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Robert Granger led Ron Weasley into the living room and gestured to the sofa and chairs. “Please have a seat, Ron. I’ll be back in a moment.”
Ron nodded and the man left. Ron slipped his hand into the pocket of his jeans and closed his fingers around the box there. It held the ring he had bought for Hermione. It was a simple diamond, just under a carat, slightly yellow in color and a bit flawed, set in a gold band. Engraved on the inside of the band were three simple words, Swish and Flick. Ron wanted to just ask her to be his wife, but he felt like he had to ask her father’s permission first.
Robert surely knew that that was why Ron was there; he had only been to the Grangers’ house a handful of times before and it had always been when he was invited for dinner or tea. Ron had a feeling Hermione’s father had left him alone to make him sweat. It was working, too. Ron began to pace the room nervously. Finally he crossed over to a bookshelf that was against one wall and began to nervously catalogue its contents.
Two of the shelves were covered in nothing but photographs of Hermione. Ron had a moment of confusion as he stared at them before he remembered that Muggle photos didn’t move. He looked at one of Hermione at around age 6, wearing a pale blue princess dress and white dress shoes – her dress reminded him of a fairytale Hermione had explained to him called Cinderella. She was smiling shyly at the camera. His eyes went next to a picture of his girlfriend at 8, with her father pushing her on a strange metal frame with wheels. He racked his brain for a few seconds and finally placed it – it was called a bicycle. Hermione looked both thrilled and terrified.
The next photo was of a toddler-age Hermione – 3 or 4 at the most – jumping on a blue and white-lace covered canopy bed, laughing delightedly and holding a blue pillow above her head as though prepared to throw it at someone. Ron immediately liked this picture; the very young Hermione looked positively impish in it. It was a side of her he didn’t get to see very often, which just made it more precious when he did.
He moved his eyes to another picture. Hermione looked about 7 and was wearing a purple bathing suit and running through water that seemed to be spraying up in a fan-shape from some sort of piece of plastic. The skin around Hermione’s mouth was reddened, as though she’d been eating or drinking something red that had stained. She was grinning from ear-to-ear, revealing the too-large front teeth that Ron remembered from their first few years of school. Her thick, dark hair was soaked and plastered to her face and neck. She looked positively adorable.
Ron turned his eyes to a picture of Hermione at what must surely be no older than 10 or 11 years old; she looked nearly exactly as she had when Ron had first met her. Her frizzy hair was pulled back into a thick braid that hung like a rope down the center of her back. Pieces of her hair had escaped the attempt at confinement and were hanging in chaotic curls around her ears and face. She wore a dark blue party dress that came to just below her knees and black dress shoes with white stockings. Her arms were around her father’s neck, and she was standing on the toes of his shoes while he balanced her by holding her around the waist. She was smiling up at him and it was obvious they were dancing.
Ron leaned a little closer to the shelf, studying the pictures closer. He was startled into standing up straight and spinning around by a deep voice behind him, “Now isn’t she something, son?”
Ron smiled nervously, running a hand through his red hair. “Yes, sir.” He replied honestly, for he thought the world of Hermione. “She’s quite a woman, that’s for sure.”
Robert stared at Ron in stunned silence and Ron realized that to him, Hermione wasn’t a woman. To him, she was still the little girl from the pictures – jumping on the bed and throwing pillows, riding a bicycle, playing in the water, dressed like a princess, dancing on his shoes. When he looked at Hermione, he didn’t see the beautiful young woman Ron saw. He saw the daughter he had raised and loved for so many years.
Robert stared at the young man before him for a moment, then slapped a hand on Ron’s shoulder and said gruffly. “Alright then.” Then he turned to the door and called for Hermione. When she stepped into the doorway, he said softly. “I’ve told him it’s alright, Hermione. So you go on and say yes when he asks, if that’s what you want.”
Hermione beamed at her father. “I want it more than anything, Daddy.” Then she practically flew across the room and into his arms. She wrapped her arms around her dad’s neck and hugged him tightly and Ron was reminded of the photo he’d just looked at, of Hermione dancing with her father. And he could see how Robert still saw her; the child she had been.
And as Ron met Robert’s teary eyes over Hermione’s head, he realized something else. It wasn’t just that Robert Granger didn’t see Hermione the same way Ron did – he didn’t see Ron the way Hermione did either. Hermione looked at Ron and saw the man she had loved since he’d been nothing but a boy; the person who had grown up as one of her best friends, who had fought at her side, who had done his best to protect her. Hermione looked at Ron and saw Prince Charming. But when Robert looked at Ron all he saw was a thief.
Ron found he couldn’t be angry at Robert for giving him a hard time every now and then; after all, he was stealing the man’s daughter.