A clap of thunder exploded outside while a torrent of rain pelted the soggy earth that grew weary from the rapid approach of winter. Harry jerked awake, his breath quick, his heart beating fast. A nightmare faded before he could remember the details. He only remembered his uncle, but that was enough to make him shiver and curl closer into the warmth and goodness that was twisted around him like a vine. Peaking his eyes open, he found Hermione attempting to suffocate him in her slumber, her arms and legs tangled around him, her face burrowed into his neck. His heart swelled in his chest, an odd feeling but one he was begrudgingly getting accustomed to whenever she captured his attention. An inkling of what that feeling meant plagued his thoughts as of late. But his mind was not his own. It had been infiltrated. His thoughts were not safe. This hadn't been the first time someone had made themselves welcome inside his brain without his consent. Though, he had to admit, this was the best company he'd ever had.
Harry watched her sleep for longer than he was comfortable admitting to. A time existed when he had watched Ginny sleep, curled on his lap in the Gryffindor common room. Thinking of Ginny no longer held the same power over him that it would have a year ago. She existed in a distant memory, the ghost of infatuation. He remembered how he once enjoyed watching the pretty redhead's face turn peaceful in her rest. But this experience now with Hermione elicited wholly different feelings. For one, Hermione's nakedness drew his arousal. For another, he witnesses the experience of her dreams, an experience too personal to overlook. The dark scenery within her mind paralleled the feeling of a nightmare, but it was filled with sadness rather than fear. Stumbling through an unknown wood, Hermione searched for something unseen, desperation and loss fuelling her to keep moving. The rain in reality seeped into her slumber, made her shiver as she walked. She was crying. Then mumbling softly aloud, she moaned, "Ron, come back." Her gentle words stabbed through his sternum.
Wincing, Harry sat up abruptly, burying his face in his hands. A shuddering breath forced its way inside his lungs. The swelling in his heart burst, leaving a void in its absence. Some of the pieces lodged into his sternum like shrapnel, an ache that lingered and festered worse than any physical wound he'd endured before. Dawn had not yet risen, and he was still tired. But the need to get away from her, the need to place distance between their bodies, even if their minds were now inseparable, almost indistinguishable triumphed over his exhaustion. Carefully, Harry crawled over his sleeping partner before making his way quietly to the bathroom. Pacing back and forth inside the small space, he waited for the water to heat up. Love was a foreign concept to him. Even the word sounded strange inside his mind. That emotion avoided him for most of his life, and in turn, he learned to avoid it. Certainly, people in his past loved him, and he them, though he never truly considered it that way. But never had any love before felt quite like this. You've fallen in love. He huffed.What a stupid, childish thought. He couldn't be in love. Not with her anyway. Not with Hermione. After all, she didn't belong to him, and that fact grew more and more apparent as the days wore on. He shook his head roughly before stepping into the shower. The water burned, but he enjoyed it. The fire melted some of the ice inside his chest.
Through the pain of his heartbreak, another emotion sprung up, drowned out the sadness with a scorching rage, and his hand, seemingly of its own accord, slammed against the tiled shower wall. The sting in his palm left him momentarily confused, though the anger still blistered in his belly. It wasn't her he was angry at. It was the damn world, and its suffocating insistence on making him suffer. What a typical twist of misfortune. The first girl to have ever stolen his heart loved his best friend instead.
He stayed in the shower for a long time, barely moving, simply letting the water run over the aching muscles in his back. The water threatened to go cold before he considered getting out, ultimately turning to reach for the tap. But as he did, a stab shot through his scar. Stumbling back, he clapped a hand to his forehead. He knew what was happening and desperately tried to stop it. The old, familiar feeling rushed inside his brain, the feeling of having his mind ripped out of his skull. His vision went blurry; his hand pressed tighter against his head. No. His knees trembled; his breath came quick. No! But it was a swift defeat. His eyes rolled back, and he went limp, tumbling backward into the darkness.
