A/N: Hellooooo. So apparently this is sort of happening. I haven't written an actual proper Romione fic in ages (those 100 drabbles don't really count). I'll make this short. This is tightly but not necessarily (your choice) linked to MsBinns's Reunited story (I highly recommend to read it) that is itself the follow up of her Australia fic (omg if you haven't read it what are you still doing here? GO READ IT NOW). So basically, this is set in Australia-verse, post Australia, MsBinns kindly allowed me to play the Hermione of her universe. Merci ;) Hermione and Ron went to get her parents back from Australia, this is what my brain decided to imagine the follow up of that. There should be three chapters to this story. One per summer months.

June

They fly back to England from Perth. It's an agonizingly long journey that involves several long flights and layovers. Ironically, their last layover before flying to London is in New Delhi. She remembers their too short journey through India as they land before their connection. She throws Ron a glance, he is clutching his fists as he attempts to breathe calmly. She grabs his hand and acknowledges how far they've come since that day.

Somehow the airline messes up and they only have three seats together on their last flight. The fourth one is at the far end of the plane. Alone.

Ron volunteers to take the isolated seat.

She pictures him, sitting by himself, trying to breathe his way through take off and landing and she falls in love with him all over again.

I love you, she hears herself whisper to him as she hugs him.

He holds her tighter.

...

"Don't be too long," her mum tells her. And Hermione refuses to believe she is seeing tears in her mother's eyes. She chooses to ignore the truth.

Truth is that Apparating for a few minutes to say goodbye to Ron as he goes back to his childhood home without her, without them, causes her parents pain.

Regaining their trust is going to take a lot of time.

"I won't," she replies with a heavy heart, "may take more than a few minutes though."

Her dad nods as she grabs Ron's hand and leads him outside the door. They're going to Disapparate at the end of the street. Her parents are still too uncomfortable with magic. She vaguely hears Ron bidding her parents goodbye through the buzzing in her ears.

They reach their destination faster than she expects.

"Are you okay?" he asks, his hand against her cheek.

"I'm fine." He doesn't believe her. "I'll be fine. We'll be fine."

"You and I or you and your parents?"

"Both."

She doesn't want to be one of those sappy girls that cry as they say goodbye to their boyfriend, not knowing when they'll see them again. She fights back the tears, she's gotten good at it. "My parents… These things take time, I lied to them. A lot."

"You had to. To protect them."

"Yes, and I think my mum is beginning to understand that. My dad may take longer…"

"I wouldn't be so sure about that." She looks at him questionably. "I mean, we did just win a war. And they would have been dead if not for you. Just keep reminding them that, eventually they'll both come around." She shivers, shaking away the thought of how much danger her parents were in because they were Muggles with a magical daughter.

She hugs him, tight. Knowing full well that as soon as they'll Apparate at the Burrow, any privacy they have now will be thrown out the window.

"Are you nervous?" she asks against his heart.

"A little." And she knows he means more than just seeing his family again. Going back to the Burrow also means fighting back demons.

They both discovered a lot about themselves through their journey to Australia.

It seems that he's finally ready to go home.

Is she ?

…

That first night in her childhood bed, surrounded by reliques of her younger self, she feels both at home and misplaced. It's an uneasy feeling.

When sleep finally takes her, it doesn't last.

She wakes up drenched in sweat and her throat dry. Her mother barges in, horror on her face.

Hermione didn't realise she was screaming.

"I- I'm fine," she clenches her fists underneath her blanket, hoping it will make the shaking stop.

Thankfully it's too dark for her mother to see. She mentally flinches, she should have remembered to cast a silencing charm.

"You can go back to bed," she takes a deep calming breath, "I guess it's a little weird to be back here." She tries to joke, but her mother doesn't take the bait.

Hermione is about to apologise for waking her up, when her mother, tears in her eyes, walks up to her and hugs her. She smells the remnant of her mother's perfume in the crook of her neck, the same perfume she's always worn as far as Hermione can remember, and something that is just distinctly her. Hermione suddenly feels so small, wanting nothing more but melt into her mother's embrace. She longs for a time when her mother's embrace was enough to cure all her sorrows. She lets the tears fall, allowing herself to mourn her childhood long gone.

After a while, when her heart has stopped racing and both their tears have dried, her mother tells her to lie back down. She expects her mother to go back to bed, instead the older woman runs her hands through Hermione's hair. It's all too familiar and she gets overwhelmed once again. She blocks the tears and instead tells her mother she loves her.

"Love you too baby," her mother whispers back.

Hermione falls back asleep, lulled by the soft caresses of her mother hand and enveloped in her perfume.

...

She's home.

It takes her a fews days to actually realise it.

