Chapter Text
She was so livid that she wanted to murder him—and she might have done, too, if only the big, idiotic git hadn't caused her to lose her wand.
Truly, it was entirely his fault:
The entire incident had started earlier that evening, following a very meager dinner of edible fungi, in which, like usual, she'd been forced to listen to Ron moan and complain. As if it was her fault they were severely lacking in sufficient food supplies. (Secretly, Hermione did, in fact, blame herself, as she'd prepared for this endless, rambling journey by packing half the Hogwarts library, yet she foolishly hadn't thought to pack a single bloody canned good. She would never, however, admit that particularly daft blunder on her part to Ron.)
Since Harry would be taking the late watch, he'd announced his intentions to go to bed early, but Hermione suspected that he hadn't wanted to put up with Ron's irrational disposition any more than she had.
The only problem was that she was left alone with a very temperamental, Horcrux-wearing Ron Weasley—and that was a bomb just waiting to go off: It was clear that he'd been itching for a row for days, and Hermione had been steadfastly resisting it, as she hadn't wanted to give him the satisfaction.
Yet she'd found herself that evening exactly one grumble away from tearing his infuriating ginger head right off his neck.
Therefore, she'd wasted no time in pulling on an extra jumper and snatching up the nearest basket before announcing her intentions to gather edible plants, never mind the fact that it was already dark out and the temperature was rapidly dropping. Ron stated as much and had proceeded to follow her, urging her—in quite a rude manner, if truth be told—to come back inside.
To make a long story short, she'd refused and had instead continued to march aimlessly off at a brisk pace, lit wand in hand. Inevitably, an argument broke out, as she accused him of being an overbearing, ill-tempered oaf, and he'd retorted by calling her barmy and mental and all the tired, over-used names he reserved for her when his pea-sized brain couldn't come up with anything cleverer.
At some point they'd unknowingly crossed the boundaries of the protective enchantments, and, shortly thereafter, Hermione had skidded down a steep, rocky embankment, landing in a painful heap in a thorn bush.
And of course he'd thrown himself down after her, the daft lug, apparently having forgotten that he's a wizard.
So that's how it came to be that they were effectively lost, bruised, cold, and—to make matters impossibly direr—wandless, as she'd lost hers during the fall, and Ron, unsurprisingly, hadn't thought to bring his along.
Of course they'd attempted to climb back up the cliff face, but it proved much too steep, especially beneath their cold-numbed limbs. And they'd tried going around it, but that had proven useless as well, especially since it was almost pitch black out due to the thick overhead canopy, and although her eyes had adjusted to the dark quite a while ago, it was still impossible to discern more than vague shapes.
Therefore, they were stuck exactly where they were until either daybreak or Harry happened to find them.
To avoid having to blame herself for yet another blunder, Hermione easily deflected the culpability to Ron. After all, if he hadn't followed her and started that row, she wouldn't have been distracted and would have seen the drop-off in ample time to avoid it.
She currently sat planted on a rock, one arm wrapped tightly around her middle while she plucked out yet another painful thorn from her upper thigh. She was shivering violently but trying not to make it apparent to Ron. There was frost on the ground, but at least it wasn't snowing, she supposed. At least she hadn't been seriously injured in that fall.
After all, she could easily have broken a leg, a wrist, her neck, for crying out loud. She supposed that she should be feeling grateful, but all she could seem to manage was white rage.
"I reckon we should probably try starting a fire or something," Ron's voice rang out suddenly from the tall, dark mass leaning against the rock wall to her left that she knew to be him.
"Good luck with that," she muttered irritably, retrieving from her satchel the thin blanket that she'd packed earlier that day with the intention of sitting by a small stream near their campsite. She then wrapped it about her shoulders, but it hardly did a thing to protect her from the bitter chill.
"Y'know, you could try being a bit more helpful," he bit out.
