A/N: This will be a very short story, I'm guessing three to four chapters. Eventual HHr. Compliant with all books, but not with the epilogue. Reviews are always appreciated and tell me whether it's worth continuing this story. Enjoy =)

Disclaimer: I own nothing and make no money out of this! The title of this chapter was taken from the following poem.

Part 1 – Time and Grief

O TIME! Who know'st a lenient hand to lay

Softest on sorrow's wound, and slowly thence

(Lulling to sad repose the weary sense)

The faint pang stealest unperceived away;

On thee I rest my only hope at last,

And think, when thou hast dried the bitter tear

That flows in vain o'er all my soul held dear,

I may look back on every sorrow past,

And meet life's peaceful evening with a smile:

As some lone bird at day's departing hour,

Sings in the sunbeam, of the transient shower

Forgetful, though its wings are wet the while:

Yet ah! how much must this poor heart endure,

Which hopes from thee, and thee alone, a cure!

('Time and Grief', William Lisle Bowle)

The last few months had been the most hectic in her life. There hadn't been a single moment when she hadn't been totally on her guard, the need for 'constant vigilance' even following her into the realms of her dreams. Between running from Voldemort and his minions – always worrying that they might find them – and searching for the remaining Horcruxes while finding a way to destroy them there hadn't been any time to relax. Every second had been spent looking over her shoulder, worrying they might have finally been detected.

So when she and Ron kissed that eventful day in the Chamber of Secrets and time seemed to stop around them, she relished it. For the first time in months she felt warm again, and for however short it lasted she felt happy. With her hope renewed and a warm fuzzy feeling still lingering in the pit of her stomach she fought with exceptional vigour in the battle that would later be dubbed 'The Final Battle'.

After that, their relationship developed quickly. Where it had only been awkward kisses with Viktor (her only experience in that department before Ron), things between Ron and her progressed far more quickly and reached a very intimate level very soon.

It was out of character for her, she was someone to rather take things slowly, but she blamed it on years of built-up tension, and frankly, at the end of the day she didn't care. They found solace in one another, someone to lean on when their world seemed to be collapsing around them and that was really all that mattered. All across the Wizarding World people were celebrating when she just wanted to curl up and cry. Yes, they had won, but at what price? There had been so much blood, so much death, so much destruction. At just 18, she had already witnessed far too much and the memories hardly let her sleep at night.

Ron understood as he was going through the same things. He had witnessed the terror himself, knew how it felt to lose a friend in battle. He had lost his own brother that day and that loss was still hurting him deeply.

Many a night, when she was exhausted and yet nightmares wouldn't allow her to sleep peacefully, Ron would stay awake with her, his arms circled around her waist giving her a sense of security. He had his fair share of nightmares as well, but hers were more frequent and of a more violent nature. Maybe it was the experience of having been tortured by one mad Bellatrix Lestrange, having her status as a 'mudblood' forever carved into her hand. Or perhaps it was due to her over-analytical mind, that she just couldn't let things rest the way Ron could. Or maybe it had to do with the fear that she would never find her parents again or worse, that they would never forgive her what she had done to them – what had she had done out of love, out of the need to protect them.

But as often as she dreamed of being captured by Deatheaters once more, being subjected to the Cruciatus over and over again, or of the scenes of battle, her friends dying, stumbling across Ron's corpse, watching helplessly as the green light of Avada Kedavra hit Harry, as often as she would see the disappointment and hurt in her parents' eyes before they banned her from their life – just as often she would dream of Ron leaving her, leaving them, once again.

Something had been destroyed that night when he had left, some innermost trust that he would never betray her or Harry that way. But for a long time, she was convinced that he being next to her, holding her, when she woke from those dreams was enough, that Ron by her side, reassuring her, caressing her, that it was enough.

And for a while it was.

It took them a long time to heal. The past years had left all of them with deep scars, and while she and Harry were the only ones to carry a noticeable one on the outside, it was the emotional ones that really mattered.

Far too many funerals took place in those early days. And yet somehow they lived on.

