"That could have gone better," Ron said, pouring mud out of his boots all over the tent floor.
"It also could have gone much worse," Hermione pointed out, hanging her coat on the rack by the door and carefully toeing off her filthy boots.
"Whose ruddy idea was it to search the moors of Yorkshire in the middle of a bloody downpour in November?" Ron said, shivering as he let his coat flop to the floor.
"Yours," Harry pointed out bluntly, not particularly in the mood for his friend's ill-temper when everyone was equally uncomfortable.
"Oh, right," he said. "I forgot."
"At least we know Hufflepuff's cup isn't hidden in that particular spot," Hermione said.
"No, just a truly impressive amount of mud," Ron said, then sneezed forecefully. "I don't suppose we have dinner tonight, do we?"
"Actually, yes," Hermione said. "I've got beef stew and biscuits cooking in the kitchen. Can't you smell it?"
"Nope," Ron said. "My nose is all stuffed. I think I'm coming down with a cold or summat."
Harry finished taking off his own shoes and coat and stowing them away. He watched while Hermione went over to her bag and began burrowing through it until she pulled out a bottle of Pepperup Potion.
"Here," she said. "This should still be in good order."
Ron grunted and took a spoonful as Hermione proceeded to put Ron's boots away neatly and used the Scouring Charm to get rid of the mud that had been tracked in. In another few seconds, her trademark bluebell flames were crackling away in a jam jar on the table, sending warm but eerie light around the room. Three bowls filled with piping hot stew, which Harry noted looked much better than Hermione's original forays into cooking, were soon on the table with biscuits beside them.
"Good," Ron said, grabbing a spoon. "I'm starved."
"Possibly a thank you is in order?" Hermione said, sounding rather ill-tempered.
"Oh, yeah, thanks," Ron said. "It does smell good."
Mollified, Hermione nodded and began to eat as well. Harry joined in, and the stew really was as good as it looked, hot and thick and feeling wonderful after the cold, wet day.
"This is exactly what we needed," Harry said, and Hermione beamed at him as though she'd received top marks on a test from McGonagall.
"Yeah, mostly," Ron said, looking dreamily into the middle distance. "Mum's has a bit of rosemary in it though, I think, and the biscuits could be lighter, but you're close this time. You'll get it eventually."
"Why don't you get it eventually?" Hermione said, snatching the rest of the biscuit out of his hand. "And I'm more than willing to eat this myself if it isn't up to your exacting standards!"
Harry prepared for yet another row, but as he was thoroughly enjoying the stew, he felt less bothered by it than usual. It really was quite good.
"I don't need to learn this stuff," Ron said, looking with longing as the biscuit disappeared into Hermione's mouth. "I have other things to do. Mum cooks or you do, or Merlin help us, Harry."
Harry was uncomfortably knocked out of his pleasant feigned deafness on that one. He'd had to cook for the Dursleys since he was old enough to look over the stove, and in spite of Aunt Petunia's constant reminders not to burn anything, he was more than passable at most basic things. He gave his friend a very large quantity of stink eye as Hermione turned even redder in the face, not that Harry wasn't starting to match her.
"These other things of yours to do would include what?" Hermione asked.
"Thinking," Ron said, which Harry had to admit was a vague answer.
"About?" Hermione said.
"Home. Horcruxes. Hogwarts," Ron said.
"Yes, but Harry and I do that too and we contribute to helping to keep this place in decent order," Hermione said. "The very least you can do is pick up after yourself instead of dumping boot-water all over the floor for someone else to clean up."
"But one way or another it does get cleaned up," Ron said. "Just like the food gets cooked."
"And the Pepperup Potion gets brewed and the coats and boots get put away and the laundry gets done," Hermione said, folding her arms. "Almost all of it by me. It really is my fault, I suppose. I just can't bear living in squalor, and I don't think you actually care one way or the other."
"Not really, no," Ron said, shrugging. "Cook and clean if it makes you happy."
"And if it doesn't?" Hermione said.
"Then don't. It's not like it'll make any real difference. Who cares?" Ron said, and Harry shuddered a little at the look that came over Hermione's face, which Ron seemed to completely miss.
"Right then. I won't," Hermione said, her voice dropping about three octaves. Harry was surprised the stew didn't freeze solid.
"Okay," Ron said, oblivious to the wrath that was coming at him in silent waves from Hermione as he threw his spoon back into his empty bowl. "I'm full and sleepy, so I'm going to bed. Night all."
