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drvconian · 7 months

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How You Get the Girl ...

“I just don’t know what I did.” Ron complains, leaning into the back of the couch in the Common Room, his eyes closed and his eyebrows pinched. It’s late, almost everyone else has gone to bed, which is why he speaks quietly to you: it makes you feel like you’re sharing a secret, which you technically are, but everything feels more special when it’s just Ron and you.

You like Hermione and Harry just fine, but when you all got together as a group, it always felt that he preferred them more, especially Hermione. You could understand why: she was smart and pretty, both things you envied about her. Your jealousy wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t seem like you caught Ron staring at her all the bloody time.

You shake your head, smiling softly over at him. “Girls are fragile, Ron. You can’t be as brutish as you are with your brothers or Harry.” You laugh quietly, “what kind of girl would take that as a compliment anyway?”

“I dunno.” He replies, rolling his eyes. “I would, though.”

“That doesn’t surprise me.”

“Well, you gotta help me then.”

You widen your eyes at him, clearly taken aback at his request. “You want me to help you get with Hermione?”

Ron moves in closer, nodding his head slightly. “You have to. You’re one of my closest friends, I dunno who else to go to with this.”

Your heart beats hard in your chest, you have no idea how to feel. The sentiment is nice, that he trusts you enough to ask for your advice on how to impress the girl he fancies. On the other hand, it hurts to know that he even fancies another girl (even though you knew) and that he expects you to help him. You want to say no and try to convince him that Hermione and him would never work out, so you surprise yourself when… “okay, Ron. I’ll help you.”

...

A knock on your door drags you out of your reverie. You close the book in your lap and place it on the table beside you, and unfold your legs. They’re stiff from how long you’ve been sitting on your couch, and you wince slightly. You stand up and make your way over to the door, opening it slightly to peek at whoever it could be.

“Ron?”

He’s standing in your doorway, hunched over in his jacket. He’s soaking wet, his hair dripping onto his face and his jacket a shade darker than it’s supposed to be. He looks miserable standing there, but his face brightens when he sees you. “You answered.”

You nod before opening the door wider, “are you insane? Come inside before you catch a cold.”

He steps inside, brushing against you, and stands barely in the doorway. The water on his clothes drips down onto your floor, and you quickly close the door behind the two of you. You open up a closet close to the door and pull down a towel, handing it over to him so he can dry off. You watch him, the air between the two of you thickening.

“It’s been a long six months.” He begins, peeking out at you from beneath the towel that he’s drying his hair off with. You watch him, worrying your bottom lip. You don’t know what to say, you hadn’t seen him since your final, chaotic days at Hogwarts – even then, you hadn’t seen him for a long time before then. He hadn’t contacted you at all. He takes a deep breath. “I was too afraid to tell you what I wanted. I’ve always been too scared of that.”

...

“Tell her something cheesy like… I want you for worse or for better. It’ll help defuse the tension since she’s upset with you. It’s sort of cute, and it’ll help lead into you telling her you like her.”

He nods in a more attentive way than he ever had in class. Your stomach twists – you could sabotage this whole thing, yet you weren’t. Hermione was your friend just as much as Ron was your best friend. You weren’t cruel. You just happened to like Ron more than she probably did.

“And then maybe you can add in something like: I would wait forever. To show your dedication.”

“Dedication? I’m not looking to marry her!”

You roll your eyes. “That’s not what I meant! You’re just buttering her up, but you don’t have to say that if you don’t want to-”

“I’d only say that if I meant it.”

You resist the urge to roll your eyes again. How romantic. You feel a pang in your heart at that thought… at least he wanted to confess to Hermione.

“Okay, well, you hurt her, right? Admit that you did, and say that you want to fix it.”

...

“We were best friends, Ron. You could’ve told me anything, hell, you almost bloody did!” You cross your arms, conflicted on whether to laugh or be annoyed with him. “You told me way too much sometimes.”

He doesn’t smile or laugh the way he might’ve at the suggestive joke when he was younger. Something seems to settle within him, and he pulls the towel off of his head. He takes a slight step forward, and you feel the tension settle between the two of you. You rarely saw Ron this serious, though it seems to be a more permanent emotion during and after the war.

“I broke your heart.”

Everything around you stills. Your own heart stills. That was one truth you had kept to yourself throughout all those years, throughout all of his relationships. So many little fragments over the years had gathered until, just about half a year ago, it had finally shattered and he had walked away from you. Your chest feels tight as you wonder who could have told him.

“I want to put it back together.” He swallows, his words trembling just the slightest bit. “I know now that I will wait forever.”

...

You're sitting in the Great Hall as Ron eats lunch while you work on your homework. You’re focused on a particular list of ingredients for a potion when Ron speaks. “That stuff you told me worked, by the way. Thanks.”

“Oh. With Hermione? Good.” You force yourself to sound happy, even looking up to smile at Ron across the table.

“She forgave me, sort of. I don’t think she understood what I was really trying to say.”

You sigh, rolling up your parchment and setting it aside. You’d get back to it later. “You’re back to being just friends?”

He nods, “I couldn’t just outright tell her! She’d probably think I was joking or something.”

“You’re such an idiot.” You lean across the table so you can lower your voice. “You could bring up the ways you’ve subtly flirted with her. There’s that picture we took where you’re staring at her. You wouldn’t let her see it, remember? You could show it to her.” You settle back into your seat, reaching to unroll your parchment again.

“How do I explain why I didn’t just show her then?”

