In the Waiting

by Prill_and_Quill

Summary:

The Advent after the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione Granger is carrying more than grief into December.

Living as a Muggle and preparing to return to the Weasleys for Christmas, she never expects to find the one person she thought she’d lost forever—much less in the most ordinary way imaginable.

Sometimes love survives by waiting.

Written for HMS Harmony's Secret Santa Exchange 2025.

Prompt: Hermione finds Harry's wallet, leading to meet cute.

Notes:

• For The Muse of Apollo (mtwb).

Merry Christmas, Muse of Apollo!

Chapter 1

Hermione Granger had forgotten how crowded London could feel in December.

It wasn’t that she disliked Christmas shopping; she once had adored it. When she was little, her parents used to take her to Covent Garden each year, timing their visit so the lights were just beginning to glow—the lamps catching the early dusk, the huge tree, the performers on the cobblestones, the smell of roasting chestnuts and mulled wine drifting through the air. Someone would always be playing a violin badly. Her father would pretend to wince at the sound; her mother would elbow him; Hermione would twirl under the lights with her mittened hands thrown outward, dizzy with it all.

Now, the air tasted the same– roasting sugar, cold stone, a hint of smoke– but everything else was different.

She was heavily pregnant, for one thing.

The weight of the baby pulled at her lower back and shifted her balance in ways she still hadn’t quite learned to anticipate. Her boots felt half a size too small, no matter which pair she wore. The long dark green coat she’d bought in September in a fit of optimism now only just buttoned over her belly if she held her breath and didn’t bend too much. Her scarf kept slipping, her hair was frizzing in the damp, and she had not slept properly in…well. Months.

And yet she was here, out holiday shopping on the first of December, on purpose.

Because she had made a decision.

She needed to return.

Not to Hogwarts. Not yet. 

Not to the Ministry, certainly. 

But to the people who had become her family in every way that mattered. To the red-roofed, messy, warm house where she had learned what it meant to be someone’s child and someone’s guest all at once. To the kitchen table where Molly slid plates toward her heaped high with potatoes. To the lopsided sitting room where she and Ginny had whispered late into the night about everything and nothing. To the bedroom at the top of the house where she’d lain awake listening for two boys breathing and snoring in the dark across the hall and thought, This is what it must be like to belong.

Her plan was simple and terrifying: she would show up at the Burrow on Christmas Eve.

She would walk up the snowy path with her bags and her enormously pregnant self and knock on the door, and when Molly opened it, Hermione would say…

Well…she didn’t quite know yet. 

I’m sorry I disappeared. 

I’m sorry I couldn’t stay. 

Or maybe: I have been so afraid. 

Or perhaps she wouldn’t say anything at all at first; perhaps she would simply let Molly pull her into a hug and cry into her shoulder.

But she could not arrive empty-handed.

So she was here, weaving through the crowds of holiday shoppers, trying to find gifts that would speak for her where words might fail.

For Arthur, something Muggle and fascinating but not dangerous; for Molly, something that wasn’t a cookbook or a kitchen gadget, something that acknowledged the person beneath the mothering. For Ginny, who had lost a brother and a future in the same dreadful hour and had every right to hate Hermione now. For George, whose laughter had once filled every corner of that house. For Bill and Fleur and their little girl, and Charlie, and Percy, and maybe even Kingsley and Professor McGonagall and Luna and Neville if she could manage it.

People she loved. 

People she had left.

And if she was very honest– and she tried to be, now, since the lies she’d told herself had never saved anyone– she also wanted to bring something for Harry.

If he was there. 

If he was anywhere at all. 

If the world had not swallowed him whole.

She couldn’t think what it might be. What gift could possibly bridge the vast absence between them? 

What object could say, I know you told me not to look for you, I know you thought you were doing the right thing, but I am still here and so are you…

…and we have a child?

The thought made her chest seize.

She took a steadying breath and stepped away from the bustle of Long Acre and toward a quieter corner of Covent Garden– the old Apple Market courtyard. It looked nearly like it had in her childhood. The stone arches glowed beneath strings of white lights; garlands looped between pillars; the scent of cinnamon drifted from a nearby bakery kiosk. Someone was setting up an open-air Christmas display: wreaths, hand-carved ornaments, wooden toys. A small choir of schoolchildren practiced on the far side, their voices bright and uncertain, the sound weaving through the air like the memory of something gentle.

She spotted a bench tucked near a statue at the edge of the colonnade, half in the glow of a shopfront window and half in the soft shadow of the arcade. It looked, in that moment, like the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.

Hermione lowered herself slowly…not at all gracefully…onto the bench, letting her whole weight settle. Her coat strained a bit across her middle, and she exhaled in a long, shaky breath. There was a tightness under her ribs she recognized now as the baby pressing upward, lodging himself against her diaphragm in silent protest of the cramped conditions.

“I know,” she murmured, rubbing a small circle over the curve of her stomach. “I’m tired too.”

People moved through the courtyard in shifting patterns. A little boy in a bobble hat tugged on his mother’s hand and pointed at the giant tree, eyes wide with wonder. A pair of teenagers posed under the mistletoe for a shy, fumbling kiss while one of their friends snickered behind a camera. An older couple walked arm in arm, steps matched, faces turned toward each other as though the crowd around them were nothing but background.

Hermione watched them, the ache in her chest blooming, slow and deep.

Her little one kicked, firm, insistent. 

She closed her eyes.

The tiny movement under her palm was still astonishing, a reminder that she was no longer a closed system, no longer only herself. Everything she felt was shared now, rippling through two lives. She tried to imagine what the baby made of all this: the noise, the light, the cold, the shifting emotions that rolled through her like tides.

“It’s all a bit much, isn’t it?” she whispered.

She leaned her head back against the chilled stone wall behind the bench and let her eyes stay shut. It was dangerous, she supposed, to close them in a public place with her handbag beside her and her sense of vigilance frayed at the edges. But she was so tired. And for now, at least, the world felt oddly safe. The sounds of the courtyard washed over her– laughter, the distant strains of the children’s choir, the clink of crockery from a nearby café.

Her mind, given the smallest bit of quiet, did the thing it had been doing all year.

It rewound.

She thought about all that had happened in this calendar year, from one December to the next, and it was almost impossible to believe it had all been contained within twelve months. Last year at this time, she and Harry had been coping with the loss of Ron.

Loss. 

That was the word she had used in her mind, for weeks, refusing to think abandonment. Ron’s absence had been a raw hole in their strange little world, echoing with all the things he’d said right before he Disapparated into the night. Hermione had stayed angry for as long as she could, because the alternative was unbearable. Harry had curled inward, guilty and grim, determined to keep going because there was no other choice.

They’d been mere days from Godric’s Hollow then, though they hadn’t known it. Mere days from walking hand in hand through the snow toward the graveyard, her glove tucked into his, watching him bend over stone and carve the ice away with numb fingers. Mere days from Nagini; from the broken wand; from the house that held the ghosts of everything Harry might have had.

And after that– after the snake and the shattering of his wand and the sick, cold terror that had lived in her chest for hours and days– had come the part that still made her breath stutter.

The terrifying realization that she could have lost him.

Not in the abstract way she’d always known he was in danger– they all were– but in a visceral, immediate way. That night, lying awake in the tent listening to him breathe, every inhale felt like a miracle. Every exhale a reprieve.

She had climbed into his bed without a plan.

She hadn’t meant anything by it, at first. She’d only wanted to be close enough to know he was still there. She remembered lifting the blanket with clumsy fingers, sliding beneath it in her pyjamas, pressing her cold toes against his calf and feeling him jolt.

“Hermione?” he’d whispered, voice hoarse with sleep and astonishment.

“Sorry,” she’d murmured, though she wasn’t. “I just—I needed to…”

To what? 

She hadn’t had words then; she barely had them now.

He had gone very still. Then he’d shifted to make room, one arm hesitantly resting over her side, like he was afraid she’d change her mind if he held her too tightly.

She had held on to him as though the world might end again at any minute.

At some point…it might have been hours later, after they’d spoken in broken fragments about fear and graves and snakes and futures that might never come…she found herself pressing her lips to his temple. Just once, a benediction, a thank you to the universe that he was still warm under her hands.

He had inhaled sharply.

“Hermione,” he’d said again, but differently, and she heard so much in it: warning and longing and bewilderment.

She’d kissed his cheek to see if it was possible, if she’d imagined the way his breath had hitched. Then she’d turned his face toward hers and kissed his mouth.

He had kissed her back like it was the first thing he’d really wanted in weeks.

The memory was so clear she could almost feel it now: the way his fingers had slid into her hair, a little clumsy, a little desperate. 

