Chapter Text
“I’m so sorry.”
Harry hummed, turning to his right and meeting Hermione’s gaze. The witch was huddled at his side, blue flames dancing around her in an effort to keep the cold out. Her eyes looked at him remorsefully as she shuddered a bit, nodding slightly at the pouch that rested against his chest, barely noticeable.
“I’m so sorry,” She continued, sighing deeply. “I should’ve aimed better, or used another hex, or maybe if I would’ve gone upstairs with you—”
“—Hermione,” Harry interrupted, shaking his head. His hand reached up to the pouch, as if to assure himself that the broken pieces of his wand were still safe. “It’s not your fault. You got us out of there alive. It was an accident.”
“You’re angry, though,” Hermione stated, smiling bitterly at him.
“Not at you.” He answered immediately. “It’s because of you I’m alive. My wand—”
His words choked in his throat and he found himself unable to finish his sentence. Hermione, although still looking somewhat regretful, had a hopeful glint on her eyes as she nodded, slowly setting her head upon his shoulder.
Time seemed to pass slowly as the cold started to set in and the sunlight stopped crashing against the tent, plunging it into an encompassing darkness that was only broken by the tiny dots of lights that the blue flames provided. Harry turned to look at his companion; Hermione’s face was half hidden in darkness, and her mane of hair was about the only thing he could discern in the blue light. She had stayed very still against him, almost as if she was afraid that one movement would set him off and send him away.
He cleared his throat, his right arm quickly enveloping her and pulling her frame closer as his head dropped to lean against her.
“I’ll take first watch,” Harry murmured, feeling her nod against his cheek. His arm squeezed her one more time and, giving into his impulse, he leaned down and pressed a kiss at the top of her head.
He got up quickly after that, grabbing her wand and walking heavy steps to the opening of the tent. He stopped just before exiting, looking back at the witch sitting in the bunk bed.
“You should get some sleep. It’ll be a long night.”
Hermione chuckled softly, nodding. “I’ll take over in few hours, then…but wake me up if anything happens.”
Harry nodded and stepped outside into the biting cold while snatching a floating jar.
The Forest of Dean was quiet at night.
Too quiet for his comfort, but it was better than jumping at every single noise like it was a Death Eater approaching. The owls hooting were the most prominent sound aside from the crunch and movements of leaves, but both of those things seemed to have an almost muted sound and quickly became background noise for his ears.
Harry shivered, wrapping the blanket more tightly around his shoulders as he gazed around the dark, barely even able to look at the silhouettes of the trees surrounding their campsite. The jar sat at his feet, blue flame dancing elegantly inside the glass container and giving him just enough heat to stave off the worst the cold, but the light of it was barely able to cast a small glow upon his battered boots.
He sighed, bored out of his mind but also unable to concentrate in anything more but the forest around him, and decided to take a more direct approach to his turn of watch. Harry abandoned his seat, shaking out the snowflakes that had settled on his coat, and set out to walk the perimeter of the enchantments that Hermione had carefully put around their campsite. Her wand was firmly on his hand, fingers caressing the ridges as his eyes strained to look for any movements beyond the darkened trees.
The flicker of the blue flame was the only thing that signaled him where the tent was as he walked further and further away, and he idly wondered if a lumos spell would be too much of a giveaway of his position in case of an attack.
He stopped and glanced down at the wand. He hadn’t used it before and was not accustomed to it, but the wood felt warm to the touch and not at all resisting him unlike previous attempts with other wands. Glancing back and realizing that he had gotten so far away that the blue fire was almost indiscernible, Harry decided to check on his compatibility.
A quick lumos proved quite easy. A cutting curse or two towards a stump swelled his confidence at the size and depth of the gash, and a transfiguration of a tree branch into a broom assured him that, in the event of a fight, this wand was more than capable of working with him.
He started to walk back, satisfied that all seemed well in the little piece of land that they had commandeered for themselves, staring at Hermione’s wand as his curiosity stirred in his mind.
I wonder...
Harry blew out a breath, giving a quick glance to the blue flame and was satisfied to see it more clearly now, still dancing slowly in its glass and with no indication that anything had messed with it or the tent barely visible behind it. He shook out his arms, suddenly feeling nervous, and decided to try the spell that had become muscle memory for him.
“Expecto Patronum,” He whispered, eyebrows rising as a mist quickly left the tip of the wand, materializing in the familiar stag that was now staring at him.
Prongs tilted his head, leaning in to sniff at the wand in his hand.
