Alexia (R/Hr, PG-13)
Title: Alexia
Author: Mad Maudlin
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Ron/Hermione
Summary: After every spell they broke and duel they fought, it wasn't a curse that got her at all
A/N: Consider this a final bit of last year's unfinished business...I started this fic in the spring while taking a class on psycholinguistics. The idea bit me and wouldn't let go. Warning: not beta'd. Any and all typos are strictly my own.
Alexia
by Mad Maudlin
Angular gyrus. Inferior parietal lobule. They sound like spells in Ron's mouth, like charms or hexes from her dusty old books. They don't sound like falling stonework, like a dent in her head that gushed blood on his fingers. They don't sound like numb fingers or stammers, not like healers or doctors or nightmare machines that see inside her brain, for fuck's sake, what the hell are they doing inside her brain? The wound was on the outside, wasn't it? Hadn't they already fixed it?
The words sound like curses, that's the ironic thing: after every spell they broke and duel they fought, it wasn't a curse that got her at all. Actually, what got her was the curse that missed. An explosion, a crash, a bump on the head. Ron and his brothers hit their heads a million times over and never suffered worse than a goose egg; Hermione hit her head just the once, and suddenly that meant healers and doctors and lots of words he didn't understand. Hermione understood, though, and cried about it until she shriveled up and fell limp over his lap. He carded his fingers through her regrown hair and felt the scarthe markbarely a bump where a falling chunk of stone had hit her, just over and behind her left ear.
Alexia, they said. Ron thinks it sounds like somebody's stern maiden aunt.
It means she can't read.
-\--\--\-
They're war heroes now, and it's pathetically easy for Ron to find his own placenot a flat, even, but a real house, a cottage just outside a Muggle village, screened by trees. It has two bedrooms and miles of weed-eaten garden and a little pond on the edge of the property. He cleans it up, gets furniture, gets food, and then goes to get Hermione.
Mrs. Dr. Granger lets him in with a weak smile and sends him into the lounge, where Hermione is watching television. "Hey," he says.
"Hello," she says faintly without looking up.
Ron hesitates, but Mrs. Dr. Granger nods to him, which gives him courage. He sits down on the sofa next to Hermione and watches her fingers stroke the pattern of the ugly brown afghan she's huddled beneath. They don't exactly follow the ridges, but they don't cross them, either. "Er," he says. "How do you feel?"
She snorts at him, and he supposes he's just been a teaspoon. "Quite lovely, all things considered. You?"
Ron picks at a threadbare spot in his jeans. "Er. All right, I guess."
"That's good."
"I miss you."
She makes a great shuddering sigh and buries her face in the afghan. Ron rubs her shoulders, and wraps his whole arm around her when she doesn't react. "I'm sorry," she says, sounding snotty and thick.
"You don't have to apologize."
"Maybe you should go."
Ron takes a deep breath and checks to make certain that Mrs. Dr. Granger has gone. "Only if you come with me."
That brings her head up. "What?"
"I've got a house now," he says. "I want you to come live with me."
"Why, do you think I need looking after?" she snaps.
"No, I think I'm in love with you," he says.
Hermione sighs. "Sorry. I'm just...I don't know."
Ron reaches out for her hand; she pulls it away. "It's nice. Even my mum likes it."
"Good for your mum."
"It's plenty big for both of us."
"And what precisely would I do there?"
Ron blinks. "Er. Whatever you want, I reckon."
Hermione chuckles a little, which is worse than the way she was watching the telly. "What I want. Of course. Except the one thing that would be really useful."
Ron cringes and sighs. "Maybe you were right. I should go."
"No." Hermione grabs his hand and traces the contours with her fingers, the right ones a little clumsier at the task than the left. It's the only outward sign of what's wrong with her, of the little dead spot that's inside her head. When she speaks, she says, "I'll come with you."
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
Ron kisses her on the forehead. She doesn't smile.
-/--/--/-
At first Ron fears that Hermione will sit on the couch staring again, and just substitute the wireless for a television. It's not exactly relieving when he wakes up one morning to find the coffee on, the post sorted, and a couple of eggs slowly scorching in a frying pan. "Good morning," Hermione says like she's daring him to have any other kind.
"Morning," he says. "What's all this, then?"
She prods the eggs a bit, then begins to flip them, or at least tries. "Breakfast."
"I see that..."
"I've decided to concentrate on the things I can do," she declares, "instead of dwelling on what I oh bollocks!"
Ron leaps into action, only there's none to take: the rogue egg lands with a splat on the floor, bits of grease and yolk flying everywhere. Hermione banishes the mess with a flick of her wand and then rushes to get more eggs out of the fridge (a feature of the cottage that Ron's father has been very enthusiastic about). "Don't worry about it," Ron says quickly. "I don't have time for a big breakfast anyway."
Hermione turns and looks at him, biting her lip a little. "Are you sure?"
"I've got to be in at eight."
Another perk of being a war hero: Ron has a job, probably the best job in the whole world. It's in the business office of the Chudley Cannons, and he suspects he's fantastically bad at it, but it's difficult to demand high performance when you're working for a team that celebrates a fifth-place finish. Plus, he's required to attend matches every so often for research purposes. He gets paid to watch Quidditch. This makes him the envy of almost every wizard he knows plus Ginny, even if it is the Cannons.
Hermione was offered jobs, too. Ron offered to read the letters to her, but she burst into tears at the time, and now there is nothing, no new post for her at all. Probably because anyone who'd be writing to her knows better.
