. . . Chapter 39 . . .

. . . Molly's Birthday and Pursuit . . .

"Ron. RON!" A shrill shriek woke Ron from a rare blessedly dreamless sleep.

"Oi, what?" he groaned against the pillow as Hermione aimed another kick at his shin.

"Owl. Get it," she commanded grumpily.

Casting a tempus charm quickly Ron found it to be early in the god awful hour of six o'clock on a Saturday. Stumbling over the Orange Menace and out Hermione's door, Ron saw a large Ministry owl tapping the window persistently. Blinking rapidly to clear the sleepy blur from his eyes, Ron covered the wood floor quickly. Very few things were important enough to interrupt weekends. Death Eaters, attacks, death in the family. . . Ron jerked the window open and the bird landed quickly. Ron yanked the scroll from the birds leg and it took off from where it came. Ron fumbled to unroll it and lay it flat on the table.

Weasley, Potter -

Ministry tomorrow at nine am. Fawe.

Harding

Ron looked down at the parchment. Fawe was to be arrested then. The standard pre-raid fear dampened the prospect of putting Fawe in Azkaban slightly.

"What is it?" Hermione's sleepy voice called out.

He looked back down at the note and crushed it in his hand, detouring to throw it into the ashes in the fireplace on his way to Hermione's room. Pausing at her door to look down at her, Ron answered quietly, "Raid tomorrow." She went from eyes shut, snuggled into his spot with his pillow to sitting up in his white undershirt in one blink.

"Who? What time?" Her ability to jolt awake instantly was fascinating. So was that bleeding perfect shirt.

"Tell you tomorrow," he cheeked. They couldn't tell anyone anything until after raids had actually happened and so far Hermione had only wormed information out of him a couple times. His feet slapped against the wood floor. Hating having to leave her in the dark, yet glad that she was safe from undue worry, Ron pushed her back into bed and curled her to himself to chase after an elusive sleep. Hermione's breathing evened out quickly in his arms. Ron stayed awake mentally reviewing everything they'd learned these months - spells, stealth, group raid strategies. Group raid strategy was simple - groups performed actions that forced favorable reactions. Very exact. Very precise. He would be shadowing Harding, of course, but eventually, he'd have a spot, an exact plan. He hated not knowing the plan and trusting Harding implicitly and blindly. It was rather like playing chess with a blindfold on and trusting someone else to put your hand where it needed to be.

Harry's footfalls alerted Ron to his wakefulness and Ron pulled Hermione tighter against himself, breathing in the smell of her hair. After years of wondering at the smell of her hair, Ron knew now that it was Orange Ginger, a muggle shampoo that Hermione always found at corner 'drug stores'.

"'Mione?" Harry's voice seeped in around the edges of her white door.

"Not awake," Ron whispered back. Hermione groaned and stirred.

"M'wake now," she grumbled and Ron smirked at her when she twisted in her arms, blinking rapidly.

The shadows of Harry's feet shuffled in front of Hermione's door. "Did you get stuff for omelets? I can't find the onions - "

"Far right cabinet, behind the potatoes," she interrupted. "Cheese is in the fridge."

"Ok, you want some?"

"Yes we do," Ron answered for her. She looked up at him, glaring. "Mum's birthday is today, might as well get up and then go over there for the visit." At her scowl still in place, Ron added, "Fleur will be there. Baby news maybe?"

Her face softened predictably. Always a sucker for babies, elves, and all manner of small, big-eyed creatures. He suppressed a smirk when his thoughts drifted briefly over to SPEW.

"Up for omelets," he said before her face resumed its hardened look. He pushed her gently to her side of the bed and then slid out of his side as well. Shapely, tanned thighs peaked out from under that white shirt as she walked. Ron took two steps over to her, wrapping his arms around her and dragging her back to bed. "Omelets in a few minutes. Come here," he breathed before wrenching the filmy clothing off of her and throwing it to the side in a flourish before impeding her journey to breakfast.

Hours later, the three of them stepped out into the living room of the Burrow where mum's birthday had evidently exploded over the space in the living room. Ron gaped at the gaudy display.

"All ours, new products," George materialized between streamers that were suspended in mid air. George waved a hand at the decorations and then smiled up at him before stepping to embrace him. Seeing George always made it feel like someone had stomped on his chest. He stepped back from George hoping that that feeling would fade with time.

Bill's face swam into view. "Ron!" He moved to clap a hand on his shoulder. "Where's your beloved?" Ron's face heated up at the endearment but he stepped aside to let Bill greet Hermione and Harry.

