Ron didn't know what Hermione was doing all day, every day. She seemed to have had a sticking charm placed on a seat at the Burrow's long kitchen table, and she tapped away at a strange muggle contraption she had helped his dad fix in the shed. She would stop, get that look on her face that seemed to him like she was reading something long and difficult right behind the front of her eyes, and she would scribble at parchment.

One time she got up, rolled parchment the length of the table, and started to plot things on it, like a map. She'd put her wand to her temple, do something strange and silvery with it's tip, and then add another jar to the collection at her feet.

Then, just when he thought she couldn't leave the chair, but to help his mum in the kitchen or make her a pot of tea, she would disappear for a whole day. He would hear the creak of the step two before Ginny's room, the creak of a door, and close his door for the night, looking puzzled and crestfallen that she wasn't confiding in him, while Harry rolled his eyes from the cot bed.

The first two weeks after the battle were fixing and mourning. And yet while Hermione was big on the fixing - helping out in the hospital wing for three days straight until Ron sent Charlie to go and talk some sense into her (he doubted he would be much good at the talking sense part), she hadn't been too great with the mourning. She had sat with Ron for hours, certainly, and she had read a lovely poem at Tonk's and Remus's funeral. All through Fred's she grasped Ron's shoulder, her arm stretching up and across his back, occasionally rubbing the back of his neck when he started to cry and finally, as they walked back to what had been the most unorthodox wake anyone had ever experienced, he slipped his arm around her waist, so they were walking in step. But mourning herself? If she had done it, Ron hadn't seen. She was waiting for the ministry to set up her trip to Australia to get her parents, she was organising to go and see what had happened to their house, to repair what had to be repaired, she was helping to reconstruct Hogwarts, she was having long, consoling discussions with Ginny late into the night so that only whispers reached the ears of the boys if they stuck their heads out into the hallway, and she was, now, scrawling, writing, making silvery stuff come out of her head, tapping on a muggle contraption, making tea and disappearing every second day.

Not that Ron was watching her at all.

A year ago Ron would have said she was writing a nice long letter to Victor bloody Krum, and tried to make her stop, and done something stupid and irrational. Maybe he would have been mean to her cat or something, or called her a know it all, made her stop by setting up a chess game right where she was trying to work, or asked the twins to help him make a ruckus so she would have no choice but to stop, exasperated, and let Ron whisk her away from all the commotion to someone quieter where he would have ample opportunity to work up the courage required to snog her senseless.

Something had happened though. Something had clicked, or changed. He had said something nice about house elves, right in the middle of the battle, and she'd kissed him. Right on the mouth. And Ron didn't have that much to go on, but he was almost sure that when you think you're about to die, and your arms are full of the only thing that can destroy a bit of You-Know-Who's soul, and you drop all that and snog someone, it pretty much means you're in love.

Not that they'd talked about it since. The best Ron could do was kiss the top of her head every time he passed her permanent seat at the table in the kitchen, and brood sullenly on the days she disappeared from the house all together, and other little things that generally exasperated Harry and made his little sister scoff and roll her eyes.

"Look, Ron, you're going to have to be bolder than that." Ginny said sharply one night, when the entire family was present and he had just wished Hermione a feeble goodnight, complete with a pathetic little wave as she swished her wand at the stacks of accumulated paper and banished them to the corner of the table, "You boys, you think we're just going to read into every little...and then it's up to us to...Merlin, Ron, she kissed you. You should definitely talk about it."

Ron's ears went red, and everyone in the room seemed to be suddenly busy, or to be reading their tealeaves, or needing to fix the dial on the radio. Everyone, really, except for Mrs Weasley, who let out a strange, happy noise, Harry, who groaned resignedly and put his head in his hands and George who whistled mockingly, and began to snicker.

"Ginny, you really think now's the place..."

"If she just told me what she was doing every day..."

Most of the family looked up now. Confused.

"Er, Ron...have you, you know, asked her?"

Ron thought about it. He thought about how he loitered outside the kitchen door watching as she bent over her notes and scribbled, and watched as her fingers moved over what his dad had told him was a tipe-rider and how when she disappeared he would hear her come home and never never go down stairs to see her, but scurry back to bed and brood.

"Well...well no. But she never offered the information..."

"Ron you twat, she's writing it all down."

