This story was originally written for the 2010 CanonFest as a gift for HonourWeasley12. Special thanks to QueenBee23, my original beta for the story.
"Your grandson is absurdly high-maintenance." Hermione slid back into the warm bed with a little sigh.
"Ah, like father, like son." Ron rolled over to face her and snuggled against her back. "I must have worn a hole through the hall carpet when Hugo was his age."
"Oh, God, I remember.. And I was no help to you, either."
"I was more than happy to take on baby walking duty if it helped you get better. I don't think you'll ever know how scared we all were." Ron shuddered at the memory from all those years ago, the fear and worry of almost losing his wife as she gave birth to their son as fresh as though it were yesterday. Hermione leaned back into his embrace and sighed.
"I only recovered as quickly as I did because of you. And, goodness, Ron, I swear people still gush to me about how wonderful you were."
"They're only still commenting because they are so surprised by my rising to the occasion." He snorted back a laugh. "For some reason, half the people we know seem to think that I should still be slacking off and bickering with you like a thirteen year old git!"
"And I'm supposed to eternally remain a precocious aspiring prefect with an axe to grind, yes," she chuckled softly. "That's the trouble with saving the world when you're still in school, half the population will forever assume that your personality must have been set in stone in the womb."
"I know! To tell you the truth, it took me long enough to get a clue. Extending my idiocy isn't doing me any favors."
"Don't be so hard on yourself, Ron...Merlin, remember what our kids were like when they were at Hogwarts? I never realized how young we really were back then until I saw them go through that age. "
"Yeah, me too, love. It was amazing how young they seemed at the same ages we thought we were so grown up. Lots of changes in those years. Makes me appreciate even more that I got to be with you all the way through."
"Most of the way through, anyway."
"Nope, all the way through. Any time I wasn't with you, I was missing you. It's how I knew."
"Aw."
"Oi! Don't mock my sexy sensitivity, woman."
"Wouldn't dream of it."
Ron felt it strongly in their second year. Eyes vacant, arms rigid, for months she was little more than a cold statue carved by a talented but gruesome sculptor. Then, the whole thing spun out of control; danger, grief, and horror everywhere and he was lost without a sensible girl to calm him down. He stood numbly in the Common Room, torn between the family he didn't know how to comfort and the friends whose curiosity he didn't know how to handle. His best option seemed to be yet another trip to the Hospital wing, until she suddenly came bursting in, running and smiling. Before he knew it, she was squeezing the life out of him. She was warm and soft again, her eyes dancing and full of questions and answers and pure excitement. By some miraclt, she was Hermione again.
"Imissedyou." He blurted without thinking, and she squeezed him just a little bit harder.
Hermione understood the feeling in their fourth year. She stood between them, utterly confused. Ron was trying to apologize, and Harry wouldn't let him. Suddenly everything was normal again, and they were doing that boy thing. Ron smiled, truly smiled with his whole face, just like he hadn't done for weeks, and all she could do was cry and hug them both. Squeezing Ron extra hard, she whispered to him what she hadn't realized until then.
"I missed you." He pretended to get caught up in her girlish tears, when he was really wondering why he had never noticed how nice it was to hug her, and when had she gotten, you know...those soft...nevermind.
Ron had trouble saying it during their sixth year, but he knew it had to be said.
"Hermione...I...I've missed you, you know." He felt like he'd been waiting for hours for everyone else to leave. He had to tell her, she had to know; she must already know, she knew everything, after all.
"Well." She pursed her lips and looked at everything in the Hospital wing that wasn't his face. "You haven't exactly been wanting for company, have you?"
Shite. She didn't know. How could she?
"Yeah, well, s'funny, but that seems to be when I miss you most. "
"That doesn't seem very nice towards her, you know."
"I know. It's just...The whole bit with being a Quidditch hero and having the showy, adoring girlfriend; it isn't nearly as cool as it seemed like it would be."
"Those things rarely are." Her eyes met his for the first time in months. "I missed you, too. More than you know." She hugged him then, but gingerly and with long arms.
Hermione said it during their year on the run, but she didn't mean for anyone, least of all Ron, to hear.
It was a dismal night, bone chilling and drenched in an icy rain. Ron's shadow stretched across the the floor of the tent as he kept watch. He was alert and on his feet, as though he could erase the last two months through a fierceness of devotion measured by the stiffness of his spine. She watched him in silence, and lowered her eyelids when she saw him approaching her cot.
"I'll never leave you again, Hermione." He barely whispered his vow, the words only meant for himself. "Ever. I swear." He turned, then, and resumed pacing at the tent opening.
"I missed you," she whispered in the dark, so quietly that he couldn't hear her over the rain It wouldn't do for him to hear, not yet.
Yet, he did. And, for the first time in months, Ron Weasley smiled.
"And, I never did leave you again, now, did I?"
"Never once." Hermione snuggled closer and nuzzled against his neck. "Unless, of course, you count The Exchange."