"Love involves a peculiar unfathomable combination of understanding and misunderstanding." -Diane Arbus
i. Molly Weasley
His tiny hand gripped her finger.
Even with five previous children to her name, she was startled. Never had a baby possessed such a strong grip, she was sure. She smiled affectionately at him. He really was an adorable baby, a right sweetheart.
And it made her so very angry that, as he grew older, he suffered from that question.
Molly hated that dreadful question more than any other. It was a simple question, something that her children asked carelessly when fighting with each other, that Aunt Muriel asked because she really was an old crone, even that a cousin of Molly's asked politely one day, as if it weren't the most ridiculous thought.
"Now I know, Molly," said Rachel, pregnant with her second child, "that Ginny is your favourite child, but of the boys, who do you like best?"
What sort of outrageous hogwash was that?
How could Molly ever, ever, be expected to quantify her love for her children like that? She had set Rachel straight on the subject, as she did anyone audacious enough to ask. What really made her hate the question, however, was the niggling fear in the back of her mind that sometimes the people who mattered most didn't understand how absurd the question was. Did her sons know?
Did Ron know?
He was the most sensitive of her boys. It was always so painfully obvious that he compared himself to his brothers and never seemed to feel he measured up. How could she prove that though she had desperately wanted a daughter when he was born, he wasn't in any way a disappointment to her?
How could she explain why she loved him?
She loved him because he was loyal to a Quidditch team that always lost. She loved him because he promised to teach Ginny how to tie her shoes if she agreed to form a secret club with him that Fred and George couldn't join. She loved him because he didn't want her to clean the dirt off his face at the train station. She loved him because he was fiercely proud of a father who made little money in exchange for maintaining morals.
She loved him because he brought home a thin, pale boy and thought the world of his new best friend without ever realising that his new best friend thought the world of him.
How could she explain that she knew from the day his tiny fingers curled experimentally around her pointer finger and suddenly clasped it, refusing to let go, the sort of man he would become?
She couldn't stop crying when it became clear that Harry, Ron, and Hermione had disappeared from the wedding. She hated that her baby was in such danger. But he was in danger because he was trying to do what was right.
He was in danger because he was loyal to his friends. He was in danger because he had found them, and like a tiny hand grasping her finger, he had clung to them and would never leave them, never abandon them, never forget them. Perhaps he would have his moments of doubt; perhaps, like a six-year-old who didn't want his mummy to kiss him goodnight anymore because he was too stubborn to say he liked it, he might be unsure about his friendship with Harry and Hermione.
He would never really abandon them, though. He would always return.
And wasn't that enough for any mother to take swelling pride in her son and to love him so much?
She always promised herself that someday she would prove to him that he was as good as all his brothers, and she loved him just as much. He went to Hogwarts, and she remembered her promise. He left with Harry and Hermione, and she remembered her promise. He sat at the kitchen table quietly eating the corned beef sandwich she had made him, and she remembered her promise.
The house was empty. George was in the flat he hadn't left once since the funeral last week, Arthur, Bill, and Percy were at work, Charlie had returned to Romania, and Ginny was spending the day with Harry. It was only Molly and Ron right now. He had been so neglected these last two weeks. He noticed her gaze and he smiled, food in his mouth, and she bit back her own smile.
And she realised, randomly, that he was eating corned beef. He hated that, didn't he? How could she never remember? He ate it now without complaint, and when he finished and settled down to read a history of the Cannons, she realised he ate it without complaint for her. Her baby had grown up. He knew what really mattered. That terrible question didn't plague him, not anymore.
She watched as he turned a page in his book, his hands so large, his fingers so long, and she remembered when they were once unimaginably tiny but still unafraid to grip her finger tightly.
And for the first moment in a long, long time, Molly felt as if everything would be okay.
ii. Ginny Weasley
Brothers were strange creatures.
Ron Weasley was no exception.
When she was little, Bill and Charlie had been her heroes. They were impossibly big, and they knew everything, and it was when Bill would toss her into the air and catch her effortlessly that she first learned a love of flying.