Ron looked at the faces of his family, who were all staring at him with a mixture of amused and bewildered expressions. All of them, it seemed, had thought to ask Hermione what she was doing. Then again, she hadn't kissed any of them, and made them so confused that they couldn't think straight when in her presence.

"Writing what down?"

"Everything." Harry had lifted his head from his hands now, and was looking at Ron in a calculating way, as though he were waiting for something. He only had to wait a few seconds. Ron's red face turned a stark white almost instantly, and his eyes grew wide.

"Everything? You mean...you mean she's been...well...she's...well what the bloody hell for?"

Ginny stood up now, and through gritted teeth, hand on her wand, replied.

"So that those of us who weren't there know how you three 18 year olds managed to defeat the worst dark wizard of all time. So that when our kids go to Hogwarts and study the war they don't think 'oh yes, and then there was a battle, and Voldermort died, the end'? Merlin Ron, you're such-"

Frustrated, Ginny decided not to share what Ron was after all, and instead left the room abruptly, hitting her youngest brother around the back of the head on her way out.

" So you all, you all knew this is what she was doing?"

No one said anything for a long while. Harry looked torn between following Ginny and staying to be there when Ron had a certain realisation. He decided the later was more important. Ginny would have Hermione to vent to.

"Well, she needed to borrow my typewriter..."

"She asked if she could use the big table, or course she needn't have asked but you know Hermione..."

"She wanted a memory from me."

This silenced everyone, making Bill the last person to disclose just why he knew what Hermione was up to. Ron's felt a little sick, thinking he knew the answer to his next question.

"What...memory?"

Bill cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"The beach...the second time, she didn't even mention the fi-"

Ron stood, left the room, and let the back door to the Burrow slam shut behind him, gulping in the cold autumn air in the backyard, letting too much of it fill his lungs too quickly. It had almost been a year ago, now, since he had left them. He didn't even feel like the same person any more.

He heard the door behind him open, and Harry walked out, uneasy.

"Ron..."

"Harry, first of all, how can you be OK with her reliving all of that, herself? And second of all-"

He didn't need to say second of all, which was lucky, because he couldn't bring himself to say it anyway.

Everyone would know that he left them.

Until now, everyone was treating him like a hero, and he knew, knew he didn't deserve it, but he had been taking it anyway, just smiling when people thanked him, let Ginny, his mum, everyone hug him and tell him how proud they were, how happy that he was still alive. He shouldn't be alive.

He had left them.

"Harry, everyone will know."

His voice was quiet and hollow, and it had been this that Harry had been waiting for but found that now Ron said it, he actually had nothing comforting planned to say.

"Look..."

No, nothing. Harry moved closed, put what he hoped was a comforting hand on Ron's shoulder and shook his head.

"I'm sure she won't write it in a bad way. I'm sure. She wouldn't. And besides, no matter what Ginny says, I don't think Hermione's planning on letting anyone read it for a long time."

He sighed, and looked down.

"She's just trying to keep busy. She hasn't...stopped...yet. She hasn't felt it. And Hermione's better at keeping busy, ignoring everything else, than the rest of us are. I reckon she needs you mate."

Harry wasn't sure if Ron was listening, but he gave a little shake of his head, so Harry disappeared inside, hoping Ginny had calmed a little, and hadn't rambled too much to Hermione.

The door crashed shut behind Ginny, and she slid down the inside of it.

"I heard yelling."

Hermione didn't move from where she was, propped up in bed, reading a book about the Grindlewald's final battle, thinking it might give her insights into the wandlore aspect of her book.

"Right. Sorry." Ginny breathed, heavily, steadying herself.

"Don't be sorry, I was just-"

"No, sorry, for announcing to the entire family that you'd snogged my twat of a brother. Not sorry for announcing that he is a twat, however-"

"Oh Ginny you didn't-"

"Hermione, the way he follows you around! Hiding in doorways, kissing the top of your head when he passes, too scared to talk to you, waiting up each night thinking we don't hear when the door upstairs closes the second you get home. Merlin he's a prat!"

"It's my fault..."

"It's not your fault, Hermione, it's all his!"

"I've been keeping him away. I could have gone to him a hundred times, I could have asked him to help me. There are memories I've asked Bill and Harry and Fleur for that I could have easily gotten off Ron. I just know that he won't let me do this on my own and if I don't..."

"If you don't, you might actually feel something?"

Ginny chocked out the last word, seeming to realise mid sentence that it was the wrong thing to say. Hermione looked as though Ginny's hand had struck her in the face, and she was suddenly engrossed in her book again.

