Hold Me Close [Harry Potter; Ron/Hermione]

Title: Hold Me Close
Pairing: Ron/Hermione
Rating: R (warnings for violence and character deaths. this is rather dark.)
Summary: They are close enough that they can almost touch. Almost.
Word Count: 7405
A/N: written for tarie's Flip-Flop Challenge. I originally got the idea for this after reading the summary to lunalelle's fic, First Touch. I was struck by the idea of being deprived of the ability to touch, and just how sad that would be. One of the things I've noticed a pattern of in fanfiction and, I suppose, in human existence in general, is that most romance is contingent on physical contact. I wanted to write this to prove that love can exist even when everything else is taken away. This is a dark story, but I think in some ways there's a hopefulness to it, at least from where I'm standing. I hope you all enjoy it. Thank you to noticeably, bloodybrilliant, sunblossoms, and waxrose for all their encouragement. (The section headers are from Bright Eyes' "A Perfect Sonnet".)

Dedicated to fivil for the occasion of her 18th birthday.




Hermione keeps her head bowed when they bring her in. She doesn't think she can bear to meet their eyes, to know that it's Pansy Parkinson under that hood, that it's Vincent Crabbe behind that mask, that it's Draco Malfoy whose cold hands clamp around her wrists.

They throw her down and the cell is locked and closed before she can even utter a word of protest. She lands face forward, palms flat against the dirty ground of the room, the cell, the place they put people like her until they can think of something to do with them. The walls and floor smell like vomit and urine and Hermione nearly gags. She thinks she's going to be sick, but they haven't allowed her food for almost two days now, so there's nothing to throw up.

There are two windows on the far wall of the cell, their barred, paned, and charmed frames looking out into some grey nothingness. Hermione isn't sure where she is, just that it's far away from Hogwarts, from London, from anywhere safe. The wind is thundering against the walls, making them seem paper-thin, rather than made of stone. Hermione takes a moment to wonder what sort of stone it is, and if there are any charms that could break through it. Somehow she doubts it. Death Eaters aren't stupid. Besides, she has no wand now, just six even snaps of wood sitting hopelessly at her feet. She isn't even sure she would be able to recite the incantations accurately now. Her voice is wavery, parched, and foreign. Hermione’s mind is foreign too, trapped in some netherworld just outside the cell’s walls.

She curls her knees to her chest and counts the ridges along her knuckles, listening to the sweeping movement of Dementors and wards patrolling the corridors outside her cell. She has a passing thought that this is Azkaban, that she is in Azkaban, that this could have been Lucius Malfoy's cell, or Bellatrix Lestrange's, but she convinces herself that this can't be true. She hasn't harmed anyone. She hasn't made any mistakes. People like her don't go to Azkaban.

She can see the cell across from hers through the bars of corroding, rusted metal. It is empty, and dark, and separated from her by more empty space. She stares at it long into the night, as though she's waiting for it to change, for people to materialize, for a rescue party to arrive with wands raised and portkeys in hand. The only thing that changes are the shadows.

Hermione is surrounded by vacant cells. Hers might as well be empty too. She is a ghost within her frail wrap of skin, and her clothes cling like dull regret against her body. Her palms are chapped from the sandpaper-rough walls, and feel awkward as they wipe away the tears and dirt from her eyes.

She can’t sleep, so she doesn’t. She just waits.


Hermione is only alone for a day, and then the masks and hoods and trailing black robes return, bringing bread crusts and and a bowl of grey swill and Ron Weasley, who is kicking and screaming and fighting against the grip of two of the larger Death Eaters. He sees Hermione and screams out her name in a voice that’s fiercer than she remembered, and he doesn’t take his eyes off her, as if to break the gaze would be to make her disappear.

She mouths his name but doesn’t say it, because the Death Eater closest to her is already laughing, laughing at Ron as he grapples for the bars of Hermione’s cell. His hands are slippery, and caked with mud. Hermione wonders if he was shoved to the ground just outside. There are scratches on his arms and bruises over his collarbone and while her face remains impassive, her breath catches in her throat as she thinks of all the things that could have happened.

The tallest Death Eater, the one with grey eyes Hermione would recognize anywhere and a voice to match, tosses Ron carelessly into the cell adjacent to her own, and locks it with a deafening click. Then the figures all turn and leave, their smirks burning through their masks, and their footfalls creating triumphant imprints into the dark stone.

