I am SO grateful to everyone who has read and reviewed this fic so far. Especially those of you who review every single chapter - that is just going above and beyond in terms of awesomeness.

Also, mega thanks to kabg01. I don't think I'd be this far along with this if it wasn't for her encouragement.

Sorry this chapter's so long but y'know, stuff's gotta get done :-)

Ron looked up in surprise at the mug that had been placed in front of him on the table. If he hadn't seen Hermione's retreating form, and had at least one of the exceptions to Gamp's law forcefully instilled into his brain in many a hungry hour, he would have thought the tea had appeared by magic. Cautiously, he gave it a sniff, feeling a little like Mad Eye Moody. Surely Hermione wouldn't try and do him in? He was being ridiculous and he knew it. He took a small sip, allowing a rapturous expression to open up his face. Merlin the witch could make a good cup of tea. He hadn't realised he had missed it. There were probably a hundred other things about her that he hadn't even noticed he was missing, he realised as he took a larger gulp, making little attempt to stifle his groan of pleasure. He glanced over at her, curled up on the sofa, to see that she had been watching him the whole time. He scowled in embarrassment, trying to will the easy flow of blood to his face to cease but she just took a sip of her own brew and turned her eyes to her book.

Although he turned his attentions back to the blueprints of the Woolworth Building in New York – the home of MACUSA – he found his thoughts and eyes drifting more than once to his wife who was sat engrossed in her book. On several occasions, he thought he experienced the feeling of being watched but when he looked up, she was turning a page, or frowning intently at something she had read, so he must have imagined it.

After several hours, during which he had done little more than make small notes with a quill on the plans, he stretched his arms up behind his head with a yawn, wincing as his shoulders popped. He really wasn't designed for sitting at a desk, he acknowledged, wishing he had his broom with him so he could go for a quick fly and really work the kinks out of his stiff neck. With more smugness than he thought was attractive, he noticed that Hermione's gaze had been drawn from her book to the spot where his stretching had caused his t shirt to ride up. He eyed her steadily, making no effort to correct his clothing, until she noticed his scrutiny and looked up to meet his eyes. Now it was her turn to blush.

"Want to play a game?" he asked, noticing the darkness encroaching through the window and realising he didn't want to return to his work.

Hermione agreed, nerves and curiosity warring on her face as she slipped her bookmark into her book and replaced it on the shelf. Ron summoned their tea mugs and washed them under the sink before retrieving a bottle of Ogden's Old out of the bag and coming to sit next to her on the sofa.

"Twenty questions," he stated simply, handing her an empty mug and pouring a healthy measure of firewhisky into it, "if you don't want to answer, you have to have a drink."

"Ten questions each," confirmed Hermione, "I'll go first," she offered, taking a sip of the warming drink. They were both familiar with this game – Ron had invented it when he had upset Hermione and hadn't realised why, early on in their relationship – and had played it a number of times when there was something they wanted to talk about but needed strict parameters in order to prevent it descending into a row.

Hermione smiled and asked him a question that she almost always asked him in the game. It wasn't particularly challenging but she asked it now to show him that she remembered how they used to play it, that his effort at nostalgia wasn't wasted, "What would your boggart look like?"

Ron leaned back against the sofa, staring at the ceiling, "I know you think I'll say spiders, I always say spiders but I found a boggart a few months back in an old storage chest in the shop…" he paused, letting out a soft laugh, although it wasn't really funny, "It was Fred and George – I mean – George looked like he did now. But Fred was all….." he retched, making an ineffective gesture with his hands that in no way indicated a rotting corpse and yet he could see that Hermione understood fully. She patted him softly on the arm, murmuring her apologies and looking away in case he needed a moment to recover but he soon rallied.

Ron, ever the strategist thought carefully, chewing his lip a little as he decided to start with something to throw Hermione off her guard in the hope of distracting her from probing more fully into his answer, "Why are you still hiding away in the Magical Creatures department, instead of working towards being Minister?" and was rewarded when she blinked hard in surprise.

"That's breaking a rule – no leading questions!" she crossed her arms over her chest.

"I've never liked that rule," Ron grinned as he took a sip of firewhisky, making no effort to rephrase the question.

"It's safe," she admitted after long enough of a pause that Ron had started to worry that he had made a mistake, "I can hide. Not from people, nothing like that. From complicated decisions – unpalatable decisions. At the moment I know what's right and what's wrong. Should house elves have rights? Of course! Should Werewolves be made to register themselves? No! All nice and black and white and tied up in a little package. It's boring and it's slow going but I know what the answer should be. What should be done to increase the sharply declining wizarding population? Not so simple. I got scared of making decisions like that. I thought that if you could make a decision and stick to it, even to the point of breaking us up – and I couldn't understand why – maybe I wasn't cut out for the complexities of high politics," she looked down into her lap sadly and Ron felt like a heel for asking her, albeit only until she parried his question with one of her own.

