Take your coat and shoes off
Come and sit beside me
We could talk for hours
Or we could just do nothing

Four billion people surround us
So many souls lose their way
All that we have is each other
And that's all I've ever wanted

Don't you think it's funny
Tell me what the point is
We could die tomorrow
Might as well enjoy this

Four billion people surround us
So many souls lose their way
All that we have is each other
And that's all I've ever wanted

Give me all your disappointments
I'll give you my secrets
We could lay our heads down
Or be forever sleepless

Four billion people surround us
So many souls lose their way
All that we have is each other
And that's all I've ever wanted

-- From "Sleepless" by Jann Arden

It's funny.

I've lived in this house for fifteen and a half years. I'd never even known another home until I went to Hogwarts five years ago. And yet, after all this time, I still manage to find things here that surprise me. Unexpected things. Things that make me wonder how I ever could have missed them, unless I just wasn't paying attention.

There's that shadow that falls over the back fence when the sun is low in the sky, that comes from the ancient walnut tree in our garden. It's been such a fixture here throughout my childhood, that it's only now that I notice just how big and majestic it's really become: trunk thicker than a fully-grown mountain troll, and branches so heavy and long that they droop down almost into the ground.

This morning, as I was doing my duty and ridding Mum's garden of those pesky little gnomes, I discovered this passageway that led me to another garden just outside our property. It had probably been there all this time, but had been obscured by Mum's overgrown hedges--which she'd been after Fred and George to trim the entire summer, until she finally decided they'd probably never do it, and the job fell to me.

It's beautiful out here. Full with lush greenery and overgrown weeds, and dandelions and wildflowers in all the colors of the rainbow--or all the colors of a bag of Bertie Botts Every Flavour Beans, as I'd personally like to think of it. It's teeming with life and vibrancy, enclosed in its little space, completely unaware and untouched by the things happening in the real world.

In our world.

It was three months ago today that our lives changed forever. The Dark Lord, the one whom everyone had feared for years, whom no one had ever dreamed would ever return, had found a way to rise again. And he'd done it on the blood of my best friend.

I'm so scared for Harry now. We don't talk about this much; we don't talk about it nearly enough. But maybe we don't really need to. He knows I know the burden he's carrying. He knows I can hear him muttering in his sleep, or that I see him sometimes, sitting on the window sill in the middle of the night, staring out at the moon.

He's had to face more in his fifteen years than anyone should ever have to in a lifetime.

A toad croaks somewhere nearby. I hear a splash of water soon after, in the small pond just beyond this patch of dandelions. And then I hear rustling behind me. I turn around and see the shrubs parting, then a sliver of brown appears in the gap between the leaves. The sliver of brown grows into head of wild chestnut curls, and I can't help but smile as soon as it does.

"Hermione... what're you doing here?"

She picks off twigs from her hair and dusts herself off before sitting on the ground beside me.

"I was going to ask you the same thing," she says. "Your mum said you were up early, de-gnoming."

I groan, my muscles suddenly picking that moment to remind me of what I had just spent the last hour and a half doing. I'm about to slip into a curse as well, until I remember whose company I'm in.

"How did you ever find me here, anyway? I didn't even find this place till just now..."

She shrugs, then looks at me and throws me off completely with one of her brilliant smiles, which I wasn't expecting quite so early in the morning.

"You weren't in the garden," she says, "so I decided to go exploring..."

She leans over and picks off a daisy from the ground, twirling it between her fingers. Had her fingers always been this delicate? And had she always had that light spray of freckles on the bridge of her nose? Funny how I never noticed those things before either.

Funny how Hermione, whom I've known for almost five years, whom I know better than anyone else in this world, besides Harry, could still surprise me too.

I'm staring at her like a ruddy fool, until her voice suddenly shakes me out of my thoughts. I feel my face get hot at once, and out of nowhere, I have this odd urge to turn away. For some reason I can't quite figure out, I don't want her to see my face turn red right this moment.

"I wondered if there was anything back here. I figured if there was, you'd probably be hiding here somewhere."

She laughs, that full, lilting laugh, and before I know it, I find myself looking at her again. She's broken off a dandelion, one of the dying ones, and blows on it to scatter its seeds.

"Why didn't Harry help you with the gnomes?"

Finally, I find my voice.

"I thought I'd let him sleep," I say. "He didn't sleep too well last night..."

"He hasn't been sleeping very well for a while now," she says softly.

