Author's Note: Hi…remember me? I've been writing a story about Ron and Hermione…? No you don't remember?

I'm so, so, so sorry that I haven't updated in such a long, long time. Whoever said junior year was hard hadn't been a senior yet! But enough whining…here's a new chapter for all the lovely people who have the patients to keep on reading my patchy updates. I tried to make it a long one to make up for the fact that I haven't posted in a while!

Enjoy!

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Chapter Thirty-Seven –

Hermione woke suddenly as something fell to the floor, emitting a very loud and echoing crash. The sound was followed by a couple of swears and a muttered oath. Hermione sat up in bed, disoriented, looking blindly into the darkness for the source of the noise. She cautiously moved her hand over to the bedside table, where she knew her wand was lying. Her fingers finally located the thin piece of wood; she muttered the familiar spell under her breath, and the room was flooded with the ethereal light of her wand. She pointed it around the room, into the dark corners and crevices of the bedroom, her heart beating wildly; she was certain that any moment now an intruder would come in, bringing her back to those years where they weren't safe.

The sound, it appeared, had not come from the bedroom at all. The room, aside from her, was completely empty. She turned to the place where Ron slept; the blankets had been haphazardly pushed aside, his pillow still dented from where he had been sleeping moments before. She leaned forward so that the door of the bathroom was now in view. There was a thin strip of silver light emitting from the crack under the door. She heard Ron drop something again.

Hermione turned to the clock and received a dull blow of shock; it was only three thirty in the morning. Setting her wand back down on the bedside table, she pulled the blankets around her and padded softly out of bed, shivering slightly. It was spring, but the mornings were still cold; if you called three thirty the morning.

She knocked softly on the bathroom door, and Ron opened it. Hermione blinked into the light, a contrast to the comfortable darkness. Ron was halfway between asleep and awake; his hair was sticking up on all sides, and although he was wearing trousers, he was still wearing the shirt he had slept in.

"What are you doing?" she asked, her voice a bit hoarse. She moved fully into the bathroom, sitting down on the ledge of the tub and watching Ron rummaging around for a brush. "It's in the third drawer on the right," she added.

Ron grinned appreciatively at her, but then the smile faded. "I'm sorry I woke you up; I tripped over my shoes on the way in here," he said, his ears turning red.

Hermione smiled slightly, "Well, there's a reason I keep telling you to leave them by the door and not wherever you kick them off," she said, marveling at her ability to nag him even before the sun had risen.

Ron laughed, then crossed the room and kissed the top of her head. "You're right, of course," he said. He sat down on the ledge of the tub next to her.

"Are you going somewhere?" she asked, resting her head on shoulder because she already knew the answer. She did not look up at him, but rather, she could sense that he nodded. Being a first year Auror, he and Harry got the most inconvenient shifts, or were called on projects at an hour that no one higher up in the department wanted to wake up for.

"I won't be gone long though," he said from above her head. "Probably only dinner time," he added, and Hermione nodded too. Maybe she would go to the Burrow tonight and see everyone; she hated eating alone.

"When are you leaving?" she asked, tilting her head to look up at him. He kissed the tip of her nose before he looked down at his watch to answer.

"Five minutes ago," he groaned, getting off the ledge of the tub and scrambling around for the rest of his things. He pulled his shirt over his head, getting tangled up as he tried to simultaneously tie his shoes. Hermione giggled and got up, taking pity on him and helping him. Not that she minded, of course.

"What would I do without you?" Ron said, sighing, looking down at her and grinning happily. Hermione laughed.

"You'd go into work with your shoes on the wrong feet and your shirt on backward, but you'd be there on time," she said jokingly, rising on her toes and kissing him on the cheek. He wrapped his arms around her so that she couldn't move away, his lips finding hers and kissing her gently.

"You're going to be late," she murmured softly, not quite managing to sound like she cared.

"I'm already late," Ron said, shrugging. "And besides, this is a special occasion and all. Seeing you in a wedding dress."

