A/N: This fic was posted last month for rhrlove[dot]com's Missing Moments Challenge! I hope you all enjoy it, and please hop over to rhrlove[dot]com to check out the other stories and art by some extremely talented writers and artists!

I have gotten several messages and I wanted to clarify… I have not forgotten my other fics! My computer crashed a couple of months ago and I have not had the means to repair it. Portions of my old stories were written that I don't want to have to write all over again. I have only been able to work on new stories since that took place, and even some of my smuttier stories have had to be posted by friends because I have no private computer access now! Hope you will all forgive my lateness in updating, and cross your fingers I'll be able to solve my computer drama soon to get back on track!

xxx

By My Calculations

March, 1998

He wiped dirt from his face with the back of his too-long jumper sleeve, wool scratching roughly across his face, catching uncomfortably in week-old stubble. It was painful to realize just how much relief could be drawn from 'at least we're still breathing,' as if all other comforts and concerns in life had been reduced to completely insignificant details now. Shell Cottage seemed to envelope him comfortably tonight, though the last time he'd been here it had felt more like a prison.

He pushed open the cracked bathroom door and was instantly slapped in the face by a wave of warm steam, emanating from the claw foot tub against the far wall, as his socks hit the floor tile.

"Shit!" he breathed, and he pressed his right thumb and index finger into his eye sockets, shivering through the heat.

"Ron?" Hermione said softly, and he paused for a moment to regain his balance and shiver again.

"Sorry! I didn't know you were... you didn't lock the door!" He panted for a moment before shaking his head, lowering his hand, and clenching his eyes more tightly... "Didn't even shut it all the way, for Merlin's-"

"Well, close it now. You're letting all the steam out," she huffed, and he backed away slowly, feeling frantically for the door frame, eyes still sealed shut.

"Harry?" Bill called from downstairs, and footsteps began to descend just outside. In a fit of panic, Ron abandoned his as yet unsuccessful exit strategy and pushed his back against the door, shutting himself inside with Hermione.

"Sorry!" he whispered again, swearing under his breath as he heard the distinct sounds of water gently sloshing in Hermione's bath... where she was currently sitting, naked, a few feet in front of him. His eyelids were suddenly much more difficult to hold closed... but he managed, owing his success to sheer nervous terror.

"There are bubbles," Hermione said after a moment, but all Ron could do in reply was shake his head slowly, breathing through his mouth to calm down. "Lots of bubbles," she added.

"What... huh?" He felt the ability to form sentences slowly slipping out of his grasp...

"You won't be able to see anything."

He stopped breathing altogether, focusing all efforts on working out the meaning of Hermione's short sentences.

"Open your eyes," she added when it was clear he wasn't going to catch on quickly.

"Why?" he squeaked, mentally cursing again at the ridiculous sound of his own voice.

"Oh Ron, are you serious?" Hermione sighed, and something stirred in Ron's subconscious, that thick line of friendship that ran beneath everything else, that ran between them. He would have placed all of his Gringotts galleons on the fact that Hermione had just rolled her eyes, even though he couldn't see her.

And without pausing to think, he laughed, and opened his eyes to smirk directly at her. She raised her eyebrows up at him and his blush worked overtime, ascending from his neck to his cheeks in mere seconds.

"Um..." He cleared his throat. "Sorry I uh... barged in on you."

And for the first time, her own nerves surfaced. Mesmerized, he watched her thin fingers tap randomly on the side of the porcelain tub...

"It's good you're here anyway," she said lightly. "I've started a list..."

Ron scuffed his feet against the tile before chancing a hesitant step closer.

"A list?" he asked, intrigued and simultaneously thrilled to have something else to focus on, something that wasn't gorgeously submerged in steamy bath water and fluffy soap bubbles...

"Yes, Ron," she said with the hint of a sigh, sinking a tad lower into her bath. "I'm tired of how we've been, aren't you?"

"How we've been?" he questioned, raising an eyebrow.

He ran through his memories, Okay, so he'd left. And now things were different between them, weren't they. Something still felt broken. But something else felt new, and not in an entirely bad way... But nonetheless, he still hadn't earned her forgiveness, had he. And he wasn't sure he really ever would, no matter how easy it was to ignore the wrinkle in their friendship...

"Hermione," he continued, before she had the chance to speak, "I'm really, really sorry for leaving. You know I am... I'm a-"

But she cut him off before he could call himself whatever bad name was on the tip of his tongue.

"No, that's not... that's not what I'm saying."

