It’s funny that so many people seem to care. Ron doesn’t understand it, but it bothers Harry and it just means that Hermione’d been right, so he doesn’t like it even if it doesn’t make much sense to him. Anything that leads to Hermione being able to say ‘I told you so, Ronald’ in anything more than a playful or downright wicked way and to Harry getting that restless and twitchy thing happening makes it important to him to try to fix. He might not be as smart as Hermione or as skillful as Harry, but Ron knows that his strengths are different, which is why they all balance and fit together perfectly. The problem is that normally he’s good at planning and strategizing stuff. Only, this time, he didn’t really think they needed a plan or that there’d be a need to get strategic when it came to just being honest about the most important thing to them.
He’d been wrong. He honestly didn’t know that being open about their relationship would lead to so many bloody opinions from people who seemed to think they mattered, so he hadn’t thought about how they should do things or figure out ways to protect Harry from the judgmental nonsense being printed in the Prophet or how to make sure Hermione wouldn’t be hurt by all the insults being hissed at her by jealous or ignorant people. Ignorant people that they’d considered friends, in some cases, which was what really bothered Ron more than the rest, what upset Harry and Hermione the most. He didn’t care about strangers and he knew his lovers didn’t, either, but it was the people they trusted turning on them and declaring them depraved and immoral that made the opinions harder to ignore.
Maybe it had been stupid to think that their personal lives should stay personal. Ron didn’t care what any of their friends did when it came to relationships, after all, so he hadn’t known that being heroes would somehow mean that he and his lovers weren’t given that same privacy. His family had been supportive, at least, even if Percy still got a little awkward when trying to figure out how to refer to Harry and Hermione, and the people that truly mattered the most didn’t give a damn, either. The ones who did hadn’t really been friends in the end, is how he saw it, and those who had stepped up to support them made him realize who really did care beyond the names and war and all the shite that happened in the past.
It’s only been a few months since the news hit the Prophet and Harry hadn’t denied that he was romantically involved with both Ron and Hermione. Ron knows it will eventually stop being news, that people will get bored or there’ll be some new scandal to shock and horrify the world, but that doesn’t mean he feels any less frustrated or angry that he has to sit by and watch Harry and Hermione deal with all this without being able to fix it. Isn’t something he can fix, he knows, and despite it all he wouldn’t change his answer to Harry back when they’d first discussed the idea of not hiding what they had. People might hate it or not understand it, but Ron knows that hiding would do nothing but tear them apart because there’s time for secrets and time when it’s okay to just be happy and to love. He might not be able to fix this whole mess, but he knows that every kiss and every touch helps Harry and Hermione focus on that love and that they’ll weather this storm together.
End
Funny
Story Notes:
3/11/12