Home is What You Make It

The rocks crunched under his feet as Harry made his way down the dirt road to the wooden gate.

He walked a little slower these days - his energy not being what it used to - and so the trek had taken him some time, but he had wanted to walk instead of just Apparting and had enjoyed being in the countryside on a beautiful, sunny day. The green, rolling hills that were occasionally crowned by small outcroppings of trees and the occasional areas of white or yellow, where flowers were rising from the grass. It was exactly the kind of day that summers are made for, but grey clouds on the horizon hinted at a storm to come.

There was a light breeze that would occasionally blow a strand or two of his gray hair into his eyes, and he had to brush them away with one of his wrinkled hands. As he neared the gate, he thought to himself that even though the walk had been a long one, he didn't feel winded. I may be an old man, he thought, but I'm not that old yet. And he wasn't; despite his age his hands never shook when he used his wand, and his Quidditch skills had helped him stay in shape despite the steady passing of the years.

At last he reached the wooden gate, which looked even more weathered than he remembered. The traces of the white paint had all but disappeared, except for a few chipped patches here and there. Despite its age, it opened easily when he pushed it, and he looked at the small group of trees in the distance, and the cabin hidden among them.

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“Harry! Where are we going?” Hermione asked, her voice a mix of excitement and anticipation. She groped ahead blindly with one hand, the other closed tightly around Harry's.

Her hand started to creep towards her face and Harry said “Hermione! I said no peeking! Leave the cloth over your eyes. We're almost there.”

“Almost where, Harry? I don't hear anything.”

“Exactly,” he said, with a smirk.

She gave him that little annoyed frown, and he was certain if he could see her eyes, she would have just rolled them.

The gravel crunched under their feet and the sun shone down as they made their way down the road. Hermione was about to say something again when Harry stopped suddenly.

“All right, we're here,” he said, releasing her hand. “You can take the blindfold off now.”

She quickly tore the red cloth off her face, the sun momentarily reflecting off of the golden ring she now wore, a ring that matched the one on Harry's hand.

She found herself standing in the middle of the country, in front of a weather-beaten gate.

She glanced at Harry with a look of puzzlement and asked, “Where are we?”

He just smiled and pointed to the gate. Still giving him a searching look, she walked over to it, pushed it open, and gasped. Starting from the gate was an old road that looked like it had been made by tires years ago; so along ago that it was overgrown with grass, and to her surprise, beautiful yellow flowers. They followed the road all the way up to a patch of green trees.

A sudden gust of wind blew her chestnut hair into the air, and she could hear the trees ahead of her moving and sighing with the wind. That was when she saw the house in the trees, so nestled inside that you would probably miss it if you weren't looking for it.

Harry must have noticed she saw it because he slipped his hand into hers and said, “Come on, love,” and started walking towards the house.

They walked in the old tire ruts in silence, neither wanting to trample the flowers. Hermione couldn't wipe the confused expression off of her face, and Harry couldn't stop smiling mischievously at it.

At last they entered the trees and stood in front of a rundown wooden cabin. The trees seemed to have circled it, giving it a small half-circle lawn in the front, and probably in the back, Hermione thought. The windows were brown with dust, the wood was rotted and there were splashes here and there of a paint job that had long since vanished.

She had no idea what she was supposed to say, and so finally blurted out, “Harry, what are we doing here? I thought you said you had a big surprise for me? Surely this mangy old shack can't be it!”

Harry just smiled at her. “Hermione, this `mangy old shack' is our new home.”

She looked at him like he had suddenly caught fire.

“Our new home?! Harry, I know the flat we're in now isn't very big or anything, and I know you want to get out of city, but this can't be our home! Besides, I thought we were going to look for a place to live together.”

“I didn't need to look any further when I heard about this place from Neville. It's exactly what I wanted: to get away from all the people, now that the war is over, and lead a normal life. This place is perfect.”

Hermione couldn't form the mess of thoughts that were running through her mind into coherent sentences, which was something for her.

“Harry, why would you want this?”

“Because of this,” he said, walking up to the door and opening it into the most beautiful room she had ever seen. She came up to stand beside him in mute amazement. The walls were painted sky blue, with brand new wood cupboards and dressers. There was a forest green couch and two cozy looking chairs near a fireplace and a large kitchen table by a door, and the windows that from the outside appeared to be dusty, were as clean as could be, throwing sunlight everywhere.

“I love magic,” Harry said, and she looked over at him, still in shock. He leaned in and kissed her forehead and continued, “This is just the living room. The kitchen's over there to the right, through the door by the table, and down that hall to the left are the bedrooms and the library. Don't worry, we have electricity, but I've used a spell to hide the poles and wires outside.”

“How did…when…?” Hermione finally managed to get out.

“Oh, over the past couple of months. I'd leave the Ministry during lunch and at the end of the day and come here for a couple of hours. I didn't know all the spells, so Ron and Luna helped with some of it.”

“Ron and Luna helped?” she asked, not hiding the surprise in her voice.

Harry chuckled. “Yeah, they had to. There's no way I knew how to do it all.”

A sudden realization dawned on Hermione. “So all those times Luna was never around while you were at work, she was….”

Harry nodded at her, “Yeah, helping tidy up the furniture and decorations. You should have seen the way Ron and I originally had it. She took one look and started laughing, and told us to worry about the magic; she'd handle the furniture, since she knows your tastes. Of course, I added a few touches, here and there.”

“You did, did you?” she asked with a sly grin.

“Yeah, I made sure we got all your favorite books for the library.” At that, she could help but laugh and lean on his shoulder. “And go look at the mantle.”

She walked over, gently tracing her hand over the chairs as she did, and saw her favorite picture from their wedding: Harry standing behind her with his arms wrapped around her waist and she leaning back to kiss him.

She turned at looked at him, the man she had loved for most of her life, and had finally married, still standing in the door way, the sun creating a kind of halo around him and a single tear slipped down her cheek. He was right: this place was perfect. It was home.

Suddenly she was flying across the room, into his arms where he they kissed deeply and she laid her head against his chest.

While stroking her hair, she heard him say, “Welcome home, Mrs. Potter.”

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The sky had turned grey fast, and thunder could be softly heard. Harry walked up to the door, through the overgrown grasses in the lawn, and peeked inside. The inside matched the outside now: everything was broken and rotted, and the furniture was overturned or broken. A thick coat of dust covered everything, and he could see cobwebs in the corners of the room. Despite this, he still saw it the way it was when he had brought her for the first time. He didn't think he'd ever see it any other way.

He shut the door and walked around to the back, where Hermione had spent so much time gardening, working with all kinds of flowers, lilacs being one of her favorites. He looked down at the one he carried in his hand and sighed as he turned the corner. In the middle of what had once been their back lawn was now a large grey stone with Hermione's name on it.

She'd only been gone a year, but it felt like a lifetime being without her. He felt a hot tear roll down his check as he approached the stone and stood in silence in front of it. He would never forget the day the placed her here, and he and Ron remained after everyone had left. Luna had died a year before, so Ron had been a great help, as he always was, to Harry.

As they stood there in the silence Ron had said, “Don't regret a moment of it do you, mate?”

Harry looked up and thought back on a lifetime of happy memories and moments with Hermione, and shook his head. “Not a moment.”

“I still don't regret it,” Harry said aloud, and set the lilac down in front of the stone. He felt a raindrop fall and stood for a moment longer in front of the stone before he pulled out his wand and mumbled a spell on the flower, then Apparated away.

As the rain started to fall in sheets, the drops just rolled off of the lone flower without touching it. If anyone had been there, it would have looked like the flower was crying.

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