A/N: Thank you so much to everyone for their wonderful support! It means so much that people are still invested in this story, you don't even know. And another quick thanks to my love CallieSkye for always Britpicking for me (not just in this chapter, but in life)... you are the best. Anyway, on with it!

"I'm sorry," Ron repeated for the third time that night to the small, petulant owl glaring at him across the table. "Don't take it personally, all right? It's for your own good."

Beside Pigwidgeon sat a nameless and extremely patient Great Horned owl, whose yellow eyes glowed in the quasi-darkness of the basement kitchen. The house was eerily quiet, Harry presumably having gone to bed hours ago, but Ron felt wide awake as he skimmed over the words he had scrawled onto the parchment.

Writing to Hermione was more difficult than he realized. It had been easy, during summer holidays from Hogwarts, to simply send her a letter inviting her to the Quidditch World Cup, or Grimmauld Place, or the Burrow, and he really hadn't needed to think about it. Now, though, when he missed her so much it was like a weight in his stomach, there was no way he could possibly convey that in words. There wasn't much he was allowed to tell her about Auror training - not in writing, anyway. Things at the shop had gone into overdrive, Ron's presence having galvanized George's ambitions for reopening, and now the place would be open for business by the first of February. That night he'd been there late, repairing shelves that had been all but ruined by Death Eaters all those months ago, and now, he saw as he glanced at his watch, it was nearly two in the morning.

Deep down, he knew Hermione would understand if he didn't write her every night, but he wanted to. Even if the words on the parchment couldn't come close to accurately expressing how he felt, it was the only way he could even attempt to feel close to her. Looking back, he had hardly capitalized on the opportunity of actually being at Hogwarts with Hermione, miserable in the actual castle as he was. He had seen her every single day, kissed her goodnight, occasionally found moments to sneak up to his dorm (not that they'd all gone exactly to plan, but it had happened), but there was still so much he had missed. He had been so worried about trivial things like Quidditch and so busy trying not to think about the fact that he lived in the building where his brother had died, that he hadn't appreciated how lucky he was just to be with Hermione at all.

He appreciated it now, of course, but it was a bit too late, and now all he could do was write to her.

"Stop looking at me like that," he hissed to Pigwidgeon as he tied his letter to the leg of the Great Horned owl. "You're in retirement now. We've discussed this."

It would have been nice, thought the side of Ron that had only slept seven hours over the past two nights, if Harry would go ahead and replace Hedwig already, even though Ron knew it wasn't that simple. They were both taking advantage of the Hogwarts owls, and it meant that Ron had to spend most nights contending with a very fussy and insulted Pigwidgeon.

As if he had time for one-sided debates with an animal who could fit inside his palm.

"Thank you," Ron added to the Hogwarts owl, carrying him over to the fireplace. "Reckon you can get there by morning?"

The owl took off up the chimney without a backward glance, and Ron stared around the kitchen. His bed would be cold and empty and enormous without Hermione in it, but he had no other choice. With a casual wave of his wand, he extinguished the lantern in the corner of the room and made his way upstairs.

•••

The sky was still dark when Ron's wand let out a sharp blast like a bell, and it took a moment for him to orient himself. Somehow he had ended up sprawled across the middle of the bed on his stomach, one foot hanging off the end of the mattress, and it occurred to him, as his wand continued to chime in his ear, how big this bed really was. He had grown so accustomed to the Hogwarts dorms, to the bottom bunk of a tent, and then sharing with Hermione, that to have so much to himself still didn't feel right. The weeks since her departure should have acclimated him to this new solitude, but he had never been the sort of person who had anything to himself, and he wasn't sure this was how he wanted to start.

"Finite," he muttered to the wand, which silenced itself at once. His head felt wrapped in cotton as he hauled himself out of bed and fumbled around in the dark for his trainee Auror robes. Showering, he thought with a slight cringe, would just have to take a backseat to last-minute revision.