As she grew older, Ginny saw Percy go from unimaginably intelligent to an insufferable prat, but she always had a soft spot for him. There was something about earning his admiration, his pride, that was like nothing else in the world. He was her teacher; he showed her how to bandage her split knee properly and how to write her name and how to toss a gnome.
And throughout her childhood, Fred and George were silly and fun and full of good ideas, and the word impossible left her vocabulary under their watchful eyes. Every trick she knew she learned from them. Best of all, they showed her what it meant to have an other half, and she would never settle in her search for her own.
But one by one, these beloved big brothers went off to school, and they never really returned. Oh, they came back to the Burrow for holidays, and then for visits, but they were different, and she was, too, and none of them ever had the time to meet the Ginny that grew up in their absence. All this meant, really, was that when it came down to it, the brother closest to Ginny was not her hero or her mentor or her idol. No, it was Ron.
Ron, who was skinny and stupid and told her she was too little to do anything. She gave as good as she got, of course, and he would never have expected less. They worked best that way, fighting because they could, because they could fight and fight and fight and still possess the firm knowledge that they would be loved regardless.
This wasn't something Ginny ever really understood as a child; it was simply a given.
Ron went off to Hogwarts, too, but Ginny followed him quickly, and however overprotective Ron might have been towards her, he still knew her, still spent time with her, still remained the brother to whom she was closest. Their bickering sometimes grew a little too caustic, but it was okay. At the end of the day she was still simply Ginny and he was still simply Ron.
He was her brother, simply her brother, only her brother, thankfully her brother. He was insensitive, self-absorbed, and an all around prat. But she could overlook that, because in a lot of ways, he, the biggest baboon this world had ever known, was the person who knew her best.
And he had his moments, now and then.
When she finally escaped from the wake and found her way to the old Quidditch shed, he was close behind her. She sat with her knees pulled to her chest, her black robes crumpled, her tears, so long denied, already pouring down her face. He sank down beside her wordlessly. She went on crying.
She didn't want anyone to see her cry.
But this was Ron.
She leaned into him slightly, unintentionally, and she felt him shaking. He was crying, too. She hadn't seen him cry in the four days since the final battle, either. They both needed this. He wouldn't judge her, and she wouldn't judge him, and they could cry for Fred together. That's what it meant to be someone's sibling: to love unconditionally because you've never considered an alternative.
They had lost Fred, and that loss was a wound that would never fully heal. Having six brothers didn't making the loss of one any less. But having Ron as a brother made it survivable, as strange as it might seem.
"Ginny," Ron said gruffly, shifting slightly and acting as if he weren't crying, too, "you're getting snot on my robes."
Ginny only laughed through her tears.
iii. Lavender Brown
He was the first person that ever made her feel like a Gryffindor.
She really didn't know what had first endeared her to Ron Weasley. Most girls swooned over Dean Thomas and Harry Potter, the handsome, brave Gryffindor boys. But Lavender had little interest in either. She had eyes only for Ron Weasley, taller than both Thomas and Potter, with a wider smile and a care-free attitude.
Snaring a boy was child's play to Lavender. She knew how to flirt and to giggle and to touch her hand innocently to his arm as well as she knew which shoes not to wear with which skirt and how to curl her hair so it lay just so.
Ron wasn't experienced when she first got a hold of him, but she made for an excellent teacher, and she soon took his sloppy, eager kisses and made him the best snog the school had ever seen. He was so attentive to her, and she wanted the whole world to know. Until, suddenly, he simply wasn't interested anymore. She tried to ignore it, to cox him into another snog and to convince him to love her the way that she was sure she loved him, but it was never enough.
She should have seen it happen, she should have believed Parvati that summer when her friend told her he was off the market. No, he wasn't seeing anyone, she said, "But everybody knows he might as well have the words 'Property of Hermione Granger' written across his forehead. He's taken, Lav. Find somebody else to fancy."
She didn't. There was no way Ron could ever like Granger more than Lavender, and for a long time, Lavender felt she had plenty of evidence to that effect. She was wrong. She was so, so wrong, and after it all crumbed to pieces, she felt like a used, ugly, daft duck for it.
Why did she ever like him in the first place? Why did she waste so much time with him?
