Love's Greatest Sacrifice

A wail escaped Hermione's lips as she pulled away and ran streaming up the stairs to the Gryffindor common room.

Shaking, she bolted the door of the girls' dorm, and sank onto the floor in front of it. Tears poured from her eyes as she tried to understand. Well, she did understand, she just didn't know how she understood.

Ron was alive, but she was seeing his specter. How was this at all possible? She was having visions of Ron's ghost, of Ron's.. death.

A parade of scenarios flashed across her mind, each one more frightening that the previous. But Hermione didn't believe in Divination. Surely this would fall under the category, she thought. It can't be a vision, it can't be real, she told herself. But she could not be certain of anything. Rationality simply came dripping out of her and collected in a metaphorical puddle on the floor. she slid down until she was lying flat on her back and tried look at the things that made sense. Well, that was easy, because none of it made sense.

Hermione did not know how many miserable hours she had spent lying on the floor. She did however notice when the sky began to turn dark, which was when her roommates had knocked on the door.

"Hermione! Um, are you about finished? Ron said not to disturb you or anything, but we have to go to bed!" chimed Parvarti's smooth voice.

Hermione slowly rose from her spot in front of the door and unlocked it.

"Where is Ron?" she asked sadly.

"Don't know," said Parvarti, "but he told all your teachers that you were having an emotional collapse because someone you cared about had just died. I think he said it was your grandmother."

"They understood," added Lavender, "but is that actually what happened?"

"Yes," said Hermione solemnly, "someone I love is probably going to die."

Hermione stormed over to her bed, flopped down without removing her clothes, and shut the drapes. Many feelings crossed her mind that night. At one point she convinced herself that he was going to die tomorrow, and at another point she had started to believe she might have misinterpreted the vision. Only a single thing remained prominent and unchanged in her mind. She wanted to tell him. She wanted him to make her feel better about it. But she knew he couldn't. She knew it would be worse. However, regardless of how hopeless it would undoubtedly make the situation feel, she still had to tell him.

Especially since she knew there was a slight chance that it was a warning, and not a definite outcome. Clinging to that hope, she finally fell asleep, uncertainty still rampantly seeping through her veins. One thing was definite, however. She knew the blue boy would not be coming to visit her tonight, or any night, from now on. He had finally delivered his message.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next morning, Hermione had searched vigorously for Ron. She wanted to thank him for making up an excuse, she wanted to kiss him again and again, and she wanted to tell him... to tell him.

She walked mopily to breakfast after an hour of searching, and found that he wasn't even there. Every second had now become a scrimmage between her and her mind. Whenever she would find a place devoid of Ron, she would have to force herself to realize that he probably wasn't dead yet.

Harry, being familiar with such moods, did not bother Hermione about her sullen disposition. He did however inform her that he had seen Ron in their dormitory, acting moody, and that he had left early in the morning without saying where he was going.

"Oh, great," Hermione said sardonically.

"Do you know what's the matter with him?" asked Harry.

"No," she replied. She really didn't.

Luckily, Ron did show up for class, but he refused to talk or even look at her for a second. He had positioned himself three tables away in front of where she and Harry had sat down, and Hermione was forced to stare miserably at the back of his head for two hours.

After class had ended, he escaped off to Divination before she could even say one word to him. During the rest of their shared classes, Ron ignored whatever came out of Hermione's continuously moving mouth. She was frantically begging him to talk her, begging him to listen.

"I have to tell you something important!" she hissed underneath her breath. Ron stuck his fingers in his ears.

There was nothing left to do, she reasoned. As Hermione came back from another search, Harry told her that Ron had confined himself to their room and was now doing his homework there.

Without saying another word to Harry, Hermione jogged up the stairs to the boys' dormitories and disappeared behind the door the the sixth year boys' bedroom.

"Ron," she said plainly, "I have to tell you something."

Ron made for the door. As he brushed her aside she did the only thing she could think of.

