Through
Summer, 1994.
There is no air.
Harry wants to writhe, to flinch, to run, to move, but he can’t feel his body. Over and over, rapid and loud as a batch of firecrackers, the wall beside Harry’s head explodes. He can’t see. He rolls in waves of sound and dull light. Bam! The world is a flash of dark red, is a thick black water. Bam! Bam! Harry hasn’t taken a breath in minutes. Hours. Days. Hasn’t moved. Can’t. Bam! Dead, Harry thinks. I am dead. I am dead. Dead, dead.
Then it’s over.
Harry comes to himself doubled over, knees and hands on the carpet. Oxygen hits his lungs in a sudden flash of heat, and he has to cough against the shock. It hurts. That’s right , he thinks. That’s real. The roaring in his ears fades enough to catch the muffled sound of his uncle’s voice, the heavy footfalls making their way out of the hall and back toward the telly. From the other room, it drones soft and low, making Harry feel distant, dreamlike. He tries to tune it out; focus instead on the taste of blood in his mouth. That’s real. His knees hurt where he fell; his head pounds. Real. Real.
Alright , he tells himself. Now get up.
Harry takes the luxury of a few more deep breaths, willing the feeling to return below his knees. He feels himself stand, a steadying hand against his cupboard door. Above it, at eye level, a new dent in the plasterboard mocks him from between two stagnant, smiling portraits of Dudley. Round and rough and the size of Vernon’s fist.
The sight makes Harry’s vision swim, but he pushes away from the wall and tells himself to grow up. He takes the stairs at a clumsy pace, then the hall, trying to rush, trying to move silently. He holds the handle of the door firmly, hoping to muffle the click of the open and close.
Stop shaking .
Harry wishes, not for the first time, that just one of the half-dozen locks lining the door worked from the inside. He presses his back to the wood in a cheap facsimile of security, closes his eyes, and works at slowing his breathing. He hadn’t noticed the panic building, but it presses into him now.
Stupid. An easy summer of slipping by unnoticed, gone. Just like that. And why? If there’s an answer, Harry can’t say it. Won’t.
He slides to the floor, pressing back against the door and sinking until he can put his head between his knees. According to Hermione, this is supposed to help.
His hands feel numb. His face, numb. His body, a transparent thing. Distant. Other. He’s reminded of the promise he’s made countless times, to sit behind a closed door and try not to exist. There have been times he’s thought he’d managed it, when he felt so far outside of his body he’d been sure nothing could reach him, not even himself. But he always returns, eventually. He clicks back into sync with the world and continues being.
Harry opens his eyes and stares at his feet. Still here. His throat is sore and it hurts to swallow, the ghost of a hand still wrapped and tight, but his breathing moves in and out of him in manageable waves. Harry focuses on that- on breathing- until everything else is washed away. Whatever had been pressing up from beneath the tide of panic, whatever thought or feeling, is gone now.
He is hollow and he is breathing and he is nothing and he is here. He feels empty and it’s better, until it isn’t. Anger comes to him unbidden, laps at him like a drooling dog. Gnaws. Demands attention and food, and Harry cannot help but oblige. He lets it roll through him, quiet and burning and unfocused.
Anger at this house; at Vernon and Petunia and Dudley; at their noise, their appetite, their hate for him, how their eyes skate past him like staring through mist. They are made of hands and tongues, when they do see him, and he hates them. They feast and diet and hold the luxury of choosing out of his reach, and he hates them. They speak and touch, complain and lash out, and he goades them into remembering he is there, just for the chance to regret it. And he hates them.
Anger at himself, for not hating them more. For what he wants, even now. For what he said, downstairs, and why, and a hundred, thousand other unforgivable things. Anger at his anger.
