It was well past midnight before Hermione actually made it to the owlery. After leaving Dumbledore's office she'd rushed back to the common room, retrieved several sheaves of parchment and a quill, and took up at a table normally utilized for homework where she set about composing the letter she would send to her parents. She set herself the task of getting it finished and off that very night. She wouldn't let it sit another moment. Putting together the right way to approach her parents with the idea of a boy and a house elf staying with them over the summer had required more tact and skill than she'd originally anticipated. She didn't suspect her parents would be horribly opposed to Harry staying over; it was the house elf she wasn't sure about. For all their support toward Hermione and her witch status, they were still muggles and largely unacquainted with the magical world (to which house elves firmly belonged). Feeling guilty for it, but for Harry's sake not guilty enough to change her mind, she decided to omit the details on Harry's guardian. If Kimmy could remain in dog form then her parents need not be any the wiser. After all, they allowed her to have Crookshanks in the house, so a Chihuahua shouldn't be that different. After that slightly deceitful decision was made, writing the letter seemed to become a bit easier, but it still had to be just right. She couldn't abide by any letter that would fail to convince her parents to have Harry as a summer guest. It became a homework assignment, subject to the same exactness and perfection. She started several drafts that she scrapped and discarded; she began anew it seemed half a dozen times. Early in Hermione's effort, Ron had returned from owling his own mother and seen Hermione scribbling and contemplating feverishly. The look of sharp concentration on her face surely made Ron believe that its source was a textbook, for he gave an exaggerated yawn and dashed up the boys' dorm stairs before Hermione could catch him. Hermione had barely spared him a glance; she had a friend to rescue.

Finally, with Crookshanks coiling around her legs and hopping on to the table to swat at the jumping feather-end of her quill, she had her letter done. She didn't even look at the time, unconcerned, as she stashed her finished note, grabbed up her cloak, and headed out of the common room.

The owlery was eerie in the black of night. The occupants, normally so docile and calm during the day, were now uncommonly active and vocal. Hermione had never visited the owlery at night and would avoid it if possible in the future. The fast, stealthy whisper of feathers rushing past her face was enough to make anyone jumpy.

Hermione peered around the darkness uselessly a moment then pulled out her wand and cast lumos. There was a wave of indignant, angry hoots at the sudden light, dark bodies shifted and moved in a wall of avian complaint. A great many owls just fled the tower entirely, a crowd of birds making for the windows and door. Hermione ducked the mob and looked up. The light found a single patch of white in shadow near the ceiling and Hermione sighed in relief at the sight of Hedwig's back.

"Hedwig."

The snowy owl turned her head and looked down at Hermione. A dead rat, mangled and half-eaten, dangled from her beak.

"Eww… Hedwig, come down here, please."

Hedwig seemed to weigh the options, ruffled her feathers with a disgruntled shake at having to abandon her meal, then let the corpse drop to the ground twenty feet below and left her perch to fly down to Hermione. Hermione was startled when Hedwig came right at her (though Hermione couldn't imagine what else she could have expected the bird to do), and when she instinctively brought up an arm to shield her face Hedwig wrapped her feet around Hermione's forearm and landed cleanly on the girl's arm.

Hermione staggered at the unexpected weight but managed to keep from pitching Hedwig to the floor or ending up there herself. It felt horribly awkward and ungainly to have the owl on her arm. And she was surprisingly heavy. She couldn't fathom how Harry made it look so natural and effortless.

Hermione took Hedwig outside to the stone ledge, thankfully free of the fray of night raptors. She took a deep breath of clear air then opened her eyes to see Hedwig watching her intently. Her expression would almost seem to ask 'what did you expect in an owlery at this hour?'.

Hermione pushed the thought aside and moved closer to the ledge. Not so discreetly, she rested her arm supporting Hedwig on to the ledge. Her arm was tired from only holding Hedwig a few moments. Harry's bird clucked her beak, maybe offended or disappointed at Hermione's pitiful upper body strength, but stepped off Hermione's arm and on to the ledge. Then again she fixed the girl with the same expectant amber gaze.

