"Ronald Weasley, you complete and total idiot!"

Hermione Granger shoved the red-haired boy onto the grass. Drawing her wand, she pointed it at his throat. "Just go and leave, why don't you? Make everything in your world right, I'm sure you'd just love to do that! Lavender would be so HAPPY to see you!"

Harry was at a loss for words. He had no idea there had been this much hostility building up inside of Hermione.

"Wh-what do you mean, 'leave'? I thought we were in this together!"

The wand at his throat started to glow dangerously. "We were, until YOU decided that I had to do all the planning and cooking, and Harry had to do all the guarding and leading! Name one thing you've done! ONE!"

Harry moved to stop Hermione from going completely homicidal, but found himself stopped by a body-bind curse.

Ron apparently decided that discretion was the better part of valor. "Hermione, I can't leave with you holding me at wand-point."

Hermione, still very cross, agreed and withdrew her wand. "Are you coming with us, or are you going home?"

Ron looked from Harry to Hermione, then back again. "I need some time to myself. I don't think anyone at home would be very happy that I've run off and left you two here to fend for yourselves, to be perfectly honest."

Harry sensed that the spell had worn off. He also sensed that there was something Ron was not saying. "Ron, what's bothering you?"

"What's bothering me? What's bothering ME!" Ron started yelling. "I'll tell you what's bothering me! You and Hermione are always spending time together, trying to leave me out! You never give me any chance to be helpful, I'm wearing this damn locket more often than not, we're nowhere nearer finding a way to destroy it than we were back in August, there's never enough food worth eating - I'm sorry about that Hermione, but while you're a bad cook, me and Harry are even worse -"

Harry coughed out "Dursleys", but let Ron continue with his rant otherwise uninterrupted - it seemed to be doing him good.

"- and Harry's cheating on Ginny with you!"

Total silence, then sniggering, then full-on laughter from Hermione.

"Seriously, Ronald? That's your biggest worry? That I'm secretly in love with Harry behind your back?"

Harry could hardly believe what he was hearing. He had never, in six-and-a-half years of being around her nearly constantly, ever thought of Hermione as anything other than something between a sister and a best friend. Ron though of him as a romantic rival?

"Ron, Harry's as close to a brother as I'm ever going to get." She stood up, and went over to Ron. For a moment, it looked like the two were going to kiss. "Hand me the locket, let's get this sorted out before anyone does anything they'd regret. And yes, Harry, that includes me 'jumping his bones' as you so eloquently put it yesterday."

Ron obeyed, and Harry noticed that he looked noticeably warmer.

"Damn, that feels a lot better. Okay, first of all, what's this about 'jumping my bones'?" Ron asked, with a knowing wiggle in his eyes.

Harry answered before he could stop himself. "She's been wanting you ever since the Yule Ball, mate. She realized it some time around her first successful Confundus charm." At this, Hermione blushed, but also managed to send a 'you are so dead after this is over' glare at Harry. "Last night, she kept asking me if you thought the same way about her or not."

"I do! I just never wanted to try and get serious with her in case.. well, in case you wanted her." Ron said, blushing slightly.

"Me and Hermione? No way, Ron. She's like a sister to me. Besides, I knew as far back as the Yule Ball that I would die a horrible, painful death if I ever came between the two of you romantically."

"What? How could you have possibly guessed-" Hermione asked, now blushing as scarlet as Ron's hair.

"Between how Ron kept practicing stinging hexes on his Krum Figurine, and how acidly you reacted to Ron's general behaviour before the Yule Ball, I figured you were both actively trying to make each other jealous."

The two people in question looked at each other for a brief moment, then looked away. Harry smiled at how brightly the two of them were blushing.

"O-okay then, but then why did you break up with my sister, if it wasn't so that you could be with Hermione?"

At this, Harry let out a barking laugh, not entirely unlike Sirius'. "You thought that was real?"

Ron and Hermione both blinked. "Until now, yeah."

Harry laughed more. "Guys, do you really think I would actually break up with someone who wasn't afraid to love me for who I am, faults and all? Me and Ginny weren't just snogging all those times we snuck off after hours - thanks for not coming down too hard on us, by the way."

"Don't mention it." Hermione said. "Seriously, don't. But if it wasn't all snogging, what was it?"

"Coming up with the perfect Breakup scenario, one that would convince Death Eaters that I would have neither reason nor means to come after Ginny in the event of her being in serious trouble."

"Didn't you hear what Dean said about-"

"Ron, I heard it just as well as you did. Yes, I'm worried for your family; they're the closest people I've got to a real family. But do you really think Ginny, Luna, and Neville can't take care of themselves? After all, we trained them! For that matter, something's been bothering me for a while now."

Hermione looked at him strangely. "What would that be?"

"Why Snape would most likely have overridden a Death Eater's assigned detention with one he knew would be considerably safer?"

"You're saying Snape's a good guy now?"

"I'm saying nothing of the sort. It's because of him that we're out here now, isn't it? But I'm starting to wonder if he wasn't forced into killing Dumbledore."

Ron yawned, and his stomach growled. "Well, not that this hasn't helped me or anything, but the fact remains that the food's been lousy, scant, and.. and lousy, and we can't just go back to Headquarters now that we've taken the Death Eaters inside the Fidelius."

Harry laughed again. "This has got to be the happiest I've been since the Wedding. You two don't remember how the Dursleys treated me?"

The response was immediate. "Like a house-elf, but I don't-"

"Hermione, where at Hogwarts did you see most of the house-elves?"

"In the Kitchens, but I still don't-"

Ron was suddenly and, to Hermione, inexplicably beaming. "You can cook!" he said excitedly. "Why didn't you tell us?"

"You never asked; Hermione assumed that I couldn't, and we both knew you couldn't, so she took the responsibility upon herself. You never question Hermione about the small stuff like that, and the two of you apparently decided I was supposed to be the chief defender and plan-maker, and never asked me what else I could do."

Silence, then "Sorry about that, Harry."

"It's okay, just stop jumping to conclusions about what I can and can't do. Or what I do or don't know, for that matter. You do realize that, in howevermany years Dumbledore had between What's His Name's first death and his own death, he was only able to locate two Horcruxes on his own? Lucius Malfoy had the Diary, and that was destroyed in our second year. Dumbledore took care of the ring, and if Sirius' Brother hadn't beaten us to it, or if he'd told Kreacher to pull a Frodo, we'd only have... three..."

Hermione and Harry looked at each other excitedly. "THAT'S IT!" they yelled at the same time, then hugged. Ron pointedly looked away, and the two huggers remembered very quickly why they had been having this conversation in the first place. They sat down (Hermione very close to Ron), and started to explain.

The explanation took all night, but by the end of it, Ron was smiling too.

"So, all we have to do is find an active volcano? That's easy!"

Silence, then...

"Where in the bloody hell are we going to find an active volcano in Britain?"