A/N: Thank you so much, everyone. More notes at the end.

"But mate," slurred a red-faced Ron, "it's the end of an era. The end of an era, mate."

"An era?" From his seat on the drawing room floor at Grimmauld Place, Harry placed an Exploding Snap card at the top of an exceedingly precarious house of cards. "How long's it been, eight years? Does that really count as an era?"

"That's a long time! Hermione, tell him," Ron implored her. "Tell him eight years is a long time."

With a laugh, Hermione settled herself further into the corner of the sofa she shared with Ron and surveyed the scene before her. It had begun innocently enough, with a birthday dinner for Harry at the Weasleys, but things had begun to deteriorate almost immediately upon their return to Grimmauld Place. Harry had located a bottle of Muggle scotch in the cupboard and insisted that they all drink to Ginny's new role as reserve Chaser for the Holyhead Harpies. Almost immediately thereafter, Ron, experiencing a fit of nostalgia, had begun toasting to his and Harry's last evening as flatmates.

Since her return from Hogwarts, Hermione had been unofficially living at Grimmauld Place with Ron, but she refused to move too many of her things there, wanting her first true home with Ron to be their own flat together. Now, with all but his bed packed into tidy boxes, they were fully prepared to relocate the next morning.

"An era is defined as a significant period of time," Hermione said. "Eight years can be an era if you want it to be."

"And she got ten Outstandings on her NEWTs," said Ron proudly, "so she'd know."

Hermione caught Ginny suppressing a smirk across the room and opted not to remind Ron that she'd only taken seven exams. Instead, she merely extended her legs out so that the soles of her feet rested against Ron's thigh. His hand fell down, almost on instinct, to give her ankle a soft little squeeze.

"So what you're saying is, you're gonna miss me," said Harry with a chuckle.

"Nah," said Ron. "But you-" He pointed an emphatic finger in Harry's direction- "are gonna miss me."

Harry gave a joking roll of his eyes. "Right."

Sliding off of the armchair she'd been occupying, Ginny walked on her knees to the house of cards in front of Harry. "How mad would you be if I knocked this over?"

"Go ahead, I don't care," Ron told her. "Know what we should actually do, is play chess."

"Yes!" Harry declared. "I would love to play drunk chess with you."

"Alright, I'll go get my set."

Ron hoisted himself up from the couch, but almost immediately bent down again to lay a warm, wet kiss on Hermione's lips before sauntering away to the staircase.

"He's your problem now," said Harry to Hermione, extending his legs out in front of him and leaning back on his palms.

"Oh, just admit it," Hermione fired back. "You're going to miss living with him."

"Maybe a bit," Harry conceded as Ginny inched ever closer to the house of cards. "He's right about it being the end of an era, you know, it's just too easy to take the piss when he's like this."

"And he's going to miss you too."

"Yeah, right," scoffed Harry as Ginny crawled over his outstretched legs. "You know all he's talked about since you two decided to move in together is - is you two living together, really."

Before Hermione could reply, there erupted a thick plume of dark smoke from the coffee table where the house of cards had stood just seconds ago.

"I got bored," explained Ginny simply as the fog cleared to reveal her grinning face. "You lot were being way too serious."

As the ash on the table slowly reformed back into cards, Ron appeared in the doorway.

"I forgot my chess set's packed up," he said, "but I found this old Gobstones set in one of the closets - Ginny, what'd you do?"

She simply laughed and reached for her bottle of butterbeer as Ron tossed the sack of marbles onto the table and fell onto the sofa beside Hermione. Half-perplexed, half-disgusted, Harry picked up the bag and held it at eye-level.

"I think the spell's gone off," he said, crinkling his nose. "It's sort of… dripping."

"Oh," Ron laughed, "yeah. Well, I dunno what you expect from me, all my stuff's in boxes. I'm moving in, what, twelve hours?" He made a big show of checking his watch. "No, ten, actually. Ten hours, Hermione."

A loose, broad smile slid over his face as he turned to look at Hermione and lifted up his arm so she could nestle herself against his side. Even through his shirt, his skin was flushed and warm from the alcohol in his veins, and his fingertips marked burning paths along the bare skin on her upper arm.