Hermione took a step back from him, giving him an appraising look and then glancing down at the white duvet she had wrapped around herself to keep warm. "It's the blanket from our bed," she pointed out to him.

Ron shrugged. "Well, you look beautiful in it to me. It could be your wedding dress."

Hermione received the familiar feeling she got whenever he gave her a compliment like that; her toes felt warm and her hands shook slightly. "You are clearly aiming to flatter me," she told him sternly, though she couldn't keep the wide smile off her face.

Ron grinned, bringing her in close and kissing her. She hated that he had to leave now, that they couldn't just go back to bed and she could tell him how much what he had said meant to her. But then she was pulling away, grabbing his wrist to look at his watch. "You're really late now," she told him. Ron groaned but couldn't help but agree.

Hermione followed him to the living room, where he threw the green powder they kept on the mantel into the fire, turning the orange flames a shocking shade of emerald. He hesitated for a moment, turning to Hermione, who was all wrapped up in the blanket, leaning against the arm of the sofa and watching him leave.

He kissed her again, his lips lingering on hers. "I love you," he whispered in her ear, and she had to physically restrain herself from jumping into his arms.

"I love you too," she whispered back, readjusting the blanket, which had slipped off her shoulder. They both knew he couldn't drag it out any more, and Ron walked to the fire, stepped in, and disappeared. The green flames died, and Hermione was left alone in the middle of the living room, the sun just starting to float above the green hills in the distance.

There was no point going back to bed now; she would have to get up in a few hours anyway, and her heart was still racing from Ron's comment about the wedding dress. She'd never calm down enough to sleep. So she made her way back into the bedroom, shedding the blanket and putting on a sweatshirt of Ron's instead. It fell to her knees, and Hermione smiled as she looked at herself. She thought she looked ridiculous…Ron would love it.

Turning on the lamp by her bed, she brought the blankets around her legs and propped open a book about centaur regulations, finding her carefully marked place in the middle of the page. She had a meeting at the end of next week, and she had been preparing for days, though her revising was constantly ruined by either wedding plans (which she secretly didn't mind) or Ron (which she secretly didn't mind even more). Though they were both good distractions, she still had one hundred pages to read by the meeting next Thursday, and that seemed almost like procrastination to her.

At six o' clock, the sun had fully risen and the pale morning light was peeking through the curtains of the bedroom. Marking her place again – though this time it was much closer to the end – she put the book aside and started to get ready for work. She would be early, she knew, but it looked like it would be a nice day; she'd walk around and get a coffee before going in.

She Apparated into a dark alley in London, a place which couldn't be seen by passersby on the pavement and was often used by witches and wizards. There was a café down the street that made coffee just bearable enough to drink.

Stepping out onto the pavement, she was buffeted by the stream of early risers starting their day early. The café was a small, run-down place that was usually frequented by glasses-clad writers and old men with the day's newspaper. On one of the café was a nail salon which perpetually soaked the air around it with fumes, and on the other was a pet store. Usually Hermione didn't pay much attention to either of these, but this morning, something caught her eye.

In the window of the pet store was a small puppy, curled up and seemingly asleep. Hermione paused, causing several people walking on the pavement behind her to mutter angrily and push past her. Before she could fully think about what she was doing, she pushed open the door to the shop, a small bell announcing her arrival.

The shop was, predictably, empty. Not many people shop for pets at seven in the morning. The sales assistant, who was standing behind the counter and examining her split ends, jumped up at the sound of Hermione's arrival and hurried to her side.

"Hi! How can I help you this morning?" she asked brightly, all traces of boredom left behind. Hermione was slightly disconcerted.

"I was just looking at that dog there," Hermione said, pointing to the window. "It's a Jack Russel terrier, right?" she asked. She recognized the breed from their days in the Room of Requirement, where its silvery likeness would snap at the paws of her otter.

