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vi. The Dream Team
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HER SCREAM RIPPLES throughout the trees as they land roughly on their feet in the middle of another forest. 

There isn't a sound, apart from that of the odd animal or gust of wind, that accompanies them as they walk through a scene that doesn't seem to change, until the blue sky melts into a pale orange, then a light purple, and then an inky navy, so that they have to take out their wands and light the tips to even see their shoes.

"Where in the name of Merlin –"

"Shut up, I can hear something – look, over there, it looks like a Patronus and – who's that following it?!" Ron starts in a hiss, but ends in an excited babble, his wand outstretched in front of him as he starts to walk.

Thea swallows her trepidation and follows suit, keeping glancing over her shoulder.

"Ron, I don't like this, I really don't –"

"Thea, just be quiet! I think it's Harry!"

"What?"

"What's he doing in there? Look!"

Thea glances down to where the boy is frantically pointing; there's an iced over lake, but sure enough, there is Harry, clothes stripped off and climbing in. Thea and Ron break into panicked runs, and it's as Ron dives frantically into the black, icy current that her heart lurches so violently she thinks she might be sick.

Harry's here.

"Ron, be careful!" she calls.

She finds her fingers winding into her loose hair and tugging out of horrid, heavy anxiety. It's minutes before Ron manages to drag Harry from the pool, and Thea manages to latch onto one of their arms each to help. They're both face down on the bank, trembling and coughing and spluttering, their breathing laboured and splintered.

Harry's here. He's really here.

"Harry! Oh my God, are you alright?"

The boy jerks up into a standing position, and the first thing Thea notices is the perfectly oval scald on his chest. She can't stop herself from flying towards him, her hands landing on his shoulders, that are so cold it even startles her.

"You're freezing, love." She says softly, her eyes wide and glassy as they stare up at his face. But he's averting her gaze so obviously that a lump starts to build and ache in her throat.

"Harry, please look at me."

There's a second's pause before he does, and all she can see is torment, like he wants to pull her in and kiss her to make up for lost time, but he doesn't. He just looks at her like she asks, before he pushes her away, a little hard so that she stumbles, and all she can do is watch in quiet despair as he reaches for the clothes he left on the ground, in a way to get away from her.

"Why the hell didn't you take this thing off before you dived?" Ron asks Harry as he pulls jumper after jumper over his almost convulsing body.

"It was y-you?"

"Well, yeah."

"You cast that doe?"

"What? No, of course not! I thought it was you doing it!"

"It wasn't me, my Patronus is a tiger," Thea adds quietly. The only indication that she's heard is that they both glance at her for a moment.

"My Patronus is a stag."

"Oh, yeah. I thought it looked different. No antlers," Ron says, rather confused.

"How come you're both here?" Harry demands, his voice a little cold, and Thea can tell it's not from being in the pool.

"Well...we've come back. You know. If you still want us." Ron mumbles nervously.

Thea trains her eyes on Harry, who seems to do the same. His stare is piercing, and she really can't figure out what he's feeling, which unnerves her down to the bone.

"Oh, yeah. I got it out. That's why you jumped in, right?"

Thea's jaw drops at the sight of the sword of Gryffindor, glinting and real and in Ron's hand.

"Yeah, but I don't understand. How did you get here? How did you find us?"

"Long story. We've been looking for you for hours, it's a big forest, isn't it? We could hear you, and we could see you following that deer."

"Neither of you saw anything else?" Harry asks, disappointment evident in his voice.

"No. But I did think I saw something move over there, but I was running to the pool at the time, because you'd gone in and you hadn't come up, so we weren't about to make a detour to – hey!"

"Harry, come back!" Thea shouts out in surprise at the boy running towards where Ron is pointing.

Thea and Ron exchange a look. Ron's fingers are curled tightly around both the Horcrux and the sword, and Thea's about to offer to hold one, when Harry makes his way back.

