Author's Note: Thank you soooo much to everyone who reviewed my first chapter! It meant a lot to me. I apologize for the huge delay for this chapter. I'll try my best to get the next one up sooner!

Dedication: This chapter is dedicated to my good friend of the fanfiction name SashP. She is a veteran to fanfiction, and helped me a lot at the start of my fic (although my ship style is very different from hers :DDD. I recommend that you check out her story titled "Cream Coloured Wedding Dresses"- it's a really nice one shot.

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters in my story. I do, however, own the plot. Unless of course I am channeling JK Rowling's brain and publishing Deathly Hallows on here (extremely doubtful).

Chapter 2

She sat alone at the kitchen table. The back door was opened, and she could hear birds singing outside. They were chirping happily to the new day. What was wrong with them? Maybe they didn't get the memo, but this was not a happy day; not at all. This was not a day to be singing.

In just a few hours, Harry, Ron, and Hermione would be leaving on some secret adventure. She didn't know where they were going, or what they had planned, but she knew that it was going to be dangerous. She could see it in their eyes.

She wanted more than anything in the world to go with them. She thought that she had proven, at least in the past two years, that she was just as capable as they were. Hadn't it been Ron, not her, that had gotten himself attacked by a suffocating brain at the Department of Mysteries? Hadn't it been Hermione who had been knocked unconscious, while she merely sprained her ankle?

She took a bite of her toast. She could hardly taste it.

She liked to think of herself as fearless. In some ways, she really was. If she had the chance to fight in a battle against Voldemort himself, if she could get back at him for all of the terrible deeds that he had done, and the lives he had ruined…she would do it without hesitation. But as she sat at the kitchen table, she had the sinking feeling that her deepest fears were coming true.

She hated to think about being separated from the people that she loved. It was such an overwhelmingly helpless feeling, knowing that at any given moment they could be in great danger, and there would be nothing that she could do to help them.

Harry had told her that he didn't know how long they would be gone. How could she be expected to just sit safely at home for god knows how long while her brother, her best friend, and her…?

Who was Harry to her, anyways? She felt as though she hardly knew him anymore. The guy that she had fallen for wouldn't treat her like such an…inferior. She could hold her own, and he knew it. Why was he being so difficult?

She could talk some sense in him. She knew she could. He had to let her come with them.

As if he had read her thoughts, suddenly Harry was in the kitchen. "Hey Ginny," he muttered, before turning his back to her and opening the cabinet.

She swallowed hard. It was now or never, she told herself.

"Harry? We need to talk," she started, in a voice that conveyed more confidence than she felt.

"I'm kind of busy," he replied, "I still have to pack and all."

"Yeah, I know. But its just…you're making a mistake, Harry. I know that you want to protect me, but I don't need to be protected. What I do need, though…what I need is to be with you guys. I need to do my part to help, Harry."

She turned to see his reaction. He stared evenly back at her, without speaking.

"I mean…I could never live with myself if something happened to one of you and…."

She fought back her tears. She had to stay strong. "...and I wasn't there to help prevent it."

He gave a smirk. "Au contraire, I for one don't need to be protected," he mocked.

She frowned. "You know me, Harry. You know this about me more than anyone else, because you are the same way. If I don't help…I won't be able to live with myself. How could I possibly?"

"I'm sure you can manage," he replied coldly.

She looked up at him, shocked that he could say something so hurtful. Who was this guy, and what had had he done with Harry?

But then she realized the horrible truth. This was Harry. And maybe he had always been this way. Had she really been so in love with him that she had disillusioned herself into thinking that he was someone that he wasn't?

"Did you ever really love me?" she whispered to him, the hurt evident in her voice.

Harry's expression did not even falter; he did not even hesitate in his response. "No, Ginny," he answered, "I did not."

Tears welled in her eyes, and she turned away from him. She ran from the kitchen and up the stairs, her vision becoming more and more blurry….

"GINNY WEASLEY! Have you listened to a word that I have said?"

Ginny snapped back into reality at the sound of her mother's voice.

It had been more than a month since her horrible fight with Harry. When he had left a few hours later, they hadn't even spoken to each other. In fact, they hadn't spoken since.

After the fight, Ginny had run up to her room. Hermione was there, and they had spent the rest of the morning talking and crying. When it was time for Hermione to leave that afternoon, Ginny had a tearful goodbye with both her and Ron. She had hugged them both tight, whispering to her brother that she would never forgive him if he didn't come home safe.

After saying goodbye to everyone at the Burrow, they had left with Harry. He didn't so much as look in her direction.

