It's a strange feeling when you find yourself completely out of your depths.
It's like being drowned in thought, or in the absence of thought. It's like the world ceases to exist, because why would it even bother to continue existing without the things that make existence worthwhile?
There were things they wanted for themselves.
Things that didn't involve drowning.
Things that didn't involve such desperation that, should they survive, would taint the rest of their lives. This need to survive flowed through them, and for what?
For Ron to just be dead? For him to be gone? For—
"He doesn't feel dead," Hermione muttered, her voice weak and raspy. "They're lying to us. How would they even know if—"
"It's the shock collar, 'Mi. They've got all of us hooked up to it. It's just like you said." Harry sniffled.
"Molly doesn't think he's dead," Hermione said sourly.
Harry grimaced. "Molly's not thinking straight."
"Or maybe she's thinking straighter than all of us. You saw the clock, Harry. You tell me how Ron's marker isn't pointed towards mortal peril or lost or any of the things it ought to have been showing these past months?"
"You know as well as I that it doesn't bloody work anymore."
"It works sometimes—"
"Last week it said that both George and Arthur were at Hogwarts when they were clearly in the kitchen with Ginny and I, and last year Molly went into hysterics when it showed Fred alive and well at the Burrow."
"But—"
"But nothing, Hermione. You weren't there in that room with Lord Greengrass and Kingsley and McLaggen. You didn't hear them." Harry thought to the muted annoyance in Greengrass' voice… to the way his very own lungs emptied of breath when he looked to Kingsley and found him holding back tears. It was real for Kingsley. It was real for Greengrass, even if for him it was just an inconvenience.
"But he can't be dead... he can't be." Hermione chewed the words between her teeth. "The plan worked. I'm pregnant. He has to come back."
Harry refrained from looking at her. They were both desperate, but it seemed to him that there was quite a difference in what they were desperate for. Hermione was safe now. Harry could step forward for her, they could be alright, and they'd have a baby if everything worked out. But Harry was desperate because Hermione wanted him to be Ron, and there was nothing he could do to ever become Ron. He wasn't Ron, he wasn't Ron at all, and for a while he thought that was good and special and part of what made their relationship work so well but he told her Ron died and the noises she made when his ears finally started to work again still echoed through his head every moment he had enough breath to even breathe.
The screaming and groaning and wailing wasn't what Harry expected.
He didn't know what he expected anymore, not really...
Nothing was what it seemed to be.
Ron was supposed to be alive and shrugging off work and being a nuisance somewhere shirking his responsibilities. He was supposed to be a prat that Harry could blame for not being there when they needed him.
He wasn't supposed to be dead.
Harry rolled onto his side to watch Hermione. She was lying on her back, eyes open, unmoving. Tiny bits of sun broke through the closed curtains, illuminating the small smattering of dust that floated through the stagnant air.
"I'm going to spend some time at the Burrow," he spoke quietly. "Gin told me that Molly can't go into his room still. There are a few things he'll want cleaned out before his family starts going through his stuff."
Rolling off the bed, Harry gathered his things from the floor and tucked them into a small travel bag. There were a few things scattered about the flat, and he walked into each new room like a ghost fighting to stop reliving the moments where he was truly alive in the spaces right before him, and then he walked back and she was still there on the bed, lying on her back, eyes open, unmoving. He was a ghost next to a fresh corpse who had no ghost of her own, and he scrunched his face every time he dared look back to her.
But not everything was about her, was it?
No.
Harry lost his best friend, and Ginny lost her brother. Molly and Arthur lost another son. Harry hurt, and it felt like he was being ripped in two, like the part of him that always considered Ron to be his true second half was being sliced by a dull knife and every nerve screamed at the loss.
And Hermione heard him wandering her flat, and she heard him pause occasionally at her door, and she could feel his eyes on her. She could feel him watching her and worrying about her and she was so angry. After everything he went through, how had he landed on acceptance? How had he decided that trusting the word of evil men was the right thing to do?
She watched the ceiling.
She watched the miniscule shadows form and sway as the image of a woman's face stared back at her. It looked like she was staring up at a mirror, or rather, a watercolour self-portrait, her eyes piercing her own.
There was a scuffling noise and the sound of the Floo, and then he was gone.
Hermione wanted to get up.
