Sin título

[constancezin]

We are pleased to announce you the wedding of Ms. Hermione Granger and Mr Ronald Weasley during a private ceremony with family and friends. The Chosen One was Mr Weasley best man, of course.

Harry Potter declares, "I'm really happy for them, I'll go (again) through hell for them. I wish them the same happiness I'm in!" As Mr and Mrs Potter just have welcomed their first child.

.

My entry @toorumlk dtiys

Such sweet romione couldn't be ignored

[relyingonoldships]

Omg you drew romione 😭❤️

[clinioelerrante]

Since Iberghol's so many years ago, I have not seen anything like it, with the same strength and feeling

moonchild, don’t cry

head girl and her dropout boyfriend

[acnelli]

Can you recommend any Romione multi-chapter fics, where Ron gets all the respect he deserves. I mean fics with competent and protective Ron Weasley, just the way he really is. I love Mine by Metronomus, All in by Holly1492 and Price of Love by RogueSugah, for example, but I need more fics where Weasley really is our King ❤

Hi anon,

the ones that immediately come to mind for me are these:

When Fate Decides by @azaleablueme

Lego House by @accio-broom

Everything Has Changed by @accio-broom

Fraternizing With The Enemy by @adenei

If some of you know more fics that fit the bill, please add them in a reblog 💛

[clinioelerrante]

You dont forget...

In search or Hermione by AzaleaBlue

All in by holly1492

Of hearts and heros by Emmilyme (ao3)

The price of love by Roguesugah ( ao3)

Sleepless by Writergirl8

All these are the Unforgivables of Romione shippers and The Pentateuch in the Romione The Bible.

[clinioelerrante]

Un cuento de navidad Romione

No hay mucha distancia entre El Ministerio de Magia y el pequeño apartamento que comparte con Ron. Es cierto que con la caída de Voldemort, el ministerio británico así como el de otros países que se vieron amenazados, mostraron su agradecimiento premiando al trío con una cantidad considerable de galeones que les hubiesen permitido disfrutar una propiedad mucho mayor pero ellos, a diferencia de Harry que reconstruyó Grimmauld Place desde los cimientos cuando Ginny se fue a vivir con él, habían optado por buscar un lugar pequeño pero acogedor cerca del lugar de trabajo de ambos.

-Es simplemente una cuestión práctica,- había argumentado Hermione al tiempo que levantaba una ceja. -No necesitamos gastarnos una cantidad absurda de dinero cuando solamente somos dos personas empezando a vivir juntas.-

Ron, simplemente había puesto los ojos en blanco y había dejado escapar su sonrisa torcida haciendo que el interior de Hermione se estremeciese. En aquel momento, ella se debatió entre tener una discusión en toda regla con él o arrancarle la ropa a mordiscos… Ella optó por la segunda opción, sin saber que secretamente, Ron se encontraba extremadamente complacido por su idea. Al fin y al cabo, si una casa es demasiado grande, las posibilidades de encontrarte con tu mujer “accidentalmente” y poder follarla sobre el mueble más cercano, se reducirían notablemente, «Y un hombre tiene derecho a soñar, ¿verdad? »

Y así, ella tal como el médico le recomendado ese mismo día, estaba recorriendo el pequeño trayecto que separaba ambos lugares, disfrutando de la vistas mientras paseaba. Hacía frio, sí. Pero su corazón estaba lleno de calidez.

A lo largo de la calle, se podían observar los escaparates de las tiendas llenas de motivos navideños, regalos, dulces y chucherías, con las caras de los niños tan pegadas al cristal, que pareciera que habían sido víctimas de un hechizo de sellado permanente. Árboles de navidad con encantamientos que simulaban una nevada eterna sobre ellos o cambiaban el color de las hojas al ritmo de algún villancico se localizaban en cualquier esquina.

Había olor a algodón de azúcar, chocolate caliente con especias y pasteles de distintos sabores. Sonidos de campanillas, puertas abriéndose y cerrándose en el trasiego incesante de los distintos comercios, los gritos de algunos padres intentando rescatar a sus hijos del hechizo visual de los escaparates y ¡Cómo no! La caótica sinfonía de fuegos artificiales y petardos de Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes acompañadas por las risas y gritos de la chiquillería por todo el Callejón Diagon.

Sumergida en todas esas sensaciones, por fin llegó al hogar. Ella esperaba que Ron llegase más tarde, cuando terminase su servicio en el ministerio. Atrapado entre su trabajo de Auror y su colaboración con WWW, Ron le había prometido que hoy terminaría temprano para poder pasar la tarde tumbados en el sofá, con ella acogida sobre su pecho, debajo de una cálida manta y viendo películas muggles navideñas en la televisión…

Lo que ella no esperaba de ninguna manera, fueron las voces susurradas, los sollozos y el llanto que parecían venir desde el salón de la casa.

En un principio, había estado a punto de gritar el nombre de Ron y abalanzarse sobre el origen de los sonidos con su mente llena de imágenes de mortífagos o similares asaltando su casa y torturando o lastimando a Ron. Pero la veterana de guerra dentro de ella había tomado el control y de manera sigilosa, se aproximó con la varita preparada, dispuesta a reunir con Satanás a cualquiera que osase poner un simple dedo sobre su esposo.

Había lanzado sobre ella un hechizo desilusiónate y lentamente se había aproximado al dintel de la puerta para echar un vistazo al interior del salón antes de desatar un infierno de varita los asaltante. Su mente estaba lista para enfrentar cualquier horripilante escena sin que ello le hiciese perder la concentración, pero nunca había estado preparada para lo que vio.

En el sofá, frente al televisor que reproducía imágenes en blanco y negro, estaba Ronald Weasley vestido con un irregular jersey de motivos navideños, aplastando sobre su pecho un cojín al que parecía estar exprimiéndole la vida mientras lo abrazaba, al tiempo que gruesas lágrimas caían desde sus cerúleos ojos y un llanto inconsolable escapaba de su boca.

-¿Ron?-

La llamada había escapado de ella tan angustiada, que había hecho salta un metro a Ron cuando la escuchó.

Rápidamente él se orientó hacia la puerta encontrándose con la cara de genuina preocupación de su esposa, que fue sustituida por la de la estupefacción cuando él se abalanzó sobre ella y tomando su cara entre sus manos, empezó a besarla por toda la cara como si hiciese una eternidad que no la hubiese visto.

Ella sintió tanto amor, tanta ternura, tanta devoción y tanta desesperación en cada uno de los pequeños besos, que de manera instintiva, Hermione lo abrazó y lo estrecho contra ella como si quisiera proteger el enorme corpachón dentro de su propio corazón y liberarle de toda la angustia que él estaba sintiendo. Ella no sabía qué era lo que a él le consumía por dentro, pero ella misma empezó a llorar abrumada cuando junto con cada beso, empezó a escuchar “Hermione. Mi Hermione” saliendo de los labios de Ron, cuando él le devolvió el abrazo.

Nunca supo si fueron segundos, minutos u horas, pero cuando notó que los sollozos de Ron disminuían y la calma volvía de nuevo a él, ella se separó muy suavemente tomando sus manos entre las suyas para no perder el contacto y mirándole llena de amor por él.

-Ron. Amor. ¿Qué ocurre? ¿Ha ocurrido algo malo?- Ella apretó ligeramente sus manos entrelazadas para darle confianza y hacerle saber que ella siempre estaría con él. Apoyándolo o siendo el refugio que pudiese necesitar.

Mientras sus ojos azules estaban clavados en ella, el alto pelirrojo negó con la cabeza, su cálida sonrisa se dibuja sobre su cara y dulcemente se suelta de su agarre. Pasa una de sus mangas por sus ojos para limpiarlos de lágrimas, mientras su otra mano vuelve a la mejilla de ella como si tocarla la hiciese más real para él.

-¿Ron?-

-No pasa nada mi amor. Todo está bien-.

-No parecía estar bien, hace un momento.- Hermione pone su propia mano sobre la de él y acariciándola, para pasado un instante, tomarla y tirar de él hacia el sofá. -Siéntate conmigo Ron,- dice mientras ocupa uno de los lados del sofá y golpetea suavemente el asiento a su lado invitándolo.

Ron, que parece bastante recompuesto aunque no aparta sus ojos de los de ella, se deja caer en el sofá enfrentando su cuerpo al de ella, quien le toma su otra mano para volver a insistir.

-¿Me lo cuentas, Ron?-

El pelirrojo suspira y deja caer los hombros al tiempo que, por primera vez, el vuelve sus ojos al suelo en lo que ella ha llegado a reconoce como una señal de vergüenza.

-En realidad…- Él aclara su garganta después de que sus primeras sílabas hayan sonado como la extraña combinación de una rana cantarina y un gallo saludando al Sol. Sus orejas enrojecen de vergüenza y Hermione piensa que no puede amar aún más, al entrañable patán hecho un desastre que tiene ante sí. -En realidad es una tontería. Está mañana logré terminar pronto con la idea de llegar a casa temprano tenerlo todo listo para ti y para la velada que habías preparado.- Sus ojos la miran y lucen brillantes. Hermione sabe reconocer esa mirada. Ella no la había visto con frecuencia hasta después de ser torturada en Malfoy Manor, pero desde ese momento, empezó a verla en su rostro con cada vez más frecuencia. No sabía que significaba hasta que Neville se lo dijo poco después de La Batalla de Hogwarts:

-Hermione. Esa es la forma en que él te mira desde cuarto curso cada vez que cree que no le estas mirando. Los chicos, a veces cruzábamos apuestas pensando si se convertiría en un charco de babas en ese mismo momento.-

El recuerdo hace que una dulce sonrisa aparezca en la cara de Hermione, mientras Ron continúa con su relato.

-Preparé algo de picar, chocolate con menta y un toque de almendras. Busqué la manta más calentita que tenemos, te preparé un baño relajante, te dejé en el baño tu jersey, tus zapatillas y me vestí con el jersey que me tejiste el año pasado.- Sus ojos se achican y una pequeña risa escapa de su pecho, mientras Hermione pone los ojos en blanco. A pesar de todo su interés y los consejos de la Sra. Weasley, ella no ha mejorado demasiado en sus habilidades de tejedora. Pero cualquier sensación de fracaso desaparece cuando Ron usa la prenda como si fuese la mejor creación de alta costura del mejor modista del mundo. -Y cuando lo tenía todo listo, me dedique a buscar una de esa películas navideñas hechas por muggles que tanto te gustan.-

-Eso fue adorable, Ron.- Es algo que Hermione ha aprendido de él. Ron no es romántico al uso, pero quizás sea por haber crecido con una situación económica precaria. El caso es que él adora los pequeños detalles de bienestar doméstico y le encanta compartirlos con ella. -Pero tuvo que pasar algo para que, lo que quiera que sea, te afectase así, ¿verdad?- Ella preguntó intentando trasmitirle con su voz que cualquier cosa que fuese importante para él sería importante para ella. A Ron aún le costaba un poco mostrar sus sentimientos sin pensar que no son un signo de debilidad.

-Ya te digo que fue una tontería,- sus orejas volvieron a tomar el tono escarlata de la vergüenza. -Accidentalmente encontré lo que parecía ser una película sin color, así que me dediqué a mirar si el televisor se había estropeado.-

-Algunas películas no tienen color Ron,- ella acarició sus manos con sus pulgares dulcemente. -Simplemente son tan antiguas que los muggles no tenían los conocimientos para hacerlas con color. Incluso hay algunas tan antiguas que ni siquiera tienen sonido. En cierto modo, esas se parecen mucho a las fotos mágicas.-

-¿De veras? No sabía eso. El caso es que mientras encontraba la manera de dar color a la película, me fui metiendo cada vez más en la cabeza de ese pobre diablo al que le están haciendo ver cómo sería la vida de la gente que le rodea si él jamás hubiese existido. -Una sombra cruza ahora su mirada y sus ojos caen al suelo con vergüenza. -Entonces vi que su mujer se había convertido en una bibliotecaria solterona que tenía una vida triste y me acordé de ti.-

-¿Pensaste que sin ti, yo me convertiría en una persona triste y solitaria, Ron y eso te entristeció y lloraste?-

-¡Diablos, no!- Los ojos de Ron arden con el fuego de la pasión tras ellos. -Tu serías brillante incluso sin mí. No. Me imaginé como sería mi vida sin ti. Me imaginé como hubiese sido mi vida si Dobby no hubiese llegado a tiempo. Como sería no tenerte. Cómo sería despertar sin sentirte a mi lado y pienso que no sé lo que hubiese hecho sin ti.- Hermione prácticamente no respira. -Pero es navidad y no quería sentir tato dolor, tanta pena y tanta autocompasión dentro de mí. Así que me concentré en lo que tengo ahora. No me refiero a los galeones del ministerio, ni a este nuestro pequeño hogar. Me concentré en cómo se sienten tus manos en las mías, cómo mis botones saltan de orgullo por ti cuando me enseñas sobre cómo los muggles son capaces de hacer películas maravillosas sin color ni sonido, cómo deseo que vuelvas a casa después de trabajar en el ministerio o como anhelo volver yo después de trabajar con George o al terminar una misión. Cómo pareces del tamaño adecuado cuando te abrazo, cómo la cama huele a ti, cómo mi corazón parece querer salir de mi pecho cuando sonríes, cómo luces cuando estamos haciendo el amor… Me concentré en todo ello y por eso lloré. Porque no creo que pueda ser más feliz de lo que lo soy ahora… contigo.-

-¿Ron?- Hermione está decididamente llorando ahora.

-¿Sí?-

-Estoy embarazada.-

Fin.

Y en estas que @be11atrixthestrange escribe: "Do You Believe In Magic?" Un Cuento de Navidad con Ron y Hermione... y mi corazón se volvió loco.

También puedes encontrar esta historia en AO3:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[clinioelerrante]

A Romione Christmas Carol

There is not much distance between the Ministry of Magic and the small flat she shares with Ron. It was true that with the fall of Voldemort, the British Ministry as well as those of other countries that had been threatened, had shown their appreciation by rewarding the trio with a considerable amount of galleons that would have allowed them to enjoy a much larger property but they, unlike Harry, who had rebuilt Grimmauld Place from the ground up when Ginny went to live with him, had opted to find a small but cosy place close to where they both worked.

"It's simply a practical matter," Hermione had argued as she raised an eyebrow. "We don't need to spend an absurd amount of money when we're just two people starting to live together."

Ron, had simply rolled his eyes and let out his crooked smile making Hermione's insides tingle. At that moment, she was torn between having a full-blown argument with him or, biting to ripping... She opted for the second option unaware that, secretly, Ron was extremely pleased by her idea. After all, if a house is too big, the chances of running into your wife ‘accidentally’ and being able to devastate her over the nearest piece of furniture, would be greatly reduced... And a man has a right to dream, right?

And so, as the doctor had recommended her earlier that day, she was walking the little distance between the two places, enjoying the view as she strolled. It was cold, sure, but her heart was full of warmth.

All along the street, she could see shop windows full of Christmas decorations, gifts, sweets and trinkets, with children's faces so close to the glass that they looked like if they had been the victims of a permanent sealing spell. Christmas trees with incantations that simulated an eternal snowfall over them or changed the colour of the leaves to the rhythm of a Christmas carol, could be found on every street corner.

There was the smell of candyfloss, hot chocolate with spices and cakes of different flavours. There were the sounds of bells ringing, doors opening and closing with the ceaseless bustle of shops, the cries of parents trying to rescue their children from the visual spell of the shop windows and of course, the chaotic symphony of fireworks and firecrackers by Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes accompanied with the laughter and screams of the youngsters throughout Diagon Alley.

Immersed in all these sensations, she finally arrived home. She expected Ron to arrive later, when he finished his service at the Ministry. Caught between his Auror job and his work with WWW, Ron had promised her that he would finish early today so they could spend the afternoon lying on the couch, with her snuggled against his chest, under a warm blanket and watching Muggle Christmas movies on TV...

What she had by no means expected were the whispered voices, the sobs and the crying that seemed to be coming from the living room of the house.

At first, she had been on the verge of screaming Ron's name and pouncing on the source of the sounds with her mind filled with images of Deatheaters or similar raiding their house and torturing or hurting Ron. But the war veteran inside her had taken control and stealthily, she approached with wand at the ready, ready to reunite with Satan anyone who dared lay a single finger on her husband.

She had cast a spell of disillusionment on her and had slowly approached the lintel of the door to peek inside the room before unleashing a hell of wand against the assailants. Her mind was ready to face any horrifying scene without losing her concentration, but she had never been prepared for what she saw.

On the sofa, in front of the television playing black and white pictures, was Ronald Weasley dressed in a patchy Christmas patterned jumper, crushing a cushion over his chest that he seemed to be squeezing the life out of as he hugged it as thick tears fell from his cerulean eyes and inconsolable sobs escaped his mouth.

"Ron?"

The call had escaped her so distressed, it had made Ron jump three feet up when he heard her.

He quickly turned to the door and noticed his wife's face of genuine concern, which was replaced with one of stupefaction as he rushed to her and taking her face in his hands, began to kiss her all over her face as if it had been an eternity since he had seen her.

She felt so much love, so much tenderness, so much devotion and so much desperation in each of the little kisses, that instinctively, Hermione wrapped her arms around him and pulled him close to her as if to protect the huge hunk inside her own heart and release him from all the anguish he was feeling. She didn't know what it was that was eating him up inside, but she herself began to cry in overwhelm as along with each kiss, she began to hear 'Hermione. My Hermione' coming from Ron's lips as he hugged her back.

She never knew if it was seconds, minutes or hours, but when she noticed that Ron's sobs were diminishing and his calmness was returning to him, she broke away very gently, taking his hands in hers so as not to lose contact and looking at him full of love for him.

"Ron. Love. What's wrong? Has something bad happened?" She lightly squeezed their intertwined hands to give him reassurance and let him know that she would always be with him. Supporting him or being whatever refuge he might need.

As his blue eyes were riveted on her, the tall red head shook his head. His warm smile plastered over his face and he sweetly loosens her grip. He runs one of his sleeves over his eyes to wipe them clean of tears, while his other hand returns to her cheek like, if touching her, would make her more real to him.

"Ron?"

"It's all right my love. It's all right."

"Didn't look right, just a second." Hermione places her own hand over his and caresses it, only to take it after a moment and pull him towards the couch. "Sit with me Ron," she says as she takes up one side of the couch and gently taps the seat next to her invitingly.

Ron, looking rather composed though he doesn't take his eyes from hers, drops down on the couch facing her body, who takes his other hand to insist again.

"Will you tell me, Ron?"

The redhead sighs and drops his shoulders as, for the first time, he turns his eyes to the floor in what she has come to recognise as a sign of embarrassment.

“! Actually..." He clears his throat after his first syllables have sounded like the odd combination of a singing frog and a cockerel greeting the sun. His ears redden with embarrassment and Hermione thinks that she can't love the endearing lout in front of her any more. "It's fucking silly, really. This morning I managed to finish early with the idea of getting home early to have everything ready for you and the evening you had prepared." His eyes look up at her and they look bright. Hermione knows how to recognise that look. She hadn't seen it often until after she was tortured at Malfoy Manor, but from that moment on, she began to see it on his face with increasing frequency. She didn't know what it meant until Neville told her shortly after The Battle of Hogwarts:

"Hermione. That's the way he's been looking at you since fourth year whenever he thinks you're not looking at him. Us boys, sometimes we'd cross bets wondering if he'd turn into a puddle of drool right then and there."

The memory brings a sweet smile to Hermione's face while Ron continues his story.

"I made you some snacks, chocolate mint with a touch of almonds. I got the warmest blanket we have, ran you a relaxing bath, left your jumper and slippers in the bathroom and I dressed in the jumper you knitted me last year." His eyes narrow and a small chuckle escapes his chest as Hermione rolls her eyes. Despite all her interest and Mrs. Weasley's tips, she hasn't improved much in her knitting skills. But any sense of failure disappears when Ron wears the garment as if it were the finest couture creation from the best dressmaker on the world. "And when I had it all ready, I went looking for one of those Muggle-made Christmas films you love so much.

"That was lovely, Ron." It's something Hermione has learned from him. Ron is not a regular romantic, but maybe that's because he grew up in a precarious financial situation. The thing is, he loves the small details of domestic comfort and loves to share them with her. "But something had to happen for whatever it is to affect you like that, hadn´t it?" She asked trying to convey in her voice that whatever was important to him would be important to her. Ron still had a little trouble showing his feelings without thinking that they weren't a sign of weakness.

"I'm telling you, it was silly," his ears once again took on the scarlet hue of embarrassment. "I accidentally found what appeared to be a film with no colour, so I spent some time looking to see if the TV set had broken down."

"Some films don't have colour Ron," she stroked his hands with her thumbs gently. "They're just so old that Muggles didn't have the knowledge to make them with colour. There are even some so old that they don't even have sound. In a way, those look a lot like magical pictures."

"Really? I didn't know that. The thing is that while I was finding a way to give colour to the movie, I got more and more into the head of this poor devil who is being made to see what life would be like for the people around him if he had never existed." A shadow now crosses his gaze and his eyes drop to the floor in shame. "Then I saw that his wife had become a spinster librarian with a sad life and I remembered you."

"Do you thought that without you, I would become a sad and lonely person, Ron and that made you sad and you cried?"

"Hell, no!" Ron's eyes burn with the fire of passion behind them. "You'd be brilliant even without me. No. I imagined what my life would be like without you. I imagined what my life would be like if Dobby hadn't come in time. What it would be like not to have you, what it would be like to wake up without you by my side, and I think I don´t know what I would have done without you." Hermione is practically breathless. "But it's Christmas and I didn't want to feel so much pain, so much grief and so much self-pity inside me. So I concentrated on what I have now. I don't mean the galleons from the ministry or this little home of ours. I focused on how your hands feel in mine, how my buttons jump with pride for you when you show me how Muggles are able to make wonderful films without colour or sound, how I long for you to come home after working at the ministry or how I long to come home after working with George or finishing a mission. How you're just the right size when I hold you, how the bed smells of you, how my heart seems to want to burst out of my chest when you smile, how you look when we make love.... I focused on it all and that's why I cried. Because I don't think I could be happier than I am right now... with you."

"Ron?" Hermione is positively weeping now.

"Yes?"

"I'm pregnant."

The End.

And then @be11atrixthestrange rote: "Do You Believe In Magic?" A Christmas Carol with Ron and Hermione and my heart turned crazy....

As always, really, really thanks to @headcanonsandmore for to check the traslation to english.

You can find this tale at AO3 too:

An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works

[clinioelerrante]

The house elf

Lovingly dedicated to the director  @divagonzo  and participants of romioneficfest 2021 ( @romioneficfest ) posted on Tumblr.

Finally, in English.

 All my appreciation to @headcanonsandmore, without whose help the realization of this translation would have been impossible.

He did an OUTSTANDING job revising the original, something I can never thank him enough for. Any errors or inaccuracies in the text will be my fault, not his.

 Even after reading @headcanonsandmore's annotation and, because the text is basically the interaction between a male character and an elf, I will using using he/his/him would perhaps have given the text a lack of freshness, as it was continually making 'notations' to clarify which of them is speaking.  I hoped this would make it easier for the reader. I apologise if this may offend anyone in any way.

 The home elf

When the first rays of sunlight broke through the windows of Grimmauld Place, the sapphire eyes of Ronald Weasley greeted them open.

He hadn’t slept much that night and there was a good reason for that.  In a few hours Hermione, Harry and himself would infiltrate the Ministry to try to obtain Slytherin’s locked.

The first of the Horcruxes they must locate and detsroy brought with it the real meaning of what they were getting into and the terrible dance that they would be facing from them on.

Not that he had been unaware of it before, but he had always felt protected under Dumbeldore’s magic and presence. It was the attack on his own home that reminder him what that protection was over.

Just once, he had felt like this. So exposed, so vulnerable, so insignificant, so useless and scared. It was when Hermione had been injured in the Department of Mysteries. If it were up to him, he would have hidden Hermione with her parents on the other side of the world. This was a nice dream to find solace in but he was aware that without her, the mission would be doomed to failure.

The night when the first lights of dawn were coming to an end had been a constant succession of lucid nightmares in which he had envisioned the thousand and one dreadful fates they might face once they passed through the Ministry’s atrium, and all but two of these nightmares had as their protagonist a witch with thick bushy hair and chocolate-coloured eyes.