Anger at Hermione, calm in his head, saying it is only natural, to feel. Perfectly normal. At her accusation, that anything about him might be natural, normal. Anger at the weight she feels, the quiet moments they’ve shared when she has said, in her tight voice, that she knows what it is like to never measure up. Anger at the ease with which she walks beside both her parents, down the cobblestone of Diagonal Alley as they work diligently to understand what she is. At the casual brush of her hair from her face, the gentle touch of lips to her forehead that causes him, each time, to look away. The hellos and goodbyes and blatant love. Anger that what she knows of him and what he knows of her, they do not share. Not really. No matter his sympathy for her terror of falling short. Shame is a horrid thing, but he is certain they would hold her close despite it- hers and theirs. He is certain she will never truly need to find out.
Anger at Ron for the same, and more. For his family and their open doors, his open bed, his constant returning. Anger that he started all of this, the opening and feeling and want, that Harry has to work now to be nothing, and so often fails. Anger at the shiny gifts he gives that Harry can never keep: the relief of touch, of sleep, of laughter and speaking. Three years of this, to teach Harry a simple question, and now the scene downstairs. What do you want? He doesn’t. He does. Anger that he does. To be seen, not just looked at. To be real. To be gone. To never be touched again, or worse, to be touched always. The sick joke of his skin, crawling and aching beneath the echo of a hand.
Anger at both of them and a million others, for their freedom.
Anger at Sirius, for making promises. And at himself, again, for ruining everything, not putting the pieces together sooner. Dropping his guard and letting Pettigrew slip away. Knowing escape was too good to be true, but believing he could have it anyway.
He sits like this, awash in anger until it exhausts him. Hours pass, or minutes. He’s not sure. But he knows it abandons him like everything else, seeps out of him and into the floor, leaving him hollow and tired. He has to force his hands to unclench from where he had gripped himself. A number of half moons indent the skin of his arms; he hadn’t noticed the pinch of his nails. A few look close to bleeding, but they don’t. He stares at them for a moment until the feeling returns to him, a dull and soothing ache. Real.
Harry takes a deep breath, lets it out. When he can stand, he does. His knees and back pop as he stretches. He presses an ear to the door and listens for the sound of footsteps. Nothing. He opens it as quietly as he can and steps into the hall, glancing back toward the stairs. Nothing. He crosses to the bathroom and is finally behind a door that latches. Somehow, it is never here he thinks to go when something happens. Or- he had once, he thinks. There had been consequences to that he does not fully remember.
Eyes down, he crosses to the sink and splashes water on his face. It is cold and clean and feels nice against his hot skin. He cranes his head down to the faucet, drinks, and regrets it as his tender throat aches in protest; he forces himself to drink anyway. He straightens, grimacing, turns off the water, and finally dares a look in the mirror.
It’s a strange sensation, seeing himself. He avoids this when he can. He doesn’t like to recognize this version of his reflection. His eyes are dull and hungry, even he can tell. His skin somehow both tanned and washed out. The water dripping off the tip of his nose, his jaw, makes it seem as though he is melting. There’s a split in his lip, where he’d bitten it in his collision with the wall. His neck is lined red, a few spots darkening just above his collarbone on one side. The ghost of a hand on the ghost of a boy. It sets his skin to crawling.
Disgusted, he turns away. He dries his face and hands and leaves for the bedroom, not bothering to listen for the sound of movement. He doesn’t care anymore. He just wants to be free of the ghosts in the mirror.
No point in being paranoid, anyway. No one is in the hall, the Dursley’s all crowded around the telly downstairs. Though he closes the door carefully behind, just in case.
Nothing even happened. Not really. Nothing to write home about, as Ron might say. Vernon lost his temper, but his fist had hit the wall and only that. Not violence, but the threat of violence. A promise, but nothing Harry can point to and say See? This happened . Even the ring of red around his neck will be tender for some time, but it won’t bruise. Nothing for anyone to notice or mind; what’s Harry to do? Cry about it? Write letters to his friends lamenting his terrible life?
“Dear Hermione. Today my uncle might’ve hit me, but he didn’t. Please send your sincerest sympathies. Love, Harry.”
