Harry and I sat on opposite sides of the tent. He was staring out into space, seemingly absorbed in his own thoughts. I hoped he was thinking about Horcruxes. That train of thought fed into a tunnel too long and winding to see if there was a light at the end of it- but it was better than mine.

I was hunched over my Tales of Beetle the Bard. I'd been staring at the same page for twenty minutes and had no idea what was on it. The radio blared next to me, an incessant stream of noise, which I'd learned to tune out, trusting that I'd be jolted into listening if a familiar name issued from it. To Harry, or to anyone, it must have looked like I was hard at work, my head bent down, my fingers tracing the outline of the pages. But my thoughts had nothing to do with Horcruxes, or Voldemort, or clues, or anything constructive. They were fixed on Ron.

My neck felt weighed down by the locket. I had to wear it tonight, but I knew that taking it off wouldn't dispel the depression. Ron. My best friend, my- my Ron. He was gone. I couldn't stop him from leaving. He'd insulted Harry, he'd gotten fed up, he'd left. And his parting words kept playing over and over in my head.

"Well? Are you coming or staying?"

"I, uh- Ron, I-"

"I get it. You choose him."

And I'd been stunned into silence by the force of his words, the barely-unstated accusation. When I'd recovered my wits to stammer incoherently, it was too late. He wasn't coming back. And I'd run out to the rocks, shouting his name over and over, declaring my innocence with Harry to the cold thin air.

That was two weeks ago, but it still hadn't faded. Neither Harry nor I mentioned his name to each other. He and I didn't have much to say to each other at all these days. I could tell he was privately grieving in his part of pushing Ron away. Harry had always been closer to Ron than me.

Ron had the lion's share of both of our affections. And now he was gone, and the two people left were Harry and me. Best friends, the stars of the Golden Trio as Snape liked to disdainfully call us. Harry was the Chosen One, the Boy Who Lived- the famous one, the Quidditch star, the boy with the scar and the tragic dark past and the pall over his destiny haunting his famous green eyes behind their famous round glasses. And I was logical and book-smart: and the only female of the group, which fact apparently holds inherent fascination for readers of Witch Weekly and The Quibbler and the like. If I weren't female Ron might still be around, and we might have made more progress by now.

But Ron was the warmth, the humor, the hot-blooded loyalty that made the three of us a family.

Ron had been Splinched. We'd left him alone so he could recover. Being Splinched is no joke. We had no idea he'd felt left out. We'd taken his silence for weakness from the pain- when he'd undoubtedly been as aware as both of us, and the locket was making him see things that definitely weren't there between Harry and me.

A song popped onto the radio. Low and slow, contrasting sharply with the incessant fast high-pitched chatter of the litany of death. The song reminded me of the wedding, the desperate way we all clung to pageantry and romance to dispel our fear for just a few hours. I almost chuckled to myself as I realized I preferred the chatter. What was wrong with me? When had I become so bitter?

I turned the page of the book, just for form.

I couldn't help resenting Hermione. The way I saw it, it was her fault that Ron was gone. This was not the locket talking- Hermione was wearing it right now, not me. If Hermione hadn't coddled Ron like a child just because he'd been Splinched (when my head felt damn near about to explode every five seconds because of the scar), if she'd woken Ron as well as me when she'd found the clue in the book, and if she'd just told Ron there was nothing between us when he was spewing his bullshit accusations and turning our lives into a soap opera, Ron would still be around. He was my best friend. Hermione should have made a move by now if she was ever going to. We all knew how slow Ron was, that he was never going to do or say anything unless he was sure she was interested. Ron was awkward enough as it was, and Hermione meant too much to him for him to risk ruining the friendship with an unwelcome advance. Hermione knew that better than anybody, yet she hadn't taken any real initiative with Ron. She was probably clinging to some girlie fantasy, that he'd bring her a bouquet of roses and serenade her with an original love song on acoustic guitar. Hermione. She was the center of this drama, the wedge that pushed two best friends- two brothers- apart.

I was no closer to thinking of what to do than I'd been three hours ago. Progress: zilch. Ron was right. We weren't accomplishing things fast enough.