"Reckon I can't really blame him. He's... had a lot to deal with in the last few months..."

Hermione doesn't say anything; she's not even looking up. She's broken off another daisy and is absently picking off the petals. It's as if she's avoiding my eyes on purpose, and when I look closer, I can see why.

There are tears in her eyes.

"Hermione? Are you... all right?"

She laughs shakily. "I'm not really the one you should be asking that, am I?"

"What are you talking about?"

"Oh, Ron, Harry's the one who's had to see and experience all these horrible things," she says. I can hear that slight waver in her voice, though it's obvious she's trying to control it. "He's the one who's fighting off nightmares..."

"And what about you?"

"What about me?"

"Aren't you scared? Don't you wonder sometimes, if..."

I can't even finish the sentence. It's one I've started many times over the last few months, but can never seem to finish, even in my thoughts.

"Dad's heard rumors," I say.

She looks at me, her eyes wide.

"He and Mum talk late in the kitchen sometimes... They never think we can hear them, but we always can..."

"What kind of rumors?"

"Snape's disappeared."

"Snape??" she says breathlessly. She can't believe it any more than I could when I first heard it myself.

"Lousy bastard," I mutter. "After all Dumbledore's done for him, trusting him... I swear, Hermione, someday I am going to be an Auror. I'm going to be an Auror just so I can catch that filthy son of a-"

"Ron..."

At first I think she's going to tell me not to swear again, but when I look at her, I can see that's not it. She's crying.

She's got her hand on her forehead, and she's sobbing soundlessly, fighting with every ounce of strength she's got not to shake. Without even thinking, I reach over and wrap my arms around her. I wasn't sure how she'd react, whether she'd think this was an unwelcome gesture or not, but pretty soon, I don't have to wonder anymore. She leans into me, burying her face in my chest, and she gives in to her grief completely. Her hands find their way to my shoulder blades, and she pulls me closer into her.

I stroke her hair ever so gently. I can smell the faint lavender scent of her shampoo. It's the sweetest fragrance I've ever smelled in my entire life.

She pulls away, and for a moment--or maybe it's longer, because I've lost all sense of time now--our eyes lock. When she finally speaks, I feel a sense of loss, and I'm not even sure why.

"What are things going to be like?" she says.

There's so much pain in her voice that it breaks my heart. I can't stand to see my best friend in so much pain.

"You-know-who could come back at any time, and..." She swallows. "... and things would never be the same..."

"I hate him for what he's done!" I spit out. "I hate him for hurting Harry... I hate him for turning our world upside down when all we should be worrying about are the O.W.L.s..."

I look at her. She's still holding onto me, resting her cheek on my collarbone once more.

"I hate him for making you cry," I whisper. "Voldemort doesn't care about anyone or anything... All he wants is to destroy everything that's good..."

I feel her lift herself off me. She's staring hard at me, and at first I can't figure out why.

"You said his name," she says. "You've never said his name out loud before."

I did. Blimey, I actually did. And I think, it's about bloody time.

I let out a laugh. She looks at me, her eyes filled with worry, but I offer her a reassuring smile.

"The world might be ending, Hermione," I tell her. "And if it is, don't you think it's time we started saying things we've never said before?"

The words come out of me, but I surprise even myself by saying them. I had intended them to be about Voldemort, but somehow, I have this nagging feeling, that's not really what I was talking about at all.

"Things like... what?" she says.

Things like...

I love you.

I think I've always loved you.

I think I was just too daft, too blind not to see it before now.

And I'm about to tell her this. I'm about to tell her that somewhere along the way, she stopped being Hermione, my best friend, my confidante. That when I wasn't looking, she became Hermione, my heart.

My other half.

But somewhere within me, the doubts start to creep in. I lose my nerve. If I tell her this, if I tell her this now, because I think Voldemort is going to come back--that he's going to make all our lives hell and take away everything we've ever held dear--then isn't it just like admitting defeat?

That's what I tell myself.

"Things like... his name," I say. Again, I laugh. "Pretty stupid, isn't it? All this time I've been afraid of saying his name... It's just a word, though. Just a word."

She takes her eyes off me; for a split second I think I just saw pain in them once more. Disappointment.

"Sometimes we're just afraid to say things, when we don't know what they'll sound like out loud."

Someday, Hermione. Someday, I'll know what it will sound like to hear myself say that I love you out loud.

And then you'll know.