Author's Note:

WOW! So many reviews for one chapter. I really must thank everyone that has taken the time to leave a constructive comment, both in the review section and on the message board. It's appreciated, believe me. I understand how hard it can be to pick your jaw up off the floor and string a coherent sentence together, especially after you've been gob smacked by a character death, so thank you. It's the reviews that keep me writing, although in this case it was a bit of a double-edged sword. I admit, I expected people to be shocked, especially since everything happened so fast. What I didn't expect was that so many people would be in denial about Ron's 'death' or downright belligerent about it.

I think part of the problem may be that a great many people have been skimming the chapters and sacrificing the details, because they are eager to read the resolution to a particular cliffhanger, or because they only care about a certain portion of the storyline. Now there is nothing wrong with skimming. I do it myself all the time and as much as I'd like to say I always go back and re-read those stories again later, that's not always the case. Sometimes giving up details is a sacrifice I'm willing to make. But when I decide to skim, I know that I'm running the risk of missing key plot points, so if I get confused, I really have no one to blame but myself.

I do realize that it can be difficult to wait for a resolution to a cliffhanger, especially with the delay between updates, but I think that it's some of the people that have been skimming that are confused and / or upset by Ron's actions now. Not only did they not see this coming, they are now incapable of predicting what will happen next. So if you find yourself in that position and you really have no clue what is going to happen with Ron in this chapter, it may be wise to go back and re-read chapters 28 & 29 again BEFORE reading this chapter to avoid further confusion. The entire plot of the story is spelled out quite clearly in those two chapters.

And just for the record, the ending of this story was one of the first things I plotted out. I had it all worked out in my head BEFORE I started writing the first chapter. And while I understand that some of you would like things to happen differently, it is simply not going to happen. I have no intentions of changing anything I had planned, because every single chapter has been leading up to this. So please, stop asking me to alter things that have happened, or change the direction of the story because it is NOT going to happen.

Ok, I'm going to step off my soap-box now. On with the story.

Chapter 74

"BASTARDS!" Hermione screamed, snatching the wand out of Ron's limp hand and waving it over the floor she was crouching on, causing the glass and debris around her to soar into the air and fly towards the two men standing in front of her. "HE'S DEAD AND IT'S YOUR FAULT!" she bellowed, scooping her Là nain talisman off the ground and clutching it in her fist, before jerking her tear-stained face up, and locking her angry glower on the pair of Death Eaters. "I'm going to make you pay."

It wasn't so much her words, as the look in her eyes when she said them that set off warning bells for Peter Pettigrew. He'd seen that look before in Sirius's eyes and he recognized madness when he saw it. The young woman kneeling on the ground might be bloodied and heartbroken, but she was far from beaten. If anything, she was even more dangerous now than she had been before, because in her mind she had very little left to lose. Fortunately Peter never had any intentions of confronting her to begin with, so that didn't pose much of a problem for him.

The same can't be said for Dolohov, Peter thought, transforming into his rat form, both to avoid the razor-sharp shards of glass flying at his head and to present a smaller target, should Hermione send another spell his way before he managed to slip away. All that time in Azkaban and still just as arrogant as ever. He still equates goodness with weakness, Peter thought, scurrying out of the line of fire as his comrade threw up a hasty shield to protect himself, but that's his problem, not mine.

"SANGUINEM INFERVESCO!" Hermione bellowed, jabbing her wand at the only person left standing in her way.

The fiery bolt that shot out of her wand and soared towards Dolohov's chest definitely got his attention. The situation he'd found so humorous mere seconds ago abruptly stopped being funny when the little bitch on the floor tried to boil the blood pumping through his veins. Surprise didn't really do justice to what he felt as he was forced to go on the defensive and strengthen his shield. He'd expected something feeble, like a Stunner, or perhaps a Disarming Charm; what he hadn't expected was for her to actually try and kill him.

Technically the Mudblood's curse wasn't the same caliber as an Unforgivable, but it definitely wasn't something that was respectable enough to be taught as part of the curriculum in Dumbledore's pathetic excuse for a school. Neither was the Suffocation Spell she fired at him next. Perhaps there was some truth to the rumors he'd heard after all. Perhaps Potter wasn't simply trying to dispose of the Dark Lord, so much as replace him. This girl, at least, had delved into spells that skirted the edge of what the establishment considered decent. She'd moved well beyond conventional Defensive Magic. The problem, for her anyway, was that she was still using curses that could be deflected. Angry as she was, she obviously wasn't willing to cross the line and use something unstoppable. That would be her downfall, because sooner or later she'd leave him an opening and that was all Dolohov needed.