The sales girl nodded eagerly. "Yes, would you like to hold him?" she asked, already moving to the window display and opening the door. She placed the sleeping puppy in Hermione's arms before Hermione could get an answer out. She had never considered herself a dog person; the only pet she'd had was a cat, though she wouldn't have considered herself a cat person either (Ron would have argued that Crookshanks didn't even count as a cat). The puppy woke up, looking up at her happily, his tail wagging. He scrambled in her arms so that his face was close to hers, and then he licked her nose. Hermione gasped in surprise and the sales girl laughed.

"He likes you!" she exclaimed, relieving Hermione of the energetic puppy and cradling him in his arms.

"What's his name?" Hermione asked, scratching the top of the dog's head absentmindedly.

"Puck," the sales girl answered, looking down at the dog. Hermione stopped, her hand suspended in midair.

"From A Midsummer Night's Dream?" she asked, surprised.

The sales girl nodded, smiling. "You know your Shakespeare," she said, laughing. Hermione smiled wryly; it was not a coincidence that she knew the names of Shakespeare.

"I think it's fate," she said, smiling at the little puppy. Ron had surprised her with a house; the least she could do was surprise Ron with the dog he had been wanting for more than half his life. She smiled to herself as she pictured Ron's face when he came home tonight, and Puck greeted him at the door. "I have to go to work," she told the sales girl. "Can I come back at the end of the day?" she asked, and the girl nodded enthusiastically.

Hermione passed through the motions of her day in a daze. All she could see when she sat down to work was Ron's expression when he saw Puck. She only had to keep her surprise a secret for a few hours; she had no idea how Ron could have done it for months.

At five thirty, Hermione all but flew out of the office and down to the pet store to take Puck home. Twenty minutes later, she was lifting Puck out of the box from the store and setting him gently on the carpet in the living room. Pig, who had been resting in his cage woke up at the sound of the new dog and began rustling his feathers. Hermione scribbled a note and attached it to Pig's leg, directing the owl to the window, which was complicated because Pig was eagerly trying to meet Puck.

Ginny was at the door before Pig could even return from his journey to her. Hermione opened the door, one arm firmly around Puck so that he couldn't run out. Ginny squealed at the puppy, taking him out of Hermione's arms before she fully made it through the door.

"Ron's going to love him!" Ginny exclaimed, and Hermione smiled happily. It was just the reaction she wanted to receive. Puck seemed to love the attention too; he had jumped out of Ginny's arms and was running in circles around the two of them, his tail wagging emphatically.

The two walked to the living room, Puck still running circles around their heels. Ginny sat down heavily on the sofa, scooping the puppy into her lap. Puck wriggled half heartedly, and Hermione watched, laughing.

"I was just going to send you an owl," Ginny said, looking up at Hermione. "Harry and I were supposed to have dinner at my place, but he's working so I figured Ron would be working and you'd want some company."

Hermione nodded. Harry and Ginny had decided to do the only thing that seemed left to do: they started at the beginning. They were dating. Ginny had moved out of the Burrow a few days after their conversation and had begun renting a flat near the Harpies' practice pitch. Harry came over sometimes, but he didn't have his things there, and she didn't have her things at Grimmuald Place. They didn't see each other every night; usually just weekends and once or twice during the week. And Hermione suspected that Ron was right for once in that they were holding hands and kissing. They were going slowly, which is what they both, apparently, agreed they needed.

Hermione made dinner while Ginny sat on the floor of the living room and played with Puck. She offered to help in the kitchen several times, but Hermione gently put her down; having Ginny in the kitchen was more of a hindrance than a help.

They couldn't eat at the kitchen table because it was currently papered with dozens and dozens of lists, all practically black with Hermione's incessant wedding lists. Here and there one could find a few lines of Ron's scribbling, but they were few and far between. Instead, they sat on the sofa, Puck trying vainly to jump up and reach their plates, which they held high above their heads.

Ginny left reluctantly at about ten, kissing the top of Puck's head and giving Hermione a hug goodbye. Hermione sat in the living room with a book, waiting for Ron, who had told her that he would be home hours before now. She wasn't worried; his talent for predicting when he would be home was very poor. If he said he'd be back at nine, it wasn't unusual for him to walk through the door at midnight.

