A/N: Okay, so here's what happened. I was writing the next (promised) chapter of With Me, minding my own business, when all of a sudden I started trying to make Ron into a badass, and I realized that story wasn't far enough along for that to make any sense at all... So basically, last night, I opened a new document, regrettably, and typed this. Which means this is basically the spit up of a With Me chapter. A very large amount of spit up. Though they aren't related in the slightest, nor are they even similar, really. At all. But there you have it.

So if you've come this far, and are able to push your regret aside at not seeing With Me updated tonight instead, I hope you will enjoy this little (aka LONG) piece instead. This is chapter one of two. Now back to With Me, now that hardcore Ron has temporarily vacated that story and skipped on over to this one... xx

Black.

All he could see was black.

Ron's first thought was that something had gone wrong, his eyelids had stopped working properly, or in his state of early morning half consciousness, he must have misjudged his actions, because it should not be this dark. Surely. He must have only felt his eyes open, a short circuit in his sleepy brain, telling him he'd already performed an action which he really had not. But as he breathed in the cold, dusty air around him and unfamiliarity began to set in, he blinked, realizing with confused horror that it made no difference. Eyes open or closed, he could see nothing. Nothing but complete darkness.

At this realization, he moved swiftly past disorientation and on to panic, pushing his palms down against the hard floor in an attempt to cautiously stand. And he would have made it... if it hadn't been for that tiny sound, a whimper, coming from somewhere to his left.

"Hermione?" he called, half dazed as he sensed her. He shouldn't have known it was her - he had no reason to - and he realized, as he dropped back fully onto his hands and knees and began to crawl towards the direction of the sound, that it could be anyone at all there with him...

Until she spoke.

"R-Ron?"

"Hermione!" he shouted, instinct driving him towards her voice, faster, closer to the tiny sounds she was making against the damp floor...

Damp.

He took distant note of the change in feeling as his hands no longer pressed down into rough stone, but were now passing over much smoother rock, slick with moisture.

"Where are we?" Hermione asked, and it was only then that Ron realized how close he now was to her, her voice loud and breath hot against his forehead. "What's going on? Oh! I can't see anything!" she continued in a shrill voice, breathing heavily just in front of him. "Why can't I..."

"I can't either," Ron said slowly, settling on the floor, crouching in front of her. He moved his head slowly, experimentally, left to right, blindly hoping to find even the faintest strip of light. But there was nothing. Nothing but darkness.

He heard her shuffling around for a second before she let out a half frustrated, half terrified huff.

"I don't have my wand! Do you have yours?"

He could have kicked himself for not checking already, and he tipped his weight back onto his shins as his hands dived into his pockets, patting and feeling his way around familiar jeans for a slightly unfamiliar strip of chestnut - the wand he now called his own.

"No, haven't got it," he said shortly, mind whirring as he tried to recall what had happened and how they'd gotten here.

"Ron, do you remember anything... at all... about what happened... why we're here?" Hermione asked slowly, and he could hear her trainers scuffing the floor as she stood... at least he had to assume that's what she was doing.

He shook his head in reply to her question, realizing momentarily that of course she couldn't see him.

"No," he said scratchily before clearing his throat. "No, nothing. You either?"

"Nothing," she said, shocking him with how far away her voice now sounded.

"Where are you? What are you doing?" he asked as he slowly pushed back up onto his feet and lifted his head, aware of his height and the possibility of low ceilings. But he hit nothing and finally stretched to his full 6' 4".

"I figure, we got in here somehow, didn't we?" Hermione began, and he listened closely to what sounded like something softly rubbing against a rough surface. "So there's got to be a way out."

"What the bloody hell happened..." Ron muttered, desperately trying to remember, to focus. "Something..."

He bit down on human flesh, feeling bone between his teeth, and he writhed against bindings as something cold pressed against the inside of his elbow...

"Blimey, were we kidnapped?" He pressed his fingers over his eyelids, trying to concentrate on the fragment of memory that was slowly seeping back to him.

"I don't know," Hermione said distantly, distracted by whatever it was that Ron could hear her doing..

"Hermione, keep talking so I can come and find you. Is the floor level?"

