Priority

Thank you, this is a fantastic idea. Sorry it took me so long.

He’s been all she can think about since Dumbledore pulled her aside earlier this morning. Throughout everything - the headmaster’s recounting of Arthur’s attack and Harry’s role in his rescue, her hurried excuses to her parents, her manic trip on the Knight Bus - the one thing pulsing steadily in the back of her mind is Ron and how quickly she can get to him.

When she finally arrives at Grimmauld Place, he looks tired and wan but his face lights up when he sees her. Before she can even think about it she’s got her arms around him and, after a second, his go around her too.

“I heard everything,” she says, her face muffled against his shoulder because when had he gotten so tall? “How’s your dad?”

“He’s okay,” Ron says, squeezing her a little tighter. “Going to be fine.”

All she wants to do is hold him until he knows everything is going to be all right but he clears his throat, sounding a little embarrassed, and she reluctantly lets him go.

“I thought you were going skiing.” His voice is innocent enough but she looks up at him sharply and can see the smile that he is trying to contain.

“I was,” she says sternly, “and I don’t know why you insist on mocking it. I’ll take you with me sometime, you’ll probably love it.”

“Sliding down a mountain on a pair of rickety sticks?” Ron says. “I’ll pass. That sounds way too dangerous to me and I play Quidditch.”

“You wear a helmet,” she says, exasperated. “My parents can even fit you with a mouthguard - ”

“A what?”

“Nevermind,” she sighs.

“So why did you come here instead?” he says, suddenly finding the edges of his sleeves incredibly fascinating. “Worried about Harry, I guess?”

“No. Well, yes,” she says, because she can see he’s getting flustered and that makes her flustered too. “Of course I am, we all should be, but when I’d heard what happened, I wanted to see – well, I thought you might – ”

“I’m glad you’re here,” he blurts out suddenly. His ears are flaming red and it’s all she can do not to throw her arms around him again.

Ginger

The highlight of the long days at Shell Cottage is her nightly walk with Ron along the coastline. She doesn’t need to hold his arm, not anymore, but he always offers it anyway and she always takes it.

The other tradition, as unspoken as the first, is that their conversations are light and casual, and about anything but the seemingly impossible mission at hand.

Tonight they stroll in silence, contemplating Lupin’s news.

“A baby,” Ron says finally, his voice full of wonder. “Do you ever think about having kids?”

“Not lately,” she says ruefully, before realizing that is veering dangerously close to their invisible line. “But I used to, yes.”

“Me too,” Ron says. “I don’t think I want a lot of kids like my folks had. Growing up in the Burrow was fun but it was a bit of a zoo at times. So maybe just like… four.”

“Four?!” Hermione says, laughing. He gives her a puzzled look. “Some people would argue that four is a lot, Ron.”

“Why, what are you thinking?” Ron says.

“Maybe one?”

“One?” It’s Ron’s turn to be the incredulous echo. “That’s not even enough to play a game of Quidditch!”

“You certainly have odd criteria for making important life decisions.”

“But it’s ridiculous!” he says. “How am I going to continue my family’s plot of ginger world domination if I only have one kid?”

She laughs again. “Well I hate to rain on your planned ascendancy, but red hair is a recessive trait so there’s no guarantee that the children would even have red hair to begin with. But now one of my grandfathers had red hair so - ”

She tails off as it dawns on her that they aren’t talking about his kids or her kids, they are talking about their kids. The ones they would have together.

Given the relaxed, non-flushed appearance of his face, this fact hasn’t dawned on Ron yet.

Unless maybe it has.

“- so I might carry the genome,” she finishes carefully.

“Aha!” Ron says, looking pleased. “Ginger domination. But anyway, don’t let it trouble you. I wouldn’t mind a brown-haired child, as long as they are ginger in spirit.”

She tucks her hand a little tighter into his elbow, feeling lighter than she has in weeks. After everything they’ve faced, before everything horrible that’s still to come, Ron can still think about the future and a red-headed Quidditch team all his own.

And apparently, so can she.

Lift

“Can you put any weight on it, do you think?” Ron says and Hermione shakes her head, wincing slightly.

They’d been out trying to scavenge some food and she’d slipped on a loose rock, twisting her ankle. She tried a healing spell but it still smarts and it’s the one time in weeks that she doesn’t have her blasted bag with her. It’ll be easy enough to fix, once she gets her hands on the bag, but the issue now is getting back to the tent.

What really stings though is that it’s adding insult to injury, because it was poor Harry’s turn with the locket today and she and Ron had been having a rare, lovely few moments alone together before she had fallen. It had almost, almost, been like the heady days before they’d left and after weeks of frustration, it had been exactly what she needed.

