A/N: It took me far too long to update this! But now, here it is, the last part. I'm on the way out the door and didn't get this thing beta'ed, nor did I properly proof it, so I hope it's not too typo-riddled and that you all enjoy it! xx

26 March, 1998
1:00am

Ron's fingers shook violently against his knee. To put it mildly, he thought, everything had been very nearly... fucked.

He was on the verge of so many things, all at the same time...

Tears that burned his eyes and fell sporadically as he replayed this new endless loop of all that had happened to them over night. Anger that surged through him like a life force, somehow strengthening and weakening him at the same time. Terror that made his heart beat faster, his breath come shorter, and his nervous system submit to something outside his physical control. And finally, as he stared down at the girl who had seemed to weigh less than nothing in his arms as he'd carried her up from the shore to the guest bedroom of his brother's house, there was some glimmer of relief, edging ever closer to the surface. His only hope of seeing that glimmer intensify could be found somewhere within a gaze, his eyes steady and unflinching as he stared unabashedly at her chest... because he had to see it. Her life. Her breath. Each rise and fall. To know it was real.

"Ron..." she groaned, eyes still clamped shut as she moved against the stack of pillows behind her.

And all of those things he'd thought he felt - what had been coursing through his veins with some impossible speed and weight - suddenly doubled or tripled. He couldn't be sure which. And he nearly collapsed from the weight of his emotions, stirring up a recollection from so long ago...

Teaspoons and Harry's flushed post-snog cheeks - a distant conversation now - danced through his memory as he clutched Hermione's bed sheets in his fists.

"I'm here," he managed to whisper, squinting down at her.

Her hand moved along the bed sheet until she found his. Weakly, she laced her fingers with his, brow furrowed, eyes still tightly shut.

"Are we... safe?" she choked out.

"Look at me," Ron urged, squeezing her hand in part to steady his own against another wave of nervous tremors.

Her eyes cracked open so slowly, and he waited with the anticipation of a child watching the unveiling of some promised surprise. Her eyes found his in the lantern light, and he smiled, lips twitching as fear turned finally, solidly, to gratitude. He had no idea who he was thanking, if he thought about it... and he didn't care. She was with him. And maybe she really shouldn't have been. She should have died, surely, or been driven insane. Just the thought of all that could have been, could have shifted so slightly away from what now was...

She burst into tears as he held her gaze too long, as they passed from friendly eye contact into that realm of possibility that they had been edging ever closer towards these past few months... years, really.

He removed his hand from hers... only to replace it against her wet cheek, wiping tears away with his thumb as they fell. Abandoning his chair, he slid onto the bed to sit as close to her as he could manage, leaning slightly over her, shielding her in some irrational way from everything else.

"Y-you are s-so effing brave," he cried, voice heavy with undiluted awe.

She blinked and winced and he rested his palm flat against the mattress on the opposite side of her body, hovering over her protectively.

"Does it hurt?" he asked her, studying her with concern.

"A bit," she admitted, breath fluttering off beat. And he was sure that 'a bit' was more than a bit of an understatement.

"Should I call Fleur? She put some kind of paste on you earlier and she's got all sorts of things for pain," he babbled, but Hermione shook her head.

"No, please. I'm alright. Don't..." but her voice broke into a cry as she completed her thought, "leave me..."

The weight of her words struck him hard, and pain ripped through him at his own past mistakes. Wounds still sore and healing suddenly forced back to the surface, scratched and irritated by one short sentence.

He'd left her before.

"Shit, Hermione," he shuddered, recalling a promise and realizing with feverish intensity how rubbish he'd been at keeping it. "I didn't keep my promise to you. I'm so sorry!"

Her eyebrows furrowed as she stared back at him, confused as his eyes glowed with sorrow and regret.

"What do you mean?" she asked, voice so light and kind. Whatever he was feeling, she hadn't been thinking it. And her words had hit him harder than she'd known they possibly could. Not because she didn't once understand. But because he was the one who needed to understand forgiveness. His own forgiveness.

He had to forgive himself.

And he wasn't sure if he could.

"Remember," he sighed, "last year, in the hospital wing at Hogwarts. You asked me... you said I should tell you if I'm angry or upset, and that I shouldn't let it tear us apart. But I didn't tell you the truth, even though I was... and it did tear us apart! And I left you."