Hermione pulled the letter to her parents from her pocket and faced Hedwig. She took a breath. "I didn't ask Harry if it would be all right to use you to send a letter, Hedwig.

"Harry was supposed to spend the summer with the Weasleys, but that fell through. I wrote my parents to ask them if he could come home with me. I hoped you'd take this to them as quickly as possible. I'd use a school owl, but I wanted to ask if you'd do it first, because you're much faster than they are."

Hedwig immediately stuck out her leg.

Hermione smiled gratefully. "Thank you, Hedwig." The bird stared at her, as though to say that she agreed for Harry's sake and it was pointless, almost insulting really, to thank her for something she would do in a heartbeat.

Hermione quickly tied the scroll to Hedwig's leg. As soon as it was secure the snowy owl took off with a powerful beat of wings and quickly disappeared into the night.

Hermione remained at the ledge a long time, staring into the darkness. She knew it was unrealistic to expect Hedwig to return so soon, but she couldn't seem to pry herself away from the hope that maybe Harry's bird could do it. She was still there when most of the school's owls began returning from their night of hunting.

❾¾ ❾¾❾¾

Harry was the first one awake in his dorm room. He'd jerked out of a nightmare with his heart racing and lungs burning. He'd been back in the graveyard. He had been tied, prone on his back on the ground between tombstones, and Wormtail was there with his dagger. He'd said a few drops of Harry's blood weren't enough, and he'd proceeded to cut Harry, peeling strips of flesh free and wrapping them around a fetus-like creature in the grass as though Pettigrew meant to recreate his lord using Harry's skin like paper maché.

When Harry reoriented to his surroundings and realized he was in fact in his bed at Hogwarts, the bitter vice of fear wrapped around his chest turned into a drowning, sour ache. His shoulders slumped as he sat up in bed, his head drooped, and his bones throbbed. It was getting better, the marrow-deep pain from the Cruciatus. Hopefully, in a day, he could be distracted from noticing it in every waking moment. And in some of his sleeping moments. The sensation of the knife peeling parts of him away had been distressingly real.

Harry's stomach flipped. He'd already been distracted from it once, the only time since he'd been tortured that he'd honestly been able to not think about it. That first night, in this bed, with…

Harry shook sharply from his thoughts. It seemed scandalous to think on it for too long, to linger on details too closely. It made his head spin, made his skin tingle strangely, made his stomach lurch. It was just dangerous to go beyond glancing blows of recollection. That entire evening and night had been too much, too many senses and feelings and extremes, everything on the brink of overload. Harry had to disconnect, detach, or he was afraid he'd go a little mad. He was scared that he didn't know what he'd do if he actually addressed that night, that moment, that one reprieve in agony.

A look toward the window showed blackness, but a blue-black that bespoke of impending dawn.

Harry slowly extricated himself from his bed covers. He wouldn't be able to fall back to sleep before it was time to get up again; he might as well get up. The other boys were still sound asleep. Ron's snores were accompanied by the rhythmic croaks of Neville's frog Trevor to produce a truly hideous duet. Dean and Seamus were quiet sleepers, more moving lumps than people until they stirred. Neville slept like a puppy with occasional squeaking sounds, but at the time he was quiet.

Harry crept past his dorm-mates and padded lightly down the stone stairs to while away the long hours before the day.

When he reached the foot he froze.

He'd expected an empty common room at such an ungodly hour. Instead he saw Hermione. She was curled up on the couch asleep.

Unable to move, Harry stood a moment and watched her. A precursory twinge threatened to become that stomach lurch he tended to shy from. She looked peaceful, vulnerable, very purely Hermione when she didn't have to prove herself to anyone. It was a rare sight. The ever-present crinkle on her brow of complex thought was gone, leaving her expression relaxed and obscenely lovely.

Harry hadn't thought he wanted company, but he discovered he was glad Hermione was there.

He moved across the room and approached Hermione, bent to touch her shoulder to shake her awake, but at the last moment stopped. Somehow, just seeing her was enough to ease his mind. The vestiges of his nightmare were losing hold, and it seemed almost criminal to wake her when she looked so comfortable.

