Draft# Hermione against the ceaseless winter Sun

She can't sleep.

It keeps happening lately. She feels it under her skin, that pull of exhaustion, that heaviness behind her eyelids, the tardiness in her limbs. It's everywhere, like a plague. She's tired. Not just tired, but rather fatigued, and even that word can't do the exhaustion in her bones any justice.

She's wearing her pajamas, she brushed her teeth twice-nervous tick stuck since childhood-warmed up her bed covers and crawled in. Waiting for her body to do the rest. It had to give in sometime. Logically she knows this, if she gets worn out enough she's going to sleep, whether she likes it or not.

Her body seems to disagree.

She wrings her covers, and shifts her head to the left, sneaking glances at Parvati's snoring figure, hunched under her blanket.

Every time she closes her eyes, Harry is there.

She doesn't imagine him being tortured, even though she knows for a fact that he was, she doesn't imagine him bloodied and in pain. She imagines him smiling, by her side, not speaking, Harry rarely spoke in real life anyway.

She shifts her head again and stares at the maroon canopy of her bed, it all looks black in the dark.

She misses his smell.

There's nothing overly special about it, not even remotely in comparison with his messy hair and brilliant eyes, or the way his nose prunes when he's disturbed.

But she misses that. She misses her best friend. And that annoying picture of him, smiling at her like that is not helping matters. Not because Hermione doesn't like to see Harry smiling, but rather because it's been so long since she last did.

Harry hadn't really smiled in years. Not really, and it used to break her heart. Him smiling now is somehow worse.

She wonders what he would have said about her and Ron finally getting together.

"I know," she breathes in total darkness and the delicate silence, Lavender groans, "Awful timing,"

Harry should have been the first to know. He might have even been there, but Hermione would have told him all about it anyway, dissected every second of the kiss, every move, every breath. And Harry would have listened, and made it all better.

Then he would have had to hear Ron's side, probably. She expects that it would have been briefer than the account in her head.

"We just kissed, mate. It was amazing," she whispers again, trying a poor imitation of her boyfriend's voice. She feels silly, doing this, but for some reason, exhaustion probably being one of them, she couldn't stop. It made her chest feel lighter.

It all feels better like this, as if Harry is lying down next to her, staring at the canopy she's staring at, but somehow seeing something different. He always saw things that others just didn't. She misses that.

He would ask if it was wet. The kiss.

"I don't know," she muses, running her hand down her covers, "It was my first kiss you know. Kinda wet,"

Gross.

Well, not really. She liked it. She actually loved it. Hermione has no idea how long she's been waiting for Ron to do that. She's glad he did. The world felt so much full of color with Ron.

With Ron and her.

Harry would be rolling his eyes now, saying something like ' took you two long enough,'

"Yeah, it did. Too long,"

Hermione closes her eyes, for full effect. Sure enough, Harry's face is there, not as gaunt or pale, and he's smiling.

"You're such an idiotic genius. That's a thing you know," he says, except that she knows he's not really saying those words. She can't envision it, because she can't remember his voice.

Some friend she is.

Hermione can envision how it sounds, soft and rough and somewhat stubborn. But she can't picture the Harry in her mind speaking with that voice.

"Oh shut up," she replies, smirking. She's missed the banter.

He's everywhere, even more present in her mind than he were when he was with her and Ron. Hermione feels like an ungrateful bitch.

She keeps thinking of it, their last argument, the anxiety and worry surging in her veins, and Harry's pale face, exhausted and absent. She thinks of the things she said to him and her guts churn in shame and guilt.

She should have said it differently, she should have… done something. Maybe the outcome would have been different then.

"I miss you," she says and pretends as if that's what she really meant that night, when they ganged up on him. "I miss you so much,"

A tear slides down her face and onto her pillow. "I saw you were hurting and I… I felt so helpless. I barely saw you, and-" her throat felt too tight but she felt the need to continue. She needed to atone for her words, "And I wanted my best friend back."

Lavender groans again.

"I thought Cedric took you away from us and if… if you just got it out of your system-oh Harry."

She uses her fist to muffle the irresistible urge to let out the scream that's perched under her chin. "I love you, and I want you back," that's what she tries to say, but it all comes out muddled and slurred.

This is unfair. It's like the universe had taken him from her just as she was getting closer to reaching him.

Hermione bolts up, throws her covers aside and rushes out of the dorms, forgoing her slippers in favor of the freezing tiles under her toes. Her initial destination was the bathroom, but somehow she ends running down the stairs with bleary vision, to the common room.

She wishes that she could have gone to the boy's dorms. To Ron.

She pads to the darkened room, illuminated only by the dying hearth, and she half heartedly thinks whether she can break her way into Ron's dorm.

She doesn't need to, Hermione realizes as she gets closer to the fireplace. Ron is right there, sitting on the floor, his back leaned against the edge of the couch and his arms around his knees.

His freckles glow in the orange light and his face is slack with apathy. Hermione slides closer and he finally looks up at her, face still blank.

"Rough night?"

She sinks down next to him, stretches her legs and slumps against Ron's body. His pajama shirt is too thin for this chill. Next time she'll bring her blanket.

"I hate nights," she mumbles into his shoulder, and his head drops on hers, a gentle, comforting weight.

"Me too."

"Do you think he thinks about us the way we think about him?"

Ron takes his time answering, long enough that Hermione actually wonders whether he's fallen asleep. "I can't think about him for more than a second," he admits, and he sounds like it's such a sacrilegious confession.

"Neither can I."

He shifts his head and Hermione can feel his lips, grazing the top of her head. "When we get him back, we're never letting go,"

"If?"

"When," Ron's tone is firm, "That's a promise."