2. Deep in the Woods at Dusk

"Remember," Hermione called across the clearing, "don't eat anything until we've had a chance to double check it in the book!"

They were camping in a forest in Cumbria. Having hit a dead end in searching for Horcruxes, Hermione had taken to some of her Muggle history books, cross-referencing important dates and places with A History of Magic. After travelling into town with Harry and Hermione crammed under the invisibility cloak and Ron disguised by magic, they'd found what they had thought had been a lead to be a dead end, but had decided to wait out the night before relocating.

"Hermione," Ron whined, stepping over some of the snow-covered underbrush a short ways away from where Harry was inspecting a wilted-looking fern of some sort. Hermione was a good distance ahead of them, brushing snow away from plants with mittened hands, but she turned at Ron's voice.

"What, Ronald?" she snapped, standing to her full height and squinting towards them. The ground was blanketed in a good amount of snow, hitting just below Harry's shins as he trudged through, and it was still coming down in flurries. Patches of white had started forming in Hermione's hair. Harry removed his glasses and wiped them with the back of his glove.

Ron seemed to notice his own tone and blanched. Harry saw his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed thickly. "Nothing—just, d'you think we'll even find anything worth double checking around here? Not that I think you're wrong," he added quickly, "I just—y'know—I dunno much of anything about plants, is all."

It was uncharacteristically cold, even for February, and a bout of bad weather had seemingly descended upon England and refused to let up. Harry had recently gotten over a bit of a cold that Hermione seemed to have picked up. Ron, thankfully, remained blissfully asymptomatic, though Harry suspected that Ron could be on his deathbed and wouldn't utter a single complaint with Hermione around. Not anymore, at least.

Hermione sighed heavily and leant back against a massive oak tree, wiping her nose with the back of her glove and sniffing once, hard. "Oh, I hope so," she lamented. Red splotches had started to form on her cheeks and nose. "I know I haven't been able to find much of anything, but I swear I'm trying—"

"Oi! This looks edible!" Ron shouted, gesturing to a plant that looked quite spritely for a snowy February deep in woods. Ron gathered a handful of the small, black balls into his hand, inspecting them. "Berries, I'd wager. Or grapes."

"Grapes, Ron? In England? In February?" Hermione's voice was more entertained than annoyed, Harry thought, but this, of course, went undetected by Ron.

"Blimey, Hermione, did I not just say I haven't got a clue—"

"But grapes?"

"Wonder if that's a magical plant?" Harry asked abruptly, trying to stop the bickering before it had a chance to gain momentum. "Looks healthy for the middle of the winter, don't you think?"

"Looks delicious, is what it looks," Ron mumbled.

Hermione evidently hadn't heard their exchange from her distance away. "Oh—these look like brick caps, how lucky." She bent at the waist and surveyed some rather homely looking mushrooms protected under a stony ledge. "Better not, though," she sighed. "They might be sulfur tufts—I'd hate to accidentally poison all of us—"

Harry could almost see her brain kick to life as she snapped to a standing position, alarm etched on her face.

"Ron—NO!"

Everything seemed to happen very quickly—Hermione was racing across the clearing, panic emanating from her tiny body—Harry turned to Ron, who had frozen with one of the larger berries centimeters from his mouth—

"Spit it out, spit it out!" cried Hermione, stumbling in her attempt to get to them as quickly as possible.

"I didn't eat it!" Ron exclaimed. He dropped the berries and his wand in surprise. "Honest! Look—" Ron opened his mouth comically wide, and Harry saw no trace of the black berries.

But Hermione was still rushing towards them, face sheet-white, hair billowing behind her. "That's deadly nightshade! It's—"

But what it was, Harry was not sure, because at that moment Hermione lost her footing, appearing to slide across the ground, and it took a moment for him to register what was happening—

Crack!

The sound ripped through the air like a shotgun blast, and there was a high squeal and then the dreadful sound of somebody plunging into the water.

"Hermione!"

They were both moving instantaneously. Though Harry had been closer, it was Ron who reached the break in the ice first, using his gloved hands to frantically shove away the snow that had hidden the pool from sight. The hole was impossibly small, but Harry could see the edges of the ice starting to fracture.

"Ron, careful—"

"She'll drown down there, Harry!" cried Ron. His voice was several octaves higher than usual, and his pupils had dilated so far they almost obscured the fair blue of his irises.

"We're no help to her if we fall in, too!" Harry's brain was working in overdrive, trying to formulate a plan. "My wand!" he said suddenly, reaching toward his back pocket, "My—"

But it was not there—his eyes raked over the snow and there it was, where he'd been standing, it must've fallen out of his pocket—

He started to stand up—if they just had a wand, this would be an easy fix—but the ice made a treacherous creaking sound. Harry sank back to his knees to find that Ron had removed his gloves and started shoving his hands as far as he could into the frigid water, reaching wildly for Hermione and breaking off pieces of ice around the edges of the hole in an attempt to make it bigger.