"No one makes a fool out of me and lives to talk about it," the Death Eater vowed, knowing that neither Voldemort nor Bellatrix would fault him for ending her miserable life now. Important to Potter or not, the Mudblood had sealed her fate the moment she'd attacked him.

But rather than allow his threat to distract her, Hermione simply responded by hurling another curse in his direction, this one designed to dislocate his extremities upon impact.

"EXTORQUEO!"

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" Dolohov shouted, letting his shield drop when the opportunity he'd been waiting for finally presented itself. Her spell would hurt like hell if it connected with any part of his body, but it would be far from fatal. He'd recover, she would not.

The room immediately took on an ominous green glow as the Unforgivable Curse sped towards Hermione, and yet she didn't make any sort of attempt to move out of the way. For a moment Wormtail, who was still watching from a nearby corner, thought she must be so distraught over Weasley's death that she welcomed death herself, but no sooner had the thought occurred to him, than the unexpected happened. The same white light that had surrounded Ron when his spell backfired sprang up around Hermione just before the Killing Curse reached her.

Impossible, Wormtail thought, as he watched the lethal spell collide with the mysterious shield and rebound on its caster. That's just not possible, he told himself, as the bolt of green light caught Dolohov square in the chest and he toppled to the ground with a loud thud. It's not possible to block the Killing Curse, Peter insisted, scampering through the hole he'd blown into the wall and disappearing in the shadows outside before Hermione had a chance to spot him, and yet I've just seen it happen. This can only mean one thing, Peter decided, as the shock of what he'd witnessed waned enough for him to think more clearly. Potter's figured out how he defeated the Dark Lord all those years ago and he's shared that knowledge with his friends. That ought to make things interesting. The question is, can I get away with keeping this information to myself?

¤

"Mother of Merlin," Tonks swore as she stepped up to the hole that had been blown in the side of Honeydukes and cautiously peered inside the sweets shop to assess the situation. As an Auror she'd been trained to scan a scene and quickly take in details while actively searching for anyone or anything that would pose an immediate threat, but that didn't prepare her for what she encountered. One Death Eater on the ground, clearly dead despite the fact he didn't have a mark on him; the legs of another jutting out from behind the counter on the opposite side of the room; and between the two, in the center of the rubble was the lone survivor, kneeling on the glass-strewn floor, kissing the corpse of Ronald Weasley.

"My God!" Remus Lupin groaned, his voice thick with pain as he stepped up behind the young Auror and took in the scene for himself. "Hermione?" he called out, immediately moving forward when he spotted her among the carnage.

"DAMN YOU!" Hermione shouted, not at Lupin, who she ignored, but at Ron. "BREATHE!" she demanded, as she pulled away from his mouth, placed both of her hands in the center of his chest and pushed down with all her might. "I know you can hear me," she said, letting up for just a moment and then pressing down on his chest again. "So breathe!"

"Hermione!" Lupin said again, only this time his voice was laced with surprise, rather than sorrow.

"What is she doing?" Tonks asked, clearly baffled by Hermione's odd behavior. One second she appeared to be kissing her longtime friend goodbye and the next she was shouting at him and pounding on his chest.

"I know it's hard to accept, but he's gone."

"No, he isn't!" Hermione shouted at Lupin. "He's still here," she insisted, momentarily letting up on Ron's chest, then pressing down on it again. "I can feel him."

"No," Lupin said patiently, assuming she was in shock. He'd hoped that he'd be able to reason with her if he could engage her in conversation. Unfortunately, that plan didn't have the desired result, because rather than argue with him, Hermione shifted her weight off Ron's chest and snatched up the wand that had been lying beside her knees.

"Contego," she said, throwing up a barrier to prevent the Order members from interfering with her while she was trying to resuscitate her husband. She knew it wouldn't keep Lupin away indefinitely, especially with Tonks there to help him break through the buffer, but the spell was a lesser-known variation of a Shield Charm that she had stumbled across accidentally, so she hoped its obscurity would buy her a few minutes. And a few minutes was all she'd need if Ron would just cooperate.

"Viscera Pulso," she said, turning her wand on Ron next and pointing it straight at his heart.

"NO!" Lupin shouted, the calm demeanor he'd forced himself to adopt all but forgotten when he realized Hermione was trying to restart Ron's heart with magic. "You can't do that," he insisted, moving forward until her shield forced him to stop. "I understand how hard this must be for you, but you have to let him go. Even if you do manage to get his heart beating again, he'll be no better off than a Dementor victim. Trust me, you don't want that."