"Ronnie?" mum's voice filtered through the streamers, detached from a visible source. His ears reddened to match his face at the nickname and he glanced down at Hermione to see if she thought anything of either address. She was running her fingers through the multi-colored paper streamers that shimmered and changed colors against her slim digits.

"Yeah, mum," Ron called out in time to see her part the streamers and appear in front of the three of them. "Happy birthday, mum," Ron smiled down at her and reached down to hug her. He couldn't remember a time before he had to reach down to her.

"Thank you, thank you," she backed away and grinned up at him before moving to embrace Hermione and Harry in turn before ushering everyone out of the disaster zone in the living room and into the kitchen.

Around the table, the group of them effortlessly arranged themselves in the same positions as only a couple weeks ago. Ron looked up as he realized their places and wondered if anyone else had. A shudder went through him when he realized he hadn't thought about the prophecy yet today. His guard was down. Setting his shoulders more squarely, Ron sat up straighter in the chair. Constant vigilance fluttered across his mind in Moody's characteristic gravel.

"Well? Any news from the Healers?" mum said, scooting her chair in and turning to look at Bill and Fleur. The conversation drew Ron's attention from the plate of cottage pie, carrots and peas.

Bill and Fleur shared a look that shot through Ron and ignited a fierce longing for that kind of future with Hermione.

"We hav found out zat eet ees a girl," Fleur said, grinning at Bill and then at mum and dad. Bloody hell, Hermione was right. He remembered asking Harry once 'How is it she knows everything?' and smirked over at Hermione. Her face glowed with happiness and her eyes glinted with the knowledge that she was right about the sex of the baby . . . well, half right. Girl with blond hair, she'd said. Half right. He'd offer to buy her half a book then and get a laugh at that. He could picture her now, her horrified expression as she pictured a book torn in two.

"Oh! How wonderful! A girl," mum exclaimed, clearly overjoyed. A familiar pang of heavy weight settled in Ron's stomach. He had to work to keep from frowning suddenly. Least loved, always, by the mother who craved a daughter. He swallowed the thick feeling in his throat.

"Yup, we found out a few days ago and figured we'd wait for when we had all of you together again," Bill said, bringing an arm up to wrap affectionately around Fleur's back.

"Well that's wonderful," dad piped up from his seat at the end of the table. "All healthy then?"

"Yes, she ees. All healthy," Fleur declared. Ron watched his mum wipe a tear away and felt almost nauseous before training his expression not to betray his thoughts to Harry or Hermione if they glanced his way. He felt sure that no one else would see behind the mask he currently wore except Harry and Hermione.

"Yeah and we figure that we need to Floo Ginny and Charlie before word gets around too much and we have to hear it from Ginny so we're telling them after dinner," Bill explained. Smart.

"When is Ginny coming home, speaking of her," Percy asked around a wad of carrots. Disgusting. Almost immediately Ron remembered Hermione correcting his manners at the table in the Great Hall once sixth year and colored.

"Oh, um. . . when is it Molly? December - "

"Seventeenth. December seventeenth, we're due to pick up her at noon at King's Cross," mum answered quickly.

"Oh that's Audrey's birthday, well that'll be easy enough to remember," Percy said, smiling over at mum.

"How is she doing?" mum asked but Ron read a bit of tension crossing her forehead.

"Good. She's good. Her nephew - Laurence Arrhenius - is starting Hogwarts next year. Audrey was a Hufflepuff so she's hoping that Laurence will be. We'll have to wait it out I guess," Percy said, tapering his speech off after he'd confessed his girlfriend to be a Hufflepuff. Hufflepuff had always seemed like the leftovers of Hogwarts to him. Gryffindor was brave, Slytherin was full of cunning gits, Ravenclaw for the brainiacs and then Hufflepuff was for people who were loyal? Gryffindors were unfailingly loyal to their own. Same story with Slytherins - to a fault really. So then Hufflepuff seemed to be the leftover group, the misfits that were grouped together and asked to be loyal to each other in spite of their anti-talent.

"That's nice," dad spoke, breaking a silence that had stretched on a bit too long. "And Hermione? Your schooling?" Ron turned his head to look at her. Her face brightened at the topic change.

