Author's Note: Hi guys! Sorry this took so long, and thanks to all my reviewers! By the way, I wrote this instead of studying for my Biology test - so, if I fail, I'm blaming you. :P

The seventh time Hermione wanted to snog Ron senseless was when he came back to them – came back to her – in what should have been her seventh year.

She'd been sleeping, for once, but she wasn't sleeping peacefully. No – she was dreaming, dreaming of Ron and Harry and their families.

They were all in the Gryffindor common room. Lily and James were glaring at her, repeating endlessly, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."

Ron was standing in a corner, his head turned away.

Ginny was screaming at her, "It's all your fault! It's all your fault!"

Harry went to Ginny and took her arm. "She's right, Hermione, it's all your fault." He scowled at her and walked to his parents.

Molly shook Hermione's shoulder. "Don't you know what you've done?" The Weasleys surrounded her, screaming, "It's your fault, all your fault!" The sound rose until she couldn't hear any thing except their screaming and the Potter's muttering of, "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death."

"STOP!" she screamed, and they dissolved into nothingness, leaving her and Ron alone. She walked up to him, but he didn't get any closer, and as the walls faded away, she realised that they were stranded in a forest.

"Ron!" she screamed, and he looked up and saw her. But his face, she realised with shock, showed nothing but fury and hatred, and he ran from her, yelling, "It's your fault!"

"What's all my fault?" Hermione asked quietly, and although Ron wasn't anywhere near her, his voice came whispering from the forest around, "Everything." Then there was no sound, and the sudden realization that Ron was in terrible danger. She ran faster than she thought possible, but not fast enough. He was still running, faster than she could, and beyond him, an abyss yawned.

"Ron!" she screamed. "Ron, come back!" But he didn't listen, and kept running.

Then he fell, shrieking with terror, and Hermione ran to the very edge of the precipice, where she saw his body lying broken on the rocks below. She tried to scream his name, to wake him up – he's not dead, he can't be dead – but her mouth seemed bound shut, and her feet stuck to the ground.

She heard Harry's voice, calling her name, but she didn't even turn around, too horribly transfixed by the sight of Ron lying dead.

Hermione heard him calling again, and again and again, more urgently each time, and when she at last turned around to see what was going on, the dream faded and the interior of the tent materialised.

She sat up quickly, pushing her thick hair out of her eyes. "What's wrong? Harry? Are you all right?"

Harry was smiling at her, so widely it seemed his cheeks would split apart. "I'm OK, everything's fine. More than fine. I'm great. There's someone here."

She refused to let herself hope it was Ron. "What do you mean? Who –?" She looked around, searching for someone else's face, and saw Ron, holding a sword Ron, who was grinning sheepishly, in sharp contrast to the hatred in her dream. Ron, who was soaking wet and dripping water onto the carpet. Ron.

She walked across the tent, barely noticing her feet moving, and stared up at him. Harry seemed almost to have disappeared, and it was like it was just her and Ron alone again.

She stood in front of him, staring at his weak smile and his half-raised arms, and wanted to kiss him; to drag him to her bunk and have her wicked way with him. She wanted to hurt him; to hurt him like he'd hurt her by leaving. She wanted to love him, hate him, kiss him, kill him…

She felt as though she stood there for a moment and for eternity, summing up her choices and wondering what she should do. She couldn't make a conscious decision, and – as Ron's smile went from hopeful to confused – she punched him with all the force of weeks of anger and misery and love.

"You – complete – arse – Ronald – Weasley!"

He backed away, protesting, but she was almost deaf to his words. She kept punching, and words flew from her mouth, although she barely knew what she said. "You – crawl – back – here – after – weeks – and – weeks – oh, where's my wand?" She saw Harry, as though through fogged glass, standing in a corner and holding it. She went to wrestle it from his grip, although she was too angry to cast a spell – all she wanted to do was hold her wand, to feel the smooth wood in her palm and know that she could cast a spell if she wanted. But Harry stepped back and yelled, "Protego!" and Hermione was pushed to the ground by the force of the spell.

"Hermione, calm –!"

Hermione interrupted him with a scream. "I will not calm down! Give me back my wand! Give it back to me!" She advanced on him, only the invisible shield preventing her from physically wrestling it from his grip.

Harry, looking quite scared, nevertheless said, "Hermione, will you please –"

Hermione was too angry to listen to him. "Don't you dare tell me what to do, Harry Potter! Don't you dare! Give it back now!" She pointed at Ron, her fingertip pressing against the glass-hard spell. "And YOU!"

