Poisoned Youth | ✓

57- Temper Kemper

Even without any new ideas, we continued to move through the countryside, pitching the tent in a different place each night for security. Every morning we made sure that we had removed all clues to our presence, then set off to find another lonely and secluded spot, travelling by Apparition to more woods, to the shadowy crevices of cliffs, to purple moors, gorse-covered mountainsides, and once a sheltered and pebbly cove. Every twelve hours or so we passed the Horcrux between them as though they were playing some perverse, slow-motion game of pass-the-parcel, where we dreaded the music stopping because the reward was twelve hours of increased fear and anxiety.

As the days stretched into weeks, I could see the disorganizing and tension growing in the group. Ron continued to corner Hermione and me, talking about Harry's lack of organization and leadership.

"Ronald, he's doing the best he can," I would say, defending Harry to the end.

"Maybe his best isn't enough," Ron once said very sourly. That didn't end well with him as I threw a handful of leaves in his face and rushed into the tent.

Our hushed conversations continued and only stopped when Harry came into the tent. I had begun to believe that Harry knew we had our doubts as he spent a lot of time outside of the tent, pacing and walking, not wanting to be around us.

Autumn rolled over the countryside as we moved through it: We were now pitching the tent on mulches of fallen leaves. Natural mists joined those cast by the dementors; wind and rain added to our troubles. The fact that Hermione was getting better at identifying edible fungi could not altogether compensate for our continuing isolation, the lack of other people's company, or our total ignorance of what was going on in the war against Voldemort.

"My mother," said Ron, as we sat in the tent on a riverbank in Wales, "can make good food appear out of thin air."

"Your mother can't produce food out of thin air," I said. "No one can. Food is the first of the five Principal Exceptions to Gamp's Law of Elemental Transfigur —"

"Oh, speak English, can't you?" Ron said, prising a fishbone out from between his teeth.

Looking over at Ron, I saw the glittering necklace around his neck, the cause of most of his anger.

"Ronald," I rolled my eyes, "it impossible to make good food out of nothing! You can Summon it if you know where it is, you can transform it, you can increase the quantity if you've already got some —"

"Well, don't bother increasing this, it's disgusting," said Ron.

"Harry caught the fish and Iverson did her best with it!" Hermione finally snapped, "I've noticed Iverson and I are always the ones who end up sorting out the food because we're girls, I suppose!"

"No, it's because you two are supposed to be the best at magic!" shot back Ron.

Hermione jumped up and bits of roast pike slid off her tin plate onto the floor.

"You can do the cooking tomorrow, Ronald, you can find the ingredients and try and charm them into something worth eating, and I'll sit here and pull faces and moan and you can see how you —"

"Shut up!" said Harry, leaping to his feet and holding up both hands. "Shut up now!"

Anger bubbled in my veins.

"How can you side with him, he hardly ever does anything —"

"Ivy, be quiet, I can hear someone!"

Harry stood up, keeping his harms raising warning us to not talk. Beside us, I could hear hushed voices again. Harry looked through the Sneakoscope, but it wasn't moving.