His voice was strained, and his face was turning red. His eyes flashed behind the round lenses of his glasses. What had started as just another of the many arguments Ron had started recently was quickly turning into the worst row I had ever seen between Ron and Harry – between anyone.

“Go back to them!�* Harry’s voice cracked. “Pretend you’ve got over your spattergroit and Mummy’ll be able to feed you-“* Harry went on, but I didn’t hear what he said – I had turned to look at Ron.

Ron’s face was pale, the freckles standing out sharply, his features distorted with fury. His lips parted in a snarl and one hand flew toward his pocket. I realized what he was going to do a moment before he could do it. I raised my wand to save him from doing something I knew he would regret when he came back to his senses.

“Protego!� *

My arm trembled as I cast a shield charm to separate Ron from Harry and I. Emotions were swirling inside me – anger, hurt, frustration; I wasn’t surprised when the charm came out a little too strong.

I could feel tears building behind my eyes. Ron and Harry shouldn’t fight. They are best friends! Best friends don’t blast each other to smithereens!

“Leave the Horcrux,�* Harry said far too calmly. It was if he actually thought Ron would leave. But Ron couldn’t leave. We had all begun this together, hadn’t we? Surely Ron would calm down soon. He was wearing the Horcrux now. Surely, once he was no longer wearing it – surely he would calm down. Surely he would stay. This talk of leaving was a bluff. It must be.

But Harry was telling Ron to leave. Telling Ron that he didn’t want him to stay. How could Harry say that? They were best friends! The look on his face was one of hatred. I had seen that look before, but never directed at Ron. And, worse, Ron’s expression mirrored it.

It was as if I had stepped into a nightmare. Ron truly didn’t want to stay. Ron was going to leave. It wasn’t a bluff. But Ron can’t leave! I thought, confusedly. We have to help Harry! We promised him we would help him. The wizarding world is depending on us. Ron can’t leave. He can’t leave us. He can’t leave me. He can’t!

My thoughts were as tangled as the yarn I had once used to knit hats for house elves. Why were they even arguing? It didn’t make sense! Ron had always known that Harry cared for Ron’s family as if they were his own family. They were the only family he had ever known, after all. Why did Ron suddenly think that Harry didn’t care? He couldn’t think that. He knew it wasn’t true! Then why was Ron so determined to be angry? So determined to hate his best friend?

Ron yanked off the locket and tossed it into one of the comfortable little armchairs Perkins had filled his tent with. Then he looked at me.

“What are you doing?�* he snarled.

I swallowed. His blue eyes were scorching, unnatural. His face was so twisted with anger that he looked demented, unfamiliar… frightening.

“What do you mean?�* I half-whispered. The only thing I was doing at the moment was sustaining a shield charm, but that was obvious. Why would he ask?

“Are you staying, or what?�* he clarified, his voice a bark.

A sick feeling stole into my stomach. He was asking if I was coming with him. But he couldn’t leave. You can’t leave!

“I…�*

How could I go with him? The world was dangerous, especially for us. If we suddenly appeared in the wizarding world, did he think they would let us go back to our lives as if nothing had happened? And, anyway, life would never be as it had been. Snape was Headmaster; Death Eaters had taken over the school. Muggleborns were being registered and taken to Azkaban.

If I stayed with Harry we could do something about it. Once we tracked down and destroyed the Horcruxes, Voldemort could be defeated and life could be sane again.

But – Ron was leaving! Leaving us – leaving me! He couldn’t leave me. I needed him. So, should I go with him? Could I?

It felt as if I were being torn in two. Stay with my friend and save the world? Or go with my love and live in terror? And I had promised Harry I would help him!

In the end, my sense of duty and loyalty won, though my heart ached at my choice. Why was Ron making me choose? Why was he leaving? He couldn’t leave!

“Yes – yes, I’m staying,�* I managed to say. My heart was being squeezed, constricted; it was like it was apperating somewhere without me. He was glaring at me. Words rushed from me as I tried to explain my choice. “Ron, we said we’d go with Harry, we said we’d help – “*

Ron interrupted.