Ron is still holding her ankle, turning it gently in his hands, and she wonders how his cold fingers on her bare skin still manage to feel hot.

“I’ll just carry you back then,” Ron says and she makes a startled noise of agreement.

He helps her to her feet, then turns his back to her. He crouches down and she awkwardly hops up and eventually, with some wiggling and jostling, they make it work.

“There,” Ron says, sounding a little out of breath. “That’s not so bad, is it?”

Not so bad, no. Even though he’s facing the wrong way, her arms are around his neck and his forearms are under her knees and his hipbones are digging into her thighs and it’s giving her all kinds of lovely, awkward thoughts -

Ron pauses and looks around, a puzzled look on his face. “Do you remember the way back to the tent?”

She can just make out the clearing far off to the right. The clearing with the cold, stuffy, dreary tent with nothing to do but talk about how they have nothing left to talk about. And no Ron between her legs.

She silently promises Harry she’ll make it up to him.

“Left,” she says out loud.

“Okay,” Ron says and his tone is so perfectly neutral that she suspects he’s on to her, but the important thing is that he chooses to keep that to himself.

As Ron staunchly sets off in the wrong direction, he effortlessly hitches her a little closer and she can already feel the warmth of him starting to seep into her body.

Not so bad at all.

“Thanks for the lift,” she says quietly, and hopes that he knows what she means.

Sentinel

It is her last night at Hogwarts, quite possibly forever.

Parvati is already gone, her parents hurrying to sweep her away after the news of Dumbledore’s death spread to the outside world. That leaves Hermione alone in the dorm with Lavender, a difficult prospect after the tumult of this year, but the shock and sadness over Dumbledore’s death has muted whatever tension still lies between them.

As Hermione gets ready for bed, a rustle outside of her window catches her attention. She looks out to see Ron’s owl settling comfortably on her windowsill. She examines the fluffy little owl, but there is no letter tied to his leg, no indication of any task to perform, in fact Pig seems quite content to simply hunker down for the night. She’s a bit confused but sees no harm in it so she leaves him there, leaving her curtains open a bit so she can see him, and goes to bed.

She jerks awake a few hours later in a cold sweat, stifling a scream. She catches a flutter of movement in the corner of her eye and gives a breathless shriek as she cowers defensively. But it is only Pig, flying off in a cloud of fluffy grey feathers, and she lowers her arms, her heart pounding.

Wide awake now, she grabs her bathrobe and sneaks quietly out of the room. There will be no getting back to sleep tonight but there’s no point in keeping Lavender up too. She goes down to the empty common room and drops into a big armchair by the fire, rubbing her eyes wearily.

There is a clatter above her and she looks up to see Ron staggering down the boys’ stairs in his pajamas. His hair is sticking up in all directions as he squints at her with bleary eyes. “Hey,” he says in a voice rough with sleep. “You all right?”

She opens her mouth to say yes, she’s fine, and bursts into tears instead.

He is by her side in an instant but hesitates, his hands hovering over her. She goes the rest of way, leaning into his chest, and that seems to be all the prompting he needs because his arms are around her, warm and strong.

He can’t solve her heartache, not this time, but as with so many things, it is better with him by her side.

It is their last night at Hogwarts, and they spend it together.

Credit

Pfft, @hawthornblood141 is none of those things but I promise you, right now she’s just out having a life like some sort of loser and she’ll be back (see I told you). And yes, I do know what kind of things she likes but there has been enough angst in life lately even for her. So here is fluff and YOU WILL LIKE IT. You have to read this one first to get the joke at the end. Merry Christmas, stay fabulous. ; )

Ron sits alone in the Shell Cottage kitchen, bouncing his leg impatiently. It's the first time Hermione's been out of his sight (and his arms) since Malfoy Manor and he finds that he doesn't like the feeling one bit.

He is checking the clock for the umpteenth time when Fleur comes into the room, a big stack of bath towels in her arms.

“Ah there you are,” she says. “I need you to help me with this laundry. I have to finish making lunch for the goblin, ce vieux grincheux, and then I need to go to the store for more shampoo because your girlfriend, she has so much hair - ”

Fair

An anon wanted a drabble for @rebelsaurus29. I was flipping around your Tumblr and I found some Luna love, so here she is. Merry Christmas!

Ron had only come to the library tonight because he knew Hermione would be there. He wasn't going to apologize - her reaction to his innocent little joke about a certain hook-nosed Bulgarian Quidditch player had been quite unwarranted and over the top - but he wanted to make sure she saw him in case she was ready to apologize.

Warble

Hem hem. There were some voting irregularities around this entry but I’m going to allow it.

She has just entered the tent when she hears it.

