Escape ↣ Harmione

Chapter Ten

They shared a room and were a couple openly for the first time. Hermione found that being able to be affectionate, hold hands and steal kisses without worrying who might see was wonderful. She ignored her parent's grins and knowing nudges, revelling in the feeling that this is what it should be like. Not hiding, so she didn't get hate mail. Or bring Death Eaters to her parents' door hoping to hurt Harry through their association. But sitting next to each other on the sofa in their room in the evenings, with his arm slung around her shoulders as they chatted about the skiing they had done. Or walking to breakfast hand in hand, or exploring the village their hotel was in together, shoving snow down each other's clothes to end up in a heap laughing and breathless.

It was almost as if the first flush of their relationship was back, and she gloried in it. It made it worth it.

The amount of courage she had needed to deliberately set herself, and her family against the Ministry, had been more than she had imagined. It had required more than running through the Ministry hexing Death Eaters had. This had real-world consequences beyond potential injury. Her refusal to abide by the law by the deadline date would make her a fugitive. Without complying with the law, she could never return without risking life imprisonment. The country of her birth was no longer accessible to her, and it made her ache a little on the inside.

So far, hiding from the school and the Headmaster, hadn't been that difficult. Being without magic wasn't anything new. She'd only just come of age enabling her to use magic outside of school. Harry, technically still couldn't.

Skiing in Switzerland was no different from her school holidays. Harry had admitted the lack of his wand wasn't bothering him once he stopped checking for it. They had been too busy skiing and exploring their new relationship to care about magic too much. It would end, and they would want magic again, she knew that. But for now, having been unable to access it unless they were within the walls of Hogwarts, they were coping better than she thought other people would. Wizards and witches who had the use of magic in their daily life for longer, in short, the people who would come looking for them. It was the basis of the plan, the wizards and witches hunting them wouldn't think of living day to day without their magic, and likely couldn't think anyone else would either. It would limit the scope of their search and thus hopefully allow them to be evaded.

Switzerland had been beyond anything Harry could have imagined. The mountains were so far out of his circle of experience he felt like he was discovering magic for the first time again.

Skiing had not come naturally. Hermione might be shite on a broom, but she was hell on, well, snow when it came to skiing. He had lessons and started on the nursery slopes for the first few days, bravely adventuring out onto the more challenging slopes as he found his feet. The euphoric high after completing his first run without landing on his arse was akin to his first flight on a broom. He was officially hooked on skiing.

When Hermione's parents had made to move them on to Spain after the two weeks was up. He decided to turn on the charm with Hermione. He didn't think trying to charm the Grangers would get him anywhere than looked at with fond bemusement. It was an expression Hermione had picked up from her parents and used on him more than once at school. So he tried to charm Hermione hoping she would get it past her parents. They would go to Spain, get settled in the apartment then come back for another week of skiing. It wasn't like they had school work, and wasn't skiing just the most amazing thing since broom flight?

Hermione had laughed. He'd been crushed until he realised that she wasn't saying no, just laughing at his overeager bouncing on the spot as he told her his plan. He stopped bouncing and tried again. The fond bemusement on her face, he saw mirrored on her parents when she ran it by them. He squirmed with barely suppressed glee when they agreed, and he probably looked like an excited five-year-old, not a sixteen-year-old embroiled in a war. He didn't care; there were slopes to conquer.