Ron goes to work in the morning, and Hermione stays home alone. He tells himself she's got a wand and a Floo and it's not like she's incapable of leaving the house all day. When he comes home to a cloud of smoke in the kitchen, he's not surprised to learn that she stayed in anyway.
-\--\--\-
Hermione cooks for them both, and every meal is an adventure, because she has to guess and remember and get her recipes off the Five-Minute Feasts show on the WWN. Hermione does the shopping, too: she can still read numbers to make payments, but sometimes she mixes up labels, and so Ron puts buttermilk in his coffee and washes his hair with baby lotion on accident. Hermione does the cleaning and the laundry, too, and won't tolerate any offers of assistance. Ron tolerates a great deal, from mysterious fumes to streaky windows to clothes that shrink, stretch and change color without warning from one load of laundry to the next.
The problem is that his mum doesn't tolerate much, and she checks in on all her sons from time to time, just to make certain they haven't descended into savagery.
"Goodness, dear, these pans are filthy," she declares during one evening check-in. "How can you cook out of these?"
"Very well, thank you," Hermione says in a February voice.
Mum harrumphs at this. "It's unsanitary, that's what it is. Let me show you how to do it properly."
Hermione snatches the skillet out of her hand and just about snarls. "No, thank you."
"I'm just trying to help"
"Thank you, but it's not necessary."
"Well, pardon me, Hermione, but it seems that"
"Mum," Ron says, "can I talk to you outside for a moment?"
They step outside, where Hermione has turned up earth in crazy irregular patches, because she's claimed the gardening for her own as well. "What on earth is the matter with you?" his mum demands. "And for that matter, what's wrong with her?"
Inferior parietal lobule, Ron thinks, but he says out loud, "Look, just...don't be so hard on her, all right?"
"Do you know how dirty those dishes are?"
"So maybe she's not so good at, y'know, cleaning stuff."
Mum's eyes narrow ever so slightly, into that penetrating look that used to make him squirm. "Ron, if you and Hermione intend to continue this...arrangement, I intend to treat you like husband and wife. And if Hermione is going to be a wife she ought to learn how to keep a proper house."
"She's the smartest witch of our year!" Ron snaps back, and somehow he's shouting, though he doesn't know why. "Maybe even the smartest witch of our generation. She knows more stuff about more stuff than half the Ministry put together."
"Which is why it's inexcusable that she doesn't know a proper scouring charm!"
Ron stays outside long after his mum has gone, toeing the soft dry earth where Hermione has started work already; dandelions are already re-sprouting. When he finally brings himself inside, he notices that Hermione's eyes are very red and wet, but every surface in the kitchen is spotless.
-/--/--/-
When people ask him how Hermione is doing, he says "all right" and changes the subject. He doesn't think it's really a lie. Everything is relative anyway, and compared to how she could be she's all right indeed. She talks about accentuating the positive as she douses another stovetop fire, about redirecting her energy as she adds heaping scoops of soap powder to the laundry. "I can't allow my disability to define me," she says through gritted teeth as she turns up the earth in the garden, flipping broad chunks of turf left and right and leaving deep wounds in the brown earth.
"What are you planning to plant?" Ron asks her, feeling at a chunk of sod that has dried up under the summer sun.
Hermione pauses only a beat before plunging the shovel deep into the ground again. "I'm still thinking about it."
Ron doesn't know what she does all day except shop, clean, and hack away at the empty garden. She doesn't tell him. Not a keeping-a-secret kind of not telling; she just says it's nothing special and asks about his day. He tells her about vendors and contracts and stupid office politics, and she eats it up and offers him adviceeven shows him a hex that will make the loudmouth in PR piss lemon juice. "Where did you learn that?" Ron asks, because it's actually quite impressive.
Hermione says quietly, "I read about it somewhere."
"Well, it's brilliant," Ron says, but she puts her wand away and goes outside.
On weekends, they sometimes eat out, or go visit his family or Harry, but Hermione doesn't talk much and always complains that she's got work to do. It's the same thing she says when he asks her to come with him to Cannons matches, because he always gets two free tickets from his boss. He ends up taking all of his brothers and Ginny and Harry, and even the loudmouth in PR, instead of her.
He even takes Neville Longbottom once, after running into him on Diagon Alley during lunch. He's just back from the Amazon, doing research with Professor Sprout, and so Ron takes him to a match to catch up and then brings him home for dinner. Hermione roasts a chicken in celebration, and listens raptly to Neville's tales of the jungle.
"But what about the people?" she asks after he spends a quarter-hour describing an exotic vine. "Did you meet any native wizards? Their magic is supposed to be fascinating."
"We saw a few of the Indians," Neville says, prodding at his asparagus. "But I don't know if any of them were wizards or not."
"Did you talk to any of them?" she asks.
He shrugs. "My Portuguese isn't that good."
"Oh, well."
After dinner, Neville asks what they've been up to, and Ron talks a bit about the Cannons. Hermione shrugs at him and says "Nothing in particular" with a great deal of color in her cheeks.
"You've started the garden, haven't you?" Ron says in a bracing voice, and when she doesn't say anything he turns to Neville. "She's been putting the garden into shape."
That makes Neville's eyes light up like nothing else. "Really? Can I see it?"
"I've only just started," Hermione says; she's looking at her hands but her shoulders are very square. "I haven't started planting anything yet, just turning up soil."
