My Heart, My Home

A/N: Hello all, its good to be back after a long hiatus of working on just academic projects! I apologise for no updates in quite a while (erm, if people are still concerned :p) but I have two one-shots up, and will get the next chapter to Number One Girl and a few other one-shots up soon, hopefully around the weekend!

Take care all!

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She simply couldn’t help it.

Hermione sighed as she continued to stare. It was hypnotic and addictive not to mention robbing me of my sleep on a regular basis, she thought wryly, but there was no way she could stop.

The object of her unwavering stare gave off a soft snore and stirred sleepily, attempting to get its wayward legs back under the cover of the warm blankets that she was sharing as well.

Hermione grinned fondly at the scene before her and blinked back tears that always came unbidden as she cherished every movement made by her husband that showed off his sweet and vulnerable side.

My Harry, she mused, reaching out a hand to tenderly smooth the furrowed brow which relaxed at once at her touch. He always looked so young when he slept, blissfully unaware of the pressures that the waking world would undoubtedly place on them with each advancing day. At least those blasted nightmares are over, she thought fervently and then shuddered as she remembered nights upon nights of listening to the most horrific screams and desperate moans emanating from the boy she had fallen in love with so long ago and who had now gone on to become her husband and the ringleader of their mischievous fearsome fivesome.

That last thought made her giggle softly and she trailed the fingers on his brow very gently across his face. She lingered on his eyelids, tapped the sides of his nose softly, rubbed his fine, chiseled cheekbones and finally stopped on his lips. Her eyes roamed his face, taking it in yet again, a great wave of love threatening to send her into sobs, and she involuntarily grinned at the headlines that had graced the wizarding world when she and Harry had announced their engagement. A million hearts could be heard breaking around the world for weeks and Hermione planted a possessive kiss on his forehead as she affirmed her love for him in her mind once more; my Harry, my sweet adorable Harry.

Her fingers drifted upwards automatically towards the famous scar that was no longer red and angry but a mere strip of lightning shaped skin that was only slightly darker than the surrounding skin and well and truly healed. She moved to place another kiss on that mark and drew back to find her husband blinking away his sleep and gazing questioningly at her.

He smiled teasingly, albeit with a hint of sleep still dancing about his face, ‘I knew I shouldn’t have watched that movie with Ron yesterday. Too many veelas; I was just having the most amazing dream,’ he trailed off with a naughty grin.

Hermione pouted, ‘So it’s the veelas in your dream, is it?’ Then her expression changed to one of utmost amusement and she began to giggle, ‘I don’t think I’ll forget the Quidditch World Cup where you and Ron saw the veelas for the first time. Oh God! It was hilarious; there you were, two randy fourteen year olds, just about ready to jump over the railing and make your way into the stadium!’ Her giggles turned to soft laughter and she clapped a hand to her mouth in order to keep quiet.

Harry rolled his eyes and waggled a finger at her, ‘I’ll have you know,’ he began with as much dignity as a man who had just woken up from sleep could muster, ‘that I was not randy and was not at all about to leap into the stadium as you put it- that was Ron.’ He sniffed contemptuously, daring his wife to contradict him.

Hermione simply smirked and thwapped his shoulder playfully, ‘Oh yes, dear. You were so calm that I had to hold onto your robes and pull you back not to mention the fact that you already had a foot on the railings and looked pretty silly when the effects fell off. Oh yes, that’s only Ron alright.’

Harry laughed along with her, both mindful to keep the noise quiet – their children had a most amazing ability to interrupt their sleep if they so much as caught a whiff that anything funny was occurring anywhere and he definitely did not need his brood to come charging in when he, erm, was not very decently dressed.

And of course, he thought looking at his wife, as a rougish grin crept across his face, that sheet doesn’t conceal all that much of her…

‘Harry, you randy wizard! Get your mind out of the gutter!’

‘Huh?’ Harry snapped his eyes away from his wife’s chest where the sheet’s strategic location was giving him a rather tantalizing hint of just what may possible be under it and dragged them back to his wife’s hazel eyes which twinkled with a mixture of amusement and resignation.

She smiled slyly. ‘Those veelas still dancing in your head, then?’

Harry reached out and lovingly tucked a lock of tangled hair behind her ear. ‘Not at all, love.’ His fingers moved in an unconscious imitation of his wife’s earlier movements and he stroked her cheek, ‘especially as I have the most alluring veela I could ever possibly want, with me right here.’ He leaned up to press a gentle kiss to her cheek and drew back in alarm to see slow tears flowing down it and its partner.

‘Hermione, what’s wrong?’ he queried softly, aware that her tears were increasing and she was hitching her breath. He sat up against the veritable sea of pillows that Hermione insisted on having ever since they had started a family (you never knew which child was going to need a night of comfort with his/her parents) and drew her to him in a firm embrace. He gasped as she tightly wound her arms around his waist. Hearing her muttering, he strained to hear her words.

