Disclaimer: The characters and storylines mentioned here all belong to JK Rowling

Massive beta thanks to kabg01 - I couldn't do it without her.

"Where are we?" Ron asked in trepidation, gazing around the dusky woodland.

"Forest of Dean," muttered Hermione, as she pulled her wand from the sleeve of her dress and began waving it widely, her mouth moving slightly as she uttered an incantation under her breath.

Ron sighed good-naturedly, "Again?"

"I told you, it's where my parents used to bring me on holiday. Just try not to jump in any frozen lakes this time."

"Just please tell me you haven't got that old tent squirrelled away somewhere?" he looked her up and down suspiciously, apparently not too keen to spend another night in the fusty, cat scented tent that they had spent so long in. Hermione shook her head distractedly, concentrating on her incantations. Ron seemed to know better than interrupt her while her hand was gripped so closely around her wand and she frowned towards a point in the middle distance that he wasn't able to identify; and just kicked a few frosty leaves around the bare ground.

Suddenly, a ripple passed through the air, almost knocking the pair of them off their feet and sending birds screeching from bare tree tops.

"Woah," Ron murmured, impressed, as he surveyed the log cabin that had suddenly appeared in front of him. Hermione just smiled and tucked her hair behind her ear, trying not to look too pleased with herself at the neat bit of magic she had used to conceal, and subsequently reveal, the cabin.

"What is this place?" he asked, surveying the small, birch clad building. It had a deep veranda in the front that housed a swing chair; and an uneven, lichen furred slate roof. Its small windows glinted in the evening gloom. It had the same crooked manner as the Burrow and looked almost as though it had grown organically, just popping out of the ground like a mushroom. Ron fell in love with it immediately.

"I bought it a couple of years ago. I needed somewhere quiet to get some peace after, well, you know. When we – when the papers were full of stories about us breaking up. I just wanted somewhere to get away to."

She had made it sound almost like a health resort. He didn't need to know the days she had paced to and fro, raving out loud in one sided arguments with him. She would keep secret the nights she had cried until her throat was raw and her eyes were swollen, the fact that she had to heal the bones in her hand after she had ill-advisedly punched a wall on one occasion. So she couldn't blame him when he had hummed in approval, probably admiring the neat log store, or the hammock that swung lightly between two nearby trees, an impervious cast over it to stop it filling up with leaves. She tried to ignore the niggling fear that bringing him here, to her private sanctuary, was a mistake as she swung open the front door.

"No need for security alarms here. Not with that masking charm you had over the place – very clever. You'll have to teach me that one." Ron said admiringly, his eyes still darting over the features of the cabin as he followed Hermione in. She tried to mask a noise of surprise as a cough that Ron, who was never keen on homework at the best of times, wanted to learn spells from her of all people.

She basked in the compliment, "The trick is that it wasn't invisible, it just looks exactly like the rest of the forest – oh –" she was cut off as she surveyed the mess inside. A silty tidemark rose several inches above the floor on every surface and the wooden boards underfoot were warped and discoloured. A damp, muddy smell pervaded the air. The curtains and quilt on the bed were darkly stained from the bottom up, as though they had wicked the dirty water up their length. The books from the bottom shelf of the bookcase were open on the floor, their pages wavy with damp. Hermione bent down and flipped up the corner of the large rag rug, showing the underneath to be thick with black mildew, "There must have been a flood," she murmured, cursing herself for having placed such a high number of security spells on the cabin, only to forget to protect it from the elements. Too late she remembered to hitch up the skirt of her wedding dress which was dragging in the dirt.

Ron patted her arm reassuringly, "Shall we tidy up together? We should be able to make a decent job of it," he removed his wand from his pocket.

They stood back to back and moved their wands simultaneously in a wide sweeping motion. As the dusty scum began to vanish from the skirting and furniture legs, Hermione gasped and almost dropped her wand. She could feel Ron's magic, melding with her own, making something more powerful than the sum of their parts. She heard him exhale in a huff and knew he could feel it too. Stains disappeared from soft furnishings and the books straightened themselves out. A few brown leaves popped into nothingness. Even her wedding dress became clean and before long Hermione was satisfied.

"Well that was quite something wasn't it," Ron wondered aloud, staring down at his wand, "I could feel you. Is that normal? No one's ever told me about that before."

"No idea," replied Hermione, suddenly itching to get to the library and read up on joint magic performed by married couples.

"Tomorrow," Ron laughed softly, elaborating as Hermione looked at him in confusion, "You can go to the library tomorrow. It's too late now, it'll be shut."

