My Substitute For Love

25th June 1999 (Ron is 19 and 34, Hermione is 19)

HERMIONE: I have gathered up the last of Ron's things from the bathroom and put them into a plastic bag. I don't know where to send them but I've got a pretty good idea where to go first.

"Hermione, what are you doing here at this time in the morning?" Ginny beamed as she opened the front door to the flat she shared with Harry.

I didn't know if the family knew that Ron and I had broken up yet, surely Ginny wouldn't be looking so carefree if she did, and if Ginny didn't know then Ron had obviously not been staying with them.

"Um I was looking for Ron actually," I smiled as I tried to hide the bag behind my back, "he's not here then?"

Ginny frowned at me.

"Why would he be? Surely he's at work isn't he?"

I refused to go to the ministry to see him. I couldn't face Lavender. I wouldn't have been able to stomach seeing the smug look on her face if she knew that she had won this long fought war after all.

"Oh is he travelling?" Ginny asked after my hesitation.

"Yes," I lied, "he is and I was just trying to track him down that's all. It's okay Ginny, I'll try the twins place."

Ginny had looked a little stunned at my sudden departure and I had apparated to Diagon Alley and found myself practically running to the twins shop. I forced myself to stop. I couldn't understand why I had needed to know where Ron had been staying ever since he reappeared from his seizure after our row and simply dressed and picked up his bags without a word to me other than, 'I can wait'.

I had owled him to tell him to collect his remaining belongings while I was out but the owl returned with the letter unopened. I had casually asked Neville when I saw him if he and Ron were on good terms since the warning he had received from the older version of Ron and Neville had informed me that he hadn't seen anything of Ron since that day. So he wasn't sleeping on Neville and Seamus' sofa.

"Hermione my dear future Weasley to what do we owe this honour?"

Well that settled that, I thought as I let Fred pull me into a warm hug while George nodded at me and continued to serve a customer at the counter, if he still thought I was a future Weasley then he couldn't have spoken to Ron recently.

"I was just looking for that younger brother of yours," I forced myself to grin, "he hasn't been by has he?"

Fred shook his head and called over his shoulder to George, who had finished with his transaction and crossed the shop floor to join us.

"You haven't seen Ronniekins recently have you George?"

"Not since he came by early last week with a broken nose and a shiner, he was about twenty six, twenty seven I think. Why has he gone A.W.O.L.?"

I began to walk backwards out of the shop with a carefree shrug.

"Not to worry, it's only something he forgot to take with him, I'll track him down. See you both soon."

Again I had abruptly left a bewildered Weasley, or in this case two of them, wondering why I was acting so oddly and tried to think of the next place he might be.

Charlie was in Eastern Europe at a conservation facility, Bill and Fleur were preparing for the birth of their first child, and Percy was...Percy, of course. He would have gone to stay with Percy, he was discreet and none of the family was talking to him, which would explain why none of them had heard about our spilt yet.

Before I knew what I was doing I was knocking on Percy's front door.

"Yes dear, can I help you at all?" the elderly doorman asked as he opened the front door to let me into the foyer.

"Hello I was just looking for Mr Weasley," I smiled as I scanned to wall of post owls for Pig.

"Oh Mr Weasley is at work at the ministry my dear."

"Oh I know but I was wondering if Percy's, I mean Mr Weasley's guest was..."

"Mr Weasley's guest?" the doorman frowned.

"Yes I believe his younger brother is staying with him temporarily? I have some things he wanted passed on and I was wondering if I could leave them with you."

"I'm afraid there's been some kind of mix-up young lady," the doorman said kindly, "Mr Percy Weasley doesn't have anybody staying with him at the moment. He does have quite a lot of brothers, maybe you're mistaken and the person you are looking for is with one of them?"

"Yes, I'm sorry you're probably right. Sorry to have troubled you sir."

I stepped down from the porch and tried to think. I couldn't believe that Ron would have gone home to his mother. I would have heard from her the second he arrived. She'd either be bemoaning my treatment and letting me cry on her shoulder or slapping me around the face for breaking her baby boy's heart. I suspected the latter was the more likely of the two. It was my only option left though so I apparated to the Burrow as soon as I found a secluded spot to do so unnoticed.

