The sound of Harry’s snoring filled the room, magnified by the echoes created from the empty room. Another place, another time, the loud, consistent snores would have driven Hermione out of her mind, but anything that made Number 2 Grimmauld Place feel anything close to normal was welcomed. Harry snoring all through the night, so loud that she could hear it in Ginny’s room, was normal.
Ron, she noticed, trying to keep her mind from anything other than the two boys beside her, hadn’t stopped moving for twenty minutes. He’d stay on one side for a maximum of three minutes, turn, heavily sigh, and turn again. At the moment he was on his stomach with his face buried in the pillow. She considered offering him the couch cushions he had so gallantly forced her to take but thought better of it. Eventually, there was nothing left to examine about Harry or Ron, and sleep, it appeared, was out of the question.
The Trace. Could someone at the wedding have placed it on Harry? She hated questioning the people that she trusted, the people that Harry trusted, but how else could it have been explained? Death Eaters patrolling every street in the country, hopefully waiting for Harry Potter to turn up? Unlikely. Was someone in the Order double-agent? Considering, it wasn’t a far shot. But who? Who would be willing to sell out Harry?
Ron’s breathing, Hermione told herself, shaking her head. Tonight, she needed sleep, and in the morning they could worry about Death Eaters and Voldemort and what the hell they were going to do. In; out . . . in; out . . . .
“Hermione?”
It took several seconds for Hermione to recognize the voice as Ron’s and several more before her heart stopped threatening to shoot straight out of her chest. She breathed in deeply, shutting her eyes tight, and let out the breath before weakly saying, “Yeah?”
“I’m sorry for how I acted at the wedding.”
“I . . . “ she started uncertainly, perplexed. Death Eaters had crashed the wedding, his family was being watched, and the Ministry had fallen to Voldemort, and he was thinking about the way he’d acted? She said the only thing she could think to say. “That’s all right, Ron.”
She heard him turning and she did the same, facing him. He propped his head on his hand, apparently wide awake.
“No, it’s really not. I was an arse. Considering, I really shouldn’t have been.”
“Considering? Considering what?”
He shook his head, throwing messy red hair, auburn in the little bit of moonlight coming through the velvet curtains, into his eyes, which he exasperatedly pushed back. “Just . . . you know, considering one of us could have gotten hurt. If something had happened to you and the last thing I’d done was stupid, I mean . . . well, it would have sucked. For me.” After a moment, he added, “Well, for you too of course. You’d be dead or worse. But still, you know, er . . .”
“Really Ron, it’s all right,” Hermione said, laughing quietly. “But I do appreciate your apology.”
He smiled, and in the darkness she could see his eyes shining as he looked up at her through a veil of hair that had fallen back down to cover his face. The silence that ensued felt awkward, but she couldn’t think of anything to say. She was scared, not just of the situation they were in, the situation they had put Ron’s family in, of not knowing whether or not Death Eaters could get to them here, but scared of the house itself, uncomfortable in the dark, foreboding establishment that had long housed some of the most evilest witches and wizards.
Every creak in the old house sent a wave of nausea through her stomach. The shadows cast on the walls and outside of the open door made her heart race, and eventually she had to close her eyes, furling her knees close to her chest. For what seemed the hundred time that night she shut out every noise but the incessant snoring of Harry and the quieter, uneven breathing of Ron, trying desperately to not think about what they would do in the morning.
“Hermione?”
Hermione gasped slightly, drawing in a breath and telling herself to stop scaring herself out of her wits. It was silly to let the dreariness of a home, and inanimate object, cause so much nervousness in her.
Even quieter than before, Ron whispered, “Are you awake?”
“I don’t want to be,” she blurted, and she hated how small her voice sounded. She sighed and opened her eyes, finding Ron quickly.
“It’s just creepy in here,” she admitted, and he nodded understandingly.
“That’s an understatement. I hated being here even when half the Order was staying here too.”
Unwillingly, she smiled. At least she wasn’t the only one scared, but a little voice in her told her that it wasn’t a good thing for more than one of a party of three to be scared.
“I’m sorry about last year, using Lavender Brown to make you jealous.”
Hermione blinked several times. “Excuse me?”
Even in the dark she could see a slightly flush to his cheeks. “Oh come on,” he said, shifting his legs so that he was more comfortable. “You had to have known that’s what it was about.”
Suppressing a laugh of surprise, Hermione shook her head. She had suspected that he’d used the poor girl as a device to get at her but, coupled with an overwhelming feeling of conceitedness at the theory and the fact that she thought much higher of Ron, she hadn’t let that suspicion get too far.
“In that case, I’m sorry I took Cormac McLaggen to Slughorn’s party.”
”I knew you didn’t like that bloke,” he muttered, and Hermione did allow a giggle. It felt unnatural in their circumstances and she hurriedly turned it into a cough.
“Tell me, why this sudden bout of apologies?”
Had he shuffled closer to her while she was looking? He must have, because the space between them had somehow shrunken in the past five minutes. Somehow, Hermione just smiled and accepted it, surprising herself for the second time in the night. The first had been when her suspicions of something as joyous as a wedding being ruined had come to fruition.
“Because,” Ron said, “we are in Grimmauld Place, sleeping on a floor, with no food and no way of knowing whether or not Death Eaters can get us here. We’re with the most-wanted man in the Wizarding World, and we’re just three teenagers who haven’t even finished schooling. If something happens”“
“Nothing’s going to happen, Ron,” Hermione said, trying to wave away his worries, but he went on.
“If nothing bad happens to us, it’ll be because of you. No, really Hermione, listen,” he said, ignoring her as she tried to interrupt. A small smile pulled at his lips as he said, “Harry and I would be dead without you by now. You’re the only one of us who can just . . . think about what we’re doing.”
Flustered and pleased, Hermione just smiled in return.
“I know I’m an arse sometimes,” he went on, and Hermione got the sudden feeling that he had been rehearsing this all night. “But I do appreciate you Hermione. I do. And I don’t mean to say the things that I say or do the things I do I just . . . I just . . .”
“I love you, Ron,” Hermione said, and despite her heart beating like some mad, trapped thing inside her chest, her voice was quite calm. “And I know that we can’t do a damn thing about it right now, not with what’s waiting for us outside of this could-be safe house, but I do, and you don’t need to change anything about you.”
It was his turn to smile in surprise; after a moment he reached out and took her hand, squeezing it tightly.
“I love you too, Hermione.”
She had imagined the moment she told someone, anyone, that she truly loved them, would be like fireworks or one of the old, Muggle romance movies she used to watch, but lying on the cold floor of Number Twelve Grimmauld place with her best friend of six years, it didn’t feel like anything had changed except his need to apologize for everything he’d ever done to her.
However much she wanted to question whether or not she’d said it out of the same fear of loosing one another that had prompted him to apologize, Hermione just held on to Ron’s hand and closed her eyes. The fear of the Death Eaters barging in at any moment, the unease at the sounds of the restless house, the worry for Ron’s family”it pressed in on her, still tearing apart her sanity piece by piece. The fear of tomorrow was so overwhelming that she just wanted the night to be over with. But with the help of Harry’s snores filling the now-quiet room and Ron’s breathing, which had fallen into a steady rhythm, Hermione closed her eyes, holding tights to Ron’s hand.
When tomorrow came, they wouldn’t speak a word about what they’d said, just as they hadn’t spared the time to every unspoken sentiment over the last six years, but nevertheless, Hermione was able to sleep knowing that of all the things the didn’t know, they at least knew one thing, and one thing was good enough.
Between the Snoring and the Seemingly Imminent Death by A H
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