Enough

Harry Potter sits atop a stone window ledge of the North Tower, legs dangling over the side, looking out over the crowns of the Forbidden Forest, golden and studded with rubies. He likes fall the best. It means change. It means school. It means dinners in the Great Hall and letters by owl post. It means being immersed in a world he belongs in again. It means no more Dursleys, at least for a while. It means trips to Hogsmeade and Honeydukes chocolate and The Three Broomsticks. It means coming home. It means Ron and Hermione.

The wind picks up and rustles the yellow-orange of the leaves before ghosting across Harry's face, playing with his hair. He shifts slightly with the cold, but doesn't want to leave just yet. He knows when he does, it will be back to them, and he's not sure if he's all that well-equipped to handle the intensity he's bound to feel with them just yet.

It's part of why he loves them. The intensity. The way his nerves are raw and open and exposed when he's with them. The tug he feels behind his navel when Hermione rakes her nails down his chest, like she's a Portkey, the predetermined destination being her, inside her skin and all over her small frame, until they're the same person. How he almost never feels whole until Ron's mouth is on his and Harry realizes faintly that the broken whimpers he can taste don't come from a freckled throat.

He loves the little things about them. If he's learned nothing else in his seventeen years, it's that people take little things for granted, and he's sworn on everything that matters never to do that to Ron and Hermione. So he watches and notices and commits the details to memory like a chipmunk stashing acorns away for a particularly gruesome winter.

He notices Hermione's slightly disapproving looks when he and Ron sneak off to the kitchens and catalogues them. And the way her hands flutter excitedly when she's worked up about something, an unconscious habit he knows she hates. The way she clings to him in her sleep after she's had a nightmare. These instances are few and far between, and he's glad for that, but he also vaguely resents the pleased feeling he gets knowing she feels safe with him to protect her.

He mentally photographs the way Ron is after a match. Blue eyes sparkling, red hair tousled from the wind, and smelling of outside air. He watches Ron's features change when he's playing chess, from amicable and lighthearted to an almost predatory ruthlessness that makes Harry's blood rush, and files it away. And the awkward bumbling and tripping over words Ron goes through every time he's honestly nervous about something has yet to fail to be endearing, after almost seven years.

He loves them for the desperation they instill in him. He needs them, more than he ever thought he could need anybody. He needs them for their touches, alone in creaky old towers bewitched with silencing and locking charms, and for their smiles and glances across the crowded Gryffindor common room. For their ability to make it all so crystal clear he sometimes thinks he could simply walk right through all of his responsibilities and his obligations to the wizarding world and emerge whole, happy, and unscathed on the other side of them. He needs their doubts and their fears and their insecurities; they make him realize that he's not quite so unusual after all. In short, Harry needs them.

He sometimes half-wishes that they didn't need him the same way, though. He can't quite bring himself to wish it all the way, and in his more fragile moments, it is this failure he falls back on, "coward!" resonating in his mind even as comforting fingers (smooth or calloused or both) run gently through his hair. It's dangerous enough that they've become so crucial to him, but much more so that he's become so crucial to them. The tremendously high number of ways they could be hurt trying to protect him makes his breath hitch and a sick feeling flutters in his stomach.

He takes a deep and unsteady breath, trying simultaneously to quell that nervous, sick feeling and to rid himself of the chill he's developed in the crisp autumn air. From his post high above, he can spot a trio of first-years making their way across the wide, rolling lawn of Hogwarts, giggling amongst themselves as they try to walk three abreast, one cloak wrapped around three sets of shoulders, clearly having difficulty but not considering for a minute to break their huddle. Emerald Seeker's eyes follow them as they pass, and as they disappear through a great wooden door, the corners of a full and worried mouth twitch upwards in the hint of a tremulous smile.

Ron and Hermione. Hermione and Ron. And Harry fits somewhere in the mix. He loves them fiercely and is loved fiercely in return. That much he knows with his whole heart, and right now, it's enough.

