The rain threatened to break through the old tent's canvas roof; it pounded into it sinisterly, relentlessly, disturbing the eerie stillness of October's very last night.
The rain drops in her hair spilled down her spine as tears came streaming down her face, making her shiver heavily with cold. She drew the blankets further up her body, tugging them clumsily under her chin in an effort to warm her trembling limbs. Those, she realised, were Ron's blankets, and they smelled like him.
Instantly, she threw them off her with a furious gesture, something like a howl burning in her throat, pleading to be let out; Hermione bit into her knee to stifle it, and felt as her pain erupted into quivering sobs as soon as her teeth sank into the sopping thickness of her trousers.
The wind blew through the leaves, the forest bending under the callous weight of the downpour. It had started just as they'd begun to fight, roiling with a sort of desperation as their argument picked up. Her mind, ever alert, kept playing their conversation again and again, timing it to the angry pattern of the rain. It tormented her.
'My mother can make good food appear out of thin air.'
'Your mother can't produce food out of thin air. No one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law on Elemental Transfigur-'
'Oh, speak English, can't you?'
'It's impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you've already got some -'
'- well, don't bother increasing this, it's disgusting.'
It was like a steel knife had been planted in her heart, twisted and bent until it sliced it in half, wrung until it ripped her heart to pieces. He'd been so vicious, Ron, his handsome, kind face contorted, almost monstrous, as he snarled at her. He had never lashed out quite as fiercely before.
Somehow, it did not matter that he had been wearing the locket. It did not make her feel any better or erase any of the things he'd said.
Angry and tired to the point of breaking down, Hermione wiped her face with both palms; they still held the pungent smell of the charred, grey fish she had prepared for them to eat that day. She felt sick.
Suddenly, she could not stay in the tent a minute longer.
Her eyes prickling with tears, she stepped out into the rain-swept woods. Her bare feet dug into the damp moss, its velvet tickling the soles of her feet, in between her toes, as the wind whipped her hair against her forehead, her cheeks. Her once soft, bushy curls now stuck harshly to her face, impeding her vision.
She swiped it briskly from her eyes and shivered violently; her sopping clothes had clung to her body, and the rain pummeled her. Hermione wished she could simply disappear into the thick blackness of the night - or perhaps melt into the ground.
Her feet plunged into the muddy river, feeling as the icy water rose up to her knees. The moonlight danced across the stormy waters, dappling her skin silver as the river rose and splashed her hungrily.
She wanted to succumb to its bottom and cry. She wanted to swim away from there and never look back.
She would have screamed his name, if it hadn't given their location away. She would have run after him, teared down the trees, the forest, the country to find him if she could. It tormented her - the hurt in his eyes as he turned to leave, it haunted her. It made her bleed.
Suddenly, it occurred to Hermione that it was, in fact, Halloween. She gave a hollow laugh, her thoughts swirling uninvited to another Halloween years before, when the three of them had knit a friendship as good and strong as their own lives. Or so they had thought.
'I get it. You choose him.'
It was her own shield that stopped her reaching him, wasn't it? Her own magic that prevented her from grabbing his arm and pleading with him to stay. And more than anything she yearned for him to stay - please, Ron, oh, please stay.
A faint splashing noise filtered through, and it made her heart shrink. Instantly, the mad rush of her thoughts slowed and Hermione listened, body frozen still amidst the chatter of the running river.
Nothing else came though, except the drumming of the rain and the quiet of the night, and her own beating, broken heart. She breathed in the damp air.
And then, again, clearer than before and much, much closer, another splash.
Her heart writhed like a sparrow caught in a wire fence - she had left her wand inside the tent. How could she have been so stupid, so foolish? Her lip quivered, a desperate sob breaking past her lips as the wind whipped viciously across her arms, her cheeks, and the rain seared her skin.
Hermione could not dare to move.
Splashsplashsplash.
Something touched her then, and her whole body tensed, mind nearly exploding with the fear of it. She waited for the impact, for the bulky figure of a Death Eater to knock her to the rocks beneath her feet, or for the sharp claws of a hungry creature of the night to tear her apart, its damp muzzle dragging across her face, its warm breath tickling her skin before it bit.
But it was only a fish.
Blood flowed through her veins again, her fists, her jaw unclenching. She had been so silly, she could almost laugh - only a fish.
A fish, like the one she had tried to cook. A fish, like the one Dean and the others had eaten as Harry and her and Ron had listened from the tent.
Ron.
'Oh, remembered me, have you?'
There was a hollow, gaping hole inside her chest now, one that she didn't know how to repair. Finally, she dragged herself out of the water, over the mossy earth, and back into the tent. Then, wet to her very bones and numb with pain, Hermione curled onto the cold, hard floor and waited for the sun to rise over the darkness that had settled inside her mind.