Chapter 2: The Dream

Hermione shuffled down the stairs to her parents' sitting room, yawning and feeling wonderfully refreshed.

"Good morning, Hermione," Ron greeted her, setting aside his Chudley Cannons book and smiling at her. "I'm glad you had a bit of a lie-in. I saved some breakfast for you."

Just for a moment, she wondered why he was here. He'd never been here before, not that she could recall. It seemed quite odd. He looked horribly out of place among her parents' pristine sitting room suite. His feet were up on the lounge, shoes on, and she knew her mother would be livid if she saw it. His blazing red hair and lurid orange jumper stood out starkly from the off-white fabric surrounding him.

She started to ask him what he was doing there, but the words died in her mouth. Of course he was there. It all made sense.

He held out a piece of toast for her. He'd wrapped it in a napkin, but crumbs fell from it as he handed it to her. She watched them collect on the carpet near her feet. She had a feeling she should be worried about them, but they seemed to belong the same way Ron did.

She took a bite, feeling the sweetness of the jam as it touched her tongue. She closed her eyes, savoring the taste as though she hadn't eaten in days. Her eyes fluttered open as she felt Ron's lips press against hers.

They were suddenly sitting next to each other on the lounge. The toast was gone and her hands were resting lightly on Ron's shoulders. Ron was holding her face in his hands, rubbing his thumbs gently against her cheeks. He kissed her again and it was unbelievable.

Ron moaned her name as his hands drifted downward, caressing her neck and shoulders as he deepened the kiss. The world turned on its side as she allowed his tongue into her mouth. She felt as though she was falling, slowly at first, but then faster. Her stomach clenched, and panic overcame her. It didn't just feel as though she was falling; she was falling.

She tumbled to the ground, a puff of air escaping her lips as she felt the impact. She opened her eyes to see if Ron was all right, and found she was in the common room in Gryffindor tower.

This wasn't right, was it? Weren't they in her house a moment ago?

"Do you see what I'm talking about, Hermione? You're so tired and weak that you're falling down."

Ron's voice was hard, infused with a primitive sort of anger she hadn't heard there since they were much younger.

"Well, certainly don't help me up," she said sarcastically, matching his fire with her own as she struggled to her feet. "I'm doing this for you and Harry, can't you see that? Why do you need me to tell you everything?"

They argued, sending venom-filled words at each other with a fervor only they could bring out in each other. Everything seemed to speed up as she felt her frustration welling into the pit of her stomach. She shut her eyes, throwing her head back as she tried to control her anger.

His lips slid against hers and she opened her eyes in surprise. She saw her mother's painting on the far wall over Ron's shoulder as his lips moved to her cheek, then to her ear, and then lower. He nestled beneath her chin and she leaned into him as he kissed the nape of her neck.

They'd been in the common room a moment ago, hadn't they? Or had they been here all the while?

Oh, but Ron was amazing. She wrapped her arms around him and leaned back into the soft, overstuffed pillows on the lounge. He moved over her, putting just a bit of his weight onto her stomach, and she moaned at the feel of him.

"Am I hurting you?" he whispered against her neck, kissing her again when he was done.

"No. It's wonderful," she told him, burying her hands in his hair and holding him to her.

"I miss you, Hermione," he told her, lifting his head to look into her eyes.

"What?" she asked. What did he mean? They were here, together. How could he miss her? His lips returned to hers and she felt connected to him in a way she'd never even considered possible before. When he broke away, she moaned at the loss, squeezing her eyes shut and wishing with all her heart that he would begin again.

"I miss you. Harry does too. But I miss you more."

A blaring, high-pitched sound blasted her awake and her hand found and turned off the alarm before she even opened her eyes. She didn't want to open them. When she did, she would be alone. There would be no Ron to argue with her or kiss her.

She sat up, the details of her dream rushing back to her in one overwhelming shock of images.

Ron. Kissing her. She'd dreamt of Ron kissing her. Her cheeks grew hot as she remembered exactly how thoroughly she'd imagined him kissing her. Of course, she'd also dreamt of Ron rowing with her, but that was hardly a revelation.

Her hand flew to her lips, although she knew they hadn't really been kissed. Ron's body hadn't pressed her into the pillows on the lounge downstairs. He hadn't whispered against her skin, caressed her cheeks, or moaned her name until it burned in her ears.

"Oh, no. The lounge," she whispered to herself, realizing why her alarm had just sounded. She checked the Time-Turner with trembling fingers, and found she didn't have much time to close the loop.

She leapt from the bed, opened her door as quietly as possible, and rushed downstairs. She felt a familiar swirling sensation as the time around her settled itself again, and she re-integrated with the past Hermione.

She sat on the lounge, feeling a bit shaky, and picked up the sheaf of parchment she'd been working on. She'd intended to spend the next few hours working, waiting for her parents to wake up and take her on the day trip they'd planned. Hermione tried to remember where they were going. They'd told her about it, and it had seemed quite interesting at the time.

