A/N:  I know it's been FOREVER, but hey!  Life happens!  Sorry!!!!!!!!

Disclaimer:  I own nothing here except for the plot.

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Hermione pulled her coat tighter around her as she hurried down the city streets.  The streets weren't particularly nice to anyone, least of all a seventeen year old girl who came from an upper-middle class family and wasn't at all used to being on her own.  In the month since she'd run away from home, she'd grown rather accustomed to seeing the homeless people and criminals that made the streets their home, but it still unnerved her when someone would ask her for some spare money or, even worse, when someone offered her money for 'favors.'  Two weeks before, Ron had knocked a man out with one punch after the stranger had offered an exchange involving Hermione.  An argument had followed that night, though, because even though Hermione had been extremely thankful that Ron had been around, she was still outraged when he told her in no uncertain terms that she wasn't going anywhere after dark without him.  They'd screamed at each other for an hour until she finally realized how truly desperate he was to keep her safe.  And anyway, she agreed to humor him, as they both knew it would be an impossible condition to keep.  After all, her job didn't let out until far after dark, and his was so random that they never knew what time he'd be at home.

Their jobs.

That had certainly been an interesting adventure.  Hermione had always imagined herself being wonderfully successful with a job that would bring in more than enough money for her survival.  Of course, she'd also counted on having a degree.  As it was, though, she had no sort of degree or diploma, neither Wizard nor Muggle, and finding a job was a lot harder than she'd expected.  She had to deal with working a fake identity for one; she and Ron had found that things were much easier 'being' eighteen and married than it was being seventeen and runaways, so they'd created fake IDs and then tucked their wands away with the full intent to leave them hidden.  They were now, respectively, Helen and Ray West. 

They were Muggles now, and they needed Muggle jobs.  Ron had gotten hired on rather quickly at a small diner; waiting tables was one of the few Muggle jobs that he knew anything about.  It had taken Hermione a bit longer, but she'd finally landed a job at a downtown used bookshop.  Books had always been her passion, and she was rather surprised to find that she honestly didn't mind working.  The only problem was the low pay that she was receiving.  Ron did okay in tips when he actually got to work, but the diner relied heavily on seniority, and, as the newest staff member, he was usually the last one asked to pick up a shift.  So, money was turning out to be a problem for them.

On their first day on their own, they'd gone to the Bank of London and emptied out the savings account that Hermione's parents had set up for her when she was a baby.  It was a fair sized amount of money, but they'd nearly exhausted it after putting the deposit down on the small flat they'd found.  Their new home was in the worst possible part of downtown, and it wasn't even a real flat.  It was the attic of an old house that had been split up and rented out by a mad old woman named Mrs. Winkler.  She was quite eccentric, but she'd given them a fairly good price on rent.  The 'flat' was small, but it was enough for the two of them; it was quite rundown, though, and the furniture inside of it looked to be as old as Mrs. Winkler.  Their neighbors weren't the friendliest of characters, either.  There was an elderly couple who didn't quite speak English living on the second floor, and two girls who Hermione strongly suspected were prostitutes and drug addicts rented the basement. 

Things had been difficult for them, but they'd finally gotten enough straightened out to maybe work on making it.  They had jobs, they had a place to live, they had food thanks to the leftovers Ron managed to filch from the diner, and they had each other.

And that was really the main thing.

Hermione had never fully realized just how close Ron and Harry had been.  She known, of course, that they were best mates, but she'd never imagined the complete and total loss they would suffer if separated. 

Harry was gone, and Ron was falling apart.

He tried to hide it, of course, but Hermione could see right through him.  She saw the pain that flooded his eyes in the place of the laughter that used to occupy them.  She'd heard him in fitful rages early in the morning when he thought she was still asleep, cursing the world and asking no one in particular for an explanation. 

Ron just wasn't happy anymore, and it was tearing Hermione apart to watch him suffering.

She cared for Ron more than she liked to acknowledge, and the pain that she felt over Harry's death was multiplied every time she looked at her other best friend.  She couldn't bear to watch him fight the emotions that needed releasing, and so she did the only thing she could to help him.  She comforted him.  Not in a pat on the shoulder and soothing word way, though.  She comforted him by lying beside him and allowing him to sleep peacefully instead of fitfully.  She comforted him by kissing his cheek occasionally and squeezing his hand from time to time.  She comforted him simply by being there.

His best friend was gone.  But he still had her.

