A/N: As usual, thank you so much for all of the love on the last chapter. If I didn't reply to your review it's because my free time is extremely limited these days (if Real Life would chill, that would be great) and I've been trying to spend it writing! But believe me when I say I appreciate it. Anyway, the good news, or bad news, however you want to see it, is that there's only one more chapter (and an epilogue) left of this fic! But we'll get on with the current chapter, and the remaining ones will hopefully be along shortly.

The castle was always a bit eerie this late at night, when the corridors were quiet and the classrooms dark and still. Only the groaning of the moving staircases punctured the silence, along with Hermione's footsteps against the stone floors. She had always liked doing her prefect rounds on her own (with the exception, in years past, of when she was paired up with Ron), but tonight, when her mind wouldn't stop racing, she wouldn't have minded company.

She had tried not to notice when April had slid seamlessly into May, tried to bury herself under Arithmancy charts and employment applications and the classifieds section of the Daily Prophet, but it hadn't really worked. Something about the change had triggered an onslaught of memories, playing like a montage in her mind. Even as she had set herself up a station in the library, where she remained until Madame Pince had kicked her out, she had found it impossible to block out the recollection of what it felt like to transform into Bellatrix Lestrange, or the burning heat of the cursed gold in the vault, or her all-consuming terror - which had not waned - as they escaped on a dragon.

And if these were the memories that assaulted her today, she really wasn't sure how she would handle tomorrow.

So she'd told her prefects that they could have the night off, and that she would do the nightly rounds herself. It felt good to be busy, usually, and she knew Ron employed the exact same method to pass the time these days, but it was sadly ineffective tonight. There wasn't a soul at Hogwarts to commiserate with: Ginny and the rest of the students had gone through a different - though no less harrowing - sort of hell with the Carrows. The truth was that she needed Ron, and Ron only. She hadn't left his side once during the battle, they'd seen all the same things, shared the same unthinkable horror and - as had become an overarching theme of the past several months - it simply wasn't fair that they had to be apart now.

Stepping onto a staircase, she made her way dutifully up to the seventh floor. She had walked through every foot of the castle tonight, been down to the dungeons and up to the Astronomy Tower, and aside from the pair of sixth-year Hufflepuffs she had found snogging in a broom closet (whom she hadn't even had the heart to punish), her night had been wholly uneventful. It was time, now, to retire to her room, to lay in the silence with Ginny and Demelza and try not to think about what tomorrow really meant.

But she thought, first, that she should make a cursory visit to the Room of Requirement. Its allure had always been strongest to those most likely to be out after curfew anyway, and anyone senseless enough not to ask the room to render itself undetected probably deserved to be caught. She walked down the corridor, approaching the tapestry of Barnabas the Barmy and feeling like the castle grew darker, and her steps slower, with every second.

She had only been there once over the past year, and it wasn't a memory she enjoyed visiting; her stomach sank at the thought of Ron and the real reason he had avoided the Room of Requirement… and that she hadn't seen it, hadn't understood until he spelled it out for her. She had been so caught up in her own priorities, her quest to ace her exams, that she hadn't stopped to consider someone else's viewpoint might not match her own. When it came to Ron, that was the last thing she wanted.

Her feet continued down the corridor, almost of their own volition, to the corner of the wall that had been blasted apart last year. To the untrained eye, it was unmarred, the same blocks of stone that had been placed there by the four founders, but Hermione knew better. She could see the seams in the bricks, the cracks and fissures that remained even after they had been sealed back together. And part of her had to admit… it felt like it had happened yesterday. She could still hear the ringing in her ears from the explosion, Percy's pleading words as he tried futilely to rouse his brother. The images were so crisp and stark in her mind that it was as if she were watching a film.

She pressed her fingers to a gap in the bricks where they hadn't aligned quite right. The repair work still seemed raw and fresh, like the hole it had patched up could reopen at any moment.

And that decided it, really. Turning on her heel, she strode purposefully in the direction of the Headmaster's office.