"I'd like to hear what you're planning, though."
Ron would, too, though he doesn't say it; Hermione's jaw is tight, but they all troop into the garden, where the patchwork of raw earth and grass seems more chaotic than usual. Neville's eyes pop at the size of the patches she's begun to till and he whistles lowly. "You'll never plant all this before the frost," he says. "Unless maybe you draft all Ron's family to help."
"I don't think that'll be necessary," Hermione says.
Neville sifts the soil through his fingers and sniffs it. "Good drainage," he offers. "What are going to put up here?"
"Wellivy, I was thinking, mostly," Hermione says haltingly, "or perhaps some climbing roses. Verbena and trillium, too."
"Eastern exposure on this side," Neville observes. "Ivy would probably do better. What about down there, at the bottom of the hill?"
"I haven't planned that yet," Hermione says sharply.
Neville frowns at her a bit. "Well," he says, "if you'd like, I could talk to Professor Sproutshe might know someone who could get you a discount on a few things, if I went with you"
"I don't think that will be necessary."
Ron clears his throat and says, "You know, Nev, we were up pretty early to get to the match, are you sure you're all right to Apparate home?"
Neville takes the hint. "Yeah, I should probably turn in early." He looks at Hermione, who is staring down the hill with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. "Nice to see you again," he calls weakly.
Hermione says, "You too."
On the way out, Neville says, "I thought you said she was doing okay."
"She is," Ron says. "Under the circumstances."
Ron cleans up from dinner to give her time to settle down, and then watches her hoe vigorously through a patch of soil even though the sun has gone down. "He was just trying to be a mate," he says.
"I got just as high a mark in Herbology as he did," Hermione says through gritted teeth.
"No one said you didn't." She doesn't say anything. Ron says, "I'm going to take a walk down to the pondwant to come with me?"
"I've got work to do," Hermione says, and the hoe bites into the ground.
-\--\--\-
They have separate bedrooms, which began as mostly for show; they had spent too many nights in the field sharing the same blanket, the same pile of straw, to worry about it. But the winter closes in and the garden turns to dust and Hermione starts spending more and more nights in her own room, retreating there early in the evening when Ron worked late, lingering awake late when Ron got home on time. He always sleeps to one side of the bed and some mornings finds himself clutching the other pillow. When he looks in on her asleep, she's always curled into a ball on her side with the blanket up over her head. He wonders if she's trying to protect herself, if in her sleep she doesn't know it's too late.
She begs off going to the Burrow for Bonfire Eve, says she doesn't feel well, but Ron returns late to find her beating away at the garden with that hoe, turning up the same ground she had gone at months before and the left unplanted for the weeds. She isn't wearing a cloak or even gloves, and she's shivering as she slams the hoe into the earth again and again and again, until Ron yanks it from her stiff fingers and throws it away.
"Hermione," he says, and when she just stands there panting and shivering he says it again. "Hermione!"
"Goodness," she said, with a chatter in her teeth. "Goodness, I must've forgotten the time. I just wanted to do a little gardening."
Ron puts her to bedin their room, not hersand for the first time in a while she lets him hold her, lets him draw tight around her body and press his face into her hair. He holds her tight until she stops shivering and her hands have thawed and her breathing is deep and even, and for a little while he thinks this might be it, the turning point, though he can't quite say what they might be turning towards. But in the morning she is frying eggs with a hard mouth and won't talk to him at all.
That morning, before he leaves for work, he locks the garden shed.
-/--/--/-
Hermione stops cooking breakfast. Hermione leaves dinner on a plate in the oven. Hermione really sort of disappears. The garden turns to mud and weeds and days stretch into weeks and Ron starts to wonder what the hell he was supposed to have done, because obviously what he did do wasn't right. Maybe this was a job for somebody who wasn't such a teaspoon.
A noise wakes him in the middle of the night. He finds Hermione sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of cold tea and her Hogwarts: A History. She's fully dressed and she's crying, little sniffle-sobs and wet gasps. He watches her for a long time and then goes back to bed.
-/--/--/-
Ron ambushes her on his lunch break to ask, "You want to go out with Harry tonight?"
She doesn't look up from the laundry she's folding. "I have too many things to do."
"Like what?"
She glares at him, and rubs at her puffy eyes. "Fine," she says. "I'll go."
"We're meeting him at the Leaky Cauldron at seven."
"Give me until seven-thirty."
"Fine."
She stays shut up in her room until seven-twenty-nine and they Apparate over separately. They have dinner and drinks with Harry, who finally applied to join the Aurors and has been accepted. Harry talked to Ron about the Cannons, and Harry talks to Hermione about his training schedule, and luckily he doesn't notice that Ron barely talks to Hermione, and Hermione doesn't talk to Ron at all. It is still a good night, and it seems like a good idea to invite Harry back to the house, at least in the moment after the worlds leave his mouth and before he sees the look on Hermione's face.
"This is really a great house," Harry says.
Ron shrugs. "It works. I like it."
"I mean it. It's really great." Harry seems to smile at everything in the room individually. "I've got like four houses and I can't stand being in any of them."
"Maybe if you spent less him bonking my sister and more time taking the curses off," Ron says, and they all laugh a bit.
Harry shakes his head. "I mean it, though. I like this place. Feels like a home, you know?"
"Thank you," Hermione says softly. It's the first thing she's said in a while.
Harry leans toward her and Ron can't stop him saying, "Is that what you've been up to, then? You've been quiet."