Then, the night before Dumbledore's funeral, they wound up as the last two Gryffindors in the common room, and she remembered why. Seeing her, he didn't avoid her gaze or make an excuse or pretend not to see her, as he had for weeks. He merely smiled wearily. Somehow they started talking, despite her first few biting comments.
He had never talked to her before, not really. She hadn't much let him, she supposed, because she knew she wasn't very smart or funny or interesting, and she was determined not to let him realise that. But as they sat alone in the common room that night, he seemed genuinely interested when she told him how her father didn't want her to return to Hogwarts next year. They talked about what each had experienced the night of the battle, and he told her about his brother.
Finally, when a soft lull fell, she couldn't help herself. "Ron," she murmured, "why did you . . . why did you ever go out with me? Is it because — is it because I was the first girl to want to snog you?" Was she, Lavender Brown, nothing more than a replaceable floozy?
He kept his gaze on the ground as he shrugged. "Partly," he admitted. "But partly . . . I was in awe of you. I'd never met anybody who — I mean, I guess my brothers are like that sometimes, but I've never — and I know Harry can't —"
"Can't what?" she pressed.
"Can't simply go after what he wants. I mean, I'm a Gryffindor, and I like to think I'm brave, but I'm not — not really." His shoulders sank. "But you," and he turned to her with a startling kind of sincerity, "you know what you want and you do what it takes to get it, and you don't care what anybody else says or thinks. It's kind of amazing."
Her cheeks were burning. Nobody had ever said something like that to her before. She, brave? And didn't he know that she cared so much what other people said and thought? But this, this, was why she liked Ron Weasley: because he could be so clueless, so frustrating, but also so unwittingly sweet. People didn't expect it of him, and they had good reason not to, but like her, he could surprise people.
"So, yeah," he grunted.
"Okay," she murmured. "Thanks." She stood. "I better get to bed. But you should know . . . I kind of fell in love with you."
He blushed brilliantly, and she smiled at the knowledge that some things never changed. "I didn't deserve it," he muttered.
"No," she said, "but most boys don't."
At the bottom of the steps, she glanced back. "Oh, and Ron? Good luck going after what you what. You'll need it. Hermione won't wait forever." He stared at her with wide eyes. She flushed with happiness at her own benevolent advice. She always like to have the last word. She went to bed with his words still swirling in her mind.
And when she returned to Hogwarts against her father's wishes, when she fought in the final battle, when she confessed to Seamus Finnigan on her twenty-fifth birthday that she loved him, she thanked Ron Weasley, the boy who gave her courage by mistakenly believing she had it.
iv. Angelina Johnson
He came through.
Truth be told, Angelina wouldn't have expected it of him when she first met him.
He was friends with Harry, who was a sweet boy and a decent Quidditch player, but her knowledge of him ended there, and her knowledge of Ron was no greater. When they grew older, she came to respect Harry, but her opinion of Ron changed little. As bad as it might be to say, she thought of him simply as Harry Potter's best friend.
But, as it turns out, when the going got tough, Ron could be a lot more than Harry's mate.
First, it was Quidditch. She really had thought he was a disaster on a broom, only for him to become Gryffindor's king. Then, there was the final battle. He fought unflinchingly, standing by Harry as few friends really would. Finally, he came through when no one else could.
He saved George.
No one else could. Lee was at a loss, and the Weasleys meant well and tried hard, but they had little success in reaching out to him. Ginny alone could make George smile, a ghostly smile but a smile nonetheless. Long after Ginny stopped dedicating her drinks to Fred, however, George was still downing his without pause. No one knew what to do, least of all Angelina.
She wouldn't have guessed the answer lied with Ron Weasley. Angelina was there the day he came to the flat with determination hidden in his gaze. He tried to ask George for advice about Hermione, about how to ask her if they were simply dating or if he could call her his girlfriend, and he fumbled as he spoke, scoffing his foot. George made a few snide comments, his good humour having fled from the whiskey on his breath.
Ron asked him what he was doing that night. Could he help Ron pick out a present for Hermione's birthday? George didn't even bother to reply. Writing up inventory for the shop, Angelina could only pity Ron; she couldn't offer him any help in his desperate attempts to reach George.
Ron lost it. "What's your problem?" he exploded. "I'm trying here! You're worse than Harry in fifth year!"
