Ronald woke up in the dark, with his leg mysteriously heavy and a small hand in his. The events of the night came flooding back, remembering the hallowed-out looking serial killer, the monstrous transformation of his harried but lovable professor, and the searing pain he felt in his leg, now erased thanks to some potion from Madam Pomfrey.

As his eyes adjusted to the light, he saw it was Hermione whose hand was in his. She was curled up in a chair, a little bit of drool on the corner of her mouth and her brow furrowed, almost in frustration. He had seen her asleep before- in the common room, in the library, even at the Burrow- and she usually looked so peaceful, but now she looked scared, or maybe angry.

Contentedly he sat there, watching her breathe in and out a little huffily. He noticed, not for the first time, the glint of a small golden chain around her neck. Following it down, he saw at the end an hourglass in a gyroscope. Slowly, so as not to disturb the small hand encased in his own, he sat up fully and turned himself to sit on the edge, hoping to get a better look. Idiotically, and certainly with an amount of confidence he wouldn't have had if any conscious person were able to see him, he reached out and grabbed the trinket to examine it more closely.

He realized that it was idiotic and with an untoward amount of confidence when he saw Hermione's eyes fly open and felt her hand grab his own wrist.

"Don't." She was staring him down, now, and if it were anyone else he would have blushed or shyed away from the intensity of her eyes. If he were being honest, he thought even then that it was nice to stare into them, even having just been caught grabbing at her jewelry.

Despite being well alone in the hospital wing, it was dark and that sort of atmosphere meant that everything must be whispered. Anything worth saying in the dark was a bit of a secret, or else you'd say it in the light, and it could be said loudly.

While the two teenagers weren't consciously aware of this distinction, they both abided by the social nicety, and attempted to keep their voices quiet for an angry discussion (not quite a fight, but certainly it could have devolved into one, if either of the two were low on blood sugar).

"But it's a time turner! I just want to see it." Ron whined a little, shifting his weight forward against her grip on his wrist. Her other hand, which had previously been fitted into his other hand, batted him away. Unfortunately, after a lifetime of picking fights, this newly freed hand swooped up and grasped the pendant.

Hermione let her grip on his wrist go, standing now, awkwardly leaned over the side of his bed as he held it up to examine it. In the leaning position she felt like a toppling tower, or maybe an uncomfortably placed model from the cover of a magazine.

He started to turn it slightly, only to get a better look, when her hand shot out again to still his. "You can't, they're not to play with."

"How'd you even get one? They're meant to be locked up. And only for important things." Ron shifted a bit, angling his body towards hers and hoping she wouldn't notice how close they were starting to be.

"I got one for classes, Professor McGonagall let me use it so I could take every course I wanted to."

His mind flashed back to the summer holiday, when Hermione proclaimed she was just too angry at Hogwarts for making her decide between courses, and seeing her fill out a sheet of electives with every single one chosen as her first choice. He made a face like he had just been told he would be eating only haggis for a month. "Why on earth would she let you do that?"

Now it was Hermione's turn for making a disgusted face. "What, because I'm muggleborn, I can't learn about everything magical?" The words flew out as she leaned forward. He couldn't tell if this was to scare him, or to try to find the singular brain cell that must be hiding behind his eyes. It was a common activity of hers when he or Harry said anything particularly moronic.

It was always a challenge that lived on the tip of her tongue. It was a nagging internal question that she carried no matter how comfortable she thought she was beginning to feel at Hogwarts, or in the wizarding world, or with Ron. At some point, she figured, she must no longer be allowed access to something. And if it were knowledge that'd be all the worse- the only thing she could really find to defend herself against accusations that she wasn't a real witch was having a deep knowledge of magic. It was a well known point of pride for her, and she'd die on that hill, no matter who her enemy.

Heat seemed to radiate off her and the air around her (or rather, thanks to being so close, around them) was growing warmer and warmer, like a fire getting a little too close to the edge of the hearth.

Ron had certainly not meant that and knew he needed to quickly backtrack. "Merlin, no, bloody hell. You just wanted to take everything, and there's no way- no time- to manage all that. Not even for you." He swung his legs around to the side of the bed, so they were just about in line with hers, and so they were just about the same height with him sitting. Plus, it helped to be eye-to-eye. Being eye-to-eye sometimes helped to work out arguments, his mother always said, and she had many years of mediation experience, so he figured he could trust her.

"Well that's the point of the time turner, isn't it? To give me more time?" Hermione's face was the image of stubbornness. She knew this year was hard but she fully intended to keep her schedule so long as she would be allowed.

Ron sighed, hoping he was in the clear, and took one of her hands, cautiously. "I'm just saying you need to slow down a little. You don't need to learn everything at once, as fun as a plaque that would be to receive. You've got your whole life ahead of you."