The way he had pulled back to search her face as though waiting for her to laugh and say it was a mistake. 

The way she had not laughed.

They had fallen together in a slow, almost reverent tangle. Skin on skin, the cold air of the tent trying and failing to steal the heat of them. She remembered lying beneath him, every nerve alive, his forehead pressed to hers as he’d pushed into her inch by careful inch, gasping each time her body clenched around him.

“Are you…” he’d started, but she’d cut him off with a whispered, “Harry, please,” and he’d made a sound like something breaking open.

They had moved together until he’d come undone inside her, shuddering, her name caught on his tongue like a prayer.

They’d slept for a few hours, wrapped around each other. Woken and done it again. And this time, she was the one who felt herself shatter first. And then she understood why they called it “making love,” because the world outside the tent was cold and brutal and uncertain, and in that small space they’d found something like shelter and a home and giving all they had of themselves to each other.

It had gone on like that for weeks.

In between hunting horcruxes and arguing about strategy and dodging disaster, they had been quietly, fiercely, each other’s. No declarations, no promises. Just the fact of it, written in the way he reached for her hand in the dark and the way she pressed her face into his chest whenever the nightmares came.

And then Ron had come back in March.

She could still see the look on his face when he’d seen them, not in bed, thank God, but close. Too close. Harry’s hand on the small of her back. Her leaning into him without thinking.

There had been shouting, of course. Tears. Apologies. Explanations that didn’t explain anything at all. At some point– she couldn’t even remember when, precisely– Harry had met her gaze over Ron’s hunched shoulders and there had been a silent, mutual decision.

They would pretend it had never happened.

They would be what Ron needed them to be: Harry’s best mate and Hermione’s almost. They would lock away the weeks in the tent in the same mental cupboard where she kept other impossibilities.

That decision had lasted until Malfoy Manor.

April.

The torture had broken something in her. Literally, in the case of her skin and her nerves; metaphorically, in the delicate scaffolding of denial she’d built for herself. 

She’d woken in Shell Cottage with the taste of blood in her mouth and Harry’s hand wrapped around hers.

He had looked wrecked. As though he’d been the one under the wand. She’d watched his throat work as he tried to speak and failed.

Later, in the narrow bed in the tiny room under the eaves, they had found solace in each other all over again. There had been no pretending then, no space for it. Just bruised bodies and shared nightmares and the desperate knowledge that they might only have days left. They had held each other the way drowning people held driftwood– no guarantee of rescue, but the only thing keeping them from sinking.

Then Gringotts. Then the Battle.

May second had come like a storm.

She saw it all in flashes if she let herself think about it: spells streaking through the air; the crush of bodies in the Great Hall; the dying and the dead. Fred’s body on the floor. Remus and Tonks, still and pale. Colin. So many names she couldn’t say anymore without her voice cracking.

And Harry– walking into the forest alone.

Coming back.

Dying.

Living.

Winning.

Losing far too much.

Almost immediately after, she had gone to restore her parents’ memories. It had seemed like the next right thing. She owed them that much. She had taken a Portkey to Australia, heart pounding, head full of all the speeches she would make about protection and fear and love.

Instead, she had found out that her overzealous efforts to protect them had destroyed their memory of her.

They were happy.

They were still dentists. They had moved to a smaller, sunnier practice. They took evening walks along the harbour and talked about “someday” and “perhaps we’ll travel more.” When Hermione had tried the counter-curse, carefully, cautiously, standing across the street with her wand hidden in her sleeve, nothing had happened. The magic slid over them like water over glass.

She had realized then that she would have to choose between shattering their contentment and holding on to the version of them that existed only in her mind.

She had chosen them.

Hermione had arrived back in England with two new truths lodged under her skin: she had no parents, not really, and she was no longer certain how to belong in the world she’d fought to save.

When she’d travelled to the Burrow, she’d found it altered in ways she should have expected but hadn’t. The grief was everywhere. Fred’s absence was a hole in the air itself. George walked through rooms without really seeing them. Ginny’s eyes were sharper, somehow, as though mourning had honed her rather than dimmed her.

Harry was not there.

Mrs Weasley had told her, hands busy with something at the sink that did not need that much scrubbing, that Harry had realized he was being used by the Ministry. That there were owls almost daily asking where he’d be giving interviews, where he’d be smiling for photographs, when “the Golden Trio” would be available for some absurd event or other.

“Kingsley stopped by,” Molly had said, voice tight with tired affection. “He asked about when you’re going to be home, dear. Said he’d like the three of you to appear together, give everyone something to look to. ‘Symbol of unity,’ he said.”

Hermione had heard that and, suddenly, seen herself the way they did: not as a person, but as a symbol, a story. A neat little narrative to pin on a wall: The Golden Trio, Arm in Arm, All Is Well.

She’d looked around then. At Molly’s lined face, at the tower of unwashed dishes, at Ginny folding and refolding a tea towel in the corner. The Weasleys were grieving. They had lost a son, a brother, an uncle. 

The last thing they needed was a clingy, needy witch who could not stop bursting into tears. A witch who woke more nights than she’d admit– hearing her own screams. Feeling the knife-sharp heat of the curse slicing through her. Hearing Bellatrix’s laughter like shattered glass. A witch who ached for her parents and best friend.

 A witch who could barely stand to be in a room with the word “hero” in it.

She had stayed one night.

In the morning, she’d left an apologetic note and Apparated to her parents’ house in Witham.

The house had felt wrong the instant she stepped inside. Too quiet. Their things were still there– photos of her as a toothy child, stacks of dental journals, her mother’s favorite blanket– but the space felt hollow, like a stage set after the actors had gone home.

It was there, standing in the kitchen in the pale light of a June morning, that she’d realized she hadn’t had her period since Shell Cottage.

She’d done the calculation three times, then done it again because she trusted her own arithmetic less than she trusted the idea that her body might betray her.

Then she’d performed the spell, fingers shaking as she traced the little diagnostic pattern just above her navel.

The answering flare of magic had glowed bright gold.

She had sat down very carefully on one of the kitchen chairs.

“Oh,” she’d said aloud, to no one at all. “Oh.”

She was pregnant.

Hermione had let herself into Grimmauld Place that afternoon, heart hammering. It had been the only thing to do. Wherever Harry had gone, whatever he thought he was doing by disappearing, he had a right to know.

The house greeted her with silence.

The dank, gloomy corners had been cleared somewhat; Kreacher’s idea of tidiness, she assumed. The troll leg umbrella stand was still there, and the portrait still muttered under its curtained prison, but the clutter was reduced. The kitchen was almost cheerful. There was a new mug in the cupboard that said #1 Auror in garish Muggle printing, which made her throat ache.

His room was empty.

His things were gone. Not a trunk, not a jumper, not a stray sock. The photo of his parents that had once lived on his bedside table was missing.

On the bed, folded with painful care, lay a single note with her name on it.

Hermione had opened it with fingers gone numb.

I’m leaving, he’d written, in his untidy, familiar scrawl. Leaving wizarding society. I’m not what they want me to be, and I can’t pretend.

Please don’t try to find me. You deserve happiness, and whoever I am right now won’t give you that.

Take care of them—Ron, the Weasleys. Take care of yourself.

– Harry

There had been more, a line or two half-crossed out, a smear where a drop of water had hit the parchment. She hadn’t been able to tell if it was from his eyes or hers.

She had realized, standing alone in that too-quiet room, that she was alone.

Except she wasn’t.

She had a baby.

Their baby.

The knowledge had been like a pivot. The world did not get any kinder; the losses did not sting less. But a new axis appeared, and her life began to turn around it.

She had resolved, right then and there, to be well for their little one.

So she had returned to her parents’ house in Witham and gone through the rooms like a ghost, gathering her things. She’d moved keepsakes into boxes, sent the furniture to storage, and put the house on the market with a brisk young estate agent who talked about “up-and-coming neighborhoods” and “good transport links.” When the estate agent handed her a cheque, Hermione had tucked it into her pocket with the vague feeling that she was impersonating someone else’s life.

She found a lovely little flat in Cambridge.

It was on the top floor of an old building with crooked stairs and a view over slate rooftops toward one of the colleges. The rooms were small but bright. There was a bay window just big enough for a chair and a stack of books. The landlords were kind and mostly left her alone.

She enrolled at the University to do an English course of study– the English Tripos, they called it– intending to specialize in Elizabethan poetry when the time came. It felt almost absurd, at first, to sit in seminar rooms discussing sonnets while the past year still screamed in her bones. 

But there was something healing about it, too.

She spent her days reading beautiful words out loud to the baby within her.

