Chapter Text
Hermione was sitting alone in the Common Room. It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon. Almost everyone is outside, but she was never good at small talk and Harry was taking a nap. A deserved one, he’s been studying a lot, for school or Dumbledore tasks.
And she doesn’t have Ron anymore.
She doesn't want to think about that. She can’t cry anymore.
She also can’t pretend anymore, even if Lavender shares the room with her. It wasn’t her fault, although Hermione had to remember herself that occasionally.
It was Hermione’s fault, and Ron. She knew they both had made mistakes, they both had lost time.
They could have said something back in the third year, when they didn't consider themselves so young and childish and started to understand that the obsession they felt for each could be something else. Something more.
3 years of waiting.
Obviously, they had to fight for their survival and Harry's more than they would have liked during those three years, but they also had quiet moments, just the two of them, that could have been filled with these conversations.
Hermione loved their silences, though; it wasn’t uncomfortable but soothing.
Hermione loved everything about Ron.
Loves…
The Common Room door opens and she hears Lavender’s voice; before she could gather her belongings and hide in the bedroom, Ron comes in alone. The door closes behind him and they both look at each other.
Alone for the first time since that quidditch game.
Even though, after a few seconds looking straight at him, she gets up, organizing her books and notebook, putting it inside her bag so she could go upstairs and stay at least an hour hidden before coming back and looking for Harry.
But Ron talks to her. “Hi.”
Just like that. Naturally.
She didn’t answer.
“You can’t ignore me forever.” He takes a step closer, cautious. He didn’t want to be attack again.
“Where’s Harry?” Another step. No answer.
Her stuff was already inside her bag on the table, but she is frozen in place, her back to him. Hiding the tears, which disobey her and keep falling.
“We need to, at least, say goodbye.”
WHAT?
When she finally turns around, he is a step away from her. She has to turn her head up to be able to look at him.
“Say goodbye?” She finally speaks, knowing that the tip of her nose and her lips must be red and her eyes filled with tears.
"It doesn't seem like we're going to be friends again, does it?"
She takes a deep breath and another tear falls against ther wishes.
“I wish I could… go back in time, Hermione. Rethink…”
"Perhaps you should have spoken to me first, Ronald." She is sad, above all, but also angry.
Suddenly, the remaining worries and the lack of courage seemed to no longer matter. The two spoke as if the subject had already been discussed and debated many, many times.
“Yes,” he replied seriously. “But… you too, right?”
“I tried. I know that, but I also know I should have tried harder.” Hermione felt ridiculous debating who should have done more or less while holding back tears.
“What if…”
Lavender enters the room and Ron stops talking. The girls look at each other and she calls Ron over, still looking at Hermione.
He chooses and goes with her, hand in hand, talking.
Hermione stays behind.
She felt that everything was over.
That she could never even be friends with him again.
Her greatest fear.
She thought that talking would be what would end this friendship, that it would prevent any chance of them being together as more than friends. But it was precisely the silence that ended everything.
She stays behind. The room remains empty. She remains alone. She decides to go back to bed anyway and try to sleep for a few hours, so, for a while at least, she wouldn't feel anything. And who knows, she might even dream about him, in a completely different situation from the current one.
The following days were the same, except for the occasional glances they stole from each other. Hermione was particularly charmed by Ron when he was distracted during class. She realized she hadn't noticed this before because they were almost always sitting next to each other, out of her sight. Now that they take turns with Harry (she feels guilty for him in all of this, but neither she nor Ron do anything to ease their friend's situation), she can always see Ron from a good distance in the classrooms.
The memory of Amortentia's scent flooded her brain during a Herbology class where she'd spent an unusually long time staring at him. It was Ron's turn to sit with Harry so it felt better to look. It would be easy to look away, if necessary, and pretend to be observing Harry and not him.
Ron also spent time looking at her, glances here and there. He was careful not to let Lavender see, and he also felt bad for the girl. It wasn't that he didn't like her; he even found her tolerable, and all the kisses had been satisfactory so far. He wanted to like her the way he liked Hermione. He thought it would happen quickly, being in a relationship, but it was taking longer than expected, and he was becoming more and more certain each day that his feelings for Hermione were stronger than he had imagined.
As time went on, nothing made sense to Ron anymore. He was so sure that this was what he needed! So sure that Hermione would never look at him any other way, but her reaction when she saw him with Lavender, not just the first time, but every time, made him reconsider.
Being a monitor with her didn’t help.
The nights were weird, and he fought an internal battle: try to talk to her and resolve the situation, or let it go and focus on his current relationship.
