A/N: Hello, loves! Welcome to my second Gift-Giving Extravaganza 2013 fic! This one is for my fav Hufflepuff, Paula. I hope you enjoy it, I've never written semi dark!fic before but Cassie inspired me.

Two parts in here, the "I call ugly a four-letter word" and "when they kissed, she could taste the next sixty years of her life" are both quotes. The first one is from Andrea Gibson, and the second one is from Rudy Francisco, both included at Paula's request.

Thank you to DobbyLovesSocks, my amazing beta who helped me clear this up.

Love,

Allie

Hermione didn't know what she was expecting, honestly. A warm welcome, a 'congrats on defeating Voldemort, almost dying, and saving the world' would have been nice, but she knew she would never get it.

"You what?"

"Mum, Dad, honestly, I did it to protect you, I promise." She was pleading.

A quick blur sped through the air and her cheek was stinging. It was just like old times, then. "You did no such thing. You lied to us, you worthless girl." The other cheek, now.

She could feel her eyes brimming with tears, but she remembered the consequences of crying. She tried to hold it back.

Her father ripped her wand out of her hand and she felt defenseless. Instinctively, she reached for it, but her hand got rewarded with another sharp blow.

"You're staying here. With us. You are never to go back to that strange wizard world, and there will be no magic under our roof." He tipped his head back to get the last drops of beer out of the bottle. He tossed it at her and it hit her knee. "Another."

She got up, went to the kitchen, and brought him a beer. She felt as though she'd been punched in the stomach. The reason she left was her parents. The reason she wanted to stay in the wizarding world was her parents. She was stuck. The last time she tried to run away they found her. They always found her, somehow, and now she was without her wand.

"My knitting, girl." Her mother said, from her position on the couch. "Bring it to me."

"Where is it?" she asked quietly.

Her mother gave her a swift glance. "Where it always is, you fool!"

"Go and get it," her father slurred.

She got the knitting.

In the middle of the night, there was a tap on her window. She shot up from bed, having been unable to sleep, quickly checked for noise of her parents' consciousness, and opened the window to find Ron's owl with a letter. She opened it and patted the owl's head softly, taking in Ron's familiar scrawl like a breath of fresh air.

Hermione,

Is everything alright? You said you would be back to the Burrow by midnight. Send word immediately. If you don't reply, I'll come to check on you tomorrow.

Love,

Ron

Hermione grabbed a pen off the desk and quickly began to write a reply, her neat and legible words an obvious contrast to Ron's messy writing.

Ron,

Do not come. I've been detained, will send word when I—

The door creaked open and, with a creeping sense of dread, Hermione looked at the clock. It was one am, time for her parents' nightly check to make sure she wasn't out or gone. She turned around, threw the letter out the window, and tried to hide the obvious owl.

The light flipped on. "What are you doing?" her mother asked, pinched face and bushy hair making her look like the mother-in-law everyone dreaded.

"I needed to close this window," she improvised swiftly, turning around. She gently deposited the owl onto a nearby tree as well as she could without her parents seeing, and closed the window. "It was getting chilly."

"You know you're not to be out of bed between eleven and five." Her mother walked towards her and smiled. "Maybe she needs to be reminded of the rules. What do you think, Father?"

"I think you're right, Mother."

It was a long night.

The next morning, Hermione was up at five-thirty in the morning, woken by her mother shaking her. "I've left your list of chores for the day in the kitchen. They must be done by five, we're having friends over for dinner. I expect you to be on your best behavior."

She rubbed her eyes. "It's only five-thirty," she mumbled.

"Don't talk back to me!" She was pulled out of bed by manicured nails that dug into her skin.

"Sorry, Mother." Hermione would hex the woman who had tortured her for years, but her wand was unfortunately nowhere to be found and her chances of performing 'Accio' wandlessly were next to none.

There was a knock at the door, and then the doorbell rang several times. Her mother turned around quicker than Hermione had thought possible and went down the stairs. She opened the door, somehow still managing to look like a pretty and decent human being in her bathrobe. "Hello? And who would you be at this hour?"

Ron was standing there, looking like a thoroughly drenched knight in shining armor. It was raining outside.

"Hi, I'm looking for Hermione Granger."

"Who?"

"Hermione Granger. She does live here, doesn't she?"

"No, there's no one here by that name. I'm Mrs. Smith. I live here with my husband, we don't have any children."

