Hello, the new school year! I am grateful to all of you who have continued to take interest in this story, asking me to post the new chapters soon. I am sorry it has taken me so long to do this.

I will try to be better in the future. The end of the summer was hectic, vacation included. I love Canada! Niagara Falls are beautiful!

Chapter 6. Ron Weasley.

It was as though someone else, not him, was sitting, feeling acutely fatigued and acutely paltry under the vast dark heavens, that had once decided his destiny…

If not the heavens, then who else? Aside from yourself… Yet, could you yourself have taken that terrible step, the first step onto the path of loneliness and disillusionment, where every instant feels like eternity; every emotion – a torment; every memory – a knife cut across the heart?! Could you have voluntarily walked away, away from your home, away from her? From her eyes, that had always invested you with confidence; from her voice that had been whispering the oh so needed words of love and devotion; from yourself, because without her you can never be the same…

Four years. An eternity, yet, an instant. You live, bearing within you the past that is no longer a part of the lives of others. Of her life that was torn asunder, smashed by the merciless heavens. No, not by the havens.

By them.

Ron closed his eyes, his elbows resting wearily on his knees. It was like only yesterday that he was running down that dirty lane off the Diagon Alley, his heart clenching with dread in his chest. The colours, the sounds of that moment were still fresh in his mind.

…That lane, dirty, damp, and dark. And Ginny's red hair, and her blood. And the beasts, killing her without mercy. And the pain – not the physical kind. The kind that makes you want to weep and scream, looking at the dead person whom you loved like yourself…

Ginny. Little Ginny… He had never been so brave in all his life as in that moment – when she was dying. When the enemies of her husband, the great Harry Potter, so easily cut – gnawed through – the thread of her precious life. And he had never been so insensitive to physical pain as he was then…

Sometimes Ron wondered why he didn't die there, in that dark alley, along with her, with Ginny. Why the merciless heavens did not let him follow after his sister. And the answer was always the same: because of her.

Because of Hermione.

…The bedroom in the house at Grimmauld Place, cobwebby and dusty. Damp sheets. And Hermione, putting away her wand and feverishly kissing his bitten lips. Her hands, her eyes, her smell that sometimes made him choke up. His heart, beating out of his chest. And it didn't matter that he was a werewolf, that the full moon was approaching, that he was wanted by the Ministry. Even the knowledge that Ginny was no more seemed distant and irrelevant at that moment. Because it was she, Hermione, that was the center of his universe, as she had been for so long…

He survived and broke out of the Ministry's grasp only because she was next to him. She believed that it would all work out, and he also stupidly believed that. He lived, he fought, suffering and clawing at himself on the inside. All for the sake of the moment when he got to pretend to be her, Hermione. The moment when he got to save her life. So that she would live. So that she would learn to be happy again. So that she would love again. Not him. But love, nevertheless…

The thoughts of Hermione always brought on the memories of Harry. And the old, dragging pain that used to be jealousy, but lost its sharpness and heft over the years. These memories always raked up the dark feelings and thoughts. And so he would go back to thinking about Hermione, because everything about her was clear.

The details faded, but the warmth that now made a chill come over his heart, remained. As though her hand – as only her hand ever could – momentarily touched his unshaven and scratched cheek.

Her hands. Remembering them, he always remembered the foggy autumn evening, when he wandered the streets, cross with Hermione once again over something trifling. He was cold and tired; he felt qualmish because he knew that she was sitting in their kitchen, upset, biting her lips. And, not knowing where his feet were even headed, he came home. She met him with silence. He took a step toward her, and she slapped him – hard, stinging with the cold of her chilled hands – and then buried her face in his fog-soaked shoulder and cried.

Remembering that slap, he remembered his own. He hit her. Out of anger. Out of jealousy. Out of pain. It wasn't even him, but rather the creature he was slowly becoming…

…A dark kitchen, the cold steel of the knife against his hand. Inside him – also steel, alien, cold, sharp. Everything agitated and vexed him: sounds, smells, objects. He wanted to hide in the corner and howl. And there was her – her usual self, with her books and harebrained theories, researching and figuring out something. Her, thinking of Harry, as usual, as always, while he was feeling sick to his stomach. He was not his usual self, he was different, and she should realize it and change, too! She should stop talking about Harry, about what a sad and difficult time it was for the Golden Boy, because for once it was a sad and difficult time for Ron. And he struck her; he lost control with a sort of acrimonious satisfaction of a bullied caged beast who was finally able to break free and punish his tormentors…

And now, nearly four years after all that, after he left the lake shore in the Forest of Dean, leaving her with Harry, having done everything in his power to protect their future from annihilation, to avenge Ginny and his own ruined life, he knew that there wasn't much left of that former Ronald Weasley. Only whatever parts of his soul that he has managed to preserve from being consumed by this new life that had invaded him – first with the werewolf's fangs and his helplessness to prevent it, and then – with the strength, ferocity and uncontrollable fury. And with the wistful eyes of the girl who has forever become his burden and his refuge…

"Ron."

He looked up at the slight figure standing next to him, afraid to touch him. She was always afraid to touch him, as though wary of being hurt, although Ron never even said a cross word to her. Perhaps, because this slim girl with braids – the daughter of his first full moon's victim – reminded him of another girl, from his past life, whom he held in his arms, bathed, read to, and helped to sort out the complexities of life. Who called him Daddy. Who for the past four years has maintained a thin thread between him and his past.

"Ron," – she called him again, as though to remind him that she was not Rose.

"Yes, Bertie," he did not stand up, so as not to loom over her.

"Mummy is feeling sick again," the trembling hand touched his shoulder hesitantly, seeking comfort.

Ron rose slowly to his feet, knowing that he had to move and act, picked up Bertie, and strode toward the cottage where the sounds of the piano have long ceased and the light in the window grew dull and uneasy… Like the light of his current life.