The outside of the tent swam into view, lit up by the morning sun. They still hadn't moved from the forest, clearly still waiting for her to reappear. Hermione's heart ached for them.
Ron came out from amongst the trees, doing up his jeans zipper as he stomped across the frosty ground. "It's bloody freezing out here," he called to Harry as he entered the tent. Hermione followed him in. Clothes and bits of old food and half-read books littered the floor, the table, and the beds. A small wooden wireless was perched atop a few of the books and Celestina Warbeck's crooning voice was coming out of the speakers. Hermione followed Ron over towards Harry, who was trying to practice vanishing various items with a new wand – she wondered where he had picked it up, since he had been borrowing hers, until she left.
Not left, she thought.Before I was taken away. Before I was ripped from one reality and forced into another.
"...that's three down, we're basically there!" Ron was saying. His chipper attitude didn't seem to get through to Harry, whose expression was dark and clouded. An uneasy silence fell between them.
"Tell you what," Ron announced abruptly, clapping his hands together. "Let's plan out where we think the next horcruxes will be…"
"Don't you think I haven't already tried that?" Harry snapped. "Don't you think I haven't racked my damn brains every single day for months trying to figure out where they are, how we'd get to them, what we-"
A book fell to the floor in front of them. The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
Hermione was sweating with the effort of trying to move the book. She had concentrated so hard on interacting with it that there were now stars swimming in her eyes. She tried to focus again. Just one more push.
The pages of the book flapped to the front. The book lay open on a blank page.
Harry and Ron huddled over it.
"Ron, did you…?"
Ron shook his head, swallowing hard. "No."
"Then how did that book just move?"
"Harry…"
"Yeah?"
"Wasn't that Hermione's book? The one she got from Dumbledore in his will?"
The boys carried on staring below them, neither daring to move. Tentatively, Harry reached out with his toe and gave the book a quick nudge. Nothing happened.
From nearby, Hermione's nose was bleeding. She had her hands outstretched and was trying, and failing, to cast a wandless charm on the blank page. She needed them to find her hidden note. She ignored the blood as it dripped down, warm, onto her lips and into her mouth.
"Please, please…" she begged. The magic wasn't coming out of her without her wand.
Harry and Ron started backing away from the book, confused.
"Maybe it was just the wind, again…" Harry said.
"Yeah… Although I tell you what, mate. I've had this weird feeling lately, like we're being watched…"
One last push. Sparks jetted out of Hermione's palm, ripped through time, and hit the blank pages of paper. Ink appeared on the page, and with a gasp, the boys lunged forward to read it. Hermione, utterly spent, fell back, her chest heaving for breath, her pulse pounding in her ears.
"Hermione!" Ron shouted. It was the last thing she heard as everything around her faded to black.