Welcome back Everyone!

Fun fact: this story started out as a oneshot, then became a multi-chapter story when it became too daunting for me to try editing a 10,000+ word oneshot. (Also, I hope that this improves the readability for all of you; I know that I personally sometimes find long oneshots intimidating to start, depending on how much time I have.) As a result of starting out as a oneshot, though, the chapter breaks are not exactly even. And by "not exactly even", I mean completely uneven, since I split the chapters based on the perspective shifts. So enjoy this giant block of about half of the story.

As with the first chapter, I'm the only person who has edited this, and all mistakes are my own. If you have any feedback, whether it be things you love or (kind) constructive criticism, I'd love to hear it.

Finally, the usual "no own, no money, no sue" disclaimer applies.

With that, I leave you to enjoy the second chapter, this time from Hermione's point of view!

Best,
OfLegosAndDragons


When Harry interrupted her pretending to sleep by trying to sneak his own blanket onto her, all Hermione could do was mentally thank Merlin that she finally had an excuse to curl up with Harry in bed. She had watched him try and shoulder all of Ron's usual tasks without actually saying anything, and he had become so much more withdrawn since Ron had left. Not that she was much better at first, but she had mostly cried herself out after a week, and was just angry at Ron for leaving them since then. Harry, meanwhile, seemed to keep blaming himself for everything. He kept shooting her these terrified looks whenever he thought she wasn't looking, as if she'd leave him as well if she had to do anything more than what she already did when Ron was still with them. As much as it pained her to admit it, though, everything was perfectly predictable given each of their personalities, and she didn't know how to confront him about it. When Ron got angry (or jealous), his temper would get the best of him, and he'd blow up and then eventually burn himself out and come back. She would hide and think, overanalyzing everything that had happened and everyone's reactions to it, trying to figure out how to prevent it from happening again in the future. And Harry… Harry needed something to do to keep his mind off of things, whether it be playing chess with Ron, Quidditch, planning for Dumbledore's Army, or (apparently) taking over all of Ron's tasks so that he didn't have any time left to think. To an extent, she understood that, but she really hated watching him suffer alone while not knowing how to bring it up, since he just seemed so brittle. Harry had also, whether he realized it or not, become more physically distant from her after Ron's accusation that they were together. He started shying away from any touches, as if accidentally brushing hands would prove Ron right and make Ron stay away forever.

Thus, when Hermione saw the opportunity to be able to physically comfort Harry and pass it off as leaching his heat, she jumped on it, and opened up the blankets for him to crawl into bed with her. It took some prodding to get past his confused puppy face and make him pick up on what she was offering, but she prevailed in the end. She even managed to hold back the "unless you want me to" that threatened to slip out after her comment about not biting. Harry hadn't shown any romantic interest in her before, and she wasn't going to let the reason that he was stuck suffering in the cold be because she couldn't keep the yearly flare-up of her crush on him in check.

Once Harry crawled into bed with her, everything seemed to just naturally fall into place. Harry didn't appear to have any of the stupidly patriarchal gender roles about snuggling ingrained into him, and accepted being the little spoon without any comment. Sure, he was stiff at first, but Hermione mostly attributed that to this being the first time that Harry had (to the best of her knowledge) ever shared a bed with somebody else. When coupled with his general aversion to physical touch (that still seemed to linger, no matter how hard she tried to cure him of it), it made perfect sense that he might be a little bit nervous about snuggling with her. She focused on keeping her breathing as even and relaxed as she could, though, so that Harry would feel comfortable, even as her heart was pounding out of her chest at the uncertainty of whether or not she'd actually be able to help him.

After a little while though, he practically melted in her arms, and drifted off to sleep. Hermione allowed herself a tiny sigh of relief, before finally relaxing herself. Being as gentle as she could, she wrapped herself tighter around Harry as he slept, trying to convey to him that she wouldn't leave him as long as she had a choice, and that there would always be someone in his corner who cared about "just Harry" and not "the boy who lived". As she held him, she finally felt some of the thoughts of her own inadequacy drift away. Sure, she should have been stronger and faster when trying to keep Yaxley from grabbing onto her. She should have also planned further ahead before they left for the ministry and kept some non-perishable food in her bag instead of part of the library. Or, even before that, she should have spent some time reading about wilderness survival and how to forage for food and stay warm, since she knew that they were going to be on the run at some point. She was the brains of their little trio (duo?). She should have done better, and her inability to figure out the stupid book that Dumbledore had given her or where to look for the sword or the other Horcruxes had been eating at her since long before Ron left. Now, though, her only concern was making sure that Harry felt as safe as she could make him, and she finally felt useful again. All she needed to do was make sure that Harry felt safe and warm and protected for the night, and hopefully it would help keep his nightmares at bay and let him finally relax.

