A/N: This wasn't even a moment I'd planned on writing or even considered; it just sort of came to me as an idea and started writing itself late last night and wouldn't stop. I hope you enjoy.

Also, these are, quite obviously, not going to go in order - I've got several more to write yet.

I also wrote a large part of this on my phone, which has the awful glitch where it's replacing the letter "I" with weird symbols; I took the chapter back down and tried to fix this as I noticed it after posting. I think I've fixed it - it's not showing up on my doc here, but will show up on my phone. If it's an issue, let me know in the reviews!

3. In The Boys' Dormitory, Mid-Morning

Harry woke up to a gentle stream of light through the curtains of his four-poster. For a moment, he was completely disoriented—he was supposed to be in a tent, he was supposed to be freezing, he was supposed to be starving—but just as he shot into a seated position, noisily grabbing his wand from the bedside table, memories of the last twenty-four hours began to flood his senses. Every muscle of his body ached impossibly; despite the long shower he'd taken, every part of him reeked of smoke and soot and chill; the room was so impossibly quiet that he wondered if he was alone.

With a low groan, he turned to look to his right—and nearly hexed Ron in surprise.

His redheaded best mate was cross-legged between their beds, a finger to his lips—the universal shhh—as he peered urgently at Harry. Harry froze, unsure if there was a threat, and gripped his newly repaired holly wand a bit more tightly in his hand.

"Relax, mate," whispered Ron, who looked more worse for the wear than Harry had ever seen him. His normally mischievous blue eyes were dull in the orange glow of what Harry assumed must be mid-morning; his scars from the Department of Mysteries were nearly invisible beneath cuts, scrapes, burns and bruises from the days previous. "I just don't want to wake her."

Harry opened his mouth to ask which her he happened to be referring to, as they were in the boys' dormitory, of course, when there was a bit of movement on Ron's bunk that revealed a wild mass of brunette curls beneath the deep red bedsheets. A further movement revealed a bare back beneath those curls, littered with wounds and bruises of its own, right down to just above the base of the spine, where the sheets pooled and hid the rest of the body.

Perhaps more disconcerting than the fact that the skin was so marred, or the fact that said skin belonged to Hermione, who appeared to be naked in Ron's Hogwarts bed, was the horrifying number of vertebrae, ribs, and other bones that were so clearly visible beneath the injuries.

About a million questions zoomed through Harry's groggy mind, but Ron must've read his expression and offered an exasperated glance. "She said she couldn't sleep, that she had a nightmare. I could tell she'd been crying pretty hard," he said somberly. He held her in his gaze like she was a precious gem. "She came up here after she showered and was out as soon as she hit the pillow." He swallowed what appeared to be a lump in his throat and didn't meet Harry's gaze as the tips of his ears burned red. "In her towel," he added.

The past couple of years had marked a change in Ron and Hermione's friendship, Harry knew. He'd been there for all of it—the ups and the downs, the jealousy and the fondness—but the catalyst for all of it, he knew, had been Ron's maturation. Perhaps he'd been a bit early in his predictions, but Harry had his suspicions that Ron had fancied Hermione since the early days of third year.

It seemed to be a bit of an alarming progression, though, that Hermione had slept next to Ron in his twin-sized four-poster in nothing more than a towel mere hours after the end of a war and, as far as Harry knew, their first kiss.

Harry opened his mouth to voice this but was silenced by the turn of Ron's head as he seemed to forcefully rip his eyes from Hermione. Concern, exhaustion, and a touch of something else that Harry couldn't quite identify sat heavily on his features.

"I panicked," Ron said, a tremble in his voice. "Once she was asleep, I moved down here. I mean—blimey—she was—and I—I couldn't—"

He looked to Harry helplessly. Harry smiled sadly and adjusted his position, so he was sitting sideways on his bed. "You know, Ron, I don't think you're nearly as slick as you imagine you are."

A bit of redness spread from Ron's ears to his cheeks and neck, but he cocked his head to the side in either true or mock confusion, Harry couldn't tell. "Not sure I follow you."

"I could tell you were mad for her back in third year."

Ron raised a hand over his shoulder to scratch his back, looking to Harry sheepishly. "Second, actually."

What must've been a dopey grin broke out across Harry's face. "Second year?"

"Reckon I realized it when she was petrified."

Harry snorted.

"What?"

"Seems like the only way you two can ever get a move on—or stop rowing—is one of you nearly dying."

"Well, you know what they say. Near-death experiences make the heart grow fonder," Ron said bitterly.

