Disaster, Comfort, and Overdue Smiles

For that one moment, that one, blissful moment, I could've sworn the planets, in all of the known universes and beyond, were all perfectly aligned. Ignorance had nothing on us.

We were still sitting on the bunk, but we might as well have been perched on a cloud right at the edge of the exosphere. And instead of watching satellites and asteroids go by past the Kármán line, we were watching the glow of them on each other's faces. It was nearly pitch-black, and the only times we could actually see were when a star went supernova in the distance or when a flaming comet zoomed by particularly close. They say there's no sound in space, but I could hear everything with a dizzying clarity. The flames of the sun licking at Mercury's surface, the wobble of Neptune, and even that unmistakable whirl of a black hole to nowhere, all muddled together with the cackling of the man on the moon and those tiny sounds that were shamelessly escaping me. We weren't breathing. We couldn't anyhow, and we didn't have to. Not up there. Not then. As far as I was concerned, we were untouchable.

"Wait –" Our lips separated with a wet smack. Harry peered over my shoulder, and then began casting his eyes about the room. For what, I couldn't tell. I tried following his gaze but it jumped from this place to that, without rhyme or reason. "I think I'm forgetting something..."

"Remember it later," I suggested. This kissing that we were doing was quite nice. Perhaps the nicest thing we'd done in the past week. It wasn't completely out of this world to think that if we stopped, eventually we'd use our mouths for other things that weren't as pleasant. Talking, and yelling, and everything in between would only lead to cold shoulders and even colder nights. We should keep ourselves occupied for sanity's sake, if nothing else. In that spirit, I stroked the nape of his neck and tried bringing his head closer, but he lightly batted my hand away.

A chill set in as I waited for my mind to catch up and his mind to latch down on the tail of the idea it was chasing. The wait wasn't long.

A snap of his fingers and a hurried exclamation of 'My wand!', and my coat slid off the desk again with his frenzied intent to undo all the work of his admittedly clever Clarus spell. The sound of crinkling plastics and papers soon filled the tent and without warning, the magnetic poles switched and my galactic daydream tore itself to shreds. The planets started spinning again at a dazzling pace, some going in the wrong direction and colliding with each other, others being sucked into that gaping black hole. A second ago, air was the last thing on my list but now it seemed like I couldn't get enough of it. I was starting to get light-headed.

"Are you there?" He had a curious look on his face, and I didn't know how long he'd been trying to get a hold of me. He waved his hand and talked comically slow, his next words laced with amusement. "Hello? My wand? Mind Accioing it for me?"

Harry vanished. The cloud suddenly became as light as air and then I was falling, flailing, as the ground rose to meet me.

His eyes flitted around the room with expression bordered on panic. It was obvious that he couldn't maintain his casualness anymore. Neither could I, even though I was doing a lousy job of it in the first place. I broke out in cold sweat just before my figurative insides painted the figurative Earth red.

"Say something, goddammit. You're scaring me."

The evidence would speak for itself.

I got up and grabbed my coat off the floor, letting my fingers fumble with the clasp. I felt a decidedly horrible pang when my fingers grazed against the object of my avoidance. Yes, I, Hermione Granger, thought that if I ignored something long enough it would just go away. But of course the universe didn't work like that, and since I'm ninety-nine point nine percent sure that it plots my demise this very second, I should've known it wasn't going to bend the rules this one time.

'I mean, how bad could it be?', I thought.

So I shoved it into his outstretched hand without preamble.

Harry made a choked sound I'd never heard before, and I couldn't tell if he was ready to cry, yell, or both.

"Mend it." He tried giving me back the broken pieces and I flinched like they were the tools someone used to commit murder. His wand felt lifeless, like a twig that I picked up off the ground before coming inside. I didn't want to touch it. I didn't want anything to do with it.

"Harry, I don't think –"

"Try. Please." He was eerily calm, as if he honestly believed that such a thing could simply be fixed. I could see other emotions bubbling up but he held them back, more for his sake than mine.

It didn't take a wandmaker to know that its phoenix feather core was the only thing holding the two nearly severed pieces together. The feather itself was dull and limp peeking though the splintered wood.

I was sure he remembered the spello-tape phase Ron's first wand went through and I knew he knew that even if I had some, I wouldn't even mention it.

