Disclaimer: Characters are not mine; god, how I wish they were. Then I'd be rich.

FEVER DREAMS

Please God, please.

These are all the words she has left, now. She has cried so much and so hard and so silently today that now, as the sun goes down, her head is aching, pounding in time with her heartbeat, and with each painful throb comes the three-word prayer: please God, please. Please God, please.

Please don't let him die.

He is drowning in darkness. Each of his limbs is a lead weight dragging him farther beneath the surface of a vast, black pool. Shards of glimmering light cut through the darkness around him whenever he opens his eyes, which is not often, because opening his eyes sends a shooting pain straight through to the back of his skull. The pain throbs to life with each heartbeat while his eyes are open, with each tiny sliver of light. Much easier to keep his eyes tightly closed. Much easier to not think at all, not to think about how he got here to this strange prison of falling, falling through endless darkness.

The last thing he remembers…the very last thing…he opens his eyes painfully, slowly, and it comes to him as the tiny lights shoot pinpricks at his brain: the last thing he remembers is the pain. The pain fell into his gut, ripping and burning its way down his throat to gouge a pit in his stomach. Then had come the rushing, glimmering blackness and the falling and the feeling of drowning in air. There is nothing else before that.

Except…there is. There was something, just before the pain came. Wasn't there? He opens his eyes again to find that the glimmering lights all around him are brighter, are congealing into one bright light before his wide-open eyes, like the light that comes from the end of a wand when you say 'lumos.' The light hurts him and he flails out against it, trying to lift his heavy arms and push it away, but his arms aren't listening to his brain, and anyway the light is everywhere now, it fills this space, it fills his brain and makes his eyes numb. There is a buzzing like Muffliato in his head.

Someone is talking to him.

"Ron! Can you hear me? You are in the hospital wing."

He knows that voice, but the light is too bright and the pain is too big.

"Poppy, we're losing him again."

And he begins to fall faster, closing his eyes and letting it happen, letting the buzzing pain take him, much too tired to fight or to remember, not right now. Maybe later.

Before it all came crashing down, she'd been getting ready for breakfast and trying not to think about what day it was. Consequently (don't think of an elephant, ha ha), all she could think about was the date. Saturday, 1st March, 1997. It was his birthday. She lay in bed and listened through the heavy hangings as Lavender dressed and talked and brushed her hair and talked and put on her lip gloss and talked and talked and talked about how unfair it was that the Hogsmeade visit had been cancelled, and talked about the stupid present she had gotten him and quizzed Parvati for the five millionth time about whether he would like it, and talked about how fantastic he was, as if she knew. As if she had any sodding idea.

And she could swear, though she wasn't entirely sure, that Lavender was talking much more loudly than she normally did, perhaps for Hermione's benefit. Perhaps she knew or suspected that Hermione was listening through her bed hangings and clutching her bedspread to her mouth so the others would not hear the quiet sobs which would, which just had to, work their way up her throat, every morning and every night. Every time she heard Lavender talking about him.

Her dorm mates had finally left, and Hermione rolled out of bed and pulled on yesterday's jumper and last night's jeans and a pair of flip-flops even though she knew her feet would be cold. She didn't glance in the mirror as she passed the washroom door. She knew what she'd see: her same old, plain old self, a bit thinner and a bit paler and a lot more tired-looking than she used to be. Dark circles under the eyes. Thumbnails chewed raw. Lips gnawed bloody at the corners. She didn't have the heart to look at herself any more.

Just after Christmas break, she'd been so good. So strong. Her mother's voice had still been ringing in her ears when she returned to the castle after Christmas: 'Don't give him the satisfaction of knowing you're upset! Just go on with your life, and be your old cheerful and brilliant and pretty self, and he'll come to his senses soon enough.' Almost the same advice she'd given Ginny about Harry, two years before. It had made so much sense to Hermione, two months ago, after she'd given up and broken down in her mother's arms and spilled everything, the whole thing: how much she was in love with him, and how cold he'd been to her, and how very, very much it hurt to see him with someone else…Her mother had rubbed her back and nodded and sighed and given her some sound, familiar advice, and it had made sense. It had appealed to Hermione's logical nature, her sense of order. Of course it had.