In the end those funerals were the thing that kept her going. She knew that they would have wanted them to move on, to live their life to the fullest. She could imagine Remus looking at her solemnly, telling her not to waste away while presenting her with a rather large chunk of chocolate (life would be moving on, with or without her. She had to remain strong for those around her, if she couldn't do it for herself), could imagine Fred cracking jokes about his demise, telling her to get a grip on herself (wasn't she supposed to be the smart one? So she should be able to realise that losses had been inevitable. And there was always George to look at when she missed his beautiful visage, even if he of course had been the more handsome of the two of them.).

So she lived on, tried to get a grip on her life once again. But it was difficult.

She had always been so full of control, planning far ahead. But now, when her talents were no longer needed, when she didn't have to plan ahead to keep her two friends safe despite whichever stunt they would come up with next, now she started to fully realise the horrors of the war they had been through. Planning, strategising had kept her mind busy before and had prevented her from having to fully analyse just exactly what was happening.

Ron was her safe haven these days, the one to keep her company and to tease a little smile out of her every once in a while.

She had convinced Ron to stay at Grimmauld Place for the time being, unable to bear seeing everyone at the moment. When she looked at them she would only see her own feelings mirrored in their faces, mainly grief and in some cases also guilt – guilt that they had survived when so many others had lost their life.

Harry on the other hand had been convinced by Ginny to move into the Burrow for the time being. So she saw little of him these days, and even less of anyone else.

She missed Harry sometimes, after having spent so much time together that was only natural, but while she longed to see him more often she didn't make any effort herself to visit him.

Yet she worried about her black-haired friend. She told Ron about it once, but he firmly told her that she was not responsible for Harry right now, that it was her first and foremost job to fix herself.

"Do you really think you can help him with the state you are currently in", he asked her.

A month ago, she would have hit him for the insensitiveness of his comment, but this time she remained silent, knowing that even if there might have been more subtle ways to tell her so he was essentially telling the truth. She was surprised when he continued.

"Look at you. At me. At all of us. We are broken, each single one of us." He looked at her solemnly.

"You have to pick yourself up before you can help anyone else. After all, how are you supposed to help someone up if you're still lying on the ground yourself?

"Imagine Harry couldn't fly or was a horrible Quidditch player. You couldn't help him with that either, before you had overcome your own fear of heights."

She had to laugh at his last comment. It was just so unbelievably Ron. And yet she had to realise how much he had grown over the last months. Gone was the completely insensitive young boy, replaced by a grown-up man.

Most importantly, he knew how to make her smile and that day found her with the first real laugh in a long time eliciting a soft smile from him in return. That night, for the first time since the final battle both of their sleeps were undisturbed, no nightmares haunting them.

Of course there was another option for the scenario Ron had described. True, the persons lying on the ground couldn't just pull one another up, but they could still help one another, getting up together, slowly but surely.

But they didn't see that option and so, while she still continued to worry about Harry, she didn't do anything about it.

In a way, that other option was the thing they were doing for one another though. Their smiles became more frequent, the lines on their faces started to diminish though never disappearing completely.

However, Ron seemed to be healing far faster than her. His time away from them had probably caused him to deal with the war a lot earlier, while she had still tried to keep the reason they were hiding in the country as far away from her mind as possible and then he had also always been the one to take things lighter.

Thus, he was back on his feet much quicker, visiting his family and friends while she preferred to stay back at Grimmauld Place on her own, not ready to face them all just yet.

That was probably when they started to drift apart.

Afterwards, she often asked herself how she hadn't seen it coming. And when she was honest to herself, she admitted that she hadn't wanted to see it, had ignored the signs on purpose.

And yet they had been there. When they had spent nearly all their time together the month after the Final Battle, Ron's visits to friends and family had become more frequent. When he had never left her for more than an hour in the beginning, now nearly a day could go by before he returned to Grimmauld Place. Their kisses and touches became fewer, losing their original passion.

And still she clung on to him, clung on as if he was her only lifeline. Maybe part of her also clung on because she couldn't bring herself to accept that their passion had cooled down so quickly, that their relationship was to end so shortly after it had begun.

It was Ron who decided to take action in the end, and when he did he did so with the most stereotypical sentence in the history of human relationships.

"We need to talk."

She was still in denial then, so she answered him with a cheerful smile and a "sure", as she settled on the sofa. The way she bit her lip, however, betrayed that part of her already sensed what was to come.