Hermione and Ron hurry towards each other at the same moment, words and questions spilling from their lips. “I can’t believe you’re all right,” and “I’ve missed you so much,” and “Did they hurt you?” and “How are you?” and “Have you heard from Harry?” There are no insults or jabs and Ron doesn’t look angry anymore, because he isn’t frustrated with her, for the first time in what must be months.

They reach through the bars, straining for each other’s hands, but they can’t touch. The distance is just a few feet too wide; they can't bridge it.

Ron curses, and Hermione tries to placate him with a dismissing "Don't worry" and an added "It doesn't matter anyway". It doesn't help that her voice is shaking as she says it. It does matter. Her hands are cold even as she rubs them together, and he's so close and so far away and she wants to hold him because he's looking at her with a tired, helpless sort of expression. He looks so close to giving up that it scares her.

Hermione doesn't lie often, but she doesn't know what else to do right now. Neither one of them would be able to handle the truth.

"It will be all right," she whispers, as Ron sinks to the back of his cell and slumps against the wall.


The next day, one of the Death Eaters returns, a short figure with a feminine step and a gleam in her brown eyes that reminds Hermione of flashing fourth year badges with mocking words. She throws food at Ron and drops a copy of the Daily Prophet at Hermione’s feet. Then she turns and leaves, humming a tune to herself that Ron seems to recognize because he grinds his teeth together and glares after her swishing black robes.

Hermione doesn’t want to look at the paper, because she is afraid of the things she might read, but her curiosity gets the better of her. As frightened as she is, she is also anxious for any word from the outside world. She spreads the pages out on the floor of the cell before flipping to the front, to the headlines. Some of the articles have been clipped out and removed and Hermione supposes that was no accident. They’re only seeing what the Death Eaters – what Voldemort – want them to see.

Hermione starts to read, but then she stops. No, she thinks, her vision going hazy around the edges as she looks over into Ron’s cell. He sets down the bread and soup and looks back at her.

“What is it?” he asks, trepidation lurking in his consonants.

Hermione gathers herself together, and reads the headline aloud.

“Remus Lupin, Nymphadora Tonks, and Arthur Weasley were among the casualties in yesterday’s Death Eater attack on Diagon Alley."

She stops reading. Her mind continues to process the sentences in the article, but her voice feels like it’s caught on her lips. She looks up at Ron, and his cheeks have gone pale, and his eyes look, suddenly, so much bluer than before.

The silence that stretches in the space between their two cells is infinite, and Hermione hates it, so she tries to speak.

“It—They—I’m sorry, Ron.”

He nods mechanically, as if he isn’t sure of any other way to react, and Hermione wants to spell the bars of the cell apart and gather him in her arms and just hold him. His hands are around his knees but he isn’t crying, because he’s a boy and boys don’t do that, especially not now. It’s war and people die… but Hermione can’t help wanting to just hold him. Maybe it’s a motherly instinct any girl would have, or maybe it’s because it’s Ron.

She almost reaches for the splintered scraps of her wand before realizing that would be pointless.

“I’m sorry, Ron,” she says again, and the sound is tremulous and inadequate.

“This soup tastes terrible,” Ron replies.


Lucius Malfoy arrives to cast cleaning charms on their cells at the end of the week. There hasn’t been another paper brought yet, and Hermione takes comfort in the meaning of this. Everyone must be safe. For now.

Lucius is just as quick and precise with his spells as Hermione imagines he is with his curses. He speaks them simply, and the job is done quickly. He sneers at them both, his eyes an icy grey, and just as cold and sterile as the walls and floor. If anything, the charms have made the cells feel even less comfortable.

As he turns to leave, he drops a bucket of cold water and a sponge in Hermione’s lap.

“Wash yourself,” he hisses, as if the dirt that’s there is her own fault. She reasons that, to him, it likely is.

He saunters off as if this prison is his own personal palace, and Hermione is surprised that Ron refrains from screaming after him. She wonders if maybe he doesn’t have the energy to anymore.

She contemplates the bucket of water, the liquid like ice against her fingers. And wonders if it’s safe to drink. That would be more practical, at least. Ron looks parched, and Hermione wishes she could hand the bucket through the bars to him, but they’re too narrow, and the gap is too wide, and Ron is telling her to go ahead now, that he doesn’t mind.

She sponges the water on her arms and legs and it raises goosebumps on her skin and just leaves her feeling frozen.