…
A crash from the bathroom startled Hermione awake. The morning was young, judging from the gentle, blue light streaming in from the cracks in the canvas, the whooshing of rain a timeless lullaby. At first, she took a moment to lounge about the mattress, her fuzzy mind unable to differentiate whether the bang that had awoken her was dream or reality. But upon realizing that the space beside her was cold, she opened her eyes, finding Harry missing. She threw on some clothing before heading towards the bathroom door, knocking softly. As she waited, she remembered the Legilimency, the connection between their minds, and the sudden and conspicuous absence of it now.
Harry? She crinkled her brow, feeling silly to attempt telepathy, as if the entirety of yesterday had been a strange and distant dream. Harry's silence did nothing to disprove that notion. But yesterday had happened, and the mental quiet that greeted her now unnerved her. She knocked again.
A sharp gasp preceded a painful groan from inside the bathroom. Hermione bit her lip, her stomach twisting, before opening the door. Steam from the water hung in the air, lending a dreamlike ambience to the small space. On the sink rested Harry's glasses, folded neatly on the edge of the porcelain. The mirror was fogged, hiding her reflection as she stepped further inside.
"Harry?"
"Ah, Bellatrix." Harry's voice was soft and strange from beyond the curtain. The sound of the shower spray nearly overpowered it. "Do you have it?"
A cold, dewy sweat rose on the back of Hermione's neck. "Harry, what are you talking about?" Her unwilling feet carried her closer to the shower before her unsteady hand rose to yank back the vinyl. Hermione found him crumpled against the back of the tub, his head writhing painfully as if he were attempting to free himself from an invisible stranglehold. His eyes were open, but they were rolled back, exposing only the whites of his eyes. The water continued to pelt against his thighs; Hermione turned off the tap.
Harry's back arched as he hissed with pain, his nose beginning to bleed, just a drop at first, then a rush of blood streaming down his lips and chin, dribbling onto his chest. "You must keep it safe. Never remove it from your person. Let no one touch it." The blood dripped into his mouth as he spoke. Hermione rushed to his side, her hands turning his face to look at her. "If you fail…," he continued.
"Wake up. Harry, wake up."
His eyes snapped to hers. But instead of the brilliant green she expected, a glowing red greeted her. She recoiled, tumbling back against the tile as she stared with wide eyes. "I will hurt you." Obviously, Harry was not himself. But still, with his eyes shining red, the words tumbling from his lips as blood poured down his face terrified her.
Hermione shivered, her eyes pooling with frightened tears. "Fight it. Fight him." Come back to me.
His eyes rolled into their sockets once more as his head swung backwards against the tile, a sharp, painful bang. Groaning through gritted teeth, he clenched his hands into fists, blood seeping like an endless stream from his nose. Then, with a laborious gasp, he settled limply against the porcelain. Hermione watched, her body shaking though she was not cold, as his chest heaved. The only sounds in the small room were her own timid breaths and Harry's heavy wheezing. After a moment of his stillness, she crawled over to him once more before her palms enveloped his cheeks, thumbs dragging along the sharp cheekbones of his face, handsome still even with the pallor of his skin and the blood coating his mouth and chin. "Harry?"
Before his eyelids fluttered open, she heard his thoughts return, quiet at first, then raising, like someone turning up the volume of a stereo. His inner voice muttered nonsensically, its tone frantic. Then his eyes opened, unfocused, before he met her gaze, his irises the usual, shocking green once more. "Hermione. The cup." His voice was a breathless whisper. In his mind, a vision replayed - long, pale fingers placing a golden cup that dangled from a chain around the slender neck of Bellatrix Lestrange. In the distance, a howling wail could be heard. "Hufflepuff's cup. It's a Horcrux. Bellatrix has it." But you know that already. His eyes slid shut again.
"No, I couldn't see the vision, couldn't hear your thoughts. I thought, for a moment, that the mind reading…the mark…that it had all been a dream."
"I wish it had." I wish our thoughts were still our own.
