"It's good to know that some things never change," Hermione said as she pushed back from the table with a contented sigh. "You're still the best cook in two worlds, wizard and Muggle."
"Thank you, dear," Molly Weasley said, a very pleased smile spreading across her round face.
"I second that," Harry sighed, grateful (as he always was after one of Molly's splendid meals) that wizard's robes had no waistband that required letting out.
"And since Neville isn't here to speak for himself," Ginny put in as she caught up the last two pieces of fried chicken left on the platter, "I'll add his 'amen' to that." Ginny wrapped the chicken in a large linen napkin and placed the whole in a wicker basket sitting next to her on the bench. "He's been so busy at the greenhouse these last few weeks, I think he'd starve to death if I didn't take proper care of him."
"Speaking of greenhouses," Hermione said, "this is a splendid Greenhouse Charm. Did you perform this for your N.E.W.T.'s?"
"Yes," Ginny said. "Actually, I learned it working with Neville. He uses it to protect plants caught outside in late-season frosts. It's just as easy to cast it over a picnic table as a garden."
The barrier surrounding the table in the Weasleys' back garden was invisible and, for all intents and purposes, intangible. It was, in effect, a shield composed of solidified air. As such, it was porous enough to allow outside air to pass through (and, in the case of plants, for carbon dioxide to pass out in turn). But it formed a buffer against rain, snow, and even gusting wind. And the temperature at the table was at least 30 degrees higher than that outside the barrier, making the midday lunch a very cozy and comfortable affair for all concerned.
"Oops," Ginny said suddenly. As she drew her hand back from the basket, the clasp caught at a bracelet dangling from her left wrist, just behind her watch. She freed herself carefully before drawing her wand and waving it over her wrist to tighten a link loosened in the process of disentanglement. "Thank Merlin I spotted that," she said with a relieved smile. "That loose link might have snapped at any time. If I lose this, it will break Neville's heart."
"What is it?" Hermione said curiously, leaning forward now.
"I wrote you about it," Ginny said. Holding up her arm so that the bracelet caught the pale sunlight dully, she smiled down on it as though it were composed of diamonds. "It was our first Christmas together after Neville began working at the apothecary. He wasn't making much money then, and he wanted desperately to get me something special. But all he had to his name was a handful of Knuts." She shook the bracelet musically, and Hermione smiled warmly.
"I remember now. Every night before Madam Hockingburr took the day's receipts to Gringotts, Neville searched the coins, looking for specific minting dates. Whenever he found one he was looking for, he traded it for one of his own Knuts."
"This one," Ginny said, touching one of the bronze coins, "was minted the year I was born. That one," she pointed again, "was minted the year Neville was born. There's also one for the year we met, on the Hogwarts Express. And another for the year we went to the Yule Ball together. And another for the year -- "
Ginny was about to indicate a Knut minted the year she and her friends had gone to the Ministry on their ill-fated mission to rescue Sirius. It was then, according to Neville, that he had felt the first pang of what would eventually grow into a deep and abiding love for Ginny. It was, she reflected, the only good thing to come from an otherwise tragic experience.
"It's been my good luck charm ever since," Ginny concluded. "It's only a handful of Knuts, but I wouldn't exchange it for a vaultful of Galleons. As long as I wear it, I feel like Neville is with me wherever I go. It's like we're never apart."
"I never did get to congratulate you two properly at Ron's," Harry said apologetically.
"Don't give it a thought, Harry," Ginny said with a toss of her head that sent her long, fiery hair dancing about her shoulders. "Between Dad and Percy, we know what it's like when the Ministry is your taskmaster."
Smiling gratefully, Harry turned to Hermione and said, "All settled in, then? Nothing coming by post from Beauxbatons?"
"No," Hermione said. Her eyes drifted up along the twisted outline of the Burrow until they came to rest on the topmost window. This did not escape Harry's trained Auror's eyes.
"Just my luck the only vacancy was at the very top," he smiled. "I'd forgotten how many stairs this house has. Granted, I used a Levitating Charm on your trunk, but my feet still remember every step between here and the loft. Pity about the anti-Apparation spell, but I suppose it wouldn't do to have people popping into rooms not their own. Still, all those bloody stairs..."
"Didn't you know?" Ginny said as she put a covered platter of mashed potatoes atop the chicken in Neville's lunch basket. "Hermione asked for the highest room we had when she wrote that she was coming back. In fact, we had to pull a switch to give her that room. The vacancy that opened up yesterday was on the third floor. We did a switch with the boarder in the loft."