"How much do you think your insecurity had to do with leaving the Auror department?"

His immediate reaction was to remind her of what George had done, to angrily assert that it was an entirely selfless decision, but a moment's pause changed his track, "It wasn't quite like that. It was more like I was still in Harry's shadow. I was beating him in every exam and exercise but he was the one who was getting the knowing nods about promotion, he was the one who was always being touted around as the future of the auror department. For a while I did think it was me just being an idiot but when the test results are there on the page in black and white, it's hard to argue with that one. It wasn't his fault – he hated it as much as I did. So I suppose a bit of it was running away. But I really did love being an auror. Just, you know, wearing the robes, everyone knowing that you're important. Plus the fact that storming around fighting bad guys, it's not exactly new news for us is it? I remember after our first raid – looking for dark artefacts in some old wizard's house who had been suspected of killing his wife – one of the other trainees was sick with the stress of it. Actually sick on the pavement and I remember thinking, this is easy! I can do this! And you loved it, loved introducing me to people 'this is my boyfriend, the auror'. Was that why you got so pissed off with me for quitting?"

"Is that your next question?" Hermione asked. Although he hadn't meant it as such, Ron nodded in agreement.

"No of course it wasn't because I'd miss having an auror for a boyfriend! I thought you were running away and that you'd regret it," she answered simply. Something in her eyes told Ron that whilst this answer was truthful and complete, it could have very easily been expanded to detail exactly how he had disappointed her in every word and action around that time. He was about to press her for more information, when he remembered shamefully how he had offered to fix her up with one of his auror friends, and thought better of it.

"Can you still produce a patronus?" Hermione asked, her gaze distant and her tone thoughtful.

Ron frowned in confusion and waved his wand muttering, "Expecto Patronum," and his Jack Russell patronus appeared for a few seconds, although it was indistinct and faded quickly, "I'm probably a bit out of practice," he offered by way of explanation, watching Hermione as she scowled after the shadowy dog.

"Can't you?" he asked, curiosity suddenly alight in him.

Hermione just raised her mug to her lips and drank the measure of firewhisky in it, "I forfeit," she coughed, as smoke plumed out of her mouth. Ron said nothing, just filed the information away to be examined later and refilled her mug. When she regained her composure, she seemed keen to change the subject.

"Did you sleep with Lavender after the gala?" she was trying to look casual, like she didn't care.

She shouldn't care, after all, the papers had detailed enough of his exploits with various celebrity witches for her to know he had hardly lived like a monk while they were apart. It didn't matter, so why did he feel the tips of his ears heating up as he swirled the amber liquid around in his cup.

"No," he looked at her directly in the eyes, so she knew he was telling the truth, how much he wanted it to be the whole truth, "I went back to her place but I passed out, I was too drunk. Ended up being sick on her bedside rug actually. Funnily enough she never pushed me for a second go. While we're on the subject of exes, as much as even thinking of the two of you together gives me the heebie jeebies, if it wasn't for this marriage law, do you think you'd have ended up with Malfoy?" his knuckles were taut white as he gripped the mug in his hands, the only belier to his calm countenance.

"End up with? As in married? No. Leaving aside any feelings we may or may not have had for each other, his parents would never have allowed it and he wouldn't have betrayed them."

"Leaving feeling aside! Ha! You know that was what I was asking about. I don't need you to tell me that those Death Eater scumbags wouldn't have welcomed you into the family with open arms."

Hermione reddened a little, "Draco's changed. He's, well he is just as much of an arse as when we were at school, but behind it he's kinder. I think the war scared all of that out of him. He doesn't believe any of those old prejudices any more. He actually treated me quite nicely."

"So that's a yes is it? Because he took you out to fancy restaurants" Ron attempted to strangle his anger back down but tendrils of it were sneaking out.

"Because he didn't humiliate me by snogging his ex-girlfriend in front of everyone we knew and the national media!" Hermione hissed, her fists clenched.

They stared each other down for a moment, both aware that they were about to break the key rule of the game – to not let it descend into an argument. To break the tension, Hermione asked Ron to describe his most embarrassing moment. Managing to get his temper fully back under control, he lounged back against the cushions, feeling himself relax again, "Well I've got to say that having to remind my bride that she needed to kiss me when we got married was quite high up there –"

"As was being sick on Lavender Brown's rug I imagine," Hermione giggled, unabashed at the fact that he had mentioned her hesitation at the wedding.

