And Then, You’ll Know || Ron/Hermione || T/PG-13
It was never a conscious thing, this need for her. Not at first, anyway. Slowly, it grew, from a magnetic pull to an impossibly simple gravitational force. It wasn’t one thing, and it never would be. It was all of them, piled together into something that made simple unbelievably complicated, irrationally possessive, insomnia-inducing and sometimes painful. Did he crave the pain of uncertainty, as he craved the gorgeous smell of her frizzy curls and the mesmerising vision of the dying common room fire flaming in her heavy-lidded eyes?
She gazed down at her books, a look he only ever saw when she was looking at them, or when she was… He swallowed and imagined she could look at him that way, a nonsensical wish that briefly grazed reality in his memories, in sigh-sweet memories he tried not to overthink, a desperately losing battle. Maybe, maybe she looked at him like she looked at Sites of Historical Sorcery, but he rather hoped for Spellman’s Syllabary. He pressed his lips together to suppress bubbling laughter. She quirked an eyebrow in his general direction.
“Sorry,” he shrugged, a lopsided half-grin as she shook her head with a badly hidden smile of her own.
The sofa was warm, the common room empty, the night dark and almost pensive, though his racing thoughts only raced on her. Months and months, he’d been starving, away from her, making mistakes. Now, he was delightfully drugged, a hand’s width away from her left side, an oversized jumper sleeve and her cold hands. He knew they would be cold, but his brow furrowed momentarily at how. He’d never held her hand-
That wasn’t strictly true, he corrected, sniffing. He’d found plenty of excuses, over the years, to reach for her. There were endless justifications still left to use, surely? Only, just then, he could not think of a single one.
“Would you like something to read?” she asked in a whisper-warm voice, and he almost couldn’t answer her raw, unintended intimacy. He cleared his throat and shook his head, and she licked her lips, looking at him.
“What are you thinking?” That tiny waver was unmistakable, and what kind of dare was this? He was a ball of knotted thread with no coherent answer.
“Glad you don’t hate me, anymore,” he managed to tease, though it fell too far toward serious, surprising himself, hoarse again so quickly.
“Ron… If we’re going to talk about that…” she swallowed. “Well, we probably shouldn’t, is all.”
He held onto her voice around his name for too long.
“S’alright,” he slurred. “Keep reading.”
“Do you think Harry will be back soon?” The tiniest dagger, close to lightly puncturing his heart.
“I think we still have time,” she added, and his jaw unclenched, unaware it had been held so tight before. We still have time… to be alone.
He smiled at her, unwillful he thought, but they were so close. She was so fucking close to him he could feel her.
She shifted on the sofa, cheeks pink - from the fire - and he let his legs stretch out further before him, straight along the woven gold and burgundy rug. Her thigh touched his, and she left it there, glancing back down to the book heavily resting across her lap.
His roaming thoughts traveled through time as she attempted to read - years, then days, then moments, to her words… we probably shouldn’t. What did she not want him to say? What was she afraid of? Did she know? She could know, and a part of him would not be surprised. Another part would be bloody horrified.
He recalled nights at the start of the year where he’d sat just there with her, in exactly the same spot, uncomplicated - and yet so damn complicated - and he’d rest his head on the back of the sofa, sometimes daring to move it to her shoulder with the ridiculously transparent validation of wanting to see what she was reading. If all he could do, just then, was to remove the need for an excuse… was that all it would take?
And then, you’ll know, he fantasised, a terrifying pondering that could turn dream to nightmare.
He shifted down the sofa in a way she apparently found comical or even endearing if he dared to add a pinch of optimism, and he did it before he could think about it for a second longer, his shaggy ginger fringe partially obscuring his view as he tilted his head down, her woolly shoulder pressing to the side of his stubbly face.
“Tired?” she asked softly, through an obvious smile. The easy answer was yes, though it wasn’t the truth, an excuse to be right where he was. He took a deep breath, closed his eyes.
“Good,” she whispered back, and for a long, long time, no pages turned, her toes brushed behind his leg, and the whole rest of the world was gone.
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