"Seems to be," Hermione said. "I never thought about what it would be like to be blind, not really," she added thoughtfully, "until now. This is terrifying." He could hear her shuddering as he approached her, knowing he was close enough when he felt the warmth of another human body emanating against his exposed arms.

She clucked her tongue, and bumped her shoulder against Ron's chest accidentally.

"Sorry," she mumbled, but she didn't move away, and he was oddly relieved at physical contact, here in a world where he could no longer tell which way was up, much less be assured, visually, that he really wasn't alone. It was the strangest feeling, when he paused to consider it, trusting every sense except his own sight, the one thing he could no longer count on.

"Okay, well, for one thing, you're right, and there's got to be some way out if we managed to get in, yeah? So we just need to go around and feel all the walls and sort of... map the place out," he concluded, feeling very satisfied with this course of action and knowing that Hermione would too. There was nothing like a plan to keep her levelheaded. And he knew he was going to need her, like always, if they were going to get out of here any time soon...

"Good," Hermione said. "Why don't you feel around for the ceiling. Reckon it must be high up? Maybe if we get our bearings on the size of this room we can just go around, you on top and me under you-"

Ron swallowed hard and tried to ignore every single thought that was now forcefully trying to dominate him... because every single one of them was entirely inappropriate given their current situation...

"Okay," he interrupted, clearing his throat again. "Let's do that."

So he stretched up onto his toes as he felt the pressure of Hermione's shoulder ease away from him until they were no longer touching... until he felt a strange pit of emptiness, the one he had grown accustomed to feeling when she wasn't close by...

"Well, ceiling's got to be at least eight feet up, I reckon, or I'd be able to find it."

"Maybe you could..." and as she paused mid-sentence, Ron could almost picture her biting her lip in thought... "Would you maybe be able to lift me? And we can see if I hit something?"

"WouldI," Ron teased, extending his arms towards the sound of her voice until he found her, his hands awkwardly bumping into unknown places until she corrected his direction with a twist, her hands on his wrists. And then he was grabbing her tightly around the waist and bending his knees to squeeze her and lift her, as if she weighed less than nothing.

"Slow down!" she shrieked.

"Oh, sorry!" he said quickly, waiting for her to squirm against him and regain her position.

"Okay, keep going, just a little more..."

It was only when he'd fully straightened his legs and readjusted that he realized just how much they were touching, in how many places... His arms circled her thighs now, just beneath her bum. It was making him dizzy. Or it could have been the blackness, closing in from all sides. He chose the latter, to keep distraction at bay, but fear rose slowly as he considered their situation more closely. How they hell had they gotten here...

He looked into Hermione's face, a gray cloth too tight across her cheeks, gagging her. Her eyes were filled with tears as he tried to reach for her, realizing with horror that his arms no longer listened to his brain, no longer obeyed his commands. All was silent and still. And then he was dreaming.

He shook against Hermione as she steadied them oddly, and he knew she must have hit something solid.

"Ah! Found it. I've got my palm flat against the ceiling. Not terribly high then. You think perhaps ten feet?" But he could barely hold onto her now, memories solidifying, and he had to lower her quickly to the floor, grunting as she landed with a thud. "Ron, what the-"

"I r-remembered... something."

"What?" she asked quietly, as if he was about to tell her a secret.

"Oh my God..." He blinked rapidly, through the dark, as he tried to recall more details. "Someone... something..."

He heard her shiver and suck in a breath, and he knew she must be getting impatient with him.

"What is it, Ron?" she demanded.

"You were... you were tied up and so was I and I couldn't move anything to help you and... shit!"

She gasped and stepped up until he could feel her warmth again. He felt her shiver and his thoughts spun out of control. It was too cold in here. And was it getting colder?

"Oh!" Hermione shrieked, and he felt her palm press flat against his stomach out of nowhere, making him jump with shock. "I couldn't speak! I remember! I was trying to scream or call out for help but... but I couldn't..."

"Bloody hell! We were kidnapped!"

"Ron!" Hermione gasped again. "What if someone's... watching us? !"

"Okay, we've got to find a way out of here," Ron said urgently. "Feel around near the bottom and I'll check the top."

So they made their way quickly, almost silently, around the room, hands rubbing against the walls in all directions, in search of something, anything...