Down in the basement kitchen (it felt as though he'd hardly left), he re-lit the lantern from earlier, toasted a slice of bread with his wand, and dumped a generous portion of tinned beans on top of it. His mum would likely go spare if she saw the way he ate lately; though he and Harry had a standing invitation for dinner at the Burrow, he ended up eating takeaway fish and chips with George at the shop most nights.

He sat down at the table and cracked open his textbook to the chapter on antidotes. Elbows on the table, the fingers of his left hand sunk deep into his hair, he began to read, to commit to memory the processes by which antidotes were derived, the many horrific potions on which a bezoar would have no effect (a thought which still, years later, made his stomach turn), the theory behind Golpalott's Third Law. Studying was easier now than it had been at Hogwarts, most notably because he wasn't trying to sneak glances at Hermione when he thought she wasn't looking, but also because now, he knew why he was doing it. He was working toward something now, and if he was going to be an Auror, he wanted to be a damn good one. He didn't want any question as to how he had earned a place in the program, he didn't want any suspicion of favoritism for Harry Potter and his friends. He was going to prove that he deserved to be there, and he was going to learn these bloody antidotes if it was the last thing he did.

Sunlight was just beginning to stream in through the dingy basement windows when Harry padded into the kitchen, looking irritatingly well-rested.

"Morning, Hermione," he quipped, pinching his lips together in a clear attempt to keep from smiling.

Ron picked his head up from his hand and rolled his eyes. "Don't I wish."

Harry gave a small nod of sympathy and picked up the half-empty tin of beans from the work surface, peering curiously inside to study its contents. "When'd you get back last night?"

"Dunno," Ron muttered. "Late. And I wanted to write back to Hermione right away, so she'd get the letter by breakfast."

"Right," Harry nodded. "Are you going to finish these?" He held up the tin.

"Er, no, you can have them," Ron replied. He'd barely touched his own, so engrossed he had become in his book, and he thought to himself that he must have really missed Hermione if he was channeling her like this.

As it tended to do, his mind wandered to her, wondering what she was doing, if she was spending her morning the way he was - rising before dawn to pore over a textbook, the sort of behavior he used to insist was indecent in anyone but her. And he just hoped that she wasn't living like him, that she was sleeping, that she was eating. For the first few days after Hermione had left, he had been on the point of mentioning it to Ginny, but he had gathered from Harry that she was deepl y entrenched in captaining the Quidditch team, and he thought the words might fall on deaf ears.

He had always been the one to balance her out, the one to make her laugh when she was stressed or nick her a sandwich from the kitchens when she was too absorbed in a book to bother with dinner - and she had done the same for him, really. She was the one to pull him out of his own head when he was lost in anxiety over a Quidditch match, she could match his stubbornness with her own, and now that was gone.

Not gone, he told himself firmly, watching Harry prepare his own piece of toast. There was just more distance now, only one method of communication, no opportunities to touch her, but it wasn't gone. It was just different right now.

And he needed to stop being so dramatic about it, he decided. There was no use approaching it like she had gone halfway round the world for the next three years. He would see Hermione in a few short weeks, and in the meantime, they both had things they needed to do.

"Oh, so, anyway," Harry piped up with far too much eagerness for such an early hour, licking tomato sauce off his thumb, "I was talking to Robards last night, after you left for the shop, and he said - well, actually, first he told me that you got the top grade on the Concealment and Disguise exam - but after that, he was saying he wants us to do this field training thing for a day."

"Both of us?"

"Well, yeah," said Harry. "I mean, everyone'll have to do one eventually but they want us to go first, since we've got - y'know - the most experience. It's supposed to be a Saturday, sometime next month. Which-" he cringed- "I just hope isn't the same day as any of the Hogwarts visits."

"Yeah," Ron agreed fervently, "yeah, me too."

•••

A sharp blast of cold air struck Hermione's skin, jolting her out of a deep sleep, and her eyes popped open to see Ginny standing at her bedside, the crimson duvet clutched in her fist.