"Worse than Harry in fifth year? Is that your idea of a joke?" George snarled. "Stick to what you know, little brother; something that doesn't require any humour or intelligence."
"George," Angelina began.
"That's it?" Ron challenged, fuming and, to Angelina's amazement, not backing down. "You sit on your lazy arse all day, ignoring Mum's owls and letting your shop fall to pieces, but you can't even come up with a creative insult?"
There was a hot, angry pause.
"Look, we all miss him. We all lost him. And I get it, okay, I get that it's worse for you, and you can't be expected to act like nothing happened. But can't you at least act like you're a little glad to be alive?"
"Maybe I'm not," George said darkly.
"Get over yourself," Ron snapped. "If it had been the other way, if you had died, would you really want Fred to drink himself to death? To treat his whole family like shite in your name? No, you wouldn't, and you can tell me that's a line, but I don't care! This is Fred's legacy? Are you joking?" He shook his head, looking disgusted. "Hermione was wrong. It doesn't do any good even to try to help you."
He stormed out of the flat.
But he came back the next day, and he helped Angelina finish inventory. He began to come every day and help around the shop. A few weeks later, when Angelina couldn't find George, she called Ron. He returned with a drunk George in tow. From then on, Ron appeared nearly every night before George went on, and he went out with him. He took care of him.
Some nights Angelina would find them drunk together. She knew they began to visit the cemetery. She watched George start to joke a little more. He even laughed aloud, a sweet, genuine laugh, when he and Ron were planning a surprise birthday party for their mother. It didn't happen all at once, but it happened. George simply, slowly, in his own broken way, moved on.
And Ron was the only clear turning point Angelina could see. Ron was there through it all.
Ron saved George.
Angelina never looked at Ron Weasley the same way again.
She watched him marry Hermione and he was the best man at her wedding to George. She grew to know him as someone who spoke before he thought, who was a little too competitive, easily embarrassed, and absolutely, fiercely loyal to his family, even if sometimes it took a push for him to prove it.
He always came through.
v. Luna Lovegood
Friends were very nice.
She was happy without them, of course, but it was quite lovely when she found herself in the company of people who would tell her, as if it were the most obvious fact in the world, "Luna, we are your friends." She was always so touched by those words. Her friends were funny and sweet. They made her feel wanted. When she was away for months at a time searching for elusive creatures, she found she missed them very much.
Ron was so funny, and sometimes he even made her laugh so hard that she cried. He was also a very loyal friend, and Luna admired that. Now and then, especially when they were younger, he would say things that weren't very nice, but he was still a nice person, really. Luna was never as close to Ron as she was to Hermione, Ginny, and Harry, but she always knew that someday she would discover what a very good friend he could be.
It happened when she was thirty.
She met Rolf while seeking the Blibbering Humdinger in Russia. He had thick blonde hair and the darkest eyes she had ever seen. She thought they were very pleasant. At first, he didn't entirely believe there was a Blibbering Humdinger, but he agreed to help her seek it. After all, two good naturalists were better than one.
She soon realised that she was very attracted to him. She told him so. He was attracted to her, too, and he was a very good kisser. She told Ginny when she visited. "It sounds pretty serious," said Ginny, burping Lily. "Do you think you're falling in love with him?"
Luna was startled. "I don't know," she said.
She had never been in love before. She knew what love was, of course, even what romantic love was. Didn't she? Love was the way her father would leave little flowers around the house for her mother to find. Love was the look on Harry's face when Ginny walked down the aisle on their wedding day. Love was Hermione painting her kitchen orange for Ron.
But would someone do all those things for Luna? She decided she wasn't so sure. Besides, it was easier to recognise when other people were in love than to decide if she herself loved someone. It was all very worrisome.
Then, a few weeks later, she happened across Ron in the Three Broomsticks. He was proudly showing her pictures of Hugo when she mentioned Rolf. "Newt Scamander's grandson?" he asked. "Ginny told me you've been seeing him."
"I have," Luna replied. "I like him a lot. But I don't know if I love him. I can't decide. What do you think?"
"What do I think about what?"
"Do you think I love him?"