Hermione shrugs at him. "I haven't been doing much of anything. Just...thinking, I suppose."
"We should do something together," Harry says. "Before my training starts. While I'm still a free man."
Ron thinks that Harry must be rather drunk to be suggesting such a thing, and Hermione seems to know it. "I don't think so," she says. "I've...I'm actually quite busy."
"Thinking?"
"And other things."
Harry shakes his head. "Look, with Ginny back in school I've got nobody to faff about with most of the day. We could do something. Go to a movie. You know I've never actually seen a movie in a real theater?"
"Harry, I" Hermione stammers, and Ron is caught on the edge of her words. "I can't really afford to go out that often"
Harry snorts. "I can pay for your ticket, it's no big deal"
"Yes it is!" Hermione leaps to her feet, and Ron doesn't know when she started shouting or what is wrong (except for what's been wrong the whole time). "I don't need your charity, Harry Potter, do you understand me? I don't need a handout from you!"
Harry had walked calmly into battle while looking Voldemort in the eye. He was still slightly frightened of women. "I wasn'tI didn'terI'm sorry?"
"You didn't say anything wrong," Ron told him, loudly. "You were just being a mate, right?"
"Right."
Hermione glared at them both and walked out of the room. Ron jumped up to follow her. "Harry, this might take a while."
"I...she...." He looks at Ron, looking lost. "I thought she was doing all right?"
Ron shakes his head and followed her.
He follows her up the stairs, up to her door, and he has to hex the lock off to do it but he finds her pacing in her room. "Don't talk to me," she says, and swipes at the tears on her face.
"What the hell is this all about?"
"Don't talk to me!"
"Answer the question!"
"I don't need anyone pity!" she roars at him, fists clenched. "Not Harry's or your mum's or yours!"
"Good," Ron says, "'cause right now you're not getting any!"
She growls and goes to the window. "I don't need looking after, Ronald."
"I know that."
"I'm disabled, not an idiot"
"Nobody said you were!"
"I don't need anyone taking me out to the movies like, like I'm a child,"
"You're still the smartest witch of the century,"
"or showing me how to do things, or"
"even if you refuse to act like it!"
"or locking up the garden shed like I can't be trusted!"
"You can't!"
She shoves at him, not really hurting but not really trying to either. "I don't need you to take care of me, Ronald Weasley!" she shrieks. "I'm a grown witch and I don't need your help or anyone else's!"
"Oh, so that's it, is it?" he asks. "That's why you're doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"You can't bloody stand it, can you?" Ron says. "You can't post letters, you can't use a cookbook,"
"So what if I can't?"
"you can't even do your shopping without someone to check it for you,"
"I don't need anyone else,"
"you can't even live on your own because you couldn’t respond to any bloody job offers!"
"certainly not you!"
"You need help and you can't bloody stand it!" Ron roars. "That's is, isn't it?"
Hermione is breathing deeply, panting really, and flexing her fingers like they belong around his throat, but she also isn't meeting his eyes. "That's ludicrous."
"That's it," Ron says. "You're Hermione Jane Granger, the smartest witch in her year, and you've never needed help with anything so you don't even know how to ask!"
"I don't need anything," she says with a voice like a grater.
"You do," Ron says. "You need someone else's help and it just eats you up inside. You need other people and you won't admit it because you otherwise you wouldn't be Hermione the Great. Well, congratulations, you're not. Welcome to the human fucking race!"
She Disapparates
-/--/--/-
Hermione doesn't come back in the morning. Hermione doesn't come back the next day. Ron really doesn't expect her to. He doesn't ask if anybody's seen her, doesn't tell his mum she's gone, and eventually figures out how to make his own dinners.
It's not really a big deal. He doesn't really need her. He thinks that was part of the problem.
When she shows up again she is pale and fragile and at first he thinks he surprised her while she was clearing away her things, fleeing back to her mother like the witches in the soap operas always do. But he's home at his usual time and she's not carrying a suitcase, just a rucksack, and it's not even full.
"Hello," she says.
He sits down on the couch, opposite her. "Hello."
She nudges the rug with her foot. "I, um, I started the laundry."
"Thank you."
"And I wentI talked to Neville yesterday."
"Neville Longbottom?"
"Yes." She swallows. "About the garden."
Ron nods. "You, er, you staying, then?"
She nudges the rug again, then smoothes it. "If you want me to."
"I want you to," Ron said. "I want you."
She looks up at him, She smiles.
He gets up to sit next to her.
"I also went up to Hogwarts," she said, and starts opening the rucksack. "I talked to Madame Pince for a while."
"Oh?"
"She gave me this book," and she pulls it out, and it's enormousbigger than her usual light reading, even. The cover is reinforced with brass and the spine is as thick as Ron's arm. "This book, you see. Apparently in 1397 a wizard named Yegor Antonov was blinded in a duel with his sister over their late father's collection of goblin weaponry, but he went on to be Vice-Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and director of the Vampire Nutritional Campaign."
Ron nods, because he doesn't know what else to do.
"This is the only English translation of his autobiography, and I thought, maybe, there might be something useful in heresomething that might, you know, help me."
He nods again.
Hermione swallows. She says, "Would you," and then stops.
"Would I...?"
"Would you read it to me?"
Ron looks at the book and then at her, with her shiny eyes and her chin stuck out just so. He kisses her, gently, then pulls the book into his lap and opens it to the title page. "Where do you want to start?"
