Hi sorry this took so long in posting! I deleted half of it by mistake and had to rewrite it. I didn't mean to leave it on a cliffhanger for so long.

Thanks to my beta kabg_01 and all of you who have reviewed and followed the story so far.

For a moment they did nothing but stare in dumb horror as the stag faded away. Ron sat up sharply, pushing himself away from Hermione, all memory of what was just about to happen gone from his mind.

"It'll be ok. It'll be ok," he repeated in an insistent tone to Hermione, wrapping his arm around her shaking shoulders.

"It's too soon, she's only six months pregnant. Surely the healers can do something to stop it?"

Ron pursed his lips, knowing that all the magic in the world couldn't stop a baby being born if it was on the way, "Yeah, probably," he muttered, although the way Hermione's wide eyed gaze skittered away from him to the wall behind him told him that she was sharing his lie.

"We er should probably…scourgify," she gestured to herself with hands shaking so badly that the paint changed colour but didn't diminish at all.

"Hermione. Hermione! Come here!" Ron wrapped his long arms around her, resting his chin on the top of her head and allowed his warmth to seep into her suddenly icy feeling skin. "Ready?" he asked, when he felt her relax a little, vanishing away all the paint with a surer hand than hers.

"I am now," she smiled grimly, and linking her arm into his, apparated away.

They skidded into the reception at St Mungo's which for once was mercifully quiet and panted out Harry and Ginny's names to the witch on reception who directed them to the sixth floor.

"The maternity ward," whispered Hermione unnecessarily to Ron as the lift started its journey upwards. He knew it as well as she did – they had both visited the floor together for their reproductive appointments. He didn't say anything in reply, just reached out and squeezed her hand. His face was pale, his mouth a grim line as he stared upwards as though he was willing the lift on faster, as if that could help anyone. After what felt like an age, the doors pinged open and they rushed out into the maternity ward, both full of trepidation at what they would find at the end of the pale lilac corridor.

As they pushed open the double doors, the sight of Harry and a disgruntled looking Ginny stopped them in their tracks. They had their coats on and Harry was carrying a bag, so it looked as though they were on their way out.

"False alarm mate," Harry sighed in relief. Ron's face broke open into a wide beam as he sagged down into one of the chairs that lined the waiting room, his long legs stretching out in front of him. His heart, that had been pumping like a freight train, began to slow to a normal rhythm.

Hermione let out a long shaky breath between her teeth, "What happened?"

Ginny frowned again, the usually forthright Gryffindor seeming strangely reticent, "The doctor said it was a combination of overdoing it and the baby causing a distention in my stomach."

"But what does that mean?" Hermione pressed, still worried.

Harry barked out a laugh, "What my lovely wife means is that she's got wind!"

"Wind!" echoed Ron, collapsing into gales of laughter, so delirious with relief that it wasn't anything serious that it felt like he had just eaten an entire bag of fizzing whizbees in one go.

Ginny just crossed her arms over the top of her bump and scowled at the pair of them.

"Apparently cleaning the house from top to bottom then eating double helpings of spaghetti and meatballs topped with gherkins wasn't a good idea," giggled Harry weakly.

"So you're alright?" Hermione couldn't seem to make the words register, even now Ginny was fighting a smile herself, her cheeks flaming scarlet with embarrassment.

"Right as rain, the healer has given me some indigestion medication and told me to go home and let Harry wait on me for the rest of the day and that way the problem should…erm…pass."

"Yeah, it's my lucky day," Harry grimaced, making the others laugh all over again.

"You're the second person who's said that to me today," mused Hermione, "Elphias Doge said it too. He'd won two trips for a round the world cruise, which made me feel a lot less guilty about getting the house so cheap."

"Yeah, convenient wasn't it," Ron sniggered, "And he didn't even remember entering."

Hermione narrowed her eyes suspiciously at him, "What do you mean?"

He just jammed his hands in his pockets and said nothing, a smirk playing over his lips as he desperately tried to maintain control of his poker face. The problem was, he was shit at poker and he knew it – everyone from Ginny to Neville had rinsed him out before he refused to play for any more than knuts. However, it wasn't until his eyes flicked to Harry – a move that Hermione had seen so many times before from the boys when one of them was about to propose a crazy scheme or hit her up for some help with their homework and wanted the other one to back them up – that he realised he had given the game away.