Ron looked crestfallen. "Do you know anyone on this street with the name Hermione?"

"No, I'm sorry. Now, if you'll excuse me," Her mother tried to close the door, but Ron put his foot in it. He looked up to where Hermione had stepped out onto the balcony.

"Hermione?"

Hermione didn't care if she would get hit for this or if she wouldn't get food for the rest of the week. "Ron, Ron I'm being kept here, leave, go, get away!" She could feel tears start to make their appearance on her face. Her mother would hit her for looking ugly when she cried.

"Hermione! What's wrong?" he yelled, the pain on his face hurting her heart more than he could ever know. He tried to get through the door but her mother had already slammed it shut when he momentarily took his foot out. She locked it and turned around, giving her daughter the death glare. It had once almost resulted in death. Two broken ribs and a trip to the hospital later, Hermione had 'fallen off her bike' and wasn't allowed to ride it ever again.

"Darling." Her mother smiled. "Why don't you come downstairs and explain to me who that was?"

She slowly took the stairs. "My boyfriend," she whispered. "Mum, I have a boyfriend." In any normal household, this would result in at least an hour of jubilation, a daughter and her mother sharing excitement and talking about how they met and if his family was nice and where they went on their first date. But this household was far from normal.

"You what?" She still had her polite face on, but Hermione knew there was a monster hiding underneath. The demons were behind the smile.

"I have a boyfriend." She repeated calmly.

"That ugly scrap of a thing? A boyfriend? No wonder he's all you can get, you hardly keep up with yourself these days. Go back upstairs, brush your hair, and put on some decent clothes. And when you come down, do not eat breakfast, but get directly to your chores. We wasted time with that boy." She paused, then her lips quirked. "And tell your boy that if he ever comes here again, we will not hesitate to call the police. Isn't that what you people hate? Muggles finding out about you? Oh, we'll rain down the parade, darling. Now go."

She turned on her heel and fled, biting back tears for the second time that morning.

Weeks later, when she took out the rubbish, it was after dark, and she had to drive it up to a facility. The ride was welcome, even if she had four bags of extremely smelly rubbish in the backseat. The dinner had been awful, of course, what else did she expect? She was paraded around like a show animal, and then sent to her room with no food.

She thought about stopping for food, but her parents had the time to drive to the facility mapped out, and if she took extra time, they would start to wonder. She arrived, parked, threw the bags into the dumpster, and turned around to get back in her car.

A very handsome figure was standing there, looking like a knight in shining armor. He was smiling.

She ran into his arms. "Ron," she whispered.

He held her and softly stroked her hair, comforting and quiet. "What's wrong, Hermione?"

Her answer was to cry, for several minutes, until she came back to her senses. Hermione Granger did not cry. "Ron, it's…it's nothing. You need to go. I can't leave them, they're going to come looking for me any minute now. I've been too long."

"No." He looked straight at her. "I am not leaving you, Hermione, not after…not after what happened. We could be separated any time, and I want to be with you, always."

She was surprised to hear him so emotional and open, and looked up at him. "Really?"

"Yeah. Er…don't make me say it again, okay?"

Hermione laughed and got back into her car. "Okay. But really, I have to go, otherwise I'm going to be in trouble."

"In trouble how? It's not like they've got you on a leash, 'Mione, you're eighteen. That's Muggle adult age, right?"

Sighing, she shook her head. "No. I mean, yes, eighteen is the age. But…"

"But what?" He opened the other car door and got in, making it impossible for her to leave.

She told him everything. From seven years old to that day, she told him every detail. Why she had to go home for the holidays, why she tried so hard at school, and why she needed so badly to find a place in the wizarding world.

There was silence when she finished. "I had no idea," he said, finally.

"Of course you didn't. I was very good at hiding it." She looked at the clock and felt like crying again. "Shoot. This is not going to be pretty when I get back, do you want to help me make it look like I got into an accident? There's no other reason I would be this late. It's been half an hour, at least."

Ron just looked at her. "You have to make it look like you got into a car accident just to justify taking a little time for yourself?"

"I get midnight to five. To sleep." She laughed bitterly. "Some sleep I get."

There was silence for a while, and then they pushed the car into an alley, cast a shield charm around them, and began destroying the car with magic. Never had it felt so good to destroy something. Hermione was broken, but she was being slowly put back together again.

