A/N: I realize the majority of these are ending up being R/Hr centric, with Hermione sleeping; I do apologize, and promise that I have quite a few bouncing around my brain that don't follow this same theme. Thanks for reading!

6. A Cool Summer Evening At The Burrow

Most days, Harry was sure he could count on one hand the number of places that made him feel truly and completely safe.

Hogwarts, of course, was the first place that came to mind—or had been, he reckoned grimly, considering his most recent memory of it involved the lifeless forms of several people he loved, and he wasn't sure he'd ever be able to reconcile the two concepts of safety and death. But it had been his first true home, the first place he'd felt like a person rather than an old vacuum cleaner stowed under the stairs.

Without a doubt, the Burrow was the second. Hogwarts May have been his first home, but the Burrow was his permanent one—the place at which he'd spend the remainder of his holidays, ringing with the greatest memories of his life, full of the people his children would call their family.

The third place was one less concrete, but just as valid all the same. It was somewhere he found himself often, somewhere he found himself now: he felt safe when he was alongside Ron and Hermione.

It was unlike him to be this pensive, but Harry reckoned these new philosophical tendencies were a direct result of both the end of the reign of terror by a murderous dark wizard and the vacant space left by the eviction of the very same murderous dark wizard from his head.

Harry snorted so loudly he almost choked. Seven years ago, Hagrid had uttered those four words—Harry, yer a wizard—and his life had changed in the most mental of ways.

A long arm appeared from his right and smacked his shoulder, hard. Harry flinched and rubbed the spot. It would undoubtedly bruise.

"Would you pipe down, you speccy git? She's finally asleep."

Ron's harsh whisper cut through the silence like venom. Harry met his eyes and frowned at the look he saw there.

"What's got your knickers in a twist?"

"She hasn't slept in days!"

"Look at her," Harry said, motioning to the sleeping form draped across them on the couch. Hermione's head sat heavily on his right thigh, her tangled hair covering his entire lap. "Reckon I can't tell if she's asleep or actually dead."

As the words left his lips, Harry became acutely aware that he'd said precisely the wrong thing. Ron's face went ghost white and he swallowed thickly, pulling his hands from where they'd been rubbing circles along Hermione's blanketed shins.

"I—sorry, mate, you know I didn't—"

"I know," Ron said quietly. "It's alright. Just… ever since the Manor—"

"Ron, we don't have to talk about—"

Ron shook his head. "I—I think I've got to," he said. "At least—I dunno—Bill says I've got to."

Harry decided not to comment on this, instead letting Ron pause before starting to speak again.

"The… the first couple of days after the battle, when I was…"

Harry nodded. Holed up in your room, he finished silently.

"…Bill paid me a visit, right before I came down for dinner that night. Told me that there are things we need to talk about, even if we don't think we're ready. I, er," he coughed a bit, rubbed the back of his neck, "told him, in maybe fewer words, that I reckoned he didn't have much experience with, y'know, traumatizing events." He puffed out a guilty breath. "Put me in my place, didn't he?"

Harry offered a grim smile. "Sometimes it's easy to forget that barmy rubbish happens to other people too."

"Well, last time I ever do that."

"Wait—is that why you came down with that poorly glamoured black eye?"

"Did I actually convince anyone that I'd been throwing a Quaffle in the air and accidentally dropped it on my face?"

"Had me convinced," Harry muttered.

Hermione twitched a bit on the couch, writhing for a moment and letting out a quiet moan before stilling again and finding peace. Ron grimaced.

Harry frowned. "Hard to watch."

"Understatement."

"Has she made an appointment at St. Mungo's yet?"

Ron gritted his teeth this time, looking physically pained. "Work in progress," he said. "She's under the impression that she's got to wait until the more critical patients are treated, because of course she's fine, Ronald, honestly, I couldn't take a Healer's attention knowing someone who actually needed it was going without—"

"That's rubbish, though," Harry said emphatically, choosing not to comment on the accuracy of Ron's impression of their friend. "She's got to be joking."

"Have you ever, in seven years of knowing Hermione, known her to be rational when it comes to her own well-being?"

Harry opened and closed his mouth a few times before speaking. "I suppose that's where we typically come in."

Ron huffed a massive sigh, looking completely and utterly defeated. "Only so much we can do, though, I reckon. All I want to do is just make an appointment for her…"

"But then she wouldn't go on principle."

