"Bill, I have to leave."

Bill looked up at him with raised eyebrows, seemingly unsurprised. "Well, I figured that you would eventually. Didn't think you would hang around here long with Harry and Hermione out God knows where…"

Ron looked down at his feet, his ears glowing red with guilt. His brother hadn't been pleased to see his youngest brother on his doorstep without his two best friends. When Ron had told him that he had left them behind, Bill had been livid.

The memory was still fresh in Ron's mind. He had Apparated from the forest after looking for the tent he had Apparated from and then running from the Snatchers he had ran into. Bill and Fleur's was the only place he could think of where he would be welcome. He couldn't imagine his parents' reaction to his desertion if he had showed up at the Burrow.

It turned out, his mother's reaction probably was nothing compared to Bill's.

"You did WHAT?"

Ron was standing on his brother's doorstep in the pouring rain, facing an extremely angry Bill. Before he could say any more, Bill had withdrawn his wand and whipped it at Ron, causing him to fall backwards into the mud.

"Bill, what the hell – "

"You left the two people who you care about most because of a stupid fight?" Bill shot sparks at Ron as he attempted to get up. "Are you a Gryffindor or not?"

"It wasn't just that – OW!" Ron yelped furiously as Bill sent sparks at him once again.

"It wasn't? Then enlighten me, Ron! I would love to hear the real reason why you would leave the two people you promised to stick by through this war!" Bill's face was growing red, and his scars were making him look monstrous in the low light of the moon.

Ron began to get up off the ground, his wand now also drawn, but Bill whipped sparks at him once again, and Ron snapped. "Would you stop? I'm trying to explain – "

"NO! Levicorpus!"

Ron yelled as the spell lifted him by his ankle from the ground, dangling him upside down as if by an invisible hook.

Bill approached him, his face inches from Ron's. "You're a man, aren't you?"

"Yeah – "

"And you care about Harry and Hermione?"

"Yeah, but – "

"Liberacorpus!"

Ron fell to the ground and into the mud, the wind getting knocked out of him. He rolled over, panting, as Bill crossed his arms and said, "then talk."

Ron shook his head as he got to his feet. "I can't tell you the details, Bill. All I can say is…it was my fault. Yeah, I left because we were fighting, and I wasn't getting my way. I thought for a minute that Hermione would come with me, but she stayed with Harry. I was…jealous. I thought she had chosen…him. And I wanted to go back as soon as I Apparated out of there."

Bill ran a hand through his long hair. "I'm sick of this, Ron. I'm so sick of your constant "woe is me" attitude! This is the most serious thing you've done because of your pathetic attitude, you realize that?"

Ron scowled at him. "I know. And I know I shouldn't have come here. I'll find somewhere else to go – "

Bill grabbed him by the collar and steered him toward the door. "You're staying here on one condition. That you'll go back to find them. That you'll stop at nothing to find them, you hear me?"

Ron nodded as Bill gripped his collar tighter. "You're a Gryffindor and a Weasley, Ron. Neither of those terms mean that you're a coward. This'll be the last time you leave those two, alright?"

"Right." Bill let go of his collar and pushed his brother forcefully through the front door. "Fleur'll be thrilled to see that we have a guest in the middle of the night..."

Ron shook himself from the memory. He was standing in the kitchen of Shell Cottage with his rucksack on his back. Bill and Fleur stood opposite him with cups of tea in their hands.

"So where shall you go?" Bill asked, pushing a cup of tea into his brother's hand.

"I honestly don't know," said Ron, sipping the hot tea. "I've been all over the country looking for them in the last few weeks. I don't know where else to go."

Bill clapped him on the shoulder. "You'll figure it out. I know you've been trying pretty hard. Just make sure you find a safe place to sleep. Don't stay in one place for too long. Stay where the wizard protection is strong."

Ron nodded. To be honest, the main motive of hunting down his friends again was to see Hermione's face. Over the last few weeks, as he had been staying comfortably at Shell Cottage, he couldn't imagine how his friends were surviving, half-starved in the forest somewhere. When he shut his eyes to sleep at night, all he could see was Hermione's tearful face as she ran after him as he left. Since he had left, the guilty knot in his stomach hadn't loosened one bit.

To keep his nerves at bay, he had taken to tapping into the wireless to keep track of Harry's whereabouts. He knew if he didn't hear anything about Harry, they both were still safe.

That didn't keep him from worrying. Most nights he stayed up into the early hours of the morning, thinking about every frightening scenario possible. As soon as daylight broke, he was Apparating to his next destination to find them.

The guilt was eating him alive. He desperately needed to see Hermione again…to hold her…to tell her that he was sorry again and again until she forgave him. He couldn't imagine she was going to take too kindly to his return. After his desertion, she wasn't going to forgive him all too quickly.

As he left Shell Cottage with nothing but his rucksack and the clothes on his back, he tried to imagine Hermione's face when she finally did forgive him, and this drove him to keep searching for his best friends.