Hermione groaned in her sleep and curled a bit more forward into Ron's pillow, inhaling deeply as she did. As her back arched, each individual vertebra seemed to become more pronounced against the battered skin of her back. Harry felt a wave of nausea roll over him as Ron sucked in a shuddery breath.

"How did we not notice?" Ron asked in a broken voice.

Harry considered asking what they hadn't noticed, but it was obvious, and they both knew it: Hermione was severely malnourished. The three of them had lost significant weight throughout the year on the run—between scouring for meals, battling illnesses, and logging countless steps, it was lucky any of them had even made it out alive of the winter alone—but Hermione was absolutely skeletal, even compared to Harry's chronically underfed frame and Ron's lanky, too-tall-for-his-own-good one.

"Well, she's always been small," Harry pointed out. He knew he was grasping at straws here, searching for some sort of small comfort that might silence his own concern and what he assumed was a full-blown panic on Ron's part.

"Harry," Ron said emphatically, gesturing to her bare back again with a terrorized look and confirming Harry's assumptions. Harry sighed and nodded once, removing his glasses and rubbing a hand over his face.

When he put his glasses back on, Hermione was covered by the quilt again, and Ron was settling back onto the floor, eyes fixed on the rug beneath him. His body language indicated defeat. Harry was too tired to try to make him feel better—it had been a long day, a long year, a long seven years.

"She gave me her sodding mushrooms," Ron said in a voice that Harry recognized as one that was often accompanied by tears. "All I did was complain about being hungry, and complain that we had nothing to eat. And she gave me her sodding mushrooms to shut me up. And now look at her."

He sniffed loudly and his shoulders started to shake. Harry waited a moment before rising from his bed and sitting down next to him, clapping a hand over Ron's shoulder and leaving it there in what he hoped was a comforting manner.

The break in Ron's composure was short-lived. Noisily, he dragged the back of his hand across his face, and sniffed again. When he turned to Harry, his bloodshot eyes and blotchy cheeks were the only indication that he'd cried at all. "M'sorry. Been a wild couple of months, hasn't it?"

"That might qualify as an understatement."

The pair laughed half-heartedly and Harry pulled his hand from Ron's shoulder, leaning back against the side of his bed and wrapping his arms around his bent knees.

They had just settled into a comfortable, thoughtful silence in which Harry had begun contemplating when the last time he'd eaten was, when from Ron's bed, Hermione started to quiver a bit. What looked like little shocks seemed to shoot through her muscles as she slept.

Harry stumbled to his feet, grabbing for his wand a second time, looking wildly about the room for some sort of invisible source of nonverbal magic that could explain this. Wildly, he wondered where he'd last left his Cloak—if someone had snatched it they could be underneath it and cursing her—he raised his wand and tried to remember the wrist movement for Homenum Revelio—

Ron, however, shook his head, raising an arm toward Harry. His freckled face looked a thousand years old, aged by fatigue and terror and worry. "She's alright," he murmured, studying the space where her figure was now huddled beneath his blankets. "Residuals from the Cruciatus," he explained gravely. Harry noted that every cell of Ron's body seemed rigid and prepared to spring up at any moment.

"The Cruciatus?" Harry echoed. "But that was weeks ago. How didn't I—"

"Mate, you had your own things to worry about—"

"Like hell I did!" Harry snapped, sitting more upright on the floor and leaning in toward Ron. "You two have always been my priority—"

"Would've been foolish if we were at that point," Ron said sagely. "She insisted she was okay after Fleur saw to her, made me promise that I wouldn't worry you. I did a bit of research, I guess in… cases as extensive as hers, this sort of thing can go on for years. Longer, maybe."

Ron's jaw was locked tightly, knuckles white where his hands had balled into irate fists.

"Should we wake her?" Harry asked.

Ron shook his head, eyes not leaving Hermione. "I usually wait until it gets bad," he said. His voice sounded a bit tortured. "It's hard—she needs rest, if I woke her every time she looked a little uncomfortable she'd never sleep—but at the same time, to watch her like this, to wonder…" Ron trailed off, either unable or unwilling to finish his sentence.

Harry sighed frustratedly and dragged a hand through his hair, messing it up even further than nature typically saw to.

"So the nightmares—"

"Obviously you know about those," Ron said quickly, and Harry nodded. Almost every night at Shell Cottage, they'd all been awakened by Hermione's panicked cries and Luna's soft voice as she attempted to calm her. Eventually, Ron had started to stay with her again, which hadn't stopped the nightmares, but had at least kept them quiet enough so as to leave the rest of the cottage in the dark when they were happening.

"Those haven't stopped either," said Ron quietly. "I'd wager those might go on just as long as the Cruciatus residuals."