Author: Mad Maudlin
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Ron/Hermione
Summary: After every spell they broke and duel they fought, it wasn't a curse that got her at all
A/N: Consider this a final bit of last year's unfinished business...I started this fic in the spring while taking a class on psycholinguistics. The idea bit me and wouldn't let go. Warning: not beta'd. Any and all typos are strictly my own.
Alexia
by Mad Maudlin
Angular gyrus. Inferior parietal lobule. They sound like spells in Ron's mouth, like charms or hexes from her dusty old books. They don't sound like falling stonework, like a dent in her head that gushed blood on his fingers. They don't sound like numb fingers or stammers, not like healers or doctors or nightmare machines that see inside her brain, for fuck's sake, what the hell are they doing inside her brain? The wound was on the outside, wasn't it? Hadn't they already fixed it?
The words sound like curses, that's the ironic thing: after every spell they broke and duel they fought, it wasn't a curse that got her at all. Actually, what got her was the curse that missed. An explosion, a crash, a bump on the head. Ron and his brothers hit their heads a million times over and never suffered worse than a goose egg; Hermione hit her head just the once, and suddenly that meant healers and doctors and lots of words he didn't understand. Hermione understood, though, and cried about it until she shriveled up and fell limp over his lap. He carded his fingers through her regrown hair and felt the scarthe markbarely a bump where a falling chunk of stone had hit her, just over and behind her left ear.
Alexia, they said. Ron thinks it sounds like somebody's stern maiden aunt.
It means she can't read.
-\--\--\-
They're war heroes now, and it's pathetically easy for Ron to find his own placenot a flat, even, but a real house, a cottage just outside a Muggle village, screened by trees. It has two bedrooms and miles of weed-eaten garden and a little pond on the edge of the property. He cleans it up, gets furniture, gets food, and then goes to get Hermione.
Mrs. Dr. Granger lets him in with a weak smile and sends him into the lounge, where Hermione is watching television. "Hey," he says.
"Hello," she says faintly without looking up.
Ron hesitates, but Mrs. Dr. Granger nods to him, which gives him courage. He sits down on the sofa next to Hermione and watches her fingers stroke the pattern of the ugly brown afghan she's huddled beneath. They don't exactly follow the ridges, but they don't cross them, either. "Er," he says. "How do you feel?"
She snorts at him, and he supposes he's just been a teaspoon. "Quite lovely, all things considered. You?"
Ron picks at a threadbare spot in his jeans. "Er. All right, I guess."
"That's good."
"I miss you."
She makes a great shuddering sigh and buries her face in the afghan. Ron rubs her shoulders, and wraps his whole arm around her when she doesn't react. "I'm sorry," she says, sounding snotty and thick.
"You don't have to apologize."
"Maybe you should go."
Ron takes a deep breath and checks to make certain that Mrs. Dr. Granger has gone. "Only if you come with me."
That brings her head up. "What?"
"I've got a house now," he says. "I want you to come live with me."
"Why, do you think I need looking after?" she snaps.
"No, I think I'm in love with you," he says.
Hermione sighs. "Sorry. I'm just...I don't know."
Ron reaches out for her hand; she pulls it away. "It's nice. Even my mum likes it."
"Good for your mum."
"It's plenty big for both of us."
"And what precisely would I do there?"
Ron blinks. "Er. Whatever you want, I reckon."
Hermione chuckles a little, which is worse than the way she was watching the telly. "What I want. Of course. Except the one thing that would be really useful."
Ron cringes and sighs. "Maybe you were right. I should go."
"No." Hermione grabs his hand and traces the contours with her fingers, the right ones a little clumsier at the task than the left. It's the only outward sign of what's wrong with her, of the little dead spot that's inside her head. When she speaks, she says, "I'll come with you."
"You don't have to."
"I want to."
Ron kisses her on the forehead. She doesn't smile.
-/--/--/-
At first Ron fears that Hermione will sit on the couch staring again, and just substitute the wireless for a television. It's not exactly relieving when he wakes up one morning to find the coffee on, the post sorted, and a couple of eggs slowly scorching in a frying pan. "Good morning," Hermione says like she's daring him to have any other kind.
"Morning," he says. "What's all this, then?"
She prods the eggs a bit, then begins to flip them, or at least tries. "Breakfast."
"I see that..."
"I've decided to concentrate on the things I can do," she declares, "instead of dwelling on what I oh bollocks!"
Ron leaps into action, only there's none to take: the rogue egg lands with a splat on the floor, bits of grease and yolk flying everywhere. Hermione banishes the mess with a flick of her wand and then rushes to get more eggs out of the fridge (a feature of the cottage that Ron's father has been very enthusiastic about). "Don't worry about it," Ron says quickly. "I don't have time for a big breakfast anyway."
Hermione turns and looks at him, biting her lip a little. "Are you sure?"
"I've got to be in at eight."
Another perk of being a war hero: Ron has a job, probably the best job in the whole world. It's in the business office of the Chudley Cannons, and he suspects he's fantastically bad at it, but it's difficult to demand high performance when you're working for a team that celebrates a fifth-place finish. Plus, he's required to attend matches every so often for research purposes. He gets paid to watch Quidditch. This makes him the envy of almost every wizard he knows plus Ginny, even if it is the Cannons.
Hermione was offered jobs, too. Ron offered to read the letters to her, but she burst into tears at the time, and now there is nothing, no new post for her at all. Probably because anyone who'd be writing to her knows better.