As she savored finally being allowed to cuddle her crush in his sleep, though, she ran into two minor issues. The first of which was that Harry was way too skinny. She could feel each one of his ribs as she clung to him, even through the multiple jumpers that they were both wearing. She knew that they weren't getting enough food, and it was obvious to her the extent to which it impacted her when her menstrual cycle stopped due to malnutrition. She naively thought that Harry was doing better, though, since he kept giving her the larger of their minuscule servings of food, and when she tried fighting him on it, he just brushed her off and said that it was still more food than he got with the Dursleys when Dudley was on a diet. Which, given how hungry she always felt since they had started living in the tent, was an awful idea to stomach, but until now had made her stop fighting him doting on her at his own expense. Now though, she had the additional concern that Harry would let himself starve to death before they found a way to destroy the locket. That idea was so awful that she resolved to use it to try quenching her own hunger each time they ate, so that she could let Harry finish her "leftovers" (the portion of her food that he should have been eating anyway) for the foreseeable future. The second problem was much fluffier though, literally: she couldn't stop staring at Harry's hair, and she yearned to run her fingers through it. Between the two problems, suppressing her own bodily functions regarding hunger seemed easier than suppressing the urge to run her fingers through Harry's hair. It was especially hard to tamp down the urge to stroke his hair since she knew how calming it would be for him, because her mum used to do that for her whenever she was sick. Which led her to the thought of how much she missed her parents, and if she'd ever see them again. It also led her to a thought about how she doubted that Harry had ever had someone to take care of him like that when he was sick, and how much she wished she could have fixed that for him. Which just led to her clinging to Harry even tighter. Eventually, she felt herself drifting off to sleep, in spite of her attempt to savor every second of cuddling with Harry. Her last thought of the night was that as awful as Ron abandoning them was, she could almost accept it since it brought her closer to Harry.

When she woke up the next morning (still curled around Harry), she felt lighter than she'd been since before the raid on the ministry, even despite the Horcrux still around her neck. Harry was also visibly walking on air all day, and had a spring in his step that she hadn't even realized that he'd lost until now. Harry was even distracted enough that she was able to levitate the extra portion of their limited meal for the day back onto his plate when he wasn't looking. When night came, she found herself rushing through her nightly routine, eagerly awaiting being able to cuddle up with Harry again. For warmth. And just for warmth, no matter what her traitorous heart kept trying to insist. When Harry got the lost puppy look again after he finished his own bedtime routine, she just opened up the blankets again and Harry climbed in without any further prompting. This time though, he rolled her over and stole her spot as the big spoon. Internally, she was seething at him (this was her time to protect him!), but in the end just chalked it up to boys and their dumb pride, and she didn't want to fight him for the position of the big spoon and scare him off entirely. Besides, as her dumb ovaries and their stupid hormones, and her traitorous heart, and her overly curious brain were telling her, this was the perfect time to see if Harry was romantically (or, at least physically) interested in her. If he was, then she'd be able to feel him poking her in the morning, right? It was times like these that she cursed her incessant curiosity for all subjects—including health class—for giving her the idea. But, it also made her feel like she was still getting something out of their cuddling other than just Harry's warmth (since she couldn't comfort him in her arms tonight), so she sucked it up and dealt with being the little spoon. As it turned out, however, being the little spoon was good for her sleep as well. Without the desire to study Harry all night long, she felt herself nodding off a lot more quickly than she had the night before.

