And then his words, spat out with bitter fury, "I get it. You choose him."

I froze. I could not recognise the face before my eyes. It was not Ron, it could not be Ron. I had known him to be occasionally jealous and insecure, overshadowed as he was by his siblings and his famous best friend, sidelined as he tended to get, as nothing more than a sidekick of the great Harry Potter. I could never identify with his emotions, but I had been able to rationalise them, understand them even. I had always been sympathetic. I had always been there for him.

But that he could doubt me, after everything we had shared – I would not have thought it even remotely possible.

I naively searched for the Ron I knew in the steely eyes that met mine, beseeching him to come back to me. But something had broken, perhaps irretrievably so.

I heard my voice plead as he turned his back to me, "Ron, no – please – come back, come back!"

I shook myself out of my hurt. He was leaving, leaving me. No, I could not allow this to happen. Nothing would make any sense anymore. If he left, everything he left behind, would be over.

Something stopped me. In my heart, I knew it was not just the Shield Charm that I had cast to stop Ron and Harry from attacking each other. In my heart, I knew a part of me had snapped out of the delusions that it had been nurturing.

But this was not the time. I removed the Shield Charm and ran into the darkness, calling his name, my tears mingling with those of the heavens above. I knew he had disapparated, but I did not stop. My hands brushed across the harsh edges of tree barks as I ran, but nothing could overpower the pain I felt inside. I sank down to my knees, weighed down by my own tears, feeling rains cascade over me, lashing out at me like icy swords. I could not help but blame myself for his leaving. It was not just a departure, it was more - it was an insult, a cold rejection of everything our relationship and I had stood for. I had failed. Failed to make him to trust in me, in us. Why else would things have come to this? Why else would he have doubted my love, or Harry's friendship?

I remembered Harry. Back in the tent. I knew that he would be just as hurt, but it was Harry. He would not cry it out, he would internalise all the pain, channeling it within himself where it would continue to smoulder, threatening to explode ever so often. The thought of him alone in silence, lost, abandoned, made me wipe away my tears. It was not his fault. None of this was. He did not deserve the burden that had been thrust upon him, or the solitude that had been forever intertwined with his destiny.

I returned to the tent, and said, in a quiver that was as matter-of-factly as I could muster it to be, "He's gone! Disapparated!"

However, my heart still stung with what Ron had said, with the utter lovelessness of his last glare. My tears betrayed me, and all bravery forgotten, I curled up into a chair and cried, shamelessly, uncontrollably. I saw Harry through my tear-stricken vision, pick up the Horcrux that Ron had cast away before leaving.

And for a moment, my heart lit up with hope. It was not Ron, it had never been Ron, it had been the Horcrux that had poisoned his mind, his heart. Harry had thrown Ron's blankets over my shaking frame, and I was able to will myself to believe that it had never happened. Ron was there, with me. I could feel his scent wash over me, that characteristic warm minty smell that was Ron's and Ron's alone, the one carried by the fumes of the Amortentia, the scent that to me was that of love itself.

Yes, it was the Horcrux, not Ron.

But before I could bring myself to share this with Harry, all heart had left the words I had meant to utter. I knew too well that it was something within Ron himself that the locket had stirred, something suppressed, but something that was nevertheless there. I knew it to be so. When I myself had experienced those inexplicable bouts of anger while wearing the locket, I had only felt myself flare up at things that did ordinarily annoy me. The same was true for Harry. And the same was true for Ron.

And my tears, that had been undeterred by my attempts to escape on my flights of fancy, continued to pour out of my eyes, soaking the blankets and the dreams I tried to cling to, in vain.

The rain had stopped and feeble rays of sunshine had begun to pierce through the cloudy mantle, as feeble as the foolish hopes that I tried to reassure myself into feeling. My eyes were exhausted of all the tears they had shed, but the weight of those that were yet to shed continued to weigh down on my eyelids. The pain, I felt, would never leave me. Unless Ron - unless he miraculously somehow found his way back to me. I looked around at the trees, for some sign, some movement, something to prove that it had not all been a lie, that I had not been the biggest idiot on the face of the earth, that my heart had not been thus irreparably shattered.

The rustling I heard had not come from the trees but from the tent. Harry was stirring. I made for the kitchen to prepare breakfast, as though nothing had happened, as though it had always been the two of us in the quest to destroy the Horcruxes, as though Ronald Weasley had never been a part of our lives.

But everything had changed. I could not meet Harry's eyes, none of us could talk to each other. And the storm of emotions, that I thought had been quelled by all those hours of silent sobbing, continued to battle within me in a futile fight for supremacy. My exhausted, battered heart continued to sway between anger and hurt and guilt and hope and love and hatred.