Her lips trembled for a moment before she composed herself, shaking her head against her pillows, a tiny gesture of dismissal.

"No, I really messed up," Ron said, before she even had the chance to verbally discard his concerns.

"Ron..." she said simply, and he was sure she knew just how pointless it would be for her to tell him it was okay. Because it wasn't. And it wasn't going to be until she knew the truth.

"We're right back in shit again and it's my fault."

"I don't want you to feel like that," Hermione said softly. And she paused as if planning her next sentence, but the words were never spoken, and Ron let out a breath he hadn't known he was holding.

"I've got to tell you what really happened. Okay?" he begged, hoping that she'd let him, fearing that she wouldn't be ready to hear it.

But her eyes sparkled and she studied him so carefully as his hand glided of its own wishes towards hers again. He was unaware he'd even been moving until he felt her skin against his, her palm press to his, and their fingers lock together again tightly.

"I want you to tell me. I knew there was something you were hiding, but I was afraid to ask you," she admitted.

"Why were you afraid?" he asked, heart breaking as he thought of all that she'd been through, and how much of that had been his own fault.

"Because... I didn't know if you wanted me to know. And I thought maybe... it was something horrible that I wouldn't want to hear but that I'd have to hear someday."

"Something horrible?" he echoed, trying to riddle out what she could possibly have misunderstood from his silence since the night he'd come back to her.

"You-you remember what I said to you last year?" she asked, looking down nervously at her hand in his, watching as his finger brushed against her skin once before he knew what he was doing. He froze, overly conscious of her eyes on his hand, focused on those little details that threatened to give it all away.

But his mouth was too dry to respond, and in some way he wanted her to say it again, to remind him of her secret, so he'd know it was still there, still a secret that she'd someday tell him. And if it was what he'd once hoped, then he could still hope at all.

He could still be forgiven.

"I had a secret. I couldn't tell you what it was. I still have it, you know. And I was afraid, when you left, that I'd have to throw it away."

He squeezed her hand involuntarily and she looked up into his eyes again.

"I remember," he choked. "Did I ruin everything? Please tell me I-"

"No. Not for me," she said quickly, blinking with suspicious frequency.

He swallowed. And he knew it was time. If not for everything, at least for this. For this one thing. He could give her that. And he suddenly found that it wasn't even difficult. He wanted her to know. He needed her to know.

He licked his lips, and focused on each of his words as his lips moved to form them.

"When I pulled Harry out of the pool, he asked me to destroy the locket myself."

Her eyes widened a bit, excited surprise as he revealed bits of truth, piece by fragile piece.

"But I was afraid to do it. I knew what it had made me think and do, and how it had changed me. But I did it anyway because Harry asked me to. Because he wanted it to be me."

Ron paused to lose himself in her gaze, shocked by the fact that through all the intensity of this intimate setting - sitting with her in a bed all alone, telling her his secrets - he was, in fact, comforted. He was nervous, yes. He was terrified. But his words flowed from him with ease as she listened, tentative and hopeful, her hand tightly bound by his own.

"Harry opened the locket. And it happened so fast. All of a sudden, everything was just... real. No one saw me. I was just another person, nothing special. To my mum and the rest of my family, to everyone. And worst of all... to you."

Hermione sucked in a breath as her eyes grew larger, the creases across her forehead deepened, and her bottom lip trembled. But this was his story. This was his own grief, not hers. And yet, it seemed that his words had struck her with as much force as they did his own soul.

Mesmerized by her reaction, he was spurred onward, spilling the rest of his story in one...

"You preferred... Harry... to me. You wanted to be alone with him. It was easier with me gone. It was easier and you were happier without me. Both of you were."

Hermione choked on a sob as he spoke, tears rolled slowly from the corners of her eyes, and her creased brow quivered as she bit her lip.

"But then I destroyed it. I stabbed the locket and it was all over. And Harry told me the truth, what I already knew in my heart just then. Or what I hoped."

He stopped at last and moved a tiny inch closer to Hermione, guilty for making her cry, for choosing now to tell her this when he should have been rejoicing at her survival and making her rest. But then maybe that was exactly why it was now that felt right.

