"Ron!"
It was the muffled yell, and the squeeze on his outstretched hand, which pulled Ron back to consciousness.
Slowly blinking his eyes, he cast his gaze around the confined space he seemed to have found himself in. The eerie glow of a conjured shield provided the only illumination in the enclosure.
Rocks below him and beside him but, most worryingly of all, rocks were also perilously suspended directly above him.
"Ron!"
"Hermione?" his voice was croaky but must have carried through the rock, as the response was immediate.
"Oh thank Merlin! Don't you dare scare me like that!"
"Wha..." he was interrupted by the untimely arrival of a hacking cough which seemed determined to deposit a lung beside him. "...appened?"
"You stopped talking to me Ron."
There was an eerie silence as Ron tried to put things together in his fractured memory.
"No...before..."
"You don't remember?"
Glimpses of something flashed through Ron's mind: an investigation of an underground lair, the young trainee Auror striding naively out ahead of him, his order to fall back, a rumble underfoot...
"I pushed him out of the way." Ron muttered as he let his forehead hit the dusty ground with a resounding thud.
His hand was squeezed again and Ron finally had regained enough memory to have a look at the predicament he found himself in. He was sprawled on a dusty floor, face down, with his right arm outstretched into the rocks. The pressure of the rocks on his arm had been alleviated somewhat by the shield charm he must have been able to hastily cast just before the place came crumbling down around him.
And Hermione?
Hermione was holding on to his hand.
"Yes you did Ron." He could almost hear her sigh through the stone. "What the hell were you thinking?"
"Hermione..."
"You can't keep throwing yourself into danger..."
Hermione took a breath and Ron took the chance to squeeze her hand.
"You need to stop trying to save everyone at the expense of yourself Ron."
"You wouldn't have me any other way love."
Her reply was barely a whisper but resounded through the small space.
"I just want you Ron."
She began a slow movement of fingers against his palm, every once and a while meandering up towards the scars which started at his wrist.
The air was starting to get stale and the light of the shield charm was beginning to flicker.
"What's going on Hermione?"
"Help's coming Ron." A squeeze of the hand accompanied her words. "They just have to take it slowly in order to prevent a further cave in."
"m'kay..."
"Ron! You need to keep talking to me until help arrives. Can you do that?"
"Absolutely." A small grin tugged at the sides of his mouth. "Just argue with me for a bit and everything'll be fine."
"What the hell did you mean when you said that my roast dinner smells like something Norbert sneezed on?!"