"I feel things Ginny. I feel a lot of things."

The way she spoke told Ginny that there was nothing left to say tonight, and when Ginny turned out the light, a second later, Hermione didn't even protest, just put down the book and rolled over, although she didn't get to sleep for a long time.

"So I suppose because she loves you all so much you all know where Hermione goes every second day."

Ron's voice broke the sleepy silence in the kitchen, as they all moved about making breakfast. George was trying not to mock so much that he dropped the sugar bowl he was holding, which made Charlie happy because he had an excuse to mend it with his wand and siphon up the sugar. Harry and Ginny exchanged looks, and Mr Weasley cut over the voice of his wife as she began to fuss, with a simple,

"Well, yes, we do Ron. I do at least."

"And?"

Mr Weasley looked to Harry, asking, really, if he thought it was a good idea. Harry shrugged. Hermione wouldn't want Ron there, but really, he didn't think, in the start, she had set out to hide anything from him.

"She goes to Hogwarts."

Whatever Ron was expecting, it hadn't been this.

"But...school hasn't started yet."

"No, she's not going to school." said Ginny, impatiently, "If she were going to school I'd be there too, wouldn't I? No, she's going to the headmaster's office."

Ron looked more confused than ever.

"She's using Dumbledore's pensieve. She told McGonagal what she's working on. I think McGonagal's as curious as the rest of-"

Ron was gone again, but this time there was no slamming of doors, or whitening of faces, rather a steely determination. He walked to the fire place, grabbed a handful of floo powder, and then paused.

"Actually, Bill, I need your help with something."

"Sure."

"The spell to bring a memory out of your head with the silvery stuff. You can do it?"

"Look Ron, I'm sorry I gave her the memory...if it helps you look pretty galan-"

"I don't care about that, I just need...I need you to get one out of me and put it in one of Hermione's jars."

Bill, nodding, and not asking questions, picked up a vial from the edge of the kitchen table and pulled his wand out, walking to Ron.

The room was still, and Harry thought he knew what Ron was planning. Ron glanced at him, quickly.

"Unless you already-"

"No. No course I didn't."

Ron nodded.

"Right. So I think it, I guess. Right?"

Bill nodded, and Ron's face contorted in clear pain while Harry flinched and ignored Ginny's questioning tug at the sleeve of his shirt. Molly looked as though she would move to stop him, thinking it was the spell that was making his son look plain ill, but as soon as the memory was in the jar he stopped, took a breath, relaxed, and took the stoppered vial from his older brother.

"Thanks. Ok. Everyone can stop watching me now."

And with that, he threw the powder into the crackling flames of the fire, jumped in, said 'Gryffindor Common Room, Hogwarts' and flew the warm flames encase him.

On her second day travelling to the school, Hermione had asked McGonagal's permission to have all her things moved to the Gryffindor common room. Everyone who had been staying there for the weeks after the battle, to help with repairs, had left now, and it was only herself and a few teachers left. No one was staying in Gryffindor Tower. The silvery pensieve sat on a table by the fire, and the room was covered in paper, maps, lists, family trees, and pages of books that Hermione had copied out. The Tale of the Three Brothers, a book about horcruxes, a passage telling what cursed knives, like the one Bellatrix used on her and on Dobby, could do, the scarring they left. A timeline stretched right around the circular wall of the room, and every so often she would leap from where she sat by the type writer and add something little to it, like 'Harry reads writing on snitch' or 'Ron doesn't need his sling anymore'.

She tries not to think of everything they did was 'everything we did' but rather as 'that stuff that happened so that Voldermort died'. She knows that's what she's doing. It was a conscious decision, she isn't crazy. She just really can't deal with it all, has to be strong, for Ron, for her parents, for everyone. She lost no family in this war, and she can't go to pieces while everyone else is. It would just be impractical, and besides - she had a hunch that it would hurt quite a lot.

So used to the precautions of war time, Hermione's wand was already pointed at Ron's face when he appeared in the fire place. She has had no visitors so far, and although she sees Hagrid every afternoon for tea and cakes, she hasn't shared her work with anyone. Not even Harry.

So for Ron to be there, in what she thought was a private enough place to do her writing, is a great shock. Especially because every time she sees him nowadays her stomach bottoms out and she feels not only love and fear but guilt and something else she can't quite place. Like she wants to hide him, from everyone else, forever, so that it's only the two of them.