"Oh Merlin," she groaned, running her hand down her face, "Cauldron cakes….cauld-ron cakes," she dragged the words out into their separate syllables, "Did you really – you made up some pretend competition so that you could give him some cruise tickets? You made the poor old man think he was going dotty!"

Ron finally met her eyes to see Hermione sizing him up like a leopard would its prey, and took a precautionary step back. Her wand was clutched tightly in her hand as she stalked towards him, spots of colour high on her cheeks and her eyes unnaturally bright. He swallowed thickly. He wasn't sure if she was going to hex his balls off or give him the scolding of the century but, Merlin forgive him, she looked hot. His heart had evidently recovered from its exertion and started to pick up the pace again. He couldn't help but notice how his pulse echoed in the lower half of his body, his cock making its presence known in appreciation for the way that Hermione's chest was heaving.

"Run mate," Harry warned.

"Say goodbye to Harry and Ginny," Hermione practically growled at him, grabbing his arm and preparing to apparate them away. Harry grimaced sympathetically at Ron, expecting he was going to receive quite the tongue lashing when he and Hermione got home.

As they landed, Ron brought his hands up defensively, "Listen Hermione I – oof –"

His breath was knocked out of him with the force of her body slamming against his; it was enough that the momentum carried them a few steps back against the wall of the bedroom that Hermione had brought them back to. However, he didn't have a moment to regain his breath before her mouth crashed onto his with such force that their teeth clashed. Her hands were everywhere – in his hair, squeezing his arse – pulling his body closer to hers and making every curve of her body mould to him as though they had been made to fit together.

He racked his brains for a moment, trying to think what he had done to make this happen, but his puzzlement soon gave way to lust fuelled blankness, only able to concentrate on the feel of her lips moving frantically against his, her tongue battling against his own.

It wasn't until she broke the kiss to pull his tshirt over his head that he choked out, "What the…?" He was aware that it wasn't the most erudite sentence he had uttered but frankly he was impressed there was still enough blood left in his brain to even come up with that. She started fumbling with his belt and he tried again, "What's brought this on?"

"What you did…it was…brilliant!"

"I take it I'm not in trouble then?"

"What do you think?" she grinned, slipping her hand inside the fly of his jeans and gently squeezing his rapidly hardening cock in a way that made his legs nearly buckle underneath him.

As the denim of his jeans pooled around his ankles, Hermione sank down to her knees, kissing a stripe down from his chin to his neck, down over his collarbone to the point where hair shadowed below his navel. With a devilish grin up at him she pulled down his boxers.

His head lolled back against the cool plaster of the wall behind him as she took his cock into her mouth, sliding her lips with agonising slowness from tip to base, then back up again, swiping her tongue over the sensitive underside of his head for good measure. Bloody hell, she was good. Better than good. Fanfuckingtastic. Her lips created just the perfect amount of suction and the speed was just so teasingly, achingly right to draw out his pleasure to dizzying heights whilst keeping him from blowing his load in an embarrassingly short time.

He looked down at her and immediately knew he'd made a mistake in doing so. She gazed right back up at him through her dark lashes, and removed her mouth from his cock with an audible pop. Then she stuck her perfect pink triangle of a tongue out from between her lips - red and spit shiny - to lick the bead of pre-cum that had gathered at the tip of his cock as though it was the most delicious fucking thing ever. He felt his balls tingling in anticipation and only the thought of Great Aunt Muriel naked on a cold day was enough to stop him exploding just at the sight.

He pulled her up by the armpits, needing more contact, and reined his hands in her hair as he pulled her in for another bruising kiss. His hips rutted against her, needing the friction as he walked her backwards and lowered her onto the bed, frantically pulling at her clothes and making very little progress with his fumbling hands. Eventually Hermione took pity on him and vanished them away and then there was nothing between them.