He choked on his sandwich. "Well, I — I don't — you know, I've never met him." He scratched his neck awkwardly. He was uncomfortable, but Luna didn't pay too much attention to that.
"But how should that make a difference? I've met him, and I don't know."
He stared at her for a moment and took a long sip of his Butterbeer. "When you love somebody, Luna, every . . . every little thing about them is a big thing. Like, well, what's a nice thing he does for you?"
Luna thought about it. "Sometimes, when I go to bed, my toes are very cold, but I don't like wearing socks at night — I don't want to catch a case of the Burples, of course — "
"Of course."
"— So Rolf lets me burrow them under his leg where it's warm. It's nice."
"Okay," Ron said, "well, when you love somebody, something like that makes you feel as if the Cannons — as if . . . as if you've found a Crumple-Horned Snorkack. Every little thing he does for you makes you feel as if you've found a Crumple-Horned Snorkack."
"Oh," said Luna thoughtfully. "I see."
That night, Luna realised that Ron Weasley had explained love to her, and she hadn't even realised she needed someone to explain it. Real friends did that for people, and Ron was a real friend. She smiled, and she told Rolf the very next day that she loved him. It turned out that he loved her, too.
She never did find a Crumple-Horned Snorkack, but she married Rolf. That was more than enough for her. And she always had friends, too. It was nice.
Having Ron Weasley for a friend was especially nice.
vi. Rose Weasley
The monsters were all scared of her daddy.
Every night he would take out his wand and check for them in the closet, and under the bed, and behind the curtain. No monster ever escaped her father's search. And every night he would shout to any monsters who might think of coming into the room that, "I'm watching, you yellow-bellied monsters! You won't get past Ron Weasley, you won't!"
They never came, and Rose could sleep without a single nightmare. Anywhere she went with him, she was safe. When she was sad, he would tickle her until her tears were from laughter. When she was bored, he would have a tea party with her, and they would always have real food, because he said it was silly to pretend to eat food. When she was tired, he would carry her to bed.
She liked it when he carried her.
Walking down the street, she would nearly run to match his longer strides, her small hands clinging to one or two of his fingers, until finally he would swoop her up into his arms. She loved that. And she loved that everybody could see that she, Rosie Weasley, was his daughter. She couldn't help but flaunt it. She had the greatest daddy in the world. Who wouldn't be jealous?
She always beamed, flushing with pleasure, when he would introduce her to someone. "And this," he would say, looking at her as if she were the prettiest girl in the world (he said she was), "is my daughter, Rosie." To him, she could do or be anything.
She grew older, and she no longer needed him to check for monsters. She could keep his pace as they walked down Diagon Alley, and she liked to introduce herself. But one thing didn't change: she adored him like no one else.
At Hogwarts, she wrote him constantly. She told him everything. In every letter he wrote back, he said how proud he was of her. Every break she would show him the magic she had learned, and he was always so pleased. (Of course, she could only use her wand when Mum wasn't there, but she and Dad pinky swore to each other never to tattle on the other.)
When she grew to hate her carrot-colored hair, he still called her beautiful, and when she wanted to scrub off her freckles, he said he loved her more for every one she had. Sometimes it was frustrating, because he simply didn't understand, but she was always secretly pleased.
Her father believed she could do anything, and she wanted more than anything else in the world to prove him right. And, then, somehow, impossibly, she disappointed him.
The look on his face alone was enough to break her heart. He called her Rose for the first time in her memory, and his posture was stiff. She had a terrible feeling he would have exploded if her mum wasn't there to place a firm hand on his arm. She should have known it would happen, really.
She had dated a handful of people, and Dad never seemed to be too upset. When she finally found herself with a truly serious boyfriend, it was her seventh year, and she cautiously mentioned it in her letters. He seemed to take it in stride. Maybe a part of her knew her dad would be so angry at who her boyfriend was, and that's why she never let the big bad secret slip.
She couldn't avoid it when he came by the house a few days before Christmas. She led him into the kitchen. "Everybody," she said, "this is my boyfriend, Scorpius Malfoy."