Ron got up, leaving his dishes sitting precisely where they were, glinting in the lights of what served as their kitchen. Harry noted Hermione seemed to be almost physically restraining herself from removing the mess, but she was winning the battle.
"Are you tired as well?" Hermione asked Harry in a carefully controlled tone that did not bode well.
"Rather, yeah," Harry said, though he was actually nervous about speaking at all.
"I am too," Hermione said, nodding decisively. "Yes, I think—I think I'll turn in as well."
She stood from her spot and stared down at the dishes, her fingers actually twitching in the air before she turned abruptly and went to her little nook where she slept. Harry stared at his own dishes forlornly, not sure if leaving them or washing up was going to be taking someone's side. Eventually he decided he wanted to eat off something clean the next morning, so he quickly cleaned only his own bowl and spoon and crept off to bed feeling as though he might have done something wrong and hoping the next day didn't begin with an explosion.
By morning, though, Hermione was already gone long before dawn.
"But… what are we going to eat?" Ron asked, staring at the messy table.
"Dunno," Harry said. "Any stew left?"
"Yeah, but it's been out all night," Ron said, eyeing the pot dubiously. "It smells rather off."
Harry wrinkled his nose in agreement before remembering something. "I think there are a few apples left in the cupboard."
"Oh. That'll do," Ron said, and there were indeed two apples left. Harry was almost certain there had been three last night, but he said nothing.
After a very brief breakfast, Harry and Ron just stared at one another for a while.
"Fine, so, where do you think we should look next?" Harry finally said.
"Haven't a clue," Ron said. "The Horcruxes could be anywhere from Addis Ababa to Zanzibar."
"I think they're probably at least in Europe somewhere," Harry said.
"Those aren't in Europe?" Ron asked, looking defeated.
"Africa, both of them," Harry said.
"Then what's the capital of Croatia?" Ron asked.
"Uh, Zagreb, I think?" Harry said.
"Thought it was Zanzibar," Ron said, picking at his very depleted apple core. "I'm guessing there isn't a little country between France and Spain called Addis Ababa either then."
"Nope," Harry said. "I think we could try Ireland, though. It's not far, and while it's not an obvious choice, it's still pretty close by."
"Maybe," Ron said, looking at the door. "You think she'll be back after breakfast?"
"We weren't planning on moving today, so I don't know," Harry said.
"Right," Ron said, then drew a deep breath. "Well, day off then, I say. What do you fancy doing? Quidditch practice, a few rounds of Exploding Snap, maybe get something in on the wireless, lay about and do nothing at all?"
Harry shrugged, and they sat there for a while.
"Any Pepperup Potion left?" Ron asked. "I'm still a bit off."
"Probably in her bag," Harry said, carefully avoiding Hermione's name.
"Yeah," Ron said, standing suddenly and striding over to the little beaded evening bag. "I'll just have some of that, then, to keep the symptoms down."
Things really hadn't gone well the last time Ron had tried that, but before Harry could open his mouth to suggest this might not be the best of ideas, Ron had already undone the bag's clasp. Harry clapped his hands over his ears in near agony as horrible sounds came from the bag's nearly bottomless depths, and Ron, panicking, dropped it and ran to the other side of the tent, a look of sheer terror on his face.
"What in bloody hell is that?" he managed to scream above the noise. "A banshee?"
"I think it's Yanni!" Harry yelled back.
"Who's torturing him?" Ron screamed.
By now, Harry had managed to crawl across the floor to the bag and close it again, blessedly ending the shrieking.
"Do you think anyone else heard that?" Ron asked, glancing at the door like he expected a crew of Death Eaters to appear at any moment.
"No," Harry said firmly. "Hermione's put enough Silencing Charms on the tent to keep any noise from escaping. I don't care how miffed she is, she wouldn't remove those."
Ron looked uncertain for a second, but seemed to decide eventually that Harry must be right.
"I'm going for a walk," Ron finally said a bit too loudly, as though the alarm had unsettled his hearing. "I'll be back by lunch."
Harry nodded and plopped himself down on the couch. He spent the next hour pondering possible spots the Horcruxes might be. Ireland really wasn't impossible, but then there wasn't any decisive connection to Voldemort or the Hogwarts founders there so far as he knew. Then again, he wasn't all that clear about where Helga Hufflepuff had originally come from, or Slytherin either for that matter. Seamus would know, he thought, but that was a dead end. Of course, Hermione would too, but that wasn't possible either just now. Perhaps they should try something more obvious, like some forgotten spot in the Forbidden Forest or in Diagon Alley. They were possible, he supposed, but where? It was like looking for a wand in a mountain of twigs.