For a moment, resentment against Harry nested in Ronald Weasley’s heart.  He had no problem sharing the fate of his best friend.  If Harry asked him, Ron would be able to go down to hell with one hand tied behind his back, which in fact was exactly what he was about to do! Ron wasn’t stupid.  The experience of previous years had given him a realistic perspective of the war.  The price that was paid day by day and the price that was still to be paid, but that price should not include a stubborn witch who was wise, crazy and with a mouth he wanted to kiss.  Harry should have insisted and forbid her to endanger herself by traveling with them.

As if you or he could have stopped her! A voice whispered in the back of his head causing a hint of a smile to play on the redhead’s lips as images of a platinum blonde ferret getting a superb punch to the nose replayed in his mind.  

Besides, you know that if it weren’t for her, you’d both be perfectly dead and He-who-not-to-be-named would be walking the land of Merlin long before.

A brief growl escaped Ron’s smile at the thought that the little voice seemed to have the echo of a too familiar ‘I told you so’.

Even so, he could not refute that claim.  Had it not been for Hermione and her prodigious beaded bag, their situation at this very moment might have been very different.  They would not have had the supplies to survive until they had reached the Sirius’s residence and had been able to carry out all the surveillance of the ministry...

A thunderous grumble from his stomach put an end to all that introspection.

"I wonder how she’s arranged the food thing? She’s been reminding me of Gamp’s laws for six bloody years," he muttered as he sat up.

Knowing that he was unable to stay in bed for even minute longer, and hoping to calm his nerves and nightmares with a good cup of tea, he started towards the kitchen when he found the light leaking under the door of the room in which he had left Hermione the night before.

This had not ended in one of their famous arguments because he had preferred to bite his tongue rather than go to bed with both of them angry at each other, but he had been very close to grabbing her by the hip, throwing her over his shoulder, and throwing her over the nearest bed to force her to sleep, when she insisted on staying awake, going going over the details of infiltrating a Ministry dominated by Voldemort to the point of exhaustion. The rage he had barely managed to control returned with full force when he realised that she had to keep working on it.

With typical Weasley outburst, he burst into the room ready to end this madness and force her to rest for the few hours that remained, when he froze in the doorway while all the anger that had once made his blood boil evaporated as if it had never been.

Under the flickering candlelight, a sound-asleep Hermione, rested her head on a book on the theory of magic and a countless number of scrolls scribbled with diagrams and plans of the Ministry.

Ron needs to lean against the doorjamb when he feels his legs turn to jelly as he watches the flickering candlelight catch infinite shades of copper from the petite witch’s hair, how, despite the small trickle of drool that escapes from between... Oh, merlin; her lips! They look softly pink and absolutely adorable. The long lashes, blessing eyes that would be able to get anything from him just by looking lovingly at him, and the seven little freckles she has on her nose. He never told her, but he learned the configuration of the constellation Orion when he saw it perfectly represented on that little nose. But above all that, what touches his heart is to see the look on her face completely relaxed, as if for a moment, sleep has blessed her with a few hours of peace, oblivious to all the madness that has been raging around her.

For a moment he tempted to take her in his arms and take her to a bed where she rest properly. H is arms tingle at the mere thought of touching her, but he knows that if she wakes up, she will insist on continuing her crazy review, losing the little rest she so desperately needs, something he will not deny her.  Although a part of his heart cries out for the set image of indulging in what has so far been only one of his craziest dreams like taking her to a marriage bed like a bride, the rest of her whole being makes him close the door slowly while casting a soundproofing spell her to prevent any noise from disturbing her sleep.

Only then, as he resumed his journey to the kitchen, does he allow himself to wonder. When she became so important to him? What at point did she become his whole world?

Surprisingly he couldn’t find a specific moment. Somehow, Hermione had been infiltrating his heart without him being fully aware of the stealthy invasion. Evidently, he had realized that what he experienced in the fourth year was a storm of jealousy, so big!  That seemed to have turned his brain into jelly and incapable of thinking.  But only when he faced the possibility of losing her at the end of fifth year did, he realized the “the sheer extent” of emptiness his had inside if she wasn’t in his life.

And while his mind is lost in the memories of a bossy little girl who scoldes him for having a dirty nose, with a young girl who looks amazing meanwhile she glides majestically through the great dining room with the hand of a pumpkin-headed arse with a ridiculous goatee; Ron finds himself in the kitchen just as he sees the old Sirius’ home elf, stirring between pots and pans, probably anticipating the housework of the day that begins with breakfast for the three tenants of the old Black House, while the Regulus’ locket hangs around it neck.

Well. Not ‘Sirius’’. It’s Harry’s elf now, he rectifies in his mind as he remembers that Harry’s godfather had been the biggest victim of that fateful night...

“Good morning, master”, the broken voice of the old servant interrupts the thoughts that again caused a shudder in his spine.  “Perhaps Master Weasley woke up too early?  Can Kreacher help his lordship with a cup of tea? ”

“Yes, Kreacher. Please.” He thinks he’ll never get used to the elf’s sensitive ears. Somehow, the little servant always seems to sense what is happening around him, even if it was turning its back on him at the time.  Ron’s heart still comes out of his chest when he remembers the time he sneaked into the kitchen looking for something to eat at midnight, and when he closed the cupboard door, he found a pair of bulging eyes within an inch of his face staring suspiciously at him.

“Master would like something more substantial to go with his tea?”

Ron has not gone unnoticed by the change that had taken place in the Elf’s attitude since Harry had given it the Regulus’ locket. Its previous hostility towards Harry had turned into a quasi-devotion after that small act of kindness.  He wondered, what would have happened to Kreacher, if all of Hermione’s ideas about S.P.E.W. and dealing elves with dignity and kindness had been applied by Sirius?  Perhaps the tormented elf wouldn’t have found the flaw that allowed it to alert the Deatheater.  In a twisted way, the last of the Black had forged his fate by treating his servant miserably.

Then, perhaps, he thought, Sirius could have stayed alive and Harry could have had a real family, where he could have felt the love and warmth of a real home.

“Master?”

“No Kreacher, thank you very much”, he replies kindly and with a smile when he returned to the present.  Here is another one of Hermione’s crazy ideas for the magical world and which, however, she is right; he thought.  “Tea will be enough.”

"As Master Weasley wishes. Should I to prepare breakfast for the other guests, perhaps?" A furry eyebrow rose with doubt.

“I don’t know. Have either of them woken up?” Ron wasn’t about to let either of them lose moments of sleep, so he considered finding out what his friends’ current situation was first before the elf mistakenly interpreted that it was time to wake them both up.

“Master Potter is still asleep, though he hasn’t stopped hanging around in bed and grumbling all night,” Kreacher seemed to know where Ron’s thoughts were headed, “as for the mudblood...”

“DON’T EVER! NEVER! YOU WILL NEVER CALL HER THAT AGAIN, KREACHER. DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME? DON’T EVER!”  

Ron was not even aware of his reaction, until he saw the terrified eyes of the elderly elf as he lifted his arms in an attempt at self-protection.

He was unaware that the chair on which he was sitting slammed against the wall when he stepped abruptly, nor of his agitated breathing, nor how his fist looked white like snow leaning on the table, nor of how he had projected his body towards the elf like the wolf that stalks its prey.

Ron had not been aware of any of it, until he saw an elderly house elf, trembling with terror and with the certainty of supreme punishment in his eyes.  That’s when a cascade of revelations is triggered in his mind, like if they had always been there, only now they seem to fit perfectly together.

To see how a being, with a magic infinitely more complex and more powerful that human wizards is so shackled by his social conditioning and fear, to the point to be unable to react even only to save its own life or the lives of its own, to become less than vermin in the eyes of it oppressors. And as he gazes into the terrified eyes of the elf, before her mind’s eye is the image of other eyes. The sweet chocolate eyes full of love and compassion for any living thing of a girl with big front teeth, who wears a hideous S.P.E.W. badge on her chest and that makes him feel so vile, unworthy and miserable that he feels nauseous of himself.

“Kreacher,” his voice sounded harsher than he intended with the try to control the gags that haunt him, causing the elderly shudder before him.

“Kreacher,” he repeated, this time with much more warmth. “Please, have a seat.”

The elf is so scared that it went like the victim of the ‘Imperius’ curse, to the nearest chair to sit, ignoring all the social conditioning that prevents it to sitting under the presence of a wizard.

“Kreacher,” Ron took a deep breath, as if he wanted to draw from the air the inspiration he needed to face the task before him. “I’m sorry; please forgive me. I shouldn’t have yelled at you, or frightened you.”

If previously the elf’s expression was one of absolute terror, it was replaced by one of utter shock.

“Is… Is Master apologizing to Kreacher?” Its voice sounded like a frog’s and his eyes seemed to pop out of their sockets as the thought finally pierced its skull.

“Yeah. You see,” the redhead graded his hair trying to focus.  He had a difficult problem before him.  On the one hand, he couldn’t put into crisis all the old servant’s beliefs at the stroke of a pen.  That would only cause the elf to close itself to listen to him, but on the other hand, he had to make it see or at least consider, the abomination of belittling the mere existence of a sorcerer for the simple fact of his magical origin. “I didn’t mean to hurt or frighten you. Just don’t use that word again when you mean Miss Granger.  She really doesn’t deserve it. ”

The elf’s stupor had not disappeared, but a glimmer of curiosity appeared in its gaze.

“Look, I know how all that purity of blood crap goes, but I’m asking you to disregard it for once, okay?” Kreacher’s face implied without a shadow of a doubt/beyond a shadow of a doubt that it wasn’t understanding a word Ron was trying to explain.  

“Kreacher. Imagine for a moment that you didn’t know Miss Granger’s origin.  That you didn’t know her at all, and that the first time she had set foot in this house, instead of appearing in Muggle clothes and accompanying a handful of outlaws and bloog-traitors, she would have come at the hand of Master Regulus, dressed with fop’s elegant tunics and looking absolutely beautiful and relaxed, as if this had been her social environment all her life.”

“Master Weasley,” the elf looks absolutely desolate, “Kreacher can’t do that.  Kreacher can sense the magic of the wizards.  Its origin, its intensity.  It is impossible that Kreacher would not have realized that she had been a charlaton.”

Ron felt his jaw clench and his back tended to stiffen with pure stiffness as he heard it refer to Hermione as a fake. Getting his point across seemed like an impossible mission. The elf’s behaviour seemed to be conditioned by the first impression of perceiving the origins of a wizard’s magic in conjunction with all its training. Once the conditioning of a lifetime, nay, a whole dynasty, intervened! There was no room to look at anything else....

“… Anything else…” he whispered, “Anything else. There is no second chance.”  Ron’s eyes opened like plates.

“Is Master right?“ Kreacher had left the chair and cautiously approached the wizard who seemed unconcerned.

“There is no second chance,” he whispered again, and on his face appeared the smile and glow in her eyes that her opponents in chess they knew so well. “KREACHER! ”

The unsuspecting elf jumped backwards so much that stumbled upon the chair it had previously occupied and began to stumble with its own feet until the fall proved imminent, only to be taken in scooped up and gently placed on its original chair by freckled and plenty scarred arms.

“Are you okay, Kreacher?  Ron’s voice had genuine concern.  It was not only because of the continual jolts to which he was subjecting the old heart of the weak elf and the fear of destroying any bridge of understanding that might have been created between the two, but that he might have really suffered some injury.

“What did the master just do?” The elderly’s eyes were locked on Ron’s.

“I... I, I’m sorry Kreacher.  I’m not good at mastering my impulses.  I didn’t mean to scare you again.”  Ron’s eyes turned to the ground as shame flooded him again.  It was the second time he had frightened the elf. It was only logical that it would never trust him again.  Any chance to make it understand the human greatness of the curly-haired witch had gone out the window thanks to his blatant and never well-measured combination of stupidity and impulsivity... “Shit!“ He moaned.

“Did Master help Kreacher?” its eyes widened like saucers. “Master protected Kreacher!”

“Errr...? “ Ron’s face was the manifestation of absolute astonishment.

“Master protected Kreacher!  He didn’t forbid Kreacher to punish itself, no. He protected it.”  Ron’s face clearly showed that he still did not understand what the servant was telling him.  “Only Master Regulus did something similar once.”

“Hermione does it all the time” Oh Merlin! If that’s not a good opening, I don’t play chess.

“What?” Poor Kreacher looked as if it was being carried away by a stream of revelations that prevented it from being able to structure its thinking properly. It had been days since a half-blood Master who it hated had given it the treasure that had belonged to the best Master a house elf could wish for, at the same time forbidding it to punish itself even when it had betrayed him and alerted his enemies. Kreacher knew that it was a mere technicality that it could justify its actions on the basis of Master Harry’s vague instructions. Kreacher was aware that any action taken by a house elf that could directly or indirectly harm his master, could be severely punished, even with life and, in any case, a master did not need much justification to punish his servant if he chose to do so. Now a pureblood had used his own body to protect it, he had apologised for his action and was now letting it know that a mudblood was in the habit of protecting other house elves all the time. Its brain could not quite take it in and the question had slipped from his lips unconsciously.

“Ms. Hermione does it all the time.  She loves every magical creature.  She’s not worried about its origin.  She always says it’s the actions that give greatness, not the origin.  Kreacher, is it true that you can sense magic?“ He asked hopeful.    

“Kreacher can, master.”

“And is it true that you can feel the intensity of a wizard’s magic, Kreacher?”

The elf nods.

“Then: How do you perceive the power of Miss Hermione’s magic?

The elf blinked, as if had never stopped to properly evaluate that point.

“Magic is very strong with her. Kreacher can remember only one witch with such intense magic, though the muggleborn witch’s might be stronger.”

“Who was the witch, Kreacher?”

“IS. Lady Lestrange, Bellatrix.”

An icy finger runs down the Weasley’s youngest son’s back cutting off his breath.

“She’s nothing like Bellatrix, Kreacher,” Ron can feel, almost physically, as if his heart is being squeezed out of his life. “Hermione has sweet eyes, full of curiosity and affection. They don’t exude hatred and madness like that motherfucker,” there is a dull anger growing in Ron. A roaring fire of anger, fear and hatred.

“It was she, the one who tortured Neville’s parents to madness. Two purebloods whose only sins were to defend innocents people who had never harmed anyone or anything from her madness and hatred. It is people like her who are responsible for Neville and Harry not having parents. It is people like her who drag sensitive people like Regulus down a path from which there is no return Kreacher. It’s people like her who bring pain and suffering into the world just because they think they are superior to everyone else,” he says as he tries to pull himself together.

“The point, Kreacher, is: Hermione...” there is genuine passion, there is a palpable devotion in every word that comes out of his mouth... “not only she is the most brilliant, studious and beautiful witch of this generation, but she is the best person you can imagine.  That she’s a witch is a fucking blessing because, instead of the Muggles being the ones who have the opportunity to benefit from her privileged intelligence, her bravery, her desire for justice and her infinite love for any creature, it’s the magical world that has that opportunity because of “He-who-must-not-be-named” and People like Bellatrix, we’re being assholes refusing to accept that gift and all that magic that far surpasses the rest of the three of us and...”

“That’s wrong.”

“Excuse me?”

“Her magic is not the most powerful of the three of you.” The elf’s narrow eyes remain nailed into the ocean of the youngest of Weasley’s men, like if they were contemplating something only they can see.

“Right.  Obviously Harry has to be a hell of a wizard if he has to face the Dark Lord”, he says, looking away from the elf as he feels a pinch of envy in his heart for not being good enough and losing missing the surprised look Kreacher gives him, “but I’m sure her magical power must be very much like Harry...”

It is then when the emotional teaspoon that is Ronald Weasley is aware of how this crucial game of chess is unfolding.

Kreacher himself has just breached its own defence when the idea of a muggleborn can be as powerful as the most abominable Deatheater in the host of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. But that is not enough. That may have shocked its brain, but to win the game, to truly win it, Hermione must win the heart of the tormented being.

“She’s the smartest witch I’ve ever met, to the point where not even that smug git Snape, someone who enjoys making everyone look like fool , has been unable to keep her from scoring less than Outstanding on all his tests.” He proudly recalls all the times Hermione managed to get a pure curl of irritation out of the pitiful professor. One for every time she gave him the right answer even when that wasn’t the lesson of the day. "Continuously defeats any pureblood by doing a magic they aren’t even capable of dreaming of. By sheer intelligence she solved a lethal riddle in her first year and in her second she brewed an NEWT level potion that only master alchemists are capable of performing, discovered a fucking basilisk crawling through the castle’s pipes and survived an encounter with the damn thing using a simple hand mirror."

Ron can’t help the shiver that runs down his spine when he remembers the image of a little girl in a bed too big for her, stiff, limp and cold as snow. It was then that he realized there was something different about Hermione. He didn’t know what it was, but something was bloody wrong with him if she got hurt.

“You should see her when she’s studying, Kreacher. She’s quite a sight to behold. When she’s studying a particularly difficult subject she frowns adorably, her eyes sparkle with determination and she leans over whatever she’s reading so hard she looks like she wants to get inside the book and when she’s about to master all that new knowledge, she bites her bottom lip so hard I sometimes fear she’s going to hurt herself, but there’s an immense joy in her gaze. Just like when she is reading something she particularly likes. Then, she starts playing with one of her crazy curls by twisting it around her finger. I think she must be the only person in the world who flirts with a book while reading it,” there have been so many times watching her study in the library that Ron doesn’t even need to concentrate to conjure up such images. They are so deep in Ron’s heart that they are already a part of him, and the memory of them brings a smile to his freckled face.

“She is also courageous, determined, and just, like the day she shook a superb punch at the ferret’s nose in her third year...”

“Did she hit a ferret?” The elf’s jaw dropped as listened to the redhead.

"What do you mean...?" Ron’s initial surprise is quickly replaced by wide eyes as comprehension washes over him, given way to a thunderous laugh. "Not at a ferret, Kreacher. ‘The Ferret one.’ She gave a fucktastic punch to the only and genuine heir to Malfoy’s House," he completes with a chuckle meanwhile he watches the poor elf’s eyes pop out of their sockets as it imagines how she attacked a renowned pureblood with something as mundane as a punch to the nose. "Oh come on, Kreacher! That was great and she looked awesome. Besides...” his face suddenly turns serious as he looks at the elderly servant who still doesn’t seem to have come out of its stupefaction. “She was only defending an innocent creature from a spoiled child willing to gloat over its death just because it hurt his self-centred pride. She spent sleepless nights searching through old treatises of magical law for some way to save the life of a creature that wasn’t even human. Only because it was the right thing to do. Only because it was innocent.” A weight settles on Ron’s soul when he remembers that she was alone all those nights and he wasn’t there to help her.

“I’ve seen her support for her best friend and almost lose her life for it even knowing that he was wrong,” the lump in his throat threatens to keep him from talking.  “I have seen her risk losing that same friendship just to protect him, and I have seen her be taken for eccentric or crazy just to defend that creatures like you, should be treated with dignity, regardless of race and origin.”

In his troubled speech, Ron feels the moisture flood his eyes and he wipes it away by running his sleeve over his face, unaware of how the elf has cocked its head slightly to one side and is watching him intently.

“She is also kind, sweet and loving.” The weight of his heart disappears when a warmth envelops him. “At eleven years old and not knowing him at all, she helped the shyest, most insecure guy look for his lost pet. Even if she wasn’t a prefect, she was always willing to take first-year tadpoles under her wing, to look after them and guide them when they were stunned by how great Hogwarts is. She helps them find their way around the castle, helps them complete their homework, hugs them when they miss their parents and tells them incredible stories that only she knows from the thousand and one books she has read,” she says as her eyes sparkle with pride in her best friend, “and she will do it with each and every one of them. To all of them she will give her incredible intelligence and her boundless love regardless of any other condition”.

That’s when he realizes that Kreacher is staring at him with its eyes and mouth wide open, like if it can’t believe what it’s seeing.

“Errr... ahem... This... This doesn’t mean she doesn’t have flaws, she does. She has a temper worthy of an explosive potion,” he says as he rubs his tingling arms, “So many times she’s so convinced she’s right, she forgets that the people concerned also have a say for themselves. Like that time when as prefect she sent extra homework to the OWLs students because she thought they weren’t preparing them,” a smile creeps onto his face. “Kreacher, you should have seen when McGonagall found out. She asked her if she wanted her position as head of Gryffindor house and Hermione turned so red she looked like a real Weasley.”

He doesn’t know why he said it, but as soon as he finishes saying it, the image of the most beautiful Hermione, dressed in a flowing white satin robe at the beginning of a hallway and holding a small bouquet in her hands, suffices that her heart seems to have lost the ability to beat properly.

“Kreacher”, he says softly looking at the elf with the intensity of one who is trying to convey the most important message of his life and fears that his words will fail him, “It’s not that she wants to offend you.  Not you or the rest of the house elves when she wants to give you freedom.  Freedom is a divine gift, yes, but it’s like a good roast rib.  It may be tasty and crunchy, a fucking delight to the palate, but you can’t force it through a baby’s gullet. That way all you can do is to kill him with almost complete certainty.”

“It is simply that she loves you too much. She loves you so much, she loves every creature in Merlin’s green fields so much that, she cannot wait to give you what you all deserve. That is why she is wrong. She does not yet see that you are not ready for freedom, “he says to the servant’s curious gaze.“ No... I don’t mean to belittle you, the house elves, I mean, “he completes in a stammer, raising his hands in peace. But it is true nonetheless. Freedom frightens you, it breaks the scheme of things and the rules of your world. She cannot see it yet, Kreacher, but in time she will, and you will have no better ally and no better friend than she.”

“Is that her greatest flaw, Master?" It seems impossible, but Ron would be willing to swear to Merlin that the elf is leaning towards him as he looks deep into his blue eyes, as if it wants to discover something hidden deep within the troubled red-head.

“Well, not really," a sad smile creeps across his freckled face. “She has a pitiful interest in pumpkin-headed wizards with horrible accents and pompous nasties too full of themselves, as long as they’re great quidditch players."    

“Still, Master is very impressed by Lady Granger.” The elf’s eyes are practically flashing before him and yet Ron can’t find a shred of contempt, mockery or hostility in his voice, if anything... recognition?  And then something breaks in Ron when he realizes that the little bastard has just called her ‘Lady’ for the first time.

“So much that I would gladly give my own life so that she would have a full and happy magical life.  Away from all the horror and war, away from the absence of her parents and the fear of being killed at any moment just because they are Muggles.  Even if she was married…” his voice breaks,” she was married to either of those two bloody gits and their kids were...

Maybe it’s from years of involuntary training trying to save his life or their other two very best friends, maybe it’s from the keen senses of a quidditch keeper or maybe it’s just instinct, but Ron feels a tingling on his back on his neck, a feeling of a presence behind him just before he hears the crackling of the wood of the floor behind him and  Ron can see how, for a moment, Kreacher’s eyes abandon his own eyes and turn to the space behind the redhead to open like plates when they focusing one specific point behind him. It may be again for all those years lurking around death, for all the trainings that have sharpened your reflexes or just warrior instinct, but without waiting to the command of his brain, he right hand goes to his wand, his body shrink to minimize as target and he moves around looking for a twist to shield midway between the servant and the place where the sound came from and, when he does, he does it in such a natural way, so instinctive, that seems that protecting a little body was often his only goal in life.  And it’s when his head is close to complete the turn that will lead him to face the threat, when he feels a rough hand holding his wrist tightly enough to unbalance it and stop the rotation of his body. Even so, the arm with his wand continues its trajectory to point to the space that a few moments ago was behind him and one nonverbal ‘Protego’ unfolds from it while her eyes search for the owner of the hand that has stopped his movement to meet, face to face, with other eyes.  Bulging, wrinkled eyes, gazing intently at him and glowing with the light of understanding.

“Master loves her.”  

“With all that I am and with all that I will be, Kreacher.  With so much intensity, it hurts.  It hurts as much as hell itself.”

It is not a question. It is a truth revealed and as such it can no longer be shrouded in the shadows nor can it be denied, but needs to be proclaimed because it can no longer be contained.  

And the elf nods.  Once again, her eyes turn to the space behind Ron as he feels that the prey that the little character exerted on his arm gives way, allowing him to regain full mobility.  That’s when Ron turns his head to face whatever is behind him just for his eyes can see an empty door.

“This damned house and its creepy noises are going to drive me bloody mad”, he says as his shoulders sink as all the tension he has been building up escapes from him.

“She didn’t know”, he murmurs.  “Master hasn’t told Lady Granger.”  Kreacher ignores the insult to Black’s ancestral meanwhile its inquisitive eyes turn to the tormented redhead.