"Hermione I thought I heard a crack outside," Mrs Weasley said, she looked happy to see me and very relaxed.

Ron couldn't be here either. I don't know why I did it but I burst into tears.

"Oh my dear what on earth is wrong? Have you and Ron had some kind of falling-out? Is he travelling? Is he hurt?" she was getting herself panicky now so I had to stop her.

"No Mrs Weasley, well I don't know he may be, I don't know where he is and I don't care."

I broke down into her shoulder and she rubbed my back soothingly while I yelled into her woollen cardigan.

"But I do care and I don't want to anymore!"

RON: I had been sleeping in my office since I returned from the future and decided to heed Hermione's advice and just keep my head down and wait for her to realise the truth. I think Lavender knows. She's been bringing me food 'as a snack' with my last cup of tea of the day before she finishes work and leaves. I'd thank her or maybe even talk to her about it if I didn't think that she would read it the wrong way.

"Ron?"

I looked up from the deep grazes in my left arm and saw Bill frowning at me, causing the scars on his face to crumple into wavy lines.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him as I lowered my wand from the injuries I had sustained during my latest trip.

"I was just...hold on, first things first, are you alright there?"

I smiled and nodded, extending my bloodied arm to him so he could lean over and get a good look at it.

"It's fine, just grazes see? I appeared just as the wall outside the Leaky Caldron was closing and got myself caught in it a bit."

Bill winced.

"Ooh nasty."

I shrugged.

"I've had worse."

Bill sat down in the seat across from me as I finished healing the last of the scrapes.

"That's becoming your catchphrase."

I put my wand down and looked across at Bill expectantly.

"So what's up? Fleur and the baby ok?"

"Yeah fine," Bill said as he leaned forward over the desk to stare hard into me, "what about you and Hermione Ron? All ok with you?"

I wondered what he knew and didn't answer him. He huffed and sat back in his chair, folding his arms and shaking his head.

"I knew it," he sighed, "I've had owls from Ginny and the twins about Hermione showing up and acting weird before running out on them before they even knew what she was there for."

"Yeah?" I said, genuinely intrigued about this too.

"So you haven't a clue what that's about then no?" Bill probed, entirely unconvinced.

I looked away from him and drummed my fingers on my desk before glancing back at him again.

"Well I don't know what she's up to doing the rounds of the family no. What did she say to them all?"

"Nothing really, just that you'd forgotten something and she needed to give it to you. Doesn't seem to know where to find you which is odd seeing as I came right here and there you were."

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. Of course Hermione wasn't going to come here and face Lavender. I didn't respond to Bill's statement.

"Ron what's going on? Have you two fallen out again?"

I swished my wand at the open office door and locked it before performing a silencing charm.

"Blimey this must be something big," Bill said warily.

"I just can't let her hear this that's all," I said as I nodded to the now closed door that shut Lavender out from eavesdropping into my conversation.

"Oh Ron you haven't?" Bill said, about to give me a hard time for hurting Hermione just to have a bit of fun with an old flame.

"No I haven't," I said firmly and with a little resentment that it was such an easy thing for people to believe of me, "but what I have or haven't done in the past isn't the issue. I'm being falsely accused of something I can't prove I didn't do until twenty odd years time."

Bill blinked at me and I started at the beginning.

HERMIONE: I couldn't work out whether Mrs Weasley was wiping her eyes because I had been so cruel and unfair to Ron or because Ron was going to grow to become cruel and unfair to me.

"Oh Hermione dear, I understand that it must have been upsetting for you to have seen everything that you did but I have to say I'm amazed that when you confronted Ron about it and he told you there was nothing going on between him and this Lavender woman that you would call him a liar."

"But that's the thing Mrs Weasley," I tried to explain myself again, "I know he wasn't lying. I know he hasn't done anything, I heard him turning her down in his office myself but that's not the point. He'll come back to her in the future and he'll cheat on me then. I've seen him doing it, I know he's going to do it."

"But Ron sees the future too," Mrs Weasley said sadly, "and he sees the whole picture Hermione, not just a distant unheard conversation on a doorstep, he knows what he did and didn't do."

I felt my own eyes watering and wiped them before the tears could fall.