She wanted to stand up and move and get the hell out of her bed. She'd spent nearly two days there and her whole body ached, and she could hear her stomach start to make noise.
But she couldn't move.
She didn't want to, not really.
She wanted both, and nothing, and might never want again.
Her stomach growled, and she absently put a hand over her waist before she remembered.
They'd done it. She was pregnant. Tearing her eyes from the ceiling, she looked down at her body and stared, almost mournfully, at the life she was bringing into the world to save her own. This was something bad, she thought. This was an anchor baby, tethering her to a safe life. This was a donor baby, born only to save the life of someone else.
Would this child grow up and resent Hermione for her decisions? Would it despise her?
Would it look like Harry?
Hermione's stomach growled yet again, and with a heaving noise that ripped through her lips, she grabbed the glass of water left by her bedside and hauled herself from the bed, launching it at the wall. A weak smashing of glass erupted and littered the floor, and Hermione felt that it was far too quiet to justify the swelling water that drowned out every thought she had. She stalked from her bedroom to the kitchen and in a glorious moment of crackling hair and pure energy, glass whipped in front of her and behind, trails of magic tying itself to distant walls like powerful magnets drawing anything breakable.
It felt like a hurricane in a still home, but as she tossed glasses and plates and shrieked, shattering the lightbulbs above her and getting hot glass in her wiry hair, she didn't even consider that she'd become a poltergeist in her own home, haunting herself to calm everything inside her that was still drowning and gasping for breath.
Hermione drummed her fingers against her thigh, a rhythmic pattern that her fingers played at without even thinking it. It was some tune she knew from her childhood, something so ingrained into her that she didn't even know her fingers moved without processing it.
Harry was still gone. He'd left days before, and it was drawing closer to the day he would have to talk with Hermione to the Ministry and learn about the marriage law together with all their friends and families. It was drawing closer to the day he'd step in and ruin their whole world by claiming the child as his own.
Hermione bristled at the thought.
It was days away, yet he hadn't come back. She'd figured out pretty quickly that he hadn't gone to the Burrow after he left, and the immediate fear was quelled by Ginny who confessed that he was back at Grimmauld place.
He was mourning, and apparently he had to do it alone.
He needed to work through what a world without Ron would look like, and Hermione stayed at her flat and sat on her couch, slept on her couch, ate on her couch. It felt like she was glued to it, bonded to it, stapled to the only place in the entire flat where she could see both the Floo and the front door. She'd had to drag the couch to the perfect vantage point, but if Harry came back, she'd know instantly, and… And she wasn't sure what she would do.
She wanted to apologise.
He'd knocked her up all under the pretense that Ron would be coming back, and now what?
Where did they go from here?
Molly would never forgive her, she remarked as she ran her fingers along the couch. Arthur might, but Molly would never forgive her for shacking up with Harry while her son was missing.
Ginny would have a difficult time, but she would be fine. So would George. He'd been nothing but kind to her all along, even when Ron was being a prat and ran off. The rest would struggle, but Molly…
Molly would be broken-hearted, and Harry still hadn't come home or... No. Harry hadn't come back. Her flat wasn't his home.
She sat, and she stayed still for hours, or days, or maybe somewhere in the middle. In reality, she knew it couldn't have been more than three days since he left, because each night for the past month had been met with a whisper of the days they had left before everything fell to shit, and it hadn't changed yet.
Lifting her fingers from the tapping noises she made against the couch and her own thighs, Hermione tugged her hair up to tie in a bun. She and Harry would speak before the law was revealed, they would—
A tapping somewhere in her flat caught her attention.
Hermione frowned.
She drew her wand and stood from the couch, taking a step toward the noise and then another. It was coming from her bedroom. Was it possible that someone had broken in? She wasn't sure, and normally she felt like none of this would startle her this way, but the law was approaching and what if the Ministry knew what she'd been doing and hired someone to take care of her?
She raised the wand and took a deep breath before pushing the door open, her voice already picking up to cast anything she could think of but in the place of an intruder, there was only empty air.
The tapping, she discovered, was not quite so terrifying as she imagined.
Behind the window, perched on the potted plants hanging from the sill, sat Hootagin the Weasley owl.