"Wake up!"

Hermione groaned and closed her eyes again. The grayish blue light streaming in from the window indicated that it was just barely dawn, and as Hermione had stayed up late reading her Arithmancy textbook by the light of her wand, it felt as though she'd only just fallen asleep.

"Come on, get up," Ginny insisted, now kneeling next to Hermione on the bed to make the mattress bounce. "The sooner you get up, the sooner we'll be in Hogsmeade."

"No, that's not how it works." With a great effort, Hermione planted her hands on the bed and forced herself to sit up. "The trip is from eleven until five, that isn't changing."

"You're Head Girl," said Ginny. "You can't pull some strings?"

"It doesn't matter," said Hermione. "Ron's working at the shop today until eleven, anyway."

"Harry's not." When Hermione remained silent, Ginny scowled at her and tossed the duvet back onto her legs. "Oh, fine. Go back to sleep, then."

But now that she was awake, and thinking about Ron, there was no way Hermione could fall back asleep. In just a few hours, she'd finally see him. She wasn't foolish enough to book a room at the Three Broomsticks again, particularly not with most of the student population roaming the village, but she could still find some way - a less headline-worthy way - of spending time alone with him.

"I could read, I suppose," Hermione mused aloud, looking to the Arithmancy book still on her bedside table.

"And I've got a match next weekend, I should get ready for it."

Clambering off Hermione's bed, Ginny pulled a set of complicated-looking diagrams from her bookbag and sat down on her own bed. They fell into a comfortable silence, the occasional scratching of a quill and Demelza's quiet breathing the only sounds in the room, but Hermione found that she could no longer focus. It was one thing to submerge herself in work when Ron was days, even weeks away, but now that mere hours stood in her way, he was all she could think about. She read the same lines over and over again because every word made her think of him, her imaginative mind crafting scenarios for the day ahead.

Ginny, it seemed, was experiencing the same struggle to concentrate, because it wasn't long before she tossed down her playbook and stood on bare feet.

"I'm going to shower," she declared. "I can't think about any of this today."

Indeed, the hours until the walk into the village dragged so slowly that Hermione thought the hands on the clock must have been mocking her. As Head Girl, the responsibility to guide the students safely out of the castle fell to her, but the moment their feet hit High Street, the afternoon was hers to enjoy.

"Quick, let's grab a table," said Ginny, striding quickly toward the Three Broomsticks. "Before all the good ones have gone."

As they were some of the first patrons in the pub, they secured a large, round booth near the hearth and settled in, stripping off gloves and overcoats as they scanned for familiar faces. Hermione was just about to reach for her money bag so she could purchase the first round of butterbeers when Harry - and just Harry - came strolling in. His eyes fell on them immediately and he hurried over, sliding into the booth and kissing Ginny exuberantly in greeting.

"Where's Ron?" Hermione asked impatiently when they had come up for air.

"Don't know," Harry shrugged, nonchalant. "We were just planning to meet here, since he's working. I'm sure he'll be here in a minute."

"Yeah." Hermione agreed quickly. "Yes, I'm sure he will."

"Anyway," Harry said brightly, "first round's on me, I'll be back." He left a noisy, smacking kiss on Ginny's cheek and scrambled out of the booth. As Ginny trained her eyes on Harry's receding form, Hermione fixed her own on the door. Any second, she knew, it would burst open and he'd finally be there, after weeks of subsisting on letters alone.

Harry set a heavy mug of butterbeer onto the table in front of her as he rejoined them in the booth, but Hermione barely bothered to notice. The pub was filling up now, excited students pooling their Sickles to purchase drinks, the occasional couple who had (wisely) opted to avoid Madam Puddifoot's holding hands upon gleaming polished wood tabletops. Here and there, Hermione picked up on furtive whispers, most of them regarding the presence of Harry, but sometimes she heard her own name, and Ron's too, and she knew they were wondering, as she was, where he could be.

