Points of View

Hermione is dead, and Ron is happy. Ron's happiness has nothing to do with the fact that Hermione is dead, in fact Ron's happiness depends on the fact that he does not know that Hermione is dead. He thinks she is very much alive, and happy.

And so he should. But Hermione does not have the heart to tell him of her death. Instead she lies in his arms, content, tracing circles in the palm of his hand, talking to him as if she wasn't dead. And she isn't really. Dead, that is. She just thinks that she is.

Hermione thinks she is dead because there is no cavern in her heart that craves a boy. To love Ron, especially. She thinks she should like Ron, she thinks she should be able to fall in love with him. But she doesn't. There is lust, but she knows this is due to hormones, and the great physical need for comfort in another human being. She knows this is why she is content to lie in his arms and trace circles in his palm. This is why sometimes she goes looking for him (not that he would've gone far) to press her lips against his and feel his tongue against hers.

Hermione's death is not recent. Neither was it sudden. Hermione has felt herself dying slowly for years, in fact she has welcomed it. She knows her death is the only sacrifice she can make for the wizarding world.

Harry the Hero has two best friends. And in regular fairytales, Hermione would be Emotion and Ron would be Logic. But life isn't a regular fairytale, and Ron is not Logic. Ron is Loyalty and Love and Support. Which left Hermione the role she felt more capable of anyway, Cool Logic and Level-Headedness. But girls are susceptible to emotion all the same, no matter the amount of logic and level-headedness they possess. Hermione had known that Harry and Ron together possessed more than enough emotion for the three of them, so she set to work, burning emotion out of herself.

But burning emotion is never easy, particularly at an age where it consumes and becomes life. Hermione loved, and love leads to worry and fear and anger, especially in the case of Harry. So Hermione worked on removing love. But love is a hard emotion to remove so instead she simply detached.

Detachment, when worked on hard enough, eventually becomes easy, and indeed Hermione found she functioned better without the distractions of worry and fear and anger.

But love, as planned, also disappeared with these, and in this way Hermione knew she had died.

Ginny watches Harry and waits. Harry's obsessive watching of his two best friends has been noticed by other students besides her. She concludes (as all the other students do) that this might be jealousy of exclusion or even of Ron. This secretly pleases her, as without Hermione and Ron, Harry is friendless. But Ginny will be there. She is happy for her brother, that his love for Hermione has finally been requited.

Harry watches his two best friends and worries. He knows that when Ron looks in Hermione's direction, all he can see is her. Ron's adoration is absolute. He also knows that when Hermione looks in Ron's direction, she can see him, but she can also see everything else too. Harry knows Hermione well enough to know that she would not intentionally hurt Ron, so he knows she is simply making him happy. But Harry worries that this is not the right way to go about it, that in the end Ron's heart would be broken, that it would've been better off had Hermione fended him off and left him disappointed, for the disappointment would be far less then than it would be now, or in the future.

But then Harry looks at Ron and sees his joy and is indeed jealous, but only at his friend's pure happiness, and thinks perhaps that Hermione has made the right decision after all. Harry knows the danger he leads his friends into, and maybe Ron's happiness may never sour and turn to disappointment. He thinks everybody should have a chance to be that happy sometime in life. He hopes that perhaps one day he can be, but knows it unlikely. Occasionally he remembers Cho, and laughs in ironic amusement. He looks at Ginny, knowing the reason for her sudden presence, and wonders.

Ron walks on air. He is deliriously happy and gripped by adoration. He is no longer the sidekick, for Hermione has given him the plot to stand alone. Ron loves Hermione, purely and simply. Sometimes he wonders how he had ever lived without her, but stops, shuddering at the thought. When they are together, the rest of the world disappears, and for Ron there is only ever Hermione.

In the past Ron suffered the green hand of jealousy choking him when he saw Hermione with other boys, had nearly died of suffocation at the Triwizard Yule ball. But Ron spent so long watching Hermione, her every gesture, every expression, that he came to know that there was no one more special in her life than anybody else, including him. And so he suffered some more. He knew what she had done, knew that she had sacrificed herself for him and Harry. Ron agonised knowing that if he could have been smarter, less impetuous, more logical, Hermione could have kept the role of emotion. Hermione could have kept her heart.

So Ron vowed to give back what he had inadvertently taken, he vowed to give Hermione back her life. Ron's plan was romance. Perhaps if he showered enough love on Hermione, gave her all the love he had for her, she might by osmosis soak it up and live again. And in the process Ron could enjoy the way her hair might feel when it brushed his skin, the way her lips would taste when they met his, the sudden rush in his ears when her hand would reach for his.

It hadn't been easy, the courting. Ron knew the chance of success was unlikely. Everybody had watched as, time and again, Hermione evaded him and Ron had fallen flat on his face. Girls had taken him aside and given him advice. Boys had patted his shoulder in sympathy. Malfoy had made snide remarks about mudbloods and the impoverished. But still Ron had to try. After all, in terms of Ron and dating, if there wasn't Hermione, there wasn't anybody else, though he knew he had captured girls' interest simply by his single-mindedness in courting Hermione. Harry had simply stood by and watched, offering neither advice nor discouragement, but consolation in terms of chocolate frogs and Every-Flavour Beans left by his bedside.

Eventually Hermione had changed her mind. Ron could think of no other way to describe it. Suddenly she had yielded, had held his hand, had sought him out, made him her confidante. The school cheered, girls pressing for details and boys offering nudges and winks. Ron kept silent on the details and unresponsive to the nudges and winks. He instead only smiled, for he could not help himself. Ron smiled until his cheeks hurt from smiling, and then smiled some more.

So Ron is happy, though he knows Hermione does not love him. It is a start, a breaking point, and by surrounding her with his love Ron hopes to breathe life back into her, to fill her heart, to let her feel again. And in the meantime he tastes her kisses and holds her as she talks to him, and it is ecstasy.