A/N: A couple of things.

1. I haven't read Cursed Child yet, and I know I will eventually, but I wanted to write about Ron at least one more time before I read that new version of him.

2. This very clearly isn't smut, but it is still the most explicit thing I have ever written, and it's making me super nervous, so I hope you enjoy.

and 3. I feel like there are still some tense issues here (writing in present tense is weird but I love how I can let Ron ramble in it, so I did it anyway)... but I am tired of looking at it, so here you are.

He knows he shouldn't, but Ron stomps up the Burrow's stairs anyway, two at a time because his legs are too damn long not to, and he wonders if this anger will ever fade. His blood feels impossibly hot coursing through his veins, and he's just so tired of everything being so fucked up, and he can't see how any of this is ever going to be okay ever again.

And he knows that it'll have to be. He does. But that doesn't stop everything from feeling hopeless right now, today, when Mum is crying again, and Bill and Fleur and Charlie have all left, and George hasn't come out of his room, and Dad's (still) at work, and Ginny and Percy had another argument so she's out on her broom and no one knows where the hell Percy went, so yet again it's Ron to the rescue...

And really, he should be happy about this. Not that everything's a mess, obviously, but that everyone else seems to trust him to handle it. All of a sudden he's not Ickle Ronnikins anymore, and everyone keeps looking to him for help and advice, and that's nice. It is, really. But it would also be really nice if someone else could hold it together for a day or two so he could take a fucking break. And Hermione left this morning to spend time with her parents, which is also good, of course, and Harry's been in meetings with Kingsley, which is also good, and important, but that doesn't make him feel any better about somehow being utterly alone in a house full of his own damn family members.

It's just too much, sometimes.

He throws open his attic bedroom door, and resigns himself to spending a couple of hours staring angrily staring at the ceiling, trying to literally sweat his rage away until he's needed again.

But then he looks up, and suddenly, he feels as if he's pulled that rampage he's been on out of its downward spiral, executing a Wronski Feint so spectacular that even Viktor Krum couldn't hope to replicate it.

Take that, Krum.

Hermione Granger is lying on his bed. He didn't even know she was back at the Burrow, and she's lying on his bed, on her stomach, leaning on her elbows, flipping through what seems to be an old magazine. Her (bare) knees are bent and her (bare) ankles are linked together, hovering over a (not bare, this is not that kind of fantasy) part of her body that Ron is trying very, very hard not to stare at.

Well, if that didn't change his demeanor faster than you can say quidditch.

She's looking over her left shoulder at him now, her view obscured by a few of those curls she can never quite get control of, and he barely hears her say "Are you alright?" over the sound of his own beating heart.

Barely.

"Now I am," he says. She rolls over onto her back, setting the old magazine on the floor, and scoots over in what even he can tell is an obvious invitation to join her.

And then she smiles at him, almost smirks in a way he's never seen her smile (and he's definitely never seen a smile like that directed at him), and the temperature in the already stuffy attic room seems to fly through the actual roof, and he has to turn away from her and think about anything other than his girlfriend (girlfriend!) who is in his bedroom, on his bed, and...

... yeah, that's really not helping.

"Are you sure you're okay?" she asks, and of course she does, he's looking anywhere but her and turning away and muttering all sorts of unappealing things under his breath that he really really hopes she cannot hear.

"Yeah," he assures her, and he thanks whatever gods are currently torturing him that his voice is miraculously lower than usual, rather than the squeak he was almost expecting, given the circumstances. "Just give me a minute," he huffs.

"If you're sure," she agrees, and he risks a look at her, and she actually looks concerned. He definitely can't let her worry about something as silly as this, so he tries to explain as best he can without completely embarrassing himself.

"Sorry. I just wasn't expecting to find you in my bed. You caught me off guard. I, uh," he trails off, shrugging. "I need a minute," he repeats, and he meets her eyes, and he must be even more transparent than he thought he was because she looks confused only for a moment before her eyes widen and flick down to below his waist for a moment and she blushes as red as he ever has.

And she says "Oh," in a voice that is really impeding his progress.

"Looked like a dream I had once," he jokes, hoping to get out of this situation with at least a shred of dignity, a laugh-with-him-not-at-him opportunity.

"You've had a dream about me?" she questions, and if he's not mistaken (and oh he hopes he is not mistaken), she shifts her body against his old Chudley Cannons quilt and she isn't laughing, but she sure as hell doesn't seem to be disapproving, either.

In for a knut, in for a galleon, he supposes.

"More than one," he admits, and he gives up on trying to calm his libido (it's clearly not happening anytime soon) and he joins her on his bed. He leans over her and kisses her hello, slow and sweet, doing his best to keep his pelvis angled away from her because he isn't stupid enough to think that her curiosity is that sort of invitation. "A lot more than one," he mumbles into her mouth when she wraps a hand around the back of his neck to keep him close.

