almost

The first thing Hermione notices is that she is cold; the kind of cold that comes from a rainy winter in London or Scotland or any other dreary forest on the British Isles. The kind of cold that settles in your bones; the kind that feels like spring will never come. She is cold, and the cot she is sat on is hard and unforgiving beneath her. It feels like she will never be warm again.

She has tears on her cheeks that feel frozen to her face. She is afraid to open her eyes, but she does when she becomes aware of the press of ice cold fingertips in her palm. 

She blinks her eyes slowly open, and sitting with her in this godforsaken tent, awkwardly holding her hand in an increasingly rare show of solace, is Harry.

Harry. 

She glances sidelong at him, and crumpled in his other hand is Fred’s letter. The look on his face – concerned, confused, distinctly guilty – tells her that he’s read it.

Oh, Harry. 

When he notices her looking at him, his eyebrows wrinkle, knitting together even further. He squeezes her hand and then wordlessly pulls her to her feet. 

The locket remains on the cot, not forgotten, but temporarily ignored. The elephant in the room. Or one of them, anyway.

Then, in what feels like a bitter pantomime of her daydream, he flicks his wand at the wireless and begins to lead her in a sad, uneasy dance. Harry grasps her other hand and slowly begins to alternate them as he pushes and pulls her arms between them.

She knows that Harry can’t have known the dance that had transpired between her and Fred that night at the Burrow, or even in the daydream. There was no mention in the letter, and she has held their last meeting close to her heart, a secret unspoiled. And really, given everything that Harry has endured, has yet to undergo, she hasn’t wanted to burden him. 

But now Harry – sweet, tortured, ill-fated Harry – has learned something of her silent grief. And he was trying to comfort her. 

She was going to try to let him. 

Hermione allows herself to sway, to twirl, to hold and be held. But the first song is already at its last, and the new song that begins to play, tinny and strained from the old radio, feels like a cruel twist of fate’s knife. 

There’s a battle ahead, many battles are lost

But you’ll never see the end of the road

While you’re travelling with me

She feels her oldest friend, her brother in all but blood, tense. And she resents everything about this moment, really, except Harry. 

Never Harry. 

She tries really very hard to enjoy the dance, and for small pockets of time, she feels a smile ghost her lips, something that could be akin to a laugh tries to escape her. She feels the embers of a fire that she thought had already been doused.

But it’s like trying to catch a deluge in a paper cup. And really, “They’re laying on the dream imagery a little thick, aren’t they?” she manages before she bursts into tears, collapsing into Harry as the song continues around them and she sobs, anguished and, frankly, a little snotty. 

Her apologies are unintelligible as she blubbers into his collar, his grip tightening around her as he holds her upright. Eventually, though, they are both worn down, and they slide to the floor together in a tangled, undignified heap. 

Only once she has recovered from her breakdown and is now only a sniffling mess rather than a blubbering one does Harry speak, halting and unsure.

“I didn’t know,” he starts. “Er… you and Fred,” he clarifies. “How long were you…?”

“We weren’t,” Hermione says miserably, already feeling thoroughly discomposed again. 

“Oh,” Harry says, frowning, “But, he mentioned you met in the garden. And the charm bracelet… And he said…”

“I know what the letter says, Harry,” she says wearily. 

The frown on Harry’s face deepens. “I… but it sounds…he used the word ‘love.’” He flounders for words and looks at her helplessly, like she’ll swoop in and pick up his train of thought for him. When she doesn’t come to his rescue, he sighs. 

“What happened?” Harry asks instead.

“Fred Weasley has shite timing is what happened,” she says with a bitterness that’s not actually for the prankster she’s half fallen in love with, in a daydream of all things. 

“Hermione, please make sense,” Harry pleads, and she is reminded of another Harry, the one she had to explain Cho Chang to after a wet first kiss, what feels like a lifetime ago.

“The night before we left…” Hermione starts, slow and hesitant, but then she doesn’t stop. She picks up speed and the words tumble from her lips without her permission. She explains their dance, their kiss, Fred’s declarations of almost love. She explains that she hadn’t known, hadn’t even had an inkling, and she had tried not to allow herself to think about it. Not to be distracted by it, when there were more important things to focus on. But then she found a charm bracelet hidden away, and she couldn’t help but do what Fred instructed. She tells him about the daydream, though she selfishly keeps most of the details to herself.

“I think that I…” she hesitates. “Not love, necessarily, but, erm… I think I could grow to... to love him.”

She frowns.

“It wasn’t something I had ever thought about, and part of me is angry. Not at Fred. Just that… It's too little too late, isn’t it? Or maybe too much too late. And it always would be, because there’s no world where I don’t follow you, Harry.”

Harry opens his mouth to interject. “Don’t you dare start, Harry James Potter,” she threatens. “I’m not angry at you either. I’m angry at… Urgh!” she lets out a strangled growl in the back of her throat that makes Harry jump. “This isn’t our war, but here we are, fighting it. And I just…”

She wipes angrily at the tears burning her eyes. “I’m afraid. That the only time I’ll have gotten with him is one dance and a daydream. That I won’t ever have the chance to find out what it could be.” 