By midnight, however, Hermione's eyelids were growing heavy; she had been up since three thirty after all, and it had been a long day. Puck showed no signs of fatigue, but Hermione scooped him up anyway, carrying him into the bathroom and placing him gently in the bathtub where he couldn't escape and where she could keep an eye on him.

She had a box with a few old editions of the Daily Prophet placed in the corner of the room, and she set Puck gently down, rubbing the top of his head affectionately. She had planned on letting him sleep there, but when she took a step back to make sure that he was alright, he gave her a look of such a deep melancholy that she took pity on him and took him out of the box.

"You're not sleeping on the bed," she told him sternly, placing him on the rug next to her side of the bed and crawling in. She peeked over the edge and saw Puck sitting there, giving her that same pathetic look. If he were human, he might have burst into abandoned tears.

"Fine," she sighed, giving up and reaching over the side of the bed and putting him on the blanket next to her. Puck wagged his tail happily and curled up next to her. Hermione smiled slightly before falling asleep. Her last thought before drifting off was that she should stay up for Ron, so that she could see his face when he saw Puck.

For the second time in two nights, she woke up suddenly to a loud, foreign noise echoing through the darkness. Puck blinked sleepily from beside her, growling half-heartedly, his tail between his legs. Hermione scooped the puppy into her arms and opened the door to the bedroom cautiously, Puck in one hand and her wand in the other.

The living room was completely dark, but Hermione could tell by the light of the moon coming in through the curtains that there was someone sitting on the sofa. Her heart beating abnormally fast, she pointed her lit wand at the object, and the beam of light fell on…Ron.

"Oh," she said shakily, relaxing visibly to see him sitting there. She thought she should yell at him for making her think that there was an intruder in the house for the second night in a row. "You scared me, I thought there was some – " but her voice died in her throat, because she could tell the instant she started talking that there was something very, very wrong.

The last time she had seen Ron looking so miserable, he had been sitting next to her at Fred's funeral. Every angle in his lanky body was pointed down at the floor. He was holding the bottle of Firewhisky they kept under the kitchen sink for extreme emergencies (like a particular bad Cannon loss.) The last time Hermione remembered seeing the bottle, only a third of the liquid was gone. Now, there was only a thin line of the drink rimming the bottom of the bottle. Ron's face was ashen and his eyes were hollow, his hair standing out on a white, blanched face. But what scared Hermione most was that he was refusing to look at her.

"What ha-happened?" she asked, her voice rising and falling unnaturally, the tone so strange that even Puck squirmed in her arms.

Ron said nothing, but tipped the rest of the Firwhiskey into his mouth and placed the bottle shakily on the coffee table. He was looking at his feet now; Hermione wondered if he had even heard her.

"Ron," she said, her voice strangely loud. She placed Puck on the floor and hastened to the sofa, sitting down next to him and taking his hand in hers. She squeezed it tightly, but he didn't return the pressure. "What happened?" she asked again, looking determinedly at his profile as he continued to refuse to look at her. She felt more afraid now then she had when she had thought someone had broken into the house.

"Ron," she said again, this time more forcefully; some of the fear was gone. Something told her that if anyone had been seriously injured, he would have said so by now.

"I don't think we should get married," Ron said, his voice hoarse and low, cracking and almost nonexistent. Hermione wondered if she had imagined it, but she knew she hadn't because he was looking at her now, his eyes blank as they stared slightly unfocused at her. She dropped his hand at once and stood up, the world spinning around her.

"What?" she said, fear turning into anger with such a disconcerting speed that she felt sick for a moment and almost had to sit down again. Ron looked up at her, and his expression told her that this was the reaction he had been dreading. For some reason, this only made her angrier.

"Listen," he said, with what seemed to be an attempt at a complacent tone. "It's not that…it's not that I don't want to," he said, standing up as well.

