She woke early to attend to a personal matter. Their magical tent had a tiny bathroom and a sink with no mirror. Above the non-functioning faucet, Ron had taped a sign that said, "YKW DOESN'T CARE HOW GOOD YOU LOOK, JUST FLUSH." She squatted down on the toilet, peeling off her ragged jeans and the long johns she wore underneath for extra warmth. It was, in fact, that time of the month after all. The Gemino Charm had served her well; she only had to pack one tampon, duplicating it whenever the need arose. It was stored, along with certain other personal items, in a section of the beaded bag accessible via a zipper that was charmed to be inaccessible to men. (This was a bit of privacy overkill on her part. Six months into her camping trip, she could count on hand the number of times either Ron or Harry had actually put their hands into her purse and retrieved an item themselves.)
Hermione changed shirts in the bathroom too. Her dirty laundry went into a mesh bag she hung from the bedpost of her top bunk. Ron was asleep in the bottom bunk, but Harry's camp bed was empty. Where had he gone?
Hermione bundled up in her coat and scarf, sliding her socked feet into rubber boots. The wintery sunlight trickled into the campsite through leafless branches overhead. Harry's muddy shoe prints led through the trees and down a gentle slope to the creek. Her boots squelched in the mud as she followed his trail down the slope.
Harry did not hear her arriving. He was sitting on a large rock by an elbow curve in the creek, his bare feet in the rushing water. His tennis shoes were tied together and swinging from a spruce branch. On Harry's lap, he had some kind of paper he was reading.
"You're up early," Hermione said, by way of greeting.
He shrugged. "It's almost daylight savings time."
"Do wizards even do that?" she wondered. "I don't remember re-setting my watch at school."
"Dunno," he said. "I just went to class when you told me."
Spotting some wild garlic, Hermione conjured a rough burlap bag, and crouched down to collect herbs. Her hips and lower back ached when she squatted.
"Did you eat yet?" she asked Harry.
"No."
"Did you fish yet?"
"No, but I probably will."
"Are you going to do anything productive today?" she asked again, irritated.
"Depends on what you mean by productive." Harry did not look up from his paper. "If you meant, am I going to locate another Horcrux today, then probably not."
She rolled her eyes. "I meant get some food and tidy up the camp."
"Then I will, yeah."
She plucked garlic with two fingers, bracing herself again the mossy earth with her other hand. It was nearing spring, and there would be much more wild food if they could only get through the next month or so. Ron had recommended another middle-of-the-night grocery excursion, but her ordeal at the Lovegoods' had left Hermione shaken. As for Harry, he didn't seem all that concerned about their low food stores. Hermione got the feeling he was accustomed to living off of scraps.
When she filled the bag up to the top, Hermione tied it off and approached Harry's rock. Looking over his shoulder, she saw what he was reading; it was the Marauder's Map.
"What are you looking for?'
"What?" Harry hastily folded up the map. "Nothing."
"Harry, you saw something..."
"It's nothing," he brushed her off. "I just look at it sometimes."
"If you saw something—or someone who shouldn't be there—you have to tell us—"
"I didn't see anything important, alright?" Harry insisted. "Look, I tell you everything. I don't know anything else."
She felt suspicious. He had clearly been reading the map for at least twenty minutes, probably more; what could possibly hold his attention that long?
"It's nothing," he echoed, splashing his feet against the creek. "Just... forget it."
She stood awkwardly, not knowing if she ought to be angry with him, or if he might just be telling the truth. It was his father's map, after all. Maybe he just liked having it. But was he really that sentimental?
"I want to believe you," she said.
Harry stood up abruptly from the rock, swinging his feet onto the ground. His toes sunk into the mud. "Why wouldn't you?"
"Because I—"
"Have I ever lied to you?" he demanded. "Have I ever not told you the truth?"
"It's not that," she said, holding her palms up in submission. She found herself backing away from his aggression.
"Then what is it?" Harry nearly shouted. "What is it you think I'm hiding? D'you think I'm any happier about being here than the rest of you?"
"Harry, please don't shout at me. I'm only trying to make sure!"
"Make sure of what, exactly?" He stepped towards her, nearly looming over her. "Make sure I'm not mental?"
When had he gotten so much taller than her? They used to comfortably sneak around under the Invisibility Cloak, their strides identical, their foreheads knocking together when they whispered their secrets.
"I just..." Hermione swallowed. "I'm worried about you." Tears were burning her eyes again; she felt like they'd never be dry. "I'm scared, Harry, I just want to know you aren't..."