"Anything yet?" Hermione asked after a long pause, her voice shaking with desperation.

"No, nothing," he said, continuing his search until he was sure he'd covered the wall all the way around. He stopped, frustratedly kicking the toe of his trainer against the stone wall that had most recently failed him. "This is bollocks."

"Okay," Hermione panted from somewhere just below him. "We have to think about this." And he heard her voice lift as she stood. "Someone brought us here, right? So they have some sort of plan. Either they brought us by side-along apparition, or there's a door in or out that we just can't see."

"Can't see the door? Can't see anything!" Ron shouted, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. How could he have been such a failure? He'd not been able to protect Hermione. He'd not been able to stop this. And now here they were. At least they were together... at least they were still alive.

"I know, I know," Hermione said, and Ron picked up on an apologetic note that made him deeply regret shouting at her. But he didn't have time to comment on it before she continued... "But we know they must want something more from us. Otherwise, why would they have kept us alive?"

She had a good point, and though it didn't make Ron feel much better, it certainly made him more curious...

"I know it's mental, but we should try Apparating out.."

"Without a wand?" Ron questioned, raising an eyebrow he knew she couldn't see. "Good luck. I tried that in the dungeon at Malf-" but he cut himself off abruptly, stomach twisting into an uncomfortable knot at the memory. This wasn't like that. It couldn't be. He wouldn't let it.

"Okay, I know," Hermione said again, and he was grateful for the steady tone in her voice, even after his mistake, "but just humour me and give it a shot, will you?"

"Right, then come here," Ron said quickly. "We should go together." And the next thing he knew, Hermione was brushing her hands against his torso and he was trying to mentally recite the three Ds.

"You want to try it first?" she asked him softly, and in answer, he reached down to take ahold of both of her tiny, cold hands with his much larger ones, reminding himself that the butterflies in his stomach were based on something false, a reaction to the feeling outside of the meaning. Right, so what he'd been doing to himself for years now...

So he closed his eyes, imagined the Burrow, and squeezed her hands tight. But nothing happened. And even though he'd known it wouldn't work, it would have been silly to pretend, in that moment, that he wasn't disappointed.

"Yeah, we're still here... aren't we," he said dryly.

"Let me," Hermione requested, gripping his hands even tighter.

But after a long, silent pause, he heard her sigh and stomp frustratedly.

"At least we tried," she said, withdrawing her hands from his, and his palms instantly felt cold and strange, like she'd ripped something away from him when she'd moved. "Well," she began, slipping into that methodical mode that Ron had grown so used to that he nearly craved it. He even went so far as to let out a breath, relieved, as he could imagine her ticking off a list on each of her fingers, pacing in front of him as she spoke. "We've checked all the walls thoroughly for a door, we can't apparate without our wands, and we know they want us alive for something. So... we have to wait... and see what it is... and hope we can make an escape when they come for us."

Ron ran through her listed options, looking for another one that hadn't been covered. But he could find nothing, and with a resigned sigh, he realized it really was the only way... to wait... and hope.

"Alright," he said slowly. "But stay on this side. It's freezing in here and the floor's wet over where you were before."

"We've got to try and remember how we got here," Hermione said.

"Come sit near the wall and we can think. It's too disorienting standing here where I have no idea which direction is which."

So they sat, silently, lost in thought. But after a while, with nothing more to go on, Ron felt a wave of strange panic, like waking from a nightmare he couldn't remember.

"Hermione?" he called out.

"Yes?" she answered, hoarsely.

"Sorry," he mumbled. "Just needed to hear you."

"It's okay," and he was sure she'd moved closer, her voice coming from just therenext to his left ear. "Do you hear that?" she asked after a moment.

"The water?" Ron said. "Yeah, noticed that when we were checking the walls for a door. It's coming in through a crack on the other side, kind of high up. Explains why the floor's wet over there."

She shivered, and as they sat in resumed silence, he began to imagine her smile, her bright eyes, and the tiny patches of freckles that would appear across the bridge of her nose in the summertime. So it wasn't productive, but he felt oddly alone here, without being able to see her. If he could just touchher... But it was silly to imagine that the darkness could offer him bravery. As soon as he heard her voice, he was sure he'd be useless again.