Everything changed the night before he returned home for the end-of-year holidays.
It was cold, the corridors were freezing, so the other prefects were bundled up and in a very bad mood. Ron was no exception; he wanted to get back to the Common Room as soon as possible, maybe (just maybe) give Lavender a goodnight kiss and lie down in his warm bed.
He and Hermione had, once again, a silent agreement not to do patrols together anymore, but that night they ended up meeting or even bumping into each other frequently.
“Damn it, pay attention,” Hermione muttered angrily, right after the two bumped into each other as Ron exited the Charms classroom and she tried to enter.
Her irritated tone irritated him too. “You have eyes too, you know,” he replied without even turning to her, already outside the room.
A few seconds later, he felt a jolt to his shoulder. When he looked back, he saw Hermione very close, right after she had pushed him.
In her eyes he noticed a mixture of anger and regret, but he couldn't decide which was stronger.
“You’re awful, Ronald,” she said, her breath so heavy it made her chest rise and fall as if she’d just climbed all the stairs in the school at once. “I don’t know how I could have fallen in love with you.”
This time, Ron saw surprise in her eyes. Hermione's eyes widened for only a few seconds, but then she forced them back to normal as if to pretend she hadn't simply said what she most wanted to say for the past three years.
She decided to leave the room abruptly, deliberately bumping into Ron, but before she could get too far, he grabbed her wrist and pulled her back inside, closing the door behind him.
“What did you say?” Ron asked, so quietly that it was difficult for her to understand at first.
Hermione preferred to play dumb. She wasn't feeling very Gryffindor at that moment. “Nothing. Let's get out of here.”
But he placed himself between her and the door. “Repeat it,” he said, his voice impassive.
She then stared at him, raising her chin proudly. “No.”
He walked the short distance between them and stopped in front of her, dangerously close.
“Repeat it,” Ron whispered now. “Please.”
She thought he was really pleading. Something stirred in her stomach. He was so close he had to look down to see her properly.
“Hermione,” Ron now pleads for real, his right hand bravely caressing her cheek.
She instinctively closes her eyes. “I can’t. I can’t…” she murmurs.
His two hands cupped her face. Hermione took a step to be completely within Ron's personal space. Her hands rested on his waist. Automatic. Natural. Obvious. It seemed like the right thing to do. Even so…
“Ron. No,” she said, knowing she couldn't win this fight.
He leaned in, closing the few inches between them, pressing his lips to hers.
She immediately sighs, moving even closer to him. He pulls her with him to lean against the door, and the kiss instantly intensifies.
Hermione's hands squeezes his waist, and he holds her face with all the gentleness he can muster at that moment.
When she sucks his lower lip between her teeth, he groans. She does too. Ron lowers one hand to hold her by the waist, the other hand on the nape of her neck, holding part of her hair.
Hermione puts her hands inside his shirt, feeling his warm, goosebumps-filled skin.
Ron lowers his body slightly, his legs strangely stretched out but in a perfect position for Hermione to fit standing between them. She sighs, and his hand, which was on her waist, moves lower, pulling her thigh up.
Hermione separates their mouths and creates a trail of kisses down to his neck. There she inhales his scent, kisses below his ear, and gently bites above his collarbone. Ron's head is resting against the door, his neck exposed to her, and he struggles with all his might not to make embarrassing sounds.
Suddenly, she pulls back a few inches and looks directly at him.
“You can’t. We can’t…”
But before she could finish, he kisses her again, fiercely, his tongue invading her mouth and feeling the vibration of her moan.
He pulls her thigh up again, and now his leg is between hers, and she rubs against him!
Ron is sure he’s going to die.
It’s his greatest dream, simply coming true in the middle of a night patrol.
And then her voice from before invades his mind.
You can't. We can't.
And he doesn't want that to happen and start like this. Now that he knows the taste of her kiss, that he knows the sound of her sighs and moans, that he has felt her whole body pressed against his, he can't accept that they don't do things the right way. Or risk never having that again.
So this time he's the one who holds Hermione's face and slowly pulls them apart.
"Repeat it," he asks anyway, again.
"Only if you promise you'll say the same to me," Hermione replies, smiling.
She feels fireworks exploding all over her body. Mind, heart, mouth… between her legs.
She can't believe it.
“I promise,” Ron says, gently nuzzling his nose against hers.
Then she says it. The thing she thought she could never say, but had dreamed of saying. “I’m in love with you, Ron.”
It wasn’t hard. It was easy, being in his arms, breathing the same air as him, looking only into his eyes.
“Me too, Hermione. For a long time.”