And what was she?  She'd asked herself that question so many times over the past month.  She was his friend, yes.  They'd always been bonded by their mutual friendship with Harry, but, for some reason, they'd always been inhibited from becoming as close with each other as they were with him.  They'd tried of course; God knows they had enough opportunity to bond, what with Harry always running off to Quidditch practice or saving the world and what not.  But there had always been something holding them back from each other, and it wasn't the fact that they thrived off of fighting with each other. 


And, to be perfectly honest with herself, she knew exactly what that something was.  It was the very something that caused her to lie awake at night and imagine that she was lying in his arms for a reason other than the fact that they only had one bed.  It was the very something that caused her to shiver when she would catch him staring at her from across the room. 

It was the very something that she wanted desperately to explore.

She'd felt bad at first, as though she had no right to be thinking of those sorts of things when her best friend lay buried somewhere six feet under the ground.  The guilt she felt over Harry's death was unreasonable, and she knew that.  But it didn't stop her from feeling as if she was betraying his memory by thinking about things that really had nothing to do with him.

Because it had never been about Harry.

Not that anyway.

What was between Ron and herself had always been about something much deeper.  Something much more complicated.  Something much more personal.

Something she was now thriving off of and drawing her survival from.

She wanted him. 

She wanted him in a way that she'd never wanted anything in her life.  She knew him inside and out.  She knew the inner workings of his soul.  She knew the secret thoughts he hid deep inside his mind.  She knew all the pain and love that mixed and flooded his heart.  And now she wanted to know everything else.

The past month had been hell.  There was no other way of putting it any more lightly.  And there had been a whole lot more to it than Harry dying, she and Ron running away, and them trying to fend for themselves.

There was a whole other kind of hell.


She was thinking about the hell of lying beside him and doing absolutely nothing but sleeping.  She was referring to the hell that occurred when she tried to force herself into believing that not acting on her feelings was the best thing for everyone. 

It was the hell of wanting something and not being able to get it.

She walked up the drive that led to the house she was currently residing in and noticed that all the lights seemed to be off in her attic flat.  She wondered if maybe Ron had picked up an extra shift at the diner because she knew he hadn't been scheduled to work late that evening.  She climbed the outside stairs and fumbled through her bag for the key; when she found it, she slipped it into the lock and let herself into the dark sitting room. 

Flipping the light switch, she glanced around for any sign that Ron was at home.  She didn't see any, nor did she see any sort of note or explanation for his whereabouts.  She decided to phone the diner after she changed out of her work clothes.  She knew theoretically that nothing bad had happened to him, but she couldn't help but feel a bit anxious when she didn't know where he was. 

She dropped her keys and bag onto the sofa and walked toward the back of the flat where the bedroom was located.  The door was shut, and she opened it cautiously, an unfounded fear settling lightly inside of her.  To her surprise, though, Ron was sitting on the bed with his back facing her.  He jumped lightly at the sound of the door squeaking open, and he spun around to face her.  She watched wordlessly as he let out a sigh of relief that the intruder was her, but her heart stilled slightly when he reached up quickly to brush something away from his eyes. 

"You startled me," he said briskly.

"Why are you just sitting in the dark?" she asked, evading his comment.

Ron shook his head dismissively.  "I just woke up from a nap."

She glanced at the bed and noticed that none of the pillows or blankets were mussed, so she knew immediately that he was lying.  She chose not to comment, though, and instead she just nodded and said simply, "Oh."

Ron stood up and reached over to turn a lamp on.  "So, how was work?"

She shrugged.  "It was a little slow.  Sort of boring."

He nodded wordlessly.

"What time did you get home?"  She tried not to make the conversation sound so forced, but it was difficult.

It was his turn to shrug.  "About six, I guess.  We were slow, too."

"Ron, why were you sitting in the dark?"

She surprised herself by being forward enough to launch straight back into her original questioning, but she wanted to know.  She wanted him to trust her enough to tell him.

"I told you I was napping."

"Why won't you tell me the truth?"

"You're saying that I'm a liar?"  He sounded offended, and he stared at her slightly in disbelief.

She sighed softly.  "No.  I just want you to be honest with me."  She looked very pointedly at him.  "You can tell me anything, you know."

Ron looked away toward the window.  "You know Mrs. Alvarez?  The woman downstairs?  She fell and twisted her ankle today; they had to take her to the hospital."

"Ron."  She looked at him sharply.  "Why won't you tell me what's wrong?"

