A/N: Let's just get right down to it, shall we?

No good ever came from Quidditch, Hermione decided on Sunday morning. It was always putting Harry in the hospital wing or giving Ron anxiety or turning Ginny into an unrecognizable drill sergeant, and somehow it always caused a rift between Hermione and Ron. As a matter of fact, she could hardly recall a match in which something hadn't gone awry in some way.

And yet… it wasn't really about Quidditch at all, was it? That was what Ron had said, although it was evidently too easy and logical for him to share the actual problem. Instead, he did what he always had in the past: lashed out about trivial things, clammed up, avoided actually sharing how he felt. If he could just speak honestly with her, she knew they could resolve this, but she also knew she couldn't wheedle it out of him. He had to be ready on his own.

It was this thought that kept Hermione glued to her bed on Sunday morning. If Ron wasn't yet ready to talk to her, then she wasn't terribly keen on sitting at the Gryffindor table while Harry tried to mediate the awkward silence… and she was so, so sick of fighting. All she wanted was to just be happy with him.

In the bed next to Hermione, Ginny let out a groan of discomfort and sat up, her hair in disarray, eyes bloodshot.

"Celebrate a little too much last night?" Hermione asked knowingly.

Ginny hiccuped. "You could say that. But Madame Hooch told me after the match that there was a recruiter there from the Holyhead Harpies and she said that they were really impressed, so…" She flopped back onto the bed. "I'm paying for it now."

"That's really exciting though, about the recruiter. Do you think you'll play there next year?"

"With any luck, I'll make the reserves, at least." Ginny made an attempt to sit up again, cradling her head in her hands. "Let's go get breakfast, I bet Harry and Ron are downstairs already."

"You go ahead, I'm… not really in the mood for it."

"You're not in the mood for breakfast? I think a slice of toast would save my life right now." Ginny gathered her hair into a thick ponytail at the back of her head and looked over at Hermione. "Do I dare ask?"

"I don't even really know what happened, let alone how to explain it, so don't bother."

"Whose fault is it, yours or his?"

Hermione opened her mouth to reply, only to realize that she couldn't even answer, and closed it again without having uttered a word. Ginny cringed and climbed out of bed, staggering a bit as she walked to her trunk.

"That can't be good." Her expression turned to sympathy. "I'll bring you back something."

Such was the manner in which Hermione survived that Sunday, on the parcels of food brought back by Ginny at mealtimes. Hermione knew it was childish to hide from Ron in the one place in the castle he couldn't access on his own, but she just couldn't face the thought of trying, futilely, to decipher his cryptic barbs and moody silences. And she still couldn't understand what had made him so upset in the first place. She kept thinking back to the minutes they had spent together following the match, racking her brains to figure out just what had upset him, but she was at a loss. He had been so anxious in the Room of Requirement, and yet when they had reunited in his dorm, he showed no signs that anything was wrong. Maybe he really had just needed time, but maybe there was something else at play.

She was supposed to be the one who knew him best, who understood him, and yet this one answer remained elusive. If she didn't know what the problem was - if she didn't know how to solve it - then she couldn't face him. It was that simple. And so she ate the toast and sandwiches that Ginny brought to her, because she couldn't go down to the Great Hall and essentially tell her boyfriend, who she loved more than anyone, that she was failing at being a good partner. He deserved better.

Rather than deal with breakfast on Monday morning, Hermione decided to skip it altogether and simply go early to Ancient Runes. Odd though it was not to see Ron and kiss him good morning in the common room, she needed the solitude and the space. She needed a clear mind in order to think, to use logic and reason and facts to solve this. She couldn't allow herself to be distracted by his hair and his smile and his eyes anymore than she already would be, given that she shared five of her seven classes with him…

Except that when she arrived at Potions class, it was remarkably short on Weasleys. Harry and Ginny, dutifully assembling their cauldrons, simply shrugged at Hermione when she joined them at their usual table.

"Where is he?" Hermione hissed to them, hoping that if she kept her voice down about Ron's absence, Slughorn might not bother to notice. "Is he okay?"

"He was fine five minutes ago," said Harry. "Well - I mean - he's not in the hospital wing or anything."

"Hmm."

Harry looked like he had more to say, but Professor Slughorn burst through the door just then and gleefully announced that he would be giving them a quiz on rare poison antidotes, and the class snapped to attention. As sheets of parchment were passed around, Hermione's heart began to race. Was Ron now avoiding her? Had he determined, after her day of solitude, that she didn't want to be around him? And that wouldn't even be true, really. She always wanted to see him, even when he was driving her up the wall, but right now she just couldn't.

