"Why did you leave me?" Hermione sobbed painfully.
Nightmares play funny little games of tangling the most painful feelings and the memories that held them. In this most recent, particular dream Bellatrix had bound and gagged Hermione in a snowy wood, snow had found its way under her clothes and burned her back. Greyback stood in front of their tent, his face smiling with hunger. Bellatrix stood over her with a mocking smile. Hermione pulled her head to look behind her, despite the binding, and saw Ron glaring at her pityingly. Hermione tried to beg to him through her gag and it disappeared, "Ron! Please! Please don't go!" she begged. "Rooooonnn!" she roared. He shook his head and stormed away. "Noooo!" she cried.
"See?" Bellatrix took Hermione's face, forcing her to look back up at her and squeezed her cheeks painfully. "He doesn't care."
"Noooo!" Hermione sobbed.
She sat upright and pair of arms caught her and held her close. "Hermione," a comforting whisper into her hair, "I'm right here." The pain of the dream lingered, and it was too much to bear. She held onto the arm wrapped around her front and folded over it. "Why did you leave me?" Hermione sobbed painfully. Ron had no defence, nothing to say for himself. He and Hermione both knew, it was not worth saying. He kissed her lightly atop her soft curls.
For Hermione, she was able to distract herself on the journey, reading and analysing stories and symbols. In turn it forced the horcruxes whispers deeper inside, to the back of her mind, up against her spine, little knives circling and stabbing her heart from the back. That Ron will never love her, her comments too cruel, her criticisms too harsh, her nose always in a book, not as funny, how could he love a stuck-up bitch like her?
"Hermione, shhh" Ron hushed. "It's ok. You're ok." Hermione's accusations and questions were a painful reminder of Ron's worst moments. You let a stupid little necklace get the better of you Ron would scold himself in his moments of guilt that visited him occasionally from the moment he left, to the moment now in this dark bedroom at 1 in the morning. Ron knew logically that it was much more than a stupid little necklace, it had the powers of cruel whispers, made with a tortured soul and possessed in part by the man that took it away. Ron spent a long and trying process of being kind to both himself and Hermione during these trying moments. Hermione's sobs quietened, not so ravaged, not so tortured. Hermione turned to Ron and wrapped her arms around him. "I'm sorry," Hermione mumbled tearfully. "I'm sorry too," Ron said, his chin on top of her head.
Each of these episodes would end differently through the years. Painfully for Ron, sometimes Hermione break away from his attempts at comfort and will get up sleep in a different room or roll over, the nightmares refreshing the anger she felt when Ron had the audacity to return. Sometimes, though a rare sometimes, it made for their sweetest, most gentle lovemaking. Sometimes it was nights like this, trying to bring Hermione back to the now, hoping she will forgive him again.