"You didn't tell me that!" Hermione said disapprovingly. "You put someone to all the trouble of relocating -- "
"Trouble?" Molly chirped. "Quite the contrary. Old Mr. Nobbingford hated the loft. He has terrible back pains, not to mention a knee that hasn't worked right since 1952."
"That's right," Harry put in. "He played Quidditch for the Cannons until he took a spill in the championship game and had to retire. Ron interviewed him for his paper, and he recommended the Burrow when the old bloke mentioned he was looking for a room. I never knew what room he had. Not surprising it was the only vacancy, really. I know I'd be put out if I was so far away from Molly's kitchen."
"And he hated climbing all those stairs," Molly concluded, smiling at Harry's compliment. "But there was nothing else for it, as it was the only vacancy we had at the time -- and the poor dear couldn't move elsewhere -- his pension was barely enough to keep body and soul together, even with the special rate I gave him."
Looking up contemplatively, Harry said, "Don't the rooms all have Isomorphic Charms allowing its occupants to come and go?"
"Of course," Molly said. "Tenants are all 'harmonized' with their own rooms for purposes of Apparation. But that only applies to passage to and from the house, not within the house itself. In any case, he told me when he arrived that he hasn't been able to Apparate properly for ages. Took a Bludger to the head some years ago, poor lamb."
"So when we told him that he'd be able to move down three floors," Ginny giggled, "he was so happy that he gave Mum the biggest kiss she's had since Dad trapped her under the mistletoe at the Ministry Christmas party."
Molly immediately blushed as red as the raspberry currant she was spooning over the dessert tarts waiting to be served.
"How did this house come about, anyway?" Harry pondered aloud. It was a question he'd asked many times to no one in particular, but never to either Molly or Arthur.
"Well," Molly said thoughtfully as she passed around the tarts, "back when it was only Arthur and me, there was just the one level. Arthur was just starting out, and we didn't need much room. But things changed when Bill came along."
"When was that?" Harry asked.
"1969," Molly said without hesitation, a soft glow growing in her eyes. "Such a beautiful child he was -- but oh, could he cry! Thank goodness there were no neighbors then. The Lovegoods hadn't moved in as yet, and the limits of Ottery St. Catchpole weren't so near then. But the din was enough to wake the dead! So Arthur put up the second story for a nursery, complete with a Soundproofing Charm so that one of us could sleep while the other took care of the feeding and...whatever." She smiled as everyone laughed through mouthfuls of tart. "That worked for a while -- until Charlie popped in two years later."
"And you added a third floor then?" Harry prompted.
"Not straightaway," Molly said. "Charlie slept with Arthur and me for the first two years. He was nothing like Bill. Slept the night away as nice as you please. But when we tried to move the boys into the upstairs room together, Bill wouldn't have it. Four years old, mind, and nothing we said or did had any effect. Merlin, how that boy screamed when he didn't get his own way. But there was nothing for it, so Arthur put up the third story the next weekend."
Molly peered uncertainly at the house now, her eyes seeming ever more critical of her husband's skills as a house builder. At last she shrugged and resumed her narrative.
"There was a lull of sorts until Percy came along, in 1976. A lot like Bill, he was, yet unlike. I mean, they were both strong-willed, but where Bill screamed to get what he wanted, Percy pouted."
Harry and Hermione exchanged a smile at this news, which, given their own experiences with Percy, was scarcely news at all.
"Anyway," Molly sighed, "Arthur was moving up at the Ministry, and we knew that we'd eventually be called up to entertain guests here, if only in response to the affairs we would be invited to attend at their homes. So up went the fourth floor. Arthur and I slept on the second level, Charlie and Percy shared the third, and Bill took the top room.
"Then, of course, just when it seemed that everything was going smoothly, the twins came along. 1978," she added, anticipating Harry's question. "Now, looking at Fred and George, you'd think them virtual copies of Charlie. But looks are deceiving, as we found out in short order. Let me tell you, Bill had nothing on them when it came to assertiveness. Thank goodness Bill went off to Hogwarts two years later or I don't know what we'd have done.
"As it was, Ron was born the year Bill went off, so we were right back where we started. So Arthur added the fifth floor, this time with an attic for good measure, as if to say, 'That's it, no more.'"
"And then I was born," Ginny giggled.
"Yes," Molly said with the warmest smile Harry had ever seen her wear. "Finally Arthur got it right!" Her audience laughed as one, and Molly resumed: "Well, things went swimmingly for the first year. But no sooner did Charlie go off to Hogwarts than we came back from a trip to Diagon Alley to find that wretched ghoul in the loft! Oh, we tried to get rid of him, goodness knows. But there must have been some extremely powerful Dark magic clinging to him from when he was still alive, because even the occasional Auror Arthur coaxed the Ministry into lending us from time to time would go away defeated." Turning to Harry, Molly said earnestly, "I still can't thank you enough for ridding us of him at last, Harry."