Shakespeare, of course. Marlowe. Sidney’s sonnets. Spenser’s endless allegories. She’d lie on the worn sofa with one hand on her belly and read Herbert, letting the language roll off her tongue, feeling him turn or kick at odd phrases. It made her feel, in some small way, that she could give him a world not entirely shaped by war. A world that held metaphors and music and foolish lovers who only had to worry about whether someone’s father approved of their match.

But the closer she got to delivery, the more she realized that this imaginary life she was building in her head was missing something essential.

Family.

Not just any family. Her family. Which now meant red hair and loud voices and overcrowded dinner tables. Which meant Molly’s fierce fussing and Arthur’s gentle curiosity and Ginny’s sharp, bright presence. Which meant the people who had held her in their grief and allowed her to share hers.

She did not know what had become of Harry. 

But she did know that if his child were to grow up anywhere, it should be in a world where people remembered him with love, not only with newspaper headlines.

So she had written to Molly.

The letter had taken her three tries. The first two had been too formal, like something one might send to a boss. In the end, she had written simply:

Dear Molly,

I am so sorry I’ve been gone so long. I’ve been trying to find a way to be in this world again. I’m not sure I’ve found it, but I think hiding only makes it worse.

I’m living in Cambridge now. 

If it’s not too much to ask, could I come to the Burrow on Christmas Eve? I would love to see you all.

With love,

Hermione

The response had come faster than she’d expected, carried by a small tawny owl who’d thumped indignantly against her window at an ungodly early hour.

Hermione, dear sweet girl,

Of course you must come! I’m so glad to hear from you. We have missed you dreadfully. You are always welcome here, you know that. Christmas Eve, Christmas, Boxing Day, the whole week if you like. We will make up the blue room for you.

Bring nothing but yourself, Love. We can’t wait to see you.

All my love,

Molly

Hermione had pressed the letter to her chest and cried for a very long time. Not because she doubted the welcome– she had always known, somewhere deep down, that the Burrow’s doors were open to her– but because the effusive and loving response had filled some empty, frozen place in her with warmth.

Because her waiting was almost over.

She was going home.

 

---

 

Now she was shopping.

Present-day Hermione opened her eyes again. The courtyard had grown a little darker, the lights stronger. The children’s choir had begun singing an actual carol now, a slightly wobbly rendition of “Once in Royal David’s City.” People had gathered to listen.

She watched the Christmas goings-on and thought of him, like she had every single day– several times a day– for more than a year.

Harry at thirteen, in a Muggle jumper too big for him, hair sticking up in every direction as he frowned at some obscure footnote in the library as she forced him to study. Harry at sixteen, lines of exhaustion carved far too deep into his face. Harry laughing, once, in the tent, startled and delighted because she’d said something about toothpaste of all things. Harry lying beside her in the half-dark, tracing idle patterns on her hipbones as though he could not quite believe she was real.

She had stopped trying to push those images away months ago. They were part of her now, as much a part as the baby flipping under her ribs. Instead, when they came, she tried to do something with them.

She closed her eyes against the tears that gathered, and let herself think about her love for him.

Not the desperate, scrabbling love of wartime, though that was true too. 

The quieter version. 

The way he’d always passed her the toast first without thinking; the way he’d let her rant about house-elf rights for hours and still looked like he was listening. 

The way he’d once put his hand on her back outside the tent when she’d been crying over her parents and said, low and fierce, “You did what you had to do to keep them safe,” and somehow made it sound like something to be proud of instead of ashamed.

She gathered all of that up inside herself, carefully, like she was cupping a flame in her hands.

She sent it inward, first, down through her own tired, aching body toward the small, solid weight of their child.

“I love you,” she whispered, under the noise of the crowd. “We both do.”

The baby nudged, as if in answer.

Then, because she could not help it, she let that love spill outward too, into the cold air and the milling people and the tangled, invisible web of magic and memory that she was certain still connected her to him no matter what he’d written in that letter.

Wherever you are, she thought, fiercely, I hope this finds you. I hope you know you’re loved. I hope…

Hope ran out there. It always did, because she did not know what else to ask for. Safety? Peace? The courage to come back? To stay away? It all blurred together.

Her eyes stung. She sniffed, wiped at her face with the back of her hand, and gave herself a little shake.

“Enough,” she murmured. “We’re in public, you ridiculous woman.”

Eventually she gathered her things: the shopping bag with the automatic corkscrew she thought Arthur would like, the small wrapped journal she’d bought for Ginny and wasn’t sure she’d be brave enough to give, the tin of fancy biscuits and lovely shawl that seemed like a Molly sort of thing. She tucked Molly’s letter– always in her handbag, these days– back into its inner pocket, and pushed herself to her feet.

Her knees protested. Her lower back flashed hot and then dull again. She took a moment to find her balance, one hand on the bench, the other on her belly.

“Up we get,” she told the baby. “More shops. Then home.”

She turned toward the main thoroughfare, ready to step back into the flow of people.

“Excuse me, miss. You dropped your wallet.”

The voice came from just behind her left shoulder. Hermione half-turned automatically, already shaking her head.

“Oh, I don’t think…”

A hand appeared in the edge of her vision, holding out a dark brown wallet.

Hermione frowned. Her own wallet…a simple navy thing she’d bought at a charity shop… was in her handbag. She knew because she’d just checked it ten minutes ago to make sure she still had her train ticket.

She bent– awkwardly, carefully– to take the wallet from the stranger, intending to say, “Sorry, it’s not mine,” and perhaps, “We should turn it in, there must be a lost property somewhere.”

But when her fingers closed around the leather and she straightened again, the person who’d spoken had already melted back into the crowd. All she saw was the sway of a dark coat disappearing behind a cluster of shoppers.

“Oh,” she said, a little lamely, to the empty air.

The wallet sat cold and slightly damp in her palm, as though it had been on the ground for a while. It was worn at the edges, the leather softened by years of use. A Muggle wallet, clearly. No obvious magical signatures. No strange tingling in her fingers that would indicate a curse.

Still, a flicker of unease ran through her. The last time a seemingly ordinary object had changed everything, it had been a Horcrux. Or a Portkey. Or a trap.

“Paranoid,” she muttered. “You’re paranoid, and you’re in Covent Garden, and some poor man is going to be retracing his steps right now trying to find his…”

But the baby chose that moment to give a particularly sharp kick under her ribs, stealing her breath. She winced, hand flying to her side. The wallet nearly slipped from her grasp.

“Alright, alright, I’m opening it,” she told absolutely no one, earning herself a strange look from a woman walking past with a pram.

It was the practical thing to do, she told herself as she flipped it open. If she could find a driver’s licence or some other identification, she could hand it to a nearby shop and feel she’d done her duty.

The wallet opened with a soft creak.

A photograph stared back at her.

Her first thought, absurdly, was that the lighting was terrible. The image looked like it had been taken in some kind of instant-photo booth, the kind that flattened colour and shadow into a sort of dull neutrality.

And yet.

The boy—no, the man—in the picture might have stepped straight out of her memory.

Black hair that refused to lie flat. A jaw that had sharpened since she’d watched him swing from a dragon’s back. Eyes—

The glasses were fashionable. That was what made the difference at first glance. No round frames, no smudge on the left lens where he’d rubbed at something in class. But the eyes were the same. Green. Startlingly so, even through the film of whatever Muggle process had produced this picture. Green ringed with dark lashes, looking slightly past the camera as though he’d been thinking of something else when the flash went off.

Harry.

Not in wizarding robes, not with a wand in his hand, not in any context she recognized. He wore a plain dark jacket over a t-shirt, the sort of neutral Muggle clothes you could buy in any high street shop. His hair was a little longer than she remembered; there was stubble along his chin, as though he’d forgotten to shave that morning.

But it was him. Entirely, unmistakably, him.

Her heartbeat, which had been moving along at its slightly too-fast pregnancy clip, lurched into something wild and uneven.

She dragged her eyes downward to the text printed beneath the photograph.

H. James Potier

Potier.

Her brain tried to make sense of it and failed for a moment. Then she realized: a Muggle-friendly alias. Close enough to Potter that he would respond when someone called it. Different enough that no wizarding newspaper headline would immediately connect the dots.

Her vision swam.

The lights of the courtyard blurred, stretching into long smears of white and gold. The sounds around her grew muffled, as though someone had put thick glass between her and the rest of the world.

He was here.

Not here here, maybe– not standing in front of her– but he had been here where his wallet could be dropped, found, handed to her by accident or fate. Close enough that his photo could exist in her hand with a name she now understood he’d chosen to hide behind.

The relief flooded through her and she realised that she had not admitted how terrified she had been that he was no longer a beating heart in the world. 