Hermione looks at her friend imploringly. “Does that make sense?” she asks, uncertainty creeping into her voice. 

“We should start a club,” Harry says, apropos of nothing, and it’s so unexpected that it startles a laugh out of her. A real one. “Fugitives Against Weasleys Not-with-Us.”

“F.A.W.N.W.U.?” Hermione says incredulously, wrinkling her nose.

“F.A.W.N.,” Harry corrects. “The last is hyphenated.”

“That might be worse than S.P.E.W.,” she says. 

“Okay, what about F.A.W.N.N.? Fugitives Against Weasleys Nowhere Near?” he suggests, something like one of his old grins threatening to take residence on his face.

“We’ll workshop it,” she says with a tinge of amusement in her voice, an unwitting smile. Because really, what a ridiculous name.

Hermione is still sad. She is still mourning the loss of the possibility that Fred painted for her in a daydream. But it surprises her how much better she feels after confiding in Harry. She thought that her sorrow would burden them both, but instead it releases them. Makes them lighter.

Now she can talk about Fred. And he can talk about Ginny. They can mourn, pay respect, to what was left behind.

There was one Weasley they still couldn’t talk about. But it was a start. 

It’s the day before she and Harry have agreed to go to Godric’s Hollow when she finds it. Another surprise, buried in her beaded bag.

“What an idiot,” she grins to herself, unwrapping the parcel containing Fred’s Quidditch jersey, F. Weasley emblazoned on the back. Hermione holds it to her face, unreservedly inhaling the comforting, warm scent of him that is so strong she wonders if he intentionally preserved it with a spell. 

She puts it on and it falls almost to her knees, but she doesn’t take it off again until they’re getting ready to depart the next day. Hermione thinks maybe, maybe this is a good omen – a portent of good fortune for once, maybe even a little luck. 

Then they go, and as always, all hell breaks loose.

They are attacked by a snake possessing a corpse before they narrowly escape Voldemort himself, she snaps Harry’s wand nearly in two, and she worries that he might die as she tends to him throughout the night, severing the horcrux from his chest and leaving shiny pink flesh behind.

She thinks bitterly that if that was good luck, she doesn’t want to know how it would have played out without it. 

The next night, as Harry takes watch, she dons the jersey again, hoping this time for an uneventful passing of days. Hermione contemplates the daydream still on her wrist, the absurd rubber ducky, and decides this one she will save a little longer. 

Then she wakes up in a panic to find Ron and Harry, soaking wet, the sword of bloody Gryffindor in one of Ron’s hands and a destroyed horcrux dangling, blackened and gnarled, from the fingertips of the other. 

Hermione thinks, as she calls Ron an arse and nearly hexes him, a maelstrom of conflicting emotions swirling inside her, that there is no God. This is too hard. Too heavy. She is just one person, and she is going to crumple under the weight. 

She is angry, she is furious, she is on a warpath.

She is overwhelmed with relief because Ron hasn’t been captured or tortured, nor has he befallen a tragic death. Ron is okay. He’s alive. He came back. 

Her relief lasts all of a day before she is already exasperated. No one will tell her what happened with the locket, and she has to corner Harry and call on every favour he’s ever owed her to get him to cave. To tell her what they saw. And even then it still takes weeks. 

Then she is guilty. Because now she knows Ron’s secret and he has no idea of hers; she’s transfigured F. Weasley to read H. Potter and it eats away at her when she sees Ron’s hopeful gaze fixed on her. She fiddles with the charms at her wrist, and it fills her with a silent shame.

Because it’s not Harry. Never has been. But it’s also… not Ron. And now she doesn’t think it can be. 

Ron tells them about the radio broadcasts, and then one night they catch one, and she finds herself kneeling on the ground, open-mouthed, listening to Lee Jordan’s voice. 

When Lupin’s voice introduces itself as Romulus, tears form in her eyes. 

Then, yet another familiar voice says,

“‘Rodent’?”

And Harry, Ron and Hermione cry out together, Hermione loudest of all:

“Fred!”

She hears Harry ask if it was maybe George, instead, but she knows, she knows it’s not. 

“I’m not being Rodent!,” Fred’s voice rings out in the tent. “I told you, I want to be ‘Rapier’!” 

She laughs, wiping away tears, and has to fight to focus for the rest of the broadcast. 

Fred continues, talking about the panic being sown by You-Know-Who, how absurd some of the rumours are, and says, “So people, let’s try and calm down a bit.” 

She knows it’s not, but for a moment it feels like it’s said directly to her. Like he's said that just for her. 

Then she and Harry are laughing, for the first time in weeks and weeks. The broadcast ends with a recording of a muggle song, one Fred had included in the daydream. She knows that this part is for her alone, and she finds herself beaming. She talks admiringly of their bravery, and in the next breath worries over their safety.

But for today she has this – she has Fred’s voice, and the knowledge that, somewhere, he’s blessedly alive. Playing songs in the hopes she might hear them. Today, she has hope. 

And then, before the feeling can even find purchase, Harry says Voldemort’s name. 

… and all hell breaks loose.