by Angela
03-30-03
The
small hours of the morning of December twenty-sixth made for a silent night
indeed. A thick blanket of snow muffled
the nighttime sounds outside the stout stone walls of the Hogwarts dormitories,
and the buzzing aftermath of the Yule Ball had faded into stillness. It was as though a sleeping draught had
drained the students of their energy until the only sound was the sniffing sigh
of Dean Thomas’s snore.
Ronald Weasley was wide awake.
He scowled at the dismembered bits of the enchanted
Viktor Krum figure he’d cherished since summer. Here, alone and protected by the heavy draperies that surrounded
his bed, he could acknowledge that Hermione had been partially right. He hadn’t liked the smug superiority on
Krum’s face when he strutted into the dance with Hermione on his arm. He didn’t like to see her all done up and
too-obviously pretty for some other guy.
He was jealous.
It didn’t take a genius to figure that out, unfortunately, and by
breakfast even his mother would’ve heard about their ridiculously public
spat. That wasn’t the worst of it,
though.
The worst was the look on Hermione’s face when she
realized she’d said too much, that she’d as good as admitted that she had
wanted him to ask her to the ball. In
the instant before she stormed out of the room, he’d seen it—only for the
barest moment—a look of fury and mortification and hope. As if a part of her was glad it was finally
out in the air.
It was the hope that had Ron awake at half past
three. Any observer might say that she
hit the nail on the head, that jealousy was the only issue here, but they’d be
wrong. He liked Hermione. He really liked her. I was just that he’d hoped the subject
wouldn’t come up just yet. Everything
was too muddled, too confused to have to deal with love and romantic stuff,
especially since they were right in the middle of a tournament that would very
likely get Harry killed.
And though Harry being dead would be the very worst
possible outcome of the situation, anything that made the three of them less
like three and more like two and one made Ron’s chest hurt.
But growing up did that to people, he guessed. In a few years it’d be him and Hermione with
Harry on the side, or him and Harry with Hermione on the side, or, worst of all,
Harry and Hermione with him on the side. He felt tightness around his chest and wished he could reverse
time so they could be first-years again.
Then he wouldn’t have to think about his feelings for Hermione.
Or his feelings for Harry.
It was complicated, this swell of emotion that he felt
for his best friend. Part of it was
familial—he felt it for Ginny or the twins, or even Percy—but there was
something else there, something he’d be embarrassed to tell anyone else. Part of it was pride; being close friends
with the Boy who Lived came with no small bit of attention. Another part was friendship in its purest
form, the knowledge that he would die for Harry if it came down to it. But there was one other bit, something that
sent shivers down his spine whenever he thought that there could be a future
without Harry, and even more when he thought of a day-in, day-out existence by
his side forever.
“Ron?” Harry’s
drowsy voice interrupted his muddled thoughts.
Ron panicked, flinging the broken Krum-pieces under his
bed before answering. “What is it?” he
asked in a hushed voice, pushing open his bed-curtains.
“Oh,” Harry whispered, rubbing the sleep from his
eyes. Only his head and hands were
outside the draperies. “I didn’t hear
you snoring, so I thought you’d wandered off.”
“I don’t snore!”
“Sure you do.
Otherwise, I wouldn’t have known to wake up because you weren’t doing
it.”
Ron was about to argue, but a sleepy grumble came from
the general direction of Seamus Finnigan’s bed. “Looks like we’re too loud,” Ron whispered across the gap between
their beds.
Harry pushed open his bed-curtains and motioned for Ron
to join him. In a skip, barely enough
time for him to register the cold stone floor on his bare feet, Ron was sitting
cross-legged in the darkness of Harry’s bed.
Harry was obviously still half asleep. He shook his head, as if to keep his
thoughts focused. “I talked to Diggory
tonight,” he started in a soft voice.
“He told me some nonsense about the egg.” Harry scowled. “I think he
was trying to make me look bad in front of Cho.”
Ron felt a similar scowl twist his features. “Join the club. I think Hermione was trying to make a fool of both of us for not
asking her to that stupid dance.” Even
as he grumbled the words, he couldn’t figure out why he was saying them. Harry knew what was going on as clearly as
Hermione did.
“So,” Harry looked a little uncomfortable. “Are you going to ask her next time, like
she said?” His eyes looked black in the
darkness, but Ron couldn’t miss their intense questioning.
He shrugged.
“Doesn’t seem fair,” he said finally, “for me to get the ready-made date
while you have to work for it.” Ron
looked down at his fingernails—bitten to the quick during his fight with
Harry. He’d spent a lot of time talking
with Hermione those weeks. “But I
might. It’ll be a year at least, after
all.”