Ron pulled a hand to his face and raked it from top to bottom. "Maybe I'll just Stun her and bring her in myself."

This drew a laugh out of Harry. "She'd hex your bollocks clean off."

Hermione chose this moment to begin quaking again. Ron brought a hand to her back, rubbing his large hand from the base of her spine to the base of her neck and down again. She whimpered but then quieted and stilled, pulling a deep breath in through her nose.

Harry read Ron's expression clearly. "You're actually considering it."

Ron inhaled sharply, returning his hand to Hermione's shin as he averted Harry's gaze. "Before we even got to the Manor," he began, "I don't know if you caught the stuff that Greyback was saying about her."

Harry's stomach dropped. He nodded. "Got the gist of it, I think."

"When we were down there in that cellar, and we heard her screaming… I—I mean, we knew she was being tortured, but all I could think was, what else?"

"What else?" Harry echoed.

"What else are they doing?"

Ron's voice was haunted and his entire body had drained of color.

Harry considered the words before he realized what Ron was saying and he, too, felt himself blanch. "You thought Greyback was already…"

"I didn't know," Ron said. "That was enough, for me. We didn't know, and she was making those awful noises, and all I could think was that she was going to die up there, or something worse, while I was stuck in that ruddy basement, screaming my head off and trying to Apparate without a wand like an absolute tosser."

It was an almost ironic concept, a feat worse than death, but Harry knew what Ron was referring to.

"And it—it didn't happen, thank Merlin, but even once that sodding chandelier fell on her and I pulled her out, she wasn't moving at all—and then you tossed me that wand and I was half in the ocean at Bill and Fleur's, absolutely convinced she was dead."

Harry froze immediately. The violent thud of his heart sounded noisily in his ears. "I didn't know that," he said. "Bill came out and told me that she'd be alright—that you'd taken her inside."

Ron shook his head furiously, a tear cutting a path down his face before falling onto the quilt that covered Hermione. "She wasn't moving, I couldn't tell if she was breathing—I kept shaking her, and talking to her, and she wasn't saying anything back, nothing at all."

"Ron, I…"

"And then I carried her into the sitting room and Bill was yelling and Fleur was muttering all these mental spells and then Hermione was screaming, and it was so much worse than in that drawing room because—" Ron broke off, pulled in a deep breath, and then huffed it out. "Because we didn't know what was causing it. And then I realized that she could be…"

Harry let the half-finished sentence linger in the air for a moment. "Like Neville's parents."

"I was convinced, Harry," Ron said in a diminutive voice. "I almost lost my own mind, crying and yelling and cursing things, but then Bill pulled me aside and told me I needed to get a grip."

Harry could picture it, clear as day: while he was mourning Dobby, that infinite moment in which time stopped, Ron was pinned to the wall by his brother, sobbing inconsolably, convinced that Hermione had been tortured to insanity.

"I should've been there," said Harry fiercely, shaking his head. "I'm so sorry, Ron, I should've been there—it all happened so fast—"

"Blimey, Harry, you don't have to—"

"I was terrified, too. But you both needed me."

Ron considered this, shrugged his shoulders, and frowned. "Been plenty of times I wasn't there for you when you needed me."

"Plenty more when you were."

"Reckon I sound like I need a trip to St. Mungo's."

"You ought to," said Harry sincerely. "Honestly, Ron, we all went through trauma—"

Ron waved him off. "I'll be fine. Family needs me, mates need me, the whole bit."

"Whole lot of us needs you to take care of yourself."

Hermione shifted her head in Harry's lap, causing both boys to freeze and draw their attention to where her curls fanned out on his thigh. Her head was facing out toward the living room, but Harry could tell from her body language and steady breathing that she was still asleep.

"Still can't believe she put her sodding head in your lap," Ron grumbled.

Harry laughed quietly, an authentic one that warmed his body top to bottom. "What can I say? I am the Chosen—"

"Oi, don't even fucking say it."

Harry bit back another laugh. "You saw her. She was completely asleep sitting up. Guess it was just bad luck on your part that she fell this way."

"S'alright." Ron shrugged, rubbing a hand on her blanketed leg again. "If her shins are the best I can get, I'll take 'em."

"Oh, I'm sure you can get much more than just—"

"Don't."