A/N: Henlo there, friends! To give you all some angsty, sad, traumatic, fluffy, romantic and uplifting entertainment while I try and fix the mess that has become 'Till We're In The Sea, I give you THIS

:0 (- that's your face)

A quick warning, this does have domestic and child abuse, disturbing descriptions, and violence. But, as a way to tug on them good ol' heart strings and lighten everything just a tad, there is family fluff, romance, and a happy ending (as most stories should have!) With that out of the way, this IS a Ron!Bashing story so if you like Ron... um... sorry i guess

Disclaimer, the Harry Potter series isn't mine, the characters aren't mine, the storyline and plot is, yada yada, buy my merch, okay I think we're good.

And with that, please enjoy!

Chapter 1: Nameless

The lock of the door clicks open and I let out a strangled sigh. A tiny pair of arms wraps tightly around my leg and I drop one of my hands to touch the soft hair of my child. The front door swings open with a loud bang and my husband stumbles in, obviously drunk as expected.

It has been nearly five years since Ron and I's marriage, and never have things looked so bleak in my life. In fact, the only thing keeping me from killing myself is my little five-year-old girl I desperately try to protect every day when Ron comes home. If he ever threatens to beat her, I step in and take her place. Whenever he raises a hand to hit her, I dash in and take the pain.

It is this instinct that makes me gently guide my little Rose behind my legs, my hand running small, soothing circles on the side of her soft, red hair. Rose's worried cinnamon eyes peek behind me to see a drunken version of her father, and she clutches my old, dirty rag-of-a-dress as she knows what is to come. And in comes Ron, the heavy thud of his shoes echoing through the house as if he is a horse. He sees the unfinished dishes and, what I presume, a single speck of dust on the counters, which is what most likely flares his outburst seconds later.

"I TOLD YOU TO BE DONE CLEANING AND WASHING BY THE TIME I GOT HOME!"

I say nothing, but stand there, all bravery I once felt inside my body years ago gone from my soul, as it has been since I had married him. I can't speak, move, or even blink. My eyes remain trained on Ron as I keep Rose behind me with as firm a grip as I can muster. I don't even flinch when his hand comes down on my face with a loud smack, then back again on my other cheek. I feel tears pool in my eyes and the bruises already form in the shape of his hand, and Merlin, I want to scream and cry, but I never do, and instead stare at him with a submissive expression and shoved the tears away from my eyes. Ron grips my chin roughly and jerks it up to his face with no amount of gentleness in his touch, extracting a small, strangled gasp from my lips.

"I want this done in five minutes and then have the brat go back to where she belongs in the garage. You, however, come up to my room. You get 30 minutes of Hell for not finishing what I ordered you to do. I'll make it an hour if you don't lock the little bitch in her room."

Ron drops my chin and, without missing a beat, I keep my hands to my side despite the urge to rub the sore spots and answer, "Yes, sir." And Ron stumbles away in a drunken rage, up to his room to sip on more beer, as he so often does as an alternative to let his body recover from the alcohol.

It was only my luck that he would only be coherent with his words if he was angered, and specifically at us.

I let a tear escape my eye as I reached to gently touch the bruise on my cheek, only to wince at the sudden sharp pain that shot through my nerves. It was a meek, angelic sounding "Mummy?" that snaps me out of my thoughts and sees myself looking down at my little girl, who clutches my clothes with so much fear in her wide little eyes that it hurts me more than the multitude of other wounds and scars I have "earned" over the years.

I bend down and scoop her up into my arms, planting a lingering kiss on her head. "I'm okay, Rosie, he's not coming down here to hurt you," I whisper, running my hand through Rose's curly red hair. A small sniff escapes Rose and her tiny arms tighten around my neck.

"I don't want to be in the garage alone…" Rose whimpers, who buries her face into my shoulder. I put down the plate I am drying, hug her tightly and whisper sweet nothings of comfort into her ears, planting kisses around her head as I do so.

"I know, sweetheart, and I hate to lock you in there, but I'd rather you be in there for a half hour than listening to my screams for a full hour," I say and I drop my hand to continue drying, but hold my child in my arms protectively, as if she will suddenly be taken from me. My only light in this prison with the monster that made me a slave to him, a punching bag; a dark, depressing mess with no other goal but to keep the one person, the one thing in my life that keeps me sane. This small, precious human I gave birth to is the one and only thing I have to force myself to not give up, to get off the floor after a round of pain and misery and find my way to the garage to hold and assure her that I'm all right, that I will never leave her alone in this cold, dark place, that I am alive, even if I were only barely conscious.