"Then," he sighed, "I'm confused. Sorry..." He felt disappointed in himself, for once again missing the point, a point that seemed pretty damn important right now. And at what point was Hermione finally going to get completely fed up with his inability to stay on the same page as her?

"Look, let's be honest," she began firmly, but he knew her well enough to catch the hint of fear beneath her resolve to speak confidently. "We nearly died last night. And for what?"

He flinched, and had nothing to say to her. The only thing he could say was much too obvious.

For the world. For Harry. For the people we love...

But why was it that now, now that he'd nearly lost her, none of those things had the same weight as they had before?

"Well-" he began instead.

"I know, I know," she cut in, sparing him from having to state the obvious. "For Harry. For good against evil, all of that... But... but what about us?"

He swallowed, feeling dizzy from the steam and off balance from her wide eyes peering up at him, so far up from her position below him...

"Us?" he managed.

She sighed and looked away, a few toes poking up through the soap as her fingers began drumming slowly against the tub again. Was it disappointment he saw in her movements? Disappointment in him? Well, it wasn't as if he should be terribly surprised...

"Ron," she continued, still looking down, dropping her hand back beneath the water's surface, "in my own head, I think I'm ready to die. I'm supposed to be."

He blinked as his jaw dropped. No, he had to get closer to her. And he stepped forward, dropping down to his knees on the tile less than a foot from the tub rim.

"Don't say that!" he whispered harshly, forehead creased with concern.

"Ron," she began again, turning her own head left to meet his eyes again, now so close to her own. "We've all dealt with it, haven't we. That it's possible, every day. Every single day that we keep fighting, we face the chance that we won't survive. I just... I thought I was okay with it. I know what we're up against and why and what could very likely happen if we keep trying, which we will..."

Ron could do nothing but shake his head slowly. Yes, he'd thought about all of those things before. He'd accepted them. But he'd never accepted them for her. If he died, surely, it would be for a good cause. His life might be worthwhile, in the end, to have saved someone or something or to have stood for something because... well, that was what he knew. It was easy for him. But for her...

No.

He wouldn't let it happen! He wouldn't let her think it might. And he certainly wouldn't let her say it after almost dying! After suffering helplessly above him while he cried for her...

"But when it comes down to it," she continued, before he could clear his dry throat to speak, "I'm terrified. Found that out last night, didn't I. And that's not really fair."

"Of course it is!" he shouted, closing the last foot of space between himself and the tub, leaning against the rim so his face was inches from Hermione's. He watched her sharply suck in a breath, but she didn't move away, and he was too upset now to back off even if she had. "Why should you just accept your own death?" he cried, as if he was begging her for an answer, or for reassurance of some kind... the kind that he knew to be impossible.

So he said the only thing left, the only thing he could feel, in that moment, that mattered at all.

"Because I don't accept it!"

She breathed heavily, and he felt his heart pound against porcelain, his chest aching against the side of the tub. Her breath warmed his face, so much more than the steam of the bath ever could. And he was speechless, caught in some moment in time that filled the space between his words and her nose, now moving to lightly touch his...

Before she turned her head away.

And damn the heat from the bath... He couldn't tell if she was blushing or simply flushed from the temperature of the water.

"Maybe you're right," she said slowly, her voice oddly shaky. "Maybe we can't really. But we can try to make it easier, can't we?"

He swallowed hard, gripping the side of the tub with a strong forearm, fingers just barely, accidentally, grazing through the thick bubbles of Hermione's bath.

He swallowed again.

He was sure, no matter where her words were taking them, that he wasn't going to like where they would end up...

"I don't want you to have to make it easier," he said simply, voice just barely above a whisper.

She shivered, almost imperceptibly, and her hand moved up out of the water again, arm extending until her fingers curled over the tub rim, just a few inches lower than his own. He watched her movement with ears pounding.

"I don't want you to have to either," she nearly cried, and Ron felt his heart shatter as every one of her little words weighed down against him. She cared about him. A lot. And he could see it and hear it and feel it.

He was going to do it, he really was. He was sending the signals from brain to fingers, to stretch and move, to grab her hand where it rested just there, just out of his reach. To hold on and never, ever let go.

But she moved first. And it was too late, her hand dropping back down once more.

"This list..." she said, clearing her throat.

Discussion, officially back on target. And he could do nothing but nod, waiting for her to continue, releasing his death grip on the side of the tub and sinking back onto his knees to resume a more friendly distance...

"I want to explain it to you first, the way I see it," she said, sloshing in the tub for a second as she readjusted the bubbles, insuring their continued thickness, hiding her body completely underneath.