"Wow. I thought you were in McGonagal's-"

"I moved." She said, crisply, "Less strange, here."

"Hermione, you should check who I am."

"I know who you are."

"No, come on, precautions. There are still death eater nutjobs kicking about."

"Get out of the fireplace Ron, you're covered in soot."

"Hermione. How do I know you're not some polyjuiced freak?"

"Ok, fine." She sighed, knowing he was only trying to make her smile, but hating that the second she succumbed to whatever it was he was here for her carefully constructed world of busy-ness could be very very ruined.

"Fine. First year, what spell did you use to knock out that troll?"

Ron was a bit taken aback by this. On a list of things that only he and Hermione could know, he could think of a few more romantic moments that would beat anything involving a troll.

"Wingardium Leviosa. What did I say to you, first thing, after I'd been poisoned?"

The blush alone would have confirmed the identity of the witch standing before him.

Her voice was barely audible.

"Thank Merlin it's you, Hermione."

Clambering out of the fireplace, he dusted himself off, and stood up before Hermione, towering over her, and looked down with a tiny smile on his face.

"So people seem to think that if I had just asked you what you were doing all this time you would have told me."

Hermione sat down behind her typewriter, briskly, and began to tap away again. What had she been up to? Touching up the planning phase, in Shell Cottage. They were talking to Griphook, and Bill was telling Harry what it is to make a deal with goblins, about their nature, about-

"Were they right?" Ron asked, sitting down opposite her, and picking up the first scrap of parchment that he could reach. " Would you have shared this with me, if I asked?"

"You haven't yet."

"Haven't what?"

"Haven't asked me. What I'm doing."

"I know what you're doing. They told me last night, after Ginny had a go at me. You're writing it all down. And personally, I think you could use some company."

"I can't, Ron. I need to get this done, you'll just distract me."

"I won't. I promise. I'll just be there. I can hold your hand when the shit parts happen. You shouldn't have to watch all that again, yourself. Especially..."

He trailed off. If she had asked Bill for the memory of himself carrying her back to Shell Cottage, limp in his arms, embedded with crystal then she surely would be revisiting the Malfoy Manor.

"I've already written that bit Ron, I'm fine."

But she didn't look fine, and when she glared up at him, her eyes were shinning, and her jaw was clamped firmly together, her mouth a line daring him to push further.

"Hermione, everyone says you've been asking for memories you missed. Things you weren't there for."

"I have."

"Well there's one of mine you should...there's something you should see. I would have written it down, but I'm not much of a writer. You know that, you've been reading my bad essays for years. Thing is I'm a bit of a weak arse girl in this memory. It's pathetic, really. But I just have to have you...I can't have you write about what I did to you and Harry without knowing what that Horcrux did to me. The things it...it knew about me..."

He stopped, and couldn't meet her eye now, although Hermione's had lost their steel, and her mouth had opened slightly.

"But I don't want you thinking I'm still the bloke in the memory you see. I just want you to remember, while you're in there, that I'm the same guy who you dropped an arm full of basilisk fangs to snog not to long ago because he said something nice about house elves."

Hermione blushed a furious red, and she couldn't help but smile. It was the first time either of them had mentioned the kiss in the battle, and although she liked to relive it at least once a day it was nice to know that Ron remembered it happening.

"Don't worry. That's something I definitely don't have the ability to forget."

With this tiny bit of hope to spur him on, Ron handed over the vial of memory Bill had made for him, placed it in Hermione's trembling hand, and turned towards the fire.

"You can jump on in there now if you want. I can wait."

"I don't have to. If you don't want me to."

Ron was confused. If it were him, the curiosity would be way too much. He eyed Hermione suspiciously.

"I want you to know. I need you to know. Look, I know I've been a real arse, but I know it's not all me. You've been avoiding me. And if it's because you don't trust me, I need to fix that. I need you to know that I'm here, and I'm not leaving. Not even if we're stuck in a tent for weeks with a bit of Voldermort's soul taunting me and there's no good food about."

Hermione teared up a little, and clapped her free hand to her mouth, shaking her head.

"Hey. Hey don't cry, Merlin I'm an arse, I didn't mean to upset you more..."