‘Those stupid, miserable, pathetic, imbecilic Dursleys, if I ever get my hands on them again, I’ll…I’ll…’

Fresh sobs choked her and Harry sighed, feeling a great wave of love wash over him.

‘Darling,’ he began tilting her face up and forcing her to look up into his eyes again, ‘That was a long time ago, dear heart.’ He tenderly wiped her tears and then placed a comforting kiss on either eyelid. ‘It doesn’t hurt anymore, love, especially now that I have you and the kids in my life. Please, don’t do this to yourself.’

Hermione sat up completely and Harry realized that the barrage of tears had soaked into her thin nightshirt and was making her shiver. She shook her head violently and hiccupped, ‘I just can’t Harry! I just cannot! I simply cannot believe vermin like that even existed, let alone be members of the human race!’ She leaned forward again and let her fingers trail his face. ‘When I saw what they had been doing to you, and oh Harry, in spite of that, you’ve become such a wonderful, beautiful man, I…I love you so much, and I wish I could have taken all that way, I really wish! Do you have any idea how just two words from you can make my entire day seem so much better?’

Harry kissed her forehead and grinned warmly, ‘Is that so? Well, I imagine its exactly like what your words do to me, then.’ Schooling his features into a serious expression, he affirmed, ‘You did take my pain away, love. When you came barging for me that summer after fifth year…I still cannot believe that you actually just came charging in and ordered the Dursleys about… I don’t think I’ve ever properly thanked you for it. You did what even the great Dumbledore’ – here, Harry snorted as Hermione sighed, he had never quite regained the blind trust that he had placed in the aging wizard prior to their fifth year – ‘and the Order were reluctant to do, all that is, except Remus.’

‘I was able to come and get you only with his help, Harry. Remus has always been there for us, you know and he became the father that I was truly needing…’ she trailed off, a mixture of a grimace and a rueful smile on her face and Harry knew that she was mentally reliving her parents’ divorce – a necessary result of her father’s abominably numerous extra-marital affairs. Her mother had to be hospitalized from shock and Hermione had never spoken to her father whom she now hated with an absolute passion that dwarfed her husband’s animosity to Voldemort. Over the many years, Harry had held his girlfriend, fiancée and wife from barely lynching her father whenever she happened to see him. He did agree with her – David’s treatment of Jane Granger, a woman that Harry had come to immensely cherish and admire was nothing short of abhorrent. If it hadn’t been for her unwavering support and Remus’s patient guidance, both he and Hermione would have mercilessly struggled, given that they were trying to cope with numerous issues all throughout their last years at Hogwarts and the resounding defeat of Voldemort right on their graduation day.

A school to run, the wizarding world to be rebuilt, Voldemort’s demise, Harry’s personal demons, Hermione’s sorrows, the results of the Dursley’s abuse, Jane Granger’s treatment, and not the least – discovering their love for each other.

Or at least, me discovering my love for her, he thought sarcastically. It only took me so long to see it. Hermione had fallen in love with him their seventh year but he had reciprocated her love completely by uttering the momentous words only three years after they graduated, and two years and a half years after his return from a self-imposed solitude.

‘I also never thanked you for waiting for me,’ he whispered, even as he drew her back into his arms and hugged her to his chest. Hermione leaned back to look at him and smiled through her tears, ‘you silly, silly man…don’t you see, there was no way I couldn’t not wait for you, I was so in love with you’, she shuddered involuntarily, ‘although, well, I did wonder at times if you would ever love me,’ she trailed off, her voice small and quivering and once again Harry found himself hating the fact that he had put her through four long years of pain.

‘No Harry, now its you that shouldn’t be doing this to yourself’, she remonstrated gently and his unfocused eyes came back to train on her face, expectantly peering up at him from against his chest.

‘But, oh God, I can’t help it,’ he stuttered weakly. ‘I…I cannot imagine what I put you through then. You were studying and coping with your parents’ situation and you took care of me after the war and supported me through my treatment later on and all this time, oh Hermione, there you were and I never even noticed, and honestly, its not because you weren’t pretty or anything, but I was so, so tired and well, you were you and it never occurred to me….’

‘Hush, love,’ she interrupted, rolling her eyes and placing a finger on his lips. ‘I was there remember? I saw everything and I never thought you absolutely had to reciprocate whatever I felt.’ Taking his chin softly in her hand, she tilted his face to directly face hers, ‘I did whatever I had to do, because I love you Harry. My concern at that time was to make sure that you were safe and healthy and I was ready to go to hell and back for that.’ She leaned forward and gently kissed his scar again, shuddering as she recalled those torturous first weeks of his rehabilitation.

