a fic
We must belong somewhere (a story about rebuilding)
Ron tells the story about how he’s finally paying attention when he absolutely isn’t, and says the word ‘fuck’ far too much. The kids try to figure their shit out in their own dysfunctional way.
R for Ron’s potty mouth and hints at sexy times
Thanks to purelush for looking it over because I was too impatient for anyone else to.
Leave the worried look on your lover's face.
Let the orange embers in the fireplace remain.
Cause everything must belong somewhere.
The train off in the distance, bicycle chained to the stairs.
Everything must belong somewhere.
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.
It was understood that Harry, Hermione and I would move into Grimmauld Place when it was all over. Mum cried, Hermione's parents couldn't remember who she was, and Harry couldn't face the empty house alone. He threw himself into the cleaning of the house, and Hermione and I watched warily from the old couch where we sat, Hermione's gorgeous legs resting on my lap and her book forgotten. We watched for several days, in awe of the vigor Harry attacked the house with, and soon realized he needed a project.
I complained, naturally. I was bone-tired from the war, and Hermione told me, laying in my bed, that I had the right to be, and I didn't have to help, but of course that just made me want to help more. (Harry heard all this, but didn’t say so until months later.)
Still, he appreciated the help. I mostly ran errands for Harry and Hermione, fetching whatever Harry decided they needed, making sandwiches with a cranky Kreacher just for something to do when all I felt like doing was admiring Hermione's little cut offs while she painted the foyer a bright yellow. The Muggle roller went up, down, left, right, and it was so distracting I cut my hand once on the knife that was supposed to be slicing the onions.
I didn't really understand the preoccupation with doing things the Muggle way, to be honest. I doubt I ever will. Harry and Hermione nudged shoulders, grinning at defeating this grim, magical, dreary place with coats of Muggle designer paint. They ignored me when I suggested some simple transfigurations, which I pretended didn’t hurt. I’d thought Hermione may have been impressed.
I was mostly able to put it out of his mind, though, when we sat around the little round table Harry had put in the kitchen, having chopped the other, older table into firewood. (Sirius had never sat at this little cherry wood table). Around the table, the three of us were just that- the three of us. We ate heartily, and I watched Hermione's cheeks growing round and red again, noticed that Ginny never came to call. (Didn't mention either though; why would I?)
Until one day, she did come to call. She was furious, the Weasley temper terrifying in our newly bright, happy foyer. I held Hermione down where we sat in our usual spot on the new, overstuffed couch, Hermione's feet in my lap and her eyes on her page, but we could hear. Everything. Ginny yelling, I'm tired of this I'm tired, Mum can't stop crying and Ron is never home and I only see you when you decide I am worth your time-
It went quiet, and the next day, I was glaring at Ginny's little cut offs as she moved her things into the room across from Harry's. She and Harry painted it a dark blue and we listened to their laughter coming from the room. The paint didn't come out of Ginny's hair for days, and she insisted it stay in the carpet. It gave it character. Hermione was twitchy that day.
I tried not to think about George, or Fred.
Fred.
And Hermione didn't push, because apparently the defeat of a dark lord removed the stick from her arse- at least a little bit. She did, however, leave business cards of Healers around my room when she thought I wasn't paying attention.
I paid attention to everything. She never really had given me enough credit.
Hermione shared the secret with Neville, and he was over a lot, first with the pretense of getting away from the reporters and later, dropping the pretense and just hanging out. It was nice though, having him over, and everyone agreed. Sometimes we- it was just so easy, getting caught up in our little bubble of love, of relationships that were so hard fought for they had to be destined. Neville broke up the pattern of it all, a pattern that if Hermione hadn't been hiding from it, might have described as a puzzle that belonged together but not in the way we were currently forcing the pieces.
It took two months, unlike Ginny's twelve hours, but Neville was eventually given one of the many rooms. Harry said it gave him an excuse for more redecorating, joking that he was going to go to Muggle design school or something. Ginny laughed because really, he was practically colorblind. (His own room had been originally painted garnet and gold before we woke up one morning to find him nursing what appeared to be his sixth cup of coffee, covered in dark green paint. It was now green and gold. "Green was always my favorite color," he'd shrugged, and went to bed.)
Still, Neville split his time between Grimmauld Place and his Gran's, and Ginny was out a lot (Have to have my own life, you know- I don't know how you three stay cooped up in here all the time.) and it was the three of us. Hermione constantly made comments about how she was becoming the house mother, left out the you're not quite suited to be the house father, but you'll do for now.
And Harry was without a project. I'm going to have to take up bloody scrapbooking at this rate, he had said one night, and Hermione arched her eyebrow in that beautiful expression of hers and told him very calmly to shut it and get a job. Like an adult.
That was six months after the war, and Harry looked at her for a few minutes. I braced myself for an explosion, as he was occasionally (less so as time wore on) wont to do, but we just received a shrug. "I suppose I should," he said.
Luna showed up next, flooing into the kitchen to find Harry and I at the round table. She smiled, not at all surprised to see the Boy Who Lived circling ads in the classified section of the Daily Prophet.
"I thought Ginny might be lonely soon enough," she said simply, toting her bag behind her. "Besides, Daddy isn't looking to rebuild the house."
She didn't offer any more explanation before moving into the formal sitting room that no one really used. "The Prophet's rubbish, you know," she called over her shoulder as we watched; Harry was gobsmacked and I was admittedly equal parts thrilled and amused. She would certainly brighten things up around here.
She hung up a curtain in the threshold and would simply smile when Harry offered her one of the many bedrooms. "I like it down here." It felt less permanent that way; which suited Luna.
No one really wanted Luna to live there, except maybe Neville. I think it made him feel less of an outsider or fifth wheel. In any case, he was around more now that she moved in. Harry grumbled the entire first week as she set up camp in the sitting room, mostly wondering what she could have meant about Ginny being lonely. Ginny and Harry had seemed just fine since the day Gin moved in, and though Hermione often had to rub my back when the PDA got out of hand, I was mostly happy for them. They were damn loud, though. I was pretty certain that no one should be making my baby sister make that noise. The one time I broached the subject, Harry had managed to perfect silencing charms almost immediately.
