"Excellent," said Ron, rubbing his hands together, "Dinner. I've been looking…"
His face fell as he stepped into the tent and a pungent smell hit their nostrils. It smelled to Harry like overcooked greens and some sort of a meat product.
"Er… Hermione? Um… what are you doing to that broccoli?"
Hermione was standing in the kitchenette, faintly shrouded in steam. Her hair seemed to have reacted badly to the additional humidity, and had puffed up around her face in a sort of brown fuzzy cloud.
"Cooking it, Ron, what does it look like," she said irritably, "Someone had to make dinner,"
Ron threw Harry a panicked look. Harry just shrugged. He'd eaten worse. Some of his earliest attempts at cooking for the Dursleys had not been particularly edible. Aunt Petunia had saved them up and given them to him for school lunches. Ron, on the other hand, had never to Harry's knowledge been forced to eat anything unpleasant- between Hogwarts feasts and Mrs Weasley's excellent cooking, the worst thing he'd ever eaten was probably corned beef sandwiches.
Ron ran a hand through his hair and took a breath, and Harry decided it was a good time to fade into the background.
"Hermione," Ron began, as Harry slipped into the sort of bedroom-y section of the tent, "You're amazing. At many, many things. And you do so much. Way more than me and Harry-"
Harry winced as a wooden spoon clattered ominously against something.
"But what you've done to this broccoli…"
A saucepan lid clanged violently. Ron hastily changed tack.
"The point is, you're really good at all the research stuff, and I'm a bit useless really, so um, I should probably… do the… cooking…"
The silence was broken only by the fierce bubbling of whatever was in the pots on the stovetop. Harry peered cautiously around the curtain. Hermione was standing stock still, tight lipped and glaring. Ron was sort of braced, as though waiting for the onslaught. It never came. Hermione dropped the tea towel she was holding onto the counter and stalked out of the kitchenette. Ron let out a breath of relief, but Harry winced as Hermione hefted up a huge and hideously bound book entitled 'Blackest Magickes' and squashed herself into the corner of the threadbare sofa.
"Uh…" he said, and then stopped, because he could see tears glistening in her eyes. She sniffed stoically, and pretended he hadn't said anything.
Harry decided he should pretend he hadn't said anything too.
Things were positively icy. Harry found he had a permanent headache, but it seemed different to the stabbing pains caused by his scar. Ron's cooking went from edible to quite tasty, but his overall attitude towards Hermione morphed from apologetic to downright pathetic. He reminded Harry of a desperate puppy. It was really difficult not to take it out on him.
Hermione remained fragile. On the verge of tears. Furious. Silent. Hardly slept. Constantly studying. Clearly miserable.
Harry realised for the first time that Hermione might not find studying 'fun'. She always found it interesting, but perhaps that wasn't the same thing as fun.
He also realised he had no idea what she did think was fun. Or even what she liked. She liked them. Or… she used to. Now… not so much. But even then, why did she like them? Was it just that they'd saved her from that troll? Or was it just because they were the only ones prepared to befriend her…
Harry found himself staring at her, and wondering how on earth they'd managed to be friends for so long without ever seeing more of her than the bossy bookworm.
Why she liked Ron was a mystery.
Harry had always thought it was… well, odd. She obviously did like Ron, but it seemed… incongruous. Like she ought to like someone else, someone more academic, more high achieving, more dapper, more suave…
"Ron,"
"Yeah?" Ron glanced up from the potatoes he was peeling
"What does Hermione like?"
"What do you mean?"
"I dunno. Just- aside from books, what does she like?"
Ron frowned.
"Blueberry muffins. Summer afternoons, but not if it's hotter than twenty-eight degrees. Oranges. Roast parsnip. Silk. Bad puns. Getting stuff right. Showers. Do you want me to keep going?"
"Yeah,"
"Uhmm, ok, Lupin, staying up late, daffodils, floating, the smell of inky parchment, holidays, playing scrabble with her dad, pancakes with lemon and sugar, toothpaste, shepard's pie, her mum's perfume, rainy days, losing at chess, the sound of the word philanthropic, almost any dish containing cumin and coriander, magic- being good at magic… you know, I've often wondered if she was really crap at being a muggle,"
"Not likely, it's not exactly difficult. How do you know she likes all those things? Some of them are pretty specific."
Ron shrugged.
"You like lemon merangue pie, flying really fast, flouting authority, anything dangerous, and snogging my sister." He tossed the potato into the colander, "You also like coconut mice, mum making a fuss over you and hideous knitted jumpers. Also, winning. And pie. You eat a lot of pie."
"I don't eat that much pie," said Harry, reproachfully
"Yeah you do," said Ron, "You'll eat anything if it's baked in pastry."
"That's not-" it was totally true. Harry trailed off into thought. Did he know what Ron liked? Quidditch. Chess. Long socks. Food, of any sort. Professor McGonnagall. Hermione. Charms. Comic books. The Chudley Cannons.
Huh.
So how had he not noticed what Hermione liked? He knew what she didn't like- injustice, cowardice, hypocrisy, cruelty, divination, failing, flying, cooking, her hair…
Harry thought about the things Ron said she liked. Were any of them properly fun? Like flying? Or exploding snap?
Did Hermione even know?
Right from the start she'd always been the serious one. She'd saved their lives countless times with her relentless study and overworked brain. She was brilliant. She was always getting cross with them for not studying more, not taking things seriously.