He hesitated for a moment, holding on to his self control with a will of iron, giving her a chance to tell him no. But she didn't. Not when he rolled her nipple between his long fingers, making her gasp, not when he ghosted his palm over the ticklish spot below her hip bone and not when he caressed the soft velvet of her inner thigh. Praying to Merlin, Morgana and every other magical legend he had half forgotten from History of Magic classes that he could make this good for her, he slipped his shaking fingers between her folds.

She wanted him. Gods, she actually wanted him, this, whatever. She was hot and wet and already beginning to rock against his fingers, a low whine of blessed want in his ear, even at his tentative explorations.

He slicked his fingers with her wetness then began circling her sensitive bundle of nerves. As it swelled under his ministrations, Hermione's legs began to shake slightly. He took this as a sign that he could be more bold, and began a faster rhythm, flicking his fingertips back and forth, his fingers moving easily over her slick clitoris until she was writhing against the sheets, her eyes squeezed shut. Her thighs tensed around his hand and her breath was coming in short gasps as the wetness under his fingers grew and grew.

He leaned down and pressed his lips against her warm, damp forehead, massaging her breast with his free hand, "Let go Hermione. Just let go," he urged in a whisper.

As her pleasure peaked, he felt his magic surge into her, nudging her over the edge and he just had a moment to marvel at the feeling before she tipped into oblivion.

She was fucking glorious - the feel of her, the small panting moans she was making, the way the tendons stood out on her neck as she rode through her orgasm. Ron was reminded of the way the sun shone through stained glass windows in the great hall and he almost laughed aloud at his brain's tragic inability to be able to come up with something that even remotely matched the wonder that was Hermione fucking Granger. Or Granger-Weasley, rather, because this creature, this goddess, who even now was pulling him on top of her, barely able to gasp more than "need you now..inside," was his actual bloody wife.

Every wet dream about her, the first feel of her boobs when they had been younger, even when the times they had made love before was all bleached out to pale insignificance compared to the feeling of burying himself inside her, her sigh of satisfaction ragged against his ear. He wanted it to last forever but even as his body called him to thrust, the urge to feel that delicious movement as basic as the tides, he knew it wouldn't last long. The pace of his thrusts picked up and each time he slammed his full length back into her, he felt his orgasm build and build to impossible heights that had every muscle tight and stars bursting at the edges of his vision.. Just as he was about to fall over the edge, he felt her tighten around him and looked down to see her chest flushed, her hands fisted in the sheets and her mouthing his name. It was the undoing of him and he spilled his seed into her as her walls pulsed around his cock, drawing out every drop. The feeling of synchronicity - of being totally joined physically, magically and emotionally was overwhelming.

"Wow," panted Ron, half laughing, as he rolled onto his back, enjoying the coolness of the sheet under him as he floated through his post-orgasmic comedown.

"Wow," whispered Hermione in response, and was silent for a very long time, long enough for the sky to turn from orange to purple outside the window, before propping herself up on one elbow to look down appraisingly at him. Her eyes were heavy and her hair was a birds nest that Ron didn't want to be around for the taming of, "You know, that really was a very thoughtful thing you did."

"I gathered you appreciated it," Ron laughed. Hermione joined in for a moment before she frowned.

"Although…" she paused, her cheeks turning a shade of pink that Ron could barely make out in the weak moonlight of the night was rapidly falling, "You don't think they'll find it suspicious that Elphias won those cruise tickets the same week the Prophet wrote to his sister and told her there had been an administrative error with the Annual Prize Draw from fifteen years ago that had only just been discovered and she had actually won second prize – a hundred galleons?"

Ron raised an eyebrow in surprise, "You didn't?"

Hermione just nodded, wide eyed.

"Nah, they'll be too busy booking their holidays to think of it I reckon. And if they come and ask us, we just deny it, right?"

"Right!"

Ron scratched the back of his neck, contemplating, "You know, if we'd just talked about it in the first place and come up with a plan together, this wouldn't have happened."

"Well that's just our problem all over, distilled down into this one ridiculous event."

"Let's not knock it too much – it seems to have worked out alright to me. But yeah, perhaps we need to just…"

"Communicate?"

"Deal. Now leave me alone woman, I'm knackered and if I don't get to sleep in about the next thirty seconds, I'm going to be about as useful as a troll in the morning."