Ron didn't react to her inviting gesture to sit next to her and instead stood opposite of her, nervously wringing his hands.

"I don't really know how to say this", he started, his voice unsure.

"You know you can talk to me about everything", she said in a friendly tone, though the smile had disappeared from her face.

"I love you, Hermione, and that will never change", he said, his eyes boring into hers, willing her to understand. "It's just…" he trailed off again.

"Yes", she asked, her voice a mere whisper now.

"I love you", his voice stronger now, more sure of himself. "But not the way a man loves his spouse, but a very, very close friend."

Tears had started to trail down her face quietly at his statement, causing a desperate plea to appear on Ron's face – a plea for her to understand.

"I don't regret this", Ron went on, a hint of desperation in his voice. "I don't regret us. You mean so much to me, Hermione, and I don't want to hurt you. We had such a wonderful time together, and yet there's something missing.

"Not that I blame that on you, of course", he hastened to assure, clearly distressed and at a loss what to do. Meanwhile the tears kept trailing down her face, while she refused to meet his eyes.

"I'm sorry", he went on. "I never wanted for this to end, for us to end. I so much wanted for us to last, you know. Blimey, I even imagined us growing old together, having children and all."

His left hand went up to grab his red hair in frustration and nervousness.

"There are just some things – sometimes I just don't understand you. Not that that's your fault of course. And then, some of your habits…" he trailed off again.

"I mean, there are probably also a thousand things about me that annoy you to no end. And I'm sorry for that, too."

She had closed her eyes, unable to look at him as he kept on repeating himself, apologising over and over for things that really were not his fault. Not any more than hers, at least.

"I know", she finally broke his rambling, her tear-filled eyes meeting his gaze for the first time. "I know and I understand."

It was hard for her to utter those simple words, so unbelievably hard to admit to herself that she had failed at the one thing she had fixed her every will on. With nothing else left to plan, and no strength to look for new tasks just yet, leading an exemplary relationship had been the one thing she had fixed her energy on, a relationship that was now shattering to pieces in front of her.

When she looked up at him and saw his relieved expression, she knew she had done the right thing though. Ron didn't deserve to suffer from this, it hadn't been his fault after all.

"So you're not mad at me", he asked her, a hopeful tone to his voice.

"No", she answered simply, realising that it was the truth. While she had been in love with Ron in the beginning, she realised that, deep down, she had known for a long time that it wasn't meant to last, that while she loved him and he her, their love was not the kind that served as a strong foundation for a long-lasting relationship.

Reflecting on their relationship in later years, she would notice that it had been short but intense. A wartime romance, others might probably call it. But that didn't mean that it had been any less real.

Maybe things would have ended differently if it had been her to break up the relationship. But it hadn't been her, and thus they learnt to become friends again, neither of them ever regretting the time they had spent together as more than just friends.

"So will we be ok", he asked.

"I think we will. Maybe not right now, but we will be ok. We're Ron and Hermione after all. We fight, we bicker, we make up. We always have."

He was openly crying along with her now, as he walked over to her, hugging her tightly.

"I love you, Hermione", he repeated.

"I love you too, Ron."

He had sunk down on the sofa next to her, still tightly embracing her. They sat like that for a long time, mourning the end of their relationship together.

Eventually their tears subsided and they both settled down.

"Look at the pair of us", Ron said. "Pathetic, aren't we."

She chuckled quietly, slowly disentangling herself from his embrace.

"I have to leave", she stated rather abruptly.

"What? Why?", Ron asked as she was getting up.

"I have to find my parents. It's been too long." There was determination in her words, and Ron knew that he couldn't stop her even if he wanted to. Though it was unlike Hermione to decide something like this on the spur of the moment, once she had decided on something she was just as stubborn as Harry.

Ron bit his lip. That was not the way he had wanted for this to end, and yet he accepted her decision. It seemed sensible enough, after all. If it had been his parents he would have gone to look for them a long time ago, he figured.

He didn't understand that she was only giving him part of the explanation, that as much as she wanted to retrieve her parents , she was also looking for an excuse to get away. He also didn't understand that while she hadn't planned her decision consciously, part of her had been ready to leave for a long time.

Maybe if he had known that none of them would see her again for more than two years he wouldn't have let her gone so easily.

But he didn't know and so she left.