It was a disaster. Scorpius was on his best behaviour, as she had instructed, but Dad wouldn't look at him, wouldn't speak to him, wouldn't even shake his hand, and dinner was painfully awkward. Finally, Rose said something. She demanded her family be polite. Everything quickly spiralled out of control. Rose held her ground well, but when her father started yelling, he nearly brought her to tears.
He had never yelled at her. He had never even been annoyed with her. She felt so betrayed.
And she looked at him and saw that he felt betrayed.
He wouldn't talk to her the next day. He wouldn't look at her. Christmas dawned cold and grey in the Weasley household. They trudged to the Burrow, Dad in a foul mood. Hugo whispered to her murderously, "Thanks for ruining Christmas." She had. She finally burst into tears at dinner and raced upstairs to Aunt Ginny's old bedroom. Her dad followed her.
She couldn't stop crying, not even when he sank down on the bed beside her and ran a hand over her hair. "You deserve somebody so much better than him," he told her, his voice gravely.
She turned to look at him. "You don't know him," she protested.
His face darkened. "I don't need to."
"But I just . . . I know you hate me —"
"I could never hate you," he interrupted. He cupped her face and wiped away her tears. "But why him, sweet pea? Of everybody, why him?"
"Because," she said, desperate to make him understand, "because of the way he looks at me. I've always wanted somebody to look at me like that."
"Like what?"
"Like you look at Mum."
"Rosie. . . ."
"I love you, Dad. I love you so much. And I never want to disappoint you or hurt you or . . . but I really do like Scorpius. I think I love him. Can't you . . . can't you be okay with it — for — for me?"
He stared for so long that she began to ache with the feeling that nothing would ever be right again. The suddenly he reached forward and pulled her up, hugging her. She sank into the embrace. "I'd do anything for you," he murmured thickly.
She clutched him tightly, never wanting to let go. For the first time in so long, she was overwhelmed with the feeling of warmth and safety she hadn't felt since her daddy had banished the monsters from her room.
vii. Hermione Granger
She had always been his, and he had always been hers.
She can still remember Ginny, so small and shy, timidly asking Hermione if she liked Harry. Hermione had known immediately what the twelve-year-old girl meant, and she had been able to assure her that she had never liked Harry that way and she never would.
Harry was brave and kind and good, but he didn't throw up slugs for her.
When Ron was angry he said so. He always stood up for her. He followed a trail of his worst nightmare for her. He argued for her when Snape reduced her to tears. He made it clear that only he was allowed to call her a know-it-all. He noticed her too hectic class schedule third year and her smaller teeth fourth year. He might have been slow to realise why he always noticed the little things about her, but she didn't mind.
She always realised, always knew. Somewhere along the line, she found that not only had she begun to feel that way about boys, but she had begun to feel that way about Ron Weasley. She was a goner from then on. It happened early, far earlier than entirely necessary, and she was force to wait through years of Ron stumbling over Fleur and snogging Lavender Brown.
But she got him in the end.
There was nothing so exhilarating as hearing his concern over the castle's House Elves. Ron had made so many stupid, stupid mistakes, but he was better for them. He had listened to her, and he had grown up, and all those years had been worth it. If there was any doubt of it at that moment, any doubt still lingering even after she finally kissed him, he soon squashed it.
She was never very comfortable with her apperance. Her hair was frizzy, her lips were thin, and her stomach wasn't a flat plane. She could add more to the list, and living with glossy, curvy, perfect Lavender Brown and Parvati Patil didn't help her self-esteem. She was smart and she knew it, but her confidence never extended far past that firm knowledge.
When Ron looked at her, however, in those days and weeks and months after the war, it took her breath away. There was something in his face, something in his eyes, that made Hermione's breath come short. And the more he seemed to love what he saw when she looked at her, the more she did, too.
Physical intimacy never came easy to Hermione. To be that open with someone, to let them know you in those ways — it made her want to bury her nose in a book and never emerge again to face it all. But Ron went slowly.
He trailed kisses down her neck until she was trembling. He ran his hands through her hair until she purred like Crookshanks. He rested his hand on her leg beneath the table until Molly told her if she caught any more sun she'd start to burn. How could she not want to spend her life with him, the boy who threw up slugs for her and cared about House Elves and liked her frumpy appearance?
Of course, spending her life with Ron Weasley was not an easy task.