There is never a day in my life where I yell at her. Even as a baby, when the horrid nights of constant screaming and crying woke me up from sleep and set Ron off more and more, I would sit and feed her, and look down at the tiny little thing. I would hold her as one would hold an ancient piece of China glass, and even after my little Rose had calmed, I would still rock her gently, and tell her stories my mother did to me, and sing lullabies my father guided me to sleep with.

It was the constant arguing, Rosie's crying, and Ron's wanting to carry on his mother's lineage of having seven children when I hadn't that made him snap. I'm only comfortable having four children at the most, if I even get to that point, and with my tendency to take our arguments too far and Ron's habit of even starting them in the first place, that caused us to split apart. Further and further we grew, and I never once thought about how bad it was getting until it was too late. How he ordered me around, how he wouldn't let me leave, how he used Rose as a way to make me stay, until it escalated to how he physically stopped me from running and threatened to kill me. I wanted to run so badly, to scoop Rose into my arms and slip away into the night.

But I never ran.

I can never bring myself to do it. I have no income. It has been nearly five years, and Ron has already taken too much of the control I once had over my life so that I am trapped. I need to start a new life, I need to leave, I need to keep my baby safe, I need to see my family after so long, I need to see my friends, I need... I need...

I need Harry. The first person I could console with besides my parents. The person I care so much for, the person I never let die, the person I visited on a daily basis, the man I loved. But it's too late to tell him. He was still recovering from the war when I last saw or even heard from him, and Ginny had divorced him mutually, as they both realized their marriage was going nowhere, even with a son. Ultimately, his son James chose to go with him, as they were much closer together than James was with Ginny. That was the last time I heard of him, and that was two years before Rose was even born.

And that was another reason why I thought our marriage never worked out. Rose had been conceived before our wedding, and we both felt obligated to marry each other then. Oh how I wished I had run away with my Rose and gone to live with Harry or my parents. What made it worse than ever, though, was the fact that Ron bought a house in the middle of nowhere and charmed it to look like some abandoned barn, making us disappear completely off the map.

And that's how it's been ever since. Wake up, beatings, gambling for Ron and cleaning for us, beatings, sleep, repeat. Every. Single. Day. The holidays are the worst of them, too. Christmas, Hallowe'en, Easter, and even our birthdays are filled with pain. It's Rosie's birthday that is the most horrid of them all, where I can't do anything but be forced to watch Ron beat her. That is the worst day of my life in all my years of living with him. We can't even say "Happy Birthday" to each other either, because how can you be happy if you're forced to look at your husband beat your loved ones? How can you be happy when you know your child has to sit in a corner and sob hopelessly as she watches you turn black and blue? Sometimes we don't even care about our new age. I remember when Rose was four and she kept wishing not to grow up anymore, not to have a birthday, because the beatings and suffering was too much to bear for someone so small and fragile. I know she never said it because she didn't want to make me feel even more dreadful — or perhaps she never realized what she was actually saying — but I know that she was yelling "I wish I was never born". It felt like a knife had been thrown straight into my heart when she first screamed that she never wanted a birthday into my chest while I was trying to clean her up. But sometimes, I agree with her. It's hard not to.

Life is dark and cold, and besides the comfort Rose and I draw from each other, it's so lonely. Then Ron came home one day with the worst news I would ever hear in my life. He had gone to see Harry and my parents. They all asked him why I wasn't even making an effort to contact them, which was exactly what he wanted. He knew they were getting suspicious, that they would send the police and Aurors to look for me. And he told them something so barbaric and life-shattering as one as heartless as him could say— I was dead.

When the words of what he had told the last hope we had left his mouth, my world crumbled. But time never stopped, my surroundings didn't slow; I only felt the last grip I had on the rope to escape this endless loop of suffering slip through my grasp. The jolt that physically hit me was most definitely the bottom I was hitting after all these years of praying for a way to run, of working my way up this rope to the light at the end of the tunnel. I wanted to be strong for Rose, and I wanted to find that last piece of white luminescence to hold for even a short time, but I couldn't. I ran to the garage that had become our room and crashed onto the floor, screaming into the freezing, hard cement.

When Rosie came rushing into the garage after me only seconds after, I never felt more hatred in my soul that I hadn't felt in years. But it wasn't her I hated. It wasn't even the beast who had taken this light away. It was me, the person who had to tell their own child that it was all up to us, that no one was coming now. And it wasn't the beatings that made us so weak and so easily breakable, it had been years since we had gotten a decent meal, and it wasn't as if we were getting any exercise, especially since we weren't allowed out.

And as such, Ron became the only one bringing in money. The house — which he had bought from someone he hadn't told me about (and who I doubt he even considered was a back-alley dealer) — has weak foundations and relies solely on Ron's Reparo spells every other day since he has taken and snapped mine. At least, I thought, the house would collapse and we could run away if we got out safely. Until then, we could only wait. Every day the doors and windows are sealed shut and both Anti-Apparition and Unbreaking Charms are placed.

