Chapter 1

It felt so good. Soooooooo good. Easily the most deeply satisfying, righteous feeling Ron had experienced in his life up until that moment. Ecstasy.

He watched as it happened, fascinated, almost as if his actions were being performed by another person. Which, in a way, they were. He was too blinded, too emotional, to fully occupy his body or account for his decisions. And so it unfolded, appearing before his eyes in ultra-slow-motion: his knuckles making contact with Thayer's cheekbone and then skidding across Thayer's face and slamming into the bridge of his nose, which emitted a deep and gravelly crunching sound, a sound that made the corners of Ron's lips curl upward. But it wasn't over yet. The flesh on Thayer's face, molding itself to the shape of Ron's knuckles, was already bruising, blood already gushing from the wound across his nose, as his head snapped backward and his mouth flew open in a contorted "O."

Ron put it all into that one punch, every ounce of pent-up frustration over everything — everything. Thayer, he knew, didn't deserve to pay the price for all of it, but he volunteered for the job with his actions that night.

Ron smiled as he pulled his fist away and Thayer staggered backward, gripping the side of his face with his hand.

"What the entire, actual, ever-loving fuck, Weasley?" Thayer bellowed as he tried to regain his balance.

"Don't," Ron growled lowly in reply. "Do. Not. Speak. Don't speak or you'll get another."

"Fuck you, arsehole," said Thayer, who was still stooped over and watching blood pour from his nostrils onto the linoleum floor of the Aurors locker room. "Let me guess … this is about Granger, eh? Came running to you, did she?"

Ron didn't hesitate, lunging forward at Thayer and toppling him to the ground, taking pleasure in watching the man's head thud against the floor. "I told you to shut your gob, you bastard," Ron said roughly, pulling himself back to his feet to stand over Thayer while pointing his finger toward Thayer's face, his chest heaving. "Shut up. Shut up and listen to me good. If you ever, ever lay another finger on her, if you ever so much as look at her the wrong way, if you ever say anything against her — no, check that — if you ever even think something against her, you'll get this and more. Do you understand me?"

Thayer, still sprawled on the floor, nodded weakly.

"Good," said Ron. Then he turned and walked serenely out of the locker room and down the hall to the lifts that would take him to the Ministry Atrium.

As he strode past the information desk and toward the Floo bank, it occurred to him that, weirdly and inexplicably, his whole life had led up to this moment. A long, intractable, inevitable, heartbreaking slide toward the now. How the fuck did it happen?

He'd catalogued the various pangs and aches in his chest so many times before, it wasn't difficult for him to summon the memories, and quickly.

There was the moment, of course, when he first realized that he fancied one of his best friends. She was Petrified and laid up in Madame Pomfrey's infirmary for weeks, weeks during which Ron would borrow Harry's invisibility cloak to sneak up to the hospital wing and visit her after curfew. He would sit by her bedside for hours just looking at her, holding her hand, speaking to her, though he doubted she knew he was there. He became aware, of course, that had it been Harry lying there — unmoving, unseeing — he would have been just as likely to want to visit him, to make him feel less alone. But there were other feelings that even Ron's second-year self knew went a bit deeper than that: the feeling that it was his job to look out for her somehow, the feeling that, if he could trade places with her, to lessen her suffering, he would in an instant. He wasn't so sure he would feel the need to do that for Harry, and that was when he started slowly to cotton on to what eventually became the most inescapable truth of his life: He was in love, hopelessly in love, with Hermione Granger, the brightest witch of her age. He, Ronald Weasley, the least-loved son in a poor and little-respected wizarding family, an indifferent student, a mid-grade athlete, a so-so looker, saw something in this fascinating, brilliant, maddening little firework of a girl — something he reckoned others would also see eventually, and when they did, there would go his chances of ever being more to her than one of her two best friends.

Misery. That's what it was. Misery and pining. And it went on and on.

He was far too young in second year to understand fully what he was feeling. But, looking back on it, he reckoned those nights spent in the hospital wing, gazing mutely at her still and silent form, admiring the moonlit slant of her nose, the arch of her eyebrow, the slope of her cheek without having to worry about being caught doing it, while she carried with her the answer to a seemingly unsolvable riddle … well, to his mind it fairly well summed up the entire arc of their relationship. Over the years, she would prove to be so tantalizing to him, always just within reach and yet so far away, and containing somewhere within her a secret, something she sometimes seemed ready to share with him — that is, until she would catch herself, pause to consider, and then retreat to that private place that he couldn't seem to reach.

