SoulBands

Soul Bands, Chapter One

By Caducee

"These are for us," he'd said, carefully opening a small velvet pouch. Even before peeking inside she had known what it meant, and before knowing it she had squeezed Ron's arm.

Ron had frowned dubiously at the box inside, knowing after a quarter of a second what this meant as well. He had quickly glanced at Hermione, worry also etched into his eyes, and she had regarded him with an expression similar to what was threatening to build in him as well. He can't be doing this. Please. Not now.

And Harry, oblivious to their exchange, had droned on, fingers shaking uncontrollably as he picked up each ring from the soft silk and displayed them neatly in the crook of his palm. Hermione had caught a glimpse of the rings but Harry had just as suddenly closed his fist around them, hiding them from his friends for a moment and looking up again with a darkness looming behind his eyes, making both of them shudder to the core.

"I want both of you to know that this is for... our protection. I don't want anyone..." At this last word his voice had cracked with painful exertion, but he had recovered quickly, perhaps hoping that his friends wouldn't have noticed how his throat constricted with each passing second. Telling them this was killing him. "To hurt you. I don't want anyone to hurt you. I don't care about me."

Hermione had gasped. "Harry!"

Harry had had the grace to look appalled for a moment as he met her eyes, but he had resumed his speech in much the same fashion as he had before. "It's the truth, Hermione. It's either him, or me. One of us. I don't..." He had exhaled a long, sorrowful breath to control his emotions, like always. A pillar of strength, he had once been told. Harry felt like the Pise Tower; a simple gust of wind could be enough to shatter him to pieces. "I don't care if I die, as long as justice is served right. I couldn't live knowing that I've failed. It just wouldn't do. 'Neither can live while the other survives.'" He had repeated the prophecy to make them understand. It only served to scare them furthermore.

Ron had cut in, trying to make his friend think rationally, "Harry, mate," he had started, but Harry had interrupted him with one hand in the air, eyes closed painfully against what he had to say.

"No, Ron. It's destiny, they would say. I call it doom, but whichever term suits because either way I have to go after him. And these..." He had opened his palm to them to reveal three glinting rings. "These are going to tell us if one of us dies."

There. He'd said it. Hermione had wanted to cry.

"Soul Bands," Ron had murmured, glancing sideways at Hermione, who had brought her small hand to her mouth silently, with wide unbelieving eyes.

Harry had merely answered with a slight nod.

"Harry," Ron had started again, about to refuse his own ring, but once again Harry had sharply cut him off and handed him his ring before offering the other to Hermione. He himself had already slipped his on when Ron had been surveying Hermione's reaction.

"Don't start. I've thought about this long and hard. I need to do this, at least for your sakes. You have the right to know."

"Harry, you know we'll be there."

Hermione had agreed vehemently. "We're not daft, you know. We're wizards, Harry, perfectly capable of defending ourselves with our own means."

Harry had seemed helpless then, like a small bird lost in a thundering storm. "But this is my fight. Mine alone. I'm tied with the bloody prophecy, you're not."

He had had a ruddy good point. Ron had seen Hermione bite her lip, dipping her head to finger the ring which still sat in the middle of her palm, as if she could not quite believe Harry's words. Ron thought he knew what was tearing at her. This fight with Harry was hopeless. They had to let go... They had to let him go.

And so, wordlessly, Harry had pushed Ron and Hermione's rings on their right hand's fourth finger. And then he had suddenly Disapparated and left Hermione alone with Ron in the Shrieking Shack, with the wind howling terribly at the windows and the creaks resounding in the old shabby house sounding much more terrifying now than they should have under normal circumstances.

Finally Ron had sat down on the unkempt and dusty bed and Hermione had sat at the foot of the bed and they had talked about everything and nothing. Just the sound of his voice had reassured her. Just the thought of him close to her now broke the fears and made it all that much better. She realised later that she had needed this talk.

Lost in their conversation, Hermione didn't notice at first but then she realised she was fingering her ring distractedly. It felt strange, to have something stuck to her finger when she wasn't used to such invasion of her fingers. Oh, of course she'd worn the occasional ring and fancy jewellery for special occasions, but apparently it had just now stuck to her brain that she would not be taking this one off for a little longer than just a few hours. In fact, there was no telling how long she would wear it.