“Mine broke,” Harry said, feeling the need to explain, even if it felt weird speaking to what was essentially a spell. “But this one’s good for now, yeah?”
Prongs snorted as if agreeing with him before his head shot up, ears concentrating on something on the far right. Before the black haired wizard could do anything, his patronus ran away, jumping across the trees before glancing back at him, waiting.
Harry took two steps forward before faltering, looking back at the shape of the tent, debating on whether it was wise to wake up Hermione and have her come with—
“No,” He murmured to himself, resuming his path and lightly jogging to catch up with Prongs, who had already started to leap away. “She’s brilliant, but if Prongs is sensing trouble, it’s better she’s not there. She’s muggleborn…if they capture her…”
He was still justifying his decision when he reached the stag patronus, now completely still and glancing towards a fallen tree. There was nothing extraordinary about it: covered in moss and broken in some places, it appeared to be old but sturdy.
Before he could question anything, Prongs dissolved quickly and left his caster standing in darkness. Harry scoffed, lighting up the tip of the wand and glancing around before shaking his head, starting to walk back as he tried to remember which direction he had taken to reach this place.
“Leaving so soon?”
His feet stopped and he whirled around, wand immediately pointing at a sitting figure in the fallen tree. The glow of the lumos blinded him to the stranger’s face, but his voice…he would recognized it everywhere. He glanced around, spying a couple of branches in the ground, and carelessly lighted them on fire.
With the warm glow of his improvise fire, Harry stopped dropped his wand arm and came face to face with Albus Dumbledore himself.
“I believe we should talk,” The elder wizard continued, his voice in the same soft, condescending tone that used to calm Harry and that he now hated.
It took the black haired wizard three steps before he was standing right before Dumbledore—or whoever he was—with Hermione’s wand pointed right at his neck.
“In which place were the headquarters of the Order located in two years ago?”
Albus sighed. "Harry—"
Hermione’s wand dug into the older man’s neck while Harry repeated the question slowly, teeth grinding and hand trembling.
Albus lifted both his hands in a surrendering motion. “Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place. Sirius’ home. We need to talk, Harry.”
“In my Third Year, what spell did you use to stop me from splattering all over the Quidditch field when dementors attacked?”
The other wizard’s mouth twitched downwards, as if slightly offended by the wording of the question, but ultimately answered without hesitation. “Arresto Momentum. Harry—”
“Who killed you?”
Harry looked at the former Headmaster after uttering the question, still digging the wand on Dumbledore’s neck and daring him to answer and prove that somehow he was talking to the same Headmaster that he watched fall to his death a year ago.
“Severus Snape,” Dumbledore answered, hand pushing the wand away from his neck. “Stop the interrogation, Harry. You know it’s me.”
“You’re dead, that’s what I know,” The black haired wizard retorted, but lowered his wand and stepped back. “What did you use to look like him? Polyjuice?”
“We need to talk,” Dumbledore stated, ignoring the other’s jabs and taking a seat in the fallen tree once more. “I am here to help, seeing as you and Miss Granger have found yourselves in a complicated situation.”
Though he was not at all sold into this manifestation of Dumbledore, Harry somehow felt no danger coming from whoever was sitting in front of him. The older man looked relaxed, if not for the way his eyes tightened at the corners and his soft smile was laced with sadness, but he had no weapon in sight and his sitting position was completely vulnerable. Harry could very well curse him and send him into an early grave—again?
“We’re handling it,” Danger or not, Harry was not stupid enough to expose the exact situation that he and Hermione found themselves in, and he was suddenly regretting not going to get her before following Prongs.
“Perhaps I can be of assistance,” Albus answered easily. “After all, you are here because of me.”
Harry snorted humorlessly. “I know. Bold of you to assume I’d listen to you, Headmaster.”
Albus ignored the sarcasm dripping from the young wizards voice, sighing. “If you just listen to me and trust me, you can get out of here and continue your mission, Harry. I can protect you.”
“The real Albus Dumbledore is dead,” Harry stated. “And even if were to somehow be him in reality, I’m in no mood for riddles and games. You left me a mission that is impossible to complete with all the half arsed information you’ve given me.”
Albus scoffed slightly. “You didn’t need to burden yourself with everything before the time was right, Harry. Besides, you’re a strong and capable wizard. You and I both know you can find the answers you seek if you just pay close attention to what has already been laid out for you.”
“See? This is what I mean! You should’ve just told me everything from the beginning, and maybe then Hermione and I wouldn’t be traveling blind and would actually be close to accomplishing something!” Harry exclaimed.