"Oh good! It's going well. I've selected my NEWTS level independent project for Transfiguration and Charms I think," she said, looking over at his parents. He inclined his head at her in confusion and Hermione glanced at him and then Harry. "Well I didn't want to tell you two if I changed my mind or failed at it but - well, ok - Transfiguration has a separate independent project required for each NEWTS level student and then Charms does as well so I thought it'd be great to combine the two of them. So what I'm doing is transfiguring a non-living item into a humanoid being that can think and reason so. . . like the suits of armor at Hogwarts jumped to defend the school when commanded?" She paused and waited for the table to understand her. Ron noticed her bite her lower lip slightly during the pause and had to refocus his thoughts quickly. "Well, this is rather like that because that's ancient magic and when I asked McGonagall she said that that spell, or series of spells, is lost to the school and then so many of them were destroyed that, well, I thought it would be useful to recreate," Hermione finished breathlessly in the stunned silence. Brilliant. Why did she always have to be so bloody brilliant?

"That's - that's brilliant, Hermione," he spoke before she lost that happy expression on her face and glowed when her smile grew.

"Thanks, Ronald," Hermione said softly. He felt her foot nudge against his under the table.

"It really is," George added. "Blimey, that's magic that the founders of Hogwarts did. How many of those were destroyed?"

"McGonagall said almost all of them were. The first part of the spell is easy comparatively. Remember that herd of desks McGonagall made?" Hermione glanced around the table and wait for their nods. "Well that's pretty much the first part. It's a bit trickier than that but it's similar at least. The hard part is bestowing them with human reasoning skills."

The rest of Ron's family agreed that her NEWTs in Charms and Transfiguration were brilliant. He made a mental note to ask her how Arithmancy, Potions, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Ancient Runes were going too. He still had trouble believing she'd decided to pursue full NEWTs in six subjects. Even more puzzling and wonderful was her desire to take and earn her Defense Against the Dark Arts NEWTs. When he'd asked her about it the first time, she'd responded tartly, "I've been keeping up with two Aurors-in-Training for the last few months. Not to mention the things we did last year. I'd like to get that too - prove people wrong." He smiled over at her.

After dinner - they had thankfully skipped wine this time, he cut his eyes at the perfectly sober Hermione - they moved into the living room where mum was torturing Bill and Fleur by going through all the old baby photos of Bill. Hermione's less than impressive tolerance for alcohol was something Ron had to file away for future reference. Two glasses of wine - fine. Three - Hermione is drunk. No shades of gray. He smirked over at her where she and Harry were talking animatedly. Harry stopped when Ron glanced their way and jerked his head at him to come over. Ron stood and covered the room between them.

"Ron, I think we should head out. It's already almost ten and we've got. . . " Harry tapered off but Ron understood he meant the raid with Fawe.

"Right," Ron answered with his thoughts on the raid tomorrow morning. "Yeah, ok. Just let me - "

"Oh, yeah, let's," Harry interrupted, finishing his thought. The three of them bid goodbye to everyone, promising to see them again for Bill's birthday in a month if not sooner. He wondered how Fleur would look then, if she'd be showing yet.

That night with Hermione in his arms, Ron stared up at the ceiling and tried to gently pull her hair up off of his arm where it tickled the old scars there.

"I won, you know," Hermione said lightly.

"Huh? Won what?" he goaded. He knew she was talking about the baby, he'd been waiting on her to bring the baby up.

"It's a girl," she explained with a twinge of irritation tainting her voice. "I win."

He grinned in the dark. "So you did. . . half of it."

"Half?"

"You called hair color as well. Blond," he pressed his face against her curls while he talked.

"Yeah, yeah." He heard rather than saw the smile that must've been gracing her face. "Well, half right is better than you. You're half wrong," she teased.

"Mmhm," he answered sleepily, curling both arms around her and breathing deeply for many silent minutes.

"Beloved," she whispered into the darkness just before he drifted away into sleep.

"Hm?" Curiosity narrowly beat out sleep and he listened carefully to her response.

"When Bill asked, 'Where is your beloved?'. . . I like that. It's a bigger word than girlfriend. . . It fits us, I think," she said.

He smiled against his pillow, "Goodnight, beloved."

"Goodnight," he could hear the smile in her response.

With a sharp pang he remembered the now ever present cloud hanging over their happiness, all of the clouds, he amended, thinking about the raid tomorrow morning. He pulled her against him so that her bare bum rested in the cradle of his boxer-clad form. He'd make sure they proved that damn prophecy wrong. Every move she made was his to watch. He fell asleep thinking about how to outsmart fate.

The next morning, Ron and Harry stood outside in the back yard. Hermione had agreed to honor the Sunday agreement with the Tonks' to keep Teddy by herself until they got back. She leaned against the frame of the back door watching them get situated in their Ministry robes. Ron glanced back at her with her hair blowing in the cool late October breeze. Ron felt Harry grab onto his arm and dragged his gaze off of Hermione's small form.

