Chapter Text
Hermione didn’t have an anger problem.
Probably.
He didn’t think.
It helped that, most of the time, Harry could tell her rage was completely focused in the direction of a very particular red-headed arse-hat of a man-child.
Hermione and Ron had dated and broken up more times than Harry could count in the last six years. Hermione would break things off, and then months would pass where Ron would date as many witches as he could get his hands on until he’d realize that none of them were Hermione.
Eventually, Ron would come to her with the same practiced speech about how just because they weren’t dating anymore didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends. Hermione was never able to turn him away and then, rather anti-climatically, she would look around a few weeks later to find that she was dating him again.
Harry, for his part, did his best to be there for Hermione, although it killed him to do it. If there was one thing that war and dying had taught him, it was that people didn’t change faster than they were able to. And sometimes that was never. The idea of Hermione being trapped in this ouroboros of shittiness with Ron for the rest of her life made him feel sick, but each time he thought there was no way he could keep his mouth shut, Ron would inevitably open his and make an offhand comment about her packed schedule.
Which, to be fair, was enough to keep her running around from before the sun came up until well after midnight, seven days a week. She was on the board of no less than fifteen non profits, chairing four of those, and that was in addition to spearheading passion projects of her own— which she had to find funding and resources for independently of any of her other charities.
Hermione overworked herself, anyone could see that. Harry had the sneaking suspicion that she kept so busy because she knew if she slowed down she would have to process all of the trauma from the war and instinct told her Ron couldn’t handle that.
So she kept going.
Ron, for all that Harry cared about him, had never really grown up. The things he was interested in as a child, mostly just quidditch and his mother’s food, were still the same things he devoted himself to now at twenty-eight. He was the perfect friend to go watch a game with, but outside of that and meals at the Burrow, they didn't have a ton in common anymore. It didn't help that Harry had been working with a mind healer for years now, and the only thing that Ron worked to improve was his ability to complain.
Sunday dinners at the Burrow were always Harry’s chance to suss out where Hermione was in their current breakup/get-back-together cycle. It wouldn’t take long before Ron would remark about how Hermione didn’t ever watch him play in his pick-up Quidditch league or how the reason she was so stressed was because she wasn’t a mum. If Hermione rolled her eyes and changed the subject, they would usually stay together for a bit longer, but if she gritted her teeth and got a certain, hard-edged look in her eyes, then Harry knew she would be single again in the morning— no matter how temporarily. Harry would find Hermione on his doorstep in the early hours with coffee and croissants, and she would stomp around his parlor genuinely at her wit’s end while he did his very best not to tell her that she deserved so much more than Ron could ever give her.
After a few hours of this, she would break down, and her tears of frustration would twist him into knots while he pretended to have it all in hand. And then they would get drunk. The best part was that for the next several weeks it would just be him and Hermione, and they got along like gangbusters when Ron wasn’t there to drive them both batty. Harry lived in dread of the day that Hermione stopped dropping by unannounced for an early breakfast, or to run an idea by him.
It meant that, once again, Ron was back.
He’d known for some time now that what he really wanted was for it to be him and Hermione time, all the time. But that was not possible. She loved Ron, and so this was their life.
Six months after their most dramatic break up to date, Ron had grovelled rather spectacularly, swearing up and down that he was finally ready to be the man she needed. Later, Hermione had conveyed to him, rather optimistically, that she thought he had finally changed. For Harry’s part, he was certain that just because someone said things they had never said before, didn’t mean that they meant them.
Ron had lots of pretty words about loving people for who they were, accepting them no matter what, and how he wanted her to be happy. So Hermione relented, as she always had.
Two weeks later, that all changed.
—
Aurors arrived at Hermione’s residence after an anonymous tip about an intruder. He had been working the early shift when the call came in, and his heart had jumped into his throat making it hard to breathe. When they had arrived what they found was Ron, mummy-wrapped in what looked like his own dirty laundry, suspended from the ceiling like a caterpillar in a cocoon and being circled by no less than forty vicious canaries. A note was fixed to his chest explaining that if anyone cared to keep Ron alive, they would remove him from her home. Permanently. Harry managed to wrangle the canaries long enough for the other aurors to free Ron and get him off the premises. A short while later Ron sat in the DMLE headquarters trying to answer questions about why Hermione had left him like that. He was bewildered and completely certain that she had gone off her rocker just because he had finally proposed, ring and all. None of that made sense to Harry. He wanted to be more certain that Hermione had finally come to her senses when she saw the ring, but something told him that there was more to the story and that Ron was leaving out the details to make himself look better.
Harry’s eyebrows had climbed into his hairline at the pronouncement.
Not to mention that Ron was the very last wizard he knew who was interested in settling down. When he wasn’t dating Hermione, he was in the habit of taking a new witch home every night. There was no shortage of women interested in his war hero fame, something Harry found not a little gross. Regardless, it didn’t make sense that Ron went from chasing an endless supply of skirt to wanting to be with one woman for the rest of his life. When he said as much, that’s when Ron explained his proposal had been for an open marriage, and then he regurgitated the words from his last ‘take me back’ speech about giving someone what they needed if you really loved them.
The puzzle pieces fell into place. Ron hadn’t been suggesting those things for Hermione, he had been laying the groundwork for this.
Harry felt numb from shock.
Suggesting such a setup to Hermione— a witch who, by all accounts, was loyal to a fault, was so disgusting it made him want to vomit. All of a sudden stringing him up by his own dirty laundry and torturing him with angry songbirds sounded like a very mild response, indeed.
He looked across the table at his friend, a word he didn't think he meant anymore, and could barely stomach the sight of him. As Ron technically hadn’t committed a crime, there was no way they could hold him, but his suspicion was that the verdict would not at all go the same in the court of Molly, so he frog-marched Ron to the nearest fireplace and took him straight to the Burrow. Molly had turned a violent shade of chartreuse listening to Ron explain what an open marriage was, and Arthur was so pale with shock he had had to sit down. Harry left the Burrow with the sound of Molly’s shouts ringing in his ears, confident that Ron would not be allowed out into the general population for the time being, at least.
Only then did he excuse himself and apparate to a familiar cabin nestled in an isolated forest, where he paused before letting himself inside.
After the war, Hermione's anxiety only worsened. There was a terror they had lived through being on the run that was hard to explain to anyone that hadn't been with them. The fear of being caught. The fear of dying. Harry had found peace at Grimmauld Place, and had been able to slowly recalibrate to a life where he was not being threatened on a daily basis. Hermione had not been so lucky. Six months after the war had ended she was still looking over her shoulder, still putting up war time wards where ever she slept. It had broken his heart, and one night he had told her that he wished she had a place to go where she felt safe. A place no one knew about but her. She had taken the idea to spectacular heights and within the month had created a cabin deep in the highlands of Scotland. Hermione had made herself a private haven, a bolt-hole to go to when she needed space. From work. From Ron. From the world.
And she had made Harry the Secret Keeper.