•••

Focus on the good. Ron had been chanting the words to himself all weekend, but it didn't seem to be doing him much good. As much as he knew the facts on the surface - that today marked the day Voldemort had died, and Harry had lived, and Hermione had kissed him for the first time - he couldn't control the barrage of images that he usually tucked away in the darkest recesses of his mind. All weekend he thought of that seventh-floor corridor, the explosions, Percy kneeling beside Fred's lifeless body, and he wondered, as he laid in bed on the morning of the second of May, if it would always feel like this. If, when these anniversaries arose, he would always feel this raw, that he and George would still close the shop as an act of mourning, that he would feel like it was happening all over again.

Rolling onto his stomach, he let his arm stretch across Hermione's cold pillow. He could recite the same trite platitudes to himself: that Fred would not want them to live like this; that he still had so many wonderful things in his life; that the war was over once and for all. None of it made it sting any less. None of it made him feel like what had happened would ever really be okay.

And besides, as much as Fred had lived his life to the fullest, he had also had a flair for the dramatic. He might have appreciated a bit of mourning from his brothers.

It was this thought that gave Ron the fortitude to pull himself out of bed. The Sunday Prophet would surely have been delivered by now, and he could peruse the classifieds section for a flat for himself and Hermione. Over the past few weeks, he had gotten the sense that Hermione wanted them to have their own space, and he quite agreed. Aside from the obvious - being able to do things like shag on the sofa or shower together without the fear of Harry interrupting - he wanted something that would be just theirs, a fresh start for the new phase of their lives.

And to that end, he decided to actually make his bed for once. He thought he might get into the habit for when he and Hermione started living together. Normally he just left it - he was only going to mess up the blankets again that night, particularly if Hermione was there - but there was a certain bachelor-esque immaturity to an unmade bed that he was hoping to leave in the past. As much as he wanted it, desperately, and as right as it felt, he knew moving in with her was probably most 'responsible adult' move that he had made in his life, and he didn't take it lightly. It meant everything to take the next step with her, and he didn't want to be a disheveled slob who never made his bed when he did.

Down in the kitchen, he lit a few lanterns with his wand and was just fiddling with the kettle on the range when the Prophet delivery owl tumbled in through the fireplace as usual. Ron paid him from a jar on the mantle that he and Harry kept stocked with spare change and sent him back on his way, tucking the paper under his arm as he returned to the stove.

Outside, the sun had just barely risen. Ron had intended having a bit of a lie-in, but his brain seemed incapable of shutting itself off; he had acclimated himself to being busy and now couldn't switch back. What he wanted - just one of the many things on that never-ending list - was just one morning to sleep as late as he pleased, with Hermione in the bed beside him, and those drowsy morning kisses where neither knew what they were really doing. He'd never really had that; his life lately involved a lot of alarm clocks and very little Hermione, and he just wanted a break where it was the other way around.

But for now, a boiling-hot mug of tea, a plate of toast overloaded with butter and jam, and the flat listings in the Daily Prophet would have to do. He settled into a chair at the kitchen table and was just burning his tongue on a sip of tea as he opened up the paper. Immediately, he knew it was a bad idea. This particular Sunday edition was so thick, he learned quickly, because an entire section had been dedicated to the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. There were photos of the fallen - he didn't feel like checking if there was one of Fred - and updates on those who had been instrumental in the victory. And he was sure there would be a long article about Harry, and probably some mention of him and Hermione too, but he didn't bother to look. The irony of it wasn't lost on him: he spent the first eighteen years of his life longing for attention, for glory and recognition of his own, and now that he had it, it didn't mean to him what he thought it would. Mostly, he craved a quiet, normal life.

Near in the back of the paper, following a detailed timeline of Harry's life and notable achievements, were the classifieds. He had only been looking a month, but nothing - and he knew how crazy this sentiment was, coming from someone who had grown up wearing third-hand clothing and shoes held together by magic - nothing seemed good enough. The problem was, they weren't exactly raking in the Galleons yet, and flats in a safe neighborhood with a fireplace and a library for Hermione weren't exactly ten a Knut.

Turning a page, Ron found himself greeted with a life-size photo of Severus Snape with the caption: Unlikely Hero? and felt his stomach flip. The last thing he wanted, on this of all mornings, was to consider the true content of Snape's character.