"Oh," Hermione said, adopting the familiar and horribly bitter sarcastic tone she affected when she wanted to hurt him the most. She turned away from him, she couldn't look at him anymore. In her mind she was going over every second of the last few months, trying to find an answer, anything to explain this.

"I want to…but…" Ron said, running his hand through his hair and looking torn. "I can't do it to you," he said nonsensically.

Hermione turned on her heel to face him; she was debating whether to sob or scream, and in her confusion she forgot that she wasn't looking at him anymore. "You better start explaining," she told him harshly, every note of her voice falling thick and flat.

Ron sat back down again, and Puck flitted anxiously at his heels, though Ron didn't seem to notice. Hermione's mind quickly rewinded to her idea of surprising Ron with him. Those two people seemed so different than the ones who were standing in the shadowed living room right now.

"The…mission…that Harry and I went on today. It was this man, he wasn't a Death Eater, but he…I think he wanted to be, he just never had the guts to commit to anything. There are a lot of them around now, they escaped Azkaban, so now they're thinking that now's a good time to start carrying out what they wanted to do before," Ron rambled, though Hermione could just work out what he was saying. "Anyway, they do mainly small crimes; vandalism, occasionally blackmail. They're all cowards, they do something and then they hide. But this one guy, he started getting a bit brave and went after an Auror's wife because she was Muggleborn. His office is a few rows from mine, his name's Brighton, he was a few years ahead of us at Hogwarts. He just got married last June," Ron said, and his voice was getting smaller and smaller with every word. "He started following her…Brighton's wife… sending her nasty letters. That's what we were doing today, trying to track down the bastard."

Hermione sat down next to him on the sofa, empathy for the woman overwhelming her anger for Ron. "Did you catch him?" she asked quietly, though she knew the answer before the question was fully out of her mouth.

Ron shook his head miserably. "We got close but he…he got away," he said, hanging his head, obscuring his face from her. "Don't you see, Hermione?" he asked weakly. "We can't get married because what if something like that happens to you?" he asked.

Hermione blinked, thinking hard. "It won't happen to me," she said bravely, though in her mind she knew this was a lie. What had happened to that Auror's wife could easily happen to her.

"You don't know that," Ron retorted, as Hermione feared he would. And now she had nothing to counter him. "You don't know that us being married won't make you a target, won't make people like that man want to hurt you. I can't do that to you," he mumbled, looking at his legs again.

"And what about me?" Hermione asked; her voice, opposite Ron's, was getting stronger. "What about all of the things I'm doing to save House Elves? Have you ever thought that some people might not like that, and do something to you because they know I'd stop whatever I was doing to help you? Have you ever thought of that?" she asked.

Ron's ears turned slightly red in the dim light. "No, but…" he muttered.

"But what?" Hermione asked sharply, her blood pounding because she knew what was coming next. They had been arguing over this for years. "You think I'm at more of a risk because I'm a girl, I suppose."

Ron was silent for a fraction of a second, but it seemed much longer to Hermione. Then he stood up, running his hand through his hair, looking wildly around the living room as if an answer was stored high on the bookshelf along with the dusty textbooks Hermione couldn't bear to part with. "Look," he said, his voice firmer now. "I didn't want you to be angry! I didn't want you to think I was doing this because I didn't think you were strong enough to fight them off. Because I do think you're strong and I think you could stand up to anything anyone threw at you, and it has nothing to do with the fact that you're a girl!" Ron said, and Hermione was surprised to hear that he was practically shouting. "But that's not the point! The point was that all day when we were hiding out, waiting for that bastard to show up, all I could think about was you. I thought that we could be like them. And I don't want that; we spent years fighting so that we would never be in danger again. And getting married…that might put you in danger," Ron finished, his voice quiet and defeated again.

For the first time that night, it was Hermione who did not know what to say, who hung her head in shame. She had overreacted, thinking that she couldn't stand up for herself. She had been foolish; of course that wasn't the answer. What the actual answer was, well, it was much deeper and much harder than she had thought. And she didn't have an answer.

