Harry/Hermione hugs throughout the Harry Potter series.
As much as I truly believe that Ron is Harry’s first friend, which makes him undeniably special to Harry, I believe that Hermione is Harry’s best friend and vice versa.
Maybe it’s because they were both from the Muggle world. They understand each other in ways pure-bloods can’t. And when they chose to fight in the wizard world, they both had to make the choice to cut the ties to their old lives the way Ron never had to. It was harder for Hermione than for Harry, but it was still a choice. In DH, they were literally all they had left in the world, whereas Ron has his family- which was both a boon and a curse as they went through the forest.
Maybe it’s because Hermione is sort of a mothering type of person who is open with her affection and concern for those she loves and Harry needed that. Consider all those full bodied hugs seen above, which for a kid who was probably never hugged before coming to school, would mean so much to him. It’s not just that she’s a girl and society deems it okay for girls to be more openly emotional than boys; there was an ease in how they would talk to each other, even about the hard things. When he was the most upset, she was the one who went to him first (“He was their friend!”), and vice versa, when she was vulnerable in HBP, he was there for her.
Maybe it’s because Harry was Hermione’s first real friend.
But for better or for worse, there was never any question whose side she would be on. She never left him, not in GoF, not in the forest in DH, and that last cap, the “I’ll go with you…” It was Hermione who worked to keep Harry alive the most, and in that moment, when they both realized that what they probably suspected but didn’t want to admit to themselves or the other was a possibility, the fact that she was willing to go with him to die just speaks volumes more than her not going with Ron in the forest.
I honestly thing that if not for the fact that he charged her with the duty of getting Nagini killed, she would have followed him to the very end.
I will love the two of them forever because their relationship is so precious and special. It doesn’t matter if you ship them or not, whether you see their love as platonic or romantic. Their love is undeniable and unlike any other in the series, and it remains my favorite relationship because the depth and quality of the care they have for each other is unparalleled in the entire series.