"LOCOMOTOR MORTIS!" she shouted.

Ron's legs pinned together and he came crashing down, barely missing the stairs and landing flat on his face in the hallway.

"Ron, sorry!" she squealed, rushing by his side. "I had to. You have to hear something!!"

Ron simply covered his ears and started humming an angry chorus of 'My Bonnie lies over the ocean'.

"Ron, don't be so difficult! It's important!!" Hermione bellowed. For a split second, her sadness had been replaced with rage, which she was almost thankful for.

She dragged his passive aggressive body into the boys' room with great effort, and shut the door.

"Why are you mad at me?" she asked sternly, staring down at him.

"I- I, you don't, you don't just run off screaming after someone kisses you! Or, for that matter, expect them to be around you afterwards! To top it all off, you won't tell me what the hell is wrong! I know getting kissed by me makes you cry apparently, but you were certainly crying before that! And I want to help you, even if you don't want me to! So what's wrong?"

Hermione remained motionless, absorbing Ron's choppy speech.

"Ron I wasn't upset that I kissed you!" she pleaded. "I was upset because of something else that I.... figured out when I kissed you. Something that made what I was crying about before seem even worse."

Ron put on a skeptical face and continued to listen from the floor.

"I figured out who the ghost was," she said, her breath heavy.

He anxiously waited for her to finish. She did not however, since she had begun to cry so much that she lost the ability to speak. He watched her, swallowing tears, her eyes growing vividly red.

"Ron," she began, finding a miniscule voice, " It's you."

Ron blinked. "What? What on earth are you talking about?!"

"I'm afraid," she said in a hoarse rasp, "I'm having visions of your death."

Ron did nothing but stare at her for the next minute.

"Ron," she shrieked desperately, "I know you're planning to.. to sacrifice your life for Harry or something, but it's not worth it! You don't know if it will work!"

Ron's lack of argument indicated to Hermione that she had in fact guessed his plan. This made Hermione release yet more tears in a tremendous sob. She couldn't be strong anymore.

After an agonizing silence, Ron finally said, "How do you know it won't work?"

"I don't, but I know that if it doesn't, I'll have two dead best friends!"

Ron seemed to be contemplating something.

"So you'd rather not take a chance that could very well save the wizard world, and still have one dead friend, Harry, mind you, than experience the slight possibility that you'll end up with two."

"Even if it does work, I'll still have one dead friend!" she screamed. He couldn't do this. He couldn't value his life so little.

"So you're saying you'd rather Harry die than me?!" he said, raising his arms in disbelief.

"Maybe I am!!"

Hermione undid the leg locker curse. As Ron stood however, she pushed him out of frustration, and he landed, stumbling, onto Harry's bed.

Tears were still pouring down her cheeks as she started to yell in desperation.

"Stop caring so little about your life! It's not just your life you know! It's your family's, it's Harry's, it's MY life you'll be taking along with you!! Don't you care? How can you be so selfless and selfish at the same time?! How can you not know that I would rather live in a world with Voldemort than live in a world without you? IT'S NOT WORTH IT! So stop being such an idiot and promise me you won't even think about it until you've at least given me time to find another way to protect Harry! Okay?!!!!"

Ron's mouth had opened in shock. He lay rigidly on Harry's bed, simply goggling at her.

"I- uh, well, all right," he said, still flabbergasted.

"Good. Thank you."

She walked to the edge of the bed, and rested her head over Ron's heart.

"I don't ever want to feel this stop beating. You hear me?"

Ron nodded slowly. "I'll help you research some protection spells, okay?" he said softly.

Hermione was silent. Then after a while she said, "I don't really know if this vision is inevitable or if it's just something that could happen, or if it's only an hallucination and I'm losing my marbles. All I know is I'm going to do everything I can to keep you from killing yourself," she choked.

Ron said nothing, but placed a light kiss on the top of her head.