Over the Hills and Far Away, a harry potter fanfic

JK Rowling owns all these characters and is filthy, filthy rich. I own only this particular plot and any characters I may have invented, and I am not any kind of rich. No copyright infringement is intended. -JM

"I live for my dream and a pocketful of gold..."

I have to say, of all the Muggle places we've used to hide so far this summer, this has gotta be one of the best. I mean, it's really posh. It doesn't look like all that much from the outside: just a smallish, ranch-style place. But once we got inside, it was obvious these people, whoever they are, have a fair bit of cash. All the furniture looks new, for one thing, like no one's ever sat on the couches or laid a drink on any of the tables or, God forbid, spilled anything. Everything shines.

All the 'new'ness didn't seem to faze the other two, though. Hermione just spun around as soon as we were all inside and sealed the door behind us, and then jerked back one of the curtains and squinted out at the street, biting at her lip and clutching her wand so tightly I thought it might snap in half.

Harry saw her, too. "Don't worry," he mumbled. "No one followed us." He dropped his rucksack in the middle of the front hallway; his wand was stuffed into one of the outside pockets, along with a couple of road maps, and he made no move to pick it up.

That was good enough for me; I don't ask, any more, how Harry knows things. But if he's not worried about Death Eaters finding us and breaking down the front door, then I'm not worried. We'd apparated into a wood about a half mile away from this house, and I didn't think we'd passed anyone on the dark streets on our way here. I'd walked out front and Hermione brought up the rear, with Harry between us, as usual, and we didn't see a single person. You wouldn't expect to, out here in the suburbs, at midnight on a Wednesday.

I still get nervous with Hermione walking behind both of us like that, especially as we mostly travel at night and sometimes have to split up a fair distance away from one another. She tut-tuts at me whenever I mention it, and says, "We're all in equal danger, Ronald." I still worry.

My eye caught a crystal vase on one of the front tables; even in the midnight darkness (we hadn't turned on any lights, just out of habit) it gleamed and shone in the watery light from the street lamps outside. I reached out a grubby finger and touched it along one delicate edge. It was cold.

I looked up and caught Hermione watching me; I can always tell when she's watching me, because I get, like, this tickling feeling on the sides of my neck. I can't explain it, really. She was looking at me and biting at her lips again; she does that a lot lately. Bite her lips, I mean, not look at me. (Yeah, I wish.) I couldn't tell what her face was doing and her eyes were all shadowy, and when I looked up she looked away, quickly. She lit her wand-tip and shone the beam of light around the hallway, playing it off of gleaming floors, bunches of dried flowers, picture frames, a mirror with a gilt edge.

"Nice digs," I muttered.

"Yeah," said Harry, wandering over to a doorway and surveying the next room.

"Who are these people, anyway?" I asked.

"Dunno," Harry said. "All I know is, they're on holiday in Majorca until next week."

"How do we know that?"

"Slughorn."

Hermione just bit her lip and frowned. You could see her now, in the light from her wand. Her hair was drawn back in a loose knot at the back of her head, but lots of curly strands were escaping the knot and twining around her face, sticking to her sweaty, grimy neck in the heat. We were all pretty grimy. Her face was thin and hollow and there were dark patches under her eyes. Harry and I look the same, I know, but for some reason, seeing her scared and exhausted like that gives me a sharp stabbing feeling, right through my gut. Every time.

"Right," she said, softly, and tucked a stray curl behind her ear. She moved forward a few steps and let her bag fall from her shoulder. "Where's the bathroom?" She wandered farther down the dark hallway, dragging her rucksack behind her on the floor.

"Why is that always the first thing she says?" I asked, going over to join Harry in his doorway.

Harry grinned, a tight little smile that only reached the corners of his mouth and didn't touch his eyes. "She's a girl, mate. Gotta make allowances for that." He moved into the next room and I followed him, dropping my bag in the hallway next to his.