Maybe he could accomplish a lie-in after all, through sheer force of will. It was better, anyway, than sitting here with this newspaper that, though he'd turned the page to the classified listings, still seemed to be staring him in the face, taunting him.

He wiggled the apartment listings out from under the fat stack of paper and returned to his bedroom. So much for making the bed, he thought morosely as he slid beneath the blankets. The sheets of newspaper fell haphazardly onto the pillow beside him as he burrowed into the comforter and determinedly closed his eyes. The more he slept, anyway, the sooner the day would be over...

In the fog of half-sleep, he felt himself drifting, limbs growing heavy, mind emptying, but he thought he felt a warm, achingly familiar arm cross over his waist. He allowed his mind wander further into this fantasy; dreams of her always helped, as much as they never measured up to the real thing. Maybe he could let himself pretend that he really did feel her lips pressing into his shoulder through his shirt, that it really was her breath on his neck, her voice whispering his name…

Wait. Maybe it really was. Wrenching his eyes open, he turned his head and blinked through the last vestiges of sleep to catch sight of a lock of bushy brown hair, then big, bright eyes and perfect pink lips-

"Wh-" His brain seemed to have ceased all function. "What are you - are you really-"

"Shh." She kissed the edge of his jaw. "Go back to sleep."

"I'm awake now," he said, scrambling about under the sheets to sit up against the headboard. "But you - how-"

"I spoke to McGonagall," said Hermione simply as she shifted around to sit cross-legged next to him. "I have to Floo back to her office by five tonight, Ginny's here too. I just didn't want you to be alone. Not that you'd be alone, of course," she hastened to add, "you've got your family, and Harry, but - okay, it's selfish, really, because I wanted to see you-"

"No," he said tenderly. "No, you're amazing."

He was immensely prone to sentimental, romantic thoughts when it came to her, the sort of things that would have had a thirteen-year-old Ron melting in mortification. Now, though, he was nineteen, arse-over-tea-kettle in love with her, and genuinely would not have had it any other way. As he leaned toward her, bringing their lips together, the thought flitted through his mind that he had been kissing her for a whole year now. A whole year of unabashed devotion, of being her boyfriend (though the word was at once too inadequate and too juvenile to properly convey the depths of their connection), of not only loving her but acting on it, expressing it, and her reciprocating in spades.

A year. They could measure in years now, not just months, and it felt settled, grounded. Not too grounded, of course - he felt goosebumps spring over his flesh as her fingertips trailed lightly up his forearm. He entertained the idea that he might truly be dreaming, that his imagination was running wild, but quickly banished it. There was was no mistaking her fingers snaking in between his, the taste of her, the warmth of her breath. She broke apart from him, a slight smile playing at her swollen lips. No, the fuzziness of sleep had dissipated, leaving them in the stark morning light, and she was still here, her palm still pressing softly into his, and his mind traveled back, back to something he had heard years ago that had always stuck with him.

It hadn't been long after Ron's return home from his fifth year at Hogwarts, with brain scars freshly seared into his forearms, that he had overheard Fred and George talking in their bedroom at the Burrow. They had been packing up their things in preparation to relocate to Diagon Alley, and Ron, desperate to escape the stifling heat of his attic bedroom, had been on his way down to the kitchen for an ice-cold pumpkin juice when he heard their voices.

"What has it even been, a year, if that?" Fred had been saying just as Ron stepped onto the landing outside their room. "And he's already marrying her?"

Ron had quickly gleaned that they were discussing the newly-betrothed Bill and Fleur, and stopped in his tracks to listen.

"Yeah, and have you seen her?" George had replied. "I'd lock that down too."

"But that's my point, it's probably still the honeymoon phase, where you think the other person's flawless-"

"And I ask you again, haven't you seen her?"

"And again, that's my point." A solid thud had sounded then from behind the door. "There's like this - this haze over a new relationship, right, where you think it'll always be this perfect. But that starts to go away after about a year, and you start to notice that the other person chews really loud or, y'know, takes the Daily Prophet seriously or something. I just don't think the haze has lifted yet." Another thud. "Suppose it's his problem though, innit?"

"Not much of a problem when the woman in question is part veela - no, leave the Boxing Telescopes here," Fred had interjected suddenly. "They're not ready yet."