Ron backed away several steps, babbling half-formed excuses and apologies.

"I came running after you! I called you! I begged you to come back!" She half-meant when he'd run from her in the dream, almost confusing dreams and life for a second.

Ron seemed on the verge of tears. "I know, Hermione, I'm sorry, I'm really –"

"Oh, you're sorry!" Hermione laughed, a high-pitched cackle of anger rather than amusement. "You come back after weeks – weeks – and you think it's all going to be all right if you just say sorry?"

Ron blinked and glared at her. "Well, what else can I say?" he yelled.

"Oh, I don't know!" yelled Hermione, with as much sarcasm as she could muster. "Rack your brains, Ron, that should only take a couple of seconds –" She knew she was being meaninglessly cruel now, but she wanted – needed – to make him hurt as much as she'd hurt when he'd left.

"Hermione, he just saved my – " started Harry, but Hermione didn't want to listen to him.

"I don't care!" she shrieked. "I don't care what he's done! Weeks and weeks, we could have been dead for all he knew –!"

Ron approached, his ears and face a brilliant scarlet. "I knew you weren't dead!" he yelled, cutting Hermione off completely. "Harry's all over the Prophet, all over the radio, they're looking for you everywhere, all these rumours and mental stories, I knew I'd hear straight off if you were dead. You don't know what it's been like –"

"What it's been like for you?" Her voice was going higher and higher with every word, she knew, and she was barely able to speak.

"I wanted to come back the minute I'd Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of Snatchers, Hermione, and I couldn't go anywhere!"

Hermione sat down, crossing her legs and arms, looking at the floor and only half-listening to Ron and Harry's conversation. A fierce argument was going on inside her own head.

You love him!

But he left me.

What does that matter?

Of course it matters! Are you out of your mind?

But you love him.

Of course I bloody love him, but this is about principles, and – and friendship, and loyalty, not love at all.

Everything's about love. You love him, that's all that matters.

She stopped thinking and went back to listening to Harry and Ron's conversation. Ron was talking about getting in a fight with the Snatchers. "…grabbed his wand, Disarmed the bloke holding mine and Disapparated. I didn't do it so well, Splinched myself again –" He raised his right hand, showing two missing fingernails.

Hermione raised her eyebrows. Missing fingernails! We almost DIED. Missing effing fingernails, and he thinks that's bad!

Hermione realised Ron had stopped talking. "Gosh, what a gripping story," she said, haughtily. "You must have been simply terrified. Meanwhile, we went to Godric's Hollow and, let's think, what happened there, Harry? Oh yes, You-Know-Who's snake turned up, it nearly killed both of us and then You-Know-Who himself arrived and missed us by about a second." She stuck her nose in the air, noting with pleasure Ron's dumfounded expression.

"What?" he said, but Hermione continued, narrowing her eyes at him.

"Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn't it?"

Harry looked at her for the first time in a while. "Hermione," he said quietly. "Ron just saved my life."

His words sent a joyful glow through her, although she didn't show it. Maybe he does still care about us, she thought. Then she mentally shook that thought away. She was still angry with him; still wanted to make him pay.

"One thing I would like to know, though," she said, looking at the wall above Ron. "How exactly did you find us tonight? Once we know, we'll be able to make sure we're not visited by anyone else we don't want to see."

Ron glared at her, and Hermione noticed with satisfaction the reaction her words had caused.

He pulled the Deluminator out of his pocket. "This?"

Hermione was confused enough that she stopped scowling. "The Deluminator?"

"It doesn't just turn the lights on and off," he explained. "I don't know how it works or why it happened then and not any other time, because I've been wanting to come back ever since I left. But I was listening to the radio, really early on Christmas morning, and I heard – I heard you."

What? wondered Hermione. "You heard me on the radio?"

"No, I heard you coming out of my pocket." For a moment, Hermione thought he was being sarcastic, until she looked at his face and realised that he was completely serious. "Your voice," he said, holding out the Deluminator, "came out of this."

"And what exactly did I say?"

"My name. 'Ron'. And you said… something about a wand…"

Hermione flushed. She remembered the exact time she'd said that – it was the first time that either of them had said Ron's name aloud since he'd left, She remembered all too well the heady sense of delight she'd felt when she'd said his name, even though she was so upset about Harry's wand being broken. She remembered that she had cried, not only about Harry's strange illness and his broken wand, but because she'd finally realised that she was completely, truly, madly in love with Ron.