Ron goes to work in the morning, and Hermione stays home alone. He tells himself she's got a wand and a Floo and it's not like she's incapable of leaving the house all day. When he comes home to a cloud of smoke in the kitchen, he's not surprised to learn that she stayed in anyway.
-\--\--\-
Hermione cooks for them both, and every meal is an adventure, because she has to guess and remember and get her recipes off the Five-Minute Feasts show on the WWN. Hermione does the shopping, too: she can still read numbers to make payments, but sometimes she mixes up labels, and so Ron puts buttermilk in his coffee and washes his hair with baby lotion on accident. Hermione does the cleaning and the laundry, too, and won't tolerate any offers of assistance. Ron tolerates a great deal, from mysterious fumes to streaky windows to clothes that shrink, stretch and change color without warning from one load of laundry to the next.
The problem is that his mum doesn't tolerate much, and she checks in on all her sons from time to time, just to make certain they haven't descended into savagery.
"Goodness, dear, these pans are filthy," she declares during one evening check-in. "How can you cook out of these?"
"Very well, thank you," Hermione says in a February voice.
Mum harrumphs at this. "It's unsanitary, that's what it is. Let me show you how to do it properly."
Hermione snatches the skillet out of her hand and just about snarls. "No, thank you."
"I'm just trying to help"
"Thank you, but it's not necessary."
"Well, pardon me, Hermione, but it seems that"
"Mum," Ron says, "can I talk to you outside for a moment?"
They step outside, where Hermione has turned up earth in crazy irregular patches, because she's claimed the gardening for her own as well. "What on earth is the matter with you?" his mum demands. "And for that matter, what's wrong with her?"
Inferior parietal lobule, Ron thinks, but he says out loud, "Look, just...don't be so hard on her, all right?"
"Do you know how dirty those dishes are?"
"So maybe she's not so good at, y'know, cleaning stuff."
Mum's eyes narrow ever so slightly, into that penetrating look that used to make him squirm. "Ron, if you and Hermione intend to continue this...arrangement, I intend to treat you like husband and wife. And if Hermione is going to be a wife she ought to learn how to keep a proper house."
"She's the smartest witch of our year!" Ron snaps back, and somehow he's shouting, though he doesn't know why. "Maybe even the smartest witch of our generation. She knows more stuff about more stuff than half the Ministry put together."
"Which is why it's inexcusable that she doesn't know a proper scouring charm!"
Ron stays outside long after his mum has gone, toeing the soft dry earth where Hermione has started work already; dandelions are already re-sprouting. When he finally brings himself inside, he notices that Hermione's eyes are very red and wet, but every surface in the kitchen is spotless.
-/--/--/-
When people ask him how Hermione is doing, he says "all right" and changes the subject. He doesn't think it's really a lie. Everything is relative anyway, and compared to how she could be she's all right indeed. She talks about accentuating the positive as she douses another stovetop fire, about redirecting her energy as she adds heaping scoops of soap powder to the laundry. "I can't allow my disability to define me," she says through gritted teeth as she turns up the earth in the garden, flipping broad chunks of turf left and right and leaving deep wounds in the brown earth.
"What are you planning to plant?" Ron asks her, feeling at a chunk of sod that has dried up under the summer sun.
Hermione pauses only a beat before plunging the shovel deep into the ground again. "I'm still thinking about it."
Ron doesn't know what she does all day except shop, clean, and hack away at the empty garden. She doesn't tell him. Not a keeping-a-secret kind of not telling; she just says it's nothing special and asks about his day. He tells her about vendors and contracts and stupid office politics, and she eats it up and offers him adviceeven shows him a hex that will make the loudmouth in PR piss lemon juice. "Where did you learn that?" Ron asks, because it's actually quite impressive.
Hermione says quietly, "I read about it somewhere."
"Well, it's brilliant," Ron says, but she puts her wand away and goes outside.
On weekends, they sometimes eat out, or go visit his family or Harry, but Hermione doesn't talk much and always complains that she's got work to do. It's the same thing she says when he asks her to come with him to Cannons matches, because he always gets two free tickets from his boss. He ends up taking all of his brothers and Ginny and Harry, and even the loudmouth in PR, instead of her.
He even takes Neville Longbottom once, after running into him on Diagon Alley during lunch. He's just back from the Amazon, doing research with Professor Sprout, and so Ron takes him to a match to catch up and then brings him home for dinner. Hermione roasts a chicken in celebration, and listens raptly to Neville's tales of the jungle.
"But what about the people?" she asks after he spends a quarter-hour describing an exotic vine. "Did you meet any native wizards? Their magic is supposed to be fascinating."
"We saw a few of the Indians," Neville says, prodding at his asparagus. "But I don't know if any of them were wizards or not."
"Did you talk to any of them?" she asks.
He shrugs. "My Portuguese isn't that good."
"Oh, well."
After dinner, Neville asks what they've been up to, and Ron talks a bit about the Cannons. Hermione shrugs at him and says "Nothing in particular" with a great deal of color in her cheeks.
"You've started the garden, haven't you?" Ron says in a bracing voice, and when she doesn't say anything he turns to Neville. "She's been putting the garden into shape."
That makes Neville's eyes light up like nothing else. "Really? Can I see it?"
"I've only just started," Hermione says; she's looking at her hands but her shoulders are very square. "I haven't started planting anything yet, just turning up soil."
"I'd like to hear what you're planning, though."
