a/n: many thanks to be11atrix-the-strange for her help on this chapter! hope you guys enjoy :)
It was twenty quick minutes later that they had the tent packed and ready. Ron held the deluminator in his hand, and Hermione was absolutely terrified of what they were about to do. Following this mysterious light of Ron's into the unknown seemed beyond Gryffindor courageous, teetering between reckless and downright stupid.
But Ron seemed so sure. And she wanted to trust him. It was just that the last time he'd followed his feelings based on his interaction with an inanimate object, he'd stormed out of their tent in the pouring rain. At least he wasn't going without her this time, so that was something. Dumbledore had left the deluminator to Ron for a reason, though, and if it weren't for blind faith in the late headmaster's instructions, none of them would be out here hunting horcruxes in the first place.
Hermione took tight hold of Ron's hand, and he smiled reassuringly at her before clicking the deluminator. Out again came the eerie blue light. It seemed to know what they were doing (as if that were any comfort), because it hovered for only a moment before it floated slowly towards Ron. Hermione held her breath, trembling head to toe, and watched as the light vanished against Ron's chest. One blink later, Hermione felt the pull behind her navel, but the familiarity of the sensation only increased her trepidation. It was a portkey, just like they thought. They were going somewhere.
Portkey travel was as dizzying as ever, but they landed safely in an open field, hands still joined. Hermione glanced anxiously over at Ron, but he appeared to be just fine, so she looked around them. They were, thankfully, alone, but there was also no obvious indicator of why they were there. "Why does this place look familiar?" Hermione mused.
"Because we're near the Burrow," Ron answered immediately. This didn't seem to be the comfort to him that she might've thought it would be. "Why did it bring us here?"
"You tell me. Do you still...I don't know. Feel it?" The light hadn't returned upon their arrival, and Hermione wasn't sure what to make of that. Although, to be fair, she wasn't sure what to make of any of it.
"No." Ron frowned and looked out across the fields. "It feels like we're supposed to be here, though."
"Ron, we—" She hesitated, but she had to say it. "We can't go home."
"No, I know that. But there's something here."
She tried to suppress the frustration in her voice as she asked, "What, though?"
"I don't know." Ron sighed. "I'm sorry, Hermione. I want to have answers for you, I just don't."
"So...what now? Set up the tent?"
Ron still looked pensive, gazing in the direction of what she thought must have been the Burrow. "Yeah. Yeah, I suppose." He finally, slowly, let go of her hand. She waited nervously for a moment, but nothing happened, so she opened up her bag and together they set the tent back up. Afterwards, though, they lingered outside despite the cold. Whatever the deluminator had sent them there to find, they weren't going to find it sitting in a tent.
They kept a steady flow of conversation throughout the day, but both of their focuses were elsewhere. Hermione was relying heavily on Ron to alert her if he spotted anything that might tell them why they were there. But according to Ron, other than being an enclave of magical families, there was nothing significant about Ottery St. Catchpole and the surrounding countryside. Dumbledore had no known ties to the area, and neither did Voldemort.
Ron volunteered to take the first watch again, and Hermione reluctantly retreated inside only after Ron promised not to mess with the deluminator without her. By morning, he had decided that whatever purpose they had in the countryside was no longer there, and that they should try again. Hermione remained skeptical; after all, what could they be looking for that was moving? But sure enough, when they had packed up the tent again and Ron clicked the deluminator, out came the blue light once more.
Their second landing spot was familiar as well; it looked like the forest they had apparated to the night they'd left, though where exactly that was, Hermione still didn't know. "Better place to hide something, I suppose," she mused as she looked around at the dense woods and started pulling out the tent from her bag.
"Hermione," Ron said slowly. "What if it's not something we're looking for?"
Hermione looked across at him as they worked at the tent and knew immediately what he meant. "You think we're following Harry."
"We heard his voice, Hermione. How else do you explain all this?"
"I can't explain it, Ron, and nor can you!" she snapped, frustration getting the better of her. Ron frowned but kept working. "We need to keep looking for horcruxes. You know we do."
"And you know we haven't had any leads since Godric's Hollow!" Ron shot back, quickly on her level. "This is the closest we've been to progress in weeks, and you want to just ignore it because you can't explain it? Because you can't feel it?"
"As I recall, you had a more acute feel for the locket, too, and look how that turned out!" It was a low blow, and she knew it. Ron's expression hardened.
"Tent's done. So you can go back to the books you've read a hundred times, and I'll just be out here with my feelings," he snarled at her. He conjured a chair and flopped into it, his arms folded across his chest. Hermione knew she should apologize, but she was too fired up for it just then, and so was he, so she turned away from him and stalked into the tent.
Ron only popped inside for meals, and he did so without looking at or speaking to her. She finally poked her head out a few hours after dinner. "I can take the first watch tonight, if you want," she ventured.
"I'm fine," he returned coldly.