"You're bleeding." With one hand still pressed against his face, Hermione pulled her wand from her pocket with the other, waving it to summon a bit of toilet roll. But the moment she had, the whole bathroom seemed to cave inward, the toilet ripping from the ground towards her, the sink dislodging, spraying water, the roof of the tent sinking inward, and the mirror flying off the wall directly at her hand. Before she could even gasp in surprise, Harry raised his palm instinctively when a shield charm burst from the centre of it, blasting away everything that came near. Both of them froze in shock. Hermione, always ten steps ahead, pulled her hand away from Harry's face with a pensive glance. Another side effect, perhaps, she thought before waving her wand once more, this time without touching him. "Reparo." The spell's strength returned to normal, and the bathroom straightened instantaneously – the toilet and sink returned to their respective places, the roof popped back into shape, and the mirror was restored, hanging back over the sink innocently. She sat in silence for several moments, staring at the now immaculate room, her thoughts disturbed and relentless. While she considered the new information, Harry stood in front of the mirror, taking a look at his macabre reflection.
"God," he said, running the tap and washing the blood off his face. "This is all getting out of hand."
"That's quite the understatement." Hermione rubbed her face before standing and handing Harry a towel. He was dripping all over the floor. "I'll make breakfast. Get dressed."
They didn't speak of what happened, nor did either spend much time thinking of it either, though more darkness clouded their already fragile states of mind. As the days passed, they spent much of their time practising Occlumency. They made excellent progress, but Harry surprised both of them by mastering it faster than Hermione. What Hermione didn't realize, however, was that Harry had an ulterior motive. He had something he was desperately trying to hide, namely his feelings for her. They still slept together and rather frequently at that. The marks on their chests would ache and ache and ache in the absence of the other's touch. If they waited too long, a simple brushing of their arms as they walked past each other was enough to have them coupling on the floor. All of it added up to a whirlwind of confusion, uncertainty, and quite a bit of unbridled lust. In the moments of physical contact, Harry had to be careful of his thoughts. No matter how much he tried to shield his mind from her, he couldn't, not when they were touching. So, he had to be careful of the things he thought of in those moments, focusing intently on the shape of her lips or the silkiness of her skin or the scent of her hair. If Hermione noticed his strangeness, she didn't let on.
One evening, after they had made love against the side of Harry's cot – they hadn't quite made it to bed – Hermione was curled up in his lap, her head resting against his shoulder, her legs on either side of his hips. His hands drew random patterns into the skin of her back while his head rested against the mattress behind him. "Hermione?" His voice was as soft as his fingers gliding along her spine.
"Hm?"
"I can't believe I just thought of this now, but…shouldn't we be using protection?" He lifted his head, his worried eyes inspecting her expression. To his surprise, she frowned, her sadness seeping into his own emotions.
"No. We don't need to worry about that."
This threw him. "Why not?"
Instead of answering, she grabbed his hand and guided it to her lower back. A faint line greeted his fingertips. "Do you feel that?"
He nodded.
She returned her head to his shoulder. "When I was a little girl, I was in an accident." In her mind, he saw her story replaying like a dream, vague memories and flashes accenting her words. "It was a cold, winter night – cliché, really. The start of all stories worth telling. My father lost control of the car, crashed into tree, right where I was sitting. My parents were fine, but I had to be rushed to hospital for surgery. My pelvis was crushed. During surgery, they found out that one of my fallopian tubes was damaged beyond repair; they had to remove it. And the other one…." She laughed here. It was a bitter sound. "Well, the other was missing entirely. A rare birth defect. When they told me, I didn't care. I was just glad to be alive. I mean, I was a child. What did I care of having babies of my own? Besides, I had plenty else to focus on at the time. It took me months to recover. I had to relearn how to walk. It was…perhaps the single most awful event of my life. Anyway, even during Hogwarts, it never bothered me. I hardly thought of it. If anything, it was just another excuse to bury myself into my schoolwork. But the older I got, the more that thought crept in. That even if I wanted to, someday…I couldn't. Not without medical intervention anyway. So, to sum it up, no, Harry. I can't have children."
His arms tightened around her during her story, his fingers tracing that old scar over and over, as if he could make it go away just by wishing it so. The emotion she made him feel, those forbidden thoughts, snuck up to edges of his mind, and he shoved them away, forcefully. "I'm sorry," he said, his lips pressing against the top of her ear, desperate to distract himself. "You would have made an excellent mother." The truth of his words filled him with a devout certainty.