Harry must have drifted off somewhere after thinking Voldemort's scavenger hunt was pretty much hopeless and maybe going to Fiji or Samoa to search wasn't really any crazier than what they'd been doing. As it was, he woke when Ron slammed himself down on the couch beside him. More specifically, though, the smell woke him.
"What in the name of Godric Gryffindor happened to you?" Harry said, holding his nose.
Ron, dripping from head to foot and covered in mud and what appeared to be other less savory things, glared at him.
"Take a wild guess," he said.
"How did you get so wet?" Harry asked tentatively. "It's not even raining, is it?"
"No, it's not," Ron said. "However, if you fall into a bog, you tend to get soaked even in fair weather."
"You fell in a bog," Harry repeated.
"More specifically, I fell into a bog that has apparently been used as a toilet by the local farmers' pigs since time immemorial," Ron said.
"Crikey, you don't half stink," Harry said, coughing. "You'd better get outside and hose yourself off before the whole tent needs airing for a solid week."
"No!" Ron said defiantly. "This is all Hermione's fault, so she's going to come back and clean it up!"
Harry took a deep breath, then immediately regretted that decision as the hellacious smell wafted into his lungs and made him nearly lose his breakfast, small as it had been.
"Ron," he said, "you do realize you sounded like a right git last night, right?"
"That's only your opinion," Ron said. "I'm tired of Hermione telling me to clean up after myself."
"Because you never do unless she tells you to, and even then most of the time it doesn't get done at all unless she does it," Harry said. "When was the last time you washed your own socks?"
"I dunno. August?" Ron asked.
"Or wiped your feet on the mat when you came in the tent?" Harry said.
"But she can clean it up in no time," Ron said.
"So can you," Harry pointed out. "She's right, you know. You really do sort of expect to be waited on like the Hogwarts house-elves followed us out here."
"Yeah, well, she's the one who can't stand the mess," Ron said.
"Right now, I can't stand it either," Harry said, waving a hand by his nose in an attempt to breathe without his lungs exploding in protest. "If we all live here, we should at least all try to keep the place comfortable enough to be livable. And lay off her cooking, will you? It's not her fault you grew up with the Julia Child of the wizarding world as your mum."
"Who's Julia Child?" Ron asked.
"A Muggle woman who was a really well known chef," Harry said. "She could cook almost anything and make it look appetizing."
"But everyone's mum cooks like that, don't they?" Ron said, looking shocked. "I mean, they can just do that automatically, right? It's in their genes, like liking the color pink and knowing how to French braid and things. Hermione's just not trying hard enough."
Harry stared at his friend in disbelief.
"Hermione's right. You really are an idiot," he finally said, getting up and leaving the tent so he could avoid passing out from Ron's reek.
Lunchtime came and went, and Hermione did not appear. Harry chanced a bit of Polyjuice Potion he still had leftover in a flask in his pocket and went into town to scavenge lunch. He managed to cadge a whole hamburger when it fell out of someone's paper sack as he left a take away spot. Granted, he wasn't terribly hungry with the stench of the bog still clinging to his nose, but that passed quickly enough once he took a bite or two. Two decent meals in less than twenty-four hours: that had to be a record. He decided to return to the tent, hoping things would be in better shape.
Sadly, this hope did not bear any resemblance to reality.
"Um, Ron?" he said in as controlled a voice as he could.
"Yeah," his friend responded.
"What in the name of Merlin's knickers happened here?" he asked.
There was an unidentifiable mess on the ceiling that looked like it might have been cabbage at some point but was now a blackened pile of glue. A small lake, not unlike the one Fred and George had left behind for Umbridge to deal with in fifth year, had taken over the dining and living areas so that the couch and chairs were currently half their height up in muddy water. Enormous scorch marks decorated the canvas walls in three seemingly random places. Finally, to top it all off, a very large though thankfully peaceful water buffalo was grazing in the middle of the tent, contentedly chewing on what Harry suspected was his own pillow.
"I tried to clean up, cook dinner, and get rid of the stench," Ron said.
Harry surveyed the damage.
"Okay, so you obviously said 'wingardium leviosa' wrong, explaining the buffalo," Harry said.