"No, Remus, wait," Tonks interjected, Hermione's comments about feeling Ron suddenly making sense to her. Of course, she thought, mentally slapping herself upside the head for taking things at face value when she knew the lengths the couple had gone to in order to protect Harry. She's not barking at all. She can feel him, because they're still linked. "That's not necessarily true in this case," Tonks said to Lupin. "They're connected by a Coupling Potion. Hermione is anchoring his soul."

"They're what?" Lupin exclaimed loudly, spinning around and gaping at Tonks with a horrified expression on his face. "How could you keep something like that a secret from..."

"SHUT UP!" Hermione shrieked, cutting her former professor off before he could finish his statement. "Just shut up and let me think for a minute. I need to concentrate and I can't do it with you two yammering behind me. I just need to think," she repeated, this time to herself. "Think, damn it," she said, before pinching Ron's nose and bending over to give him another breath.

"Damn you, Ron," she mumbled, as she pulled her mouth away from his and placed her head on his chest to make sure her spell had worked properly. "You knew I wasn't ready to deal with this yet, but you just had to go and play the hero anyway," she admonished, breathing a silent sigh of relief when she heard the rhythmic beating of his heart beneath his chest. "We could have at least tried to take them on together," she continued, as if Ron was merely lying there injured and was capable of hearing her lecture. "Pettigrew didn't even put up a fight. All I had to do was find my wand. This was supposed to be our last resort, not our first, you daft fool. What were you thinking? What was I thinking telling you how to do it? But you just wouldn't let it go, would you? You just kept pestering me until I finally gave in and now look at you. You were so worried that I'd do it first that you jumped the gun and beat me to it. If you think I'm going to thank you, you're wrong. Now stop cowering wherever it is you are and get back in your body and deal with me."

"This is ridiculous," Lupin muttered, pointing his wand at the young couple on the ground. He suspected that Hermione was rambling in an effort to stave off her grief, but enough was enough. This wasn't a Boggart, Ron was really dead this time and she had to accept that. "Finite Incantatem," he said, hoping to break through the barrier holding him back. "Are you just going to stand there and do nothing?" he asked Tonks, when his spell penetrated the shield as if it wasn't there at all and struck the floor with no results.

"Pretty much," Tonks replied. For now anyway, she added in her head. She'd recognized the spell Hermione had used and she knew exactly how to counter it. That particular shield wouldn't let a person through, but it didn't hold magic back. One well-placed Stunner and the barrier would fall right along with Hermione. That just wasn't something Tonks was prepared to do quite yet.

"You can't be serious," Lupin hissed softly. "Look at her, she's bleeding," he said, which was perfectly true. There was a deep gash on Hermione's cheek and another one across her left thigh, not to mention several smaller cuts on her arms, most which resulted when she was thrown into the sweet display. Of course, up until that point, Hermione had been too preoccupied to really notice. In fact, she still wasn't feeling any physical pain, but the comment must have caught her attention, because she looked up. "Merlin only knows how badly she's wounded," he continued. "She needs our help."

"OF COURSE!" Hermione cried triumphantly when Lupin unwittingly provided her with the inspiration she'd needed. "Why didn't I think of that before? It's not just our souls; we're connected by blood as well. That's it," she said excitedly, setting Ron's wand on the ground and giving him another breath, before picking up a large shard of glass. "Only, which line is it?" she said uncertainly, faltering after she'd snatched up Ron's left hand. "Which one is the life line?" she asked the startled adults, holding her own palm up in the air and looking at them as if she wanted them to point it out.

"What?" Tonks asked, as Lupin's mouth fell open.

"The life line," Hermione reiterated impatiently. "Which one is it? Oh forget it," she said, when neither of the adults answered her quickly enough. "I'll just cut them all. It's not like we haven't done that before," she muttered to herself, thinking about the talisman she'd hastily shoved in her pocket before beginning C.P.R. on Ron. "What could it hurt?"

"It's the one on the bottom," Tonks said, earning herself a sharp look from Remus, who clearly didn't think it was beneficial to humor Hermione. "Well, it is," she said defensively. "Although," she added in a more confident voice, "it doesn't really denote the length of a person's life, so I don't see what use that will be. The health line may be what you're looking for. Then again, maybe it's not," Tonks said, when she realized that she'd managed to confuse Hermione even more.