No. He may be pathetic, but he has not sunk that low. He is exhausted, perhaps a bit dizzy, and alone. But he still has a grasp on himself, despite all evidence to the contrary. He let his mouth run away from him, that’s all. He paid the price. A consequence. That’s all.
If no one had touched him in weeks, that was what he wanted. Of course. If they looked through him, that was for the best. If he couldn’t remember the last time he heard his own name said aloud, well that hardly mattered. He was fine. Surviving. Doing well, all things considered.
Hermione be damned. And damn Ron, too. And damn the bitter, aching thing in his chest that seems to whisper Make a noise. Break something. See if they will look in your direction. See what they will do.
It’s just another summer, and he is fine. Soon, he will return to the garden and pull weeds. He will walk past the room where they sit and none of them will glance in his direction and he will be glad of that.
March, 1996.
“What do you want, ‘Mi?” Harry asks. His voice is not unkind, but neither is there any invitation in it. He doesn’t open his eyes.
Hermione’s shadow stretches across the grass to cover Harry’s face where he lays. His hands rest on his stomach, his chin tipped up as if to absorb as much light as he can. The last of the snow has melted away, at least here, giving way to a rare day of warm sun. The blanket he’s laid out must provide less than ideal protection from the wet grass and mud, but if he minds, he gives no indication.
“How did you know it was me?”
Harry shrugs, says nothing.
“We haven’t seen you around, lately,” Hermione starts. Harry shrugs again.
“Been busy.”
Hermione shifts. This is going about as well as she’d expected- poorly.
“You haven’t been to dinner. Ron says you’ve been staying out all hours,” she trails off, hoping he’ll pick up with an explanation, an excuse, something.
“Like I said: busy.” He doesn’t bother to shrug this time.
A beat passes. Hermione’s bag feels heavy on her shoulder, despite the charms counteracting the weight of the books inside.
“Can I sit?” she asks, finally.
“Not like I could stop you.” Harry opens his eyes then. His head turns in her direction. His gaze settles somewhere around her ankles.
“You could say no,” Hermione corrects.
Harry doesn’t respond. Instead he rolls his head upward once more and stares at the sky. Tired of his dramatics, Hermione huffs. She casts a quick drought charm, unwilling to settle onto mud, and slumps onto the space of blanket beside him. Her shadow shrinks with her, spilling light across Harry’s face once more. He closes his eyes as it hits him, taking a breath as though savoring something special.
“I brought you this,” Hermione says, pulling a folded cloth filled with cheese and an apple from her bag. The offer seems to catch his attention, and he spares her a glance. Once he sees what she has, however, something strange and dark flashes in his eyes.
“Already ate,” he tells her: a lie, Hermione knows. She is far from intuitive, but Harry is so ill suited to deceit. His eyes glaze as he says it, like a flinch though he remains still. Not for the first time, Hermione is struck by how he has changed over the year, since the end of last, since Cedric. He met them at Grimmauld Place and carried something dark with him. She knows what it is now, who is ripping away at Harry, taking him from her, taking him from himself.
It’s more than that, though, this lie, this look. It isn’t the cold bitterness from the beginning of term. There’s something to him that she can’t place. Something that’s been growing from the start of the year. The occlumency lessons have pushed him in ways she couldn’t have anticipated. They’re necessary, she knows. She thinks of the hate rolling off him in waves, of the nightmares, of the terrible risk of letting him continue to seed himself into Harry’s soul. She pictures all his secrets siphoned into the mind of him , pictures Ron’s name, her name, the name of her parents becoming central to his thoughts. She considers the cold bodies scattered like litter because he knew each move before they made it, hers among them, Harry’s among them. Or, Harry driven mad by thoughts that aren’t his, images of terrible lies he cannot tell from reality. There are worse prices to pay than these nights in a cold dungeon, than nightmares, than the terrible mercy of someone like Snape. She knows this. Still, she can see the hollowness behind Harry’s eyes, beneath the dark look, and guilt wells up in her. She refuses to look away from him, despite the feeling.
