Chapter 3! I'd like to thank two individuals (Vivian Bella Cullen and zoroth395) for their lovely reviews. You don't know how much that made my day. This fic is definitely a project I'd been mulling over for a good long time now and I'm super stoked that some of you are enjoying it! So, in the spirit of brevity, enjoy. 3

Harry's eyes were closed when he apparated and, for a long moment, he held them shut tight. As such, the frost that crept over his lenses went momentarily unnoticed. Only seconds ago he'd been throwing essentials into a duffle bag, trying to pretend he couldn't hear Ginny's sobbing. Not wanting to infect whatever this was that he was doing with the remnants of his crumbling marriage, Harry forced himself to let go of the anger and frustration, the sadness and guilt. He imagined the discomforting emotions bleeding out of him and collecting in a small pool around his boot-clad feet.

Almost as soon as he'd purged himself, before he opened his eyes, he caught scent of a campfire. Emotionally overwrought by the past few hours, he almost barked out a laugh. She'd gotten here first. Of course she had, Harry thought to himself. How he'd every entertained the notion that he would be more punctual than Hermione Granger, he had no idea.

Harry removed his ice-crusted glasses, tucking them into the interior breast pocket of his snow dusted pea coat and took in his surroundings. That they'd both known where to meet spoke volumes about what was happening tonight. Harry stood at the center of a small clearing about the size of a small barn house. The forest floor was covered in a thick layer of perfectly white snow that, with the light of a near-full moon, seemed to cast the area in an ethereal glow. The branches of the tall firs sagged heavily with their burdens of snow and seemed to almost encase the clearing. About six meters in front of Harry was The Tent. Not some facsimile of the shelter they'd depended on so surely all those years ago, but the real thing. He hadn't seen it since The War had ended and part of him had assumed it had been lost in the rest of the war time paraphernalia they'd accumulated and had no use for afterwards. The sight of it stripped the past six years away from Harry's soul like so much cheap wallpaper.

The fire he'd smelled a moment ago flickered and popped gently a few feet from the flaps, two empty camping chairs settled into the snow beside it. Slowly, so as not to make any noise, Harry approached the leftmost of the two chairs and settled into it. Setting his bag down next to him, he stared into the fire and waited. The next five minutes felt both instantaneous and eternal, but eventually his silent reverie was interrupted by the sound of rustling canvas. To her credit, or likely the detection wards she'd placed around the clearing, Hermione made no noise of surprise as she took her seat in there chair next to him. Unable to help himself, Harry turned his head and took her in.

Perfection wasn't an applicable word to be used on Hermione Granger tonight, Harry decided. He was fairly sure that a word had yet to be coined that would describe adequately how magnificently she had captured the essence of this excursion and their need for it. She wore the same jeans and grey jumper that she'd worn that day all those years ago. It fit her just the same as it had then; Hermione hadn't changed much physically over the past few years. The combination of her and the tent were almost too much for Harry to process.

Harry knew his feelings must have made their way onto his face because the corners of Hermione's mouth curled up ever so slightly.

"Tea?" A gloved hand extended offering a steaming mug of black tea. Harry took it wordlessly and smiled back, swiveling his head back around to stare at the fire once again.

"You really are something else, 'Mione." Harry uttered softly after a few minutes of quiet contemplation.

"What could you possibly mean by that, Harry?" She looked over at him, batting her eyelashes coquettishly.

"I had no idea you'd kept it."

"The tent or the jumper?"

"Both? Either? Did you… How long…" As much as he needed to ask, the words stubbornly refused to arrange themselves. The beautiful thing about friendships like the one he had with Hermione, however, was that, more often than not, actual words were the least important part of a conversation.

"Longer than I'd care to admit. Likely even longer before I realized it."

"But why keep them? You're not really the hoarding type."

"I don't know, honestly, Harry. They were… relics, I suppose." She blushed slightly at this, though the color was barely distinguishable on her already rosy cheeks. "I know that makes me sound awfully full of myself, but I just couldn't bring myself to part with something that was such a part of me. Of us." Harry shook his head.

"No, Hermione. I…" He let out a long sigh, running his hands through his hair and looking out into the darkness of the trees beyond. "I get it."

"I know you do. It's why we're here."

"Is it?" Hermione cocked her head at the question and waited for Harry to continue. He swung his arms out in a sweeping motion, gesturing to the clearing they were sat in.

"Too much?"

"No. And that's the issue, isn't it? It's not too much." Hermione shrugged her shoulders, attempting and failing to affect an air of indifference.

"When I think of the time we spent here, it's always of this place." She looked away from him as the sentence trailed off. They sipped at their tea for a while longer, contemplating all the things she hadn't said. Eventually, despite the understanding they obviously shared, Harry knew they'd have to stop being so evasive if they were going to move past this moment.

