Chapter Three

Memory Lane

In the back of Hermione's closet there lay a series of shoeboxes, one on top of the other, a thin layer of dust settled nicely on each of them. In times of desperation, she would crawl to a little spot on the floor, set her handful of tissue on the floor next to her, and dive into 14 years of memories, satiating-or attempting to, anyway-the void within her, the need to turn back time and feel herself as a whole again. She would sit there for hours at a time, slowly making her way through the chronologically sorted boxes until either she fell asleep amongst the memories or temporarily healed herself. She never told anyone about them-not Harry or Ginny or anyone-because she felt it made her seem vulnerable and weak, and she didn't want her friends and family to know she had been unsuccessful at moving on and living her life fully. She was supposed to be strong. She was supposed to be resilient. She was supposed to be...okay.

But for the first time ever, Hermione found herself in the presence of someone more vulnerable than she, and so she crawled into the small space in her closet, pulling the rough, scarred hand gently next to her. When she saw that he was settled, she pulled out the first box, an apprehensive look in her eyes. Ron watched as her fingers slowly lifted off the cover and set it next to her. Watching him carefully, she placed the box in his hands, preparing herself for his reaction. He looked at her nervously, but soon began sifting through the objects, reading clippings from the Daily Prophet and letters exchanged between the three, and sometimes the four, of them. Hermione watched the expressions change on Ron's face; he seemed to be recognizing certain events, which pleased her greatly. After a while, he was ready for the next box, and over the next two hours she sat there with him as he relived his-his and Hermione's and Harry's and Ginny's lives. Hermione wanted so badly to speak to him, to talk about the events and voice the words that tickled her throat, but Ron had nothing to say and she felt the need to not disturb him before he was ready.

It wasn't until they reached the last box that Ron expressed any outward emotion. As he picked up the stack of clippings and began going through them, a tear welled up in his eye and slowly trickled down his cheek. Hermione was a bit taken aback, but she remained silent. She felt selfish wanting to talk until finally, after almost three hours of silence, Ron cleared his throat abruptly, making Hermione jump a bit.

"I...I can't believe I wasn't there for the wedding," he said remorsefully, his finger flicking the rough edge of the newspaper. Hermione looked at him painfully.

"You have no idea how hard it was for them to go through with it without you there. They almost didn't get married because of it, they were so, so troubled by it. It was...well, it was really hard for everyone, but it was a beautiful wedding, and...

She felt that if she carried on she would only make him feel worse, and so she let the words drift off into nothing. He picked up a small, blue velvet box in the corner and, as Hermione's breath caught in her throat, popped it open. Hermione hadn't opened that in over a year. She only stopped wearing it three years before, when she and Ginny got into a horrific row in which Ginny had screamed at the top of her lungs that Ron was not returning. Sometimes she thought if she opened it and wore it, it would somehow change things, heal her heart, make Ron come back, destroy the pain, and when the day came where she finally realized that was impossible, she stopped allowing herself the privilege to look at it. It put a spell on her, a spell under which she could no longer function. And so the box remained closed.

Until now. There she was, looking at it once again, but this time the spell was defunct. Because there Ron was, sitting right next to her. She looked over at him tearfully, her hands impossibly shaky. Ron, two fingers pinched together, carefully removed the small, glistening ring and examined it closely. Every flicker of light on the diamond caused more awe to stir inside him. He turned it around between his fingers a few times before turning to look at Hermione. By now, her face was streaked with salty tears, her eyes a deep pool of sorrow. Ron looked at her concernedly, brushing a tear from her chin. She glanced down at his hand and wondered why it felt so radiantly warm.

"Mione, what is it?" he asked, already knowing the answer but needing to hear it from her lips.

"Ron, I...I haven't looked at that ring in ages, and all of a sudden here you are-here you are! You, Ron, have been missing for six years and suddenly you are sitting here in my closet looking through boxes, shoeboxes filled with memories, things I put in here to look at because sometimes, sometimes I go crazy thinking about you and realizing I don't have you with me any more and wonder how it is I live my life! Because I loved you Ron, I loved you more than life itself, you meant more to me than everything in the world, and having to live without you for six years was the hardest thing anyone should ever have to go through...yet here you are, holding my engagement ring, the ring you gave me seven years ago, seven years ago, and I just...I don't know what to do with myself right now, everything I thought was real is crashing down around me because here you are...here you are and I-I just...oh," she said, and she collapsed onto Ron in a wave of sobs. Ron wrapped his arms around her tightly, holding him close to her, his face wet with tears as well. They rocked softly, back and forth, to a silent rhythm only they felt, and he stroked her soft, damp head gently. Out of the corner of her eye, Hermione saw a box hidden away in the corner and gasped. I forgot all about that box...

Ron followed her eyes and, seeing the box, pulled it from under its cover. Hermione stopped him, looking at him pleadingly as if begging him to stop. Ron saw the panic in her eyes and ignored it. He pulled the box into his lap, dusted off the top, and opened it. Inside were more clippings-more clippings? Merlin, how much of her life has she wasted with scissors in her hands cutting up newspapers?-but as he began to read them, he felt his heart drop. So this is it. This is how I died. This is where they took me. Hermione couldn't stand to look in the box, so she turned her head and pulled her legs to her chest protectively. Ron shuffled through a few of the papers until he found one with a picture on the cover, and as he looked at it closely, he felt cold and hollow. There, in front of his eyes, was Ginny, being reunited with Harry and collapsing into him in a fit of tears, Harry's robes diminished into nothing more than mere scraps, his body covered in blood and sweat and tears. Off to the side was Hermione, her head in her hands, sobbing uncontrollably, and standing around them were members of the Ministry, Aurors, Professors, his family, and people he knew from his childhood, all there. But where was he? And what was this? He read the caption below:

The aftermath of the terrible Death Eater attack in Surrey.

And suddenly, he knew.

"Hermione, this is when...this was when they took me.

Her bundled legs slid to the floor silently. She turned around sharply and trembled, "Took you? Ron...took you where?