with their clothes, not wanting him to come across any reminders of the horrors he’d seen. Tomorrow she’d see if she could talk to Harry about it or read the report, that way Ron wouldn’t have to. She’d never make him talk about it again and wished she could just obliviate it from his mind.
She hated his job. She hated that someone so kind and caring was subjected to something so cruel and senseless. He’d seen enough of it all by eighteen. He didn’t need more of it now.
A fatigued sigh left her. There was no sense in miring herself in that discourse.
She put away the tea and biscuits, turned off all the downstairs lights, changed her clothes, put sleep clothes out for Ron in the bathroom and turned down the covers to their bed.
A few minutes later Ron emerged, looking somewhat less shaky and raw.
“Bit early for bed, innit?”
“Not after the day you had.” She gave him a hug, and tugged him into their bed. He sluggishly crawled in and used the deluminator to put out the lights.
She wanted to tell him to quit. She wanted to demand he find a safer, saner job. Instead she curled into his side, unsurprised when he crushed her even tighter to him and kissed the top of her head. There would be a million unsaid things that tore at her mind, but she could be quiet for him.