But now…well, a person could only take so much. She could only pretend so much that she couldn't see him. There had to be a limit. There had to be a point when she'd walk into the common room and see the two of them wedged into the same chair or wrapped up in a tapestry together or perched on one of the window-seats snogging the breath out of one another, and she'd just scream, or run mad, or kill one of them or both of them or jump out of a window or just do something so she wouldn't have to look at the two of them any more.

She stumbled down the girls' staircase while pulling her unwashed hair into a messy ponytail, feeling the brittle ends of it catch on her jagged fingernails and not caring at all. She supposed she would go down to breakfast before Apparition lessons. A person had to eat, even if said person was carrying a molten ball of lead in her stomach, even if a rocky lump rose in her throat every time her damned peripheral vision picked up a flash of red hair or a familiar, wide grin from down the table in the Great Hall.

She only had time to glimpse Ginny curled up on a couch before the fire next to Dean, to make a passing note of the same horrible grey fog which had hung over the castle for a month pressing against the common room windows, before it all came crashing down around her that morning. Before she saw Professor McGonagall clatter, sweaty and panting, through the portrait hole—appearing in Gryffindor Tower for only the third time in six years—and stalk shakily over to where Ginny was sitting. Hermione froze on the stairs as Ginny sat up straighter, pulling herself away from Dean, and McGonagall caught Hermione's eye over Ginny's head, and the teacher's expression was one of such barely-controlled panic, such frantic desperation held in check, that Hermione knew something was badly wrong. Her heart began its painful pounding.

She watched in slow motion as McGonagall bent down and began talking in a low and urgent voice to Ginny. Dean's jaw dropped open. Ginny's small white hands fell into her lap and she let out a weak cry like an injured bird. Hermione felt her feet carrying her the rest of the way down the staircase, and saw Dean's wide eyes on her, and felt Ginny's hand as it slipped into hers and pulled her across the room, away from McGonagall.

"It's Ron," Ginny sobbed in a small voice, and Hermione felt the eyes of twenty or so Gryffindors fixed upon the two of them as they slipped out of the portrait hole and into the corridor. And then Ginny wasn't pulling her any more, because she was running, her longer legs were outstripping Ginny's short ones down the corridors and secret passageways as Ginny's sobbing, hitching voice choked out what McGonagall had told her, and Hermione did not stop once to look back at Ginny or to catch her breath, but went barreling down the Hospital Wing corridor and stopped short in front of Harry.

He was pressed against the Infirmary doors, his ear to the crack, bouncing on the balls of his feet and clawing at the door with his fingertips and frowning and biting his lip. She grabbed his sweaty hands with her own trembling ones and held them as if she was drowning and he was the lifeline. "What happened Harry," she breathed as Ginny skidded to a stop next to her, clutching at Harry's arm and making those same injured-bird whimpers and squeaks, over and over.

And after Harry had finished telling them, Hermione had begun to pray, for the first time in years. Please God, please. Three words, over and over.

The flickers of light are not quite as painful, now. He has no idea how long he has been wherever he is, or how he got here, but he has the clear feeling now that if he opens his eyes, it will not be as painful as before. And so he opens them by the barest of slits. The lights are still there, but they are more gentle now, butter knives rather than daggers, and he looks fully at them.

Yes, before the pain came and ripped his body inside out and set him falling, there was something else. Quite clearly, something else. Just before the pain he'd fallen into a large squashy chair (Where? Why?), and the feeling down in his stomach had been heavy and awful, like a strong wind had hollowed him out. It had been quite different from what he was feeling now. It had felt like…

Shame. Yes. He had dropped from feeling buoyant happiness and excitement to feeling like a world-class loser in a very short period of time.