She lifted her head, a sad smile lifting her lips. "And you'll make a wonderful father someday."
Her words stabbed him deeper than they had any right to. She complimented him after all. But he heard the deeper meaning in her words. 'You will make a wonderful father someday…with someone else.' He shifted her off of him, standing abruptly, and blocking his thoughts as soon as they were no longer touching. "Thanks." He hadn't meant the word to sound so biting. "I, erm, I need to use toilet." He rushed off to the loo without looking at her.
The next day, they had run out of food entirely. Hermione had made them a breakfast of used tea bags with no sugar or honey, and one heel of bread each with no butter or jam. And that was the last of it, save for some spices and sauces. It had been over a month since their last food run, and it was clear what needed to be done.
"I'll go." Harry was already donning his pack and zipping up his jacket.
Hermione bit her lip nervously. "Shouldn't we both go? Together?"
"No." He said it perhaps a bit too forcefully because she flinched.
He expected her to be stubborn like she always was, but she simply stared at him for a few moments before saying, "Kay. Just…be safe."
"I will. Where are we again? Just in case."
"The Forest of Dean. Remember, it's the little clearing right near the river."
"Right. I'll be back soon. I promise."
Her eyes appeared glassy, but she only nodded, her thoughts blocked from him. Without another word, he strode from their little tent. The November air bit his cheeks as he stepped outside, the cool blues and greens of the forest a stark contrast to the safety of the warm, orange glow from behind him. His fingers curled tighter around his wand as he walked towards the edge of the wards. Pulling his hood low over his head, he disapparated. The moment he set foot on the pavement of an alley in a little, Muggle village, he grunted, crumbling to his knees, clutching his heart. The pain in his mark that was always there when he and Hermione weren't touching spiked to a new, feverish temperature, debilitating, unbearable. He released the mental barrier of his Occlumency. Hermione? he thought, bracing against the skip he appeared beside, still holding his chest, petrified that something had happened to her.
Harry, are you alright? Her voice sounded strange in his mind, like she was speaking to him from underwater. The relief he felt at hearing her voice was practically silly.
The mark…is it burning for you?
Yes, it's like it's on fire. I think it's from the distance…?
Fuck. Should I come back?
No. We need food, and I think…I think it's fading.
She was both right and wrong. The pain was intense, but he was growing accustomed to it slowly. He decided to make his trip as quick as possible, scurrying towards the nearest supermarket. He loaded up his trolley, grabbing a large assortment of non-perishables, like canned soups and vegetables and boxes of tea bags and bags of crisps, though he did indulge on some meat and milk and eggs. The shop was busy, and he had to wait in a long line at the till. He fidgeted, the mark on his chest positively burning. He rubbed it absently, earning himself some odd looks from other customers. When it was his turn at the till, the lady working it was staring concernedly at him.
"Are you okay, love?"
"Yeah, fine, thanks. You?" He handed her the pounds that were actually transfigured Galleons – very illegal.
"Your nose is bleeding." She had handed him a tissue before taking his money.
"God, sorry. Thank you." His hand trembled as he wiped his nose. She was eyeing him suspiciously, his rather raggedy clothes, the scars on his forehead and face, the tremble to his hand. The inconvenient nosebleed was just the icing on his already shitty cake. He could only imagine what he looked like, what sort of person she thought him to be, perhaps homeless or an addict of sorts. Though, he was pretty much homeless, and lately, he was rather addicted to Hermione. He grew worried that she would alert the police or something, but she handed him his change and sent him on his way. Gathering up his bags gratefully, he headed off back to the alley he came from before apparating back to the Forest of Dean, just outside of their wards.
The pain in his chest didn't decrease even as he strode back into the tent. He found Hermione curled up in one of the armchairs, holding a tissue to her bleeding nose with one hand and clutching her chest with the other. He dumped the bags onto the kitchen table before nearly running towards her. She hadn't noticed him arrive and squeaked in surprise when he pulled her into his arms. Instantly, the pain disappeared, like ice to a burn.
