Bewitching Darkness (A Harry Potter Fanfiction)

Chapter 6

Ron's POV

"Does it hurt anywhere?" I asked Hermione. She was sitting up now and her head was resting against the headboard of the bed in the hospital wing. Her face was pale and beautiful at the same time, and her mouth was parted slightly. When she spoke, she lifted her head up to look at me.

"Yes," she said. "It hurts." Her voice was so quiet and familiar, its soft pitch had always been enough to mesmerize me.

I looked at her and she locked gazes with me, refusing to look away. I knew what she was feeling of course. Anger at me. Of course, she would be angry. She had every right to be. I was an absolute idiot. If I hadn't gone to Abby and Vanessa, she would not have been thrown over the Astronomy tower, and she wouldn't be in the hospital wing.

Her doe brown eyes stared back at me with so much feeling hidden behind them, but it was almost impossible to tell exactly what that emotion was. Anger? Probably. Sadness? Maybe. Betrayal? Yeah.

"Look, Minion, I know I...." I began, but she put a hand up and winced.

"Don't call me, Mione," she told me and I flinched, knowing it was my own fault.

"Okay," I said. "But I just want you to know that I'm sorry, okay?"

"Weren't you sorry the last time you left us? Hermione asks. "Back when we were hunting horcruxes?"

She stared back at me, her eyes narrowed and her jaw set. I could see she was in pain. The bandages were bothering her, but she could not take them off right now. I looked back at her and inhaled before starting. "When I left, I wanted to come back the second I left."

Hermione stayed silent for a while, interlacing her fingers together and looking down at her hands. Then she looked up and her eyes were shining with tears. My heart sank. "But this time...when Abby and Vanessa were there, you didn't want to come back. Did you?"

I knew the answer to that, but I just could not say it out loud. It hurt, knowing that it would hurt Hermione even more and that she probably wouldn't want to talk to me anymore. But there was a small voice inside my head that said I had to tell her no matter what.

"Hermione," I began carefully. "I...was under a spell. I didn't know what I was thinking most of the time. Sometimes, I didn't even know what I was doing. But once it wore off, once I saw you lying there, it broke, and there hasn't been a moment after that I haven't regretted everything."

Her eyes softened for a moment, but then they grew hard again. "What about before that? When they cane and they were all over you...you never thought they could be death-eaters? They were literally always there around you and you never even suspected their motives?"

I took a deep breath, letting her words sink in. She was right. Of course she was. I had been incredibly stupid. I knew I should not have let them come between us like that. She was way more important than any random new students.

"I'm sorry," I murmured, squeezing her hand. Then as if just realizing what was happening, she flinched and yanked her hand out of my grasp. "Hermione, I...." But she narrowed her eyes.

"Ron, I.... I can't do this. Just...don't talk to me for a couple of days, okay? I need time." Her voice was almost breaking and it had lost all the strong conviction it used to have. I guess falling off the tower did that. Or getting betrayed by me.

I could feel my heart sink as she sank back on her pillows and closed her eyes. Her bushy brown hair felt soft under my fingers and I sighed. This was all my fault. She was slipping through my fingers and it hurt. It hurt knowing that after seven whole years, I would let a couple of stupid girls ruin it all.