I'm a poet! And I didn't even know it!
April is National Poetry Month and though I have a very low tolerance for most poetry, the poetry I do like I love leik woah. So in honor of the genre that gave us Shakespeare, Milton and Syndey, here is a Hermione-centric R/Hr oneshot about the power of poetry (both good and bad). I tried not to be too pretentious with my poetry references but c'mon, this is poetry. A little bit of pretension may have slipped it.
For the sake of this story and this month, please assume that Hermione has some knowledge of muggle poetry, okay? Thank you.
And now, without further ado...
The Lies Poetry Tell
Hermione Granger is not a romantic person. She has no patience for these things, no understanding for the sentimentality and the tears and the bad poetry. Not even for the good poetry, if she's being honest. And even the best poetry, the poetry that lasts centuries (Phillip Sydney, he knew how to string some words together), she has no patience for it if it sells the fake stuff. Because it's all a lie if the lovers aren't a couple. Hermione doesn't give much credence to this unrequited love business and has no use for the concept. How, she asks herself, how can you love someone when you aren't even a couple? She doesn't believe it's possible. How can you love someone, need him and trust him with your whole soul, if you're not even with him? Poor Juliet, poor dunce of a girl, there's no way she loved Romeo. They weren't a couple. They just happened to like the look of each other, to fancy each other a bit. Nothing serious. Nothing loving. Certainly not. And Sydney? That stubborn fool, Stella was married to another man. She was taken and Astrophil was an idiot for writing so many sonnets to her. Nothing loving between them, either. No need to get so worked up and write fifty bazillion rhyming couplets.
Hermione is above such silliness. She doesn't make the mistakes those other people make. She's reasonable. Sensible. She knows you can't love someone until you've shared something together. Something intimate. And no, not sex, get your mind out of the gutter, Hermione Granger is above such base things. She believes people have to share a life together before they can love each other. They must have experiences and thoughts and feelings that they share with each other and no one else in the world.
So to answer your question, no she does not love Ronald Weasley. Don't be ridiculous. They aren't even a couple.
Aren't even a couple.
It's a refrain that haunts her sometimes. It consumes her whenever he's in danger, which happens far more than she thinks is exactly fair. Sydney and Shakespeare, they didn't have these worries when they sat down to write their ridiculous sonnets. They only had to worry about patronage and Aristotle's rules and offending whoever had the shiniest sword. Lucky bastards. They never worried about people dying because just they happened to be noble and just and right and willing to sacrifice for it.
It's astounding, really, that such smart men could be so dumb.
But anyway. No love between her and that redhead. Between her and the redhead who really ought to stop putting his life in danger and would if he had any sense of decency. Very unchivalric, what Ron has put her through these past few years. Hermione doubts Guinevere had to go through this much worry and her husband was a king and a warrior. Although, she asks, have you ever actually read the old accounts of the Round Table? Arthur didn't do squat. He relied entirely on the knights.
These are the thoughts that keep Hermione up at night. These are the conversations she has with the person she can never see. There's a questioner, something of a cross between a professor and journalist, who lives in the back of her mind and sometimes he likes to play psychologist. Sometimes he likes to plague her with ideas she can't accept and situations she refuses to contemplate. Because she doesn't love Ron and she doesn't care that they haven't kissed and it would never occur to her to think that she loves him. Because, of course, she doesn't. Don't be ridiculous.
When Hermione mentioned the questioner to her Aunt Polly, who actually is a psychologist, she got so caught up in the fact that the questioner was a man (my dear! she exclaimed, you are a young lady!) that she entirely missed the point. But she gave Hermione a lovely bound book of John Milton's collected works so she couldn't call the visit a complete waste.
One day Ron leaves and the next morning Hermione remembers John Milton. It's more cause-and-effect than most people would assume. There's a poem that comes to her when she wakes up in the morning and only hears Harry's snores. It comes to her when she gasps and turns around, begging him to appear. But he walked away, remember? She's too angry at him to care if he's alright, she reminds herself. Because don't forget, he walked away and abandoned you both.
It's a beautiful poem, the one a blind Milton wrote hundreds of years ago about his dead wife and probably never imagined would enter a young witch's head when her best friend up and left her alone with the Boy Who Lived in a tent in the woods. But whatever Milton thought when he listened to his daughter read his poem aloud to him, that has no effect on Hermione's own mind when she wakes up every morning and listens for snores she won't hear and remembers what she saw in her dreams.
I waked, she fled and day brought back my night.
That's how it ends, the poem about his dead wife. But Ron isn't dead and Hermione isn't blind and they aren't married and the pronouns aren't even right. So really, there's no need to think of Milton. Good poem, though.
She dreams about Ron. She sees him in her dreams, sometimes smiling and laughing and reaching for her, other times swearing and trembling and dying in her arms. She has no romantic vision about how that would go, his dying. Her Ron isn't a gallant knight. He'll go down swearing, no doubt about that. He won't take it gracefully. It's comforting knowing he doesn't want to die just as much as she doesn't want him to. She feels sorry for Ginny sometimes.
In her kinder moments she imagines Ron back at The Burrow, surrounded by family and security spells. She imagines him playing chess with Ginny and helping his mom clean the kitchen and spying on Order meetings.
But she doesn't have these kinder moments very often. Ron didn't treat her kindly, not at all, and she does have her pride. Hermione can't love a boy who abandoned her. She simply can't. The poets-those delusional fools who crafted such beauty out of such pain-must have lived very happy, sheltered lives to ever convince themselves unrequited love was something worth writing about. It's not. Trust her on this. Hermione has lived with the reality for longer than she'll admit and she knows there's nothing poetic about loving a boy who won't even stay by your side.