Was it possible she was right?
They would both be dead if it wasn't for her.
Had she ever had a chance to have fun?
Harry frowned.
Ron started tossing each potato up in the air before dumping them in the colander. In a minute he was completely distracted, trying to juggle slippery peeled potatoes, grinning like a goon and tossing them to Harry.
"Cheer up, Chosen One. She'll get over it eventually. Besides, I'm making shepard's pie, and I've got real ingredients and everything. HA! You're going to have to lift your game if you want to play for England," he retrieved a potato from the draining board where it had landed after slipping soap-like out of Harry's hands.
Harry snorted, a reluctant smile on his face for the first time in days. Daft git. Nonsensical that idiotically juggling potatoes could make him feel just that little bit lighter. Harry realised for the first time that Ron hadn't been doing these things of late. That obsessive radio listening and anxious paranoia was quite different to the Ron that mooched about the common room eating chocolate biscuits pilfered from the kitchens, and generally mucking around with whatever happened to be to hand. Harry had found him down there once, entirely alone, bouncing a cushion on his head, and narrating the bouncing as though it were the world championships. He'd been sheepish about it for maybe two seconds before challenging Harry to a contest. Utterly daft, and they'd ended up in fits of laughter, trying to resurrect a cushion that had somehow ended up in the fireplace.
And now here they were. And Ron was the only one of them with a family. Hermione's parents were gone. Harry's were dead. Ron had so much more to lose. Was it any wonder he wasn't acting the fool quite so often?
Harry found his face had collapsed back into its usual expression. He thought it was a mixture of grim determination and exhaustion and misery. Ron's grin had vanished too. He was running the peeled potatoes under the tap, eyes fixed a little unseeingly somewhere between the end of his nose and the colander.
For the first time Harry found the words in his head to explain it. It wasn't just that Ron had befriended him on a train, it was that Ron had shown him friendship. Something Harry had never had before, something that had made him feel… accepted. Ordinary. Equal. Liked. There was a dogged loyalty to Ron's friendship that Harry realised he emulated- rushing headlong into dangerous situations out of loyalty to someone. That was a Ron-type model of friendship. Ron had taught him friendship.
Harry had hardly begun to wonder if these findings applied to Hermione as well- had she taught him friendship in some way?- when the revelation about the three of them came crashing down.
Hermione had tried to befriend them in the only way she knew how- by sharing her knowledge. It hadn't worked. Ron had sneered at her attempts- belittled them. Out of personal pride perhaps, but the message it sent was very clear: knowledge can't buy my friendship. In some ways, Harry supposed it was a little what Malfoy had tried to do- sell the benefits of friendship with him. But Hermione was a smart cookie, and after the troll incident, in that moment when she was faced with telling the truth or lying to protect them… Harry realised Hermione had done the one thing guaranteed to gain Ron's respect. She had also taken Ron as the model for what a friend was, what a friend could be.
It made sense.
Harry stared at Ron in the small kitchenette, now chopping the potatoes and plopping them into a pot of water on the stove. Did he have any idea that the friendship he radiated, that loyalty, that lighthearted companionship was like air to the drowning? Had he noticed his two best friends were ostracized outcasts in one way or another? Had he ever noticed that the way he dished out allegiance had everything to do with a sort of family solidarity that he took for granted, but that his closest friends had never really known before? Not that Hermione didn't have a family, she did, but… Harry noticed for the first time that Hermione's parents were almost… absent. He knew Ron's family extremely well, but Hermione's he hardly knew at all. She didn't even spend much time with them herself. Perhaps the magic had driven a wedge between them. That made sense to Harry- the Dursleys had been scared of magic. Perhaps the Grangers were too. Perhaps she bought their affection with her grades…
It seemed almost arbitrary, that loyalty was what Ron offered and what he expected from his friends. And yet… here they were, in the middle of no-where, falling apart because Ron was torn. For the first time, Harry could see Ron was being pulled by conflicting loyalties- to his friends and to his family, and the net result was misery.
Harry felt a wave of guilty confusion.
He needed Ron there. He needed Ron to be lighthearted and positive, and a goofball. He needed to believe they would succeed. So did Hermione. But this Ron- the one they saw most of the time now, the one with the pinched face and hollow eyes, with the laughter snapped out of them- this Ron was no good to them at all.
Ron turned on the wireless and started peeling onions.
A rush of jealous anger filled Harry's chest.
He had wasted all that time and brain power on pointless revelations about his friends, and it in no way helped him to do what he had to do. If anything, the job of finding and destroying Voldemort and his horcruxes was made more impossible than ever. All his thoughts had really shown him was that at some point, Ron's loyalty to his family would surge to the surface, and he would leave them- and when he did that he would be leaving them unsupported and desperate… and it would just about destroy them.
Harry found he wanted to scream at Ron, so certain that in a matter of weeks or months, he would betray them, abandon them-
"Harry?" Hermione looked anxiously up at him, eyes red rimmed and sunken with lack of sleep and too much reading, "Harry, you'd better take it off now. It's my turn. Besides, you look kind of… manic,"
Harry yanked the locket off and dumped it unceremoniously in her outstretched hand.
"He'll leave us, you know" he muttered, "Like we could ever compete with family,"
"Don't," she said, eyes suddenly brimming. She blinked the tears away. "Just- don't,"
Harry turned and strode out of the tent.