I glanced at Hermione. She'd been sitting in that exact position for God knows how long. I saw her turn a page. Her head was bowed, but I could tell just from the curve of her cheek that she was too sad to think. I watched a tear roll down the cheekbone in the candlelight and fall onto the book.

Instantly I felt awful.

I knew she couldn't possibly know what I'd been thinking, all the accusations I'd mentally leveled at her. Or maybe she could. Her emotional IQ had always been far higher than mine (to say nothing of Ron's). And now she was sitting there, beating herself up, pretending for my sake that she was working. Knowing her, she was probably beating herself up for wallowing as well. A vicious cycle. She was almost as tall as me, but sitting huddled by her portable fire, she looked small and heartbreakingly delicate.

I wished, not for the first time, that Ginny were here. That I could have somebody to hold at night. And Hermione and Ron had had that, yet never took advantage of it.

Maybe they weren't stupid. Maybe Ron wasn't being oblivious and Hermione wasn't being little-girlish. Maybe they had avoided contact for my sake, so I didn't get jealous or feel left out.

The music played and made me think of the wedding, the slow dance I shared with Ginny, basking in the warmth, glancing out of the corner of my eye at Ron and Hermione standing on the side. Ron looked duck-footed and awkward, Hermione kept glancing impatiently between him and the pair of us, trying to drive a hint that just wasn't penetrating.

I didn't blame Hermione then. I was annoyed at Ron. It was a wedding, people were dancing, Hermione was standing right there next to him looking even prettier than she'd been at the Yule Ball, in that come-hither-red dress. If he couldn't seize the moment then, it would never come. Ginny had slithered her hands up my shoulders, up the sides of my neck, and her blue eyes stared into mine- and I'd pushed the thought of Hermione out of my mind as I'd leaned in.

Poor Hermione never got to dance. Even at the Yule Ball, she'd danced with Krum only a little before Ron had crapped all over her fun. I thought of a way to cheer her up.

I didn't even realize I'd been crying until I heard a movement. I glanced over to Harry's spot, and he wasn't there. The movements were footsteps, and he was walking over to me.

His green eyes flashed behind his glasses. His steps were slow, and he was staring right at me.

I looked back. I wondered if he was going to hit me. He'd certainly been short with me lately, and I got the feeling he blamed me somewhat for Ron's departure. But his face was earnest, and his mouth was soft and sad.

When he got to me, he held out his hand. I looked at it, and looked up at him, and didn't understand. But I took it. He helped me up. He reached his arms behind my neck and lifted off the locket. I moved my head so he could take it off, but instead of putting it on himself, he tossed it aside. He walked backwards, slowly, staring into my eyes. As I followed, I saw the pain and sadness in his face that had been there for days, full force. He was no longer trying to hide it from me. It was there, open. We walked to the middle of the tent, and he stepped forward, closer to me, and took my hands. We stood still for a moment.

Questions floated through my mind. There was tension in the air. That was nothing new. As a group we'd dealt with every possible kind of tension, and since Ron's desertion, though Harry and I were cordial, you could cut the air with a knife. But this tension was different. It wasn't like any tension I'd felt with an enemy, with an exam, or even with Ron.

Then Harry made a silly face and moved our hands like a pinwheel.

I burst out laughing. He was trying to dance!

Even the fire seemed to glow brighter.

Dancing with Hermione was easy. Not, of course, that I can dance. Parvati Patil would most vehemently deny any accusation of dancing ability leveled at me. And dancing with Ginny isn't hard. We either fast-dance (in which she does most of the work, and I bob around like a fool, and sometimes she grinds up on me and that doesn't take anything besides instinct to reciprocate), or slow-dance (in which we stand in one spot, our hands in scripted positions, and shift weight from foot to foot for the duration of the song, and I don't know if she actually has rhythm, but I definitely don't, so I just follow her beat and that seems to make her happy). But with Hermione, swinging around was fun. We both kept messing up, but I didn't feel any pressure to dance "right". Even I could tell that both of us weren't following the slow beat at all, not even double-time or anything. I knew she was laughing with me, not at me. She would never ridicule me for not being a good dancer. I'd seen her dance with Krum at the Yule Ball, and she'd seemed decent, but not fabulous.