But he was.

He was alive. 

Alive in this city. 

Alive in this world.

Her eyes filled so fast she couldn’t blink the tears away in time.

Her breath shortened, each inhale a shallow, ragged gasp. Her heart hammered against her ribs like it was trying to break free.

The baby kicked again, hard, sensing her distress.

Hermione clutched the wallet in one hand and pressed the other to her belly.

“It’s him,” she whispered. “Oh God. It’s him.”

She tried to step forward. To sit back down. To do anything other than stand in the middle of the courtyard staring at a piece of plastic and card as though it had pulled the ground out from under her.

Her knees wobbled.

The world tilted– not a gentle sway, but a sudden, violent lurch, like a ship struck by a wave. The stone beneath her feet seemed to drop away. For a heartbeat, she was back in the forest, falling, falling, waiting for the impact.

“Miss? Miss, are you alright?” a woman’s voice said somewhere to her left, thin and faraway.

Hermione tried to answer. To say, yes, I’m fine, I just found the ghost of my entire future in a wallet, or maybe simply, no. Her lips moved. Nothing coherent came out.

The bench she’d been sitting on a moment ago seemed impossibly distant now. The statue behind it wavered. The faces of the people around her blurred into smudges of colour.

Her fingers went slack.

The wallet slipped from her hand.

The woman who’d spoken– middle-aged, wearing a red hat with a pompom– lunged forward just in time to catch it before it hit the ground. “Easy now,” she said, voice closer, more urgent. “You’re white as a sheet. Sit down, love, you’re going to…”

The sentence never finished.

The rushing in Hermione’s ears roared like the sea. The lights went from smeared to starburst to nothing at all.

She had one last, dizzying thought– not even words, just Harry’s face, green eyes and stubborn chin and the name Potier echoing in her mind– before everything went black and the world dropped away.

Chapter 2

“Hermione, come on, love. Come back to me.”

The voice threaded through the soft dark like a remembered song. She turned toward it– toward him— without opening her eyes. Of course he was here. Of course he’d be beside her when she woke. That was how it always went in the dreams: the war half-forgotten, the tent warm, the world outside distant and muffled. She could roll toward him, press her face to his chest, and none of it would matter.

“Hermione. Please.” The voice cracked on the last word. “Open your eyes for me, yeah?”

The plea snagged.

Dream Harry never begged. Dream Harry was calm and sure and gently amused, a woven-together patchwork of her favorite memories of him. This voice sounded…frayed. Desperate. A little older.

Her brow furrowed.

There was a sound she’d never heard in the tent: a high, regular beeping. Another low, constant hum, like machinery on the other side of a wall. And the air…Merlin, the air smelled wrong. Too clean, too sharp. Antiseptic and plastic and something faintly metallic. Nothing like damp canvas and woodsmoke and cheap tea.

The light pressing against her eyelids was all wrong, too. Too bright. Too white. Dreams in her experience mostly came in softer shades.

She frowned harder, which made her realize her head hurt. Not splittingly, but with a dull, muzzy ache like the aftermath of too little sleep and too much crying.

“Hermione?” His voice was closer now, just above her. “That’s it, love. You’re safe. You fainted, that’s all. You’re alright.”

Fainted.

Safe.

Her hand twitched.

The murk of unconsciousness thinned. The beeping resolved into a pattern. The smell sharpened. The cold edge of panic slid across her skin.

Hospital, she thought, suddenly, with a clarity that bordered on unpleasant. That’s a hospital.

The realization hit at the same time her stomach rolled and her ribs spasmed with a sharp, familiar kick from within.

The baby.

Her eyes flew open.

The light stabbed at her. She blinked rapidly; the world swam, shapes blurring and reshaping themselves. A ceiling of white tiles. A curtain track. A fluorescent panel that buzzed faintly. Something plastic taped to the back of her hand. A monitor beside the bed with green lines dancing across it, keeping time with the beeping.

And then, filling her vision, his face.

He was so close she could see the individual lashes fanning against his cheekbones, the fine lines at the corners of his eyes that hadn’t been there a year ago, the way his hair was still an unruly mess.

She blinked again, slowly this time.

He did not vanish.

His eyes were wide and bloodshot, shadows carved underneath them. Someone had given him a beard in her absence; there was proper stubble along his jaw now, darker than his hair, just starting to curl. It did nothing to make him look older or more dignified; it only made him look like Harry, attempting adulthood by accident.

He was breathing too quickly. His mouth was parted like he’d just run up a flight of stairs. One of his hands was braced on the rail of the hospital bed, knuckles white.

“Hermione,” he whispered, as though he still wasn’t sure she was really awake. “Hi.”

Her hand lifted of its own accord.

Slowly, as though moving underwater, she brought her fingers up to his cheek. The skin was warm, not that odd numb quality that dream-skin sometimes had. Solid. There was resistance when she pressed her fingertips into the curve of his jaw. The rough drag of beard against her palm made her breath catch.

“You’re here,” she breathed.

The words came out cracked and thin, but they were real. The sound of her own voice shocked her almost as much as the sight of him.

His eyes fluttered shut at her touch.

“I’m here,” he said, and for a heartbeat he sounded like he had in the tent, a quiet conviction under the rawness. He turned his head slightly and pressed his lips to the center of her palm. The sensation jolted through her like electricity.

She managed a ragged laugh that wasn’t very much like a laugh at all. Disbelief and relief and shock tangled together in her chest.

“But…how?” she whispered. “Why…how are you…”

“You’re in A&E at St Thomas’,” he said softly, opening his eyes again. “On the South Bank. You fainted at Covent Garden. Gave everyone quite a scare.”

St Thomas’. She’d been there once, with her mother, years ago for some dental conference thing, walking past the big sign and watching ambulances pull in. She tried to reconcile that memory with this fluorescent-lit cubicle and his face hovering above hers. It felt like forcing two mismatched jigsaw pieces together.

“Covent… oh.”

The last few minutes before the darkness flooded back in jagged fragments: the bench, the lights, the choir, the weight of the wallet in her hand. The photograph. That name.

“Someone called me,” he went on, voice still soft, like he was afraid he might startle her back out of consciousness if he spoke too loudly. “They found my number in my wallet… emergency contact, all that. Said a woman whose name they thought was ‘Hermy’ had collapsed, and she had my ID. I thought it was a prank at first. Or a trap. But then I…”

He broke off, throat working.

“I came anyway,” he said, after a moment. “Couldn’t not. And this lovely grey-haired woman was waiting near the ambulances, and the first thing she said was, ‘Oh, thank goodness, you’re here. Your wife fainted in the market. I’ve told them you’re on your way.’”

He huffed out something that wanted to be a laugh and ended up caught halfway.

“I didn’t tell them they’d got it wrong,” he admitted, a crooked, fragile smile flickering. “Seemed simpler to let them think it.”

Wife.

The word slid into her like a blade made of light. She couldn’t hold it, not yet, not with everything else pressing in. She filed it away to examine later, like she might tuck a particularly complex problem into the back of her mind until she could find the right spell.

She tried to prop herself up on her elbows. The effort made the room sway; Harry’s hand shot out immediately to steady her shoulder.

“Easy, Love,” he murmured. “You smacked your head a bit when you went down. They said you might be dizzy.”

“I…” She stopped.

Because the baby chose that moment to lodge both feet squarely beneath her ribs and shove. A sharp, insistent, curling pressure. She gasped.

Harry’s eyes went wide with alarm. “Are you alright? Do you need…”

“Harry,” she blurted, cutting him off. “I’m pregnant.”

There was a beat of absolute silence.

Then his gaze dropped, properly, fully, to the enormous swell of her belly under her dress.

He stared like he hadn’t really seen it until now, as though his mind had been so focused on her face, her pulse, the rise and fall of her chest, that the rest of her had been background.

His hand lowered from her shoulder to the blanket. Hesitated. Then, very carefully, he laid his palm over the curve of her stomach.

The baby kicked again, perhaps in outrage at all the fuss.

Harry’s fingers twitched. The corner of his mouth lifted in something that was not quite a smile and not quite a grimace.

“Right,” he said hoarsely. “I gathered.”

He glanced up at her again, and whatever half-joke he’d been about to add died in his throat.

Their eyes met.

She watched the change in his expression as it happened, like watching weather roll across a sky: the flicker of wonder, the flare of hope, the shadow of fear. Under it all, a question rising, inexorable.

“It’s mine, isn’t it?” he whispered.

His voice was so small that if the room had been any louder she might not have heard it. The beeping of the monitor seemed to slow for a moment. The hum of the fluorescent light faded to nothing. There was only that question, hanging between them like a spell waiting for an answer.

