A/N: Had no idea where I was going with this, truthfully. That's the trouble with post-book release fics, you have grand ideas to make yourself feel better and then lose a sense of direction, end up with stories without plots and finally abandon them altogether in favour of twisting canon. Luckily not a problem that affects me, I just got this on a whim last night and it didn't turn out the way I intended. Will have to do another to get that way then.
I was honestly pleasantly surprised and almost overwhelmed by the response to the last story. Thank you all so very much. I'm always surprised that people want to read what I write, so it's always wonderful to read your reviews. It reassures me that I've been coherent and encourages me to write more. XD! Otherwise, happy reading.
Disclaimer: Ha-ha, I've said it before and I will say it again. She can keep this stuff; I'm just playing for a while.
*****
Always
*****
It was a well-practiced habit that each evening when Harry clocked in at Auror Headquarters in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, he would take a detour to Hermione's office in the nearby Wizengamot Administration Services with a cup of coffee and a smile. She would still be preparing to leave, though many of her colleagues were long gone for the day, packing away files, sorting work to take home and that which she could leave for her secretary to put away. When he appeared in the doorway, without looking up she would ask, "Just arrived?"
This was obvious, but tradition, and in the name of it he would reply, "Yes, and you're still here."
"I've got a lot of work to do," she would say, still not looking up.
He would then snort, call her an irretrievable swot and a workaholic and remind her, in a voice that was frightfully reminiscent of Mrs Weasley's, "But Hermione dear... if you would only go home a little earlier... I'm sure you and Ron could do with a romantic evening every now and then...."
Then Hermione would look up, and scowling, say, "Between her and my mother I think I'll go mad, now I understand what Tonks used to talk about."
And then Harry would present the still-steaming cup of coffee as a peace offering and sit with her until she either chased him away to work or one of his colleagues begrudgingly came to retrieve him. It was habit, tradition, a daily ritual that he felt compelled by some subconscious force to repeat. He could not begin his shift without seeing her off, and he liked to think that she could not end her day without seeing him begin his.
But today was different.
It was not that there weren't days when they missed each other at work. Sometimes he would be called into duty and go directly where needed, not returning until hours, and on one occasion, days later. Sometimes she would leave early for a family or personal emergency, and he would be on pins on needles until the next day when he saw again. And then there were vacation times where she would visit with her parents in Australia or some other more exotic locale, or he would travel to some place he'd never been but she'd insisted he would enjoy. The pictures filled the few free spaces left on the walls of his cubicle and desk, and overflowed unto the floor in many places of his flat.
It was not that there weren't times when they simply couldn't be bothered to just wave at each other across a floor. Sometimes he was too tired and needed to get a head start on the files on his desk. Sometimes she would be too busy to notice he hadn't come and took advantage of the opportunity to get out of the office faster. And sometimes still they just needed the time to themselves, no excuses.
And it certainly wasn't that there weren't occasions when they had a falling out and didn't want to see each other at all. They may be best friends but that did not mean they didn't have the intermittent fight.
But today, none of these reasons could apply. In fact, it wasn't really anything serious. Hermione's desk merely looked as if she'd just stepped out to the loo and would be coming right back. No sign of a struggle, of a hasty departure or anything out of the ordinary really, but something just felt different. Since he'd come into the Ministry for the day in fact, something had felt... different.
Her secretary was still at hers though, and looked up at him with a smile, the overtly flirtatious one she always reserved for him, and said, "You come around more than her boyfriend.... She'll be back in a minute. Do you want me to get you another coffee?"
Harry shook his head. "I don't really like it, but she's obsessed with the stuff. When did she step out?"
Her secretary, Kendra, turned back to her desk looking just a little crestfallen, and replied, "Five... ten minutes ago.... But you know Hermione, if someone approached her in the hall asking for help she's going to drop everything and try to help them."
He smiled a little at that, and suddenly Kendra was beaming. Then she looked back at the open office a moment and began, "You could go in to wait for her... if you like." He looked up at the office too, and then she added conspiratorially, "I think she's got something in there for your godson actually, Teddy... is it?" When Harry nodded, she continued, "It came special delivery from the Magical Menagerie this afternoon, but the poor dear must be starving and she just...."
