"Is she any better?" Ron asked immediately, sweeping into the makeshift infirmary that the Order had been forced to make after the loss of St. Mungo's. "Is she any better?" Ron repeated again, though he had already known the answer from Ginny. Still, Ron looked at Madame Pomfrey with hopeful eyes.

"I'm afraid not," Madame Pomfrey said primly, as she already knew what he was talking about. "But at the moment she's fine."

Pomfrey knew instantly she had said the wrong thing.

"Fine!" Ron exploded, his eyes virtually flashing red. He calmed himself down quickly under Pomfrey's stern glare, though, as he knew that she was working her best at the moment with what she had. "Sorry," Ron added apologetically.

Pomfrey nodded curtly.

"Is there anything else, Mr. Weasley?"

"Yes, actually. I was wondering - you've mentioned that it would be possible to heal her if you had supplies from St. Mungo's?"

"Her and many others," Pomfrey sighed drearily. "But at the moment, we're so short on medical - wait, now, Mr. Weasley, you don't say that you'll be going to St. Mungo's! We can't have any more injured people as it is, much less you - Mr. Weasley!"

"Of course not. Purely hypothetical. Wishful thinking, I suppose," Ron lied in order to get out of the uncomfortable conversation, as strictly speaking, he should not have mentioned the operation or alluded to it in any form. Pomfrey gave him a suspicious glance, and he could tell that the old witch was much too clever to fall for such obvious deception. Nevertheless, she let the matter go. Perhaps no one in the world had been carrying greater weights on their shoulder for a long time than Ron Weasley, since he was the only remaining member of the trio that was supposed to save the world that was still largely uninjured and still very capable. Every time Ron passed, people would look at him with an odd sort of hope, thinking that he would somehow be able to magically lift them out of the situation. Things had only gotten worse with Hermione's near-fatal injuries.

"Can I see her?" Ron asked hopefully.

"You may, but it won't do you any good," said Pomfrey sympathetically.

Ron nodded grimly and went over to the bed of the person he cared about most in the world.

"Hermione," he said, unanswered, as he gazed at her. He grasped her hands lightly, searching for a sign of life. And of course, there were signs of life. A faint pulse. Slow, ragged, but substantial breathing. And worst of all, the occasionally flickering eyes, her hands and fingers twitching every now and then, unintelligible murmurs escaping from her lips. They only served to hurt Ron more, as somehow he always hoped that perhaps it was this time that she had woken up, and his hopes were always crushed in seconds. Ron looked directly into her eyes, searching for some sign of life, but they were where you could really tell that Hermione was still asleep, as they were uncharacteristically vacant and empty, even moving occasionally, but looking at something else, something that she and only she could see in her mind's eye.

Ron stared at her for another few moments, before a familiar voice interrupted him out of his reverie.

"Ron," Ginny said to him. "Come on, let's go to lunch."

Ron sighed but nodded slowly and got up. "Alright."

"Here, I already got you something," Ginny said, handing him a sandwich as they seated themselves. Ron looked around, depressed, as he noticed that, as usual, Ginny and he were distinctly separated from the rest of the group. People rarely treated them normally any more, especially after the Battle, and looked at both of them with odd looks of mixtures of hope in many of their eyes, and in some of the more lucid ones, of pity. Few, though, looked at him as a friend. Ron found that, barring a few notable exceptions, he simply couldn't socialize with anybody in the Order other than people who had known before all of this happened - Dean, Seamus, Neville, Lupin, etc.

"Did you get debriefed?" Ginny asked him as he ate.

"I did, yes."

"Tell you anything?"

"Just to get rested."

"Anything else happen?" Ginny looked at him, searching his eyes. Ron decided that it would be better to simply tell her, as she would find out anyway.

"Yes. I asked permission to do a covert raid on St. Mungo's - pick up the medical supplies that Pomfrey wishes she could get her hands on so much."

"I thought you might," said Ginny, leaning back, looking simultaneously excited, worried, but eager. "So...when are we going?"