The quiz was easy - Hermione knew it would be - and then she made it her goal to completely disregard Harry and Ginny as she worked diligently on a Pain-Relief Potion. It was, she thought as she bottled it up, something that would have come in handy for her at the moment: her head was beginning to pound from stress.

Herbology was no different, with the exception that the humidity and aromas from the greenhouses only served to exacerbate her headache so that by the time the lesson ended, she was not only annoyed with Ron's truancy but rendered incredibly grumpy.

"You go ahead," Hermione said to Harry and Ginny when they suggested going to lunch. "I have something I need to do."

So while they made their way to the Great Hall, Hermione hurried up to Gryffindor Tower. Ron was even less difficult to locate than anticipated: Hermione found him lounging on an armchair near the fire, lazily flipping through that month's edition of the Quibbler.

"Hi," he greeted her, casually waving a hand in her direction. "Did you know there's a rumor that Dumbledore was a time-traveler from the future? Mental, right?"

His cavalier attitude sent a quick jolt of fury through her body. "Do you realize you missed a quiz in Potions?"

"Did I?" he replied vacantly, wresting a pair of Spectrespecs from the magazine. "Damn."

"Are you going to come to class this afternoon?"

"I'll consider it," he said with such an air of disregard that Hermione wanted to snatch the Quibbler right out of his hands.

"Ron, you have to go to class."

He tossed the magazine onto a table and stood. "Really? Because Slughorn grades on how much he likes you, not if your potion's any good and considering he still barely knows who I am, I'm not sure there's any point."

"And Herbology?" Hermione pressed on, folding her arms over her chest.

"It's Herbology," he scoffed. "It's boring and it's easy and I don't really need it."

"But you do need it!" Hermione cried. "It's all required for the Auror program, and - and why are you even here, then, if you're not going to take any of it seriously?"

"Why am I here?" he repeated as if incredulous that she didn't already know. "Hermione, do you think I'm happy to be back? Nothing about being back here feels right, not classes, not Quidditch - do you honestly think I like being here, eating all my meals in the same room where they kept my brother's body? Why would I ever want to go to the Room of Requirement when my brother was killed ten feet away from it?"

All the blood in Hermione's body seemed to leave her veins. She remembered it like it was yesterday, Fred joking with Percy, the explosion, Fred's frozen laugh and the tear tracks in the soot on Ron's face. Of course it would be burned into Ron's brain too.

"I - I never thought - Ginny-"

"Ginny wasn't there!" Ron exclaimed, flinging his hands up in frustration. "She didn't see it, she doesn't know what it was like - every time I even look at that corridor, it's all I can think about."

Hermione took a step toward him, at a loss for words. Every time she invited him to the Room of Requirement, she had to have been making him miserable, not to mention the time they'd actually gone. No wonder he'd fled.

"So why did you come back to school if you're so miserable here?"

"What else was I supposed to do?" Ron was trembling, his face brick red and anguished. "At the time I had two choices, either go back to Hogwarts or freeload off my best friend for the rest of my life. At least this way I'd get to see you."

"But I thought you wanted to be an Auror."

"All I wanted was to be happy - Harry hates it here too, but he'll at least make it into the program, I don't even know if I will, and, and… I don't even know if that's what I want anymore." Raking his fingers through his hair, he grabbed two fistfuls and let out a sharp breath. "I never told you, but - oh, hang on, you won't believe me otherwise."

He turned on his heel and bolted up the staircase to his dorm, leaving Hermione to stare after him. Within seconds, his footsteps thundered down the staircase and he reappeared, holding out a piece of folded parchment to her. "Here," he said anxiously. "Just read it, it explains it better than I can."

Curious, Hermione opened up the parchment to find it filled with messy, uneven handwriting.

Ron-

You owe me. I happened to come across that little tidbit about you and Granger in the Prophet (nicely done, by the way) and I decided to save you the trouble of hearing from Mum and Dad about it and so I "accidentally" set the thing on fire before they had a chance to read it. Better me than them, right? You want to be more careful, though. You keep forgetting you're famous and for some reason, people are interested in what you do (or who, ha ha).

Anyway, the actual reason I'm writing you isn't to take the piss. It's starting to seem like time to reopen the shop, it's just been stood there abandoned and getting dusty for months, and that's a huge waste. We didn't put in all that time for it to just close down after only two years. I'm going to need help, though, because someone will need to be down on the main floor with all the customers and someone will have to manage the books, orders with the apothecary, etc. I reckon that person should be you. I'll pay you, of course, it'd be a partnership (even though you totally owe me and I should make you work for free since I actually would have loved to see Mum send you a Howler about protecting Granger's virtue or some nonsense).