Ron's hand closed down around hers, halting her fingers in their distraction. She looked up to see him pensive. "Feels strange, doesn't it? Our life force right into the strands of this ring." He paused, seeming to be lost in the past, and then he frowned. "I've seen these before. Sometimes, when couples want a more modern wedding, they offer these rings to their loved ones during the ceremony, but it's usually two strings that bind them spiritually - or magically, if you will - together: the 'pink' one and the 'silver' one, to represent the woman and the man in their simplest element."

"Silver seems cold to me."

"The silver gold represents the man's strength."

"And the pink one?" Hermione asked, thinking she thought she might know the answer already.

Here Ron stroked her palm with his thumb and laid his head on top of hers. Hermione closed her eyes and shuddered as Ron slid down the edge of the bed while his other hand roamed round her waist to rest flat-palmed on her stomach. "Pink gold represents the woman's beauty."

The sound of his voice was comforting and rocked Hermione into peacefulness. She smiled slightly before quivering again.

"Are you cold?" Ron asked immediately before pulling away and regarding her in the face with worry etched in his still-boyish features.

"Not at all," she replied, lying through her teeth. It was cold. A creeping cold that seemed to emerge from her fingertips and toes and spread out to her core, making her shiver all over.

"Are you sure? You don't look so well... you're shivering."

"Stop fussing over me." For once she hoped she sounded bossy enough. She did not need Ron to start pampering her at the brink of an impending war.

Hermione felt Ron move and struggle to stand up, and then he came back with a dirty but bearable coverlet and wrapped it snugly round Hermione's shoulder. Only then did he seem satisfied and sat down again to wrap himself as well with the bedcovers and enclose Hermione's middle cosily. And she was thankful, but she would never dare admit it.

"What's your colour, you think?" she asked after studying the graceful entwining of the three colour-different metals so similar in nature. "I'm fairly sure mine is pink, obviously," she added with a little leer.

Ron was thoughtful for a few moments. "Well, Harry is certainly our man of steel, don't you think? I don't know, I guess I'm the yellow gold. Something draws me to it."

Hermione smiled unbeknownst to Ron. "Yellow gold always seemed warmer to me, like sunlight and summer days..." She shifted in his tight embrace to meet his sky blue eyes. His hands seemed to tighten around her. His eyes seemed to penetrate her core. She felt weak in the knees, even though she was sitting and couldn't possibly collapse. "And..." Her voice betrayed her; at once it shook with tension and nervosity.

His eyes strayed south to her lips and became entirely entranced with them. "And?"

Hermione's thoughts became clouded. How could it be? She'd never experienced such incoherentness... but it felt good, like she was being thrown over numerous white clouds of fog and couldn't care less if she fell or not. She stared at Ron fixedly but couldn't make thought. "And... I'm not sure... Ron..." she trailed off.

He soon shook himself out of his trance and roughly stood up and went to the window to stare outside. However, several planks of hardwood blocked the said window, and all the other windows in the shack, in fact. So he whirled around, defeated, and studiously avoided her gaze, instead playing with his ring much like she had only moments before. "Frankly, I hate these rings," he said fiercely, suddenly.

Hermione blinked. She hadn't expected such bluntness. She should have. This was Ron, after all. "Come again?"

"No, really, I do. I was told when I was young that muggles underestimated the power of these rings. In fact, history goes that those first few muggles who had acquired them had bought them in wizarding jewellery stores somewhere in Italy. Pink gold went through a colouring process that wizards designed and all that. So these enamoured couples found out sooner than later that when their husband or wife died the gold attuned to them would blacken forever." Ron scowled at the ring. "I've heard so many dreadful stories about wizards' gold that now I definitely despise any jewellery made with it."

"Why?" All this was tickling her curiosity.

"I mean, it's crazy, isn't it?" Ron threw his hands in the air hysterically. "How a boy could be so afraid of a harmless piece of gold! Why not be scared of leprechaun gold, it'd be a little more constructive. I'd have a real reason to be scared, but... but this," he spat, lifting his right hand and presenting the ring gleaming on his fourth finger, "this is insane! And why would Harry tie us all to each other like this? Why did he do it?" Ron slid down the wall, shoving his head into his hands. This was the most painful sight Hermione had ever had to witness, except perhaps when she'd had to take Ron up the trapdoor after he'd been knocked down by the Queen in their trek to save the Philosopher's Stone in their first year. Seeing a boy break down was bearable, but seeing a full-grown man breaking? She couldn't take it.