Hermione swallowed.

Her mouth was dry. Her tongue felt thick. Of all the ways she’d rehearsed telling him, this had not been one. She had imagined calm rooms, cups of tea, perhaps sitting at the Burrow’s rickety kitchen table with the rest of the world held at bay for a few minutes. She had not imagined bright lights and non-magical machines and his hand trembling against her belly.

“Yes,” she said. The word came out firm, even as her eyes filled. “He’s yours.”

Harry’s eyes slammed shut.

For a second she thought he might be about to faint himself. He went very, very still, the tendons in his neck standing out, his jaw clenched tight. She watched his throat move as he swallowed hard once, twice.

“Bloody hell,” he breathed, barely louder than the hiss of oxygen somewhere behind her. “I knew it. I… as soon as I saw you on that bed. I felt…”

He opened his eyes again, and they glistened. Tears balanced dangerously on his lashes.

“Magic,” he whispered, sounding bewildered and almost angry at the word. “I felt my magic reaching for you. And… and for him. I haven’t…” He shook his head, hair flopping into his face. “I haven’t used magic for so long, Hermione.”

She stared at him, chest tight. “What do you mean?”

He gave a short, humorless laugh, scrubbing his free hand over his face.

“Exactly what it sounds like,” he said. “I… stopped. After. After everything. I didn’t pick up my wand for months. At first I thought I physically couldn’t. Every time I tried, it felt like someone had their hands around my throat. Like the spell would turn around and hit me instead.”

His fingers were still splayed over her stomach. She covered them with her own. The contact seemed to steady him; he took a deeper breath.

“Harry… what happened?” she asked quietly. “To you. After I came back from Australia. I went to the Burrow and Molly said you were travelling, that you’d left, that you realised you were being used. I went to Grimmauld and you were gone and there was the note and…”

“I know,” he said quickly, pain flickering across his face at the mention of the letter. “I know. I… buggered that up spectacularly, didn’t I?”

“That’s one way to put it,” she said tightly.

He flinched, but he nodded, accepting the hit.

“I was broken,” he said simply. “More than I realised. I went back to Grimmauld after the Battle and thought I could just… be there. For a bit. Hide. But it wasn’t quiet enough. Everywhere I looked there was something that reminded me of someone who was dead or something I’d done wrong or some way I’d almost got you killed.”

He looked at her like he expected her to argue. She didn’t. She couldn’t. How could she, when she still heard Bellatrix’s laugh some nights?

“I started having… episodes,” he went on. “Panic attacks, I suppose. Couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t sleep. Couldn’t eat. Thought I heard Voldemort in the back garden at two in the morning and went out in my pyjamas with my wand and nearly hexed a fox to death.”

Hermione’s hand tightened on his without meaning to. He covered it with his other one, sandwiching her fingers between his palms.

“And then the relentless Ministry owls,” he said. “Interviews. Speeches. The ‘Golden Trio’ this, the Boy Who Lived Twice that. Kingsley tried to buffer it, but there’s only so much the Minister can do when the whole bloody country wants a circus.”

His mouth twisted.

“I couldn’t do it,” he said simply. “I couldn’t walk into that building and smile and shake hands and pretend I wasn’t… hollow. I thought if I went back I’d break everything and everyone I touched. Including you. Especially you.”

A lump formed in her throat.

“So I…” He blew out a breath. “I realised I needed help. Proper help. Not just more tea and ‘there, there, it’ll be alright.’ I checked myself into a mental health facility. Muggle. Out near Surrey.”

She blinked. That, she had not expected.

“The doctor they assigned me– Dr. Clarke– turns out he’s a squib,” Harry said, and there was a faint, incredulous smile hovering now, as though even he found the whole thing slightly ridiculous in retrospect. “Recognised me straight off. We had a bit of a row about it, actually. I thought he was going to send me back to Kingsley like some runaway schoolboy.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“He didn’t,” Harry said simply. “He looked at me for about ten seconds and said, ‘You are in no fit state to be anyone’s symbol, Mr Potter. You’re barely in fit state to be yourself.’ And then he told me if I didn’t take some time to heal before I went anywhere near magical Britain again, I’d relapse so hard I wouldn’t see daylight for a year.”

Hermione swallowed hard. She had very nearly done exactly that herself, in different ways.

“So you stayed,” she said.

“I stayed,” he echoed. “For three months. Didn’t tell anyone where I was. I know. I’m sorry, Hermione,” he added quickly, seeing her face. “It was selfish and cruel and you have every right to hex me into next week. But at the time I thought… if I disappeared, you’d all be better off.”

“That’s not how better-off works,” she whispered, voice shaking.

He winced. “I know that now. Clarke… helped. He made me talk. About… everything. The war. The Horcrux. Dying.” His eyes flicked to her face, gauging her reaction to the word. “You. The tent. Ron leaving. Ron coming back. The Manor. How I couldn’t stop replaying it all every time I closed my eyes.”

Tears pricked hot again; she blinked them back.

“But also about other things. Hogwarts. The Dursleys. Dumbledore. Sirius. How fucking angry I was about all of it.” He took a shuddering breath. “I didn’t use magic the whole time I was there,” he said. “On purpose. Clarke said if it was tangled up with all my trauma—which it was—I needed to give my brain a chance to uncouple the two. ‘You’re allowed to just be a man for a bit, not a bloody wizarding myth,’ he said. His words, not mine.”

“And after?” she asked.

“After, he suggested I… live,” Harry said, voice going almost shy. “As a Muggle. For a while. Somewhere I could get lost in a crowd. Said I should get a job, pay rent, learn how to do the mundane bits everyone else took for granted. ‘You skipped that part,’ he said. ‘Your psyche might benefit from knowing you can survive Tesco on a Saturday.’” He huffed a small laugh.

“So I did. I got a place under a stupid name, got my National Insurance number, let them take a truly awful photo of me for some ID, and tried to figure out who I was if I wasn’t Harry Potter, Boy Who Lived.”

She thought of the name on the card. H. James Potier. The neatly printed letters under the cheap plastic.

“And you didn’t write,” she said quietly.

A flush crept up his neck.

“I wrote,” he said. “All the bloody time. To you. I just… never posted them.”

She blinked. “What?”

He ducked his head, looking suddenly very much like the boy who’d once dreaded getting a mark lower than hers.

“I started a new letter every week,” he said. “Clarke’s idea. Said if I couldn’t talk to you, I should at least… talk as if I were. So I did. I wrote about the sessions. About stupid things, like the first time I burnt toast in a toaster instead of with a wand. About nightmares. About days that weren’t awful. About how much I missed you. Every night I’d add something. Sometimes three lines, sometimes three pages.” He smiled faintly. “There’s a whole stack of them. In a shoebox. In my wardrobe.”

Hermione’s throat closed. She imagined a box filled with hundreds of pages, his cramped handwriting spilling over margins, her name at the top of each.

“I thought if I sent them,” he went on, voice low, “I’d only drag you into my mess. That you’d feel obliged to come, or to fix it, because that’s who you are. And the one thing I was sure of was that you deserved… some peace. A chance to be something other than an emergency response unit for Harry bloody Potter.”

She laughed then, a broken little sound through tears.

“Oh, Harry,” she said, shaking her head against the pillow. “You’re such an idiot.”

He looked stricken for half a heartbeat, and then she added, “A well-intentioned idiot. But still an idiot.”

“Story of my life,” he said softly.

She sniffed and tried to wipe her face; the cannula taped to the back of her hand tugged. Harry immediately let go of her belly to gently brush his thumb under one of her eyes, catching a tear.

“I missed you,” she said, the words tumbling out like they’d been waiting just behind her teeth for months. “So much I thought I’d split open. Every day. Every night. At first I tried to be reasonable about it. Tell myself you needed time, that you’d come back when you could. But then weeks passed, and months, and there was… nothing.”

She took a shaky breath.

“So I made a… I suppose it was a ritual,” she said. “Whenever I thought of you– which was all the time, by the way– I’d imagine gathering up my love for you into a little golden ball.” She huffed out a humourless laugh. “Ridiculous, I know. Like a St Mungo’s patient in a brochure. But it helped. I’d picture it–warm and bright– and I’d send it out into the world. To find you. To sit with you, wherever you were, even if you never knew.”

Harry went very still.

He stared at her like she’d just said the password to a vault he’d been trying to open for years.

“You… what?” His voice had gone hoarse again.

She flushed, embarrassed now that she’d said it aloud. “It sounds silly, I know. But it’s the only way I…”

“Do you love me?” he blurted.

The question landed between them like a dropped wand.

He looked almost frightened of it. His fingers curled unconsciously against her wrist, as though bracing for impact.