It seemed to be a small den, this room, from what I could see by the street lamps shining in the windows; there were bookcases lining the walls, and one cabinet in the far corner was crammed with all kinds of Muggle gadgets. They love knobs and buttons, Muggles. Harry pulled all the curtains closed, wandered into the hallway to get his wand, and walked around the room in the dark once more, muttering charms--Imperturbable charms, I'd guess--at all the windows. Finally satisfied that no light or sound would reach the outside from this room, he reached up under a shade and turned on a light.

"Gah," I said, and clutched at my eyes. They hurt, electric lights, just at first. They're harsh on your eyes, if you're not used to them.

"Sorry," said Harry.

"Yeah, warn me next time you're gonna turn on a...what's it called."

"A lamp, Ron. It's a lamp."

"Yeah, I know. But..." I shrugged. I was too tired. I shuffled over to a cushy-looking armchair and collapsed into it. It was a leather chair and it squeaked as I sat down. Like everything else in this house, it looked and smelled brand new; like Fred and George's dragon-hide coats. Nothing in my family's house is that new.

"They like Led Zeppelin, these people." Harry had wandered over to the cabinet with the Muggle gadgets, and was leafing through a collection of records. I recognized them because my dad has a couple. Not that he knows what to do with them, mind you. But he has them.

"Good for them." Somewhere down the hall, a toilet flushed, and then, a few seconds later, we heard the gentle whoosh of a shower coming on, and the scraping aside of a shower curtain. My insides stabbed at me again. Hermione had been so quiet, lately. It's hard to know what she's thinking, now...things seemed so much easier between the two of us at the end of last term, but with the way we've been living this summer...well, let's just say our timing wasn't the best. Not if our goal was any kind of relationship. Our love lives haven't been the main topic of discussion, these past few weeks.

I leaned my head back against the chair and covered my face with my hands. I do that a lot. It's like an ostrich, isn't it: if I can't see them, they can't see me. Pathetic, but it's all I've got.

We maintained silence for a while, Harry pulling out records and examining the covers, me finally letting my hands drop and looking wearily around the room. Everything is so...I don't know. So still, in a Muggle house. The pictures don't move, for one thing; it might seem like a small thing, but it's actually kind of spooky, the way the people just stand there, frozen. And nothing else moves, either. In our house there's always something moving, even if it's just the hands of Mum's clock, or the dishes washing themselves, or something.

We sat in silence for a while and listened to the whoosh of the shower down the hall; once in a while a car drove by outside, but otherwise it was quiet. Harry put one of the records on. I really wasn't in the mood for anything loud, but I was too tired to tell him so, and besides, what he put on wasn't bad. Loud, but tuneful. Good guitar.

"Oi," I said. "What's this?"

"Led Zeppelin. Houses of the Holy. Side B," he said.

"Never heard of them."

He handed me the album cover: a bunch of naked girls, climbing rocks. I raised an eyebrow at him.

Harry shrugged. "Dean used to have a lot of their stuff, remember?"

The shower stopped, and we listened as the curtain was scraped back again. A few minutes later, we heard Hermione in the hall, dropping her bag next to both of ours. She wandered into the den, wearing fresh shorts and an old white tee shirt, still rubbing at her hair with a towel.

She stood just inside the doorway a minute, her hands holding the towel on her head, kind of staring across the room. I watched her and my stomach turned over, lazily, like it does a lot, around her. I used to think it was because she annoyed me. Hah. Now that she'd washed all the grime off, it was even more obvious what kind of a week we'd had: she had an angry bruise just underneath one side of her jaw, blooming yellow and blue. Scratches ran up and down her arms, and her knuckles were bloodied and broken. There was a hastily-repaired gash running down one of her shins; I had one like it in my side, and Harry had several down his back. (I hate werewolves.)

She looked so tired: her body just kind of sagged. I ached, watching her. Sometimes looking at her makes me feel like I've been poisoned again, like something huge and painful is clawing its way up my gut.

She looked at me and I looked away, quickly. Stupid. She sighed and draped the towel across the back of a chair, wrinkling her nose and frowning toward Harry and the record player. "What are you listening to?"

I handed her the album cover; she frowned at it, then raised an eyebrow at me. I shrugged. "Don't ask me. Harry's your DJ."