Harry did not hear the rest of her statement; instead he hurried into Hermione's office, abandoned the coffee on a shelf near the door and went round to her desk. In the centre of it was a plain old cardboard box and in the box was a small black shaggy puppy. It was so small he could hold its entire body in one hand, but he could imagine it about half the size of a man, growling menacingly at any who dared to hurt him, chasing after his train as he went back to school....
He nearly knocked the box over when Kendra said from the doorway, "She called him `Padfoot', what a funny little name, eh? But I guess if you're called `Hermione' and you haven't changed it yet you must have a thing for funny names."
Harry just smiled at her, without looking up. His eyes did not want to leave the box and its precious cargo within, as if he feared that should he the little dog would vanish under the flap forever....
"Of course, if that's an Irish wolfhound it wouldn't be long before its towering over its young master, isn't Teddy five... or six...?" asked Kendra.
Harry nodded, then cleared his throat and replied, "Yes, four, actually, and just this morning when I was woken for breakfast he read me back to sleep from his favourite book. He's going to be really smart." Kendra smiled now, and Harry continued, "But I wouldn't be too worried about Padfoot here, if he's anything like his namesake he's going to be really gentle."
Kendra made to say something to this, but then a departmental missive came zooming through the doorway and into her hand. She opened it, read it quickly and then apologising, walked back to her desk, leaving Harry to the puppy. And no sooner than had she gone than did he reach into the box and lift the sleeping puppy out. It barely stirred, but he could feel its beating heart and breathing like tremors through its hot, fragile little body.
He had to wonder what made Hermione get Teddy such a pet; Crookshanks certainly wouldn't be pleased to see it. He wondered what possessed her to call it Padfoot; didn't she know how much even thinking about Sirius sometimes hurt?
He replaced it in the box and sat on her chair without thinking about it. The puppy still did not stir, and Harry sat drumming his knuckles softly on the hardwood desk, looking about the office. Its colour was inconsequential and bland, and the fact that Hermione kept it immaculate and devoid of any personal mementos made him wonder how she could stand it day after day. Well it was not entirely devoid. He reached across the desk and took up a picture frame, a magical photograph of him, Hermione and Ron before the war. It was long before it in fact, back in their First Year at Hogwarts, when they were all innocent.
Ron would have laughed at that. He remembered snorting himself at Fred and George calling themselves innocent in his Third Year when they presented him with the Marauder's Map. The Marauder's Map made him think of Sirius and Remus and he promptly replaced the picture and removed the box from the table. When he looked up again then, it was to see that Hermione had returned.
Leant against the doorframe, with a file in one hand and the other on her hip, she asked, "What are you doing at my desk?"
He smiled and put his feet up on it at once, "Waiting for you. Where have you been?"
She quirked an eyebrow, and then replied, "I had something to do; I have a job you know."
"Your coffee's probably cold," he said and nodded to the cup on the shelf.
At once Hermione rolled her eyes, "I'm a witch, no problem."
Harry took his feet from the table and stood up, "But it's not freshly-brewed hot, and I believe that changes the flavour."
Hermione took the cup from the shelf and left the doorway to come to her desk. "You don't drink coffee, how do you know the flavour's changed?"
"Some things just don't taste right when magic's used on them," he replied simply and walked around the other side of the desk to allow her the chair. Before she could sit though, he asked, "Why'd you get Teddy a black dog?"
Hermione's eyebrow arched again, "You've got something against black dogs?"
"No," said Harry. "I only bother when they're named Padfoot. Why?"
She looked at her desk in confusion a moment and then looked down to the box by her feet. "Harry, I could have stepped in it!"
"You didn't, why'd you call it Padfoot?" he asked, not letting his gaze leave her as she bent over and lifted the box back up onto the table.