“No, Kreacher.  Not yet, and I can’t do it now.  What’s at stake is too important and much bigger than us”, he says, shaking his head, as if he was trying to get some thoughts out of his brain and clear his own ideas.  “When I confess to her and she tells me she doesn’t share my feelings, I’d have nothing left to fight for except to keep them both safe and sound, and leave if we win them.  And if by some miracle she shared them, I couldn’t fulfill that mission.  I could endanger Harry because when it came to protecting them, she would always be my priority.”

It is when the rays of sunshine flood the old kitchen that Ron realizes how far the morning has gone and the dreaded moment has come.  It’s time to complete the final preparations to infiltrate the Ministry.  With a snort of resignation, he heads for the door to wake up her friends when he feels the elf’s hand again on his arm, only in this case it is a gentle grip.  Very similar to the touch of a friend who’s just trying to get your attention.

“No”, he says in a calm but determined tone. “Kreacher will take care of waking up the rest of the wizards.”

“No.  Kreacher must to insist.  Master Harry and fellows have a long day ahead.” The little servant surrounds the tall figure of Gryffindor’s old guardian while gently pushing him towards a chair in front of the large kitchen table.  “Master Weasley will finish his tea and then Kreacher will return so that all of them can have a proper breakfast.”

Resigned to the now familiar elderly elf’s stubbornness, Ron nods and takes a seat in the chair as he lifts his cup of tea to his lips and watches it leaves the kitchen.

As soon as it has crossed the threshold of the door, the last servant of the ancient and honourable Black House turns towards the bedrooms, passing by the figure who leans against the wall, tries to keep herself hidden into the shadows while holding her hands over her face, trying to silence the desperate sobs that make her small body shake all over.

“Now Lady Granger knows”, it whispered as it turned to face the young woman.

Between sobs and shudders, a slight nod of her head is her only response.

“Perhaps it is time Master Weasley knew too."

The elf’s voice sounds firm, but there is a decided edge of pleading in it.

A head full of curls sharply denies, sending the wild locks flying in all directions, while the hands covering the face wipe away the tears that run down it.

“It is not possible, Kreacher.  Like Ron said, the stakes are too high. Much higher than the two of us, and I can’t let Harry stop being Ron’s priority.  Without Harry, there’s no future for anyone.  Without Harry there’s no future for both of us.”

“Master Harry is not the most powerful magician under the roof of this house”, says the elf as if it had not heard the prodigious witch’s answer as its eyes turn to the kitchen door.

“I know,” she says in a sob as a sad smile insinuates over a face that is once again, streaked with tears and whose eyes focus on the same point the elf is looking at as if she expects to be able to see the redhaired man on the other side of it at any moment.

“However”, Kreacher’s eyes now turn fixedly to Hermione’s eyes, “he is not the most self-confident wizard either.”

“I know that too, and I curse myself every day for what I have contributed to his self-loathing.” The girl’s eyes briefly meet the elf’s and then search the threshold of the kitchen again, like has unwittingly become the border between the will and the duty." But we’ll both have to wait Kreacher," and her eyes, now full of fire, meet the elf’s again. "Though right now, my whole being is crying out for the desire to walk through that door and on the kitchen table, make him my own like only a woman can make a man her own to seal the deal. Because I’ve been his, forever.”

“That’s not fair to him.”

“Nothing in this war is fair, Kreacher.”

It nods in understanding and just when it seems that he is going to resume its path in search of its rightful master, it stops and looking carefully at the muggleborn, makes its fingers snap making Hermione feel a rejuvenating freshness running through her red eyes and her eyelids swollen by tears.

“Master Weasley doesn’t need any more worries at this time.”

“Thank you, Kreacher”, she smiles, “and thank you for not giving me up earlier”, she says, pointing to the treacherous loose piece of wood on the floor, just outside the kitchen door.

And for the first time in its long life Kreacher, the last proud servant of the ancestral, noble and elitetist pureblood House Blacks, gives a genuine smile to a muggleborn witch.

“It will be our secret Lady Granger”, it says as it completes a graceful bow and leaves the place to look for its rightful master, even though it feels that something inside its has changed forever.

 Months later:

“Hang on a moment!” said Ron sharply. “We’ve forgotten someone!”

“Who?” asked Hermione.

“The house-elves, they’ll all be down in the kitchen, won’t they?”

“You mean we ought to get them fighting?” asked Harry.

“No,” said Ron seriously, “I mean we should tell them to get out. We don’t want any more Dobbies, do we? We can’t order them to die for us —”

 It only takes a moment, but for Hermione Granger it’s as if she’s been hit by the ‘Arresto Momentum’ spell.  A lifetime of feelings and images flashes through her privileged mind so real, so sharp and clear, it’s as if she were reliving her own memories in a pesieve...

Terderness

A beautiful boy with a stain of dirt on his nose...

Loyalty

A rough stick falling over the head of a mountain troll...

Nobleness

Slugs vomited in a bucket...

Courage

Badly wounded, covered in dirt, sweat and blood, standing, with a broken leg, like a bulwark between two teenagers and a serial killer…

Jealousy

The broken arm of an action figure at the foot of a bed...

Devotion

A male figure with horribly scarred arms, who watches over her when she wakes up with a terrible wound in her chest...

Excitement

The smell of parchment, freshly cut grass and a soap with scents of wood and clove when hug that glorious body...

Hope

A broom that materializes in front of the burrow driven by a metamorpagus witch...

Confort

Hands joined, just before sleeping at Grimmaud Place...

Love

Blue eyes that watch over her when she wakes up at Shell Cottage...

Fear

A small boy, with a large head wound on a chequered floor...

Panic

A freckly face, as white as a sheet, on a bed surrounded by a bunch of redheads who look scared...

Terror

A mangled arm that bleeds so much that it is impossible to believe that a human being can contain so much blood...

Desperation

A soaked figure, with his face crazed with pain and anger, just before disappearing in the pouring rain on an autumn night...

Everything is a stormy maelstrom that consumes her, takes her breath away and threatens to blow her head up incapable of bringing together so many emotions at once, and that’s when a picture emerges above all that emotional explosion. A scene watched sneakily from the half-light, under the threshold of a door in an old manor house.

The image of a humble old house elf listening Ronald Weasley’s confession of love for her.

And the feeling that neither can, nor wants to be hidden any longer, breaks through.  The imperative need, greater than breathing, to take what is rightfully hers and which she has been denying herself for far too long.

She is barely aware of what is going on around her, drunk as she is, of the emotion that envelops her. She does not hear the sound of fangs striking the ground, nor does she see a lightning-shaped scar warp as the eyebrows above green eyes rise as they widen, nor the movement of her own legs, nor the surprise reflected in a freckled face. Her heart is all she feels, the love overflowing from it and then the trembling of her own body and the feeling of to be at home when she jumps up and embraces the impressive hunk before her. The tremor in the core of her belly as she attacks lips that seem to have been made just for her. The vertigo she feels when Ronald Weasley, "Ron", her first, one and only true love, makes her flutter like a schoolgirl in the embrace that envelops her as he kisses her back with such intensity that she feels her toes curl and the shudder of her centre becomes so intense it burns. It burns like the very fires of hell within her.

He loves her.

She loves him.

And both will fight like hell, against any power in heaven or on earth that tries to separate them again.

The End.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33865393

[clinioelerrante]

El elfo doméstico

Dedicado con todo el cariño a la directora ( @divagonzo ) y participantes del romioneficfest 2021 ( @romioneficfest ) publicado en Tumblr.

I hope the english version will be ready soon...

El elfo doméstico

Cuando los primeros rayos de Sol atravesaron las ventanas de Grimmauld Place, los ojos zafiros de Ronald Weasley los recibieron abiertos.

No había dormido demasiado esa noche y había una buena razón para ello. En unas horas Hermione, Harry y él mismo, se infiltrarían en el Ministerio para intentar obtener el medallón de Slytherin.

El primero de los Horrocruxes que deben localizar y destruir trae con él, el significado real de en lo que se estaban metiendo y el terrible peligro al que de ahora en adelante, tendrán que enfrentar.

No es que antes no hubiese sido consciente de aquello, pero siempre se había sentido protegido bajo la magia y la presencia de Dumbeldore. Fue el ataque a su propio hogar el recordatorio de que esa protección había terminado.

Tan sólo una vez, se había sentido así. Tan expuesto, tan vulnerable, tan insignificante, tan inútil y asustado. Fue cuando Hermione fue herida en el departamento de misterios. Si de él dependiese, habría escondido a Hermione junto con sus padres en el otro extremo del mundo. Este era un bonito sueño en el que encontrar consuelo, pero él era consciente de que sin ella la misión estaría condenada al fracaso.

La noche a la que las primeras luces del alba estaban poniendo fin, había sido una sucesión constantes de pesadillas lúcidas en las que había imaginado los mil y un destinos espantosos que ellos podrían enfrentar una vez que atravesasen el atrio del Ministerio y todas salvo dos de dichas pesadillas, tenían como protagonista a una bruja con espeso cabello rizado y ojos del color del chocolate.

Por un momento, el resentimiento contra Harry anidó en el corazón de Ronald Weasley. Él no tenía ningún problema en compartir el destino de su mejor amigo. Si Harry se lo pidiese, Ron sería capaz de bajar al infierno a ayudarle con los ojos cerrados ¡qué de hecho era exactamente lo que él se disponía a hacer! Ron no era estúpido. La experiencia de los años previos le había hecho tener una perspectiva realista sobre la guerra. El precio que se pagaba día a día y el que aún quedaba por pagar, pero ese precio no debería incluir a una bruja marimandona, terca, sabelotodo, enloquecedora y con una boca hecha para ser besada. Harry debería haber insistido y haberle prohibido que ella se pusiese en peligro viajando con ellos.

« ¡Como si él o tú hubieseis podido impedírselo!» Una vocecita susurró en su cabeza provocando la insinuación de una sonrisa en los labios del pelirrojo cuando en su mente, se recrearon las imágenes de un hurón rubio platino recibiendo un soberbio puñetazo en la nariz.  

«Además, sabes que de no ser por ella, ambos estaríais perfectamente muertos y El-que-no-debe-ser-nombrado, estaría caminando sobre la tierra de Merlín desde mucho antes.»

Un breve gruñido escapó de la sonrisa de Ron al pensar que dicha vocecilla parecía tener el retintín de un «te lo dije» demasiado familiar.

Aún así, él no podía rebatir esa afirmación. De no haber sido por Hermione y su prodigioso bolsito de pedrería, su situación en este mismo momento podría haber sido muy distinta. Ellos no hubiesen tenido los enseres necesarios para haber sobrevivido hasta haber llegado a la residencia de Sirius y haber podido realizar toda la vigilancia del ministerio…

Un atronador rugido de su estomago, fue el que puso fin a toda aquella introspección.

-Me pregunto ¿cómo ella habrá dispuesto el tema de la comida? Lleva seis malditos años recordándome las leyes de Gamp-, murmuró mientras se incorporaba.

Sabiendo que era incapaz de permanecer en la cama ni un minuto más y con la esperanza de poder calmar sus nervios y sus pesadillas con una buena taza de té, emprendió el camino hacia las cocinas de la mansión cuando se encontró que la luz se filtraba bajo la puerta de la habitación en la que había dejado a Hermione la noche anterior.

Aquello no había terminado en una de sus famosas broncas porque él había preferido morderse la lengua antes que irse a la cama con ambos enfadados el uno con el otro, pero le había faltado realmente poco para agarrarla por la cadera echársela sobre el hombro y lanzarla sobre la cama más próxima para obligarla a dormir cuando ella se empeñó en permanecer despierta repasando hasta la extenuación todos los detalles de  la infiltración en un ministerio dominado por Voldemort. Aquella furia que a duras penas había logrado controlar, regresó con toda fuerza al ver que ella debía de seguir trabajando en ello.

Con el típico arrebato Weasley, irrumpió en la habitación dispuesto a terminar con esta locura y obligarla a descansar las pocas horas que aún quedaban, cuando se quedó congelado en la puerta al tiempo que toda esa cólera que antes hacía hervir su sangre, se evaporaba como si jamás hubiese sido.

Bajo la tintineante luz de las velas, una Hermione, completamente dormida, descansaba su cabeza sobre un libro de teoría de la magia y un innumerable numero de pergaminos garabateados con esquemas y planos del ministerio.

Ron tiene que apoyarse en el quicio de la puerta cuando siente que sus piernas le fallan al ver como la parpadeante luz de las velas, obtiene infinitos matices cobrizos del pelo de la menuda bruja. Cómo, pese al pequeño hilo de baba que se escapa de entre sus labios, estos lucen suavemente rosados y absolutamente adorables. Las largas pestañas que cubren unos ojos que serían capaces de obtener cualquier cosa de él con sólo que le mirasen con amor y las siete pequeñas pecas que ella tiene en la nariz. Nunca se lo dijo, pero él aprendió la configuración de la constelación de Orión cuando la vio perfectamente representada en esa pequeña nariz.

Pero por encima de todo ello, lo que conmueve su corazón es ver el semblante de su cara completamente relajado, como si por un momento, el sueño la hubiese bendecido con unas horas de paz, ajenas a toda la locura que se ha desencadenado a su alrededor.

Por un instante, tiene la tentación de tomarla en sus brazos y llevarla a una cama donde ella pueda descansar verdaderamente lo que hace que sus brazos hormigueen con la mera idea de tocarla, pero él sabe que si por casualidad ella despierta, insistirá en continuar con su loco repaso perdiendo el poco descanso que tan desesperadamente necesita, algo que él no le negará. Así, aunque una parte de su corazón clame por la imagen impostada de permitirse lo que hasta ahora sólo ha sido uno de sus más locos sueños como es el llevarla como a una novia al lecho nupcial, el resto de todo su  ser le hace cerrar la puerta lentamente  mientras lanza un hechizo de insonorización a la misma para evitar que cualquier ruido pueda perturbar su sueño.

Sólo entonces, mientras reanuda su viaje hacia las cocinas, se permite preguntarse, ¿Cuando ella se volvió tan importante para él? ¿En qué momento ella se convirtió en todo su mundo?

Sorprendentemente no pudo encontrar un momento concreto. De alguna manera, Hermione se había ido infiltrando en su corazón sin que él fuera plenamente consciente de la sigilosa invasión. Evidentemente, él se había dado cuenta de que lo que experimentó en cuarto curso fue una tormenta de celos, ¡de tal magnitud!, que pareció haber convertido su cerebro en jalea e incapaz de pensar. Pero sólo cuando enfrentó la posibilidad de perderla a final de quinto curso, fue cuando se dio cuenta del autentico vacio que su corazón tenía si ella no estaba en él.

Y mientras su mente se pierde en los recuerdo de una niña mandona que le regaña por tener sucia la nariz y en una jovencita que luce de una manera increíble, mientras se desliza majestuosa por el gran comedor de la mano de un imbécil cabeza de calabaza con ridícula barbita de chivo, Ron se encuentra en la cocina justo al tiempo de ver como el viejo elfo domestico de Sirius, revuelve entre cacharos y enseres, seguramente anticipando las tareas domesticas del día que se inician con el desayuno para los tres inquilinos de la vieja mansión Black, mientras el medallón de Régulus cuelga alrededor de su cuello.

«Bueno. No “de Sirius”. Ahora es el elfo “de Harry”», rectifica en su mente al recordar que el padrino de Harry había sido la víctima mayor de aquella aciaga noche…

-Buenos días maestro-, la voz quebrada del viejo sirviente interrumpe los pensamientos que volvían a provocar un estremecimiento por su espina dorsal. -¿Quizás el amo Weasley se despertó demasiado temprano? ¿Puede Kreacher ayudar a su señoría con una taza de té?-

-Sí, Kreacher. Por favor-. Él piensa que nunca se acostumbrará a los sensibles oídos del elfo. De alguna manera, el pequeño sirviente siempre parece percibir lo que ocurre a su alrededor, aunque estuviese dándole la espalda en ese momento. A Ron el corazón aún se le sale del pecho cuando recuerda la vez que entró furtivamente en la cocina buscando algo de comer a medianoche y al cerrar la puerta de la alacena, se encontró con un par de ojos saltones a menos de un palmo de su cara que le miraban suspicaces.

-¿El maestro desearía algo más consistente para acompañar su té?-

Ron no había dejado de ser consciente del cambio que se había dado en la actitud en el elfo desde que Harry le había entregado el medallón de Régulus. Su previa hostilidad hacia Harry se había tornado en una cuasi-devoción tras ese pequeño acto de amabilidad. Él se preguntó, ¿qué hubiese pasado con Kreacher, si todas aquellas ideas de Hermione acerca de S.P.E.W. y dar un trato digno y amable a los elfos hubiesen sido aplicadas por Sirius? Quizás el atormentado elfo, no hubiese encontrado la falla que le permitió alertar a los Mortífagos. De una manera retorcida, el último de los Black había forjado su destino tratando miserablemente a su sirviente.

«Entonces, tal vez…», pensó, «… Sirius hubiese podido seguir vivo y Harry hubiese podido tener una familia de verdad, donde hubiese podido haber sentido el amor y la calidez de un auténtico hogar.»

-¿Maestro?-

-No Kreacher, muchas gracias-, él le respondió amablemente y con una sonrisa cuando volvió al presente. «He aquí otra de las locas ideas de Hermione para el mundo mágico y en las que, sin embargo ella tiene razón», pensó. -El té será suficiente-.

-Como desee el maestro Weasley. ¿Debería preparar el desayuno para los demás invitados, quizás?- Una ceja peluda se elevó dubitativa.

-No sé. ¿Alguno de los dos se ha despertado?- Ron no estaba dispuesto a que ninguno de ellos perdiese momentos de sueño, por lo que consideró saber primero cual era la situación actual de sus amigos antes de que, por error, el elfo interpretase que ya era hora de despertarlos a ambos.

-El amo Potter aún sigue durmiendo, aunque no ha dejado de dar vueltas en la cama y gruñir toda la noche-, Kreacher pareció saber hacia dónde se dirigían los pensamientos de Ron, -en cuanto a la sangre sucia…-

-¡NUNCA! ¡JAMÁS! VUELVAS A REFERIRTE A ELLA EN ESOS TERMINOS, KREACHER. ¿ME ENTIENDES? ¡NUNCA!-  

Ron ni siquiera fue consciente de su reacción hasta que vio los aterrorizados ojos del viejo elfo mientras alzaba sus brazos en un intento de autoprotección.

No fue consciente de que la silla sobre la que estaba sentado salió despedida contra la pared cuando se incorporó bruscamente, ni de su agitada respiración, ni como sus puños lucían blancos como la nieve apoyados sobre la mesa, ni cómo había proyectado su cuerpo en dirección al elfo como el lobo que acecha a su presa.

Ron no había sido consciente de nada de ello, hasta que vio un elfo domestico anciano, temblando de terror y con la certeza del castigo supremo en sus ojos. Es entonces cuando una cascada de revelaciones se desencadena en su mente, como si siempre hubiesen estado allí, sólo que ahora parecen encajar perfectamente entre sí.

Ver como un ser con una magia infinitamente más compleja y más poderosa que la de los magos humanos, estaba tan encadenado por su condicionamientos social y el miedo, que es incapaz de reaccionar, aunque sólo fuese para salvar su propia vida o la de los suyos, para convertirse en menos que una alimaña a los ojos de sus opresores. Y mientras mira los aterrorizados ojos del elfo, ante los ojos de su mente se presenta la imagen de otros ojos. Los dulces ojos del color de chocolate llenos de amor y compasión por cualquier ser vivo de una niña de grandes dientes frontales que luce una horrible insignia de S.P.E.W. sobre su pecho. Y eso le hace sentir tan vil, indigno y miserable que siente nauseas de sí mismo.

-Kreacher-, su voz sonó mucho más apera de lo que pretendía en el intento de controlar las arcadas que le acosan provocando que el anciano se estremezca ante él.

-Kreacher-, repitió, esta vez con mucha más calidez. -Por favor, toma asiento-.

Tan aterrorizado está el elfo, que se dirigió como la victima de la maldición “Imperius”’ a la silla más próxima para sentarse, ignorando así todo el condicionamiento social que le impide estar sentado en la presencia de un mago.

-Kreacher-, Ron respiro profundamente, como si quisiese tomar del aire la inspiración que necesitaba para enfrentar la tarea ante él. -Te ruego me perdones. No era mi intención gritarte ni atemorizarte.-

Si previamente la expresión del elfo era de absoluto terror, ahora abría que añadir la de la absoluta estupefacción.

-¿E… El maestro, se está disculpando ante Kreacher?- Su voz sonó como la de una rana y sus ojos parecían salirse de sus orbitas cuando la idea, por fin, atravesó su cráneo.

-Verás-, el pelirrojo se mesó los cabellos intentando enfocarse. Tenía ante sí un problema difícil. Por un lado no podía poner en crisis todas las creencias del viejo sirviente de un plumazo. Eso sólo provocaría que el elfo se cerrase a escucharle, pero por otro lado, tenía que hacerle ver o al menos considerar, la abominación que suponía menospreciar la mera existencia de un hechicero por el simple hecho de su origen mágico. -No era mi intención dañarte ni asustarte. Simplemente no vuelvas a usar esa palabra cuando te refieras a la Señorita Granger, por favor. Ella realmente no lo merece-.

El estupor del elfo no había desaparecido, pero un destello de curiosidad apareció en su mirada.

-Mira, yo sé cómo va todo esa mierda de la pureza de sangre, pero yo te pido que por una vez no lo tengas en cuenta, ¿vale?- La cara de Kreacher daba a entender sin lugar a dudas, que no estaba entendiendo una palabra de lo que Ron estaba intentando explicar.  

-Kreacher. Imagina por un momento que no supieses el origen de la Srta. Granger. Que no la conocieses de nada y que la primera vez que ella hubiese pisado esta casa, en vez de haber aparecido con ropa muggle y acompañando a un puñado de proscritos y traidores de sangre, ella hubiese venido de la mano del amo Régulus, vestida con elegantes túnicas de lechuguino y luciendo absolutamente hermosa y relajada, como si este hubiese sido su ambiente social durante toda su vida-.

-Maestro Weasley-, el elfo lucía absolutamente desolado, -Kreacher no puede hacer eso. Kreacher puede percibir la magia de los magos. Su origen, su intensidad. Es imposible que Kreacher no se hubiese dado cuenta de que hubiese sido una impostora-.

Ron sintió como su mandíbula se apretaba y su espalda tendía a envararse de pura rigidez al oírle referirse a Hermione como una impostora. Hacerle entender su punto de vista parecía una misión imposible. El comportamiento del elfo parecía estar condicionado por la primera impresión que suponía percibir los orígenes de la magia de un mago en conjunción con todo su adiestramiento. Una vez que intervenía el condicionamiento de toda una vida, ¡no! ¡De toda una dinastía! No había oportunidad para mirar nada más…

-Nada más…- susurró, -Nada más. No hay segunda oportunidad…- Los ojos de Ron se abrieron como platos.

-¿El maestro se encuentra bien?- Kreacher había abandonado la silla y se aproximaba cautamente al mago que parecía ajeno a su preocupación.

-… No hay segunda oportunidad-, volvió a susurrar al tiempo que en su cara apareció la sonrisa y en sus ojos el brillo, que tan bien conocían sus adversarios en el ajedrez. -¡KREACHER!- Exclamó.

El desprevenido elfo dio tal salto hacia atrás, que tropezó con la silla que ocupaba previamente y comenzó a trastabillarse con sus propios pies hasta que la caída resultó inminente, sólo para ser tomado en volandas y depositado suavemente sobre su silla original por unos brazos pecosos y surcados de cicatrices.

-¿Estás bien Kreacher? La voz de Ron tenía genuina preocupación. No era solamente por los continuos sobresaltos a los que estaba sometiendo al viejo corazón del débil elfo y el temor a destruir cualquier puente de entendimiento que hubiese podido crearse ente los dos, sino a que realmente hubiese podido sufrir alguna herida.

-¿Qué acaba de hacer el maestro?- Los ojos del anciano estaban clavados en los de Ron.

-Yo… yo, yo lo siento Kreacher. No soy bueno dominando mis impulsos. No pretendía volver a asustarte-. Los ojos de Ron se dirigieron al suelo cuando la vergüenza volvió a inundarlo. Era la segunda vez que había atemorizado al elfo. Era lógico que ya no volviese a confiar en él y con ello, cualquier oportunidad de hacerle entender la grandeza humana de la bruja de pelo encrespado había salido por la ventana gracias a su manifiesta y nunca bien mensurada combinación de estupidez e impulsividad… -¡Mierda!- gimió.

-¿El maestro ayudó a Kreacher?- Sus ojos se abrieron de par en par. -¡El maestro protegió a Kreacher!-

-¿Errr…?- La cara de Ron era la manifestación del absoluto pasmo.