Harry smiled. It had not only been his pleasure to help the Weasleys, after all they had done for him over the years, but he'd earned extra credits on his final examination when qualifying for his Auror classification.
"It's not surprising those other blokes went away frustrated," Harry said. "Some of the spells I used were ones Hermione modified when we fought Voldemort. Almost like she evicted the bugger herself just so she could have his room later on."
Molly's choking laugh was cut off as her throat siezed for a moment at mention of Voldemort's name (as had been the case in Ron's flat the night before, Ginny reacted not at all, while Hermione only smiled).
"Yes...well..." Molly said as her heart rate slowed to normal, "thanks to you, the boarding house is doing a thriving business. Can you imagine how many people would want to live here with that horrid creature keeping them awake all night?"
Sensing an opening into which she could plunge, Hermione said now, "To answer your question, Harry, I wanted the highest room available because I've grown accustomed to meditating over views from Gryffindor Tower, and lately the towers of Beauxbatons. I can't see myself occupying a ground floor flat anytime soon."
Thinking of his own ground-level flat, Harry sighed inwardly. He'd not been able to rid his mind of the image of himself and Hermione sharing his flat at some future date, and the closer that date, the better. But it was not the most realistic dream he'd had in the last three-plus years. Too much had passed between himself and Hermione for her to come rushing back into his life (not to say his bed -- not that she'd ever been there in the first place) the moment she set foot back on British soil.
Perceptive witch that she was, Hermione saw the introspective glaze cloud Harry's eyes, and rather than intrude on whatever private thoughts he might be entertaining, she turned to Ginny, who was just finishing up with her fiancée's lunch basket.
"Things are going well with Neville?" she asked.
"I've never seen him so happy," Ginny said, her soft brown eyes glowing with a lovelight that rang a silent chord in Hermione's bosom. "It was quite a chore to convince Madam Hockingburr that adding a greenhouse to her apothecary would pay for itself inside of a year. But now that she doesn't have to import certain herbs and plants that Neville can grow in the back lot, profits are soaring."
"That wouldn't have worked with the apothecary in Diagon Alley," Harry said to no one in particular. "There's no room to expand, since they're surrounded by London on all sides. But Hogsmeade has plenty of open ground. Of course, the village council took a bit of convincing. It was a close thing for a while."
Harry's voice trailed off, and an uneasy silence settled over the picnic table. Everyone knew that the council had relented only upon the testimony of one whose business the apothecary valued above all others (as, indeed, the merchants as a whole valued the livelihood they derived from the institution in whose employ he was). It was the Potions Master of Hogwarts, Severus Snape, whose support had swayed the council in favor of the apothecary, and Neville. It was an act of unexpected generosity, given Snape's animosity toward Neville all through the latter's school years. It had, indeed, softened the opinion of many who had viewed the reformed Death Eater with suspicion, even after his selfless aid in overthrowing the reign of Lord Voldemort, not once, but twice. But one there was whose heart would never soften toward Snape. It required only the briefest glance at Harry's face to reaffirm this to Hermione.
In an attempt to relieve the tension, Hermione cast her best smile at Ginny and asked, "Have any of our old classmates been to visit Hogsmeade lately? I wonder what some of them are doing now -- I've been shameful in my neglect of them, when I know they're only as far away as owl-post."
"Let's see," Ginny said thoughtfully, one eye resting covertly on Harry as she gave every appearance of looking straight at Hermione. "I see Lavender every now and then. Whenever stories are scarce, she buys a few rounds at the Three Broomsticks in the hopes that someone will talk out of turn and give her something worth a couple of columns. No illegal dragon eggs as yet," she added with a smirk. "But as long as the Daily Prophet keeps picking up the tab, there's always hope."
"Circulation of the Prophet went up 20% when they started running Lavender's gossip column," Harry told Hermione, who grinned in response.
"And I saw Oliver Wood at Quality Quidditch Supplies last week, signing autographs. Still has those shoulders a centaur would kill for," she said with an exaggerated sigh.
Ginny and Hermione giggled as the latter tucked into her tart. Harry smiled as he wiped raspberry currant from his chin. Molly clucked her tongue as if to say that engaged women should be more circumspect in regard to men not their fiancée.
"Oh," Ginny said almost as an afterthought, "Draco was in yesterday, buying supplies."