Hermione opened her mouth to speak but Ron placed his finger against her lips, "If I promise you can tell me tomorrow, will you please not explain to me all the benefits that trolls have made to our society?"

oOoOoOo

Ron stretched out his arms, feeling the crackle of tension popping out of his joints. Merlin, he had slept like the dead. Suddenly, the reason for his deep slumber rushed back into his memory and he couldn't have prevented the lazy smile that broke across his face, even if he had wanted to, which he bloody well didn't.

"Morning," he replied, his voice croaky from sleep, and he flicked his eyes open. Eyes, the colour of firewhisky, the lightest dusting of freckles over the bridge of a nose, that only really came out when the sun shone on them, nothing like his ugly splotches.

"You're bloody gorgeous, you know that," he sighed blissfully, his hands creeping down under the cover, revelling in the way the soft swells of her breasts fitted perfectly into his hands.

The corners of Hermione's lips quirked in amusement as she said in challenge, "Flattery will get you everywhere, Mr Weasley."

"Everywhere?" Ron smirked and rolled his hips against her so she could feel how quickly he was stiffening before suddenly his face dropped just a little and he glanced at her nervously, not wanting to push his luck "Twice in one week?"

Frowning, Hermione rummaged under the bed for where she thought her wand had rolled the previous night, closing her fingers over the thin cylinder of vinewood. She mumbled a spell and Ron listened as something rustled up the stairs and into her outstretched hand.

"Now see this?" she asked, waving her weekly schedule under his nose, "This is what I think we're going to do with it," and with that, she ripped it neatly down the middle, then again and again until she was left with a handful of confetti which she tossed up into the air to rain down onto their heads.

Ron twined his hand into her hair, pulling her to him, and without breaking the kiss, rolled her on top of him so her legs straddled his hips. The ends of her curls brushed against his chest ticklishly.

Suddenly they were interrupted by a tapping at the window that could only have been an owl.

"Damn," Ron muttered into Hermione's neck, clinging to her tightly before she slid out of his arms and summoned her dressing gown to her.

"It's only an owl!" Ron laughed, leaning up on his elbow, deprived of his view of Hermione's as she walked towards the window, "He's not going to tell anyone if you're starkers!"

If he had expected Hermione to laugh or admonish him, he was disappointed. After letting the owl in and freeing the bulky package from his leg, she stood silently, looking at its contents. After a couple of minutes, Ron's curiosity began to outweigh his desire to stay under the duvet. Walking up behind Hermione he wrapped his arms around her waist and rested his chin on her shoulder to see what had caught her attention so closely. The lavender package had the crest of St Mungo's on the outside and was full of small, identical glass phials and packets that he assumed contained pills.

"Fertility potions. I'm almost surprised it's taken them this long to send them," Hermione sniffed, "Perhaps they were hoping that the Weasley genetics would make them unnecessary."

"Perhaps they won't work," Ron said hopefully.

"Then they'll probably come up with something even more horrible. I just can't believe after all we went through in the war, everything we fought for, we've ended up like this. This is the freedom people died to preserve? I will live in the wizarding world for the rest of my life and will never understand why sometimes they are so BACKWARDS!"

She stormed off out of the room, the bottles clinking as she went. Ron rubbed the back of his neck with his hand, unsure of whether to follow her. He had heard her voice break and he was sure she was crying now. Whenever she cried, he just wanted to hold her and tell her that everything would be alright, even when he had no good way of knowing if it would be or not. It was like that ball of light that had flown inside him and filled him with the white hot need to be by her side – that was what her tears did to him. He just didn't know if she would tell him to bugger off or not. After all, he was part of the problem, he supposed. Part of the backward wizarding society she hated so much. He was the monster that was going to impregnate her and saddle her with kids when she wanted to, deserved to, fulfil her potential at work. She was going to do great things, and what was he – the manager of a joke shop? Maybe she'd rather he was Malfoy, perhaps he'd be a better father, after all, he must have had everything he wanted growing up – he'd know how to make a kid happy. And he could give it a better life, surely, teach it how to get ahead. After all, what was more backward than a wizard who grew up in a converted pig sty? If he had kids, they'd probably end up hating him as much as Hermione -