Ron had barely seemed to notice her change in colour. "So I took it out," he said, looking at the Deluminator, "and it didn't seem different or anything, but I was sure I'd heard you. So I clicked it. And the light went out in my room, but another light appeared right outside the window." He raised his hand, pointing at something that only he could see. "It was a ball of light, kind of pulsing, and bluish, like that light you get around a Portkey, you know?"

"Yeah," said Hermione, intrigued.

"I knew this was it. I grabbed my stuff and packed it, then I put on my rucksack and went out into the garden. This little ball of light was hovering there, waiting for me, and when I came out it bobbed along a bit and I followed it behind the shed and then… well, it went inside me."

"What?" asked Harry, saying exactly what Hermione was wondering.

"It sort of floated towards me, right to my chest," Ron said, illustrating the movement with his finger, "and then – it just went straight through." He touched the middle of his chest, near his heart. "It was here. I could feel it, it was hot. And once it was inside me I knew what I was supposed to do, I knew it would take me where I needed to go. So I Disapparated and came out on the side of a hill. There was snow everywhere…"

Harry interrupted. "We were there. We spent two nights there, and the second night I kept thinking I could hear someone moving around in the dark and calling out!"

"Yeah, well, that would be me," said Ron with a half-laugh. "Your protective spells work, anyway, because I couldn't see you and I couldn't hear you. I was sure you were around, though, so in the end I got in my sleeping bad and waited for one of you to appear. I thought you'd have to show yourselves when you packed up the tent."

"No, actually," said Hermione, no longer so angry. "We've been Disapparating under the Invisibility Cloak as an extra precaution. And we left really early, because, as Harry said, we'd heard somebody blundering around."

"Well, I stayed on that hill all day. I kept hoping you'd appear. But when it started to get dark I knew I must have missed you, so I clicked the Deluminator again, the blue light came out and went inside me, and I Disapparated and arrived here, in these woods. I still couldn't see you, so I just had to hope one of you would show yourselves in the end – and Harry did. Well, I saw the doe first, obviously."
"You saw the what?" Hermione was both incredibly confused and relieved. He'd tried to find them, he really had, maybe he really did care.

The two of them started to explain what had happened, haltingly at first. Hermione uncrossed her arms and legs to get the blood flowing, and listened, fascinated.

"But it must have been a Patronus!" she exclaimed at a break in the story. "Couldn't you see who was casting it? Didn't you see anyone? And it led you to the sword! I can't believe this! Then what happened?"

Ron continued, explaining how he'd watched Harry jump into the pool and waited for him to resurface. "I got kind of scared when he didn't come up after a few seconds, so I went to the very edge and saw him trying to pull the Horcrux from his neck, 'cos it was choking him, see?" Harry rubbed his neck, where, Hermione saw, a purple imprint of the chain was left. "So I jumped in and pulled him out, and then when he was out I looked in the water to see what he wanted so badly, and saw the sword, so I jumped back in and got that too. And then Harry said that I should destroy the Horcrux, and he asked the locket to open, using Parseltongue, and –"

He faltered, and Harry jumped in, as though trying to protect Ron – or Hermione – from an important truth. "– and Ron stabbed it with the sword."

"And… and it went? Just like that?" Hermione was whispering, although she wasn't sure why.

"Well, it – it screamed," said Harry, half-looking at Ron. "Here." He threw the locket to her and she examined it, looking over its punctured windows. She noticed, with a flush of something akin to pleasure, that Ron was watching her looking at the locket.

Harry said something about a wand, and Ron turned away from her, opening his rucksack. Hermione, finished with the locket, stood up and Ron half jumped back, holding a short, dark wand in his hand. He looked apprehensive, although Hermione wasn't sure why. Putting the destroyed Horcrux in her bag, she climbed back into her bed and rolled over, staring at the wall so that Ron and Harry wouldn't notice that she was crying.

Oh, she loved him, she loved him, and she didn't know whether she was joyful or devastated about that.

"About the best you could hope for, I think," she heard Harry murmur.

"Yeah," replied Ron. "Could've been worse. Remember those birds she set on me?"

Hermione almost laughed through her tears. "I still haven't ruled it out," she said.

She felt, rather than saw, Ron smiling as he took his pyjamas from his rucksack, and she smiled too.