Harry wasn't speaking to her. It wasn't surprising, really. That was how he and Ron had always responded—ignoring her, not speaking to her. (She'd had it from Ron more than Harry.) It got her thinking about Hagrid, actually. She'd spent a large chunk of time with Hagrid when Ron had thought Crookshanks ate Scabbers, and his anger had meant neither he nor Harry had anything to do with her.

It was juvenile and obnoxious, but not unexpected. The only thing she was worried about was that he'd try to ditch her. The arithmancy said there was a forty-five percent chance he'd try to leave. If he did that, he'd realize she'd warded him in, (Because if he left, Apparated, she might never be able to track him down.) Then he'd never trust her, the majority of their plans would start falling apart, and she'd probably have to have Severus stage an attack on the safe house to begin to move them forward. (And that plan was positively Dumbledore-worthy, and she hated it.)

They went on for a week like that. Ron was quiet, not surly but not friendly. Harry woulnd't look at her, let alone speak to her. She cooked, and they took their plates to a different room to eat. It was insulting, but she'd decided to wait it out.

And then Ron left.

He and Harry had had an argument. Not about her, surprisingly. Ron said, "You know what?" and then he grabbed his bag and stomped out the front door. She'd gotten as far as the front room when they heard him Disapparate.

\\

"What now?" Harry asked. Ron had been gone for an hour, and Harry had spent that time locked in the room they'd been sharing. Hermione had her equations spread out on the kitchen table, reworking, factoring it all in.

"Do you know where he went?" she asked, not looking up from her numbers. She wanted to go after Ron. Harry shook his head, though. She sighed, leaning back and finally look at him properly. He looked tired, sad. Older. "Then we have to move. If they get him, they'll be able to get back here, and that can't happen."

"What if he comes back?"

"It's been an hour."

"Hermione…"

"We'll give him until eight." Maybe he'd come back when he was hungry for dinner. "Then we go. I'll leave the wards open to him. If he comes back, he'll have a place to stay."

"We can't just—" he started.

"We have to," she said, cutting him off. He frowned.

"But—"

"Harry," she said, taking a calming breath. Most of her plans had incorporated Ron. There was so much to do. "We just have to."

\\

It was after ten. They sat in the front room, not speaking; there was nothing to say. They were both hoping Ron would turn up, slouchy and defensive. It was raining, pouring. The rain plunk, plunk, plunked on the roof noisily, harder and heavier every moment.

"What did you argue about?" Hermione asked. She hadn't wanted to ask, because she'd suspected it was about her, but the more she thought about it the less likely that seemed to be the answer. Ron had acted a bit odd since she'd returned, but not towards her.

"This wasn't what he'd expected," Harry said, answering her more quickly than she'd thought he would.

"What do you mean?"

"He said he thought I knew what I was doing. He thought Dumbledore had told me what to do."

"He did."

"Yeah, but he didn't tell me how to do it, really, did he?"

"No." She had to agree with him there. She'd never been able to decide if Dumbledore had been so hands-off with Harry because he was a Horcrux and the headmaster didn't want Harry to have details in case the Dark Lord looked into his mind, or if that was just Dumbledore's way. He'd sent her off on enough vague exploration missions, after all.

"Is that what you two were talking about, then?" Harry asked, suddenly surly. She raised an inquiring eyebrow. "D'you think I hadn't noticed the two of you whispering behind my back?"

"I told you about that," Hermione said, her voice as neutral as she could make it. "The arithmancy gave us better odds if you didn't know all the details."

"Did the arithmancy predict Ron leaving?" Harry sneered.

"No."

"Fat lot of good it does, then."

Harry pulled the locket out of his pocket, charred black from the Fiendfyre she'd used to detroy the Horcrux in it what felt like a lifetime ago now. It had only been a few weeks for him—right after they'd retrieved it from the Ministry, before she'd realized she was pregnant. He turned it over in his hands, picking at a bit of something on the chain, shedding black flakes onto the rug.

\\

They were silent the next morning. They were in a new place, a tiny flat in an unfriendly Muggle neighborhood. It was an Order safe house, not one of the places Dumbledore had arranged just for her. She was half hoping that the Order would try to contact them; that Ron would be found and returned like a misplaced coat.

Harry paced and brooded. He asked her questions, and then he brooded on her answers.

For her part, she worked on her arithmancy, and she made sure Harry ate.

He hadn't been back at Hogwarts for a week yet when the Weasley girl, Longbottom, and a few others from Hermione's "Dumbledore's Army" band took it upon themselves to steal Gryffindor's sword. It was the dead of night, but he hadn't been sleeping—his rooms didn't smell right, and it had been putting him off.