She wandered over to him, frowning down at the album cover. "Is this the one with 'Over the Hills and Far Away?'" she asked. Apparently, she knew this group too.

"Ummmm..." Harry grabbed the album cover back from her. "Yeah. It is."

"Good. I like that one."

"It'll come up in a bit. It's on Side A."

She wandered over to the bookcases, and I couldn't help but smile a little, behind her back. She does this in every bloody house. She always finds the books, eventually, even in the sketchy dives where you'd think the most interesting reading would be a back issue of 'Maxim' in the bathroom. (Highly underrated Muggle publication, in my opinion.) She ran the tips of her fingers over some of the book covers. After a few minutes, she stopped, leaned forward a little, and squinted at one of the titles on a particularly old, crusty-looking book.

"Wow," she breathed, pulling the book off the shelf and reverently opening the front cover.

"What'd you find?" Harry said.

"A first edition Dickens. 'David Copperfield.'" She smiled up at him, her still-damp face shining like she'd just found treasure. I suppose, to her, she had. Harry just shook his head at her and turned back to the records. I watched her as she leafed gently through the ancient book, and I couldn't keep from smiling.

She finally gave a huge yawn, put the book back on the shelf and settled herself into an armchair opposite mine, curling her legs underneath her and wrapping her arms around herself. Her hair was dangling, damp, around her shoulders. She laid her head on the chair's arm and closed her eyes.

My insides stabbed me, again. I had to take a sharp breath. "You want the shower next?" I asked Harry.

"No, I'm all right for now." He'd settled himself in front of the record player and was fiddling with some of the knobs on the Muggle contraptions nearby. His voice was kind of flat and hollow, an I-don't-want-to-be-disturbed kind of voice. "You go on."

So I hauled myself up from the chair and started riffling through my bag for clean clothes. There weren't many. I ended up carrying the whole bag to the bathroom with me and dumping it, just to find something decent to wear. It smelled like her, in the bathroom: that tangy perfume--the stuff I got her for Christmas a year or more ago--and something else underneath that, something earthy. Something that's only her. Harry asked me, last year, what Slughorn's Amortentia had smelled like to me. I made something up, to tell him. But the truth is, it smelled just like her: earthy and tangy.

The hot water felt great. Really great. You get to missing indoor plumbing, when you spend most of your time crawling around the countryside, sleeping under an invisibility cloak, hunting for pieces of Voldemort's soul and being chased down by every dark creature in the country. I never minded camping before, but this is different.

I don't want to be thinking about her all the time, not when we're in such trouble, not when we're hurt and on the run, but it's hard to think of anything else. Especially now, when I'm around her all the time. When she walks into rooms in Muggle houses with her hair wet and her damp skin still glowing, and snuggles herself into a chair, and she looks so tired. She sleeps like that too: all curled up into a ball, like a cat. I never knew that, until this summer. She draws her knees up to her chest, curls one arm around them, and tucks the other arm underneath her head. She's very still, when she sleeps. Or maybe, like me, she doesn't sleep. Maybe, like me, she's too scared.

I shook myself, and shut off the water.

I pulled on some clean jeans and an old, holey shirt, kind of swiping halfheartedly at my hair. The steam followed me into the hallway when I opened the door, and the first thing I heard was the music. "The song remains the same..." wailed the singer.

The record player in the den had been turned up louder, the bass rattling the floorboards even out in the hall, but above it I could hear her laughing. That stopped me. I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard her laugh, or seen her smile, or look anything but very, very worried.

I stuck my head around the doorway. Harry and Hermione were dancing; he had her clasped close and was whirling her around and around the polished wood floor. He wore a playful grin--something I hadn't seen him do in quite a while, either. Her head was thrown back, her mouth open in a happy shriek, droplets of water from her hair spritzing the floor.

"Watch out, now," Harry said.

"Har-ry!" she shouted. She was trying to sound annoyed at him, but her wide grin gave her away.

My insides roiled. I kind of collapsed against the doorway, watching them. Harry spun her around once more and then the song ended and they broke apart; Hermione collapsed into an armchair, giggling in a slightly hysterical way. "Oh, I'm going to be sick," she said weakly. Another song was coming on; it was gentle and slow.

