9. Somewhere in the Forest After Dark
Harry steeled himself, filled himself with air, and said the words he'd been chewing over in his head for close to an hour.
"You saved my life."
Hermione, who was nose-deep in a book, didn't look up from what she was doing; she hummed in a noncommittal way that told Harry she wasn't paying attention and turned the page.
He didn't want to repeat it. Truly, he didn't want to hash this out—it was no mystery that they'd all rescued each other from the grips of death plenty of times since their first year at Hogwarts, and although he was not one to have pride enough to swallow, there was something different about this particular instance.
In brief, he could not stop thinking about it.
"Hermione."
The urgency in his tone caught her attention. Her eyes, wide and brown and concerned, met his.
"What is it?"
"Nothing," he said quickly, sorry to have worried her. "Nothing, everything's fine. It's just—er—you saved my life. You know. At Bathilda's—or—you know. And after, even, what with being ill and everything. All of it, really." He waved vaguely in the air.
Hermione blinked, looking as though Harry had just told her the sky was blue or the grass was green or that you couldn't Apparate in or out of Hogwarts. It took her a moment, but she eventually echoed Harry's thoughts almost exactly.
"Isn't that what we do?"
"Save each other's lives?" Harry said, fighting the urge to smile. "That's what friends are for, is it? Just another day in the life?"
"For us it is," she said.
She turned her attention back to reading, but it was no use, Harry had done it: there was a tension in the air now that he had to clear. Part of him wished he'd never brought it up.
With a deep breath, he plunged on. "This wasn't the same and you know it. If you hadn't been there—"
"—Harry—"
"—I'd be dead, full stop. No, really, Hermione, listen to me," he added when she offered him an exasperated look. "You could've left weeks ago. With Ron. There was no reason for you to stay."
"No reason for me to stay?" she said a little hysterically, eyes narrowing. This was not the first time Harry had been on the receiving end of this look; he braced for an inevitable impact. "What do you mean by that? Wishing I'd gone too, are you?"
"What? No! No, of course not, don't be stupid."
"Stupid?"
"Hermione, stop."
They locked eyes. Hermione's jaw was set; Harry was confident a look of bewilderment had swept across his face. This was far from the conversation he'd set out to have, and he found himself struggling to find a way to steer it back on course.
"We have a mission," Hermione said simply after a long pause, looking back down at her book, and before Harry could even open his mouth to respond, she added, "And before you try to tell me that it's your mission and that I don't have to, I'd like to add that I find it rather egocentric of you to suggest that you're the only one any of this concerns."
He recognized the tone well; it was a mix of the Hermione of their earliest years of friendship (the one that Ron had referred to as a "nightmare") and the present-day Hermione that, Harry was certain, could not accept a compliment.
"Hermione—"
"Frankly, I've had enough of it," she continued. "You might be The Chosen One, Harry Potter, but that doesn't mean that we haven't all got everything to lose here."
He knew she didn't mean the harsh tone; he'd known her for too long not to be able to read her face like a neon sign. Harry crossed the tent to sit in the chair opposite her and leaned over his knees and folded his hands in his lap.
"Listen. I'm just saying that if you'd left with him, I'd've gone to Godric's Hollow straightaway. No Polyjuice Potion, no planning, no one to watch my back when I ran headfirst into a death trap. If you hadn't been there that night, this would all be over." He waved vaguely in the air again. At the look on her face, he added quickly, "That's assuming that I really am the only one who can defeat Voldemort."
Hermione looked at him evenly. He knew her mind was digesting this, trying to formulate an answer.
Something suddenly struck Harry.
"Have I even thanked you for staying at all in the first place?"
"You don't have to."
"Well, thanks anyway. Really." He thought of how much she'd cried after Ron had left and the vacant look that had taken over her face for weeks. "I know how much you—"
"Don't," she pleaded, frowning. "I knew he'd make his way back. Somehow. Eventually. I certainly knew he'd regret leaving. Besides," she added with a half-hearted shrug, "the fate of the wizarding world is more important."
"Dumbledore might've disagreed with you. 'Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also' and all that. He always said love was more important than anything else."
To Harry, it was a casual remark, but Hermione's face turned scarlet and she stuffed her face back in her book. Harry sensed this was the end of the conversation and rose to his feet, peering out the flap of the tent in search of Ron's fiery hair.
"Anyway, thanks. For everything," he said, eager to end the conversation. Hermione marked her page in her book and stood, too. "We'd be lost without you. Where did Ron—oof."
Hermione had flung herself so forcefully at Harry that it knocked his breath away. Then she hugged him tightly enough to break him in half.
"You're welcome," she said quietly.
There was a stretch of time where neither of them said anything—it seemed like neither of them breathed—before Hermione finally pulled away, tried and failed to disguise the act of wiping her eyes with her sleeve, and clucked, "Honestly, Harry, you'd have gone with no planning?"
"None whatsoever," Harry said with false bravado. "Seven years of friendship and I haven't learned a thing from you. Tragic, really."
"The Boy Who Lived," Hermione mused. "Maybe you should try a little harder to keep it that way."