Chapter Text
The fire in the drawing room had burned low, sending curls of orange light over the dark wood and deep green velvet of the old settee. Grimmauld Place, for all its creaking and groaning, had a particular stillness at this hour — a kind of truce with its ghosts. The quiet wasn’t peace, exactly, but it was the closest thing Harry had come to it in years.
He sat with one leg tucked beneath him, barefoot and comfortable, wand tapping rhythmically against his knee. The evening had passed in its usual summer rhythm: the others had spilled out to some Muggle club Dean liked — all pulsing lights and ridiculous trousers — and now were either asleep, paired off, or still stumbling in through the floo with half-sincere apologies about tracking dirt on the rug.
Harry had begged off early. He always did.
The door creaked open without warning, and he didn’t need to look up to know who it was.
Hermione entered the room with her usual mix of purpose and chaos — shoulders square, hair half-up and already unraveling, mascara smudged in a way that made her look less glamorous and more real. She was muttering something about boys being a menace, then shushed herself as she kicked off her shoes with a practiced wobble.
“Hello,” she said, not quite whispering.
Harry didn’t bother moving. “Thought you were staying out.”
“I was,” she said, approaching the couch. “But I got bored of pretending I care about mid-century Brutalist architecture just because someone called me ravishing .”
She dropped onto the cushion beside him with a sigh that managed to be both dramatic and genuine. She didn’t just sit — she folded. One leg bent beneath her, arms crossed. Her knee knocked gently into his.
Harry adjusted slightly but didn’t pull away. It was Hermione. If anything, he leaned into the familiar warmth of her.
“I brought you takeaway,” she added, tugging a wrapped pasty out of her bag. “Then I ate most of it. Sorry.”
He smiled. “Thanks for thinking of me.”
She glanced sideways. “You always come back too early.”
“You always stay out too late.”
“Touché.”
The silence that followed was comfortable, edged with firelight and the slight rustle of Hermione’s skirt as she tried to smooth it down over her thigh. She let out a quiet sigh.
Harry looked over, watching as she wrinkled her nose, the way she always did when something displeased her — whether it was a badly worded essay or, apparently, wandering hands.
“You alright?” he asked.
“Mmm…” she paused as though evaluating and tilted her head back against the couch, eyes closed. “Yes.”
“You’re not completely blitzed,” he said, more observation than question.
“Mm. Nope. Just… floaty.” She blinked at him. “You have more sober-up potion in your stash?”
He stood and crossed the room, rummaging in the small cupboard near the mantle. “Is it still gin that’s your poison?”
“Gin. Elderflower. A hint of regret.”
He returned and offered the vial. She sat up and took it, swishing it once like wine before knocking it back with a grimace.
“Merlin, that’s vile,” she said.
“You keep asking for it.”
“I keep needing it,” she said, and leaned back again, eyes tracing the shadows on the ceiling.
Harry didn’t say anything for a while. She looked tired. Not the exhausted sort of tired, but the kind that settled in your shoulders when you were trying to outrun something. Eighth year had done that to a lot of them. Trying to be normal again. Trying to remember who they were before everything fell apart.
Hermione had thrown herself into study, of course — revising out of habit, joining every club offered, organizing study sessions, and leading endless restoration meetings for Hogwarts. And now she was preparing for Healer training. Always moving. Always planning.
But the clubbing — the casual dates, the snogging in back hallways, the whispered “he’s not that bad” explanations after — that was newer. That was this summer.
“You’re always the last one awake lately,” he said.
Hermione cracked one eye open and looked at him. “Am I?”
“Just… noticing.”
She turned her head to face him. “Are you worried?”
“No.”
She tried to fix him with a glare and gave up, closing her eyes again. “Liar.”
He didn’t argue. “Maybe a little worried.”
Hermione shifted slightly. Her shoulder pressed into his now, solid and warm. Her perfume had faded with the night, replaced by the faint, earthy smell of old books and her shampoo and whatever she’d used to tame her hair. It was familiar. Anchoring.
Hermione exhaled slowly. “Do you ever wonder if we missed something?”
Harry glanced down. “Missed what?”
She waved a vague hand. “All those years. The first kisses. First loves. First everything. We were… fighting. Hiding. Grieving.”
He didn’t answer right away. She wasn’t really asking.
“I keep thinking I’m catching up,” she said, “but it always feels like acting. Like I’m pretending to know how this is supposed to work.” Her voice dropped. “I hate not knowing what I’m doing.”
“And I really don’t know what I’m doing, Harry,” she said, voice low. “With any of it.”
He didn’t reply right away.
“I know how to study. I know how to plan. I know how to survive.” She exhaled. “But this… dating. Flirting. Trusting people enough to let them close… It always feels like a performance. And if I get it wrong, I can’t revise.”
Harry considered his reply carefully. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on yourself, Hermione. I don’t think you have to know. Not yet.”
Hermione let her head fall against his shoulder. “Feels like everyone else does.”
“Not everyone.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“I know what people think,” she said eventually. “That I’m smart. That I’m useful . No one’s ever tripped over themselves to call me beautiful...”
Harry frowned.
“You don’t have to say anything,” she added quickly. “I’m not fishing.”
“I wasn’t going to say it to argue,” he said. “I was going to say I don’t think they’re looking closely enough.”
She turned her head again, cheek brushing against the knit of his jumper. “You’re a good liar.”
“I’m not lying. I do think you’re beautiful.” The words left him before he could think to weigh them.
