To: Hyel

From:

Betas: lazlet and kx

Fandom: Harry Potter

Threesome: Harry Potter/Hermione Granger/Ron Weasley

Title: Salt of the Earth

Requested Element: Takes place during the war.

In the months before the end, autumn gives into winter without much of a fight. And winter, once established, trudges on with no sign of abating; clawing at the windows, wind forcing its way through the tiniest gap. But Ron gets very good with a fillius charm and a can of expanding sealant once Hermione can find a way to properly explain it to him. As with all muggle things in their lives, there is a stillness, a sadness.

Mr Weasley would have liked this.

Remus is their secret keeper, and the irony is not lost on any of them. They hide behind wards and charms, subterfuge and slight of hand, in a house that isn't really there. Nobody in the Order approved, but no-one else had a better plan.

Harry can't remember how long they've been there. Just that they are there, and that things have slowly changed.

Hermione isn't soft and warm, she has cold, inky fingers and feet, like it is all her blood can do to loop around the middle of her body. She leaves piles of books by the bed, and in the bed, held in place by other books or torn off scraps of parchment. She forgets to eat for days at a time, leaving barely touched plates in her wake, and any semblance of curves that grew as the three of them got older have been eaten away. Her trousers slip down from her waist, held up only by a bony ridge of hipbone that Harry often finds himself staring at.

She hands Harry a slim volume, 'The War with Hannibal' printed in gold type down the spine.

"You should read it." Her hair is long, tied back and away from her face. "You should read about the people who came before us."

She stopped saying 'before you' when Dumbledore died.

It takes a while, but she presses just enough that Harry relents.

"After everything he did, he still lost, and they salted the earth. That's why there isn't a Carthage any more." His opening statement.

"Well, yes." Hermione consedes. "But that wasn't really my point."

He sits at her feet and eventually they talk about surprise and logic, about imagination and determination. When eventually Hermione smiles Harry feels like he has passed the test, and to celebrate they take out the chess board and ask the pieces nicely if they'd mind getting into position. Ron watches from the table, and plays on both sides.

Ron is all long arms and legs that fold up into small spaces, into the corners of sofas, around kitchen chairs, stretched along his part of the bed. He masters any residual clumsiness that has lingered since adolescence by mopping up practical skills. He makes things, both to be useful and just because he can.

He takes apart the clock he took from home. Unhooks the redundant hands, binds them together then tucks them carefully into the back of his trunk.

"But we're always either here or gone." Says Harry, staring at the mantelpiece, all three hands pointing at home.

Ron looks up from directing knives to chop and spoons to stir. "It's nice to be reminded though, isn't it?"

He repeatedly breaks and stitches together the furniture. Practicing. Since his last growth spurt he has taken to charming his jumpers bigger rather than letting them go.

Harry didn't get a growth spurt of his own. Ron has his favourite dark mutterings about the Dursleys, and has spent time filling Harry's plate with the same food he himself rejected as a child, as if his family spirit can live on in an enchanted wooden spoon and bottomless pan.

Regardless, Harry is still slight, still twisting inwards despite his own best efforts. Order meetings are harder to bear—the diminished numbers looking to him with a need he fears he cannot live up to. Ron and Hermione sit between them and him now, covering the silences with their own cobbled expertise and experience.

They sit between him and the world, and Harry can't imagine where he would be if he had travelled alone. He falls with them, and leaves bite marks, as proof that they are still here. He allows himself to be lost in their skin, in long limbs, and bony hips. He buries his face in Hermione's unbound hair, and nips at the freckles that cover Ron's shoulders as he fits his body to theirs in a bed that is never really big enough.

He hides them under the blankets where—if they are very quiet and very careful—no one will ever find them. He clings to them, despite himself, and lies long into the night convinced that he has no plan, no clue of how they can win. The house is very silent then, with no sounds from an outside that doesn't exist. Hermione and Ron lost in deep sleep, barely shadows.

But morning eventually brings noise: Ron's mutterings and clatterings by the stove; the flap of half a dozen book pages turning over and over to their right spot; the low buzz of the Wizard's Wireless; until it says something that makes one of them hex it off; new parchments to read and try to understand, clues and pointers and false starts. Winter, no matter how bitter, still lets in light from their stolen views, and Ron's wand and can of sealant keeps out most of the cold.

There is a cup of tea by Harry's hand, and the steam slowly fogs his glasses. There are three new books with passages he should read, and a slim volume on the fall of the Third Reich that Hermione thinks might help. Ron is a familiar blur of red and orange and gold, his wand probably tucked behind his ear while his hands are full. Hermione is curled too small in her chair, her sleeve pulled up to the elbow, scribbling and pausing, scribbling and pausing.

And despite the knots and the pits, and the looming of tomorrow—despite himself—Harry finds that he's thankful.