When she woke up, she found herself torn between glad Harry didn't have an erection (so that he wouldn't be awkward about climbing back into bed with her later that night), and slightly disappointed that after spending another night in bed with her, he apparently wasn't turned on in the slightest. He seemed really unsure of himself the night before though, so maybe he was concerned about that too. Maybe he just needed some time to acclimate himself to snuggling with her before letting himself relax while holding her. This required more investigation, but she would not settle for being the little spoon two nights in a row. She mentally filed the thought away to come back to later, and went on about her day. Ultimately, this wasn't an issue, and Harry accepted being her little spoon without a problem later that night.

They accidentally fell into a pattern after that. Apparently, whomever had the Horcrux got to be the big spoon. Which led Hermione to realizing—with more than a little alarm—that she started looking forward to wearing the Horcrux and the misery that came with it, because it meant that she could be useful and protect Harry that night. As much as Hermione wanted to be the big spoon every night though, she really didn't want to fight Harry for it when he was wearing the Horcrux. Neither of them were super reasonable while wearing the locket, and she didn't want to go a night without sleeping next to Harry due to a fight. Besides, given the evidence presented to her, she was pretty sure that the Horcrux was telling Harry that he was weak if he didn't want to be the big spoon, which seemed to be just the sort of hypermasculine garbage that Tom Riddle would believe. This thought led to the tangent that Tom Riddle would have probably turned out a lot better if he'd had more hugs growing up, but there was nothing that she could do about that now, and so she'd have to settle for protecting Harry to the best of her ability in his sleep until Riddle could be dealt with more permanently. In the meantime, she made the accidental discovery that the Horcrux was much less effective at preying on her insecurities when she was Harry's big spoon. She honestly wasn't sure what about it made the Horcrux less effective, but her top thoughts on the matter were that either her stronger sense of purpose (to protect Harry), her thoughts of love and affection (regarding Harry), or her increasingly insistent arousal (directed at Harry) seemed to dampen the power of the locket when she was wrapped around him. Given that she didn't have a way to isolate any of those variables, however, she resigned herself to letting that be a mystery that she never discovered the answer to.

Despite giving up on the Horcrux mystery, though, she hadn't given up on her quest to determine if Harry was interested in her or not. Unfortunately, she didn't seem to be making much progress in that respect either. (She refused to think about how her lack of progress may just be connected to the logical impossibility of proving a negative. When those thoughts came up, however, it was usually a sign that she'd been thinking about the issue too long while wearing the Horcrux herself. She did her best to drown out those thoughts with happier ones about being able to prove that clearly Harry was interested in her when he was the big spoon again the next night.) Whenever she let her thoughts linger on her test methodology, she frequently came to the conclusion that maybe she needed to test the issue more directly. She'd honestly lost count of the number of times that she'd had to bite her tongue to keep herself from blurting out that they should lose their clothes for better skin-to-skin heat conductivity at nights, but she knew that it would scare Harry away if she did it too soon. Given the abysmal progress that they were making on finding the other Horcruxes, however, she figured that she had plenty of time to come to that later if need be, maybe in February for Valentine's Day…. But no, right now her job was just to make Harry feel comfortable and safe at night, and she could deal with her own feelings (and arousal) later. She was thankful that any of her physical signs of arousal could be blamed on the cold if Harry ever did notice them. This seemed increasingly unlikely, of course, but featured in many of her more pleasant thoughts recently, if only so that Harry would give her a little privacy so that she could take care of it. Or so that he'd offer to take care of it for her. But in the meantime, Harry came first, and so she would continue protecting him to the best of her ability.

All things considered, she was actually pretty successful up until their fateful trip to Godric's Hallow, then everything fell apart. Just when she thought she was finally getting somewhere both in the hunt for anything at all to defeat Voldemort, and also in her quest to figure out if Harry liked her back, she left him alone with that stupid snake and broke his wand. And this was right after he invited her to see his parents' graves with him for the first time, and they pretended to be a muggle couple—on Christmas Eve no less—for their trip. That had to count for something, right? But, in the end, Hermione tamped those thoughts down as hard as she could. Letting any of her thoughts stray from the task at hand of defeating Voldemort was what almost got them both killed, and she couldn't afford to let that happen. She regretfully put her secondary quest on hold, and swore to herself that she wouldn't let herself think about romance with Harry again until he either made the first move or the war ended. She did take the concession that night that since she was going to be wearing the Horcrux two nights in a row (after having to use a severing charm to get it off of Harry), then she would get to be the big spoon two nights in a row as well. The fact that Harry was too unconscious to argue with her on that did slightly dampen the feelings of success that came with it, but if he really wanted to be the big spoon, then he shouldn't have let himself get bitten by a snake and scare her like that. Besides, the only way that she was going to be able to get any sleep at all that night was if she was able to hold him close after almost losing him, and so she took her comforts where she could.

