What Morning Felt Like by Menucha

Rating: G
Genres: Drama, Romance
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 6
Published: 18/02/2007
Last Updated: 18/02/2007
Status: Completed

It was cold. Not just the kind of cold that made you shiver and your fingers go numb, but the
kind of cold that made you give up on shivering.




1. What Morning Felt Like
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Disclaimer: I own nothing.

The journey had been miserable.

It was cold. Not just the kind of cold that made you shiver and your fingers go numb, but the
kind of cold that made you give up on shivering. It wouldn't help anyway, it only wasted
precious energy that had come from hasty meals that had been less than filling.

It was the kind of cold that made your soul go numb.

It would have been enough, really, to know what they were doing. To think of the deaths, the
foreboding danger, the knowledge that each day could be their last. To know that for every moment
that they were unsuccessful, he was growing stronger. To realize that their families and loved ones
were in danger, and the fate of the world they knew was weighing more each day.

But no, it had to be cold. Cold that you felt in your bone marrow, that consumed you from the
inside and clouds that never went away, despite the unrelenting winds. The sun didn't rise for
them. They lost track of the time of day. It didn't matter any longer.

Each moment mattered, and each moment slipped away from them, as the cold settled into them.

It could have been two in the afternoon, or two in the morning. Harry didn't know, and he
didn't care. The dreary winter sky had no light to it anymore, and even if it did, Harry
wasn't sure he'd notice. He was lying on his back, a Muggle sleeping bag and the thin
waterproof nylon of the tent keeping him from coming into direct contact with the frozen ground. He
stared up at the ceiling of the tent, a mess of poles and fabric that he and Ron and Hermione had
become practiced at setting up, even when they were taken by exhaustion and their limbs were heavy.
The roof looked exactly the same as it always did. He had spent countless hours memorizing each
bend in the metal and each fold in the blue nylon as he laid awake, his body weary but his mind not
allowing him to succumb to sleep. The contours of the ceiling never changed, except when the wind
shook them, or when the spiders decided to build their own homes on the rafters (not that Harry
would ever tell Ron).

Staring up into space was the safest thing he had.

It was night, or the closest thing that they had to night. They chose specific times, when
exhaustion had made them unable to think, or when the cold became so intense that they couldn't
get anything done, to be Night. At least, that's how it was at the beginning. More recently, as
it got colder and they seemed to be less and less productive, Hermione had decided that they needed
to get rest, because no matter how much the boys protested, nothing but arguing was getting
accomplished on no sleep. So a few short hours daily became Night, and this was how Harry spent
his. Cataloguing the ceiling of the deteriorating tent in his mind.

Ron, who had never had trouble falling asleep, typically dove into slumber mere seconds after
his head touched the pillow. Thankfully, he had outgrown his snoring, although occasionally he
could be heard murmuring nonsensical phrases to no one in particular. Sometimes, though, he
murmured to a someone in particular, one of the many someones who could never answer him.

Hermione slept, too. She fell somewhere between Harry's and Ron's sleep patterns, just
as she laid her sleeping bag between theirs. Most nights, she would curl up on her side, always
facing Harry, just watching him as he began his Nightly ritual of tracing the ceiling with his
eyes. She would fall asleep, after a few minutes or a few hours of watching him, curled tightly
against the cold, her knees nearly against her chest. Some nights, though, she would just sit next
to the film window of the tent and gaze out into nothingness.

And then there were the nights when emotion and cold took Hermione. Those nights were the ones
when the flaps of the tent never kept out the wind, and the cold sunk right through the sleeping
bags and the sweatpants and hooded sweatshirt that she slept in. On those nights, as she lay,
curled as tightly as she possibly could, she shivered and moved minutely closer to Harry, as though
she didn't want him to know that she was. The first few times, she would place her frozen
fingers just under the curve of his back. Then, one night, he took her cold hands and slid them
under the fabric of his own sweatshirt, resting them on his stomach and letting his heat warm
her.

She would move closer to him throughout the night, knowing she wouldn't wake him, since he
barely slept anyway. It was selfish of her, she knew, to use him for heat. But it comforted her,
and she hoped that somehow, it would comfort him too.

When Harry did his nightly census of the overhead beams, he often disappeared into himself.
Although he was totally aware of his surroundings and could move at a moment's notice, he could
tone out Ron's quiet musings, and the hissing of the wind. He just counted.

On this night, though, he knew Hermione was thinking. She wasn't next to him. He missed the
sound of her rhythmic breathing just inches from his ear, and the safety he felt while she watched
over him. He wasn't worried for her, though. He knew she was fine. He could feel her, somehow,
and didn't need to look to know where she was.

She was strong. As fragile as she looked sometimes, and as cold as her small hands became, she
was an incredibly strong person. She amazed him occasionally; he'd always known of her
intelligence and quick thinking under fire, but the girl who had cried in the girls' toilets
over rude comments regarding her appearance had disappeared years ago. She was tough now. Kind, but
ruthless when it was needed. She'd seen enough suffering of those she loved. Hermione held
fiercely to those she cared about, but took no prisoners when it came to her enemies. Harry had
thought more than a few times that he was damn happy that she was on his side, because when she
dueled, she dueled with nothing on her mind but winning. She hated this side of her, he knew, but
this was what was needed of her, and she did it. She fought harder, faster, and sometimes, dirtier
than her opponent. She had to. Her eyes when she was dueling… he swore that she could burn straight
through a Death Eater with a mere look.

He saw the slightest movement out of the corner of his eye. It was merely a shadow, a fuzzy bit
of motion, but he knew it was her. She got to her feet by the window and, without even stopping for
her heavy coat, unzipped the door to the tent and slipped out.

He bolted out of bed, reaching for his glasses with a trained hand and drawing his wand from a
pocket in his pants. There was no reason to wake Ron yet; if there had been, Hermione would have
woken them both. Harry knew she didn't need him, his help, or she would have shaken him awake,
as she had done on many a night. And she certainly didn't need his protection. He didn't
have any intention of saving her, or protecting her. He would just look out the door… see what she
had left for. He slid the flap of the tent over by just a few millimeters and, the tip of his wand
in the small open space, looked out.

She was dancing.

It was snowing. There was some on the ground, and it was falling in big flakes. She was
twirling, and smiling, and sticking her tongue out to catch the falling snow, waiting for it to
melt in her mouth.

Her arms were out at her sides, head thrown back, her unruly brown curls catching snowflakes and
making her sparkle. And she was *smiling*. The kind of smile that they didn't have
anymore.

She was beautiful.

She stopped, mid-spin, looking straight at him. He had let the tent flap drop from his hands as
he watched her in silence. The smile, that smile that went straight through him, never faded.

“It's snowing,” she said.

He said nothing, merely looked at the sky and put out his hand, catching the flakes that melted
as soon as they touched his palm.

She reached out for his open hand.

She danced with him. She twirled, and smiled, and ran in circles with his hands in hers. She
broke from him, and took her previous pose, arms spread wide and eyes to the sky. One big flake
fell straight onto her waiting tongue, and she giggled like the schoolgirl that she should have
been. Her eyes sparkled.

For the first time in a long time, quite possibly forever, he smiled. A real, whole, smile.

They couldn't feel the cold, and he wasn't even sure it really was cold anymore. It
didn't matter that in the morning, they would go back to war, or that the beautiful snow would
turn to treacherous ice. That wasn't morning.

*This* was what morning felt like.

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