It starts like this.
Ron leaves. Harry stops searching.
And Hermione can't breathe.
The tent flap bristles in the breeze of the forest and Hermione sits at the opening. The rough pads of her fingers press into one of her books, and when he curses under his breath, her eyes flutter to catch the strained muscles of his back and flicker back to the worn pages distractedly.
"Stupid—bloody—locket," he growls, teeth bared and gnashing as he stands over the pendant with hunched shoulders. For a moment, he doesn't move, his wand arm stiff.
"Maybe you should give it a rest," Hermione says. She pauses and folds the corner of her page slowly. "For today, at least," she mutters and she hopes she hasn't said the wrong thing.
Harsh breathing and rusted leaves crunching beneath his feet, he flares his nostrils and draws his arm back, aiming precisely at the green locket. He chants in Latin and slashes the air with his wand, a series of rapid spells bursting by extension and Hermione flinches with each curse.
He pulls back from the billowing smoke and chokes back a scream when the locket, throbbing with its own pulse, remains neat and intact despite the charred earth. He rests on his knees as he presses his palms onto his legs and hunches over the pendant before snatching the chain and hanging it around his neck like a noose. It latches to his chest, skin burned and cracking, peeling like his patience, his sanity, but he picks himself up from the ground with a will Hermione fears will shatter one day, some day, soon enough.
When he trudges past her to walk through the tent's entrance, she clenches her eyes shut and holds her breath to block the stench of burning flesh. She can't bear to look at his hands, withered and chipping like Professor Dumbledore's.
They are children, she thinks. Little boys and girls playing a big man's game, slipping on shoes too big and cloaks too long. The spells that poured from their mouths became sharper, tongues unruly - their words became a weapon. Sometimes she wonders if they've done any good at all, if she is just as bad as the dots beyond the line, and whenever she asks Harry this, he presses his fingers over the jagged scrawl on her arm and her thoughts dissolve from a world of black and white.
When she's sure he's not looking, she gets up and scatters the blackened leaves.
"Mum?"
Her heart stops and her skin pebbles at the chill in his voice, a sad and aching sound. "Mum, please—Mum, come back," he cries. Hermione never knew his mother of course, but he says her name with such loneliness that she, too, yearns for the woman.
His eyes dart wildly beneath closed lids as he twists in his cot, sticky blood from his forehead staining his pillow. "Mum," he keens, shoulders hitching as he screams, screams for a mother who had died seventeen years ago.
But Hermione does not untangle her legs from the sheets, she doesn't move or lay a gentle hand on his arm to wake him.
And she wonders if Lily Potter ever let her baby boy cry himself to sleep.
It's over. It's over, he thinks, but as he ambles through the destroyed courtyard, painted crimson, in search of her, he thinks this kingdom of bloodshed is his now and the burden throbs deeper than the ache in his body. But he continues, legs limping over fallen pillars and fractures of hearty walls he once thought protected him, bloodshot eyes scoping for her, a snip of her mangled hair or faded, pink jacket. Then the panic settles in the pit of his stomach, numbing the tips of his fingers because he cannot find her and he always has, even amongst seas of restless crowds and cloaks of black but his arms quiver and his knees tremble with every forced step and he just needs rest. Hands tracing the lined stones of the wall for balance, he stumbles to the nearest entrance and crumbles to the ground.
It's only a coincidence he finds himself in the girls' bathroom, he tells himself. And it's only a coincidence that she is there, fingers curling around the edge of the sink until they turn white, eyes piercing the cracked mirror.
She whirls at the sound, wand poised in a graceful sweeping motion. He always knew she was the better soldier.
"Harry," she states calmly, but the startled look in her face doesn't fall, nor the tension in her shoulders. "What were you doing, before?" he asks as she moves to help him up, pushing his back up to the wall so he can lean against the jutting bricks. It's one of the only places that hasn't been destroyed completely, cubicles lined neatly and the porcelain bowls of the sinks are unblemished. She watches her reflection in the mirror, weary bones moving behind stretched skin and her eyes blur. "Look at us," she breathes, voice full of malice and disgust.
They've trained for this, to play warriors in a revolution that called for their blood - because they were both chosen. It's just that no one told them what to do if they survived. And with that stubborn will of his, he refrains from reaching out and wrapping his sinewy arms around her frame. He can't bear the feel of her bones colliding against his.
"We're just kids, Harry," she whispers, her voice small and hollow. Her arms are scratched and threaded with bloody lines, dirt marring the hollow caves of her face, and there are too many, he thinks. She looks back in the mirror and her features harden. "We're just children," she says again, gasping for air that her lungs crave, and she leans on the sink once more.
And when he says it's going to be okay, a hushed secret tumbling from chapped lips, it is tidal.
She grabs his arm and cries, and this, he thinks, as her nimble fingers dig into his skin with a faint pressure, is how it feels to have the weight of the sky slide from his back.