"I can't risk it. I can't risk my heart on this. It's already done now, we've broken up and he's moved out so could I just leave his shaving things and toothbrush here with you. You can give them to him when you see him next."

I slid the bag across the table to her but she just looked down at it sadly and shook her head.

"He didn't come home to me Hermione. He didn't go to his brother's or Ginny either so you say, nor his friends either, and I don't know when or if I'll see him to pass these on to him."

I felt sick. This was all Ron's fault but not at all Ron's fault at the same time. In order to save my own heart I had shattered his instead. I got up from my chair, leaving the bag on the table.

"I'm so sorry I lost him, I really thought he would go straight to one of you, and I hope you find him soon but I can't...I can't that's all."

I ran out of the Burrow and knew that Mrs Weasley was about to check the clock to see that Ron was at work, I had done the same thing when I had passed it by earlier on, and get straight on the floo to make sure that her son was eating properly and demand he come home to the Burrow as soon as the working day was over.

I felt glad that there would be somebody to look after him.

RON: Bill carried one of my cases and I heaved the other inside his house.

"Listen are you sure about this Bill? I mean you and Fleur don't need a lodger right now and..." I was interrupted by a stern look from my oldest brother.

"You are not sleeping in that bloody office one more night. I can't believe you didn't come to me right away. What have I always told all of you?"

I rolled my eyes and kicked my case against the wall so Fleur wouldn't trip over it.

"Bill is God, we defer to Bill at all times and if anybody messes with us they will meet Bill's bloody wrath."

He chuckled at this.

"I forgot about that, there's nothing like a blood oath to put little brothers in their place is there?"

I tried to smile at this. I didn't feel much like smiling but I knew he hated it when either the twins or myself were sullen. He said it wasn't natural.

"No I meant the other thing I always told all of you. You will never be too old to come to me for help with anything at all. I will never see any of you homeless or hungry or broke okay? Not ever."

"I'm not homeless Bill," I sighed, "I have a perfectly nice home thank you very much, I'm just not welcome there right now that's all."

Bill clapped a hand on my back and led me through to the kitchen.

"Patience mate, like she told you, it'll all work out fine don't worry."

HERMIONE: I resolved to have an early night. Owls had been coming and coming and I couldn't read another testimony to Ron's honesty and declaration that I couldn't know anything for sure about the future. Mrs Weasley had obviously spread the news of our separation and the verdict was in, Hermione is the bad guy in the scenario.

I would have expected nothing less. The Ron they knew hadn't done anything wrong.

I still didn't know where he was or whom he was with. I didn't know if Lavender knew and what she now intended to do about it if she did. I didn't know how to go about the rest of my life without Ronald Weasley in it.

"Oh crap!" I heard his voice groaning from the floor at the side of the bed.

"Are you hurt?" I asked instinctively as I leaned over to check his naked and well defined older body for signs of injury.

"No I'm just tired," he mumbled as he clambered up onto the bed and wriggled beneath the bedclothes, "where am I?"

"It's 1999" I said as I shifted uncomfortably away from his naked body as it spread out across the entire bed in that typical way of his.

"No I meant where am I? The other me, I'm in his spot."

I smiled briefly before thinking fast.

"He's on an assignment, something to do with recruitment you told me but we both know that's just a cover don't we?"

That's it; remind myself that Ron is capable of lying to me when he needs to.

"Mmm, sorry about that, I'd tell you but then I'd have to kill myself. I'd have to kill somebody, I didn't pay that much attention to the training that day," he murmured into the pillow while draping his arm over me and pulling me towards him.

I shouldn't do this. I shouldn't use this future Ron to get me through another night without him by my side. This was immoral. This was wrong. This was almost as bad as the abuse of the time travel I had accused him of. I had to tell him that he was to sleep on the sofa.

"When in 1999?" Ron suddenly said through a yawn.

I swallowed.

"April."

Ron smiled and snuggled in closer to me, resting his head on my lap where I was sitting up, and I realised that he had been checking the time of year so he could know if he belonged at my side or not. I smiled sadly because I had lied to him about it being April so he would think he did belong here.

For the time being, just for tonight, and without anybody around to tell him any different he belonged with me again.