"Anything there?" Ron asks him.

"No." Harry says shortly.

"So how did the sword get in that pool?" Ron replies.

"Whoever cast the Patronus must have put it there." Harry says.

"Didn't you say the sword presented itself to you? Couldn't that explain it?" Thea adds, her brow frowning.

Harry shrugs. She knows he's refusing to speak to her. It infuriates her more than it upsets her.

"You reckon it's the real one?" Ron asks, gesturing to the sword.

"Only one way to find out." Harry responds, shrugging again.

Thea swallows hard, her heart rate increasing as she speaks.

"I'll do it."

The boys both look at her in surprise, and Harry jumps in almost instinctively.

"No. It's too much for you –"

"That's insulting, Harry – you might be angry with me, but please don't insult me." Thea sighs.

"This isn't about being angry with you, T, it's about the fact that this is part of You-Know-Who's soul –"

"Excuse me, but I've dealt with Lyra Vincent's full soul on a bad day. This is child's play." She snaps.

He's probably right, but she wants to do it. She wants to take some part of the fall, to fill in the cracks that are spreading throughout all of them because of her and Ron leaving.

"Thea, please –" Harry is almost begging, when Ron cuts in.

"We'll do it together."

Thea looks at Ron and gives him a small, but warming smile.

"OK, fine. Ever the dream team."

Ron and Thea ignore Harry's snarky remark as Ron hands Thea the sword, turning to place the locket on a large rock next to them. The weight in her hands matches the one on her shoulders, and she breathes in as hard as she can, trying to calm the seemingly electrified nerves dancing through her jittering body. Ron takes a place next to her and places his hands over hers. They spare a glance, an encouraging one, as Harry starts to talk to them.

"I'm going to open it, using Parseltongue, and you stab it. Straight away, OK? Because whatever's in there will put up a fight. The bit of Riddle in the diary tried to kill me."

Ron's grip over Thea's hands shifts uneasily.

"It's OK, Ron. You can do it." She says.

"I don't know if I can. It makes me think stuff, bad stuff I was already thinking, but even worse –"

"Ron, I'm here, OK?" she says softly. "We can do this."

Slowly, he nods.

"You can do it. You've just got the sword, I know it's supposed to be you who uses it. Please, just get rid of it, Ron." Harry says firmly, but Thea picks up on the desperation underneath it.

She understands. This is the Horcrux that drove the four of them apart. They want it gone with everything in them.

Ron inhales.

"Tell me when."

"On three... one, two, three..."

A strangled, hissing sound comes from the back of Harry's throat, and Thea watches, loud blood bursting in her ears. The oxygen reaching her lungs doesn't feel enough, as she hears the click of the small, golden doors of the locket open. Icy eyes are stark against the damaged metal of the locket, and Thea feels as though her entire body freezes to the spot. Ron, next to her, is just as stiff, and she thinks she can hear Harry shouting to them.

Thea's arms are dragged up, as Ron lifts the sword above their heads, but a nasty, chilling voice slithers from the Horcrux and plagues the air around them, saying two different things that twine together in a sort of chorus. One is clear and loud as it speaks to Thea directly.

"I have seen your mind, Theabel. I have seen your heart, and it would be mine if there were anything left of it."

Everything lively within her face drains, as the voice continues its taunting, drowning out Harry's shouts of Ron and Thea's names.

"You're nothing like your mother...you're worse. A coward, who shies away from power, who shies away from her own decisions... you don't deserve him...not like she does."

Thea lets out a helpless yelp and stumbles backwards into Ron, as two bubble-like figures burst out of the locket, terribly like Harry and Hermione, before their bodies join them. Their voices are foreign, but so similar to their real ones that Thea can't do anything but let them overpower her, and she thinks they're talking to Ron too.

"Why return? We were better without you, happier without you, glad of your absence...."

"Don't listen to it!" it's the first time Thea can hear the real Harry's voice, and it drags her back to some sort of distorted reality, and she manages to speak to Ron.