"Sod it," Ron growled, and flung himself into the pool.

There was a terrifying moment of utter peace and silence in which Harry's horrified mind entertained the thought of what would I possibly do without them?, but before he could fully collapse in on himself, before he could consider the idea of fetching his wand again, Ron's head and torso emerged from the water, one long arm wrapped all the way around Hermione's chest, the other waving wildly in an attempt to tread water.

"Over here!" cried Harry, extending an arm and inching backward on the ice as far as he could.

"I've got her," Ron huffed, almost more to himself than to Harry. He was pallid, pupils still blown wide, teeth chattering and limbs quivering. He pulled himself toward the edge of the crack in the ice and stopped treading water. Hermione's slight figure was crushed against him. "I've got her—I can stand here, I—I've got her—"

"Hand her here!"

Ron lifted Hermione as best he could and placed her on the ice. Harry grabbed her hand—it was freezing and horrifyingly limp—and tugged her towards him, mystified by how light she was. Once they were close enough to the bank, Harry rose to his feet with an arm around her waist, dragging her back toward the base of a fir tree and settling by her head.

Harry was shaking so badly that he couldn't catch his breath. Hermione was ashen, mouth slightly open, eyes shut—was she breathing?

"No," Harry muttered, giving her shoulder a shake—it certainly didn't look like she was, but he couldn't be sure—not with how badly he was trembling. "No—come on, Hermione—"

A moment later, there was another bone-chilling crack, and Harry ripped his attention from Hermione to watch as Ron heaved himself from the pond, scrambling on hands and knees away from the broken edges of ice. He had just barely made it to the shore when the glassy surface split into fragments.

"I need a wand!" Harry yelled, but Ron had already closed the distance between them.

"Hermione," he said, falling to his knees beside Harry. "Hermione—wake up, Hermione—" He said her name like it was a prayer, one giant hand cupping her cheek delicately. "Harry—why isn't she—"

Harry retrieved his wand and sprinted back to the pair, pointing his wand directly at Hermione and shouting, "Rennervate!"

Ron had taken her into his arms and was smacking her back with one powerful hand. The sound echoed through the clearing and Harry felt his blood turn to ice—she couldn't, there was absolutely no way; she couldn't—

"Hermione?"

There was a spluttering noise and then an agonal gasp—two of the most beautiful sounds Harry had ever heard—and then Ron was crushing Hermione to his chest, muffled sort of choking noises tearing from him and spilling into the air. "Thank God," he was repeating in a voice Harry had never heard from him before.

Harry fell to Hermione's side, gently pulling her from Ron and wrapping an arm around her. He patted her back as she continued to retch into the snow. Her breaths came in wheezes.

Ron looked absolutely shell shocked, leaning backward and cupping a hand over his eyes. His jaw was so tight that Harry thought he might break his back teeth.

A shiver tore through Hermione like a convulsion. "We need to get you inside," Harry said. Then to Ron, "Both of you."

Wordlessly, Ron gathered Hermione into his arms, rose to his feet, and started marching toward where they'd set up the tent.

"Ron," Hermione croaked.

"I've got you."

"No—" A shiver cut her off. Harry thought he just might've seen a ghost of a smile on her lips. "Don't—don't eat the berries."

Once inside the tent, Ron and Harry worked wordlessly.

Harry took to gathering all of the extra blankets they had lying around the tent and cast a powerful warming charm over them. After depositing them at the base of Ron's bunk, he busied himself in the kitchen preparing a kettleful of the hottest tea he could manage.

In his periphery, he watched as Ron settled Hermione on his bunk and cast a drying charm over her, and then a second one for good measure. One of his hands rose to her cheek to pull her hair from her face. Hermione was either too tired or too cold to comment—her eyes were closed and her arms were wrapped tightly around her torso in what appeared to be an attempt to stop herself from shivering.

"Harry's making some tea," Ron said, voice softer than velvet. He was perched at the edge of her bunk. "You need to warm up."

Hermione pushed a hand behind her to sit up and Ron surged forward, one hand at her back and the other guiding her shoulder forward. "Let me help you," he said.

"I'm more than ca—capable—"

"Of course you are," Ron said sincerely. He seemed to have reigned in his emotions, but Harry could still see the concern weighing heavily in each tensed muscle of his body. "But you just went swimming in February because I was too much of a git to wait and find out if what I was eating was poison. So I reckon I owe you."