In second year, of course, he didn't realize that these feelings simmering inside him were love. No, the pieces of the puzzle didn't fall into place for him until fourth year, when the Yule Ball rolled 'round. Even then, the idea took a while to take root, to truly saturate his consciousness but, when it did, it was like a gong sounding in his head, low and long. He was in love. With Hermione. Not infatuated. Not interested. Not smitten with, sweet on or hot for. In love. When it dawned on him, it was like he'd known it all his life, but somehow he didn't see it until it the possibility of doing something about it had been taken away from him, stolen by someone with whom he could never compete: an international quidditch star.

He wasn't a complete idiot — he realized she looked to him for certain things, relied on him even. But he chalked up the lingering looks, her habit of quite literally leaning on him in times of crisis, crying on his shoulder, slipping her hand into his in the darkness of a scary first night at Grimmauld Place, as fear-fueled spasms of emotion, the actions of a small but formidable person still struggling to understand a world so new to her, the instinctive desire that a girl might have for a brother in times of trouble. But he didn't think any of that amounted to love — not on her part, anyway. He didn't notice, of course, that Hermione never looked to Harry for any of those things but, even if he had, he would have found a way to explain it away in his own head as only natural. After all, she always seemed quite aware that Harry had plenty of problems of his own, didn't she.

There was that one brief, shining moment during the final battle, though — a picture his mind always presented to him at times like this. It was that split-second in the Room of Requirement where she stood there gazing up at him, her chest heaving from exertion, her arms overflowing with Basilisk fangs, and looked at him as if she'd never, ever seen him quite so clearly before. The way her smile broadened, her eyes widened with surprise … he had been sure … he would have bet his life on it … that she was going to kiss him. But then a familiar flame of something that looked like doubt flickered in her eyes, and the spell was broken. She praised his work breaking in to the Chamber of Secrets — and he was chuffed about it — but he still felt let down, wished for something more. And then he immediately kicked himself for even imagining that she would want to kiss him. His actions on the Horcrux hunt, he reminded himself, had foreclosed any claim he might have on her affections. He was lucky she would still speak to him, much less kiss him. And there was a battle on, after all. More pressing matters that day forced his attention away from the girl of his dreams — but never for long.

Thayer's words — "Came running to you, did she?" — struck a nerve because, well, she actually hadn't, but he wished like hell that she had. And they revealed that Thayer knew what probably everybody knew — everybody but Hermione, that is. Ron was at her command. Even now, after the war, after so much time in which he'd tried to forget by focusing on work, focusing on family, and even attempting occasionally to focus on other girls, she still ruled his heart. He doubted it would ever change. And he couldn't honestly say he regretted it.

oooOOOooo

A/N — Hello, dear readers! Here's Chapter 1 of my next Romione fic. As you can see, it's an entirely different universe from the one I set up in the fic I just completed earlier this week, "All In." In *that* story, I explored the question of what would have happened if Ron and Hermione had started their romantic relationship before the Horcrux hunt. The answer took up nearly 275,000 words!

I'm thinking this story will be a little bit less ambitious, at least in terms of length and scope. That said, I'm experimenting with a different style here. Where "All In" was told in present tense from Ron's point of view, this story will be told in the past tense by an omniscient narrator. I'm also thinking about making the chapters more compact, so you might expect to see more frequent updates, but ones that are shorter in length. (Of course, I may not live up to this promise!)

Anyway, I hope you'll enjoy this story. I'm feeling a little queasy about posting this opening chapter so soon — especially since I haven't fully mapped out the arc of the story yet — but I've got a loose outline and I've decided I'm going to trust my gut and post. As always, I'm relying on you, friends, to give me feedback and let me know if you're engaged or if I'm boring you to death.

More soon!

Holly.

P.S. - If you read "All In," then you may recognize some characters from that story. And if you *haven't* read "All In," you can certainly do so as you await updates to this one! Cheers ...