VERY short chapter, peeps. But this is such an important part of the story, I wanted it to stand on it's own. I may edit later and add in the funeral. YES, he is really dead. This was the surprise I mentioned to someone...somewhere. Hummm. Three more Chapters and an Epilogue remain. Sequel pending lots of final reviews and demands for such a thing. :-D Next chapter is called "The House that Harry Built.

THIS chapter, "Accidents Happen" is more or less the climax. I'm saying this because it's at this point that the characters are forced to change, to adapt to what their world is becoming. That my friends, it what a climax is supposed to be.

LAST point, before any of you ask - I killed him (you'll find out who in a sec!) because I like him too much to turn him into a jerk, but he had to die for the story to progress the way I want it to.

Enjoy!

* Keep going!

* Almost!

* Okay, here you go!

Chapter Eight: Accidents Happen

Harry woke to find Hermione's tear stained face looking down at him. He sat up. "What wrong?"

"There's been... an ac-accident. At -at the Quidditch Pitch," she stuttered. "Ron..."

"Ron's been hurt?" Harry asked, jumping up. "How bad?"

"Harry, Hermione, I just heard!" Severus Snape rushed into the room.

Harry got a sinking feeling in his gut. It was the feeling he had when he found out his parents had been murdered. The feeling he got what he realized Voldemort was after him. The feeling he got when Sirius..."Where's Ron?" he whispered hoarsely.

"Dead," Hermione croaked.

Severus started explaining about Ron going out to the pitch early that morning to practice. Ron had done a rocket - a maneuver in which you fly upwards at an almost straight angle at a very high speed - and just about when he was about to reach maximum altitude, he suddenly fell off. A dozen students had seen the fall from on the grounds. A few had been close enough to hear Ron scream, but none of them had been near enough to do anything to save him.

Harry was only vaguely listening to this. His heart was thumping a million miles an hour. Ron. His best friend. Dead. Gone. Just like his parents. Just like Sirius. Just like Dumbledore, Remus and Tonks, and a dozen other in the War.

Hermione wanted to die. Why now, why him? she wanted to know. Ron survived the War, but not a fall off a damn broom. I swear, my children will never lay a finger on a broom, Hermione thought. His children. Our children.

Hermione felt a fresh batch of tears begin to roll down her cheeks. She was pregnant. With Ron's twins. She was two months along now, and had been planning on telling Ron about it the next Hogsmead weekend. Now he would never know. And she was left here alone to raise them.

She sure has hell wouldn't abort them. She's figure out a way to support herself and the babies. They were all she had left of the man she'd loved since she was elven years old.

"I don't want to talk about it," Harry stated as soon as he and Severus sat down by the Potion Master's fireplace. "Let's talk about...something else...anything else."

Severus knew the feeling. He hadn't want to talk about it when Lily died. After confessing to Dumbledore, he'd gone to a Muggle bar - the same bar he'd met Emily at two summers before. "I'm sorry about last night," he mumbled.

"It's okay," Harry said. "It really doesn't seem important anymore. I'm sorry too."

"She just showed up," Severus explained. "I haven't seen her in nineteen years."

"You don't owe me an explanation, Sev," Harry sighed. "I should have trusted you more. Not jumped to stupid conclusions. I just didn't know you had ever fancied girls, it kind of surprised me."

"You knew I fancied your mum," Severus countered, hoping dearly that bringing up that point wouldn't be too awkward for his bond-mate to think about.

"I know," Harry replied. "But you were never with her."

It wasn't a question, Severus recognized. Harry knew in his gut that Severus had never been intimate with Lily Evens Potter. Severus had nothing to prove in that regard. Thank Merlin.

"I've got to go check on 'Mione," Harry said, getting up. "Why don't you owl Emily; tell her what's happened. Hermione doesn't really have any girl-friends to help her through this, and if she ever needed a witch of an aunt, it's now."

Severus nodded. Harry walked over, kissed him gently on the lips, and then left.

EEK! Don't kill me! :)