Miss Granger Regrets

19th September 1999 (Ron is 19 and 42, Hermione is 20)

HERMIONE: Happy Birthday to me.

I sat in my lonely flat and sipped my coffee while staring into space and feeling more miserable then I had ever felt in my entire life. I was twenty years old and separated from my fiancé because of his impending affair with a woman who was buried yesterday afternoon. Ginny had stormed into the flat last night and screamed at me to get over what I had convinced myself I had seen between him and Lavender and take him back.

We had quite a nasty fight about it actually. I think the thing that made Ginny stop yelling at me was the look on my face when she told me that Ron was hurting and beginning to shut people out again. Harry had even started popping in to his office three times a day to make sure that he was holding himself together and not in any danger of falling off the wagon.

I didn't want that. I didn't want to cause him any pain but I couldn't just sit around and wait for pain to be delivered to me in twenty years time. I hoped that Ron didn't give in to his demons again. The Weasleys had been concentrating on Ron a lot more since Lavender's death and I had seen nothing of any of them other than Fred's uncomfortable smile when I passed him in Diagon Alley.

From what Ginny and Harry had told me Ron was blaming himself for not handling the situation correctly and he had some kind of blank on most of that last day he worked with her that he just couldn't fill in. Harry seems unable to look me in the eyes whenever he talks about that day with me. I think he's siding with Ron too, poor Ron who's done nothing wrong but being punished anyway. Poor Ron who had one brief conversation with his secretary in the morning and by the evening was defending himself against the barrage of questions from Neville and Seamus about how exactly he had gone about getting her to sign that transfer request.

I had seen him talking to Dean and Parvati outside Lavender's flat when I passed by her street to get myself some lunch. Lavender's family were removing her possessions apparently and Parvati had insisted she get there first to take away anything Lavender might not have wanted them to see. This whole thing had hit Parvati hard and Dean was comforting her while talking to Ron in the street. Ron was looking very thin. I tried not to let myself worry but you can't break a nine-year habit just like that.

I walked on and that was the last time I had seen him. I missed him. I hated how much I missed him. I hated that I couldn't hate Lavender anymore. I hated the way Mrs Weasley had looked at me when I dropped a three-month-old Ron off at the Burrow just the other day. I wish I had never seen what was coming so I could at least have Ron for those twenty or so years before I lose him to his long dead ex girlfriend. I don't know how Ron can stand knowing the future, I only know the half of it and I'm finding just that unbearable.

I flinched as the bathroom door opened and an older version of Ron stepped out with a bath towel wrapped around his waist. He smiled at me when he saw me sitting curled-up on the sofa.

"Ron Weasley circa 2022 at your service," he joked.

"Get out," I mumbled as I got up from the sofa and rushed into the bedroom.

"Sorry?" he frowned at me in confusion.

I grabbed a handful of the things Ron had left behind when I kicked his present form out and threw them at the new arrival.

"You don't live here, get out!" I snapped as I closed the bedroom door and leaned against it to make sure he didn't try to come in and attempt to win me over with his charms.

I listened through the door but I heard nothing other than the muffled sounds of fabric moving and then the sound of something being filled with water from the tap. He was obviously getting something to drink before leaving without protest. I sighed; relieved to know that the Rons of the future knew their place wasn't with me any more.

"Hermione?" Ron's deep voice called through the closed door, making me jump with fright as I had been straining to listen as if he was still all the way inside the kitchen.

"I said get out Ron," I called, as I struggled not to sound upset.

"Yeah I will, I am, I just wanted to say..."

"Don't!" I ordered as I shoved my way away from the bedroom door and flung myself down on the bed.

I forced my eyes closed and buried my face into the pillow as I heard the bedroom door opening.

"I said leave!" I screamed into the pillow.

I felt the weight of him sitting down on the far corner of the bed.

"Have any of my other selves explained the gravity of time travel to you before Hermione?" he said calmly.

I tore my face away from the pillow and glared at him with watery eyes.

"I don't want to talk to you Ron. I don't want you here. You're only here because she's dead now."

Ron blinked as if I hadn't spoken at all and began to pick at a loose thread in the bedspread while he spoke.

"Y'see the bigger the situation the more versions of me get pulled toward it. It's like that time Harry almost drowned in that cellar and I travelled out of it while another version of me made it back there at the same moment to save him. The gravity of my originally leaving Harry was so heavy that an older me got pulled right back there to help him."

I sat up and held the pillow to myself.

"I don't care what explanation you've got for what you've done I just want you to go Ron. Go now," I said firmly.

"Then there's that multiple me day at Fred and George's isn't there? I torture myself to give myself an alibi and keep me out of Azkaban. That's a fairly traumatic thing Hermione so I kept on going back to that day; that place at that time."