I pushed back Luna's gauzy curtains (they really didn't give her any privacy, and I'd smacked Neville on the head a few times catching him being a pervert while she got dressed) and stepped into the sitting room one night, after a few days of enjoying the silence that Harry’s new charms allowed.
Not that it was a sitting room by any means any more. I felt like I was walking into a little hut somewhere- well, somewhere far from here. She had little laterns and fairy lights hanging down from the ceiling and from the ugly pattern on the quilt, it appeared she'd transfigured that godawful couch into a bed. I hoped it was comfy enough for her. She'd nicked milk crates from around the neighborhood, it looked like, and her books and craft supplies were stacked in the stacked sideways crates, yarn and quills occasionally spilling over.
I must have been staring around like an idiot, because Luna giggled at her own joke: "It's polite to knock, Ronald." She patted the bed, where she'd been sitting, reading. I turned around instead, looking for a surface to knock, and eventually settled on her bedpost. She beamed; she loved it when I humored her. "Come in," she sang.
I did, and sat, looking around some more. She was like another species. I shook my head and remembered what I had come in for.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, finally. She frowned.
"I think I need to be here," she said, after a moment. I was still grinning; this was serious, but I couldn't help it. So fucking batty, this girl. She stared at me solemnly through those slightly creepy eyes.
"That thing you said to Harry is bothering him," I said without thinking. I was supposed to be subtle about this. Hermione had sent me on this mission saying that she couldn't really stand conversation with Luna, and I was not even trying to be smooth. I guess it was hard to be anything but blunt with Luna, even then.
"He should be bothered," Luna nodded. "He can ask me if he'd like to know what I think about him and Ginny. Have you ever read Moby Dick? It's fascinating and a little strange." She pushed the book towards me. "I just finished it, you can borrow it."
It was more of a command and a dismissal than an offer, so I took the book and patted her leg, a bit confused as I walked out the door. Her bookmark marked a page about halfway through the book, and I shook my head to myself.
I didn't know why, but I didn't like it when Neville started slipping into Luna's room at night. She seemed too... innocent for that. More than that, I liked that they were single. It balanced the four of us (not the three of us anymore) out.
For whatever reason, Hermione seemed offended that I was reading Moby Dick.
I spent a lot of time noticing things these days. It was interesting, after several years of not paying attention, the little secrets I discovered. I stayed up late reading outside of the sitting room one night and heard Neville snoring shortly after he slipped into Luna's room, and it dawned on me that the four of us weren't the only lonely ones.
I noticed the bags under Luna’s eyes the next morning, and forgot about my previously charitable thoughts of Neville. He must have kept her up with that godawful snoring.
I also noticed Hermione's leg bouncing more than usual. She wouldn't sit still like she used to. Even in sleep, she turned fitfully, until the sheets were wrapped around her amazing legs and I was cold and left alone on the far side of the bed, but it was okay as long as she was comfortable. I declared over breakfast the fourth night that this happened that I was done living off of Harry's money and was getting a job. Harry looked alarmed at first, and I laughed. "I'm not done living off the free rent, mate, I just feel the need to help support this little community we've got here."
"Like Luna does?" Ginny asked. Okay, that was something I hadn't noticed.
"I don't know if Daddy will hire Ron to be a writer," Luna said, chewing on her toast. I shook my head.
"No, not like that. Just a job. Nothing important." I mean, it wasn't like I was good at anything except defeating dark lords- fuck, not even that. Helping defeat dark lords. And I was pretty piss-poor at that, too. And Merlin help me, I was not working for the Ministry. Most of us in the house agreed to that. So I'd get Just a Job somewhere. Maybe I'd be a good short-order cook. (It was probably different than cooking wild mushrooms over an open fire, at least).
"Of course it's important," Luna said, nudging me with a little smile. I grinned a little, back.
"Whatever you say, Loony," I said, and shoved the rest of my muffin into my mouth.
"Ronald," Hermione scolded, but Loony didn't seem to mind much.
It was eight months since the final battle, and I'd found a job. Not as a short order cook, but working in a little farm just outside of Hogsmeade for the man that ran the produce stand. His son had apparently gone off on an apprenticeship at Twilfit and Whatevers, and he needed a strong back. I wasn't good at much, but I was strong. Hermione told me so at least once a week. You don't have to shoulder all of us like you do, she would say, but I don't know what she meant.
Smacking Neville around when he asked Luna why she wasn't living with her daddy, that was just because I didn't like to see her frown. Telling Ginny to keep it in her pants around Neville was just because that little love triangle was a bit too much for me to bear. Who wants to see two of your best mates panting after the same girl- your little sister?
Not sleeping with Hermione, now that was strength. She wasn't ready, and in truth, neither was I. I don't know if I'd ever be as long as we lived under Harry's roof and I came home from work every day to find them in companionable silence in our spot on the sofa ... and ignored it. That took strength.
Telling all my worries to Luna instead of my girlfriend wasn’t strong (but was she even my girlfriend? I’d ask Luna, because Hermione and I didn’t talk about that either). Ignoring Luna when she said I should probably face these things, that wasn't strong, but whatever. Strong backs were for pulling weeds and plowing little fields. (And occasionally bodily toting a small blonde girl from room to room just to hear her laugh that crazy shrill giggle).
Ten months and Harry still didn't have a job. At this point we all knew he didn't want one, but he was sort of driving us crazy. Not Hermione, of course- where had her patience come from? The way she was talking to me lately, I'd say she was saving it all for Harry. He needs the patience and support, Ron. Ginny's off in her Quidditch trials and he needs someone-
Eleven months and Harry started looking guilty. He'd leave for hours at a time and none of us knew where he was. Hermione might have, but she didn't say. Luna didn't care and it seemed that Ginny didn't, either. They were spending more time together, making a little garden under Neville's instruction and learning how to bake and other girly things. It seemed that Luna had been right, if nearly a year early. It was okay though; everyone was feeling a bit more charitable towards her lately, as she had quite taken to baking.
