There was the forest, the blue forest at night, weaving fog around the branches, wrapping the air in silver nettles.
"Breathe, Hermione. Breathe."
She was not even panting, even if she had run for the better part of ten minutes. She was standing still against a tree trunk, looking at the unrecognizable shape of the world. The faces, the sunken eyes, the motionless stars, the smooth airless sky.
She was having a panic attack. Her lungs had shut off, her skin was like parchment, and her irises had taken a red hue.
Harry had only now managed to catch up with her. She was fast.
He grabbed her shoulders as she twitched convulsively against his hands.
"He left, Hermione. He left. We can't keep looking for him in the dark," Harry said hoarsely, trying to reason with her.
He took her face into his palms and forced her to look at him. She saw her shadow in his glasses.
"Please, breathe."
She tried to extricate herself from his hold, but he kept on turning her neck towards him, making her look at what she did not want to see, making her feel pressure where she did not want to feel. It almost physically hurt. She could hear her spine cracking with each pull.
Harry rubbed his fingers over her wet eyelids, wiping the tears.
"Hermione, please say something."
At once, Hermione saw herself gently step out of her body, almost as if she were stepping out of an old coat. Now she was naked and alone and there was only the sting of abandonment.
"Harry. We made him leave," she said into his shoulder.
Harry shut his eyes in relief. She was finally responding. Finally.
"No, we didn't, Hermione. The locket, it made his darkest fears turn on him. He, he wasn't being himself and you know that…He wouldn't have said or done any of that. He was forced to leave, but he will come back, he has to –"
"No. No. It wasn't just the locket, Harry. Don't you think he would have said something sometime?" she asked drearily, moving away from him, feeling the sudden loss of herself somewhere in the darkness around her.
"Don't you think he would have noticed? He would have. And he would have been himself completely. And it would have gone worse," she muttered, looking down at Salazar's locket around her neck.
Harry moved his hands around her neck to take it off, but she pushed his hand away.
"No, leave it."
"Why are you wearing that now? After everything it's done?"
"I'm wearing it because he left, Harry!"
He pulled away her locks and tried to glide it over her neck.
"Just let me take it off for a moment. It didn't do Ron any good and it will certainly not –"
"Just leave it. Stop touching me," she said roughly, glaring at him.
Harry staggered, feeling a wall pushing him back to that moment in the tent, the moment where he had been reminded he had no family.
"Hermione – it wasn't our –"
"Yes it was Harry! You know him, you know how Ron can be, we pushed him over the edge, we kept him out, we weren't careful enough…" she rambled senselessly.
"Careful?" he asked astounded. "Careful with what? There was nothing going on! We did nothing! He had no reason –"
"He was always watching, hoping I'd do something, hoping I'd say anything, hoping I'd look at him. And I did, but it wasn't enough, because you were always there…" she continued in the same fashion.
"Hermione…please stop, stop talking like that, none of that is true."
"I should have left. Not him. I should have left. I am the one who caused this, after all," she said, her fingers moving over the locket rhythmically.
"Give me that – "
"I will call him back, I will find a way, I will find him and then he will stay and I will leave, because I am keeping you apart. I will go to Hogwarts, or to London, or I'll find the Order or…or…" she trailed off, pressing the locket into her skin absent-mindedly.
Harry took her into his arms again and shook her roughly, his eyes reflecting the terror within him.
"Listen to me! You can't leave me, Hermione! You hear me? Not you too! You can't! You just can't...leave me."
He tried to stop the sob that was building up in his throat. He knew he would burst into tears at any moment. And she probably felt it too, because she was just waiting for him to explode.
He exhaled a haggard breath instead.
Her mouth was open, staring at him in wonder. She swallowed his breath whole, breathing back into his own mouth. His eyes moved from her eyes to her lips and back to her and that girl beyond her, the girl he could never reach.
"You can't leave me," he repeated into the warm space between them.
Hermione felt the shock of being there, in the present moment, not a second before, not a second after. How could there be enough time to feel the pauses in between?
The shift in her body was obvious.
She took off the locket in one swift motion, opened his palm and dropped it there, like a meaningless trinket she did not care for. Her hands did tremble a little, but she managed to contain herself.
Harry felt a small weight fall on him. The metal was cold, despite having been held in her hands.
Hermione slowly closed his fingers over the locket and pressed her palm over them.
That was answer enough.
She turned away mechanically and started walking back to the tent.
He was going to be silent tonight. He wasn't going to mention it again. He was going to leave her alone. She needed her solitude. But as he walked behind her, the chagrin in his heart as fresh as before, he asked himself whether they were all under the locket's spell. Whether everything they said or did was a lie.
But maybe the real question was the other way around.
What if it wasn't just the locket after all? What if Ron had been right? What if she had opened to him more than she should have, what if he had felt her close when he should have felt her far?
What if it was all real?