Hermione Granger sits at a round, wooden table in a deserted corner of the library. The top is scuffed and scarred by decades, if not centuries, of use and she wonders idly why Dumbledore neglects to have it refinished. A simple Renovo would do the trick. She traces the gouges in the wood with ink-stained fingertips and supposes that the table does have a rather antiquated charm.

She lets her eyes settle on a stack of texts piled up beside her and is a little daunted at the prospect of all the work she's got tonight. The chance of getting anything done had Ron and Harry come with her is slim to nil, and so she's come by herself. It seems a tad fruitless however, since she's now crossed the words "Quidditch", "freckles", "chess", and "spectacles" out of her essay on the historical implications of Erklings. She catches herself just as she starts another capital 'Q' and sets down her quill in mild frustration. With nothing else to occupy it, her mind wanders freely toward Ron and Harry.

She thinks of Ron's wide, easy smile. She likes it best first thing in the morning, when she's still dozy, and he's lying in bed with his head propped up in one hand, waiting to give her a kiss. She thinks of his hugs. How his arms coil around her, strong and protective, and how she buries her face in his chest, feeling the thump-thump against her nose. It makes her feel small and precious and breakable, rather like a China doll. She thinks of his passion, misguided as it may occasionally be, a thousand times more fiery than his Weasely-red hair and just as vibrant. She thinks of his freckles. How she could spend hours playing connect-the-dots with her tongue and delight in every shaky breath and strangled gasp she pulls from him. And how he is more than willing to pretend she has freckles of her own.

She thinks of Harry's laughter. His real laughter, when he can forget for a moment and laugh without the hollow undertone that betrays the sorrow he carries around ever since Sirius. It's almost musical, like the tinkling of breaking glass. She thinks of his kisses and how they seem to be able to both pull the life from and breathe it into her. Of the sharp want in them that tweaks at something inside her and causes her to press herself hard against him in a manner quite unbecoming of the Head Girl. She thinks of his pain. The way it cuts into his features like a Diffindo curse, clear and unmistakable. When he's overcome by it, he lies in her arms, curled up as if to avoid any more hurts, and Hermione strokes his hair, says nothing, and is thankful she is able to ease his distress, even a little bit.

Not for the first time, Hermione marvels at her situation and the mere fact that the two of them turned to her in the first place. Her primary school years are often overlooked by others, but Hermione remembers them well, and if they taught her nothing else, it was that there is a certain type of girl that boys liked, and she is not that type. She's bookish, far too bossy, and the bushy hair certainly doesn't help, although Harry and Ron both swear up and down that it's one of their favorite constants about her.

She wonders why they chose her. She doesn't doubt it, per se, but wonders all the same. Harry, obviously, could have anyone he wanted. He is Harry Potter, after all. And Ron, for all his gangly awkwardness, is really rather charming when he wants to be and has an exceptional amount of determination, enough to win over whomever he set his sights on, she's sure.

Maybe that's why, though, she muses. Because to her, Harry isn't Harry Potter. He's Harry. A procrastinator, a bit thick-headed at times, and to be perfectly frank, the worst chess player she's ever seen. Because when he's around her, Ron doesn't need to be suave and if he fumbles everything up, he knows that after the row, she'll cuddle up next to him and watch as the sun sets and the last few die hard Quidditch players are slowly forced off the field by the dying light.

Hermione picks up her quill and opens her History of Magic textbook once more. She twirls the quill between her thumb and her index finger and thinks that maybe, just this once, she can live with not knowing the why. Maybe it's enough to know that it's there, that it is. She loves them fiercely and is loved fiercely in return. And it's enough to know that for sure.

Ron Weasley sits alone on a battered red couch in the Gryffindor common room, his lanky frame stretched over all three seats. Long fingers memorize the rook in his hands, running almost reverently over its cracks and crevices. He sets the piece back on the board and an eye catches the two pieces in the middle, the King and the Queen, towering above the rest. He sighs without really meaning to, and a thoughtful weight settles in his chest.