"Still?"

"Not if the Bruise Removal Paste isn't-"

"But it is-"

And as a squabble had commenced about the finer points of injury-related humor, Ron had proceeded down the stairs, his mind racing. He had already admitted to himself that his feelings for Hermione had gone a bit beyond friendship. Back then, he had caught himself watching her at every turn, eager for her admiration, and - if he had really concentrated - he could still feel her kissing his cheek the way she had done back in the fall. But still, he hadn't resisted wondering if it would all someday come to pass. He hadn't even been dating her (at sixteen, he had never imagined that it would truly come to fruition), but he worried, still, that he might have simply been viewing her through the haze Fred had discussed. That one day it would fade, that his feelings might dull at the edges.

"Ron?" The sound of Hermione's voice snapped him quickly back to the present. "Did you even hear what I said?"

"Huh?"

"I asked if you had any plans for today," she said, an amused smile tugging on the corners of her mouth.

"Sorry," he said, sheepish. "No, I'm meant to go over to the Burrow a little later to see Mum and Dad, but nothing right now. Just you," he added cheekily, lifting up their joined hands to kiss her knuckles.

"Do you…" She bit her lower lip. "Do you want me to go with you?"

"Oh." Ron honestly hadn't considered this option, but then, she'd only been here for a total of five minutes. "You'd want to?"

"If you want me there."

"It won't be much fun," he said. "Mostly Mum trying to pretend everything's fine and Percy trying not to be awkward - and failing at it, I'm sure-"

"That's okay." Hermione's eyes never left Ron's as she spoke. "I want to be supportive. And… and I hope you know…" She seemed to steady herself then: outpourings of emotion were not always her strong suit. "I'm with you for everything, okay? Not just the good things."

"Yeah," he nodded, kissing the back of her hand again. "Yeah, I know."

She practically crawled into his lap then, a hand on either of side of his face as she tipped forward to kiss him, and he met her lips with enthusiasm, a hand on her back to bring her close.

He hated to disparage his brother's memory on this of all days, but he thought Fred might have been wrong all those years ago. Or maybe he had been right, but it only applied to regular couples, ones like Percy and Audrey, who had met as adults. Ron and Hermione were about as far from normal as a couple could be. They already knew everything there was to know about each other, they had seen each other at their absolute worst, they had fought in an actual war, all before they were ever together in the official sense of the term. Maybe for them, there had never been a haze to begin with, and he had always loved her - not an idealized, rose-tinted version of her, but the real Hermione. The one sitting on his lap right now, kissing him as though it kept the blood pumping through her veins.

"M'so glad you're here," he mumbled against her lips.

"I wouldn't want to be anywhere else."

•••

Ron and Harry had long since screamed themselves hoarse. The roaring charm on Luna's lion headdress had worn off hours ago, and now it croaked feebly, sounding more like a sickly housecat than anything else. The fourteen athletes on the pitch were coated in mud; even Ginny's long, red ponytail was nearly indiscernible through the deluge, and the sharp blasts of Madame Hooch's whistle could barely be heard over the downpour and the screams of the crowd. Hermione was soaked through to the skin, freezing cold, but she could not recall ever feeling such anxiety over a Quidditch match in her entire life. Not only was there a recruiter from the Holyhead Harpies in the stands, watching Ginny's every move, but Hufflepuff was making an impressive showing, and Gryffindor needed to win by two-hundred-eighty points in order to secure the Quidditch cup.

And though Hermione had been accused of not understanding Quidditch for her entire magical life - and most of the time, she would agree - she understood one thing: they needed to win.

A collective groan rose up from their half of the stadium as Gryffindor's Keeper dove to block a goal and nearly toppled off his broom.

"I'm not saying I was any good at this," Ron said, turning to face Hermione, "but I know I was better than that."

"You won the Quidditch cup twice," Hermione reminded him, her eyes watching Ginny fly over to the Keeper. "You are good at this."

His lips felt like ice as he pressed them to her cheek, his arm draping over her shoulders. She tried to bury herself into his side, seeking the warmth of his body, but his clothes were also dripping wet. Over on the scoreboard, she watched as ten points were added to Hufflepuff's score, narrowing the margin to ninety points.