Hermione pushed herself up to her knees and shambled toward Ron's crippled form to take him gently into her arms for comfort. "So we'd know," she supplied helpfully, hoping she was right.

She pulled away enough to brush a whisper kiss on his forehead. Ron closed his eyes as she snuggled back into his arms, burying her nose in the warm nook of his shoulder and breathing in the scent of Ron: molasses, earth and cinnamon.

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Hermione woke up the next morning alarmed. Somewhere, maybe in her dreams or even her subconscious, she had seen Harry in the midst of war, and she had seen the fires blazing and the shocks of coloured lights blast from everywhere all at once. Blue, black, red, silver, green. Green. The green that had haunted her dreams and reality ever since she'd witnessed Zacharias Smith's death from the confines of his kitchen cupboard. A simple mindless visit to his and his wife's house as an old friend from school had turned inevitably into a horrible nightmare. She hadn't been able to scream, it seemed. She had wanted to, had willed herself to scream against the backdrop of Zacharias and Mary's last breaths of life, but it had got lost halfway through her throat. And yet, the horror still haunted her during the night. Guilt tugged at her every time she lost herself to the memory.

"Oh my God," Hermione breathed, trying to even her breaths and turning to her side to search numbly for her wand on the bedside table. She illuminated the darkened bedroom to verify, with trembling fingers, if the white gold on her finger hadn't uncoloured.

Suddenly something moved and barely touched her breast. Hermione's breath caught in her throat and her eyes widened. Looking down at herself, she saw a large, pale and freckled hand thrown over her chest carelessly and grazing her left breast over Ron's old large Cannons shirt that she didn't remember throwing on.

"Ron..." she murmured to herself to acknowledge his presence. Ron stirred in his sleep, the closeness of their bodies fully snapping her back to reality. His body was warm and solid against the length of her back, so closely spooned he was against her. Hermione felt strange but safe in his snug embrace, especially as his hot breath stirred the hairs at the nape of her neck.

Ron's legs shifted again and Hermione was relieved to find that he was at least wearing trousers, but she realised that she wasn't. Ron's shirt was the only layer of clothing protecting her, and she realised then that this meant Ron had donned his shirt to her somewhere along the way. And yet his legs tangled with hers, and he was tender, and this felt eternally good, if a bit novel.

Delicately, so as to not disturb Ron, Hermione picked Ron's hand up in hers and she began twining and entwining her fingers through his, and the glint of the different golden hues drew her attention to his ring. The pink, the yellow and the white still harmoniously winked back at her.

Suddenly Ron let out a small cry of distress and enveloped Hermione, throwing his leg over hers and his arm clamping her shoulder, as he let out a litany of words about the current War and protecting someone over his life.

Hermione wanted to cry. This was exactly what she dreaded as well. Laying her hand on top of his, Hermione felt Ron jerk and then relax again. And she proceeded to study their rings one beside the other.

"Hermione?" came Ron's hoarse voice in her ear suddenly, jolting her out of her occupation.

"Yes, Ron. It's me," she murmured.

For a few moments there was silence, but then he seemed to realise their comfort and jerked back. "S - sorry. I didn't mean to."

Hermione sighed, turning to face him. "It's all right, Ron. We both needed the comfort, I think."

Ron blushed. "Did - did I do... anything?" he asked with a small mousy voice.

"No, Ron," she replied.

"Oh."

The tenseness was corporeal. "I didn't... mind," Hermione said at last.

Ron pierced her gaze. "Really?"

Hermione nodded, swallowing the great big lump of nerves threatening to swallow her whole, and licked her lips anticipatingly.

Ron's eyes strayed south to her lips before surveying her eyes again, and then he reached out and pulled her body right next to him, only inches away from her lips, and breathed in her scent with closed eyes. Hermione smelled of sweet apples, of ink and perhaps a little candy. He could swear on anything that she had probably never smelled of candy before meeting Harry and himself. The thought made Ron smile ever so slightly before he felt her nose nudging his shoulder. He opened his eyes to feel her press her body against him and hooking her leg over his.

"Hermione," he choked out, incapable of coherent thought.

But already she had drifted off again.