-¡El maestro protegió a Kreacher! No le prohibió a Kreacher que se castigase a sí mismo, no. Le protegió-. La cara de Ron manifestaba claramente que seguía sin comprender lo que el sirviente le decía. -Sólo el amo Régulus hizo algo similar una vez-.

-Hermione lo hace todo el rato- ¡Oh Merlín! Si eso no es una buena apertura, yo no juego al ajedrez.

-¿Cómo?- El pobre Kreacher tenía el aspecto de estar siendo llevado por una corriente de revelaciones y emociones que le impedían poder estructurar su pensamiento de manera correcta.

Hacía días que un amo mestizo al que odiaba, le había entregado el tesoro que había pertenecido al mejor amo que un elfo domestico pudiese desear. Al mismo tiempo, le había prohibido castigarse a sí mismo incluso cuando él le había traicionado y alertado a sus enemigos. Kreacher sabía que era mero tecnicismo que él pudiese justificar sus acciones en base a las instrucciones poco concretas del amo Harry. Kreacher era consciente que cualquier acción realizada por un elfo doméstico que directa o indirectamente pudiese perjudicar su amo, podía ser severamente castigada, incluso con la vida y, en cualquier caso, un amo no necesitaba muchas justificaciones para castigar a su sirviente si así lo decidía. Ahora, un sangrepura había usado su propio cuerpo para protegerle, se había disculpado por su acción y le hacía saber, que una sangresucia tenía como costumbre proteger a otros elfos domésticos continuamente. Su cerebro no pudo asumirlo completamente y la pregunta se había escapado de entre sus labios de manera inconsciente.

-La Srta. Hermione lo hace todo el rato. Ella ama a cada criatura mágica. No le preocupa su origen. Ella siempre dice que son los actos los que dan grandeza, no el origen. Kreacher ¿Es verdad que puedes percibir la magia?- Preguntó lleno de esperanza.    

-Kreacher puede, maestro-.

-¿Y es verdad que puedes sentir la intensidad de la magia de un mago, Kreacher?-

El elfo asiente.

-Entonces. ¿Cómo percibes la fuerza de la magia de la Srta. Hermione?

El elfo parpadea, como si nunca se hubiese detenido a evaluar correctamente ese punto.

-La magia es muy intensa en ella. Kreacher sólo recuerda una bruja con una magia tan intensa, aunque la de la bruja nacida de muggles podría ser mayor-.

-¿Quién era la bruja Kreacher?-

-ES. La Dama Lestrange, Bellatrix.-

Un dedo helado recorre la espalda del hijo menor de los Weasley cortándole la respiración.

-Ella no se parece en nada a Bellatrix, Kreacher-, Ron puede sentir, casi físicamente, como si le estuviesen estrujando el corazón hasta quitarle la vida. -Hermione tiene los ojos dulces, llenos de curiosidad y afecto. No destilan odio y locura como esa hija de puta, Kreacher-, hay una ira sorda creciendo en Ronald. Un fuego rugiente de ira, miedo y odio.

-Fue ella, la que torturó hasta la locura a los padres de Neville. Dos sangrepura cuyos únicos pecados fueron los de defender a inocentes, que jamás habían hecho daño a nada ni a nadie,  de su locura y su odio. Es gente como ella la responsable de que ni Neville ni  Harry tengan padres. Es gente como ella la que arrastra a personas sensibles como Régulus a un camino del que no hay retorno, Kreacher. Es gente como ella la que trae dolor y sufrimiento al mundo tan sólo porque se cree superior a cualquier otro,- dice mientras intenta recomponerse.  

-El caso, Kreacher, es que Hermione…- hay autentica pasión y una devoción palpable en cada una de las palabras que salen de su boca… -no sólo es la bruja más inteligente, brillante, estudiosa y hermosa de esta generación, sino que ella es la mejor persona que puedas imaginar. El que ella sea una bruja es una jodida bendición porque, en vez de ser los muggles los que tienen la oportunidad de beneficiarse de su privilegiada inteligencia, de su valentía, de su deseo de justicia y de su infinito amor por cualquier criatura, es el mundo mágico el que tiene esa oportunidad y por culpa de “El-que-no-debe-ser-nombrado” y gente como Bellatrix, estamos siendo unos imbéciles negándonos a aceptar ese regalo y toda esa magia que supera por mucho a la del resto de nosotros tres y…-

-Eso es un error-.

-¿Perdón?-

-Su magia no es la más poderosa de los tres.- Los entrecerrados ojos del elfo permanecen clavados en el mar océano del menor de los hombres Weasley, como si estuviesen contemplando algo que solamente él puede ver.

-Bueno. Obviamente Harry tiene que ser un mago jodidamente extraordinario si tiene que enfrentarse al Señor Obscuro-, dice apartando la mirada del elfo mientras siente una punzada de envidia en su corazón por no ser lo suficientemente bueno y perdiendo la sorprendida mirada que le dedica Kreacher, -pero estoy seguro que su poder mágico deben estar muy parejo a Harry…-

Es entonces cuando la cucharadita de té emocional que es Ronald Weasley es consciente de como se está desarrollando esta crucial partida de ajedrez.

El propio Kreacher acaba de abrir una brecha en su defensa cuando la idea de una nacida de muggles puede ser tan poderosa como la más abominable mortífaga en las huestes de “El-que-no-debe-ser-nombrado”. Pero con eso no basta. Eso puede haber sorprendido su cerebro, pero para ganar la partida, para ganarla verdaderamente, Hermione debe ganar el corazón del atormentado ser.

-Ella es la bruja más inteligente que he conocido, hasta el punto de que ni siquiera ese imbécil engreído de Snape, alguien de disfruta haciendo quedar como tonto a cualquiera, ha podido evitar el calificarla con una puntuación menor a “Extraordinario” en todas sus pruebas-. Él recuerda con orgullo todas las veces que Hermione consiguió arrancarle un rictus de irritación al lamentable profesor. Una por cada vez que ella le dio la respuesta correcta incluso cuando esa no era la lección del día. -Continuamente derrota a cualquier sangrepura haciendo una magia  ellos ni siquiera son capaces de soñar. Por su pura inteligencia resolvió un acertijo letal en su primer año y en su segundo elaboró una poción de nivel EXTASIS que sólo los maestros alquimistas son capaces de realizar, descubrió que un jodido basilisco se arrastraba por las cañerías del castillo y sobrevivió al encuentro con la maldita cosa usando un simple espejo de mano-.

Ron no puede evitar el escalofrío que recorre su espalda cuando recuerda la imagen de una niña pequeña en una cama demasiado grande para ella, rígida, inerte y fría como el hielo. Fue entonces cuando se dio cuenta que había algo distinto con Hermione. No sabía que era, pero algo estaba jodidamente mal en su interior cuando ella resultaba herida.

-Tendrías que verla cuando estudia, Kreacher. Ella es todo un espectáculo. Cuando ella está estudiando un tema particularmente difícil frunce el ceño de manera adorable, sus ojos brillan de determinación y se inclina sobre lo que quiera que esté leyendo tanto que parece que ella quisiese meterse dentro del texto y cuando está a punto de dominar todo ese nuevo conocimiento, ella muerde su labio inferior con tanta intensidad que a veces temo que se vaya a hacer daño ella misma, pero hay una inmensa alegría en su mirada. Igual que cuando ella está leyendo algo que le agrada particularmente, sólo que entonces, ella empieza a jugar con uno de sus locos rizos enrollándolo alrededor de su dedo. Creo que debe ser la única persona en el mundo que coquetea con un libro mientras lo lee,- han sido tantas veces viéndola estudiar en la biblioteca que el pelirrojo ni siquiera necesita concentrarse para evocar dichas imágenes. Ellas están tan dentro del corazón de Ron que ya forman parte de él y su recuerdo siempre hace esbozar una sonrisa en su pecosa cara.

-Ella es también valiente, decidida y justa, como el día en que le sacudió un soberbio puñetazo en la nariz al hurón en tercer curso…-

-¿Ella golpeó a un hurón?- La mandíbula del elfo se descolgó al escuchar al pelirrojo.

-¿Cómo que …?- La sorpresa inicial de Ron es rápidamente sustituida por unos ojos abiertos de par en par cuando la comprensión le inunda, dado paso a una estruendosa carcajada. -No a un hurón Kreacher. ¡“Al hurón”! Ella le dio un puñetazo jodidamente perfecto al único y genuino heredero de la Casa Malfoy-, completa entre risas cuando ve como al pobre elfo se le salen los ojos de las orbitas al imaginar cómo atacaron a un reconocido sangrepura con algo tan mundano como puñetazo en la nariz. -¡Oh vamos, Kreacher! Aquello fue genial y ella lucía sexy como el infierno mientras lucia jadeante, con el pelo revuelto y una mirada desafiante. Además…- su rostro se pone repentinamente serio cuando mira al anciano sirviente que aún no parece haber salido de su estupefacción. -Ella solamente estaba defendiendo a una criatura inocente de un niño malcriado y dispuesto a regodearse de su muerte solamente porque él hirió su egocéntrico orgullo. Ella pasó noches enteras sin dormir, rebuscando en viejos tratados de leyes mágicas alguna forma de salvar la vida de una criatura que ni siquiera era humana. Sólo porque era lo justo. Sólo porque era inocente-. Un peso se deposita sobre el alma de Ron cuando recuerda que ella estuvo sola todas esas noches y él no estuvo para ayudarla.

-La he visto apoyar a su mejor amigo y casi perder la vida por ello aún a sabiendas de saber que él se estaba equivocando-, el nudo en su garganta amenaza con impedirle  continuar hablando. -La he visto arriesgarse a perder esa misma amistad tan sólo para protegerlo y la he visto ser tomada por excéntrica o loca sólo por defender que las criaturas deben ser tratadas con dignidad, independientemente de su raza y origen-.

En su atribulado discurso, Ron siente que la humedad inunda sus ojos y la aparta pasando su manga por su cara sin ser consciente de como el elfo ha ladeado levemente su cabeza y lo observa atentamente.

-Ella también es amable, dulce y cariñosa-. El peso de su corazón desaparece cuando una calidez lo envuelve. -Con once años y sin conocerle de nada ayudó al tipo más tímido e inseguro a buscar su mascota perdida. Aun no siendo prefecta, siempre estuvo dispuesta a acoger bajo su ala a los renacuajos de primer curso, a cuidarlos y a guiarlos  cuando ellos quedaban pasmados ante lo grandioso que es Hogwarts. Ella les ayuda a orientarse por el castillo, a completar sus tareas, les abraza cuando echen de menos a sus padres y les narra cuentos increíbles que sólo ella conoce por los mil y un libros que ha leído-, dice mientras los ojos le brillan de orgullo por su mejor amiga, -y lo hará con todos y cada uno de ellos. A todos les entregará su increíble inteligencia y su desmedido amor independientemente de cualquier otra condición-.

Es entonces cuando se da cuenta que Kreacher lo está mirando con los ojos y la boca abiertos de par en par, como si no pudiese creer lo que está viendo.

-Errr… ejem… Esto… Esto no significa que ella no tenga defectos, de hecho los tiene. Ella tiene un mal genio digno de una poción explosiva-, dice mientras se frota sus brazos que cosquillean. -Tantas veces está tan convencida de que lleva razón, que se olvida de que los interesados también tienes que decir algo por ellos mismos. Como aquella vez en que siendo prefecta mandó deberes extras a los estudiantes de TIMOS porque ella pensaba que no los estaban preparando debidamente-, una sonrisa se dibuja en su cara. -Kreacher, tendrías que haber visto cuando McGonagall se enteró. Ella le preguntó si es que quería su puesto como jefa de la casa Gryffindor y Hermione se puso tan roja que parecía una autentica Weasley-.

Él no sabe porque lo ha dicho pero apenas termina de decirlo, la imagen de la más hermosa Hermione, vestida con una vaporosa túnica blanca de satén al inicio de un pasillo y con un  pequeño ramo entre sus manos, basta para que su corazón parezca haber perdido la capacidad de latir normalmente.

-Kreacher-, dice suavemente al tiempo que mira al elfo con la intensidad del que está intentado trasmitir el mensaje más importante de su vida y teme fallar con las palabras. -No es que ella quiera ofenderte. Ni a ti ni al resto de los elfos domésticos cuando quiere daros la libertad. La libertad es un regalo divino sí, pero es como una buena costilla asada. Puede ser sabrosa y crujiente, una jodida delicia al paladar, pero no se la puede hacer pasar por la fuerza a través del gaznate de un bebe. Así lo único que conseguirás es matarlo con casi completa seguridad-.

-Es simplemente que os ama demasiado. Os ama tanto, ama tanto a cualquier criatura en los verdes campos de Merlín que no puede esperar a daros lo que todos os merecéis. Por eso ella se equivoca. Ella aún no ve que no estáis preparados para la libertad-, dice ante la mirada curiosa del sirviente. -No… No pretendo menospreciaros, a los elfos domésticos, quiero decir-, completa en un tartamudeo levantando las manos en señal de paz. -Pero no deja de ser verdad. La libertad os asusta, os rompe el esquema de las cosas y las reglas de vuestro mundo. Ella aún no puede verlo Kreacher, pero con el tiempo lo hará y no tendréis ni mejor aliada ni mejor amiga que ella-.

-¿Es ese su mayor defecto, maestro?- Parece imposible, pero Ron estaría dispuesto a jurar por Merlín que el elfo se está inclinado hacia él mientras mira profundamente sus ojos azules, como si quisiese descubrir algo que se oculta en lo más profundo del atribulado pelirrojo.

-Bueno, en realidad no-, una triste sonrisa se dibuja en su cara pecosa. -Ella tiene un lamentable gusto por los magos cabeza de calabaza con horrible acento y por los pomposos desagradables demasiado llenos de sí mismos, siempre y cuando ellos sean grandes jugadores de quidditch-.    

-Aún así, el maestro está muy impresionado por la Dama Granger-. Los ojos del elfo están prácticamente relampagueando ante él y sin embargo Ron no puede encontrar ni una piza de desprecio, burla u hostilidad en su voz, si acaso… ¿reconocimiento? Y entonces algo se rompe en Ron cuando es consciente que el pequeño bastardo acaba de llamarla “Dama” por primera vez.

-Tanto, que yo daría gustoso mi propia vida para que ella tuviese una vida mágica plena y feliz. Lejos de todo el horror y la guerra, lejos de la ausencia de sus padres y del miedo a ser asesinada en cualquier momento sólo por el hecho de que ellos sean muggles. Aunque ella estuviese casada…- su voz se quiebra-,… estuviese casada con cualquiera de esos dos malditos imbéciles y sus hijos fuesen…

Quizás sea por los años de entrenamiento involuntario intentado salvar la vida de sus dos mejores amigos o la suya propia, quizás sea por los sentidos agudizados de un guardián de quidditch o quizás sea solamente instinto, pero Ron siente un cosquilleo en su nuca, el presentimiento de una presencia a su espalda justo antes de escuchar el crujido de la madera del suelo detrás de él y Ron puede ver como, por un momento, los ojos de Kreacher abandonan los suyos propios y se dirigen al espacio que hay detrás del pelirrojo para abrirse como platos cuando se fijan en un punto concreto detrás de él. De nuevo puede ser por todos esos años rondando la muerte, por todos los entrenamientos que  han agudizando sus reflejos o simplemente el instinto del guerrero, pero sin esperar la orden de su cerebro, su mano derecha busca su varita. Su cuerpo se encoje para minimizar el blanco y desplaza en un giro que le hace interponerse entre el sirviente y el lugar desde donde vino el sonido y cuando lo hace, lo hace de una  manera tan natural, tan instintiva, que parece que el proteger un cuerpo menudo fuese su único objetivo en la vida. Es cuando su cabeza está por completar el giro que le va llevar a enfrentarse a la amenaza cuando siente una mano áspera que le sujeta la muñeca con fuerza suficiente como para desequilibrarlo y detener la rotación de su cuerpo. Aún así, el brazo con su varita continua su trayectoria para apuntar al espacio que hace unos instantes estaba a su espalda y un “Protego” no verbal se despliega de ella, mientras sus ojos buscan al propietario de la mano que ha detenido su movimiento para encontrarse cara a cara con otros ojos. Unos ojos saltones y llenos de arrugas, que lo miran con atención y en los que luce la luz de la comprensión.

-El maestro la ama-.

No es una pregunta. Es una verdad revelada y como tal, ya no puede ser devuelta a las sombras ni puede ser negada, sino que necesita ser proclamada porque ya no puede ser contenida.  

-Con todo lo que soy y con todo lo que seré, Kreacher. Con tanta intensidad que duele. Duele tanto como el mismísimo infierno-.

El elfo asiente. De nuevo, sus ojos se dirigen al espacio detrás de Ron mientras este siente que la presa que el pequeño personaje ejercía sobre su brazo cede permitiéndole recuperar toda su movilidad. Es entonces cuando Ron vuelve la cabeza para enfrentar lo que quiera que se encuentre tras él sólo para que sus ojos puedan ver… una puerta vacía.

-Esta maldita casa y sus horripilantes ruidos van a volverme malditamente loco-, dice mientras sus hombros se hunden cuando de él escapa toda la tensión que ha ido acumulando.

-Ella no lo sabía,- murmura el elfo. -El maestro no se lo ha dicho a la dama Granger-. Kreacher ignora el insulto a la ancestral morada de los Black mientras sus ojos inquisitivos se dirigen hacía el atormentado pelirrojo.

-No, Kreacher. Aún no y tampoco puedo hacerlo ahora. Lo que hay en juego es demasiado importante y mucho mayor que nosotros-, dice mientras sacude la cabeza, como si intentase sacar algunos pensamientos de su cerebro y poder así aclarar sus propias ideas. -Cuando yo le confiese y ella me diga que no comparte mis sentimientos, a mí no me quedaría nada por lo que luchar salvo el mantener sanos y salvos a los dos, para luego desaparecer si ganamos y, si por un milagro ella los compartiese, yo no podría cumplir esta misión. Podría en peligro a Harry, porque a la hora de protegerlos, ella siempre sería mi prioridad-.

Es cuando los rayos de Sol inundan la vieja cocina cuando Ron se da cuenta de lo mucho que ha avanzado la mañana y que el temido momento ha llegado. Es hora de completar los últimos preparativos para infiltrarse en el ministerio. Con un resoplido de resignación, se dirige hacia la puerta para despertar a sus amigos cuando siente de nuevo la mano del elfo sobre su brazo, sólo que en este caso es un agarre gentil. Muy similar al toque de un amigo que tan sólo intenta llamar tu atención.

-No-, dice en un tono calmo pero decidido. -Kreacher se encargará de despertar al resto de los magos-.

-Kreacher, realmente creo que yo debería…-

-No. Kreacher insiste. Al maestro Harry y a sus compañeros les aguarda un largo día.- El pequeño sirviente rodea la alta figura del antiguo guardián que Gryffindor al tiempo que le empuja suavemente hacia una silla frente a la gran mesa de la cocina. -El maestro Weasley terminará su té y luego Kreacher regresará para que todos puedan desayunar debidamente-.

Resignado ante la ya conocida tozudez del anciano, Ron asiente y toma asiento en la silla mientras se lleva la taza de té a sus labios y le ve abandonar la cocina.

-o-

Apenas ha atravesado el umbral de la puerta, el último sirviente de la antigua y honorable  casa de los Black gira en dirección a los dormitorios pasando por delante de la figura que apoyada contra la pared, intenta mantenerse oculta mientras mantiene sus manos sobre su cara, en el intento de silenciar los desesperados sollozos que hacen temblar todo su pequeño cuerpo.

-Ahora la Dama Granger lo sabe-, susurra al tiempo que se gira para enfrentar a la joven mujer.

Entre sollozos y temblores un leve asentimiento de su cabeza es su única respuesta.

-Quizás sea el momento de que el maestro Weasley también sepa-.

La voz del elfo suena firme, pero en ella hay un decidido toque de suplica en ella.

Una cabeza llena de rizos niega enérgicamente haciendo volar los salvajes mechones en todas direcciones, mientras las manos que cubren la cara borran las lágrimas que la recorren.

-No es posible Kreacher. Como Ron ha dicho, hay mucho en juego. Mucho mayor que nosotros dos y no puedo permitir que Harry deje de ser la prioridad de Ron. Sin Harry, no hay futuro para nadie. Sin Harry no hay futuro para nosotros dos-.

-El maestro Harry no es el mago más poderoso bajo el techo de esta casa-, dice el elfo como si no hubiese escuchado la respuesta de la prodigiosa bruja mientras sus ojos se dirigen hacia la puerta de la cocina.

-Lo sé,- dice en un sollozo al tiempo que una triste sonrisa se insinúa sobre una cara que vuelve a estar recorrida de lagrimas y cuyos ojos enfocan al mismo punto que mira el elfo como si esperase poder ver al pelirrojo al otro lado de la misma en cualquier momento.

-Sin embargo-, los ojos de Kreacher se dirigen ahora fijamente a los ojos de Hermione, -tampoco es el mago más seguro de sí mismo-.

-También lo sé y me maldigo a mí misma todo los días por lo que he contribuido a que él se menosprecie-. Los ojos de la chica se encuentran brevemente con los del elfo para luego volver a buscar el umbral de la cocina que, se ha convertido sin pretenderlo, en la frontera entre el querer y el deber. -Pero ambos tendremos que esperar Kreacher,- y sus ojos, ahora llenos de fuego, vuelven a encontrarse con los del elfo. -Aunque ahora mismo todo mi ser esté clamando por el deseo de atravesar esa puerta y sellar el pacto haciéndolo mío sobre la mesa de la cocina como sólo una mujer puede hacer suyo a un hombre. Porque yo he sido suya desde siempre-.

-Eso no es justo para él-.

-Nada en esta guerra es justo, Kreacher-.

Este asiente en comprensión y justo cuando parece que va a reanudar su camino para buscar a su legítimo amo, se detiene y mirando detenidamente a la bruja nacida de muggles, hace chasquear sus dedos haciendo que Hermione sienta un frescor rejuvenecedor recorriendo su enrojecidos ojos y sus parpados hinchados por el llanto.

-El amo Weasley no necesita más preocupaciones en este momento-.

-Gracias Kreacher,- ella sonríe, -y gracias por no haberme delatado antes,- dice señalando con la mirada a la traicionera pieza de madera suelta que se encuentra en el piso, justo frente a la puerta de la cocina.

Y por primera vez en su larga vida Kreacher, el último y orgulloso sirviente de la ancestral, noble y elitista sangrepura casa de los Black, entrega una sonrisa genuina a una bruja nacida de muggles.

-Será nuestro secreto Dama Granger-, dice al tiempo que completa una graciosa reverencia y abandona el lugar para buscar su legítimo amo, aún cuando siente que algo en su interior ha cambiado para siempre.

 Meses más tarde:

 —¡Espera un momento! —dijo Ron abruptamente—. ¡Nos hemos olvidado de alguien!

—¿Quiénes? —preguntó Hermione.

—Los elfos domésticos. Estarán todos abajo en las cocinas, ¿no?

—¿Quieres decir que deberíamos ordenarles luchar? —preguntó Harry.

—No —dijo Ron serio—. Quiero decir que deberíamos decirles que se marcharan. No queremos más Dobbys, ¿verdad? No podemos ordenarles que mueran por nosotros…

 Dura sólo un instante, pero para Hermione Granger es como si hubiese sido alcanzada por el hechizo “Arresto Momentum”. Toda una vida de sentimientos e imágenes pasa por su privilegiada mente de una manera tan real, tan nítida y clara, que es como si estuviese reviviendo sus propios recuerdos y sentimientos en un pensadero…

Ternura

Un niño precioso con una mancha de suciedad en la nariz…

 Lealtad

Un rudo bastón cayendo sobre la cabeza de un trol de montaña…

 Nobleza

Babosas vomitadas en un cubo…

 Valor

Malherido, cubierto de de suciedad, sudor y sangre, sostenido sobre una pierna rota siendo un baluarte entre dos adolescentes y un asesino en serie…

 Celos

El brazo roto de una figurilla de acción a los pies de una cama…

 Devoción

Una figura masculina con los brazos horriblemente marcados, que la vela cuando ella despierta con una terrible herida en el pecho…

 Excitación

El olor de pergamino, hierba recién cortada y un jabón con aromas de madera y clavo al abrazar ese glorioso cuerpo…

 Esperanza

Una escoba que se materializa frente a la madriguera conducida por una metamorfomaga…

 Consuelo

Unas manos unidas, justo antes de dormir en Grimmauld Place…

 Amor

Unos ojos azules que la velan cuando despierta en Shell Cotagge…

 Miedo

Un niño pequeño, con una gran herida en la cabeza sobre un suelo ajedrezado…

 Pánico

Una cara pecosa, pálida como el papel, en una cama rodeada por un montón de pelirrojos que lucen asustados…

 Terror

Un brazo destrozado que sangra tanto que resulta imposible creer que un ser humano pueda contener tanta sangre…

 Desesperación

Una figura empapada, con la cara desencajada de dolor e ira, justo antes de desaparecer bajo una lluvia torrencial una noche de otoño…

Todo es una vorágine tormentosa que la consume, le corta el aliento y amenaza con hace volar su cabeza incapaz de conjuntar tantas emociones a la vez. Es entonces cuando por encima de toda esa explosión emocional emerge una imagen. Una escena contemplada de manera furtiva desde la penumbra, bajo el umbral de una puerta en una vieja casa señorial.