Harry smiled.

Delicately, Ron helped Hermione into a sitting position, reaching for a maroon mound of fabric at the edge of his bed. "In you go, then," he said, and began to pull the jumper over her head.

He asked her if she was alright a total of seventeen times in under ninety seconds, by Harry's count.

Harry summoned the cup of tea he'd prepared and turned back toward the bed. He was distracted, momentarily, by the look on Ron's face as he (quite indiscreetly) took in Hermione's form huddled in just jumper beneath his quilt.

Harry cleared his throat as subtly as he could and Ron's ears immediately turned bright red as he recognized what he'd been doing. "Uh, cheers," he said, and accepted the cup from Harry.

Though he knew it was a moment in which he did not really fit, Harry leant against the table in the kitchen, studying the way Ron helped Hermione settle the cup in her hands and take a sip. "Easy, there," he said softly when Hermione started coughing.

It was a side of Ron that he saw rarely, if ever, but a side that had certainly become more prominent after the breakup with Lavender. Harry knew that Ron was a fierce protector and loyal friend to both him and Hermione—this had been clear from the moment Ron had sacrificed himself in a living game of wizard's chess—but Ron's tenderness with Hermione was newfound and touching, and something Harry still found hard to believe, despite bearing witness to it firsthand.

He knew for a fact that there was no chapter on this in Twelve Failsafe Ways.

"Oh, I'm so sorry," Hermione croaked, taking her free hand and covering her eyes with it. Her hair was frizzy and wild, no doubt a result of Ron's multiple drying charms. "I saw you with those berries, Ron, and I just panicked, and I didn't know the ice—"

"Blimey, how would you have known?" said Ron. "Give yourself a break, will you? You nearly drowned!" She started to cough violently again and he rubbed her back, casting a nervous glance toward where Harry stood in the kitchen. "Harry, we need to get her to a Healer, she—"

"Absolutely not!" Hermione cried through another coughing fit. Her eyebrows were furrowed, as they often did when she was frustrated. "I am fine," she insisted. Another shiver tore through her. "A bit cold, and water-logged, but I am fine."

Ron's eyes were begging as they met Harry's again and then turned back to Hermione. "Hermione," he said seriously. His free hand found one of hers. "You haven't eaten properly in months, we've been freezing our arses off night after night, you can't weigh more than—"

"Oh, so that's it, is it? I'm too weak to manage a bit of ice water?"

An agitated sound ripped from Ron's chest as he got off the bed and paced for a moment, raking his hands through his still-wet hair. Hermione huddled herself a little bit further under the blankets, but still looked irate. Harry took a tentative step toward them, knowing Ron's temper could betray the good intentions he no doubt had.

"Fucking hell, Hermione!" he roared, his footfalls heavy in the silence. "You weren't breathing when we pulled you out! There's got to be—I dunno—water in your lungs, and that can't be good, and if you get even sicker we won't be able to—"

"Ron," Harry said gently, placing a gentle hand on Ron's shoulder. He took it as a good sign that Ron stopped pacing and did not throw it off. "Mate, she looks okay—"

Hermione's anger was gone, her voice soft and small from Ron's bunk. "Honest, Ronald—I feel fine, I think I got everything up—"

A wet cough rumbled through her chest and she grimaced, holding a hand to her chest.

"We can try to get some Pepper-Up Potion next time we're near a wizarding village," said Harry. "We'll leave in the morning and that's the next place we'll go."

Ron's face was still set tight, his lips in a thin line, and he sat on the edge of the bunk again, facing Hermione. His hands—pale, scarred, freckled—found Hermione's shoulders, slid up her neck, landed on her cheeks—his thumbs traced the space just below her eyes, dark with bags—and Hermione shivered. Harry couldn't imagine that Ron's hands were very warm, but wagered that the shiver was one of a different origin.

From his spot just behind the two of them, Harry could see Ron's pale blue eyes absolutely drilling into Hermione. Harry once again realized that this was a place in which he didn't belong—the way Ron was holding Hermione in his gaze was oddly intimate. Loving. He willed himself invisible.

"I'm not losing you again," Ron said, tracing a thumb over Hermione's blue-tinted lips. "Do you hear me? Not ever again."

With that, he was on his feet again, one hand to his face with fingers pressing on his temples as he stalked out the front flap and into the frozen winter night beyond it.

Harry slinked back toward his own bunk, watching as Hermione raised a trembling hand to her lips, tracing where Ron's cold fingers had just vacated.

A/N: I wrote this quite a while ago but have been sitting on it, thinking I needed to change it, thinking I could improve it, before finally deciding that this was how it came out and this is how it's going to stay. So here you are!