The attempted theft was a convenient excuse to send a replica to the Lestrange vault, which put him in good standing with the deranged witch and her husband (always a useful thing). He made a mistake, though: He sent them to Hagrid for detention.

Longbottom had practically been spitting when he'd declared they'd serve a week of detentions with Professor Hagrid for their pathetic attempt. Hagrid wasn't fooled, though. He found himself alone with the half-giant in the entrance hall later that week, the silence different than he was used to. He'd become accustomed to the glaring, the simmering anger.

He knows, Severus realized, experiencing a mad desire to tell the man he'd named his son after him.

He couldn't even bring himself to modify Hagrid's memory to cover his own tracks.

\\

He realized early in October that his rooms didn't smell like Hermione, and that was what was throwing him off. The vanilla of her conditioner in the bathroom, the scent of her on the pillow next to his. The weekends didn't fill the space with the scent of baking bread, the evenings weren't filled with Bast's piano experiments or Sofia's turning pages.

Severus lay in bed at night, mind empty, entirely unable to sleep.

Still no sign of Ron, Hermione wrote on her palm, watching the ink fade. She had a red pen this time; it paled to a dark pink, looking like a strange old scar among the others on her hand.

No report of him from the Death Eaters, as far as I'm aware, Severus wrote back a moment later. She imagined he was in his office, and that Dumbledore's portrait was trying to read the notes and failing. It made her almost smile.

Potter has a ten-thousan-galleon price on his head. Just raised it, Severus wrote. That did make her smile.

He finally surpassed mine, she wrote back.

"You're writing to your husband, aren't you?" Harry asked. She jumped, not having realized he'd entered the kitchen.

"Yes." There was no point denying it. He and Ron knew she was married, and they'd tried to guess who to for weeks. It had been an entertaining diversion. They'd never once guessed correctly, though they'd covered everybody from Viktor Krum to Filius Flitwick.

"Is he having a better month than we are?"

"Not particularly."

She could see he wanted to ask more questions. He wanted answers. He deserved them, too. More than anybody. But it was too dangerous.

"Harry," she said, pulling out the relevant chart of equations. It wouldn't mean anything to him, but it would help her think the plan through as she spoke to him. "Would you mind if we didn't talk about the Horcruxes for a day? I think—the arithmancy is saying—we should do something… rather risky."

Incredibly foolhardy and inexcusably dangerous, actually.

"I'm listening," he said. And not only was he listening, he was focused. Focused like when she'd been drilling the Summoning Charm into his head before the first task, when his life had depended on it.

"We need to be seen."

"Seen?"

"Yes. Someplace where there are wizards, where we'll be spotted. But not someplace where we'll end up in a duel."

"But you said we had to stay here."

"I know. That was before,…" She cleared her throat. "That was before Ron left." Harry immediately frowned. "We need to go out someplace and be noticed, then leave before the Death Eaters show up. Remind the world that we exist, I think."

"And maybe Ron will be able to find us."

There was so much hope in his expression that Hermione had to smile.

"Maybe." She bit her lip.

"Great. Good." Harry stood up. "Yeah, let's do it. Let's go."

"Settle down, Harry. We can't just up and go right now."

"Sure we can. Why can't we?"

"Where are we going to go?"

"Godric's Hollow." His answer was immediate, unblinking. Like he'd assumed she'd been talking about Godric's Hollow all along.

"Godric's Hollow?"

"Yeah. I've never been there. And we talked about it last year."

"You'll have to remind me," Hermione said. "Last year was seven years ago."

Harry gave her an odd look, then almost smiled. "Right. Weird." He sat down again. "I've never been to my parents' graves, Hermione. And I want to see the house."

"It's just rubble. They left it as it was."

"You've been there?"

"No, but I was told about it."

"I want to go there."

Hermione thought for a moment. It really wasn't a horrible idea, of all the places they could go. It wasn't so full of magic-folk like Diagon Alley or Hogsmeade, and there were enough Muggle homes among the magic ones that nobody could come vaulting out of their houses on the attack. Well, they could; they'd just hesitate. Hopefully.

And, with any luck, there were just watchers in the neighborhood instead of a contingent of Death Eaters waiting for Harry Potter to show his face.

"Okay."

"Really?"

"Yes. I agree, I think we should. I mean, I can't think of anywhere else that would do better. It'll be dangerous, but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems that that's the best option."

"Great. Let's go!"

"You need to shave first, "she told him, settling into her chair more comfortably.

"What?"

"You look a wreck, Harry. People need to recognize you, and the Boy Who Lived doesn't have facial hair."

'Facial hair' was a generous term. He had a sort of rough five o'clock shadow, thickening a bit at the sideburns. It made him look unkempt, not rugged (though he was probably hoping for the latter).

"Fine."