The buffalo lowed loudly in agreement.
"At least it didn't land on my chest," Ron said miserably. "I'm just off from my cold and being hungry and upset and… for pity's sake, Harry, give me a hand before she comes back!"
As the buffalo began chewing on the corner of the dining room table, Harry opened his mouth to agree, but at that exact moment, Hermione walked through the tent door.
"I hope things didn't go too badly, but you did rather deserve—" she stood stock still a foot into the tent, finally squeaking out, "it."
Harry and Ron looked at one another.
"That's a buffalo," Hermione said, her face a mask of shock. "There is a buffalo eating the kitchen table. It is a buffalo, isn't it? I haven't gone mad?"
"It's a buffalo," Harry admitted. "Um, Hermione, why don't you take a little walk outside for a few minutes or hours or something and let Ron and I clean this up, yeah?"
"Okay," she said in the voice of someone clinging to the edge of sanity. "I'll do that then. Yes. A walk. A buffalo. I can take a buffalo, I mean, a walk."
As she turned around and exited the tent like a sleepwalker, Harry and Ron began attempting to put everything right. It wasn't a perfect success, but they managed to make the swamp vanish, unstick the cabbage, and open the tent flaps to get some air in. The buffalo was another matter. Regardless of what they did, it simply would not vanish or otherwise return to wherever it had come from. Harry found himself desperately wishing for the Room of Requirement, but eventually he managed to enlarge the tent door to three times its usual side and then he and Ron carefully lured the massive creature outside. Once it was out on the moors, it decided it would be fun to run about for a while, and the pair of them left the buffalo to a good evening constitutional. By the time Hermione wandered back into the normally sized door again, the tent was, if not sparkling clean, at least not the home of a miniature swamp and a very large ruminant.
"Um, hi?" Ron said sheepishly.
Hermione looked slightly shell-shocked, peering about cautiously as though she expected the buffalo to suddenly pop out from behind the refrigerator.
"Yes, it's, I guess, yes," Hermione said, carefully sitting on the edge of the couch and trying not to notice there was a largish bite missing from one of the cushions.
"Um, so, that didn't really go too well," Ron said.
"No," Hermione said. "No, I would say that was a fair statement."
"So maybe you'd better just do all the cooking and cleaning from here on out because I'm an inept idiot," Ron said quickly.
Harry was relatively sure this was the worst possible thing Ron could have said, and Hermione did appear to be vibrating slightly, but when she spoke, she seemed too calm.
"I am going to tell you a story," she said.
"Oh, good," Ron said, smiling in relief and apparently thinking this was a good sign.
Harry, for his part, suspected that the story might center around a witch who ax-murdered a slovenly red-haired wizard and left the bits somewhere in a swamp, but he gave her his full attention.
"Once upon a time," Hermione began, but as Ron opened his mouth to interrupt as usual, she gave him a look so chilly that Harry honestly thought he saw snowflakes, and more tellingly, Ron closed his mouth with a quiet pop, immediately disabused of his earlier optimistic attitude, "there lived an ant and a grasshopper."
"Whose aunt?" Ron asked, then clapped his hand over his mouth before mumbling around his fingers, "I'm sorry! I can't help it!"
"I am beginning to believe that really is the case," Hermione said, rubbing her temples as though a headache were coming on, which it well could be with the faint traces of mire and the buffalo's generous "gifts" still wafting through the air. "I mean the insect. Both the ant and the grasshopper lived in a large, lovely field, and it was summer."
Ron kept his fingers over his mouth and nodded vehemently to show he was listening.
"Every day, the ant would run about, gathering food and laying it aside for winter or digging tunnels to expand the nest. She worked from dawn until dusk, and the grasshopper would laugh at her," Hermione said.
"Why?" Ron asked, and Harry gave him a warning look that this might have been a step too far.
"No, it's a perfectly logical question to ask," Hermione said. "The grasshopper spent all of his time playing his fiddle and eating the grass in the field, never once thinking about tomorrow or doing any work at all. He thought nothing of the future and regarded work as something only other animals did, particularly animals who were boring. He considered the ant foolish because, while the grasshopper had fun all day, every day, the ant toiled away, and he thought that was stupid of her."
"And the ant doing all this heavy lifting is a girl?" Ron asked skeptically.