A few days later, Hermione had settled back into her normal routine. After the initial blow-up over the rubbish incident, Hermione had covered it up well. Since then, though, she'd been feeling empty. The insults, though, had been getting worse. Ugly, worthless, and a variety of choice swear words had been thrown at her so many times she couldn't count if she tried.

And she missed Ron. She missed him like crazy, with his messy hair, awkward sentences, and goofy smile. Her hero, her boyfriend, and the only one who really knew her, now. She was brushing her hair one morning, about a week after she met him, when there was a sharp knock from the direction of her window. She dropped her brush and whirled around to see a very familiar face at her second-story window.

She quickly shut her door and went to open it. "What are you doing here?" she hissed. "This is not a bad romance novel, Ron."

"You're coming with me."

"I can't."

"What are they doing to you, 'Mione? What is so bad that you want to leave but you can't?"

She sat on her bed. "How are you doing that anyway?"

"I made footholds."

"Come on up, if they walk in you can be outside or in and it won't matter."

"Not until you tell me what's going on."

"Ron, to me, ugly is a four-letter word. To be honest, I'm tired of hearing myself swear. They make me believe what they say."

He huffed and puffed a little as he pulled himself over the window ledge and clumsily rolled onto the floor. It was then that she noticed he was wearing a suit. She was still in her pajamas, and felt a little self-conscious. "What is that for?" she asked, laughing a little.

He pulled himself up to a kneeling position. "I was serious, you know."

"About what?"

"When I said I never wanted to be separated from you again. I meant it."

Hermione felt herself flush. "You don't mean that. I'm not worth anything."

He almost laughed. "You are worth so much to me. You are my world. We almost died, Hermione. We almost died." He looked fierce. "And I'm never, ever, going to let you slip away without making sure you know exactly how much I love you. Marry me." He pulled a box out of his pocket and opened it to reveal a beautiful, modest ring.

She wanted to. Oh, Merlin, she wanted to. "How will I leave? They're always going to find me."

"No, they won't. We'll run, Hermione. We'll run so far away that they'll never find you, or us, and they'll learn that they should have loved you to begin with because you are precious and not to be tossed around like they toss you around." He got up and took her head in his hands. "We will run wherever you want to run. To the end of the Earth. I will build you a spaceship and we can fly to Jupiter, if that's what you want. I love you." He kissed her with the passion of a man who means his words. A man who loves.

When they broke away, they rested their foreheads together. "Okay," she whispered. "But your mum will kill me if we don't tell her right away."

Quietly, he laughed. "Okay. To the Burrow?"

"I think you're forgetting something." She wiggled her left hand fingers and smiled.

"Right." The ring slipped onto her finger as easily as if it had been made for her.

Ron swung his legs over the window and began to climb down. "You coming?" he asked, smiling like he'd won the lotto.

"Give me just a second." Hermione picked a piece of paper off of her desk and used her favorite pen to write her parents a small note.

Dear Mom and Dad,

Thank you for cutting me down, but I have found someone who loves me more than you ever will. I hope you will be able to make your own meals, but just in case, the frozen section at the supermarket is quite helpful. Please do not waste your time looking for me, because we are going somewhere you will never find us. And if, one day, you want to treat me like your daughter, I will find you. I doubt that will ever happen.

Have a nice life.

Or at least a better one than you gave me.

Hermione

She taped it to the window, so when they entered the room, they would see it immediately. "Alright. Let's go."

While they were flying high, with her arms wrapped around him as he navigated the skies, she smiled, genuinely smiled, for the first time in weeks. "I love you."

"I love you more."

Now, when they kiss, she can taste the next sixty years of her life. Some days, she wants to swallow stacks of his photographs just so he can be a part of her for a little bit longer. She could not be more in love with him or their children. Every day, she tells Rose how much she cares for her and loves her. She used to tell Hugo, too, until he started saying "Eww! Mom! Stop it, you're embarrassing me." Now she whispers it to him at night after he falls asleep and smiles, knowing that when he's grown up, she will say it to his face again.

Her parents never found her. Ron kept his promise. Like he always does. Every day, she is reminded how lucky she is when she looks at the ring on her finger, the safe house around her, the friends who visit. When the bad dreams come, he holds her. When she has to lock herself in a closet to feel safe, he is next to her. And when she cries, he dries her tears.

She ran with him. And she would run with him every day, for the rest of her life, because she loves him. And he loves her. And he saved her.