I stop, I hesitate.
His hands tremble with cold as he walks back towards the tent. Snow lies thick upon the forest floor, branches hanging low under the weight of icicles. He looks at them and stops. How he wishes he could reach out and just swipe them from existence – that cold heavy burden. But he knows that if he does, they will only fall to the ground, fall onto the hardened bed of snow and remain there. Frozen and solid and ever present. He lifts his free hand and holds it to his chest, feeling the oval metal pressing, pushing, breathing against his heart. Yes, he would love to toss the locket onto the ground as well. But he cannot.
Taking a deep breath, Harry continues back in the direction of the tent. He tosses the mushrooms into a billy-can sitting outside the front-flap and turns around, checking for anything out of the ordinary. The white mist of warm, moist breath on the air blinds him and he squints through the cold. Nothing. He tugs open the zip and enters the somewhat warmer front room. A slow, soft melody drifts in the air; the steady, almost languid beat calms the erratic drumming within his chest. It is familiar - something he has heard while listening to the alarm clock radio during that final summer in Privet Drive. A memory stirs. He blinks and it is gone. Hermione sits curled up in the large armchair, the magical wireless in her lap.
She looks up as he enters and gives a small half-smile that does not reach her eyes. He smiles dully back and goes to sit in the opposite armchair.
“I found this Muggle station the other day when you were outside,” says Hermione and he flinches at the quaver in her voice. They hardly speak to one another, now. It feels like a betrayal to Ron, even though he was the one to walk out, and the silence means they can pretend nothing is wrong. The music rises in crests of waves and suddenly, before he knows what he is doing, Harry is standing and walking towards Hermione. She cocks her head to the side and looks at him blankly.
“Dance with me.”
She stares at him, her eyes half-closed, before sniffing softly and taking his out-stretched hand. Harry picks the wireless up from the armchair and carefully places it on the side table before pulling her close against him. She lets out a huff of breath and their eyes meet. For the first time in weeks he sees something in them, something other than grief and loneliness and hurt.
All I have is all you gave to me.
He breathes her in, one hand sliding down to her waist, the other pressed firmly at her back as they rock against the rhythm of the music. Her chest heaves against his, and he knows she is close to tears so he holds her even more tightly and lets her gasp into his shoulder.
They hold each other.
They hold each other, breathe each other, feel each other. And it’s as if something has entered the tent—a warmth, or something similar, that smoulders with longing in the pit of Harry’s stomach as Hermione presses herself against him, as their chests rise in swells with the music, as their eyes flutter closed. His hand drifts to her neck, his fingers tangling in the bushy curls and if he concentrates hard enough it’s as if he can feel Ginny, as if the hair is red, as if the soft, puckered lips against his chest are moist and cherry-pink. It’s as if the light streaming through his eyelids is a sun-kissed yellow beam flooding a bedroom with Harpy posters covering the walls. It’s as if he has just turned seventeen and received the best birthday present he could have wished for.
“I miss him so much,” she whispers.
“Me too.”
He feels the light pressure on his neck as she presses her face into him—cold, dry lips, damp eyes.
I come, I bleed enough.
His hand trails around her waist and he can feel the rough fabric of her jacket. He wets his lips and it’s as if she is wearing Quidditch robes, red and gold, sweat and skin and heat. They rock, they sway, their feet shuffling on the rug, and the music softens before rising in a soft, intense crescendo.
For the briefest of moments, he feels as if a weight has been lifted from his chest, as if the icicles on his back have fallen away leaving a heated touch. As if there is nothing in the room but her. Who is she? He cannot tell. All he wants is to comfort her, to hold her, to feel her. To make sure she knows he is there, to make sure she knows they are still alive. One more moment, one more day of breath and life and fight. There is hot, bloody tissue inside of them that will continue to beat and heave and move and shift around their bones, beneath their skin.
He wants her to know that she is not alone.
At first he thinks she is sobbing. But it goes on and on without a pause and he realises that she is humming a low note against the rise and fall of notes on the wintry air. Her head moves from side to side and he opens his eyes to find that her hair is not red, the room isn’t bathed in late summer light, her clothes are a coarse woollen weave and not the light-weight Quidditch robes of fantasy.
She is Hermione. His best-friend. His only hope. His reason for living through this frozen hell.
And the music stops.
Turn to the gates of heaven, to myself be damned.
It’s not enough. Just a touch.