In every nook and cranny she looks is a childhood memory and it makes her heart feel both lighter and heavier. It's a paradox she has trouble to comprehend. She knows she took the right decision by sending her parents to Australia. Her methods now, she probably could have done better. But she didn't had much time to plan and that's the best thing she could come up with back then. She would have done anything to protect her parents. So she did.

Still she apologises. Endlessly. Relentlessly. So much that her parents now roll eyes every time she utters the word 'sorry'.

Sometimes, it feels like they look at her like she's a stranger. They don't always make a good job covering it up.

She accepts their accusations and their anger. Repent in it even. And as she does, she helps them rebuild their lives, and hers.

...

A few days after settling back home, she receives a letter from Ron.

Pig falls in their backyard, completely exhausted.

She begins to write back almost instantly, even though she is unsure of when she will be actually able to send it back. Apparating at the Burrow would be faster she knows it, but it is hard to let her parents out of her sight for too long now that she has them back. Or maybe it's the other way around... Maybe she can go to the Burrow this week. She'll have to talk to her parents about it. In the meantime she writes, one letter every day. She figures she'll send them all at once when Pig will have recovered.

She keeps her reply as light as possible. They both know she isn't sleeping well, he probably isn't either. She details all the logistics involved in setting back the house. How they had to reinstall the electricity and telephone lines. They still aren't done unpacking what they brought back from Australia. They have to go shop for new furnitures. Her parents aren't exactly thrilled about it, many of the furnitures they had before had some sort of sentimental value. The couch they bought when she turned one, the coffee table that they've had since their first apartment, the carpet she took her first step on… She's trying to make her parents see the bright side. They get a fresh start. She's not sure who she's trying to convince more.

There is a lot she doesn't write, she imagines Ron will be able to read between the lines though. How she struggles to hold a full conversation with her parents. How she avoids talking about magic altogether. How they don't ask about it either. How she has to repress a whole part of her in attempts to repair the damages she's done. How the guilt is eating her up, now even more so.

…

She's surprised at how long they wait until questioning her more about Ron.

They ask after a week, when Hermes arrives at the breakfast table with another letter from him. He's out of owls, she briefly thinks. Pig and Erroll are both still resting after their journey and she hasn't been able to send any of her letters back yet.

She smiles despite her parents scolding. Ron writes her letters.

She drinks his words, reads them over and over. She misses him more than she expected to. After all they've been apart before, for longer than seven little days. But this is different. They are different.

She excuses herself, already mentally beginning to write back, adding to the letter she started after Pig first arrived.

But before she leaves the room, her father clears his throat.

"How long have you two been together again?"

She stops in her tracks and turns around slowly, twirling her father's words in her head. She's trying to make sense of his tone, stuck between cold anger and deception. She remembers telling them a little about Ron and her, when they were still in Australia.

"Excuse me?"

"How long have you and Ron been a couple? Is it really since the infamous battle like you told us, or are you lying about that too?" To his credit, her father does look like he regrets the words that just escaped his mouth.

It's the 'too' that hurts her the most. And after a week of sleeping alone again, casting silencing charms around her bedroom, knowing full well her parents would disapprove the use of magic but unable to do otherwise. She doesn't want her nightmares to wake them up.

She knows that soon they'll wonder what is under the bandage on her arm. She's not sure she'll ever be ready to tell them.

She puts Ron's letter away and sits back with her parents. She realises they are as frustrated as her, wanting nothing more to go back to their relationship before but unable to do so. So she starts to talk a little, tells them that yes Ron and her only got together at the battle but that it had been a long time coming. She watches her dad's features soften as she talks. Then, because she's missed them too much, and even though she's heard the story a thousand time, she asks about how they met. Her father looks at her, seemingly pondering if he'll grab the olive branch she's trying to lay, and then he talks about her mother and him, throwing her a smile that reaches all the way to his eyes.

It's the first time she's felt like their connection could be mended again one day.

…

She tells her parents she's going to the Burrow on Sunday to visit Ron and his family. The distance has become unbearable, she could almost begin to forget the sound of his voice and the warmth of his touch. They don't comment much on it and she doesn't know if she should be happy that they're not accusing her of spending time with Ron and his family or sad that they don't seem to be interested to know about it. She ruminates the thoughts in her head for the next two days.

Every Weasley is there to welcome her when she arrives and she immediately feels lighter. They spend the afternoon chatting around tea, Ron's hand tucked in hers. Fortunately, they gave almost half an hour to themselves and she makes sure to remember every minute of it.

…

Four days later, her parents leave her alone one afternoon. It's the first time she is in the house by herself since they came back and she barely waits for the door to close behind her parents before she Apparates to the Burrow. She just explained Apparition to them that morning because they were complaining about traffic and rush hours and she just blurted out about wizards transportations. They didn't look very enthusiastic about it. But when they make their way outside the door, she mentions that she may go out while they are away, just in case they are back before her. They don't ask, but she's sure they know where she'll go.

