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Her Vow
The day passed like a blur. No, really. Hermione couldn’t remember waking up, she wasn’t sure if she had ever gone to sleep. She also couldn’t recall if she’d had breakfast. Certainly, she would have showered on her wedding day. Fleur and Ginny had poked and prodded at her hair until it stayed in the elegant updo. Her mum and Mrs. Weasley had fastened the buttons on her dress. But she couldn’t remember it. Not the moment when they’d fawned over how she looked nor the way the guests had gasped when she made her entrance.
Now, standing at the altar beside Ron, none of the previous hours were important. The words Kingsley spoke were soundless in her ears; all Hermione could focus on was Ron. She only saw the blue of his eyes and the goofy, lopsided grin he’d been wearing ever since she’d glided down the aisle. Her dad had to steady her steps because she had begun to hurry, itching to get to Ron.
“The bride and groom have prepared a few words to be read,” proclaimed Kingsley to the audience made up of their family and friends. Hermione was brought back from the freckles on Ron’s face as Kingsley handed her the yellow parchment she’d written her words on.
Swallowing, Hermione willed her palpitating heart to settle. Ron nodded in encouragement. While she unfolded the stiff parchment, Hermione bit her lip, forgetting that she’d rub off the lipstick Ginny had put on her.
Finding Ron’s eyes again, she also found her peace and didn’t need to read the words she’d written.
Dear Ron,
For a long time in my life, I thought this day would never come.
At first, it was nervous fear that everything that I felt for you, was not reciprocated. I can’t attribute a singular moment that caused me to fall in love with you. Like life itself, it was gradual, evolving with the most careful precision blend of smirking remarks, short outbursts, and warm smiles.
But then, when there was a glimmer of a chance that you might feel the same, there came the war, and we had to put our feelings aside. My love became sheer terror that I could lose you in a way where the only victor would be Death. By some miracle, we emerged together.
People often believe that love is, in its entirety, wonderful. But they forget that there is a whole range to being in love.
You are the only person in my life that can get me to experience the whole range of love. You irritate me endlessly, frustrate me, anger me to the point I want to hex you… But equally, you make me smile despite how hard I try to hide it, make me laugh to the point I can’t breathe anymore. For someone I once accused of having the emotional range of a teaspoon, I think a teaspoon is all I need.
Because, despite all of your jokes that I taught you Potions or History of Magic, helped you correct your homework and revise for exams, I am nothing compared to the teacher you are to me. No books, no lessons, nothing could ever help me learn what love is, except you.
Ron gasped, and his eyes became silvery. Hermione didn’t remember anyone else but him. It was always him.
* * *
His Vow
Ron was pacing, and he was not a pacer. His nerves always hit him in waves of cold sweat and nausea, but as if that wasn’t enough, today he had begun pacing.
He woke up dazed, stretching and blinking back recognition of what date it was. When it hit him, he shoved off the duvet and ran to the shower, sure he was already late. Except he wasn’t. In fact, when Harry came in thirty minutes later to wake him, Ron was already fastening his cufflinks.
He didn’t eat, he didn’t speak. For once in his life, Ron was early. So early, that he arrived at the end of the aisle well before he was meant to, his foot tattooing the ground with its continuous beating. Little flakes of white fluff were falling, and Harry told him to stop making it snow.
He tried calming himself, not wanting to be all sweaty and green on his wedding day. The snow was nice, though. But nothing worked. Only when the lilting notes began to play and Hermione emerged through the marquee’s flap, did he still. Her cheeks were rosy, her lips busy being chewed, and her eyes were trained on him.
She came. She was walking to him. She was standing next to him. He couldn’t stop staring and grinning. And her words loosened tears he had been choking back all day.
It was his turn now. Taking the parchment from his pocket, he cast a sideways glance at all the faces staring up at them and tried to read.
Hermione,
“Bollocks.” The crowd behind him laughed, and Ron felt his ears flare. “Sorry,” he mumbled. He cleared his throat and filled his lungs. Everyone was looking at him. Hermione was looking at him.
Hermione.
He let out an exhale. Hermione said yes to him. She walked down an aisle all for him. She wanted him for the rest of her life. The words she’d spoken resonated around him, and it was just him and her. Kingsley, Harry behind him, the rest of their guests, they all disappeared and with it, his nerves ebbed away.
Hermione,
I can’t remember ever wanting anyone else but you, even when I didn’t know it myself. But I guess I wasn’t ready then, and it took me a long time to see. When I finally did, it felt like I’d been blind my whole life, like I’d lived my life seeing shadows and, finally, I could make out colour. I didn’t know that’s what love was.
The phrase “blinded by love” is a lie. Love makes you see. You make me see — that you’re kind and irritable, brave and bossy, brilliant… And a little bit scary.
And knowing that you see all of me and love me still, well, all I hope is that I’m ready now. To be your best friend. To be the man you need. To be yours.
Because you’re the most precious nightmare I’ve ever had. You’re my love.
Bickering with you, laughing with you, anything with you I’m grateful to have. They seem like moments that were almost stolen from us, and I will fight any troll, any spider, any basilisk, any evil to be with you.
I bleeding love you.
Ron made sure to stare into the warmth of Hermione’s glazed eyes. Together they had fought for this, for them to be together.