"Ron?" she said quietly.

"Mm hm."

Right. Total mush.

"Make a joke or something. I can't stand it."

He pondered his options, but opted for the simplest solution, the one thing he felt he could joke about just then, close enough but not too close.

"Hermione, what are you wearing?" he asked, grinning.

He heard her chuckle, an eye roll evident in the tone of her laughter.

"Same thing I was wearing yesterday, prat," she said. "It's a red-"

But he didn't need her to say anything more. He remembered. Oh, quite clearly...

"A red dress with hardly any straps. It's a kind of cotton thing, right? And there's that little lacy bit at the bottom that just covers your knees."

A long, silent pause made its way between them once again, filling the space with highly mounted tension this time. But then, at last, he felt her hand on top of his, marveling at her aim through the blackness. She tugged his hand until she laid it to rest on something soft and warm and...

He swallowed hard as he realized he was now touching what must be Hermione's thigh. So she was sitting on her knees, bum resting on top of her feet? He wasn't sure why it made him feel better, to know how she was sitting, but it did. Some internal map was building this new world, one in which he had no choice but to guess. He closed his eyes, though there was no need, no difference between the two versions of the world. Somehow, just the motion felt like something, and that was all that mattered. And it seemed to make it easier, somehow, for him to let go and feel everything she was showing him. Though he really didn't know what this meant, or if it meant a thing... or if he was just a useless prat, just like every other time, and too scared to change...

"Cotton. Right," he finally managed to say. But after a moment, his fingers traveled an inch higher. And he furrowed his brows, opening his eyes again to the pitch black room. "Dampcotton," he corrected. "Hermione, you must be freezing! You should change into something dry."

"Oh, brilliant," she said sarcastically. "I'll just waltz over to my wardrobe and make a selection, shall I?"

But Ron ignored her, withdrawing his hand from her leg and stripping off his perfectly dry shirt. And as she finished quipping, he stretched out a hand to give the shirt to her, moving forward until he felt her thigh against his knuckles again. Her hand slipped down over his until she touched the bodily warmed material he was offering.

"Change into this," he said. "It's not like I can, uh, see you or anything." He felt his face burn, but almost laughed at how incredible it was to blush and not have anyone there who could actually see it.

"What..." Hermione began slowly, and he felt her studying the fabric with her sense of touch. "Is this your shirt?"

"Yeah," he shrugged, acutely aware, again, that his body language could no longer translate through this place...

"Ron, no," she protested firmly. "I'm not taking that."

"Why not?" And he had just enough time to wonder if he should be offended before she spoke again.

"Because that's unfair. Now you don't have anything-" Was it his imagination, or was she trembling?

"I'm wearing an undershirt," he cut in. "Seriously. I'm good," but his completely bare chest broke out into light goosebumps, as if trying to physically protest his lie.

"You are?" she asked in a tiny voice.

"Yeah," he said solidly, heart nearly shattering blissfully at how hesitant she seemed. It was becoming more and more obvious, with each passing moment, just how many things she could do to him with only her voice...

"Okay, fine..." she said, nearly linking fingers with his to take the proffered shirt.

And then she stood, and he knew because his hand fell from her thigh to brush the bare skin of her shin, but she quickly backed away, and he closed his eyes again, focusing unwisely on the sound of her dress whooshing over her head, followed by another backwards swish as his shirt was pulled down to replace the dress.

It had to be completely barmy to be this turned on while being held hostage in a freezing cube of a room, for who knew how long, possibly for the rest of their lives...

He swallowed a lump of pure fear as his heart raced.

"Thank you," she said, cutting through his transition from elation to devastation, her voice moving down as she must have knelt again to his left.

"Sure," he said softly, unable to come up with anything more witty or clever to banter with at this point.

"Ron, would you mind, maybe, if we tried to walk around again, just to see if we missed anything? I feel useless sitting here, just waiting."

"Waiting was your idea," he teased. "But yeah, let's have another... " He stopped himself from saying 'look', realizing how useless so many ordinary words and phrases now were as he stood.

"Right," Hermione said, standing next to him. "Let's go."