"Did I -?" Hermione's fingers drifted absently to her lips, wondering if she had spoken out loud by accident or if the marriage spell had somehow allowed Ron access to her mind.

He grinned, "I've seen that look on your face many times and it's almost always followed by you saying that you were off to the library to check something out. Now please don't take this as an indication of my future prowess but I'm knackered, I'm half pissed and if I don't go to sleep in about the next ten minutes, I'm going to fall over."

Hermione breathed a sigh of relief. After a seemingly endless day, that powerful joint magic had been quite draining and she was longing for nothing more than to put her pyjamas on and get into bed. The thought that they could avoid the inevitable task for a little longer relaxed her still further. She went to fetch the little cotton bag that she had dropped in the porch to get their toothbrushes and nightclothes but by the time she had got back, Ron was already on the bed asleep.

oOoOoOo

When Hermione awoke, Ron was still sprawled across the bed, fully clothed in his dress robes next to her, snoring lightly. She was glad she had thought to enlarge both the bed and the cosy tartan bedspread that she loved so much just as her eyes were closing the night before – she had remembered of old what a bed hogger he was. Slipping silently out from under the cover and summoning her dressing gown to her, she made her way to the kettle to make herself a cup of tea. Looked around the cabin in satisfaction – little more than one wooden walled room with a small bathroom through a door by the sleeping area but she had worked muggle technology and magic together perfectly to create her sanctuary just as she wanted it.

As she sat at the small kitchen table by the stove, sipping the steaming brew, she took a moment to admire her handiwork before realising that it was very much a cabin for one. With a small frown she duplicated the chair she was sitting on and elongated the sofa before waving her wand to the cupboard where a chinking of china told her that she had been successful in doubling her meagre amount of crockery. That would have to do; she wasn't prepared to do any enlargement charms on such an old wooden building. Besides, they might decide they hated each other and needed to go home in half an hour.

The gloomy thought followed her to the bathroom. Although she had managed to channel electricity into the cabin through a ridiculously complex spell of her own invention that she would've just loved to have shown off about but had kept quiet because she couldn't even imagine the repercussions of the wizarding world mastering modern technology; heating the water in the tank where it collected on the roof, in a non-magical fashion, had been beyond even her. Leave plumbing to the muggles, she smiled as she cast a warming charm over the bath, causing steam to rise out of the water. It wasn't until she had washed out the remains of her bridal hairstyle that she had managed to convince herself that her and Ron were both adults and they were quite capable of spending a few days together without killing each other. As long as they stuck to neutral conversations they should be fine. Just the small task of consummating their marriage to get over, then they could go home. Could she hide in the bathroom forever, she wondered, submerging herself entirely under the water.

When she finally left her hiding place, Ron had woken up and was wandering round aimlessly, picking up knick-knack and examining them before putting them back down again and flicking through the books on the shelves.

"You better have been careful when you got those," Hermione gestured to the casual clothes that he had replaced his dress robes with, "All the clothes were folded up neatly in the bag."

Ron grimaced. They had argued over his careless rummaging in the beaded bag on more than one occasion when they had been away and he wasn't keen to revisit the conversation, "No, everything's exactly as you left it," he assured her.

"Did you want breakfast or anything?" she asked him stiffly, dying to grab the paperweight out of his hands and put it back in exactly the right spot.

"No I'm good, I got a couple of sandwiches out of the bag. Don't worry, I didn't drop any crumbs!" he held his hands up defensively.

"Hmmm," she hummed absently, eyeing where he had eventually put the paperweight back.

Either Ron misinterpreted her silence or was wrestling with his own problems but suddenly he burst out, "Look. Don't get cross at me for suggesting this but do you think we should just get it over with. You know," he nodded his head towards the bed.

Hermione's throat constricted and her muscles tensed. Now? Already? She had to visualise the Gryffindor lion for several long moments before she felt brave enough to even consider the idea and realise he had a point. The longer they left it, the bigger thing it was going to become between them and besides, they couldn't go home without doing it. It was just that they were still so awkward with each other, almost as though they had never been intimate with each other before. Still, she supposed that wasn't going to go away in a hurry. She nodded, causing him to return the affirmative gesture, his face pale and a muscle in his jaw working in and out. .

With as much grace as she could muster, she climbed under the cover and wriggled out of her clothes, trying not to meet Ron's eyes as he watched in amusement as a procession of garments dropped out of the side of the bed. Eventually she was done, the covers pulled up to her neck. He stripped his t-shirt and jeans off with casual ease, making her feel even sillier.