"Health line?" Hermione questioned desperately. Did we even cover that while I was still in Divinations? she wondered, as she stared down at Ron's palm. We touched on Palmistry, but I just can't remember. DAMN IT! If I'd known I was going to need to know this, I might have stuck with it longer. "To hell with it," she said, placing the sharp end of the glass against Ron's palm, pressing down, and dragging it over his life line, leaving a thin trail of blood as she went. "I'm cutting them all," she stated, tracing every line on his hand, before dropping it in her lap, pressing the jagged shard of glass against her own palm, and doing the same thing to herself.

"I know you can hear me," Hermione said, tossing the bloodstained shard on the ground when she was finished with it and picking Ron's hand up again. "Listen to the sound of my voice," she said, pressing her bloody palm against his and linking their fingers. "Use it to find your way back. We're connected; soul to soul, body to body, blood to blood. If you can find me, you can find yourself. Now, breathe, damn you. BREATHE!"

"What was that word again?" Hermione asked herself, bending forward and breathing for Ron again, because he still hadn't managed to do so on his own.

She'd tried to find information on Resurrection Spells in the Restricted Section of the Library, but she hadn't had much luck. All she'd managed to find was a few references in passing and a few vague hints in the form of words that could be partial incantations. But even a partial incantation was better than nothing at this point. The problem was that her notes were hidden in her dorm room.

If only I'd had more time, Hermione thought, as she desperately tried to remember the words she'd copied down.

"Excito?" she questioned. "No, that might bring him around if his soul weren't in limbo somewhere, but that won't restore it to his body. Restituo? No, that's not it, either," she told herself. "It was something like reverse. Think, damn it. Reverso? No. Reversum?"

"Reverti?" Lupin said, without realizing that he'd spoken the word out loud.

"THAT'S IT!" Hermione cried, tightening her grip on Ron and pointing his wand at the place where their hands were connected. "Spiritus Reverti!"

¤

"MERLIN'S BEARD!" Tonks cried, jumping backwards and tripping over a large chunk of wall debris when Ron sucked in a tremendous breath of air. "DID YOU SEE THAT?" she asked excitedly, grabbing Lupin's arm to help break her fall as she pitched sideways. "She did it," Tonks continued, righting herself with Lupin's help and shaking him in excitement. "I was afraid it wasn't going to work, but it actually did. Do you have any idea what this means?"

The Weasleys will spend the rest of their lives visiting a lifeless husk in St. Mungo's? Remus thought, closing his eyes and shaking his head sadly.

"If she can beat the Killing Curse," Tonks continued, mistakenly believing that he needed her to explain, "then Harry can beat it, too. He really can defeat Voldemort."

"No," Lupin disagreed, shaking his head even more adamantly. "She hasn't beaten anything," he argued. "All she's done is…SHITE!" he cursed loudly, when Hermione swayed ever so slightly and keeled over beside Ron. "All she's done is make things worse," he snapped, springing forward to attend to Hermione when she lost consciousness and the shield that had been keeping him back faltered. "We have to get them both back to Hogwarts," Lupin insisted. "There's no telling what kind of damage that spell did to her."

"If it was dangerous why would you tell her the incantation?" Tonks asked anxiously, darting forward to help as Remus Conjured a bandage out of thin air and carefully knelt down on the ground beside Hermione

"I didn't mean to," he admitted, as he quickly wound the strip of cloth around Hermione's bleeding thigh and tied it as tightly as he could. "I don't even remember where I heard that word before," he added. "It just popped into my head."

"And out of your mouth?" Tonks asked, kneeling down to assess Ron's injuries. "That's not like you," she said, when Lupin didn't reply. "I know how much you hate to lose control, but admit it, you got caught up in the moment. You wanted it to work," she stated, reaching for Ron's blood-stained jumper and shoving it up until his chest was bared. "You can pretend to be as logical or as pessimistic as you want, but I know the truth. You wanted her to be right just as much as I did."

"What is that?" Lupin asked, catching a brief glimpse of the silver talisman hanging around the redhead's neck, before Tonks realized what he was looking at and jerked Ron's jumper back down.

"None of this blood is his," she said, choosing to ignore his question the same way he'd ignored her comments. "He has a broken rib or two, but they didn't puncture the skin. All of this," she said, pointing down at the crimson stain in the center of Ron's chest, "must be Hermione's. That's probably why she lost consciousness. She's going to need a Blood-Replenishing Potion as soon as you get her to Madam Pomfrey."

"And where exactly are you going to be while I'm doing that?" Lupin asked, standing up and pointing his wand down at Hermione. "Mobilicorpus," he said, levitating her off the ground.

