It was better this way. The way they'd always planned it, ever since planning it had become an option. Ron smiled slightly as he closed the door to the Burrow for the last time. Hugo would be round later with the kids to fix the garden and have dinner with them. He'd left the door open and a note on the table explaining everything. It was the kids that had held them back for so long, really. They'd wanted to be around to see them married and help them to bring up their own children. But now little Harry was almost twenty and they could see the superfluity despite what the children told them.

He turned from the door, stretching the arms that had pushed their decision. All those years ago, and the brain stem scars had never really faded, neither had the splinch mark on one shoulder. They ached worst in the winter time, when Hermione would sit up for hours casting warming charms on cloths and spreading them over the criss-cross lines to ease the pain and would carefully button his shirts and cut his dinner when his hands shook too hard to hold a wand or a button or a fork. He shook out the ache and walked slowly- couldn't seem to move any faster these days- to the car where Hermione sat in the passenger's seat. Too weak to apparate, too old for the Floo or Portkey. He didn't even trust himself on a broom with his hands.

He opened the driver side- he'd taken seventeen years to get his licence after the incident with the Ford Anglia in second year. He started the ignition and he stared out the window to catch a last glimpse of the home he'd lived in since childhood- the place he'd married Hermione, seen Harry and Ginny's wedding, raised their children together. And then he rolled up the window and reached out, taking hold of his wife's hand, ready for the next step.

XxXxXx

'Ginny, you understand why we're doing this, don't you?' Harry asked, arms wrapped around his beautiful wife, head buried in grey hair that had lost it's hue so many years ago but never lost it's scent.

'Oh, Harry.' She sighed, tears dripping from her cheeks, 'I always knew that someday you were going to leave me to go off on another adventure with those two.'

'It doesn't mean I don't love you. I do. But... what we went through... We've got to do this together. We agreed, and none of us could cope if we were left behind, and what with Ron's arms and Hermione... well, the Healers aren't sure if we've got weeks or months.'

'And I can't come because...'

'The kids are gonna need you Gin. They won't... they didn't go through what we did. They won't understand.'

'And you're trying to protect me' she smiled bitterly and he sighed, catapulted back almost eighty years to one summer day in the Hogwarts grounds when things weren't certain and there were no choices.

'Look, I'm not going to stop you but...'

'I understand, Harry. I'm always going to be the one that gets left behind. It's ok. Just...' she trailed off, eyes on the floor for a moment.

'I love you, Harry James Potter. These have been the best eighty years, and I wouldn't have changed anything between us for the world. Thank you. Thank you for my beautiful children, and my wonderful memories and all of the happiest moments of my life.' She flung her arms around him and pulled him close. He gripped her equally desperately until tyres sounded outside.

'That's my ride. I... I'll be waiting, you know that, right?' Harry asked, suddenly urgent.

'Of course, you bloody idiot. You think I won't bat bogey you if you don't meet me the second I get there?' she smiled through her tears and he held her hand tightly.

'You wanna come see Ron and Hermione?' he asked. She thought for a moment.

'No. We said goodbye last time. This is about the three of you. I'll... I'll give you six hours until I floo the kids. Alright?' her tears were drying on her cheeks as he pressed a kiss to one.

'Goodbye'

'Until next time'

And he walked out.

XxXxXx

Harry drove. Trees flashed beside the car as they rocketed along the motorway. Hermione slept in the backseat, forehead creased with the pain that had been ever present recently, head on Ron's lap as he stroked her hair with wonder in his eyes. Harry smiled wryly. He'd never stopped looking at her like that, not even after all these years.

'We'll be there soon' he murmured to the backseat, meeting the eyes of his stalwart best friend in the mirror. Ron nodded and bent down to wake Hermione. Trees started to dominate the windows as they left the main roads and started on smaller tracks. Finally, Harry pulled the car in on the side of the road, behind a bank of trees. Before getting out and going round to the back to help Ron and Hermione out. Ron's hands were shaking again, but Hermione smiled weakly and took them in hers, blowing on them.

'Must be cold, love. You're shaking.' She said.

'Must be.' Ron replied, grinning a little before turning to the forest.

'Well, it's nothing like I remember it.'