“Once we get out of here, we’ll be able to get a proper bath and shower, with lots of soap,” Ron says, conversationally. Hermione tries to smile, but she’s shivering now, and the “once we get out of here” doesn’t sound hardly convincing enough.


Hermione hasn’t been sleeping much since they put her in here, and when she finally falls asleep, she has nightmares. In her dreams, she sees Harry fighting a horde of masked Death Eaters, all with wands out and curses spilling from their lips. He is brave and brazen and he’s racing toward them head-on, but he’s never quick enough, and he falls before he can cast a single spell. He lies there, dead on some anonymous battlefield, and no one comes to find him. Her dreams don’t even lend her the kindness of closing his eyes, and everything goes green.

The green of Harry’s eyes is brighter than the curse that kills him, which isn’t right, but the rest of the dream is, which is what frightens her. It makes sense. She expects that’s what the Daily Prophet will say tomorrow when it lists The Boy Who Lived among the dead. It made sense. It was fitting. It was a courageous end to his extraordinary life.

Hermione wants to slaughter whomever it is that comes up with phrases like that.

The worst part about these nightmares is that Hermione has forgotten exactly what Harry looks like, and the dream Harry is a blur, like a watercolor painting left out in the rain. He is fuzzy around the edges, and she can’t make his nose and mouth fit on his face the way they’re meant to. It’s disorienting, not being able to recognize your best friend.

Tonight, when Hermione wakes up, she is sure she hears Bellatrix Lestrange laughing. At first she thinks it’s an extension of the nightmare, but when she looks over to Ron’s cell, she sees his chest rise and fall with his steady breaths, and she knows she is awake.

Bellatrix’s laughter is sharp and grating, and there’s something else. The sound of Sirius is caught in her throat. Along with the loss of sanity and rationality is the loss of Sirius, and she’s captured him, stuck him in with the tight strain of her laughter, and Hermione hates it. She hates listening as the cries of the dead ricochet and volley back and forth off of the stone walls. Somewhere, in a place more distant, there’s another voice, and that one is worse because that laugh isn’t laughter at all. It isn’t even human.

Hermione doesn’t sleep after that, and eventually the laughter stops. Hermione is glad that it was loud enough for her to hear. Had it been softer, Hermione might have heard the screaming, too.


Ron pulls himself off at night (it must be night), his hand over his crotch, rubbing himself desperately with a mumbling moan choked in his throat. He lies flat on his back, the cold floor pillowing his head, and arches into his hand again and again in a way that might seem erotic if it weren’t so… sad.

He's asleep, Hermione tells herself, and maybe it's true. Hermione isn’t quite sure if she wants it to be, or not. Ron doesn’t seem as tired as she is in the mornings, so maybe this is his way of brushing away nightmares, of finding some kind of sleep that isn’t marred with blood or grief.

Hermione has stopped sleeping. She’s afraid to close her eyes. The pitch-black is more frightening than anything else, even the green of her nightmares, because at least those are inside her head. The dark of her cell is comforting because it’s not absolute, but when she closes her eyes, it’s like a curtain falling, and the Death Eaters could be right there in front of her and she wouldn’t know it.

Tonight must be a full moon, because there’s light in the corridor. Hermione wills herself not to think of Remus, because that will only make her cry, so she focuses instead on Ron’s shallow breathing. His inhalations and exhalations grow more and more rapid and then… there is silence. Hermione doesn’t look at him because she can’t, because if she does, she thinks she’ll break, shatter into a thousand pieces of “Oh, Ron…” and she doesn’t want that because there’s no place for that here.

The next morning when Ron wakes up, Hermione greets him with a tired smile, and before she can come up with an adequate line like “How did you sleep?” or “It seems like a nice day”, or all those wonderful cheerful little lies, the words come tumbling out of her mouth.

“I heard you.”

It takes Ron a second to understand what she means, and when he does, the blush on his cheeks reaches his ears.

“I—“ he starts.

“No,” Hermione interrupts. “It’s okay.”

Ron looks confused, and thumbs his robes awkwardly, and for a second, Hermione wonders if there isn’t enough space between them. But she doesn’t regret her words. They’re talking now, and they weren’t before, and this is good, because she needs this, and by the slight smile in the corners of Ron’s mouth, it seems like he needs it too.

“Who do you think about?” Hermione asks.