“After all of this?” he added in a rush. “After Ron, and the tent, and the Manor, and me disappearing like a coward, and you having to do all of… this…” his gaze flicked to her belly, then back “...without me? Do you still…?”

Hermione stared at him for half a second.

Then, to her own surprise, she laughed. A startled, watery, incredulous sound.

“Oh, Harry,” she said, shaking her head, tears spilling for an entirely different reason now. “You are such a fucking git.”

His mouth fell open, indignant and stricken all at once. “That’s not…”

“Of course I love you,” she said, cutting him off. “I have for years, you absolute muppet. Do you honestly think I would go through an entire war, sleep in a tent with you, get tortured, cross continents, carry your child, and still be summoning little golden balls of affection in your direction if I didn’t?”

His face crumpled.

He made a sound…half laugh, half sob…and bowed his head for a moment, one hand coming up to cover his mouth. His shoulders shook once, hard.

When he looked at her again, his eyes were overflowing.

“I love you too,” he said, the words tumbling out as if he’d been holding them in as long as she had. “So much I thought it would kill me. So much it terrified me. So much I tried to cut it out of myself because I thought it would only hurt you. And it didn’t bloody work, because there you were in my head anyway every time I closed my eyes, and apparently you were also sending glowing balls of love at me, which explains a lot, actually.”

She laughed again, then hiccupped on a sob.

He leaned in, slowly, as though giving her time to refuse.

“Can I…?” he began.

“Yes,” she said, before he could finish.

Then his mouth was on hers.

It wasn’t like the frantic, desperate kisses of the tent, all teeth and cold hands and the knowledge that any day might be their last. It wasn’t like Shell Cottage, where everything had been raw and jagged and sharpened by pain.

This kiss was softer. Trembling at the edges. He tasted faintly of mint and coffee. His hand cupped her cheek, thumb brushing the corner of her mouth. She slid her fingers into his hair, and he made a tiny, helpless sound that shot straight through her.

For the first time in months, perhaps in years, the tight band around her chest eased.

A discreet throat-clearing snapped them apart.

Hermione jerked back against the pillow. Harry practically levitated away from the bed, spinning to face the curtain as it swished aside.

A woman in her forties with dark skin, a neat bun, and a stethoscope around her neck stood in the gap, eyebrows raised in the universal expression of a medical professional who has seen absolutely everything and is impressed by none of it.

“Well,” she said dryly. “I’ll take that as a sign you’re feeling better, Ms Granger.”

Hermione flushed from the roots of her hair to the tips of her toes. “I…sorry,” she stammered.

The doctor’s mouth twitched, betraying a hint of amusement. “No need to apologise. Just don’t pull any more leads off my monitors with your romantic enthusiasm.”

Hermione glanced down and realised one of the adhesive pads on her collarbone was indeed half detached. Harry made a strangled noise.

“I’m Dr Lewis,” the woman went on, sweeping the curtain fully aside and stepping in. “You gave us a little fright earlier. How are you feeling now? Any dizziness? Nausea?”

“A bit… woozy,” Hermione admitted. “But better. I can think in full sentences again.”

“That’s a start.” Dr Lewis checked the monitor, her expression smoothing into professional focus. “Your blood pressure’s come up nicely. Heart rate’s settling. Baby seems quite content in there.”

Hermione let out a breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding.

Dr Lewis glanced at Harry. “And you must be the fretting partner who’s been pacing up and down the corridor?”

Harry went scarlet. “Er. Yeah. Harry. Potter. Um. Potier. Right. Yes.”

Hermione almost laughed at the sheer horror on his face as he nearly said the wrong name; she covered it with a cough.

“Good,” Dr Lewis said briskly, either not noticing or choosing not to comment. “It’s useful to have someone around to keep an eye on her. Now, Ms Granger…do you remember what happened before you fainted?”

“I was… shopping,” Hermione said. “In Covent Garden. I’d been walking for a while. I sat down, and then I… found a wallet.” Her eyes flicked briefly to Harry’s back pocket. “And then everything went a bit… strange. I stood up, and the next thing I remember is… his voice.” She nodded toward Harry.

“Hmm.” Dr Lewis nodded, palpating gently along Hermione’s scalp with practised fingers. “No obvious bump. You lost consciousness briefly, but your reflexes are normal, and the scans were clear. You’re dehydrated, a bit anaemic, and according to your notes about thirty-four weeks along. All of which makes you more prone to episodes like this.”

Hermione winced. “I drank tea,” she said, a bit defensively.

“Tea is not water,” Dr Lewis said, in the not unkind tone of someone who had had this conversation forty times that week. “And from what your partner here tells me, it’s likely you hadn’t eaten much all day.”

Hermione felt Harry’s gaze on her like a physical thing. She stared fixedly at the blanket.

“I… forgot,” she muttered.

“You forgot to eat,” Dr Lewis repeated. “When you’re growing an entire human person.”

Hermione’s cheeks burned. “I was… busy,” she said weakly.

“Shopping?” Harry added, trying and failing to keep the reproach out of his voice.

“Exactly,” Dr Lewis said. “Busy. Doing things you can do just as well after a sandwich. Right, lecture over.” She gave Hermione a small, wry smile. “In all seriousness, this faint looks like a combination of low blood sugar, standing up too quickly, and perhaps a bit of emotional shock.” Her eyes flicked to Harry for the briefest moment. “You’re both… alright?”

“Yes,” Hermione said quickly. “Just… surprised.”

“You and me both,” Harry murmured under his breath. She kicked his ankle lightly; he smiled.

“Good,” Dr Lewis said. “I’m happy to discharge you, Ms Granger, as long as you go straight home, hydrate properly, and have a nutritious meal. No more marathon shopping trips on an empty stomach. If you faint again, or if you have any pain, bleeding, or reduced fetal movements, you come straight back, understood?”

“Yes,” Hermione said, chastened.

“And you…” Dr Lewis turned to Harry, fixing him with a look that Hermione recognised as the universal female conspiracy of “I’m counting on you.” “You make sure she actually eats, not just whispers promises to herself about doing it later.”

“Absolutely,” Harry said at once. “I’ll… feed her whatever she wants.”

“Within reason,” Dr Lewis said dryly, already scribbling something on Hermione’s chart. “No raw seafood, no unpasteurised cheeses, no litres of coffee. Other than that, knock yourselves out.”

She unhooked the leads and cannula and when she was finished, she tore off the form and handed it to Hermione. “Take this to reception and they’ll sort the rest. Take it easy for a few days. You’re in the home stretch now.”

Hermione nodded, fingers closing around the paper.

“Thank you,” she said, and meant more than just the medical instructions.

Dr Lewis’s gaze softened for a moment. “You’re welcome,” she said. “Do try not to faint again on my watch; it plays havoc with my schedule.”

With that, she swept back through the curtain, leaving them in a suddenly quieter bubble of space.

For a moment, neither of them spoke.

Harry perched carefully on the edge of the chair beside her bed, suddenly looking unsure again. His hand hovered over the rail, then settled lightly on top of hers.

“So,” he said, in a tone that tried for casual and landed somewhere in the vicinity of reverent. “Food. Any preferences, or shall I just obey Dr Lewis and roll you into the hospital cafeteria?”

Hermione made a face. “Absolutely not. I want something that doesn’t smell like disinfectant and despair.”

He grinned, the expression a little shaky but real. “Fair. Nutritious? There’s a vegan place not far from here, I think.”

“Harry James Potter, if you feed me vegan at thirty-four weeks pregnant, I will hex you into next Tuesday,” she said, scandalised. “No. I want… fish and chips. Proper ones. With mushy peas. And something greasy and awful.”

His smile widened into something that lit his whole face, banishing the last of the grey from his eyes.

“Fish and chips it is,” he said. “I know a chippy in Waterloo that does the best battered cod in London. Clarke swears by it. Says it’s better than half the antidepressants on the market.”

She smiled back, tired and full and aching in a way that felt almost good.

“And…I want to be with you,” she added, more softly. “Wherever that is. Hospital, greasy chippy, miserable little flat. I don’t care. I just… want to be where you are.”

Something in his expression broke open entirely.

His hand tightened around hers. He leaned down, pressed his forehead gently to hers, eyes closing.

“Funny,” he murmured. “That’s exactly what I’ve spent the last six months wanting with you. I just didn't know how to say it.”

She turned her head, just enough to brush her lips against his cheek.

“Well,” she said. “You’re out of practice at a lot of things, Potter. We’ll just have to fix that, won’t we?”

He laughed– a real, startled, delighted laugh that made the monitor blip in sympathy.