And there had been something else, on top of the shame. Something like a realization. What had he realized, just then, just before the pain came? There had been happiness, bliss, an almost unbearable need for…something, he can't remember what. And then, quite suddenly, had come the crushing shame. And then the pain. It is too confusing. It will not make sense.

It was almost full dark outside, and the three of them were sitting in a tight row on the cold stone floor of the hallway outside the Infirmary when Professor McGonagall stuck her head out of the door, sighing.

Ginny, who had been crying softly into her hands ever since Dumbledore had led her silent Mum and Dad away to his office, looked up at McGonagall with both fists clenched beneath her chin, as though steeling herself for the worst of news. Then McGonagall had smiled, a tight, thin-lipped smile, but a smile nonetheless, and the three of them had sagged toward the floor in relief before stumbling to their feet.

They were to be allowed to visit him, to sit at his bedside now that he was out of "immediate danger." Hermione shivered as she rolled this phrase over in her mind, following more slowly behind Harry and Ginny, who burst into the room and over to Ron's bed.

They all stood around him as McGonagall explained, "The healing effects of the bezoar often depend entirely upon the speed with which it is given. This one was, thankfully, administered within a minute of Mr. Weasley drinking the poison. The bezoar acts by absorbing the remaining poison and not allowing it to come in contact with the victim's body. Unfortunately, the poison that was able to…get to him…" Here, Professor McGonagall had to lean on a bedstead for balance, and seemed to stare out the window onto the grounds for almost a full minute. "The poison his body had already absorbed still must be leached out gradually, and the attendant symptoms dealt with. He will remain in bed for at least a week. But after that...Madame Pomfrey assures me…he will be fine."

Hermione lowered herself into a chair on shaky knees. She was sitting to his left, his long-fingered hand curling into a half-fist barely a foot from her. His hair was mussed, and a spot of something black dotted his cheek, just next to his mouth. He was dressed in the generic, white Infirmary-pajamas she remembered from her own sojourns in the hospital wing, and the frayed cuffs were at least three inches too short for him. The downy ginger hairs on his arm seemed all to be standing straight up, as though he had received an electric shock.

He barely seemed to be breathing.

She clasped her hands and prayed silently as the other two resumed discussing the poisoning, as Ron's brothers came in and were hugged furiously by Ginny, as the four of them talked and talked. She did not take her eyes from his motionless face until she actually saw him frown and take a shuddering breath, until one of his hands twitched on top of the covers, until she was sure he was still with her.

Think, he tells himself. It hurts, but do it anyway. Before the pain. Before that, before that had been…

A soft pink-and-lavender wall is rushing in at him from all sides, closing him into a compartment no larger than a Muggle phone booth. The colors around him are bubble-gummy pastels, swimming in and out and around one another and fogging his vision. He puts his hands out to test the barrier. The pastel wall is soft and pleasant to the touch and smells vaguely of some kind of flower, and he is not frightened, not at first. Only puzzled. It is a soft, translucent barrier, and beyond it he can see figures moving.

There are two figures, he thinks, one with long dark hair and a loud, mocking laugh and the other with dusky doe-eyes and a high, chirrupy giggle, moving behind the wall. They are grey and inconstant, disappearing and reappearing at different points as though Apparating at lightning speed. He wants to see clearly, he needs to get out there. But the more he pushes against the translucent wall the more it closes in on him, and the more desperately he wants to get out of it. He opens his mouth to scream to the grey and mocking creatures for help, but all he is able to manage is a feeble whimper.

He closes his eyes again. Strength, he needs strength. He needs to push the wall away. He has to remember something from before he came here.

"It's perfectly obvious," a soft, gentle voice whispers from just behind him, and he whips around in the tight space inside the wall and opens his eyes and forgets to wince in pain as the light hits them. There is another shadow just beside him, sharing the tight space, but in the dim light he cannot make out its shape.

"What's obvious?" he asks, and fails to recognize his own voice--it comes out in a barely-audible croak.