"Harry." His name was a prayer on her lips, and she clutched his jacket between her fingertips, gifting his chest and collarbones with little kisses. He tried to ignore the way his heart inflated at her eagerness to see him, reminding himself that she was only glad because of this strange ailment afflicting them. Like he always did, he shoved the feelings aside, focusing instead on the way her body felt pressed against his. Lifting her chin to repay her kisses, he snogged her in earnest. Her hands worked to unbutton his trousers, yanking them down his hips upon completion of her task. Lifting her up, he placed her back down on the table, beside the sweating groceries.
We need to put those away first, she thought as her teeth nipped at his lower lip.
Definitely, he agreed as he pulled her clothes off, pushing himself inside her almost viciously. She cried out, her head banging against the table while her nails dug into his bottom, wrenching him closer, deeper. He was blind to the pain of it, groaning at the heat that enveloped him as well as the sensations she shared with him. And then it began. The table groaned rhythmically beneath them in tandem with the sloppy sounds of their sex. This was perhaps the roughest encounter they'd had, and it was a bitter reminder to Harry that this was not about emotion; it was about need. His thoughts were getting out of control as his pace doubled in speed. He couldn't look at her, as much as he wanted to. He was afraid of what she might see, might hear inside his mind if he indulged himself with a glance. Staring blankly at the innocent logo on the grocery bags, he forced himself to pretend that this was nothing, nothing.
That she was nothing.
Blasphemy.
The end approached. His hands curled around the edge of the table, his stomach tightened, and his eyes squeezed shut.
Nothing. Nothing.
She sobbed to the heavens, salvation imminent for her. For him? He was plummeting straight to hell. And it was over with a grunt and six final thrusts. Pulling away, ashamed, angry, destroyed, he straightened his trousers and grabbed the grocery bags whilst Hermione lay gasping, a sweet, peaceful smile on her lips.
Nothing. Nothing. That's what I am.
"Did you say something?" Her breath was still quick. Her eyes were closed.
"No."
"Would you two give it a rest already?"
Harry and Hermione froze. His misery and her euphoria dissipating into a matching panic. Harry swivelled round, searching for the source of the noise. No one but the two of them could be seen. After several tense seconds, realization dawned over Hermione's face. "Phineas."
Harry forgot entirely about the portrait they had stashed in Hermione's bag. It had been so long since they'd taken him out of there.
"Yes, I'm still here, thank you," the disembodied voice said, as if he was capable of reading Harry's mind as well.
Righting her clothes, Hermione jumped off the table. "We're not letting you out of there, so you might as well go back to Hogwarts."
"You're absolutely right, I should. I'm a gentleman, after all. I needn't be corrupted by all of this teenaged immorality. You're lucky you weren't my students. You wouldn't want to know what we did with pupils getting up to the things you two have been getting up to. Particularly half-bloods mingling with Muggleborns. Tainting the blood further used to be a crime, you know, back when the world had a shred of decency and decorum."
Harry's eye twitched, but Hermione ignored the blatant prejudice. "We're too old to be Hogwarts students now," she said matter-of-factly, though there was a wistfulness to her words. Harry supposed she wished she had finished school, that she wasn't on the run from a madman, that she wasn't stuck in a tent in the woods with him. She had grabbed her own bags of groceries and began helping Harry put them away. Phineas continued to rant while they ignored him.
We need to be more careful. Her thoughts caught him off guard. Since they discovered how to block each other out when they weren't touching, they rarely spoke to each other telepathically, the events of earlier that afternoon notwithstanding.
Why? Harry carefully compartmentalized all of his emotions once more, hid them away.
He heard what we've been up to. Who knows what he's told Snape.
Harry snapped his mental shield back into place as if he slammed the door in her face. Exteriorly, he calmly placed the milk in the fridge. On the inside, his thoughts ran haywire. Snape knew what they had been doing. There could be no doubt about it. Voldemort was already eager to hurt Hermione. When he found out how truly important she was…. He couldn't finish that thought. His body was shaking. Professor Black was still talking, his pompous voice filling Harry's stomach with fury. He turned and began to walk towards Hermione's bag, his steps even and measured, but he was ablaze. At first, she didn't realize anything was amiss until Phineas Nigellus's voice grew louder. Turning to look, she saw Harry leaning the portrait against the wall, pulling his wand from his pocket.