Hermione released a deep sigh and approached the bird, tucking her wand between her teeth and opening the window to retrieve the parchment tied to its leg. It was folded up several times, and Hermione's face ran pale when she began to open it and found bright red blood drying against the parchment.
Grabbing her wand from her mouth, she hurled a hasty detection spell towards the Burrow. She wanted to barge in, her every instinct telling her rush into the fray. But even deeper was an uneasy feeling that told her that it wouldn't just be her rushing into the fray.
The detection spell touched the Weasley property, and Hermione felt a tingling in her fingers. She'd manufactured the spell long ago to help Harry and Ron, though it was still glitchy and needed work. Regardless of the glitches, she'd done it on the Burrow enough times in the past to visualize the blueprint against her skin, and where the spell seeped in the real world, her own skin responded with a resound word: safe. It started in the fingers, at the edge of the property, and worked inwards and then upwards. Except for the lingering sorrow, there was no danger there now, nor had there been danger since Hermione last spoke with Ginny and George just four days earlier.
The sound of Hermione's Floo fluffed out in a billowing cloud and Hermione rushed out, immediately relieved at the sight of Ginny walking out.
And then she really saw Ginny. She was fine, of course. Safe. Strong. Secure. But she had the same hair as Ron, and as Ginny approached, Hermione closed her eyes and leaned against the wall behind her.
"I felt the detection spell," Ginny explained without being asked, reaching her arms toward Hermione. "We're all okay."
Hermione nodded and took hold of Ginny's hands gratefully, fingers intertwining with hers. She found herself embracing the girl without even thinking, and she took a deep inhale of the scent of her.
There was something about Ginny that comforted Hermione. It reminded her of Harry… The faint scent of sweat and dirt, and it reminded her of Ron. The unmistakably lingering of the Burrow everywhere the Weasleys went. It smelled of Molly's cooking, and a warm fire. She breathed it in and tried to keep her lip from trembling.
It wasn't the first time they'd seen each other since learning of Ron's death. They'd been together the day Harry came home to her with the news, but it felt like all of them were in a thick haze of their own and nobody really interacted. They just held hands and held each other and pretended that the world wasn't crumbling. They imagined that their whole set of lives weren't being built up in sand by a child at the beach who held a bucket of water and perched atop them to douse them and drown them and laugh as they collapsed.
But Ginny was here now, and she looked as though she'd been crying, but there was no blood.
"Is anybody hurt?" Hermione asked. "Someone sent me a note and bled all in it, I got worried—"
Ginny gave her an odd look.
"We haven't sent anything to anyone in days. What did you get?"
Hermione, still holding Ginny's hands, pulled her toward her bedroom door where Hootagin preened and ruffled his feathers at the sight of the redhead.
"Hootagin!" Ginny admonished, and leapt toward the bird. "Where on Earth have you been?"
Ginny scowled at the bird and then turned back to Hermione.
"He's been missing for weeks," she explained to Hermione, who was taken aback by the reaction to the owl. "We've been using Bill and Fleur's owl ever since. We thought he got lost or up and died on us. What a dumb bird," she exclaimed.
Dropping Hermione's hands, she walked to the bathroom, and Hermione returned back to the bird and the note it had pulled from her fingers and tucked into his feathers. Unfolding it a bit more, she could see that the blood had made parts of the parchment weak and soft.
Ginny returned from the bathroom, eyes red, and with a handful of cloth soaked in water. She began to clean the owl and avoided looking at Hermione.
"I saw the tests on the counter," she murmured after a moment, and Hermione stiffened.
Right.
Nobody told her…
"Gin," she began, but she was cut off by a stern hand.
"I'm happy for you, you know." She turned her back to the bird. "Ron would be happy too. If he were here and knew what was going on, he'd be happy that Harry kept you safe."
Hermione's eyes welled with tears.
"Perhaps, but I can't imagine he'd be very proud of how it happened."
Ginny smiled. "Probably not, the jealous prat. But he valued your safety above your virtue. He'd probably have thrown a fit, but he'd understand. He wasn't a total arsehole."
Hermione bit her lip.
"So," Ginny said in a cheerier tone. "You got a note?"
Hermione nodded, handing the note out. Hootagin tried to pull it back, but Ginny blocked the attempt with deft hands as if she were protecting a quaffle.
Ginny's brow furrowed as she opened it.