"It is getting late," Hermione observed quietly, "and we've got a lot to do tomorrow."

"What are you suggesting?" asked Ron with a wry grin. "You want to go to sleep?"

"I want to go to bed," she clarified before inching closer to speak quietly in his ear. "But we don't necessarily have to sleep."

Ron's eyes went wide, and then he jumped up from the sofa, proffering a hand to Hermione. When she accepted it, he pulled her up and then grasped her by the waist, tossing her easily over his shoulder.

"G'night!" he called cheerfully to Harry and Ginny, his hands secure on Hermione's legs to keep her in place.

"Ron!" Hermione hissed as he stepped onto the stairs. "Ron, put me down! This is dangerous!"

"Nah, we'll be fine," he said. "I'm an Auror."

"You're also drunk-" She pinched him on the backside, but that only made him laugh. "What if you slip and we break our necks-"

And then the world flipped over again and suddenly she stood, on her own two feet, on the landing outside of Ron's bedroom. He smoothed down her tousled hair with both hands and then cupped her face, kissing her soundly on the mouth.

"You're right though, I'm going to take a Sobering Potion. I'll be in there in a second."

Hermione hardly had time to change into her pajamas - which consisted, per usual, of an old shirt of Ron's and a pair of knickers - before Ron returned and locked the door behind him. Unbuttoning his trousers, he set them atop one of many cardboard boxes and navigated through the gaps to the bed. His eyes, indeed, looked brighter and clearer than they had minutes ago, and when he knelt on the bed beside her and leaned in for a kiss, his tongue was minty from his toothpaste.

"So," said Ron, seating himself in front of Hermione on the bed and running his palms up her naked thighs, "it's happening tomorrow. No going back after that, you know."

"Good," said Hermione, scooting toward him so that her legs moved to either side of his hips. "I don't want to go back."

"Me either." Ron's hands were on her hips now, drawing her very nearly onto his lap. "Do you remember, last summer, I used to ask you to move in here just about every other day?"

"Yes…"

"I was in a bit of a rush, wasn't I?" His fingers drew idle circles on her back. "But I reckon… we probably had to go through the last year, right? To be where we are now?"

"We did," she agreed. "I didn't always love it at the time, but it made us stronger in the end."

Eyes heavy-lidded, Ron tilted forward and brushed his lips over Hermione's once then, and they fell into a soft, lazy exchange, their movements slow and earnest. Hermione wound her arms around Ron's neck and gripped the back of his shirt in her fists, bunching it up until she could peel the garment from his body. She took one look at him, with his hair mussed and his lips swollen, and felt a great rush of affection flood her entire being. Everything about this final night here in Grimmauld Place, on the precipice of their new life together, felt monumental, cementing itself in her memory forever.

Ron's lips migrated over her cheek, his teeth scraping over the shell of her ear before he kissed down the side of her neck. As his hands slid under her shirt and up her waist, her breaths grew uneven, issuing in sharp spurts from her lips. Every point of contact between them set her skin ablaze; the pad of his thumb rolling over her nipple made her bite her lip and tighten her legs around his waist. Desire burned in every nerve in her body as he swept her shirt over her head and laid her back on the bed. Unconsciously, her legs drifted further apart as he kissed along the underside of her breast and stroked his tongue over her nipple. Her every sense was heightened at his touch: a tingle raced up her spine when his teeth grazed her sensitive skin.

"Ron," she sighed, hips wiggling just the slightest bit against his, "just kiss me."

His lips were on hers in the next instant, the pressure of his torso pinning her to the mattress. Opening her mouth, she slipped her tongue over his, reveling in the moan she prompted from the back of his throat. Her leg curled over the small of his back, positioning his length against the smoldering warmth at her center. At the contact, she gasped and rubbed herself more firmly against him. Quickly they found a rhythm, their heated kisses alternating with the grinding of their hips, and Hermione felt a strong, impatient pulsing between her legs.

Snaking a hand between them, she reached into the waistband of Ron's pants and wrapped her hand around him. He groaned again into her mouth as she stroked up and down, velvet skin hot beneath her palm.

"Lie on your back," she instructed him, circling her thumb around his tip.