"The vast majority of worker ants are actually female, the precise opposite found in hives of bees," Hermione said. "A few males exist, of course, in every ant colony; otherwise, the species would be incapable of reproduction. However, the majority of the working ants one sees running about and carrying heavy loads are wingless females."
"I think I am beginning to see a parallel," Ron said quietly. "Okay, so what happened?"
"Time passed, as it does, and very soon the winds of autumn blew through the field. The grass died with the frost, and the grasshopper was left with nothing at all to eat," Hermione said.
"Oh," Ron said. "I guess he should have thought of that."
"Meanwhile, the ant and all of her fellow workers were snug in their nest below ground with their queen, their storerooms filled for the winter, and having quite a jolly time of it now that their work was done," Hermione said.
"Do ants actually do that?" Ron asked.
"Generally speaking, yes, they do lay aside provisions, and the ants themselves can have rather stunningly long live for insects, with queens sometimes living as long as thirty years, but the typical female ant usually lives about two or three years," Hermione said.
"And the males?" Harry asked.
"Normally they die in a few weeks," Hermione said.
Harry had an uneasy suspicion Hermione was perhaps savoring that bit of information a touch too much at the moment.
"Okay," Ron said, his voice cracking a bit. "So the girl ants are having some sort of insect-based Christmas party in their underground bunker full of food and frolic, and the grasshopper is…?"
"Slowly starving to death from his own inability to take care of himself," Hermione said.
"Do I want to know what happens next?" Ron asked.
"Well, there are actually two different endings to the story. This is a very old one, one of Aesop's again, but we think the oldest version is that the grasshopper goes to the ants and begs to be let in for the winter," Hermione said.
"And do they give him a place to kip and a bite?" Ron asked.
"No," Hermione said. "They tell him they have only enough for their own, and that those that worked all summer can play all winter. Then he goes off into the winter snow and freezes to death."
"Oh," Ron said, looking sad. "Uh, what's the other ending?"
"The grasshopper asks to be let in, apologizing for his behavior and saying he's learned his lesson," Hermione says. "The ants take pity on him, in part because they always liked his music, and they invite him in for the winter, letting him play his fiddle while they dance away the winter."
"That was nice of the ants," Ron said, smiling. "I feel a bit sorry now for the ones I've stepped on."
Hermione gave him a horrified look.
"Only accidentally!" Ron quickly explained. He did add after a moment, though, "In full disclosure, Bill was the one with the magnifying glass and the tendency towards mass ant-icide."
Hermione sighed and Harry briefly wondered if SPAW, the Society for the Promotion of Ant Welfare, was now in the offing. However, she only continued on.
"In the summer, the grasshopper left the ants, but whether he learned anything at all from his time there or if he shirked his work and hoped to be saved again through the kindness and toil of others is anyone's guess," Hermione said. "The end."
"I'm a grasshopper, aren't I," Ron said miserably.
"Possibly," Hermione said.
"If I try to be a little more Hermione-ant-like, do you think you can manage to maybe put up with us," Ron asked. "We, um, we really don't seem to be able to manage without you."
Hermione sighed again, but she gave him a tired smile.
"I'll show you a few tricks," she finally said. "We'll all take turns with everything, and everyone cleans up their own mess."
"Unless it's an accidental buffalo in the dining room," Harry added wisely. "Then we might need to pull together on that."
"If an emergency of that caliber arises again, yes, I think co-operation would be in order," Hermione said, then, with a jerky intake of breath, she started laughing.
"What?" Ron asked.
"How on earth did that ever happen?" she finally got out between breaths of air. "I mean, seriously, how?"
"Apparently it really is 'leviosa' and not 'leviosar.' Flitwick wasn't kidding," Ron admitted, then he started to laugh too, and Harry joined them in another second.
Elsewhere, out on the moor, a police car was stopped in the middle of a country lane, its headlights trained on a gigantic water buffalo that was peacefully wandering along the road, chewing its cud and mooing to itself contentedly.
"Jack, do you see…?" said one officer to the other.
"Gert, that is not a hallucination. I'm calling it in," said the second.
By the next morning, a remarkably cleaner tent was quickly packed up and transported to a location near Bristol, and the buffalo had been moved to a nearby zoo, where it spent its life quite happily with a few others of its own kind in a nice paddock. Sadly, though, the buffalo's earlier ravages were not without consequences. Ron had to do without a pillow for a few days because Harry had cadged his when Ron wasn't looking. Ron decided very wisely not to argue the point.