"You're sure he didn't have the time wrong?" Hermione asked Harry, interrupting their study of a complicated Quidditch strategy.

"Positive," replied Harry. "We were talking about it last night, but I didn't see him this morning, he must have left early." Seeing the blood drain from Hermione's face, he quickly continued. "I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation, he wouldn't just not come see you."

"I know that," Hermione snapped back, "but he's nearly forty minutes late, something must have happened."

The thought entered her mind to Disapparate out of Hogwarts and set out searching for him in London, but she immediately dismissed the notion as sheer madness. She was Head Girl, after all. She couldn't spend her day Apparating all over Britain when she was expected to remain in this tiny magical village.

"I'm going to send him a Patronus," she decided, feeling the eyes of her friends on her back as she strode toward the exit of the pub.

Outside, the icy February wind whipped her hair into her face as she drew her wand and pulled a happy memory to the forefront of her mind. They weren't easy to come by; even ones that made her heart burst - memories of waking up next to Ron, of the first time he told her he loved her - were all tinged now with an ache and a longing that grew stronger by the moment.

A wisp of silver shot out of the end of her wand and dissipated into nothingness, and Hermione felt her frustration rise. Harry was right, this was the only spell that ever gave her trouble, and of course she would fail at a time that she truly needed it. She made a few more attempts, but could conjure nothing even remotely resembling an otter, and with her fingertips going numb from the cold, she resigned herself to playing third wheel to Harry and Ginny.

"What'd he say?" asked Ginny brightly when Hermione returned to the booth.

Hermione hesitated - she didn't much fancy admitting to failure - then turned her attention to Harry. "Can you send him one?"

"Er - yeah, sure," agreed Harry, seeming to understand that he had best tread lightly. "Or, you know what, I can go round the shop and check, it'll take five minutes-"

The bells on the pub door jangled violently then, and Hermione's head snapped over to see Ron charging inside. His hair was a disheveled mess, and he still wore the brightly colored robes that identified him as an employee of Weasleys' Wizard Wheezes under his coat. As he approached, wending haphazardly through the sea of tables and over-sugared third-years, Hermione spotted a streak of dirt across his cheek.

"I'm so sorry," he stated vehemently, sliding into the booth beside Hermione and urgently pressing his lips to hers; he tasted like soot. "I'm so, so sorry, the shop - I don't know what happened. Well, I do-" Reaching for Hermione's mug of butterbeer, he took a long gulp, and even in his frazzled state, she still found herself observing the bob of his throat, his strong hands gripping the handle of the mug: she had missed him even more than she realized.

"Ron," Hermione interrupted gently, reaching up to wipe the dirt from his skin with the pad of her thumb. "Breathe."

He shook his head as though clearing his mind and sipped the butterbeer again. "A whole wall of shelves came down at the shop - some kid was playing with one of the Weasley Weather products, one of those little tornadoes, only the tornado got loose and took everything down, this was about two minutes before I was planning to leave - and the place was full of customers - I'm so sorry," he concluded. "George knew I really wanted to see you so he let me go-"

"It's okay," Hermione told him honestly, "I'm just glad you're here."

"Yeah, me too." He glanced down at the mug in his hand as though just now noticing it. "Oh, sorry, I'll go get you a new one." With another quick kiss, he headed up to the bar, his knee bouncing as he waited for Madame Rosmerta.

Hermione couldn't stop watching him, partly because she hadn't seen him in weeks, but also because she could rarely recall ever seeing him this wound up. The liquid in the mug trembled as he carried it back to the booth, and as he sat back down, his fingertips drummed rapidly on the tabletop. Nervous energy was pouring out of him, even as Hermione slipped her hand around his and gave it what she hoped was a reassuring squeeze.

"Everything's fine," Ron said, shifting her hand in his so that their fingers interlocked, though his jiggling leg betrayed him. "This day's just been mental, is all."