“Would you just take it?” she asks, stubbornly, holding the napsack toward him.
“I said I’m not hungry, Hermione,” he snaps, a bit too loud. He brings his voice down again to continue. “Put it away if you’re going to sit here, or eat it yourself.”
He turns away from her again, looking up. He keeps his eyes trained on the sky, his face hard. There was a time this would have worked. A number of things flash through her: hurt, anger, pity, guilt, grief. Once, just last year, he had taken the gesture. She’d never needed to worry about where they stood, then; even the wrong steps were mendable. Now, she felt always a breath away from some terrible, unknown edge.
She wants to push it; on another day, she would have. She stares at him for a beat then takes a deep breath and shoves both back into her bag. A moment more and she lays down beside him. On her side, she cradles her head in the crook of her arm, against the dried earth, and watches Harry. His jaw is tight, his shoulders tense.
It takes her a moment to weigh the consequences, then she reaches out toward him. The back of her hand brushes his cheek, and for a moment he tenses, physically, so that she almost regrets the gesture. Then he seems to relax. His face presses back against her. It’s the first time he has let her touch him in weeks, or more, she realizes, and is suddenly reminded of him leant back against a stall, months ago now. I’m so tired. She can feel it around them.
She cards her hand through his hair, pushing it back from his face and revealing the famous scar. It’s beautiful, in a strange way. It’s not the first time she’s considered this- how the lines stretch from his hairline, down across his forehead to fragment his left brow like pale cracks in his deep skin. Perhaps that’s wrong of her. She knows what it must stand for, for him; all that death. Still, she lets her thumb trace the edges as she continues to push his hair back.
“We- I’m- we... We’re worried about you, Harry.” She opts for honesty this time, cuts him a break. The words hang between them, nearly tangible in the cool air.
“I’m sorry,” he admits after a moment. He brings a hand up to rub at his eyes, interrupting the pattern of Hermione’s carding. The gesture covers one scar with another, I must not tell lies nearly glistening in a neat line of newly healed flesh along the back of his hand. She has to look away, opts for staring at a lower point on his arm.
“Have you been sleeping?” Hermione asks in lieu of responding. Harry shifts to give her a sideways glance from beneath his arm, but his eyes soften when she meets them. Something clicks, and for a moment, he is the boy she knows.
“Some,” he says. He looks all of his fifteen years, in that moment; which is to say, terribly young and overburdened. It occurs to her, every now and again, how young they all are. It is easy to forget, especially when it comes to Harry. Things happen to them in ways she cannot imagine they happen to others. Things happen to Harry in ways she cannot imagine happening to herself. It is easy to slip into the belief that he is accustomed to this life, well suited to the constant struggle and near death. It is easy to believe it’s normal, how they live out their days. Then he will look at her, and she will see him clearly for a moment, and she will feel the weight of the last five years settle around her, and she will remember - they are children. No matter how old she feels. No matter the responsibilities with which they have been saddled. She wonders if Harry ever remembers this, if he has ever allowed himself to consider just how young he is.
Harry sighs, and she doubts it.
“Not when I can avoid it,” he admits.
“The nightmares aren’t getting any better, then?” Her stomach twists uncomfortably.
Harry doesn’t answer. Hermione can tell he means more than no. They’re worse, it’s all worse; his silence hangs between them. Hermione is split down the middle. Looking at him, she wants nothing more than to touch his face and tell him never to enter the dungeon, to never look Snape in the eye again; to urge him to sleep, just sleep; she would keep watch.
Then, she thinks of the bodies, the dead, the muggleborns murdered, the generations of children raised under the reign of a man whose name they are too afraid to say, and the words spill from her before she can stop them.
