Captured

Chapter Three: Caught

The days crawled by slowly, mundanely, and the brief happiness they had experienced with a decent meal faded with each turn of the sun as their food supply once again dwindled. Within another week they had eaten the last of their food, and one more week had their stomachs aching to be full again. This of course meant that Ron was back to his unending foul mood, which meant that Harry was as well. She still had a bit of chocolate, but she tried to save that solely for whoever was wearing the locket. Of course, even if she did decide they could have it outside of wearing the locket, they couldn't survive on chocolate alone.

It also didn't help that despite her spending as many of her waking moments buried in the pages of a book as she could, they didn't seem to be making any progress whatsoever on the horcrux front and the locket seemed to be becoming stronger the weaker they became.

Hermione was attempting to eat the fish Harry had managed to catch for them in a nearby stream, but there was barely any meat on the bloody thing. She glanced at Harry, who was picking unhappily at his own depressingly tiny fish, and then to Ron who was outright glaring at his despite being given the largest fish of all.

"If this is all we have to eat, I'd rather the bloody Death Eaters get me honestly," Ron grumbled to himself on the opposite side of the campfire from Hermione. She tried not to let the comment get to her, but she was only human and the lack of sleep, food, and progress was getting to her as well. She could feel the hot prickle of tears beginning at the edges of her vision and fought to blink them back. He's a good guy, he'a a good guy, he's a good guy. Hermione repeated this to herself as she took a deep breath to bite back the nasty retort she wanted to say to him. An argument wouldn't help anything. And this wasn't Ron. Not the Ron she and Harry knew anyway. This was a Ron who was so filled up with worry for his family that he didn't have any more space for the hunger and discomfort afforded them by their journey.

Harry's parents were gone, and if her memory charms worked properly then her parents were already out of the country or soon to be out of the country depending on how long the arrangements took for them to move. But Ron.... well his family was right in the thick of it. They were the front lines. And it wasn't just his parents, but his siblings as well. He had to go everyday not knowing if he'd ever see his mother alive again, or his sister, brothers, or father. She felt the retort fade and die on her tongue as she softened towards him.

She couldn't imagine how difficult this was for him, how much more difficult this part of it was for him than either Harry or herself. She imagined that if she were worrying about that as well that she likely wouldn't be pleasant to be around either.

She sighed as she glanced back down at her food.

They needed to find another town.

Unfortunately, Hermione was running out of towns she knew that happened to be bordered by any amount of forest big enough for them to hide in.

Ron grumbled another frustrating complaint and Hermione looked back up as Harry stood abruptly, glaring at Ron.

"Next time you can catch the fish then. I'm going inside."

She watched after him, noticing him pulling out the Snitch Dumbledore left him for the hundredth time before disappearing back through the front flaps. She nervously glanced back at Ron who was glaring murderously after Harry.

"It's not like he's exactly doing much though, is he?" Ron spat after him.

Hermione swallowed nervously, anxiety flooding her veins like a poison. "Ron he's... he's trying his best. I don't think you'd be so upset if you weren't wearing the locket."