Harry did end up getting that sandwich.
It's corned beef, somehow fresh and intact even though the Kitchens must be a mess. Ron turns up his nose at it, but Harry relishes every bite.
They're in the seventh year boys' dormitory, all three of them, high up in Gryffindor tower. It doesn't look lived in and comfortable like the dorms used to be every year. It's sad and dark, no happy memories have been made here by the two boys who briefly inhabited it. Ron's sprawled on what would have been his bed, if he'd stayed. Hermione sits on the same bed, close to him but not quite touching, yet. Harry's on the floor, leaning against his own would-have-been bed, savouring his sandwich, facing them.
The silence is welcome after the noise and crowd of the fighting and then the comforting. So many people, who'd lost their families and friends, wandering lost and broken across the Great Hall, hundreds injured among students and the families who had come to fight, all of them reaching for him, The Boy Who Lived, their beacon of hope, even though Harry had felt that he himself was about to collapse at any given moment, body and nerves frayed by the deaths and the truths he faced.
Ron and Hermione had stuck with him through it all. Both of them walking, not infront of him nor behind him, but firmly at his sides, matching him step for step. Ginny had joined them too after a while, pale in grief and weariness but strong as the foundations of Hogwarts itself. Even with the three pillars behind him however, he'd grown weary very quick, and they'd dutifully whisked him off up to the dorms, leaving Ginny to make a convenient excuse for their abrupt departure.
He still ached at the thought of going back down there, as he inevitably would have to, to offer words of comfort and hope he didn't have. He still hadn't faced the rest of the Weasleys, his family. He didn't want to look them in the eye after he'd cost them the life of their son and brother. He knew they would not blame him, but he couldn't face the hug Molly would give him or the pat on the back Arthur would offer or the bold smiles of the Weasley siblings without seeing the wicked smirk he would never see again, on Fred's face or George's.
"So. What now?" Ron's voice, quietly spoken but as loud as a gunshot in the silent room, snapped Harry out of his musing, "Where do we go from here, now that we've done all we've had to?"
"I don't know." Harry said truthfully. He knew he wanted to help with reperations, to assist where he could in rebuilding Hogwarts and opening it to students again, help relocate families who had been upended by the War, and then....he didn't know. It seemed like so much of his life had been consumed by Voldemort and defeating him, he has no goal now that the job was done. His dreams of becoming an Auror seemed so far away, in a different lifetime.
"We'll have to stay for a while won't we? Help with the rebuilding and relocation and all that," said Hermione, reciting his thoughts better that he could as always, "They'll expect us to, after all this." She was wringing the corner of the dusty bedsheet in her hands, eyes somewhere else even as she spoke.
"Your head's somewhere else, Hermione." Ron pointed out. He reached up his hand and tapped his knuckles gently against her temple. "What's going on in there?"
Hermione flushed a deep pink, at the gesture or at being called out, Harry didn't know, but it warmed him somewhere deep, seeing them like this.
"Nothing!" she exclaimed too loudly, "except...well, I'd like to go and get my parents, you see.." her voice was quiet now.
"Obviously, I'll have to wait and I dont mind, really, but when this is all over, I wanted to go and..." she took a deep breath, "I was wondering if you both would come with me." She said the last part a bit hesitantly, obviously against the idea of taking them away from home, after the time they'd spent away from it.
Harry and Ron were quiet for a while, but it wasn't a tense silence, mostly a contemplative one. For Harry, the decision was obvious. He'd dragged her across the coutry with him, with no destination or goal, into deadly situations involving a lot of guesswork and pain, yet she'd never given up on him once. Solid as a rock and sharp as tack, she'd held him up and guided him along during his darkest moments, when his whole view of the world had been upended and his mind was clouded by bitterness. He'd go wherever she wanted him to.
He was just about to say as much when Ron spoke up, "Of course we'll come. Mum might argue of course, but all you need to do is mention your Mum and she'll bend like a reef. Of course, we're coming 'Mione, why would you ask such a stupid question?"