La imagen de un humilde y viejo elfo doméstico escuchando la confesión de amor de Ronald Weasley por ella.

Y el sentimiento que ha sido ocultado por demasiado tiempo, ya no puede, ni quiere ser ocultado nunca más y se abre paso. La necesidad imperiosa, mayor que respirar, de tomar lo que es suyo por derecho y a la que ella se ha estado negando por demasiado tiempo.

Ella es apenas consciente de lo que ocurre alrededor, borracha como está, de la emoción que la envuelve. No escucha el sonido de unos colmillos golpeando el suelo, ni ve como una cicatriz en forma de rayo se deforma cuando las cejas sobre unos ojos verdes, se alzan cuando estos de abren de par en par, ni el movimiento de sus propias piernas, ni la sorpresa reflejada en una cara pecosa. Su corazón es lo único que ella siente, el amor que rebosa de él y después, el temblor de su propio cuerpo y la sensación de estar en casa cuando ella salta y se abraza al impresionante corpachón ante ella. El estremecimiento del núcleo de su vientre cuando ella ataca unos labios que parecen haber sido hechos sólo para ella. El vértigo que siente cuando Ronald Weasley, -Ron-, su primer, único y verdadero amor, la hace revolotear como una colegiala en el abrazo que la envuelve mientras le devuelve el beso, con una intensidad tal, que ella siente que se le encogen los dedos de los pies y el estremecimiento de su feminidad se hace tan intenso que arde. Arde como el mismo fuego del infierno en su interior.

«Él le ama.»

«Ella le ama.»

Y ambos lucharán como el infierno, contra cualquier poder, en el cielo o en la tierra que intentase volver a separarlos.

Fin.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/33387868

[clinioelerrante]

In a couple of days...

In a couple of days, Ron will be able to beat Hermione to death.

In a couple of days, a 50-year-old Death Eater will demand to marry Rose.

In a couple of days, Rose will be forced to leave school.

In a couple of days, Ginny won't be able to fly on a broom.

In a couple of days, Hermione will be expelled from the Ministry and forced to stay at home wearing a burka.

In a couple of days, Hugo will report Rose because she has a tattoo.

In a couple of days, Rose will be sentenced to 10 lashes for having a rainbow tattoo.

In a couple of days, thousands of half-bloods and muggle-borns will try to flee for their lives.

In a couple of days, thousands of half-breeds and Muggle-borns will be murdered on roads and highways and it will never be known.

In a couple of days, Harry, Draco, and Luna will be hanged to death for being gay.

In a couple of days...

...many won't have a couple of days.

No. Ron will never mistreat Hermione, nor will Rose be uneducated, nor will Hugo betray his sister, nor will Hermione and Ginny have to give up their careers. Harry, Draco and Luna will not die like dogs...

No. I have allowed myself to take writer's license and use my favourite couple, to convey how I feel about what is about to happen in Afghanistan.

We have abandoned them to their fate and the weight of this infamy will catch up with us in one way or another as time goes on.

In a few days, I will post something more pleasant about my favourite crazy couple. About the immense and desperate love they have for each other and their children.

But today, let me pray for those who will be left behind.

God help them.

[clinioelerrante]

Dentro de un par de días, Ron podrá golpear a Hermione hasta matarla. Dentro de un par de días, un mortífago de 50 años exigirá casarse con Rose. Dentro de un par de días, Rose será obligada a abandonar la escuela. Dentro de un par de días, Ginny no podrá volar sobre una escoba. Dentro de un par de días, Hermione será expulsada del ministerio y obligada a quedarse en casa vistiendo un burka. Dentro de un par de días, Hugo denunciará a Rose porque ella tiene un tatuaje. Dentro de un par de días, Rose será condenada a 10 latigazos por tener tatuado un arcoiris. Dentro de un par de días, miles de mestizos y nacidos de muggles intentarán huir para salvar la vida. Dentro de un par de días, miles de mestizos y nacidos de muggles serán asesinados en carreteras y caminos y jamás se sabrá. Dentro de un par de días, Harry, Draco, y Luna serán colgados hasta morir por ser gays. Dentro de un par de días... ...muchos no tendrán un par de días.

No. Ron nunca maltratará a Hermione, ni Rose no tendrá educación, no Hugo traicionará a su hermana, ni Hermione ni Ginny tendrán que abandonar sus carreras. Harry, Draco y luna no morirán como perros... No. Me he permitido tomarme la licencia del escritor y usar a mi pareja favorita, para trasmitir como me siento sobre lo que está a punto de pasar en Afganistán. Les hemos abandonado a su suerte y el peso de esta infamia nos alcanzará de una manera u otro con el paso del tiempo.

Prometo que en unos días, publicaré algo más agradable sobre mi pareja de locos favorita. Sobre el inmenso y desesperado amor que se tienen el uno al otro y a sus hijos. Pero hoy, permitidme rezar por los que van a quedar atrás. Que Dios les ayude.

[giuls233]

Can you draw mini-Ron standing on a BROKEN LEG and defending mini-Harry and mini-Hermione from mini-Sirius?? And also mini-Ron saying "ARE YOU A WITCH OR NOT??". Also mini-Ron crying out Hermione's name in the Malfoy Manor cellar. Also mini-Ron roasting Snape in Hermione's defence. Also mini-Ron punching out Draco. Also mini-Romione's book kiss. Also mini-Ron noticing Harry's Umbridge scar. Also mini-Ron explaining about the meaning of Mudblood.

Well this is quite the ask anon, SO COME GET YO FOOD:

Idk if the last 2 or the exact words bit you get the idea.

[clinioelerrante]

A peculiar discovery.

“This is absurd, Mr. Weasley!”  said McGonagall. There was a touch of weariness in his complaint and a perfect point of exasperation and disbelief when he rolled her eyes and raised her hands to heaven like asking to Most High for enough patience to be able to keep his composure.

“My arse it is!”  Ron mumbled underneath his breath retorting her decision in a rare emotional tidal wave from the professor of transfiguration and head of the Gryffindor house.

“I beg your pardon?” The expression of astonishment on the old teacher’s face is immediately replaced by the frown, the stony countenance, and the gaze above the crescent glasses which the students of Hogwarts have learned, since their first year is the equivalent of an imminent and particularly original detention.

“Nothing. Doesn’t matter”, the whisper escapes from a head down, red as hellfire, which, if it keeps going down, there was a good chance of ending up inside its own arse.

Minerva McGonagall has been a teacher at Hogwarts for many years and has certainly seen students from all classes with all kinds of families, personalities and individual problems. So, in theory, she should be versed in dealing with students from all walks of life, but even so, there is always someone in every generation of students, who simply do not fit into any of the classifications made to date. She thought that classification was complete when she had to face the gang led by James Potter and his friends Sirius Black, Remus Lupin and Peter Pettigrew, but it seems that this new generation has its own challenge to her patience. A really serious challenge, it seems, and one that is going to require all her patience and experience as a teacher and head of the one of the house of the school.

“Mr. Weasley”, she asks him, after taking a deep breath and composing herself in her office chair while she rests her forearms on the desk in front of her and leans slightly forward.  “This situation cannot be sustained any longer. Please look at my face as I speak to you”, She demands, causing the furious fire in front of her to be replaced by two blue eyes of surprising intensity despite her youth. “Mrs. Pomfrey has already noticed that you have been visiting Miss Granger in the infirmary every night outside curfew. She understands your concern for her and has been turning a blind eye to it to this day, but this situation is already unacceptable.”

The old teacher cannot help but feel a lump in her throat when she remembers the scene before her just a few hours ago when, at the request of the school nurse; she came to the nursing wing.

There, leaning on the bed occupied by the petrified Miss Granger, it stands amidst a jumble of scrolls of sloppy calligraphy; it was the head, with the traces of crying on his face, of a sleeping Ronald Weasley sitting by the bed while holding his friend’s hand.

“Mr. Weasley, from this moment on, you are “expressly" forbidden to go back to the infirmary outside visiting hours and especially outside curfew.”

“But Professor…” Minerva is not so much surprised by the interruption as by the vehement and passionate tone in which a hint of despair seems to be hidden. “Hermione has been petrified for weeks. She must be deadly bored, so I go and tell her all the things that happen at school, only the nice ones of course. Like the mandrakes are maturing and she’ll soon be fine and how boringLockhart’s classes are or how Harry’s great at quidditch and he swept the pitch with Malfoy’s stinking ass…” and then his face lights up like if he’s found the definitive and irrefutable point “… she’s been out of class and out of notes for a long time. When they wake her up, she’s going to be distraught, so I read her my own while I’m with her. I know they’re not as good and fucking perfect as hers…” the strict instructor’s hair stands up on the back of her neck when she hears such language, but not as much as when she feels the intensity of the feeling shining in the child’s eyes and translating it into his words, “…but at least they’re something and I’m sure she’ll be able to improve them as soon as she starts studying because she’s the best in the school, whatever asshole face Malfoy says and…”

Minerva’s detecting something now. There is loyalty in the child’s body language, but in his words, she finds something else - devotion. There is a genuine admiration for his friend, an unwavering desire to help her. Hagrid had told her about the slugs incident, and the teacher’s pride in her pupil was burning. Initially, she thought of punishing him, but the Gameskeeper’s recounting convinced her that the youngest of the Weasley boys had had enough punishment. McGonagall detected something else also: a threat to anyone who dared to harm her.

“Mr Weasley!” She interrupts him. “I think Professor Dumbledore has explained to you that petrified people feel absolutely nothing”. She uses a calm and instructive tone in an attempt to calm his own distress. “For them time has stopped. When Miss Granger is unpetrified, it will have will be very similar to that of having consumed a sleeping without dreams potion.”

“But she’d certainly be looking at how to help Harry and me if we were the ones petrified and missing class. Right now she would be raiding the library trying to find some way to wake us sooner, even if we were as dry as a one-eyed dragon’s eye. She’s crazy, I know, but I’m sure she would, and besides”, the intensity in his gaze that existed until that moment, disappears and is replaced by a shadow, while his shoulders fall and his voice descends to something more than a whisper. “Besides, it’s the only thing I can do after that stupid idea of the kiss failed so, I’m going to keep doing it no matter what”. At that moment Ronald Weasley seems oblivious to where and with whom he is, giving the impression that those last words are, rather, a reflection out loud to himself.

“Mr Weasley!” The professor suddenly stood and looked with open eyes at a stunned redhead whose facial expression quickly changed from surprise to understanding and from understanding to panic-. “Are you telling me that you abused a helpless… ?”

“NOOOO!”  The scream from his mouth was if he had been slapped by the accusation. “No. It’s not like you think… well, it’s … but not… I mean, I did kiss her, but it’s not like that, it’s not like that at all any way.”

“Explain yourself”. McGonagall’s voice suffers no kindness. It’s a pure ice knife ready to attack as soon slightest transgression it detects.

“Last year Hermione was talking to us about the differences in how muggles understand magic, and she was telling us some muggles stories of spells and curses. One of them tells the story of a woman who seems to fall under a spell so similar to the living dead potion and how she is reanimated, not by a potion, but a kiss! Yes. I know it’s crazy and that real magic doesn’t work that way, but I thought… FUCK!” The imprecation escapes meanwhile he runs his hands through his hair in a reflex act of desperation over his inability to explain the obvious. “Professor Dumbledore spends his time talking about magic and that it has aspects that are completely unknown and mysterious to us, and my best friend survived to the killing curse from the most evil and powerful wizard of all time so I thought, why not? Maybe the crazy muggles were talking through their hats and written their own version, so there was nothing to lose, so I kissed her on the forehead. I did it for her and because I don’t like seeing her like that. That doesn’t look like Hermione. That doesn’t look like my best friend”, he says, collapsing on the chair with his face in his hands.

With all her years, with all her experience, Minerva McGonagall, Head of Gryffindor House, member of the secret society known as The Order of the Phoenix, cannot help but gaze in disbelief at the revelation. One, which very few have had the opportunity to see in all its grandeur: Rebellion, concern, sacrifice, dedication, tenderness, loyalty, devotion, protection… desperation. All from an eleven-year-old boy already irrevocably in love with his schoolmate. Too young to be able to recognize her own feeling and give it a name, but so strong and indestructible that the old teacher can only pray to heaven that Hermione Granger’s heart will harbour the same feelings for the impetuous and stubborn Ronald Weasley.

The owner of all rights is JKR.

This was my work for the Romioneficfest 2020.

I apologize to the heirs of Shakespeare, but, I was really dying to publish something on Romioneficfest. I hope you can forgive my terrible English. A million thanks to the festival's moderator, who revised my grammar and put this story on a diet to keep it within the regulated parameters.

There's a dragon lady. That even though she always looks angry, we all know she has a tender heart.

Thank you.

#Romione FicFest 2020 #Fic Post#Romione #Ron Weasley #Hermione Granger #Submission #Queue Up for the Dragon #Rated T #Rated PG-13 #Mod note: Emailed to me and asked to edit.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/26120641/chapters/63539629

[clinioelerrante]

A girly chat

Summary:

Ginny and Hermione meet casually in the school halls after curfew. The situation is getting more complicated and. . . some things must be said, once and for all.

The copyrights of the characters belong to their creator J. K. Rowling.

 A girly chat

If the renowned Hogwarts School of Magic and Sorcery has a thousand years of tradition, there is possibly another tradition that is even older than Hogwarts. In fact, it is probably as old as it was when the first boarding school that took in teenagers of both sexes for almost a whole year was set up.

 Into the shadows, Ginny Weasley carefully scrutinized the last stretch of corridors to the staircase that finally led to the Gryffindor common room. A couple of hours ago the curfew had come into effect and now her only concern was to be able to reach the safety of the common room before some particularly fussy prefect, or worse, a teacher, discovered her returning late to her tower.

 She had split up with her boyfriend Dean a while ago after a not too satisfying snogging session and her mood was particularly irritable.

 Lately, things between the two of them haven't been working out as they should for a couple of girl and boyfriend. She was aware that there was an imbalance in the relationship. She liked Dean, that was indisputable and she would never have agreed to have a relationship if there was even the slightest interest on her part.

 It was one thing to have a very satisfying intense and passionate snogging session in the heat of the moment and quite another to maintain a relationship with another person with nothing more than the purely physical. Not that she was against it. In fact, some of her classmates had that kind of relationship, “a term flirt", they called it. The kind that start a few weeks into the school year and end up back home for the summer holidays with some of the Hogwarts Express carriage suspiciously isolated from the rest with silencing spells, door locks and a few imperturbable ones too. It was simply that this type of relationship was not for her and the point was as time passed, the relationship with Dean seemed to slide dangerously towards that way.

 She was fully aware that Dean was the one most emotionally involved in that relationship. In fact, Ginny was beginning to suspect that Dean was genuinely falling in love with her, and while it was true that she was attracted to the bloke, it was even more true that she was nowhere near as attracted to him same way.

 To make matters worse, Dean was developing a somewhat overprotective feelings about her and, without intending to, was overwhelming her with all his solicitous displays of attention. She knew that he didn't mean to do it on purpose, but for a country girl who had to deal with six older brothers, two of whom were the biggest and most terrible pranksters in the history of the school, another who had the dubious honour of being the biggest blind stubborn who ever walked the face of the earth, one leading member of Dumbledore’s army, one sneaky fighter in the mystery department and owner of the most terrifying bat-bogey hex known, all those attentions were, to put it mildly, a pain in the ass.

 To add to all this the growing, even at the end of February, level of anxiety that every fifth year student experiences as the dates for the OLWs tests approach, the initial appreciation that Ginny's mood was particularly irritable tends to fall short and, if by the hands of the devil, we add as the last ingredient to the potion the Weasley name and its legendary explosive temperament, it is not necessary to have an NEWT  in potions to discover that we are faced with the perfect elaboration of the “Weasley Wrath” potion trademark and, only a fool, a suicidal, a desperate person or someone absolutely unaware of the delicate boil that was cooking in the small body of the redhead, would think of taking it out of the pot.

 Ginny Weasley wasn't the only one wandering the halls at that hour. Also on the way to the common room, Hermione Granger was returning from one of her lonely prefect patrols. For months now, she had avoided patrolling with the other prefect of Gryffindor, so she simply left the common room early and made an erratic patrol of the castle in a desperate attempt not to find him in her path. If she had met him or anyone else, they would have immediately noticed her swollen eyelids, her red eyes and the soft sob that escaped from her mouth. Normally she would try to hide these already constant features on her face through some make-up, glamorous charms, impeccable uniformity and an apparent indifference to what was going on around her, but today she was too hurt, despondent and tired to realize her real look.

 Having spent more than half of her shift in a secluded corner blowing off steam in her crying, all she wanted was to reach the quiet of her bed, cast an imperturbable spell and keep crying until the tiredness overtook her and she fell asleep.

 It had been months since Ronald Weasley had started dating Lavender Brown and contrary to what might have been expected, the pain of heartbreak had not diminished one iota, quite the contrary. As the weeks passed, it was manifesting itself in all its majestic and vileness.

 It was simply agony!

 Her daily routine had become an unconscious attempt to avoid him for any means. Waking up even earlier, skipping meals, going to classroom for unusual routes, prolonging her library study hours beyond what was customary there to her. . . every conceivable means had been used by her to avoid him, but it had not been enough. Somehow, as always with Ron, it was never enough.

 She couldn't avoid him completely, whether it was in classroom, in the common room, at her frugal meals or even in the library, where he would go when he had no choice but to complete his schoolwork and even though she tried so hard not to notice him when he was in those risk areas, it was so unlikely that she thought the expression “ignoring the elephant in the room” was an understatement and should be replaced for “ignoring the Ronald in the room”, because a redheaded lighthouse more than six feet high was frankly impressive and even harder to avoid.

 To her greatest misery, where her brain was plotting escapes, her treacherous heart longed to see the one responsible for her misery and more than once she surprised herself looking for in the direction she knew the insufferable redhead was. The problem was that usually the image her hungry eyes encountered was not that of a lonely, bucolic Ron pining for her, but of a nasty Ronald Bilius Weasley who seemed to have attached with a permanent Sticking Charm to Lavender Brown's mouth.

 Those were the worst times for Hermione, except for the nights when these images of constant kissing were repeated incessantly and while part of she was disgusted and nauseous at such sexual display, it was no less true that another part of she, most of she to be honest, desperately wanted to tear Lavender from her face and transfigure her into a couch on which to throw Ron so that she could measure his tonsils with her own tongue. That was the moment when the tears came to his eyes uncontrollably and the need to take refuge somewhere isolated arose.

 So, the lonely prefect rounds were in a way a blessing and a curse.

 Blessing because she was allowed to hide in any of the school's classrooms where she could vent her tears sometimes, sometimes with a brief burst of anger. Curse, because in the lonely rooms of the castle, that was when her brain was at its most tortured and that night, the memories had been particularly painful.

 Without pretending to rejoice in her grief, she had gone back in time, remembering the happy moments with Ron, especially after the incident, saved by the skin of her teeth, from the Mystery Department. Even before, she had felt that something was changing in their relationship as friends, as for example, when she discovered that Ron had given her a bottle of perfume, but it had never been so evident until after the disastrous raid that had taken Sirius ´life.

 The point was that ever since she woke up with the ugly scar on her chest, she shuddered at the memory, Ron had been with her all the time, comforting her and even, in a moment of weakness she had, making her feel that the imprint had not diminished in any way how beautiful she might look to a man. Quite the opposite. It was proof that she was a brave woman willing to face any manifestation of injustice and evil and if any man was not able to see it, then he would not be worthy of her love.

 “If I knew a woman who was willing to fight like that for me. . .“, he had started with a dreamy look, “...I'd be in love with her forever and someday I'd make her my wife“. Causing her to fall on his own arse if she hadn't been lying on one of the beds in the school infirmary wing, at the same time that she becomes a puddle of drool.

 She had barely been able to stop herself from grabbing his shirt, drawing him in front of her and facing his eyes, telling him:

 There's one who's been fighting for you since the bloody second year and you still haven't noticed, you stupid idiot! and then kissed him like there's no tomorrow.

 Instead, she'd babbled something unintelligible, burst into moan, and then she'd taken refuge in his chest and burst into tears.

 Great, Hermione! She thought as she banged her head repeatedly against the nearest wall. You had your chance on a silver platter and you chose that moment to show yourself as a weak, crying damsel. You are mum Myrtle pride.

 Previous times, during the summer, she had gone to The Burrow like so many others and had to admit that there had been a change in Ron's behaviour. Somehow, he seemed to be more solicitous of her without that meaning the end of his usual discussions. It simply seemed as if it was easier for them to be together without provoking each other for trivial matters, at least until “Fleeeerg" with her stunning beauty and “teggific" accent, made her presence felt in the vicinity, at which point Ron seemed to be slightly dazed and in spite of everything, she had to admit that this daze lasted for only a moment before he pulled himself together. Sometimes Hermione helped him with a particularly hard and cruel slap, on the other hand very satisfying for her, on the back of his neck.  Anyway, his reactions to Fleur's presence weren’t more that a brief stunned. Just the opposite to the pitiful sight of the fourth year.

 In short, his behaviour in the hospital wing, The Burrow and the first months of the term at Hogwarts did not bode well for what was to come. In fact, she thought they were taking steps in the right direction until after she invited him to Professor Slughorn's party and perhaps that was the final reason she felt so broken. She had been brushing against happiness with her fingertips so close that she could almost feel it and suddenly found herself touching. . . nothingness.

 Thus she was immersed in her own reflections and returning to the stairs leading to the Gryffindor Tower when she seemed to perceive the movement of a shadow lurking in the darkness of the corridors.

 Surely if she had been sufficiently rested and clear-minded her reaction could have been better, but for someone who is personally, emotionally exhausted, and with Hermione Granger's history of unpleasant encounters, this was perfectly understandable:

 “IMPEDIMENTA!”

 It had been like suddenly hitting an invisible wall. Convinced that the path between her hiding place and the stairs leading to her target was free of obstacles, she had launched herself into a swift race towards the stairs and, at a stroke, bounced back.

 If the initial impact had been brutal, falling to the cold, hard floor of the school in an uncontrolled manner had not been a piece of cake either, but if she had learned anything from her recent fight it was that pain could wait. Because in the time it takes to complain about the wounds, a spell with very, very bad intentions can go after you and that is definitely much worse than the pain itself. So as soon as she had finished bouncing around on the floor of the corridor, she threw herself to the side as she wielded her wand to confront her assailant and found herself facing another wand, behind which were astounded and very familiar brown eyes.

 “Her. . . Hermione?”

 “Ginny?”

 They were both so bewildered that they forgot to lower their respective wands, which continued to point at each other like a mournful omen, until the prefect of Gryffindor surrendered hers while offering her other hand to help the friend with the sore arse.

 “For God's sake, Ginny”, she scolded her as he helped her up. “You scared me to death. What are you supposed to be doing at this hour outside your bedroom lurking in the school halls?” She finished.

  “Oh! I don't know”, accepting help meanwhile she rubbed her bruised arse with her other hand and giving her friend an unfriendly look, the redhead's response was not long in coming. “Maybe wait until a hot wand witch was encouraged to use me as a target for her shooting practice”, she said sarcastically.

 “You know that's not what I'm asking you, Ginny”. Hermione ignored the little voice at the back of her head which told her to answer with the same irony, an instinctive reflex, and the fruit of the continuous and biting training that she practiced daily with the youngest of Ginny’s brothers.

 That was before, she corrected herself. We are even talking to each other anymore, she told herself and after all, Ginny was her best friend. The one who had been supporting her in her worst moments making imaginative descriptions of her stupid brother to try and cheer her up.