"Nothing happened that night, Hermione." If she could have stared any harder at the darkness surrounding them, she would have.

"No, I guess it didn't." Harry bit his tongue, knowing that whatever response he'd give to that statement wouldn't be the right one. Instead, he channeled the emotion of his adolescence and opted for guilt.

"If he hadn't come back the next day, I'd be dead."

"I know that, Harry…" Hermione's shoulders sunk and she seemed to deflate slightly, accepting, if not admitting defeat. Something about her attitude sent a current of irrational anger through Harry. He forced his face impassive.

"Why'd you do it, Hermione?"

"Do what?"

"You slagged him off for a while after he got back, but it wasn't long before you two were wrapped up in each other." Her head whipped around and he could see the anger he felt inside reflected in her eyes. Harry shrugged at her, "Just curious."

"Fuck you, Harry Potter."

"Pardon me?"

"No."

"No what?"

"No, I will not pardon you." Harry would swear that, for a moment, he could see flecks of white hot flame danced across her irises. It could have been the reflection from the campfire, but with Hermione, he could never be sure. "Why don't you tell me, Harry. Give me your best guess." She crossed her legs, cradling her mug in both hands and took a long sip, all while maintaining her locked gaze.

Harry fidgeted uncomfortably for a moment, regretting his mild antagonism. This awkwardness was short lived as his own anger seized him the second it smelt his hesitation. With a brutally smug smirk, he offered up his best guess, "Because he was the one you'd always wanted?" She scoffed and a small laugh escaped her lips against her wishes. Harry knew that this conversation would last just as long as neither of them uttered his name.

"If that is honestly your best guess, I was a pretty rubbish teacher."

"Well then tell me, 'Mione. Explain it to me, because I still don't understand it."

"Explain what, Harry? That Ron was there?" He flinched at the name-drop and she rolled her eyes in exasperation. "Oh so Voldemort was fine, but Ronald Weasley is too much? Grow up, Harry." The anger flared inside his stomach and he snapped back at her.

"Because he was there? Smartest witch of our generation and that is your excuse for marrying someone like… Ron?!" He almost screamed the name, his response distorted by a combination of guilt at the use of Ron's name and anger at Hermione's answer.

"What. Do. You. Want. Harry?" She thrust each word into him like a knife.

"I want you to give me a real bloody answer, Hermione. One that makes sense." She pulled at the mass of tangled curls that made up her glorious mane. Frustration was writ in large print across her face.

"What do you want from me, Harry? To tell you I made a mistake? To take back the past six years?" She shook her head and stared into her mug. Harry spotted a soft wetness forming in the corners of her eyes that obliterated his anger and guilt into a thousand tiny pieces. "I can't do the latter, Harry. I wish I could, truly, but I can't." Hermione's said in a whisper.

"I'm sorry, 'Mione…"

"No you're not." Harry closed the gap between the two of them in an instant. It would have been slower to apparate to her. He gathered her face in his hands and tilted it up to meet his.

"I am. I promise." Hermione's smile was small, but sincere. Harry ran a hand through her tresses, and her sadness ebbed away just long enough to lock eyes with him. Those few moments unlocked a vulnerability in him that he realized he'd been hiding beneath that anger and frustration. An emotion so tightly bound to Hermione that he wondered for a moment how he'd ever spent a day without her. There was a small part of him that needed her in a very real way. In that instant Harry knew what all this was. What the source of his morose discomfort of the past couple of years had been. The farther he had drifted away from Hermione, the more uncomfortable he'd been. The longer he spent away from her, the more he and Ginny had fought. Each little joke Ron made about their relationship had chipped away at the walls of ignorance Harry had built around his feelings for Hermione. In one fell swoop in a pub in Windsor on a cold winter's night, Harry had triggered the events that had shattered the illusion that his subconscious had so carefully crafted over the past six years. The flood of emotions that washed over him were almost too much to bear and he stood up, removing his hands from her cheeks.

"I'm going to go get some more wood for the fire." The words had left his mouth and his feet had started carrying him away. They were hollow, empty words and they both knew them for the excuse they were. Harry could feel her watching him wordlessly as he faded into the darkness. Shadows from the flickering fire danced across the stack of logs next to the door of the tent, catching the image of Hermione as she sighed deeply and brushed the corner of her eyes with her woolen gloves.

I truly hope you all enjoyed the first chapter in the Forest of Dean. I'd originally planned to do the first night all in one chapter, but in the writing of it I realized that one wouldn't do it justice. The following chapter will likely wrap up Night 1. Don't forget to leave a review if you have enjoyed the fic thus far and have any comments or criticisms. I love to hear them! 3