A/N: So, I'm posting this chapter quite early because I'm going out of town for four days as of Friday morning, and I didn't want to miss a week. The next chapter should be back on regular schedule, so a week from Saturday. I actually split this chapter into two parts, after editing it, because it got out of control long.

Thank you all for continuing with the angst with me! Hope you enjoy this update x

CHAPTER FOUR:
6 years, 9 months, 17 days
Tuesday, 1 March 2005

She was standing in the shower, water pounding hard against her shoulders. It was four o'clock in the morning, but she couldn't sleep.

For the past four years, since beginning her job at the Ministry, there were three days she always took off work, and no one asked questions anymore. The second of May, like so many others, in remembrance of the Battle of Hogwarts and the end of the war. The twelfth of May, the day she'd gone with Ron to catch a Portkey to Australia, the day she'd lost him. And the first of March… his birthday.

This year was different. This year she was expected at the Wizengamot in three days, and she had too much work to do. This year she'd said "see you tomorrow" to her co-workers as she'd left her office the night before. This year… she needed it to stop.

She needed it.

Then why was she crying? She hadn't even realised it, lost in the rush of almost painfully hot water from her shower.

She reached for a bottle of shampoo and began working suds through her hair, which had gotten quite out of control, but she pushed away from any feelings of frustration, trying and failing to forget.

Never seen your hair this long…

She squeezed her eyes shut and combed her fingers through thick curls, swiftly tugging as much as she could over her shoulder and moving down to the ends, which were so long now they brushed her stomach. Once done, she allowed the water to run down her back until it had gone quite cold, numbing her body a bit before she bothered to turn it off and reach for a towel.

For the next half hour, she methodically dressed, charmed her hair mostly dry and busied herself with unpacking and repacking her bag, which had filled quite rapidly with notes and books she didn't need with her anymore. She contemplated the time, wincing at the thought of arriving at work at just past five in the morning. It was still quite dark outside, and no one else would be at the Ministry at this hour, save the Aurors. But she didn't want to sit here, alone. And she knew there was no hope of sleeping again. So, she stood, resolved to spend an extra long day sequestered at her desk, hoping her work kept her busy til dinner.

She really hadn't meant to find it, she would swear, as she paused to go back to her wardrobe and rummage through boxes for a scarf. She really, truly hadn't… But, her fingers brushed cool metal at the back of the second box she opened, and it didn't take seeing what she had touched to know.

The one thing she had of his, still here with her. The thing she hadn't been able to part with. The thing she'd hidden from herself more than a year ago now.

Ron's Deluminator.

She squeezed her eyes shut and tugged her hand back as if burned. She distantly registered that her whole body was shaking, but she stood anyway, frantic to put as much distance between her discovery and herself as possible. She rushed from the room, headed for the front door. She'd take the long way, she decided. She'd walk through the early morning chill and let the cold slice through her thoughts.

She had to. She couldn't let herself drown.

But then, she paused. Hand on the door knob. Heart in her throat.

She was supposed to be stronger than this.

Don't drown.

...but maybe just a little. Face it now and then… then she'd go to work, lose herself in parchment and books. She let go of the door and turned to lean against the wall. At least she hadn't done the charms for her makeup today… not that she often wore much, just enough to cover the dark circles underneath her eyes, make her cheeks a bit less pale.

She took in a deep, trembling breath… let it out again.

He would have been twenty-five years old today.

He was pacing his small, dark cell, corner to corner, pushing away from a frustration that was building to rage. The last few times they'd brought Evelyn by had been… different. He knew more now than he'd ever thought he would.

Alcott Wright, Evelyn's father, had been employed at the Department of Mysteries for many years. Evelyn's mother had died in childbirth, so Alcott had often taken his daughter to work with him, often against regulations. He'd bring her inside, let her sit on the floor and play. One day, she'd crawled down the corridor to the room with the brains, that place Ron remembered in hazy streaks of memory.

Once the brains had got her, she'd gone mute, worked on building partitions in her mind, until she could be many different people. If someone tried to get in, she'd choose who to be. But, for some reason, Ron knew she was telling him the real truth. Against her will. Their connection was removing the boundaries she'd created, and he was hearing pure thoughts and memories. Deeply buried. Ones he wasn't even sure she knew she was giving to him.

He'd maybe never understand how it worked, but he knew everything his captors needed, now. Which was his awful predicament.