"Quite, but the most embarrassing moment in my life to date was…." he launched into a high spirited account, several minutes in the telling, that involved him leaping up to re-enact the more energetic parts, and leaving Hermione weak with laughter and having to wipe away tears of mirth.

After that, the next few questions they meandered through light hearted subjects, enjoying the easy banter and holding off more difficult subjects until later in the game. If Ron hadn't been counting on his fingers, he would have forgotten he only had two questions left, abruptly bringing the game back to more serious terms by countering Hermione's 'would you rather have the hiccups all day long or sneeze a hundred times a day?' with "What do you think of me?" he watched her over the rim of his mug as she took a sharp breath in, considering how to answer. She had vetoed a question earlier on and he knew she disliked doing it too often, feeling that it wasn't in the spirit of the game.

"That's a tough one to answer – everything gets all jumbled up in my head when I try and think of it – how much I loved you, how much I hated you. It all gets mixed up in it. I'm glad we're friends again and I'll never be able to tell you enough how glad I'm here with you rather than Greg Goyle. I think you're a good friend and a good person," she settled for eventually. She obviously decided to stick with the more serious theme, almost unable to meet this eye as she asked, "How much do you resent me for making you marry me?"

Ron decided it was easier to take the forfeit than even try to answer it but as he lowered his mug, feeling the whisky slip warmly down his throat, he saw the barely concealed upset on Hermione's face and realised he was doing more harm by not being honest, no matter what the cost to him, "Less every day. Sometimes I wonder if I oughtn't resent you a bit more. Be a bit more cross that I've ended up with you despite both of our best efforts. But already, like earlier, when you brought me that cup of tea, I forgot for a minute it wasn't real. So don't worry, I'm fine. Emotional range of a teaspoon remember."

Hermione sniffed a little and giggled, "So just keep making you cups of tea and we'll have a happy marriage?"

"That's the spirit!" he laughed, patting her on the leg. Now came the question he had wanted to ask, the one he had saved until the end when she had no chance of a follow up question, the moment where he asked her how she wanted this to end? If she could just wave her wand and make everything go her way, how would it be? Them not talking again, the law overturned and everything back the way it was? A pitying look to him and the consolation that they would be better off as friends? Or was there even the tiniest chance that her feelings might be softening? But now it was time, he didn't dare ask. Merlin, he didn't even know what he wanted the answer to be. Hating himself for being so cowardly, he tried to tell himself that things can't be unsaid and some questions are better with no answer, "I forfeit," he muttered angrily, tossing back the liquid in his mug.

Hermione's eyebrows quirked in surprise, "But...but it's your turn? Can you forfeit asking a question?"

"I'm tired, I'm going to bed," he shook his head as he got off the sofa and stalked off, wondering what exactly fate had brought them back together for. It was a long time before he was able to get to sleep.

oOoOoOo

The next morning Hermione actually shook Ron awake, "Gerroff," he mumbled, "This is supposed to be a holiday," and tried to roll away from her.

"It's snowed!" she exclaimed excitedly, seeming to enjoy the wince that so much enthusiasm so soon after waking up sent through him and bouncing up and down on the bed a little for good measure, her eyes wide with glee.

Ron rubbed a hand over his face and struggled to a seated position, which was made harder than it could have been by the impairment of Hermione sitting on his legs, "You know what you've done, don't you?" he growled, "You've only gone and woken up the Weasley family snowball fighting champion 1999-2002."

Hermione just laughed in response, jumping down from the bed and pulling on her hat and gloves as Ron hurriedly began adding layers of clothes over his pyjamas.

By the time he headed outside, a sizeable wedge of wedding cake in his hand in lieu of breakfast, Hermione had disappeared. He glanced around suspiciously and was just about to head back into the shelter of the veranda when the roof emptied its entire load of snow onto him. His hastily cast impervious did a poor job of protecting him and he still found himself clambering out of a waist high pile of snow as Hermione's giggle rang out from behind a large pine tree.

Ron pointed at the branches above her with his wand, causing snow to rain down on her. A high pitched squeal told her that he had found his target but his smugness was short lived as a tornado of white flakes came flying towards him. He managed to throw up a protego but that only resulted in him being encased in an igloo of snow that had impacted against the shield. He heard a muffled "immobilus" from outside and light flooded in as the snow turned to ice. Encased in a dome of ice, and finding himself wondering at the two-fold use of the freezing spell, he saw Hermione stalk out into the open, hands on hips, seemingly unable to resist seeing the effect she had created.