He nodded again, once more feeling sure he couldn't speak.

"First year, you saved me from the troll," she began.

Oh yes, he remembered so well. But he hadn't expected her to say it, to bring up the past, so far gone, so far away from them now. Such a distant day. So he nodded a third time, awed.

"But I lied for you, that day," she added, and his lips curled at the corners as he reminisced. "Second year," she continued, "I helped you with the Basilisk research. But you figured the rest out for me, while I was petrified."

Another host of memories, and some not too fond. Of days and weeks without her.

"Third year, we came after you in the Shrieking Shack, but I don't think it counts because Sirius wasn't at all who we thought he was. So that keeps us even, the things you saved me from and the things I saved you from..."

"Actually," he began, before he could stop himself, "shouldn't we work in that row about Crookshanks and Scabbers? Because..."

But he broke off as she turned back towards him, finally, and lifted an eyebrow, daring him to question her already well-thought out list.

"That doesn't count either, does it," she said, looking into his eyes again. "Scabbers betrayed Harry's parents. Would have been wonderful if Crookshanks had murdered him. Though I'm glad he didn't, because then we might still be fighting, to this day."

"Wouldn't," Ron countered, but Hermione simply shrugged and turned back to watch the bubbles above her, cautiously, and Ron chanced a badly thought out glance to follow her line of vision.

The bubbles had thinned. Significantly.

He tore his eyes away, after much deliberation and difficulty.

"Fourth year," she continued finally...

...and he felt all nervous tremors over the reminder of how close he was to her naked body dissolve, like so many of her bubbles, replaced instantly with dread at her next words...

"You didn't ask me to the Ball... but then maybe you really didn't know what I wanted."

She paused just long enough for him to hold his breath, working out yet again just what she meant. That she'd really, truly, wanted him to ask her. That his suspicion, all those years ago, the suspicion he tried to bury... had been right.

Unbelievable...

"And anyway," she pressed on, and he was sure she was blushing now, "I snogged Krum."

His previously, delightfully shattered heart dropped painfully to the floor.

"But you knew that..." she added quickly, looking in his direction again for extra confirmation, face blotchy from the heat and her blush, her nerves and embarrassment - he could see it clearly now - and the opening of old wounds, wounds that had never been spoken about aloud. Not like this.

"Yeah," Ron said slowly, feeling that the moment had broken now that she'd admitted to something he'd only feared before.

So it was real now. Completely. And he could no longer deny it or run from it.

He looked down, running an index finger along the grout between two floor tiles.

"I guess I knew," he finally admitted. And he had, hadn't he. Didn't matter how much he buried it. That didn't make it any less real...

But how had she known that he knew? Had Ginny told Hermione? Must have. After letting something like that slip...

"And you also know why I couldn't tell you... don't you," Hermione said, and he sensed her watching him, even though he had opted to stare a hole through the tile instead of continuing to meet her gaze.

Truthfully, he didn't know if he really did know why she couldn't tell him. But how was he supposed to say it, right now, as he listened to the sounds of her bath water sloshing again? He shouldn't really have been compelled to look up at the sound, but he was...

He blinked as their eyes met.

"Sixth year," she nearly whispered. "You... you dated Lavender Brown. But I asked McLaggen to Slughorn's party."

He shifted uncomfortably against the floor, wanting, all at once, to hear so much more on this subject and also never to hear either of those two names ever again, out of Hermione's lips.

"And..." she continued, making the decision much easier for him as she apparently wasn't planning to elaborate. This was, after all, for the sake of some list, a list he still didn't understand… "This year, I got you splinched. But..." she looked away again, "but you left."

There. She'd reached it. What he'd done. Again. He looked down, palm against the tile.

So it had been part of the point after all. He hadn't been so terribly far off. And he was on the verge of stating this when she continued...

"But then... then you saved my life."

He felt the blood boil beneath his cheeks and was sure his skin was now bright red. But this was important, this moment. So very important. And he had to look at her. Right now. And hold her eyes. And not back down. Because this was something. This was what he'd been waiting for but hadn't known he had been...

He looked up. And found her eyes, burning back at him, wet and round and sparkling with lantern light and gratitude. He could hardly bear it, knowing that he'd left, come back, and now she was thanking him, somehow. She was... nullifying a mistake by weighing it against an instinct! He hadn't planned it. He hadn't screamed his lungs out at that damp, dark ceiling because he wanted her forgiveness. She could never speak to him again, never forgive him for his angry departure so many weeks ago... and it would have made no difference.

He would have fought for her. Always.