When the morning came and Harry was still out cold, however, the guilt crept back into her heart, and she regretfully left the comfort of their bed before Harry woke up for the first time. As much as she wanted to keep Harry safe and protected in his sleep, she had apparently been neglecting her job of doing so in real life. The longer the Horcrux hunt went on, the more likely that they were to make a fatal mistake. She needed to start being the brain of their group again, and resolved to start working on the only new lead that they had: namely, The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore. Unfortunately, she found that her focus kept getting drawn back to where Harry was sleeping, no matter where she was in the tent. She therefore forced herself to go outside to read with the mantra that now that he was out of sight, he was out of her mind. It didn't really work, and she wanted nothing more than to go back into the tent (and into bed) with Harry again. She was marginally more successful at keeping her eyes on the book that she was supposed to be reading if she couldn't watch Harry instead, though, and so she ended up staying outside.

When Harry found her once he woke up, and then sent her inside to get warm while he stayed outside himself, she wasn't going to lie and say that it didn't sting. But she had just broken his wand, and he was entitled to be angry with her and take some time to himself. Even at his angriest, though, Harry's anger didn't even begin to touch the anger that she had at herself for everything that she should have done differently last night. When night came back around, she was just glad that Harry was willing to come back in and sleep anywhere near her. Therefore, she didn't fight being the little spoon, no matter how much her instincts were screaming at her that she needed to protect Harry. When she briefly woke up to him getting up in the middle of the night, she miserably reminded herself that at least Harry was still being kind enough to lend her some of his body heat as she was falling asleep, and pulled the blankets closer around herself when she heard him leaving the tent. She tried her best to stay awake until he came back in, but it turned out that staying awake most of the night before healing (and then worrying about) Harry had drained her more than she had realized. She soon ended up drifting off into a fitful sleep anyway.

When she woke up, it was to Harry gently shaking her awake, with Ron holding the Sword of Gryffindor and what was left of the locket. After what she wanted to say was a stunning demonstration in self-control that she didn't wrestle Harry to the ground and take her wand back to hex Ron (and instead limited herself to just a few punches before Harry separated them), Ron offered to take the first watch. After all that they had been through without him, she wasn't going to be the one to tell him that they hadn't been keeping an actual watch for over a month now. Harry appeared to have a similar thought, and seemed to want to use the opportunity to catch her up on what had happened the night before. Harry was absolutely giddy that Ron was back, and managed to entirely miss her horror at his story. Somehow, Harry managed to wander off in the middle of the night less than a day after she had to save him from the bloody snake, and he managed to almost drown, get strangled to death, and freeze to death all in one go while she was still asleep. The only reason that he was even around to tell the story was because–somehow–they got lucky and Ron decided to come back at exactly the right time. Also, someone else managed to find them while they were hiding and deliver the sword and cast the doe. Harry was just so ecstatic about everything though that she couldn't bring herself to rain on his parade. As it always seemed to be when Ron was involved, Harry managed to equate "hey" with a genuine apology, and then everything went right back to normal between them. As much as she loathed to admit it, however, they needed all the help they could get. And, from a morale perspective, Ron always managed to somehow lighten Harry's mood in a way that she never quite could. She grudgingly accepted Ron back into their little group, and resolved to do her best to stay civil with him for Harry's sake. At the same time, however, she resolved that even though the Horcrux had been destroyed and it was no longer their indication of who got to be the big spoon, she was going to wrap Harry up in her arms tonight and not let him out of her sight, no matter what might happen.