You pull your quill out of your ink, already returning to writing down another ingredient. “Tell her you lost your mind.”

...

You remember sitting on the Common Room couch, when one of those fragments joined the many others. When Ron first started fully showing interest in Hermione and you knew you had no chance with him. No, Ronald Weasley wouldn’t show up at your door and suddenly confess to you, when he and Hermione had finally found their happy ending sometime during the battle at Hogwarts. He couldn’t be saying that.

“Ron… what are you saying? Is everything okay?” You want to feel his forehead, to see if his cold has already set in and he didn’t realize what he was saying. Your heart is hammering inside of your chest.

“Don’t you remember how it used to be? We were always alone.” His voice becomes steadier as he talks and he grows closer to you, his eyes brightening. “We spent so many nights together, talking on the Common Room couch. It was always just us at lunch. We even went on walks just to talk.”

“That’s because, usually, Hermione and Harry were busy. We didn’t have a choice-”

“I did. I didn’t know it then, but I always had a choice and I always made it.” He’s standing in front of you, looking down at you with a look you know you’ve never seen before. You had known Ron since first year, and you knew almost every look and what it meant. You didn’t know this one.

“I was such an idiot. I am such an idiot. You’ve been in front of me this whole time, and I didn’t see it.”

...

It’s one of the rare moments where you somehow end up alone with Harry. You’re sitting in the library, waiting for Ron and Hermione to show up so you can start your study session together. You already have your parchment and ink out, along with several books on the table. Harry’s setup mimics yours, and you’re both leaned over the table.

The two of you don’t talk much, you’re both connected by your friendship with Ron. While you’ve become friends with Hermione, you and Harry are still more like strangers.

The sound of footsteps approaching causes you to look up from your books. You knew it was Ron, you didn’t have to be looking to know it was him whenever he was near. What you didn’t expect was for Hermione to be walking next to him. They sometimes entered together, having run into each other or they had been previously hanging out. The part you didn’t expect was their intertwined hands, and the large grins on their faces. Their rosy cheeks.

It happened.

Harry looks up from across you, and his face immediately splits into a grin. He’s happy for his friends, and you should be too. You mimic his smile, trying to mask the way your heart feels like it’s breaking. Ron looks victorious, like he’s just won the final Quidditch match of the season against Slytherin. All you can feel welling up inside of you is defeat, because this is your fault. You could have just denied him the help, and maybe it’d be you holding his hand and smiling.

Would Harry even be smiling like that if it was you?

...

“I want you.”

Eight years. Ninety-six months. Four thousand, three hundred and eighty days. That’s about the time you had known Ron. You had spent more than half of that wanting him. You had spent the latter half of that knowing it was never going to happen.

Never had you expected that during your ninth year of friendship, he would tell you the thing you had wished for all that time. The thing you had hidden in journals or in daydreams you were ashamed of. You had spent years making up crushes and having Ron try to help you the way you helped with Hermione.

“But you- you and Hermione… I can’t-”

“Hermione and I broke up a while ago. She said she knew from the beginning that we wouldn’t last.” You wince at that, but it doesn’t seem to faze him. He’s smiling down at you. “She said she knew who I would end up with.”

Oh.

“It’s been obvious this whole time, hasn’t it? That it was you?”

Oh.

“I mean, even Harry saw it. After ‘Mione and I split, we all had dinner and he told me that I was a blind idiot for not noticing sooner.” He laughs slightly, “he also made me realize how much I’ve hurt you over the years.”

You don’t know what to say. You’ve wished for this moment practically your whole life, and now that it’s here, you’re lost. In your mind, you would end up with someone your parents’ set you up with and you’d live your version of a mediocre happy ever after. You’d spend the rest of your life with the knowledge that Ron loved someone else and he had and would never love you.

You’re staring up at him. You had stared up at him so many times before, but never like this. Never with him confessing to you. Never with him smiling at you so tenderly and so happily. Never with so much affection.

Softly, he brushes a strand of hair away from your face. You reach your hand up and rest it on his wrist. The two of you stay like that for a moment.

Your voice is quiet when you finally speak. “Do you mean it?”

His eyes never leave yours as he nods his head. You wrap your arms around his neck and his arms wrap around your waist. You want to weep into him but also scream with joy: you’ve never felt this happy.

You pull away slightly to look at him. “It’s always been you, Ron. For worse or for better. Slug puking or Quidditch winning. It’s you.”

He pulls you close again, his head resting on top of yours. You press your head to his chest and listen to his heartbeat.

It’s beating just as fast as yours.

...

You listen to the birds chirp as you walk down the street. It’s slightly windy, but the heat from the sun keeps whatever chill the wind carries away. There’s the faint smell of flowers coming from the flower vendor just down the street, next to the diner where you’re supposed to be grabbing lunch from.

You’re not very familiar with this part of town. It’s not near your flat, and you had to Apparate to get there.

You pull open the door to the diner, and a bell chimes to alert the people inside of your presence. Muggles. You smile slightly at the gesture, and make your way inside. You look around, before you spot a pair of brown hair and glasses.

Harry spots you first and his face breaks into a smile. At this, Hermione turns around and greets you with a smile too. Harry stands up out of the booth and pulls Ron, who has been holding your hand this whole entire time, into a hug. Hermione stands up and pulls you into a side hug. It’s a little awkward, but maybe you’ll get more comfortable with each other someday.

Everyone is smiling as you slide into the booth beside Hermione. She picks up the menu and hands it to you, “I have to recommend the cheeseburger…”

Word Count: 2270

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