Chapter 3
Hermione squeezed her eyes shut.
“No, no, that’s- I’m not saying- we have to find the snake, Ron, we have to finish-”
“I don’t CARE about the bloody snake!” Ron shouted harshly, cutting her off. “I don’t care about the bloody snake anymore, I care about Harry!"
His voice cracked at the end and she could see him trying to hide a wobbly lower lip. It was the sort of thing he’d be embarrassed at her noticing, and then she’d get exasperated that he even cared, because her whole body was shaking, so wasn’t that really the more embarrassing thing? Why was she even thinking about this right now, for heavens sakes! Hermione was splitting at the seams.
Her mind was racing around, firing on a hundred different cylinders, and once again she could feel her eyes starting to swim with tears.
“I know, I know you do, and I do too, Ron, but everything depends on this, nothing can end until it’s all been finished off, and we’re the only ones who can do it!!”
It was impossibly hard to argue this side. Of course she didn’t want to let Harry die. Of course she thought that Harry trying to do something noble and ridiculously stupid was perfectly in character and perfectly awful. Of course she cared more about Harry than the snake! But it was her job to argue the logical thing. It was her job to fight emotion, see the situation from the angle of the greater good, cut out all personal feelings with a metaphorical knife, because she was the only one in this bloody friend group capable of doing so. She hated Ron for getting to fight for the nobler thing, the more instinctual thing, that they both desperately wanted- she hated Ron for making her take Harry’s side.
Ron was silent, clearly thinking.
“Well….what if we weren’t?”
Hermione wiped her tears away with her palm again.
“W-what do you mean.”
“What I mean is that if we’re going to rescue Harry,” Ron said slowly, “we need a replacement. Someone else to know about the Horcruxes- you know, just in case we…” He didn’t finish the sentence, but it was clear where he was going with it. He cleared his throat a little. “Well. Someone needs to kill the damn snake if we can’t, right?”
Hermione wiped her face again, almost starting to feel a burning annoyed sensation in her stomach. Ron had a tendency to get reckless when the people he loved got hurt, and his brother had just died. There was so much that could go wrong with this.
“Ron…we can’t- just- stop everything for this-”
“Hermione, what part of Harry walking into the Forest to get himself killed do you not get??” Ron said, clearly frustrated that they weren’t on the same page.
“I know, but-"
“But what, Hermione??”
“Well, what if he- Harry- knows something we don’t?” Her voice had tapered down to a tearstained whisper. “I don’t know, he’s got this connection to Voldemort, what if he’s figured out some way to- to- oh, I don’t know, but- maybe it’s not exactly what we think it is, maybe- maybe if he does this-” Hermione’s voice broke and she immediately looked way, covering her mouth with her hand, unable to continue.
“If he does this he DIES, Hermione!” Ron shot back, starting to get teary, his voice getting thicker. “I don’t care if he’s trying to save us, or if he’s got some weird plan up his sleeve, I can't lose Harry tonight too!”
She knew it was very obvious she was on the verge of fully bursting into tears, and she was trying very hard not to. She didn’t know what to say.
“Well- I can't either!"
Ron gaped at her like he couldn’t believe they were wasting time on this.
“So we don't let him die, obviously!” He turned around, seemingly to resume the hunt. “Come on!’”
She wasn’t ready to move on that quickly.
“Well- who would we even tell? About Nagini?”
Ron opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. She knew he hadn’t thought it through this far.
And then, with the worst, most stomach-churning, ill-fated good luck in the world, they heard trainers hitting the ground pounding, and a lit wand moving towards them up ahead.
Hermione screamed, and the figure immediately shouted,
“Expelliarmus!"
Practically at the same time, she dove in front of Ron to shield him, thrusting her wand forward.
“Protego!"
The jinx bounced off of her shield charm and ricocheted past the figure, lighting him up with a flash of green and revealing it to be-Neville.
He looked at them, shocked, and then held up his lit wand as if to confirm what his eyes were seeing.
“Hermione? Ron?”
Hermione felt all the tightened muscles in her body loosen in relief, and she let down her wand and her guard.
“Neville! Oh, thank Merlin,” she gasped, holding a palm over her fast beating heart.
Ron, who was looking a little green as well, held up a brief hand in a wave to Neville.
“Thought you were something much worse, mate.”
“Can’t be too careful, can you?”
Hermione looked to Ron, and then to Neville.
“What are you doing here?”
“I’ve been looking for lost first years,” he replied, out of breath. “Found quite a few alive who can’t find their way back to the Great Hall. Can’t blame ‘em. Whole castle doesn’t even seem like itself.”
“Brilliant,” said Ron. “Neville, have you seen Harry?”
Neville processed the topic shift for a split second, and then nodded, taking a second and wiping his brow. “Yeah. ‘Bout half an hour ago.”
Half an hour ago. That made perfect sense, that was just about the time she’d noticed him missing-
Ron looked like he was about to knock right over.
“Half an hour…” he swallowed. “He didn’t- I mean, he didn’t say where he was going, did he?? Not the forest.”
Neville looked between them both. Increasing concern was growing over his face.
“Nah, he didn’t say where. Just said he had to go do something important and he didn’t say what. For what it’s worth, he told me he wasn’t handing himself over when I asked-” he added, at the dizzy look on Hermione’s face.
“Well, that’s exactly what he’d say, isn’t it,” she said, cutting him off faintly.
“Bloody hell, Neville!” Ron’s voice cracked again, hands jumping to grab the back of his hair anxiously.
Neville was now just as pale as them.
“Oh, god. He’s gone off to do something horrible, hasn’t he?”
There was no time to fill him in on all the details, and Hermione didn’t think either of them had the stomach for it, anyway.
“Neville. No one else knows about this,” her voice came out high and wobbly. “But Voldemort’s snake- Nagini-”
“She’s got to be killed, yeah?”
They both froze, staring at him.
“How’d you know that?” Ron asked.
Neville took a deep breath and blew it out and delivered the exact news they didn’t want to hear.
“Harry.”