Disclaimer: This chapter contains scenes and dialogue from HPatDH, Ch. 19 (The Silver Doe). As always… JKR gets the credit for coming up with the universe and characters.

P.S. I promise there will be more original chapters soon(ish). There isn't much for them to get up to while on the run aka following canon…

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"Hermione…"

She didn't want to wake up, her dream was much too good. Why return to the cold tent when she could stay here in the arms of her faceless lover?

"Hermione?!"

An excited male's voice reached her through the haze of sleep and she bolted up right before her eyes had even opened, "What's wrong? Harry? Are you all right?"

"It's okay, everything's fine. More than fine." He consoled as she brushed her curls from her face. "I'm great. There's someone here."

"What do you mean?" She asked as she scanned the enclosed space. "Who…?"

And then she saw exactly who had shown up in the middle of the night... Soaked to the bone and dripping water onto the threadbare carpet at the entrance to the tent. Weasley held the sword of Gryffindor in one hand while the other lay limply at his side. He stared down at the floor and kicked sheepishly at the puddle that had gathered underneath him.

Harry faded into the background as she stood and made her way over to the phantom. She had to still be dreaming… Her subconscious felt guilty for the true identity of her secret yearnings…

But when she finally crossed the short distance and stood in front of him the warmth that radiated from his body was too real. He gave her a hopeful lop-sided grin and raised his arms to embrace her. In response, an all-consuming anger ignited inside of her and she launched herself at the wizard, pummelling every inch of him she could reach.

"Ouch! Ow… gerroff! What the?! Hermione… OW!"

"You… complete… ass… Ronald… Weasley!" She punctuated each word with a blow causing the wizard to cower as she advanced. "You… crawl… back… here… after… weeks… and… weeks?! Oh, where is my wand?"

When she twisted around to direct her ire at the innocent onlooker in the corner, he looked afraid of what she might do and raised her wand, "Protego!"

The force of the invisible shield that sprang up between her and Ronald, knocked her back so far that she fell onto her behind. Undaunted from her quest for revenge, Hermione scrambled to her feet and started towards the terrified boy.

"Hermione…" Harry tried to use a soothing tone. "Calm…"

"I will NOT calm down!" She screamed, completely out of control. "Give me back my wand! Give it back to me!"

"Hermione, will you please…"

"Don't you tell me what to do, Harry Potter! Don't you dare! Give it back now!" She screeched before turning back to her true target. "And YOU!"

The redhead took a few steps back and raised his hands in submission.

"I came running after you! I called for you! I begged you to come back!"

"I know," He said gently. "Hermione… I'm sorry, I'm really…"

"Oh, you're sorry!" Her interruption was followed by a shrill laugh that scared her but she couldn't stop. The absolute audacity of the blundering traitor! "You come back after weeks… weeks… and you think it's going to be all right if you just say sorry?!"

"Well, what else can I say?" Weasley yelled back at her.

"I don't know… Rack your brains, Ron. That should only take a couple of seconds." She knew it was a low bow but didn't care. She wanted him to hurt as badly as she had every second he had been missing and without her wand that was damn near impossible.

"Hermione…" Harry interjected, attempting once again to reign in her rage. "... he just saved…"

"I don't care!" She screamed. "I don't give a fat hippogriff's ass what he's done! Weeks and weeks, we could have been dead for all he knew…"

"I knew you weren't dead." Ron bellowed, stepping as close as the Shield Charm between them allowed. "Harry is all over the Prophet, all over the radio, they're lookin' for you everywhere. All these rumors and mental stories! I knew I'd hear straight off if you were dead. You don't know what it's been like…"

"What it's been like for you?" Her hand twitched at her side, ready to make contact with his nose as soon as the barrier disappeared…

"I wanted to come back the minute I'd Disapparated, but I walked straight into a gang of Snatchers, Hermione, and I couldn't go anywhere!"

Unwilling to be deterred from her rightful wrath, Hermione rolled her eyes at the excuse and threw herself into the closest chair. She crossed her arms and legs tightly to stop them from visibly shaking.