Ron would, too, though he doesn't say it; Hermione's jaw is tight, but they all troop into the garden, where the patchwork of raw earth and grass seems more chaotic than usual. Neville's eyes pop at the size of the patches she's begun to till and he whistles lowly. "You'll never plant all this before the frost," he says. "Unless maybe you draft all Ron's family to help."
"I don't think that'll be necessary," Hermione says.
Neville sifts the soil through his fingers and sniffs it. "Good drainage," he offers. "What are going to put up here?"
"Wellivy, I was thinking, mostly," Hermione says haltingly, "or perhaps some climbing roses. Verbena and trillium, too."
"Eastern exposure on this side," Neville observes. "Ivy would probably do better. What about down there, at the bottom of the hill?"
"I haven't planned that yet," Hermione says sharply.
Neville frowns at her a bit. "Well," he says, "if you'd like, I could talk to Professor Sproutshe might know someone who could get you a discount on a few things, if I went with you"
"I don't think that will be necessary."
Ron clears his throat and says, "You know, Nev, we were up pretty early to get to the match, are you sure you're all right to Apparate home?"
Neville takes the hint. "Yeah, I should probably turn in early." He looks at Hermione, who is staring down the hill with her arms wrapped tightly around herself. "Nice to see you again," he calls weakly.
Hermione says, "You too."
On the way out, Neville says, "I thought you said she was doing okay."
"She is," Ron says. "Under the circumstances."
Ron cleans up from dinner to give her time to settle down, and then watches her hoe vigorously through a patch of soil even though the sun has gone down. "He was just trying to be a mate," he says.
"I got just as high a mark in Herbology as he did," Hermione says through gritted teeth.
"No one said you didn't." She doesn't say anything. Ron says, "I'm going to take a walk down to the pondwant to come with me?"
"I've got work to do," Hermione says, and the hoe bites into the ground.
-\--\--\-
They have separate bedrooms, which began as mostly for show; they had spent too many nights in the field sharing the same blanket, the same pile of straw, to worry about it. But the winter closes in and the garden turns to dust and Hermione starts spending more and more nights in her own room, retreating there early in the evening when Ron worked late, lingering awake late when Ron got home on time. He always sleeps to one side of the bed and some mornings finds himself clutching the other pillow. When he looks in on her asleep, she's always curled into a ball on her side with the blanket up over her head. He wonders if she's trying to protect herself, if in her sleep she doesn't know it's too late.
She begs off going to the Burrow for Bonfire Eve, says she doesn't feel well, but Ron returns late to find her beating away at the garden with that hoe, turning up the same ground she had gone at months before and the left unplanted for the weeds. She isn't wearing a cloak or even gloves, and she's shivering as she slams the hoe into the earth again and again and again, until Ron yanks it from her stiff fingers and throws it away.
"Hermione," he says, and when she just stands there panting and shivering he says it again. "Hermione!"
"Goodness," she said, with a chatter in her teeth. "Goodness, I must've forgotten the time. I just wanted to do a little gardening."
Ron puts her to bedin their room, not hersand for the first time in a while she lets him hold her, lets him draw tight around her body and press his face into her hair. He holds her tight until she stops shivering and her hands have thawed and her breathing is deep and even, and for a little while he thinks this might be it, the turning point, though he can't quite say what they might be turning towards. But in the morning she is frying eggs with a hard mouth and won't talk to him at all.
That morning, before he leaves for work, he locks the garden shed.
-/--/--/-
Hermione stops cooking breakfast. Hermione leaves dinner on a plate in the oven. Hermione really sort of disappears. The garden turns to mud and weeds and days stretch into weeks and Ron starts to wonder what the hell he was supposed to have done, because obviously what he did do wasn't right. Maybe this was a job for somebody who wasn't such a teaspoon.
A noise wakes him in the middle of the night. He finds Hermione sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of cold tea and her Hogwarts: A History. She's fully dressed and she's crying, little sniffle-sobs and wet gasps. He watches her for a long time and then goes back to bed.
-/--/--/-
Ron ambushes her on his lunch break to ask, "You want to go out with Harry tonight?"
She doesn't look up from the laundry she's folding. "I have too many things to do."
"Like what?"
She glares at him, and rubs at her puffy eyes. "Fine," she says. "I'll go."
"We're meeting him at the Leaky Cauldron at seven."
"Give me until seven-thirty."
"Fine."
She stays shut up in her room until seven-twenty-nine and they Apparate over separately. They have dinner and drinks with Harry, who finally applied to join the Aurors and has been accepted. Harry talked to Ron about the Cannons, and Harry talks to Hermione about his training schedule, and luckily he doesn't notice that Ron barely talks to Hermione, and Hermione doesn't talk to Ron at all. It is still a good night, and it seems like a good idea to invite Harry back to the house, at least in the moment after the worlds leave his mouth and before he sees the look on Hermione's face.
"This is really a great house," Harry says.
Ron shrugs. "It works. I like it."
"I mean it. It's really great." Harry seems to smile at everything in the room individually. "I've got like four houses and I can't stand being in any of them."
"Maybe if you spent less him bonking my sister and more time taking the curses off," Ron says, and they all laugh a bit.
Harry shakes his head. "I mean it, though. I like this place. Feels like a home, you know?"
"Thank you," Hermione says softly. It's the first thing she's said in a while.
Harry leans toward her and Ron can't stop him saying, "Is that what you've been up to, then? You've been quiet."