"I don't know why you're hiding, I know what you look like. You've not gone and got a massive tattoo or something have you?" He tweaked the cover up, making her squeal and try to kick him, denying it furiously as she yanked it back, "I've got a tattoo," he told her, seeming both proud and embarrassed at the same time as he turned his back to show a ghostly Jack Russell gambolling over his right shoulder blade. She tried to concentrate on it instead of the scar down the left hand side of his back which had happened when he was an Auror - a raid gone wrong, the reports had said. He had nearly died from the curse that had hit him when his back was turned. Looking at it even now sent a long forgotten thrill of fear and upset through her and recalled hours spent crying at the side of his bed in St Mungo's. Ron didn't seem to mind her lack of admiration of his tattoo, "Got it when I was drunk at Seamus and Dean's joint stag do," he admitted. Despite his teasing of Hermione about her shyness he kept his pants on when he slipped under the covers. "Now what?" he sat by her side, facing forwards, making no attempt to touch her.

Hermione sighed, folding her arms over her chest, "Oh well this is romantic isn't it Ronald, thank you for trying to make this as easy as possible,"

"Oi! I just mean should I – can I…kiss you?"

"I suppose," she conceded, although the thought of his lips against hers, him so close to her made her feel panicky and trapped. It wasn't that she didn't find him attractive, she was forced to concede as she sneaked a look at his muscular frame, his pale skin that she used to love to run her hands over; it was more that she had finally become comfortable with him, stopped being angry with him after so long, and now this was going to pick up her feelings and toss them up into the air again. She was scared of how they were going to fall.

They both inclined their head one way, then the other, giggling nervously, before finally their lips met. Ron's mouth was soft and dry against hers as he gave her the gentlest of closed mouth kisses. Even that small connection made her eyes prick with the beginning of tears. Carefully, he lowered her down to the mattress. She could feel his hands trembling against her arms. It reminded her of the first time they had made love, back in her parent's house in Cambridge. Too late, she realised her mind had wandered onto the subject of her parents and where they might be, hoping that they were happy, wherever they were. She was jolted forcibly back into reality when Ron leant on her hair painfully.

"Ow!" she snapped, pulling away from him with a wrench. He reddened and apologised nervously. Sighing, Hermione summoned the bag to pull out a hair tie to avoid further accidents. Blushing furiously, she also pulled out a tube of lubricant that she had thought would make things easier.

Ron eyed the tube nervously, the tips of his ears beet red, "Should I put it on for you?" his voice cracked a little as he asked.

"No! Absolutely not!" Hermione wondered for a moment if maybe death would be better than the mortification she felt as she fumbled under the covers with the tube of cold slimy gel.

They kissed for a few minutes, lying rigidly side by side, but honestly, Hermione could have been reading a book or eating a sandwich for all the arousal she felt. Her heart was pounding painfully fast and having Ron so close, her nostrils full of the scent that always now reminded her of amortentia, made her feel like she couldn't breathe. Keen to get it over with, she parted her legs and tried to pull him on top of her.

"I suppose that technically it only has to go in, neither of us need to…" she said briskly, intending the words as encouragement but as she looked up into his scowling face, she realised that they might not have sounded quite that way.

"Now who's killing the romance? I, er, I don't know how to say this but I'm not…you know...hard," he gestured down under the cover.

"Do you want me to try a spell?" she asked, lifting the cover. She had read up on arousal spells, hoping that she wouldn't have to use them but feeling better to be prepared.

Ron sprang away from her, scrabbling backwards like a wet cat, "No way! You are not going to engorgio my…thingy! Just give me a minute," then it was his turn to reach under the covers. Hermione tried to look the other way as Ron's hand worked with increasingly frantic motions, his mouth a grim set line of determination. Hot tentacles of shame roiled in the pit of her stomach, that she was subjecting him to this, that the idea must be so unappealing to him that he couldn't get aroused. She breathed deeply through her nose and gritted her teeth, forbidding the tears pooling in her eyes to fall down onto her cheeks.

Were they really adults? Adults who had previously had a successful relationship no less. She wondered if they would be able to obliviate each other after this or whether this memory would be so shameful it would forever be burned onto their brains.

"Oh this is impossible, Ron we've barely even kissed. This isn't going to work," she pushed her hair frustratedly out of her eyes.

