Hallowed Hearts
Chapter 1: A silent promise
"He all right?"
Ron's voice rumbled from directly behind her, very near her ear.
Hermione yelped in surprise, spinning around as she pulled the bathroom door closed behind Harry.
"Ron! You gave me a fright," she gasped in a mixture of annoyance and amusement. She paused, looking up at him.
He was standing much too close, his frame towering over her, and Hermione couldn't help but note that he'd changed into the pyjama bottoms and gray t-shirt she'd unpacked for him just before she'd brought Harry his toothbrush.
She also couldn't help but note that he seemed broader through the shoulders than he had a year ago, his biceps fuller and almost straining against the cotton. He was also barefoot. Had his feet always been so large?
"Sorry 'bout that," Ron murmured apologetically, interrupting her thoughts.
"Well how's Harry?" he added, a slight smirking edge to his tone, and Hermione felt herself flushing that she'd been staring and it hadn't been lost on him. "I-he's fine," She replied, attempting to put some distance between her body and Ron's.
"How are you?"
She asked when she moved around him and stood several feet away as he leaned casually against the bathroom door, his arms crossing over his broad chest. Abruptly the self-satisfied expression drained from his face, his eyes taking on a haunted look. Despite the reassurance sent by way of Mr. Weasley's Patronus, Hermione knew that the events of the past several hours, while taking its toll on all of them, had affected Ron the most.
It was his family, after all, that they'd been forced to abandon when the news had come that the Ministry had fallen.
"'Bout as good as can be expected, I suppose," he replied as he gazed back at her intently.
"But we've got each other, haven't we?
Me, you, and Harry?"
She smiled tenderly at the unexpected vulnerability in his voice, abruptly overcome by an intense feeling of affection for the boy-no, he was a man now, wasn't he’ that she'd’ known since childhood. "Yes, we've got each other," she replied in a whisper, moving forward to hug him on sudden impulse. He met her halfway, striding away from the bathroom door and engulfing her in his arms, which slipped low around her waist and pulled her flush against his body as her face was buried against his chest.
His scent was everywhere; it engulfed her very senses, and she felt her arms snaking up his chest, slipping around his neck as she heard and felt him inhale deeply. She knew his face was pressed into her hair. It certainly wasn't the first time they'd hugged, but something had shifted in the air between them, crackling like an electric spark. There was something decidedly different about this hug-something decidedly non-platonic. Not that their’ relationship had ever truly been platonic. It had always contained an underscore of something much deeper, even when they'd fought-and fought they certainly had.
Pulling away from him slightly, she stood up on the very tips of her toes, cupping his face in her hands as she pressed lingering kisses to his forehead, his eyelids, and his cheeks. She'd just leaned forward to press her lips against his when she heard the bathroom door open.
Hermione and Ron flew apart almost guiltily, avoiding Harry's eyes as he gazed curiously between the two of them.
"Please, don't mind me," he said, a teasing edge to his tone as he disappeared into the drawing room.
Her face flushing hotly, Hermione turned back to Ron in time to see that his ears were bright red as he vanished inside the bathroom, muttering something about needing the loo. As the door shut behind him, she knew that the moment had passed.
As she rejoined Harry in the drawing room of Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, she ignored his good-natured smirk while making a show of removing her toiletries and nightclothes from her beaded bag.
The silence between them was almost deafening, and for a moment it seemed as if Harry wanted to say something, but his mouth closed as soon as it opened. For the most part, Harry had always kept his opinions to himself when it came to her relationship with Ron, and it didn't look as if that was about to change anytime soon.
*****
Two hours later, the three of them had set up camp in the drawing room. At Ron's insistence, the couch cushions had been dragged onto the floor with Hermione's sleeping bag placed on top of them, directly between the two men's sleeping bags.
She now lounged across the cushions, facing Ron in the dark. They'd stayed up talking for a while about the Horcruxes and the fall of the Ministry of Magic, but Harry had been completely silent for a good twenty minutes now, his breathing deep and even.
She could tell by the way Ron was breathing that he was still awake, and that suspicion was confirmed when she felt his hand seeking hers in the dark, and she grasped it like a lifeline. His palm was large and cool in her own, the feeling of his skin igniting something undeniable in the pit of her stomach.
She wished that she had the words to soothe him; she wished she could tell him that everything would be okay, that they would all survive this, but that would be an empty promise, wouldn't it? She had no such guarantees to give.
"'Hermione?"
His voice was low, gravelly.
"Yes, Ron?" she whispered.
She could sense his hesitation in the several moments it took him to respond.
"Would you…lie with me?"
She could practically hear his ears turning red. "I mean, just for a bit?" he added hastily. "I mean-I just wanna-never mind. Dumb idea. Forget I said anything." Without hesitation or giving her actions a moment of thought, Hermione sat up in the dark, pulling herself onto the floor next to Ron. He seemed surprised even as he moved to hastily unzip his bag, but he certainly didn't argue his luck as she climbed in with him, his body heat drawing her in like a moth to the flame.