Ginny didn't make a Quidditch team despite her efforts, and I was perpetually sunburned.
Harry consoled her, and I noticed that he only looked guilty when he was looking at me.
The year mark came around. Hermione decided that she wanted to start sleeping in her own room again. I need the space, I feel like I’m growing, finally, but I need to do some of it on my own and I wondered why that meant she couldn’t cuddle at night.
But then, it’d been months since we cuddled at night anyway, so I watched her take her pillow and I smelled her on my sheets for weeks before realizing that it was probably over.
I don’t know, it sounds bad, but it wasn’t. Sure, she fucked with my head, but she fucked with her own, too. She didn’t know what she wanted.
I finally went to see the Healer, and he sure sounded smart. Said things like Living together like that probably made you all feel good but wasn’t the most conducive to personal growth and healing after the war. It is healthy that she is wanting to move on like that. Have you ever thought about moving out? but I didn’t comprehend.
Okay, so it was totally bad. I sulked for weeks. Harry was disappearing for even longer at a time, and I was bloody mad, because I just got dumped and I needed my best mate, and where was he? Luna started hanging around in my room though, and I realized I was grateful when it started to smell more like a weird combination of patchouli and lime than ink and peppermints. (I think she washed my sheets once, too, and it was the last way Hermione left me. She was still there, still a beautiful, nagging presence in my life, but I wasn’t sulking anymore. Much.)
“Where the fuck is Harry?” I asked her one night from where I lay on my bed. Language, Ronald, Hermione said in my head. (In reality, she was laughing with Neville in the kitchen as they evaded Kreacher, but whatever).
Luna looked up at me from her parchment- editing a Quibbler article, it looked like. “Working, I suppose.”
“He got a job?”
“Yes. He thinks none of us know about it but he’s in Unspeakable training.”
“The fuck?” I was so perplexed that Hermione’s phantom reprimand didn’t make itself heard this time.
“You know Harry. He needs something to do.” And it was just that simple.
Well, it wasn’t, but I guess it made sense that he didn’t tell us. I wondered if Hermione knew, but banished that thought like a rogue fucking boggart.
“Mostly, I’m scared,” I told the Healer the next week. I was dying to say this to someone besides Luna (she was the only one in the house that wouldn’t judge) and it was like I’d taken a sip of veritaserum. I guess that’s what happens when you hold it in for nearly a year. “All I’ve known for years is Harry-Hermione-Ron and I fucked that up, we fucked that up, by trying to be together, and now I never see Harry and I’m wondering if I ever really loved Hermione that way, because shouldn’t I be sulking more if that’s the case?”
Healer Banner closed his notebook and sat back, smiling that infuriating damn smile.
“Ron, around here, that is what we call growing up,” he said slowly.
“Well, it fucking sucks, and adulthood can suck it,” I grumbled, but then looked up curiously. “Which part is the growing up? Fucking up relationships, growing apart, or being scared shitless?”
“All of it,” Banner sighed.
After I accepted It, things seemed a lot less dramatic at home. Ginny was training all the time for next year’s trials and I heard her talking to Neville once about how being with Harry wasn’t what she thought it would be. That made me feel a little bit better about the nagging feelings I’d had about Harry and Hermione.
Sometimes George and Percy would stop in the house, nag me about visiting Mum, eat Kreacher’s food, and leave. I brought home fresh produce from work- it actually made Kreacher smile, if you could call that a smile- and was not ashamed to think that I’d be happy working there for the rest of my life. (I didn’t really think of the fact that one day I might have to support a family, because I was fucked up as it was without trying to raise children.)
Grimmauld Place was really becoming home, and I sat down at the kitchen table with Gin one night and thought in an odd moment of clarity (it might have been the firewhiskey I was nursing) that it was ironic that I finally felt this way. For months I'd tried to guard the perfect perception I had of home, with Hermione and I sharing a bed and Harry happily painting the hallways (and Ginny flying around in the house, breaking shit, I added grudgingly); the four of us picture perfect, with the kids we’d name after dead people eventually; embracing the trio dynamic that didn’t exist anymore (and if I was honest it stopped existing after I left them during the Horcrux hunt).
After letting go of all that, I was starting to feel happy and maybe even… whole. From the night after the battle, when Luna distracted everyone so Harry could escape, to rolling my eyes when Harry permitted Neville to use one of the many rooms as a greenhouse (Hermione’s floor perpetually smelled like fertilizer now), to crying over Hermione’s side of the bed, to finally sitting here, staring at the seat Ginny had just vacated because I get too irritatingly thoughtful when I’ve been drinking- it finally stopped being a struggle.
That, or I needed to stop drinking. Luna slid into the seat Gin had left, and I looked up with a big grin. Luna wasn’t around as much anymore, and I accused her of such.
She just shrugged in response. “Well, why?” I persisted.
“I’m not as needed anymore. I might move out,” she said calmly, as though she were talking about the weather. The bottle in my hand stilled on its way up to my mouth. No, she couldn’t fucking leave when things were just getting right around here. “Maybe I will go to Beauxbatons and finish my education. By the time Hogwarts is rebuilt, I’ll be too old to want to go back.”
“You know what, Loony?” I said, knowing I had to be slurring a little.
“Yes, Ronald?” she said, and for once, she was humoring me. Fuck.
“You can’t just go around deciding what is best for everyone, even if you’re usually right.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think- because I can think of at least one person that needs you here.”
“And who would that be?” She was much less amusing when she was patronizing.
“Me!” I slammed my fist on the table. She smiled serenely and got up, taking the bottle from me and screwing the cap back on. After storing it away somewhere, she kissed my head.
“You shouldn’t drink alone,” she said, and perched herself on the table next to me.
“’ve got you here, so I can drink,” I said. “And you’re ignoring me.”