"You mean as helpful as you are? The way you refuse to help prepare meals and then proceed to pull faces and moan? There. Now you know how it feels."
"Oh, yeah, real mature, Hermione. We could bloody freeze to death out here and—"
"What do you propose that we do, Ron?" she shot back, incensed anew at being called immature by Ron, of all people, as she bounded to her feet. "Do you know how to start a fire without a wand? Even if you do, everything around us is covered with frost, in case you haven't noticed, so how do you expect to be able to create a spark?"
"Er…yeah…good point…" She could make out his arm as it came up to rub the back of his neck.
"I don't suppose you have your Deluminator on you?"
"Left it in the tent," he admitted with a groan of aggravation.
"Right. Along with your wand."
"Sod the snippy little attitude, woncha? This isn't my bloody fault—"
"Oh, it's not, is it? Who was it that followed me, distracting me in the process, all because he was itching for a row?"
"Itching for a—? Hermione, you were marching off alone, into the dark—"
"I can take care of myself, Ron! I would've been fine if it wasn't for you!"
"Or," he countered, his voice rising in frustrated anger, "you could've walked off that sodding cliff by yourself, and me and Harry wouldn't've known—!"
"Argh! Fine! Can we just…not argue? It's not helping matters." As the angry adrenaline ebbed somewhat, she became aware that she was losing feeling in her toes. "We just—we need to think up a way to stay warm until morning."
"Okay," he conceded, taking a calming breath, clearly too exhausted—or else too cold—to continue fighting with her. "There is…there's something that Charlie told me about once, about survival situations…"
"Which is?" she prompted when he hesitated.
"Well…it's got to do with making body heat last or something like that…"
She could practically hear his face going as red as his hair.
"Ron, would you get to the point?"
"We'd have to, er, take off all our clothes and—and, uh, press our bodies together while wrapped in a—a blanket," he stammered in a rush, plainly mortified.
Hermione forgot to breathe as she took in his words.
There was a prolonged silence, punctuated by the chattering of teeth and short puffs of breath, as they stared at each other. Well, stared in thedirection of each other, as it was difficult to distinguish individual facial features in the pervading darkness.
She was frozen as she deliberated, weighing their options, which were practically nonexistent: It was freezing, after all, and they wouldn't survive in the elements without taking some sort of action—and soon, at that. Of course, there was always the possibility that Harry might stumble upon them before the situation became that desperate, but it was hardly a prospect that she was willing to gamble their lives on.
Nonetheless, the idea of wrapping up in a blanket, naked, with Ron, while something she'd fantasized about more than once over the years—under less extreme circumstances, at any rate—was absolutely out of the question. Especially given the mortification in his voice when he'd made the suggestion; obviously, he found the idea of being pressed against her naked skin unappealing, and she certainly didn't wish to subject him to that. Not unless they had no other choice.
"L-let's try wrapping up together with our clothes on," she suggested after a moment, attempting unsuccessfully to prevent her teeth from chattering as she hugged herself. "P-perhaps that—that'll be enough."
"Y-yeah—yeah, all right—good," he said, his voice more high-pitched than usual, and the relief there was evident. "Don't—don't know why I didn't think o'that." He was plainly embarrassed.
Hermione couldn't help but smile in the darkness, her irritation with him melting away with his awkwardness. "Come here, then," she instructed, sighing lightly as she unwrapped the blanket from around her shoulders and reached out for his arm. Steering him toward the ground, they sat together with their backs against the rock wall while she wrapped the blanket tightly around both their shoulders with trembling hands and instinctively leaned into his warmth.
It helped quite a bit, especially when Ron's arm slipped hesitantly around her waist, pulling her more snugly into his side. As she absorbed his warmth, her teeth eventually stopped chattering so violently, but her pulse had sped up as it always did in response to his nearness—and this was as close as they'd ever been, physically.
