Hermione found Ron in the tent beside hers. He was sitting in front of an antique duchess, hands fiddling with a pure white rose. She pulled up a chair and sat behind him, and he held the flower out to her mutely. And that is when her heart broke for him.

“Oh, Ron…” she murmured weakly, fingertips grazing over the silky petals. She recognised it from Mrs. Weasley’s garden, could just imagine him standing out there for ages with George complaining that they were all the same or Harry trying to be helpful in that awkward way of his.

“Harry told me you’d left,” he said quietly. “He wouldn’t tell me why exactly, but you know.” He shrugged, too rigidly. “I figured it out. There’s only one thing… person… that would make you leave your own wedding like that.”

Her gaze wondered down to the floor. Stupidly, ridiculously, absurdly, she could not help to think her feet were sore, that there would be hundreds of blisters on them tomorrow and they’d be red and swollen and she’d have to lather them with bandages and with sudden ferocity she kicked the bloody heels off her feet. Watched them roll for a bit on the grass, the right going further than the left. Rubbed her feet and tucked them under her as she crossed her legs, thinking furiously that her feet were not the only things she had ruined today. And it was all because she couldn’t make up her fucking mind. And she had never hated herself more than she did in that moment. It was like one of those awful movies her mother loved so much, “There’s nothing juicer than a love triangle,” she would say. And Hermione would have to bite her tongue during the whole movie because the protagonist was so selfish and so cruel to let the other two dangle like that. And now she had gone along and done the same thing, all because she was confused. What was more infuriating was thinking about how angry she was with herself when the real matter at hand was Ron, sitting without a sound.

She wanted his ears to go red, wanted him to stand and shout and declare how much he hated her. She wanted him to leave her because she was too scared to leave him. She had pictured their wedding so many times before. Everyone was happy and smiling and crying and rose petals from some unknown source were falling from the sky as they kissed after saying the most beautifully perfect vows. Hers would have been immersed with big words and tear-jerking sentences and his would’ve been simple and funny but even better because that was just Ron. And while Hermione was thinking this she stared into the mirror on the duchess.

Their reflections did not match how she’d always thought they would look before their wedding. Ron was still looking at his hands, brushing some lint off his sleeve. His mouth was turned down, and his eyes were not the vibrant blue she knew. Impossibly, his hair seemed to have faded two shades. She looked at herself. Her mascara had run down her cheeks, lips too red for such a pale completion. Leaves and twigs were tangled in her drooping bun, drooping so pathetically it didn’t even look like a bun anymore. Her dress was stained with patches of dirt. The tiara in her hair was crooked, and she pulled it out painfully. Looked at it, no longer as beautiful as she’d once thought, and set it on the duchess. They both stared at it, sitting there and mocking them. The sun had long since disappeared behind the newly clouded sky, and somehow without any real kind of warning Hermione knew it was over.

She dipped her head until she found his shoulder, crying soundlessly for the things that could have been. “I’m so sorry, Ron. I’m so sorry.”

His cheek rested on top of her head. “Me too.”

“You’re the last person I would ever want to hurt in this world,” she whimpered.

“I know,” he said softly. “Because, really, who would fall in love with bloody Malfoy if they had the choice?”

She laughed watery. Did not speak for five seconds. “You’re my best friend,” she whispered.

“Always,” he promised. 

“Things are going to be weird now.”

“Yeah,” he agreed. “But, I mean, I sort of knew. Like this whole thing isn’t as surprising as you’d think it would be. We’ll bounce back. We always do. Not at first, but eventually. And if everyone else loves you as much as I think they do, they’ll understand too. Not at first, but eventually.”

“Never mind everyone else.” Hermione moved her face up, chin now resting on his shoulder, watching their reflection as she spoke. “You understand why this didn’t happen, don’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“No, I mean really.”

“Then no.”

“I’m doing it because there is always going to be a part of me that loves him. And because I love you I can’t do that to you. I don’t want you to only have half my heart.”

“I have the emotional range of a teaspoon, remember? To me you either love someone or you don’t. And you don’t love me like that anymore. So I ask you, Hermione Jean Granger, what are you still doing here?”

“What?”

Ron turned around, their knees bumping as they came face to face. “Don’t just sit here and make sure I’m okay like some kid. Go,” he urged. “Go to that sodding git before he gets so depressed he turns himself into a ferret again.”

