Ron’s Best Friend
Sixth Caper: In the doghouse!
It must have been, could have been, a trick of the light, but Ron and Cerb would both swear Hermione made like Medusa just then, hair writhing like snakes, even emitting sparks. Cerberus mightily... cowered. Ron stood up... only to shake at the knees.
Neither of the two humans spoke for about a minute. Ron stood still because the poor monkey was being unstuffed before his eyes, one-handed. Hermione seemed unaware her hand was being so vindictive. Ron prayed her wand was still in her childhood bedroom.
“I can clean them up,” Hermione said very quietly. The rain had abated as if nature was also listening in on this house’s impending disaster, so Ron heard his wife.
“I’m sorry, Hermione, I’ll clean them. You haven’t got your wand.”
Silence as Hermione looked at her hands and at the mutilated monkey plushie. She turned red.
Even the roofs and trees paused to drip.
Well, we know and love Ron for blunders such as this. Never mind that his own wand was somewhere in the couch. He was helpless. But to point out the fact that Hermione was likewise ”
“Get out,” she whispered.
“Hermione, I’m so sorry””
“Get of my sight! Get out of my house!” she declared, no longer whispering.
“What?” Now, Ron’s panic was laced with indignation, because it was raining and he was in nothing but pyjama bottoms.
“Yes, the wife always gets the house in divorce. Now. Get. Out.”
“What are you talking about? Now, Hermione, take it easy” You’ve been out of sorts lately. I’m so sorry about””
“Don’t touch me! Get away from me. Now!” The last was growled so fiercely Ron abandoned his attempt to get upstairs to dress and shuffled out his own front door.
Back inside the house, Cerb whimpered toward the door, though still sticking to the wall. Hermione silenced him with a “Hush!” and then stomped upstairs, hair still visibly alive. A moment later, Cerb was electrified with a “Come up here this instant, Cerberus!”
And then all was quiet, dog and mistress slept and sulked in their respective beds (respectively), and master tried to settle in the damp cushions of the chaise in the cold patio.
○0○
Ron woke stiff and chilled. For a moment, he was bewildered why he was not in bed. And then he heard Enid Buffwood cooing to her flowerbeds, and thought it prudent to dash back inside before the old biddy did her customary peek into her neighbour’s garden and saw him.
He was relieved when the latch of the French doors yielded at once. He had to get to work, but work could be left off for a cuddle with Hermione. Merlin knew what got into her last night. She’d been beyond scary. He’d have preferred a pummelling.
Cerb yelped, Ron turned to look at him without pausing in his entrance, and stubbed his toe so spectacularly he didn’t even finish invoking Morgana, only Ow.
When his eyes stopped watering, he took notice of the trunk he had bumped into.
His trunk. His wand sat on the lid, over a note saying, “Be gone before I wake up.”
○0○
“When will you learn? How could you?”
“I always take my coffee with three sugars, Ginny. I don’t get fat and I brush my teeth. Don’t badger.”
His sister glowered at him and threateningly levitated the sugar bowl over his head. Ron scowled back. Harry plucked the bowl from the air and put it back on the table.
It was sunny that day. The birds made a racket in Ginny’s garden. The spruce made a lovely shade and let through lovely coins of sunlight to dapple the grass and the flowers in planters grouped around, but it was less pretty than their garden. Ron already wished he was sitting in their porch, not here at the Potters’ breakfast counter, several miles away from Hermione, when at this hour the two of them usually sipped tea from one mug.
“Even your holey socks are in your trunk, mate.”
“Yeah.”
“She really packed you away good.”
“She did.”
Harry clucked.
“What are you going to do about it and when are you planning to do it?” Ginny asked her brother, scowling.
Ron scowled back. “If she wants me away, I’ll stay away. If she cares more for those poopy letters than her husband ””
“Good plan. Well, you can go see if Mum will let you stay at the Burrow because you’re not staying here.”
“Why not?”