Sometime early in 1997, a small chest of gold coins had been brought in to the Department of Mysteries, and it was said the gold would duplicate, actually increasing in real, usable quantity over time. Alcott had been in with a band of petty thieves for quite a while, but as they'd got word of the gold, they'd planned to steal it and retire, a prospect that had them all feeling quite greedy… including a six year old Evelyn, who had been silently blaming her father for the death of her mother and her accident at the Ministry. Something had always been wrong inside her, like she'd turned off everything good, all compassion and mercy, and was living in the shell of a person, dark clouds filling her mind.

She'd manipulated her father, spoken to him for the first time since her accident and convinced him to double cross his companions, knowing that if he took the gold for himself, it would be hers. And all she'd really wanted was to have what others would be jealous of, to put her simple life behind her, to buy everything new, be the envy of the other kids who often picked on her for her secondhand toys and the old shoes she wore.

Ron wished he couldn't relate, but he'd found himself feeling sick as he'd uncovered this bit of truth. Her motivation was a painfully familiar one, and he'd felt some amount of pity toward her, until he'd found out the rest.

Alcott had done the double cross and hidden the gold, escaping far away with Evelyn. But, sometime in the night, he'd begun to feel guilty. Had second thoughts. But, by then, in Evelyn's mind, the gold was hers, and her father had no right to turn it over to anyone.

She'd never seen him as a real person anyway, never connected with another human being enough to feel anything at all.

She'd slit his throat with a razor blade, in his sleep.

Two days later, her aunt Mathilda had found her huddled in the corner of a hotel room, her father's blood coating the bed sheets. Mathilda had assumed, at first, that someone had killed him because of the double cross, or someone had learned the whereabouts of the gold and had murdered him to keep the secret.

This suspicion didn't last very long.

Alcott had once said that perhaps he should have let those brains in the Department of Mysteries have a go at him as well, so that he could communicate with his daughter, know what she was thinking. This had come back to Mathilda, as she'd begun to believe that Evelyn knew everything, exactly where the gold was hidden. And, as she had worked for a time at St Mungo's, Mathilda knew where they kept the files on unusual injuries. She'd spent months searching and had finally located it in Hogwarts student archives… a wizard, scarred by those same brains the night they'd all been destroyed, able to read Evelyn's mind. To do what no one else could do.

And he had done it. Ron now knew exactly where the gold was.

Which was the only reason he was here, the only conceivable thing they needed from him. The only secret that kept him alive.

They'd given a rough promise of freedom, should he tell them the truth. But he was too smart for that. Why fake his death and let him live? No. They would kill him, bury his body in a field somewhere, and that would be the end. No one would ever find out.

He had to string them along til he was ready. He'd worked on unlocking the door for several straight weeks, but either his wandless, nonverbal spells weren't working or he had yet to figure out the charms they were using. His next best chance was to attack them, steal a wand, run.

There were days when he hardly felt like moving, let alone training, but he couldn't be physically weak and expect to stand a chance. So, as soon as he would wake, with no concept of time, he would roll to the floor, working out his arms and chest as well as he could. He'd sprint from corner to corner, tagging the wall at each end, until he couldn't see straight. And he'd close his eyes, concentrate on all the charms and hexes he knew, strategically choosing the ones that could serve him best.

Finally, sensing he had run out the clock on playing dumb and taking a beating, he'd begun to sprinkle out the truth, cautious not to ever say too much, to merely give a glimpse to keep his captors desperately longing for more.

He played a fearful game, scuffing his feet at the edge of a cliff but always catching his balance. And he was never sure when might be the day they threw him over.

Thunder. Thunder always made her remember the same thing. Sometimes she'd think of it in fragments, flashes like lightning of his hands on her waist, his mouth against her ear… Tonight was different. Tonight there was a sort of fog, hovering over her, slowing her down.

Everyone had left their offices, but she'd opted to work late rather than meet up with Harry and Ginny. Being together, with them… on the night of his birthday… Not this year. She'd wanted to face it alone.

It was well past dark, and she'd be soaked through if she walked home, but she found herself pulling on her yellow raincoat, anyway. Yellow.

She could see the golden summer sun, glinting across the fields of the Burrow, replaced by that dark shadow of a storm.

Grabbing her bag, swishing her wand to waterproof it, she made her way to the door, passing by rows of dark, quiet desks until she reached the lifts, leaning back and closing her eyes as gears whirred and she was whisked away, echoes of distant thunder still rolling toward her. And maybe she couldn't really hear them, but she could feel them, floating between now and memory.