It is just a small sound but her wand is out instantly because their world is fraught with danger now and even the smallest of sounds could mean big trouble.

But then she hears the noise again and her wand drops.

It's not an intruder, it's not even an animal.

It's singing.

And it's coming from the direction of the shower.

Divine

An anon suggested @susieq41 and in the midst of all the fabulous Ron-love there, I saw a couple astrology posts. I hope you like it.

Divination classes with Trelawney are getting increasingly difficult for Hermione to take. Tea leaves, crystal balls and now it's astrology of all things, as if the date her parents chose to have marital relations has any effect on her personality or the events of her life.

X

Yes! @idearlylovealaugh wrote this, which is one of my favourite things in the universe and she is the only other person in the world who is possibly as excited for the return of The X-Files as I am.

Girlfriends

@gryffindorpride? So I went there and it’s nothing but Gryffindors which is... unfortunate. ; ) But here are the Gryffindor girls getting along before the hormones ruin everything.

Thwunk

Happy belated birthday to the fabulous @aloemilk who loves the fluff and the UST as much as I do. I hope you had a wonderful day.

Thwunk!

The snowball hits Hermione square in the back of the head, knocking her knitted hat askew and sending frigid globs of slush slithering down the back of her neck. After an initial cry of surprise, she pointedly adjusts her hat and turns to face her attackers.

“It was him!” Harry shouts and pushes a stumbling Ron toward her, then flees in the opposite direction.

“Traitor!” Ron calls after him.

She takes advantage of his distraction to kick a big fan of snow into his face. Magic is fun, but there’s something to be said for winning a battle Muggle-style too.

While Ron sputters and tries to clear his eyes, she picks more snow up off the ground with her bare hands and dumps two handfuls of it on his head, making sure to press some of it into his ears. While he's trying to remedy that, she picks up another two handfuls and dumps them down the back of his giant sweater.

Now that her fingers are good and icy, she goes in for the kill, quickly sliding her hands up under Ron's sweater and pressing them flat against his skin.

Ron lets out a shriek more befitting a preschool girl than a teenage boy and flops around on the ground like a fish out of water and she's having a hard time keeping her hands on him because she's laughing so hard.

He stops squirming and goes quiet and after a moment she does too because they're very close together and his skin is hot and smooth under her palms. His heart pounds beneath her fingertips and whatever has been quietly percolating between them all year is suddenly enormous and inescapable.

“Do you give up?” she says, because she thinks she does.

“Yeah,” Ron says, looking up at her. “I give up.”

She's trying to process her next move when thwunk! the snowball hits her in the head, sending a spray of snow over both her and Ron. Harry cheers, Ron blinks and the moment is gone.

She and Ron quickly leap to their feet, their faces in a raging battle to see who can go the deeper red. She meets his eyes briefly and he gives a rueful half-shrug before his eyes turn to Harry and his gaze narrows.

She may never know what he was thinking in that moment but she is certain that at this moment she and Ron are in complete agreement on one thing:

Harry James Potter is about to rue the day he was ever born.

Bubbling

A little muppet birdie suggested @coyotelaughingsoftly for my Christmas drabble idea and it’s a wonderful choice. She also mentioned that it’s your birthday today, so happy birthday too! Inspired by this master class.

It's the little things that are going to be the death of her.

She has always been hyperaware of Ron, analyzing his every word, his every move, his every expression. The day he'd sighed "I love you, Hermione," in the common room in front of Harry and everyone else she'd tossed and turned all night playing the moment over and over in her head (because he couldn't have possibly meant it like that. Unless...)

Lately, though, it's not ambiguity or uncertainty about his feelings toward her that is giving her sleepless nights. His intentions in that regard are, for the first time, astoundingly and gloriously clear.

But there is a war going on and despite all her newfound clarity, despite their unspoken understanding, it is not the time for grandiose romantic declarations and therein lies her problem because oh, he is making it so very difficult.

She sees him standing in his bare feet at Dobby's graveside and even through the heavy sadness of the moment it triggers something light in her heart that she struggles to contain.

Not here.

Later that night, he drapes a blanket over a sleeping Harry and she has to grit her teeth because it is so quietly thoughtful that she just wants to grab Ron and shake him to make sure he knows how bloody wonderful he is.

Not now.

He catches Luna, still bearing the bruises of her weeks at Malfoy Manor, struggling to reach the tea cups on the high shelf in the kitchen and he jokes about the Nargles moving them up there, but then he gets her a mug and makes her sit down while he makes her a cup of tea. Luna gives him a grateful smile and Hermione feels her heart start to swell all over again.

Not yet.

