Small Fires: A Bedtime Story for SoftObsidian74

10.

~ homecoming ~



She wakes up with her face pressed into Ron\'s shoulder. Ron\'s arm reaches around her and draws her close. The small tent is dark. There\'s a familiar rattling of autumn rain, the heavy drops falling on the roof of the tent and the tarp.



“Cold?” Ron asks.



She\'s not cold at all. She lies on her side, and her entire body is soaking in the heat that is emanating from him. She breathes in, inhaling his scent. He smells like warmth, and earth, and something fresh and very, very familiar.



“No,” she says. “But I had some horrible dreams...”



“I know.” He grips her tightly. “Me too.”



She nuzzles his neck. “Ron... Where\'s Harry?”



“Outside. Making fire.”



She bolts to sit up abruptly. “No!” She cries. “Harry! Stop! No fires!”



She pushes Ron away, and crawls out of the tent, to see Harry crouching on the ground over a small heap of wood and kindling, about to light a match.



“Don\'t!” Hermione says. “It\'s the fires, Harry, I saw it, I had a dream, that\'s how they found us, we can\'t have fires!”



“Huh?” Harry stares at her blankly.



Ron pokes his head out of the tent. “Just ignore her,” Ron says. “You know how she is first thing in the morning.”



Harry chuckles, and lights the match.



“Harry, please, listen to me,” Hermione pleads. “They\'ll catch us, Draco said it wasn\'t the fires, I know, but I still think it might have been the fires...”



Harry grins. “Hermione, relax. Everything is fine.”



She watches him, mesmerized by his relaxed, calm movements.



The fire begins to burn, and its flames dance between the pieces of dry wood. There\'s something surreal, something different about those cheerful, bright flames.



Harry is holding a pot in his hands. He puts a heap of dehydrated noodles into it, and adds water.



There\'s something wrong about this, she knows that, and it takes her a while to understand just what exactly is wrong.



“Harry,” she asks cautiously. “Where did the food come from? Where did you get the pot?”



“I borrowed it from Remus,” Harry says.



A chill runs down her spine. “Remus is dead.”



Harry shrugs resentfully. “What\'s your point?”



She turns around and sees that Ron is also looking at Harry with a quizzical expression.



“It\'s a bit of a long story,” Harry says calmly. “Sit down, I\'ll explain.”



She sits down obediently, and watches him anxiously.



“Nagini wasn\'t the only Horcrux Voldemort had left,” Harry says. “I was another one. Well, not a proper Dark Object, but close enough. I had his soul-fragment living inside me since the day he killed my parents. Nobody knew except for Dumbledore, who told Snape, who told Draco.”



“Draco,” Ron mutters.



“It\'s a little complicated,” Harry says calmly. “To cut a long story short, when I died, the fragment of Voldemort\'s soul inside me was destroyed as well. Then Draco took care of Nagini...”



“How?” Hermione asks, interrupting him.



“Poison,” Harry explains. “His special formula. It has absolutely no effect on humans, but is lethal for snakes. It was in the water Draco gave us before Voldemort struck us with the Killing Curse and fed our bodies to Nagini.”



“That\'s disgusting,” Ron says.



“Well, yes, but for once, I\'m not complaining,” Harry says, grinning like the Cheshire cat. “Anyway... as soon as all of Voldemort\'s Horcruxes were gone, Draco took him by surprise, killed him, and ran.”



“That nasty little prick,” Ron says approvingly. “Who knew he\'d be following in Snape\'s footsteps?”



Harry shrugs. “He\'s a little insane, after being trapped with the Death Eaters for two years, but the newspapers say it\'s nothing that fame, wealth, and plenty of adoring women won\'t fix. He got the Order of Merlin, First Class. As did we; in our case, posthumously.” Harry sounds half-proud, half-amused.



“Well, good,” Hermione murmurs. “So this is it then. The war is over, and we\'re dead.”



“Yeah,” Harry says. “Not so bad, is it?”



She shakes her head. She knows she should be upset, but as she watches Harry stir the food in the pot with a makeshift wooden spoon, and as she feels Ron\'s hands massage her shoulders, she realizes she doesn\'t mind.



“I wonder why Snape never told you,” Ron says. “About you being a Horcrux, that is.”



