I returned with the bottles and a bottle opener. Ron opened them and handed them out, before raising his bottle for a toast. "Well, to Harry and Kat, I guess," he said. "Maybe one good thing will come out of this trip."

He clinked his bottle against all of ours. I couldn't help but smile at Harry.

"What do you mean?" Hermione asked, sitting forward. "Ron, what are you talking about?"

"You... didn't know?" he asked.

Hermione looked at me. "Is that...true?" she asked.

I nodded slowly. "Yes," I said.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asked. I could see the hurt in her eyes and it hurt me. I kept it from her so it wouldn't hurt her.

"I..." I trailed off. It didn't make a lot of sense now.

"I asked her not to," Harry said. It was a fib, but it might help diffuse tension.

"I'm going to bed," she said, emotion heavy in her voice. She threw her bottle into the sink as she walked past, where it made a clinking noise as it hit the metal sink and shattered into a million pieces.

I looked at the boys, not sure what to do. Should I follow her? Give her space?

"I'm going to go talk to her," Harry said, getting up. That surprised me, I figured he would have just ignored it and let me deal with it. Perhaps it was a good thing to let him talk to her.

~.~

Harry's Point of View:

"Hermione?" I asked from outside the tapestry that separated where Kat and Hermione slept from the main room of the tent. I heard the creaking of the bunk bed, meaning she had climbed up into her bed.

"Good night!" she said. Her voice was a little watery, meaning she had been crying. I hated crying girls, but I didn't want for her to go to sleep upset. She had spent enough of today in a rage.

"I'm coming in," I warned her.

"Just go away," she told me. "I just want to be alone, okay?"

"No," I said. "I'm not going away until we talk."

"I'm not moving," she said.

"You don't have to," I informed her, sitting on the edge of Kat's bed below her. "We didn't do this to hurt you... please don't think about it like that."

"What am I supposed to think?" she asked, a hint of the malice in her voice. "My supposed best friends are in a relationship and don't think to tell me?"

"We didn't want to hurt you, Hermione," I explained. "We didn't want you to feel awkward or anything. We're in this together... all of us. We didn't want you to feel like a third wheel and start to resent us or being out here or make you feel alone... we just wanted to be happy with each other and didn't want to risk making you unhappy in the process. So don't be angry with Kat or with me... Please."

She was quiet, but I could hear her sniffling. I reached in my pocket and took out a handkerchief and handed it to her. It took her a minute to accept it. "Thank you," she said, quietly.

"I'm almost a little upset that Ron knew before you did..." I said, thinking that maybe I could make her smile. "I mean, for once, Ron was not the oblivious one."

She snorted, and I couldn't help but smile.

"It's just because he's spent the last month around other civilized humans and I've been with you two," she said, though she didn't sound quite so upset

"Are you calling us barbarians?" I asked, getting off the bed and looking at her. It was a playful move and I hope it came across as such.

"You know what I mean," she said, burying her head in her pillow and laughing. "I'm tired."

"Good night, Hermione."

~.~

Kat's Point of View

I slept well that night. Well, that morning, rather. By the time I washed the dishes and went to bed, the sun was starting to peak over the icy hills. Although the night had been exhausting, sleep evaded me. Every time I nearly got to sleep, I thought about how grateful I really was that we were all back together and smiled. Ron was back with us after being away for over a month and that was good... we needed Ron. Harry and Hermione needed their best friend. I would always feel a little left out of that trio, though I didn't mind. They had existed long before me. I was just happy it was whole again.

And now Hermione knew about Harry and me. I delighted in being able to say we were a couple. Although I felt bad at having lied to her, it was the right thing to do. Plus it seemed like she and Harry had a good conversation tonight, and that was good. Hermione had been incredibly upset today, but I hoped that when she woke up tomorrow she would feel like I did. She would be incredible happy we were all back together.

Eventually my giddiness gave in to the incredible exhaustion and I slept. I was awoken many hours later by the conversation going on outside my room. Hermione was no longer asleep above me, as I could hear her speaking with the boys. I just was not ready to wake up yet so I pulled the blankets over my head and tried to ignore the conversation.

As I lay there, waking up, I started to remember the dreams I had while I was asleep. I didn't usually remember my dreams, but tonight I could remember my mother being in one. I could never remember having a dream of her before. She had died when I was so young that I had no memories of her. The only memories I had were ones I had synthesized myself after my father had told me a few stories about us... I couldn't remember seeing her with my own eyes, just having seen pictures. How did I even know what her voice sounded like? I didn't. But the voice in my dream... I had immediately recognized it. The whole situation took my breath away a little, so I just laid there and tried to think of nothing at all. I wasn't very good at that.

About ten minutes later, I was fully awake and decided I would go out and join them now. There was some left over breakfast made by Harry, so I sat down next to him and ate that.

It sounded like I had walked in on the middle of a conversation. I just let them continue it without interrupting. It was times like these I felt I did not quite fit in. It didn't really matter, though. They would translate the important stuff later.

"What do you think?" Hermione asked, looking at me as if I had been listening the whole time.

"Well," I said, pulling tightly at the collar of the sweatshirt I was wearing. It suddenly felt awful tight. "I don't know, to be honest. I just let you guys figure this stuff out. Tell me where you need me and I'll be there."

"Then we need to go see Xenophilius Lovegood," Harry said.

