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The first thing Hermione heard were the waves: in and out, crashing and receding, leaving and returning. The flap of a candle flame at her bedside. The breathing of a man in a chair beside her.
She shifted a little, slowly sitting up. She was in an unfamiliar bedroom in an unfamiliar house, but was reassured to see Ron beside her. As soon as she moved, Ron stopped twiddling with his wand in his lap. “How are you?” he asked, his voice thick with concern.
“I’m alright,” she said. In truth, her body ached in a way she did not know it was possible to hurt. In the moment, though, the lingering pain was overcome by Ron’s presence at her bedside. She was touched, but not entirely surprised, that he was there, waiting on her. “Could’ve used a Dreamless Sleep Potion, but that’s nothing new these days,” she added.
He nodded seriously. “Bill and Fleur have made breakfast, can I get you anything?”
“Not right now,” she said, smiling weakly. “I’ll come down in a bit.”
“Right, good,” he said, his attention turning back to his wand. “How—are you still in pain? I checked with Bill, they’ve got the ingredients for a Calming Draught, but I wanted to see if that’s something you’d want first. Or if there’s something else….” His voice trailed off.
“You’re going to make a Calming Draught?” said Hermione quietly.
“Yeah,” he said matter-of-factly. “I—well, I stole a book from your beaded bag. I put it back,” he added quickly, “just to double-check the instructions and everything. It’s been a minute since I made one.”
She remembered, suddenly, what happened yesterday when they landed on the beach, how she was barely in her own body, how her knees hit the sand and Ron pulled her up. With an arm around her shoulders, he supported her up to the cottage, and she leaned to him, and he had led her to the sofa. Ron had sat beside her then, his arms around her still, and she could not tell where she ended and he began, and her body ached, and he whispered something to her about being safe, and she sobbed into his shirt.
He was still looking at her expectantly, waiting for an answer.
“Er—a Calming Draught sounds nice, really, but you needn’t go through the effort,” said Hermione eventually. “Really.”
He seemed almost disappointed. “I’ll grab you some tea.”
She watched him leave the room and close the door behind himself, and could hear his footsteps on the creaky staircase down the hall. Smiling to herself, it occurred to her that he could be attending to her just to get back in her good graces after he’d stormed out of the tent and left them for weeks. Yet the tone of his voice, and his worry for her, told her that he was not doing this to impress her or atone for his past idiocy. He genuinely cared for her.
The greatest proof she had of his care for her was a faint memory, that she was almost certain she hadn’t imagined, of him yelling her name at Malfoy Manor. It had been distant in light of the pain, as distant as the sound of the tide coming in was now. He had yelled for her, screamed for her, over and over….
Ron returned a couple minutes later, carrying a cup prepared just as she likes it. He sat back down in the chair again, as if he intended to stay until she got out of bed. “How’s Luna as a roommate?” he asked.
She had forgotten that she had shared the room with Luna. “Good, I suppose.”
“She’s entertaining everyone downstairs with tales of Dabberblimps,” he told her, shaking his head fondly. “Makes for a nice change.” He looked alarmed suddenly, as if he’d accidentally insulted her and their time in the tent. “I don’t mean—”
“I’ll make sure to bring them up more in the future,” said Hermione lightly. Ron grinned, relieved, and she felt her heart lurch. “How’s Harry?”
“Stuck in his own head,” said Ron. “I can’t tell what he’s thinking about the goblin stuff yet.”
“Have you checked him for Wrackspurts?”
He laughed. “We’ll have to ask Luna how,” he said. “That’ll help defeat You-Know-Who.”
The moment passed. She could feel his eyes on her as she sipped her tea, but she did not look at him. The mention of You-Know-Who sobered her, reminding her of their mission and the consequences of their capture. The sound of the ocean came through to her again: in and out, coming and going, there and gone. It was bizarre, to be in such a beautiful place and to know of such horrible things happening outside the protection of Shell Cottage.
“Bill was saying Tonks will have the baby any day now,” said Ron. “She’s at her parents’—well, her mum’s, I guess.”
“I can’t imagine having a baby nowadays,” said Hermione. “And right after her dad died—it’s too awful.”