“Yeah,” he said, brushing another quick kiss against her mouth before straightening. “We will.”

He squeezed her hand one more time, then stood, reaching automatically for her bag and coat from the chair in the corner. He slung the strap over his shoulder like it belonged there, then moved to the side of the bed, lowering the rail with a practiced motion that made her wonder how long he’d been here, watching over her.

“Ready?” he asked.

Hermione looked down at the swell of her belly, then up at him. At the faint stubble on his jaw, the worry lines still etched between his brows, the way his fingers had already crept back to rest lightly on her side as though drawn by magnetism.

“For fish and chips and the rest of my life?” she said. “Yes. I think I am.”

He smiled, brilliant and a little disbelieving, and held out his hand.

She took it.

Chapter 3: Epilogue

The door of the Burrow was vibrating with Christmas Eve cheer, as it always did.

Hermione heard it through the winter air as they crunched up the path— voices colliding in the kitchen, a burst of laughter like a kettle boiling over, someone arguing about whether the pudding had been moved, and Molly Weasley’s unmistakable, indignant, affectionate bellow cutting through all of it like a conductor’s baton.

Harry turned to Hermione with a mischievous grin, the kind that meant he was about to make things worse on purpose.

“Harry James Potter, do not you dare...”

“Oh, Weasleys!” he hollered into the winter air. “The Potters are here!”

Jamie let out an ear-piercing scream directly beside Harry’s ear, sheer joy weaponised. Harry winced so hard he nearly folded in half.

“Oof. I did not think that out,” he muttered, shooting Hermione a rueful look.

He tightened his hold as the toddler made an immediate bid for freedom. Jamie was made of elbows and righteous fury and Christmas excitement. At nearly two, he had discovered the power of his own body and used it like a weapon. He wriggled in Harry’s arms with a determination that could have powered the Knight Bus.

“Gran!” Jamie shouted, spotting the crooked windows and the warm glow beyond them. “Gaaaaan! I comin’ to seeeee you!”

Hermione shifted the sleeping bundle against her chest. The baby—who had blissfully slept through her brother and father’s rioting—made a tiny, offended squeak, her face scrunching as though the movement itself was the final insult to her dignity. Hermione tucked her more securely into the crook of her elbow and drew the edge of the blanket up over her rosy nose.

“She’s going to wake up,” Hermione murmured, more to herself than anyone else.

“She’s probably already awake,” Harry said, voice warm, eyes flicking to their daughter. “She’s just too dignified to announce it.”

Lil’s eyelids fluttered. Hermione felt the delicate rooting motion begin, the small mouth searching even in sleep. Her body answered with a familiar heaviness, milk aching behind her breasts.

“Gran! Gran! Gran!” Jamie chanted, building toward a shout.

Harry wrestled him upward like a squirming sack of potatoes and pressed a kiss to his temple. “Mate, if you headbutt me again, I’m leaving you on the step.”

Jamie’s head snapped around immediately. “No!”

“Right,” Harry said. “Then stop trying to throw yourself out of my arms like you’re escaping Azkaban.”

Jamie, offended by the implication that he was anything other than a free and sovereign citizen, wriggled harder.

Hermione smiled despite the ache and exhaustion, despite the too-bright joy that still sometimes startled her. Two years ago, she’d fainted in Covent Garden and woken to Harry’s face over her like a miracle. Tonight, she stood on the Burrow’s step with their son thrashing in Harry’s arms and their daughter tucked into her own, and her whole body felt like a filled cup—heavy with love, sloshing dangerously close to spilling over.

Harry shifted Jamie again, bracing him against his hip like he’d been doing it all his life. Fatherhood suited him. It hadn’t erased what was sharp or raw inside him, but it had given it somewhere to settle. There were still days he went distant and quiet, still nights he woke sweating and disoriented, still moments when a sudden noise made him flinch hard enough to spill a mug of tea. But he had learned how to come back.

How to breathe.

How to be held.

How to hold.

Harry reached for the knocker.

The door flew open before his knuckles touched it.

Molly Weasley filled the frame like a storm in a cardigan, her hair swept up and her cheeks flushed from heat and cooking and sheer force of personality.

Jamie chose that moment to fling one arm out like a grappling hook.

“Gran!” he shrieked, launching toward her with the confidence of someone who had never once in his life been dropped.

Harry tightened his grip and leaned back, amused and exasperated. “Oi. I’m not a broomstick. Stop it.”

Molly’s stern expression cracked at once. “Oh, my darling boy!” she cried, hands going to Jamie. “Come here, then—come to Gran.”

Jamie made a triumphant noise and kicked his legs wildly as Molly scooped him, laughing, into her arms. He immediately began patting her cheeks like he needed to confirm she was real.

“Gran,” he said, satisfied.

“Gran indeed,” Molly crooned, kissing the top of his head. “And you, Harry—honestly, you look half frozen. Come in, come in.”

Then her eyes moved, and Hermione realised she’d been standing just far enough behind Harry to escape Molly’s first sweep of attention.

Molly’s gaze dropped to Hermione’s arms and narrowed instantly. “Hermione Jean Granger Potter,” she said, and the full name landed like a gavel, “what are you doing out of bed?”

Hermione’s laugh came out soft and a little sheepish. “Hello to you too, Molly.”

“Come in here this instant,” Molly scolded, already stepping back as if she could physically usher Hermione into warmth by force. “You’re barely a week out, and here you are traipsing about in the cold like you’re off to the shops. Where is your sense?”

Hermione glanced past Molly’s shoulder—caught sight of the kitchen table already half-set, the tree in the corner thick with ornaments, the familiar chaos—and felt her throat tighten.

“My sense,” she said carefully, “is that I needed this more than another few hours in bed.”

Molly huffed, but her eyes were damp. “Well. Come sit down.”

She turned and bellowed toward the interior of the house, “Arthur! Up! Let Hermione have the chair. Yes, she’s come! Oh, of course the baby’s here too—honestly…”

She stepped back, unwrapping the scarf from around Jamie’s neck as he twisted in her arms to shout, “GRANDAD!” the moment Arthur came into view.

Arthur held out his arms at once, face alight. “There’s a good lad,” he said, and Jamie made a noise of pure delight as he was transferred from Gran to Grandad like an honoured parcel.

In the whirl that followed, cloaks and scarves and gloves were whisked away, and Hermione found herself being guided—not quite forcibly, but with Molly’s undeniable gravitational pull—toward the sitting room.

“Harry,” Molly called over her shoulder, “you take the wraps to the bedroom.”

Harry stepped in behind Hermione, rubbing his shoulder where Jamie’s heel had dug in. “Yes, Mum,” he said, mock-suffering.

Molly pointed a finger at him without looking. “Don’t you start, young man.”

She motioned Hermione toward the plush armchair by the fire. “Hermione, love, you’re sitting down, and you are not to move unless you absolutely want to do so.”

Ginny breezed into the sitting room from the opposite door, mug in one hand, hair pulled back messily. Her eyes lit the instant she saw the bundle in Hermione’s arms.

“Oh my god,” she breathed, crossing the room with careful speed. “Lil?”

Hermione’s chest loosened. “Lil.”

She lifted the baby slightly so Ginny could see her better. “Lil,” she murmured, “meet your godmother.”

Ginny leaned in, her face softening in a way Hermione didn’t see often except in private, and brushed one finger along Lil’s cheek. Lil’s mouth opened in a small, indignant O, then closed again, as if she’d decided this was beneath commentary, and she drifted back toward sleep.

“She’s gorgeous,” Ginny whispered.

Hermione’s eyes burned. “Thank you.”

Ginny’s gaze flicked to Hermione’s face, then away, then back again—like she was still learning how to hold tenderness without flinching from it. “You look like you’re going to keel over,” she said briskly, which was Ginny’s way of saying I’m glad you’re here and I’m worried about you and you’re still mine.

“I probably am,” Hermione admitted, and her laugh trembled.

“Sit down,” Ginny ordered, and then, because she had always been ruthlessly practical, she tugged the edge of Lil’s blanket and tucked it in more snugly. “And if Mum gives you any nonsense, I’ll hex her.”

Molly’s voice boomed from the entryway. “I heard that!”

Ginny didn’t even look guilty. “Good.”

Hermione lowered herself into the armchair, careful and slow, her body still aching in places she hadn’t known could ache. She felt Harry nearby—hovering, but trying not to crowd her. He’d been like this when Jamie was born, too, when she was post-birth fragile: like an invisible hand at her back, ready to catch her if she swayed. It reminded her, with a sudden ache, of how he’d been during the war and at Shell Cottage—only now the vigilance had gentled into something domestic. A glass of water always within reach. A blanket tucked around her shoulders. A murmured How’s your pain? at three in the morning when Lil wouldn’t settle.