"Why does something always have to be wrong?!" he exploded.  "And why do you have to be so bloody nosy all the damn time?!"

Hermione stiffened in shock.  She forced the hurt she was feeling to stay hidden and not show on her face.  She responded the only other way she knew how to; she yelled right back.  "Because you're too bloody stubborn to admit when something's bothering you!"

"Hermione, leave me alone," he said warningly.

She rolled her eyes in frustration.  "That's always your answer for everything, isn't it?  Just leave it alone."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

She just rolled her eyes again.  "You're not that thick, Ron.  Figure it out."

He was silent, assessing her briefly before looking away again without a spoken word.

Hermione, in defeat, just shook her head silently and turned to leave the room.  He stopped her, though, by speaking softly.

"It's been a month today."

Hermione halted her exit and slowly turned her head to face the back of his.  The words ran threw her like a chill; how could she not have noticed that it had been exactly a month?  It had totally slipped her mind.  Her breath caught in her throat as she realized that she had absolutely no bloody clue what to say. 

Luckily, he chose that moment to turn back around and continue speaking.  His voice was little more than a whisper, but she heard him perfectly.  "That's why I was just sitting here in the dark."

And then Hermione did the only logical thing that she could think of.  She crossed the room in three steps and wrapped him in a warm embrace; it was the only thing she had to offer him, but he seemed to melt into it.  Within seconds, she felt him hug her back, and they stayed like that, just holding each other, for a long time.

"I really miss him..."  His voice was so weak, so incredibly open and honest, that Hermione found it pitiful, and she had to fight to keep her tears from falling. 

"I know," she whispered back, burying her face deep into his chest and inhaling his scent.  Just knowing he was so close was as much of a comfort as she could get, and she felt him mirror the action as his face disappeared into the top of her hair.

"Why did this happen?" he asked desperately, his voice so full of emotion that it was unnerving.  "I still don't understand..." 

Hermione squeezed her eyes shut against the choked and pained sound of his voice.  She could feel the agony he was feeling just by listening to him speak, and she'd never been more frightened in her entire life.  She shook her head slightly, whispering a quiet, "Me, either."

She felt, rather than saw, the first tear he shed as it dropped onto the top of her head and slipped down her forehead and cheek.  He was crying.  And all she wanted to do was make him stop. 

"Hermione..." he choked on her name, and she felt his body tense as she wrapped him even tighter.  "I...  I just want it all to stop."  His words were airy and chopped as he continued.  "All of it...  All of the feelings... and memories...  All this hurt...  I just want it to go away."

He was shaking in her arms, and the only coherent thought she had was of making all of his pain disappear for him.  He'd saved her enough times; perhaps it was time to return the favor.  She leaned her head back slightly, causing him to raise his own and meet her eyes.  She could see to the depths of his soul in that blue, and she knew that it was with complete inhibition that he whispered, "I just miss him."

It was without hesitation or second thoughts that Hermione gently raised herself onto tiptoe in order to brush her lips against his.  She wanted to make his pain go away, and the only way she could rid him of his demons was to attack her own at the same time.  After their lips brushed each others' for a second, they parted, and Hermione lowered herself again, looking up and meeting his eyes again.  "I miss him, too," she whispered, letting him in completely as he'd done for her.

And then he was kissing her.  Deep in her mind, she knew that this made no sense.  Giving into something they'd been fighting for so long wasn't going to cure either of them.  It wasn't going to stop the memories or the pain.  It wasn't going to bring Harry back.

But it was helping.

Hermione's eyes fluttered closed the second he lowered his head and breathed against her lips.  And when he pressed his own lips to hers, she felt the rest of the world slip away.  In that moment, there was no one else.  There was only them.

And nothing she'd done before had ever felt as truly right as this did.  One of his hands tangled into the curls at the back of her head as he kissed her.  It started out gently, but his desperateness soon shone through, and she lost herself in the moment, giving herself over completely to him.  She had nothing else to offer him, so she surrendered herself.

She felt the return offering in the way he kissed her, the way one hand clung so desperately to the back of her head, and the way his other hand slid down her neck and rested on her shoulder. 

And when he broke away from the kiss only to lean down and place his lips next to her ear, she thought she would die from the simple pounding of her heart beating so close to his own. 

"Hermione, I love you."

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Heeheehee!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Ah, I'm evil!  I really need reviews because the next part is scheduled to be more "adult," and I want to know if that's what you guys want.  If you'd rather it be tame, then please let me know. 

I'll write what you guys want!