"You got this today?" Ginny asked, and Hermione narrowed her eyes.
"I've been sleeping in the living room for a few days, he might have shown up during that time."
"But you've never seen this before?"
Hermione shook her head. "I didn't even open it before you came over. Why, do you recognize it?"
Ginny took a deep breath.
"This is the note that Mum sent to Ron all those weeks ago when we found out."
"Found out about…?"
"About the law, Hermione! Mum sent this out the morning George had the idea to knock you up to get you out of marrying Dolohov."
"I don't understand, so what if the bird brought the note back?"
"But he didn't bring it back to us… He brought it to you, which means that he had to have been told to bring it to you."
"Ginny—"
"The bird is shit, 'Mione, but he listens to us, and none of us ever told him to take this to you. Ron had to have told him; there's nobody else who would think to send this to you. I think he was trying to come back when he died… I think this was his way of telling you he wouldn't be able to make it home."
Hermione's eyes lit up.
"Call Harry," she ordered, her voice firm as Ginny's eyebrows lifted.
"What's going on?" Ginny asked, already digging a pen and paper from her bag. She scrawled a quick note and waved her wand over it, watching as it tucked itself into a firm envelope and flew from her fingers. It vanished in an instant, but Ginny still held her breath. She looked up to see Hermione absent from the living room.
"Hermione?" She called, and heard rummaging in Hermione's room.
"The blood is red," Hermione responded, matter-of-factly.
"So?"
"So, you're a girl. How long does it take for blood to turn brown or black after it's left the body?"
Ginny's brow furrowed.
"It doesn't take long to dry," Hermione continued, "but the ministry says he died just over a week ago. The blood is still red, Gin."
"I don't understand what you're getting at, 'Mione." Ginny pulled Hermione's arm, yanking her towards herself and out of her growing thought bubbles. Hermione looked up, briefly annoyed, but softened when she saw that Ginny's face was turning bright red, her eyes watery and ready to bulge. "Ron is dead. The ministry told Harry; Lord Greengrass told mum and dad everything. You can't do this to them."
Hermione lifted a soft hand to Ginny's cheek, wiping away a tear that had started to fall.
A clashing at Hermione's front door surprised the two witches who only let themselves breathe when Harry appeared. He ran in quickly, sweaty and breathing heavily.
"What's happened?" he yelled, breathless. "Is the—are—are you alright? Ginny said it was urgent. I got here as soon as I could; is something wrong with the baby?"
Ginny scrunched her nose and tried to speak.
"Gin," Harry approached her.
"Hermione got a note from Hootagin, she thinks it's from Ron and—"
Harry looked past Ginny at Hermione who stripped off her pyjama shirt to replace it with a warm long sleeve. His eyes loitered over her abdomen for a moment before turning back to Ginny.
"Who says it isn't from Ron?" he asked defensively. "That bird doesn't listen to anybody but you lot, and even you said last week that you hadn't seen Hootagin in a while. If he found Ron, who's to say he couldn't have—"
"There's blood on the note he delivered," Hermione interrupted. "And the blood is red."
She held out the note and Harry took it. He lifted it to the light and brought it close to his face.
"Ginny," he muttered after a moment. "Go back home. Make sure that Bill is there and clear out as much room as you can at the Burrow. Make sure he leaves the kids with Fleur. Get Molly's first aid kit—"
"Her what?"
Harry shook his head. "That box she keeps her medical things in, Ginny. Go, make sure she has all of that. Go now!"
Ginny froze for a moment before Harry widened his eyes at her, and she disappeared into the Floo.
"Do you still have the bird?" Harry asked, and Hermione nodded, running to her bedroom and hurrying back out with Hootagin gripping her fingers tightly.
"We're going to need to hurry," Hermione spoke quickly as she shimmied off her shorts in exchange for a pair of durable and warm trousers.
Harry looked up and noticed her changing.
"You're not coming with me," he said. "I can't look for him and worry about you at the same time."
"Have you forgotten that I'm not a helpless chit?" she asked, her voice inching towards yelling. "We go together."
Harry disappeared into Hermione's bedroom and returned with a spare pair of clothes.
"Where were you hiding those?" She asked as she pulled a pair of socks onto her feet.
"They're not mine," he responded casually, distracted. "Ron always had them here in case he was staying over and needed something to go to work in."