“No, I’m listening,” she said, and I looked up at her, and realized several things at once. The way she sat in my easy chair wrapped up in that orange afghan Mum knitted her, watching me as I worked on the latest Muggle book she demanded I read; the way she hugged Neville and tended to his plants when he came back from a visit with his parents; the way she didn’t talk much around Hermione because she knew she infuriated her; the comfort she gave my little sister when my best mate neglected her- all of these things I’d noticed, admired, grown to adore. I wondered if the others didn’t notice, because they bloody well should, and we were all beyond lucky to have this weird fucking girl taking care of us under the guise of making cork necklaces and blessing the floo every month. And I hardly knew this enigma of a wide-eyed girl, because she never opened herself up to us like we were to her, but that didn’t stop me from falling for her. And I told her.
“I …like… adore you,” I said, only slurring a little, and she nodded, like this wasn’t big fucking news to her. “You’re bloody perfect, you know that, right? And if I didn’t have you in my life every day I would probably need even more therapy. But that… if you need to go, for you, that’s okay. I thought maybe, even though you never fucking tell us anything about your life, you might need us too, as fucked up as we are.”
She was crying. Fuck. I’d made dreamy, untouchable Loony cry. I should get a medal.
“That, Ronald, that is what I needed,” she said, and my hand found its way to her face. I tried to wipe off her tears but I couldn’t, and realized belatedly it was because she was holding my hand to her cheek.
“Come here,” I said, and pulled her into my lap. She was still fucking skin and bones. “You need someone to look after you once in a while, don’t you?” She nodded again. “Well, I can try.”
“Ron,” she sighed, and her face was in my neck, and fuck if this didn’t feel better than months of Hermione turning away from me in the middle of the night, better than months of waiting for a mediocre kiss that only resulted in a strain on our friendship. And she’d barely touched me yet.
“Yes, Loony?” I asked, and she giggle-hiccupped into my neck, and I beamed. I suddenly felt a lot more sober.
“I do need you,” she said. “And it’s finally okay to tell you so.” I realized she was right. I was finally ready to be needed as well as need.
Eighteen months since the war was over, and I glanced at my wall calendar that Luna had decorated, having replaced all the ‘Mondays’ with ‘Fridays’ to fuck with me, I guess, or she’d just heard enough of my groaning on Monday mornings to try to do something about it. I realized it’d been months since I stopped measuring the time in ‘months since the war.’ I wasn’t on a deadline to get things perfect anymore.
They were perfect, in a weird imperfect way, and I rolled my eyes at myself, thinking Loony was rubbing off on me a bit too much.
Three months since Luna opened my eyes, and Hermione was still scolding me for calling her Loony. Luna seemed okay with it, except for that one time I called her Loony while slipping my hand into her knickers.
It turned out her dad had gone even crazier during his stint in Azkaban, and the Quibbler was running itself into the ground and Luna worked hard every day to keep it from failing and to return her dad to health (he doesn’t believe in St. Mungo’s). Living with him had just gotten to be too much, though, and that was when she decided to grace us with her presence.
She said that being here made her happy, even if things were hard everywhere else, and she felt particularly peaceful around me. I had a good energy, or something. Whatever. As long as she liked me half as much as I wanted her.
She was incredible. As fucking batty as ever, but I learned that sometimes it was just a cover-up, another way to protect herself. Sometimes not, though.
I was irritated with myself a lot for not being arsed to force her to talk out her problems, but she didn’t blame me, never blamed me. She would just smile peacefully and say that it was okay, we could take turns shouldering the hurt for each other.
She hummed ‘Weasley is my King’ under her breath as she danced around the kitchen, and she never moved into my room like Hermione did. She seemed to know that we all needed our own space, even if most nights I snuck into her room anyway. She was filling out under my careful watch, and she preferred the vegetables I picked the most. She smiled more- real, blisteringly bright and beautiful- and I felt a strange sense of pride. We also visited my Mum a lot more, and sometimes went to the graveyard in Ottery St. Catchpole where her mother and my brother rested. It wasn’t so bad, this facing problems thing, with Loony there, holding my hand.
“Did you know she doesn’t eat meat, Harry?” I asked one time, the two of us sitting alone at the table. We were making a grocery list, which is something I’d rather leave to Hermione, but she got cranky when we assumed she’d do all the domestic chores. Plus, she was busy working at her new Ministry job lately. (That one surprised me).
“Yes, you git,” Harry laughed. “You really don’t pay attention, do you? You’ve been sneaking into her room for months and you’re just now realizing that she doesn’t eat animals?”
“Well, she needs to eat meat,” I protested. “It’s probably why she’s so damn skinny.”
“Ron, I’d recommend not telling her that. I doubt Luna would take kindly to you telling her to eat something she’d rather cuddle.” He was right, fuck. How else would I get her healthier?
Neville had drifted in. “You know, there are some vitamins and supplements for that kind of thing,” he suggested, and I perked up. He was working for an apothecary now, he’d know. He grinned at the look on my face. “I’ll pick some up after work today.”
“Okay. Also, we need to get some of that fresh bread from the new baker in Hogsmeade- Hermione loves that shit,” I said, and Harry rolled his eyes. “See, I pay attention.”
“Sometimes I wonder how you decide what you pay attention to,” Ginny said, and I started. Where did she come from? I turned to look at her. She was all dolled up and that skirt was far too short.
“Where the fuck are you going, dressed like that?” I asked.
“Dean is taking me out,” she said, shrugging. I glanced to Harry, who didn’t appear too concerned.
Well, fuck. Maybe I did have to work on that a little bit.
It was all right. I still had a lot of growing to do. I’d blame Luna for distracting me when she came home tonight, and all would be well. Harry waved goodbye to Ginny as she flooed away, and I shook my head at myself before adding to the list that disgusting goat’s cheese that Neville insisted was healthier.
This family might be fucked up, me worst of all, but we were happy. And I think maybe healing. (Finally.)
