Author's Note: Hey! I know that I promised this for January, and I know I'm a few days late. For that I apologize. This chapter is dedicated to F Maurice, as a thank you for all the excellent reviews you've left. I really appreciate them, and I feel really bad that yours was the chapter with the greatest delay, but know that it had nothing to do with your suggestion being hard, and everything to do with the fact that I thought it would be a good idea to write something for all my favorite people as Christmas presents(which were all late too, because apparently deadlines aren't a strong concept for me) and everything else got pushed back. I'm also sorry F Maurice that I couldn't have executed your idea any better, but I hated to keep you waiting and there was just so much that I wanted to do with your idea, and so that made it hard to settle on one cohesive idea. SO THIS CHAPTER IS LIKELY TO BE REWRITTEN SO AS TO IMPROVE IT SOMETIME LATER.
In other news, I have homework again. But in a weird inverse relationship will likely mean that I actually write more! I love to procrastinate, and the idea of limited free time has rekindled my love of almost everything, Fanfiction and Ron and Hermione included.
I would like to thank F Maurice for the review on the last chapter, and once again I'm sorry I couldn't write you a better dedication chapter.
I do not own Harry Potter, or else I could write a way better Ron and Hermione fight.
I think thats it. Review? Seriously, it would be super awesome and make me feel really good about, well everything.

-BarbedWire

Chapter 15: Honeymoon

"Hermione?"

"Hmm?" the somewhat muffled reply came to him from the living room of the grey flat as he stood in the tiny bedroom, going through the stack of clean clothes on the bed.

"Have you seen my Chudley Cannons shirt?"

"You mean the one I wore to bed last night?" She responded, her tone making it perfectly clear that she considered herself to have much better things to be doing than helping him locate his shirt. The better thing to be doing, he supposed was reading. He did not even need to look into the sitting room to see it. He could already imagine her, sitting on the threadbare couch, her knees curled up beside her and some book, or work file or article balanced atop them as she read. He'd seen her take such a pose too many times to count since the day he had met Hermione Granger. It was one of his favorite things to picture actually.

Well, okay. It wasn't his favorite, or his second favorite thing to picture, but it was right up there. After a few much less appropriate images.

Endearing and utterly Hermione though her behavior might be, it was completely unhelpful to Ron, and therefore at the moment it was the last thing he wanted.

"No," he said, keeping his voice level. "The new one. Without all the holes."

"I don't know," Hermione replied, indicating that she was returning to her reading and he would have to handle this by himself.

"Have you got any ideas?" He shot back, increasingly annoyed at the book's obviously higher status on her list of priorities.

"Did you try the dresser?"

The large wooden dresser was new to the room. It was a gift from Hermione's parents. Just like the pile still stacked untidily beside the couch where Hermione was currently perched in the living room, it too had been wrapped in silver paper. He wasn't sure why everyone had decided that all wedding presents had to be wrapped in silver, but they all seemed to have either shared paper, or at least the thought process in purchasing it.

"I haven't got any clothes in the dresser." Ron frustratedly pointed out to his no doubt increasingly annoyed wife. Just thinking about her, sitting out there, willing him to leave her to her reading made him smile despite his annoyance at his current rank on her priority list. She was his. Everything he had ever wished for was sitting out there, in the small room on the ugly old sofa. She had promised to spend her whole life with him.

And granted, a large portion of that life would likely be spent absorbed in printed words, but he was pretty sure he could manage sharing her that much- provided he was allowed to completely monopolize her non reading hours.

"Why haven't you unpacked yet?" Her voice was drenched in exasperation, and Ron half suspected her to start reprimanding him about the importance of his studies, or how Snape's essay was more important than exploding snap.

Ron looked down at his still mostly packed bag sheepishly. They had been back from the Honeymoon for which he had packed the bag for only three days, and since then he had not touched it. Three days was technically plenty of time to unpack, but Ron had other things on his mind. Like how the exasperated voice belonged to his new wife, which still felt wonderfully new to think about. In Ron's opinion that was something completely worthy of celebrating. The whereabouts of his clothes had been far from the forefront of his mind.

"Just hadn't got to it yet."

With an ominous thud, Hermione closed her book. He heard her rise from the couch and cross the room in a few strides. It crossed his mind that he probably ought to have been afraid.

"And just when were you going to 'get to it' Ronald Weasley? You do have to go back to work tomorrow!" She demanded as she came into the room. "Tell me exactly when you thought you were going to get this done?"

"I dunno. I hadn't really set aside time to unpack my bag. 5:30 eat supper, 6:00 do dishes, 6:35 unpack bag-"

"That's right. And you were just going to keep not getting to it for weeks until I finally get so sick of looking at your stupid bag I do it myself!"

