still Rowling's, I just dabble...
chapter one: Better Than Anyone
There was a noise, like that old, heavy door in the Shrieking Shack, creaking open. Followed by a soft shuffling that was slowly coming closer; he pushed his head farther into the pillow. Please, please let this be a dream! Would this bloody awful day never end? People walking in and out all the time, talking loudly; he felt like utter shite, and all he wanted to do was sleep. He tried opening his eyes a bit, to see what the commotion was this time. There was only a pale light from the windows, stabbing at his eyes, but he could still just make out a girl sitting in a chair next to his bed, looking harried. He blinked hard, trying to figure out who it was and whether or not he should bother to wake fully.
The scent of her reached him before his eyes could focus and The Knot, his constant companion since January, loosened. Hermione. He always knew when she was nearby, even when she went to great lengths to avoid him. She looked small and tired; even her hair seemed to wilt in exhaustion. She was mumbling and didn’t sound like herself, but her voice was chasing the fog from his brain; he felt better just hearing her.
“I really shouldn’t be here, it’s late and … I couldn’t just leave you here alone after everything today, could I?” she sighed heavily and looked nervously over her shoulder. “Maybe I should just go…”
He smiled. It was completely mental, and yet, there he was trying not to be seen smiling in the dark; there was nothing quite like near death to put everything in perspective. Although he would have preferred that this much wanted conversation not take place in the middle of the night. And not in the infirmary. At least if he had a relapse, or she hexed him again, they were in the perfect spot for it. Now, if he could just find his voice…
He heard her slide out of the chair. “I just wanted to …I had to make sure…” she whispered. He was definitely not dreaming; she didn’t talk this much in his dreams, usually she was too occupied to say anything other than his name. He felt the heat from her hovering over his arm. “I’m sorry I hexed you. It wasn’t fair.” She was working herself into a full, rambling, one-sided confession.
“Harry was right. I should have spoken to you…” She turned to leave, his arm was cold again. “Maybe later. If you’re not…”
“You’re…talking to me now,” Ron rasped. He cleared his throat, trying to sound more like himself. “Was hoping you’d come back.” His head felt fuzzy, like his brain was wrapped in wool. He turned on his side to look at her, fighting the goofy smile threatening to erupt, but that only made his face ache. She was here; she was talking to him. She was… not calm, but he wouldn’t call her angry at the moment. And she was free of canaries. He settled for a tired grin; he needed to keep some dignity here, after all.
“I thought you were sleep…” She sat again and smiled at him. “You knew I was here earlier? But I thought you were unconscio…”
“No, I heard you.” He rose up on one arm to look her more fully in the face. His arm shook quite badly, and sure he had been poisoned, but he didn’t want fall flat on his side right now. With no small effort, he sat up slowly. It also gave him time to get his thoughts in line. “Though, I reckoned for a bit that I’d dreamt it…”
“Don’t be silly, Ron,” she scoffed.
Relief flooded over him. For just that instant, it was normal again between them. He nodded to let her know he wasn’t joking. She didn’t need to know that he dreamt—or what he dreamt-- about her. Yet. They still needed to get sorted, and there was the very real possibility she’d tell him to get stuffed. And if she didn’t, there was still Lavender….
Hermione tilted her head and asked, casually, “Did you try to talk to me?” She looked quickly down at her hands in her lap. “Earlier, I mean.” She was twisting her fingers like she always did when she was nervous. He’d missed seeing that, too.
“I’ve been trying to talk to you for months.” He smiled a little hesitantly. “You might have noticed…?”
“I noticed.” She stood, and his grin widened. “You just didn’t do a very good job of it,” She crossed her arms over her chest, smirking, “Honestly, Ron. Acting as if nothing had happened…Trying to goad me into talking to you. Don’t you know me well enough…”
“I know you better than anyone,” he interrupted quietly, startling her. Hermione stared at him, eyebrows raised, her mouth still open in mid-speech. He budged over, looking at the side of his bed; quietly inviting her to sit.
She didn’t.
When he looked at her, The Knot came back with an icy vengeance: she was clutching her elbows tightly, hugging her arms across her chest, and she was looking past him rather than at him. She wasn’t just angry, she was shielding herself. She was protecting herself from him.
This was going to be bloody awful.
“Mmhmm,” she hummed, her eyes darting all over the floor. She walked very slowly away from him; Hermione paced when she was thinking hard. She had pinched her sleeves between her fingers, worrying the fabric. Hermione only fidgeted when she needed to say something unpleasant. Now the only noise was her shoes on the floor and her fingernails scratching over cotton. Ron braced himself and started cataloging arguments against what she would say.
Any minute now.
Bugger.
She was near the chair she had been sitting in when she said, finally, without turning around, “You know me.”
He blinked. That was unexpected. It wasn’t a question, so he wasn’t sure if he should answer. She turned suddenly to stare at him, and there again was that same look of warning: the one before the canaries; the one that he’d seen when he had tried to make her talk to him months ago: her lips drawn together in fury, while her eyes reflected profound sadness. How does she manage to look pissed off and sad at the same time? She looked like she might fly apart if he touched her, or said the wrong thing.
Yeah, but what’s the right thing to say after all this time? He wasn’t an idiot. He knew he’d dug himself a good, deep hole; a hole that he’d been digging since the summer. She was moving again, disturbingly closer to the door.
“Well, yeah. I’ve studied you for years.” Her face softened just a touch, and he sat up straighter to make his points. “I know that you’ve been helping Harry with,” he looked around nervously, “well, you know. And you’ve been coming in later from the library. I know that Ernie Macmillan walks you back every night...” He didn’t even try to hide his sneer.