"Ron how could you think...I'm not avoiding you because I'm scared of you...I don't think you'd leave again. I just can't deal with it all yet, and I know as soon as I let you comfort me, I'll just break. There's so much that has to be done before I- Ron do you really think the book will make you look like a prat? A book with me writing it?"

She was getting more fervent now, and standing closer to him, closer than she had in a long while.

He barely knew what to say.

"I..was...I was a prat."

"Oh you had your moments."

They both smiled, and she shook her head, tears making her cheeks wet.

"You've got to be crazy to think I could write you that way. I'm not just writing that you left. I'm telling everything how it was. How every moment we were scared that our families were going to wind up dead, how each night we'd have someone on watch because we thought we'd be attacked at any second, how much I hurt you when you got splinched and the things the horcrux made us think and feel and how wearing it for a few hours could make me want to sit in a corner and cry, refuse to cook and decide that you'd never love me, ever. How we didn't have a clue what we were doing, and Harry would just stay up and stare at Ginny's dot on that damned map and how you came back. You came back, Ron, and you screamed by name and kept me safe, and saved my life, and that's what I'm writing. So you can show me this memory. If you want to. Or you can tell me what happened, and I'll let you stay here, and help me sort through me notes, and write on my timeline, and sometimes-"

She took a deep breathe, like if she inhaled all the emotion coming out of her she could stop it flooding into the world for Ron to see.

"Sometimes I might let you hold my hand."

Ron let out a breath of laughter, relief, and took a step forward, closing the distance between them, and pulled Hermione into his chest, so that her forehead was pressed into his collarbone and his arms wrapped right around her.

"I'm sorry I haven't been there."

"You have been there Ron. I'm sorry I never let you know I appreciated it."

"The Horcrux didn't just scream."

"I knew that. I knew there was something you two weren't telling me. It can't have been that easy, it was feeding off our happiness and our insecurities for months..."

"It fed off them alright. It...it said some things. Stuff about my family and mum never wanting me and always being the worst at everything."

"Ron you're not the-"

"And then you and Harry sort of...came out of it. Only it wasn't you, or Harry. You were weird. Beautiful, but weird. I hadn't seen you in months, mind you, so even weird was something I was willing to take at this point. I didn't even think about it being a Horcrux, I was just happy to see you."

Hermione was crying steadily now. Not just for Ron, or herself, or her parents, but for everything. She was crying because Fred was dead, and Remus and Tonks, and everyone, and no one would ever be the same again, and she was crying because she hadn't cried yet, not really.

"And then you sort of...well, you and Harry started to snog. You said you could never love me, ever, you thought I was nothing."

The word still felt strange on his lips, as though saying it made them true, made his shoulders a little less straight.

"Nothing at all. And I just broke. I thought I was going to stab Harry, Hermione. Real Harry. Bloody hell, Hermione, that Horcrux knew me, it knew everything I was scared of."

Now she was sobbing, and it was for a totally different reason. It was because when she and Ron fought they made up because his rat wasn't dead after all, but really the death eater who killed their best friend's parents in his animal form, or because of a poisoned bottle of mead, or because she was tortured by a lunatic death eater. She was crying because Ron would never have left her, if the worst dark wizard in history hadn't concealed his soul in a locket and had them wear it about their necks. Because their first kiss happened amid what was now being called 'The Battle of Hogwarts', because she had ignored him afterwards, and because now here she was, still reliving it, in his arms, and all she wanted to be was simply in love.

There was a long while, where they just stood like this, Hermione crying, Ron smiling because every sob seemed to speak to him, to reassure him; she was going to be OK.

And when he felt her breathing steady, and her arms tighten around his back, he felt safe to speak.

"So, I like how house elves have those weird long ears."

Hermione spluttered a laugh, confused, and looked up at his slight smirk, her eyes still glazed with tears, her cheek marked with the texture of his sweater, where her face had rested.

"Why on earth would you be thinking about that now?"

"Well, I thought if I were to say something else nice about house elves, you might snog me again. Guess I was-"

Laughing, Hermione slid her hands up to the back of Ron's neck, and pulled his face down to meet hers.

"Gryffindor Common Room. No imminent danger. This almost normal, Ron Weasley."

"We'll just ignore the fact that you've redecorated the walls with a ridiculously detailed outline of the war we just fought in..."

"Yes. Ignore that."

"Do I have to say something nice about house elves again, because I'm really running out of-"

Hermione's lips crushed his words back into his mouth, and Ron grinned into their (almost) normal second kiss.