So they walked, agonizingly slowly, around the room, feeling each of the four walls as they went, searching for any clue at all. He was sure it had gotten colder and that if he could see his breath, each exhale would be visible in front of him.

At last, he knew he had reached the first dry side of the room again when Hermione bumped against him with an 'oomph' as she stood up straight from her investigation of the lower half of the walls...

"Sorry-" she started, but she gasped before the word was fully out of her mouth, and he felt her hands on his chest.

He froze, muscles seizing at the contact of skin on skin...

"Ron!" she hissed. "You. sodding. liar!"

"Wh-what? !" He gulped in air, realizing he'd forgotten to breathe when she'd touched him.

"You aren't wearing an undershirt, you arse!" she shouted, voice echoing off the walls. Ron flinched as she withdrew her hands from his body sharply.

"Oh, that."

"Oh, that!" she repeated, pitching her voice up an extra octave for added effect.

For some reason, the tone of her voice dragged anger up from some distant depths, and he was feeling much hotter, and not because of her touch this time.

"Well, what was I bloody well supposed to do? ! Let you freeze to death?"

"So," she began, bitterly, "I'm supposed to be okay with that happening to you then?

"No!" he shouted, on the defense now. Why was it that whenever he tried to do anything good, it always seemed to backfire? "You didn't know what I was really doing, did you," he reasoned. "It wasn't like you were taking advantage of anything. Exactly what I wanted. I wasn't going to let you wear that wet cotton all day, or however bloody long we end up trapped in here. But I knew you wouldn't let me help if you knew the truth. So it was fine because-"

"Shut up!" she suddenly roared. "Just shut up!"

He held his breath, swallowing his alarm at her ear splitting tone.

"Look-" he began, but she cut him off so quickly that he wondered if she could even have heard him speak before she'd so obviously read his mind...

"No, you listen! You are too noble and good and self-effacing, and if you die for it, I'll never, EVER, forgive you. Do you understand? !"

He paused, replaying her outburst several times in his head, looking for possible replies. But none came to him... none soon enough.

"Do you want to die?" she asked, and he had the feeling she was daring him to contradict anything she had said so far, knowing his answer clearly before he said it. Somehow, saying no was going to be used against him...

"Of course not..." he said anyway, trailing off to await his sentence.

"Then stop being a prat and come get in this shirt with me."

He blinked, heart suddenly racing, pounding in his own ears.

No way he'd heard her right.

No. way.

Oh, God, he had nothing intelligent to say! But why were they rowing? He couldn't remember.

"Why are we fighting?" he managed to ask, head spinning.

"Why are we fighting? !" she echoed, voice cracking. "I don't know! You tell me!"

"I don't know..." he trailed off, but he regained momentum as he recalled her recent outrage at his act of chivalry. "But I doknow that you seem to be under the impression that you're going to win this one. And you're not!"

He heard her breathing raggedly before she sucked in sharply to speak again.

"Ron, you can either get in this shirt with me, or I can just take it off and give it back, whether you accept it or not, because those are your only options. I won't sit here all cozy while you freeze because you thought you were being a gentleman!"

"That's not exactly-"

"Or am I just too repulsive?" she drawled. "So, between sharing the only dry clothing we've got and dying, you choose death?"

She was going way too far, and he was sure it had something to do with his serious lack of communication.

Hang on. Speaking of communication errors, what the fuck had he done since she'd pounced on him in the Room of Requirement, practically admitting that she, at the very least, could maybe, possibly, in some small way, actually fancy him? ! Oh, so he'd been a total git, actually! Letting her kiss him, kissing her back, and ignoring all of the assumed aftermath, opting for silence and limited contact instead for these past few days. Letting her think whatever it was that she was now sure of. What, that he found her... repulsive? ! Fuck, if she knew...

"And if this if our last day alive," she continued, voice still oddly strong through her harsh sentiment, "or our last chance to be brave... I just hate this! So are you going to stand there flinching or are you going to be honest with me, finally?"

"How do you know if I'm flinching?" and he immediately regretted the simplicity of the words he'd finally managed to form. But it was much too late for that. "You... you can't see a bloody thing! I'm not flinching."