“Have you been really trying, Harry?” she asks, regretting the words even as she says them, hating the desperate edge to her voice. “Practicing clearing your mind? I know you hate him, but you’ve got to put it all away. We could read up on meditations; I’m sure there are books in the library, though there’s so little about occlumency. I’ve been trying-”
“Why don’t you head to the dungeons tonight, if you’re so eager to learn?” he snaps at her. The look on his face is no longer the open exhaustion of the previous moment, but something closer to disgust. “ You learn how to turn your brain off, and let me know how that goes.”
“Harry, I-”
“You really think I’m not trying?” Harry sits up, his eyes still on her, something cruel and hurt pouring off of him in waves.
“No, I- I didn’t mean-” Hermione follows him, pulling her legs up beneath her.
“What did you mean, then? You think I want to be out every night trying to walk myself awake? You think this is all a bit of fun for me? That I’m taking the piss, wasting my time on these lessons and ignoring them while we are nearly at war?”
“Of course not-”
“Am I stupid, then? I was the one who was there when Cedric-” He cuts himself off with something that sounds nearer to a choke than a cough, a click of his teeth. Hermione can feel the hair on her arms stand on edge, a familiar sensation this year: the result of some deepset magic Harry seems unaware of that fills the space; a powerful wizard without control. His rage and grief surround her for a moment. Then he closes his eyes, breathes out, and the static sensation fades.
“ I saw him, Hermione. I know what’s at stake,” he tells her, his voice carefully level.
“I know you do,” she tells him, and she means it. “Harry, I’m-”
“I need to go,” he tells her, standing, carefully avoiding her stare. “I’ve got homework to finish before- you know.”
“I could help, if you like,” Hermione offers, fumbling to stand and follow. Her guilt is a physical thing inside of her. In this moment, she’d do anything he asked.
“I’ve got it,” he says instead. “I just need to get going now if I’m to get it finished.”
“Harry, wait, please.” Hermione reaches toward him, hoping to grasp his wrist, to convince him to stay and speak with her, to lay back against the grass and sleep . Seeing her move, Harry freezes.
“No,” he says, his voice somehow both sharp and dull. It’s a painful sound, effective in stopping her hand before she reaches him. It hovers between them for a short moment, then she drops it into her side.
“Can we just talk?” she tries one final time, feeling futile and wrong. “Later, even?”
“Sure,” he says, though his tone is unconvincing. “Later.”
Then he is gone. He leaves the blanket in the grass, beneath her feet.
--
Harry is seven, and it is very dark. He is nine and the back door is locked. Fourteen and holding the egg in triumph of the first task. Thirteen and watching Snape’s frozen body float down the passage leading back from the shrieking shack, Sirus in his periphery.
Fifteen and in his body once more, his knees and hands cold against the stone dungeon floor.
“Think this is funny, Potter?” Snape snaps. Harry grits his teeth,, trying to catch his breath; it takes him a moment to consider what Snape could possibly mean. “If your aim is to humiliate me, you’re going to need to try much harder than that. These games won’t save you from the Dark Lord.”
What games? Before Harry can answer, he is thrown back.
He is hungry and slipping chunks of canned tomatoes into Hedwig’s cage. He is opening his first christmas gift. He is pacing back and forth in a small room filled with broken toys. He is standing alone in a back garden, standing alone at a park, falling backwards against asphalt in a schoolyard, being held by Mrs. Weasly for the first time, lying quietly in Ron’s bed-
“Stop, please, just stop,” Harry manages to force himself back into the present. Once again, Snape is feet away from him, looking disheveled.
“What have I told you about using hexes?” he snaps, bringing up his wand in retribution. “It’s a useless habit, and relying on them will do you no good.”
“No, just wait, no-”
Harry is standing in the hallway. The day has been long and quiet. He received a letter from Sirius only the day before, signed Padfoot . A name his father had used for his best friend. Harry cannot remember a time he’s been permissed the use of a nickname. There’s something warm and soft to it, a strange doorway into his parent’s lives, into the life of someone who doesn’t just want to know Harry Potter, but wishes to know Harry, to- perhaps- be known by him.