Ron hesitates, for just a second, before replying. “Oh, no one in particular, really.”

“Ron.”

“What? It’s a very personal question!” There’s an affronted sound to his words and Hermione laughs, laughs for the first time in weeks because it sounds like Ron, not some ghost wearing his skin and tired eyes.

Ron wrinkles his nose at her and glares, but there’s no energy behind it, and soon he’s laughing too. It’s strange, that if someone were listening just outside their cells, they might think they were two friends arguing playfully in a sunny kitchen, or outside under some tall oak tree.

“Really, who do you think about? You can tell me, Ron.” Hermione says again. She expects him to say “Lavender”, or maybe “Fleur”, or perhaps “that one model from Witch Weekly.” What she doesn’t expect is—

“Well… you.”

They both stop laughing, then.

A strange, awkward silence hangs between them, and then Hermione says “Oh.”

“Yeah,” Ron says.

Hermione bites her lip, and looks everywhere but into Ron’s eyes. A second later, the Death Eaters have arrived with their meal, and the conversation is over.


“Who is it this time?” Ron says, as Hermione unfolds the newspaper. They’ve both come to expect it, to be used to it. The question is too casual for Hermione’s liking, but Ron doesn’t seem to have the strength or will to get worried anymore. What will come will come. They both already know by the yellowing newsprint on the floor that someone is gone, it’s just a matter of who. The Daily Prophet only comes when someone they know has died. It isn’t there to inform, or to reassure. It’s there to taunt, to torture them with the knowledge that their friends and acquaintances (and parents) are falling one by one, and they are locked up with no way of stopping it.

Hermione clears her throat, and reads.

“Half-giant and former Keeper of the Keys at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry—"

Ron swallows hard, and Hermione stops. That’s good. That’s enough. She doesn’t need to read any more. She stares at the wall for a second, presses her lips together, and then lets it pass; the moment, the memory, either or both. It’s done with. They’ve both come to realize that it only wears them out to dwell on things they cannot change.

“Does it list any Quidditch results in there?” Ron asks, his tone stilted as he tries, obviously, to change the subject.

“Cut out, it looks like.”

“Bollocks,” Ron replies, shrugging.

“Where’s Malfoy?” Hermione asks suddenly. The thought just occurred to her that they haven’t seen Draco in days. He was there when they brought Ron in, but now he’s gone. She knows she shouldn’t be concerned, but she is, because she remembers what Harry said, how Draco faltered in his task, how he looked scared – terrified, and how Harry had looked scared too, just recalling it.

“No idea. Maybe he went home?” Ron offers, his tone doing nothing to mask his dislike for their former schoolyard nemesis.

Somehow Hermione doubts that Death Eaters just “go home” in the middle of a war, but she says nothing, willing herself to be reassured by Ron’s words.

“Ron.”

“Yes?”

Hermione starts to say something, but then decides against it. “Nothing.”


Snape is there. He comes once a week to bring them their food. He is the only one of the Death Eaters to not wear a mask and Hermione has yet to discern the significance of this.

When he comes, Ron yells and screams and tears at the hem of his robes, shouting things like “Murderer!” and “Bastard!”, but Snape remains silent and stoic. He just stares at them both, gaze alternating between the two of them, and says nothing, despite Ron’s fury. Where the other Death Eaters would have responded with hexes, Severus just glowers at Ron and pulls his wand from his robes.

Hermione thinks there is something in Severus’ gaze that is not quite right, like his heart isn't in it when he pulls his wand and presses it to Ron's throat. It's an empty threat. He's not a killer.

He sighs as he turns to leave, and Hermione wonders if there is something they’ve missed.

Ron just makes a vulgar hand gesture and then glares at the floor for the rest of the afternoon.


“Stan Shunpike was discovered yesterday morning in the wreckage of what the Ministry believes was an explosion on the Knight Bus. Once thought to be a Death Eater, the recently released Shunpike had plans to marry—”

Ron sighs, and Hermione puts the newspaper down.

There’s another pause. There’s always a pause after they read the headlines, and Ron is always the first one to speak after.

“Who would have wanted to marry him?” Ron asks, laughing in a way that is more out of nervousness than humor.

Hermione grins and shrugs, and then the pause is over and time can start again.