Bonus: Bright Eyes- I must belong somewhere
Ron tells the story about how he’s finally paying attention when he absolutely isn’t, and says the word ‘fuck’ far too much. The kids try to figure their shit out in their own dysfunctional way.
R for Ron’s potty mouth and hints at sexy times
Thanks to purelush for looking it over because I was too impatient for anyone else to.
Leave the worried look on your lover's face.
Let the orange embers in the fireplace remain.
Cause everything must belong somewhere.
The train off in the distance, bicycle chained to the stairs.
Everything must belong somewhere.
I know that now, that's why I'm staying here.
It was understood that Harry, Hermione and I would move into Grimmauld Place when it was all over. Mum cried, Hermione's parents couldn't remember who she was, and Harry couldn't face the empty house alone. He threw himself into the cleaning of the house, and Hermione and I watched warily from the old couch where we sat, Hermione's gorgeous legs resting on my lap and her book forgotten. We watched for several days, in awe of the vigor Harry attacked the house with, and soon realized he needed a project.
I complained, naturally. I was bone-tired from the war, and Hermione told me, laying in my bed, that I had the right to be, and I didn't have to help, but of course that just made me want to help more. (Harry heard all this, but didn’t say so until months later.)
Still, he appreciated the help. I mostly ran errands for Harry and Hermione, fetching whatever Harry decided they needed, making sandwiches with a cranky Kreacher just for something to do when all I felt like doing was admiring Hermione's little cut offs while she painted the foyer a bright yellow. The Muggle roller went up, down, left, right, and it was so distracting I cut my hand once on the knife that was supposed to be slicing the onions.
I didn't really understand the preoccupation with doing things the Muggle way, to be honest. I doubt I ever will. Harry and Hermione nudged shoulders, grinning at defeating this grim, magical, dreary place with coats of Muggle designer paint. They ignored me when I suggested some simple transfigurations, which I pretended didn’t hurt. I’d thought Hermione may have been impressed.
I was mostly able to put it out of his mind, though, when we sat around the little round table Harry had put in the kitchen, having chopped the other, older table into firewood. (Sirius had never sat at this little cherry wood table). Around the table, the three of us were just that- the three of us. We ate heartily, and I watched Hermione's cheeks growing round and red again, noticed that Ginny never came to call. (Didn't mention either though; why would I?)
Until one day, she did come to call. She was furious, the Weasley temper terrifying in our newly bright, happy foyer. I held Hermione down where we sat in our usual spot on the new, overstuffed couch, Hermione's feet in my lap and her eyes on her page, but we could hear. Everything. Ginny yelling, I'm tired of this I'm tired, Mum can't stop crying and Ron is never home and I only see you when you decide I am worth your time-
It went quiet, and the next day, I was glaring at Ginny's little cut offs as she moved her things into the room across from Harry's. She and Harry painted it a dark blue and we listened to their laughter coming from the room. The paint didn't come out of Ginny's hair for days, and she insisted it stay in the carpet. It gave it character. Hermione was twitchy that day.
I tried not to think about George, or Fred.
Fred.
And Hermione didn't push, because apparently the defeat of a dark lord removed the stick from her arse- at least a little bit. She did, however, leave business cards of Healers around my room when she thought I wasn't paying attention.
I paid attention to everything. She never really had given me enough credit.
Hermione shared the secret with Neville, and he was over a lot, first with the pretense of getting away from the reporters and later, dropping the pretense and just hanging out. It was nice though, having him over, and everyone agreed. Sometimes we- it was just so easy, getting caught up in our little bubble of love, of relationships that were so hard fought for they had to be destined. Neville broke up the pattern of it all, a pattern that if Hermione hadn't been hiding from it, might have described as a puzzle that belonged together but not in the way we were currently forcing the pieces.
It took two months, unlike Ginny's twelve hours, but Neville was eventually given one of the many rooms. Harry said it gave him an excuse for more redecorating, joking that he was going to go to Muggle design school or something. Ginny laughed because really, he was practically colorblind. (His own room had been originally painted garnet and gold before we woke up one morning to find him nursing what appeared to be his sixth cup of coffee, covered in dark green paint. It was now green and gold. "Green was always my favorite color," he'd shrugged, and went to bed.)
Still, Neville split his time between Grimmauld Place and his Gran's, and Ginny was out a lot (Have to have my own life, you know- I don't know how you three stay cooped up in here all the time.) and it was the three of us. Hermione constantly made comments about how she was becoming the house mother, left out the you're not quite suited to be the house father, but you'll do for now.
And Harry was without a project. I'm going to have to take up bloody scrapbooking at this rate, he had said one night, and Hermione arched her eyebrow in that beautiful expression of hers and told him very calmly to shut it and get a job. Like an adult.
That was six months after the war, and Harry looked at her for a few minutes. I braced myself for an explosion, as he was occasionally (less so as time wore on) wont to do, but we just received a shrug. "I suppose I should," he said.
Luna showed up next, flooing into the kitchen to find Harry and I at the round table. She smiled, not at all surprised to see the Boy Who Lived circling ads in the classified section of the Daily Prophet.
"I thought Ginny might be lonely soon enough," she said simply, toting her bag behind her. "Besides, Daddy isn't looking to rebuild the house."
She didn't offer any more explanation before moving into the formal sitting room that no one really used. "The Prophet's rubbish, you know," she called over her shoulder as we watched; Harry was gobsmacked and I was admittedly equal parts thrilled and amused. She would certainly brighten things up around here.
She hung up a curtain in the threshold and would simply smile when Harry offered her one of the many bedrooms. "I like it down here." It felt less permanent that way; which suited Luna.
No one really wanted Luna to live there, except maybe Neville. I think it made him feel less of an outsider or fifth wheel. In any case, he was around more now that she moved in. Harry grumbled the entire first week as she set up camp in the sitting room, mostly wondering what she could have meant about Ginny being lonely. Ginny and Harry had seemed just fine since the day Gin moved in, and though Hermione often had to rub my back when the PDA got out of hand, I was mostly happy for them. They were damn loud, though. I was pretty certain that no one should be making my baby sister make that noise. The one time I broached the subject, Harry had managed to perfect silencing charms almost immediately.