Ron was used to this question by now. When Ginny had started and joined the Order - against the worried protestations of her mother, who was aghast to realize that the last of her children was now fully grown up and rather unwilling to let go - Ron (and Harry as well) had had to force himself to reconcile with the fact that Ginny was also going to put herself in great danger - a fact that he didn't warm up to at first. But, gradually, he got used to it, and though he also worried about Ginny just as much as he used to, he knew that she was far too strong-willed to let him hide her away. And in any case, he didn't really have any grounds to stand on. Ginny was just as much a woman as he was a man. She deserved to go. She had the right.

"Well," Ron said with his voice low, "McGonagall insisted that I do a recon mission first with another operative, and map out a plan of attack for her as well. If she likes it enough, she'll let me go."

"I'll do the recon with you," Ginny said fiercely.

"You'd be my first choice, Gin," Ron said, pacifying her. "But the operative is subject to McGonagall's approval."

"And why wouldn't she let me go?"

"She believes that I may perhaps let my personal feelings get involved. To a dangerous point."

Ginny comprehended immediately, and didn't push the subject, although Ron could tell she didn't like the idea of not coming.

"Alright. You'll tell me, then, when you leave, and put me on the team - right?" Ginny asked nervously.

"Right. In any case, I'm wondering who to put on that McGonagall would think suitable. Any suggestions?"

Ron and Ginny glanced around the room, looking for an operative that they could trust and who was capable. Ginny turned back to him after a minute.

"What about Chris?"

Christopher Galen nervously glanced around the outdoors again, and ran his hand through his wavy blonde hair. Chris was an attractive man, barely out of his twenties and only just having acquired top grade NEWT's from some obscure American school, the name of which Ron could never remember. Chris was one of very few Americans involved in the war currently happening, as wizarding Americans were insistent on staying out of European affairs and troubles. Chris, and scant few others, had some other ideas and thought that if Voldemort took over Europe, the consequences would be dire for the rest of the world as well. A useful contact that Dumbledore had made in America had notified McGonagall, and eventually, after an intense screening process, the Americans were let in and allowed to fight.

Chris was one of the few people that Ron could get along with very well whom he hadn't met in Hogwarts, or before Harry had died. For one thing, he didn't regard Ron as the possible savior of everything. The name of 'Harry Potter' simply didn't have the same mythology in America as it did in England, because when Harry miraculously survived and rebounded Voldemort's spell onto the Dark Lord, rendering him virtually powerless, Voldemort hadn't yet moved in on domination of America, as he still hadn't taken over Europe. So while Chris was aware of the whole story by now, and did know that Ron was the best friend of the deceased Chosen One, he didn't have the tendency to put Ron on a higher level than other men, or treat him like he was tremendously different. The second attribute that Ron liked about Chris was that he was incredibly aimiable. Which wasn't to say that everybody liked him, for he was too open, too honest (a trait that was key for McGonagall approving him), and too twitchy for everybody to like. Nevertheless, Ron found Chris's unfailing lack of any sort of attempts at lies or deception refreshing, and the two were fast friends.

"Alright," Chris stuttered out, in his jarringly American accent, "shall we go over the plan again?"

"Bloody hell, Chris," said Ron, rolling his eyes, "I didn't pick you because you were stupid, and McGonagall didn't approve you because you were stupid, either. You know the plan perfectly well."

"All the same," Chris said, then paused for a moment. "All the same," he repeated, "I would still like to go over it. I mean, I just don't have much experience in these sorts of affairs and you've just had so much and -"

"Chris!" Ron said, interrupting him. "Calm down, will you? We're not even doing any fighting here. Just a regular old recon mission here, alright?"

"Regular old! Regular old!" Chris repeated in a state of increasing agitation. "Maybe for you, but this is a mission of incomprehensibly disproportional danger!"

"Chris," said Ron, laughing, "I'm only a year older than you. You're acting like I'm Moody, or something. Now, are you done your hissy fit?"

"Fifteen months," Chris muttered under his breath. "And that was most certainly not a 'hissy fit', as you called it. Simply a case of slight nerves, was all. Just slight nerves."

"Right," said Ron. "You just keep telling yourself that. Apparate on three...two...one..."

The two men vanished from the pitch-black night, on the stroke of midnight.