"Skinny Love"
Summary: She is barely 17, working up the courage to tell her best friend something that she fears herself. H/Hr
Mystic25
Rating: M for imagery, mature situations.
A/N: This does not necessarily tie into any fic that I wrote previously, but it does follow a vein that I feel relates Harry to Hermione during their quest in Deathly Hallows.
A/N #2: This story was given an M rating for certain "hot button" mature themes. For the sake of not giving away the main theme of the story I will not say exactly what that is, only that this is your warning of such content, and if you wish to not read something of this nature, this is your chance to leave. Thank You.
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"Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die."
~Herbert Hoover
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Her stomach rolled like the ship in a glass bottle dropped by a reckless hand. She huddled against the rough back of an old Adler tree, curling herself as close to the fire in front of her as she could without danger of setting herself alight. Her stomach was tight with spasms that have not relented in days and have denied her any sustenance except water that it even rebelled against when she ingested too much.
She leaned over the fire and out a stringy clear glob into the flames, hearing the fire eat it up with a sizzle. A tin cup of melted snow was clutched between her gloved hands that she has snipped the fingers off of to allow for better dexterity in using her wand. But, it was something that she now regretted doing because she could no longer feel her fingers. And all the spells that could possibly have helped her produce a new pair of gloves or at least fix her old pair have eluded her under the heavy cloak of her nausea.
She used a mouthful of water from the cup to rinse her mouth out, letting half of the water drip out before allowing herself just the tiniest of swallows, praying that it stayed there. Rita Skeeter's biography of Dumbledore is opened in her lap to a page that she hasn't looked at for the last ten minutes. She wiped at her mouth with the washed out stripped wool of her glove and glanced back down at the pages, wiping the lightness of snowflakes off the words before they melted to them.
A black and white photograph of a young Dumbledore and Grindewald stared up at her from a hallway of bricks. Dumbledore's hand rested lightly on Grindelwald's shoulder, his fingers gripped to the cloak of the other man. Both are smiling in a manner that seemed privy to only them. Dumbledore was young in the photograph, she suspected in his late 20's, hair the color of roasted chestnuts, his face unlined, his eyes bright. A snowflakes wafted down from the tree branch above her head and fell on Dumbledore's expression, blurring it out. She wiped it away with her thumb.
The sound of footsteps in the falling snow raised her head up. The sky was dark with an inky night that has trapped itself between the trees, the orange of the flickering flames casted only a few feet of light around the small clearing buried under packed ice. The trunks of the trees past the fire's light stand blacker than the night, the scuttling sounds of creatures moving down them.
The footsteps drew closer, crunching the snow somewhere in those trees.
She lowered the book from her lap, reaching for her wand with slow, careful movements, using the back of the tree she was leant up against to pull herself up into a standing position in fur lined boots. She stepped forward very, very slowly holding her breath. She lit the tip of her wand, but closed the brightness up inside her hand, walking until she stood at the edge of the protection charm she had cast the night before.
The fire cracked and split behind her and in the darkness beyond the forest animals that come out to hunt at night call to each other in the trees. First an owl, then a bird out too late. She raised her muffled light, moving it like a trapped firefly into the air, taking long, quiet steps around the enchanted border.
Darkness met the light of her wand for a one foot distance as she walked in as much silence as her weight allowed. The darkness continued for another foot, then three feet, the skeletal outline of dead tree branches outlining the sky like fingers.
She reached the end of the enchantment border boarder her wand alight at eye level, peering at the darkness that peered back at her in return. She moved it in a slow, sweeping motion, turning towards her left.
The pale face of a man emerged from the darkness like a ghost, illuminated in her wand light: A thin face, long rough hair like badly skein yarn in worn plaid pants, and old motorcycle jacket. a Hawthorne wand held below searching eyes. He stared right at her, a hand span away from touching her, eyes fixed to where she stood invisible like he knows something is there that he can't see. He raises his wand, poking into the barrier.
From her end, she dared not breathe, watching the barrier waiver like a stick swirling water in a pond.
She took the slightest step backwards, opening her mouth to whisper the spell to deactivate her light.
An arm wrapped itself around her waist, startling the wand out of her hand and onto the snow. The lit end of the wand shone upon the muddy snow caked leather boot of a Snatcher. She tried to move forward to retrieve the wand, but the arm around her waist tightened and pulled her backwards. Her startled sounds became muffled from a hand that closes over her mouth.
She bucked back with a hard elbow, trying to free herself, kicking the traction marks of her boots into denim clad legs.
"Hermione-" a whispered breath pressed against her ear, a hand turned her head just enough to see the image Harry's face, his glasses reflecting the light of the fire. Harry released her slowly and she turned around and took him in fully, black hair windswept, his black coat hung with pockets of snow that had gotten caught in the crevices.
Hermione's heart rate began to lower from its jack hammering. She turned back around to strangers, watching as the Snatcher kicked a hole in the snow barely an inch where her wand was, like he had felt it when it fell. She turned back around to Harry, putting a finger to her lips. She felt him release her and she crept slowly forward to where her wand lay. She reached out for it with one hand, her fingers closed around the carved designs of the handle. A thick, full bodied, nausea suddenly seized her and she could not turn around it time before it forced vomit up her throat and onto the snow, dropping her to her hands and knees a breath away from the Snatcher's leather boots.
The Snatcher dipped his head down, reaching out with the hand not grasping his wand and swept it down and out right where she was standing.
Harry seized her around the waist again, snatching up her and her wand in one movement. He pulled her backwards half a foot away, whispering "nox" to make Hermione's light go out.