I pushed back Luna's gauzy curtains (they really didn't give her any privacy, and I'd smacked Neville on the head a few times catching him being a pervert while she got dressed) and stepped into the sitting room one night, after a few days of enjoying the silence that Harry’s new charms allowed.
Not that it was a sitting room by any means any more. I felt like I was walking into a little hut somewhere- well, somewhere far from here. She had little laterns and fairy lights hanging down from the ceiling and from the ugly pattern on the quilt, it appeared she'd transfigured that godawful couch into a bed. I hoped it was comfy enough for her. She'd nicked milk crates from around the neighborhood, it looked like, and her books and craft supplies were stacked in the stacked sideways crates, yarn and quills occasionally spilling over.
I must have been staring around like an idiot, because Luna giggled at her own joke: "It's polite to knock, Ronald." She patted the bed, where she'd been sitting, reading. I turned around instead, looking for a surface to knock, and eventually settled on her bedpost. She beamed; she loved it when I humored her. "Come in," she sang.
I did, and sat, looking around some more. She was like another species. I shook my head and remembered what I had come in for.
"What are you doing here?" I asked, finally. She frowned.
"I think I need to be here," she said, after a moment. I was still grinning; this was serious, but I couldn't help it. So fucking batty, this girl. She stared at me solemnly through those slightly creepy eyes.
"That thing you said to Harry is bothering him," I said without thinking. I was supposed to be subtle about this. Hermione had sent me on this mission saying that she couldn't really stand conversation with Luna, and I was not even trying to be smooth. I guess it was hard to be anything but blunt with Luna, even then.
"He should be bothered," Luna nodded. "He can ask me if he'd like to know what I think about him and Ginny. Have you ever read Moby Dick? It's fascinating and a little strange." She pushed the book towards me. "I just finished it, you can borrow it."
It was more of a command and a dismissal than an offer, so I took the book and patted her leg, a bit confused as I walked out the door. Her bookmark marked a page about halfway through the book, and I shook my head to myself.
I didn't know why, but I didn't like it when Neville started slipping into Luna's room at night. She seemed too... innocent for that. More than that, I liked that they were single. It balanced the four of us (not the three of us anymore) out.
For whatever reason, Hermione seemed offended that I was reading Moby Dick.
I spent a lot of time noticing things these days. It was interesting, after several years of not paying attention, the little secrets I discovered. I stayed up late reading outside of the sitting room one night and heard Neville snoring shortly after he slipped into Luna's room, and it dawned on me that the four of us weren't the only lonely ones.
I noticed the bags under Luna’s eyes the next morning, and forgot about my previously charitable thoughts of Neville. He must have kept her up with that godawful snoring.
I also noticed Hermione's leg bouncing more than usual. She wouldn't sit still like she used to. Even in sleep, she turned fitfully, until the sheets were wrapped around her amazing legs and I was cold and left alone on the far side of the bed, but it was okay as long as she was comfortable. I declared over breakfast the fourth night that this happened that I was done living off of Harry's money and was getting a job. Harry looked alarmed at first, and I laughed. "I'm not done living off the free rent, mate, I just feel the need to help support this little community we've got here."
"Like Luna does?" Ginny asked. Okay, that was something I hadn't noticed.
"I don't know if Daddy will hire Ron to be a writer," Luna said, chewing on her toast. I shook my head.
"No, not like that. Just a job. Nothing important." I mean, it wasn't like I was good at anything except defeating dark lords- fuck, not even that. Helping defeat dark lords. And I was pretty piss-poor at that, too. And Merlin help me, I was not working for the Ministry. Most of us in the house agreed to that. So I'd get Just a Job somewhere. Maybe I'd be a good short-order cook. (It was probably different than cooking wild mushrooms over an open fire, at least).
"Of course it's important," Luna said, nudging me with a little smile. I grinned a little, back.
"Whatever you say, Loony," I said, and shoved the rest of my muffin into my mouth.
"Ronald," Hermione scolded, but Loony didn't seem to mind much.
It was eight months since the final battle, and I'd found a job. Not as a short order cook, but working in a little farm just outside of Hogsmeade for the man that ran the produce stand. His son had apparently gone off on an apprenticeship at Twilfit and Whatevers, and he needed a strong back. I wasn't good at much, but I was strong. Hermione told me so at least once a week. You don't have to shoulder all of us like you do, she would say, but I don't know what she meant.
Smacking Neville around when he asked Luna why she wasn't living with her daddy, that was just because I didn't like to see her frown. Telling Ginny to keep it in her pants around Neville was just because that little love triangle was a bit too much for me to bear. Who wants to see two of your best mates panting after the same girl- your little sister?
Not sleeping with Hermione, now that was strength. She wasn't ready, and in truth, neither was I. I don't know if I'd ever be as long as we lived under Harry's roof and I came home from work every day to find them in companionable silence in our spot on the sofa ... and ignored it. That took strength.
Telling all my worries to Luna instead of my girlfriend wasn’t strong (but was she even my girlfriend? I’d ask Luna, because Hermione and I didn’t talk about that either). Ignoring Luna when she said I should probably face these things, that wasn't strong, but whatever. Strong backs were for pulling weeds and plowing little fields. (And occasionally bodily toting a small blonde girl from room to room just to hear her laugh that crazy shrill giggle).
Ten months and Harry still didn't have a job. At this point we all knew he didn't want one, but he was sort of driving us crazy. Not Hermione, of course- where had her patience come from? The way she was talking to me lately, I'd say she was saving it all for Harry. He needs the patience and support, Ron. Ginny's off in her Quidditch trials and he needs someone-
Eleven months and Harry started looking guilty. He'd leave for hours at a time and none of us knew where he was. Hermione might have, but she didn't say. Luna didn't care and it seemed that Ginny didn't, either. They were spending more time together, making a little garden under Neville's instruction and learning how to bake and other girly things. It seemed that Luna had been right, if nearly a year early. It was okay though; everyone was feeling a bit more charitable towards her lately, as she had quite taken to baking.