Ginny just gave him a look, arms akimbo. Harry ducked to examine his eggs, neck reddening.
“Right, right. Fine.”
“And not just that, I don’t want you getting into the habit of running here when you and Hermione get into a fight. You should fix it between yourselves. You’re married now. Harry and I are also Hermione’s best friends, but you don’t see her here right now, do you?”
Ron ran his hand through his hair. He grudgingly admitted to himself that his sister was right. He’d probably say the same to Harry if their roles were reversed. Hell, he’d have kicked Harry right back to Ginny in a twinkling before Ginny came after him and hexed Ron as well.
“Thanks for the shower.” He stood up and shrunk and pocketed his trunk again. “I won’t go home just yet.”
“Ron, I think it’s best if you go home.”
“Oh, stop channelling Mum, Ginny.”
“Huh. I’m not even close.”
○0○
Ginny was right.
When Ron ducked out of the fireplace into the Burrow’s kitchen, his mother took one look at him and proceeded to knead her dough even more vigorously.
“Shouldn’t you be at work?” she asked.
She said that quietly enough, but it was enough for Ron to calculate if he could manage grabbing a handful of Floo powder again and articulating a destination before she got a hold of him. He knew that quiet tone and that grim face well.
He wondered what his dad had dragged from a Muggle dump this time.
“I’m taking the day off,” he said airily, sitting down so his mum wouldn’t see he was unsteady at the knees. “It’s slow at the office anyway.”
“And you are spending the day with me?”
“She’s asleep.”
His mum laughed shrilly, mirthlessly. And the way her hands mauled the bread dough reminded Ron of the poor toy monkey Hermione had separated forever from her collection of childhood friends.
“Ronald Bilius Weasley, you know me better. What have you done?”
He clung to the false assurance that she wouldn’t do anything to him since he was a married adult now and told his story. Unlike Harry and Ginny, who’d only winced at what he’d done and let him rant about his abasement, his mother left the dough before he could finish the confession part; she came around the table and rapped him several good ones on the forehead.
“I raised you better than that, Ron! Or are you still seven years old? I’m ashamed of you! You get back to your house this minute and apologise to your wife, do you hear me? Not that I think she’d forgive you easily, you idiot!”
Rubbing his forehead, Ron was only too glad to leave. He’d have to ask his dad to issue them warnings whenever he left their mum in that mood.
○0○
Cerb lay on his back beside the couch, his paws in the air. Hermione scratched his belly whenever she turned a page. She was stretched out on the sofa, reading. There was a crease on her forehead, but she always looked like that when reading the Ministry law annals.
Was she still angry? Ron mulled it over as he peered into his own house like a burglar under Harry’s cloak. Was she waiting for him to come home at six as usual?
Another half-hour. He could wait. Though he was starting to cramp from holding still. He was afraid Cerb might get a whiff of him if he moved too much, though the French doors were shut tight and there was no breeze to speak of. They day was close and unseasonably muggy, as though it was preparing to storm again right after the last one.
He jumped when their mantel clock chimed the quarter hour. Hermione got up and... grabbed her wand from the side table.
Ron sighed and Apparated back to the Potters.
He had to return the cloak.
And then he had to swallow his pride and dignity and head over to the twins'. They'd torture him, but torture was better than having to stay at The Leaky Cauldron and broadcasting to the world Hermione had kicked him out.
What had gotten into Hermione? It wasn’t like she didn’t know how he still felt about Krum.
Ron knew he’d done a wrong thing, of course. He would apologize, would try to make up. They’d had worse fights than this. He had said and done far worse. But there she was, prepared to hex him if he walked through the door.
If she hadn’t been at her parents’, he would already have pinned the twins to the wall for whatever they’d fed her.
Ron's Best Friend by lucilla_pauie
Chapter Endnotes: Not long now before this ends. Hee. I write this mainly for me and Jego, but thank you for the reads and reviews, guys!