"Ron, come on, get up, we have to –"

"All you are is an outsider, Cinders... you don't fit, and everyone knows it, including me," her voices breaks off as the Harry from the locket speaks to her, shattering the little confidence she managed to build up.

"Thea, don't listen to it!"

" – you're nothing but grey, dishonest and traitorous...no matter what I say, I'll never be able to trust you...never be able to love you, like I could someone else. Someone who deserves it."

She can see the locket-Hermione talking to Ron, but she tunes out of it, guided only by the real Harry's shouts as she drags Ron up, her face falling and her stomach plaguing her with sickness when the two figures before her coil around each other and kiss.

"Ron, come on!"

It happens so fast she can barely register it until it's over. Ron brings up the sword now tightly gripped in both of their hands so harshly, the muscles in her arms stretch and threaten to break as they drop the blade hard and fast on the open locket before them. There's a loud scream of anguish that issues from it, and a nauseating metal crunch, before the three are smothered by a silence that crashes onto them like a thousand bricks.

Thea now realises that she's crying, and quickly brushes away the tears laying on her cheeks. As Harry makes his way over to Ron, who's wrapped himself up in a ball while he trembles, Thea sits down on the empty rock where the Horcrux had been, forcing away the thoughts tightening around her throbbing mind. She knows not to think anything of what the Horcrux showed, she really does, but the sight of them together, real or not, still sends an ache right from her chest until it leaks all through her body and consumes it.

She doesn't realise she's crying again until a soft, familiar hand brushes the tears from her cheek.

Harry's face swims in front of her, and although he startles her, her body floods with a calming relief.

"None of that was real, T. I'd trust you with my life and more." She can see the sincerity in his eyes, despite the darkness, and the ache turns into dull, background noise. "And Hermione's like my sister."

"I know, It's just..." she brings her hand up to cover his on her cheek. "...still not nice to see. Or hear."

She stands up, letting his touch drop from her face, and they both join Ron a few feet away.

"We're sorry, for leaving."

"You've sort of made up for it tonight. Getting the sword. Finishing off the Horcrux. Saving my life."

"That makes us sound a lot cooler than we were."

"Stuff like that always sounds cooler than it really was. I've been trying to tell you that for years."

Thea smiles a little as they embrace, and the lightness within her expands throughout her chest. She steps forwards and clings to Ron's arm, still a little unsure of how Harry would take her touch.

"And now, all we've got to do is find the tent again."

This surprisingly doesn't take them as long as Thea had expected, but an uneasiness trickles into her spine when the shape of the tent looms into view. She knows immediately that Hermione will be blindly furious, and rightfully so. She would be if the shoe was on the other foot.

"Hermione might just throw us back in that pool, you know. With stones tied to our ankles."

"Don't be daft, she'll be pleased to see you!"

"Are you thick, Harry? She'll skin me and this twit alive!" she points at Ron, her voice low and trembling slightly.

"She won't," Harry says, marching ahead of the other two.

"At least try and sound convincing!" Thea exclaims, stumbling over a hidden knot of tree roots in the ground.

"Well, it's not like you don't deserve it."

Thea glares at Harry's back in the darkness.

"Fine. But Ron can go and see her first."

"I don't know why you're so scared, T, I'm sure she'll be fine!" Ron cuts in, rather confidently.

"You two really don't understand girls, do you?" Thea snaps.

"When did I ever give off the impression that I did?" Harry shoots back, but before Thea can retort, he starts to bellow Hermione's name at the top of his lungs as he enters the tent.

Thea withdraws from the boys and takes a seat on the cold, forest ground just outside of the tent, her heart racing.

It's not long before sound bursts through the canvas material, and Thea finds herself cringing and thanking Merlin she had the brains to stay clear.

"Ouch – ow – What the – Hermione – OW!"

"You – complete – arse – Ronald – Weasley!"

