Afternoon by Musca

Rating: PG
Genres: Romance
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 5
Published: 04/04/2005
Last Updated: 04/04/2005
Status: Completed

"...As if being in love is an incomplete sentence unless it was with each other."




1. Afternoon
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**A/N:** *More from the BoringOrdinary HHr Files. Thank you so, so much, everyone who read
and reviewed ‘Braiding’; I’m totally amazed at the response. These are stories I never meant to
post, stories I wrote just for myself when I couldn’t get online for my daily HHr fix thanks to my
crappy dial-up. Then one day I realized how much I’d hoarded, and decided to post. So yes, there
are more, but not all of them from the BoringOrdinary Files and not all of them sunny. My beta,
miconic, is up to her neck with them, bless her. And she should also be credited for suggesting the
ending for this little thing.*

**Disclaimer:** *They belong to JKR, I’m only playing.*

****

She’s at the kitchen counter, finishing up the dishes. He’s outside, pulling the washing off the
line. The afternoon purrs around them, warm and amber and her eyes are heavy with drowsiness. He
unfastens the pegs and pulls the clothes one by one, dropping them into the basket on the ground
next to him. His feet are bare. She pauses, watching him through the window above the sink and
reaches for her wand. He reaches to pull her jeans out of the line, but just as his fingers close
on the peg, the garment soars out of the washing line and lands neatly in the basket at his
feet.

He whips around and glares at her in mock outrage.

She giggles.

Moments later he walks in through the kitchen door carrying the sun-scented washing. She dries
the dishes with a tea towel, rising a little on her bare toes to place them in the cupboard above
her head. As she finishes the last one and her hands rise to the cupboard, the plate soars out of
her hand to land deftly inside the cupboard, clinking against the other dry ones. She gasps and
turns around. He’s walking up the stairs to their room now, and at the landing he pauses and looks
around, sweet smile and dancing eyes.

She sticks out her tongue at him and reaches for the cutlery and a fresh tea towel.

He returns to the kitchen, the basket dumped in their room, and walks over to her. He slides his
hands around her waist and kisses her neck, damp and warm with sweat.

“Tease,” she murmurs, nudging him with her hip.

“You started it,” he retorts softly, and nuzzles the hollow behind her ear before sitting at the
small kitchen table, chin in hand, his eyes following her movements as she puts the cutlery
away.

“Do you miss them?”

“Hmm?” She turns around.

“Your parents. The life you would’ve had with them if you didn’t know you were a witch and
didn’t go to Hogwarts.”

She looks thoughtful as she puts the last spoon away and comes to sit in a chair beside him.

“I don’t know. Yes and no, I suppose. I miss being with them, but I can’t imagine wanting, or
living any other life than the life at Hogwarts or of being a witch.” She smiles and lays her cheek
on the soft skin inside the crook of his elbow resting on the table, facing away from him. “Why the
curiosity, anyway?”

He shrugs. “Just that you insist on doing some things the Muggle way when they are so much
easier to do with magic. Like the dishes, or folding the washing." She smiles again into his
arm, and begins to trace the veins on his upturned wrist with her index finger.

“Since when did you get to be so smart?” she teases.

“Oh I’m what they call a late bloomer.” He pulls at a brown curl.

They fall silent, the idle afternoon breathing and pulsing with them. With his free hand he has
pulled out the pencil holding her hair in a messy bun, and his fingers now move through the tangles
methodically, occasionally pressing into her scalp. She sighs, pressing and sliding her own fingers
and palm down his arm, his wrist, his palm, absently noting the differences in his skin’s
temperature at different spots on his arm. At the wrist, the skin grooved with veins, is warm. The
dip of the palm is warmer still, but he’s ticklish there, and curls his hand hurriedly when her
index finger wanders mischievously in. She grins and returns her hand to his forearm, turning and
rubbing her own wrist against the powerful muscle.

Their touch would seem strange to an onlooker, untrained; as if it’s a language they learnt all
by themselves. As if they learnt how to be with each other before they learnt how to be in love.
Even in the tangle of sheets and skin sliding on skin, their touch is without artifice and
artistry. Less the universal language of lovers, more a language all of their own, the detailed
grammar of each other, as if being in love is an incomplete sentence unless it was with each
other.

“But you do that too,” she says suddenly, as if she just remembered something.

“Do what?”

“The Muggle thing. When you just took the washing in. You never use magic for that, and you
never use magic when you’re making breakfast.”

“Mmmm…”

“Mmmm what?” She sits up. He traces her hairline with his finger, then gathers her untangled
hair off her neck and twists it into a bun, pushing the pencil back in it securely.

“I don’t know. I don’t know why I do that” he says, bemused. “Although I can assure you it’s
certainly not because I miss the Dursleys,” he finishes with a dry laugh.

The corner of her lip crinkles, her eyes full of warmth as she leans into him. He marvels again
as he has done a thousand times before at how the tiniest of gestures from her, the minutest shift
in her face and eyes somehow tells him all he would need to know at any given moment, that he was
loved, wholly. He pulls her closer, and rests his cheek against her forehead, twining a strand of
hair around his finger.

A breeze tugs at the empty washing line and the tap drips errantly on a spoon left forgotten in
the sink. The slanting sun clings to the curtain while the afternoon folds slowly into the
evening.

***