Harry sat down on the floor in front of the couch instead and watched her face, the way wild curls of chestnut hair fell in tendrils near her closed eyes, her cheeks the resting place for dark eyelashes and her lips slightly parted. Even at rest like this her hair was untamed. Harry could certainly commiserate with Hermione on the topic of unruly hair. Sleeping as she was, she looked so frail, and yet she was the strongest person he knew besides Dumbledore. When she set her mind to something nothing would stop Hermione Granger. He couldn't think of anyone who truly gave Hermione her due. She was more than incredible, and most would have the audacity to call her plain. She was far from it. She was unsung. Brilliant, but largely overlooked. People knew she was smart, but 'smart' was an inadequate way to describe her. Harry, at least, knew she was amazing, even if he couldn't tell her. How he could have made it through even his first year without her he didn't know. He and Ron both owed Hermione more than either could ever repay. Yet she never tried to collect. Hermione just gave of herself…

Harry's stomach jumped, letting him know his thoughts were straying into dangerous territory.

But it was true. Hermione had saved him in so many ways and he'd never really thanked her.

Hermione shifted, grumbled faintly under her breath, and opened her eyes. She didn't start to find Harry a mere foot from her, she simply watched him in return a pregnant moment. Then she blinked lazily. "What is it?" she asked in a thick, sleepy voice.

Harry's skin prickled. "I was just thinking."

Hermione stretched languidly. Harry's eyes swept the curve of her back when she arched.

Hermione resettled and sat up. "About what?" she asked, her voice much more normally pitched. She patted the cushion beside her and Harry moved off the floor to sit next to her. There was plenty of room on the couch for them to spread out, but Harry inexplicably found himself sitting right beside her, their sides brushing lightly. Hermione didn't seem to mind, because she didn't move away.

"What are you doing down here?" Harry asked. It was better than telling her what he'd really been thinking. It wasn't fit to be spoken aloud. Somehow, it had the feel of the forbidden.

Hermione hesitated and bit her lip. "Oh, um, I'll tell you later."

Harry looked askance at her. That kind of evasion she might pull with Ron, but she wasn't supposed to withhold things from him. Harry was paused by his own reaction. Since when? Had it always been that way? When did he start to expect her to confide in him more than Ron? But he did expect it, because Hermione talked to Harry. It only then struck Harry how true that fact had always been, and how he'd taken it for granted until that very instant.

He was jolted from his thoughts when Hermione touched his right arm. The hairs at the nape of his neck tickled, but he didn't resist when Hermione gently took his arm in her lap and rotated his wrist to reveal the underside. He looked down at the fading pink of the healed knife-wound. He was too conflicted to really feel. He saw the evidence of what had happened, but it was made oddly distant by the way Hermione traced her fingertip over the mark.

When her finger neared his wrist his fingers curled of their own accord and Hermione stopped, perhaps thinking it was a silent indication of pain. Harry couldn't figure how to let her know it wasn't.

"Would you go spare if I asked how you were feeling?" Hermione asked gently.

Harry smiled. "No. I feel…" Harry stopped. The first thought that had come to mind as he sat there in the quiet of the early morning, alone with Hermione at his side in the common room, had been something close to 'comfortable'. But it seemed wrong to say that after what had happened. That shouldn't be the answer, but his first reaction had been to say that he felt kind of close to good. But the ache was still resonating dully in his muscles and bones, he still felt the edge of terror from seeing a friend killed before his eyes, he still felt the darkness that was Voldemort's magical connection to him like a sickness in his blood. He should answer that he felt dreadful.

But he didn't. Somehow, just sitting with Hermione, it went away. It faded to a background noise. She made things better, she made his crazy life mimic normal. And for Harry, anything that made him feel even an approximation of normal was a gift.

Hermione was watching him, obviously concerned about his inability to answer.

Harry frowned. He knew how he should feel, couldn't justify how he did feel, was confused that how he should feel was how he'd felt only a few minutes ago but no longer did, so he settled on an honest shrug. "I don't really know how I feel."