“I get it.�* His eyes drilled into my face, full of anger and pain. “You choose him,�* he spat.

What was he saying? You choose him. Yes, I chose Harry, but I wasn’t choosing Harry for himself. I was choosing Harry because it was the right thing! Because Harry needed help and we had promised to help him. Because the world had become a dark place and only we knew how to put it right. This was a far more complicated matter than choosing one boy or the other. But – my mind froze.

Did Ron think that that was what I was choosing? Did he think I was choosing Harry because – Did he think I was in love with… Harry? This must be the reason that Ron is so determined to hate Harry now! Ron thought that I love Harry! He’s jealous! But then, I realized in horror, my answer just now must have confirmed all of his darkest suspicions!

Haven’t you understood the years of hints I’ve been throwing at you? I screamed at him in my head. A tear spilled over onto my cheek. Can you really think –? Do you really believe that –?

Yes. I could see it in his eyes. He did believe it. My heart was no longer apperating, it was being torn out of my chest – like the heart of the maiden from one of the stories in the Tales of Beadle the Bard. The man she loved had torn out her heart because his own had become shriveled and savage.

This was just too bizarre. Ron thinks I’m in love with Harry. Ron –

Ron had turned. Ron was walking toward the tent entrance, walking away with the heart he had torn out of my chest. Ron – Ron is leaving! I – He – He can’t leave, I –

“Ron, no – please – come back, come back!�* I pleaded, running after him. Time seemed to have slowed. I was running towards him but he was still getting farther and farther away, pulling back the flap, walking out into the night –

I was so confused, so upset, I had forgotten about my shield charm. Realizing that that was what was slowing me, I extinguished the shield with a swipe of my wand and hurried toward the tent entrance. I had to stop Ron. I have to stop Ron. I have to explain. Ron can’t go. Ron can’t leave me. Ron can’t leave –

I swept aside the tent flap, expecting to find Ron standing there. I couldn’t see him. Where is Ron? He must be here. He can’t have gone. The freezing rain pounded on my head, soaking me as I ran between the trees, looking for Ron. Ron, where are you? Ron! Ron wasn’t here. But he had to be! He couldn’t leave me!

“Ron! Ron! Please, Ron! Where are you? Ron!� My voice was distorted with tears; Ron wouldn’t understand me if I kept crying. I had to stop crying. But I couldn’t stop crying. Because Ron wasn’t here. It was a nightmare that I couldn’t escape.

I kept crying, and calling Ron’s name, and running from tree to tree, irrationally hoping to find him hiding behind one of them like a child playing hide and seek, until I could hardly breathe from the pain in my chest. I sank to my knees and let the sobs I had been repressing out as I faced the truth. Ron was gone. Ron had left us. Ron had left me. He had torn my heart out and abandoned me to try and survive without it… Without him.

Stubbornly, I shook my head in denial and lurched to my feet. He had to be here somewhere. He couldn’t have left!

After what felt like hours of staggering about and clutching at my jacket with numb fingers, I was forced to admit that he really was gone. Running around in the pouring rain wouldn’t help bring him back, and would only get me sick. I turned back, my stomach so twisted I was amazed I hadn’t retched, and stumbled toward the patch of light that I knew to be the tent. When I threw back the flap, Harry was standing just where I had left him. He looked like he had aged ten years since I had left.

“He’s g-g-gone!�* I stuttered, my teeth chattering, my clothes dripping onto the rug. “Disapperated!�*

Saying the words aloud made them twice as true, made them hurt twice as much. I collapsed into the nearest armchair, weeping, trying to hold in the pain coming from the place in my chest where my heart had once been. Ron was gone. He was gone. Harry was rustling around, doing something on the other side of the tent, but I didn’t care. He could do what he liked. Ron was gone. Ron had left me. A blanket was suddenly draped over my shoulders. I knew that I should thank Harry, but I couldn’t stop crying. Ron had ripped out my heart. The tears wouldn’t stop. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t move. The tears were stealing the air from my lungs, stealing the energy from my limbs.

Finally, when my head had begun to feel light and my sobs had become silent from lack of oxygen, I forced myself to drag in a breath.