He waited until she was only a few feet away and sent the shattered pieces of the ice prison flying outwards by aiming a "fracto strata," at it. Hermione waved her wand over the shards shooting towards her, calling out "arresto momentum," and they slowed to almost a standstill, allowing her to walk round them, watching them curiously as they moved sluggishly forward.

Ron quickly balled up a few snowballs and bewitched them - as Fred and George had once to Quirrell – to repeatedly attack Hermione but after a few satisfying rebounds off her face and head, she reversed their aim so they turned on him, and added an engorgement charm for good measure.

He was lying on the ground, laughing helplessly as the snowballs pounded him before he thought to obliterate them, and then, exhausted, he settled for making the fat white snowflakes that he was so adept at producing, issue from his wand and float down over the pair of them. Hermione threw herself down next to him in the snowdrift, exhaling steamy breaths of mirth. Her nose was pink and there were snowflakes on her eyelashes and fringe. Ron's fingers were extending to brush them gently away before he remembered that he wasn't entitled to touch her like that anymore and clenched his fist back up tightly. He couldn't stop looking at those tiny crystals adorning her dark lashes, and Hermione stared right back at him, a tiny smile playing over her lips. He was just wondering how hard she would slap him if he edged closer to her, close enough to count those sparkling crystalline drops, and whether it would be worth it when the creeping frigid fingers of icy wetness from the snow beneath him caused him to shudder involuntarily.

"Freezing isn't it," Hermione held her fingers to her mouth to blow warmth onto them.

Ron was just reaching for his wand to dry off their clothes when Hermione stayed his arm with her hand, "Muggle magic," she intoned knowingly, before conceding with a blush, "Well, almost."

She waved her wand towards a small clearing nearby and Ron experienced the same ripple in the atmosphere as when she had revealed the cottage. Where there had been little more than a handful of stunted, frostbitten saplings, there was a large, circular wooden tub. Another wave of her wand caused steam to rise out of the tub, giving Ron more of a clue of its contents. He approached it cautiously, not sure of what exactly it might do but keen to find out.

"What. Is. That?" he asked in wonderment, only his auror training making him resist the urge to reach out and touch the strange object.

"See, this is why I didn't show you before, I wouldn't have been able to get you out of it, and I didn't want to take you back to your mum as a prune," Hermione tried to sound stern but she knew the beam on her face was giving her away, "it's called a hot tub."

"What do you do with it? Swim in it?" Ron asked sceptically. Muggles had some funny ideas but he was sure even they wouldn't swim round and round in such a tiny pool. Hermione had taken him to a muggle swimming bath once and it hadn't looked anything like this.

"Just sit in it. Like a bath – it's relaxing."

"As long as it's warm, I'm game," Ron agreed, his teeth chattering slightly as he followed Hermione's lead in stripping off her icily sodden outer layers. When they were just in their underwear, they both scrambled in, exhaling twin sighs of relief as the warm water began to thaw the chill in their extremities.

Ron was just starting to relax so much that he was in very real danger of slipping under the water altogether when a clinking of glass made him jump snorting awake. Hermione shrugged unapologetically as she poured herself a glass of champagne left over from the wedding. Ron rolled his eyes and she made a show of sighing before summoning a second glass for him.

"You were asleep!" she laughed in explanation.

"I was not."

"You were snoring," she insisted, handing him the glass. His water warmed fingers brushed over hers as he took it from her.

They sipped the creamy champagne in silence, enjoying the peace of nature. It wasn't until the drink was long gone and Hermione had sent the glasses sailing back into the kitchen that Ron heard her breathing audibly – he had been so focussed on the shafts of sunlight shining through the snow weighted branches that he had stopped noticing the passing of time. He looked over to see her head tipped back, her mouth slackly open and, with a grin, tugged hard on her foot which was floating just below the surface. She disappeared under the water for a second and with a yowl that would have rivalled Crookshanks had he been similarly dunked, immediately re-emerged.

"You were asleep," sniggered Ron, echoing her words back to her, seeing only a second too late the light of revenge in her eyes.

She jumped on him, splashing with one hand and trying to push his head under the water with the other. Laughing so hard that the water deluging his face was nearly choking him, Ron grabbed both of her wrists and held them over her head with one of his big hands. His laughter died away and she stopped struggling as they both became aware of her thighs wrapped around him, the swell of her breasts pressed up against the smooth muscular planes of his chest. He reached up with his other hand to wipe the dripping tendrils of hair from her face, scarcely daring to breathe as her eyes flickered to his lips, then back up to meet his own in silent invitation. Slowly, with infinite tenderness he inclined his head down to hers and kissed her. He let go of her hands and she tangled them into his hair, deepening the embrace.