She blinked. “You’re saying that because you’re not drunk and I am.”
“I’m saying it because it’s true.”
Hermione tilted her head. Studied him. Then her mouth twisted into the faintest smirk. “Well. You’re rather fit, yourself. All brooding silence and noble jawline. If you ever bothered to look interested in anyone, you could have your pick.”
“I don’t want my pick,” he said.
The silence after that was heavier.
“I can’t risk it,” he added, more quietly. “Not with the Prophet sniffing around every time I breathe in the wrong direction. I’d rather be alone than… than have my life printed in a headline. I went to that pub a couple of weeks ago… had a pint and some crisps, and the Prophet ran that stupid piece speculating on whether I was allergic to vinegar.”
She laughed —bright and unguarded— and that made him smile.
“I’d rather… just…not. It’s simpler.”
“So, what? You’re just never going to date or snog or never …?”
He shook his head.
“I can’t, Hermione. I don’t think I could trust anyone, especially with sex. I’d always be worried about who they might be talking to, who might be watching.”
Hermione was quiet. She didn't seem to be shocked by his admission and she wasn't judging him either.
Just...Hermione.
Her hand found his, warm and small in his lap. She didn’t lace their fingers, but rested them there in his.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “That’s not fair.”
“No,” he said, voice low. “It’s just true.”
And then the fire popped, and someone upstairs laughed in their sleep, and neither of them moved away.
Not yet.
The kitchen at Grimmauld Place always smelled faintly of something burning, even when nothing was. Harry blamed the cupboards, which he was fairly certain had once housed an aggressive family of soot elementals. The smell had persisted through every cleaning charm Hermione had tried.
He sat at the long scrubbed table, cradling a chipped mug of tea with both hands, the steam curling under his glasses. The sun filtered weakly through the narrow windows, casting pale gold on the worn tile floor.
Kreacher was muttering to himself near the stove, smacking pots with the kind of passive aggression only house-elves could muster.
“—lazy wizards leaving crumbs in the sink, disrespecting the silverware, spilling firewhisky on my floor—”
“I didn’t spill anything,” Harry said, not looking up from his tea.
“Not you, Master,” Kreacher replied darkly. “Though your guests do not appear to have been raised in proper households. One of them put their boots on the mantel. ”
Harry winced. “Probably Seamus.”
“Kreacher remembers,” the elf said, voice like a curse.
Harry let the warmth of the tea settle into his chest, the silence broken only by Kreacher’s grumbling and the faint ticking of the old enchanted clock, which currently read “Recovering” for half the household.
The door creaked open, and Harry looked up just as Hermione appeared — still in pyjamas, hair piled into a wild, sleep-wrecked bun, glasses sliding down her nose. She blinked at the light, shuffled to the table, and flopped gracelessly into the seat across from him.
“Coffee, please, Kreacher,” she croaked.
Kreacher sniffed. “The clever one learns manners at last.”
Hermione groaned and buried her head in her arms. After a beat, a mug clunked onto the table beside her elbow. Hermione lifted her head just enough to mutter a half-hearted thanks.
“You look like you’ve been hit by a Cheering Charm and left in the rain,” Harry said.
“I dreamt that Luna was DJing a Ministry gala,” she said, without context. “Everyone was wearing moonboots.”
“That might not have been a dream.”
Hermione gave a weak chuckle and reached for a piece of toast. They sat in companionable silence for a few minutes, drinking tea and slowly becoming people again.
Then Hermione spoke, soft and without looking at him. “About last night…”
Harry glanced up, but she didn’t seem embarrassed. More… contemplative.
“Thanks,” she said simply.
“For what?”
“For not making it weird. For not judging me. For listening.”
He shrugged. “That’s sort of our thing, isn’t it?”
Hermione smiled faintly, her eyes still on her mug. “I don’t always say things like that. Not even to you.”
“I noticed.”
She looked up then, searching his face. “You’re not going to pretend that conversation didn’t happen, are you?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t want to.”
Her smile warmed, subtle but true.
“Right,” she said after a moment, nodding to herself. “Good.”
Kreacher slammed a pan a bit too loudly and muttered, “Foolish humans and their whispering. Kitchen’s for eating, not staring meaningfully over toast.”
Hermione snorted, and Harry grinned into his tea.
She tore a bit of toast with deliberate focus. “We’re both starting something new soon.”
“Yeah.”
“Feels… big.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“I was thinking about what you said last night. Maybe I want to stop pretending I know what I’m doing,” she said quietly. “Just for a little while.”
He didn’t answer — just reached for the marmalade and pushed it across the table to her.
Hermione accepted it with a raised brow.
“You always forget you like it until you’ve had the first bite,” he said.
Her expression softened. “You really do know me.”
“Better than Luna in moonboots.”
“Everyone knew Luna in moonboots,” she chuckled.
Kreacher cleared his throat pointedly. “If Master and his companion are finished communing over condiments, Kreacher will begin clearing this disgrace of a table.”
Hermione stood, taking her tea with her. “Thank you, Kreacher.”
The elf gave a tiny, begrudging nod.
She looked to Harry as she reached the door. “I’m going to shower. Then I’ll be less philosophical.”
“Shame,” he said. “You’re quite good at it.”
She smirked, and for a second, he saw it again — the weariness under the surface, the tightness in her posture, the way she hadn’t quite looked him in the eye when she said she didn’t want to pretend anymore.
She disappeared down the corridor.
Harry stared at the empty doorway for a moment longer than he meant to.
Then he finished his tea.