She emerged moments later on street level, evenly placed streetlamps sparking reflections off the soaked tarmac and concrete, and she moved onward, through the pouring rain, unruly curls sticking to her cheeks and neck. A car zoomed past as she approached the next corner, a busy road, and she turned right, walking purposefully, but not too fast.

She shivered lightly in the cold, passing closed cafes on her right, but traffic roared by on her left. Thunder cracked again overhead, followed too closely by a flash of blinding lightning. A few people were huddled, across the street, beneath an awning, and she glanced back as a taxi stopped next to them, and they rushed inside.

Tugging her hood more securely over her head, she continued on, breathing through her mouth, wondering when the rain on her face would obscure the possibility of tears. As if anyone could see her now.

Thunder always reminded her of him.

They'd been walking for a good while, in comfortable silence, breaking it only with little remarks about the past, speculation about Harry and Ginny, and laughter when he made a joke, a feeling of comfort consuming her, so much more than she'd felt in ages. At last, she led them to the edge of the woods, and she tugged his hand, pulling him through the tree line, hidden several paces back behind a wild cluster of bushes. No one could see them here.

She turned to face him, a beautiful mixture of sunlight in his hair and a storm cloud moving closer behind him. But she was always distracted by his eyes, darting slightly, asking a million little questions. She loved him more than she could explain, and her thoughts went quickly back to how far they'd come in such a short time… but how long it had taken them to start.

Still holding his hand, she gently pulled him down to sit on the ground, in front of her. His blue gaze held hers again, sparkling and bright, and her heart was beating so fast, watching his chest move as he breathed. She wanted everything with him.

He let go of her hand, only to move his fingers up over her wrist, feather light along her forearm. He closed his hand loosely around her elbow, and they moved together at the same moment. Their lips met just as his free hand wrapped around the back of her neck, holding her close, and she shivered, in spite of the warm weather. Sitting on their knees, she thought they were still much too far apart, and she didn't care what it took to get closer, only knowing that she had to do it, desperately clinging to the feeling of him, the warmth he radiated toward her as she slid her hands up over his shoulders and climbed feverishly into his lap. For a moment, their lips broke apart, and he panted against her mouth, eyes flashing down to her lips, further down her body… making her feel that deep ache of desire, how she was beginning to suspect he felt for her as well - what she could see, in every line of his face, every breath he took.

He crushed her mouth again without a word, gripping the back of her shirt now as she fully settled on top of him, her knees straddling his thighs. Closer… closer…

Why had she asked him not to watch her, to turn away from her when she'd changed her clothes, in the shed? It seemed epically far away from the truth now. Maybe it was a bit of blind desire, given this moment and what they were doing, but it was also everything she'd known for so long. A part of her was nervous, of course, heart hammering and a growing fear that she was far less than perfect, but it was shallow insecurity. She wanted him to see her, to touch every part of her.

She arched her chest against his, feeling the sounds he made through the vibrations of his body - low, trembling moans; a shaking hand finding the hem of her shirt and working its way up the back, flattening to her bare skin.

Overwhelmed, she broke away from his lips again to hold his face in her hands as his own hands grasped her thighs through her jeans, and she moved just a bit on top of him, enough to press down on his lap and make him groan, fingers digging into her through too-thick denim. Seeing his reaction, his eyes meeting hers again, she did it again.

"Fuck, Hermione-"

Thunder cracked in the distance, and his eyes darted over her shoulder. But she was too invested now, no part of her caring about the storm, about being caught out here in it, with him. Her fists found the bottom of his shirt, and she gathered it enough to shove her hands up the front, palms to his bare chest before she just had to be closer again, moving her hands around his sides to his back, collapsing her chest to his, his shirt now bunched halfway up his body as he tilted his head and open-mouth kissed his way across her jaw, toward her ear.

His hand moved down her back until it froze at the waist of her jeans, and she could feel how much he wanted her. She tilted her head back, widening her thighs and pressing down hard against his crotch.

"Ohmygoddd…" His slurred words felt hot on her skin, and he held her waist in both trembling hands, lightly biting her ear. And then… his hands moved to squeeze her arse, and she gasped, yanking his hair until he moved back to her lips, teeth digging into her before he adjusted and slid his tongue inside her mouth.