“You have accomplished plenty,” Albus argued. “And you have found a horcrux, have you not?”
“Sheer luck apparently, since it’s the only one we’ve found so far,” Harry said, frowning deeply. “And no way to destroy it! Are you going to tell me how or is that one of the things I can find if I pay attention?”
Albus nodded. “You already know how to, you just haven’t realized it yet, Harry.”
“You could just tell me.”
“I could.”
There was a pause, and when it became clear that Dumbledore would not say anything more, Harry scoffed and shook his head, leaning against a tree.
“I could tip the scales to my favor in this war if you just told me, you know? Everything would be so much easier if you just…”
Harry, frustrated, left the tree and started to pace, his anger quickly focusing on Dumbledore and the incredible burden that the Headmaster placed on his shoulders, along the fact that he was failing spectacularly at it with each day that passed with no plan and no way to kill horcruxes.
The black haired wizard laughed humorlessly, giving the Headmaster a bitter look. “With how much you’re refusing to help, one would think you want me dead.”
It had been a spur of the moment thought that had crossed his filter without much consideration, but Harry stopped cold at the way Dumbledore’s eyes seemed to widen a fraction before regaining his usual soft expression. Before his remark could become a point of contention between them, Harry became aware of a presence just beyond the trees on the far left. He turned, and was welcomed by the soft glow of a patronus as its made its way over to him.
The doe was calm, completely ignoring the older wizard as it stopped right in front of the black haired man. For a moment, the only thing that moved were its ears, scanning the quiet woods. Harry stared, tilting his head in confusion and startled when the doe walked past him.
“Follow the doe, Harry,” Dumbledore ordered.
The younger wizard hesitated, throwing an untrusting look at the patronus, unfamiliar with the caster. He turned back, a reply on his mouth, but his eyes found nothing more than a lonely fallen tree and the smoke of what used to be his improvised fire. There were no signs of Dumbledore, or anything to indicate that he had ever been there.
Behind him, the doe stopped and scratched the ground, and Harry sighed and started to follow the soft, blue glow.
The doe took him to a small, frozen lake. It was nothing extraordinary—Harry thought it was pretentious to even call it a lake with its small size—but it was surrounded by such dense bushes and strong trees that he silently wondered about the last time somebody had visited it, if ever.
The doe stopped right in the middle of the lake, leaning down to look through the frozen water, and then returned its gaze towards the wizard. Harry, glancing once more around them and feeling somewhat protected by the flora, stepped into the slippery surface. His worn out boots were barely able to help him walk without falling, but he eventually reached the place where the patronus waited with no more than three almost incidents.
The moment he stepped next to it, the doe dissolved in the same way Prongs had, and he was left alone in a part of the forest that not even the owls visited, since their cries were missing and even the wind seemed to fall silent.
Harry kneeled down on the cold, wiping the thin layer of snow from the ice and glanced down, finding darkened water and something shiny on the floor—
He paused, eyes straining and face almost touching the ice. With the stillness of the water and the way it was shining through it, Harry was able to discern the shape of a very familiar weapon resting just on top of the rocks at the bottom.
The wizard got up franticly, slashing through the ice with a few cutting curses and quickly lifting the chunks of ice and throwing them away without looking, hissing at the way the freezing water burned his skin. He checked the bottom of the lake again, fearing that he had hallucinated, but the sword was still where it had been moments before: leaning against the rocks, waiting.
Harry began to strip quickly, as if his speed would do anything against the biting cold that seemed to penetrate his bones. He threw his clothes far away, along with his glasses and Hermione’s wand, and hesitated for a moment before diving head first inside the frozen lake.
The freezing water made his muscles seize and contract, his skin burning as he swam downwards. His eyes were blurring, both from the water splashing against them and the absence of his glasses, but he was able to swim in the right direction: the glow of the sword was growing stronger.
His arm reached out, blindly grasping at water and waiting to feel the cool metal of the sword—
Something tightened around his neck.
Harry gasped, feeling the chain of the locket digging into his neck and pulling upwards. His scar was next: it pulsed, and he was vaguely aware of high pitched screams that somehow came from him but were not his own. His hands fought with the chain, trying to grab it, but it was so strong it seemed to be fused with his skin as it continued to drag him away. His feet flailed and his vision blurred even more, one of his hands continuing to try and grip the chain while the other waved at the water, looking for the locket itself. He coughed, his mouth filling with water while the corners of his eyes stared to black out.
Just as his legs had stopped working, Harry felt arms winding around his torso. He was moving—being dragged upwards, but the pressure of the locket was still the same. He broke out of the water, barely aware of a voice that called to him, but his hands kept grasping at the chain on his neck while he coughed.