“I don’t want to do that now, not after –”

He gripped her shoulders. “Look, I bloody hate him, but I think you’ve both denied yourself the pleasure of being in each other’s lives for too long. Freaking go and don’t hesitate or stop to wonder if you should or shouldn’t because fuck that, Hermione. Say it with me.”

“Ron, I’m not –”

“Say it!” he ordered.

“Fuck that.”

“I can’t hear you!”

“FUCK THAT!”

“THERE WE GO!”

She covered her face with her hands, unsure if she was crying or laughing anymore.

Ron moved to the other side of the tent and picked up a pair of black boots. He held out his hand expectantly. “Foot.”

Hermione tentatively lifted her leg. Ron grabbed it and slipped on the boot. She lifted up the other leg for him, and when she stood she was back to normal height but no longer felt agony every step. He kneeled down and hastily did up the laces for her.

“You have every right to be angry,” she murmured.

“I know,” was all he said, as if that was enough explanation. He kissed the top of her head, pressed something cool and silver and circular into her hand. “Now go get that hunk of ferret meat.”

She turned towards the exit, then on second thought doubled back and threw herself at Ron, wrapping her arms around him. 

***

Hermione rushed to Blaise and Pansy’s for the second time. When she knocked and opened the red door, she didn’t find Draco making out with Alexis again. Instead, she found Blaise pacing, Pansy holding a crying Zane and Alexis with her hands in her hair.

“Why aren’t you at my wedding?” she blurted out to Blaise and Pansy.

“Why aren’t you at your wedding?” Blaise retorted.

“We saw your face when you went into Weasley’s tent,” Pansy explained, bouncing Zane in her lap to calm him. “You’re not getting married today.”

“Where’s Draco?” she asked after a pause.

“Blaise went to check on you two, make sure one hadn’t murdered the other, but neither of you were there.”

“We’ve no idea where he is,” Blaise said, cocking his head in confusion at her left foot exposing the huge boot.

“I think I do,” Hermione said, more to herself. She glanced at Alexis. “I’m sorry you got caught up in all of this.”

Alexis looked down. “You and me both.”

***

She blamed it on her state of mind that she ended up Apparating one floor down from where her old flat was. Blamed it on her state of mind that the stairs seemed a lot longer and steeper than when she had ran down here with Draco’s apple in tow. As it was, she reached the right floor, feet screaming at her despite the boots. She heard Zoe and Mathew having sex as she passed their door, and wherein once the sound might have disgusted her, and it was possibly really perverted of her, but the familiarity of it was nice. She blamed her state of mind for thinking the sounds of neighbours having sexual relations could ever be nice.

And then she was inches from the same old threshold. And her heart seemed to try jumping out of her chest. And everything was nostalgia.

The door was swung wide open. Bravely, Hermione peaked around the doorframe before sliding her whole body around. The flat was void of all furniture, all objects and the cosy smell she had come to identify it by, just gone. As though nobody had lived here to begin with. But it was like that with all homes, she supposed. They always looked ordinary to everyone else except for the people who remembered the tons of memories with them.

There were dints in the carpet where chairs and tables and couches had been. Windows and blinds all closed securely. The walls a shade lighter where portraits had been. That was where Draco was, standing in front of the fireplace, hands in his pockets, eyeing the vacant wall that once hung the picture of her, Harry and Ron.  

“You never liked that picture,” she commented lightly.

If Draco was startled by her sudden appearance, he did not show it. Just looked at her for a long time, and she would have loved to know what he was thinking then.

“Only because it’s the typical cliché of a photograph. People always smile in them. I know it’s to look nice and crap, but it’s dishonest.”

“Dishonest?”

“You’re being told to smile. If you have to be told then obviously you aren’t happy enough to smile.” He lifted his shoulders in a light shrug. “Photos should be taken when nobody realises. That’s capturing the moment.”

“It could also be called creepy or stalking.”

Draco huffed and eased down onto the staircase. Hermione followed, seating herself beside him. He looked at her boots and smiled, and as she watched him she absently held out her hand, where the doublet of Draco’s silver ring lay. He stared at it, then met her eyes.

“You kept it,” he said gently, watching her with an intensity that stirred up a storm in her chest. She only nodded and slipped it easily on her finger. He moved closer to her, his shoulders brushing her bare ones each time he breathed. She took a moment to study their flat again, tried to find somewhere she could look without instantly connecting to a memory and found she could not.