Because he could have lost her. But he'd been given one more chance. And so had she. And he'd be damned if he wasn't going to make it count. Do everything differently. Do what he should have done ages ago.

"And what," Hermione began, so quietly that he held his breath to hear her, "was it that you hoped?"

"I..." he started, rubbing her hand with his thumb again, not even caring that she was noticing, that she was staring, "I have a secret. I can't tell you what it is... yet... but I think you might already know. And I hoped... that I was right about yours too."

She let out a cry, somewhere stuck between relief and desperation, and she dropped Ron's hand and pushed up away from her pillows to wrap her arms around his shoulders, burying her face against his neck, soaking his shirt collar with her fresh tears. His arms were around her waist before he could comprehend his own movements, his own nose and mouth pressed into her thick, messy hair.

"Promise me one thing," she spoke against his skin, and his eyes fluttered shut at the warm tickle of her chapped lips against his sensitive neck. It was perfect, and closer than they'd ever been.

And he would have promised her anything in the world.

"Okay," he agreed, before he had any idea what he was agreeing to. But sod it, he didn't need to.

"Promise we aren't going to wait until one of us ends up in the bloody infirmary, half-dead, before we finish this conversation."

He laughed, relief finally absorbed through his body in the steady and pounding beat of his heart against hers.

She pulled back slightly to grin sheepishly up at him, her face glittering with the remains of her tears. He removed an arm from around her and wiped her face dry with his hand again, feeling her blush and watching her cheeks redden, excitement in how he could affect her, in knowing it was true.

He could see hope again, and not so very far away.

And maybe somewhere within that hope... there was forgiveness.

His own, for what he had done. And hers. He'd have done anything in the world to gain it. Though he'd found he only had to be patient to receive it. She'd made up her mind, but had to remember what they'd almost lost. And in every wrong step, they always seemed to move closer... in the end.

"I promise," he smiled, and she grinned fully back at him, relaxing into his embrace as her body calmed to his touch. "I'll neverleave you again. I won't let you out of my sight, actually."

She laughed and shook her head, amused.

"And you know, as soon as we get out of here, we should do it. We should just have it out and say everything, yeah? Might as well. It's getting ruddy annoying talking in codes and riddles."

"Yes, it is..." she whispered, eyes shining with awe.

He beamed at her, and fear could not find him. They had each other. And they were going to be fine.

"Ron?"

"Yes," he breathed.

"You're amazing."

He blushed as his heartbeat tripled.

"You're confused," he sighed. "That's you you're talking about."

She shook her head, still smiling, and leaned so close to him that he stopped breathing again. It was probably bad for his health, to be so close to her.

But she narrowly missed his hopeful target, and pressed her cheek against his, sighing out a heavy breath. But just as he felt her pulling back again, her lips brushed against his jaw. So small and soft. He could have imagined it. But he hadn't. He was sure...

She released him and settled back against her pillows, eyes drooping with exhaustion. Ron watched her unabashedly, sure he was as transparent now as he'd ever been opaque. And that she could see everything he hadn't said.

He honestly hoped that she could.

"Stay here for a bit?" she questioned, and it was only then that he noticed just how much space she'd left on the edge of the bed.

Unable to form words, he nodded, and without waiting for her to ask him, he lowered himself onto the bed next to her, on top of the blankets. Her lips curved into a lazy smile. And he knew what he was going to do, impossible to shift gears now.

Stretching an arm across her, he let the weight of it sink on top of her stomach, settling slowly so as not to hurt her, as if the pressure itself could break her. And he slid his face closer, until his lips touched her cheek. And he resisted furiously against a startled gasp the moment his mouth came into contact with her soft skin.

When it was over and he thought he'd move away, his neck and cheeks on fire, his course was recalculated by her body magnetically tilting closer to his own. And from her position on her back and his position on his side, he could see each breath she took as she rested her cheek against his long nose.

"Thank you for coming home," she whispered.

He had the impression that she wasn't thanking him, but thanking the universe, thanking whatever force it was that had drawn him to her again out of the void.

It was the perfect time to say it, but he couldn't. Not yet. She was alive. He could feel her.

And when he did finally tell her everything, when she told him too, it would no longer just be enduring. It would be truly living.