It felt extremely weird to be back at the Burrow after all this time, in part because it felt like no time had passed at all. Other than the inhabitants, not much had changed about the magical house. Hermione was greeted warmly by everyone but one conspicuously absent redhead, and of course Rose was as well. She was obviously very comfortable at the Burrow, and amidst the constantly expanding Weasley family.

Although she expected it, being the whole reason she was here and all, it was extremely jarring to see the twins together again, now all grown up. Holly had bounded into the room last, followed shortly by Arthur—"Holly was just telling me about the wonders of a hair dryer," he said to Hermione—and went to hug Rose before she turned sheepishly to Hermione. "Hi, Mum."

Hermione pulled her into a hug. "I missed you," she whispered into her daughter's unruly hair.

"I missed you, too," Holly whispered back, as Ginny called upstairs to Ron. "I'm sorry about this."

Hermione smiled slightly as she pulled back. "I'm not."

Ron descended the stairs into the living room, followed closely by Harry, and his eyes immediately found Rose. "Dad!" she squealed, running over to him. Ron grinned as he lifted his daughter off her feet, and Hermione's heart gave an insistent lurch; he and Rose were obviously as close as she and Holly were, and she wanted both of their relationships to extend to both twins. This was the first necessary, uncomfortable step towards making that a reality.

"You've got some explaining to do," she heard him say to Rose, who looked back at him defiantly.

"So have you," Rose retorted, one eyebrow raised at him.

"Think that's our cue," Bill said as he started herding the family out of the room. They all headed off in different directions until only Ron, Hermione, Rose, and Holly were left.

Rose and Holly turned as a unit and sat side-by-side on the couch, looking expectantly at Ron and Hermione. Hermione wished that they had the same sort of solidarity on their side, but she and Ron hadn't been a duo in a very long time. She felt outnumbered as she gingerly took the seat nearest Rose. Ron pulled a wooden chair that had made its way in from the dining room over to the couch and straddled it backwards, his arms resting across the top. "Why don't we start at the beginning," he suggested. "When you two met?"

Both girls frowned at him. "That's not the beginning," Holly said indignantly. "We're almost twelve years old. Start there."

Hermione glanced over at Ron, and he made a motion for her to speak. She took a deep breath and looked back at her daughters. How was she ever meant to explain all that had happened? "Well, your dad and I met our first year at Hogwarts," she began, but Rose made a noise like a buzzer and shook her head.

"Too far. You got together after the war, right?"

Ron and Hermione both nodded. "And the two of you came along very quickly," he said lightly.

"Not our fault," Holly pointed out, crossing her arms over her chest and clearly not amused. Hermione chuckled.

"No, it wasn't. I was still in school when I learned I was pregnant. We hadn't even gotten Grandma and Grandpa back from Australia yet."

"Wait, why were they in Australia?" Rose asked. Holly had heard this story, but Hermione wasn't sure how much, if anything, Rose knew about her side of the family. If the knowledge Hermione had given Holly about the Weasleys was anything to go by, it wasn't a lot.

Ron explained how Hermione had modified their memories to keep them safe during the war. "And then when the Aurors found them, I went to help bring them home." He glanced awkwardly at Hermione, likely remembering the same fight that she was that they'd had over his trip.

"So what happened after we were born?" Holly asked.

"Yeah, why'd you break up?" Rose added.

Hermione picked at her jeans, refusing to look at Ron. She tried to maintain eye contact with each of the girls, but damn, they looked so much like him, and always had. Ten years later, she still wasn't exactly sure how it had all gone so wrong. How she had so flippantly walked away from the only boy she had ever loved—who was, though now a man, still the only person she'd ever had such feelings about. "It was...very hard. Trying to raise twins at our age."

"We could've had help," Ron muttered sarcastically.

"We did have help. I wanted help from you," Hermione said, trying hard to keep her voice even.

"I was working, Hermione."

"So was I. Eventually."

"Yeah," Ron scoffed. "I remember."