"Reparo." I tried, more for his sake than mine.

Streams spun out and enveloped the fragments. We both watched with bated breath as the feather brightened and the wood resealed itself over it like a scene in reverse. Then we both stood there for only Merlin knew how long until Harry finally gripped his wand in that awkward way eleven-year-olds hold theirs for the first time.

"Lumos," he said. The wand sputtered. A light glowed feebly and then blinked out like a dying star. I caught his gaze but all I could see was a childlike flicker of faith and the incredulous disbelief that this could honestly, truly be happening. He tried again with no better results, but I could tell he wasn't ready to give up just yet.

"Wingard –" The wand promptly broke as if the sheer thought of carrying out a spell like that was too much to bear. A crack resounded in the enclosure and the piece farthest from the handle clattered to the ground, sewing the last threads of finality in the situation. Harry stood shock still.

Tension? There was nothing but.

"Harry…" I placed a hand on his shoulder. I didn't know why, really. Maybe it was to calm him down, to focus his attention somewhere else, or quite possibly to stall whatever was about to happen to our fragile truce. Either way it wouldn't have ended well.

He rounded on me. "You had it the whole time?"

It was sudden, it was angry, and it was steeped in so much accusation that I nearly choked on it.

"Harry..."

"Just answer the question," he demanded. I could tell he wanted someone to be mad at. He wanted someone, anyone, to take his frustrations out on. And I'd be damned if it was me.

"I found it with the rest of my things yesterday," I said, as calmly as I could even though he was shaking with hardly-contained rage and grief and I could feel some part of my chest hurting because I could only imagine the pain he was in. "I found it back at Bathilda's just before I apparated us out but at the time I didn't know –"

"And then what? Did it suddenly apparate into your coat?"

"Oh I don't know, maybe it did," I hissed back, without thinking.

The wand that had gotten him into, and out of, countless situations was now the equivalent of a half-decent paperweight. As much as I knew I should bite my tongue and go for the comfort approach instead of reacting to his anger, I couldn't. Words just keep coming like flood water, deadly and all-consuming. We were going to drown in them.

"When were you planning on telling me? Was it before or after the Final Battle?"

"It was going to be after you got better. You were really unwell. I didn't want to make things any worse."

"Well, congratulations. You're doing a great job."

"Why are you getting upset with me?"

"Upset? Who's upset? I think I'm being pretty civil considering that my wand is in a million bloody pieces!"

"That's right! Your wand, Harry. You had it! I should be asking you what happened!" I found myself prodding my finger into his chest to punctuate every stressed word. He gritted his teeth. I stood my ground.

"Now I can't ask you questions anymore without you throwing a fit. You're so goddamn sensitive sometimes I swear –"

"I'm throwing a fit?" I asked, indignant.

"That's what I said.

"Why don't you just sit down and relax?"

"Why don't you stop telling me what to do?"

"I was just trying to help! If it wasn't for me, it'd be ashes by now or worst yet, in the hands of Death Eaters! How does that sound?"

He flung his hands in the air. "Brilliant! They could've used it for firewood since that's what it is!"

He dropped the wand handle and brushed past me, towards the tent opening. I was starting to feel lightheaded again, but for a completely different reason.

"Where are you going?" I called after him. The voice that left my hardly sounded like my own, but it made Harry falter all the same. He didn't turn around when he answered with,

"Why? Would it matter?" In second, he was gone.

I could've done what I did the last time someone left me standing in this very spot, abandoned. I could've. But this time, I didn't just stand there with my mouth open in shock. This time, I refused to let him leave.

I absolutely refused.

Snow was making my socks wet and my toes cold by the time I caught him by the shoulder and tried spinning him around. He shrugged me off and kept going. Bitter air rushed past, violently stripping us of whatever heat followed us out of the tent.

"Stop it," I yelled above it.

"Let me go," he said as he tried to yank out of my grip.

"Just stop it, Harry," I pleaded. "Stop."

He was still facing in the opposite direction when he stopped fighting against Mother Nature and her intent to make it as difficult as possible for him to plod away. If this was the one time that the universe was conspiring with me instead of against me, I was glad for it.

"We promised not to do this anymore."

The full moon was straining through the clouds, giving me just enough light to see the puffs of my exhausted breathing.

It was a few seconds before I got my answer, as if he honestly had to think about it before replying.