It seemed like an eternity before he was free of the locket. Foreign hands ripped it from his neck and Harry gasped, gulping down air and rubbing against his raw neck.
“Harry!” Hermione’s voice graced his ears. With his eyes still somewhat blurry, he looked up to find her staring down at him. Her hair was dripping wet, pressing against her face in a careless way while she spoke to him franticly.
“Harry, are you okay?” She exclaimed, hands lightly tapping his cheeks. “Answer me—”
“I’m—” He gasped. “I’m fine…the locket, it was drowning me…”
The witch nodded. “I took it off. Are you okay? Are you hurt anywhere else?”
Harry found himself shaking his head, now being able to breathe easier. A part of his neck burned—most likely from whatever damaged the locket had done—and he was feeling colder by the second.
“No, no, I’m—I’m fine, Hermione.”
“Good, okay,” She nodded, and her eyes suddenly narrowed. She got up, walking towards where his things had been thrown off, and returned with them on her arms. She dumped them on him, and Harry had barely time to catch them before her sharp voice addressed him.
“What the hell were you thinking?!”
“W-what?” He stuttered, searching the tangled mess of fabrics for his pants. Suddenly, he became all too aware of how naked he was in front of her, and his cheeks were the first thing to heat up.
“I told you to wake me up if anything happened!” Hermione continued, frustration, anger and a sliver of fear dripping from her voice. “What the hell were you thinking, coming in here alone?! If I hadn’t heard you splashing around, you would be at the bottom of the lake, Harry!”
“You heard me?” He asked, ignoring his pain and embarrassment for the moment. “How?”
The bushy haired witch scoffed. “Are you even listening to me?! You almost drowned!”
“I know, I know!” The wizard answered quickly. “We’re so far from our camp, Hermione! Did you follow the doe?”
Hermione’s expression changed from angry and fearful to confused and concerned. She stared at the wizard in front of her, still on the ground and now half dressed in wet clothes. He stared expectantly at her as he continued to dress slowly.
“What are you talking about?” She answered, kneeling right in front of him and taking his face on her hands, moving it from side to side, as if searching gashes or bruises. “The tent is just past those trees, Harry. I heard the water splashing and you were gone.”
Harry shook his head, ready to contradict her, but as soon as she tilted his head to the right, he could see that she was right: in between two trees, a small path had appeared that lead to the tent they had set up while the blue flame still burned powerfully inside the jar.
“What were you even doing in there?” Hermione asked briskly, leaving his face alone and seemingly satisfied that there was no obvious damage to his head.
“The sword,” Harry answered, deciding to ignore her previous statement. “The sword of Gryffindor—it’s in the lake, Hermione. I tried to grab it and then this bloody thing tried to choke me.”
The witch nodded, looked back at the hole in the ice from which she had pulled him from, and stood up.
“Stay here. I mean it.” She snapped, and began taking off her clothes.
Harry quickly adverted his gaze at the first glimpse of her bra and exposed skin, and focused on dressing and drying himself while he listened to the splash of water indicating that Hermione had jumped inside the lake.
“Merlin’s pants, Harry, the basilisk! You killed the basilisk with the sword!”
Hermione’s outburst had come out of nowhere. After returning from the lake, cold but dry and still confused at the events that had taken place, both of them had sat at the table and admired the sword. It looked out of place compared to everything else in the tent: too shiny and sharp and new looking, but it was the first spark of hope that they had in weeks.
“I remember,” He answered, a corner of his lips lifting. “I was there. That’s why I wanted it. Maybe it’ll help us or something.”
Hermione’s face was happier than he had seen it in quite some time as she nodded, tugging a heavy book towards her and lifting it, showing the small letters to him.
“It will, Harry. You see…this is goblin made. They absorb only what makes it more powerful!”
He felt there was something very obvious that she already know, but for the life of him—be it that her brain always worked faster than his, or that his thoughts were still on Dumbledore and the doe—he couldn’t quite connect the dots.
“You think it might help us destroy horcruxes?” He asked, shrugging. “It’s sharp, for sure, but…”
“Oh, it will destroy horcruxes,” Hermione stated, sounding so sure that he believed it for a moment. “You killed a basilisk with this, Harry. A basilisk.”
