I.
We're out of food again, Harry realizes with a pang.
A pause. Green eyes sweep the interior of the tent, roving over mismatched tables and the kitchen counter, halting at the crumpled wrapper of a Chocolate Frog in the armchair Ron used to occupy, all sprawled limbs, a crease between his wiry eyebrows, flaming hair consistently poking up at the top. The ghost of his hoarse laugh snickers in the sleepy silence, and it echoes.
It echoes.
Another pang, but he pushes it down, pushes his rounded glasses up the bridge of his nose, and, careful not to disturb a sleeping Hermione—she's curled up in her corner of the room, back to the world, a certain tenseness carved into her shoulders that he thinks must be uncomfortable—he creeps out of the tent into a pink-orange morning, straightens into it like a rumpled accordion, faded and used and all scratched up around hardened edges. He shields his eyes against the early sun, fierce today and the color of melting gold, with a raised hand and a graceless squint. Somewhere high in the shivering treetops, a bird sweetly twitters its dawn song.
There's a little farm due north of their current camping place—nothing fancy. A dozen or so chickens, maybe a cow. An earlier investigation on his part had revealed it to be owned by a homely elderly couple, mid-sixties, quiet and at peace with themselves and their relationship to the world. Simple. Satisfied. Safe. He'll steal a couple of eggs, leave some muggle money in their place, and try to ignore the squirming sensation somewhere deep in his chest all over again.
Maybe I'll overpay, he thinks, mulls it over for a second, deflates. Maybe not.
The muggle money they have between them is slowly but surely running out, too, and all of Harry's gold Galleons and silver Sickles mean nothing to a non-magical world.
(Horcruxes and help and food and money. This camping trip from hell has been all about the things they don't have, hasn't it?)
Biting back a choice swear, he shrugs on the invisibility cloak and swipes Hermione's wand from the confines of his back pocket. The thought to tell his companion where he's going nags at him for an instant as he fingers the slender instrument (that still feels so foreign and clumsy in his hands), but he brushes it off, rationalizes that he'll be back before she even knows he's gone. He thinks, too, of how completely tired Hermione has looked lately, how the dark circles under her eyes have become tattoos in their own right, how her silences have begun to stretch thin into disquiet as she's held herself together, a book barely clinging to its bindings. Harry tells himself that she deserves to sleep in as long as possible—she has the watch tonight anyway—and with that thought, he eases into a slow walk, wand aloft, shoes crunching over browned leaves and muddied snow.
The familiar cognitive rhythm of horcruxes and hallows, horcruxes and hallows, brings him to the tiny farm some twenty minutes later, and Harry is meticulously quiet as he climbs over the crooked brown fence enclosing the property. His feet drop with a muted plunk in the snow.
At the front of the acreage, a little prairie house where the old couple lives sits guard over the tall barn in the back—not that the barn needs guarding anyway. Proud and masterfully built, it juts out of the snow in all of its vivid redness, obviously this family's pride and joy to maintain and maintain well.
Shoe over shoe, Harry proceeds to the barn, the jewel of this isolated wasteland, and slips inside, dispatching the lock on the door with a murmured Alohomora. Ever softly, he closes it behind him, punished with only the faintest of clicks.
Simple layout. Practical. Thankfully easy to maneuver. Two stalls for two cows, who peer at him curiously from the depths of shiny black eyes. At the far end of the barn, a coup of tiny boxes stacked neatly in lines on three shelves takes up the wall. Some of the chickens occupy these boxes, snoozing peacefully in nests made of hay and stray feathers, while others roam the ground a little aimlessly, a little stupidly.
He's just about to walk towards it when a glimmer to his left catches his eye, makes Harry stop and reassess his surroundings under the thin material of the invisibility cloak. A tall mirror, long dusted, and cracked over in a couple of places, leans disconsolately against the window, its bottom edge buried beneath a layer of straw and dirt. Dust motes swirl in the space around it with an almost graceful sort of laziness. (Strangely enough, it reminds him of another mirror from long ago, one he stared into night after night to see even the slightest glimpse of his dead parents. Desire, he has since learned, is a fairly pointless exercise.)
Harry diverts his track, shifts it to the left so as to get a better look at the strange object, and it is only when he is standing in front of its rugged pane, thoroughly invisible, that he realizes it's been months since he's actually looked at his own reflection. His shoulders tense in involuntary trepidation; he wonders what he'll see, wonders if he'll particularly like what he sees.
(Does he look as hollowed out as he feels?)
(Would he even care if he did?)
He clenches the edge of the cloak with calloused, tightened fingers and… one… two… three… pulls.
The cloak unravels itself from his body, falls limply in his hand, and slowly, slowly, ever slowly, Harry raises his eyes to his mirror image, and he can't feel a dang thing because he can scarcely recognize the creature laid bare in front of him.