"Fine."

I wasn't sure I heard right.

"Fine?"

I couldn't read anything on his face when he turned around because his mental shutters were down and screwed tight. He was as frozen as the ground beneath my feet.

"Yeah, fine."

"Really?"

"Really," he answered, seemingly getting bored with the repetition. "I'll just borrow yours for now."

"My what?"

"Your wand, Sweetheart. Pay attention."

I scowled at the syrupy ring to his voice and held it out without a fuss. There was never anything sweet about him calling me 'Sweetheart' and I wanted to go back inside more than I wanted to stay there arguing in the cold. He plucked it from my stiff fingers and said a Tempus charm. The image was blurry at first, like I was looking at it through a foggy window. With a twitch of his wrist, it glowed a stunning bright red. He didn't keep it up for long but it was enough to note the time and whether he'd be able to effectively use my wand without blowing himself to bits.

He nixed the digital clock and stuffed his hands into his jacket before closing his eyes and exhaling. His next words lost all that passion from before, like the wind stripped that from him too.

"Go to sleep. I'll stand guard."

"But –"

"Two hours, tops. I'll wake you up, and then we can leave."

He turned away from me and started walking towards the edge of the barriers.

"Where are you going?"

"Nowhere. Anywhere. Just go to sleep."

"Are you even going to listen to me?"

"No."

Before either of us could take another step, a savage, excited howl tore through the woods. I couldn't spot anything in the tree except murky shadows that may or may not have been there the entire time. The answering chirps and barks were drowned out by another hair-raising roar. I stiffened, instinctively going for my wand before remembering that I didn't have it.

The Burrow. I heard that some howl at the Burrow.

I didn't know it then but I knew it now.

"Werewolves," I whispered. And with our luck, it'd be Greyback and his entire pack.

We didn't move a single muscle as we waited, straining our ears against the night sounds for another indication of where they were. It seemed like the forest had the same idea, because I didn't hear a thing until that unmistakable rush behind me. In the second it took for me to turn around, the entire tent was ablaze.

"Shit!" Harry spat, just as the flames licked out at us.

Before I knew it we were running through the trees and underbrush, racing for the barriers. I struggled not to trip over snow and roots and my own two feet. Harry's hand was tight around my wrist, tight enough that I knew it would bruise come morning.

The sour taste of smoke in my lungs felt all too familiar.

I didn't know where we were rushing to or how much of them were chasing us but an instant later, there was a sharp tug behind my bellybutton and we were running into oblivion.

The ground was hard despite the pine needles that littered it. I sat with my knees bent close and my head cradled between them, listening to the pounding of blood inside my ears. Two layers of jumpers jumped to three since an hour ago but I was still too cold for comfort. I pressed at the tip of my boots to try and see if my toes were still there. My joints were stiff and my actual, physical nerves were virtually nonexistent. My metaphorical ones? They were having a field day.

It was fiendfyre that smoked us out. I've only read about it really, and even though I knew there was nothing we could've done, the scene kept playing over and over in my mind. I wouldn't be surprised if that entire forest was nothing more that a smoking plot of land by now. I ran my tongue over my dry lips but it was as dry as they were so the sentiment was lost. With no other options, I stared at the white snow between my boots.

The tent was gone, and so was everything in it. I mentally took stock of what we had left, which turned out to be the clothes on our backs and whatever was in my bottomless beaded bag. I must admit it was a lot but not nearly enough.

To put it simply, we were fucked. More fucked than we were three days ago at Godric's. We've been beat down and patch up so many times but nothing compared to this. I hope it went without saying that I was scared then and even more scared now. More scared than I've ever been in my life, which was saying something. I knew a while back that we were running in circles but it was just starting to hit me. There we were, two kids against a Dark Lord and his slew of Death Eaters. Hunting Horcruxes was the plan last time I checked, but all it looked like we were doing was staying alive.

And we could hardly get that part right.

"They must've known it was us," Harry said, mirroring my thoughts. His voice was mellow, as if he was simply commenting on the scenery. "Were we that obvious?"

"Well, setting a house on fire isn't the most inconspicuous thing to do," I said, laughing that laugh you laugh when you didn't want to cry instead. He was leaning against the other side of the tree, completely out of my sight. He probably had his head kicked back and was putting all his effort into staring through the canopy of leaves above us. "And we have no way of knowing how long Nagini was following us. It wouldn't have been hard to put two and two together."

