Drabble: Now, Ron/Hermione, PG13
Not now, not now, her eyes kept saying, and Ron understood, really he did. And he agreed, too. Mostly. A snog seven years in the making when you thought you were about to die was one thing. But to have ‘the talk' now, mere hours after your mutual best friend apparently died and your brother died in reality…well, it seemed sort of bad form, didn’t it?
Still, Ron didn’t know what to do with everything he was feeling. Relief and triumph, sorrow and guilt, leftover adrenaline, regrets, shock, horror and pride in what he’d done were an awful lot for one person to deal with at one time. Cho Chang had nothing on him, he reckoned. But underneath it all, the one constant, as had always been since probably the day he met her--was an emotion so powerful, so huge that he thought he was going to explode if he kept it inside any longer.
And now that he knew, now that he’d felt her in his arms, now that he’d seen everything she felt written all over her face, he was supposed to wait? Hadn’t he waited long enough?
He needed her now. He needed to grasp onto a life preserver-the best thing to come out of the worst/best day of his life so that he wouldn’t have to deal with the gaping hole he’d felt in his heart since the moment he saw Fred’s lifeless eyes.
He needed bury his head in her neck and hide his face in all that mad hair of hers He needed to feel her arms around him again, hear her familiar, soothing voice in his ear, calming the shaking nerves which had never quite recovered from the moment Hagrid came out of the woods carrying a Harry-shaped bundle.
He needed physical release-not everything, mind you, though the broom closets and dark corners of the castle were filled with people anxious to prove that they were still alive. Perhaps a proper kiss, without Harry clearing his throat and ending it prematurely. He needed a chance to feel her under his hands, warm and real and solid-because he’d lost count of how many times he’d seen a blast of green light miss her by millimeters.
But almost as much as any of that, he wanted to pour out his heart to her, to tell her what he’d been trying so hard to bottle up for all these years, to finally let it free and know for certain that she was his future. After so many years of working toward an apparently impossible goal, he suddenly found himself at sixes and sevens. What now? Now that the Boggart had been faced and he’d worked past his fears, what was Ron supposed to do with the rest of his life?
Hermione always had the answers. Hermione had always been the answer. Who could blame him for wanting to get on with it? Life was too short to live with missed chances, wasn’t it?