Damn.

She is absolutely intoxicating. He should have predicted this, really, considering how passionately she dives into everything that interests her. He just still has a hard time believing he has somehow ended up on that list of things that interest her. He thinks, ironically, that he had come upstairs to try to cool down, and now she was riling him up in a very, very different way that he had felt when he entered the room just moments ago, and then he lets himself get lost in her, and he stops thinking altogether.

He hovers over her, his arms shaking with some combination of exertion and want. She either doesn't realize how much energy he's expending to stay put, or she knows exactly what's going on and she's determined to break his concentration, because she takes his self-imposed and tenuous stillness as an opportunity to move. Her hands are trailing up and down his back, her short fingernails scratching lightly along his spine. Her lips are insistent, more so than they've ever been in the few short weeks since he'd first felt them upon his own. She actually bites his bottom lip before she licks across it as if to soothe it, and damn if that isn't a sensation he is going to remember for the rest of his life. She holds him as close to her as she can, as he works so hard to keep parts of them separated, and when she makes a sound in frustration that he wants to describe as a moan (but he really doesn't think he can handle that), he wonders idly how long a person can survive with a lust-induced fever.

He breaks away from her at that point, reluctantly, because his nervous system needs a break and his lungs have suddenly decided that they need air, of all things. He buries his face in that soft spot between her neck and her (bare!) shoulder as he tries to catch his breath.

"I thought men dreamt about beautiful, unattainable women," she teases from somewhere near his left ear, her voice lower, sexier than he's ever heard it. It takes him a moment to realize what it is that she's joking about, his brain caught in a Hermione-induced fog, his skin hot from all the places she had touched and is still touching him. When he figures out what she means, finally, he pulls his face away from that wonderful hiding space to look at her, and raises his eyebrows in disbelief.

"Until about three weeks ago, love, you were a beautiful, unattainable woman," he murmurs, and for a moment he's sort of proud of himself, for coming up with a line like that on the spot, especially when she had driven him so far to distraction he was worried he would never find his way back.

Then Hermione frowns at him.

"That's not true," she argues. She rolls over onto her right side, propping herself up on her elbow, putting some distance between them (which was much-needed, if she expected him to participate in this conversation). "You knew long before that. I know that we didn't kiss until 3 weeks ago, but that's not when this started."

"Okay," he admits, mirroring her posture so they are lying face to face over his old pillow. "I had some idea before that. But not as much as you seem to think I did. You give me too much credit."

"Somebody's got to," she grumbles, rolling her eyes at him.

He smiles, recognizing the statement as the both insult and compliment that it is. He knows, intellectually, that he is far too hard on himself. He knows that he shouldn't spend all his time comparing himself to the amazing people around him, and he knows that the fact that his loved ones are such brilliant and talented people probably says a lot more good about him than bad. He also knows that those people do think highly of him, as evidenced by the events of earlier this afternoon that led him to storm up here to begin with. But knowing something and truly allowing yourself to feel it are, unfortunately, two different things.

And Hermione smiles at him softly, and she raises her left hand to run it through his newly-shorn hair and run the pad of her thumb against the corner of his eye (which must look as wet and warm as it feels), and he realizes, suddenly, that she understands.

And his world shifts again. The heat he was feeling before isn't gone, exactly, but it has been overcome by a warmth so overwhelming that he can't keep it to himself any longer, and he reaches for her.

She lets out a small "oof" as he unsettles her, moving her weight from her own elbow to his chest, and soon he is holding her closer than he ever has before. They are pressed against each other at a million different pressure points, his arms wrapped around her and hands splayed across her back, his nose buried in her unruly hair.

"I appreciate that, you know," he mumbles into that same spot between her neck and her shoulder, the one that elicited an oh-so-different reaction from his body just moments ago.

"I know," she whispers back, her arms snaking behind his head and under his torso to clutch him just as fiercely as he is holding her. And this is good - this is really good. Probably even better, somehow, than the feverish embrace she had tried her best to pull him into before. And he isn't quite sure what liking this warmth better than that earlier overpowering heat makes him, but if he gets to keep feeling like this, he isn't sure he cares.

"You're right," he continues softly, his lips brushing against her neck as he speaks. "I knew, but I still never believed it, somehow. 'ts why I kept fucking it up. I could see what was happening, but I still couldn't convince myself that you actually wanted me."

"Have you managed to convince yourself now?" she asks, her own lips pressed against his ear, her hand pressed firmly against his lower back. "Or do I have to keep proving it to you?"

"A little reassurance never hurt anyone," he manages to reply, just before her lips claim his again and they both cease speaking for a long time.