And the tears rushed back, coming harder and faster than before. The blanket Harry had thrown over me must be – no, it must have been, I corrected myself, hysterically – Ron’s. The smell of him, warm and familiar, made me miss him even more. Made me miss the real him. Not the demon he had been – the demon that the Horcrux had transformed him into in the hours before he had gone.

Memories streamed through my mind. Memories of Ron. His red hair, freckles, and disarming blue eyes reappeared a hundred times from a thousand different angles. Ron defending me after Snape had taken points from me for being ‘an insufferable know-it-all.’ Ron allowing himself to be taken in the frightful game of life sized chess. Ron, his eyes wide, as a flock of little birds I had conjured zoomed toward him. Ron, late at night, telling me that he loved me when I agreed to look over his homework. Ron calling S.P.E.W. spew. Ron belching up slugs because his wand had backfired when he had tried to curse Malfoy for calling me Mudblood. Ron kissing Lavender Brown. Ron asking me to the Yule Ball. Ron. Ron. Ron.

I cried until no more tears would come and then I kept crying. I cried until I felt my soul would leak out to replace the tears. I pulled his blanket closer around me, breathing in Ron’s scent, full of contradictory emotions.

I wanted him back. I was glad that he was gone. I wished he would reappear. I hated him for stealing my heart. I loved him. He was sweet and protective. He was Ron! I loathed him. He was stubborn and pig headed. He was Ron.

When I woke up, hardly an hour later, it was morning, and I was sore all over. Ron’s blanket, stiff with salt tears, was crumpled under my head like a pillow. I stared at the wall of the tent, listening to Harry’s breathing and missing the deeper sound of Ron’s breaths.

I got up and walked slowly into the kitchen to make breakfast, as I had been doing every morning for months. Only today I will be cooking for two rather than three. My sore legs became unsteady beneath me and I wobbled at the thought. Shaking my head, I forced myself to stand up straight. Harry needed me. Harry was the reason I had stayed, the reason I had let Ron walk out with my heart. I had to be strong for Harry.

I pulled out a pan and put it on the oven, turned on the heat, retrieved some unidentifiable foodstuff out of a cabinet and set to work cooking it. Soon, I heard Harry getting out of bed. I didn’t know if I could face him yet. I was embarrassed. I had never cried so much in front of him before. I had never cried so much in front of anyone before. I stared determinedly at the pan I was standing over as he passed the kitchen on the way to the bathroom.

When he emerged a few minutes later I was just putting two plates of food on the table. He pulled out his usual chair and sat down, and I did the same. I picked at the whatever-it-was I had cooked and stared at the chair Ron would usually have occupied, a new thought occurring to me. Ron might still come back. Maybe he had just needed to spend a night thinking it over. Maybe he would walk in any minute. Hope swelled in my chest. Maybe, in just a moment, he would pull back the tent flap, his freckled face apologetic and chagrined, and he would come in and tell me how sorry he was that he had left me. He would say that he had changed his mind, that he was ready to keep going, that he’d never leave me again.

These fantasies kept me distracted as we ate, while we did the dishes, when we were packing up. I put my things away as slowly as I could, knowing that, with all the enchantments we put up every time we moved, Ron would never be able to find us once we disapperated to a different place. I thought I heard the sounds of him coming in from the rain a thousand times, and a thousand times I was disappointed. If I hadn’t already decided that he had ripped out my heart and taken it away with him, I would have thought that it was being broken over and over again.

When I had spun out the time of departure for more than an hour, I knew I had to give up. There was absolutely nothing else I could do to stall for time. Harry was waiting.

Resolutely hanging my beaded bag over my shoulder after having checked it twice more than necessary, I marched over to Harry and held out my hand. He took it, and, together, we disapperated to a hillside where the wind swept my hair into my face, happily concealing the tears that were once more welling in my eyes. I walked hurriedly away from Harry, determined not to let him see me cry this time. Sitting down on a rock, I wrapped my arms around my legs and, setting my forehead on my knees, I let the tears fall. Ron had left. We had left. I might never see Ron again. He was the only man I had ever loved. And perhaps the only man who could ever have loved me.