Hermione offered her small pouch, and he thrust the warm clothes inside where they all but vanished from sight. Tucking a jumper in for extra measure, Hermione tightened the drawstrings.
"Food," Harry reminded her and left to her kitchen.
"What the FUCK?" he yelled, and Hermione winced. She'd not repaired any of the broken dishes or cups yet, and the floor was covered in chunks of glass and fine dust.
"We don't have time to argue, Harry. We have to leave now. How do we do this?"
Tossing a few cans of beans and the remainder of a wrapped roast chicken into the pouch, Harry stood straight and closed his eyes, willing himself to fix the wobbling in his knees.
He could do this, he thought.
"I've got no idea how the owl even found him in the first place."
"Harry," Hermione asked, and he turned to see her eyes watery and clouding. "What if he's really dead?"
"Then we bring him back to Molly, and we bury him as a family."
Hermione cringed at the thought.
Harry said something, but Hermione didn't hear him.
"Pardon?" she asked, clearing her mind of the image of Ron torn open on the forest floor.
"I asked," he repeated, "if you're sure you can do this. You've got to be more careful now, and—"
"Shut up, Harry." His eyes widened at her. "This is non-negotiable. Whatever we find, at least neither of us will be alone."
Finally, after what felt like minutes of contemplation, he nodded to her and held out a hand. He stood up straight and rolled his shoulders, stretching them out before grasping his wand tightly in his fist.
"I don't know what we'll be walking into," he began, "but we'll follow the bird. Get him ready."
Hermione baulked. "Follow the bird?"
"Nothing traceable, remember?"
"Apparition isn't traceable, and—"
"And we have no idea where to Apparate to. If it was as easy as thinking of Ron and being beside him, we would be in a very different situation right now. We fly, and we fly now."
Harry pulled Hermione towards the Floo and disappeared into it, and then so did she and Hootagin, still perched on her fingers.
In a billowing plume, Hermione stepped into Grimmauld Place where Harry was already returning from the room where he kept his broom and the spare one Ginny used to use for practice before they broke up. Hermione winced at the obvious reminder that he still had feelings for their friend.
Chucking it toward her and pulling her up the stairs, Harry pushed open his bedroom door and barged straight through to the tiny door that opened up to a terrace. And then they were off the ground, and Hermione shivered. Her legs felt awfully weak against the wooden hilt, and the vibrations of the broom in the wind were almost too much for her to handle. Her fingers grew numb quickly, and her teeth started to chatter, and she'd only just taken off. It had only just begun and she was already pathetically awful at this.
She would only slow Harry down.
She should have asked Harry to take Ginny, who knew precisely how to fly and was perfectly used to the heights.
She should have stayed behind with Molly and waited, as mothers do. Right? Mothers do that?
No, she remembered. Molly didn't wait back at home during the battle of Hogwarts. Hermione couldn't think of a mother at all who didn't fight for their families, and Ron was more than family to her.
Her stomach sank, and when she was finally up above what people could see, Harry looped down beside her, where Hootagin was flapping in small circles waiting for the two of them.
"We're going to be fast," he told her. "We won't have time to take breaks if you get tired."
Hermione nodded to him and gripped the broom hilt tightly. Harry pulled up close beside her, the wind from up this high whipping her hair about her face and into tangles, and her ears started to hurt.
Removing his hands from the broom, Harry leaned over to her side to pull her pouch toward himself. He pulled it open and reached inside, pulling out a helmet that he fashioned onto Hermione's head.
Hermione rolled her eyes. She wasn't so bad at flying that she'd just fall off.
"Don't give me that look," Harry said passively, his eyes on her forearm as he tugged a pair of gloves onto her hands.
"What look?" Hermione pouted, her lips pinched and eyes narrowed.
"That one. Don't do it. I don't care if you need it or not, I'm not taking any chances." He made a quick move to her other side and when he was ready, he handed Hootagin the note—open—with Molly's scrawling of Ron's name. The bird snatched it with his thick talons and was off, flying east.
They followed the bird, and it was a long while of flying without movement. Hermione wished she'd gone to the bathroom before she left, but Harry was moving too quickly, and Hootagin was flying at a speed that seemed far too fast for the owl. It soared quickly and without pause, and the night had long since arrived when Hootagin began to lower himself. It had been hours and it was so dark that Hermione's wand, still attached to the holster of the glove Harry had put on her, could feel the energy of her not even holding it and lit up a soft yellow glow to keep an eye on the owl.