“I think I’m an everlasting addition to you life now.” She hesitated. “This year and a half has been so fucked up.”

He shot her a surprised but amused look at the profanity. “So this means we’re… what, together now? You sampled the Weasley, sampled the Malfoy. Now you’re back for the full and better package.”

She stifled back a laugh. “Don’t get too enthusiastic.”

He smirked and playfully nudged her shoulder with his. “Thanks for loving me.”

“I’d say it’s no problem but it turned out to be a pretty big one.”

“I can’t help but feel we’re going to destroy each other.”

“Don’t be silly, love,” she teased. “If anyone’s going to destroy anyone it’s me destroying you.”

“Oh?”

“We both know I’m the better fighter.”

Draco was quiet for a long time. “My brave, stubborn little wench of a Gryffindor,” he muttered, but it did not hold the same annoyance as it once might have, and she thought maybe it had finally sunk in that this was it. No going back. He was here and she was right beside him. 

Her warm smile dissipated in the following silence, broken only by doors closing some floors down and someone’s classical music. “You know, the first time I realised you were going to change my life was on my birthday,” she said abruptly, feeling his eyes on her again. “Not much after you asked if I believed in love.” She locked eyes with his. “I looked up at you, slumped against my bed and fighting sleep, face slack and lacking its permanent scowl, felt your heart beating rhythmically against my ear, lulling me to sleep, and I remember… I felt this twinge in my stomach. Like really small butterflies. Hardly there, not enough to notice if I hadn’t been so drowsy, but there all the same. And I just knew.”

“Knew what?” he whispered.

“That I was going to fall in love with you.” Her confession, though very soft, seemed to whisper in the silence around them. She looked away shyly. Began to fumble with her fingers. “’Course I was half asleep and forgot about it by the next day, only remembering when it was far too late –”

Draco’s fingertips brushed her cheek in a feather light caress, and then he was kissing her. Slow and deep and perfect. The first kiss they had ever shared where they were not drunk, or grieving, or by way of distraction, or because they feared they’d never get the chance to again. It because she loved him and was pretty sure he loved her back, and the world lacked such kisses.

They both stood, hands intertwined, and went to the front door. Stopped. Looked back at the flat they had called home.

“Do you think you can say goodbye?” she asked.

“You know me, Granger.” He flung an arm around her and steered her out into the hall. “I can’t stand goodbyes.”

“Draco,” she said before they descended the stairs, “where are we going to live?” She worried her lower lip, coming to a halt. “Are we even going to live together? Or is that moving too fast? But I suppose we’ve already lived together, haven’t we? I haven’t really thought past finding you and now that I have it’s dawned on me that neither of us have absolutely any idea what we’re doing and – why are you looking at me like that?”

Draco was smirking at her, eyes dancing with amusement as he rested lazily against the wall.

She looked him over tentatively. “What?”

He took her hand and got down on one knee. She couldn’t breathe. “Hermione,” he said. “May I have the honour of…”

“Yeah?” Her voice broke.

“…tying your shoelaces?” He laughed at whatever look crossed her face, his hands tying her shoe as she let out a loud cry of exasperation. “I’m joking. We’re nowhere near ready for that yet.”

“Oh my god, you arsehole! You don’t just do that to a person!”

Draco’s eyes remained fixed on hers as he stood up again, then placed his hands on either side of her face and gave her a quick peck on the lips.

“I’m serious about having nowhere to go, you know,” she called to stop him strolling away again. “I think our only option might be to rent the flat again.”

His gaze slid behind her to the rows of doors in the hall. “I guess nothing really has changed. We’re stuck in the same crappy flat all over again, I’m still an irresistible piece of perfection and you’re still an insufferable bookworm.”

“You left out the part where you’re completely in love with me.” 

He scoffed and took her hand to lead her down the staircase. “Only a little bit.”

And although neither of them said it, they realised that while this was their ascension towards an official new beginning, it was not really a new beginning at all. The beginning had started the moment he’d ran into her, sending papers flying and arrogantly stating he would be living with her with nothing but a note. And Hermione didn’t really have an idea what she was doing, but she decided that that was okay, because Draco’s thumb was rubbing reassuring circles around her hand, and the simple action had her heart racing, and she thought that they could be both homeless or in hell or in Azkaban and it wouldn’t really matter. They were together, and that was enough.