"I don't think you can just accuse me of convoluted backhanded plans to get out of unpacking"

"We both know that's what would happen!" She yelled, scooping up his bag, and throwing it down on the mattress.

"But that doesn't mean it's like a master plan!"

"So you didn't intend it that way, and that makes it okay?" She began to throw the clothes out of his bag with terrifying ferocity.

"What are you doing?" He demanded, shocked at his ability to keep his voice level.

"What does it look like?" She shot back, tossing a pair of jeans to the floor. "Cleaning up your mess!"

"I didn't ask you to do that." He pointed out, knowing that it would only make her angrier. He had always lacked the common sense or the self-restraint or the self-preservation instinct or whatever would have been necessary to resist carrying on once he had started down the path of a row. A sensible person, he supposed, would know not to say things which would only make it worse, but he had never been very sensible when it came to Hermione.

"No?" Her voice taking on the tone of deadly mocking she reserved for when she hated him most. "So I just imagined you calling me in here to sort out your misplaced clothes?"

"I didn't ask you to do anything!" he finally lost control of his voice and roared across the bed at her. Hermione dropped his clothes and stood up to her full height to glare at him. "I just asked if you knew where my damn shirt was!"

"You wouldn't have lost it if you'd dealt with your things instead of waiting for me to do it for you!"

"We've been home three days!" The truth was, he hardly even knew what he was fighting about anymore. That was the way their fights had always been; they'd start off with something that one or both of them actually cared about, and they'd take the opposite stance no matter what and scream and yell and say a lot if things they didn't mean. It never took very long, before that thing that one of them actually cared about was forgotten by each and the only thing that mattered was the screaming match. It didn't matter if they were making a scene, if Harry was trying to force logic back into them. While they were bickering, they might as well have been the only two people in the world. All he'd wanted to do in those times was to win the argument, or hurt her as she'd hurt him, or at the very least keep her attention focused on him for a bit longer.

He could remember when fighting with her was the only time he was allowed to begin express all the flood of feelings she aroused in him. Screaming was the only way he could vent all the passion he had for her. He'd welcomed chances to bicker in those days. Since they had been in a proper relationship they had fought significantly less, due in large part to the fact that they had other coping methods for the overflow of emotions. But even if being able to kiss her made living with her easier than he had ever known it, they were still Ron and Hermione.

"And in those three days you haven't touched your bags!"

"But that doesn't mean I expected you do it for me!"

"I'm not going to spend my whole life keeping track of your things!"

"Oh don't worry," Ron yelled derisively. "I know exactly where I rank in the scope of things!"

"The scope of things?" she shrieked, throwing his bag back down onto the bed out of frustration. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"It means that if there's a book around, or some work to be done, or some goddamned down trodden species of magical creatures to uplift I don't expect you to pay me much attention!"

Hermione's eyes popped. She was reduced to working her mouth in soundless rage for a long moment before she found her tongue.

"I can't believe you're being this immature!"

"That's bloody right," he threw his arms up in the air, as if the evidence for his point was all around him, when the truth was that he had almost no idea what his point was. He was angry for the sake of being angry, and even if they were not school children anymore and he certainly shouldn't need to make her scream at him to feel her attention, but old habits die hard and it felt good in a way. "That's right, just run me into the ground again; I'll still be here when you're through."

"Damn you Ron Weasley! Damn you, damn you!" As she spoke she began to grab the clothes out of his bag, and throw them one by one at him. He didn't bother to deflect or duck, he just stood there while t shirts and socks bombarded his face and screamed. They had reached the climax, when they had both moved past the realm of reasonable thought, and beyond the possibility of coherent arguments. When they were children, this had been the part where they had started to scream names at one another, struggling in vain to prolong their interaction a few minutes longer even though the fight was dead.

He was just contemplating how incredibly immature it was to be in a pointless screaming match with his wife, when she flung it at him. Like the rest he did not attempt to stop it from hitting his face, and it after it had made contact it fell straight down to land on the bed. All at once, the yelling stopped and they both fixed their eyes on orange garment as if it was the answer to every question they had ever had.

Without really deciding to, Ron had moved forward and wrapped his arms around Hermione, and was kissing her fiercely. She kissed him back just as enthusiastically. He twisted his fingers into her bushy hair and pulled her closer, causing her to moan a little into his mouth. Gently, he hooked his hands behind her knees and set her down carefully on the bed. They fell back together, on top of the bed covers and his still half packed bag and the Chudley Cannons shirt that had started this whole debacle. None of it mattered. All it would ever take was a millisecond of the taste of her breath before nothing else in the whole world would matter. They might as well have been the only two people in the world. All he wanted to do was to hold her forever, and he couldn't see any reason why this would be an argument he could not win.