It was cold and isolated where they were when they finally touched down, and Hermione doubled over and wretched as soon as her feet felt the ground again. Her legs wobbled and collapsed, and Harry ran over to loop his arms under her waist as her stomach emptied itself all across the leaves.
"I never want to fly again," Hermione croaked, and she dove a hand into her pouch to pull out a bottle of water. It was fully stocked with calming draughts and relief potions, but her own comfort seemed to matter very little now. Water would suffice.
After a moment of readjusting herself, Hermione looked up to Harry. He was no longer holding her but looking around eerily. It was too dark to see anything with any real clarity, but Hootagin trilled out a series of soft hoots, and when Hermione raised an illuminated wand to see him more clearly, she saw that he'd fallen asleep.
"I don't understand where we are," Harry murmured. "Is this the last place Hoot saw Ron?"
Hermione gulped and gasped, still gaining her on-land composure.
"How did he find Ron here at all?" she asked, and cast glowing balls of light to extend around them, circling and drifting like mid-air jellyfish. In this dark, she was more worried about falling down a cliff than a creature of the night finding her.
"If there were more light we could track footprints or magical signatures, but there's nothing here and no light to see it." He responded. After years of working as an Auror, he had tricks up his sleeve that she didn't immediately know to use. He had far surpassed her skills in hunting, though Hermione was sure that if she studied and set herself to learning the kind of skills that Harry had, she'd far surpass him and-
"Hermione," Harry interrupted her thoughts, and Hermione bristled. "I think I found something."
Hermione was at his side in an instant and peering closely at a small smudge of blood on the trunk of the tree Hootagin sat in.
Not as dumb as they'd thought.
"Is there any more?" Hermione asked, touching her fingers to the blood. It was dried, and the red dust of it rubbed off around where she touched.
Harry shook his head. It wasn't much blood at all; it looked as though he'd just paused to lean against the tree.
"We know he was here." he responded, his voice somber. It looked as though it might have just been a bloody nose.
Harry rubbed his eyes.
Knowing Ginny, she'd probably stumbled into the Burrow and raised every alarm to Molly. He could only imagine what the woman was doing now. He didn't want to think of her trembling and scared for all these hours.
Slivers of light were already peeking through the trees.
Not real light, not like the sun. It looked more like the night before the sun. The dark was just a bit dimmer, the trees just a bit more visible. With a tracking charm, Harry was able to direct Hermione's little floating jellyfish lights in the direction that Ron left in. It was slow work, with the lights bobbing and swaying, pulling back as if an air current were sucking them in.
And they didn't speak as they followed each other. It was dark and then lighter and then they could almost see colour. Hootagin hopped around them and occasionally disappeared, returning with a smug look and bits of fur in his beak.
This forest was very different than the one she and Harry braved together all those years ago. It looked eerily similar, but light snow shivered around them. They hadn't seen it in the dark, or felt the cold through their heating charms. Both Hermione and Harry looked at each other warily when a clearing became visible, with snow deeper than what they'd thought to expect. Under the trees it was hardly breaking through the ceiling canopy, and the light even looked more strained there. When they actually stepped out into the snow, the pale light of returning dawn pointed them toward a strange dip in the ground before them.
She couldn't imagine how long they'd been gone. The night blurred around her and she guessed that the time difference wasn't helping. To be perfectly frank, both of her and Harry had gotten overwhelmingly lost in thought as the two of them trudged after Ron.
Hermione and Harry approached the tip in the ground and peered down, surprised to find something of a 30 foot drop. Far below them, a figure laid with blood plumed into the snow.
"Ron?" Hermione breathed, and it wasn't a moment before she screamed his name into the gaping Earth, echoes bouncing off distant mountains.
The figure below them didn't move, but as Harry threw himself down into the hole, so too did the jellyfish orbs, which lit up the area and reflected off the bright red hair of the man on the ground, who, as the sound of Hermione's scream made its way through his ears, opened his eyes.
"Ron," Hermione cried, apparating to the body's side.
"I knew you'd find me," Ron whispered, his voice hoarse and dense. "I knew it."