He dashed off, and she heard him giving instructions to the razor he'd gotten for his birthday. Ten minutes later, he came back. He was clean-shaven again, and he'd even changed his shirt. He might've combed his hair, but there was really no telling.

"What'd you do that for?" he asked after she'd Disillusioned him.

"We're not just Apparating in and seeing what happens," she said, scowling in his general direction. "Get out the Cloak, too."

She Disillusioned herself, then groped her way to Harry and joined him beneath the Invisibility Cloak. It was suffocating beneath it, the both of them dressed for the winter weather. She took him Side-Along.

They arrived in Godric's Hollow in the late afternoon. A snowy lane, a blue sky. Cottages stood on either side of the narrow road, Christmas decoations twinkling in their windows. A few people were out in their yards, one shoveling the walk and another fussing with the wreath on the front door. Normal lives.

"All this snow," Hermione muttered, looking around them. "There's nothing for it, Harry. We'll have to take the Cloak off and just walk."

There were no immediate threats. It was a quiet afternoon on a quiet day.

"Where's the graveyard?" Harry asked, stowing the Cloak under his jacket.

"You put that back on at the first sign of trouble," she told him. He nodded impatiently, waiting for her to answer his question. "It's just down the lane. See the little church?"

He nodded, and they set off.

Godric's Hollow was a lovely place. She hadn't expected that—everybody she'd talked to about it had gotten a particular look on their face. Everybody she'd talked to had known the Potters, though.

There was a war memorial in the middle, partly obscured by a windblown Christmas tree. Several shops, a post office, a pub, and the little church made up the rest of the main square. The church had stained-glass windows, and there were people bustling about preparing for a service.

"Harry, I think it's Christmas Eve," Hermione said, watching a couple trot along the opposite side of the lane with packages in their hands. There was music, too, and laughter from the pub when the doors opened.

"Is it?"

She was hit by a wave of nostaligia so painful she almost sat down. They'd charmed their house and yard in Australia Christmas Eve and Christmas Day so that there was frost on the windows and snow on the grass. Severus used a clever spell to make the light in the house twinkle around the edges like it was reflected off tinsel.

She ached for those Christmases.

"Are you okay?" Harry asked, and she realized she'd stopped walking. He was looking back at her, several paces ahead.

"Yes, fine. Sorry."

She put Christmas back in the box in her mind, and put the box back in the depths where it needed to stay.

"My parents will be here, won't they?" Harry asked when she'd taken the few steps and caught up to him. They started walking together again.

"Yes." She took him by the hand, gently urging him closer to the memorial. "And there's this."

He gasped when it transformed for their eyes. A man with untidy hair and glasses, a woman with long hair and a kind, pretty face, and a baby boy in his mother's arms. They had snow on their heads, but the statue was otherwise unaffected by the elements or time.

Harry walked closer, his hand clenched around hers. He stared for a long time, walking around it twice to view it from all angles. Hermione kept a lookout for any witches or wizards who noticed them, but there was nothing yet.

"C'mon," Harry said when he'd finished looking. He turned and walked toward the church, Hermione letting him lead her by the hand.

There was a kissing gate at the entrance to the graveyard. On either side of the slippery path to the church doors, the snow lay deep and untouched. They moved through the snow, and Hermione was glad that she'd charmed her boots to repel the wet of it.

Row upon row of snowy tombstones protruded from the snow. Hermione looked around, but there was nobody. Harry had his hand in his pocket, the slightly strange angle of his shoulder telling her that he had his hand clenched around his wand. That was good; he was prepared.

"Look at this, it's an Abbott. Could be some long-lost relation of Hannah's!" Harry called, and she wanted to shake him.

"Keep your voice down," she hissed, looking around again.

"I thought we wanted to get noticed."

"Don't you want to have a look around before we need to make a quick exit?"

"Right."

They waded deeper and deeper into the graveyard. The snow was an annoyance, making it cumbersome to walk and difficult to read the tombstones.

"Here," she called softly when she found it. Harry hurried back to her, face flushed.

"Is it—"

"No, but I thought you'd want to see it."

Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

Kendra Dumbledore and her daughter Ariana. The tombstone was lichen-spotted granite, iced over in places. It seemed to odd to see the name and know that it was Dumbledore's mother, his sister. He seemed so singular, and he'd been so many different things to her—the role of 'brother' or 'son' had not seemed one that he could've played.

"Let's keep looking," Harry said, sounding surprisingly bitter. It was strange how that cropped up, how he could seem the teenaged hero so often only to run into the wall of understanding, the bitterness of knowing that he'd been manipulated for the right reasons, that a friend, a mentor, had left something out.

"Harry, they're here," she said after awhile. They'd split up, dusting off Peverells, a Black, and a few more Abbotts. "Right here."