"I get it," Harry spat, furious. He retrieved his shoes from the spruce branch, swinging them over his shoulder. "You're just like Ron, you think I'm a head case. I see what you're thinking—"
"That's not what I'm thinking, Harry, I swear—"
"But it is what you're thinking. I know it!" His voice cracked into bits, like a glass bottle against pavement. "I know you think it's mad, I know you don't believe me about the Hallows, I bloody know it!"
"Harry, just because I don't like your theory doesn't mean I think you're insane!" she pleaded.
Harry's eyes were wide behind his glasses, bloodshot and desperate. "I can't make you see it," he said. "And how much sense it makes—how everything's fallen into place, but you think I'm—you think I just want the stone, like I only want my mum and dad back, don't you?"
"Anyone would want that," she whispered, a tear striping her cheek. "God, Harry, I want my parents, and it's only been a few months."
Harry wiped his muddy feet off on the moss, and pulled his newly-darned socks on so fiercely that she worried he'd rip them open again.
"It's not like that," he muttered "It's got nothing to do with that." Shoving his trainers back onto his feet, he added, "You just don't get it, 'cause you've never been on your own."
A cavern opened inside her throat; Hermione tried to reply, but she couldn't find words. She watched listlessly Harry stalked off, striding uphill with his loose shoelaces dangling behind him. There was no point in going after him, no point in trying to make him understand what she suspected, her deepest and most terrible intuition, the one that sprouted from the ruins of their trip to Godric's Hollow like a mushroom in the rain.
She did not want to say it, did not even want to think it—that ever since the butter-yellow nursery of his parents' cottage had splintered to pieces and collapsed into the foyer, ringing out a sour, horrible chord on the wrecked piano, Harry was well and truly doomed. If he looked like a ghost of late, if he seemed absent of attention and insubstantial in character, perhaps it was only the final stage of a separation that had begun so early in life that Harry knew no other way. On the coldest, most awful winter nights without Ron and without hope, she'd even wondered if she ought to start letting go of the absolute, inflexible conviction that Harry couldn't die.
It was easier to focus on the cramps cupping her abdomen, pressing in on her lower spine like a malicious fist. To be in her body and in pain was preferable to the terrible, towering fortress of her thoughts. So, Hermione sat down on the very rock Harry had abandoned, hugged her sack of herbs to her chest, and openly wept. Tears disappeared into the loose weave of her scarf.
High above, in the trees, a squirrel was chasing another. Hermione looked up, and watched them. They leapt easily from twig to branch as though the sky itself were a trampoline. She knew the chaser was male, the escape artist female. These familiar melodramas retold themselves without human intervention. It took real effort to say that's not my story. To say, I am doing something more important. I cannot be distracted, and I cannot run away.
"It's about killing that bastard," whispered Hermione to the spruce trees. "Nothing else matters."
"Shhhh," replied the trees.
She got up, and knelt by the creek to wash her tear-streaked face in the striking cold.
"And I found these too!" said Ron, brandishing a plastic sac of chocolate-covered raisins. He shook the package for emphasis.
"Can't believe the luck you've had," mumbled Harry through a mouthful of peanuts.
"I searched the whole bloody tent, under the beds and everything" Ron bragged. "I knew Percy had his hiding spots."
Late afternoon shadows were growing longer. Ron had layered another coat on top of his hooded sweatshirt, while Hermione had pulled a knit cap down over her unruly hair. Harry was underdressed and his fingers were turning pink. She doubted if he noticed.
She poured boiling water from the tin kettle over the fire into each of their thermoses, adding a few sprigs of spruce to each cup.
"I know it's bitter," she warned, "but you've got to drink it. They're really good against colds and the flu."
"You can add some chocolate to sweeten it," Ron suggested.
Harry shook his head. "You should save it. Don't know when we'll get more." He'd already hidden away his own allotment of beef and onion crisps, determined to make them last.
Ron and Hermione looked at one another, pointedly. They'd long since discovered that they couldn't match Harry for will power when it came to preserving food stores. Harry could refrain from snacking, even when desperately hungry, so long as he knew food was in limited supply. Hermione, on the other hand, was exceptionally weak, especially during her period.
"I think it's alright to use a little bit," she suggested delicately. "Since Ron's found so much today."
"Suit yourself," Harry shrugged, and shifted his body away from the campfire smoke. With the wand Ron had found for him, Harry traced a glowing figure-eight above the dirt. He was biting his lip, looking frustrated.
"Still not the same?" Ron asked.
"It just feels wrong." Harry shook his head. "I can't make it work like it should."
"Have you tried—"
"I've tried everything, Ron," he said sadly, and pushed his dirty glasses back up his nose.
Hermione did not like this conversation, mostly because she felt guilty for letting Harry's holly wand get destroyed during their escape from Godric's Hollow.
