166[@more@]reach.
"Ouch -- ow -- gerroff! What the --? Hermione -- OW!"
"You -- complete -- arse -- Ronald -- Weasley!"
She punctuated every word with a blow: Ron backed away, shielding his head as Hermione advanced.
"You -- crawl -- back -- here -- after -- weeks -- and -- weeks -- oh, where's my wand?" She looked as though ready to wrestle it out of Harry's hands and he reacted instinctively. "Protego!"
The invisible shield erupted between Ron and Hermione. The force of it knocked her backward onto the floor. Spitting hair out of her mouth, she lept up again. "Hermione!" said Harry. "Calm --"
"I will not calm down!" she screamed. Never before had he seen her lose control like this; she looked quite demented. "Give me back my wand! Give it back to me!"
"Hermione, will you please --"
"Don't you tell me what do, Harry Potter!" she screeched. "Don't you dare! Give it back now! And YOU!"
She was pointing at Ron in dire accusation: It was like a malediction, and Harry could not blame Ron for retreating several steps.
"I cam running after you! I called you! I begged you to come back"
"I know," Ron said, "Hermione, I'm sorry, I'm really --"
"Oh, you're sorry!"
She laughed a high-pitched, out-of-control sound; Ron looked at Harry for help, but Harry merely grimaced his helplessness.
"You came back after weeks -- weeks -- and you think it's all going to be all right if you just say sorry?"
"Well, what else can I say?" Ron shouted, and Harry was glad that Ron was fighting back. "Oh, I don't know!" yelled Hermione with awful sarcasm. "Rack your brains, Ron, that should only take a couple of seconds --"
"Hermione," interjected Harry, who considered this a low blow, "he just saved my --" "I don't care!" she screamed. "I don't care what he's done! Weeks and weeks, we could have been dead for all he knew --"
"I knew you weren't dead!" bellowed Ron, drowning her voice for the first time, and approaching as close as he could with the Shield Charm between them. "Harry's all over the Prophet, all over the radio, they're looking for you everywhere, all these rumors 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 not so shrill only bats would be able to hear it soon, but she had reached a level of indignation that rendered her temporarily speechless, and Ron seized his opportunity.
"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!"
"A gang of what?" asked Harry, as Hermione threw herself down into a chair with her arms and legs crossed so tightly it seemed unlikely that she would unravel them for several years.
"Snatchers," said Ron. "They're everywhere -- gangs trying to earn gold by rounding up Muggle-borns and blood traitors, there's a reward from the Ministry for everyone captured. I was on my own and I look like I might be school age; they got really excited, thought I was a Muggle-born in hiding. I had to talk fast to get out of being dragged to the Ministry."
"What did you say to them?"
"Told them I was Stan Shunpike. First person I could think of."
"And they believed that?"
"They weren't the brightest. One of them was definitely part troll, the smell of him...." Ron glanced at Hermione, clearly hopeful she might soften at this small instance of humor, but her expression remained stony above her tightly knotted limbs.
"Anyway, they had a row about whether I was Stan or not. It was a bit pathetic to be honest, but there were still five of them and only one of me, and they'd taken my wand. Then two of them got into a fight and while the others were distracted I managed to hit the one holding me in the stomach, grabbed his wand, Disarmed the bloke holding mine, and Disapparated. I didn't do it so well. Splinched myself again" -- Ron held up his right hand to show two missing fingernails: Hermione raised her eyebrows coldly -- "and I came out miles from where you were. By the time I got back to that bit of riverbank where we'd been ... you were gone."
"Gosh, what a gripping story," Hermione said in the lofty voice she adopted when wishing to wound. "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."
"What?" Ron said, gaping from her to Harry, but Hermione ignored him.
"Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our sufferings into perspective, doesn't it?"
"Hermione," said Harry quietly, "Ron just saved my life."
She appeared not to have heard him.
"One thing I would like to know, though," she said, fixing her eyes on a spot a foot over Ron's head. "How exactly did you find us tonight? That's important. 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, then pulled a small silver object from his jeans pocket. "This."
She had to look at Ron to see what he was showing them.
"The Deluminator?" she asked, so surprised she forgot to look cold and fierce. "It doesn't just turn the lights on and off," said Ron. "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."
He was looking at Hermione.
"You heard me on the radio?" she asked incredulously.
"No, I heard you coming out of my pocket. Your voice," he held up the Deluminator again, "came out of this."
"And what exactly did I say?" asked Hermione, her tone somewhere between skepticism and curiosity.
"My name. 'Ron.' And you said ... something about a wand...."
Hermione turned a fiery shade of scarlet. Harry remembered: it had been the first time Won's name had been said aloud by either of them since the day he had left; Hermione had mentioned it when talking about repairing Harry's wand.
"So I took it out," Ron went on, 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."
Ron raised his empty hand and pointed in front of him, his eyes focused on something neither Harry nor Hermione could see.