He looked at her relieved face with a sort of quiet conviction, eyes filled with determination and an emotion Harry knew intimately. It was the emotion he felt when he looked at Ginny, bright and brilliant and beautiful, the one he felt when he looked at Mr. and Mrs. Weasley and their unconditional support, when he'd looked at Hedwig and her intelligent, knowing eyes and the emotion he'd seen in his parents and godparent's eyes as they looked at him for the last time. And suddenly, his decision had taken a different form.
"I think you both should go alone, actually."
Two pairs of eyes, indignant brown and incredulous blue locked on his own determined green. "What do you mean. "you both", Harry?" Hermione blurted out "I mean, I'd understand if you don't want to travel too much again but...I thought maybe-"
"Yeah mate, what the hell?" Ron said reproachfully "Not to insist or anything but she did drag herself across half of Britain to pick up after us two idiots you know?"
"I know," Harry said, "and you were there too Ron. Both of you went with me, without me even asking. You risked your lives and families for me. Least I can do," he says this with a little grin, "is to make myself spare and give the both of you some alone time."
They stare at him now, for a moment or two, Hermione steadily growing pinker and Ron's eyes filling with laughter.
"Harry! That's- you don't need to- we're completely fine with-"
"What she means, mate," Ron interrupts helpfully "is that that's utter bull. We're a three-man-team, have been and always will be. We'll get plenty of time to you know...be "alone" ("Ron!") "but that time is not now. Think of it as a vacation of sorts. Well, except for the part that we're going to be hunting down Hermione's parents to restore their memories."
"I want you to come Harry," Hermione insisted quietly "There's no one I'd have with me when I finally face them than the two of you, to hold me up"
Harry was on his feet in seconds, marching up to the bed they occupied and flopping down unceremoniously on them both. They let out muffled shouts of protest and surprise as buried his face in the pillow between them arms thrown across both of their waists. Despite the abrupt change in position, they rose to the occasion. Hermione buried her right hand (the one not crushed beneath Harry's weight) in his hair and started running slowly through it while Ron rolled on to his side and flung his left leg atop both of Harry's, his right arm stretching out to rest against Hermione's shoulder and his left fitted to the nape of Harry's neck.
They stayed like that for a while, Harry between the two people who were more than friends, more than family, to him. Maybe as Professor Trelawney might say, they fit like puzzle pieces, aligned by the path of the stars, made to stay by Harry's side and him to lean on them when the world was too much, and then protect them in turn. He felt the sudden crushing need to tell them this, to make them understand why he wanted them to go alone, and how much they meant to him.
"You're my courage and my compassion," he began softly, turning to Ron, "you saw me that day, six years ago on the Hogwarts train, alone and friendless and clueless, and decided then to be my friend and you've stayed true to that promise. You shared your food with me that day, and then continued to share everything you have with me and you always will. You've been my greatest protector, my sword against my pain. Thank you, Ron."
"Harry..." Ron began, looking like he'd been punched in the stomach, but Harry shook his head and turned to his other best friend.
"You're my intelligence and my will. You dealt with all my bitterness and anger, went through so much pain and fear but stuck to me like a leech, because you knew I needed you, and you never abandoned me, even when I didn't know what I was doing, even when I took my anger out on you because it was too much to keep inside me. You've been my greatest advocate, my sheild against the hate. Thank you Hermione."
There were silent tears pouring down her cheeks, but a blooming smile on her face as she regarded him.
"We're thankful to you too, Harry" Hermione began "You brought us together so long ago. Your our lodestone, our driving force. All we've done for you, you've returned to us tenfold. There's no need to thank us for something inevitable."
Harry felt raw and torn open, but not a bit vulnerable as he looked at Ron and saw Hermione's words reflected in them as well. He knew the would insist that he go with them, but he saw too, in the lingering looks and touches how they wished to have sometime for themselves as well. He would happily give them that, but first he had to convince them that they needed it too.
But that was a worry for tomorrow. He may be the Boy Who Lived, but here, today, in this bed, bracketed on either side by his anchors, he needn't be anything but just Harry.
So they laid there, three parts of a whole, basking in their hard-won peace. Heart, Mind and Soul.