I glance at the door sadly at the thought as I walk past it with Rose clinging to me, and I gently trace my fingers over it. With a sigh, I continue walking until I arrive at the garage entrance and I place my hand over the handle, giving Rose a soft kiss on her head before pulling open the door. A rush of cold air blows past me, but I am so used to it I don't shiver, and neither does Rose. I flick the light switch, only for a flash of blue light to flare up and disappear in a split second.

"No-no-no…" I groan under my breath, continuously flipping the switch up and down and failing to get the light back. I let out a sharp, annoyed moan and lightly sit Rose back on her feet. I tell her to stay where she is and walk in, fumbling my way around a large toolbox when I finally feel the carved designs on a lantern stowed away in it. After pulling it from the box, I finger around some more until I come into contact with the match box. I slide it open and pluck a match from its place and swiftly swipe it along the side, creating a loud hiss as the fire flashes up and dimly lights my surroundings. I tilt the lantern towards the match and the candle catches fire after a few seconds. Exhaling loudly, I shake the match until the fire dies out before crushing it with my shoe and throwing it away in a dirty old garbage can.

I turn around with a soft smile despite the oncoming pain I'll have to endure, and gesture for Rose to come. She does, hesitantly, and I grab both of her tiny, fragile hands in a tender sort of way.

"I want you to keep this lantern with you so you don't fall and hurt yourself if you need to move around," I begin quietly, pushing the object to her as she nodded, "and stay wrapped up in the blanket so you won't freeze," and I reach behind me to grab a moth-eaten blanket before I throw it over her shoulders, "and if the candle goes out, don't try and light it again. If I'm not back, find your Safe Spot and cuddle Cupcake." Finally, I reach underneath an empty cabinet full of holes to pull out a plushie of an otter I owned as a child and gave to Rosie.

"Can I go to my Safe Spot now?" She asks in such a voice that breaks me. I can only nod as I bring her into my arms and hold her tight. Her Safe Spot, as we call it, is in a corner of the garage where the wall sets back further and the light never touches unless she brings the lantern with her. It's where she keeps her favorite book The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle and an older picture of me and her when she was about one-and-a-half years old.

I place about four kisses around her head and she gives a small giggle she saves solely for me, and I can't help but chuckle with her. It's these moments that bring the little joy we have in our lives, simply relishing the fact that we're here now, we have each other, even if it's only for a short time. I pull away and hand her the lantern, and I nearly cry when she gives me one last hug and whispers, "I love you, Mummy."

"I love you too, Rosie," I say, squeezing her tightly before loosening and letting her step back. I nod, and she hurries off to her Safe Spot, but not before giving me one last look that tells me everything I need to know and sends a tear rolling down my cheek. I stand once she slips into the darkened corner, and make my way to the door, but I stop to stare at the corner in which Rose is hiding and say softly, "I'll be back, love," but I know she doesn't hear. And with that, I silently close the door behind me and bend down to the potted plant in the corner beside the door, and lift it to find the key to the outside of the door. It can't be locked nor unlocked from the inside, so Ron takes advantage of this and locks us in whenever it's convenient. After I regretfully lock it, I place the key back where it belongs and make my way up the stairs.

There is a full body mirror in the hallway and I catch a glimpse of myself. My once medium tan skin is covered in yellow and purple bruises, and both scars and cuts inhabit my body as well. My right eye is swollen and brilliantly purple too, and there's a scab on my lip. My curly brunette hair is messier and wilder than ever and filled with grease. I've gotten over feeling disgusting, but my reflection still makes me want to vomit. I was never the most attractive girl as a teenager, but I'm downright revolting now. Indeed, I'm not nearly the same girl I was before. Even my name has changed. Although, I don't even know what it is. Ron never calls me by my given name and instead hurls insults at me. I only know one thing.

I am no longer the Hermione Granger I remember.

A/N: ... I don't know about you, but I cried when I read this over. I honestly didn't mean to go so hard on some of the things here, but GEEZE did that backfire! This is going to be a short, multi-chapter story I'll be rotating every other day with 'Till We're In The Sea but it won't take as long to update it since I wrote this literally in a day.

But, let me know your thoughts and, as always, constructive criticism is welcome. Again, sorry for how much I poured my heart and soul into the emotional beats of this story, but I'm hoping it can kind if reach out to people who struggle or have struggled with something similar and let them know that they're never alone in this. If any of you guys are reading this, I'll be praying for you all :)

I hope all of you have a lovely morning, evening, night, and everything in-between!

~ Eclipse