But then Ginny scored, and then Demelza, twice, and when Hufflepuff's Keeper had to dive to dodge a Bludger, Ginny scored again. Hermione had truly never seen Harry so worked up in the eight years she had known him; she thought he and Ron might vibrate themselves right out of the stands when Jack Sloper faked right and threw the Quaffle into the leftmost hoop.

"I see it," Harry muttered, his voice muffled by the pouring rain. "The Snitch."

He nodded his head toward the bottom of the Gryffindor goal posts, where, sure enough, something golden sparkled in the grass.

"So go get it," Ron laughed.

"I wish I could - oh, fuck, no," he moaned as Hufflepuff's Seeker flew toward that end of the pitch. "No, no, no, no…"

Had Hermione blinked, she might have missed it: as Hufflepuff's Seeker dove in clear pursuit of the Snitch, Gryffindor's swooped down from above, snatching the tiny golden sphere out of the grass. As the stadium erupted, he tumbled onto the muddy pitch, flat on his back, the Snitch held out in one fist.

The next few minutes were a blur. Hermione found herself dragged onto the pitch by Ron and Harry as the Gryffindor team celebrated in a massive group hug. Ginny had hardly dismounted her broom before she collapsed against Harry, hugging him so fervently that he stumbled backwards. A jagged bolt of lightning lit up the sky, followed instantly by rumbling thunder, and soon students were being herded into the castle by Professor McGonagall (who was doing a poor job containing her glee over the victory). As the enormous double-doors of the Great Hall drew near, Ron and Harry glanced at each other, then the castle, then at each other again.

"Oh, come on," said Ginny, grabbing each of them by the wrist and dragging them along behind her. "You're both coming to the party."

Tracking mud and rainwater behind them, the foursome slogged up to the seventh floor. At some point on one of the moving staircases, Ginny had released Ron's arm, and Hermione took the opportunity to hang back with him, behind the other two.

"Are you okay with this?" asked Hermione in a low voice. "I know you don't love being here-"

"Yes," Ron nodded, his hair still plastered to his forehead. "If it means a little more time with you, then yes."

It wasn't until they had reached the Fat Lady's portrait that anyone realized they could do drying charms on themselves. Laughing, they cast spells at each other's clothing, and by the time they stepped into the common room, Hermione's clothes were as clean and warm as if they had just come out of the laundry.

They were the first ones inside, and Hermione watched as Ron gazed around the room with a sort of nostalgic affection. As complicated a relationship with Hogwarts as he had, it was impossible not to love the Gryffindor common room.

"Come with me for a sec," said Ron, fingers lightly grasping Hermione's as he headed toward the boys' staircase. "I want to, erm, check something."

"Sure you do," said Hermione skeptically, even as she allowed herself to be led up the steps.

As they made their way up, the voices in the common room - growing more plentiful by the moment - began to fade, and by the time they reached the Eighth Years' room, all had fallen silent.

"So," Ron began as he shut the door behind them, "at some point during sixth year, Seamus and Dean hid about an entire case of Firewhisky in here - it's under the floorboards somewhere-"

"That's what you wanted to check on? Alcohol?"

Ron stepped close to her, their bodies breaths away from touching. "You gonna put me in detention?"

"I could," replied Hermione, coy as she set her hands on his upper arms and stood on tiptoe to kiss him.

"Mmm…" One large hand came up to cup her face as he leaned into the kiss, his thumb brushing over her cheekbone. "No, I actually…" Kiss. "Wanted to…" Another kiss, so laced with need that Hermione fisted his sleeves in her hands and took a step toward his old bed. It seemed, after all, a waste not to utilize this empty room to its full potential.

"To what?" she asked, breathless, angling her face up to his to catch his lips again.

"Never mind," he muttered, mouth crashing against hers as he walked her to the bed and pushed open the curtains. "I'll tell you later."

He had piqued her curiosity, to be sure - and she wasn't typically one to just let things slide - but his lips, now on her neck, were a remarkably efficient distraction, and she tumbled back onto the bed, pulling him on top of her. They would have to be quick, she thought, reaching a hand under his shirt to rest her palm on the taut muscles of his back. The party downstairs was surely in full swing by now, and their absence would not go unnoticed, but judging by the hardness digging into her thigh, Ron felt the same urgency. As his lips locked onto hers again, tongue slipping against hers, his hand roamed up her side, covering her breast through her jumper.