It was good to see her laugh. Dancing had been such a random idea, yet so accidentally brilliant. We both felt better just being silly, and I could feel the tension leaving her body. We'd been sleeping on hard bunks, spending our days trekking and bending over books and staving off the fear of horrible deaths, and we hadn't realized how the knots had built up until we let loose on our impromptu dance floor. She laughed and laughed, threw her head back, and I kept making funny faces, pretending to be a stuffy Victorian gentleman, then a puppet, then a buffoon. I dipped her, and I could hear the joints in her back cracking as she leaned back on my arm. Then she dipped me, and I was so thrown off by this that I almost fell- then I batted my eyes the way Fleur used to, and she dropped me, and my glasses went sailing off, but they landed on a pile of blankets on my bed, so they were fine.

I helped Harry up from the floor, and he chuckled, and I grinned sheepishly. I expected him to go rogue, to get revenge on me by spinning me silly again, but instead we both just naturally fell into each other's arms. I guess we ended up slow-dancing. The way Shakespearean monologues sound natural because iambic pentameter is made to mimic English patterns of speech, this song felt natural because the beat tapped into some natural rhythm. I don't know what. It was slower than heartbeat. Maybe the cranio-sacral rhythm- I wasn't sure. I was annoyed at myself for not knowing, but for the past three years the Hogwarts course load and the war had inhibited me from acquiring much Muggle knowledge. It was hard, even, to talk to my parents over the summer.

My parents...

I held onto Harry tighter as I fought off the memory of Obliviating them, of erasing myself from family photos, of manipulating their memories and lives so that to them I had never existed.

I had no parents anymore. No Muggle family, no Hogwarts library, no Dumbledore or McGonagall to go to. No giggles and whispers of Parvati and Lavendar in the middle of the night. Not even a Snape to level his sarcasm at me and shame me for my eagerness to learn.

And now, no Ron, either.

All I had were the books, clothes and tent I'd crammed into my beaded bag, my wand and knowledge of magic, and Harry.

Harry. Without Harry, I would be alone in the world. Alone in a world that was disappearing, in a world in which I was unwelcome, because I was a witch and I was Muggle-born.

I'd always had Harry. He'd been my friend, my sanity, my focus and my reason.

And right now, Harry was the arm nestled in the curve of my waist, the hand rubbing up and down my back, the warm neck that my cheek rested against, the whisper of unevenly cut hair against my forehead.

As I held Hermione, I thought of Ginny. Not in the sense you might expect. More like, I was thinking about how I wasn't thinking about Ginny now, and how wrong that was. I'd thought about Ginny every day, missed her, felt a strange combination of hoping she was safe and happy at Hogwarts, and wishing she were here with me. She'd be useful in our quest. She was no Hermione, but she was clever, and four heads are better than three. She might also have dispelled the tension, kept everybody's spirits up, provided an influence that would have kept Ron with us, turned our crowd of three into a string quartet. I'd taken to staring at the Marauder's Map when I couldn't sleep or be useful, watching the movements of the set of footprints that bore her name, imagining what conversations she might be having with people, what she might be studying when she was in the library: wondering when she was thinking of me.

But now there was no Ginny with us, and I didn't know where her footprints were on the map, and I couldn't care less.

Now we were two. Our numbers had dwindled. My best mate had deserted me, and instead of following him when he'd asked her, Hermione had stayed behind with me.

"I get it. You choose him."

I'd dismissed Ron's words as the ravings of an insecure boy, who had been bored and had taken to seeing things that weren't there. But Hermione had not immediately denied it, and in a way, it was true.

She had chosen me.

Oh, all right. Maybe not in the sense that Ron thought. After all, we weren't wildly shagging every night as soon as Ron had fallen asleep or anything. (I instantly regretted thinking of wildly shagging while Hermione was melted against me.)

But she'd chosen to work on our quest together, to remain loyal to what it was we were trying to do. And Ron had been making an arse of himself then. I was being as reasonable as possible, and Ron was spewing gibberish and acting like the very opposite of a knight in shining armor. But if she loved him, she could have chosen to go with him anyway and leave me behind. Knowing Hermione, she would have continued looking for Horcruxes no matter where she was or whom she was with- but she chose to stay with me.