"Ouch," Harry grunted as he stabbed his left thumb with his fork. Another awkward silence fell as all eyes flickered momentarily in Harry's direction.
"I'd forgotten," Hermione said with a furtive glance at Harry. "You wrote me that Draco was engaged as Potions Master at Hogwarts in September."
"Yes," Ginny said as she essayed to lick currant from her upper lip in as ladylike a manner as she could manage. "Snape left in quite a hurry, evidently."
"I understand they passed him over for the Defense Against the Dark Arts position again," Hermione said. "I suppose it was just one time too many. But isn't Draco a bit young to be a Potions Master?"
"He's about the same age Snape was when Dumbledore hired him," Harry said in a voice cool as a gravestone. He said no more, but slowly raised a forkful of tart to his mouth and disposed of it unhurriedly, though, Hermione thought, with little or no savor. If Molly noticed this last, her manner gave no evidence.
When everyone's dessert plate bore nothing but tart crumbs and currant stains, Molly cleared the table with a wave of her wand.
"I'd best get started on supper," she said as she nodded at Ginny to negate the Greenhouse Charm. "It's like having a family to cook for again -- except that this lot pays for the privelege."
Harry and Hermione smiled as they pulled their cloaks snug before Ginny dissolved the barrier surrounding them with a tricky wand motion that had gone far to earning her an "O" on her Charms N.E.W.T. practical exam. Those skills served her well nowadays at Gringotts, where she worked at renewing and reinforcing the many protective wards safeguarding the unimagined wealth stored in the vaults deep under London. She hadn't Bill's skill at breaking Curses cast by others, but she prided herself that not even Bill could break through one of her magical protective Charms using every trick he knew. This in itself, in a demonstration exercise authorized by Harry upon his own vault, had sealed the deal with the Security Goblins at Gringotts, who had offered her a long-term contract (with bonus) on the spot.
Harry had thought Hermione might take such a position following graduation, instead of going off to the continent as she had. More than once he wondered how different both of their lives would be had she remained. Given the tension between them, it might have made matters worse. As it was, their separation had allowed both of them the latitude to grow in ways that might not have been possible otherwise. The one thing he was sure of was how glad he felt now that she was finally back where she belonged.
"Lunch is the easiest meal for Mum," Ginny told Harry and Hermione. "Most of the boarders work, so they're only here for breakfast and supper. That only leaves Mr. Nobbingford, and Mum always takes his lunch up to him, to save wear and tear on his knee. That way he only has to come down twice a day, and that's much easier now that Hermione's taken the loft."
"I'm surprised you never moved in here, Harry," Hermione said.
Harry gave Hermione a quizzical look. Was she saying that she would have liked to have the two of them living under the same roof?
"There were no vacancies when I graduated from the Auror program," he said. "And when I began, Ginny was still in school, remember. The conversion to boarding house came a year later, and by then I was tied up with a lease on my flat."
Harry did not mention that the three-year lease he'd signed shortly after Hermione's departure was due to expire shortly. He'd supposed he would simply sign a one-year extension rather than go through the bother of looking for a new place. Now, he began to wish that there was another vacancy coming up at the Burrow. Deeper inside, he wished that he could move into the Burrow without benefit of an additional vacancy. He wondered what the view looked like from Hermione's loft. He decided it wouldn't be too different from the view offered by Ron's window, which he'd enjoyed on the numerous occasions when he'd guested at the Burrow during holidays between school terms. Ron's room had been directly under the attic on what was then the topmost inhabited level.
The open country surrounding Ottery St. Catchpole was beautiful, as he knew well from many a long walk with Hermione in their early courtship days. He wouldn't mind rediscovering that beauty, with Hermione's hand in his, as in days of yore.
Of course, the loft would be a bit cramped for two people. However, the more he thought on it, that began to appear more an advantage than a drawback.
"I suppose you'll want to settle in," Harry said as casually as he could. "That was quite a meal," he added with a wan smile.
"You're heading off, then?" Hermione asked.
"Actually," Harry said as his eyes roamed over the trees in the distance, "I feel like a walk. I haven't been here in a while -- and I need to burn off this lunch. Merlin help the wizarding world if a Dark wizard should attack me now."
"You know," Hermione said, "that was a big lunch. A nice, leisurely walk would be better for digestion than a lie-down."
Hardly believing his ears, Harry held out his hand, and Hermione took it. As it had been in the safe house in London, the feel of her hand in his was headier than the most potent wine.
As the pair walked toward the small woods which cloaked the Weasleys' small paddock of land on which the family Quidditch enthusiasts had been wont to practice in days gone by, Harry scarcely noticed when the sheltering trees blocked off the chill wind blowing from the North. With Hermione's hand nestled in his, Harry had long since ceased to feel the bite of the March wind.