"…absolutely disgusting. Don't you have any decency? Hey, what are you doing?" the portrait said, the old headmaster fixing Harry's wand with an apprehensive glance.
"I'm going to roast you alive, starting with your feet." The tip of his wand lit up.
"Harry, no!" Hermione rushed towards him.
Professor Black was cowering inside his frame. "Wait! Wait! I was joking, of course. You are both the most decent people I've ever had the pleasure of meeting. Honestly, can't you take a joke?"
"What have you told him?" Harry demanded, his wand dangerously close the bottom of the painting.
"What are you talking about, boy? Told who?"
"Snape!" Harry roared, "What have you told him?"
"We talk quite frequently. I can't be expected to remember everyth-."
"What have you told him about us?"
"Harry." Hermione placed her hand on his shoulder.
He shrugged away. "Tell me, or you'll burn."
"Nothing! Professor Snape has no interest in the love affairs of his former students."
"You're lying." Harry's wand inched closer.
Hermione sounded worried, uncertain. "Harry, stop it."
He rounded on her. "Why?"
Because we may need him.
"We don't need him." He couldn't risk letting her see inside his mind.
You don't know that.
"Hermione, he was sat in your bag for almost a year. We don't need him."
You're not thinking clearly. Please. Put him back. Let's make something to eat.
"Why do you care what happens to him?"
What you're doing isn't you. This isn't you. This is…this is evil.
"Evil." Harry stumbled back, shaking his head in disbelief. "He's evil." He pointed at the painted man trembling within his frame. "Snape is evil. What they'll do to you when they've found out what you mean to me is evil." Harry's eyes widened. No, no, he couldn't have said that aloud. He needed to backtrack before she realized. "I mean, what they might imagine you mean to me because of what we've been getting up to." He looked away. I'm a complete fucking idiot.
"Right." Hermione cleared her throat. "But that doesn't make it okay to burn a man alive."
"He's been dead for nearly a century."
"His essence is in that portrait. It would be the same as burning Dumbledore's painting."
Harry's glare was murderous. He turned away from her, snatching Professor Black roughly enough that he stumbled around at the movement before Harry shoved him back into Hermione's bag. "You're a lucky bastard. Be grateful Hermione has a damn conscience."
"I take back everything I've ever said about Muggleborns," Phineas said.
"I would stop talking now if I were you." Hermione shot a disgusted glance at her bag, before walking back to the kitchen. Her mental block was back in place, but Harry could still practically feel the chill that had frozen the air between them.
"Someone could have seen me apparate earlier." Harry's voice was as empty as his chest. "I'm going to keep watch." Hermione responded with silence. For the first time since his bout with Nagini, he pulled the locket out of her bag, shooting daggers at the now empty painting, and placed it around his neck, head bowing beneath its weight. Once outside, he was struck by the temperature. His breath was visible in the frigid air, and the first dusting of snow was beginning to stick to the ground. He built himself a fire and leaned against the canvas, hatred towards himself festering in his heart. Not only was he an idiot, he was also impulsive, quick tempered, useless, weak. No wonder she preferred Ron.
As he glared into the blackness of the forest, something bright moved in his peripherals. His eyes flickered towards it, wand already out of his pocket. It was a Patronus, a stag. No, it was a doe. It trotted gracefully passed the wards, its brilliant, silvery light ethereal. He considered calling out to Hermione, but their recent row stopped him. Besides, a doe must have came from someone he could trust; its form was too close to his father's, and that felt too personal to share, even with Hermione. He remembered seeing his parents when he had nearly died last week. Was it possible somehow that his mother had sent this message beyond the grave? The delicate creature stopped a few metres away, its head turning to look in Harry's direction. He decided to follow. Impulsive. As he moved through the brush and trees towards the deer, it continued along, leading him to someplace unknown. The deeper it went into the forest, the more uneasy he grew. Just as he became certain he'd made a grave mistake in following it, it stopped in front of a small pond, turning towards him.