"Luna's father?" I asked, confused. Luna was nice enough but I was confused why we would need to talk to her father when she was away at school.

"Yes," Hermione said. She got up and walked closer to where I was sitting and pulled out her book. "Have you ever seen this symbol before?"

She had opened the book and pointed to a symbol on the inside of the back cover. It looked like a triangle that was bisected at the top with a circle inside. I had never seen something like that before, so I shook my head. "Not that I can recall, why?"

"The symbol has showed up a few times throughout our travels," she explained. "It's in this book, which Dumbledore left me in his will. However, I think it merely supports that we need to go see Xenophilius. You see, when Ron's brother Bill got married last summer, Luna's dad showed up to the ?funeral?(wedding?) in yellow robes with this symbol on it. It was on the grave of someone in the graveyard when we were there around Christmas. It's an important symbol for something and I feel like it's followed us... What should we do besides follow it? We've destroyed all the Horcruxes we have in our possession... now what? We can't just sit here like lame ducks until someone twiddles their thumbs correctly and destroys all the Horcruxes..."

"Well I agree with that," I said. "What would be the purpose of meeting with Luna's dad?"

"Well we know he was wearing the symbol at the wedding. Maybe he has a clue of what it means."

"Do you think he would expose us?" I asked. "What if he called up your parents, Ron?"

By the looks on their faces, I could tell they hadn't considered that before. It was moments like these where I felt I might actually be useful here.

"I doubt he will," Harry said. "He knows we are out here secretly. He knows that we are coming to him in confidence... he is on our side. I think it will be just fine."

"Well if you think it's just fine, let's go," I said. "Should I start packing up?"

"We'll go tomorrow," Harry said, after a moment of thought. That would be a good idea. Give us a day to rest and recuperate after an incredibly long night. Even though I had slept a lot, I still felt very off. It seemed like the final decision so we disbanded. I did the dishes. Ron and Hermione were in the living room. I looked over my shoulder, and saw Ron fiddling with the radio while Hermione read the book she had been holding earlier. I could hear the faint sound of snow falling on the canvas above me, and wondered where Harry had disappeared off to.

After all the dishes had been washed and dried, I sat down to take inventory of the food we had remaining with us. With Ron's return, we had acquired some food. I had some bacon he had stolen sitting outside on the snow. I would fry that up for dinner, and it would be amazing. Fresh bread, some canned vegetables, half a bottle of Firewhiskey, and various potions grabbed from wherever he had been staying. I would sort through those later. I had to admit I was a little impressed with the thoughtfulness he had expressed when remembering we would need stuff. Hermione needed to give him more credit.

Nothing but crackling seemed to come out of the radio Ron was playing with... until he hit a station. From the sounds of it, it was a Muggle station, but that did not matter. It was nice to listen to music and voices that were not us.

I spent about fifteen minutes identifying the potions Ron had brought us. I had not worked with potions in such a long time, it really felt right. Smelling the potions, seeing what color they turned when added to different substances... if I closed my eyes, it was nearly like being back in Slughorn's dungeons. Here, it was just a lot colder and with the added bonus of questionable Muggle music.

Harry came in about ten minutes later, poking me to get my attention. "Yes?" I asked, without turning around.

"Kat, look," he said.

I turned around to see him holding what appeared to be a branch. "What is this?" I asked him.

"Isn't your birthday... soon?" he asked. "I'm afraid I've lost track of what day it is. I just know it's soon."

I wasn't quite sure how this was connected to the pine branch in my hand. "Oh," I said. "Well yeah my birthday's a few days ago..."

"And since I gave you the one really awesome thing I could give you out here, I got the closest thing I could get to flowers," he said. "I hope that's okay."

I found it incredibly sweet, so I stood up and kissed him. "Thank you," I said, my arms encircling his waist and squeezing tight. I was pretty lucky. Even if I was all the way out here without any luxuries, I had a pretty good guy and that made me smile. We spent a few more minutes kissing in the corner of the kitchen. While we both wanted more than a quick snog, we both knew that was all we could get right now.

"Oy, you two," Ron called after a few minutes. He stood at the doorway to the kitchen area, not really caring.

I blushed and pulled away from Harry. "How may I help you Ron?" I asked.

"Too early for dinner?" he asked.

I glanced at the watch on Harry's arm, because it was wrapped around my shoulder. It was getting pretty late in the day... and it was already pretty dark because we were so far north. "Sure, go get the bacon," I said.

~.~

The next morning, we woke up pretty early and packed up camp. We were going to Xenophilius Lovegood's house, to talk to him about the triangle shaped symbol that Hermione had showed me yesterday. Then Harry found a place for us to go that was south of here, close to the coast, he said.. Maybe there would be less snow there. I could only hope.

Around ten in the morning, I helped Hermione put the last thing in her bag. We were all packed up. I took one last look at the clearing we were in, and then took a deep breath.

"You ready?" Harry asked.

"Sure," I replied, sticking my arm through his arm.

Author's Note: …Hi guys. Sorry it's been so long… my beta, potter-reading-coastie, has gone MIA and he's the one that really keeps me motivated. But I've waited long enough and now it appears I shall trudge along alone. You guys are the reason I write and I needed to remember that :) I'll try and get a chapter up a week. You guys are welcome to PM me and keep me going :) If I have anyone left out there, of course. Thank you for all of your support. Let me know what you think.