Ginny didn't make a Quidditch team despite her efforts, and I was perpetually sunburned.
Harry consoled her, and I noticed that he only looked guilty when he was looking at me.
The year mark came around. Hermione decided that she wanted to start sleeping in her own room again. I need the space, I feel like I’m growing, finally, but I need to do some of it on my own and I wondered why that meant she couldn’t cuddle at night.
But then, it’d been months since we cuddled at night anyway, so I watched her take her pillow and I smelled her on my sheets for weeks before realizing that it was probably over.
I don’t know, it sounds bad, but it wasn’t. Sure, she fucked with my head, but she fucked with her own, too. She didn’t know what she wanted.
I finally went to see the Healer, and he sure sounded smart. Said things like Living together like that probably made you all feel good but wasn’t the most conducive to personal growth and healing after the war. It is healthy that she is wanting to move on like that. Have you ever thought about moving out? but I didn’t comprehend.
Okay, so it was totally bad. I sulked for weeks. Harry was disappearing for even longer at a time, and I was bloody mad, because I just got dumped and I needed my best mate, and where was he? Luna started hanging around in my room though, and I realized I was grateful when it started to smell more like a weird combination of patchouli and lime than ink and peppermints. (I think she washed my sheets once, too, and it was the last way Hermione left me. She was still there, still a beautiful, nagging presence in my life, but I wasn’t sulking anymore. Much.)
“Where the fuck is Harry?” I asked her one night from where I lay on my bed. Language, Ronald, Hermione said in my head. (In reality, she was laughing with Neville in the kitchen as they evaded Kreacher, but whatever).
Luna looked up at me from her parchment- editing a Quibbler article, it looked like. “Working, I suppose.”
“He got a job?”
“Yes. He thinks none of us know about it but he’s in Unspeakable training.”
“The fuck?” I was so perplexed that Hermione’s phantom reprimand didn’t make itself heard this time.
“You know Harry. He needs something to do.” And it was just that simple.
Well, it wasn’t, but I guess it made sense that he didn’t tell us. I wondered if Hermione knew, but banished that thought like a rogue fucking boggart.
“Mostly, I’m scared,” I told the Healer the next week. I was dying to say this to someone besides Luna (she was the only one in the house that wouldn’t judge) and it was like I’d taken a sip of veritaserum. I guess that’s what happens when you hold it in for nearly a year. “All I’ve known for years is Harry-Hermione-Ron and I fucked that up, we fucked that up, by trying to be together, and now I never see Harry and I’m wondering if I ever really loved Hermione that way, because shouldn’t I be sulking more if that’s the case?”
Healer Banner closed his notebook and sat back, smiling that infuriating damn smile.
“Ron, around here, that is what we call growing up,” he said slowly.
“Well, it fucking sucks, and adulthood can suck it,” I grumbled, but then looked up curiously. “Which part is the growing up? Fucking up relationships, growing apart, or being scared shitless?”
“All of it,” Banner sighed.
After I accepted It, things seemed a lot less dramatic at home. Ginny was training all the time for next year’s trials and I heard her talking to Neville once about how being with Harry wasn’t what she thought it would be. That made me feel a little bit better about the nagging feelings I’d had about Harry and Hermione.
Sometimes George and Percy would stop in the house, nag me about visiting Mum, eat Kreacher’s food, and leave. I brought home fresh produce from work- it actually made Kreacher smile, if you could call that a smile- and was not ashamed to think that I’d be happy working there for the rest of my life. (I didn’t really think of the fact that one day I might have to support a family, because I was fucked up as it was without trying to raise children.)
Grimmauld Place was really becoming home, and I sat down at the kitchen table with Gin one night and thought in an odd moment of clarity (it might have been the firewhiskey I was nursing) that it was ironic that I finally felt this way. For months I'd tried to guard the perfect perception I had of home, with Hermione and I sharing a bed and Harry happily painting the hallways (and Ginny flying around in the house, breaking shit, I added grudgingly); the four of us picture perfect, with the kids we’d name after dead people eventually; embracing the trio dynamic that didn’t exist anymore (and if I was honest it stopped existing after I left them during the Horcrux hunt).
After letting go of all that, I was starting to feel happy and maybe even… whole. From the night after the battle, when Luna distracted everyone so Harry could escape, to rolling my eyes when Harry permitted Neville to use one of the many rooms as a greenhouse (Hermione’s floor perpetually smelled like fertilizer now), to crying over Hermione’s side of the bed, to finally sitting here, staring at the seat Ginny had just vacated because I get too irritatingly thoughtful when I’ve been drinking- it finally stopped being a struggle.
That, or I needed to stop drinking. Luna slid into the seat Gin had left, and I looked up with a big grin. Luna wasn’t around as much anymore, and I accused her of such.
She just shrugged in response. “Well, why?” I persisted.
“I’m not as needed anymore. I might move out,” she said calmly, as though she were talking about the weather. The bottle in my hand stilled on its way up to my mouth. No, she couldn’t fucking leave when things were just getting right around here. “Maybe I will go to Beauxbatons and finish my education. By the time Hogwarts is rebuilt, I’ll be too old to want to go back.”
“You know what, Loony?” I said, knowing I had to be slurring a little.
“Yes, Ronald?” she said, and for once, she was humoring me. Fuck.
“You can’t just go around deciding what is best for everyone, even if you’re usually right.”
“Why not?”
“Because I think- because I can think of at least one person that needs you here.”
“And who would that be?” She was much less amusing when she was patronizing.
“Me!” I slammed my fist on the table. She smiled serenely and got up, taking the bottle from me and screwing the cap back on. After storing it away somewhere, she kissed my head.
“You shouldn’t drink alone,” she said, and perched herself on the table next to me.
“’ve got you here, so I can drink,” I said. “And you’re ignoring me.”
