Disclaimer: These characters do not belong to me.
Notes: This is a Christmas present for -TheSingingBlob-. Also it's me kind of returning to my roots. :)
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A marriage is in its hard times just as much as—if not more than—its easy times.
For every sweet moment Hermione remembers, of shared laughter and gentle kisses, there is a memory of shouted arguments and red faces, and the utter certainty that there is no man on earth who can match the sheer thick-headedness of her Ronald. But for every one of those times, she remembers her anger abating, the fizzing frustration in her chest easing off, and with perfect timing Ron would come to her, sheepish look unchanging through the years, and she would fall in love with him all over again.
Hermione doesn't understand couples that don't fight. She considers her marriage all the more special because of the work put into it. She and Ron fit together like puzzle pieces with rough edges, interlocked but always catching against each other until the day they might fit smoothly.
She loves him when he stops by the bookshop on his way home from work and brings her a book she mentioned only once before. She loves him when he holds their children, from infants dwarfed in his arms to adults with children of their own. She loves him when he stares forlornly at his thinning hair in the mirror, and when he adamantly refuses to let her dye the gray streaks in her own. She loves him even as she is so furious with him she can't speak, and when his face turns the vivid color of his hair, and later, when he holds her and doesn't need to apologize, because she finds they stopped needing the words at some point.
She catches him studying his ring one day, turning it, face gilded in the half-light from the window.
"What is it?" she asks, resting her hand on his shoulder.
He smiles up at her and grasps her hand with his own.
"There's no one else I would have rather spent my life arguing with, Hermione," he tells her softly, and the absolute love in his eyes takes her breath away even after all their years.
Her Ron—he can set her to fury with a few careless words and then take hold of her heart with even fewer.
She holds him close, saying nothing. He's said it all.
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