Dawn, July 31st, 2006

A/N: A little one shot for Harry’s birthday, rather Harry-centric which is different for me. Set in my own personal future for Harry and Hermione, which I do plan to write more of. Started on the 29^th and not finished until now, so belated. But there you go.

Dawn, July 31^st, 2006

He is twenty-six today.

It isn’t very old at all, and he realizes that, but for him it is novel. A tiny miracle. Actually, a fairly sizable miracle. He never much expected to reach twenty-six.

At six, only a child, in the dour universe of Privet Drive, there had never been a future. There had been the looming reality of Stonewall and the baggy elephant skin of a uniform. But beyond that, he had never considered. His marks had not been good, so he doubted he would have made uni. At six, at ten he could not picture life at twenty-six.

Of course, then everything had changed. He was brought into the wizarding world and he had a future. And a past, actually, but the future was generally more pressing, what with the evil types trying to kill him and all.

At sixteen, he had watched Cedric die and Sirius fall behind the veil and he had possessed little doubt that the same fate awaited him, at the far side of that inevitable conflict with Voldemort. He only wished that somehow he’d manage to take the bastard with him, dragging him along to whatever lay in that last great adventure.

That had proved unnecessary however. With a little help from his friends- well, a lot of help from his friends- he had managed to dispatch with Voldemort without any messy self-sacrifice. And then he went about the matter of living.

Because Hermione had shown him in very short order that the prophecy had been very right about one thing: neither could live while the other survived. That first eighteen years hadn’t been living… they’d been stasis, waiting, preparing, bracing. But they hadn’t been living. Hermione had shown him what living was in a wonderfully memorable incident shortly after his eighteenth birthday.

Eighteen had been a good birthday. Twenty-six was looking to be a good one as well.

He was watching it dawn on his porch. His porch, because he was a homeowner. He owned a house. There was something essentially grown-up about owning a house, having that responsibility, that permanent tie to one particular place, one patch of land out of the whole of the good, green earth.

He would eat breakfast in an hour or so with his own child. Potter family tradition called for pancakes shaped like a 2 and 6. And little Charlotte would watch him eat his as she messily ingested her minicakes, ensuring that plenty of syrup got into her hair and ears in the process. Then, of course, he would need to clean her, since the midwife had forbidden Hermione from bending over the tub any longer.

He felt rather bad about that. He hadn’t meant to be stuck in bloody Chile while Char developed a wicked fever, leaving a very pregnant Hermione to tend to her, trying to cool her cranky toddler’s burning brow in the cool tub for hours on end. The mediwitch had scolded Hermione roundly on that one when she brought Char in to be checked up, and had had Harry placed on medical leave.

He didn’t want to recollect Ron’s reaction when he’d heard Harry’d been placed on med leave for Hermione’s health. It was his birthday after all. He needn’t dwell on that browbeating.

In any case, at twenty-six he was the father of one-and-a-half. It was the most delightful of burdens, to be responsible for forming and shaping these tiny lives he’d been entrusted with. Char was so clever already, meeting her mum’s achievements stride for stride when one compared their baby books. And she looked- well, in one of the nicest gifts he’d been given, the sort of gift he liked to recall on his birthday- Char looked like a little female version on him. Thick black hair from birth, nowadays just brushing her pale little shoulders, framing the gleaming green eyes she’s inherited from her Grandma Lily via Daddy.

He realized how much he has managed to change- from six, from sixteen- as he can contemplate the future, that vast unpredictable chasm, without flinching. He can see Char, running amok on her first toy broom, boarding the Express for the first time, growing up into some slim, dark-haired genius type. And the new little one, who would be joining them in just a month or two, trailing his-or-her sister, wishing to go to Hogwarts as well, finding their own place with their big sister’s help.

At sixteen, he could barely contemplate the next month without feeling reckless. Today he is contemplating the next two decades without pausing for breath. It was the most spectacular thing.

And he knew who brought it about. He could hear her stirring, her rustles in their bed audible in the dawn stillness through the open windows of their room. He didn’t know if they were truly audible, if anyone else would have heard them, but after fifteen years he was so finely tuned to Hermione that he could hear her sneeze a mile off.

Now he heard her footsteps not near as far as they padded out of bed and down the stairs, careful as not to wake the little monster, surely following the scent of the coffee he now sipped. Coffee was another passion of maturity, a habit born of necessity on late nights in the Auror offices.

And here she was, Hermione emerging, still-bleary eyed and fussing at the ties on her robe. Like this, her hair unfettered and glowing in the dawning sunlight, he could still see the stubborn little girl who had stood up to him and Ron late one night in the Gryffindor common room, refusing to be left behind as they plunged recklessly into the unknown.

His current version was a bit softer at the edges, a tad more relaxed. She was still strict, the disciplinarian parent to Harry’s spoiler. But Hermione at twelve would not have known quite how to come curl under the arm extended over the top of the porch swing, tucking herself in like another part of himself, her legs extended over the length of the swing as Harry pushed them in a gentle rhythm. They rocked and watched the rising sun.

It had just barely managed to crest the horizon when Hermione turned her face up to kiss his jaw line a murmur a quiet “Happy Birthday.” Harry responded with a simple kiss to the top of her head, practicing his long refined talent of doing so without getting a mouth full of bushy brown hair.

He had not thought much of the future when he was a child, merely six years old. But if he had, he could never have imagined this, this quiet contentment and tranquility. This life was not perfect or particularly non-dangerous, compared to other people’s, what with his occupation of chasing down criminals and Hermione’s frequent litigation of contentious legal cases, but these moments, these little bits of ideal living, were what he’d gone to the edge and back for and he’d be a right bugger if he did not enjoy this perfect dawn, the dawn of his twenty-sixth birthday.