“No, I’m listening,” she said, and I looked up at her, and realized several things at once. The way she sat in my easy chair wrapped up in that orange afghan Mum knitted her, watching me as I worked on the latest Muggle book she demanded I read; the way she hugged Neville and tended to his plants when he came back from a visit with his parents; the way she didn’t talk much around Hermione because she knew she infuriated her; the comfort she gave my little sister when my best mate neglected her- all of these things I’d noticed, admired, grown to adore. I wondered if the others didn’t notice, because they bloody well should, and we were all beyond lucky to have this weird fucking girl taking care of us under the guise of making cork necklaces and blessing the floo every month. And I hardly knew this enigma of a wide-eyed girl, because she never opened herself up to us like we were to her, but that didn’t stop me from falling for her. And I told her.
“I …like… adore you,” I said, only slurring a little, and she nodded, like this wasn’t big fucking news to her. “You’re bloody perfect, you know that, right? And if I didn’t have you in my life every day I would probably need even more therapy. But that… if you need to go, for you, that’s okay. I thought maybe, even though you never fucking tell us anything about your life, you might need us too, as fucked up as we are.”
She was crying. Fuck. I’d made dreamy, untouchable Loony cry. I should get a medal.
“That, Ronald, that is what I needed,” she said, and my hand found its way to her face. I tried to wipe off her tears but I couldn’t, and realized belatedly it was because she was holding my hand to her cheek.
“Come here,” I said, and pulled her into my lap. She was still fucking skin and bones. “You need someone to look after you once in a while, don’t you?” She nodded again. “Well, I can try.”
“Ron,” she sighed, and her face was in my neck, and fuck if this didn’t feel better than months of Hermione turning away from me in the middle of the night, better than months of waiting for a mediocre kiss that only resulted in a strain on our friendship. And she’d barely touched me yet.
“Yes, Loony?” I asked, and she giggle-hiccupped into my neck, and I beamed. I suddenly felt a lot more sober.
“I do need you,” she said. “And it’s finally okay to tell you so.” I realized she was right. I was finally ready to be needed as well as need.
Eighteen months since the war was over, and I glanced at my wall calendar that Luna had decorated, having replaced all the ‘Mondays’ with ‘Fridays’ to fuck with me, I guess, or she’d just heard enough of my groaning on Monday mornings to try to do something about it. I realized it’d been months since I stopped measuring the time in ‘months since the war.’ I wasn’t on a deadline to get things perfect anymore.
They were perfect, in a weird imperfect way, and I rolled my eyes at myself, thinking Loony was rubbing off on me a bit too much.
Three months since Luna opened my eyes, and Hermione was still scolding me for calling her Loony. Luna seemed okay with it, except for that one time I called her Loony while slipping my hand into her knickers.
It turned out her dad had gone even crazier during his stint in Azkaban, and the Quibbler was running itself into the ground and Luna worked hard every day to keep it from failing and to return her dad to health (he doesn’t believe in St. Mungo’s). Living with him had just gotten to be too much, though, and that was when she decided to grace us with her presence.
She said that being here made her happy, even if things were hard everywhere else, and she felt particularly peaceful around me. I had a good energy, or something. Whatever. As long as she liked me half as much as I wanted her.
She was incredible. As fucking batty as ever, but I learned that sometimes it was just a cover-up, another way to protect herself. Sometimes not, though.
I was irritated with myself a lot for not being arsed to force her to talk out her problems, but she didn’t blame me, never blamed me. She would just smile peacefully and say that it was okay, we could take turns shouldering the hurt for each other.
She hummed ‘Weasley is my King’ under her breath as she danced around the kitchen, and she never moved into my room like Hermione did. She seemed to know that we all needed our own space, even if most nights I snuck into her room anyway. She was filling out under my careful watch, and she preferred the vegetables I picked the most. She smiled more- real, blisteringly bright and beautiful- and I felt a strange sense of pride. We also visited my Mum a lot more, and sometimes went to the graveyard in Ottery St. Catchpole where her mother and my brother rested. It wasn’t so bad, this facing problems thing, with Loony there, holding my hand.
“Did you know she doesn’t eat meat, Harry?” I asked one time, the two of us sitting alone at the table. We were making a grocery list, which is something I’d rather leave to Hermione, but she got cranky when we assumed she’d do all the domestic chores. Plus, she was busy working at her new Ministry job lately. (That one surprised me).
“Yes, you git,” Harry laughed. “You really don’t pay attention, do you? You’ve been sneaking into her room for months and you’re just now realizing that she doesn’t eat animals?”
“Well, she needs to eat meat,” I protested. “It’s probably why she’s so damn skinny.”
“Ron, I’d recommend not telling her that. I doubt Luna would take kindly to you telling her to eat something she’d rather cuddle.” He was right, fuck. How else would I get her healthier?
Neville had drifted in. “You know, there are some vitamins and supplements for that kind of thing,” he suggested, and I perked up. He was working for an apothecary now, he’d know. He grinned at the look on my face. “I’ll pick some up after work today.”
“Okay. Also, we need to get some of that fresh bread from the new baker in Hogsmeade- Hermione loves that shit,” I said, and Harry rolled his eyes. “See, I pay attention.”
“Sometimes I wonder how you decide what you pay attention to,” Ginny said, and I started. Where did she come from? I turned to look at her. She was all dolled up and that skirt was far too short.
“Where the fuck are you going, dressed like that?” I asked.
“Dean is taking me out,” she said, shrugging. I glanced to Harry, who didn’t appear too concerned.
Well, fuck. Maybe I did have to work on that a little bit.
It was all right. I still had a lot of growing to do. I’d blame Luna for distracting me when she came home tonight, and all would be well. Harry waved goodbye to Ginny as she flooed away, and I shook my head at myself before adding to the list that disgusting goat’s cheese that Neville insisted was healthier.
This family might be fucked up, me worst of all, but we were happy. And I think maybe healing. (Finally.)
Bonus: Bright Eyes- I must belong somewhere