When the three of them started getting ready for the night, however, Harry suddenly blurted out that he'd take the night watch. When Hermione went to go fight him on it, she saw from just the look on his face that there would be no convincing him otherwise. She honestly didn't know what to think. On the one hand, she was freaked out that two people had managed to find the tent in one night. Thus, she was privately in agreement that restarting a watch schedule was a good idea, especially now that Ron was back and they could split it three ways again. On the other hand, she was really struggling to keep her face from betraying her hurt that, apparently, Ron leaving them for more than a month was brushed off without a second thought, but her accidentally breaking his wand while saving their lives meant that Harry would rather stand out in the bitter cold and biting wind overnight than let her hold him. Ultimately, though, she let Harry be noble and take the night watch, since the last thing that she wanted to do was strain everyone's temper even more with a fight right before bed.

Thus, with one last forlorn look at the flap of the tent that Harry had vanished through without another word, she set about untangling Ron's blanket from what Harry had taken to affectionately calling their nest, and passed it over to him. Ron seemed to take the fact that all of the blankets were on her bed as a sign that they had combined their blankets since one of them was always on watch, and tried to compliment her on what was clearly her brilliant idea. Hermione felt her temper boiling at the surface again at Ron's seeming insistence that she was the only one to have ideas, and that each and every idea needed to be complimented. She longed to throw in his face the fact that it was actually Harry's stupidly noble idea to combine the blankets, and hers to keep them on her bed—and for them to both share the bed together—because the two of them were left alone to starve and freeze, while Ron went off to somewhere with enough food and a warm bed. The little vindictive side of her, the part that resorted to punches and canaries when people ticked her off, also wanted to throw in Ron's face that him leaving them had brought her and Harry closer together than he'd ever be with either of them, quite literally. Just before the words left her mouth, though, Ron's parting words of "you choose him" echoed through her head, and she managed to force out a "thank you" for the compliment instead. Harry had been maddeningly vague on how they had managed to destroy the locket. His explanation of him opening it up with Parseltongue, and then Ron stabbing it with no further fanfare, seemed off to Hermione. Especially given what had happened with the diary and the ring, and the fact that the Horcrux had tried to actively kill Harry twice in the last two days before it was destroyed. She wondered how much of Harry's sudden desire to take the night watch was connected to being upset with her, and how much of it was connected to not wanting to upset Ron and make him jealous. Ultimately, however, she wasn't going to push the issue with Harry or Ron, and miserably slumped into bed woefully alone.

Unfortunately, Ron's reappearance didn't fix the reason that she and Harry had started cuddling each night in the first place, namely the fact that it was bloody cold in the middle of winter in England, and whomever magically retrofitted the tent clearly had no idea about the importance of insulation. As much as she hated to admit it, the loss of the extra blanket and her Harry-shaped heater in bed with her was devastating. While Harry had been noble enough to offer up his blanket, though, she knew Ron wouldn't be so stupid as to try and go the night without any sort of thermal protection himself. And, she was still right pissed at Ron, so she would not be offering up her bed to Ron either, no matter how much warmer it would be. What she wasn't counting on, though, was for Ron to offer up his bed to her.

"Merlin's saggy trousers! It's still bloody cold, even with the tent to block out the wind! I have no idea how you and Harry managed to handle it all these weeks! Come here, Hermione."

Hermione just stared at Ron, a mix of shocked at his audacity and affronted by his forwardness and, and…

"I know that you're not happy with me, and I know that just saying sorry can't make up for leaving, no matter how many times I say it or how much I mean it, but I can see you shivering from here, and… well, I've been a bloody awful friend to both you and Harry, but I am trying to do better, and I hate it when either of you are suffering. And clearly you are right now, and I wish I could magically fix the weather or make the tent warmer or something, but I'm not as brilliant as you or as strong as Harry. And, well, this is all that I could come up with to make things even a little bit warmer for you. You can hex me in the morning if you really want to, but please, just come here for tonight to warm up? I won't try anything; I hope you know that I'm better than that. And, if you have a better idea on how I can help I'm all ears, but please, just let me help you?"