  “Okay, okay. I've been spending some time with Dean”, she explained as she dusted off his uniform. “Far from prying eyes, Hermione. Is that good enough for you, or would you prefer me to give you more details about our business?” She ended up with a smile that had nothing innocent about it.

 “Save me the nauseating details please, I have just finished my dinner and I would like to keep it inside my stomach, thank you very much.”

 A nasty expression was drawn on her face and the youngest Weasley didn't know for sure if it was more fake than real. What if it was completely real is, that it was the most blatant lie Hermione Granger had ever told her.

 “Hermione”. She paused for a brief moment thinking of how to approach the subject. “I didn't actually see you in the big dining room during dinner so, I'm wondering if you had anything to eat?”

  “Well. . . er. . . me. Yes”. . . She stuttered. “I was actually late while completing my homework, so when I realized this, I spent a moment in the kitchens while making my rounds.”

 “Hermione. . .”

 “Giiiinny?”

 All right, the gentle approach didn't seem to yield the desired result, so it was time to tighten the screws a bit. Ginny had a genuine concern about Hermione's health. She was aware of how little she ate and of the use of glamorous charms on herself. Not for nothing, she had been her only real friend and confidant.

 “Hermione, don't try to hide it”, her voice took on a tone of harshness necessary to provoke her friend reaction. Hermione tended to ignore all the negative things said about her and the requirements that displeased her. That doesn't mean it didn't hurt, like when Draco Malfoy constantly insulted her, but making a habit of it, she tended not to give it much of her attention at the moment.

 “It's because of my arse of a brother, isn't it?”

 The prefect's expression of pain and the sinking of her shoulders confessed exactly what Ginny had suspected.

 “Hermione, this has to stop now”, she continued, looking into her eyes. “He is a perfect prat, we know it but, look at yourself. Your eyes look like they've fallen victim to the conjunctivitis curse and you’ve been crying so much that even the tiny amount of makeup you do wear got smeared’. You don't eat. You don't rest. I doubt you're even getting enough sleep. You can't keep hiding it with glamour charms. You have to talk to him.”

 “I don't have anything to talk to that. . . that. . . lubricious dog”, Hermione said, her body went rigid at the mere suggestion of talking to Ron. Under no circumstances would she stoop to talking to him.

 “Hermione…” Ginny was patient enough to confront her friend. Sometimes she was surprised at how damned stubborn she could be and how much she and Ron were alike in that. “Right now you're being miserable and stupid too. Yes; stupid. Don't look at me like that”, she defended herself when the brunette frowned at her. “Think about it. Since you stopped talking to him, you don't have him like your couple or like your best friend anymore.

 This does not mean that you have stopped nursing a broken heart, or that have you forgotten him. You’ve closed off any chance you might have had from making him realise he’s a right tool for dating Lavender because he can’t already to notice how extraordinary you are. How's he going to notice if you aren’t anywhere near him?

 Ginny knew it was her turn to tell a big lie. Ron already knew how extraordinary Hermione was. During the summer holidays of the fourth year, Voldemort's return had been a constant topic in family conversations, but the other big topic had been Ron's monologues explaining how damned cool Hermione was and that a certain Bulgarian “pumpkin head” didn't deserve her at all. They used to end with the twins placed one on each side of a red Ronald in rage, while imitating a pair of languid-looking violinists, playing a romantic tune.

 “Don't go down that road, Ginevra. As far as I'm concerned, your brother has ceased to exist. I'm not going to let him keep hurting me one way or another”, Hermione interrupted her as she proudly raised her chin and passed a sleeve of his school sweater over her face to clean it. “He was the one who started treating me like dragon dung after I invited him to the Slughorns party and I don't even know why. I can't remember anything I could have offended him about and I don't care anymore. As far as I'm concerned, he can take Lavender and do whatever he likes with her.”

 Ginny could hear the tremor in Hermione's voice when she made her last statement, but she couldn't tell her that not for a moment had she managed to fool her with that bombastic claim that she didn't care at all what Ron and Lavender did together, because a feeling drowned out her own voice. A feeling called. . . remorse.

 “In fact. . .” Her words escaped in a whisper from between her lips as her gaze rested on her own shoes.

 Hermione stopped her walk when she saw Ginny to stop. Even through the veil of tears that covered her eyes, she could sense that something was wrong with Ginny.

 “Ginny, what. . . ?”

 “In fact”, She took every ounce of courage to lift her eyes off the ground to face her friend's, knowing that what was coming now would have frightening, unknown, and possibly disastrous consequences. “I think you should know that not Ron’s entire fault.”

 For months, Ginny had been carrying guilt about what happened between Hermione and her brother. She knew that Ron had processed in the worst possible way the information that she had let slip. No doubt her passionate brother was ultimately responsible for the entire aftermath, yes, but there was no denying that her indiscretion had been the trigger for everything that had happened afterwards.

 “Ginny. What do you mean?” Something shook in Hermione's gut. Something dark and slimy, like a premonition that something terrible was coming, something that made her afraid to know the answer.

 “Hermione… you see… a few months ago Harry surprised me when I was snogging Dean behind a tapestry.”

 “Well”. For a moment she hoped that that awful feeling of apprehension was just her imagination. “I don't think Harry liked that very much and I understand that you felt uncomfortable, but I don't understand how. . .” but when she saw Ginny Wesley’s serious face, that hope vanished like sea foam.

 “Ron was with him.”

 A freezing cold ran down Hermione Granger's spine, making her wince while her heart seemed to have missed a beat.

 “Wh-what else happened, Ginny?”

  “Ron… well, you know how overprotective he is… he burst into a speech about my reputation, what everyone would think of me, and practically called me a scarlet slut”. Ginny blushed furiously as she remembered the whole incident. “I finally told him there was nothing wrong with it. I made fun of him that he wished Fleur would kiss his cheek and that his best kiss had come from Aunt Muriel”. Her voice seemed to raise an octave at a time as she was telling it, as if the memory were recreating the anger she felt against her meddlesome brother at that moment. “That everyone was doing it and enjoying it except him. I teased him and told him, if he kissed Pigwidgeon, Harry kissed Cho, and you. . .” Ginny was interrupted at that moment when she realized the look full of pain and betrayal that Hermione was giving her with all her intensity.

 “Say it, Ginevra Weasley”. An acidic poison filtered through her words as she waited for the statement that would confirm what her heart already knew.

 “You kissed Viktor”, she finished, in a whisper.

 And there it all was. Hermione felt her eyes fill with tears as her tiny body shook with rage. The ultimate reason for her broken heart and her pain, for her frustration and her bitterness, for the caresses and kisses that were denied her and given to another, for the worst months of her live in short, was finally before her.

 Feeling the bile rise in her throat she began to turn around to run to a toilet where she could vomit when she felt her elbow being caught as she listened:

 “Hermione, I. . . I'm sorry.”

 That was already more than he could bear.

 “Are you sorry? You, who call yourself my best friend, do you feel sorry?” For months she had been containing all her feelings of pain, resentment and hate under a seemingly flawless facade, but Ginny's confession had caused a rift and all that steam that had now found a weak spot was uncontainable. “And what exactly are you sorry for, Ginny? Are you sorry you didn't tell me so I could have tried to fix it at the time? Or are you sorry you to stole my hope and my chance for happiness? Or maybe are you sorry you didn't keep Dean's tongue inside your big mouth and avoid destroying everything”, she said as he trembled with anger and pain, feeling the magic crackling between her fingers, asking for permission to claim her wand and curse the redheaded traitor.

 “You knew how I felt about your brother”, her face reddened with pure fury, as her eyes filled with the tears of broken hope. “You knew I was afraid of how Ron would react if he found out about Viktor. I begged you, I pleaded with you to keep it a secret“, her voice began to break. “I supported, comforted and suggest you when you were a nervous wreck with Harry. I defended you so that your brothers would not leave you behind and take you out of danger like a weak little girl unable to defend herself. I put my heart in your hands and my trust in your silence and you… you betrayed it all because you couldn't control your temper when they stopped you having a goddamn shag with your boyfriend?”

 Okay. Hermione had overstepped the mark. Ginny wasn't a Weasley for nothing. She understood that she was broken by the pain, but it was also true that she needed to learn something and, by Merlin! She was going to learn it! Even if it meant casting a full-body binding spell on her! The pain and remorse for the involuntary betrayal of her friend was not the only thing on Ginny Wesley’s conscience. There was also something else, and it was time to bring it out into the open.

 “It was your fault that you and Ron never got anywhere too, Granger! I'm sorry, but that was”. Hermione felt as if the previous insult had been added to a slap. Not only was the charge harsh, but Ginny had used her last name, something that only happened when she was particularly angry. She wanted to answer, but she didn't have time to reply before the temperamental redhead started talking again without taking her eyes off the stunned prefect.

 “Do you ever really wonder why he's with Lavender and not with you? Have you ever really tried to put yourself in his shoes to understand what he saw in her or what she offered him and that you never gave him?”

 Hermione felt again the taste of bile rise in her throat and only the anger that burned inside her like hellfire prevented her from vomiting right there.

 “Sex! That hooker is shagging him. . .” escaped between her teeth in a hiss so low and so loaded with hate and contempt that it seemed pure poison.

  “For Merlin’s beard!” Hermione was surprised to find Ginny who rolled her eyes in obvious disbelief. “Do you really think Ron's with her because they're fucking like rabbits, Hermione? Merlin! I knew Ron was a tough cookie, but I think you could give him a run for his”. Her eyes fell back on the increasingly stupefied, frizzy-haired witch.

 “And, when were they supposed to start ‘copulating’, Hermione?”Ginny made an obscene gesture with both hands and a finger. “He was stuck with you from the time the course started until the day you decided to stop talking to him. You shared classes; you shared patrols around the school. He had the quidditch training sessions. When he was in the common room he was joking or slaughtering Harry at chess and when it was neither of those things, he was with you in the library begging you to help him with his homework. So unless he has a time-turner or is sneaking out at night, can you tell me what time of day he takes to sneak out and to shagging Lavender into the wall?” Ginny thought her explanation had made the point, but as she watched the brunette's frown grow into a gesture of intense concentration she could not help but be horrified.

 “I can't believe it!” She raised her arms to the incredulous sky. “You're really considering what I said? Well, I have to tell you something, genius! Two people are needed for that activity. Did you ever see Lavender mysteriously disappear before all this mess and, come back dishevelled, with hickeys or looking appropriately fucked?”

 Ginny was reassured to see the light of sanity in Hermione's eyes again, but this was quickly replaced with a deep sadness that obscured her gaze.

 “So, if it wasn't the sex, I don't know what you mean, Ginny. I understand what he sees in her. Lavender is everything I'm not physically, but I've been her friend since first year. I thought he would appreciate that much more.”

 Ginny's disbelief in Hermione's blindness was reaching cosmic proportions.

 “Exactly! That's what he sees. To a woman who offers him the attention of a friend and sometimes less than that. He has never seen from you any attention or, Merlin, not so much as a compliment’ that reflects more than friendship for him, Hermione!” she spat  while the other girl seemed to look like a victim of a stunning spell, but Ginny pressed on, determined not to give Hermione any chance to replicate.

 “You never told him he was worth it! A mention at the end of the third year after Sirius broke his leg, and little else! Never as quidditch player. Damn it! You didn't even see him in his victory last year, when he was the star of the game without being, for once, under Harry's shadow, grounded by the disgusting toad. No. You left with Hagrid. You ignored him again. He understands you putting him behind Harry, but Hagrid? For Merlin’s sake, Hermione”, the temperamental redhead put her hands on her hips, meanwhile she went back to her bewildered friend again. “You've seen his performance in DA. He's the best duellist after Harry. He only fails when he's confronted with you. The poor jerk is not even able to hold his wand properly when he has your image in front of him. . .” a mischievous smile slips on Ginny's face for the first time. . . “in your presence, at least.”

 Hermione's jaw dropped and her eyes opened wide as a furious blush covered her cheeks at the prying comment of the meddling sister, and her heart seemed to go crazy in her chest when she wonders what she meant and one, not at all honest, image of Ron “wand in hand” seems to venture into her mind, causing a shudder in her belly.

 But before she can revel in it, the truce given by the youngest of the Weasleys concludes.

 “Did you ever tell him he was a good wizard? No; not like a friend, not like a partner, but a WIZARD. Did you ever really fight for him?”

 Ginny was sorry. It really pained her to yell at her best friend that way, especially when she saw Hermione’s face in pain. It was one thing to launch an offense of the moment and quite another to proceed with a full-blown assault, but it was too late. A dam had been broken and the torrent was already uncontrollable, moreover. Some things needed to be said and done, no matter how much they might hurt and perhaps make them look.

 “Lavender did it! She noticed a wizard she liked, she found him funny, she found him fanciable, handsome, worthy of being shown off as her boyfriend and who knows what else in my dumb brother, and she showed her! That's why you lost him. Because you drowned in your own insecurity and fed his! And it won't be because you didn't have more than one warning!” Her eyes narrowed as she stared at her know-it-all friend.

 “Do you really think that Padma Patil, proud Ravenclaw and one of the most beautiful girls in the whole school, didn't have other suitors for the Yule Ball? Or... Are you seriously going to argue that you didn’t notice how Luna was staring at him all of last year?

 It was as if Hermione had been hit with a stinging spell. Of course! She had noticed the sustained glances the grey-eyed blonde had given Ron and the conversations she seemed to be looking for when the meeting was over. Although compared to what she felt against Lavender it was a trifle, that time was definitely when she felt the green-eyed monster establish a permanent camp in his heart.

 “You can be thankful that he's completely clueless, or he could’ve ended up giving his heart to someone a long time ago”, she said with a suggestive eyebrow.

 “But no. You decided to stay in no-man-land, with no initiative, ignoring warnings. Perhaps thinking… no, hoping… that no one else would notice him. Obviously, he won't have a second look from Madame Rosmerta right now and you might even find it comical to remember the Yule Ball incident with Fleur, but if you took a moment to reflect on who Fleeeeeerg's fiancé is, you might find out what another Weasley looks like”, she said with an eyebrow raised again as one of the corners of his mouth seemed to rise in a mocking smile. “Maybe if she hadn't met Bill and Ron had gotten a couple more years to grow up. . . Well, Gabrielle is a Delacour too, is veela too and she's pretty cute, don't you think?” Ginny's smile looked awfully similar to George and Fred's when they were preparing some of their shenanigans against Ron. “Really I don't know, though. After all, my brother seems to have a thing for women “older..." with her fingers, she simulated the quotation marks“...that him.”

 If Hermione's brain seemed to have been blocked with the information overload, her heart, which had seen all the signs! It seemed to have been used as the model in one of Professor McGonagall's classes and transformed into an angry hummingbird that buzzed in her chest protesting that it'd been silenced for so long and shouting I told you so!

  “Maybe, deep down, you're still seeing the eleven-year-old boy you met on the train”, Hermione’s shoulders sank in resignation, “and you didn't realize that boy is long gone! Someone's here! Someone claimed him as her own! And now, you're learning the lesson he learned in fourth year: that one day someone could come along and take him away from you...  FOREVER.”

 That had been overwhelming. Hermione felt as if she had been caught in an avalanche and it was dragging her helplessly down the mountain, unable to resist its uncontrollable power.

 “B. . . Bu...” she stuttered as she tried to pull herself together. “But I… I gave him clues. I invited him to Professor Slughorn's party; I kis... kissed him before the game. . .”

 “On the cheek, damn it!” Ginny blew up, interrupting her. “Like if he was just a brother or a baby boy!”

 “He hasn’t ever implied that he has any other interest in me”, her voice fell in a whisper that did not even seem to have the strength to convince herself. “H... He called me a nightmare once.”

 “Merlin’s beard, Hermione! He was an eleven-year-old boy who was overwhelmed by a girl who had read and memorized all the books of the first year before starting school and who in her first class of spells, casted a perfect spell on her first attempt when she didn't even know she was a witch until three months before.”

 “Is that it, then?” If there was a daze before, it was now as if she were in the presence of a boggart facing her worst fears. “He thinks he must be with a pureblood because I am a freak who should have been a pitiful witch for being mugg-muggleborn and...” Her thoughts died on her lips when she suddenly found herself at the other side of Ginny's wand.

 “Don't even complete that sentence, Granger,” Ginny's face had become so red that it was practically purple. “Don't even think about completing it”, she hissed. “Ron may be too blind to see what's right in front of his eyes, but I won't have you insulting my brother like that”. Her voice is practically vibrating with wrath. “You didn't see him completely devastated at your bedside after the raid on the mystery department, nor when he came, every night! To watch over you when the basilisk petrified you, back in your second year!”, Hermione's eyes open wide as a moan escapes her chest at the revelation, but the redhead is not finished with her.

 “Did you know he confronted McGonagall and Mrs Pomfrey when they wanted to force him to stop visiting you? That he fought a giant spider for you? Don't you remember when he spent an afternoon throwing up slugs for you? Yeah. He may be a more of an oblivious prat than anyone else I know, but his heart has always been in the right place. Maybe the problem is that there's more than oblivious prat round here.”

 “You always told him that Krum was just a friend, but you never told him that you did NOT love Viktor and you didn't know or didn't want, to caught him between the rock and the wand and ask him: Why are you jealous? and force him to confess. With all the stupid fights you have all the time! The most important was the one you didn't provoke it, when you know, Ron works best with a direct approach and is very insecure under the shadow of his brothers, but there are more so”.

 “Your pride got the better of you and you never told him you were Krum's Yule’s Ball partner. If you had told him, he might have had more time to deal with it. But  you didn’t. Without wanting to, you rubbed it in his face and you never stopped to think that when he saw you on Krum’s arm, before the jealousy, he must have felt that you didn’t trust him.”

 “You didn't realize, I'll give you that”, she raised her hand before Hermione can even hear the whole sentence, “you were always comparing him to Harry. . . Harry, the handsome one. . . Harry, who grew up so much last summer. . . Harry, with his manly scars. . . Harry, the bloke... Harry, the fanciable one. . . Harry, the great teacher. . . Harry, who kissed Cho “in a more than satisfactory way. . . Harry, who you never accused of being an insensitive wart or of having the emotional range of a teaspoon. . . even though Harry is as blind and made the same mistakes, if not bigger, about girls, as Ron”, the redhead's voice broke for one moment.

 “Yes. You invited him to Professor Horace's party, but do you remember how you did it? You didn't tell him that you want to go with him, but, that guests were allowed to bring companions and that you had planned to invite him. How do you think that sounded to him? Perhaps, like an act of mercy towards the mediocre friend of The Chosen One and The most brilliant witch of her generation, The Slug Club’s honour guests?” Ginny questioned Hermione with a look. “You told me how excited you were to have quality time with him at Grimmauld Place before Harry came, remember? You told me and only because I had you over a barrel, but did you ever tell him? How happy you were to be able to share some quality time, you with him? Have you realized that he always invited you to our home, but you never invited him to yours?”

 “And finally”, Ginny's pupils were so high that it looked like her eyes were going to roll back on themselves, “the icing on the cake. Instead of telling him he wouldn't have needed the Felix potion, because you were sure he would be able to play an extraordinary game on his own, you attacked him for using it. A perfect continuation of what happened in the summer before fifth year. Who was elected prefect, Hermione? It was Harry, wasn't it?”

 Hermione felt as if a stone had been tied to her feet and thrown into the coldest dungeon. Ginny had laid out the facts in a cold, one-on-one manner, as if she were a court prosecutor giving her an overview she had never acknowledged before. But of all that, what hurt her most, it was the mention of Ron's prefecture. She would have been happy to give up her soul in order to correct that terrible mistake and, even then, the implacable redhead did not seem to have finished with her.

 “And you can still be thankful he doesn't know what you did with McLaggen in the keeper trials”. As soon as she heard her, she was no longer hopelessly abandoned in a dirty dungeon, but her hands were tied behind her back, a bag was placed over her head and she was thrown into the sea as she sank irretrievably into an abyss that did not allow her to breathe. “Harry just used a mind trick on him. He made him to think he was invincible because Harry had cheated, but. . . YOU DID IT! Can you imagine what it'd do to his self-esteem if he found out about that? That would make him see that you see him as useless. Like a snotty baby who needs to be helped to walk, unable to do anything good by himself. . .”

 “IT'S A ROTTEN LIE!” The burst of the heartbreaking scream gave way to uncontrollable crying. The grief that had gradually set in Hermione's chest could no longer be contained and she could no longer bear it. “It has never been like that”, a whiny whisper escaped her lips before she put her hands over her face and felt herself falling to her knees on the cold stone.

 “It's never been like this.” If seeing Ron with Lavender had been like having her heart ripped out of her chest, Ginny had ripped her soul out like a dementor leaving her hollow, empty inside. In the last remnants of her sanity she wondered if all the Weasley siblings had the gift of cruelty.

 “He's extraordinary”. She sobbed. “He doesn't realize it, but he is and that frustrates me so much”, she confessed. “He doesn't realize it, but I see it. I've been watching it ever since I saw that long and gawky redheaded guy with dirt on his nose. He was adorable when he tried to do magic with Pettigrew trying to turn him yellow. Why do you think it hurt me so much to be called a nightmare, when I had been called worse things in my old muggle school?”

 Now the surprise had changed sides and it was the redheaded Weasley who was left with her eyes wide open as she felt the longing in her friend's voice.

 “Because it was him who told me!” She almost screamed, raising her face to the sky to confront her inquisitor. “I wouldn't have cared if the insult came from anyone else! I was already ignoring the “know-it-all”, “cactus-head” and “beaver-toothed” comments that some were giving me, but I didn't care about him. I wanted to be his friend. His friend! That's why I was willing to lie to McGonagall!”

 The crying had finally stopped and as she focused her inflamed, red eyes on her best friend, they began to glow with the passion behind them.

 “Do you really think I don't see the kind of extraordinary wizard. . .? NO!”  She interrupted herself and there was real pride in her voice now.

  “Not because he's wizard! It would be exactly the same if he were muggle. Do you think I don't see the kind of extraordinary MAN he's meant to be as long as he has a little more confidence in himself?” She had raised her chin now when pride in her best friend had surged over her chest threatening to pop the buttons on her shirt while, the vocal inflection she imprinted when she referred to him as man made a chill run down Ginny's back from the back of her neck to where her back loses its honest name.

 No. That was not desire only. It was much more! It was a wild wish. Primary and possessive like the predator that stalks its prey. Ginny had no doubt that if at that moment her carefree brother had turned up there; despite her anger, despite her spite, Hermione would have cornered him against the wall and ridden him like a wild beast marking him as her own forever, and yet the temperamental redhead grasped something else. Underneath that entire wish, there was something else. Something she knew but had never understood in its fair measure until then.

 Love.

 A love so immeasurable and desperate that it could consume all the lives that Hermione Jean Granger could live.

 “Do you think I haven't seen how loyal he is? Do you think I don't see the gratitude he professes for Harry since he chose him over Malfoy before he was classified?” Hermione had lost all inhibition and stood proudly on the ground. She had been accused without knowing the fullness of her feelings for Ron. Good. So be it. In return, she would bare her soul and burn everyone who saw it with the burning radiance of her love for him.

 “Ronald would be able to go down to hell with one arm tied behind his back if Harry asked him to. Yes, that's right. I didn't know about the acromantula affair or his confrontation with the teachers, but knowing that doesn't change what I feel, because that's not the fear that nests in my heart. No”, she said as she nodded her head. “My terror is not to know what or how many more times he's done it. I saw him standing front of Sirius, battered, bleeding, with a broken leg,... no wand and willing to be an insurmountable wall between Harry and me. Willing to drop dead rather than let him pass”, his proud pose now cracks and for a moment his body trembles, but she pulls herself together. Her face hardens again and her gaze returns to her best and most painfully sincere friend.

 “No Ginevra. That's not what grips my heart and squeezes it like a black claw. I am not afraid of all he has done, because he has done it, it is past and now he is here, safe and with me. What terrifies me is what he will do”, an atom of understanding appears in the eyes of the redhead what is quickly replaced with fear when she comes to understand all the consequences of Hermione's point. “I know it. One day he'll come between me and a deadly curse and he will be taken from me by it, Ginny. He'll be ripped away from me and there's nothing I can do to stop him”. There was so much love in Hermione's eyes, so much devotion, so much pride and so much despair that Ginny's heart trembles as she notices the moisture flooding her own eyes.

 “And I don't need that to love him. I used to do it before all that. It just makes me love him even more. With such intensity and such desperation that it hurts Ginny. It really hurts”. Tears now roll freely down both women's faces.