Ron wonders casually how the people in the Prophet must have died. Hermione knows that they’re killing curses, because she’s read the rest of the articles, but she doesn’t tell Ron this, because she doesn’t want Ron to know that his father died without his wand, defenseless, cornered in the back of Flourish & Blotts by two Death Eaters who cast Avada Kedavra and then apparated away before anyone could apprehend them. She doesn’t want him to know that Remus covered Tonks with his body and took the first curse, the one that meant for her. She doesn’t want Ron to know that Hagrid was killed by his own half-brother, who, under the Imperius curse, had wielded a wand and cast Avada Kedavra with a precision to his speech he never had before.

Instead, Hermione tells Ron about Muggle diseases, about tuberculosis and pneumonia and small pox. The names make him laugh. She tells him about cancers and tumors and leukemia and the diseases that make people waste away and die in their sleep. Ron says that those might be nice, and Hermione refrains from mentioning that some of them are just as painful as Crucio.

Hermione tells Ron that maybe that's how people are dying, even though she knows it’s a lie. Ron smiles at this, and Hermione thinks it’s okay that she hasn’t told him the whole truth of things. She prefers it when he smiles.


Peter Pettigrew is there too. He brings Hermione a dishtowel for her face, and catches himself bowing like a servant might as he offers it to her. Ron hates him the most and his cheeks go hot and red as he stares at his former pet. Wormtail snivels and leaves quickly, looking fearful.

Afterwards, Ron won’t say anything. He sits in the back corner of his cell seething and wringing his hands together, and Hermione imagines he is thinking about all the missed opportunities he’d had to strangle Wormtail when he was just a rat. She wishes she could do something to relieve his anger, so she starts arguments with him on the nights after Wormtail comes, so that he has an outlet. They’re over inane things like who has more swill in their bowl, or whose cell is cleaner, or over the fact that Hermione is given the newspaper and doesn’t that mean that the Death Eaters must think Ron is an illiterate moron.

Ron gets angry quickly and he screams and shouts and insults her with a dozen or more different words. She knows he doesn’t mean a word of it, because she doesn’t either, but they both need it.

When their throats are raw from arguing, and one of them calls truce, they even laugh again, just a little.

On those nights, Hermione is able to sleep, and she does so pressed clean against the bars of her cell. Ron does the same. On those nights, the space dividing them doesn’t seem like anything at all.


Draco is in the cell across from them now. He looks sullen and empty and he’s been stripped bare of his clothes. He doesn’t say anything to Ron or Hermione because he can’t. His tongue is missing. It hasn't been cut out, but, rather, removed by a spell. When he opens his mouth, the sound is like that of a howl sucked up a chimney and Hermione can’t look, because it’s just a gaping darkness and he is frightening.

His eyes are almost white now, the same shade as his silvery hair, and Hermione wonders vaguely if he is blind. Ron shouts at him for a whole hour, but when Draco says nothing in reply, he gives up and starts kicking the wall of his cell instead.

Hermione tries to talk to Draco, to get answers, to find out what’s going on, but he just writhes on the floor of his cell as if he’s in pain.

Neither Ron nor Hermione asks him what he’s doing here, why he’s in here and not under a mask and hood, patrolling the prison grounds. They don’t need to. The bruises on his forearm where he's scratched his Dark Mark into an unrecognizable gash say enough.

Draco only stays a day, and when he leaves, no one tells them where he’s going, or if he’ll be kept alive. Ron and Hermione talk about it, but they don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been already said by the sound of Draco’s body being dragged away by two Death Eaters, one of whom Hermione is certain was Lucius Malfoy.

They stop speculating on the second day after he’s gone, because there’s no way to know what’s happened to him. The only thing clear to Hermione is that his cell is empty and cleared out again with a cleaning charm, and it is silent. That hurts for a reason it should not, and even Ron understands because even though he hates Malfoy, he knows that too many people have died already in this war.


In the mornings before their meals arrive, Hermione remembers things. She remembers conversations with Ron, sunshine and laughter exchanges, and words that are heavier now, and mean more than when they were first spoken. She remembers all of the times she confessed to Ron how glad she was to have him as a friend, and the time last year when he’d told her he loved her. She wonders if he meant it then, if he means it now, if it even matters.