Harry laughed, turned to the door and caught my eye. He glanced from me to Hermione and back to me again, quickly, his smile fading a bit. I rolled my eyes at him.

"Hey mate," he said. "Cut in for me, will you? I've gotta shower; I smell like dung." He brushed past me, grabbed his bag and disappeared down the hallway.

I stood, leaning against the doorway, listening to the music for a few minutes. Hermione was still slouching in the armchair, her head resting on her hand. She was squinting at the wall again, maybe looking at one of the paintings, maybe just staring off into space. Finally, I cleared my throat. "You guys look like you were having a good time."

"Hmmm," she said. She wasn't looking at me.

When I get nervous and edgy, I say rather stupid things. "Nice place, huh?" I said. Stupid.

She glanced over at me then, her eyes glassy, and shrugged, kind of curling her mouth up and looking around at the polished floors, the leather couches, the old books and the paintings and the vases at every window. "I don't know," she said. "It's too...new, you know?"

I smiled. "Seems okay, to me. Nothing at my place is new."

"I like your place, though. It's comfortable, and warm. There's nothing warm about this house."

I thought about the beautiful, cold crystal vase in the front hallway, and slowly nodded.

We listened to the gentle song for another few minutes. Then I asked another question, before she could drift a million miles away from me again: "D'you think it'd be safe to send an owl tomorrow?" I really did want to contact Mum. I knew she'd be going nuts, not having heard from us all this time. And I was worried about Ginny; I know Harry was, too. But I asked the question to keep Hermione with me for another minute.

She shook her head. "No chance. That'd be a dead giveaway that we're here, having owls fly in and out of the place. The idea is, not to attract attention." Her eyes were fixed on the wall again. She was drifting away; soon she'd be curled up and asleep, or pretending to sleep, in the chair.

But then a third song came on the record player, a more upbeat one with acoustic guitar. Hermione looked up, then sat up a little straighter. Then, she popped up out of her chair. She glanced over to me and hesitated for just the barest of seconds, long enough for my guts to do another somersault. Her eyes were so sunken, her face so drawn. "Oh, this is my song! Dance with me?" she said. Then she kind of half-smiled and held out her hands to me. "Come on, I've gotta dance. I love this song. I haven't heard it in forever. And who knows when..."

At that point, it would have been impossible to refuse her, even if I'd wanted to. My legs kind of walked themselves over to her, which was lucky because I don't think they were really under the command of my brain, any more. My hands sure weren't under any kind of command; I didn't know what to do with them, and kind of shrugged at her. We'd never danced together, before, and this seemed like a bizarre time to start.

Still wearing that half-smile, she took my hands; her touch was warm. She placed my right hand at her waist. I gulped. She took my other hand and held it, rather firmly, out to the side. She was really, really close to me. All of my senses were full of her warmth, and her smell, and her eyes looking up at me.

"There," she said.

"Okay," I said.

The music boomed around us. We both started to move at the same time; she moved her right foot and I moved my left foot, and somehow my foot came down on top of hers.

"Ouch," she said, and let go my hand.

"Oh God, sorry."

"No, it's okay."

I let my arms fall to the sides again. "Sorry. I'm rubbish at dancing. I'm out of practice. Harry's probably better..."

"No, it's not that. We're all out of practice." She stared at the floor. Her face was very red. She bit her lips again, and kind of looked up at me and then down again. "I just...wasn't this nervous, dancing with him."

There was a second there, or maybe two, when it really did feel like I'd been poisoned again; I couldn't catch my breath, and my heart didn't seem to be beating at all.

Out of that numbness, I felt her gentle touch on my hands again. I looked up.

"Try again?" she said.

I opened my mouth but nothing came out, so I just nodded.

We held each other more gently this time, as if something might break if we held too tight. It worked okay. I let her lead, and we seemed to get on all right. The song had a good beat, as they say, and you could dance to it.

"What's this one called?" I asked.