Petunia has been droning on all day about the neighbors and the state of the yard. An incurable gossip, she is convinced everyone she knows is the same, always speaking out of both sides of their mouths. It is always something. Today, the garden; yesterday the smell of the bins outside; last week, the dust around the fireplace, the grit on the windows; and on.
Harry has only been pretending to listen, occupied with picking at a hole in his shirt and thinking on the letter upstairs and how he might respond. She is not talking to him, anyway, not really. Harry is not someone to be spoken to, he is barely someone at all. It makes him feel strange, to acknowledge this fact, even to himself. It puts him on edge. He thinks of Sirius, who looked at him rather than through him, who wrote him letters that welcomed Harry inside, and it feels like a dream. It is not a pleasant feeling, to have memories shift from clear to hazy, from immediate to unreal. Petunia clicks down the hallway, and he shifts to make room while she glides past. His daydreaming does him no good here. Harry is not someone, not really; he is the outline of a boy. An unpleasant mirage.
Resentment settles into him like stone. Petunia hustles past him again, her shoulder an inch from his face, but never touching him. She does not spare him so much as a glance.
“The boy will have to clean it up,” she says. Harry realizes she is speaking to Vernon, who has made his way to the bottom of the stairs. Harry is standing between them.
“He’ll head out there now, then,” Vernon responds, his voice gruff as though worn by Petunia’s monologue. Neither of them address him. Neither catch his eye. “Have it done by supper.”
“No, I won’t,” Harry feels himself say. He never decided to say it, but there it is. There is a sudden, terrible stillness as Harry’s voice settles around them. His ears ring with nerves, but satisfaction radiates through him when, for the first time in what must be weeks, Vernon meets his eye.
“You’d best have it done, boy,” he spits. “Petunia is having guests. If it’s not finished-”
“I won’t be gardening today,” Harry pushes further. He tries to keep his voice casual and clenches his hands to hide his shaking. It is a strange sensation: thrilling, and great, and horrible all at once. Something crosses Vernon’s face that Harry is only now learning to recognise: Vernon hesitates. There has been a middle ground between them since the end of the term. With a dangerous godfather only a letter away, the Dursleys have not yet crossed the line. Harry, for his part, has not pressed it. He is violating that agreement, now, and he can tell Vernon is unprepared.
“What?” Harry would take a step forward, add weight to his tone, but he thinks his knees might give out on him if he moves. He should quit while he is ahead; he should leave the house or try to make his way to the bedroom. Instead, he says, “I can write my godfather, see what he-”
It’s a step too far. Vernon’s hesitation solidifies into a rage.
“Oh, I’ll give you something to write about-” he says, stepping forward-
“Enough!” Harry screams. He is shaking. He is glad he hadn’t eaten today, or he would have lost it across the floor with the dizzying effort of forcing himself out of his own mind. Sick, he drags himself to his feet, his wand at the ready.
The look on Snape’s face is familiar. His mouth turns up unkindly, and he moves to cast again.
“Expelliarmus!” Harry casts. The wand flies from Snape’s hand and across the room. Harry keeps his wand at the ready and pulls air into his lungs. He feels dirty, exposed, as though he has been cut open and is missing vital organs. His skin crawls; his throat aches. “Enough.”
“What’s this?” Snape sneers, seeming unthreatened by Harry’s posed wand, only irritated at the loss of his own. “Amazing, isn’t it, Mr. Potter, how revealing our memories can be? Ah. How difficult this must be for you, to see yourself as you are without your friends and fame to hide behind: a spoiled little dog, just like your father. You and that sickly twig of a woman you call an aunt are a deserving pair after all. Is that how you go about all of your summers, then? Using the threat of a murderous criminal to avoid a bit of hard work?”