The shadow has understood him, despite the croaking. "What you need to remember," she whispers—it's a she, he's sure of it, and the voice is maddeningly familiar, sweet and soft, if only he could place it. She reaches toward him with a shadowy arm. "How you can get out."

"How can I get out?" He tries to grasp the shadow but his own too-solid hand seems to melt through the tingling, insubstantial figure like she is a ghost, only vapor. "Please let me see you," he begs. If he could only see her, he'd remember. He knows it.

"You will when you do," she says, and backs away, out through the pastel wall. She laughs at him, and it is a laugh he remembers, one that reminds him of music, the trilling of a flute. He steps forward to follow her and collides with the soft imprisoning barrier. He swears as loudly as he can manage—still only a croak--and she laughs harder. "Don't swear," she tells him.

All it once it comes to him: Apparition! He'll Apparate out of his pastel, sweet-smelling prison. He closes his eyes again and pictures the castle, Hogwarts. That's where he was before all this began, he's almost sure of it. If he could just get there again, he'd be all right. He's never Apparated before, true, but if he can manage it this time, if he can find…

"Aren't you ever going to read Hogwarts, a History?" the shadow chides him in that gentle, teasing, sweetly familiar voice, and all at once he can see her. She comes into focus as if he's adjusted a lens. She's perfectly obvious, right there in front of him. He should have been able to see her before. "You can't Apparate anywhere inside the castle or on the grounds," she continues, shaking her head so that her beautiful hair falls over her shoulders, curling under her chin and against her throat. "Honestly, Ronald. You have a shockingly selective memory."

It's Hermione, there in front of him, with her curly brown hair and dimples and clever, flashing eyes. Of course it is Hermione.

It all comes flooding back to him as if someone has turned on a tap. He remembers taking the antidote, grabbing the tumbler of mead from Slughorn, remembers the huge, rocking shame of realizing that he was no more in love with Lavender for all those months than he had been with Romilda Vane just that morning. The truth of how stupid, how utterly, wretchedly stupid he'd been, not just that morning, but all winter, had come crashing into him with the force of a tidal wave, and he'd swallowed the mead quickly, in the hope that it would wash some of the choking guilt down into his roiling gut.

Of course it is Hermione.

If he had more control over his limbs (they feel suddenly, strangely heavy again), he would smack himself in the forehead, hard, hard enough to maybe knock himself out again and put off the moment when he'll have to face his own stupidity, and face her sad, glistening brown eyes the way they'd looked from down the table in the Great Hall, when the two of them hadn't been speaking.

He remembers kissing her on the cheek upon first seeing her at the Burrow last summer, being so glad to see her and not being able to stop himself from doing it, and catching hell from Bill for it later, and not caring. Remembers the way Hermione blushed and smiled with one corner of her mouth and stared at the floor after he'd kissed her, and the way she'd bite her lip and brush her hair behind her ears before leaning forward to make another disastrous move at chess. Hermione. Of course.

Even as he watches, she's drifting away, fading back into the darkness. He reaches out but cannot get hold of her, and she smiles and tilts her head to the side so that the curls fall across her face in that way he loves, that way he has loved from the first time he saw it. She's saying something, he can just barely make it out. Her voice is echoing and far away: "…a good chance he'd keep something that tasty for himself," she's saying.

And then she's gone.

"Hermione," he calls, but it's no good, it's still only a croak. She'll never hear him. He'll never be able to explain. He fills his lungs and gathers all of his remaining strength and bellows as hard as he can at the dissolving shadow that he will never reach, now. "HERMIONE."

She is still and silent, not even breathing, for almost a full minute after he has said it, and after he has lapsed back into snoring. It was, unmistakably, her name, and not any one else's. She lets out her held breath in a long, slow wave. Of course it was her name. Of course. She feels a calm settle into her bones, for the first time in months, as she realizes that it is over. Finally over. No matter what lies ahead, the long years of fighting are finally over. He will not die, he will get better and he will come back to her as a friend, and then, later, as something more. It will happen.

Of course it will.