"A gang of what?!" Harry asked, much more forgiving than her.

"Snatchers," Ron explained. "They're everywhere… Gangs tryin' to earn gold by roundin' up muggleborns and blood traitors. There's a reward from the Ministry for everyone captured. I was on my own and I looked like I might be school age so they got really excited. Thought I was a muggleborn in hidin'... I had to talk fast to get out of bein' dragged to the Ministry."

"What did you say to them?"

"Told em' I was Stan Shunpike. First person I could think of."

"And they believed that?"

"They weren't the brightest. One of them was definitely part troll. The smell of him…"

The attempt at humor did not receive the laughter he had hoped for. She just glared from her chair, intent on never speaking to the wizard again.

"Anyway… They had a row about whether I was Stan or not. It was a bit pathetic, to be honest, but there were still five of them and only one of me." The redhead continued to give a blow-by-blow of his great escape. "...grabbed his wand. Disarmed the bloke holdin' mine and Disapparated. I didn't do so well. Splinched myself again. And I came out miles from where you were. By the time I got back to that bit of riverbank… You'd gone."

Unable to stop herself despite her plans for silence, "Gosh, what a gripping story! You must have been simply terrified. Meanwhile, we went to Godric's Hollow and, let's think what happened there, Harry? Oh yes… You-Know-Who's snake turned up, it nearly killed both of us, and then You-Know-Who arrived and missed us by about a second!"

"What?!" Ron gapped.

She ignored him. "Imagine losing fingernails, Harry! That really puts our suffering into perspective, doesn't it?"

The absurdity of the situation made her foot start to bounce.

"Hermione…" Harry said quietly. "Ron just saved my life."

Placation be damned, she didn't give any indication that she had heard the feeble reasoning for her forgiveness, "One thing I would like to know, though… How exactly did you find us tonight? That is important. Once we know, we'll be able to make sure we are not visited by anyone else we don't want to see."

Ron returned her glare and pulled a small silver object from his pants pocket, "This."

"The Deluminator?"

Her shock at the reveal of Dumbledore's last gift to the wizard caused the question to come out nicer than she meant it to. They had all assumed the peculiar instrument had some hidden function… If not, why would it have been left to him in the first place?

"It doesn't just turn the lights on and off…" Ron went into another long explanation of what happened during his time away and how the tiny enchanted object magically kept him on their trail since the morning after the attack. "I kept hopin' you'd appear. But when it started to get dark I knew I must have missed you, so I clicked it again. The blue light came out and went inside me, and I Disapparated and arrived here in these woods. I still couldn't see you, so I just had to hope one of you would show yourselves in the end and Harry did! Well… I saw the doe first, obviously."

"You saw what?"

A third exposition of the happenings while she slept took place, this time including Harry's excited input. As the story of the silver doe and sword in the pool unfolded, she couldn't help it… Hermione became engrossed. So much so that she was leaning forward by the end.

"...and Ron stabbed it with the sword."

"And… and it went? Just like that?" She asked Harry quietly, amazed that they had been correct about the sword's ability to destroy horcruxes after all.

"Well… It… it screamed." Harry told her with a quick glance in Ron's direction that clued her in on some missing piece to the puzzle. He threw the locket into her lap. "Here."

She picked it up and started to examine the punctured windows. There was no longer an intense feeling of evil emanating from the thing. It didn't whisper of her greatest fears or regrets. It was, for all intents and purposes, a normal necklace… Broken and bent but still just a hunk of twisted metal.

Ron gifted Harry the wand he had taken from the random Snatcher as she put the horcrux into her bag. Without another word, she climbed back into a bed and pulled the blankets around herself.

"About the best you could hope for, I think," Harry murmured to his savior.

"Yeah…" Ron whispered back. "Could've been worse. Remember those birds she set on me?"

She smirked at the canvas but didn't move as she called out, "I still haven't ruled it out…"

And she hadn't…

Eventually, she would get her hands on her wand…

And he should be worried about receiving worse…