Disclaimer: JKR’s toys.

A/N: DH fic, set in between the last chapter and the epilogue. This isn’t meant as ship-bashing or Ron-bashing, so I hope it doesn’t come across as that. It’s simply my attempt to reconcile my view of the characters and JKR’s ending. I’ve never been interested in the Ron/Hermione or Harry/Ginny relationships and to be honest neither of them particularly work for me. But they’re JKR’s books, so she can do what she wants. It just always seemed to me that Harry and Hermione were far better friends than Ron and Hermione, and for me friendship is an important prerequisite of a lasting romance.

Best Friends (Hermione)
by Bil!

Hermione isn’t in love with Harry, she’s in love with Ron. She knows that a lot of people, many of them newspaper reporters, were hoping for some sort of love triangle, a juicy scandal for them to sharpen their quills on. Harry isn’t a very good celebrity because he’s too good a person and doesn’t do anything interesting. No tempestuous affairs, no lusty love-children, just plain, simple, wonderful Harry. A nice scandalous love triangle with his two best friends would have livened things up immensely. Saint Potter does not good copy make.

But Hermione isn’t in love with Harry. Her pulse doesn’t quicken at his touch, she doesn’t lose herself in his eyes, and she doesn’t get the urge to drag him into the nearest room and snog him senseless. That is for Ginny and Hermione is glad, without the slightest hint of jealousy, that Harry has someone to adore him, someone to adore in return.

She’s in love with Ron, you see. Head over heels, completely smitten. She knows even now that she will marry him, that they will have children together, grow old together...

But there is something she seldom admits, even to herself: She is not in love with Harry, certainly not, but... she loves him more than she loves Ron. Ron is the love of her life. Harry is her best friend.

It’s Harry who finishes her sentences, Harry who consoles her when Ron does or says something completely stupid (for no matter how mature he becomes Ron will never lose his foot-in-mouth disease). She’s the one to whom Harry comes for advice, she’s the one who can break him out of his self-destructive guilt trips and make him face the world again.

They are best friends. It’s as simple and as complicated as that.

If Ron died... Hermione has nightmares about that sometimes, the horror and the grief shaking her awake when old memories mix with new ones and create fears that she never imagined would follow that first, magical Hogwarts letter. If Ron died, she doesn’t know that she would have the strength to go on.

But if Harry died, she would be lost. It sounds not as bad. It’s worse.

No one ever told her that love was this complicated.

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