"Are you sure?"

"Promise."

The pub felt oppressive suddenly; Ron's entrance had been a bit of a dramatic one, and that combined with Harry's presence didn't lend itself to much anonymity. Judging from past experience, there was no way that Ron was going to relax with the cacophony of a busy Saturday blaring at him and overexcited adolescents pointing at their table. As he gulped down the last of his mug of butterbeer, Hermione leaned gently against him, so that their shoulders touched, and he turned to face her. His blue eyes were big, just slightly bigger than usual, and now that she had a moment to really look at him, she saw a few faint smudges of soot by his hairline, the beginnings of dark circles in the sensitive skin below his eyes.

When his knee picked up bouncing again, she decided that enough was enough.

"Let's go for a walk," she suggested with half a glance in Harry and Ginny's direction. They were talking a mile a minute; Hermione only caught the occasional word about recruiters and reserve lineups. It was a conversation Ron probably would have loved to join, had he been able to concentrate on anything.

"Er-" Ron's eyes passed briefly over the table, littered with half-empty glasses. "Yeah. All right."

They bade a quick farewell to Harry and Ginny and made their way out of the pub, Ron's fingers loosely linked through Hermione's as he led the way. Rather than start toward Honeyduke's, or Scrivenshaft's, or even the Hog's Head, Hermione tightened her grip on Ron's hand and headed out of town, away from the castle, in the direction of the train station. The frigid air stole the breath from her lungs, but she moved unhurriedly, leaning into Ron, and not just for warmth.

"Where are we even going?" asked Ron after a second.

"Nowhere, really," Hermione said. "But we don't have much time to spend together, and I'd rather be alone."

"Yeah, I would too."

"And anyway," she continued on, "it didn't seem like sitting still was doing you much good."

Ron sighed, his breath fogging the air. "It would just be my luck, you know, for this to happen today. Everything was going fine before - the shop's doing brilliant, actually, even with all the kids away at Hogwarts. I can't even imagine what the summer's going to be like," he said as a smile cracked over his face. "Crazier than before, I s'pose."

"I wish I could see it."

"I'd say we should Apparate there, but it's a bit of a wreck right now, and anyway," he added, the growing twinkle in his eye making Hermione's heart simultaneously soar and ache, "if we're Apparating anywhere, it should probably be my bedroom-"

"You know I can't," Hermione replied ruefully. "I would if I could-"

"I know, I know." As their feet crunched over the frozen ground, toward the currently thestral-less carriages that brought students to and from the castle, Ron dropped a kiss onto her hair. "It's enough just to see you."

"Is it?"

"Well… no," he admitted as Hermione laughed and gave a little squeeze to his hand. "But I've missed you so much, I - six weeks is a long time-"

"Ron," she interrupted, looking up at his pinkened cheeks, his hair, which was messy from the wind and just slightly too long, curling around his ears, and felt an old nostalgic pang grip her heart again. It really wasn't fair, she decided petulantly, to love him this much. "Are you happy?"

His brows knitted together as he turned to face her, their feet still carrying them toward the train station. "I - well - I mean - I don't know, Hermione, you can't ask that."

"Okay, but - but you're not miserable, are you? You'd tell me if-"

"I would," he nodded, "and I'm not, not even close. I mean - I don't sleep much. And I eat a lot of takeaway. And I study, I actually study loads. You should see me," he grinned, "you'd be so proud-"

"I am proud-"

"And it's all a lot," he concluded, as Hermione watched the flush deepen in his cheeks. "But it's good. I'm glad I'm doing it."

They had reached the Hogsmeade station platform by now, hardly recognizable without hoards of students, Hagrid corralling first-years, and a scarlet steam engine. It was eerie this way, so quiet that it almost felt abandoned.

"And you were right," said Ron, pivoting in front of her to take her free hand in his. "It was good to get out of that pub."