Harry felt a surge of guilt. These last couple of months, he'd only cared about the mission—only cared about the horcruxes—and as a result had been completely ignorant to Hermione's struggles.

Struggles he had caused, by opening his blasted mouth and uttering Riddle's name.

Ron's voice broke Harry's reverie; when he looked over, Ron was studying the lump of bedclothes that was Hermione, his gaze full of such affection that Harry almost felt he ought to look away.

"She wasn't this thin back in March, at the cottage. I mean—she was thin, too thin, even Fleur said something—but not like this."

Harry considered his words, considered Hermione's current trembling, whimpering state. "Reckon it's from—" he stopped, closed his eyes, found he couldn't bring himself to say the name of that dreaded curse out loud, "… the Manor? She couldn't keep much down at first, at Bill and Fleur's."

"But we'd've noticed, wouldn't we?" Ron said desperately. He seemed quite distressed that he could've missed this detail. "We were with her the whole time! Wouldn't we have noticed? Said something?"

Harry remained silent on this issue, failing to remind Ron that he hadn't even noticed the residuals from the curse. He allowed the guilt to settle over him again, thick and cold.

Ron dumped his head into his hands again and heaved a giant sigh, shaking his head as he did so. "I dunno, Harry. I don't," he lamented into his palms.

There was a beat of silence before Harry settled his intense gaze on Ron, who must've sensed it and turned to look at Harry.

"And your nightmares, then?"

Ron blanched and immediately looked away, fiddling with the edge of the ragged jumper he'd worn to bed. Harry might've been unaware of Hermione's struggles, but he'd slept next to Ron for seven years, one of which was in remarkably close quarters in a tent and then in the sitting room of a cottage. A lot had changed in him after Malfoy Manor.

The way he treated Hermione, of course, was the most obvious. In front of everyone, not caring who saw, he doted on her, often sporting an expression that Harry had only ever seen him wear after a bit of love potion courtesy of Romilda Vane. At meals, Ron spent his time watching Hermione as indiscreetly as possible, rather than inhaling second and third helpings of meals as if his stomach were a black hole.

Throughout all of this, he'd remained oblivious to Harry's observance.

The biggest difference that Harry had noticed, however, had come in Ron's sleeping patterns. Ron had once been someone who could sleep for twenty-four hours straight, if not forcefully shaken awake. After Hermione's torture, though, Harry would frequently wake to find Ron walking along the shore before anyone else in the cottage had risen for the day.

Often times, Harry was jarred awake in the early hours of the morning to Ron's incoherent shouts as he tossed and turned beneath his quilt on Shell Cottage's sitting room floor. More than once, Harry had found himself in a headlock with a wand to his throat, a half-sobbing, deranged Ron convinced that he had Greyback in his arms.

The question had been rhetorical—of course Harry knew Ron's nightmares hadn't subsided; Ron had had one two nights ago, before they'd busted into Gringotts—but Ron tended to focus on the wellbeing of others before his own (especially when it came to Hermione), and Harry knew from experience that this was often not the healthiest of coping mechanisms.

"I'll be alright," Ron said.

Harry decided not to push the issue. At least not just yet.

Although it was at least ten o'clock in the morning at this point, judging by the intensity of the sun coming through the windows, Harry still didn't feel like venturing down to the Great Hall, or even the Common Room, for that matter. A shared glance with Ron indicated that he felt the same way.

"Kreacher," Harry said quietly, and almost immediately, the ancient house elf had Apparated into the space.

"Master Harry," croaked Kreacher as he bowed slightly.

"Are you alright?"

"Kreacher is well, Master Harry."

"Would you mind bringing us something to eat?"

"Scones," Ron said suddenly, flushing when Harry turned to him questioningly. "They're Hermione's favorite," he added.

"Right," said Harry. "Some scones, and perhaps some sandwiches, if you can?"

Kreacher nodded and was gone just as quickly as he'd arrived.

A sigh came from Ron's bed as Hermione turned over in bed. Only her head poked out from the quilt, but Harry suddenly became acutely aware that she was still completely naked in Ron's bed, and now was laying with her front toward them.

"She'll murder us when she wakes up," said Harry.

"Oh, don't I know it," Ron mumbled. "Been trying to figure out how to go about this for hours."

"What d'you mean?"

"Well," said Ron. "She needs to sleep. But she also needs to eat. Also think she'll have our necks if we're awake too long without waking her. But if I wake her and she realizes she fell asleep in my bed in just a towel, she might have my neck anyway. Truly a lose-lose all round."

"You're mental," said Harry with a chuckle and a smile.

Ron turned to him with a twinkle in his eyes that had been missing for months. "Reckon I am, when it comes to her."