Hermione stood abruptly. "Can I see you in the kitchen, please?"

"I'm guessing this was a point of contention?" Rose asked, eyebrows raised.

Ron rolled his eyes but stood. "We'll be right back," he said to the girls, who looked frustrated at having their story interrupted.

Hermione was ready to kick the whole family out of the kitchen if need be, but Harry was the only one in there, and he had been privy to plenty of good, bad, and otherwise between them through the years. She sealed the room with a silencing charm and spun to face Ron. "I'm not going to fight with you in front of the girls," she snapped, "but what makes you think that your sarcasm is in any way helpful here?"

"They asked what happened, Hermione, I'm not going to sugar-coat things," Ron replied irritably. "We owe them that much."

"So this is going well so far?" Harry joked, watching them over a mug of coffee.

"Shut it, Harry." Hermione shot him a glare before she turned back to Ron. "They're also eleven years old, Ron, I don't think they need to know every little detail. We'll just go back in there and say that things didn't work out, and we broke up."

"You can tell Holly whatever after-school-special version of things that you want, but I thought the whole point of this was to tell them the truth. And that's exactly what I intend to give Rose, with or without you here to filter it."

"That wasn't the plan!" Hermione yelled at him.

"You're right, but the plan's gone to shit now, if you haven't noticed!" Ron's voice raised to match hers. "The plan was for you and I never to see each other again, but here we are! So what now, Hermione? Run back to America instead of actually working things out? Not like it'd be the first time."

Hermione reached for her wand, but Harry was faster, and he had her disarmed in seconds. Hermione turned her anger on him, though Ron was looking annoyingly smug about this turn of events, which fortunately distracted him enough for Harry to disarm him, too. Ron watched his best friend catch his wand, his face rapidly reddening. "Hey!" he protested.

Harry set all three wands onto the table with a clatter and stood between the two of them. "Look, we all told both of you eleven years ago that this was an idiotic plan that would never last," he said fiercely. "Now the twins are back together, and that means that like it or not, the two of you have got to find a way to be civil to each other."

Hermione struggled to force her expression to soften as she addressed Ron. "Fine. What would you like to tell them?"

"Frankly, Hermione, I still don't know what the hell happened. It was like...one day you were there, and the next day you weren't."

Harry took a tentative step towards the door. "Should I…?"

"No," Ron and Hermione chorused, and Harry reluctantly sat back down.

"It just felt like nothing was going according to plan."

"Nothing?" Ron repeated sarcastically. "Thanks a lot."

"We were never supposed to be parents at nineteen, Ron, much less to twins," Hermione lamented. "We were supposed to have careers, and lives, and…" She trailed off, unsure how else to explain.

"That's such bullshit, Hermione," he snapped, clearly frustrated. Harry was looking ever more uncomfortable as he reached for a discarded copy of the Prophet to hide behind. "Reckon you still ended up with a life and a career, didn't you?"

"Oh, sure, just dismiss all of my concerns. Why would any of my feelings be valid?" Hermione shot back.

"Of course they were valid, but fuck...nothing?" Ron stepped closer to her, and the chill in his voice as he continued was more alarming than when he was yelling. "I was terrified of a lot of things back then, Hermione. Scared I'd be rubbish as a dad, scared I'd fail out of the Auror Academy...scared for you, that you wouldn't find a job you liked, and that you wouldn't feel fulfilled just being a mum." He was so close to her now that she had to crane her neck to look up at him. "But the one thing I was never, ever afraid of was doing it all with you."

Hermione stood frozen, staring up at him. Before she could find the words to reply, there was a knock at the kitchen door, and Percy poked his head in. "Er...the girls would like to know if the two of you have killed each other in here. I'll tell them you're both still standing, but don't make a liar out of me, alright?" Hermione pressed her hands to her temples as Ron brushed past her.

"I'll go along with whatever you want to say to them," he told her, his tone still frosty as he moved to follow Percy. "Let's just get this over with."