She truly did want to spend more time with her parents, but she had a feeling her time with them this summer was coming to an end. She wasn't sure how safe her parents were with her around. They would all be better off if she went to Grimmauld Place or the Burrow.

The Burrow. With Ron. The boy she now dreamt about.

"No," she said aloud. It was just one dream. She tried to push it away, but she missed him terribly, in a way she didn't miss Harry.

"Ridiculous," she said, talking to herself again. Harry and Ron are different people. Of course she would feel differently about each of them.

That's not it, she told herself. You know that isn't the reason. That isn't why you stared daggers at him during the Quidditch World Cup when he drooled over the Veela. Oh, but those feelings are older than that, aren't they? You didn't mind going to Hogsmeade alone with Ron before Sirius signed Harry's permission form, and never mind the night you yelled at him that he should have asked you to the Yule Ball before someone else did.

She sighed heavily and noticed how heavy her eyelids felt. She wasn't sure how long she'd slept, and she had a feeling that all this thinking about Ron was just because she was tired and out of sorts. A bit more sleep would cure everything.

She settled back against the pillows, taking in a quick breath as she flashed onto an image of Ron hovering over her as they kissed. That dream—she had to put it out of her mind. She forced herself to think of something else, making a list in her mind of everything she could remember from the last book she'd gone over.

Blocking spells. Nothing there she didn't already know, and certainly nothing that would be strong enough to block an Unforgivable Curse. The next chapter covered confusion spells, but she doubted that a wizard with Voldemort's power would be susceptible to those.

She tried to remember what was in the following chapter, but it was as though she'd stopped reading there. She couldn't recall a single thing after the confusion spells. Had she read it? She was sure she had, but if that was true, why didn't she know what it covered?

She'd nearly talked herself into going upstairs and digging the book out of the stack on her desk, but her arms and legs were so heavy against the cushions of the lounge that she couldn't imagine getting up. She yawned and her eyes, dry and irritated, began to sting. She shut them, just for a moment, to rest them from the morning sun filtering in through the sheer curtains at the far side of the room.

Ron walked toward her, grinning in that way that only he could, as though every inch of him was happy and fully satisfied with life. She marveled at how he felt things so openly. No matter what, his anger, humor, fear, or boredom was always transparent to her.

"Hermione," he whispered, holding out his hand to her. She was drawn to him, and they were in each other's arms before she could remember crossing the distance between them. His large hands cradled the back of her head, his fingers threading into her hair as their lips crashed together.

They were urgent, moving against each other with a desperation she'd never felt before. It was an exotic, brand-new feeling to her, but even in their haste to pull each other closer, deeper, there was a gentleness underlying it all. She could feel the reverence in him through the passion, making her pleasantly dizzy as everything in her world narrowed down to the feel of him against her.

She explored him with her hands, learning the lean expanse of his back before she ran her palms up his chest, cursing the way his shirt fought against her.

"Sweetheart," he broke away from her to whisper, and she frowned a little, trying to find his lips again. She hadn't expected terms of endearment from him. It didn't seem like something he would say.

"Sweetheart," he repeated, pulling oddly on her shoulder. Strange, the way his voice sounded. Higher pitched than normal. It almost didn't sound like him at all. She tried to kiss him again, but he was pulling back. She wanted to bring him toward her again, but her hands found only air where he had been.

She opened her eyes to find her mother shaking her awake, smiling down at her.

"Wake up, sweetheart. You need to get up now if we're to make our trip into the city to see that exhibit at the National Gallery your father told us about. Don't you remember?"

Hermione blinked a few times, trying to come to terms with the difference between her dreams and her reality. The last dream had been so real she was still breathless from those imagined kisses.

"Hermione, you're terribly flushed. Are you feeling ill?"

"No," she answered quickly. "I was looking forward to our trip and I couldn't sleep. I came down here to read and I suppose I dozed off. I'm just a little disoriented."

"Well, if you're still tired, you can sleep in the car on the way into London. Why don't you splash some water on your face and get dressed? I'll have breakfast by then."

"Thanks," Hermione told her, pulling herself to her feet. She started toward the stairs, wanting to take them on a run the way she usually did at Hogwarts, but she knew her parents preferred her to climb them at a more normal pace. She wanted to get to the Pensieve as soon as possible.

She walked over to the Pensieve and took out her wand, rationalizing the removal of the dreams from her memory as a necessary step to preserve her work to help Harry. She concentrated for a moment, focusing on her most recent dream and nearly losing herself within it before she summoned the resolve to pull it from her mind with her wand. The first dream followed it, creating a large, brilliant streak of silver inside the basin.

She turned to leave, remembering that she'd dreamt of Ron but with no recollection of the content of the dream. She felt irrationally angry with him, that he would invade her sleep and cause her so much trouble that she felt the need to remove those memories entirely.

It wasn't his fault, of course, but that did nothing to stem her irritation.