"I thought I'd go to the Three Broomsticks and have a drink with Rosmerta," Tonks replied sarcastically. "Honestly," she sighed, "I'm going to continue looking for Harry. Once I help you find a Floo connection that is. My guess is that it's upstairs. It would probably be best if I went up first and had a look around, just in case."

"What happened to sticking with your partner?" Remus asked before the young Auror made it halfway across the room. "Weren't you the one that said we shouldn't be taking unnecessary risks and running off on our own?" he pressed on, moving forward and bringing Hermione along with him. "The sooner we get these two back to Hogwarts, the sooner we can both go after Harry."

"Fine," Tonks acquiesced, noting the determination in his deep gray eyes. He's just as stubborn as Sirius, especially when the safety of the people he cares about is an issue. There is no way I'm going to win this. "But I'm the Auror here," she added out loud, "so I go up first."

¤

"Don't do this to yourself, Molly. You heard what Remus said."

"He's my son. I'm not going to give up hope just because..."

"There never was much hope," Madam Pomfrey said softly, her voice heavy with regret. "I can only imagine how difficult this must be for you, but I wouldn't be doing you any favors if I allowed you to believe…"

"But his color has improved," Molly Weasley whispered back, "you said so yourself. And he's so warm now," she added, tracing the contours of her son's freckled cheek with the back of her hand as her eyes filled with tears again. "It's like he asleep."

Oh for heaven's sakes, Hermione thought irritably, roused by the two women's mutterings. Don't those two ever get tired of talking, she grumbled in her head, assuming that she was in her own bed and the noise that had woken her had come from her dorm mates. What could Harry have possibly done to have Parvati in tears already? She just got back to Hogwarts tonight.

But even as those words formed in Hermione's mind, another thought occurred to her, one that made her heart race as it plummeted to the pit of her stomach. Some of us didn't make it back, an uneasy voice reminded her as memories of Ginny vanishing under Harry's Invisibility Cloak with a little girl flashed through her mind. Unless, that was just a dream; just another one of those horrible nightmares, she thought, groping for the talisman around her neck to reassure herself as she often did.

"NO!" Hermione cried out, sitting bolt upright in her bed when she discovered that it was missing. "NO!" she screamed again even louder, as her eyes shot open and she realized the darkness surrounding her hadn't been created by the deep red curtains of her own bed, but the screens Madam Pomfrey used to separate patients in the hospital wing.

This isn't happening, a stubborn voice protested in the back of Hermione's mind. But even as part of her tried to deny the truth, the screen on her left parted and Madam Pomfrey's anxious face appeared.

"No," Hermione said again, tears flooding her eyes as she looked at the Healer. "No, it worked," she insisted, shaking her head. "I saw him breathe. It worked. It did," she said, her confusion giving way to anger. "I know it did. What have you done to him?" Hermione said accusingly. "You must have done something, because I can't feel him anymore. WHERE IS RON! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?"

"Hermione," Mrs. Weasley called out, her voice riddled with pain as she pushed past Madam Pomfrey and rushed forward to prevent the agitated girl from climbing out of bed.

"It's not true," Hermione insisted when she saw her own grief mirrored on the older woman's tear-stained face. "He's not gone. He can't be."

"There, there, Miss Granger," the school nurse said, snatching a drinking glass containing some sort of potion off the bedside table and holding it out for Hermione to take. "Drink this and…"

"DON'T CALL ME THAT!" Hermione shrieked, purposely knocking the concoction out of Madame Pomfrey's hand. Whatever that glass contained, it wasn't going to help her. Nothing would. "Why did I allow people to continue calling me that?" she said, more to herself, than to anyone else. "Why didn't I use his name? That must have hurt him, but he never said anything. He never let on, not even… No," Hermione said, covering her eyes with both hands and rocking back and forth on her bed as she switched back to denial. "It's not too late. It's not, it's not, it's not."

"Hermione," Mrs. Weasley said again, sitting down beside the distraught young woman and wrapping her arms around her.

"I want to see him," Hermione hissed, pulling herself together after a few moments had passed. "We're still married," she said, lowering her hands and leveling her red-rimmed eyes on Madame Pomfrey. "I'm of age and any decisions regarding his health are now mine to make. Not yours, mine! And I'm not giving up on him. Period. End of discussion. Now where the hell is my husband?"

¤

Yes, I'm afraid it's true, you're forced to endure yet another cliffhanger. The good news is, my room mate is no longer on vacation, so I should be able to get the next installment completed relatively soon.

As always, thanks to my wonderful betas for all their hard work. And a special thanks to Emmilyne for holding me hand and offering such great advice.