 “Do you think I don't know that he sees himself as stupid, ignorant and mediocre in everything? But I've seen him beat McGonagall when he was twelve. I have seen him develop a brilliant strategy to protect Harry and me with the cost of his own life on a deadly chessboard”, again her voice trembled, as she relived in her mind that horrible scene of Ron being brutally beaten by the queen while for the second time, the youngest of the Weasleys regretted opening her big mouth and how similar she was to her closest brother.

 “You're saying I don't realize his magical abilities? That, I can't see that he's with the same level as Harry? But have you noticed how much better a wizard he is than I am?” Hermione has a dark satisfaction in watching Ginny's wide open eyes. She, who has accused her of despising her brother, is not innocent of the same sin.

 “He hardly studies. He falls asleep in all the history of Magic classes, is always late to write his essays. . . So what? He is able to perform any spell once he has seen the technique; he doesn't even need to study it. I can’t see it before, but I understood it at the end of last year. He doesn't give a damn about any data or magic that has no practical application. Now he causes hilarity because in class of transformations he invoked a huge moustache when the spell failed”, a sad smile comes to her face when she remembers the scene. “But when he finds out how useful they can be in hiding from the Deatheaters, to do body transformations will be like breathing for him”. Hermione pauses for a moment, as if needing to rearrange his thoughts after his vehement exposure, and on his serious face, an ironic smile is drawn.

 “So, how did he feel overwhelmed by me when I levitated a quill at Professor Flitwick's class?” And now it was the fire of defiance that burns in her eyes when she turns to Ginny.

 “He used ‘Wingardium Leviosa’ to knock out a mountain with its own club in the middle of a combat to death” And just in that moment, Ginevra Molly Weasley realized that in front of her was not a haughty Hermione Jean Granger, but the still unconscious Ron Weasley’s wife in fiery and proud vindication of her husband.

 “The only problem is his damn insecurity”, there was a hint of sadness in her voice now. “He feels so inadequate under the shadow of all of you that, God! Sometimes I feel in my fingers the magic to curse all of you for having contributed to that. But when he is safe, when he is calm, when he does not feel the need to prove himself to anyone, when he does not have time to think or when no one sees him, he is amazing. I. . . I only cause him to he see himself as he is, as the others see him, as Luna see him!” She sobs. “There's not a more beloved prefect in the whole school! Every time a student has a problem, they go after him. It doesn't matter what house they are. Everyone knows they can count on him. Did you know that I learned the names of all the students of Gryffindor from him, Ginny?” Surprised, she shakes her head without saying a word. She was intensely aware that she shouldn’t interrupt Hermione's cathartic process now. “He knows the names of all the students in the lower years of Gryffindor. I imagine that even the sixth and seventh years and everyone goes to him when they have a problem in their real life or get into a mess. Not like me, they only come to me when they have problems with their homework and they do it not because he is soft or he will not punish them. I've seen him put such imaginative and appropriate punishments that would make McGonagall want to adopt him! No, it's nothing like that. It is because he understands them and helps them when they really need it, but he is so convinced that he is mediocre, he is so afraid to fail that he simply suffocates herself and slips up because of it”.

 “That's why he didn't ask you to be his date at the Yule Ball”, Hermione is surprised when Ginny takes the floor again. There's no reproach in her tone now, just warmth. “That idiot, he was dying to invite you. Believe me, I know”. Ginny raised her hand gently to Hermione's threat of interruption, who had opened her mouth to give her the counterpoint.

 “But he was terrified, Hermione. He couldn’t just see you as his best friend anymore to become someone he likes in the romantic sense of the word. The poor idiot wanted to hide it saying those silly things about going with the prettiest girl, or that since you both didn't have a partner you could go together and all that dragon shit”, she said, raising her hands and rolling her eyes at the same time, “and you saw how it ended that night. He went with one of the two most beautiful, exotic and noticed girls in the school, but he didn't dance her, he didn't give her a compliment, he didn’t give her a glance, because of how jealous he was of Viktor Krum.”

 Ginny had taken the hand of the brunette with the furious hair and red eyes in front of her. All the initial frustration had faded as she discovered the intensity of Hermione's feelings for her brother, and now she just wanted to give her the comfort she really needed. To be the friend she was supposed to be.

 Hermione, on the other hand, was devastated. If physically this confrontation added to her exhaustion from the last few days, emotionally she was a broken doll, and the tears that ran down her cheeks were the irrefutable proof of that. She felt her legs fail her and let herself slide down the wall of the corridor until she was seated on the hard floor of the castle. In a moment of rage and pain, she had opened the doors of her heart wide to her best friend. She had taken out of her chest all that anger and pain that she had been feeling for months and now, instead of a little peace, what she found was an immense emptiness, a darkness so dark that she was surprised that her heart continued beating, because seemed that it was only fed with that anger and now, in its absence, it found no sense to continue beating.

 Her silent crying was interrupted for a moment when she felt her friend sit beside her and wrap her in a warm hug. There was no hostility there anymore, just warmth and an offer of comfort that she accepted crying out loud.

 “I had bought a new dress for the slug meeting”, she whispered between hiccups and sobs after a moment. “Since I couldn't have that ball with him, I wanted, oh God!” She sighed. “I… I really wanted to have a real first date with him that was perfect. I even intended to be much more aggressive...”, a sad smile escaped her lips that broke Ginny's heart when she saw it“... with him that night. I even thought about having a couple of drinks to loosen up a bit and make it easier”. The longing in her eyes made the youngest of the Weasleys understand the double meaning of the phrase when she heard it. “And, what happened, Ginny? I missed his first kiss and I lost him.”

 “Then you know what you have to do when that pair of squids break off”. The freckled redhead had genuine love in her eyes when she said it and gently pressed her hug when the brunette looked at her with a face of disbelief.

 “Oh, come on! Don't look so surprised, Hermione. That relationship won't last. Ron is not comfortable with Lavender. It's true that she has improved his self-esteem, but he doesn't love her. There's got to be a lot more than kissing in a relationship with Ron. He needs passion, vehemence, fire. There has to be someone to incite him, to challenge him, to cause him to be better, do you remember?" She said, raising his eyebrows as she wrote “quotations marks" with her fingers.

 “He needs you.”

 That says it all. The two join into a comforting embrace, each resting her head on the other's shoulder, and while the only daughter of the Weasley clan feels the moisture seeping through her sweater and the tremor of her disheartened friend, this one can barely hear the “stupid blindness” that Ginny mumbles.

 “Miss Weasley, Miss Granger! What are you supposed to be doing at this time outside their common room?”

 Sitting on the floor, Ginny was stupefied for a moment and then, the next moment, she burst out laughing uncontrollably, causing her hands to fall to her ribs as she rolled on the floor in a very undignified position, seeing how “by magic", the “perfect prefect” seems to have apparate standing next to the head of the house, defying the rule that she has repeated countless times, ‘No one can apparate at the Hogwarts grounds...’

 “Miss...Miss Weasley! Just what is so funny. . . ?” But the redheads uncontrollable laughter interrupted her.

 Meanwhile, at the same time Ginny tried to point her trembling finger at one Hermione Granger, who seemed to have inherited the Weasley superpower to redness to the point of spontaneous combustion.

 “Miss Weasley”, without losing her composure in the face of the unusual scene, Minerva McGonagall tried to take control of the bewildering picture, although in reality she didn’t seem in the least surprised. “Please pull yourself together, stand up! I hope you have a satisfactory explanation for your behaviour.”

 “Prof... Professor” , Hermione's timid attempt is again interrupted, with another roaring laugh from Ginny, who can barely stand on her shaky legs as she kept pointing at her friend and her face seemed to be about to split in two for a grinning from ear to ear.

 “Shit on it, Hermione! For Merlin's sake. . .”

 “Miss Weasley!”

 “Just a moment ago...” Ginny seemed to ignore the presence of the transformation teacher as she continued her jocular chatter “...you were talking about how to try and relax, so you could have the courage to face Ro. . . the ‘asshole’ and do what you want and, as soon as Professor McGonagall appears, you jump up and down and get stiff as if a stick had been shoved up your arse? What. . .”

 “MISS WEASLEY!” At this moment the teacher's face looked absolutely horrified with the colourful language from the youngest of the Weasley family.

 “Ginny. I sincerely believe that this is not the time. . .”Whispered a brunette with her hair more frizzy than ever, as she threw an Avada Kedavraish look at her shameless friend who, seemed to have either uncontrollable verbal incontinence or an unparalleled suicidal wish. Meanwhile Ginny continued to talk without realising it.

 “Are you going to be just as stunned when he freezes and a trickle of slime when you “turn more aggressive with. . .”

 “ENOUGH!” Raising both her voice and her hand in an energetic gesture that cannot be replied to Mc Gonnagall interrupted the diatribe and laughter of the fifth year student, who finally seemed to notice the presence of her teacher. “I don't really care anymore why you are out of their rooms after curfew and not even what it was all about”, she said, as she puts two finger to the bridge of her nose as if she had a terrible headache. “The point is that you both are contravening the rules of the school and therefore both deserve a detention”, provoking the immediate face of terror of the sixth year prefect.

 “Miss Weasley. It's not just the fact you are wandering around the castle after hours, doing who knows what? But I will not consent to the use of such vulgar and rude language in my presence. So, next Friday, you will report to Mr. Filch who will tell you which toilets to clean. . . no magic.”

 “As for you, Miss Granger; I really cannot understand why you did not immediately accompany Miss Weasley to Gryffindor Tower neglecting your duties as prefect. Do you have anything to say that might excuse you?”

 “Actually, I think I can, Professor McGonagall”, which provokes a gleam of curiosity in the glances now directed at her, from the punished student and the Transfiguration Professor simultaneously. “But it's not in my defence”, she says, looking up from her shoes, “but in the case of Ginevra Molly Weasley”, a perverse smile hints at Hermione's face that quickly becomes sweet, when she see a grimace of annoyance at her friend's as soon she was called with her full name. “Actually, I was having a problem focusing on one of my assignments and she offered me a new perspective”, she says just at the instant she turns away for a moment her eyes from her favourite teacher, to offer a warm smile to the stubborn redhead.

 “Well, that's a commendable attitude no doubt, Miss Weasley”, for a moment the latter of them thinks she detects the flash of a smile on the teacher's face, but it's so fleeting that she thinks she's imagining it. “But both of you will understand that the corridors of Hogwarts at dawn are neither the place nor the time for such things, for which the sanctions are still in force. Are you both aware of this?”

 “We are, Professor McGonagall.” They both answer together.

 “Good. Gryffindor will be deducted ten points for each of you for being out of the common premises after curfew and Miss Weasley will be deducted another five points for inappropriate language. I would recommend that you do not reply, Miss Weasley”, she adds, seeing like the redhead was making the attempt to protest, “and thank Miss Granger for her defence. Initially I was planning to deduct another ten points.”

 “I'll thank you very much, Hermione”, she mumbles in a buzzing tone that makes the target of  her gratitude shudder imagining the kind of thank you that must be planning to give her the explosive temperament of the redhead. “All right. I think it's time for us to get back to the tower and get some rest for the rest of the night”, she says in a breath.

 It was at the moment when both students have turned around and started to withdraw in the direction of Gryffindor Tower when:

 “By the way. . .” the voice of the head of Gryffindor house forced them to turn around to face her again and find her with her back to them.

 “I think that change of perspective will be very useful to you, Miss Granger”, she adds as she turns his head and stares over his glasses at the surprised prefect.

 “Wha..Yeah?. . . err. Yes. I. . . I think it’ll be, professor. Yes, I'm sure it will be. Thank you very much”, stutters the dazed brunette meanwhile Ginny bit her hand in a desperate attempt not to burst into laughter once again.

 “I expected no less from you, Miss Granger. You're dismissed.”

 And so, while the two students of the renowned Hogwarts School of Magic and Sorcery, one of them in a state of shock and the other one barely able to contain her laughter, headed back to their tower, Professor McGonagall finally headed for her own quarters, the beginnings of a smile on her face:

 “Fifty points for Gryffindor...”  to his mind comes, the memory of the great dining room adorned in green and silver, while a venerable aged man with white beard speaks and one chubby and fearful child, listens astonished his words.  '. . . It takes great courage to stand up to our enemies, but it takes the same courage to stand up to friends. . .'  "Miss Weasley.”

 The End.

 Notes:

I would like to thank to the incredible @headcanonsandmore, for her invaluable help in completing the English version of the text. Without her, it really wouldn't have been possible. I think this is, so far, my best work, and if there's anyone it deserves to be dedicated to, it's you. Again, thank you very much for your help.

 This is the work that, I really would have liked to present at the @romioneficfest 2020, but it turned out to be a bit long. . . more than 10 times longer, but... a lovelly Dragon, gave me a chance.

:)

Thanks to read.

 #Romione #Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley #Hermione Granger #Ginny Weasley #Ron Weasley #Luna Lovegood #Mental Anguish #Love Confessions #True Love #Friendship #Missing Moments

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25513438

[clinioelerrante]

To be fainthearted…

That a student of Hogwarts was prowling the corridors of the castle in the wee hours of the morning was not uncommon.

The fact that this student belonged to Gryffindor House was even less so.

That such a student had hair that was red as hellfire could almost be considered normal.

The fact that this particular student was mumbling curses and oaths about a certain frizzy-haired which, it had been part of the regular school scene for more than 4 years.

But for such a student, at the height of Dolores Umbridge's reign of terror, to wander aimlessly, alone, under a disillusioning spell, with the marauder's map in hand and risking exemplary punishment or even expulsion from school, was decidedly atypical.

“A fucking wart? Mmm-hmm. A fucking wart and a fucking teaspoon?...” He mumbled as he took long strides through the corridors, almost oblivious to everything else. “My arse!”

Everything had started after the DA meeting. Cho Chang had accosted Harry in room of requirement while the rest of the group had dispersed. Hermione and he had gone to Gryffindor common room at and were having a relaxed conversation until she insisted that he complete his task while she wrote a letter. Hermione's parchment was already over the edge of the table and hanging dangerously close to the floor, when Harry came through the hole behind the portrait.

It had been perfectly obvious that something had happened. While one could not say that Harry had arrived with a completely dumb face, it was no less true that he was the closest thing to the face of someone who had been struck by a stunning spell.

With Harry’s apparent inability to explain what had happened, Hermione had taken the initiative in the conversation until he blew up the cauldron:

“Have you kissed?”

Wait... What? Harry would have kissed Cho or maybe it was Cho who kissed Harry? After the initial surprise, he was enthusiastic about his friend and wished he did it.

Of course! He'd been aware of Hurry’s crush on Cho since last year. One would have to be blind not to see him with that deer's eyes accompanied by a slight drooling every time Cho entered the scene! But following the usual pattern of shitty luck in Harry Potter's life that was the time when the bird was dating Cedric Diggory.

The memory of the partner killed by Peter Pettigrew overshadowed Ron's memories. Cedric was a good guy and his end had been unexpected, unjust and one more to add to the long list of Wormtail's coward crimes. Top of them, the betrayal of Harry's parents: Lily and James Potter.

“You filthy rat!" he swore. “If I had known, I personally would have left you alone with Crookshanks in a nice little room without a single hole in its walls and an undisturbed spell on the door.

The point was that Harry was still attached to Cho, if not more so, and it seemed that she had begun to notice Harry. There was no doubt that he had turned out to be a brilliant teacher in the DA meetings, added to his perpetual challenge to the pink toad and the legendary fight at the quidditch pitch had contributed enormously, to increase his sex appeal according to some whispered comments that he had heard between the women of the DA and some boys.

Ron wished with all his heart that, “For once!”, Harry's bad luck changed and like any normal teenager, he could live a normal life enjoying the intimate affection of a hot girl who she like him, although in his opinion ...a Tornado fan was not good enough for Harry. . . One flash of a long red hair burst into his mind making him shake his head to free himself from such disturbing vision.

But as usual, Harry hadn't had any luck with it either.

Instead of the first-time nervous or inexperienced teenager's kiss, it had resulted in little more than a disaster that had trapped Harry in the pit of insecurity in his ability to kiss properly a girl and later, with Hermione's invaluable assistance and her detailed talk about Cho Chang's state of emotional turmoil, he guessed in Harry, the doubt about the appropriateness of attempting any kind of relationship with such an emotionally damaged girl and, knowing Harry's legendary hero complex, he would be able to give up the girl if he thought it was sparing him any further pain. A massive Dragon’s dung in Ron's opinion, so he had used his best weapon to pull Harry out of his stupefaction and keep him from falling into his usual melancholy self-isolation; a joke:

“No one can feel so many things at once. It would explode!”

Ron doubted that anyone could explode because of it. If himself hadn't exploded with everything that's happened in the last year, it would be strange if someone else did. “Okay. Maybe Neville would go into a coma or pass out, but I don't think so. Dealing with Mrs. Longbottom for so many years had given him much more courage than many would give him credit for.”

In any case, Hermione's words had unleashed an emotional storm inside Ron, and the problem was that he saw no way to refute the logical sequence of events that had been linked together and seemed to form the links of a chain that wrapped around his neck.

Harry was diligent, brilliant, and handsome, he was not. Harry would have deserved to be prefect of Gryffindor, he didn't. Harry was extraordinary in Quidditch, he wasn't. . . “But Victor fucking pumpkin head Krum  is too. So rich. Could be richer as Harry even and. . . . and I'm sure he's experienced enough to know how to kiss a woman properly and. . . Oh God! How does Hermione know Harry is a good kisser and who has she been able to compare him to. . . ?”

He couldn't help it. His mind was filled with the slow motion image of Hermione kissing Krum torridly, trapping his ridiculously short hair between her thin fingers and taking his lips as if from them she extracted the air she needed to breathe, while one of his hands remained on her delicate waist and the other slowly ascended from her hip to caress her entire chest, provoking a lustful moan in her.

Ron felt the periphery of his vision turn red and his fists instinctively clenched so tightly that he felt his own nails sink into his flesh. He felt the need to rip the bastard's head off and when he looked up to face him, his mind was filled with Harry's gaze as he kissed Hermione passionately.

A familiar black claw wrapped around Ron's heart and squeezed it empty until it was breathless. He had never felt such pain or such overwhelming despair. Without being able to avoid it, from the depths of his being, a cry of impotence burst out, which ascended through his throat and escaped from him like the roar of the mortally wounded lion that intends to take his killer away with his last breath. . .

“Who's there? Don't try to escape. Inquisitorial Squad, with me!”

Ron cursed himself. He was so overwhelmed by the pain his own mind had generated that he had forgotten about bloody Umbridge and its band of mangy snakes patrolling the school corridors. Without thinking too much, he rushed to the double-leafed doors in front of him and entered.

“Professor Umbridge. Here!”

Blood seemed to be boiling in Ronald Weasley's veins. He'd recognize that voice anywhere. It was like the Malfoy and Weasley families had some sort of bond in destiny that would inevitably lead them to confront each other. The bloody bouncing ferret was on the other side of the door blocking the exit and calling for the great inquisitor to fall on him. Ron could hardly have imagined the satisfaction it would cause the flathead to discover that the student who violated the curfew was a Weasley and, among them, Harry Potter's best friend, no less! Nothing would make him happier than to witness another humiliation by Ronald Weasley. He was in these thoughts when another, much more disturbing, one made its way into his mind.

Umbridge! This would be like an early Christmas present for her. She would take advantage of the fact that it was him to provoke Harry and that would give her the perfect excuse to expel him.

Shit! You bloody fool couldn't have held back yourself, he thought to himself. No wonder Hermione can't see you as anything but a good-for-nothing. . . Hermione! Oh my God! If neither Harry or I are here, the ferret and the fucking toad are going to torment her to death. They're going to beat her and provoke her mercilessly until she quits or explodes and they can finally expel her. This would kill her. Shit, shit, shit, I'm the biggest asshole on the face of the earth. . .

“Grand Inquisitor Dolores Umbridge here". The voice of the disgusting toad was heard on the other side of the door. “I order you to leave that room.”

Ron, not breathing, stood three feet from the door waiting for the fatal decay.

“There's nothing to be afraid of"; he said with false sweetness. “All of us here are friends and we care about the safety of the students at the school. The Ministry only wants the best for all the magical children in the UK...” Ron thought that sounded suspiciously similar to a certain muggle story Hermione had once told him about a witch, one stupid girl and a poisoned apple...

“I'm absolutely sure is not your fault"; and this time there seemed to be some poison in her voice. “No doubt you'd be following the horrible example of Mr. Potter and his friends about how much fun it is to walk around the castle at this hour, but they don't have the good breeding of those born into completely magical families". She said scornfully, “And they can't understand how dangerous it can be to prowl around the castle at these hours, without the supervision of someone fully versed in the ins and outs of true magic society”. Ron swore he heard a chuckle from the silver ferret. “I'm begging you to come out. I promise that you will only receive one warning and we will accompany you to your common room so that you can rest until tomorrow's class”.

That's not what you've been saying publicly so far, you bloody cow. Always promising magic world perfectly safe thanks to the ministry and your “beloved” Fudge, old hag, he thought, trembling with anger. SHE knows more about the magic world, its traditions and its miseries than you will ever know in your entire fucking life. In an ideal world, you wouldn't even be worthy of breathing the same air that she breathes.  Instinctively, his magic channelled all his anger into his own hand that seemed to sizzle, longing to meet the wand that waited expectantly in his back pocket.

“Very well”, this time Umbridge's voice was definitely loaded with contempt. “I understand that if you are unable to understand the delicate complexities of the magical world and my desire to ensure your safety is because you have not had the proper education in your born-home. Nothing that a proper punishment can't solve, so, you´ll understand your place”.

This did it. Ron took three steps behind leaving its good fifteen feet with the door.

This sadist thinks it's not pureblood who is here and she's going to take advantage of it to make an example of it. His hand finally met his wand that seemed to emit a buzz of satisfaction to his contact. She will be stunned when she sees that the marauder is one of the “twenty-eight sacred". He thought this one with really loathe, like if bitter gall touched his lips at the memory. If I were anyone else I might be able to escape from this by sounding sorry, but being who I am, she's going to take advantage of it to go against both of them and if she doesn't go against Hermione, Draco will. For a moment a smile escaped his lips as he thought of what Hermione would do to Draco if he openly fought against her while remembering the superb punch the ferret had received in third year. But Malfoy will never attack her openly. He would seek a moment of solitude and would be accompanied by his two gorillas and possibly some Slytherin Deatheater apprentice and, God knows! What they would be capable of doing to her.

As his last smile died on his face, his wand was raised in his arm in a duelling position. Ron knew his fate was already decided. He knew that with him expelled, he would no longer be able to protect Harry and Hermione within the walls of Hogwarts, but nothing would stop him from defending them outside or making a last stand inside. When he confronted Umbridge and her henchmen, he would make his argument clear by giving them a hell of a wand, to make them understand that, just in the moment any of them tried to harm any of their friends, there would be no place under the sun where they could hide from him. So that miserable crew on the other side of the door would get the message and refrain from really drastic actions against his two friends.

Being Ron under age, he would not end up in Azkaban, and the fact that this stinking band knew that he would be free to show up at Hogsmeade from time to time would help reinforce the message. That would give Dumbledore and McGonagall time to regain control of the school and protect both of them. The image of a knight being taken by the queen on a gigantic chessboard gave him a crooked smile meanwhile he faced, wand in hand, his fate. Checkmate, pal.

“Alohomora!”

Alohowhat? What in  the h. . .; Ron didn't have time to complete the question that popped into his mind while his frown frowned in shock when he heard the spell on the other side of the door. But, if the door's not locked, why are they. . . ? For the second time, the idea died in his mind as he watched as the doorknob seemed to turn repeatedly in the attempt of someone trying to open the door, apparently in vain.

“ALOHOMORA!” It was heard again from the other side.” What's wrong with the damn door?” Again the voice of Umbridge was heard, this time in an unmistakable tone of irritation, as the doorknob was shaken more and more violently without the door giving way by a single millimetre.

-Get out of the way! This time there was real rage in the voice of the great inquisitor. On the other side of the door, Ron heard her to perform, one after the other, no less than 10 different spells trying to unlock the door and the paroxysmal movement of the doorknob had also given way to the incensed knocking of the door, as if in a primary resource and having failed magic, brute force was being used to force entry. It was then that he realized that his wand seemed to be emitting a dull buzzing sound that made her hand tremble.

“That's enough! I'm sure this is a joke of that brazen poltergeist”. Ron smiled. The toad's voice sounded more like a big walrus's breathing down from too much exercise. “Sure. He must have let out the scream and bewitched the door so that it could not be opened"; she continued, between gasping and panting.