Harry’s eyes met hers across the room and held. Something passed there—gratitude, wonder, a kind of reverent disbelief that he was still allowed this life. Hermione felt it in her bones.

Jamie wriggled out of Arthur’s arms and promptly barreled toward Ron, who had just emerged from the kitchen carrying a tray of something steaming.

“Captain!” Ron boomed, seeing Jamie, and immediately lowered the tray to a side table before swooping the toddler up with both hands. “Is that my favourite little Potter bloke?”

Jamie shrieked in delight.

“Airplane!” Ron announced, and began hauling Jamie around the sitting room at shoulder height, making exaggerated engine noises. Jamie’s laugh rang out like bells.

Lavender appeared behind Ron, moving slower now, one hand unconsciously cradling the gentle swell of her own belly. Her face had softened since Hogwarts—less sharp, less performative—and her eyes shone as she watched Ron with something like awe, as if she still couldn’t quite believe she was allowed this version of him.

When Hermione’s gaze met hers, Lavender smiled—small and sincere—and lifted her free hand in a quiet wave before turning back toward the kitchen, as though she didn’t want to demand anything of the moment.

Hermione returned it, feeling a strange, quiet warmth settle in her chest. Life had not gone the way any of them expected.

But here they were.

“Look at him,” Ginny murmured, settling back into her chair. She nodded toward Ron, who was now swooping Jamie toward the ceiling and then down in dizzy spirals, making absurd aeroplane noises as though the fate of the world depended on his commitment to the bit. “My brother is insufferable.”

“He’s happy,” Hermione said, and it wasn’t a defence so much as an observation—simple, factual, almost sacred.

Ginny’s expression shifted, something soft moving behind her eyes. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “He is.”

The room filled, slowly, the way the Burrow always filled—like a tide coming in. Bill and Fleur arrived with Victoire bouncing on her toes; Percy came in with Arthur right behind him, both carrying stacks of plates as if Molly might accept help if it were forced into her hands. George drifted in like a quiet shadow, and Angelina slid in beside him, fingers twining with his without fanfare. He still smiled sometimes—Hermione had seen it, quick and bright like a spark—but they all knew what it cost him. Tonight he looked quieter, as if the noise of Christmas was a wave he’d learned to endure rather than ride.

Charlie arrived last, hair windswept, cheeks red from the cold, and immediately proclaimed that he’d brought “a surprise”—a charmed wooden dragon that puffed harmless smoke rings. Victoire shrieked with joy. Teddy—now far too quick—darted after Charlie toward the back door, already yelling something about catching “real ones.”

“Dragons!” Teddy shouted, sprinting.

“Dwagons!” Jamie echoed, immediately trying to slide out of Ron’s arms.

Ron lowered him, laughing, and Jamie bolted after Teddy with all the speed his small legs could manage—approximately the speed of a determined duckling.

Hermione watched him go, her heart doing that dangerous filling thing again.

Harry, naturally, moved after Jamie without thinking. He scooped him up halfway to the door, Jamie squealing in outrage.

“No!” Jamie yelled, flailing. “Dwagons!”

“Mate,” Harry said, calm but firm, “it’s freezing. You’re not going outside without a coat and a hat. We are not raising a feral child.”

Jamie screamed as if Harry had proposed sending him to bed that instant.

Lil began an insistent rooting, and Hermione smiled into her blanket, watching Harry wrestle their squirming toddler while trying to fish Jamie’s tiny hat from the hook by the back door. This—this ridiculous, ordinary life—was the kind of thing she had never dared hope for in the tent.

Molly’s voice rose again from the kitchen. “Percy, don’t put those there, I need that space! Bill, honestly, you’ll spill the—Arthur, darling, will you please—”

Arthur’s cheerful voice replied, “Yes, Molly. Of course, Molly. Absolutely, Molly.”

Bill’s deeper laugh followed.

Hermione leaned back, letting the sound wash over her. The Burrow was a storm of love and demands and clatter and warmth. It always had been. She had forgotten, for a while, what it felt like to be in the middle of it.

Lil’s fussing sharpened. Hermione lifted the edge of her jumper and guided her to latch. The baby’s frantic indignation turned instantly to steady, eager suckling, and Hermione’s body answered with a familiar rush—relief and tenderness braided together so tightly she could hardly tell one from the other.

She closed her eyes briefly.

Let herself breathe.

When she opened them again, she saw the room through a softened lens: George on the far sofa, quieter, Angelina’s fingers twined in his as though anchoring him. Ron back to playing aeroplane with Jamie—who was now shrieking with laughter despite having been forcibly hatted. Lavender watching them with one hand on her belly, eyes shining. Fleur smoothing Victoire’s hair while Bill murmured something in her ear that made her smile. Arthur and Percy carrying plates under Molly’s sharp direction, both pretending they were not being directed.

Harry paused in the doorway for a moment, silhouetted by kitchen light, one hand resting on Jamie’s back with quiet certainty. He looked…right. Not polished. Not heroic in the Ministry sense. But right, in the way he had always been when he was allowed to do something simple and real.

He hadn’t gone back to the Ministry. He hadn’t finished Auror training. The first time Hermione had asked—carefully, as if approaching something fragile—whether he thought he might someday, he’d stared into his tea for a long time and then said, very quietly, “No. Not when I’ve finally found something that doesn’t make me feel like I’m about to drown.”

So he’d stayed with the job he’d gotten in the Muggle world: janitor at a primary school not far from their Cambridge flat. Humble work. Invisible work. But Harry came home smelling faintly of soap and pencil shavings and snow-damp children’s coats, and he looked tired in a way that didn’t frighten her. He talked about fixing broken chair legs and unclogging sinks and painting over scuffs. He talked about the children leaving him little drawings—stick-figure families with too many heads, messy hearts scribbled in crayon.

He talked about putting things to rights, one small ordinary task at a time.

It suited him.

And in the quiet spaces of their life, his magic had returned—not in grand, showy bursts, but in gentle threads. A warming charm on Lil’s bottle. A levitation to lift a heavy laundry basket. A quiet Lumos in the middle of the night when Jamie woke frightened. Magic not as weapon, not as symbol, but as tool and comfort.

Hermione looked down at Lil, nursing greedily, her tiny fist flexing against Hermione’s skin.

Home, she thought with sudden, fierce tenderness. We made a home.

Harry turned back into the room briefly, catching Hermione’s gaze. His eyes softened. He lifted two fingers to his lips and then pointed them toward her in a small, silent kiss. Hermione felt something inside her melt.

A few minutes later, Harry had finally succeeded in dressing Jamie like a tiny, indignant explorer. He scooped him up again and pressed a kiss to his hat.

“Right,” Harry told him firmly. “Now you can go hunt dragons.”

“Dwagons!” Jamie shouted, instantly forgiving the tyranny of hats.

Harry opened the back door, cold air sweeping in. Teddy and Victoire shrieked somewhere outside, already on the hunt. Charlie’s booming laugh followed, bright as firelight.

Hermione leaned back against the sofa, Lil warm and heavy in her arms, the Burrow humming around her. Molly’s voice rose again, directing the table-setting like a general, and somewhere a chair scraped and someone complained good-naturedly about being bossed about.

And Hermione—Hermione sat in the middle of it, full to the brim, watching the people she loved move through the room like constellations. George’s quiet endurance. Ron’s ridiculous joy. Lavender’s shining hope. Harry’s steady presence, like gravity holding her in place even when he was outside.

She lifted her eyes and found him crossing back toward her. He perched on the arm of her chair as if it belonged to him—like he’d been doing that for years—and smiled down at her.

“Our son is weatherproofed for thirty seconds,” he reported solemnly. “Maximum.”

Hermione smiled.

Harry’s eyes warmed, concern threading through the affection. “Are you alright, sweetheart? You look quite tired.”

She sighed, letting her head tip back against the chair. “I am quite tired, Harry,” she admitted. She lifted her hand toward his face and he caught it, pressing a kiss into her palm the way he always did now, like it was his own private liturgy. “But I needed this tonight,” she confessed, voice soft. “I needed our family.”

“I did too,” he said, and bent to press a kiss into her hair. “You’ll rest tomorrow, alright?”

Hermione leaned into his warmth, Lil heavy and quiet against her chest, the house full around them.

“I promise,” she whispered.

He exhaled, the sound almost a laugh and almost a prayer. “Thank you for this lovely life, my love.”

Hermione’s smile turned watery.

It was lovely.

It was full and beautiful.

And Hermione did not feel like she was waiting for something she might never get.

She had it.

Right here.

Right now.

With him.