"I know," Hermione smirked, stepping closer to him. "I don't think you'd have said all of that in front of Harry and Ginny."

"Hmm, probably not."

He dipped his head to kiss her and she rose up on her toes to meet him halfway. Finally, blessedly, they were alone, and she could kiss him the way she really wanted to. She couldn't do much more, she briefly lamented, but this certainly beat a couple of chaste kisses in a crowded pub.

Ron pulled away and rested his forehead against hers. "Are you sure…" He stole another kiss and pulled away to look at her fully. "That you can't be Apparating away anywhere?"

"I'm Head Girl."

"You were Head Girl back in September at the Three Broomsticks, too-" His eyebrows wiggled suggestively at her.

"Stop-"

"I'm only joking."

"Sometimes…" Hermione paused; could she admit to him what she hadn't even truly admitted to herself? Because if she said it aloud, that validated it somehow. It stopped being an irrational, desperate thought and became real.

"What?" he asked, his voice soft.

"Sometimes - and only sometimes," she felt compelled to clarify, "when I'm tired, or frustrated, or I miss you - I don't know what I'm doing here."

It was the sort of thing she hadn't wanted to let herself think. She didn't want to link it back to him, to think that she was so codependent on this relationship that she couldn't handle a little distance, but their relationship was one of the biggest in a long list of things that had changed since the war. She understood now more than ever his frustration back in November when he had told her that being back at Hogwarts felt like a step backwards. Her closest friends, the two people who had always been there, were moving forward… and she was standing still.

"It's not like it's anything... bad," she continued at the inquisitive look on Ron's face. "Everything's fine, but - but that's all it is. It's fine. It just feels like I'm surviving from day to day, and that's it."

Hogwarts had never just been about academics for her. When she was eleven, it had represented a completely new world, a chance to embark on a completely new life. She had made friends, fallen irretrievably in love, led rebellions, learned more than she could ever have dreamed. Every year, despite the increasing danger looming ahead, she had boarded the train with a sort of overflowing anticipation of the year to come, and now... now, she had all but begun a countdown calendar until NEWTs exams began. It no longer felt like her new life - now it just felt like a stop along the way to the life she truly wanted.

"And I reckon I still shouldn't talk you into Apparating home with me and just, y'know, staying there, can I?"

It was more tempting than she wanted to admit. "Please don't try."

"Well," he said with an obvious attempt to imbue his voice with optimism, "you're always saying it's not forever, right? And it's not, it's only a few more months."

"Only," Hermione repeated, not sure how much she believed it.

"It'll go by fast enough," he went on in the same tone, "it'll be the Easter hols soon, and you know after that, term always went by really fast-"

"And next weekend," she recalled suddenly. "You're coming, right, to the match?"

Every muscle in Ron's body froze. "Er..."

"Oh God, what?"

"It's not bad - I mean, yeah, it is bad, but it's not - it's just that, er, remember that field training thing I told you I had to do?" he said, his eyes fixing themselves on a point somewhere past her head. "I found out mine's that weekend."

"Oh."

"I'm sorry," he added frantically as everything Hermione had envisioned - snuggling up in the stands of the stadium, preferably under a thick blanket, the match dragging on for hours to maximize their time - faded quickly away. "You know if there was anything I could do-"

"No, it's okay." She looked up at him, though he still wasn't making eye contact. "Honestly, don't feel bad. It'll be Easter soon, before we know it."

"Yeah," he shrugged. "Yeah, but I'd rather come see you-"

"And I'd rather Apparate home with you, but it's not an option right now." Her eyes had found his again, blue locked on brown. "We both just have to do what we have to do."

She stood on her toes, intending to kiss him, but paused just as he was closing his eyes.

"You still have dirt on your nose," she pointed out with a smile stretching her lips, reaching a hand up to swipe at the side of his nose.

Ron laughed and dipped his head, kissing her squarely on the lips. "Don't I always."

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