For the amazing Lauren
They cope, after the war. It's not perfect - they still fight, sometimes, and bicker over the little things, but that's good. That's normal. Besides, when have their lives ever been close to perfect?
So.
Things are different, of course they are. You don't fight a war and come back the same person you were before. Hermione still has the scars on her arm that mark her out as Mudblood, that she sometimes tries to scratch open when the memories become too much. She wakes up in the middle of the night with tears staining her cheeks and screams echoing in her ears - her screams, her friends' screams, children's screams. She comes down to breakfast with hollow eyes and sunken cheeks, barely picking at her food. She doesn't restore her parents' memories - better they live a happy life, she thinks, than shackled to a broken daughter.
Ron can't get the image of Fred's empty gaze or ghost of a smile out of his head. They haunt him when he's awake, they lurk behind his eyes, they assault him when he rests. Sometimes, he avoids George for a while - he knows he shouldn't, he knows it hurts his brother when he does, but he can't bear to face him on the days when it gets particularly bad. He spaces out for minutes at a time, blinking and finding he's missed an entire conversation. He dreams, too, dreams about the battle, and Fiendfyre, and the locket. Once, not so many years ago, Molly would claim he could sleep for England; he doesn't think she would anymore.
In the end, though, things get better. They get better, and closer. Eventually, it would be Ron's hands stilling Hermione's when she begins to pick at her scars. It would be Hermione pulling Ron gently out of his head and back into the real world. The spaces between the conversations would get smaller; the shadows under her eyes would begin to diminish.
Hermione starts living at the Burrow, not sure where to go now that her house belongs to someone else. They occupy bedrooms just across the hall from one another, and the proximity is comforting. One night, when the dreams are especially awful, Hermione quietly pads across the corridor, gently pushing Ron's door open. She finds him sat up in bed, as if he were expecting her, and, unspeaking, he draws the covers back, nodding at her knowingly. She settles herself in next to him and eventually drifts off into a surprisingly dreamless sleep. He does too, for Hermione wakes the next morning to Ron's gently snoring, his arm loosely wrapped around her.
It becomes an almost nightly thing, one of them joining the other in bed. It's not a perfect solution - the dreams don't stop - but, as long as they are together, they seem less real. Hermione knows Molly has them figured out by the knowing looks she gives them, but she doesn't say anything, for which Hermione is insanely grateful.
They find solace in each other, in comforting whispers and soft touches. Their lives will never be perfect, but they muddle through together. They cope. And Hermione knows that as long as Ron is by her side, and she by his, then they'll be okay. Everything will be okay.