For the sake of this story and this month, please assume that Hermione has some knowledge of muggle poetry, okay? Thank you.
And now, without further ado...
The Lies Poetry Tell
Hermione Granger is not a romantic person. She has no patience for these things, no understanding for the sentimentality and the tears and the bad poetry. Not even for the good poetry, if she's being honest. And even the best poetry, the poetry that lasts centuries (Phillip Sydney, he knew how to string some words together), she has no patience for it if it sells the fake stuff. Because it's all a lie if the lovers aren't a couple. Hermione doesn't give much credence to this unrequited love business and has no use for the concept. How, she asks herself, how can you love someone when you aren't even a couple? She doesn't believe it's possible. How can you love someone, need him and trust him with your whole soul, if you're not even with him? Poor Juliet, poor dunce of a girl, there's no way she loved Romeo. They weren't a couple. They just happened to like the look of each other, to fancy each other a bit. Nothing serious. Nothing loving. Certainly not. And Sydney? That stubborn fool, Stella was married to another man. She was taken and Astrophil was an idiot for writing so many sonnets to her. Nothing loving between them, either. No need to get so worked up and write fifty bazillion rhyming couplets.
Hermione is above such silliness. She doesn't make the mistakes those other people make. She's reasonable. Sensible. She knows you can't love someone until you've shared something together. Something intimate. And no, not sex, get your mind out of the gutter, Hermione Granger is above such base things. She believes people have to share a life together before they can love each other. They must have experiences and thoughts and feelings that they share with each other and no one else in the world.
So to answer your question, no she does not love Ronald Weasley. Don't be ridiculous. They aren't even a couple.
Aren't even a couple.
It's a refrain that haunts her sometimes. It consumes her whenever he's in danger, which happens far more than she thinks is exactly fair. Sydney and Shakespeare, they didn't have these worries when they sat down to write their ridiculous sonnets. They only had to worry about patronage and Aristotle's rules and offending whoever had the shiniest sword. Lucky bastards. They never worried about people dying because just they happened to be noble and just and right and willing to sacrifice for it.
It's astounding, really, that such smart men could be so dumb.
But anyway. No love between her and that redhead. Between her and the redhead who really ought to stop putting his life in danger and would if he had any sense of decency. Very unchivalric, what Ron has put her through these past few years. Hermione doubts Guinevere had to go through this much worry and her husband was a king and a warrior. Although, she asks, have you ever actually read the old accounts of the Round Table? Arthur didn't do squat. He relied entirely on the knights.
These are the thoughts that keep Hermione up at night. These are the conversations she has with the person she can never see. There's a questioner, something of a cross between a professor and journalist, who lives in the back of her mind and sometimes he likes to play psychologist. Sometimes he likes to plague her with ideas she can't accept and situations she refuses to contemplate. Because she doesn't love Ron and she doesn't care that they haven't kissed and it would never occur to her to think that she loves him. Because, of course, she doesn't. Don't be ridiculous.
When Hermione mentioned the questioner to her Aunt Polly, who actually is a psychologist, she got so caught up in the fact that the questioner was a man (my dear! she exclaimed, you are a young lady!) that she entirely missed the point. But she gave Hermione a lovely bound book of John Milton's collected works so she couldn't call the visit a complete waste.
One day Ron leaves and the next morning Hermione remembers John Milton. It's more cause-and-effect than most people would assume. There's a poem that comes to her when she wakes up in the morning and only hears Harry's snores. It comes to her when she gasps and turns around, begging him to appear. But he walked away, remember? She's too angry at him to care if he's alright, she reminds herself. Because don't forget, he walked away and abandoned you both.
It's a beautiful poem, the one a blind Milton wrote hundreds of years ago about his dead wife and probably never imagined would enter a young witch's head when her best friend up and left her alone with the Boy Who Lived in a tent in the woods. But whatever Milton thought when he listened to his daughter read his poem aloud to him, that has no effect on Hermione's own mind when she wakes up every morning and listens for snores she won't hear and remembers what she saw in her dreams.
I waked, she fled and day brought back my night.
That's how it ends, the poem about his dead wife. But Ron isn't dead and Hermione isn't blind and they aren't married and the pronouns aren't even right. So really, there's no need to think of Milton. Good poem, though.
She dreams about Ron. She sees him in her dreams, sometimes smiling and laughing and reaching for her, other times swearing and trembling and dying in her arms. She has no romantic vision about how that would go, his dying. Her Ron isn't a gallant knight. He'll go down swearing, no doubt about that. He won't take it gracefully. It's comforting knowing he doesn't want to die just as much as she doesn't want him to. She feels sorry for Ginny sometimes.
In her kinder moments she imagines Ron back at The Burrow, surrounded by family and security spells. She imagines him playing chess with Ginny and helping his mom clean the kitchen and spying on Order meetings.
But she doesn't have these kinder moments very often. Ron didn't treat her kindly, not at all, and she does have her pride. Hermione can't love a boy who abandoned her. She simply can't. The poets-those delusional fools who crafted such beauty out of such pain-must have lived very happy, sheltered lives to ever convince themselves unrequited love was something worth writing about. It's not. Trust her on this. Hermione has lived with the reality for longer than she'll admit and she knows there's nothing poetic about loving a boy who won't even stay by your side.