"Ron," she gasped around a kiss, lifting her hips up from the mattress to push them against his. As he groaned into her mouth, an image flashed briefly through her mind of the two of them, far less clothed than they were now, bodies moving together, and she reached for the button on his trousers, fingers fumbling in their haste. "Maybe we should-"

A creaking of hinges and a sharp burst of laughter tore through the room.

"Seriously?" Dean and Seamus stood in the doorway, the former indignant, the latter bent double with laughter. "Again?!"

Ron, features contorted into a pained grimace, slid off of Hermione but remained facedown on the bed.

"If I had a Sickle for every time this happened to me-"

"You'd have two Sickles," snapped Ron, his voice muffled through his pillow. "Two. That's not that many."

"We just came looking for the Firewhisky," Seamus added through his chuckles, "we'll leave you to it in a second."

"No, no, go ahead," replied Ron, "who am I to stop the party?"

As Dean knelt down by the floorboards next to his own bed and rapped his knuckles against them, seemingly checking that they were hollow, Hermione sat up and tried to avoid Seamus' knowing smirk.

"You'll let us know when you're done in here, won't you?" said Seamus, who no doubt was delighting in Hermione's mortified blush. "Can't take longer than a couple minutes-"

"Shut up," Ron grumbled just as the clinking of glass sounded through the room.

"Found 'em," declared Dean proudly, rising to his feet with a bottle in each hand. "All right, let's get out of here."

"Let us know when you're done!" repeated Seamus, just before being dragged out of the room by the hand.

As the door clicked shut, Ron shifted onto his back and looked up at Hermione with an apologetic wince.

"I'm sorry." He reached out a hand and gave her knee a gentle squeeze. "I wasn't thinking about locking the door-"

"It's all right."

"But actually," Ron continued as he sat up, "I sort of - well - I brought something for you."

As Hermione watched, intrigued, he fished a folded square of newspaper from his back pocket. Handing it to her, he pulled her hand into his lap and intertwined their fingers. "Here."

In the dim lantern light of the dormitory, it took Hermione's eyes a moment to adjust to the impossibly tiny text before her. Even then it seemed to materialize in fragments, as though her mind could not possibly process it at all at once. Words jumped out at her: Charing Cross flat for lease; fully-functional Floo; cats allowed; 100 Galleons monthly; available 1st August.

"I know it's two bedrooms," Ron was saying as the words slowly seeped into Hermione's brain, "but I reckon we can make one into a library - otherwise, I don't know where we'll keep all your books-"

"A library?" Hermione repeated, looking away from the parchment and back up at him.

"Yeah, if you want. I haven't gone to look at it yet, so it could be rubbish, but I wanted to show you first."

"No, you should," she replied at once. "Go to look at it, I mean, to see if we should take it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," she said simply. "I trust you."

It felt odd to relinquish control, even to Ron, but they were a team, and they had been for years. And part of that, she knew, was placing her faith in him.

"Okay," he said as he leaned in to lightly touch his lips to hers, and then released a sharp breath. "Merlin, I really can't wait. It'll be so good to not have to think about it, y'know? To just - just know you'll be there."

Hermione nodded her agreement, her eyes shifting down to their intertwined hands, where the pad of Ron's thumb was currently running over her knuckles. Most of the time, she thought they'd never fully recover from the war and its aftermath, from the terror and the sadness, and now the requisite distance between them… but she thought, now, that maybe that was okay. Surely they couldn't live out their lives in a state of arrested grief, but it had taught them things they wouldn't have learned any other way. And she knew that any morning that she woke up with Ron next to her, alive and breathing, was something to cherish.

"It'll be better than good," she said softly.