"It looks like the rainclouds are leaving," she said, glancing at the sky. A heavy cloud stared back at her, as if to accuse her of lying.
"I could do with a few dry days," Ron snuck another peanut from the communal bag.
"We could put all the laundry out."
"Why bother?" said Harry. "It's easier to just use magic."
"I don't know," Hermione admitted. "Guess I just...forgot about that." She picked up a tiny stone from the ground and focused her mind on its size, shape and weight. With her wand, she slowly inflated the stone. It turned white, soft and rectangular. She tucked the pillow behind her aching lower back and leaned back against the log that Harry was sitting on, about a foot away.
Ron sipped at his spruce tea. He grimaced at the taste, but said, "S'not that bad."
"Oh come on," ribbed Harry. "You're just saying that to—"
"To what?" Hermione.
Ron and Harry shot each other loaded glances, which made Hermione feel especially pissy, since she was normally in on their silent communications. To be on the outside again made her feel like a first-year; unwanted, unincluded.
"Nothing," muttered Harry.
Ron looked down at the ground, to avoid eye contact. He tore open the plastic packaging of the chocolate-covered raisins and offered her one. Hermione was embarrassed at how quickly she accepted it, and stuffed it in her mouth.
Everything Ron had found in the tent that afternoon tasted especially magnificent. Even the peanuts, partially blackened with bitter-tasting mold, were near heavenly. The sugary raisins, crunchy, peanuts, salty crisps and minty-fresh chewing gum had appeared like grandiose ruins of an ancient, foreign kingdom. Hermione lay back and closed her eyes, savouring the taste and texture of her chocolate-covered raisins. Here was food from the world of hot baths and Epsom salts, four-poster beds, sunny-side up eggs and forests only viewed through stained glass. Sneaking chocolate into the library, barely balancing six or seven books stacked atop one another, and trading whispers with Harry and Ron behind the towering shelves. She held her hand out towards Ron, eyes still shut, and felt him drop several more sticky raisins onto her palm.
"We shouldn't eat all of it today," said Harry, cutting into her reverie. "Save at least some of it for later."
"Do shut up," mumbled Hermione
"I concur," Ron said, and she could hear his grin. The shuffling and crackling noises that followed must have been one of the boys stirring the fire; probably Harry. He liked playing with it.
Cramps were still wrapping her abdomen tightly, keeping her ability to get comfortable in check. Hermione discreetly touched her wand to her belly and wordlessly cast a warming charm that eased some discomfort. She was past eighteen and well-accustomed to living inside her own body now. Thank god for that. Imagine if she had to run away with Harry and Ron back in fourth year, or even second year! Harry had lost his final baby tooth on the same day that Moaning Myrtle—not yet Petrified—had hovered over a teary Hermione's bathroom stall, assuring her that no, she was not about to die, no matter how bad the bleeding appeared. She'd had to waddle back to the Common Room with an unfamiliar bulk between her legs, only for Harry to excitedly thrust his bloody tooth in her face, further cementing Hermione's terrible longing for her dentist mother. It was a small mercy that You-Know-Who had waited until the worst of Hermione's adolescent awkwardness was over before his return necessitated the very worst camping trip she would ever take.
"I can't drink this," Harry's voice was like an anchor, dragging her back down into the present. "You can have the rest of mine."
"Just pour it out," Hermione said, her eyes snapping open. She could see his legs in her peripheral vision. The uppers of his trainers were splitting from the soles, and his shoelaces were mismatched; they served as constant reminders of the home life that Hermione had once overheard Mrs. Weasley telling her own mother was "not ideal."
"Sorry," he said.
"Forget it."
"You're doing the best you can," assured Ron. "It's not like Darjeeling grows out here in the middle of wherever we are."
"We're in Scotland," said Hermione.
"Yeah, I could tell," Harry mumbled. "'Cause it's freezing and wet all the damn time."
"You know, Harry... you don't actually have to complain about every single step I've taken to make sure you stay alive. You could just keep your thoughts to yourself," Hermione snapped, and immediately regretted it because Harry looked like he'd been slapped.
"It wasn't meant as a criticism," he said slowly. "I only thought...we were all in the same boat, here."
"Might have phrased it differently, then, mate," said Ron.
"Oh, will you stay out of it?" she complained.
"Hermione," said Harry.
"What!?"
"It's fine." He sipped from his thermos of apparently-not-that-undrinkable spruce tea. "Look, I was rude. I get it."
"Yeah, Harry, you really were," she replied, kicking a stray twig into the fire. "It's an awful lot of criticism I get for everything I do around here."
"We're ungrateful louts, we know it," Ron said. He broke open another peanut shell with his fingernails, and extracted two little nuts. "Here, have mine."
"I don't need a consolation prize!"