She tried to control her shallow breathing, which came in short bursts—and it only had partly to do with the cold: He smelled good, like his shampoo and sweat, the familiar scents that she associated with summers at the Burrow spent idly reading books, cross-legged on his bed, and swims in the pond, with him attempting to drag her beneath the water by her ankle and her pretending to be miffed by his antics.
What she wouldn't give to go back there now, to a simpler, happier time, when Voldemort had seemed nothing more than a distant threat, a bad dream, and her rows with Ron had grown fewer and further between. That summer between fifth and sixth year, Hermione had felt almost positive that they'd been on the cusp of something…
Then, of course, Lavender had happened, but that wasn't something that Hermione cared to linger over. In any case, it was over and done.
Eventually, her rambling thoughts drifted to Mum and Dad. She wondered what they were doing right then. Whatever it was, she hoped that they were happy; she hoped that they were safe, that the precautions that she'd taken to save their lives had been enough.
"Better?" Ron asked, his husky voice breaking into her thoughts.
"Much. Thank you."
"What were you thinking about just now?"
She peered up at him, faintly surprised. It had been quite a while since he'd asked her anything personal. For that matter, it had been quite a while since they'd had a civil conversation. The last time that they'd been truly pleasant toward one another had been…well, Grimmauld Place, she supposed, when they'd gone to sleep every night in the drawing room side-by-side, their fingers intertwined between them.
More than once, she'd thought that he might kiss her. Had she somehow misinterpreted the signs? Who knows? she thought ironically. Maybe he's accustomed to holding Harry's hand at night. Maybe that's what best mates are supposed to do. But what about his behavior over the summer? Had she imagined that he'd been more…sensitive? Complimentary? Had she fabricated that his hands had drifted just a bit too low and he'd held her a bit too tightly when they'd danced at Bill and Fleur's wedding? Had it all merely been wishful thinking on her part?
Of course, the fact that they were now half-starving, freezing, and having to cart around that Horcrux, to boot, didn't exactly help boost morale or improve moods in general…
"My parents," she finally answered his question, thinking it safer territory than the utterly complicated, confusing nature of their relationship.
"They'll be fine," Ron assured her, and Hermione knew that he was thinking of his own family. "You made sure of it. 'Sides, it's us we gotta worry about, innit?" he added, clearly in an attempt to interject humor into their situation. "There could be…spiders and other mental stuff crawling around us right now, and we wouldn't even know it." He shuddered against her.
"Ron, considering that we could realistically freeze to death, I think spiders are the very least of our concerns." She only wished that she was joking, she truly did.
"Hey, now, spiders are always my biggest concern."
A comfortable silence settled between them, and they sat quietly together for rather a while, both lost in their own thoughts. Hermione was unsure of how much time had passed when she realized that her teeth had started chattering again, infinitely more violently than before, and the chill seemed to be creeping into her very bones. The temperature was still dropping, she realized, and if she wasn't mistaken…was that snow landing on her exposed skin?
"Hey, are you all r-right?" he asked in apparent response to her fierce shivering, his arms tightening around her, and the fact that his own teeth were loudly chattering didn't escape her.
"R-Ron, I—I think we should p-probably proceed with P-Plan B now," she said after several hesitant moments, all former reservations she'd had now replaced by urgency: It was no longer a matter of possibly freezing to death, but an inevitability if they didn't act. As it was, she'd lost feeling in her toes and was worried about the possibility of frostbite.
"Plan B?" The confusion in his voice was apparent.
"Y-yes," she said, sitting up straighter next to him, any embarrassment she might have felt overridden by her need to be warm again. "You know…Plan B?"
"Huh?" There was a dramatic pause as what she was saying sank in. "Oh. Er…y-yeah. Okay. How 'bout…w-well, my j-jumper's prob'ly big enough for the t-two of us, so I reckon y-you could j-just…take off your shirt and—and get under my jumper, and w-we'll wrap the blanket around us…"
At that point, she was so cold that further urging wasn't necessary.