“How would you..? You waited up?”
Ron nodded and continued his list. “I know that you don’t like Fleur because I turn into a blithering git around her. I know that you wanted to go to a party with me, but you went with someone else when I ... “
“Found someone better.” she supplied.
“Not better,” he argued. “I know that I hurt your feelings when I yelled at you about the Felix.” He paused. “I shouldn’t have gone on like that. And, well, I shouldn’t have been so angry before…” She was looking at him oddly, holding the back of her chair. He continued rapidly before she could interrupt again. “And I know now that if you fancied another bloke you wouldn’t ask me out.” She was frowning now; her forehead wrinkled in confusion. “You’re not just a best mate, Hermione.”
She sat unsteadily, shaking her head. “Another bloke? I don’t fancy anyone other than y—“ Realization dawned on her face. “You did know, didn’t you?” He nodded, the slight hope in him growing. She understood! She understood how he felt about Krum, about how they got here. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all. “But that means you knew ...when you…. Lavender?” She looked up into his face, with her shoulders drooping, and the floor fell out from under him. “You knew that would …you wanted to hurt me?” she asked, looking at him like she couldn’t believe her ears. “Why?”
Her eyes nailed him to the bed, and he shifted his gaze downward to his blanket to avoid the intensity of it. “I didn’t want to hurt you.” She snorted wetly, rolling her eyes at him. He felt suddenly small and had that awful cold plunk all the way to his knees, “I didn’t take up with Lavender to hurt you.” Hermione winced, plainly not believing him. He ran a hand over his hair. “Blimey, this is harder than I thought…” There was simply no way to explain without bringing up Krum. But she had just started speaking to him after months of nothing; he wasn’t about to go back to that. “I really stuffed it up.”
“You seem to have thought a lot about it,” she sulked.
“Yeah, I have. Loads, actually. Since before Christmas.” He couldn’t stop staring at her bottom lip. “I made a bloody mess of everything.” He took a deep breath. He’d be lucky if he didn’t pass out before he said it. “Christmas morning, it hit me. I realized that what I have isn’t what I want.”
She was staring at the floor. “So that’s why you stood in front of the door the night we came back?” She was pale, and he wasn’t sure if she was breathing.
He nodded. He couldn’t read her face at all. “Hermione?”
“Ron, you and Lavender...” She closed her eyes tightly, hiccoughing quietly. Ron was stuck between wanting to reach for her and terrified she’d hurl something large at him if he did. She was stilling her fidgeting hands and sounded like she couldn’t breathe. He had just decided that he’d deserve a good hexing if he didn’t try to comfort her when she looked right at him. “You’re dating her…” she sighed matter-of-factly. He stopped at mid-reach.
“Yeah, well, it seemed like a brilliant idea at the time.” He dropped his arm, letting it hang off the bed. Yeah, really brilliant, Won-Won.
“Yes, you were quite… passionate.” There was more than a little sarcasm there.
“Not like that!” Well, maybe a little like that. “I felt really bad about yelling at you, and making fun of you and all. And Harry said I should apologize, but then you said you were going out with McLaggen…” He narrowed his eyes at her, “Why did you go out with McLaggen?”
She laughed, almost hysterically, “You told me to.”
“I...what?” he stared at her wondering if he’d had some sort of hallucination. “I never told you to go out with that…that…”
“’Why don’t you hook up with McLaggen,’” she imitated him spot on, right down to the sneer. “You obviously weren’t going with me,” she hissed when Ron snorted. “You were engulfing my room mate, Ron! Was I supposed to think we were still going together?” She was standing again, clearly annoyed with the memory.
“No, I suppose not.” he conceded. “But McLaggen? Hermione—“
She lowered her voice with a sigh. “I knew he’d annoy you.” Ron gaped at her. “Oh, don’t look at me like that! You made it perfectly clear that you could go out with whomever you wanted. So could I.” She shrugged, plunking down on the bedside next to him. Her backside so close to his leg that he could feel the heat radiating from her.
“Hermione….”
“I know it was stupid and petty.” She rolled her eyes. “I’m not very proud of myself for that.”
Ron remembered Hermione’s giggling admission that she was going out with McLaggen vividly. ‘Really good Quidditch players…’
“Did you mean it?” Although, for an instant, he didn’t want to know. If she hadn’t meant it, why’d she say it? And if she did, well, he was right back where he started: second to Krum with a suffocating shadow of a girlfriend; Harry forever trapped in the middle. And no Hermione.
“Yes. I did.” She put a hand on his arm, just as his head fell. Hermione always hated to give bad news, but he knew dishonesty was worse in her eyes. “I do like really good Quidditch players.” The hand on his arm gave a gentle squeeze. “I asked you first, didn’t I?”
“You asked me… first?” Ron looked up at her slowly, mentally untangling whatever it was she just said. And she smiled at him. She smiled for him. “So, you don’t think I’m…”
“I think you’re brilliant, Ron. At everything you do.”
“Don’t suppose you’d make a list for me?” He raised his eyebrows.
“Maybe later,” she whispered.
“You’ll come back later?” he smiled, surprised.
“Are we finished?”
He shook his head, grin widening. “Not even close.” They were just getting back to where they started, and there was much more to say before it was over.
She smiled. “Then I will see you later.”
A/N: No way these two settled an argument this severe in one night—two more chapters to follow. And where would I be without queenb23 who untangles my sentences, and nates1mom who talks me off the ledge? Thank you, Ladies.