"Be careful," he heard her shout from behind them as they spun away from their house and to the Ministry.

Walking into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement was like stepping off a cliff. Quickly, Ron and Harry both realized that this raid had security and strategy measures taken far above the regular level for raids. Ron cracked his knuckles in a nervous habit. Within seconds, Lyra Silvestri materialized in front of them.

"Guys, here are your Portkeys," Silvestri handed the transportation devices to each of them in turn. "Heading to Newquay so might be a bit of a twist. Land as silently as possible, follow Parnell and Harding, stun or hex to capture not kill if possible but if it's between you and me, the poster does say 'Dead or Alive'. Got it?"

"Yes."

"Yeah," Ron answered in the same breath as Harry. His heart started racing. Dead or Alive. Bloody hell.

"Alright, good," Silvestri motioned to the Portkeys. "Activate in - " she checked the clock in the department "- seven minutes." Silvestri marched away from them, presumably to pass out more Portkeys and advice.

"Should we go over to Parnell and - " Harry asked softly.

"Harding? Yeah," Ron answered and the two of them moved to stand beside their respective Aurors and wait.

"Ready? See you in Newquay," Silvestri called out to the group of them just before the tug of the Portkey pulled him into a twisting darkness.

The group of twenty or so Aurors materialized in the shade of a line of trees beside an old barn. Ron glanced at Harding and followed his gaze over to Silvestri who motioned for people to go left and right around the graying wood sides of the barn. When Harding moved Ron followed him to the right of the barn, creeping silently across the grass. Terror suddenly flooded his person, he let it flow right back out and concentrated on putting Fawe in Azkaban. Away from Hermione. Away from other Muggle-born witches. Away from defenseless muggles.

Ron sensed the movement of the Aurors at the tree line and glanced back.

"Come," Harding breathed out light enough to have been the wind. Ron tried to refocus as they turned the corner around the side of the barn and saw the large barn door partially ajar. Harry's face stuck out at him across the gap of the door where he and Parnell advanced from the other side of the barn. Silvestri stood at the door and was careful, Ron noticed, to not step between the door and the sun and alert anyone inside to her presence. She glanced up at them and then to the group behind her and nodded at the door.

Russell and Silvestri were silently and almost instantly inside the doors. Harry's untidy black hair bobbed from somewhere a few feet in front of him. A rustle in the barn loft.

"Diffindo!" Harry's voice cut through the group before anyone else could raise their wand to the right angle.

A horrible scream came from above and then the muffled pop of Apparation.

"Bollocks!" Russell cried out.

"Heard us too soon," Silvestri said, glancing back at the doors of the barn. "Nice try, Harry," she said with a dejected tone. A couple Aurors went up to check the loft. Light streamed in through gaps between the wooden boards, creating hundreds of parallel slivers of light that went running across the dirt and hay covered floor.

"I was trying to break the loft. Get him down here," Harry explained, shifting his feet and putting a hand to the back of his neck.

A bark of laughter came from above. "Bloody hell, well done, Potter." The smiling face of Hall Maxwell appeared over the edge of the wood. "Got a chunk of him." Maxwell pushed something off of the loft.

A leg still wrapped in the shredded brown fabric of a man's trousers fell with a sickening thud on the ground close to them. Slivers of light bent up and curved over the leg, distorted.

"Sanqui Quis," Silvestri said, aiming her wand at blood clinging to the gruesome severed limb. "Uther Fawe." Gold light pulsed and then turned red. "Aha! Well done, Potter. Should slow his ass down if nothing else," Silvestri said, grinning and clapping a delighted hand on Harry's shoulder.

"Good, Harry. Good reflexes," Parnell agreed and nodded at him and then down at the limb. Ron found himself wanting to look away but was too grossly fascinated by it to turn his head.

After the Aurors had swept the remaining corners of the barn and found it empty save for decomposing food and empty wrappers, the group of them broke up to spend the rest of their Sunday in peace.

As he and Harry Apparated into their backyard, Ron glanced at his friends face and saw a self satisfied smirk residing there.

"Yeah, good job in there today," Ron said sincerely. "None of the rest of us got our wands up quick enough."

Harry shrugged good naturedly. "Luck," he said simply. Harry opened the back door first and stepped inside.

"Luck my arse, you - " Ron broke off when he saw Hermione on the couch. She was asleep with her curls pulled to one side and spilling over the side of the couch. Teddy slept on her chest, blanketed by one of Hermione's small hands. The juxtaposition between the gruesome sight of a severed leg and jarring, beautiful peacefulness he got to come home to seemed to him like pieces, moments, from two completely separate lives.