Why was she always so Goddamn hard to find lately? He looked everywhere: the library, the Great Hall, the Room of Requirement. He even dared to go to her dorm. Thankfully, the great sod was nowhere to be found. Unfortunately, Hermione wasn't there either.

Ron decided to take a walk outside to clear his head. It was still relatively warm, and many of the students were out. He let his feet take him over by the lake to a line of trees that were sunbathing.

And there she was…

All he had to do was be quiet, and he found her. She was seated on a worn blanket under one of the trees nearest the lake, reading. The sunlight shown lightly down on her and kissed her shoulders and the top of her head. Every few seconds she would take a bite of the apple she held in her right hand. When she finished it, Hermione put the core in a napkin and placed it delicately beside her on the blanket. She was like something out of a fairy tale; almost as though the light was coming from her instead of shining on her.

Relief washed through him in a wave; although, what exactly he had been anxious over, he couldn't really tell. All the crazy emotions running through him made him irritable. Every man has a breaking point, and it seemed that Ron had reached his.

"Where have you been?" he asked angrily, unable to help himself. Hermione looked up at him, not needing to shield her eyes seeing as how he was blocking out the sun and all.

"Why is it that every time I see you lately, outside of class, you are yelling at me for not being where you think I should be?" she slowly put a leaf in her book to mark her place, mentally counting to ten. She really didn't want to fight with him. "Tell me, Ron, where should I be?"

As much as she didn't want to fight with him, she just couldn't not respond a little bit.

There was a war raging inside him. A big part of Ron wanted to blow on the embers and get their row going into a terrific fire. But the end result of that option would be one of them stomping off after something really hurtful had been said, and he wouldn't have gotten anywhere. At which point, he would have to go back and face Harry (and Ginny, he was sure) with nothing to show for their fight except frustration.

On the other hand, if he calmed himself down, maybe they could just finally, finally, have this out.

Wow.

This was it. The moment he had been awaiting and dreading for four years.

Oh, Christ, WOW!

So the question became: was he a gambling man?

Yeah, he was.

Hermione was starting to get concerned. Ron had been standing there glaring at her for some time without saying anything.

"Ron?" she asked cautiously, and did that head tilting thing that drove him crazy.

He took a deep breath and let it out.

"Sorry," he said suddenly, "can I sit down?" She was too shocked to do anything but nod. He plopped down in front of her as though his legs had given out. He wouldn't look at her.

"Are you alright?" she asked.

"No," still not looking at her.

"What's the matter?"

"I can't … I don't …" he whimpered and she took pity on him.

Taking a fortifying breath, she asked, "are you mad at me?"

"Kind of…" She let out the breath she hadn't known she was holding with a whoosh. Hermione was silent for a second. She chewed her lip as she thought.

"Is this about yesterday?" she asked quietly, in such a mature-sounding, understanding way that he finally looked her in the face. The resigned anguish he saw in her eyes broke his heart.

How had they come to this place? But he knew that everything that had happened in the last twelve months had changed both of them, and their relationship, forever. Could they go back? Did he really want to? He licked his lips.

"Are you happy?" Now it was her turn to stare.

"Happy? No, Ron, I can honestly say that I am not 'happy.' But I am making the best of things. We can't spend every second of every day wallowing or we'll end up…"

"…like Harry, I know," he finished for her. "But that's not what I meant. I guess what I'm really asking is, are you happy with me?" Great, now she just looked confused.

"'Happy' isn't a complicated enough word to express how I feel about you, Ron," she answered finally, holding his eyes.

Complicated. Fantastic. He wasn't smart enough to do "complicated." They sat quietly for a few minutes, just looking at each other.

"We've changed, you and I." He continued when she nodded. "And our friendship has changed, too." He scooted closer to her until he was sitting directly beside her. He turned toward her and began to speak quickly in a low voice.

"Can't you feel it? The tension? I feel like if I'm in the same room with you for too long I'll explode. But when you're away from me, I can't take it, either. You're so different from me. You're like an adult and every time we're together I just feel really stupid and immature…"

"Ron, no! I…" He cut her off. If he didn't do this in one shot, he wasn't going to be able to.

"I feel like I'm losing you. Like you've finally figured out that I'm not good enough. And I'm kicking myself because I know that it's my fault. If I hadn't done what I did last year, you never would have realized how much better your life could be without me in it. And it's killing me…" He had to stop or he was going to do something really manly like cry. Shite. Why did he start this again?

But then something amazing happened. As he panted in and out, trying to catch his breath, he felt pressure on his fingers. He looked down and saw Hermione's hand gripping his. The warmth of the contact made him brave and he looked up at her face. She was trying so hard not to, but he could see the water in her eyes, and when he met her gaze, her control broke.

"Why are you telling me these things?" a low, quiet voice asked. There was only a taste of Hermione in it. He gulped. He had already given her the knife, might as well bare his chest for her as well.

"Because I'm afraid…I don't want to lose you and I'm scared that you're already gone…" she gripped his fingers so hard they hurt.

"Where am I going to go? I've been right in front of you the whole time, which you'd see if you would just LOOK AT ME!" she finished angrily and began crying earnestly. Jesus, she was breaking his heart. She couldn't seem to do anything but sit there and cry. He hated seeing her cry and it seemed the only thing for it was to pull her to him to calm and cuddle. So he did.

Unfortunately, this just made her cry harder.

"Please, Mione, please don't cry…"

"I can't help it," she finally said after a few minutes, "I just can't help it."

"Shh…tell me how to fix it. I need to fix it."

"You can't change the past," was all she said. He closed his eyes. Shit. What the hell had he done?

"I'm so sorry," was all he could get out in response as he pulled his arms around her tighter.

Hermione's tear monsoon was over soon enough. But she wouldn't look up at him. Instead, she pressed her nose as far into his chest as she could, tightening her grip on his shirt. She got physical contact with him so rarely, she made the most of every opportunity. She felt his chest rise as he inhaled deeply and she breathed in as much of him as she could.

"You're right, we can't change the past," came from somewhere above her head. "We'll just have to move on in light of what's happened." Confused, she reluctantly tilted her face up only to see a man's eyes looking down.

She was about to ask him what he meant when he tilted his head down and kissed her.