"Give it a rest," Harry breathed.
"Give what a rest?" said Ron.
Harry glanced from Ron to Hermione, and then back to Ron. His sweaty fringe nearly covered his glasses. "You know what you're doing, and it's getting annoying."
"I'm not doing anything."
"Okay, Ron, said Harry, dripping sarcasm.
Hermione suspected Harry was also getting aggravated with Ron's overly solicitous conduct towards her; there was a fine line between making up for one's mistakes and becoming a soppy sycophant. While she privately agreed with Harry, it disconcerted her that he had so quickly made an ally of her against Ron, when just a moment ago, it was Harry who ticked her off. Did he treat all his adversaries this way? Was this a hidden skill Harry had developed, just one of many instincts for survival? She'd never found him very perceptive or interpersonally adept. But then, she herself had changed so much over the past few years... was it so unreasonable to expect Harry to have stayed the same?
"This feels weird," said Ron quietly, over the crackle and hiss of the campfire. He was leaning towards the flames, warming his hands.
"What," said Hermione.
"The fact that it's me, y'know. Making peace." He nodded towards Harry. "It always used to be you."
Harry was twiddling his borrowed wand between index finger and thumb. He took a long time before replying: "We're not having a fight."
"Oh course we're not," sighed Hermione. "We're just getting on each other's nerves because there's nothing else to do." She felt a painful tightening and twinging throughout her back, and her brow furrowed in private pain.
"You alright?" Ron looked genuinely concerned.
Hermione nodded. "Indigestion," she lied. "Stomach's not used to these kind of sweets."
"I know that feeling," said Harry. He drew a circle in the air with his wand, producing a ring of purplish smoke that dissipated instantly when he returned his wand to his lap. He opened his mouth and closed it again. She waited, knowing he had more to say, wondering if he'd say it at all.
But Ron broke the spell. "We can't be stupid again," he said. "I mean, we can't be stupid like I was. We've got enough to put up with between You-Know-Who and Snatchers and Horcruxes, without going to war with each other."
"I just said we're not fighting."
"But we have to keep it that way." Ron looked her in the eye, and she knew he was addressing her more than Harry; it was both of them, really, who had to grow up. Steel and flint, they'd made more trouble for Harry than was ever necessary, and though she'd once considered Ron almost solely responsible for all of it, she was wondering, of late, what part she'd played in their ongoing melodramas.
Harry stood up, crumbs falling to the ground. He opened the rucksack resting against the log and drew out his Invisibility Cloak. Hermione glimpsed the contents of his bag. A broken shard of mirror caught the firelight; the Marauder's Map was folded neatly, tiny script barely visible against a tea-stained, dog-eared corner.
"I'm going for a walk," Harry announced, draping the cloak around his shoulders.
"Careful of the wards," Hermione said automatically. "Don't trip them or we'll be in big trouble."
"I know, I know." His head disappeared under the silvery, voluminous silk. Shoe prints appeared in the mud surrounding the campsite. Hermione watched pine needles shift, dew drops trembling against the unnatural opening Harry's invisible body cut through the branches.
Ron waited until he thought Harry was out of earshot, though there was no way to be certain. "He's in a cheery mood."
Hermione shrugged, listless.
"I thought the food might do him some good. Spent hours combing the tent for that."
"It did me good." She patted her belly, which was in agony, though not because of the food. "I needed a carbohydrate or twelve."
"God, I miss my mum's cooking," Ron sighed. "What I'd do for a roast beef and mash... it's criminal." He smiled at her, but his expression slipped when he notice her facial expression.
"I'm fine, Ron."
"Go have a lie-down in the tent."
"It's alright."
He shook his head, shaggy red locks tossing from side to side. The parallel urges to trim his hair and to run her fingers through every overgrown tress rose through Hermione, choking her up.
Ron got up from his log and approached her. He knelt down beside her spot on the ground, soiling his knees with mud. His upper lip and jaw were peach with stubble, still somewhat round, neither a boy's nor a man's.
"I'll keep the fire going," said Ron quietly. "I can see you're not feeling well." She could map the tiny rivers and oceans of his blue irises from this distance, and it softened her resolve.
"Harry thinks I'm mad at him," she admitted.
"So?" Ron shook his head again. "Forget it."
"I want to—"
"I'll deal with it. You go on in, take a nap."
She acquiesced, taking her conjured pillow with her. Ron tidied up the discarded snack wrappers after her. Before she ducked through the tent flaps, she noticed him Vanishing them inexpertly; it took him five tries before each bit of plastic disappeared entirely into the ether. Five tries. Harry could do it in two, she in one. But for her sake, Ron would whisper, "Evanesco," twist and flick his wand until the job was done.