"Okay..." she sighed. "It was a stupid thing to say. I'm just..." She paused to sigh again. "I need to read your mind right now, and you're making it impossible for me. Not that I ever really knew how..."

Disappointment dripped from every syllable, and he clenched and unclenched his fists, conflicting emotions battling their way to the top until he finally broke down.

"You want me to be completely honest-"

"Yes," she interjected, and he bit down on his own lip, hard, as he pressed onward, no stopping him now.

"Okay! So you want me to stop keeping things from you, keeping them from you to protect you, no less... Okay then. Fine! Here's the truth. Every ugly sodding piece of it."

A rough shiver ran through his body, head to toe. He waited for her to take it back, to stop him, because he knew now that she'd have to, if she didn't want him to go on.

But she said nothing. And his mouth was open before he knew what the hell his next word was even going to be...

"This is how it is," he said firmly, voice deep and crisp. "If I get into a bleeding shirt with you, all that's going to be going on inside my head will be a series of the most raunchy thoughts imaginable, just strung together at random, and you're going to be able to tell. Absolutely." He took a necessary breath to go on... "And I'm going to want nothing more than to trap you between my body and any one of these walls and just... just..."

His words stuck in his throat as he heard everything he'd just said, as if it was being played back from a recording.

He deflated as the reality of his confession weighed down on him, pushing him, surely, through the floor and into the pit of hell...

"Fuck."

Wrong choice of words. Absolutely abysmal.

Silence engulfed them and he had to fill it with something, anything, to break through it.

"There. Is that enough h-honesty now? Or do you want more?"

Silence lingered just long enough for him to catch his breath before...

"...more," she whispered. And his heart skipped over several beats.

He hadn't been expecting this turn of events.

He opened his mouth several times in several ways before finally filling his lungs enough to rant again, spurred on by her single word, a word not like the ones that had rattled through his brain, the ones he'd thought he'd hear... or the feeling of a palm slapped hard against his cheek.

More.

She wanted... more.

"Okay," he said, nodding, body a rigid wall as he stood before her in the deep blackness of this world, this tiny world that somehow belonged to them now. "Okay, how about this."

This was really happening. He was really doing this. And it didn't matter. Not anymore... even if she hated him for it. He'd fallen too deep, gone down too far, and it was too late...

"Last year, when we were sleeping in the tent, I got up one night to use the loo and saw a patch of your bare stomach from where your shirt had ridden up while you slept. I stopped and just stared down at you until I couldn't breathe... Do you know how many times I had to drop ice down my own clothes just to stop thinking about shagging you? !"

The horror of his words had disappeared completely now, vanished into the depths of darkness that stretched indefinitely before them, between them. It separated and joined them, some irrational lack of one sense and a heavy increase of all the others. And through his veins, something pulsed, something real and electric. And he felt he could talk all damn night. And she'd listen. Wherever she was now, through the void.

"I loved you."

There was a sound from Hermione's direction, like an almost accidental reveal of some truth, but he pressed through it.

"And I wanted to be with you. But I was too fucked to do the right thing and tell you."

Was she crying? Was that the sound that she'd made? Had he heard her cry like this before? He wanted to see her, but was also glad he couldn't. So he had more to say. Endless waves of things to tell her about. And now that the current was flowing steadily onward, it was too hard to swim to shore.

"So I kept telling myself it would never work. And I don't know if I really believed that or if it just made it easier for me to be a bloody coward."

"No, please stop…" she whimpered, and he felt his heart plummet painfully, sickly, as he imagined how repulsed he'd surely just made her.

"Shit! I'm sorry, Hermione," he said, much too late, he was sure.

"No! No, stop it!" she bellowed. "Stop all of this, Ron! You… you… you lovedme? !"

"God, of courseI loved you!" he heard himself cry.

"That's a past tense word, you know," she whispered, stunned.

"No, it's not," he sighed, realizing yet another of his many mistakes. "I love you so much, right now, that it physically hurts just to listen to your voice in here and not be able to…"

He trailed off, hands digging deep into his hair as he lowered his head, squeezing his eyes tightly shut.

"Ron!" she cried, gasping repeatedly in an effort, he was sure, to keep from sobbing. "Then why haven't you said anything? ! Why have you been so… so… infuriating? !"