Ron wonders sometimes why Harry and Hermione put up with him- with his short fuse and his jumping to conclusions. He wonders how it is that they can see past his temper and his pride and his shirts that end three inches short of his wrists and see something extraordinary, when Ron himself has been in his body for seventeen years and sees nothing of the sort.

He remembers being twelve years old and crowding under Harry's Invisibility Cloak with him and Hermione, trying in vain not to notice that Hermione smelled like warm, breezy summer days, even in the middle of February. He smiles briefly as he remembers being fifteen and trying not to notice similar things about Harry. The way he would brush irritatedly at his hair in his sleep as it fell into his face, particularly if it was after a night with Umbridge.

He thinks about Harry and the Hogwarts Express. Thinks how it would have been so easy to not have Harry in his life. If Harry hadn't asked Molly for help onto the platform, or Ron hadn't dawdled at the sweet cart until all the other compartments save Harry's were full. If Harry had taken Draco Malfoy up on his offer of friendship and spurned him forever.

He thinks the same sort of thoughts about Hermione. He sometimes can't believe that she still talks to him, after some of the things he's done to her. All that nonsense with Krum, everything in the way he treated her before the troll incident in first year, the grief he gave her when he thought Crookshanks ate Scabbers... He mentally corrects himself (Wormtail) and feels the familiar prickling restlessness in his hands that he gets when he's angry. He doesn't want to be angry, though, not tonight, and so he forces himself to think about Harry and Hermione.

Of all the things he loves about Harry, the thing Ron loves the most is his hands. Smaller and sleeker, they fit into Ron's in an easy, comfortable, perfect way that manages to make Ron want to laugh and cry at the same time. They run over Ron- his hair and his face and his arms and his legs- and he can feel the stress and the tension and the worry melt out of him like Ice Mice down his arm on a breezeless July afternoon. Ron knows what Harry thinks of his hands. Killing hands. They are, as he is, a weapon destined for slaughter- his enemy's or his own, he doesn't know. And maybe that's why his hands are Ron's favorite. Because they're misunderstood, like the rest of Harry is misunderstood, and every time Harry touches him, a jolt crackles through his system and it's not one of butchery. That's how Ron knows that Harry's power is his own. It didn't come from You-Know-Who and he knows this because Harry's power comes from his hands and not that ruddy scar on his forehead. Harry's hands are healing hands, and the look Harry gets on his face every time Ron tells him so is so wonderful that Harry's hands temporarily lose their position as Ron's favorite thing about him.

The thing Ron loves most about Hermione is her voice. Most people find it shrill. However, most people are also idiots, as Ron has discovered, and Hermione's voice changes in heartbeats, like Egyptian sand dunes in the wind. He likes it when Hermione sings those Muggle lullabies to him when he can't sleep, and it doesn't matter to him one whit that she can't sing a note. Or the way it's rough and defiant ("I was not sleeping") when he shakes her awake at one o'clock in the morning, slumped over a Charms textbook in the Library. The way her voice drops in pitch even as its rising in volume never fails to amaze him, and he's taken to picking little, insignificant fights with her about nothing, simply to hear her voice when she's really angry. Squabbling with her makes him ache for her- it has ever since he can remember- and he thinks that that might be the reason so many of their rows nowadays end in tangled limbs, bruised lips, and low, throaty whispers from Hermione that make tingles shoot up and down the length of his spine. He supposes he should feel at least slightly guilty about it, goading her until she cracks and they pounce on each other, but in truth, he suspects Hermione already knows. Hermione always knows.

Ron swings his legs off of the chesterfield and makes his way up the stairs to the dormitories to go to bed. He passes the stairs leading up to the girls' dorm with a faint smile, and another ghosts over his lips as he starts up his own stairs.

Maybe it doesn't matter what Harry and Hermione see in him. That they know something he doesn't. Maybe the only part of it that matters is that they never leave him behind, just as he never leaves them. He loves them fiercely and is loved fiercely in return. And it's more than enough.