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my_thestralPairing: Ron/Hermione
Words: 1500
Rating: G, PG, who knows?
Disclaimer: still not mine, nope, no matter how I want it... and god knows if anyone's making money out of it, I know I'm not. :)
Summary: She had loved him from the first day... and she would love him to her last.
I've loved him from the first day, you know, though, admittedly I didn't quite recognise it back then. I was only 11, you see, and I had no notion of love other than it was silly and it made you do silly things. But then I met him and... he always intrigued me, didn't he, and he defied me and challenged me and, boy, did he draw my eyes towards him with his brilliant red mane and those bright, smiling blue eyes! He was just so... out there, wasn't he? You could see him from afar, tall as he was, and though anyone could argue there's nothing special on Ron Weasley, there was always something about him that made me think of him twice and made me want to be near him.
At first I thought he only irritated me – his messiness, his sloppiness, his disregard for all rules and all things good and proper – and I thought once I “fixed” him, I could get him out of my mind and let it find its peace and order, fall back into its old, scholarly, lonely ways that used to make me feel content. But somehow, shockingly, Ron wouldn't be fixed and I slowly noticed that it was I who was getting a proper make-over. There seemed to be something wrong with my allegedly magnificent brain when he was around. A part of it seemed to have stopped working and it switched into some unknown gear that made me reckless and moody and – sometimes... often... all too often – ridiculous happy.
He would just come in like a storm, whistling, in disarray, a chaos reborn; he would chuck his tattered bag that has seen one too many Weasley onto the table, throw one of those endless legs around the chair, not always properly, lean back and started talking in his warm, raspy voice. And inevitably, sooner or later, he would say something to make my hair stand on ends or make me blush or gasp or – most commonly – giggle before I could help it because it was all just so... crazy and inappropriate. I just couldn't help myself around him: he pulled me out in the open - the real me, not the ambitious nerd who knew nothing but her books – he dragged me out of my shell and into the real world and I couldn't shake the feeling it was this Hermione he appreciated the most. For someone to like me for me, not my brains, not my magical skill, but for me... I've never had that before. The feeling was priceless, it was the kind that keeps one warm at night. He always knew how to give me that, without even thinking.
And when he agitated me into raising my voice, made me smack him across the fiery head – something that always made me feel insanely guilty because I would feel his silken hair under the palm of my hand and I just itched to touch it again – or, god forbid, made me get up and vow to never help him again with his homework, I would always feel his big blue eyes on me, clouded with anger or hurt or lack of understanding and what I really wanted to do was to turn around and drown my anger on those soft red lips, looking so, so impossibly tempting. No one has lips as plush as Ron Weasley, no one does. I've even heard other girls talking about them, though they mostly just ramble endlessly about Harry - and some of those super-fools even swoon over that terrible git Malfoy. But they are slowly beginning to notice him and I just die a little every time I hear his name, knowing that one day someone braver than me would win him over. Someone who is only beginning to notice him. Unlike myself. For me he's all I think about.
And today was that god-awful Valentine's day yet again and I wished I had Ginny's guts to put myself so out there as she had done for Harry back then in the second year. I wished I had a heart to send him a card, even if anonymously, and watched him turn bright red all the way to the tip of his ears with embarrassment, secretly pleased and in awe that he managed to capture someone's attention. But I didn't have it, not for this. I guess the silly old hat got it wrong after all – I might have been brave enough to throw myself in front of a werewolf and a guy who spent over a decade in Azkaban, but I wasn't brave enough to show one of my best friends how I felt about him and risked having my heart crushed.
He wouldn't even look at me today, or more precisely, he would only look at me when he thought I couldn't see him and his face displayed a strange mixture of despair and restlessness as if he wanted to tell me something but didn't quite know how. I was surprised he hadn't asked me yet, bluntly and carelessly, the way he did last year, if I got any Valentines yet, embarrassing me beyond words. It wasn't that I haven't got any cards, you see. One had come last night already - a beautifully romantic, singing card, made of the finest chocolate, sent by none other than Viktor Krum, the international Quidditch star, and I know it was the type of card some of the other girls would kill for. And this morning there had been a large chocolate box delivered to the dorm and by the lewd winks that McLaggen dork had been sending me all morning, I could safely assume it was from him. But none of them mattered, did they; not, if they were not going to be from him.
Except he wouldn't understand and I would just be dead embarrassed because out of the three of us, he would again be the only one who didn't get send anything – we all knew Harry would be showered in silly presents and sappy cards once again – and then his eyes would get that hurt look that I just could't stand and I only wished I was braver, because then he would have gotten the biggest box of chocolate frogs the galleons could buy.
But he hadn't said anything the whole morning, carefully avoiding the topic and I could seriously injure Ginny when she - not so discretely - explained to Luna that her brother wouldn't be going to a last-minute shopping to Honeydukes because “...he doesn't have a knut to spare, does he?” He heard it as well - I think they might have heard her all the way to the Slytherin table, thoughtless girl! - and his blue eyes got that injured look that just cut my soul in two and he pressed those pretty lips together, got up abruptly and left without a word to spare. I might have helped a piece of toast loaded with jam land on Ginny's fresh robes after that and if the stain wouldn't be removed, well, that was just too bad, wasn't it?!
I went to the dorm afterwards, to spend this torturous day as far away from the romance-crazed teenagers and avoid further embarrassment and any chance of hurting or getting hurt. And there it was.
A small, awkwardly-shaped package with wrapping made of parchment was waiting for me on top of my bed, clumsily tied together with what looked like someone had destroyed a red sock to make a ribbon out of it. But what really got my heart running like a steam engine was my name on the parcel: the “i” in it had a tiny heart in place of a dot on top and the writing was all too familiar... I must have reviewed hundreds of home-works made in this sloppy writing and I would know it anywhere. My fingers were shaking by the time I managed to undo the tight ribbon and when the parcel opened... I didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.
The chocolate frog was nearly crumbled to bits and from the croaky sound it made it was obvious, it was not the freshest ever – possibly the last of leftover from the Christmas stash. But it was the self-made heart-shaped card that finally undid me and got me bawling my eyes out.
I can't tell you enough...
how special you are...
it said on the front-page, above and below a single rose sketched by hand.
There's no one like you,
said the first page, and the second:
There's no one but you.
It was not signed, but still...
I was still sniffling when I hurried down the corridors of Hogwarts to make good of a pass we got for some last minute shopping at Hogsmeade. Ronald Weasley was going to get the biggest package of chocolate frogs the Honeydukes had on stock. Anonymously, of course. But I just knew in that moment I was going to love that boy for life.