Ron sagged back against the mattress in relief and tucked an arm behind his head, "Oh thank Merlin. I'm sorry Hermione, this just doesn't feel right to me. It's not you, honestly – it's just, the pressure."

"Lets just relax. I've brought enough food for a few days. Perhaps if we can just spend some time together it'll be easier," Hermione's voice sounded doubtful even to her but as long as it was delaying the inevitable she was prepared to try and delude herself a little longer. She would have probably said anything, sworn black was white, if only to end the humiliation of the previous few minutes. Despite having only just had a bath, she felt a desperate need to go and scrub herself from head to toe.

They then both scrambled back into their clothes as though if they didn't get dressed immediately, someone might come along and persuade them to have another go. Hermione was pleased to see Ron made a point of turning his back and resolutely not looking in her direction. Needing to still put further distance between them, Hermione decided to go and pick up some books to read, whereas Ron thought that he would like a walk in the woods and so they managed to pass the rest of the day almost without seeing each other.

It wasn't until they were preparing for bed that Hermione felt the need to break the silence that had sprung up between them, "You know, it's odd being able to just pop to the shops and get something, I was half looking for the invisibility cloak before I remembered I could just walk into the library and ask for what I wanted."

"Do you think holidays are going to be spoiled forever for us by the very hungry camping trip?" it had taken them several years to even be able to refer to their time with good humour but they had eventually settled on this name for it.

"I don't know, that trip to Atlantis we did for the Millennium was pretty good," they both smiled, remembering the holiday they had taken with Ginny and Harry to the wizard run resort then seemed to both suffer from the awkwardness that occurs when two people who have drifted apart reminisce about how they used to be close. Hermione wondered if there was a word in the German language to describe that very feeling.

"Shall I…er…get the light?" Ron asked, gesturing to the lamps with his wand.

"No need," Hermione reached over to the light switch, "Muggle magic," and they were plunged into pitch blackness.

"Night 'Mione," Ron whispered in the darkness from somewhere close by her ear and then Hermione felt like he kissed her on the top of the head but she tried to tell herself that maybe she imagined it or he had got confused in the darkness.

"Stop trying to make 'Mione happen. It's not going to happen," she blustered to cover her embarrassment, folding her arms over her chest. She could positively feel him grinning. With a huff she rolled over and tried to go to sleep.

oOoOoOo

Hermione woke before Ron again. She had forgotten his irritating habit of being able to sleep in for hours when they didn't have to get up for anything. He used to try and maintain that his internal alarm clock was an essential survival skill and that he had been praised highly for it at the Auror training academy but she wasn't sure what exactly his excuse was nowadays. She picked up her book, determined to read more about the merging of magic between married people, but she found her eyes kept drifting off the page to idly watch the regular rise and fall of Ron's chest. With a thump, she shut her book, hoping that would wake him up but other than a gentle snort, he didn't stir. His hair was a messy mop over his forehead that Hermione could only just resist sweeping back from his face, and his chin had a light dusting of stubble. Watching him sleep, seeing his pale eyelashes resting on his cheek, the skin of his eyelids so thin that she could almost see the flow of blood through them, his expressive mouth relaxed, made her ache with something like sadness.

She lay back down next to him, leaning on her elbow and just looked. He hadn't changed much in the few years they had been apart – the laughter lines around his eyes were a little more defined, he had a couple of new freckles, but everything else was just the same. The echo of the love she had felt for him resounded so strongly through her as he lay there that it scared her. It wasn't real, she told herself - just because she could remember perfectly how it would feel if he were to wrap his arms around her in that minute – it was just nostalgia, or hormones or something. If her feelings were genuine and reciprocated, then they wouldn't have had that train wreck of an attempt to consummate their marriage. Why had it gone so wrong? Was it just nerves or did Ron really not fancy her at all? She knew she would be lying to herself if she didn't admit that she found Ron attractive still. So why had she made everything worse, going all stiff and formal, treating it like a medical procedure?

She forced herself to get out of bed when she realised her hands were on the verge of straying over his bare chest, and took her book out onto the veranda. Eventually the need for a cup of tea drove her back inside by which time he had got out of bed and was studying a large set of plans that he had unrolled on the small table, so engrossed that he didn't even notice her come in and make herself a drink. After a moment's agonised deliberation, she pulled a second mug out of the cupboard and made Ron a cup too, setting it down on the table without a word.

I'm so sorry for the world's most awkward sex scene! There is a part two to the honeymoon coming in the next few days which will hopefully be a bit less awful! Reviews would be lovely.