I frowned at the strange look on his face. He was explaining something to me but not to get himself out of any trouble. It seemed as if he just needed to give me a lesson in the science of time-travel. I drew a breath to demand he leave again but he was already going on with his mini lesson and I bit my lip and let him continue.

"I spend my whole life being told that it's my fault Lavender killed herself so I just keep on going back. I keep on showing up in her flat and trying to stop her. I've saved her life five times already and I always know that I'll eventually get there on that last day and it won't do any good. I show up at the twins shop year after year for decades and I still have to watch myself get tortured. I show up at Lavender Brown's flat year after year and revive her from poisonings, replenish her blood when she slashes her wrists, clear the air when she tries to gas herself and the whole time I know it's all for nothing Hermione. I do nothing to save her in the end but I keep going back.

"You told her..." I was going to tell him what I had overheard that day.

...that's the girl I like!

"...I saw you letting yourself in and out of her place over and over again."

"Yes Hermione," Ron said with a little annoyance, "I let myself in because I knew she was going to hurt herself but I let myself back out again too. I always left again. I left by time travel or by the front bloody door don't you see?"

I suddenly felt shaky.

"But," I felt just as confused as I had done the day I had asked Ron to leave, "you would... You were always hugging her."

"What was I supposed to do Hermione?" he said as he leapt up from the bed and began pacing in annoyance, "She'd just tried to kill herself for the umpteenth time. I'm supposed to talk a knife out of her hand and then wave cheery-o and piss off, how would that help her stay alive another day?"

I tried to stop myself believing him. I could see it in his eyes though he was so sincere. I felt like throwing the bedroom window open and screaming into the street. This couldn't be true. I couldn't have really broken Ron's heart for nothing. I wouldn't have just thrown away what we had because of a misunderstanding. No this is the older, cleverer Ron. This is the Ron who cheats on me. This is the Ron I hate.

"No matter what I think of her or you think of her or anybody else thinks of her she didn't deserve to die like that," Ron's eyes were growing red as he spoke.

I shook my head. What had I done?

"You never...?" I barely managed to say before clasping my hand to my mouth with a sob that lodged itself in my throat.

"I never, ever, ever need anybody but you Hermione."

"Oh Godric!" I said with a shaky breath.

I had just ruined everything I had with the love of my life. He told me the truth all along and I just threw it back in his face and now... Harry thought he was going to start drinking again and Ginny said he was in pain and I'd seen for myself that he wasn't looking after himself properly. I had hurt him and he hadn't done anything wrong. I had hurt him and he never did anything to deserve it.

"I was there last week when she threatened to drug me or kill herself. I was there the week before that when she was making a noose, a noose Hermione!" Ron said as he sank back down onto the corner of the bed and dropped his head in his hands, "I'll be there again next week to see her do something else or try to convince me that I really do love her after all and I don't know when it'll stop."

I crawled across the bed and held him tightly. He turned into my embrace and we hugged silently for a couple of minutes before he spoke again.

"This whole mess ruins so many lives Hermione and you've got the opportunity to let it go now. She's still alive for me, she's never been dead, but it's over for you. You can let her be dead and move on. You can get married and become a mother and grow old disgracefully but I'm just stuck in this bloody loop with Lavender until she eventually kills herself for me too."

He pulled back from me and looked me in the eye.

"I've been waiting over twenty years for her to die."

I always thought that those moments in films when a hysterical woman gets slapped around the face by a sensible strong man was a load of old tosh but this whole conversation had been like a cold hard slap in the face for me. My hysterical gibberish had been knocked clean out of my head and I saw myself for the absolute raving fool I was. I leaned forward and kissed the wise old Ron before me and he gave me a sad little smile.

"So you're off now then are you?" he said.

"What?" I frowned with a smile I couldn't suppress. It was as if a heavy burden had been removed from me and I was now as light as a feather.

"You're going to go and find me and bring me back home now I suppose," he chuckled.

I was, he was right; I was going to do exactly that.

"Yes," I laughed as I nodded nervously, "I don't know where to look though, I don't know where you went."

He cupped my face in his hand and kissed my forehead before whispering into my ear with that wonderful hot breath of his.

"You find me at Bill's."

I was running before I knew it, calling back to the Ron in the bedroom as I grabbed a handful of floo powder.

"Thank you Ron, help yourself to something to eat, and I'll see you..."

"I'm gone by the time you come home!" I hear him laughing from the bedroom but I am already engulfed in the green flames and toppling out of the fireplace in Bill and Fleur's living room.

I felt myself shaking with nerves and fear and excitement. I wondered if he was angry with me. I wondered if he could forgive me and if he did how long it would take for him to do so if he did? I wondered where the hell he was.

"Ron?" I yelled.

I heard a frantic shushing coming from the hallway just outside the open door to the living room and Ron appeared cradling baby Cam in his arms.

"I've only just got him off to sleep you... Hermione?" Ron froze and stared at me.