She weaved her fingers through his hair, thunder cracked closer this time, and she heard the rain falling just before it reached them. They paused, startled, lips still together.

"Bloody hell," he laughed, against her mouth, as the downpour soaked them instantly through. She pulled back enough to watch his fringe dripping in his eyes, and she smiled.

"I have an idea," she whispered, mouth still so close to his. It wasn't really the most direct or the most alluring way for her to phrase it, but he didn't seem to understand just yet anyway.

"Hm?"

"No one can see us, and they won't come out here in the rain."

"Might… if Mum gets worried."

She leaned back a bit, enough to see him properly. His hands were resting lightly on her lower back, but she could still feel him breathing a bit fast, and his parted lips were slightly puffy from the intensity of their kisses.

"I th-think… you might want what I want." She pressed herself just a bit more firmly down on his lap again, feeling his erection hard between their restrictive jeans.

He swallowed visibly, and his eyes briefly threatened to roll shut.

"What do you want?" he whispered back.

"You know what I want."

He found her eyes once more and held her gaze, lust pouring out between them. But she saw the moment he surfaced, very gently shaking his head.

"Don't wanna just… shag you for the first time in the woods and hope nobody finds us." She inhaled shakily through her nose, a bit surprised and maybe turned on even more by his direct use of actual words. But she slid off his lap to sit in front of him, watching his eyes flash with disappointment, but his expression was so full of love, as well. "Wish we could get the hell out of here…"

"Then, let's go."

"Where?" he smiled, almost drunkenly reaching out to touch his fingers to her wet cheek, pushing back soaked curls.

"Come with me, to find my parents."

"Yeah?" His smile curled into a lopsided grin.

"Always hoped you would."

"Always hoped you'd ask."

They laughed, rivulets of rain running off the end of his nose and down his stubbly cheeks.

"We can stay in a hotel room. We'll be completely alone."

"You really don't have to sell this plan any harder, y'know," he laughed. "I'm going with you."

Lightning flashed through the trees, illuminating his face stark white, his freckles standing out for a moment, even more than usual. She leaned forward, cupped her hand so gently to his cheek, and kissed the corner of his mouth, feeling him tense before he relaxed, slowly exhaling and closing eyes.

"Can't believe I can do that now," she whispered as she pulled back again, removing her hand very slowly, until only her fingertips remained on his jaw. He opened his eyes and reached up to hold onto her wrist, thunder cracking ominously, lightning flashing immediately again.

"Any time you want," he said in a low, scratchy voice, lightly clearing his throat afterward, "'cept maybe we should go inside before this storm kills us."

Her smile spread slowly, and she felt like she was in some kind of half-drugged dream.

"Yeah, okay," she laughed, and he took her hand to help her up. "I'll talk to Kingsley tomorrow. Maybe he can help with a Portkey."

"Brilliant."

And she huddled close to him as he led her quickly back to the house, shoes squelching in the muddy grass as the rain continued to pour down.

He regretted telling her to wait, out there in the rain. Oh, how he regretted it, when he was filled with the worst of his anger.

He might have had one chance - well, more than one, really, but that had been his first - to be with her, and he'd thought he was being gentlemanly, as bloody difficult as it had been to stop once she was in his lap like that. He'd been dreaming of her naked body in his bed with him for years. On the Horcrux hunt, there were countless nights he couldn't sleep because of her, days he'd be walking in silence through the woods, imagining exactly what she'd offered him that day at the Burrow. Why the hell had he been so- so-

No. He didn't regret it. He couldn't have known what would happen next. And he'd wanted the best for her - which he had never really believed was him, anyway, but she'd really loved him, and he would have just kept trying to be better. Not that she'd ever asked him to.

He'd taken to occasionally envisioning his small, steel room as another place entirely. One day, it was the Prefect's bath at Hogwarts, and he could feel her wet skin on his. Another day, it was that hotel they'd never seen, in Australia. If he closed his eyes and reached out, she was there with him.

When he was cold, it was her breath and her body that warmed him. When he was in pain, it was her lips gently caressing his skin and whispering beautiful words. When he wanted to die… it was her angry voice, her fists on his chest when he'd come back to them in the woods.

His door scraped open, and he didn't even look up. He remained sitting on the floor, leaning back against the wall, watching a shadow pass through the flickering flame of his lantern. She had to leave him, now. He could only do this alone.

"See you soon," he whispered, just before a hand closed too tightly around his arm and tugged him roughly up to his knees.