She crept up the stairs after leaving Ron slumped on the sofa. Turning the corner of the dark corridor she stopped in front of a heavy mahogany door, the handle alone the size of her head. She paused before knocking gently and opened the door, being careful not to tread on the creaky floor board as she stepped inside.
"Harry. Pssst!" There was no movement from the bed at the other end of the room, only the continuation of the heavy snoring there always had been. "Harry!" Still nothing. "For God's sake Harry." She stomped into the room, no longer caring about how gently she woke the occupants of the bed. "Harry! Harry, it's Ron. Wake up!" she finally succumbed to shouting, causing the red-head intertwined with Harry to wake with a start.
"'Mione?" she rubbed the sleep out her eyes, blinking, trying to avoid the moonlight that glared through the open curtains, "What are you doing?"
Hermione shook Harry awake with the kind of abandon for other people's feelings that only comes from being in a state of sheer desperation. "Harry!" This time his sleep was disturbed and he sat up, looking around him; from the face of his best friend to that of his wife.
"What is it?" He looked at Hermione with panic on his face, his eyes immediately going to her swollen stomach. She shook her head, making the furrows in Harry's forehead visibly relax.
"It's Ron Harry." Hermione said, clearly growing more and more anxious by the minute. Harry jumped out of bed at that, pulling on a sweater as went.
"What happened? I knew I shouldn't have let him go, especially not on his own. I knew it." He sprinted down the stairs, two at a time. "God, Hermione. What was I thinking? Where is he?"
"In the drawing room." Hermione was following him, a good 15 foot behind while Ginny had flooed out of the room, one can only presume to fetch Fred and George or Mrs Weasley. Harry reached his best friend, expecting the worst and found himself face to face with a slightly bruised and battered Ron, stinking of sewage. But there was blood, a lot of it coming from somewhere – pooling underneath the sofa on which he was draped.
"Christ. We've gotta get him to St Mungos." He peeled the blood soaked jacket from his best friends shaking body. Molly appeared in the fire place with a pop, clad in her night dress and a crocheted shawl. At the sight of her son, her face paled and she rushed to his side. A wet cloth seemed to appear from nowhere and she was soon wiping the sweat and dirt from Ron's face.
"What the hell was he doing?" Molly looked around the room, "To get in such a state. Harry? Hermione?" Neither of them answered, but the deafening silence that followed was broken by the entrance of Fred, George, Ginny and a uniformed mediwizard.