Their eyes met and he was shocked to see little tears forming. Suddenly, he found himself enveloped in a wild hug, with her arms around his neck and her face pressed almost against his as she started to cry. His hands hand a mind of their own and flitted to her waist, pulling her into a warm embrace. They stayed there, still, for a few minutes, until she pulled back with tears still streaming down and hiccups from having sobbed too hard.

"What if my life isn't very long, Ronald?" She said, shaking. She felt very uneasy voicing the question. It wasn't a question she could ask Harry, because he was in a more precarious position than she was. It wasn't a question she could ask a professor, because they'd tell her she would be safe so long as Dumbledoor was alive and well. It certainly wasn't a question she could ask her parents, because they'd simply never understand the dangers and fears and underlying prejudices she toiled against every day.

So she asked her friend, her very good friend, and was sure he'd be the only one who could give her an answer. However, she suddenly found herself pulled back into another hug, this time feeling his chest move against hers as he cried. She cried too, after a moment, for good measure.

A few minutes later, crying stopped, and having awkwardly pulled away, he told her, "Hermione, that's not a reason to go crazy trying to learn things. Besides, who really needs to learn about Divination? It's not like prophecies always come true."

"Well, yes, but I suppose it's better to learn about anything I can. Plus, what good would I be if I said I had a right to be here and didn't take advantage of it?" She took a deep breath, a heavy breath, a breath meant to be a pause as if it were from the page of a book when the author didn't know how to properly accentuate dialogue. "I feel like it's fake, sometimes, that I get to learn magic. Like one day I'll be told I'm really in the loony bin and Professor McGonnagal is actually a doctor who gives out zoloft or something."

"What's zolot?" Ron said, trying to be a little cheerful. "And what's a loony bin? And what's a doctor?"

"In the muggle world there are sometimes people who are mad or sad or imagine things too much and they go to an asylum where they rest and recover and are held away from the rest of the world because they aren't seemly." Hermione explained, "And I'm worried sometimes that maybe I'm in one now, and that everything here is just an elaborate hallucination I've made up in order to keep myself happy."

Ron smiled, but a glare which screamed don't-you-dare-laugh-at-me-Ronald-Bilius-Weasley flickered across Hermione's face. He tried to maintain a stern composure, but it was hard. He wasn't used to not smiling at her, or smirking at her, and his face didn't like it very much. "How could this place be your happy hallucination? You've almost been killed here and you basically boss Harry and I around when you're not off stressing about homework. Or changing the course of time in order to do more homework."

"Yes, but it's not just that. It isn't tedious to me, not in the way muggle school work ever might be. I get to be magical. I get to be like Matilda and make things move around by just thinking about them." She replied.

She was starting to become self conscious, standing slightly between his legs. Certainly closer than they would've stood normally, but she had just cried a whole lot, and it was dark and they were whispering, so it seemed almost fitting to break other social niceties. And she didn't want to give up being close to him, not just yet.

His hands for a while had remained on her waist, but he seemed to remember himself at some point, and was now awkwardly looking down as she spoke, picking at his nails.

This somehow surprised him. "Can you move things around by just thinking about it, Hermione?"

"Yes, of course." She said, "That was the first sort of magic I did." Shutting her eyes, she concentrated, and without a sound or movement, he saw a quill floating itself from Madam Pompfrey's office towards his bed and into Hermione's outstretched hand.

"Blimey. That's wicked." Ron gazed up at her, "Do you know how hard wandless magic is? And wordless?"

"It's really just moving things. I can't get much else done. I think it's just because I practiced it so much as a kid."

Gently taking her hands in his, and with a sort of tenderness and sincerity that he could only really achieve with a mixture of the painkillers he took for his leg, and knowing that his friend could keep a secret well (particularly about him being tender and sincere, since that wasn't a reputation any fourteen year old boy coveted), he explained, "Hermione, that's the proof you need to know that you're meant to be here. I can't even perform the same sort of magic I could as a kid, I was able to turn invisible sometimes to hide from Fred and George and Ginny but I'm years away from learning that again. If you can do that then you're scarily powerful, but we knew that already, didn't we?"

Hermione's eyes darted away, little tears pricking up and threatening to spill out and he felt as she started to pull back. In some knee-jerk reaction, he instead pulled her close, squeezing her hands in emphasis and whispered "And this place is real. It's all real, I swear it. Not even you're mad enough to dream up this mess of a place."

After a moment, Hermione smiled a slight smile, and pressed a soft kiss to his cheek. He wondered what it might be like to have turned his head and place his lips on hers, but he decided that could be a curiosity for another day. There was no need for a thanks, for it had been conveyed, and there was no need for a goodbye, for it was simply understood that she'd be there again in the morning. With that, she hurried out of the hospital wing, dodging prefects and snitching cats alike.