He nodded, her attitude becoming infectious, and he briefly remembered the battle that seemed so far away in time, back when he was twelve. The Chamber of Secrets, saving Ginny, meeting Voldemort’s past ghost, destroying his first horcrux without realizing it—
“The venom,” He whispered, and when he met her eyes he knew she had reached the same conclusion. “I used it to kill the diary but I killed the basilisk with the sword, if it absorbs things—”
“—it must’ve absorbed the basilisk’s venom,” Hermione finished the thought, looking as giddy as she had ever looked when confronted by a solved problem. “It’s the thing that’s going to help us destroy horcruxes.”
Without the locket’s looming presence over them, Harry found that he and Hermione had fallen into a nice rhythm. Although their evenings still consisted of trying to theorize where the other horcruxes were—and coming up short besides Hogwarts, which Hermione was still skeptical about—their first victory in the hunt had lifted their spirit so much that they resolved to fix the tent before leaving the forest.
“It’s not going to take much,” Hermione had sated, nodding at the cracks in the middle beam and the rips of the fabric walls. “Any little storm is going to blow us over.”
“There’s a town nearby, we can put on some normal fabric and enchant it,” Harry answered. “And another grocery run wouldn’t hurt.”
“We should leave the forest tomorrow,” The witch continued. “We’ll get our supplies and fix everything elsewhere. We’ve been here too long, it’s dangerous.”
“I think we can take a couple more days and fix the tent before moving,” He countered. “We’ve only been here like, what, two days?”
“Feels like more,” Hermione frowned and looked down at her watch, but her frowned only worsened.
She brought the watch closer to her face, tapping it softly and then more insistently. Harry watched curiously as she took it off, placing it on the surface of the table.
“Out of battery?”
“It’s still on, just…” She sounded uncertain. “Frozen, I guess.”
Her digital watch looked completely normal, except for the fact that the time was not advancing. It was stuck firmly at 15:45:08, which was curious: he was sure that was around the same time that they arrived at the Forest of Dean a couple od days ago.
“Maybe something happened to it when you struck the locket,” Harry offered, hesitant.
He wasn’t completely sure what had happened when Hermione dealt with the horcrux. She had sent him inside the tent, and though he had tried to resist, the injury of his neck and the shivers that traveled his spine had weakened him enough that he had followed her orders without much complain. He had laid down on the bed, fighting and losing against exhaustion, but he’d heard her worried and fearful voice before darkness enveloped him.
Hermione hadn’t talked about it. He’d brought up the subject after waking up, but she had shut him down, only mentioning that the locket had shrieked before she struck it, and that a black mist had left it after it was over. Still…he could see the way her eyes had watered as she answered, and he was sure she was keeping something from him.
“You said something came out of it, right? Maybe it touched your watch.”
“No,” She shook her head. “It was nowhere near me. Nothing really happened, but…”
Harry stilled his movements as if afraid he was going to spook her, desperately wanting to know what had transpired when she had faced the locket. There was worry in his eyes, and he knew she must’ve seen it, because her reluctance left her shoulders and she leaned forward as if she was telling him a secret.
“This is going to sound incredibly strange,” She started. “But I think there’s something off with the forest.”
Harry tilted his head, confused. “How so?”
“Have you not noticed how odd the atmosphere is? How weird and abnormal the sounds are?”
“It’s very quiet, yeah, but we are in the middle of nowhere, basically.”
Hermione shook her head. “Yes, but it’s still too quiet and lonely and it shouldn’t be. I apparated us into an area that is designed for campers because I didn’t dare go anywhere else lest we end up lost or in trouble. Nobody has stepped foot close to us in all the days we’ve been here. We should’ve run into a few muggles by now. There should’ve been something to trip the enchantments, at least.”
Harry nodded slowly, not being able to counter against her arguments. He had felt that the forest was odd, and though he had initially labeled it as his paranoia and stress, if Hermione felt it too perhaps he wasn’t as wrong as he thought he was.
“Remember what I told you when you pulled me out of the lake?”
At her nod, he continued. “I…I wasn’t lying, and I wasn’t delirious. I swear, Hermione, that I left the tent and walked away far enough that you wouldn’t be able to hear me. I have no idea how you found me, much less how the bloody hell I ended up so close to camp. The lake wasn’t near it.”
Under normal circumstances, the bushy haired with would already be dismissing his apparently impossible interpretation, but her gut feeling had given her enough doubt that he was listening to Harry with only a minimal amount of skepticism.
He decided to seize his opportunity.
“I also saw…” Harry hesitated, wondering if perhaps this would be too unthinkable for her to believe, but he carried on. “I saw Dumbledore, I think.”