And, Merlin help her, while Harry had the most adorable confused puppy face ever, Ron was clearly a master at the kicked puppy face. He was also right that she was miserable and cold, and she missed having the extra warmth of someone with her in bed, and… and as much as she hated to admit it, Harry had never said anything about wanting anything more than just warmth at night from her. She'd been trying for weeks to figure out if there was the chance of ever being more than just one of his best friends, and after more than a month of sharing a bed, surely he'd have said something if he felt something for her, right? Or, even more miserably, surely he'd have had a reaction to her cuddling with him all night long if he saw her that way, even if he didn't want to say anything, right? She'd had all these plans for trying to draw him out of his shell and admit his feelings for her, but what if the feelings that she was so desperately trying to uncover just didn't exist? What if the whole time that she was holding him, he wished that she was taller and more toned and less… well, normally she'd say curvy, but with their lack of food those had all gone away, so maybe he wanted someone who was less bony? Or every time he was holding her, he wished it was silky auburn hair gently tickling his nose, rather than a face full of mud-colored (possibly mud-covered depending on the day) tangled curls? What if he was only sleeping next to her since she had offered, and he was scared that she would leave him too if he didn't? What if his hesitance at first wasn't because of his general lack of receiving affection while growing up, but because he didn't want her affection specifically now that he'd gotten a chance to actually date Ginny. She was always the one to initiate any of their physical contact. What if she'd been making him uncomfortable for years, and he was just too polite to say anything?

With a sick feeling in her stomach, Hermione wrapped herself up in her blankets, and made her way over to Ron's bed. She'd told herself right at the beginning that she wouldn't scare Harry off due to the dumb crush that she'd had on him since third year. She'd never exactly planned for their increased closeness to come back to bite her in the heart like this, giving her just a taste of what she longed for but would never have. In all of her dreams and fantasies of the future that she'd had about Harry since she had invited him into her bed, she'd never pictured those fantasies taking place anywhere else but in the tent, or with anyone else for miles around, where Harry had any options other than just her if he wanted any affection. Besides, she knew that Harry had always wanted a big loving family, and she was just as much of an orphaned only child as he was at the moment. She'd didn't have anything else to offer him besides her intelligence. As she crawled into bed with Ron, all she could think about was how glad she was that she'd never let Harry know her feelings for him. She had no doubt that he would have dropped everything for her if she did; that was just who he was (and why she loved really liked him). But he would have wordlessly sacrificed his own happiness for hers if he thought that was what she wanted, and as much as she'd love to say that she knew Harry well enough to be able to tell, he'd always been rather closed off and not very expressive. She could have seen herself just basking in her happiness and not noticing that anything was wrong. She was clearly no better than any of his adoring fan-girls, so in awe of the idea of being with Harry Potter that they never actually saw what "just Harry" was feeling.

When Ron wrapped his arms around her, she didn't even fight to be the big spoon. She'd never really noticed how much taller Ron was than both her and Harry, but she felt absolutely tiny in his embrace. She hated feeling so small and helpless, and how much it made her feel like a weak little damsel who needed saving, but she didn't deserve to protect anyone else anymore. The heroes that she had always admired in stories always did things because it was the right thing to do, and were powered by a sense of duty and honor. Like Harry. She'd always hated the fairy tales where the knight just saved the princess with the expectation that he'd get to marry her, and apparently she was that knight, and Harry was her princess. As appealing as the idea of true love conquering all was, more often than not it seemed to her that love corrupted all, and made people do things in the name of love that they'd never do otherwise. For the first time in a while, she began to hope that Dumbledore was wrong about love being the key to defeating Voldemort, because from what she'd seen of it so far, love just led to jealousy, stupidity, and heartbreak—none of which were terribly useful or inspiring to bring about a victory in a war.

Which led her back to Ron's bed, borrowing his physical warmth because he offered it, and not because she took it and he was too scared of her leaving to say no. But she could feel Ron relaxing behind her, and resolved to make this her place now, doing what she could to support Ron so that he could support Harry. As much as he had his flaws too, she was pretty sure that Ron (and maybe Luna and Neville, but she honestly wasn't even sure of that) was the last person that Harry had left that hadn't interacted with him due to some ulterior motive at some point in time, since she could no longer include herself on that list. With that, she let herself drift off into a warm but miserable sleep, dreaming about a world where she insisted that they kept watch even after Ron left, no matter how cold and miserable it was, if only to keep her treasured friendship with Harry as pure as it deserved to be, and not tainted by her selfish desires.


Poor Hermione! I'd love to say that things get better from here, but there is more angst to be had from Harry's point of view in the next chapter.

I hope you enjoyed this second chapter, and I'll see you on Wednesday for chapter 3!

Best,
OfLegosAndDragons