"But we looked at the charms. How could they…" he trailed off. I figured he answered his own question. They must've followed us there. I thought I had thrown them off by apparating multiple times (by mistake, mind you) but that obviously wasn't the case. Magical signatures weren't too hard to catch on to if you knew who you were looking for and charms only work if there wasn't something stronger out there to counter them. We could've easily been tracked. Easily. And to be honest, I didn't think either of us were completely focused on the task of checking the barriers anyway, what with everything that's happened in the last few days.

I could barely feel the bark of the tree trunk behind me but at least it was solid and concrete. I was sure the roughness of it would keep me awake, though I doubt I'd be able to fall asleep even if I tried.

"Why bother wait until we got back if they weren't going to kill us?" I asked. That question was knocking around in my skull for a while. We could've been rotting in a cell by now, captured. Tortured, even. Or, if we were lucky, dead.

"Intimidation? Fear? Who knows what those plonkers were thinking." I heard him shift over until he was sitting right next to me. Shoulder to shoulder. "It's probably just a game to them."

"At least one of us is having fun," I said. I blinked away the snowflakes clinging to my lashes.

"You think anything survived?" I asked. "There might be some ashwinder eggs nearby."

What I really wanted was my coat. Not only because I was freezing my arse off, but because Ron's note was in there and as much as I wish he would keel over sometimes, I was all too intrigued about what he wrote.

"We're not going back," Harry replied. "We'll be ambushed the second we try."

Of course we would. And fiendfyre destroys anything and everything it touched. It was a stupid question.

We were lulled into silence again. I'd like to think that we were watching the sunrise together, but I'd only be fooling myself.

Hogsmeade. It was familiar, and most importantly close to Hogwarts. We could stay at the Hog's Head until we got back on our feet and figured out what to do next. The only problem was that there were too many people, and too many possibilities for casualties. And these days it was never clear who was on whose side. We could be sold out the second we take our first breath of stale air. Sure if I thought about it long enough, I would've arrived at a couple more potential places. Harry's next words took me by surprise.

"What's it gonna take for you to leave?"

He talked so low that I hardly heard him but it didn't matter. I would've known what he said just by the way he refused to look at me up to this point.

"Come again?"

"Don't pretend that you don't know what I'm talking about. It'll save us a lot of time."

Time was literally all we had. I answer his question with one of my own.

"Do you want me to go?"

"Pretty soon you won't have a choice."

"We always have choices, Harry," I said. I turned his head towards me so he could see my face when I said what I said next. "And when the time comes, I'll make the right one."

The smile that spread over his face was one I hadn't seen in a long time. It was infectious, and with any luck I'd never get immune to it.

Snowflakes started falling lazily around us.

"Plus, if you really wanted me gone you would've left me at the Burrow and moved camp."

I swung my bag to my side while he laughed and made a big show of rummaging about in it.

"What are you doing?" he asked, trying to reach over my lap. I twisted away.

"No peeking!"

"What? What is it?" He was nudging at my side, urging me to tell him.

So what if we were homeless and probably being hunted as I speak. It didn't matter. All the worries vanished from his features and that goofy grin of his took their place and I knew that for at least that moment, that one blissful moment, I had my Harry back.

When I decided that he'd waited long enough, I pulled out my surprise with a flourish. I was never too good at wrapping things and it showed but it was the thought that counted. I held the box out to him.

"Happy Christmas," I said. He raised his eyebrows, and a blush painted my cheeks. "I know it's late but I thought it would lighten the mood a little."

"Is this why you disappeared when we were at Godric's?"

I nodded.

"Figures," he laughed, before taking the gift from me. It sat neatly in his palm. I watched in anticipation as he shook it near his ear, positively beaming. "How'd you fit a broom in there?"

He nudged me again and I exploded in laughter. "It's not a broom. I didn't know what you wanted so I –"

He kissed me. And I mean really kissed me. It was over before I could fully register it, but it was a kiss all the same. Arms wrapped around my shoulders and chased away the early morning chill. I leaned into the embrace, snuggling against his chest and stealing as much heat as I could. Harry chuckled and closed his eyes.

"I've got all I need right here."