Hermione shrugs at him. "I haven't been doing much of anything. Just...thinking, I suppose."
"We should do something together," Harry says. "Before my training starts. While I'm still a free man."
Ron thinks that Harry must be rather drunk to be suggesting such a thing, and Hermione seems to know it. "I don't think so," she says. "I've...I'm actually quite busy."
"Thinking?"
"And other things."
Harry shakes his head. "Look, with Ginny back in school I've got nobody to faff about with most of the day. We could do something. Go to a movie. You know I've never actually seen a movie in a real theater?"
"Harry, I" Hermione stammers, and Ron is caught on the edge of her words. "I can't really afford to go out that often"
Harry snorts. "I can pay for your ticket, it's no big deal"
"Yes it is!" Hermione leaps to her feet, and Ron doesn't know when she started shouting or what is wrong (except for what's been wrong the whole time). "I don't need your charity, Harry Potter, do you understand me? I don't need a handout from you!"
Harry had walked calmly into battle while looking Voldemort in the eye. He was still slightly frightened of women. "I wasn'tI didn'terI'm sorry?"
"You didn't say anything wrong," Ron told him, loudly. "You were just being a mate, right?"
"Right."
Hermione glared at them both and walked out of the room. Ron jumped up to follow her. "Harry, this might take a while."
"I...she...." He looks at Ron, looking lost. "I thought she was doing all right?"
Ron shakes his head and followed her.
He follows her up the stairs, up to her door, and he has to hex the lock off to do it but he finds her pacing in her room. "Don't talk to me," she says, and swipes at the tears on her face.
"What the hell is this all about?"
"Don't talk to me!"
"Answer the question!"
"I don't need anyone pity!" she roars at him, fists clenched. "Not Harry's or your mum's or yours!"
"Good," Ron says, "'cause right now you're not getting any!"
She growls and goes to the window. "I don't need looking after, Ronald."
"I know that."
"I'm disabled, not an idiot"
"Nobody said you were!"
"I don't need anyone taking me out to the movies like, like I'm a child,"
"You're still the smartest witch of the century,"
"or showing me how to do things, or"
"even if you refuse to act like it!"
"or locking up the garden shed like I can't be trusted!"
"You can't!"
She shoves at him, not really hurting but not really trying to either. "I don't need you to take care of me, Ronald Weasley!" she shrieks. "I'm a grown witch and I don't need your help or anyone else's!"
"Oh, so that's it, is it?" he asks. "That's why you're doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"You can't bloody stand it, can you?" Ron says. "You can't post letters, you can't use a cookbook,"
"So what if I can't?"
"you can't even do your shopping without someone to check it for you,"
"I don't need anyone else,"
"you can't even live on your own because you couldn’t respond to any bloody job offers!"
"certainly not you!"
"You need help and you can't bloody stand it!" Ron roars. "That's is, isn't it?"
Hermione is breathing deeply, panting really, and flexing her fingers like they belong around his throat, but she also isn't meeting his eyes. "That's ludicrous."
"That's it," Ron says. "You're Hermione Jane Granger, the smartest witch in her year, and you've never needed help with anything so you don't even know how to ask!"
"I don't need anything," she says with a voice like a grater.
"You do," Ron says. "You need someone else's help and it just eats you up inside. You need other people and you won't admit it because you otherwise you wouldn't be Hermione the Great. Well, congratulations, you're not. Welcome to the human fucking race!"
She Disapparates
-/--/--/-
Hermione doesn't come back in the morning. Hermione doesn't come back the next day. Ron really doesn't expect her to. He doesn't ask if anybody's seen her, doesn't tell his mum she's gone, and eventually figures out how to make his own dinners.
It's not really a big deal. He doesn't really need her. He thinks that was part of the problem.
When she shows up again she is pale and fragile and at first he thinks he surprised her while she was clearing away her things, fleeing back to her mother like the witches in the soap operas always do. But he's home at his usual time and she's not carrying a suitcase, just a rucksack, and it's not even full.
"Hello," she says.
He sits down on the couch, opposite her. "Hello."
She nudges the rug with her foot. "I, um, I started the laundry."
"Thank you."
"And I wentI talked to Neville yesterday."
"Neville Longbottom?"
"Yes." She swallows. "About the garden."
Ron nods. "You, er, you staying, then?"
She nudges the rug again, then smoothes it. "If you want me to."
"I want you to," Ron said. "I want you."
She looks up at him, She smiles.
He gets up to sit next to her.
"I also went up to Hogwarts," she said, and starts opening the rucksack. "I talked to Madame Pince for a while."
"Oh?"
"She gave me this book," and she pulls it out, and it's enormousbigger than her usual light reading, even. The cover is reinforced with brass and the spine is as thick as Ron's arm. "This book, you see. Apparently in 1397 a wizard named Yegor Antonov was blinded in a duel with his sister over their late father's collection of goblin weaponry, but he went on to be Vice-Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards and director of the Vampire Nutritional Campaign."
Ron nods, because he doesn't know what else to do.
"This is the only English translation of his autobiography, and I thought, maybe, there might be something useful in heresomething that might, you know, help me."
He nods again.
Hermione swallows. She says, "Would you," and then stops.
"Would I...?"
"Would you read it to me?"
Ron looks at the book and then at her, with her shiny eyes and her chin stuck out just so. He kisses her, gently, then pulls the book into his lap and opens it to the title page. "Where do you want to start?"