Then, in the middle of the battle, he worries aloud about the house elves, something that hadn't even crossed her mind, and it is suddenly too much. This moment and all the others like it, a thousand tiny bubbles that become a giant roiling boil that can not be contained and for once she decides to just not think.

He looks mildly alarmed as she charges toward him but she doesn't slow, the moment is too overdue, too unstoppable, too big.

And it's all about the little things.

Bing Bong

I don’t know what to say about this except I lost a bet.

We’re playing a tune and we’re singing a song -

Hermione gives her head a brisk shake. That cursed song has been stuck in her head on an endless loop all day. She doesn’t know where Rose would have heard it, their house doesn’t have a TV. And she has no idea why Ron loves it so much, being that he’s (supposedly) a grown man, but there’s nothing he and Rose love more lately than dancing around the house and singing it at the top of their lungs and laughing when Hermione complains.

Bong bing boo -

She shakes herself again and tries to focus on the charts in front of her.

“So you see,” she says, “we just have to reconcile the final numbers with a… with a… ”

- with a bing and a bong and a bing!

She gives an audible growl.

“Are you alright?” her coworker says, looking mildly alarmed.

“Yes,” Hermione sighs and pinches the bridge of her nose. “Sorry, can we pick this up after lunch? I’m supposed to be meeting someone.”

Her coworker quickly agrees, giving her one last concerned look as she departs.

Hermione hurries down the hall to her office where her lunch date is already waiting. “Sorry I’m late,” she says to Ginny.

“No problem at all,” Ginny says. “But look, you just got an owl from Ron. Looks important.”

She gestures to a red envelope sitting on the middle of Hermione’s desk. It’s pulsating slightly, giving off an aura of urgency. Feeling uneasy, Hermione rips it open.

Ron’s voice drifts from the envelope, urgent and barely discernible. “Hermione - very important - ”

His voice is low so she leans closer to listen, trying to quell her rising panic.

“BONG BING BOO!” bellow Ron and Rose’s joyful voices at maximum volume, “BING BONG BING! BING BONG BINGLY BUNGLY B-”

Hermione slams the envelope back closed, muffling the cheerful singing. She sighs and looks at Ginny.

“I was born with him,” Ginny says with a distinct lack of sympathy. “You chose to marry him. There’s no one to blame but yourself.”

“The mistakes of my youth,” Hermione sighs. “Come on, let’s go. You can at least by me a drink.”

She waits until Ginny’s back is turned then discretely slides the red envelope into her purse so she has it for later. She may put up a mature front in public, but there’s no denying that life is much more fun with a bing and a bong and a bing.

{strums} wooooooooo

Joy

For the fabulous @hawthornblood141, who sends surprise Slytherin socks in the mail and plays me Taylor Swift songs on the ukulele. It’s our anniversary again and I’m very glad you’re my friend.

It’s odd that the least of her wounds is the one that bothers her the most.

The cuts and bruises from the chandelier have all been healed, but the knife wound on her neck is one that Fleur just can't quite get to disappear. After everything Hermione went through at Malfoy Manor, the tiny laceration should be nothing more than an afterthought but she’s constantly trying to hide it, tugging her hair over it, pulling her shirt up to her chin. Ron’s watched her endlessly trace her finger over it when she thinks no one is looking, her mouth a hard, set line.

She gives him a wan smile as he approaches and that’s more than she gives anyone else lately but still her hand moves to her hair, pulling it forward across her exposed neck.

He gently catches her wrist and brushes the hair back again, ignoring her whisper of protest. He touches the faint remnants of the wound with his finger and she shudders and twists away from him.

“Do you know what I think when I see it?” he says.

She grimaces and he can hear the words she’s biting back. Revulsion. Disgust.

“Joy.”

She looks up sharply with furious eyes.

“I nearly lost you, Hermione,” he says. “A million different ways. If the chandelier had been off by an inch, if she'd hit you with that knife, if Greyback - ”

He has to stop because he's shaking all over, because even though he knows she's standing in front of him, alive and intact, he will never forget the casual madness in Lestrange's eyes, the eagerness behind Greyback's leer, the black, fathomless depths of what they could have done to her. More horrific still is the idea that there could have been no marks at all, but instead a lifetime of endless, aimless drifting in the permanent ward at St. Mungo's alongside Neville’s parents.

“I nearly lost you,” he chokes out again and swallows hard. “But I didn't and instead of the thousand marks there should have been, there's only this. So I look at it and I can feel is joy.”

He traces a finger over the wound again and she doesn’t flinch this time. Her own hands shake slightly as she ties her hair back into a loose ponytail but the smile she gives him, while still a far cry from the old Hermione, is stronger.

And all he can feel is joy.