She remembers their fights too, all of the times she swore to herself that she hated him, and all of the feelings she knew her anger was masking. She remembers jealousy, and arguments over stupid things. She remembers being hurt by him, but clinging to the idea that it would all work out in the end. She remembers what it felt like, the rush of alive that she sees glimpses of when he’s screaming at her now. But it’s just a shadow. Their arguments don’t seem as bitter now. They just feel worthless, petty, and stupid, but they can't stop fighting because that's what they have left. When they become parched and exhausted from shouting and their cheeks are flushed, they are alive.

It’s the worst kind of existence, though, because there is no opposite, no alternative, no other side to the coin.

They can beat each other up and tear each other down but they can't reach through the bars and touch, hug, kiss— They're trapped with words and looks. So they make the best of things.

When they fight, it’s over things that will never matter. When they talk now, it’s about ideals and things that can never be.

“Ron, do you want to get married?”

“What do you mean? To you?” Ron rolls over and looks at her, his face sliced apart by the bars of the cell into a dozen shadowed frames.

“No, I mean just in general,” Hermione says quickly, with a laugh in her voice. “Once this is all over.”

Ron thinks about it for a moment.

“Yeah. Yeah, I think I’d like that.”

“Me too,” says Hermione, and then she turns away from him so he won’t see the smile on her face, or the tears that come seconds later when she realizes she is being ridiculous.


Sometime in the middle of the next week, Hermione thinks she hears Ginny screaming. She recognizes the high pitched bell-tone in her voice, the same sound as when she laughed. It sounds strangled now, and Hermione and Ron keep looking anxiously to the empty cell next to them, the same one Draco was in before.

She doesn't come any closer, though, and the cell remains empty, dark with the shadowy not-vision of Harry, the presence only there in the early hours of the morning when neither one of them is thinking clearly. Hermione thinks about Harry often, and she and Ron talk about him like he’s dead, which is strange, but there isn’t any other way to talk about him. He’s not here. Isn’t that the same thing?

Hermione listens to the screams from somewhere far down the corridor and she looks worriedly at Ron, wondering if he knows, but afraid to ask.

On the second day, Ron is certain it's Ginny, and he tears at the bars of his cell with a feral look in his eyes. The pads of his fingertips grow red just as his knuckles turn white with effort. Hermione hates the look on his face, but she lets him fight and scream because she knows he needs to, because it’s Ginny, and because he’s Ron, and because somehow that makes him believe that he can break through anything to reach her, and save her.

The bars are rusted iron, and do not move, but Ron only gives up when his index finger and thumbs begin to bleed. He curses and Hermione stops her ears from hearing, hating not the words, but the broken, hollow clutch in Ron's voice. He cries himself hoarse, and Hermione sobs quietly from the far corner of her cell, hating the way Ron sounds but, more than that, hating the fact that she can do nothing to make it better. The space between their cells has never felt wider.

At night, the screaming continues, and Hermione feels like she’s drowning in her own tears, trying to ignore the "Please" and "God, no" and "Harry!" that echo in the dark like a strange chorus. It’s Ginny’s voice, but Hermione doesn't yell back. She remains quiet, obedient. Ginny probably wouldn’t be able to hear her anyway, and even if she could, there is nothing Hermione can do.

The wailing goes on for at least a week and a half, and then it stops.

Ron gives up meals after that, says he's just not hungry. Hermione doesn’t know if she is either.


It takes Hermione three tries to be able to read the headline this time. It doesn’t make sense, and she wonders if the writer got it wrong. After all, they’d just seen him yesterday afternoon, with Bellatrix and Lucius Malfoy at his side.

“Severus Snape was killed yesterday evening while fighting alongside Alastor “Mad-Eye” Moody, and Minerva McGonagall in a skirmish outside Little Whinging. After having fled Hogwarts Castle, the former professor and Death Eater’s whereabouts were unknown for many weeks until he was found, yesterday night around 10 o’clock, dead at the hand of Bellatrix Lestrange.”

“He—“ Ron starts, but he doesn’t finish his sentence. He looks dazed, like the world’s been turned on its head.

Hermione shakes her head, trying to process the words. She tries to reconstruct the battle in her mind. Maybe it was just a curse gone astray, an accident. Bellatrix Lestrange doesn’t seem the sort to make mistakes. Snape, fighting alongside Moody and McGonagall…

She sets the newspaper aside and waits for Ron to change the subject.

“Hermione,” he starts, “I don’t understand.”

“I don’t think I do either,” she replies, and it’s true. She’s long since given up playing the role of the know-it-all with all the answers, and Ron no longer gives her a funny look when she admits that she is confused.