Thea thinks the girl is punching him. She's half a mind to disappear into the trees and not come back; right now, if she came face-to-face with a Boggart, it'd turn into Hermione Granger.

"You – crawl – back – here – after – weeks – and – weeks – oh, where's my wand?"

"Hermione, calm down!"

"I will not calm down, Harry Potter, now give me my wand!"

"I think I left it outside, I'll be back!"

She hears Harry make his way outside of the tent and settle down in the snow next to her.

"See what I mean? She's out for blood –"

Thea is interrupted by Hermione letting out a loud scream.

A silence falls quietly between them, and now Thea's departure is like something loud hanging over them, begging to be heard and acknowledged. She inhales, and she thinks maybe all the words dry up in her mouth before they can leave, but they all pour out, tangled and full of pain, of all the ache she's kept locked up inside her since she left. She's half-expecting him to be gone by the time she stops talking, so she rambles on, and he doesn't stop her.

"Harry, I really am sorry. I shouldn't have left – I just, I didn't want to leave him on his own, and that's absolutely no excuse, I didn't have to go with him, it's not his fault that I chose to go with him, so I'm not saying that. I just...I'm sorry, and I understand if you won't forgive me, I really don't deserve it, I don't deserve you. But I meant what I said."

She meets his eyes that have been trained on her the whole time.

"I love you. So much that I could explode."

She sees him smile ever so slightly, and the ache within her vanishes like it was never there in the first place.

"It was horrible without you. And all I wanted was for you to come back, I wish you were there when I went to see my parents. But you weren't..."

She frowns, her stomach knotting uncomfortably. She has never felt worse in her whole life; like she's rotting from the inside out. Maybe she's grey, with black at the corners now. Tears are melting down her face before she can stop them, and a sob breaks from her lips.

Harry's face alights with panic.

"Thea..." He leans in and kisses her forehead, and it's almost like the migraine building there is quelled. "We're OK, you know. You and Ron... you saved my life. You destroyed the Horcrux, even when it said...those things. And you know, I'm terrible at being mad at you, so..."

He reaches for her hand and grasps it, Thea intertwining their fingers like her life depends on it. To her, it does.

"Where is Thea?"

Thea's eyes widen at the sound of Hermione's voice sounding shrilly from the tent, and just as she leaps up, the furious witch storms from the tent and is before her, Ron trailing behind, his ears bright red and his look helpless and apologetic towards Thea.

Hermione's look breaks Thea down.

"Is this the part where I beg for my life?"

Hermione's gaze narrows and hardens, and Thea thinks maybe she's just asked to be killed.

"Don't you dare try and make a joke out of this, you didn't see what a mess he was in!" Hermione snarls, jabbing a finger in Harry's direction.

He refuses to look at either of them, his gaze hard on his feet.

"Hermione, I'm sorry, I'm really sorry, I didn't want to leave Ron on his own –"

"Oh, don't try and spin all the blame on Ron, you're just as in the wrong as him, if not more! You left your boyfriend, and you know what, I'm convinced you were desperate to leave us, to go and find out about your dear Jude!"

"What the hell, what does he have to do with anything?" Thea herself is now brimming with an undiluted rage, triggered by his name.

"Oh, give me a break, Cinders! That's why you've been moping around this whole time because you just wanted to know about him! You've been nothing but a spare part, lingering in the background, too afraid to leave and go running after your daddy to live happily ever after with him!"

"Hermione, stop!" Harry shouts, but Thea just narrows her eyes into slits and drops her voice so it's low and slick, so much like Lyra's that it sends a shiver right through her spine, sharp and cold.

"Just like you've been waiting ever since we left the wedding to tell me that I'm just a spare part, right?"

"Do not try and play the victim, you despicable girl! You left us to fight You-Know-Who on our own, left Harry to cry on my shoulder for nights at a time while you and Ron go to sleep in warm, comfortable beds and tuck each other in every night!" Hermione's eyes are wild and full of fury, and she's taken on a look that's beyond human.