Before she could say anything, Harry interrupted, his words spilling from his mouth fast. “I tried to see if your wand would be compatible with me if I had to fight and I conjured a patronus really easily, but then it walked away and I followed it and when I arrived Dumbledore was just…there. He said hi and we talked and he wouldn’t tell me what I wanted to know and so I said that he might as well want me dead and I think he did want that—”
“—you talked to him?”
“Yeah,” He murmured. “It was weird, and I know it’s not him because he’s dead and gone and buried, but…there was something about him.”
His confession hang heavily in the air, and for a moment the wizard was afraid that perhaps Hermione thought he finally had succumbed to madness, but the witch nodded slowly and sighed.
“I saw my parents last night,” Hermione whispered, something fearful on her voice, as if saying the words would make them true. “When I—when you left and went to the tent, I…well, I wanted to get it over with, so I tried to destroy the horcrux but it became almost...alive, I guess. It was talking to me, and then it transformed into my parents and then you and Ron and other people appeared and started telling me how much of a failure I was, how I’d get you killed—”
“Hermione—” He tried to interfered, to assure her that the only reason he was still standing was because of her, but she continued to speak.
“—It was horrible, and they just wouldn’t stop…but then my parents were there…and they looked real, not like the dark mist of the horcrux, but like real flesh and blood and they talked to me, Harry. I was able to slash the locket because they were distracting me from its magic.”
“That’s…” Harry cleared his throat.
“Oh, have we finally gone mad?” She asked, exasperated, her hands passing through her face once before she spoke again. “Maybe we just need better portions of food? Or more sleep?”
“I don’t think food and sleep and going to fix that,” He nodded at her watch, still frozen in time. “Besides…I don’t know. The forest…”
Hermione sighed heavily, understanding his deeper meaning. “I know…it was nice seeing my parents, though, even if they were a fragment of my imagination. I miss them.”
“I’m sure they miss you too,” Harry offered in an attempt to lift the heavy atmosphere that had descended upon them. “Maybe we can pay them a visit after we leave. A quick check in under the Cloak, just to see how they’re doing?”
The bushy haired with smiled at him gratefully, but it was tainted by sadness as she answered. “They’re not in Britain anymore, Harry. I…I sent them away to Australia. Who knows what Death Eaters would’ve done to them if they got caught? They’re safer away.”
“Hermione…” Harry whispered, shocked. “You—you should’ve gone with them.”
He’d always known that she went far and beyond for him and her principles, but to hear her speak of the sacrifice she had made just to follow him on his failing mission…
“You should’ve gone with them,” He repeated, leaving his seat and pacing in front of the table. He felt her eyes following his movements. “You’d be better away from this mess. Why didn’t you follow them?”
Hermione scoffed, leaving her seat. "I wasn't going to leave you—"
“—you should have,” Harry answered, his voice sounding desperate and frustrated at the same time, and he couldn’t stop the way his voice rose. “For fuck’s sake, Hermione, you’d be better off in Australia with your parents instead of in the middle of this god dammed forest—you’d be safe!”
He had clearly escalated the tone of the conversation because Hermione raised her voice to match his, her eyes indignant and concerned as she answered.
“I wouldn’t be safe anywhere! At least here I’m fighting! Do you really think they will stop after taking the Ministry, when there are so many muggleborns out there?!”
He knew she was right, she almost always was, but every single negative and insecure thought he’d had up until now spilled from him in a rush. Every frustration and fear and concern that had plagued him in the cold nights was now at the front of his mind.
“It would have given you time!” Harry exclaimed. “I could have defeated him and you wouldn’t have been anywhere close to this mess! You didn’t—you shouldn’t have to send your parents away, this is not your war, Hermione!”
“I made it my war when I decided to be here, with you!” She answered strongly. “And yes, I miss my parents, but I will be damned if I let some noseless prick tear everything apart when I could be doing something to stop it.”
Harry shook his head, his anger tamped out by sheer fear and concern. “You could leave. Just Apparate out of here—go to Australia and search for your parents. Get out of here while you still can, Hermione, please.”
His voice had ended up sounding desperate enough that Hermione stopped and looked at him, no longer defensive. He stared back at her, eyes urging her to listen, but whatever small hope that he had that the witch would leave for safety died when she sat back down at the table. She signaled him back, and when he was firmly sitting down in front of her again, addressed him.
“I’m going to say this and I need you to get it through your thick skull,” She murmured, voice impossibly soft. “I’m here because I want to be here, and I will stay, okay? No matter the consequences. I am not leaving you, Harry.”
There was still a spark of defiance that wished to argue against her, but he found himself relieved at her assurance. As much as he wanted her safe and away from this war, he was honest enough to admit that she was one of the things getting her through it.