“I mean, why are they keeping us alive?”

Hermione looks at him and wonders immediately why she’d never thought to ask herself the same thing.

“They could just kill us,” Ron continues. “They could just kill us, but they haven’t.”

“Well, obviously they’re—“

“Harry,” Ron interrupts. It all becomes clear. It’s so simple. It was never about them.

“They’re—“

Ron nods. “Keeping us alive for Harry," he finishes quietly. "They know that Harry will try to save us.”


She pushes the bucket of water back and forth on the feet, her toes curling over the top as the plastic scrapes on the floor. Ron is sleeping soundly in the corner of his cell, blanketed in shadows so that she can only see a wispy outline of his silhouette. Nose and lips and a tangle of hair that’s grown too long.

She turns away from him to undress, even though she knows he’s not watching, and pulls off her robe slowly. It feels like a shell, clinging tightly too her skin, all damp and mildewed. The water isn’t icy this time, but lukewarm, and it feels refreshing on her skin, dripping down her back and over her arms as she squeezes the sponge. It feels like raindrops and Hermione wonders if she will ever get to see rain again. She never liked it much, preferred sunshine and clear skies, but anything that is not dark stone ceiling would be welcomed now.

She hears Ron shift, roll over, and she freezes. His breathing changes, and she hears the hiss of hands on clothing. She doesn’t turn around, but she can feel him watching her.

“I’m sorry,” she hears him murmur.

“No,” she starts. “No, it’s all right.” She doesn’t move to pull her clothes back on, and they both stay still for a moment in a sort of suspension of time. Neither one says a thing, but their breaths match up in an odd, disjointed rhythm.

“You’re beautiful,” Ron says finally, and she hears him crawling closer.

Hermione doesn’t reply because she doesn’t know how she’s supposed to. Thank you, she thinks, but that sounds stupid, and things are already awkward enough.

“Hermione—“ Ron starts, and there’s something needy in his voice that makes her heart jump. She swallows hard, and the sponge falls out of her hand and splashes in the bucket.

“I want to look at you,” he says.

Hermione glances back at him from over her right shoulder and he is sitting up and staring at her through the two sets of bars that divide them. He looks amazed, his blue eyes very wide, and deeper than she remembered them.

When she turns around, she sees that he is hard and she blushes, wanting to turn away again, but she doesn’t. She stares at the floor, and tries to forget that she is very naked, but it’s not working.

“I hate this,” Ron says suddenly, and for a second Hermione isn’t sure what it is he’s talking about. “I hate being in here when you’re in there.”

They’ve always only been just friends, but both of them seem to realize that something significant has just changed between them. Nothing is hidden now. It’s all out in the open and they’re confronting it, and that feels good.

“Close your eyes,” Hermione says, moving closer so that she’s right up against the edge of her cell, watching him across the space.

Ron is obedient, and when his eyes flutter closed, Hermione realizes his eyelashes are very long, and just as red as his hair.

She startles herself with her next words. “Pretend I’m there.”

“What?” Ron asks, opening his eyes and looking perplexed.

“Pretend I’m there,” Hermione repeats. “Touch yourself and pretend it’s me.”

Ron’s tongue flicks out and wets his top lip as he contemplates this. He understands that it’s all changing, right in this second, too.

After a moment, he closes his eyes and Hermione watches his hand dip under the waistband of his trousers. He gasps as he takes himself in his hand, his fingers wrapping around his cock, thumb flitting over the head, his grip firm as he pulls in long, even strokes.

It’s so vulgar, Hermione thinks, that she is sitting there watching him do that, but she can’t help feeling aroused, because it’s her name he’s moaning, and when she tells him ”faster”, he complies.

Her nipples harden and she feels the goosebumps tracing spiraling patterns across her back and collarbone, and she arches awkwardly off the floor, the water in her hair dripping inelegantly on the stone. He isn’t watching, so he won’t know, and so she touches herself, her breaths coming in gasps that seem to magnify in volume and echo off the cracked ceiling. It is pathetic, and she has to close her eyes so she won’t see the crease in Ron’s forehead as he concentrates, the glimmer of tears in the corner of his eyes as he struggles to feel something, to feel pleasure rather than emptiness.