Skeletal. Clothes hanging loosely on his frame. His whole figure leached of color, like an object under the intense scrutiny of the moon. Skin stretched tight over angular cheekbones. Stubble running rampant across his jaw. Hair scraping the side of his face and brushing against his shoulders. Lily Evans's softness gone from his eyes.
He doesn't feel anything, and then he feels everything all at once. Anger, red and hot and volatile, rears up with a roar; if he could reach out and shake his reflection, contort it once more into an image that he knew, he would do it. He would be violent. He would be forceful if that's what it would take to feel like himself again. Panic then, white and blinding—its whiplash spins his head in circles even as he is rooted on the floor of a dirty barn in the middle of nowhere. Heart thumping madly against his chest, almost aching to come out, he wonders at what point this transformation happened. Was it gradual? Was it all at once? Had Hermione noticed when he hadn't? And if she had, did she think he looked as crazy as he was currently feeling? Finally, resignation, cold and iron gray. Heavy. Harry closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, grounds himself in the earthy smell of the barn, in the feeling of the silky invisibility cloak in the palm of his hand, in the sensation of being firmly planted on the floor by principles of gravity and physics much older and significant than his current worries.
He racks his brain for the spell Mrs. Weasley would use to cut his hair during the long summers he would spend with Ron and his bright, lively family.
When it comes to him, crooned to him in Molly Weasley's gentle voice, he opens his eyes with a grim smile.
II.
"Harry Potter, where in Merlin's baggy y-fronts have you been?!"
No, Hermione Granger had not taken kindly to waking up in a tent alone and wandless, silence—charged with an implication that would completely undo her if it was true—her only companion as she waited and waited and freaking waited. Every minute gone by without the arrival of Harry's thin, lanky frame only confirmed her suspicions, but also, too, every stirring of the leaves made her head shoot up in frenzied anticipation, and she willed for that thin, lanky figure to prove her wrong for once, to be an unexpected answer to a question she thought she knew.
(In hindsight, she realizes that her first and only deductions hadn't been particularly sound, weren't unpacked to their logical ends, but it was hard to see straight when the memory of Ronald Weasley stomping out into the snowy twilight is the only thing she's dreamed and nightmared and thought about for weeks now, and this moment had begged for the association stronger than most. The stricken look on his freckled face is etched in her mind permanently. It disturbs her sleep, gnaws at her while she's awake. She wonders if she'll ever see him again. She wonders if he could ever come back.)
And now Harry is standing in the maw of the tent, an apologetic expression in the points of his features as he raises a handful of eggs into her line of vision. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, shrugs his bony shoulders in a gesture that clearly says, "Sorry, but I kinda don't see what the fuss is here."
Which, of course, is a most Harry thing to do. Moron.
"Er, sorry, Hermione," he says (predictably). "You were asleep, and I didn't want to wake you. Didn't think it would take so long either."
"Yes, well, you could have at least left a note," she retorts sharply, unwilling to let go of her indignation quite yet, but then she does it anyway because Harry would never leave a note, and it's funny that she even tried to suggest it, so they both end up laughing, hard and loud, their joint outbursts of mirth clanging in the crisp, winter air. She has to clutch the table for support, and somewhere in the back of her mind, she realizes that her statement wasn't that funny, but she has needed the release, so she laughs and laughs carelessly, almost hysterically, laughs so hard that her ribs begin to hurt.
And then there's Harry.
There is a certain coarseness to Harry's laugh that bespeaks the fact that he hasn't had occasion to laugh in a long while, and it is this observation which sparks another in her. The smile on his face, wide and lopsided, transforms it, yes, but experience and the patterns and algorithms which come with it tell her that there's something else different here, too. He looks different in a way that she hasn't processed just yet, and—oh.
Realization hits her like a slap in the face, recoils her into stunned silence. In one, deft motion, she loosens her slack on the table and stands up, stares at the boy who lived as though she's seeing a ghost.
The change in mood must be apparent to Harry, too, because he quiets down as well, tilts his head to a quizzical left. There's a tightness in his green eyes. He scratches the back of his neck consciously.
"Hermione?"
"You cut your hair." It's a statement, simple and concise, and yet it does something to Harry's demeanor in the moment that she utters it. He is instantly more guarded, more shuttered off; something unfathomable and dark and intriguing to Hermione swirls behind his glasses.
But he tries to play it off because that's another thing Harry does when he's between a rock and a hard place and doesn't want to talk about it. He jokes. He shrugs it off.
"Yeah," he laughs, not quite looking at her when he does. He brushes past her now, shoulder sifting against shoulder, and places his stolen bounty on the table. "It was getting long."
His current positioning affords her a look at the back of his head now, and she admits to herself that he hadn't done the worst of jobs. It's crude and could use a little more shaping around feathery edges, but she thinks that he looks more like himself than he has in ages.
"It looks nice," she finally says, and then, before she can stop herself, adds, "Do mine."
