Theo/Hermione (morning after engagement)
It was just so sparkly.
Tucked up in the curl of Theo’s warm, slumbering body, Hermione covertly admired her brand-new engagement ring. Even half under the duvet, the diamond’s facets caught the rays of morning light, refracting it into a rainbow of stars across the cream-colored linen.
She’d reacted exactly as she’d hoped when Theo had pulled her hand into his, expression ardent and affectionate, speaking the words she’d sensed growing between them over the past year. She’d smiled, and nodded, and slung her arms around him tightly, squeezing all her emotions out of her body instead of her eyes. He’d chuckled and hugged her back, pressing kisses to her curls and then easing her away so he could properly present the ring.
It had been perfect: intimate, personal, and affectionate. Not a cause for crying.
But now, lying in bed with her newly-minted fiancé snug behind her, she let a little of the ever-tamped emotions rise to the surface.
I’m getting married, Dad, she thought. I love him so much, Mum.
She hoped they knew — that there was still a part of their souls which bound them, even if their memories didn’t. Her chest felt tight, like it did when dad had hugged her, and so she let out a watery exhale, pretending that he had.
She didn’t like getting weepy around Theo, not with the life he’d had, and certainly not when it came to her parents. He’d lost his too, in far worse ways than she, and she considered it an unspoken Do Not Touch in their relationship. They had so much good between them that she didn’t want to let in the bad.
But despite her years of practice, there was something about knowing her father wouldn’t walk her down the aisle that cut so deeply, she couldn’t hold herself together. Tears leaked, unbidden, down her cheeks, dotting the pillowcase like rain on the pavement. She sniffed, and Theo stirred.
His hand slid up her ribs, warm and heavy, to curl over her shoulder to brush her hair back, trailing it down her neck and between her shoulder blades in a languid, soothing caress. That was normally all it took for her to roll over and pounce on him, so when she swallowed thickly and didn’t budge, his hand stilled.
“You awake?” he murmured, softly, in case she wasn’t.
She considered pretending not to be but her tears were still falling freely, clogging up her nose, and her next sniff made it patently obvious that she was. He made a sympathetic sound, concerned and contrite.
“Love, what’s wrong?”
Now that she’d been caught, she sniffed again. “I’m alright. Just thinking.”
He was toying gently with a curl; she could feel the suggestion of it all the way up to her scalp. She loved him so much, for not forcing her to look at him yet but also for not shying away.
“What about?”
She raised her hand, her engagement ring illuminated in the full sun of the room, and Theo sighed softly.
“Is it too soon?” he asked, voice a little sad but so understanding that she wanted to sob.
It was enough to finally roll over, slipping out from under his hand but using her own to keep it around her, holding him close with her own firmly on his jaw.
“It’s not that,” she said. “I love you. More than I know how to say. I’d marry you today, if you wanted.”
The stubble on his cheek was scratchy under her palm, his face creased from his pillow and his confused concern. She tried to smooth both out, with her thumbs and her words.
“I just miss them,” she whispered, the confession easier to give to his elegant brows. “They’d have been so happy for me.”
His lips pressed together under her gaze, then the edge twitched up in sympathy. She exhaled and met his gaze.
They held the intimacy of silent understanding, something she’d never dared to allow herself.
His eyes were so sparkly.
And when he raised a thumb to brush an errant tear from her cheek, she thought maybe it was alright that hers were, too.