Hermione pulled away and for a heart-stopping moment, Ron thought she was going to slap him, but she merely vanished away their underwear with a coy smile. She ground down on him, bringing him to full hardness almost instantly. The cold air to her nipples made them pucker irresistibly, leaving Ron powerless to stop himself from rolling the pebbled nubs between finger and thumb and was rewarded by her arching her back, allowing him to cup her breasts more fully as she sighed breathily. Hermione's arms tightened around his neck as she kissed him again, her tongue massaging his gently as the water allowed his hands to slide deliciously over her skin. Just when he thought his gentlemanly restraint might give out, she sank onto him, the heat of her even warmer than the water, and he took a sharp intake of breath as he thanked Merlin and any and all gods for the feeling of her surrounding his cock.

Ron gripped her hips, his hands slipping over her water-slicked skin before he grasped her firmly, allowing him to lift her up, before pulling her back onto him to match his thrusts. She tipped her head back in pleasure, biting her lip and that pull of skin between her white teeth almost sent him over the edge. His eyes feasted on the sight of her breasts bouncing clear of the water, glistening rivulets running down into the hollow between them.

Their pace quickened - her face was flushed and she was letting out little moany gasps each time his length fully entered her. As he felt the delightful pressure building, he slammed her harder, her skin slapping against his until the tight coil of pleasure that had wound up inside him snapped, and his orgasm pulsed out of him and into her. He tilted his head back, his eyes closed and let out a deep sigh. Somewhere below the floaty, sated bonelessness, he registered a note of relief that they weren't broken somehow – they could do this. As he softened and slipped out of her, she kissed him tenderly on the lips, smiling as he reciprocated, dropping a sweet kiss onto her forehead. She closed her eyes for a long moment and he pulled her in for a tight hug, which she made no move to resist. Only when the chill of the frozen night started to make Hermione shiver, despite the warmth of the pool, did they break apart and apparate inside. A hastily applied drying spell was the only thing they managed before they stumbled into bed and fell fast asleep.

oOoOoOo

Ron shifted his head on the pillow, seeing the bright sunlight shine red through his eyelids. Bugger, he must have slept in. He rubbed his gritty eyes with the back of one fist and stretched his other arm across the bed. Empty. And cold. Hermione was gone. Of course it was idiotic of him to even have a half asleep hope that she would just lie there and watch him sleeping –as though she was one of those girls he had dated before. He forced his eyes open and sat up slowly. She was nowhere to be seen. Bloody hell, had she run away? It hadn't been that bad last night had it? As much as he knew she would rather share a bed with, well almost anyone than him, they'd been getting on better recently. And he thought that last night they had almost had…what? A connection? He almost laughed aloud at his foolishness. Thank Merlin his brothers weren't here to see him going gooey over a girl after one shag.

He climbed achingly out of bed, stretching his cramped limbs – gods that girl was a bed hogger – and pulled on his dressing gown while he looked around the cabin for evidence of where she was. The cotton bag was still on the floor, which somehow reassured him. He knew that there were some things that would never leave him from their time away in the seventh year. Like his nervous habit of patting his pocket every few minutes to check he hadn't lost the deluminator (even after all these years he called it the deluminator rather than his deluminator). Or the way that in the moment before he was about to lose his temper, really lose it - like foaming at the mouth, seeing red, not just shouting lose it – he was able to pull himself back. Not much, just an inch or two. But that was enough to stop him doing something too stupid, most of the time, at least. There were still a few noteable failures. But he was better. He tried to be better. And he knew Hermione was the same. About her habits, not her temper. She would have had to have been dragged kicking and screaming from that cabin before she would have left that bag behind.

Seeing that the door was ajar he stepped outside, hissing in shock at the icy ground under his bed-warmed bare feet. There was Hermione, on the swing chair on the veranda, her knees drawn up to her chest, her hands wrapped round a steaming mug of tea. As she heard him approach, she turned to look at him, smiling brightly. Even to his eyes it looked brittle, like her face might crumble away if he touched it. His step faltered slightly.

"The snow's melted," Hermione started brightly, "I thought we might go home today. I've packed everything up while you were asleep so we can set off as soon as you're ready."

"Today? Like now?"

Hermione nodded quickly in response, taking another sip of her tea.

Ron's brows knitted together in concern and he reached an arm out towards her but just left it hanging stupidly in mid-air for a few seconds before dropping it back to his side, "Is everything….are you ok Hermione?"

"Fine," she was so bloody chipper that he could tell instantly that there was no point in pushing her. Not fine then. Had he done something wrong? Or was it just him? Was the thought of him still so repulsive to her? He nodded his head slightly and headed inside to get dressed.