Thea purses her lips into a thin line for a moment. She can see Harry trying to catch her eye, but she ignores it, hard set on the fact that no one else will see, or find out that Hermione has just broken her heart into two.

"Hermione, that isn't true. We wanted to come back, we tried for weeks to find you... please, Hermione, we were just as broken as you!"

"One thing I would like to know, though." The girl glares back at Ron, ignoring Thea's pleading. "How exactly did you find us tonight? Once we know, we'll be able to make sure we're not visited by anyone else we don't want to see."

Thea's heard enough; she turns her back on the others and crawls into the bottom bunk behind a curtain of canvas so the others can't see her, and urges her brain into a dreamless, terrible sleep.

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"They've got Snatchers crawling the whole country for Muggleborns and traitors, for cash rewards from the Ministry," Ron explains the next morning. "Gobby over here nearly got us killed, but I managed to get us out."

Thea rolls her eyes. The tension is still thick and palpable, so she keeps her mouth shut.

"Gosh, what a gripping story. You must have been simply terrified. Meanwhile, we went to Godric's Hollow," Thea swallows the guilt that works its way up her throat, burning like poison. She glances at Harry, whose got his eyes trained hard on Hermione, "...and let's think, what happened there, Harry?"

"Hermione, don't," the boy cuts in, sparing Thea a look.

"Oh yes," Hermione continues harshly, ignoring him, "You-Know-Who's snake turned up, it nearly killed both of us and then You-Know-Who himself arrived and missed us by about a second."

"What?" Ron demands.

"Harry, why didn't you say?" Thea exclaims, her wide eyes landing on him, the nausea in her stomach crashing over her in a sudden wave. She barely manages to stop herself from keeling over.

Hermione rounds on her, going up to her so that she's so close to her that Thea swears she can see flames in her rage-filled eyes.

"Because he's so blinded by you that he can't see that you betrayed him. He doesn't want you to feel guilty."

Thea's blood begins to boil. "Betrayed him? I was looking out for Ron, because you know what, he's had my back a hell of a lot more than you have."

Hermione laughs bitterly. "And I think me and Harry made it quite plain that Ron's blind trust in you was misplaced."

"Shut up!" Harry snaps. "This is going to get us nowhere."

Thea rolls her eyes. "Well, maybe if Hermione pulled her wand from out of her arse and realised that not everything is about her opinion, we would get somewhere!"

Hermione storms out.

Harry gives Thea a look.

Thea holds her hands up. "Sorry, I understand why she's annoyed, but I'm not going to let her talk to me like a piece of shit all the time and question my loyalty."

Harry sighs. "I know. You just need to let her come around."

As Ron fiddles with the antennae on the radio placed on the table, he starts to talk over the crackling, that makes Thea flinch away from it, covering her ears with her hands.

"Will you stop that?" Harry asks pointedly to Ron. "My ears are about to bleed."

"The twins and their mate, Lee, they've set up the only radio station on our side, called Potterwatch. It's really hard to get on to, the password changes all the time."

The crackling suddenly comes to a stop, and a clear, monotone voice fills the air around them; it's not Fred's, George's, or Lee Jordan's, and Thea gasps loudly, her heart seeming to fail at the words, because it's announcing one of her worst fears as real, stark and cold and almost alive in the tent.

She hadn't noticed that Hermione has stumbled back into the tent at the sound, until she feels three pairs of eyes pierce her, bracing themselves for her collapsing, or screaming, but all she does is fall so still she might have left her body. Her mind spins and turns foggy, as the words echo loud around the tent, even after the announcer on the radio has fallen silent.

"Any information on the death of Jude Lestrange, or Strenegal, as he was otherwise known, will be welcomed at the Ministry of Magic for a reward of one thousand Galleons. Thank you all for your cooperation."