Hermione swallowed a mouthful of vomit from Harry's jarring movement, throwing her hands over her mouth, but even this was futile. Nothing came out; she had eaten so little in two days, and for once she was grateful because it would cause no sound falling on the snow. She lurched forward in dry heaves, keeping her hands tightly where they were, tears streaming out of her eyes and freezing to her face from the pain of dry heaving.
Harry crouched over Hermione, pressing her face against his chest to muffle the sounds of her being sick, looking up over her shoulder where the clearing they were camping in joined into the forest. A second man in ripped jeans stained in oil and grease and an old leather motorcycle jacket walked into the clearing.
The Second Snatcher stood right behind the first. "Wha' is it? Did ye find something?"
The crouched Snatcher held out his finger like he was testing which way the wind blew. "Something-" he stood back up to his full height, not removing his eyes from the campground made invisible in front of him.
Harry kept Hermione pressed tightly against him and followed the Snatcher's figure as he moved slowly around the outer edge of the perimeter.
The Snatcher walked a few steps around the clearing "Come out come out, wherever you are!" He walked back those same few steps and stopped directly in front of them, close enough to reach out and hit with a packed snowball. He closed his eyes and sucked in a deep, audible breath from his nose. "Peonies- out in winter, that's a dead giveaway love," he opened his eyes again and stepped closer to the barrier. "'Chu come out? Too cold to be all alone."
Harry held his breath, he felt Hermione's warm breath slow to almost a halt against his sweater. She pulled away from him enough to peer at both raggedly dressed men with one eye.
"Are you a nutter!?" The second Snatcher grabbed at the first like he had escaped a mental ward. "There's nofin' there!"
The First Snatcher forcefully removed the second's grip on his shoulder. "You best keep your hands off me mate." His voice was calm, but there was a glint of steel in it.
"We've got half a day of forest ground left to cover!" The second argued, pushing the first back with his arm. "You can't be wasting time acting like a batty old washer woman!"
The first snatcher grabbed the second's hand in a grip that audibly crushed the bones together, jerking it around and up against his back.
The second Snatcher gasped audibly in pain.
"The only time wasting I'm doin' is with you!-" The first Snatcher let go of the second's hand and showing him backwards.
The second Snatcher righted his rumpled coat and stepped backwards, glowering at the first, like he wanted to come to blows, but the first removed his gaze and turned it back towards the clearing. Three feet in front of where both men stood lay the large tree trunk of an evergreen tree that had fallen a month ago in a storm, it lay half inside the clearing where Hermione had cast the protection charms and half out of it.
The first Snatcher raised his wand, and shouted: "Incendio!" The wood quickly caught alight, melting the thin flakes of snow that clung to naked dead branches.
"Are you mad?!" The second snatcher shouted watching the flames sped down the branches towards the thick tree trunk. "You trying to burn us alive?!" He removed his wand from his jacket and raised in the air about to cast a weather spell for more snow to bury the fire, but before he could, the first Snatcher grabbed his arm and jerked it back down, watching as the flames moved down the tree.
Harry watched the flames slow as their neared the barrier of enchantments. "Hermione-" Harry watched the orange light as it began to climb upwards like it had been met with an invisible wall.
The First Snatcher cocked his head at the sight, his lips pulling back into a slow smile. "There you are beautiful-"
"Run!" Harry shoved her to the left towards a wooded section of trees inside the barrier. He ran back over the slick slow and inside the tent, throwing aside the canvas flap. He snatched the Horcrux and Hermione's beaded bag, rushing back outside.
Hermione stood on shaky legs "Harry, my bag!" She didn't try to lower her voice, there was no reason too.
She caught the purple beaded bag Harry threw at her a half clumsy grip and began to call out cries of "Accio!" sending everything in the camp ground stuffing itself into her bag in a tornado-like swirl before the first of the Snatchers spells hit the shield barrier in an explosion of green light. The spell instantly rebounded, but the Snatcher went at it again, and again, sending gunfire loud sounds raining over them.
The tent suddenly stopped moving into the cavernous depth of her bag, getting caught halfway on something inside the fabric knocking Hermione breathless onto the hard ground. She felt her hand scrape the packed snow and the warm blood spread over her skin. Several loose items, pots pans, scraps of clothing flew out of the tent and onto the snow as the tent disappeared into the purple fabric. She held tightly to the purple drawstring bag and pushed the tent in with one bare hand, blood marring the canvas.
Harry threw the Horcrux necklace up over his neck, turning as he heard Hermione fall. "Hermione, leave it!" He ran back to her, feet pounding hard against the frozen ground.
"No!" She yelled back over the sound of jinxes being fired from both Snatchers now. Their spells have yet to be strong enough to break the barrier, but they are both relentless, aiming for the burning tree, trying to shatter the charms to release the flames onto them. The strongest urge to leave everything there and run was buried somewhere deep inside of her. But, overpowering the need for escape was the burning logical need to go beyond survival of the moment. If they left their tent, their possessions could be searched, Ron's family could be interrogated and tortured to find them.
She crawled up on her knees, fighting the wave of nausea that strangled her insides and doubled her efforts on the tent, her arm going down almost an elbow deep length into bag. She fiddled with the canvas fabric in the darkness that she cannot see until she felt as something snagged loose under her fingers. The whole of the tent disappears inside the bag with a vacuum like force, scattering pieces of books and cans of food across the snow. She scrambled to her feet and the world tilted sickeningly, but she didn't let go of the purple bag, grasping it tightly, sending rivulets of blood down into the snow from the opened gash.
Harry stopped so quickly in front of her his momentum almost plowed her over. He snatched her free hand and Disapperated them from the clearing with a thick crack.
The protection spells severed the moment they leave the clearing. Snatchers stare at the snowy ground trampled with footprints, and littered with camping equipment. The one in the dirty plaid pants walked slowly towards it, a smile spreading like a stain across his face. "I'll see you soon, my lovely."