"So..." she said, "if my calculations are correct, I owe you one."

How could she... what...

He had surely missed something. Because by his calculations, he owed her. Everything.

"You don't owe me anything," he said with difficulty, strained to speak as she moved a few inches in front of him, sniffing as she looked down at him with a tiny smile. He felt his heart putting itself back together and growing as he watched her.

It really was rather mental how completely attached he was. Had been for some time, he guessed, though he couldn't remember the moment the switch had been flicked. Maybe it had simply been there all along, but muted and dulled. And something, some random distant day, had made it grow. And through every hour, every moment, it had become more brilliant, more vivid, and was just suddenly clear, leaving no trace of the path that had led from darkness to blinding light.

"Ron," she said, almost a complaint, and he furrowed his eyebrows as he watched her sigh down at him. It somehow mesmerized him, just how many ways in which she could say his name, just those three little letters. "Please, just let me owe you something."

He was too curious, too intrigued now not to agree.

"What do you want to owe me?" he asked.

"I can't tell you that yet," she said, and she bit her lip, sending his heartbeat into double time.

"Hermione..." he trailed off. "Why not?"

"Just trust me," she said softly, and he watched her cheeks redden, instantly, before his eyes.

He melted, straightaway, and held back a sigh.

Oh, fuck, he wanted to kiss her, more than he ever had before. Here, so close, so much on the table after all she had said. And he should tell her now, everything. He had so many words to string together... and he owed her!

But she wanted it this way, for some reason. She wanted to make the next move... or add the next line to this list she had crafted. And he couldn't let her down.

And of course he trusted her. Always.

She shivered again, and this time, he was sure it was from the bath water that had surely cooled too much by now.

"Okay," he said, blindly, giving no consideration for what he had agreed to. If she wanted him to say yes, he'd say it. She didn't need to explain. She never needed to tell him why.

"Thank you, Ron," she said, and he had no idea what she was thanking him for.

"I didn't do anything," he replied, standing as she brushed more bubbles around on top of the water, covering the appropriate places as effectively as possible.

"Of course you did," she said with a small laugh, one he felt he wasn't exactly supposed to understand.

So now he was waiting for something. And the more he thought about it, the more he longed for it. Whatever it was.

What did she have planned for him?

He cleared his throat. He really should leave her to dry off and dress. She had to be freezing by now. But something held him back, like an invisible shield blocking his exit.

"Hermione," he said slowly, shoving his hands into his pockets, "I want to tell you my side of it, all those things you talked about. Because I did a lot of mental things. And I want you to know... I'm sorry."

She smiled up at him, and he saw the shock and happiness in her eyes as she blinked.

"I want to hear all of those things," she whispered. "So much. But Ron... you can tell me... when it's all over, can't you. Tell me we'll have months and... and years to..."

She trailed off and sniffed, and he took notice of how close to tears she was, shivering consistently now in the cold water.

"We'll have forever," he whispered illogically, hardly able to take in enough air to get the words out.

She nodded, and he watched as a tear finally escaped. She brushed it off her face almost angrily, chuckling nervously as she shivered even more violently.

"Here," Ron said quickly, reaching for a large fluffy towel on a rack to his right. And he placed it gently, if not somewhat precariously, on the edge of the tub, giving her a shy half smile which she returned happily.

"Thanks," she whispered, and he nodded as he shuffled his feet against the tile again.

"Come down for tea later?" he asked hopefully, tipping his head to the side as he awaited her answer.

"Yes," she nodded, and he grinned broadly down at her.

He feared turning his back on her now, but something overpowered that fear. There was something in the future now that hadn't been so easy to find before, like a bright spot slowly growing larger.

Forever. He had forever.

So he turned, opened the door slowly, and squeezed through, closing it behind him with a click.

May 2nd, 1998

His lips still burned where hers had been.

Hermione's. Lips. On his lips.

He grinned and gripped her hand as they took off through the castle. He just wanted the bloody fighting to be over so he could get her alone and snog her again, the way he'd been wanting to for years.

And then he felt her lean against him, her whole side against his.

"Now you owe me," she whispered, up on her toes to speak directly into his ear.

He blinked, but suddenly laughed aloud, catching on, as he raised his wand to enter the next corridor.

She'd been wanting to kiss him since Shell Cottage!

He loved her so much he wished he could scream it, knock Death Eaters to the ground with the weight of it. And maybe he could...

"Stupefy!" he shouted, and another enemy dropped as Ron's thumb ran over the back of Hermione's hand.

He wanted forever, and he wanted it now. Sod everyone who tried to stand in his way.