" 'Over the Hills and Far Away,'" she said. Her voice was very small. She let out a one-note laugh, more like a bark; it didn't sound like her, at all. "Appropriate title, for our present situation." She cast a look at the record player, and I studied her face. Yes, she was thin, and pale, and had a few vertical creases between her eyebrows that I was sure hadn't been there, a few months before. But, she was still beautiful. Not like anyone else I've ever known.

She gave a little sigh as her song ended; I felt her ribs expand and contract under my hand, and I couldn't help but shiver a little. "Thanks for that," she said. She looked back up at me, but didn't let me go. I didn't let go either. We weren't moving, any more. "My dad had this record."

"What?" I said. Stupidly.

"This record. My dad. He taught me to dance, you know."

"He did a really god job." Stupid, stupid.

"I used to stand on his feet, and he'd dance with me." There were tears in her eyes.

I've never known what to do with tears, from girls. So, I said the stupidest thing yet. "You can stand on my feet, if you want."

She looked right at me, her eyes wide, as though properly seeing me for the first time that night. Just for a second, she gave me the old Hermione-look, the one she used to give me when I'd said something particularly obnoxious. Then, she burst into laughter, just a peal of giggles which sounded more like Hermione than that sad, one-note bark. She closed her eyes and let one tear escape, just one, down her cheek. She still didn't let me go. I felt like such a tosser, at that moment. Finally when she got her breath back, she said, "No, that's really all right. I don't want to crush you."

"Give you a chance for revenge. You know, for me stepping on your foot earlier. And for, you know, other things." We were still holding each other, even though the record was over, the needle now scratching over and over at the smooth patch in the middle. "Besides, you wouldn't crush me. You're not that heavy."

She half-smiled at me again, and we didn't say anything for a minute.

Then, "The record's over," she said.

"Yup."

We still didn't let go.

"It's my birthday next week."

"Yeah, I know," I said. I'd actually been wondering whether she'd remember, herself.

"Remember my birthday last year? We all snuck out to Hogsmeade and..."

"Yeah, I remember."

"That was before..." She stopped there. We both filled in the blank, in our own minds. Last September: that was 'before' a lot of things. I felt myself going red, thinking of just some of them.

She gave a loud sniff. "I was going to be Head Girl this year, you know."

"Were you."

"Yeah. McGonagall told me." She gave a little shiver. "I didn't want to mention it to Harry, but." She started trembling. "Oh, Ron, I'm so damn scared."

One second we were standing there, and the next second she was in my arms, crying softly into my ratty shirt. I wasn't even sure how it had happened, but suddenly my hands were in her hair (a fresh smell, like hay), and I was kissing her forehead and her skin was salty and sweet. "I know," I said. My voice was muffled; my lips brushed her skin as I talked and I had gotten one of her hairs in my mouth. "Me too."

"I don't know what's going to happen. I don't even know if we'll survive." Her voice was so small; she sounded far away.

"I know," I said again. I had to close my eyes; if I didn't, I'd explode. That's what it felt like.

The needle scratched, scratched at the smooth patch of the record. We didn't move. Her warmth and her smell of clean hay and earth filled me up, and it didn't seem fair, or right, that I should be so happy and so sad, all at once. I never felt so much, all at once, before I knew her.

We fell apart, finally. She gave a hearty sniff and wandered over in the direction of the record player, wiping at her eyes with the backs of her hands. The scratching of the needle stopped. I could hear her riffling through the other records.

I couldn't move at first. I couldn't breathe. It's like being poisoned again, I tell you, this falling-in-love business. Finally I was able to walk over to the bookcase; I found myself taking down the Dickens she'd been looking at earlier. 'David Copperfield.' Never read it, myself, but then, I've never read anything much. As she will be the first to tell you. I settled into her armchair (the back of it still damp, from her hair) and leafed through the crumbling pages. It was so old, and so delicate, with flakes coming off onto my fingertips and the binding fragile and cracking; I didn't really feel like I ought to be touching it. But, there I was, touching it, whether I deserved to be or not.

A shadow fell across the page. I looked up at her; her face was red and puffy from the tears. She reached out and brushed at the dusty pages with her still-trembling fingertips.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" she whispered.

"Yeah."