With her eyes squeezed tightly shut, Hermione can imagine that those are Ron’s fingers inside her, the palm of one of his hands flat on her stomach, her thigh, her breast. She blocks out the green of her invading nightmares, and tries to focus on blue instead, Ron’s eyes looking at her as he moves, holding her and touching her reverently. Ron’s hands are large and his fingers are warm and gentle, not cold and trembling like her own.

Ron comes first, and Hermione opens her eyes then, and he’s looking at her, watching her with her legs spread and her neck back. She wants to wipe that awed look off his face because this is pathetic, they are being pathetic, and there’s nothing beautiful about her right now.

But he calls her beautiful anyway, and when she comes, he doesn’t look away.


“Ron,” Hermione asks him the next morning, “what’s it like to kiss someone?”

Ron looks startled and stares at her. “You mean you—I thought you and—“

“No, not with Viktor. I haven’t actually… with anyone. I’d been wai—“ She stops, because what she was going to say sounds stupid now, after everything that has happened.

She says something else instead, something that doesn’t sound stupid or childish.

“I love you.” She looks at him when she says it, and her voice doesn’t waver, and when he looks back at her, she can tell that he’s understood. She doesn’t have to explain further.

She starts to say something else, but he interrupts. “I love you too.”

Hermione smiles then, because isn’t that what they were waiting for? Isn’t this what both of them were waiting to be able to say? Things will be better now, she tells herself.

Ron will break through the bars, and gather her in his arms. They will share a long kiss – their first - before they escape. And they will escape. Ron will know just where to go, and how to get there, and no one will stop them. They will run faster than is possible and they both will have their wands, and they will remember all the spells they’ve forgotten.

They will step out into the sunshine, and the world will be just as they’d left it. No one will be dead, because the Death Eaters were just feeding them lies. Everyone they know will be there - everyone - and they will all smile, and embrace, and have dinner at the Burrow.

Everything will be ordinary again. Normal. Boring. She thinks they’d both like that. To be ordinary, normal, boring, together.

That’s the way it’s meant to happen.

Of course that isn’t the way it can happen, Hermione knows, sees it in the way the shadows of death linger around Ron’s eyes when he looks at her, curling in on himself, his stomach caving just as his skin folds over and over, taut and straining, with nothing but bone to grasp hold of.

It won’t be long.


After many days and nights, Hermione walks out of the prison. She had part of it right because no one stops her. There’s no one left to stop her. All of the other cells are empty and the prison is silent.

When she steps out into the sunlight, she is alone. She wonders if Ron stayed alive just long enough to tell her, to say those three words that are now scrawled across her heart.

Hermione sees Harry before he sees her, and she calls out to him with a voice that is rusty with disuse. He doesn’t smile, when he looks at her, only looks tired, his eyes circled in purple shadows. They aren’t as green as they were in her dreams and just look dull now.

When he pulls his arms around her, she notices that he’s just as thin as she is now, his joints brittle, his shoulders slim, and his hands just bones and knuckles. Hermione can’t stop herself from crying into the crook of his shoulder and he lets her. He doesn’t ask about Ron because he’s already seen the answer in her eyes.

When they let go, Harry hands Hermione a yellowing newspaper. None of the articles are cut out of this one, and Hermione turns to the front page to read the headline on instinct.

The Boy Who Lives defeats He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Wizarding world celebrates.

When Hermione looks back at Harry, he doesn’t look the least bit like a hero, with his shoulders slumped and grief bobbing in his throat.


They carry Ron's body out together, his lifeless arms slung around their shoulders. He isn’t as heavy as either of them expected. Hermione hates the wind that blows past them as they walk out of the prison again, back into the sun that is too warm and too bright for this.

Ron is cold and pale and his hair is a shocking red against the white of his neck, and they lay him down on the grass outside. It’s green and alive against him and that doesn’t seem right either.

At least they’re all together, Hermione thinks dully, the vision of all that is meant to happen fading fast, burning and curling to dust around the edges.

She kneels down next to him and looks up at Harry, who understands, nods, and walks away. Hermione whispers secrets against Ron’s ear, things he will never hear, but then, was never meant to anyway. She tells him about how she’s had a crush on him since first year, but that she was afraid, and she starts crying when she thinks about all of the times she could have told him, but didn’t.

When she kisses him, his lips are chapped and dry and cold, and her hand tangled in his hair is out of place, so she finds his hands instead. For the first time (for the last time), she knows what it feels like to hold his hand.

And maybe she always did.

(and left there to sleep
left there to dream of their happiness)