“But professor”, Ron shuddered again at the sound of Malfoy's voice and to realize that his wand was shaking more intensely. “We've known Peeves since the first year, and that's certainly not his voice, nor is this the style of his jokes. He tends to be cruder and coarser by throwing stink bombs or buckets of ice water on the backs of the students. . .” The ferret's peroration was interrupted by the unmistakable sound of a slap on the back of his neck particularly hard.

 “Stupid”. Umbridge's voice sounded particularly annoying. “Do you dare to discuss a teacher's judgment? I tell you that all this is the work of that nasty spirit and, if all of you had been properly versed in the magical arts, you would have realized it right away as well”. Ron could not help but have a panting laugh. The toad had just beaten the insufferable presumptuous, frustrated by her inability to open the door and, trying to avoid looking bad in front of her acolytes, she had diverted attention and blame onto the asshole. My word. He would have gladly paid two months' pay for being able to see the ferret's face.

“This only proves the ministry right. The quality of teaching in this place has tragically declined and it is imperative that the ministry take control of it in order to instruct the young wizards and witches in the mastery of their skills. “With me!” It was heard like a whimper and then, the unmistakable tapping of a few steps away.

Ron stood waiting for an invisible trap to fall on him; meanwhile, his wand continued vibrating in his hand, though ever more faintly, until it stopped completely. He remained motionless and almost breathless for a few more minutes, hoping to believe in his good fortune and that he really had escaped from a more than complicated situation. Finally, he decided it was time to take a chance and averted his eyes from the door and consulted the marauder's map. He couldn't believe it! On the map it could clearly read “Ronald Weasley”, but on the other side of the door the map did not reflect the presence of anyone. Even in his surroundings there doesn't seem to be a soul.

Now or never, pal; he said to himself in encouragement and then, he set about turning the doorknob which. As before, it pivoted on its axis smoothly and pulled it, the door to stay locked.

“Shit”, he mumbled, but refrained from further attempts. In a sad irony, it seemed that the same mystery that had saved his freckled arse was keeping him prisoner of the room. “Well", he closed his eyes and as he concentrated he muttered. “Whatever it is, I really appreciate you helping me out, but I'd really like to get out, get to my room and forget about tonight. I swear I've learned the fucking lesson not to wander around the castle after curfew, or at least, not to be such an asshole as to scream in the hallway after curfew”. He looked at the door again and tried to open it, and again this one remained unmoved.

“Bloody hell!” This time the tone of his voice was noticeably louder.  He turned in frustration on himself and looking up at the ceiling dropped himself over the door and, leaned on the back of his head as it tapped repeatedly against the wood in an attempt to alleviate his disappointment.

“Okay! It's all right. If the price I have to pay for escaping the damn pink toad is to spend the night in this room, I'll gladly take it. Tomorrow someone will come, open the door, cast the disillusioning spell on me, sneak out and I'll manage to find a way to justify my. . .

He jumped upright as he opened his eyes wide, realizing that he had no idea where he was! It had all happened so quickly and unexpectedly that all he could remember was walking through the door that was closest to him at the time. Once the surprise was over, he began to inspect the room, hoping to recognize it.

“I should've known better”. The sad whisper escaped his lips as if it were the sigh of a condemned man whose last chance for freedom is slipping away.

The shelves followed one another in countless rows . . . “Well, surely not countless. I'll bet Hermione knows “exactly"; the number of them, as well as the number of every damn book inside each and every one of them"; he moaned.

Still, he had to admit. Empty of students, under the twilight of the moonlight filtering through the large windows, the Hogwarts Library was magnificent. Magnificent and intimidating.

“As always, she is able to see things at first sight, which takes the rest of us years"; he sighed. “No wonder I am not even able to keep up with her thoughts when that adorable head of her gets going”. And that was precisely what was bothering him most at this time and had led him to wander aimlessly through the school corridors. That with all her brilliance, all her knowledge, all her fucking logic, she wouldn't have been able to see everything that was bubbling up inside him. . .

Ron had not been aware at first, but gradually he became aware of the presence of candlelight behind some library shelves. Initially he feared that it might be because of the presence of another person in the library, whether it was a student, a teacher or, at worst, Filch and his mangy cat. So he remained quiet, but since the light seemed to be steady, no noise was heard, and the memory that the marauder's map had shown no one in the vicinity, he ventured quietly behind the bookshelf to find out what it was.

It didn't take him long to discover that it was one of the candlesticks that supplied light to the library users, but what was really curious was that it was the only candlestick that seemed to burn in the whole library. He approached it with the aim of extinguishing the candles when they went out by themselves while at the other end of the shelf the candles of another candleholder began to burn expontaneously.

Having grown up in the magic world, these kinds of situations were no surprise to him. They were fascinating, no doubt, but not at all a complete surprise.

He had long known that in one way or another, every wizard, every witch, had left the magical sight of his existence on the world. He knew many examples of them:

The essences of the four founders who died long ago, in the sorting hat. Those of his twin uncles Gideon and Fabian also killed in the first war against Voldemort, in the house clock. The Marauder’s Map, with the essence of James Potter, and his friends. Even, according to Harry's story, who-you-know-who left part of him in the diary that possessed Ginny in her first year.

With more than a thousand years of existence, it was practically impossible to know how many wizards and witches walked, studied and lived among these old stones, and each one of them left his own mark. Some would leave a barely perceptible trace, but others performed such intense episodes of magic that the traces they left behind, seemed to have a will of their own.

The hat was left with the mission of continuing to sort the students by the time the founders were gone.

The house clock, to know the status of each family member and to be able to come to their aid if necessary.

The map conspired so that the big troublemakers could keep up their mischief at school and, the diary, somehow, tried to bring Voldemort back.

This last thought plunged her spirit back into sadness and melancholy bringing back the thoughts that had made her leaves the safety of the tower of Gryffindor:

Is that really all she thinks of me? Does she really think I don't know what Cho Chang is feeling?

Like answering that question, another group of candles went out to be immediately replaced.

I can't really blame her, can I? I've never been good at expressing myself, let alone how I feel, but then again, how could I? How do you tell the most wonderful woman in the world that you're crazy for her? That you regret terribly to be a clumsy, mindless, worthless lout. Which you know you don't deserve her. That you know that you shouldn't even notice me but that you can't help but love her more than my own family, more than Harry, more than the blood that runs through my veins, more than my life itself and that knowing and feeling all that is eating me up inside. How do you tell her you feel all this and more, ‘only’, because you love her?

Ron feels that dull pain in his chest again. A veil of tears struggles to leave his eyes as he rolls his shirt sleeve over them to prevent his vision from becoming blurred, and it is when he refocuses them that he sees it. The candlestick he approaches is no longer extinguished, but seems to beat as if prompting him to approach it, and as he does so, the booklet seems to slowly separate from the rest of his companions on the shelf, prompting him to pick it up.

When Ron takes it, he feels comforting warmth in his fingers, like if the worn book is meant to convey a feeling of friendship and comfort, like if it is telling him in a mute way that everything will be all right after all. A feeling that brings back memories of the day he got his wand. Not his brother's, but his real wand.

“What do you got for me, buddy?”

There's tenderness in Ron's whisper. Any of those familiar with Hogwarts' worst-kept secret would think that the redhead is pouring out in that act and onto an object so intrinsically linked to the image of his beloved, all the love and all the delicacy that he seems unable to show her as a victim of his own inferiority complex, while unwittingly moving towards Hermione's favourite place in the library.

It's magic.

It's part of the magic that resides in every corner of Hogwarts. It is the magic trace that perhaps a long time ago, someone left to help a heart desperate to find an answer to its silent prayer and, just like it should have been long ago, when the mortified Ronald Weasley opens the book, a magic wind stirs the pages of the book showing him one of them in particular, like the old friend who gives you good advice. That's why Ron reads. He reads with such intensity that his eyes devour the words written centuries ago and as he does so his gaze gets wet. Each line is like a balm on the wounds of his tormented heart while a bright smile appears on his face. Now, Ron knows.

And when he looks up, his heart is not only filled with love for the frizzy-haired know-it-all witch, but with infinite gratitude.

Gratitude for whoever put the book on the shelf at Muggle Studies. Gratitude for the wizard or witch whose essence left such a deep mark on the old magic of the school, that it reacted to his agony and gratitude to the one who wrote the words he has just read. Words that today give him the knowledge of knowing that he is not alone, that he has never been alone. That before him, millions of men and women, wizards and witches, magicians and muggles have experienced the same feelings, confusion and agony as him, with the fortune that some of them have been so daring, so privileged in their intelligence and endowed with the gift as to be able to express them in words, and guided simply by their instinct, Ron look for parchment and quill as he begins to copy furiously. . .

Hermione Granger seemed to be sleepwalking after leaving Professor McGonagall's office. The accumulation of events that had occurred in the last few hours that she had referred, to still seemed to be getting through to her.

Mr. Weasley had been attacked in the Ministry by Voldemort's snake! And he had only escaped death because of the early warning that Harry had given.

When she woke up this morning, she was surprised not to find Harry or any of the Weasleys in the dining room, which had led to an unpleasant feeling on her chest, but what had set off all her alarms was the story from Ron and Harry's roommates. She had immediately rushed to the teachers' table, when a simple gesture from McGonagall had instructed her that this was neither the place nor the time. Something that was confirmed moments later, with the appearance of Professor Umbridge demanding to know the whereabouts of the Weasley brothers.

In her mind, she could recreate the scene as if she had been there. She was about to bet that at this moment, Harry would be oblivious to the fact that he was the one who allowed Mr. Weasley with his warning. What's more, she would bet one of her O.W.L.s marks that at this same moment Harry would be blaming himself for what happened, convinced that Arthur had been attacked simply because he was the father of his best friend and so, he would be ruminating that feeling inside himself without letting anyone penetrate the shell of isolation he would have built around him, preventing anyone from making him see the absurdity of his reasoning.

Along with this feeling, her other concern was to imagine the state of Mr. Weasley and how the rest of the family would be passing the hours.

She could imagine their reactions and the visceral fear they must have felt in their hearts, when they were woken up in the middle of the night to inform them that, their father, was struggling between life and death, the victim of a Voldemort attack.

She imagined Mrs. Weasley tried to appear strong and confident so his family wouldn't break up. To the twins, whose jokes for once could not insulate them from the merciless reality of war. To Ginny in whose mind she'd be spending her ordeal in the Chamber of Secrets, to. . .

“Ron!” The moan escaped from between her lips and her whole mind was focused on him.

Hermione knew of the particular connection between Mr. Weasley and his youngest son. That one that not only covered the physical aspects that he also shared with his brother Bill, but also on other much deeper levels.

She knew that his father, in an effort to raise a progeny that seemed to have been gifted with a stomach that was as voracious as a black hole, had been forced not to devote as much time to it as he would have liked, and so, Ron had been raised basically by his mother, Percy and the twins. . .

"If the way they are used to behaving with him could be called raising," she snorted under her breath as she thought, how much of Ron's insecure and explosive personality was the responsibility of that pair of troublemakers. The point was, when Mr. Weasley was partially relieved of that burden after the emancipation of the two older sons, he had tried to make up for that loss of attention by devoting more of his scarce free time, and had taken him to watch his first quidditch match with the Cannons, from which the redhead's eternal love for the lousy team, emerged.

But Hermione had found many other similarities. Both were brave, though they tried to avoid direct confrontation, noting in common  to evil or any temptation to try to abuse any situation of privilege, nevertheless they were fierce when it came to defending what they understood to be right.

Immersed in her thoughts, her legs led her to her sanctuary, that corner of the library that took her away from the usual hustle and bustle and allowed her to concentrate on her readings and the writing of her complex essays. The same corner whose window overlooked the quidditch pitch, from which, she furtively observed the training sessions of Gryffindor's team or, perhaps it would be better to say, the developments of one of the team's newest members.

As the smile insinuated itself on her face, Hermione could not help but reflect on how extraordinarily complex it was to understand Ronald Weasley.

Ron, sighed to herself.  She really couldn't understand him! There seemed to be two of them and they alternated with each other in an unpredictable way.

Ron was loyal to a fault, but sometimes he seemed a little jealous of Harry's reputation. Most of the time he behaved like an insensitive fool and yet sometimes he surprised her with gestures of infinite tenderness. She could have the funniest talk with him and tell him all the places she planned to travel when she finished school, but it was mentioning Bulgaria and Ron seemed to turn into a manticore.

When he flew over the grounds of The Burrow, he seemed to be in perfect communion with his broom. She had been surprised to discover that sometimes the twins had suddenly thrown some quaffles at him and he would alter his flight to intercept them with an almost feline grace, but it was flying over the school pitch and he becoming into a nervous mess of hands and feet struggling to hold onto his broom, with an unsettling shade of green on his face.

For the most of the people, Ron was what could be defined like a lazy who was always behind in his schoolwork and unable to perform a spell correctly during class, but, the day after she helped him complete his homework or gave him a practical demonstration on it, he seemed to be able to perform it almost perfectly and, not even then!  He seems to have a consistent line of behaviour at this point. Ron didn't seem to have the slightest interest in learning basic glamour spells, how transfiguring a rat into a chalice or making a potion to cure warts, and yet, he was perfectly capable during DA’s training, of transfiguring a cushion of The Room of Requirement into a solid block of solid stone to ward off a spell cast by Harry, while he counter-attacking him by throwing impedimenta spell that caused Harry to retreat ten yards.

And in spite of all that crazy, absurd, unrealistic and incomprehensible double personality she loved him. Oh my God, how she loved him! She couldn't understand it, but it was the truth and she knew it wasn't a young girl's crush, it was something else. She could see his faults and the weaknesses of his personality that he should try to correct, such as insecurity in himself and eternal self-comparison with his brothers and in spite of everything. . . there it was. The blurred sketch of the formidable man he was destined to become just by trying it from the bottom of her heart. A man who would make any woman's heart tremble like, he already did her own.

She was deep in thought about the irritating redhead when she discovered a parchment note carelessly folded in front of the seat she used to occupy in the library.

She opened it out of curiosity, recognizing the sloppy handwriting of the object of her tribulations as she began to read it. . .

"So, what's a teaspoon?"

As they moved along the lines of the writing, her eyes widened meanwhile one of her hands went over her chest in an unconscious attempt to calm the rampant galloping of her heart that seemed to have gone mad with the careless lines of writing.

“...To seem happy, sad, haughty, understated,

emboldened, fugitive, exasperated...”

It seemed that the world had been turned upside down and where once there was a mindless lout with the same sensitivity as a teaspoon, now there was someone who had been able to correctly interpret the verses her mind was slipping on. But that was inconceivable to Ron.

He... he really can't have been able to show me this, she thought as she began to reread thinking that she was being part of some kind of joke or enchantment the twins had left behind. A joke or a spell that should perhaps be called cruel because of all it was doing to feel  to her.

  To be fainthearted, to be bold, possessed, abrasive, tender, open, isolated, spirited, dying, dead, invigorated, loyal, treacherous, venturesome, repressed.

Not to find, without your lover, rest. To seem happy, sad, haughty, understated, emboldened, fugitive, exasperated, satisfied, offended, doubt-obsessed.

To face away from disillusionment, to swallow venom like liqueur, and quell all thoughts of gain, embracing discontent;

to believe a heaven lies within a hell, to give your soul to disillusionment; that’s love, as all who’ve tasted know too well.

 “Ro... Ron!” The exclamation escaped like a whisper from her lips while her legs seemed to waver when she completed the last line. . .

“I do”

Hermione dropped into the chair at the impending failure of her legs to hold her as the crying made its way through her chest to replace her breath with an incoherent set of hiccups and sobs meanwhile  she pressed the parchment  to her chest.

No. Ron Weasley was not the callous wart she had said, nor was the imbecile with the emotional range of a teaspoon. No, Ron was just a normal teenager in constant confusion because of the tide of hormones circulating in his blood, the emotional overload of facing feelings whose intensity she herself knew very well, the recognition of the darkness that was approaching, and right now, the boy who feared for his father's life and who would put under a thick shell all the pain and all the terror that his heart harboured for, with  an apparent indifference to avoid further anguish to his family during these times of tribulation, just as he did in the second year, when he went into the forbidden forest with Harry.

But, above all, Ron was her friend. The friend who needed her now more than ever, and as she began to write a letter to her parents explaining why she couldn't stay with them for the Christmas break, she couldn't help but notice the tremor in her hand and how her knuckles went white clutching her quill when one simple question seeped into her head:

Who- the hell- had taught Ronald Bilius Weasley what love was?

 Notes: My infinite and sincere thanks and affection to @headcanonsandmore. Without their help, it would have been impossible for me to write this text in understandable English.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/25219924/chapters/61129561

I would like to say, the inspiration for this work came after having a delicious chat with the author of the fic "Books" by @fightfortherightsofhouseelves ( You can find her work here in AO3).

https://archiveofourown.org/works/14771213

Obviously, the reference poem is not mine. I wish! The author is the Spanish poet Lope de Vega. Possibly the quill who has best expressed the feelings of love through its verses in universal poetry. The English translation was done by David Rosenthal.

[clinioelerrante]

Future

I apologize to the English speakers for all the spelling and grammar mistakes I may have made. As you can imagine English is not my natural language, although I can promise you that I put my best effort into making my translation understandable. I will be happy to take any advice on how not to offend the noble language of Shakespeare. Thank you all.

The copyrights of the characters belong to their creator J. K. Rowling. It is a personal interpretation of an encounter about which much has already been written.

Future

She is small, petite and her precense has silenced all those present in the great dining room.

Ginny's neck crackles as she turns her head sharply in search of her brother. Harry's gaze has long been fixed on Hermione. . . when the silence is broken.

One moan fills the room. A groan that comes from the deepest side of the heart, which thrill the blood of the listener, not out of fear or awe, but because it is filled with a feeling that cannot longer be contained. No right now… no more.

And after the moaning, the sob. The sob that's the prelude to crying. A cry so intense, so heartbreaking, that it would move the stones. A cry that sounds like the release of a soul. A cry that tries to be drowned by the small hands that seek to cover a mouth whose lips begin to shake uncontrollably

And Ronald Weasley, the insensitive Ronald Weasley, the weasel, who-is-the-teaspoon-emotional-range-of, jumps over the table and rushes over the owner of that mouth. Of those hands that cover the lips that he dies to kiss. From the only one whose cry he is able to recognize in all time and place, in part perhaps, because he has provoked it many times, “too many times”, he thinks. But, above all this, because if there is one thing he knows about this world, it is that he cannot bear to see her cry, no, without being with her, no, without at least trying to console her, because each tear of her is a dagger directly nailed to his soul and, at that moment, becomes fully aware of it over him. If at any time or place he has to come between her and a killing curse, he will do so without hesitation. It's a fact. An absolute and incontestable truth that is not open to debate and, like if it were an essay of the human shield that, he now knows, he will always be for her, he surrounds her with his arms while attracting her to himself by lovingly wrapping her when he feels her sobs, her uncontrollable cry against his chest.

“Hermione, please, what's wrong”

And his voice is filled with agony. Agony for her mostly, but he also distresses about his secret fear that those tears will be of her grief and dissatisfaction for the future he craves above all things in this world. Agony that turns into absolute happiness, when she lifts her head and under her tear-stained eyes, she sees a radiant smile that says to him “Everything is going to be fine”.

And for once, Ron knows he's on the same page, at the same timing, in the same knowledge and in the same feeling as her. Because the chess master in himself had already resolved this riddle almost from the moment he saw the new arrival girl on the dais of the teachers a few meters from him. The strategist had already discovered the truth. His fingers reach the Hermione’s chin, tightly against his chest and delicately with reverence and almost devotion or, perhaps, there is not “almost" but simple adoration, meanwhile he narrows the embrace over her shoulders and rests his own head on one of them closing the embrace and, in a whisper that look more like a caress as he said:

“Everything is going to be bloody okay”.

And Hermione nods on his chest and lifts her head to, for the second time; to face the little girl again as the little smile on Hermione's face grows.

Because she had recognized her features. Because she's able of recognizing her thick curly hair. Because she is able to recognize her red-haired tone of it, but even if she were not able to recognize all of this, she would always recognize her eyes. Those sapphire blue eyes that are Hermione's last thought of the day and the first at morning.

Then, the little girl's mouth half-opens.

“My name is Rose Jean Weasley. . . Granger”.

P.S.

Particularly, I have always found it humiliating that every time was written about that situation, Hermione and particularly Ron, they end up unconscious or like idiots. I've allowed myself to change the point of view. Thanks for reading.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/18221483

[clinioelerrante]

Futuro

Sinopsis: Mi versión particular sobre un encuentro sobre el que ya se ha escrito mucho.

Los derechos de los personajes pertenecen a su creadora J. K. Rowling.

Notes:

Romione

Es pequeña, menuda, y su aparición, ha enmudecido a los presentes del gran comedor.

El cuello de Ginny cruje al voltear bruscamente la cabeza buscando a su hermano. La mirada de Harry, hace tiempo que esta fija en Hermione... y entonces el silencio se rompe.

Un gemido llena la sala. Un gemido que sale de lo más profundo del corazón, que estremece la sangre de quien lo escucha, no por temor o miedo, sino por estar lleno de un sentimiento que no puede ser contenido, ya no más.

Y tras el gemido el sollozo. El sollozo que es preludio del llanto. Un llanto tan intenso, tan desgarrador, que haría conmoverse a las piedras. Un llanto que es liberación de un alma. Un llanto que intenta ser ahogado por las pequeñas manos que buscan cubrir una boca cuyos labios, empiezan a temblar incontrolables.

Y Ronald Weasley, el insensible Ronald Weasley, la comadreja, Aquel-quien-tiene-el-rango-emocional-de-una-cucharita-de-té, salta por encima de la mesa y se precipita sobre la propietaria de esa boca. De esas manos que cubren los labios que él se muere por besar. De la única persona cuyo llanto él es capaz de reconocer en todo tiempo y lugar, en parte quizás, porque él lo ha provocado muchas veces, demasiadas veces, piensa. Pero, sobre todo, porque si hay algo que sabe de este mundo es que no puede soportar verla llorar, no, sin estar con ella, no, sin intentar consolarla al menos. Porque cada lágrima que ella derrama es un puñal directamente clavado en el alma de Ron Weasley, en ese momento, toma consciencia plena en él la epifanía. Si en algún momento o lugar él tuviese que interponerse entre ella y una maldición asesina, lo hará sin dudar. Es un hecho. Una verdad absoluta e incontestable que no está abierta a debate y, como si fuese un ensayo de ese escudo humano que, ahora sabe, siempre será para ella, la rodea con sus brazos mientras la atrae hacia si envolviéndola amorosamente cuando nota sus hipidos, su llanto incontrolable contra su pecho.

-Hermione, por favor ¿Qué pasa?- Y su voz está cargada de angustia. Angustia por ella mayormente, pero angustia también ante el temor secreto de que esas lágrimas sean de desconsuelo e insatisfacción al contemplar ella un futuro que sin embargo él ansía por encima de todas la cosas de este mundo. Angustia que se transforma en felicidad absoluta, cuando ella levanta su cabeza y bajo unos ojos arrasados en lagrimas ve una radiante sonrisa que le dice -Todo va a estar bien.

Y por una vez, Ron sabe que se encuentra en la misma página, en el mismo momento, en el mismo saber y en el mismo sentimiento que ella. Porque el maestro ajedrecista que hay en él ya había resuelto esta partida casi desde el mismo instante en el que él vio a la recién llegada en la tarima de los profesores a unos metros de él. El estratega ya había descubierto la verdad. Sus dedos alcanzan la barbilla apretada contra su pecho delicadamente, con reverencia y casi adoración o, tal vez no hay, un casi. Estrecha el abrazo sobre los hombros de ella y apoya su propia cabeza sobre uno de ellos cerrando el abrazo y en un susurro, como en una caricia-... Todo va a estar bien.

Hermione asiente sobre su pecho y levanta la cabeza para, por segunda vez, volver a enfrentar a la pequeña niña mientras su sonrisa crece. Porque ella ha reconocido esas facciones. Porque ella es capaz de reconocer ese pelo espeso y rizado. Porque ella es capaz de reconocer el tono pelirrojo del mismo, pero aún si no fuese capaz de reconocer todo ello, ella siempre reconocería esos ojos. Esos ojos azul zafiro que son su último pensamiento del día y el primero de la mañana. Entonces la boca de la pequeña niña se entreabre.

-Mi nombre es Rose Jean Weasley... Granger.

Notas:

Particularmente, siempre me ha parecido vejatorio que cada ver que se ha escrito sobre esa situación Hermione y particularmente Ron, acaban inconscientes o como idiotas. Me he permitido cambiar el punto de vista. Gracias por leer.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/17566223