"That's what I always am, isn't it," he shrugged, freeing his hair and shifting his weight from foot to foot, skin searing with a combination of embarrassment and terror at what might still be to come, what the hell she was thinking…

"I kissed you!" she wailed. "And then you just… I thought you didn't want me… anymore… or that you never did! That I'd just been daft in thinking a stupid kiss in the middle of a warmeant anything…"

"I know you did! I just figured it out. Because yeah, I'm a git, and I just left you hanging because I was dealing with everything else, but I could have bloody talked to you for five minutes just to tell you… youknow…"

"Ron…" she whispered again, that one tiny syllable seeming to float towards him, lighter than air.

His skin tingled, but stopped short, like a suddenly severed connection.

"Hang on. You aren't bothered by the absolute trash I just told you about?" he asked, cringing. "I mean, you realize-"

"Ron, get inside this shirt with me," she cried, interrupting him. "Oh my God, I love you."

"What? !"

"You heard me!"

"I know I did!"

His smile cracked wider than he thought possible, and he heard himself laughing nervously before he'd taken the time to even plan it.

"If you hurry up," she said through a terribly obvious grin of her own, "I'll tell you all of the dirty things I'vebeen thinking about…"

"Fucking hell…" he mumbled, stretching his arms out towards her. "Can't find you…"

But then she was slamming against him, knocking the wind out of him, and he gasped painfully as he felt her nearly bare torso against his own. She'd stripped down to her bra, removed his shirt before she'd run towards him, and he'd had no warning at all, no signs with which to prepare…

"Hermione…" he moaned as he felt her lifting his arms high above them, struggling to slide her own arms up along his, flat together. He wiggled and shifted and was soon helping her pull the neck of the shirt over both of their heads, together, their trembling bodies sliding against each other into a shirt that had once been slightly too large for him.

Well, now he knew precisely why. The reason why his already lanky frame had shrunk to barely visible throughout the past year on the run…

Just for this. Just to feel Hermione's body trapped inside a tent of cloth with his own, cloth that smelled like him and now smelled like her and would soon smell like them.

"Is this okay with you?" she asked him, her head slipping back down through the opening, trapped with him as she buried her face against his bare chest.

"Don't bother asking," he shivered. "I told you you'd be able to tell."

Oh, he was being much too carefree at this point. But it felt so perfect that he didn't even mind. She giggled against him, and he felt her stomach against his hips, pressing much too hard, so hard that he involuntarily moaned as she wrapped her arms around him, holding them close together. She tugged, and he blinked before realizing she wanted him to follow her, down onto the floor again.

They half toppled together, bound in a cocoon of warmth and blissful nerves.

She curled her body into his and he felt her tears trickling down his chest, through the ginger hairs she had lifted her fingers up to touch.

He twisted his fingers into her hair, pressing his face against the top of her head. His eyes burned through the blackness as he held her, half in his lap, bodies squished and skin absolutely everywhere.

"S-someone's going to find us," she whispered. "Or we're going to fight. Because we're going to make it."

"We have to," Ron agreed, realizing only then how close he was to tears of his own, his voice cracking.

"Y-you think," she began, sniffing against him, "someone's just brought us to here to make us talk? You know, about all of… this. About us."

He furrowed his eyebrows as he considered her completely ludicrous theory… until he felt her pinch his side… and it dawned on him how daft he was being. He burst out laughing, clutching her tight.

"Hermione, I love you," he said with ease. "And I always knew it would come out during a bleeding row. That's my excuse. That's why it took me this long. I was waiting for the perfect argument!"

She lifted her face to laugh into his neck, and he felt her lips curl as they sealed against his artery, tongue touching his skin as every nerve broke out into frenzied fireworks.

"Ahhh…" he muttered, turning rapidly to jelly.

"I love you, too," she whispered against his skin.

Sod finding a way out. He was happy. And perfect. For the first time. Ever, it seemed. As if everything else, triumphs included, had been hell on earth compared to now. Let them find himhere instead.

"Un-fucking-believable," he sighed, and he tipped his head back against the wall.

Damn anyone who called on them tonight. Now that he knew what he had to lose, he knew there was no way he was ever letting go. No matter what.

To his last fucking breath.