'Ron, we arrived here eighty years ago by apparition in a completely different part in the middle of a quest to save the world from a megalomaniac. Of course you don't recognise it.' Hermione answered, exasperated. Harry chuckled, glad to see a flicker of the old Hermione under the new, frail exterior.

Silence held for a moment as the three stared up at the trees that had sheltered them and watched so many momentous moments all those years ago.

'Do you think they remember us?' Ron breathed.

'Really, Ron, what a ridiculous thing to say. They're trees, not sentient beings,' Hermione answered immediately, but Harry could see in her eyes that she didn't mean it. She felt it too- the lure of the trees.

'Shall we?' he asked, leader again. Some things never changed, even when everything else was different. And they entered the forest.

XxXxX

Hermione's breath was coming sharply and her legs felt like jelly despite Harry's arm under hers holding her up. She cursed her body for it's weakness. It had been coming on for a while now, and it hadn't impeded her too much. She didn't need to be vigorous. Enough energy to hold up a book would do her fine. But then her concentration had started slipping, her eyes got tired more easily. Reading made her head ache and her heart burst with the knowledge that she would never get to the end of her library, despite Ron, Harry, Rose and even (not so) little Harry taking turns in reading to her while she lay, barely conscious enough to take in what they were saying.

That last stretch in St. Mungos had scared them all. That's what had prompted them to bring forward the date. They hadn't been sure that she would make it out here, but she had. She'd fought, held on long enough to breathe the free, fresh air that held so many memories. Her parents, long gone now, and those days of desperation with Harry, the elation when Ron returned, and the constant gnawing fear that had haunted them.

It was nice not to be afraid any more.

After too short a time, her legs fell and she half collapsed, caught by Harry's still-strong seeker hands at the last moment. She was panting hard now and her vision was swimming.

'Here's as good a place as any,' she heard Ron saying to Harry over her head, and felt a nod as Harry lowered her onto the floor. For a moment she almost stopped him- she would never be able to get up from here with her legs, but then she remembered and allowed herself to be lowered, feeling Ron settle next to her and reach for her hand with his trembling one. She grasped it tightly, reaching out for Harry on the other side. They sat for a moment in silence on the floor of the Forest of Dean, just being together.

Her vision returned and her breathing evened eventually. At length, she dropped their hands and reached over her shoulder for the bag that they all remembered so well. She hadn't known at the time why she'd kept it. It had seemed that it held nothing but bad memories, but as the years had passed and the world had rebuilt itself she had seen better things in the bag. She'd been able to mourn those that they had lost, and remember the good times with less pain. She'd seen Ron and Harry recover their sanity and their health, for the most part at least. With every kiss and every hug, with every child and every birthday, every dinner party, barbecue, playdate, every graduation and grandchild, that year had drifted further and further away, erased by the ebb and flow of eighty years of life.

She reached into the bag and pulled out the potion that she'd made all those years ago when they'd agreed. When Ron's hands had first started shaking, or when her breath had gone for the first time, or after Harry's last Quidditch accident. She wasn't sure anymore. There had been so many moments when they'd almost lost each other over the years, but they hadn't. They were here, all together, at the end.

She held the potion out to Harry first. He was the strongest. It would take longer with him. He took it with steady hands, shifting closer before taking a long draught and passing it to Ron before lying down beside her in silence. She turned to Ron on her other side. He gulped it quickly, spilling some over the back of his fingers as he did so. She grabbed his hand, kissing the potion off. It was a skin irritant, after all, and Professor Snape had taught her well.

And then the vial was in her hands and she tipped it back quickly, not even wincing at the taste- there's only so much time you can spend in St. Mungos before the taste of potion becomes mundane. Then she threw the vial away- one last act of transgression in her rule-abiding life- before carefully lying back between her two boys, reaching out for two hands that she knew as well as her own, staring at the stars through the trees above her. Ron's breath was ghosting over her cheek and Harry's thumb was rubbing across the back of her hand.

No words. None were necessary anymore. They'd said everything that needed to be said. They were together, at the end, just like they'd always wanted, always planned.

The stars darkened. Ron's breath weakened. Harry's thumb dropped away.

But they were together. And that's all that mattered in the end.

XxXxXx