As his arms came around her and she rested her head in the crook of his neck, the combined scent of his skin and aftershave engulfed her once more, and she felt his body stiffen and realized that his breathing was slightly laboured.
When she turned slightly in the confined space, sliding her arm across his t-shirt-covered chest, her thigh brushed against something hard and stiff protruding from his hips beneath his flannel pajama bottoms. Ron gasped at the contact, shifting away from her slightly in obvious embarrassment. "Shit, sorry 'bout that," he muttered, mortification in his voice.
"It's okay, Ron," she whispered, attempting to soothe his humiliation even as she felt her body flush in a desire of its own. Knowing that her close proximity aroused him sexually was enough to cause a sudden, undeniable stirring in her womb, accompanied by a surge of dampness between her thighs as the flesh there swelled of its own accord, her body blooming for him.
"It's a natural biological reaction," she added, hearing the tremor in her voice. "My body reacts to you, too."
"It-it does?" He seemed incredulous, and Hermione couldn't help but smile that it would be so surprising to him. Didn't he know how she felt? "Of course," she murmured as she considered their predicament. She had the sudden, inexplicable urge to pull his hand down between her thighs and let him feel the slickness there-the slickness that he'd caused-but she knew it wouldn't be the wisest course of action, would it?
For one, Harry was lying mere feet from them. Second, where would it lead even if he wasn't’ while Hermione had practiced performing a Contraceptive Charm over the summer-after all, she wasn't naïve about her own sexuality or Ron's, and Hermione Granger was nothing if not prepared-there were only about a thousand reasons why this was the wrong place and time to take their relationship to the next level.
For instance, what if the charm didn't work? Even if she performed it correctly, no form of birth control was one hundred percent effective, and evidently Weasley men harboured some Super Swimmers. An unplanned pregnancy would seriously compromise their mission. She wouldn't leave Harry and Ron on their’ own for anything-not even to go off and have a baby.
On the other hand, they could all die tomorrow.
They could very well wake up to find Snape pointing a wand at their faces, and she and Ron might die without ever having experienced that sort of intimacy. At least…not together…With a small frown, she thought briefly of last year when Ron had been with Lavender Brown. Hermione didn't know if Ron had been with her…like that. She wanted to believe that he wasn't, but she hadn't been able to ignore Lavender's stage whispers to Parvati in the girls' dormitory, as much as she'd tried.
According to Lavender, she and Ron had done everything in the book-and then some. But then, it was very probable that she'd been lying. Lavender had wanted Hermione to be jealous, that much was obvious. Not that any of it mattered anymore.
That was the past, and it was all very petty and meaningless in light of recent events.
"Hermione," Ron whispered suddenly, pulling her from her thoughts, "you know I'm not too good with words, but I've been wanting to tell you for a while now that I never…y'know…with Lavender." In the pause that followed, Hermione gazed up at him from where her head rested on his chest, feeling slightly astonished that they'd both been thinking about the same thing.
She couldn't quite make out his facial features in the dark, but she knew instinctively that he was remorseful.
"I wanted to," he admitted when he continued.
"Blimey, us blokes-we're not all that complicated.
When we're not thinking about food, we're thinking about…well, you get the idea.
I know this doesn't excuse the fact that I was a git, but...for what it's worth it was you I was thinking about the whole time I was with her, and that's what stopped me from going further. I couldn't be with her like that when I wanted it to be you.
Guess what I'm really trying to say is that I'm sorry. For everything."
Hermione was still absorbing everything when his little speech ended.
She hadn't expected this, for him to openly talk about what had happened last year and to say he was sorry. She'd been prepared to forgive and forget without an apology from him, but the fact that he was sharing his feelings honestly when it must've been difficult was enough to bring tears to her eyes.
"It's all right, Ron," she whispered as she reached up to trace his familiar features.
His beard had already started to grow in since he'd shaved that morning before the wedding, and his full lips were soft and slightly chapped. He kissed the tips of her fingers gently. "All is forgiven." And then she leaned up, pressing her lips chastely and lingeringly to the place her fingertips had just vacated.
She wanted to deepen the kiss, to open her mouth and seek entrance into his with her tongue. She wanted to allow the raw passion that had been threatening to erupt between them for a while now to consume her.
Yet she held back for the reasons she'd listed in her head minutes before.
Apparently sensing her hesitancy and not wanting to pressure her, Ron was the one to end the kiss, pulling back gently and pressing his lips to her forehead as his hand stroked the back of her head. Silence ensued as Hermione lied back down on his chest, her hand tracing random patterns on his torso through his shirt.
There was still so much left unsaid between them, but no words were needed at that moment. As his thick fingers threaded tenderly in her hair, she knew it was a silent promise that he would wait for her as long as she needed. When she was ready for him, though, he'd be there for her-whatever she needed from him.
She kissed him one last time, silently thanking him for his uncharacteristic understanding and patience, before unzipping his sleeping bag and climbing back into her own. This time, it was her hand that sought his in the darkness, and it anchored her, an immense comfort in the pressing uncertainty that the future held.
Whatever happened, they wouldn't go it alone.
They had each other.