“Thank you…for staying” Harry whispered, and though he wanted to say more, he was unable to.
“Somebody has to keep you alive,” She answered, a teasing glint on her eyes.
She was doing so much more than that; her mere presence was the only thing that stood between him and a constant state of catatonic despair. Her knowledge was imperative, of course, but he had long realized that her companionship was the thing that he truly craved.
He was suddenly seized with the impulse of telling her exactly that, but the words weren’t coming to him and his previous energy had run out, replaced by exhaustion and relief and a small bundle of fear for the unknown of the future. He reached out, grabbing one of her hands in both of his and squeezed, holding her gaze and hoping that somehow everything he wanted to say was contained in that small gesture.
A part of him thought he succeeded because Hermione smiled at him beautifully while leaving her seat. She rounded the table and tapped his shoulders, leaning her head against the back of his.
“We should go to sleep. We’ll go on a supply run in the morning.” Her words were muffled against his hair, making his shiver slightly.
With one last squeeze to his shoulders, the bushy haired witch retreated into her room at the other side of the tent. Harry stayed there, seated, until he could no longer hear her footsteps rummaging around her space, and then decided to follow her. As he laid down on his bunk, still on his day clothes, he couldn’t help but think that this was the lightest he’d felt since he fled Number 4, Privet Drive.
“I guess we’re not mad after all.”
Harry’s remark went unanswered. Hermione was most likely doing the same thing as him: gazing confusedly at the sight that welcomed them the moment they stepped outside the tent.
The forest seemed unrecognizable from before. Where yesterday there had been piles upon piles of frozen, fallen leaves all over the ground now stood dry ground with few patches of green grass here and there. The cold that had stilled their bones was no longer there, replaced by a warm air that enveloped them softly as the sun shined brightly over their camping space.
The biggest change of it all was the fact that their tent was now pitched close to an unknown lake. This one was entirely too big to have been the same one that had housed the sword days before, and its waters were cleared and fresher.
Harry glanced quickly at his side, and if the changes in the forest weren’t completely mind-bending, perhaps he’d found humor in the flabbergasted expression that was currently on display in the witch’s face. She stayed still, eyes flickering between the lakes and the tress and the blue sky, as if she’d find answers there, before repeating the cycle.
“This is impossible,” Hermione said, voice stilted. “This—this was not where we were.”
“And yet here we are,” Harry answered, hesitant. “So, we are not going insane—what the bloody hell is going on?”
“It has to be the forest,” The witch stated. “It has to be. There’s—We were right, there is something going on here.”
“Magic, you think?”
Hermione frowned, turning to look at him. “I mean, that would explain it, but this place has never been featured in any book about naturally magical places I’ve read. Only a handful of forests are known to be magical, the Forbidden Forest for one.”
Harry scratched his head. “What are the odds that you just haven’t found a book that mentions the…Forest of Dean, was it?”
“I supposed that could be it…though I have read many books on the subject…”
While Hermione was muttering to herself, the black haired wizard looked around, still baffled by the change of scenery. He wanted to attribute the lightness of the place to the sun, but even in days past it had never been quite…warm.
“Harry, look!”
Her voice pulled him out of his thought. His gaze followed her fingers, pointing at something colorful in the distance, and before he could question the importance of it he became aware of what it was. In the distance, just beyond a canopy of trees, was what appeared to be a camping tent not unlike their own, but older. It wasn’t completely pitched, barely holding onto its shape, but it looked somewhat like their own tent except more worn down without any signs of anyone occupying it.
When they approached, both of them found themselves relieved and wary of the fact that there was also an assortment of canned food inside the barren tent. The cans looked old and were dusty, but sealed and—according to the expiration date—still eatable. Even with the unfamiliar origin of the supplies, Harry refused to look a gift horse in the mouth, and started to gather whatever cans he could.
By the time they made it back to their tent, with food and fabric to fix it, the surprise at the appearance of the supplies had lifted and was instead replaced by a sense of dread.
“It’s odd, isn’t it?” Hermione wondered out loud, enchanting the cut up pieces of fabric to their tent, blocking any holes and tears she could find. “We said we’d go on a supply run and leave, and suddenly these things appear out of thin air?”
Harry had to concede the point. “You don’t think there’s somebody listening to us, right? The enchantments are good?”
“They’re are completely fine. I put new ones up yesterday, and they haven’t been triggered at all by magic or other things. Not so much as a bird has crossed into our space.”