I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to the music, the warmth and support of my friend's body, the feel of her no-longer-nearly-as-bushy hair nestled against my neck, the hands wound behind my back and resting on my shoulderblades, a much more intimate and comforting embrace than Ginny's slow-dance position of hands anchored on my shoulders and elbows crunched between us. She smelled faintly of the perfume Ron had gotten her last Christmas, a strong rosy spray with which Ginny had attacked her for the wedding, but which had now faded to a barely-there breath of femininity.

Hermione had always represented solidity, certainty. Ron had been right when he'd said we wouldn't last two days without her. She was brave without grandiose gestures, smart without being an Ernie MacMillan about it, strong without a position on the Quidditch team, nurturing without Madam Pomfrey's fussiness or Dobby's spasticity. And, as I was realizing more and more, despite lacking Ginny's flaming-red hair or Lavender's outsize breasts- she was quietly, naturally beautiful.

I felt Harry relax into me more, hold me tighter and closer. With my fires I could regulate the temperature inside the tent to a point, but the night was still cold and I still appreciated the extra warmth. So much, that I found myself wishing he would never let go.

I had no idea what Harry was thinking. For all I knew, he could be imagining me as Ginny. He probably was. But I didn't care. I wasn't imagining him as Ron. I wasn't even thinking about Ron. I was thinking about me and Harry and everything we had gone through together. I was thinking of the first time I'd met him, on the Hogwarts Express, in the compartment with Ron, when I'd repaired his glasses (insufferable know-it-all that I was, as Snape is so fond of saying) and realized that he was Harry Potter, when I'd conceived a bit of a crush on him which had disappeared (I'd thought) when I saw that he was already glued to the mean red-haired Ron Weasley. The mountain troll, the study schedules, the fruitless search for Nicolas Flamel, Hagrid's dragon. Quidditch matches, whose rules I still don't perfectly understand though I'm pretty good at pretending I do. Moaning Myrtle, Lockhart and the Dueling Club, Polyjuice, the Chamber of Secrets... the litany went on and on.

Harry's hands massaged my lower back, where I hold the most tension because of the way I lug around books, and I sighed. He dug harder, releasing more knots, and I don't know if it was instinct or what, because Harry could not possibly know anything about massage (unless Ginny had taught him), but it felt good and I pressed up closer against him to brace myself against the kneading motion.

I remembered how I'd felt when McGonagall had called me and Ron to her office, fourth year, for the second Triwizard task. McGonagall explained the premise of the task to us, that the champions had to find and rescue the people they'd miss most. I'd assumed that both Ron and I were to be Harry's targets, and perhaps Cho as well because he was so transparent about that crush, but then McGonagall said each champion had to rescue one person. She said Ron was Harry's, and that I'd felt a twinge of hurt because I'd thought I was as dear to Harry as Ron was. McGonagall smirked at my confusion when she informed me that I was to be rescued by Viktor Krum- and then laughed in my face as I blushed. I remembered Ron's glare. I was mad at Ron for being Harry's captive, and he was mad that I was Krum's. It was so, so strange.

I loved Ron, and Harry loved Ginny. But that did not mean I could not love Harry, too.

I pulled away and looked up at him, into the forest of green. Ron's eyes were a bright and solid blue. Harry's were piercing green with flecks of gold, copper and black. A lock of hair fell against the side of his face, jagged because I had no idea how to cut hair. I brushed it behind his ear with my fingertips, and pressed my lips to the warm creamy skin of his cheek.

The song ended. The death toll chatter was back.

He pulled away.

I squeezed my eyes shut and wished I hadn't just done that.

The radio clicked off and I heard Harry's footsteps increasing in volume. I opened my eyes again.

"Let's take the night off," he said.

The first words he'd said to me all evening.

I detected the question marks still in her eyes.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"Whatever you want it to mean," I said. I crossed my fingers behind my back, hard.

"A night off," she repeated. "A night off from the locket, the radio, the Horcrux searching... and from what else?"

I smiled and shrugged, trying to pretend I wasn't hanging on every word with every fiber of my being at this point. "Your call."

"A night off," she said slowly. "From missing him. From crying myself to sleep." She stepped forward. "This sound good so far?"

"So far, yeah," I said.

"A night off from regrets," she said. "A night off... from boundaries."

Her eyes were big and hazel and heavy-lidded, and I kissed the question marks away.