That makes him look her way. He nearly sends an egg flying to the floor in the moment that he spins around to face her; it is only his Seeker reflexes that save it from becoming a yolk stain on the rug.
"What?"
"You heard me, Harry. Do mine. Cut my hair." She's thinking as she talks; this is all an impulse, abrupt and deliciously shot through with the adrenaline that comes with making snap decisions. She twirls a strand of her long, wiry hair around her finger, observes it with a boredom she had not felt until this moment. "It's time for a change, I think—not to mention the pragmatic value of cutting all of this mess off. No more leaves and twigs getting caught in it. My hygienic routine will be shorter and more efficient. It's a win-win situation all around, really."
"No way," he objects quickly, shrugging distressed fingers through his hair. "I'd just mess it up. You do it. You have steadier hands."
"Yes," she responds patiently, like a mother explaining something to her child, "but I have no mirror and little desire to attempt shaping my hair in the absence of it. You did perfectly fine with your own hair, and I see no reason why it shouldn't be the same with mine."
"I can give you a reason or two, more if you need them. Shall I make a list?"
"Stop complaining and cut my friggin' hair, Harry Potter."
And that's that. With a nod, Harry closes his mouth (which had most likely been opened by an unspoken witticism), and swipes her wand from his back pocket, a gesture which Hermione refuses with a simple shake of her head.
"Let's do it the muggle way. I have some scissors somewhere in my bag. Retrieve them if you would, please."
"Accio scissors," he intones obediently, and a small pair of golden sewing scissors wriggles itself out of her magical bag and flies into Harry's outstretched hand. Hermione reclaims her seat by the table, runs slender fingers through her bushy, brown hair one last time.
"How short?" he asks, coming to stand behind her.
She smiles a little, bites her lip. "Your length would be suitable."
III.
They are sitting at the mouth of the tent together, watching as the sky slowly turns from orange to red to purple; the stars glimmer from thousands upon thousands of light years away, indifferent to the wizarding war brewing beneath them, unknowing of the boy who lived (who isn't quite sure what to live really means anymore) and the brightest witch of her age (whose book smarts simply don't matter in the middle of nowhere). They are leaned against each other, his arm around her slender frame, her head on his shoulders.
(The ghost of his hoarse laugh snickers in the sleepy silence, and it echoes.)
(The memory of his departure materializes before them in painful clarity, and it stings. It bites. It haunts.)
"I miss him," Hermione says after awhile, says it matter-of-factly, says it like it's an answer to one of McGonagall's theorems of Transfiguration.
But this isn't Transfiguration anymore, and when Harry looks over at his friend, he no longer sees the buck toothed, bushy-haired know-it-all he had first met on the train all those years ago. He sees a girl who asked him to cut all of her long, brown hair off because it was practical, economical and because long hair just wasn't her anymore, dang it, so stop complaining and cut my friggin' hair, Harry Potter. He sees lined eyes that belie sleepless nights. He sees a steeliness in the set of her jaw that has nothing to do with the confidence she has always had in her intelligence and books. As she brushes back a strand of her newly cropped hair, Harry sees the collateral damage that his long game with Voldemort has caused and tries to remember what exactly he's fighting for, but more importantly, if it's even worth it. Hallows and horcruxes. Hallows and horcruxes.
"Yeah, I do too," he replies eventually, and the admission feels like a lump in his throat. He looks away for a long moment, digs his fingernails into the snow beneath him. It crumbles under his palm.
Hermione glances up at him and for neither the first, nor the last time, wonders what this boy ever did to deserve the world on his shoulders. Harry is extraordinarily brave and kind and good, but he's damaged, too, and the recognition of this has seemed to escape the notices of many, including—not surprisingly,she thinks dryly—himself. He doesn't sleep well anymore, tosses and turns in his blankets on the nights she's on guard duty. He looks paler and skinnier than he has in years, looks skeletal in the moonlight, looks broken. There's something like stillness in those emerald green eyes now that makes her feel a little uneasy; once upon a time, they had shone out of his bright, eleven-year old face: vivid, hungry, and exceptionally beautiful.
She had always been a little envious.
He cut his hair today, slashed off incongruous chunks with his wand, crudely restored the feathery blackness to some sort of untidy order, and she doesn't think he did it because it was getting too long, doesn't think he cared anything about that.
She has the sneaking suspicion that Harry saw his reflection today and couldn't recognize himself, and it broke something inside him that he hadn't realized could be broken. She thinks some poor couple is going to walk into their barn sooner rather than later and find an angry pile of black hair scattered amongst stringy hay because subtlety had never been Harry's strong point.
But that's just a guess, an unformulated hypothesis really.
"You should go in," she suggests after a few beats of silence. "Get some sleep. We have a long day tomorrow, you know, moving and everything."
"I know."
Harry doesn't move, though, and she doesn't make him move either, keeps her head rested against his shoulder, lets his arm remain draped around her. They watch the night go by until the last dregs of it are slowly being turned over by a pink sky.