In the end can they just pretend?
Ronald Weasley had hit rock bottom, his life as he knew it was over. He had lost everything. Well not everything, but it felt like the life he had imagined for himself was over. And his family wasn't helping him. Th...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Ron and Claudia would next meet outside of her front door just two hours later. That was long enough for him to freshen up and collect his belongings. It was clear the moment Claudia had opened the door that she had not long been out of the shower, her damp hair being evident of this. The exhaustion of her all nighter was clear on her face but she still made the effort to give him a small smile upon inviting him in.
Ron had only been in Claudia's two bedroom house a few times before. He could count on one hand how many times he had been in, three to be exact. And every time he came in he was enthralled by something new he had spotted. This time it was around the living room where he saw a collection of photos which had not been there before. And as he allowed Claudia to vanish back in the direction of her bedroom to continue getting ready, it was these photos that he headed to look at. Many of them seemed to focus a younger Claudia when she was likely still at school, with the familiar faces of her friends he was too getting to know. Then there was a collection of photos from the wedding they had attended a few weeks back. Ron looked over at them all, stopping for a moment when he saw a photo of just two people. Of them to be exact. He had forgotten that this photo even existed, he could recall many photos being taken that afternoon of which he had been asked to get in, but he didn't recall one of just the two of them. He thought that because there was a chance of things going wrong that she wouldn't have wanted the photo. But here it was, displayed for everyone else to see when they turned up to her house. And Ron wasn't sure what it was but the thought of that caused his pulse to quicken as a smile broke out upon his face.
"Is everything okay Ronald?" Her voice broke out from the other side of the room, and he turned quickly to look at her.
"You have a photo of us on the wall." His words were a statement not anything else and he waited for her response. When he got another smile back in response he could only question just how far he had come from. From never knowing what her true smile looked like, only the fake one she had put on around the workplace to make her look not as scary to now. Now when he got to see a real smile from her all the time.
"I do, I have another one if you'd like a copy. Tori dropped them off the other day." Claudia had approached him and seemed despite how tired she was to have perked up a little bit more since he had first knocked on the door. Her arms snaked around his midsection the moment she was close enough and Ron was quick to reciprocate the embrace.
"I'd like that." He responded to her offer, before taking notice of the clock upon the wall. "We better head off to my parent's otherwise we'll miss the portkey." Ron concluded and Claudia stiffened a little, she hated travel by portkey especially in large groups. What they would be considering she had been informed that the grandchildren would also be in attendance. Claudia would meet Ron's nephews and nieces for the first time later that day and she was nervous for it. Not as nervous as she was to meet Molly Weasley again but close enough.