Then it spoke with a voice that had been intentionally distorted. "If you haven't guessed by now, this is a suicide mission. There are not seven pieces, but eight. Five remain. You are the last. You are a Horcrux. Destroy them all." The doe jumped into the pond and disappeared. Harry stood on the bank, frozen. He could see something glinting beneath the water, something he supposed the creature wanted him to retrieve. But he was stuck in place. It couldn't be true. It just couldn't be. Though, if he were being honest, he knew deep down that the creature was right. A part of him had always known. His ability to talk to snakes, the mental connection he shared with Voldemort, the fact that his wand was Voldemort's twin, it all fit. It fit so nicely that it made him sick. To win this war, he would have to die. Willingly. I have to kill myself. He fell to his knees, staring at the bottom of the pond, at the object that grew clearer through the thin layer of ice the more he gazed at it. It was the sword. He almost laughed. I have to kill myself, and that's my ticket. There was only one way forward, and he knew it.
Moving on autopilot, he removed his shoes, his trousers, his hoodie, and his jacket before he was shivering on the edge of the pond, staring down at his own weapon of death. With a deep breath, he severed the ice with his wand, the sharp crunching and cracking as it split apart may as well have been the sound of his sanity fracturing. Laying his wand atop his discarded clothes, he took a deep, shuddering breath and dove in. The water pierced his skin like knives, so cold that it burned. But he kept swimming, forcing himself to swing his numbing arms and his heavy legs towards the sword that shone in the moonlight. It seemed to take ages, but he reached it. As his hand closed around the hilt, the locket around his neck tightened, then wrenched back, pulled upward like a noose. He grabbed at it with his other hand. The locket evade him, yanking farther back, tugging him along with it. Trying to kick off the ground to surface, the locket held him in place, squeezing around his neck, holding him captive beneath the icy water. As the seconds passed, his panic grew. His Occlumency tried to slip out of his grasp, but he held on to it, keeping Hermione out. He needed to die anyway. She didn't need to witness it. But the closer he got to losing consciousness, the harder it became to keep his mental block in place, before the water around him began to turn red. Finally, his strength faltered, and it slipped away. Hermione, he thought, ashamed, I'm sorry. The last thing he felt before he passed out was her shocked terror.
He woke up choking, water spewing from his mouth as someone slapped hard on his back. His neck burned; his body vibrated from the cold. In his hand was the sword of Gryffindor. He stared at it blankly while he sucked in painful, raspy breaths. Hermione?
Harry! I'm on my way. Are you alright?
"Have you lost your mind?" It was a familiar voice, but it wasn't Hermione's. "What the fuck were you thinking?"
Who is that talking to you?
I'm fine. Go back to the tent. He closed his link with Hermione's mind and rolled onto his back, staring up into a pair of blue eyes situated beneath a mop of fiery red hair. The confusion twisted his face. It couldn't be. "Ron?"
"Yeah, mate. It's me."
A rush of emotions passed through him, anger, betrayal, joy, guilt before he settled back on confusion. "What…?" He coughed, then sat up. "What the hell are you doing here?" Harry rubbed at his throat, remembering that he was quite possibly freezing to death. Snatching his wand, he dried his shirt and pants before throwing the rest of his clothes back on, still shivering violently.
"It's a long story."
Something crashed through the leaves nearby. Both men raised their wands. Hermione's frantic and panicked face appeared from behind a tree before she stopped dead in her tracks.
"Hermione," Ron whispered, his wand falling. Harry smiled in spite of himself. He was a magnetic for misery. It was nearly comical at this point just how unlucky he was. He stumbled back a few steps before remembering the task at hand, the reason why they were in these woods in the first place. What he felt for Hermione didn't matter. His jealousy towards her affection for Ron didn't matter. The strange connection he had formed with her didn't matter. He was alive for one purpose only – to destroy the pieces of Voldemort's soul, the one within himself included. Yanking the locket from around his neck, he threw it to the ground, lifted the sword, and swung it back down. It split in half and hissed pitifully, releasing a puff of black smoke that dissipated between the falling snowflakes.
Four down. Four to go.