“Life goes on, I suppose,” Ron said, shifting in his chair. He sat up suddenly, as if he had decided something. “Listen, Hermione, I—”
“Don’t,” she pleaded. She said it before she could stop herself, before she could even be sure of what he was going to say.
Ron looked at her sharply, stunned. “I—? Did I do—?”
“Only, you don’t have to say anything now,” she said.
Ron glanced down at his wand, then back at her, determined. “I want—I need to say something now,” he said firmly. “After yesterday, I know I’d always regret it if…if I didn’t get to tell you….”
She met his gaze, willing herself not to look away. “Ron,” she said, as calmly as she could will herself to be. She saw him swallow nervously. “I know.”
He watched her for a moment, searching her face for something. “I know you know,” he said eventually. “And I know you’ve known, for I don’t know how long, but I still need to say it, alright?”
Hermione smiled sadly. “We have to deal with the Horcruxes first.”
Ron leaned forward. “Hermione, if something happened to one of us before I could say my piece, I couldn’t live with myself.”
“When it’s over,” she said.
She hated herself for saying it. When they were at the Burrow so many months ago, she had the thought—no, it was more of an urge, a need, an impulse—that she should put an end to the circles that they danced around one another, that she should tell him point-blank how she felt. At the time, petty residue from their sixth-year barred her from acting on that impulse, which she was grateful for now. She had realized, during their time camping out in the tent, that it was better that she had waited. Better that nothing had happened in sixth-year, that she hadn’t said anything over the summer, that there was not any romantic tension hanging between them while they camped with Harry.
Ron was right—if something happened to one of them, whatever it was between them would go acknowledged but unspoken for the rest of time. It was a risk they would have to take: they could not afford any distraction from what they had to do.
She reached out to him, and he took her hand into his. He looked down at the clasp of their hands curiously.
“Alright, then,” he said finally, staring at their joined hands. “When it’s over.”
The door flew open: Harry came in, and they quickly dropped one another’s hands. “I’ve been thinking about what Griphook said—” he began, then saw the expressions on both of their faces. “Have I interrupted something?”
“No,” said Hermione quickly. “What were you thinking about?”
Harry glanced at both of them—for Ron looked rather perturbed—before he continued. Hermione found it difficult to listen to whatever Harry was saying: the gravity of what Ron had just tried to say to her was too immense for her to focus on anything else. Instead, she snagged onto disjointed sounds in the distance as Harry spoke: Dean’s voice floating in through the open door; the creak of a bed in the next room over; the clatter of a teacup downstairs.
Ron listened to whatever Harry had said, and replied that they could discuss it down in the garden. He and Harry looked to her for agreement, and when she nodded blankly, Harry retreated out of the room.
Ron stood to follow, but stopped at the door. He seemed to choose his words carefully, aware that the door was open and Harry was just outside. “I’m going to make a Calming Draught,” he said. “If there’s anything else I can get for you, just say the word.”
He turned to leave, but stopped at the sound of her voice. “Thank you,” Hermione said. She tried to channel everything that she wanted to say to him into those two words, but could not gauge from his expression whether she had succeeded.
“Of course,” he said simply, and left the room.
Hermione closed her eyes in disbelief. Why could she not just let him say it? Why had she held him back? Didn’t this always happen—that one of them got closer and closer to saying something, confessing something, only for something to restrain them, make them hold their tongue?
Would it be enough to let it go unsaid? To let their feelings towards one another remain unspoken? To be expressed only through their breaths, through the spaces between their words? And in the end, if it was ever safe to do so, would they be able to say how they felt without the stakes of the war pressing in on them from all sides? Or would their love remain a product of the strife, never to be acted upon outside of wartime?
There it was again, in the distance: the tide. Its constancy, its steadiness, always there, always present, whether or not she actively listened for it. Warmth spread through her suddenly. Even as she questioned everything, the tide was always there, murmuring in the background. All at once, she realized Ron was the same. As sure as the tide would return, so, too, would the feelings between them endure. The tide may swell, may shrink, but it always returned. So, too, would they find their way to each other.