Snape makes a cruel sound in the back of his throat that Harry could almost confuse for a laugh. “Even I might have expected better.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about.” Harry’s wand trembles in his hand. His face feels hot and his stomach churns. He’d die of embarrassment, he thinks, if it weren’t for the hate burning him alive. He forces himself to breathe, it takes every last bit of his strength not to curse Snape where he stands. He could do it, something whispers in the back of his mind. He could make him hurt, reduce him to ash, find some means of baring Snape’s own secrets. He could make him small. He could make him hurt. He could.
Harry can taste blood from where his teeth have pierced the inside of his cheek. He bites down harder, focusing on keeping his mouth shut, his hand still, spells uncast. No, he thinks. He is not a monster.
Snape deserves his hate. He deserves to hurt.
Harry doesn’t want to hurt anyone.
Snape simply gives him a condescending look and turns to find his wand once more. With Snape’s back to him, Harry feels foolish holding his own wand so defensively. He takes the break to collect himself. He pushes thoughts of the Dursleys as far back in his mind as he can, focusing on the rage in his stomach instead, on the hate.
What is he, that his control is so fickle? A coward? A failure? Does it matter? Is hate not enough for its own sake? It fills him and he manages to regain his breath.
Snape stands, having collected his wand, and shoots Harry a strange look. The air smells off, not as dank has it had. It smells of ozone and blood. Harry’s head pounds. His vision is tight.
“I need a break,” He says, as Snape crosses back toward him.
“There will be no breaks when the Dark Lord comes for you.”
“You are not Voldemort. I just need a minute.”
“You’ve had it.” Snape raises his wand once more.
“Wait, please, no-”
“Then stop me.”
Harry does not feel his knees hit the floor.
--
Hermione finds Harry in the library of all places. It is meant to be closed, but they are no longer first years. He is not the only student still awake to complete homework or to study for OWLS.
Harry is not studying, when she finds him. There is a book open in front of him, but it seems to have lost his interest, if it had held any to begin with.
Instead, Harry stares out the window. It has been raining more nights than not, lately, and his reflection is pocked with the shadows of droplets. His eyes flick to her reflection as it appears beside him, then settle back on whatever point had occupied his attention before her.
“I’m sorry,” she says in lieu of a greeting. Strangely, Harry tenses.
“Can we talk?” she asks. There’s a heavy silence between them.
“No,” Harry says, after a while. Her heart sinks.
“Oh,” she says, hurt. Harry seems to intensify his stare out the window, as though actively trying not to glance back at her. He seems poised for a fight, but there is something in the way he sits- Hermione cannot bear to give him one. “Okay.”
He blinks. She turns to go, but stops at Harry’s voice.
“You can sit, though. If you like.”
Relieved, Hermione nods. She slumps into a chair across from him. Shuffling through her bag for a book, her hand brushes the newer sack she had packed. She debates with herself for a moment, and ultimately decides to pull it out.
Opening it, she takes out a scone and bites into it. The smell of cheese and bacon are not subtle, and it seems to catch Harry’s attention.
“Look, I know you said- I-” Hermione finishes swallowing, sighs, and holds a second scone toward him. “Will you please just take it? I know you don’t want me hovering, but… please?”
Another beat passes in which Harry looks nearly confused, like he can’t quite place her. She thinks maybe he will leave again, that she has crossed the tentative truce. Then he blinks, and she catches sight of him again- of the Harry she knows- and he nods.
“Thanks,” he says, picking off a small bite. “I needed this.”
Something in his voice says he meant more than the scone. He barely eats the bit he’d pinched from it before putting it down. Still, Hermione appreciates the gesture. She smiles, places the small sack in the middle of the table between them, and pulls out her book. For that night, they are young again, sharing the quiet. When the sun starts to break out over the horizon, Hermione looks up to find Harry’s eyes closed, his breathing deep. He does not look peaceful, as she had hoped he would should she finally catch him at rest. He looks tired, even asleep. However, he does not seem restless, or plagued with nightmares, at least not for the moment. There are a few more hours before class, she thinks. She will let him sleep, for now. She tucks her legs up beneath her.
While he sleeps, she will keep watch.