She is back before her parents. She's a little too cheerful, seeing Ron helps her stay focused on the long haul, on why they fought and did what they had to do. Her mother looks at her knowingly. They don't ask about her afternoon and she doesn't tell them. Instead she asks about their afternoon and the conversation feels tensed and forced. They ran into an old friend that questioned them about their year long disappearance.

That's when Hermione truly understands what was the biggest flaw in her plan, one she couldn't circle around with magic no matter how much she'd wanted to. And now, when the moment comes to rekindle with old friends and relatives, how do you explain that you left for almost a year without a trace?

When her parents, frustrated and agitated, complain about how to even begin to explain uprooting themselves to Australia for a year, she stays silent.

Because it's all her fault.

The thought leaves a bitter taste in her mouth.

…

As she arrives at the Burrow for dinner, Molly excitedly tells her Ron got a letter from Kingsley about joining the Aurors.

She's excited for him, and so proud. He's dreamed about being an Auror for the better part of their years at Hogwarts. He doesn't seem too enthusiastic about it though, but she does her best to show her support.

Their lives are slowly falling back into place.

...

It's like they moved one step forward and three steps back. She's running out of apologies, they are tired of hearing them. What is done is done and mending broken trust is harder than she expected.

One morning, she's reading an article about a new art exhibit and an idea emerges.

"Let's go to the British museum," she's looks at her dad, remembering the day she got lost and ended up opening the doors of the library. Her father nods and it's all it takes. Soon they are standing outside the imposing building, she grabs her father's hand, squeezing it lightly. He squeezes back before engulfing her in a hug she didn't know she yearned for.

They eat an ice cream on their favourite bench in Coven Garden afterwards, regaling her mother with tales from a more carefree past.

…

She begins to slowly slip out stories from her life on the run. It starts out of nothing. She's helping her mum cook a mushrooms omelet one morning and Hermione recalls weeks in a tent with nothing else much but mushrooms to eat. She tells her about living in a tent with Ron and Harry. Her father is sitting nearby, supposedly reading the paper but she can tell he turned his attention to her story.

Hermione doesn't say much, just that they had to be creative with food. She had remembered how they used to go camping when she was younger and how dad had taught her how to find edible food.

"One day we found this great stash of mushrooms. I cooked them directly over the coal to grill them and served them with a little bit of dill. You should have seen Ron and Harry," she chuckles, "I don't think they ate anything faster than those the first time I made them. Of course, eating mushrooms at almost every meal quickly became boring so I had to find other ways to cook it."

She falls silent, the last time she made mushrooms was before Ron left...

Her dad brings her out of her dark thoughts, "Maybe we should invite Ron for dinner one of these days?"

She instantly lights up, rushing to write Ron a letter to invite him over.

…

The letter from Kingsley comes a little later than Ron's and Harry's but it carries the same message. He wants her to join the Aurors. She knows she'll refuse. She's too much needed here with her parents. She needs to be with her parents and mend their family as much as she can.

Hermione doesn't know what her future holds anymore, but she knows it's not amongst the Auror forces.

...

One evening, as they are recounting one of Hugo's adventures, she realises they've been mentioning Australia more and more lately. Letting her in on how their life really had been there for them.

Curious, she asks more questions and they reply to all of them. It's the first time they have such an open talk about how they lived when they thought she didn't exist. As she listens, scrapping for more, it dawns her that they wouldn't have been happy if she had died. Her spell had been wearing off and they were remembering their lives in bits and pieces. They had been missing something and if she hadn't made it alive, they would have been looking for her until the day they died.

Strangely, it feels good, cathartic even, to hear them acknowledging it, even though it breaks her heart. For a fleeting instant, she feels the Cruciatus under the skin and remembers she'd wished to die. She chases the memory away, focusing instead on her parents. It's easy. Their conversation is easy and it fills her with hope. She knows they are still all avoiding some topics, they still have a long way to go, but for now they are talking, rebuilding what has been lost for longer than a year in Australia.

Their talk drifts to her cousin's antics, her mother jokes that she'd be a good fit for Hugo. The next day, they decide to go off on a vacation to visit their relatives. They'll struggle to explain, but she knows her parents will embrace reclaiming their lives.

She tries not to think about sleeping arrangement while they'll be at her grandparents. She'll probably will have to share the room with a couple of her cousins. She still has night terrors and nightmares, and she still hides her scars as best as she can. She'll cross that bridge when she'll come to it.

When she writes her letter to Ron that night, she makes sure to fully detail her talk with her parents and how normal everything felt.