Hermione clearly didn't like his answer, probably because there wasn't much she could do to help if he didn't know, but she didn't press him. She gave an accepting nod and looked toward the fireplace.

Harry studied her profile as her eyes went out of focus and she got lost in her thoughts. He'd seen her do it countless times, but he'd never really watched the process flit across her face.

He was going to miss her this summer. Somehow, he knew he'd miss her this time more than he had in the past. Aside from the sordid details of him and Hermione together that he could not let himself dissect for some faceless danger he could not name, what he remembered about that first night after Voldemort's return was feeling like he might not make it to morning with his sanity intact. He'd honestly been afraid of breaking down. He'd felt like he was stretched threadbare, and at times he'd truly believed he'd lose his mind. He didn't know what would be left of Harry Potter come dawn. And then he'd come through the night and greeted the sunrise with a kind of security he'd never had before, because Hermione had suddenly, blindingly, become this source of power to him. She stood like a windbreak to the gales of madness, a sheltering stone in a raging river of fear and pain, an immovable figure to block the horrors rushing him. In a single night she became his anchor.

With the summer holidays only a day away, he acknowledged that in so short a time he'd clung to Hermione's strength. He began asking and needing half of what she'd always tried to give him before but that he'd never had the ability to claim. He took it now, he let her hover and defend and care for him, and he knew it wouldn't be easy for him to give up her attentions. He'd dressed his wounds in her presence, and he wasn't sure he could stand to have those injuries torn open again in order to push Hermione back to where he used to keep her.

The day in the hospital wing when she and Ron had come to tell him about the Burrow, Harry had just suddenly realized that Hermione had become more important to him than Ron was. It had surprised him, because for so long Ron had been his best friend, the first one he'd ever made, but looking at the two together it hit him that Hermione had displaced Ron. She meant more. He could lose Ron's friendship sooner and more easily than he could lose Hermione's.

That had left a strange, scared churning in his gut. Somehow it seemed like he was abandoning Ron, and he didn't want that to happen, but then Ron had started talking about wizard's chess and Quidditch and he'd looked at Hermione and just accepted it. Since that night, in a way, he'd felt a distance from Ron. He thought it might trace back to the beginning of the year when Ron hadn't spoken to him for months because he refused to believe that Harry hadn't put his name in the Goblet of Fire. Ron had accused him of lying, of deceiving his best friend, while Hermione had helped him through the tasks with steadfast devotion, being so very Hermione from the very start. Harry wondered if this now, this suddenly stronger bond to Hermione and weakening of his connection to Ron, was some backlash of that. Was he just choosing Hermione because she'd never doubted him? Was he that petty and vengeful?

He thought that he might be.

Even still, he'd never felt this kind of necessity concerning Ron. He'd never needed Ron the way he knew, deep down, he needed Hermione now. And that was unnerving. Harry didn't know what he was supposed to do.

"Harry?"

Harry blinked and returned his attention to her. She was looking at him and the orange firelight painted an amber line along the contours of her face. In her eyes he could almost make himself think she needed him as much as he needed her.

But he knew he was dreaming, trying to put something there that wasn't. Hermione didn't need, couldn't need, not the way Harry did. Hermione was too strong for that.

"What is it?" Hermione queried. "You looked troubled." She reached out and took his hand. Harry looked down at their hands, the way her fingers so easily and naturally slid between his. His stomach fluttered again, and it made him glad breakfast was hours away. The way she made touch seem so pleasant and desired had been a quandary for him since second year.

"No one but you ever really touches me," he said before he could stop the words.

Hermione's eyes widened, as though accused of cheating on a test, and she gave a guilty, "Oh," and moved to pull her hand out of his. She clearly took his comment as being chastised.

"No," Harry said, a little too quickly and strongly, and he held her hand tightly to stop her from drawing away. She stopped tugging and looked warily at him. "I… I didn't mean that in a bad way. I just… noticed."

"Does it… bother you?" she asked in a small voice.

Harry frowned and shook his head. "It bothers me when other people do. I guess I don't know how to be touched. The Dursleys…" Harry broke off and Hermione's fingers squeezed his in understanding. "I learned to not like it.