Her wariness was contagious, but justified. He blew out a breath, scanning their surroundings to see if perhaps there was something amiss, but the forest was still quiet and sunny and calm.
“I don’t like this,” Harry said, turning to look at his companion. Though there was no fear, his voice was tinted with uncertainty. “It’s great we got these things, but…”
“We should leave,” Hermione answered him. “As soon as I’m done here, we should leave.”
As if personally offended by the notion, the forest seemed to come alive. The sun receded, blocked by clouds that seemed to come out of nowhere, and the wind picked up, now as cold as it had once been. Their tent was struggling with the current by the time the heavy droplets of rain started to fall one after the other, and Harry and Hermione had to seek shelter inside the fabric walls.
With their clothes and hair slightly wet, they both turned to look at each other in surprise before the bushy haired witch cleared her throat.
“Do you mind taking care of breakfast?” Hermione asked him absentmindedly, already grabbing her purse and putting her whole arm inside, rummaging through it. “I need—I need to do research.”
Harry nodded without fuss, and began searching the cans for something remotely resembling a tasty, full meal.
The rain hadn’t let up even after breakfast. It continued to pour down heavily upon their tent, but the wind had calmed down enormously with only a gust of air here and there. Hermione had spent close to three hours pouring over every single book that had so much as a mention of naturally magical places, but her frown had made it clear that she hadn’t found anything on the Forest of Dean.
Harry tried to distract himself by going over every single note and book they had to help in their horcrux hunt, but he was honest enough to admit that his mind was solely focused on Hogwarts as a hiding place, and hadn’t let him think of another place. He decided to approach the subject with Hermione again in the future—when a creepy forest wasn’t dangling over their heads.
It was incredible that Hermione kept reading the same books over and over while already knowing that there was nothing to help them with their forest problem. Most of the makeshift library that she had taken with her purse was made up of books of combat spells, some on healing, others on dark magic that could perhaps have mentions of horcruxes, and a few rune ones. There was nothing that mentioned magical places, be it natural or manmade, and though Harry had a feeling that Hermione had come to that same conclusion mere minutes into her research, he was also aware that defaulting into research mode was her coping mechanism.
When it was almost time for dinner and the bushy haired witch hadn’t moved from her spot in a couple of hours, Harry decided that he’d had enough.
“Hermione, give it a rest,” He called out, filling two plates with the beans and rice pudding he had taken from the newly stocked canned inventory, and a couple of wild mushrooms they had been rationing.
The witch shook her head, but quickly realized he had his back turned away from her. “I’m sure I missed something—”
“—I’m sure you didn’t,” Harry interrupted, turning towards here with the plates and setting them on the table, gesturing at her to come closer. “You’ve been reading those all day. If there was anything remotely helpful, you would’ve already found it.”
The witch frowned but did as she was asked, sitting down in front of him. “I don’t like not having answers.”
The wizard couldn’t help but smile at how normal she sounded, as if she was talking about a test or a quiz back at Hogwarts. “I know.”
“I don’t like this place.”
“Me neither, but it could be worse?”
“How so?”
Harry hesitated, trying to find the words to explain himself properly. “Well, it’s odd, this whole forest, but…I don’t know. I think I’m more uncomfortable with the fact that we don’t know what’s causing the changes than I am scared of the forest. I don’t feel it’s that dangerous.”
He looked at her and watch her slowly nod, taking the information in.
“It’s like with the Dumbledore impersonator,” The wizard continued. “I knew it wasn’t him but I didn’t feel threatened, just…surprised. I’m guessing the same thing happened with your parents. He, whoever he was, wasn’t really dangerous…”
“…unless you count the fact that he wanted you dead?”
Harry sighed. “You caught that?”
Hermione nodded. “Of course I did—but we were a little distracted when you said it. I was trying to think of a way to bring it up, to be honest.”
“There really isn’t much to say—”
“—did he actually tell you that?”
The wizard shook his head, shrugging. “Not in those words, but he might as well have.”
“But did he give any indication that you were right?”
“What does it matter? It wasn’t even him, Hermione, it was this bloody forest.”
He had come off more frustrated that he’d like, and Hermione looked ready to question him again but ultimately decided against him, falling into deep thought as they continued to eat in a heavy silence. They finished their meal slowly, and just as he was about to leave the table and take his plate to the sink, she spoke again.
“If you see him again, will you tell me?”
He frowned, but remembering the tension he had unwillingly attracted before, nodded and tried to smile. “Miss him, do you?”
She shrugged. “Something like that.”
“Sure, I’ll tell you.”