Hermione sighed and stepped outside next to Ron. "I'm sorry about what I said earlier. It's not fair for me to keep holding it against you, what happened with the locket." Ron shot her an annoyed look, but otherwise didn't respond. She sighed again and headed back inside, knowing she fully deserved his reaction. She only hoped that he would actually let her take over the watch when it was time, and not try to tough out the entire night himself.
She wondered, as she curled up in the bed, if Ron was right. What if they were chasing Harry? Was she really ready to give up on the idea of reuniting with their best friend after only two attempts? Then again, it wasn't as if the blue portkey light was plopping them down in the middle of Perkins' old tent; Harry was nowhere to be found, and nor was anything else they were looking for. It felt like the deluminator had raised more questions than it answered.
She was jolted awake only a few hours later by a loud clang, followed by a muffled swear from Ron, who had apparently dropped the tea kettle. He had his back to her as he bent to pick it up, and she thought briefly about just going back to sleep. But she hated the way they had left things today; there was far too much that had gone unsaid between them over the years, and the stakes were too high now to add to the list. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and said his name to get his attention.
It was impossible that Ron hadn't heard her, but he acted as if this were the case. He abandoned the tea kettle and made to leave the tent again. "Oh, sure, Ron," Hermione began, injecting venom into her tone, "just walk away again. That's what you do best, isn't it?" Being intentionally instigating wasn't perhaps the best, or most mature, way to get him to engage with her, but it was the most reliable.
He turned around and glared at her. "You don't want to do this, Hermione," he warned in a low voice.
"Don't I?" She got to her feet. "Look, I said I was sorry, what else do you want from me?"
"Sorry?" Ron scoffed. "Sorry doesn't change the fact that you have no faith in me. Maybe you never did, I dunno. You think you're the only one who's allowed to have an opinion on what the right thing to do is out here, and because you didn't find the answers in a fucking book, you think it's stupid."
He turned to go back out into the cold, and though it sort of called up the memories of the night they had left Harry, the fact that it hadn't turned her insides to marmalade told her on some level that whatever trust she'd lost in him that night had returned. She knew he wasn't leaving, just walking away from the argument. But she wasn't done.
"I don't think you're stupid, Ron, I've never thought that, but you can't deny certain similarities between the locket and the deluminator."
"Says you!" he exclaimed as he whirled back to face her, eyes narrowed. "But you are not the one who's dealing with all this. I am. One's an evil thing that wants us all to die, and one's meant to help. And for someone with the emotional range of a teaspoon—ironic insult coming from you, Hermione, really—I think I'm doing alright sorting out which is which."
There was a clear, undeniable difference between Ron with the locket, and the real Ron, but Hermione was jarred by how stark the contrast was now in the midst of a row. Locket Ron had been mean. This Ron, the Ron she'd fought with across nearly every inch of Hogwarts, could row with her on the same level, but because he was passionate, and defended what he believed in, and wasn't afraid to challenge her, and she knew it was a big part of why she had fallen in love with him.
"Ironic?" Hermione repeated, bristling as she stepped closer to him. "I don't see how it's ironic, when you're more in tune with the thoughts of some ancient trinket than those of your best friend!"
Ron let out a bark of a laugh; it was not a happy sound. "Spot on, Hermione, you're right. I don't have one sodding clue what you're thinking, because by this point, I'd presume you'd be willing to try just about anything to find Harry."
His statement was puzzling enough to take just a bit of the wind out of her sails. "Aren't you?" she retorted. "He's your best mate, aren't you worried about him?"
"Yeah," Ron snorted sarcastically, "because that's why you want to get back."
"What are you talking about?" she groaned, more confused than ever. "This isn't even about Harry, this is about you. Following this—this thing, and not even giving a second thought to how I might feel about it, after the locket."
"It's not the same!"
"How the hell am I supposed to know that?" she yelled back, their row quickly ratcheting back up.
"By listening to me! By trusting me! Two things you seem entirely incapable of doing. Maybe if I was the bloody Chosen One."
Hermione grabbed onto the front of Ron's jumper and, still completely missing whatever point he was trying to make, hollered at him, "What's Harry got to do with any of this?!"
She stared up at him, finally registering the hurt on his face mingled with the anger, and suddenly she knew the answer, as words he'd said to her weeks ago surfaced in her brain, putting everything into horrible, unbelievable clarity. The last thing he'd said to her from the opposite side of the shield charm before he had walked out of the tent was, You choose him.
Ron thought she fancied Harry.
The idea of it was so mind-bogglingly ridiculous (and quite demeaning, if she were honest, as if she only existed in their friendship to be the token girl, though she knew that wasn't really the case), and yet, it did cast a certain light on some of Ron's behavior the past few weeks. How uncomfortable he had seemed anytime they talked about Harry. Why he had asked her to forget about the kiss between them after Godric's Hollow. Why, despite all the signs that seemed so obvious, he hadn't actually ever told her how he felt.
Before she could even process this revelation, Ron's hands flew up to her face and he ducked his head to press his lips firmly to hers, before pulling back just as quickly. "That," he snapped. "That's what he's got to do with it."
He made to move away from her, but she used her grip on his shirt to pull him back in, throwing her arms around his neck to kiss him properly.