Neither of them was leading the other, yet they walked as if with one mind, following a path they had trod often in the not-long-ago. They had treasured the solitude, savoring the privacy of which their everyday lives at Hogwarts provided little or none. Some of the happiest moments of their courtship had been spent in these surroundings. On solo visits to the Burrow during Hermione's European "exile," Harry had feared that he would never again know the simple ecstasy of walking with Hermione's hand in his, watching her hair dance about her shoulders, seeing the light of joy in her eyes as she became one with their pristine surroundings.
Harry stopped suddenly, Hermione halting as she felt his feet root themselves to the leafy carpet of the woods. Before them lay the trunk of a fallen tree, its mossy surface beckoning them to sit, as it had on many another walk in bygone days. It was a spot Harry treasured as he did few places on Earth. It was here where Harry, only days removed from his sixteenth birthday, had first summoned the courage to kiss Hermione. The moment had come and gone in the wink of an eye; Ron and Luna had found them a moment later, and the magic was not to return that day, nor for many afterward. Harry had finally kissed Hermione again in December of that year, under the mistletoe in the Gryffindor common room. In the year and a half following, they must have kissed hundreds of times, their abandon growing in concert with their passion with each subsequent encounter. Yet Harry ever looked back on this place, remembering that first brief, chaste kiss.
Acting wholly without thought, Harry walked to the ancient remnant of the once mighty lord of the forest and sat the two of them down. No word was exchanged. None was needed. Their lips met, softly, unhurriedly. This time, with no Ron and Luna to interrupt, the kiss lengthened, its heat spreading through Harry like a gently whispered Incendio Spell. It was not a kiss of passion, as so many before it. It was a first kiss revisited, allowed at last to know the completion so long denied.
"I missed you," Harry breathed into Hermione's mouth when lack of air forced their lips to part reluctantly.
"I missed you," Hermione said, so softly that Harry read the syllables against his lips rather than hearing them with his ears. "Every day."
"I wanted to say goodbye," Harry said in a voice like that of a six-year-old caught with forbidden cake crumbs on his face. "But I knew if I saw your face...looked into your eyes..."
"I know," Hermione said with a smile. "I realized that when I had time to sort things out." She paused, and her eyelids drifted down to cover her dark brown eyes. "I hoped you'd come to say you were joining me. Not to say goodbye."
"I wanted to," Harry said with an ache in his voice. "I don't know why I didn't."
"I know why," Hermione said. "You weren't ready. Neither of us was. It took me a while to realize that. We were too much at cross-purposes then. We both needed time to discover where our place in the grand scheme lay. And I finally realized that my place is here, with my friends. And with you. From that day, my only hope was that you'd be waiting for me when I returned."
"You shouldn't have hoped," Harry said. "You should have known. There's never been anyone for me but you. Not before you left. Not while you were gone. And not now."
Hermione lay her head on Harry's shoulder. The contours of her face seemed to fit into the hollow of Harry's neck as if they were two halves of a single sculpture.
"We've lost a lot of time," Harry said. "Hours...days...years we'll never get back."
"I'd rather look ahead," Hermione said. "The past is...past. The future is a blank parchment. It's up to us to choose what we write on it."
"Can we start again?" Harry wasn't sure if his question were directed to Hermione, or to the universe itself, a supplication to whatever divine ear might be listening.
"We already have," Hermione said.
Harry's arm slipped around Hermione's waist even as hers duplicated the motion. They sat together in the silence of the March day, sunlight dappling their faces as it penetrated the first budding leaves of Spring struggling to clothe the branches surrounding them. A sparrow song drifted through the air, a promise of the new season, of life reborn from Winter's long death-sleep. And with that life was reborn also the first stirrings of something else, something whose slumber had lasted not one brief season, but a dozen. Love.
Note From Fae Princess: I know that it sounds like this might be a good place for the story to end, but believe me, there's more. Plenty more. I'm very glad to see that the majority of you (except one, but I'm not going to mention him because he really isn't worth it) are enjoying Stoneheart's story. On that note ...
danielerin, can I keep you forever and ever? You see, I didn't even write this story, and your generous words leave my jaw hanging. Imagine how Stoneheart feels! (He's very grateful, by the way). And thank you for sharing your little "secret" with me! And just ... just thank you for being so wonderful and thoughtful and I really hope you don't think I'm trying to hit on you ... because I'm not. I'm just entirely in love with you right now.
Thanks to everyone else, too. See you next week!