InsaneJournal

Ron Being Romantic - R/Hr - PG
Title: Ron Being Romantic
Author: shocfix
Pairing: Ron/Hermione
Words: 1338
Rating: PG

Written for oncelikeshari’s Summer Solstice drabble thingy thinger.


Ron Being Romantic
****
I tried really hard not to be selfish about it.

The greatest wizard of our times was dead. Murdered.

Poor Harry had had to witness it, and the look on his face when Ginny brought him to the hospital wing just broke my heart. I’d given him a quick hug, before leaving him to his girlfriend, and I’d wrapped my own arms around my own body and tried not to cry.

I’d been aware of Ron, standing beside me, hands in his pockets, staring at his best friend’s bowed head, and I’d tried not to imagine his arms comforting me.

And I’d managed to hold it together until the funeral. I really had. I’d tried to be my usual, practical self. I’d been available to the younger students; I’d spoken to scared parents as they came to collect their children. I’d watched Ron watching Harry.

But the finality of that white tomb, and Fawkes’ desolate cry had made the tears well over and I had almost doubled over with the pain of my grief, until strong arms turned me and held me against a hard chest and I had felt tears dropping into my hair and I had dissolved against him.

I sobbed all the harder for the fact that it felt so good to be held by him, and I really shouldn’t be enjoying it.

I tried really hard not to be selfish about it, but I had waited so long, and he was finally holding me and I really thought that that was it.

Settled.

Maybe not quite official, but we’d been edging closer ever since his birthday.

A voice snorted loudly inside my head; we’d been edging closer ever since we met!

So I’d dried my eyes and we’d gone after Harry and we’d done the right thing and we went with Harry to his aunt’s house.

And Ron did nothing. Didn’t touch me again. Didn’t hold my hand on the train. Was perfectly friendly to me at the Dursleys’, but nothing more.

And my heart ached and I wanted to Hex him.

There was absolutely no way he was going back to just friends, again, surely? Not even Ron could be that insensitive?

I even sunk so low as to ask Harry’s advice.

Ron had gone round to Mrs Figg’s to Floo the Burrow and I cornered Harry in his room.

“Has Ron said anything about… us?” I asked, deciding it wasn’t worth beating about the bush.

“Us, who, us?” he asked.

“Us, me and him, us,” I explained, having become fluent in Boy over the past six years. Well, I was obviously a bit rusty at Ron, but that was a rather specialised dialect.

“I… um, he, well,” Harry said.

“I’m not asking you to betray a confidence,” I said, knowing that Harry was perfectly capable of understanding Girl.

“He hasn’t actually said,” he said. “I sort of assumed I’d missed the big declaration and you were playing it down, in front of me, so I didn’t feel left out.”

“He hasn’t actually said anything to me, either,” I complained. “I really thought he’d have said something after… the funeral.”

“D’you want me to… ask him to pull his finger out?” he offered.

I sighed. “That’s not the most romantic way of putting it, is it?”

“Well, I’m not exactly an expert on romance,” he said and I snorted. “But I am an expert on Ron. Really, let me ask him what the hell he thinks he’s doing. We can’t go off with it up in the air, like this.”

“Well, exactly!” I said. “I just want to know, one way or the other.”

“Except, not the other,” he said.

“What?”

“You want him to make it official, not to chicken out again,” he pointed out.

“Hmmm.”

“Why don’t you just ask him?”

“What?” I gasped.

“You asked dear Cormac out, why not Ron?”

“Because I really need this to come from him – and so does he!”

“Then it’s really not fair of you to question his methods, is it?” he teased.

“Oh, why is he so exasperating?” I whined, flopping back on the bed. “I swore I’d never let him get to me like this again, but…”

“You’re mad about him.”

I grunted, inelegantly.

“And I’m quite sure he’s mad about you, too, and I will sort him out,” he promised.

“Don’t say I asked you to,” I begged.

He gave me a Look.

“What?” I asked.

“I’m just imagining having to face Voldemort and both of us being distracted by you and Ron bickering in the corner about who asked who out,” he said.

“Well, you’re used to us,” I said. “Let us distract him. Maybe that’ll give you your chance!”

He snorted and patted me on the shoulder as he left the room, to waylay Ron on his return.

I decided to act naturally, and was reading a book when the door opened and Ron slipped inside. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him close the door behind himself and lean against it, hands in his pockets.

“Hey,” he said gruffly.

I looked up. “Oh, hello,” I said airily.

He frowned at me.

“Look,” he said. “Harry just sat me down and gave me The Talk.”

My eyebrows shot up.

“Not The Talk, talk,” he said, blushing. “My dad told me all about the jobberknolls and the billywigs, thank you very much.”

I bit my lip and he sighed.

“He gave me the Big Brother talk,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck with one large hand. “About taking care of you and not messing you around and stuff.”

“Oh,” I said, holding my book against my chest and wrapping my arms protectively around it.

“He… I…” Ron huffed noisily and crossed the room to sit beside me. “He thought we were, sort of, like a… thing, you know? And that there was no… funny business… touching and stuff, because, well, not in front… well, of him, and respecting you… and stuff.”

I watched him blush and pleat the bedspread between nervous fingers and I wanted to push him back on the bed and get down to some serious funny business. The bloody idiot.

“Well,” I said carefully. “I admit. I did wonder what your… oh, dear, not ‘your intentions’, that sounds ridiculously old fashioned, but, well…”

I trailed off, realising I was babbling as badly as my boy.

“S’not that I don’t want a thing,” he said seriously. “Honest. I really was going to say something. I just… I wanted it to be, you know, perfect… and sort of romantic.”

“Oh!” I whispered, letting my book slip onto the bed beside me and putting my hand down beside his nervous fingers.

He immediately captured my hand.

“I was gonna say something next week,” he said. “Thought it would be, you know, special.”

“Next week?” I echoed.

“Summer Solstice,” he said.

“Oh, that would have been lovely,” I said encouragingly.

“Yeah,” he said, finally looking up at me, and looking a bit happier. “’Cos I reckoned that would be an easy anniversary to remember, which’d be good for me, ‘cos blokes are crap at things like that. And also, well…”

“Well?” I prompted.

“There’s the me trying to be romantic bit,” he explained.

“Which was?” I asked, biting my lip.

“’S the longest day,” he said earnestly. “So, you know, then our anniversary would last longer – and don’t say anything factual about all days being twenty-four hours long, you know what I mean.”

I sighed happily and entwined my fingers with his.

“I think that’s ever so romantic,” I said, moving closer.

“Yeah, well, s’important,” he muttered, clearing his throat and looking at me, nervously.

I smiled, encouragingly, and he cleared his throat again, so I rolled my eyes and leant closer and kissed him.

“Oh,” he said, his face lighting up as his free hand slid round me and pulled me closer.

“Oh,” I echoed, closing my eyes as he bent to kiss me back.