Comfort

He really wasn't going to cry. His eyes burned and there was a thick lump in his throat, but he wasn't going to cry. It didn't help that Harry was sitting so still, with his hand in his pocket, clutching something as if it would kill him to let it go. Ron reckoned it was the fake Horcrux. Harry had kept it with him ever since he'd come back with Dumbledore. On the other side of Harry, Ron could hear Ginny sniffling. He couldn't look at her.

Ron couldn't look at Hermione, either; he'd caught a glimpse of her out of the corner of his eye as Hagrid walked past them, howling and blowing his enormous nose, and she was letting the tears drip down her face into her lap without even bothering to wipe them away. He'd looked away quickly, because the surge of fierce protectiveness that had welled up inside him at the sight of her tear-stained face had threatened to make the burning in his eyes spill over into real tears. He screwed up his face tightly, wishing that it would be over and he could go off by himself for a moment.

A shower of arrows rained onto the grass from the centaurs at the edge of the forest. Ron watched them step back into the trees and the merpeople sink back into the lake, and after a pause in which he was sure that no one on the grounds even breathed, people began to get to their feet and murmur in low voices. He was about to stand as well when Hermione let out a small sob beside him, and without thinking, he reached for her hand and squeezed it tightly.

She squeezed back, hard. Ron looked at his knees, wishing the burning in his eyes would stop soon.

"He's... g-gone," Hermione said, with a great hiccup.

Ron found that he had a great deal of difficulty making his voice work. "Yeah," he finally managed to say. "He is."

"I just can't believe it," she said. "He's not supposed to -"

Whatever it was he wasn't supposed to have done, Ron didn't know, because Hermione could no longer talk for crying. She was clutching his hand so tightly that Ron thought she might have cut off his circulation, her shoulders shaking with the force of her sobs. The sound of it made him very aware that he did not want to cry and yet would not be able to keep from doing it, and he shifted to the edge of his seat, turning to wrap his arms around her. She did not shake her head or push him away as he thought she might have done, but pressed her forehead to his shoulder and cried until he could feel the fabric fully wet with her tears.

Ron could no longer hold back his own tears then, no matter how hard he screwed up his eyes. He reached up to stroke Hermione's hair as they cried, both for her own comfort and in a way for his as well. Neither of them said anything for quite some time, and when the tears subsided they did not immediately break away. Ron was grateful for this; it lightened his heart in a way that months of furtive snogging with Lavender had not been able to do. He was not sure how long they sat like that, but when Hermione finally sat up, sniffling, it was as though a bit more had passed between them than an expression of grief for the Headmaster.

There were tears still sparkling on Hermione's lower lashes, and he reached up to brush them away with his thumb. Hermione's cheeks were already flushed from hard crying, but the flush deepened when he touched her.

"I've made a m-mess of your robes," she said, still hiccupping.

"S'ok," Ron replied. His voice felt like it belonged to someone else. "I made a mess of your hair."

He had, in fact, made quite a mess of her hair; he'd ended up crying just as much as she had and his tears had fallen in her hair, flattening it considerably on one side, just above her ear.

"It's all right," Hermione said, looking up at him. Her expression was unlike anything he had seen before, and it gave him another lump in his throat that he thought didn't exactly have anything to do with the funeral. He took her hand again, folding it between both of his and holding it tightly.

"Hermione?"

She looked down at their hands, and then up to him again, her lower lip quivering slightly. "Yes?"

There were many things he wanted to say to her, not the least of which was that he deeply regretted what had passed between them this year, but nothing felt right to say, especially when she was looking at him so closely. So he leaned in, his cheek brushing against hers as his lips touched a spot just in front of her ear. He did not immediately pull away, and neither did Hermione. He felt her free hand rest briefly on his shoulder and squeeze before he moved back.

She looked as if she had something to say as well, but before she could say it, Ron looked off over her shoulder and saw Harry in the distance, walking away from the Minister for Magic.

"Harry," he said, with a nod in his direction, and Hermione turned to look.

Hermione nodded. "We should go to him," she said. They stood, and Ron let go of her hand, though he would rather have held it as long as she let him. Hermione reached up to touch Ron's cheek, and together they set off across the grass towards Harry.