Disclaimer: Any characters, settings and other references you recognise belong to JKR. I just play with her ideas. The title comes from a song by The Strokes. Enjoy!

The castle was a mess. Everywhere Hermione looked, great chunks of stone had been hewn from the walls and daylight streamed through the holes, illuminating rubble-strewn hallways, torn tapestries and empty canvases. Harry walked quickly, head down, shoulders rigid, mouth drawn into a thin, determined line. Two wands – one long and knobby; the other shorter, slender and familiar– were gripped in his fist.

On her other side, Ron hovered so close that every few steps their arms brushed against each other. Hermione wished he'd simply take her hand, but a quick glance at his face suggested otherwise. Ron's eyebrows were knit upwards, eyes flashing uncertainly toward every open doorway and every hole gorged into the walls, as though he expected a lone Death Eater to leap from the ruins and attack them in earnest.

A low rumble of conversation rose from the Great Hall to the top of the marble staircase. The survivors remained in the midst of celebration. Hermione wondered if they'd even noticed Harry was missing yet. She descended the battle-scarred stair last, letting the boys lead. Ron cast a brief glance toward the door beside the Great Hall, the entrance to the anti-chamber where his brother lay calling to him. But Harry was already out the front doors, and Ron didn't hesitate.

Hermione did, though it was a different door that called to her. This door would be locked – the people celebrating and grieving in the Great Hall could hardly be held accountable for their actions today, and so must be protected from themselves, ludicrous as it seemed – but locks had never bothered Hermione before. The room would be cast in shadows, His corpse laid without ceremony on the cold, damp flagstones. She wondered what He would be, now that the evil had been emptied from His body. She wondered whether He would look, in Death, any different at all…

"Psst. 'Mione. Get a move on!" Ron's head was a silhouette against the growing glow of morning outside. He raised a single arm, beckoning her. "Hurry up. I don't want to leave him on his own."

And yet, Ron had left Harry to check on her. Hermione shook those gathering dark thoughts from her head and moved to the doorway with several carefully calculated, tiptoed leaps over the scattered rubble and shattered glass. Ron's fingers closed around hers, and now they were running – or rather, in exhaustion, half-dragging each other - across the dewy lawns to catch the lone, determined figure in the distance.

When they did reach Harry, he was kneeling before the crumbling mess of Dumbledore's tomb, his back to them. The marble lid was cracked in half, and one end stood open, like the cover of a book waiting to be read. Hermione looked away. She thought of Dumbledore's smiling portrait in his empty office, and decided that she much preferred to think of him like that instead of – as he would inevitably now be – a pile of withered bones.

Ron stood behind her, drawing her body back against his chest, absorbing her shudder.

"Reckon you could mend the marble?" he murmured, voice low enough for only her to hear.

Cautiously, Hermione appraised the lower dais.

"I think so. As long as nothing's actually missing…"

Ron squeezed her shoulders in response and then released them, stepping around her to stand beside Harry. She watched as Harry rose, then bent over the tomb briefly; heard the soft thunk as wand settled on to fabric; and then Harry and Ron were reaching upward, pulling the open leaf of Dumbledore's tomb closed with their bare hands. Drawing out her own wand, Hermione cast a silent hover-charm to help them bear the weight.

With a quiet thud absorbed by the earth beneath it, a soft puff of white dust and then a deft, whispered series of 'reparo' spells, the tomb of Albus Dumbledore began to repair itself. Ron cast Hermione a grateful smile, placed an arm around his best friend's shoulders and guided Harry away, back toward the castle. Hermione fell in step beside them, and Ron slipped his free arm around her, too. As they wandered back towards the castle, Hermione gazed upwards, appraising the damage from the outside. The holes looked smaller from this perspective - more like pockmarks than irreparable damage.

Perhaps this was what Hogwarts looked like to unwitting Muggles, anyway?

With a pain that registered vaguely somewhere around her stomach, Hermione realised that the Gryffindor Tower had been cleaved in half. An entire part of the wall was missing, and three stories stood exposed to the outside elements. So much for her planned long, fitful sleep in her four-poster bed; she hoped no-one had been inside when the spell had been cast. Ron had seen the Tower too; his arm tightened around her.

"We'll rebuild." Harry spoke unexpectedly from Ron's other side, regarding the castle with fierce pride and determination written across his face. "We have all the time in the world.'

The Burrow was silent. Mr Weasley opened the back door and stood aside to let his family through. Their feet fell in weary procession upon the creaking wooden staircase, and for once Mrs. Weasley couldn't muster a protest as Hermione followed Ron and Harry up to the very highest room.

Everything was how Ron had last left it; walls plastered with moving Chudley Cannon posters, roof a violent shade of orange, clothes strewn across the worn carpet, an empty green fish-tank on the windowsill. The dog-eared pages of comic books spilled out from beneath Ron's unmade bed, a bed that was currently occupied by –

"Oi," Ron said abruptly, glaring at the ghoul in his pyjamas. "'Geroff there. We don't need you anymore."

Hermione swallowed a small smile. Harry appeared to have finally succumbed to exhaustion: expression blank, eyes empty, he didn't even pause in picking his way across the room to his old camp bed. As Ron accompanied the old ghoul back up to the attic, his arms folded sternly, Hermione eyed the bedclothes with distaste. They were thick with dust and slightly grey; the sheets clearly hadn't been changed for months. With a quick glance at Harry, already curled up into a tight little ball on the camp bed, still fully clothed but facing the wall, Hermione slipped out of the room and pulled the door shut.

Ron's feet were just descending from the trapdoor in the ceiling. He cast a puzzled look at the closed door - with it's crooked little sign reading 'Ronald's Room' - but Hermione pressed a finger to her lips and took his hand.

"I don't particularly fancy sleeping in that bed until you've aired the mattress and changed the sheets at least twice," she explained, once they were a few floors down.

Ron shrugged affably, tightening his grip on her fingers. "Fair enough. Couch it is."

Hermione hid a full smile this time: it felt inappropriate, given the circumstances, but she secretly loved that he understood as a given that they would be sleeping side-by-side.

As they settled down onto the careworn patchwork lounge, Hermione pulled Ron's arms around her, tucking herself into the curve of his body.

"Thank you."

She spoke so softly that it was a surprise he heard it; lips pressed against the back of her head in response.

"For what?"

"I didn't want to sleep alone, either." A whispered confession in a sun-dappled room.

Ron's arms held her tighter; she cupped her hands over his, enjoying the warmth that encircled her. It didn't matter that the cushioning was old and lumpy, or that her knees hovered in empty air. It didn't matter that daylight filtered through the musty curtains and played across her closed eyelids, casting a rose-coloured darkness. Hermione finally allowed the tumult of exhaustion to wash over her. She could feel Ron's heartbeat against her spine, a steady rhythm against the gentle rise and fall of his chest.

"You'll never have to sleep alone again."

She wondered how he said this with a straight face; and yet nothing could make her doubt the complete sincerity in his voice. Hermione smiled, loving how natural this felt.

"I'd like that."

Ron's chin nestled against the curve of her neck; his stubble tickled her skin. "Me too."

A/N: This is the first piece of fan-fiction I've written in nearly three years… and it's strange how natural it still feels. I apologise if I'm a bit rusty, I hope you enjoyed it, and I always appreciate feedback!

Lexie