I was shaking so much now that I felt as if I was about to spontaneously combust. Both my hands were balled up into tight fists, my fingernails cutting into my palms, and my knuckles white. I didn't know what to say or if it was possible for me to say it without waking the baby. All I could do was stare at him and vibrate with all of my repressed emotions.

Ron's shoulders sagged he gave a deep sigh before carrying the baby past me and over to a tiny cradle beside the window.

"Listen if you've come to have a go at me then let me put Cam down first. Fleur'll kill me if I disappear while I'm holding him."

An anxious smile broke across my face as he set the baby down with his back to me and I took three steps toward him so quickly I wondered whether I had stayed still and the room had shifted around me in order to bring us together even faster. Ron covered Cam with a blanket and turned around to take what he thought I was about to throw at him, more anger and punishment and blame for the whole Lavender situation, and as soon as I saw him parting his lips to express his shock at seeing me practically nose-to-nose with him I threw my arms around his neck and closed my mouth over his with a deep passionate kiss.

His body was rigid for a moment before he put his hand upon the back of my head and began to kiss me back. We kissed in front of the sleeping Cam's cradle for what felt like an age before my sudden need to beg for forgiveness hit me and I broke out connection without moving further than a centimetre away from him as I spoke.

"I've been such an idiot Ron, I'm so sorry I treated you like that," I planted a kiss on his lips before continuing, "I'm so sorry I hurt you," I kissed him again, "I knew," and another kiss, "I knew you would never do that but my stupid brain took over and I should have listened to my gut instinct," I kissed him again, lingering a little this time, "I knew you were telling the truth."

I began to cry suddenly and buried my face into his neck.

"It's ok babe," he said to me soothingly as he rubbed my back.

"No it's not!" I growled into his chest, trying my best not to wake the baby with my exclamations of guilt, "I can't believe I did that to you. I'm sorry Ron; I don't know how you can ever forgive me for this. I've hurt you so much."

Ron lifted my chin and forced me to look him in the eyes.

"It's ok," he smiled, "I went to you, that time I travelled when you told me to go, and you explained to me that you'd be back and all I had to do was wait for you."

I felt my shakiness coming back and my knees turning to jelly.

"You've been waiting for me all this time?" I said with a barely audible squeak.

"Of course I waited," he laughed, "I would have waited a year if that was how long it took, or more. Although I'm glad I didn't have to. This has been really hard."

I pulled his head toward mine again and I kissed him and wondered what on earth had ever made me doubt him. Oh yes, the evidence of my own eyes, I must remember to blind myself as soon as I get Ron back home. Blind myself and stop thinking. I will never think ever again. All I'll do from now on is feel.

"I've missed you so much," I breathed as I squeezed him tightly, "I'm so sorry..."

"That's it for the apologies okay?" Ron said as he hugged me back and I felt him kissing the top of my hair.

I nodded against his chest before looking up at him and letting out a short combination of a laugh and a sob.

"Can you come home now?" I asked him.

He pushed my hair back from my face and kissed me on the tip of my nose.

"Well I'm babysitting right now," he said with an apologetic frown.

"Not anymore you're not," Bill's voice sounded from the doorway where he stood with his arm around Fleur who was wiping tears from her eyes, "Get out of my house little brother and take your girlfriend with you."

Bill was smiling at Ron as the four of us stared at each other and seemed to be mirroring each other's poses.

"Fiancée Bill," I corrected as I squeezed Ron a little tighter, "I am his fiancée not his girlfriend, if he'll still have me?"

I looked up at him and saw that he was looking at my left hand at the ring I still wore on my finger.

"Well you still have the ring I see. It'd be a shame to waste it."

Bill laughed and Fleur cried into his shoulder. I looked at the ring myself now. I had never taken it off, not since Ron had slid it onto my finger himself. I suppose there was always that part of me that knew I was still his and he mine. I took his hand and led him over to the fireplace.

"Come on, we've got some catching up to do."

A/N Sorry the updates aren't as regular as they normally are, I've been fighting eye strain this past week and have taken to wearing sunglasses while writing! If any of you have any tips on how to get my vision back I'd be most appreciative.

In other Shari news my first ever fanfic, Eternal Sunshine of the Scourgified Mind, has been nominated for a fan fiction award. I wonder if this will mean I can demand a trailer during my next fic now that I've made it? I can hear myself now, "You call this Champagne? Bring he the head of the craft services!". Anyway it's called the Phoenix feather and they've got a Yahoo site,(that http thing thatcomes at the beginning of every link)groups(dot) yahoo(dot) com / group / phoenix(underscore) feather/ (Sorry but this site won't let me type links etc.)

Right so I'm just off to buy a tiara and a fancy gown before donning my sunglasses and writing my big finale, I think I've got plenty of you a little worried about the outcome by now.

Shari