He stood next to her, looking down at the white marble. She glanced at him, but had to look away. She'd wondered if her son, her daughters, would ever look down at her grave like that. Yearning for those dates to be different, for just a little more time, more undertstanding. Grief, heaviness.

"The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death," he read, half to himself. Then he turned to her, eyes wide. "Isn't that a Death Eater idea? Why is that there?"

"It doesn't mean defeating death in the way the Death Eaters mean it, Harry," she said gently. "It means living beyond death, living after death."

Harry frowned, looking back at the grave.

"But they're gone."

Her breath hitched, but he didn't notice. The graveyard was suddenly oppressive, like it had been under the Cloak but cold. Freezing cold. She couldn't stop shivering.

He sounded so alone, and so young. It reminded her of her children, reminded her of the danger she and Severus were in. There was a very real possibility that her children would someday visit her grave, Severus's grave, and say the same thing.

She conjured a wreath and handed it to him. After a frozen moment, he'd placed it at the foot of the gravestone.

Hermione took Harry's hand again, holding on tightly. It was the only thing keeping her from Apparating to Australia. She had to remind herself why she was there, standing next to her orphaned friend while he looked at his parents' grave, their memorial. It made it all so achingly real. It made her physically ill. She looked away, holding tight to Harry.

Finally, they left. She wanted to run, to Disapparate. Hell, she'd even give flying another go. Severus had given her two more lessons after the first, and she'd almost got the hang of it. Kind of.

"Harry, stop."

Reality pushed her morose thoughts away. There was somebody watching them.

"What's wrong?"

"There's someone there, watching us. By the bushes."

They stood still, shifting so they'd appear to be looking at the graves while they really tried to get a better look at their watcher.

"That was the point, right?"

"Yes. But we still have to be careful."

"We look like Muggles. They might not recognize us."

Hermione doubted it, especially once they got back onto the street and their watcher had the chance to 'casually' walk by them. They were Undesirables One and Two; they had posters.

"Muggles who just put flowers on your parent's grave, Harry."

"Right."

She doubted it was a Death Eater since they hadn't been attacked. That didn't mean the Death Eaters hadn't been called, though.

They started walking. The pub was fuller than before. Many voices inside it were now singing a carol. Darkness was falling. The lights were all on in the church, brilliantly illuminating the stained glass windows from within.

"This way," she muttered, leading him down the dark street leading out of the village. She wanted them away from the Muggles in the church, away from the quiet little graveyard. If there was going to be a fight, she wanted maneuverability and as few witnesses as possible.

"Look," Harry said, and she did. She'd expected a horde of Death Eaters, or a dark-cloaked figure following them. Instead, he was looking at rubble. It was scattered through waist-high grass. Most of the cottage was still standing, though entirely covered in dark ivy and snow. The right side of the top floor had been blown apart where the curse had backfired.

They both stopped walking, staring up at the cottage.

On this spot, on the night of 31 October 1981, Lily and James Potter lost their lives. Their son, Harry, remains the only wizard ever to have survived the Killing Curse. This house, invisible to Muggles, has been left in its ruined state as a monument to the Potters and as a reminder of the violence that tore apart their family.

She wondered if her death would be marked by a similar historical marker. Would there be a blasted-to-hell safe house in a quaint little village?

The violence that tore apart their family…

"Look," Harry whispered, tearing her out of her thoughts. She wiped away the tears before he could notice them.

"What? Oh."

He was pointing at notes all around the words on the historical marker. There were names signed in Everlasting Ink and carved initials, but the more recent messages shone brightly on top of the magical graffiti and all said similar things. "Good luck, Harry, wherever you are." "If you read this, Harry, we're all behind you!" "Long live Harry Potter."

"It's brilliant," Harry said, smirking. A smirk tugged at the corner of her mouth, too. Of course he'd think vandalism was brilliant. "I'm glad they did it. I—"

He cut himself off, turning his body to the side and nodding ever so slightly, indicating she should look where he was looking.

A heavily muffled figure was hobbling up the lane toward them. It vaguely looked like a woman. her stoop, her stoutness, her shuffling gait all gave the impression of extreme age. They watched, silent and still, as she grew nearer. She stopped a few yards away, then stood there in the middle of the frozen road looking at them. She didn't draw a wand, she didn't say anything.

The woman shifted, her movement awkward. Then she raised one gloved hand and beckoned. She didn't say anything, and she kept glancing around like she was afraid they'd be caught.

This is a horrible idea, Hermione thought. Harry was already following her, though, and Hermione wanted to get out of the street. It was getting darker, and the lack of notice was almost suspicious. And disheartening—the whole point had been to get noticed, to stir the pot, to provoke a reaction. And they'd got nothing but horrible reminders of what her future held, and a strange old lady beckoning them up the front path through an overgrown garden.