dancing away the pain {{part 2}} DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1 - HARRY

dancing away the pain

{{part 2}}
DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 1 - HARRY & HERMIONE
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Sometimes she regretted her decision to stay. She felt bad thinking about it, and then she reminded herself that she had made the right choice, but the thought was always lingering in the back of her mind. Sure, she missed Ron an awful lot and wasn’t sure if he was safe or not, and she would love to return to the comforting watch of Mrs. Weasley, who made the most delicious food and could provide her with a warm bed to sleep in, but Harry needed her. She couldn’t imagine leaving him, her best friend, to face all of this on his own. They were having a hard enough time finding horcruxes as two people—she couldn’t leave him to do it alone. Were she Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, who had watched the people he cared about most die, and who soon would have to kill the darkest wizard of all time, then she would want at least one friend by her side to help her out.

And so now, two months later, they had still not made any progress. The rain was pattering outside, just like that day, and the old radio they had brought along with them was playing a slow, sad song quietly in the corner, mixing with the sounds of the raindrops falling beyond the tent. The words of the song were talking about being free from pain and keeping hope even during sadness, but Hermione found it hard to take those words to heart. She had nearly lose all hope, with the events of the past year or so bringing her down—she mentally listed all the things that had gone wrong in her head: Lord Voldemort was getting stronger, her parents had no memory of her, she was now a wanted criminal, more and more innocent people were dying, she couldn’t return to Hogwarts, they were making no progress, and now the one person she really loved had left… 

Hermione felt a hot tear roll down her cheek, and she turned to face the walls so that Harry, who was sitting on a table across the tent, could not see. The tears came faster and faster now, and she kept wiping them away, until she was sure that she could have used her sleeve to clean dirty plates. The song that kept playing on the radio wasn’t helping her bad mood out, nor was the horcrux that was hanging around her neck; she wished so much that she could be free from all of the pain, suffering, and death that surrounded her.
 

She would never admit it, but she wanted to blame all of her problems on Harry. If she hadn’t become such good friends with him during their first year, she would have never had to go through all of this. Right now, she could be at Hogwarts (given, things were probably bad there, too) eating a delicious meal in the Great Hall, learning the final steps to being a great witch, and going to sleep every night in her warm bed in the girl’s dormitory in Gryffindor Tower. Sometimes she regretted ever talking to he and Ron that first day on the Hogwarts express; if she hadn’t she wouldn’t be sitting here freezing, exhausted, and famished. But, then, she snapped back out if it, and remembered that Harry had been a good friend to her all these years. They were in this together, and she would stick by him until the very end.

Hermione had been too caught up in her own thoughts to notice that Harry had crossed the room over to where she was sitting. She jolted when she realized that he was standing there—she had been constantly on the edge of her seat ever since the incident at the diner months ago—and looked up into his face. He looked more tired than she had ever seen him; he was only seventeen, but she could’ve sworn that she saw dashes of gray in his overgrown hair, and his eyes were bloodshot and were outlined with dark circles. Their first year at Hogwarts, when Harry had looked so trouble-free and innocent seemed like hundreds of years ago; now she couldn’t remember the last time she had even heard him laugh or see a smile cross his face.

He reached down to her, her eyes narrowing slightly; she took his hand and feebly stood up. He slowly reached behind her hair, and, with a click, removed the horcrux from around her neck, shoving it into his own pocket. She turned around to look at him and as she did, he took both of her hands in his and led her to the center of the tent. Having no idea what was going on, Hermione followed him without question. And before she knew it, Harry had begun to twist so that they swung side to side with the music—he planned on making her dance, like nothing in the world was wrong, when really everything was falling apart.