Ron leaned in to connect their lips again, his palm cradling the back of her neck. The newspaper clipping fluttered to the ground as Ron broke the kiss just long enough to close the curtains around them, surrounding them in scarlet, as a steady tattoo of rain pounded on the windows…

Twenty minutes later saw them nestled tightly together, legs intertwined, Ron's lips marking a lazy trail down the side of Hermione's neck. She breathed a sigh of contented fatigue and let her eyes fall shut as he ran a hand over her bare stomach, across her hip, and then up her waist to inch her closer to him.

"Love you," he muttered, laying a light kiss on her lips.

"Love you too." Hermione brushed a lock of his hair back into place, savoring the feel of the silky strands between her fingers. "I don't want to move."

"Hmm." He dropped a kiss onto her shoulder. "Let's not, then."

Her imagination raced with a thousand scenarios of how they could spend the rest of his limited time here, most of them involving him remaining in this state of undress, but it wasn't worth entertaining any of them. Reality loomed on the other side of the curtains: the stack of books on Hermione's nightstand, the joke shop in Diagon Alley, the Auror training handbook that Ron had already read cover to cover. Even as he kissed her again, and she sank into it, she knew it couldn't linger on the way she wished it could.

"No, we've got to get up." Hermione pressed a kiss to his cheek. "I'm sure they're all expecting us downstairs."

"Yeah, I suppose we owe Dean a bit, don't we."

One last kiss, and then Ron prised himself away, eyes scanning the floor for his pants.

Hermione was just pulling her hair up into a knot at the back of her head when a thought occurred to her, surfacing from the back of her mind where she had buried it months ago.

"Ron?"

He smiled at her from across the bed and adjusted the sleeve of his shirt. "Yeah?"

"When did you - come over here for a second." Rather than walk around the bed, he knelt on it and crawled over to meet her. "When did you do this?"

Ron peered down at the letters etched into the headboard - RW + HG - and his face flushed. "Oh. That."

"When did you do that?"

Sitting down sideways on the bed, he stretched his legs out before him so that his calves hung over the edge.

"I don't want to say."

"Oh, come on," she wheedled him, coming to stand between his legs with a hand on each thigh. "I thought it was really sweet, I just want to know what, you know, compelled you to do it. Was it before Christmas?"

"Christmas?" He looked dumbfounded at the thought. "No."

"Then when?"

"You're going to think I'm mental-"

"I already do," she teased, leaning in to peck him on the lips. "So you've got nothing to lose, really."

He gave a small tilt of his head as though admitting defeat and rested his hands gently on her hips. "It was after Dumbledore's funeral."

"It - what?"

"Yeah, I just - I don't know how to explain, really, it just seemed like something I needed to do. I knew we were never coming back here, and Harry was breaking up with Ginny, and it just seemed like the world had gone to shit, y'know?"

"Right, well… it had."

"Right." His voice went low, soft, his words formed as carefully as she had ever heard it. "And the whole time at the funeral, when you were crying… I'd seen you cry before, but it never tore me up as bad as it did that day." He wasn't looking at her now, instead watching his thumbs trace circles on her waist. "And I think I'd known it all year, that I didn't just fancy you or think you were fit, I loved you, but it kinda just hit me all at once that day. And I came up here to get my trunk, and… I dunno. I thought maybe if I put it into writing somehow it would make it real?" His gaze traveled back up to meet her eyes. "I told you, it's mental-"

"No," she interrupted, "It's wonderful, it's really wonderful."

"Yeah? 'Cause it kind of reminds me of when Ginny was ten and she used to write Ginevra Potter on every spare bit of parchment in the house."

Hermione's jaw dropped. "She did not."

"Oh, yeah, she did. I think my mum saved some of them, too - but anyway," he shrugged, "you were right, we should get back downstairs before they come looking for us."

With a small nod, she went in for one last kiss, this one slow and warm. She wouldn't see him again until late June, after she took her NEWTs, and the weeks standing between them and what they wanted seemed almost insurmountable.

And yet… she had never felt more confident in them and in their future. Piece by piece, they had built a life together over the past several months, and now they were so close to actually being able to live it.

Ron stood and placed a casual kiss on her forehead, then looped an arm around her shoulders as they walked toward the door.

"Oh! Wait!" Hermione scurried back over to his bed, plucking the newspaper clipping from the floor. "We're going to need this."

Ron tucked it safely back into his pocket as they headed back to the party.

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