Up to you. I know you'll be doing the Auror thing at some point, which isn't surprising but the shop can be good fun most days and it's good money every day. I know you won't believe me when I say this, but I think you're the best man for the job. I also know that you're going to write me back and ask if I'm fucking with you. I would never fuck with you. Okay, yeah, I would, but not about the shop. It's up to you and I understand if you want to keep saving the world.

Just let me know. And be more discreet with Granger, please, because Dad was all bummed out that he couldn't do the crossword in the paper that day. You owe Dad a crossword puzzle.

George

Hermione finished reading and looked up at Ron, who had been watching her with bated breath. "He offered you a job? What did you tell him?"

"I told him no," said Ron. "Obviously. I'm still here, aren't I?"

"But why? If you're really as unhappy here as you say and he's offered you a way out-"

"Oh, really, Hermione, is that what you want?" he snarled. "A boyfriend who works in a joke shop?"

Hermione recoiled, stung by the implication. Did he really think she was that shallow? "That's - that's horrible to say, why would I want you to be unhappy?"

"Well, it really didn't matter, did it, because I knew the second I read it that I had to stay here anyway-"

"But why?" Tears started to prick at the corner of her eyes. "If you hate it here so much and you have another choice, why would you stay?"

"Because of you!" he bellowed. His words seemed to bounce off the stone walls, echoing through Hermione's mind. "I'm staying here for you!"

"But I'm not asking you to stay!" Hermione shot back, allowing tears to spill down her cheeks. "If you want to go, then go! Don't do me any favors!"

"I can't!" he cried back, his voice strangled. "Don't you think I've thought about it, what it would be like to be away from you? Being here, it's like… it's been like going backwards. We lived on our own for so long, we had a whole summer to know what it felt like to be in control of our lives but we're not anymore, not here - but I can't stand the thought of not seeing you every day."

"Don't do that to yourself because of me." Her voice was shaking with the effort of not breaking down entirely. They had been at Hogwarts nearly three months and he'd never voiced a word of any of this. "If - if you want to go, we'd be okay, don't stay here for me."

"But I can't go." He stated this as though it were absolute fact. "I'm not leaving you."

"Ron-"

"I promised myself, Hermione," he exclaimed frantically, "I promised myself I'd never leave you again!"

The words hung in the air, suspended by the tension of the fight and the recollection of the rainy night, a year ago, that she had begged him to stay, pleaded with him, and he had vanished anyway. What had ensued had been some of the worst weeks of Hermione's short and unusual life and of course she didn't want to relive it, but now everything had changed. The war had ended. The doubts and the insecurities and the dark magic that had driven him away had been eradicated, demolished by the sword of Gryffindor on the day after Christmas. For months afterward, Ron had tortured himself over it. Hermione had watched, from the confines of the tent, while he accepted every cutting remark she threw his way, how he never felt he deserved anything, not even his fair share of rubbery mushrooms. But there was no need for him to continue to punish himself, not when Harry and Hermione had forgiven him so long ago.

"You shouldn't stay for me," Hermione managed to mumble, watching him through blurry eyes. "Don't do that to yourself, it isn't worth it."

"It's worth it to me."

"If you stay because of me, you'll always regret it, you'll resent me for it, and I won't have that. I won't let you make yourself unhappy because of me, I'm not worth that."

Ron shook his head. "But you are what makes me happy-" The words died in his throat as he swiveled his head to the portrait hole, through which Harry was emerging with a roll of parchment in his hand.

"Sorry," said Harry, glancing with mild concern at Hermione's tear-glazed face. "I'm really sorry. But Ron, Kingsley's just written us." He rushed up to them and thrust the scroll at Ron's chest. "Read it!"

"Er-" Hermione could tell Ron didn't want to say it, but it was clear he could have hardly cared less about a letter from Kingsley Shacklebolt. "What does it say?"

"He's presenting the bill to the Wizengamot again," Harry declared in a rush of excitement, green eyes glowing. "And he wants us to testify before them, to explain why we feel we're qualified to be Aurors right now and why we want to do it. He really thinks that if we tell them about what we've been through and how it prepared us, they'll pass the law, but he needs an answer right away, it's coming up in four weeks."

"He… he wants both of us?" Ron asked, his attention switching back and forth between Harry and Hermione so rapidly that he might have been watching a tennis match. "Really?"

"Yes, the letter's addressed to both of us. So… what do you say?"

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