“He probably still didn\'t trust my Occlumency skills,” Harry says. “Didn\'t want Voldemort to find out.”



“Nonsense. You got to be every bit as good as him,” Ron protests. “In any case, you were as good as Malfoy... It must have been something else.”



Harry\'s expression grows a little bit more serious under Ron\'s all-too-perceptive gaze.



“Truthfully, I think he just didn\'t want me to off myself in order to destroy Voldemort\'s soul-fragment,” Harry says reluctantly. “The git probably kept hoping I\'d survive the war.”



“Survive,” Hermione\'s voice echoes his. “How?”



“It\'s complicated,” Harry says evasively, and turns his attention to the food.



“Tell us,” Ron demands. “No secrets.”



“It\'s not important,” Harry denies.



“Then you should have no problem telling us,” Hermione insists.



“Well,” Harry muses, “Dumbledore\'s guess was that if I got struck by Voldemort\'s Killing Curse, it\'d destroy the soul-fragment, but not necessarily kill me. You know, my mum\'s blood protection and all. I\'d have a choice… of whether to go back, or… stay dead.”



“If you had a choice, why are you here?” Hermione asks. “You could have taken Voldemort and others by surprise, you might have been able to make your way out of there! Harry! Why didn\'t you go back?”



Harry smiles again.



“Because of us,” Ron mutters. “You mean... if we had listened to you, if we had walked out, we could have all survived? All three of us?”



“It\'s possible,” Harry concedes, but he doesn\'t sound especially troubled by any of it.



Hermione sniffles quietly. “You could have gone back,” she says. “Harry! You should have gone back...”



“See, I knew you were going to make a great fuss over this,” Harry says. “Am I really so much bother to have around?”



“No, no! Harry! You know that we love you!” Hermione protests instantly. “But, you could have gone back... Harry! Why didn\'t you go back!”



“Well,” Harry says simply, “we\'ve made it this far together, so... it didn\'t make sense to split up now.”



She laughs quietly, thinking she might cry again. Ron hugs her tightly from behind, and wraps his arms around her. His chest presses against her back. She looks down at his hands. They\'re strong, healthy and whole.



“Where\'s everyone else?” Ron asks. “My dad? Ginny? Remus and Tonks? Fred and George?”



“They\'re around,” Harry says. “All of them. My parents too, and \'Mione\'s. Everyone\'s here. It\'s a big campsite.”



Hermione chuckles, amused. “The afterlife is a campsite, then?”



Harry rolls his eyes. “It\'s a metaphor. I think everyone might be seeing it differently.”



“Well, where are they?” Hermione asks with a small frown. “Don\'t they want to see us?”



Harry smiles sheepishly. “They do, very much,” he says shyly, “I just... er, I kind of told them we need a few days to ourselves. Just us.” He gives her and Ron a hopeful look. “I hope that\'s all right?”



Ron smiles back at him. “Better than all right, mate, it\'s brilliant.”



Harry brightens up. “You really think so? You don\'t mind?”



“Not at all,” Ron says. “So now that you\'ve got us to yourself, what are you going to do with us?”



“Feed you, water you, take you to the tent, shag you through the mattress, one by one,” Harry says.



Hermione giggles childishly. “Harry, we don\'t have a mattress.”



Harry throws his hands up in the air. “It\'s a metaphor.”



~ * ~



Harry\'s eyes are half-shut. He is lying between the two of them. Ron\'s face is buried in his shoulder. Hermione\'s back is pressing against his. His hand is on her hip. Ron\'s legs are tangled with his. It feels right.



He\'s home.



“So Harry,” Hermione\'s mumbles sleepily, “what are we going to do with eternity?”



“This works,” Ron says sleepily.



“Well, we could do other things, too,” Harry says.



“Like what?” Ron asks predictably.



“Like teach you to carry a tune,” Harry says.



Hermione snickers. “Eternity should be just long enough to manage that.”



“We could make fires, too,” Ron mumbles, half-asleep.



“Mmhm,” Hermione purrs. “Fires.”



Harry strokes her thigh. Her skin is smooth and soft. Healthy. Undamaged. And young. They are all so very, very young, and he has a feeling they\'ll be young for an incredibly long time, longer than he can imagine.



“About the fires,” Harry says. “You know what the best part is? We don\'t have to keep them small anymore.”



~ The End