"So what do we do?" she asked, fearing the sound that came out of her mouth. She wasn't fighting, she was giving up to this. And she didn't know why. Her face was wet with tears, though she didn't know when she had started crying. She didn't know if she'd stop.

"I don't know," Ron said. Hermione wasn't looking at him, but she could tell, because she knew him better than anyone else in the world, that he was crying too.

"Do I give this back to you?" she asked brokenly, taking the ring from her left hand and holding it out to him. It shimmered in the darkness, somehow finding a tiny bit of light in the unlit living room and glimmering with it. Ron took it without looking at her. For some reason, this made her angry.

It wasn't supposed to end like this. They were getting married in a matter of months; earlier than Hermione had imagined at first, but she didn't care. She had known – for quite a long time – that they would always end up together. She did not know when their futures had been written, but at some point in their lives, they had realized that they had always belonged together. And although they had adamantly ignored this for longer than everyone around them had hoped, eventually they had realized this. But now…now Hermione didn't know what to do. The future, the one that Ginny had fought against, the one that Hermione wanted, was now empty. In one evening Ron had taken it from her, and she was angry.

She walked to the kitchen, taking two handfuls of lists that littered the table. "And these?" she said, her voice echoing through the silence. "Do I give these back to you as well?" she asked, throwing the lists in his direction. They did not travel far but fluttered to the ground, slowly, slowly falling. Hermione felt like she was falling too.

She walked to the bookcase next, locating books that Ron had given her for birthdays and Christmases and, recently, just because he had been walking by a bookstore. "What about these?" she cried. "Do you want these back too?" She threw the books to the ground as well, where they fell with hollow bangs. Hermione had never done that to a book.

She realized she was wearing the sweatshirt of his that she had put on this morning. She tore it off her body. "And this as well!" she screamed, throwing the sweatshirt to the ground.

"Hermione," Ron whispered, but Hermione didn't want to hear him, she did not want to hear the voice that had wrecked her life. She stormed into the bedroom, blindly searching for anything of hers that he had given her. She sensed that he was following her, but she did not turn to check.

"What about this?" she shouted, holding the perfume bottle he had given her for Christmas the year that his father had been hurt in the Department of Mysteries. It smelled terrible, she had never worn it, but the symbol of it was far more important. He had given her perfume, a gift that actually meant something. It wasn't a book, something anyone could give her. It was in that moment that she knew he liked her, she had known it as a solid fact. She had always kept it with her, no matter where she was. The year they had spent in the tent the bottle had rested in the bottom of her beaded bag protected by a Cushioning Charm, though Ron never knew it was there. Now, she kept in on her bedside table so that it was always in view.

"Don't," Ron said quietly, knowing what she was about to do before she did it. But she let the tiny bottle slip from her fingers. It seemed to take longer than the lists had done to fall to the ground. They watched as it hit the floor, the glass smashing into tiny pieces, the horrible odor of the perfume permeating the air.

And there it was. Lying smashed on the floor in front of them; everything they had worked for was gone, broken, destroyed. In one fraction of a second, one sentence, one slip of her fingers, and everything was broken. The bed was behind her and she sat down, feeling the dark room spinning around her. Burying her face in her hands she cried. She didn't know if Ron was there or if he had gone. But then she felt someone sit down on the bed next to her. He was here. She felt strange; she felt indifferent to his presence.

The silence stretched on between them, the darkness moving in kindly and filling the space that separated them. She had never felt so far away from Ron. She did not know what she was waiting for. She was waiting for him to apologize. She was waiting for him to say how stupid he had been. She was waiting for him to say he didn't mean it, he didn't mean any of it. She was waiting for him to fix everything that he had just broken. And what scared her more than anything was the idea that maybe those things wouldn't happen. What if – for the first time in their lives – they had taken things too far?

"You were right, that perfume smells awful," Ron said finally, his voice pushing the darkness and the silence aside. Hermione took her face out of her hands and looked at him. She knew her face must be red and her eyes terribly glassy, but she didn't care. She wanted to look right at him and she wanted him to look right back. And he did.