It was hard for Ginny, ending on such a bad note with Harry when he was clearly in so much danger. She knew that she should hate him. She tried to hate him. But she couldn't help it; she knew in her heart that he meant too much to her for that.

In the early weeks after their departure, life at the Burrow was difficult. With so little going on at home, it was easy to get wrapped up in her thoughts. She found herself obsessing over how she could have handled the situation with Harry differently. She was constantly wondering what he was thinking, what he was doing and even…if he was alive.

Lately she had been doing her best to move on with her life. She told herself that they could be gone for months…years even. She couldn't just put her life on hold until they returned. With that in mind, she tried her best to put all thoughts of Harry aside. Some of the time she thought that she was really doing better. Other times, however, like this morning, it all came back.

"Sorry, mum," she replied. "What did you say?"

"I said that I am going down to Diagon Alley in an hour to pick some things up. I asked if you wanted to come along and visit Fred and George."

"Oh, I don't feel like it today. I need to…"

You need to what? Wallow in self pity?

Before she could come up with a reasonable excuse, her mother intervened. "Well, young lady, you are coming with me whether you want to or not. You haven't been out of this house in days!"

Rolling her eyes, Ginny ate the last bit of her eggs, and headed towards the staircase leading to her room.

"Be ready in forty minutes!" her mom called after her.

When Ginny entered her room, she saw a letter lying at the foot of her bed. Her heart leapt.

Every few days, either Ron or Hermione would send her a note, giving her an update on what they had been up to. She hadn't gotten one in the past week, and for the past few days she had felt as though a dark curtain had fallen over her life. Her heart told her that something was wrong, although she couldn't pinpoint exactly what she thought had happened.

Ginny rushed over and grabbed the letter, sitting down on her bed to read it. She took a deep breath and began.

Hey Sis!

Everything is going well. Really, I think that we finally have a bit of a lead. Who knows? We might even be home in time for Christmas. Sorry that you haven't heard from us in awhile. We have been traveling a lot, and we didn't really have time to stop and write. I wish that I could tell you more about what is going on, but it's not safe. Harry still insists that we shouldn't even be writing these letters. But don't worry; we won't keep you out of the loop. I have to go now, Ginny. Make sure to eat some of Mum's chicken for me!

Love you,

Ron

P.S. - Hermione says to tell you Hello.

Ginny sighed in relief.

The letters that they sent were always the same- completely and utterly vague. However, each letter told her something; something that kept her anxiously awaiting each and every one.

The letters told her that they were still alive.

XXXXXXXXXXX

Hermione laid on the couch of a small cabin in the mountains of Austria, reading a book.

Until the week before, their search for the horcruxes could only have been described as a complete and total mess. They wandered aimlessly, searching through random caves that they passed on their way. They had no idea where any of the horcruxes were; they had no lead.

Then, as if by miracle, Harry had remembered back to the summer before their fifth year at Hogwarts.

"You guys…" he had exclaimed, his eyes growing wide. "At Grimmauld Place, we found a locket…it didn't open, remember? You don't think…"

Ron's mouth dropped open. "No way," he had whispered.

"R.A.B…R.A.B…Regulus Black!" Harry had practically shouted. He slapped himself on the forehead. "How did I not think of that?"

"Who cares?" Ron replied, happily. "You are genius, Mate...and I bet you anything that you are right. Let's go check it out."

Listening to the conversation, Hermione had begun to feel a sinking feeling in her stomach. "We can't…" she muttered bitterly. "Mundungus…he stole all of Sirius's stuff. Remember?"

Harry's eyes had narrowed. "We know who we need to find, then, don't we?" he concluded angrily.

With help from Fred and George, they had found him. At first, he pretended to have no idea what they were talking about. Finally, after much persuasion he had been forced to admit it- he had sold the locket. Not only had he sold it, but he had no recollection of exactly who he had sold it to.

He told them that he had gone to an enormous rummage festival. Wizards from all over the World had been there, buying and selling their used goods. It was there, along with other items belonging to Sirius, that Mundungus had sold the locket.

"I sold so much that day," he said miserably. "I can't even begin to guess who it was that bought the locket."

It was no wonder that he sounded miserable. The look on Harry's face, along with Ron and Hermione's, was enough to let him know that if they didn't get the locket back, he would pay…big time.

In a final act of desperation, he had given them a list of people that he had done business with that day. He said that he always liked to keep track of who had bought from him, so he could contact them if there was ever something new that he needed to sell. He assured them that somewhere on that list was the current owner of the locket.

