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"Who will love you?

Who will fight?"

~Bon Iver "Skinny Love"

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Hermione walked against Harry in a half stumble as he led her back into the tent and up the stairs to the makeshift bedroom. He made her sit down on her cot and removed her boots that were saturated with river water, pulling the woolen socks off her feet, dropping them in a puddle by her shoes. He removed her sopping wet coat in the same manner before she seemed to snap back to herself and made him turn around as she unbuttoned the blue flannel shirt she had on.

He snatched the blanket off his cot and cast a warming spell on it. He turned back around just as Hermione was peeling the last leg off her sodden jeans, wearing nothing but a bra and her underwear.

"Here," He walked over to her and wrapped the blanket across her shoulders, watching her fist the material from her side and close it tight around herself like a cloak.

He stood back up and pulled up at the neck of his gray sweater, drawing it over his head until he was down to a white t-shirt.

He sat down beside her on the cot and opened one end of the blanket, drawing it over himself, pulling her close against him without a protest from her because she was shaking too hard to say anything. "Uncle Vernon taught me survival skills to be Dudley's pack mule once on a camping trip. Guess he was good for one ruddy thing-" He drew one arm across her, rubbing his palm along her bare back with his hand.

"I'm sorry-"Harry felt Hermione's heart beating wildly against his. " I wasn't thinking-"

"You're sick Hermione," Harry defended herself against herself. "Evenyou're a loud to have a lapse in judgement when that happens-"

"I'm not sick Harry," Hermione met his gaze with eyes half hidden by a sheen of tears. "I-" she hitched on a breath, blinking as one of the tears broke free and wound a path down her face. "-I'm pregnant."

The weight of what she said hit Harry in degrees: shock, then disbelief, then the look on her face.

"I thought I was for weeks, and I cast an antenatal spell on myself today-" she stopped abruptly like a film strip cut in two. "I didn't know how to you-"

Hermione's weight so close to his own made him remember when it had been right after Ron left, and Hermione had cried and sat alone and listless for days, and he had done his best to make her smile, but he felt the ache and betrayal of Ron's departure as much as she did as they lived in a swirl of an empty nothing, trying to go on as shredded things. And he had asked her to dance, and it was silly and stupid. And then she had kissed him with such sad longing he felt her loneliness bleed into his own. And he had kissed her back because it wasn't nothing anymore, and the next morning they had woken up beside each other like they were now.

He set a hand on the pulse point of her wrist "Hermione-"

She pulled away from him and stood up with the blanket wrapped around her, walking away from him in bare feet, rummaging into her beaded bag that Harry had no doubt set on her cot, pulling a clean pair of jeans and a blue sweater, throwing them on with her back towards him in a hurried shakiness, not wanting to feel so naked and exposed. "I don't know how too- I never learned anything other than basic antenatal spells and if I did it wrong I could bleed to death-" She turned back around, her eyes, sad scared. "I'm sorry, it wasn't supposed to happen. I-"

Harry stood up off the cot and walked over to her and as soon as he was within reach, she threw her arms up around him, pressing her face into his shoulder, tears spilling out of her eyes.

Harry felt her breath hitch in warm, jagged puffs against his shirt as he held onto her tightly. "You need to apperate to a hospital," as soon as he said the word: 'hospital' Hermione pulled her head off his shoulder and stared at him. "St. Muggos is too dangerous, but there has to be a Muggle one close enough that can help you-"

"Harry no!" Hermione protested with a shake of her head. "You saw those burnt out caravans, the Death Eaters aren't being selective about where they search, they're searching all of it-"

"You can use the invisibility cloak," Harry said. "You can apperate under it to the nearest hospital. I'll wait here as long as I can, if I have to move I want you to meet me in Godric's Hollow-"

"I'm not leaving you by yourself!" Hermione protested. "Godric's Hollow is the first place You Know Who will look because it means something to both of you!"

"You need to be safe Hermione! Harry snapped, his voice rising like a high wind up through the tent. "Even if you remotely thought about keeping it, you can't do that running for your life all the bloody time!"

"I'm not leaving!" Hermione yelled so loudly the sound made her ears pop. "I'm not abandoning you like -" She swallowed Ron's name with a choking sound. "I can't!" Her voice rose high again, getting caught up in the top of the tent flaps. "I have thought about keeping it-"

"Hermione-"

"It might even be too late to do anything-"

"No," Harry said forcefully, staring out at her defiant look, freezing in bare feet. "It's too dangerous! If anything should happen to you- no!"

"We're in this together! When are you going to remember that?" Her voice not as full bodied in anger as it had been, it instead was wearier, sad, honest. She walked back over to him, placing her hand into his, lacing their fingers together. "You're my best friend, Harry-"

His hand was both warm and cold at the same time, the tips of his fingers still holding a chill from the cold outside. She watched as he glanced down at the flat of her abdomen, brushing his free hand tentatively against it, his touch no lighter than the wings of a moth.

He raised his eyes up to her, laying a hand up against the side of her face, his expression weariness that wished it could be something much more. Wishing that the world could be better for something like this.

She reached both hands up against either side of his face, smiling at him with a sweet sadness that rushed tears down her face. She drew forward and kissed him on the forehead, then against his mouth, tasting the warmth of his breath. She drew her arms up around his neck, feeling him hold her tightly back in return, neither one of them wanting to let go first.

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End.

The issue of abortion is a very touchy subject, yes. But I wanted to depict a more realistic view [at least in my opinion] of Hermione's reasoning. While on the run with Harry in DH, she was 17, and in the midst of a war, the thought of something like that crossing her mind is much more real to me than her simply opting to go on with the pregnancy. I did choose to have her change her mind because she had no way of knowing if she could create the proper spell/potion in the right amount that wouldn't kill her, so she was afraid. Plus there is the loyalty and love she had to Harry, of which that child is a part of. I didn't spell it out, but that was another reasoning.

This story does not tie into others, but I have already written about a baby, a birth, and Harry and Hermione's first time together, I wanted to show the middle of such a possible time.

R/R please.