"I didn't say it was awful, I said it was unusual," she said quietly, her voice hardly above a whisper.

"Which is just a nice word for disgusting," Ron said, bringing a hand to his nose to block out the smell. At another point in time, Hermione would have laughed. But she didn't right now.

"What do we do now?" Hermione asked, her voice trembling. She appreciated that Ron had broken the silence, but they couldn't go on pretending forever. They had a houseful of recently broken objects that proved this.

"I do want to get married," Ron said quietly, looking down at his hands again. She followed his eyes and saw that he was twirling the ring around in his fingers.

"Then why did you say that you didn't?" Hermione asked, anguished.

Ron sighed, almost inaudibly. "Because today I realized that just because the war is over doesn't mean that we'll be safe forever. Just because there aren't Death Eaters walking about doesn't mean that everyone can just relax. There are still things out there that can hurt you. And I was so stupid for thinking for such a long time that there weren't. I suppose that today, because it was so close to something that could have happened to you, I just…I got scared," Ron said, his voice small again. Hermione moved closer to him and put her hand in his. This time, he returned the pressure.

"You should have just told me," Hermione said, "You shouldn't have sat there brooding and drinking, and then when I found you say bluntly that you don't want to get married." Hermione said, trying not to sound as though she were scolding him.

Something like a shadow passed across Ron's face, but it left before she could fully see it. "But it doesn't change the fact that bad things can still happen, and us getting married only make them more likely to happen."

Hermione squeezed his hand even harder. "Ron, bad things can always happen. You can't put your whole life on hold waiting for a time when everything will be perfect and there isn't one bad person in the entire world…you'll be waiting forever," she told him gently.

Ron nodded. "You're right. I was being stupid," he said apologetically.

She hated when he put himself down. "You weren't being stupid," she said sternly. "I know you want to think that nothing can hurt us anymore," she started.

"Nothing can hurt you anymore," Ron corrected her adamantly. Hermione tried hard not to roll her eyes.

"Fine. Nothing can hurt me anymore. But there will always be things out there," she told him gently.

"I know," he said softly. "But that doesn't stop me from wanting to track down as many bad people as I can. Because I might not be able to catch them all, but if I can make you just a bit safer, then…" his voice trailed off, but Hermione didn't ask him to continue. She knew that he meant. He took his hand away from hers and looked at the ring that was in his other hand. "I should be giving this back to you now," he said, half to himself. This time, the ghost of a smile on his face lasted a bit longer.

"Mind you do it properly," she told him, a small smile escaping from the corners of her mouth.

Ron got off the bed and knelt in front of her. The knee on the ground was directly in the spreading puddle of the terrible perfume. Hermione wondered if he had done it on purpose. "Hermione," he said, holding out the ring in front of her, and despite herself she had tears in her eyes. "Will you marry me…er, again?" he asked uncertainly, and Hermione covered her mouth to keep from laughing.

"Yes," she said, and a grin spread over her face. "But," she said suddenly, and Ron froze, his eyes wide. "You can't do anything noble like that ever again, because next time I won't say yes," she told him, raising her eyebrows at his expectant expression. Ron grinned.

"I promise," he said, slipping the ring back on her finger. She hadn't realized until she had taken it off how strange it felt to not have it there. Ron stood up and she got off the bed as well, hugging him tightly. Puck, who had been dancing around uncertainly for the last hour, decided that he had gone too long without getting any attention and nipped at Ron's ankle. The two broke apart, Ron staring down at the puppy who he had apparently only just noticed.

"Who's that?" he asked, looking down wide-eyed at the puppy who was sitting at his feet, tail wagging wildly.

Hermione smiled. "This is Puck," she said. Ron looked at her, bewildered. "Surprise," she added quietly, smiling wider.

And Ron's face was exactly how she had imagined it would be.

...

Author's Note: I really hope this was worth the wait! If it means anything to you all, I've had this idea stuck in my head since I wrote the last chapter, and I haven't had time to write it. Please review if you can, and I will try as hard as I can to update sooner!