Abruptly, he cut off his thought process, and gazed down at the silvery scars criss-crossing his forearms. Since the incident with the brains and then the locket, he had often suffered with negative thoughts, worse than the insecurity he had had as a child. Healers had told him that it might fade in time but once dark magic had got a hold on the mind, it would always leave traces that could cling on in a nasty way. Mostly he managed to shut the thought down before they led him too far down an alley of despair, like he just had but sometimes he struggled to know if he was going to make things worse, just by being himself - stupid, too tall, never would be good enough Ron Weasley. It was one of the reasons he had found it easier just to shut Hermione out when they had fallen out, instead of trying to talk to her. But he knew that she needed someone – for all of her tough act, she was hurting. And whether she liked it or not, they were married now and that gave him some right to try and be the one to comfort her. Besides, the night before must have meant something to her, it hadn't been a mistake – it had been too perfect. And she had been happy to kiss him that morning until the blasted owl had arrived and spoiled everything. He nodded to himself, having weighed up the facts and come to the conclusion that her feelings towards him couldn't be entirely negative. He got dressed before following her downstairs, and found her in the kitchen with one hand on an open cupboard, staring in at the neat rows of potions that she had put away.

"You don't have to take one today, if you don't want to," he tentatively reached out and rubbed her back gently, ready to remove his hand if she flinched, "They won't know if you don't start until tomorrow."

"But then what? Ron, a baby? How will we cope? We just aren't ready! We're still just getting to know each other again! Waiting til tomorrow isn't going to make any difference. What would we even do with a baby? We don't know the first thing about them!"

Ron grasped her by the shoulders and span her round, bending his knees so he could look her directly in the eyes, "Breathe Hermione. Seriously, you're going to hyperventilate."

He waited until her breathing had slowed before he led her up the stairs. On the way she could hear him chuckling under his breath and muttering to himself about getting to know each other before he looked down at her a few steps below him, "We've been getting to know each other for the last fifteen years. I think we know each other pretty well by now."

"I just meant –"

He took her hand and drew her towards his bedroom, "I know you stealth eat biscuits when you're stressed, I know that rainstorms make you sad ever since that night in the tent when, well, you know, and you hate it because you want to think of it as in the past. I know you snore."

"I do not!" she insisted, nudging him with her hip as she felt the vice like feeling in her chest start to relax.

He glanced at her, nervous about whether what he was about to do would make things better or worse, and wiped his suddenly sweaty palms on his jeans. Mouth feeling uncomfortably dry, he pulled his wand from his pocket and sent all of the books and knick knacks that he had unpacked onto the shelves flying neatly back into the cardboard boxes that were still stacked up against the far wall. He smiled at Hermione, hoping it looked reassuring rather than like he was about to throw up, although her furrowed brow suggested she couldn't work out what he was up to. He then sent the boxes skidding out of the room and down the hall. Then with another flourish of his wand, the walls that he had painted a manly shade of slate grey lightened to a delicate primrose yellow.

"You really are getting good at those decorating spells," Hermione admitted, with a smile, her fingers playing over a lock of her hair that still bore the faint traces of paint.

Finally Ron frowned at his bed, his head tilted to one side as he weighed it up. With one more wave of his wand arm, he transfigured the bed into a crib.

Hermione pressed her fingers to her mouth, "Oh," was all she was able to say, as tears glittered in her eyes.

"I can change it back, for now, if you want. I just wanted to show you that we will be ok. I mean, I might drop the baby on its head and you'll probably get ridiculously stressed out about the whole thing but in terms of the practical stuff…we can do this."

"I think it'd be alright to leave it like this, for now, just so I can get used to it," Hermione whispered hoarsely, squeezing his hand with hers, "But I really couldn't do without my office," her smile changed from wistful to mischievous, "So I think you'd probably better move your things into my room."

Ron pushed his hands into his pockets, looking embarrassed about how pleased he was with himself, "Where do you think I sent those boxes?"

"Ron!" Hermione tipped back her head, releasing easy peals of laughter before he silenced her with another kiss.