"Huh?" His mouth was bestowing wet, sloppy kisses on her neck, one hand cupping her breast.

"Lie on your back."

He did as told and she instantly crawled over him, tugging his pants down to his knees and moving to straddle one of his thighs. Leaning forward, she placed her tongue at the base of his shaft and licked slowly upward, causing him to shudder. She closed her lips around him, taking as much of him into her mouth as she could, as he sank a hand into her hair and fisted the other around the bedsheets.

"Fuck," he grumbled as she worked faster. "Fuck, that's - fuck-"

She hummed against him and his breath fell ragged, emanating from deep within his chest. Incoherent mumblings fell from his lips as he drew closer and closer to losing control, his fingers tightening around her hair.

"Er-Er-my-nee," he groaned, trying not to buck his hips into her mouth, "you've gotta - stop - or I'll-"

Pulling her lips from his length with a hollow pop, she kissed a path up his freckled torso, over his firm chest, to connect her mouth with his. The fabric of her knickers, now completely soaked, rubbed over his shaft, the friction teasing both of them.

"You," Ron panted as her taut nipples grazed his chest, "are driving me mental…"

"Am I?" She ground herself harder against him, unable to suppress her own whimper of pleasure.

Securing an arm tightly across her back, Ron flipped them over so Hermione was pinned beneath them, the bed bouncing from the impact.

"These need to go," he said, using a hand to guide her knickers down her legs.

Kicking them away, Hermione bent her knees at his waist and gave a shuddering sigh as he sank inside. Once he had filled her completely he paused, his eyes locking on hers.

Even after over a year together, Hermione still found herself struck by the magnitude of Ron's feelings for her, at the way his expression was completely consumed by his love. She lifted her head from the pillow to catch his lips with hers as he moved slowly, deliberately inside her. Gradually, the pleasure between her legs mounted until she was sighing and moaning with every stroke of his hips, one hand in his hair and the other gripping the solid muscles of his back. A thin sheen of sweat popped up on her chest, their slick bodies writhing together. Her ragged breaths became desperate gasps, her toes curling, back arching, nails digging into scarred skin.

When he collapsed onto her, satisfied and spent, she trailed her fingertips along the curve of his spine, relishing in the synchronized thudding of their hearts.

"I love you," muttered Ron, kissing her shoulder. "Love you so much."

"Love you too." She wiggled her hips so that he withdrew and turned onto his back beside her. "I'm going to go to the loo," she said, placing a hand on his chest as she kissed him. "I'll be right back."

His bathrobe was one of only a few belongings that wasn't packed away in a box, and Hermione pulled it on, cinching the belt tightly around her waist before stepping into the hall.

Upon her return, she found Ron propped up against the pillows, the duvet pooling around his waist.

"You know, tomorrow night, when we're at our own flat," he began with a grin, "you won't need the robe, you can just walk around starkers. In fact, it's encouraged."

"Is it now?" Even as she spoke, she shed the robe and slipped into bed beside him, settling into the crook of his neck.

"Oh, yeah," he agreed emphatically. "If you didn't need clothes for work, I'd say you shouldn't even bring any-"

Hermione swatted his chest. "Stop it."

"Where d'you wanna shag first? In the new place," he continued on with a smirk. "We've got to try out each room at least once."

"Aren't you a bit sad about moving out and leaving this place?"

"Nope."

"Not at all?"

"It isn't like we'll never be back, Harry and Ginny still live here. But…" He pressed a kiss to her temple. "Living here was always sort of temporary, in a way. Just a stop on the way to something better." Smoothing down a stray curl, he kissed her forehead. "Being with you… that's permanent."

Well, it's done! I want sincerely thank everyone who has read, favorited, followed, reviewed - it has all warmed my cold black heart. Originally this story was supposed to essentially end after chapter twelve - everything that happens in chapters 13-19 was all crammed into one quick wrap-up chapter and a really short epilogue, but it started to seem like there were so many more things that needed to be explored and resolved (Hermione's relationship with her parents, for one). And I'm so glad I expanded on it, I'm pretty pleased with how this has turned out, and I hope so so so much that you found the ending satisfying (Ron and Hermione sure did *wink wink*). Please let me know what you thought in the comments and thank you so much once again!