It was the first two weeks after the official defeat of Voldemort that held nothing less than soul shattering shocks for Ron and especially, Hermione. Her mother was of course struggling and while Remus had assured her that he would care for Harry along with help from Ron, Luna, Neville and Ginny, and that she should be with her mother, Hermione simply couldn’t bear it. She shuttled between her mother and Harry and oh! That horrible day when Ron had stumbled out into the ward corridor and retched into a hastily conjured bucket not ten inches from her was engraved in her mind. She simply stared, stunned as he weakly attempted to pull himself together and vaguely gestured behind him to Harry’s private room, ‘He…he….abused…Dursleys….bloody pigs…whipped him….cupboard….eleven years…’

It had been a day Hermione would forever remember. Free from Voldemort’s clutches, the demons engendered by the Dursleys now roamed merrily inside his head and for the first time Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived, was painfully coming to accept the scope and the circumstances of his physical and mental abuse at the hands of his *relatives* whom Ron and Hermione could have cheerfully carved and fed to the Dementors themselves.

‘Hermione, Hermione? Where did you go love?’ Hermione snapped away from her reverie to find her husband smirking at her and waving his hand ridiculously. She sniffed, giving him a watery smile and then stroked his cheek again.

‘I was thinking about when Ron and I found out about the Dursleys…finally.’ Her voice was full of emotion but Harry detected the undercurrent of resentment and sighed. He knew that Ron and Hermione were torn between anger and horror that he had never told them the story and if things hadn’t gone the way they did, he probably would not have told them ever. He sighed again and spoke quietly, ‘I..are you still mad at me, Hermione? I have apologized before, look I am sorry that I didn’t tell you and Ron, but there was so much going on and Voldemort and it was my responsibility..’

‘Harry James Potter, what have I told you about the ‘its my responsibility’ rubbish before?’ Hermione’s eyes blazed in spite of the tears that were still flowing, albeit more gently and her mouth was set firmly. ‘What did we decide about this?’ Her voice had gone deceptively soft and Harry gave a lopsided grin, putting his arms up in surrender.

‘I’m sorry, love.’ He whispered and then swiftly leaned in to kiss her. They fell back on the pillows and Hermione pulled away breathlessly.

‘That’s not fair’, she panted. ‘That’s cheating; you know I can’t think when you kiss me.’

‘Tough luck.’ Harry smiled. ‘It’s not like I am going to stop anytime soon.’

Hermione sighed. ‘Harry’ she cradled his face, ‘I meant what I said to you that day in St Mungo’s. You are not alone. You never have been ever since you came to Hogwarts. Please, please know that. Ron cares so much and so do I…’

Harry’s voice was quiet. ‘I was worried that Ron wouldn’t want anything to do with me after fourth and fifth year.’

Hermione hugged him. ‘We were only fourteen back then, darling. And Ron may have been initially jealous but I saw how it was killing him to be away from you. He may be an immature prat, but he’s an adorable and loyal prat all the same.’ She giggled.

Harry rolled his eyes but his expression was wistful and he nodded, ‘Yes, I know. I am grateful to have friends like you and Ron and not to mention Neville, Luna and Ginny.’

‘Yes and we are so lucky to have you amongst us’ She reached up and entwined her arms more firmly around his neck and pulled him down even further. ‘I was so scared’ her voice trembled, ‘I was so scared throughout the years that I would lose you, that you would never know I loved you so much and that you…that you would find someone else…and there I would be, the best friend cheerfully waving goodbye…’ She ended on a strangled sob and Harry sighed as he pulled her close and pressed his cheek to hers.

‘Hush love, don’t say things like that. You would never have been far from my life. I think on some level I always wished that I would be with you at the end. You had shared so much with me and it just didn’t seem right that any other woman could ever know me more than you…I love you, so very much, ok?’

He kissed the tear stained cheek softly and Hermione gave off a slight laugh. She peered around him to look at the clock and grimaced, ‘Ugh! Its time to be up in an hour’s time. The kids will be up soon as well, please go and start breakfast?’ She pouted in a practiced gesture that she knew her husband found irresistible.

Sure enough, he rolled his eyes and shook a finger jokingly at her, ‘Don’t you dare start with that face, missus. You get your way enough around the house as it is.’ Then he leaned in and kissed her eyelids. ‘Get some more sleep ok, I’ll wake you when breakfast’s done. You’ve had a rough couple of nights at work.’

Hermione smiled lovingly and rubbed her eyes tiredly, ‘Thanks, darling. These night shifts are ridiculous although I only took it up because Madame Pomfrey needed extra help at Hogwarts and St Mungos. Thank goodness yesterday was the last one.’

She gathered all her energy and leaned up for a quick peck, then promptly fell back, already asleep, her chest moving in even breaths, indicative of peaceful slumber.

Harry stared at her, recalling nights where she hadn’t slept throughout, staying up because of him and soothing him relentlessly, holding him all the time and tirelessly working to cure him of the demons that had haunted him for so much of his life. And now she had married him and given him five wonderful children.

As he tucked her in and carefully made his way downstairs, Harry knew that he had been wrong about Hogwarts. He had always looked upon the school as his home, but the truth was that home was where his heart was and his heart was snoring lightly away upstairs. He laughed softly and threw open the kitchen windows, breathing in the brisk chillness of the early morning air. A wondrous blend of pink and orange hues were daintily creeping across the sky and as he set the kettle to boil water for the morning tea, he heaved a grateful sigh,

‘My heart, my home.’