They had left him, taking the list with them. Every since, they had been going down the list, visiting each and every person on it.

They had been all over the place- Belgium, Spain, France, and Norway. With each person that they visited, they became more and more desperate.

Nobody had the locket.

Or so it seemed. They had finally gotten to the last person on the list, an old man by the name of Bernard Helcun who lived up in the middle of nowhere, in the mountains of Austria. Tomorrow morning, when they arrived at his house, he would be either their Savior or their Destroyer; he was their last hope.

For tonight, they were staying at an Auror Center. Auror Centers had proven to be helpful during their travels around the Europe. They were small cabins that were set in strategic places throughout the world, so that Aurors could take shelter while they were off on missions. When they first started traveling and had expressed concern about where they would sleep, Ron had remembered his father talking about the Centers. After that, they had been breaking in and slept in them everywhere along the way.

Hermione turned the page of her book. Harry and Ron were still talking in the second room of the two room cabin, the kitchen. She had excused herself about thirty minutes ago, wanting to get to bed. However, like many nights since they had left the Burrow, she was unable to get to sleep. The sounds of the outdoors were different from at home; she often found herself laying and listening, unsure of what was outside. As tired as she was, she resigned herself to read instead.

Hearing the creak of the floorboards, she looked up. Ron had entered the room. He walked over to where she was laying on the couch and, with a smile on his face, sat down on her feet.

She laughed and pulled her feet out from under him, sitting up to give him room on the couch.

"Harry fell asleep at the kitchen table," Ron announced, snickering.

"Lucky guy," Hermione commented.

"I see that you haven't managed yet…"

"So what, are you just going to leave him there?" Hermione asked, changing the subject.

"Nah…I'll go wake him up in a minute. But I saw that the light was still on in here."

There was a brief silence. "I can never get to sleep," Hermione whispered.

"I know how you feel," Ron replied. "The sounds really get to me."

Hermione nodded. "Do you ever feel…like your life is rushing past you?"

Ron paused, thinking. "I feel like I have taken life…or the amount of time I have left in it…too lightly. It's like I have this mental list; a list of things that I want to accomplish. But I haven't been acting on them. I've always just assumed that I have ages to live my life. But you can't really know that, can you? Its just so…"

Hermione looked into his bright blue eyes, and from them she could see all of the worry, all of the passion that he felt. She remembered back to a time where she had thought that he was just a cute goofball. She had felt as though she never saw any emotion, any real depth to his character, and that drove her crazy. At this moment, however, sitting on the couch with Ron, she realized that he did have deep emotions, maybe even more so than herself. He was just afraid of putting himself out there and letting people see them. She could see that in his eyes too.

The next thing she knew, those eyes that she gazed at were getting closer to her. Closer….Closer…as though their heads were being pulled together by some invisible magnet.

When he kissed her, all coherent thoughts vanished for her mind, quite possibly for the first time in her over thought-out life. She felt totally in the moment; she was all too aware of the feeling of his hand rested gently on her cheek, the feeling of his lips against hers, the tingling sensation that she felt, surging through her body.

He moaned slightly, and they broke apart.

"Well…" he said hoarsely, "I guess that takes care of number one on my list."

His hand still rested on her cheek, he gently tucked her hair behind her ear. He reached out and grabbed her hand, giving it a squeeze. "I love you, Hermione," he murmured, a faint blush appearing across his face.

Hermione felt the heat from her own face as she responded. "I love you too…I always have."

"Always?" he asked with a smile.

"Since I first saw you on the train to Hogwarts, dirt on your nose and all," she confessed.

He snorted at that. "Yeah…" he thought back, "I guess I thought that you were alright too."

She playfully slapped him with her free hand, and he reached out and grabbed it, pulling her forward.

And then they kissed again.

Author's Note: Love me for the Ron/Hermione scene and hate me for the Harry/Ginny scene? Or even…hate me for the Ron/Hermione scene and love me for the Harry/Ginny scene? Either way, or whatever you are feeling, PLEASE leave me a review! I really love getting feedback.

Like I said, I'll try to get my next chapter up sooner! And about Harry…I know you hate him right now, but I promise he will redeem himself…eventually.

But lets not get ahead of ourselves…Look in the next chapter for:

As always, more Ron/Hermione goodness

A new complication arises to the Harry/Ginny plot!!

Thanks again to my amazing sister and beta!

Beta Note: YAY! I LOVE this story, and its so much better than my first story. This chapter was no different, I loved the Ron/Hermione action, and although I hate Harry right now, JustAnotherDay assures me that she'll make it up for him. )