For a long time Harry was quiet. Ron got nervous, wondering what he was
thinking. He could hear his heart
pounding in his ears, hoping that this thing with Hermione wouldn’t lead to
another row. It was getting chilly,
even while surrounded by the velvet draperies.
Ron wondered if Harry had fallen asleep.
Just as he made up his mind to slip back to bed, Harry
spoke. “Sometimes I think it would be
easier without them,” he said in a distant voice. “Life would be a whole lot less complicated if girls didn’t have
to become girls and we didn’t have to think of them so much.”
“Yeah,” Ron whispered, his voice catching. “Hermione’s great, but she . . . she confuses
things. It’s easier to just be with
you, mostly.” He ignored the current
dizziness in his mind just from talking about this sort of thing with Harry.
“Let’s become blood brothers.”
“What?” Ron
wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that.
“It’s something Muggles do. It’s kind of a promise to always be there for each other, no
matter what.” He pulled his wand from
beneath his pillow and uttered a few words.
A thin line of blood spilled from a cut that appeared in his palm. “Go on,” he encouraged, handing Ron the
wand. “It barely hurts.”
He took the bit of wood in trembling fingers and
whispered the same words. This was
alien to him, and he wondered what cutting yourself had to do with
promises. Before he could think too
long on it, Harry’s palm was pressed tightly against his, their fingers
entwined.
His hand was warm, Ron noticed, and his blood was hot and
wet. He understood right away, once he
saw what Harry was about. It made his
heart pound all over again, thinking of his friend’s blood running through his
veins. Ron gripped his hand tighter,
staring Harry in the eyes.
“Now we’re brothers.” Harry said, not looking away. “There is no one, not even a girl, that can
come between us now, Ron.”
Later Ron would wonder what came over him, why he impulsively
moved to seal the promise in another way.
Leaning forward and balancing on his free hand, Ron kissed Harry, right
on the mouth. It was warm and wet and
not unlike their hands, still clamped together. Ron closed his eyes as Harry’s mouth moved beneath his—shockingly
not in protest, but in return.
When the kiss ended, Ron felt his face go hot with
embarrassment. It was impossible to see
if Harry blushed, too, but Ron could imagine his friend was as red as his own
hair. It wasn’t every day you share a
midnight kiss with your newly made blood brother. Ron was mortified and a little ashamed. Hadn’t he just been agonizing over the fact that he didn’t want
to change the dynamics of his friendships with both Harry and Hermione?
Kissing changed everything. There was no getting around it.
“That was unexpected,” Harry said slowly.
Ron moaned, tugging at his hair. “I’m sorry,” he cried. “It was stupid.”
“No.” His
friend’s voice was firm, if quiet.
Almost a full minute passed in silence. Ron’s ears were pounding with blood. His face was hot and his mouth dry. He hadn’t even wanted to kiss
Harry—not the way he wanted to kiss Hermione.
He imagined kissing her every time she bit her bottom lip when she
studied, every time her scowl melted into a smile in spite of her best
efforts. Ron had never imagined
kissing Harry, and yet here they were, awkward and embarrassed, knowing what
the other’s toothpaste tasted like.
He wanted Harry to say something. Something about quidditch, or about the
second task—something harmless that would break the tension.
Harry kept his thoughts to himself.
Wondering what to do, Ron noticed the smooth hardness of
Harry’s wand, still in his hand. The
answer was obvious. He trembled as his
hand suddenly swished-and-flicked the dark wood. “Obliviate!”
An
instant later, Harry blinked, looking sleepy.
“Ron?” he asked, confused. “Why are you—?”
“You had a nightmare or something,” Ron lied
quickly. “You yelled.”
Harry rubbed his eyes.
“Sorry,” he apologized softly.
“I don’t remember any kind of bad dream. Thanks for waking me, though.”
Ron smiled down at his best friend. “Any time,” he promised.
When he crawled back into his own bed, he was
trembling. His hand was a little sore
where the cut was starting to heal over.
It was too bad Harry wouldn’t remember becoming blood brothers with
him. Ron wondered what would’ve
happened to them with that kiss hanging between them. At least now he didn’t have to worry about that. The kiss would be his secret, just like the
blood bond. He intended to keep the
promise anyway, to be there for Harry no matter what.
And Hermione—even without her blood or kiss, he knew he’d
do the same for her. He didn’t know
what the future held for them, but if he had anything to do with it, they would
stay strong as three united. For now he
could love them both equally, and worry about the next dance when the time
came.