He was an absolutely terrible disciplinarian, and if it weren't for Hermione laying down the law, both Rosie and Hugo would have grown into absolute terrors. He never quite lost the habit of speaking with his mouth full, and he always insisted that it was unnecessary to have schedules on vacation. But he made up for all of that. Even after so many years, even after their children were raised and they were both retired, he was the only one who could always make anything better.
When he found her sitting on the floor of kitchen, surrounded by a broken pitcher of juice and snivelling to herself at three in the morning, he knew what to do. He used her wand — it was closer — and repaired the jug. He set it on the counter, cleared away the spilt juice with another wave of the wand, and then sank down beside her.
He waited.
"I can't pour myself juice," she murmured, wiping at her running nose.
"Why not?" He spoke loudly. He did everything loudly now, as he seemed incapable of grasping the idea that the whole world wasn't going deaf, only Ron Weasley.
"Because I'm blind!" she wailed.
"Aw, it's not so bad," he argued, giving her knee a squeeze. "I'll pour your juice for you. There. Problem solved."
"No," she protested petulantly, "problem not solved!" She turned to him, able only to see the barest traces. All that remained now were traces, and it kind of terrified her. His hair, still a brilliant red, was like a kind of beacon in it all, but in the weeks to come she would lose sight of even that. The potions could only prolong it for so long.
"There's so much I still want to do," she said, looking at him imploringly. She reached her hands up to his face, fingers automatically spanning out over his cheeks and lips and temples to assess his expression. She knew what each tiny, subtle change on his face meant, but she could no longer see it — another terrifying idea.
"You can still do anything you want to do, love," he assured, his voice as eager as his face felt. "Nothing's really going to change now."
"How can it not? It's already begun! Betty Loughlin already asked me to step down from chair of the Committee on Outreach to the Community of Merpeople! I founded that committee! And —"
"Betty Loughlin is a wanker."
"Really, Ron, I'm being serious."
"So am I. So Betty wants to run your committee into the ground. Fine. Start another committee. You love starting committees — and societies and organisations. How about something with Centaurs?"
"That's not the point!"
"What's the point, then?"
"The point is — is — I still have so much more to do! I want to take a Muggle cruise and I want to read all the books by Sir Arnold d'Muex-Peel and I want to visit the St. Petersburg Wizarding History Museum and I — I want to learn how to ballroom dance! And I can't do anything now because I'm blind and useless. . . ."
She didn't know why, but the last few days the idea of really being blind had finally hit her, and she couldn't stand it. She had never been truly helpless a day in her life. Why did it have to happen now?
"Enough, women!" he said. He stood, pulling her up along with him. "I'll take you on a Muggle cruise, and I'll read you all those books by Arnold De Moop and I'll . . . I'll make Harry take you to the St. Petersburg Wizarding History Museum. And tell me where to go, and I'll sign us up for dancing lessons tomorrow. Anything you want to do, Hermione, we can still do it. We can still do it."
She ran her hands once more over his face. "Would you really do all that for me?" she whispered.
"Of course I would." He sounded affronted. "How can you even ask that after all this time? I belong to you."
She smiled tearfully. "Yes," she said, "yes, I suppose you do. And I'll do anything for you."
"Excellent. How about making me a sandwich?"
She laughed, clutching him to her. And somehow, despite how very little stock she put in such things as fate and destiny, she knew that it would all be okay, because it was always supposed to be like this.
She had always been his, and he had always been hers.
Fin.
Of Understanding and Misunderstanding by MagEd
Chapter Notes: As per usual: I own no rights to the Harry Potter universe. I write purely for my own entertainment, and if J.K. Rowling lets me play with her toys, I promise to return them in their current pristine condition :)
Chapter Endnotes: I'm so sorry for such a long wait!
I haven't had nearly as much time to devote to fanficiton these last few months (sadly) and this story gave me a lot more trouble than I'd expected! Nearly every scene underwent the painful process of being entirely written and then entirely deleted to make way for a second try (I think only Ginny's and Rosie's made the cut the first time around!).
There will be two more "seven people" fics, and hopefully the next one won't take nearly so long. As always, please review! It always makes my day :)