"I hope you don't mind but.... Teddy has you and his grandmother to tell him about them, he has you to give him everything he wants and needs, and then Ron and Ginny to give him toys and Quidditch posters... I... I felt left out so I bought him a puppy. And boys like dogs don't they?" she replied, trying her best to stifle the flush of embarrassment creeping up her face.
Harry wasn't going to let her get away with that. "You're jealous of the rest of us?"
She snapped her gaze back up to him with a glare, "I'm not jealous. Teddy's your godson, and we're your friends so we get equal attention from him... I just...."
"You are jealous! I don't believe it!" exclaimed Harry, astonished.
Hermione's eyes narrowed further and she said, "Little boys like dogs, I read that once so I'm just getting him a dog."
"A dog that will be bigger than him in a few months? A dog that can sleep in his bed, keep him company when he's lonely and protect him when he's in trouble? A dog that he'll have to spend a lot of time taking care of? A dog that, every time he looks at it, will simultaneously remind him of the uncle he never met and the person who gave it to him?" he asked.
Now Hermione folded her arms and looked away from him, determinedly staring at the box. Harry just continued to stare at her, quite smug, and then after a moment she said, "Don't you have work to do?"
This drew his eyes to the clock on the wall. By rights he should have been at his cubicle checking the cases he still had to follow up and looking out for any new ones fifteen minutes ago. But he wasn't going to let her get away with it that easily. He turned back to her and said, "Hermione, look at me."
After a minute she relented, but not by much, only her eyes shifted to his face. He began, "Hermione... he's four, you always give him great gifts, and the stuff Ron and Ginny and me sometimes bring is usually broken by the end of the week.... Actually, I should be jealous because though I don't really bring him anything better and he's too young for half of the stories I want to tell him about his parents and Sirius. You always have something he likes. Merlin, Hermione, you even got him a story book about Metamorphmagi, when his grandmother, who already raised one by the way, had trouble explaining why Victoire doesn't change like he does. You don't have to compete with us, you're already the best."
At this Hermione seemed to relax slightly, but then she replied, "Actually... I'm kind of jealous of Teddy really...."
Harry's eyebrows vanished into his fringe. "What?"
"He gets your undivided attention," she replied.
His eyes widened further, and he asked, "And what am I doing now? What do I do every day when I come here to see you? Or when you owl me for help? Or when you just want to talk? Am I not giving you my undivided attention?"
She had the grace to blush, and then said, "I'm being silly, I know. But I think I'm getting nostalgic about school... I miss when it was just you, me and Ron." She reddened markedly further, and hastily added, "I mean, I wish... I miss...."
Harry did not offer to help; he just took his usual seat before her desk until she dug herself out of the hole she'd created. Eventually she said, "What am I, crazy? I don't miss school where the year couldn't end without us facing near death. I think I'm bored with my job really... I couldn't be an Auror, no way, but I miss when we had something to do beyond this.... I feel so frustrated with my job sometimes. It'll be years before I can do more and Kingsley's gone a long way to help, but I'm not just fighting old rules and laws, I'm fighting a mentality, ideologies and traditions that have been around for centuries. It'll be years before anything really different happens at this rate. My great-grandchildren may still be fighting for wizards to recognise that it is their prejudices that have caused so many problems and wars."
Harry left his seat and went round to her chair, got down on his knees and took her hands into his before replying, "A lot has already changed, and you of all people should understand that it will take a while. We're not going to be standing at Platform Nine and Three-Quarters in fifteen years sending our children off to school with everything sunshine and roses among wizards. We may certainly be changing the way those children interact with one another now, but it may take another generation or two before the problems that made us enemies with their parents are properly rooted out. It seems... so far away, but change does not come overnight, and certainly not of this kind."
Hermione looked down at him with an expression of mild surprise. Then she asked, "Have you been wearing Ravenclaw's diadem while you sleep?"
"I may not be the smartest wizard in the world, but I like to think that I know a thing or two," he replied, with a mock-glare. Her embarrassment was genuine. Then, with a softening expression, he added, "At least I hope so; I don't want Teddy to suffer through school. I don't want him to suffer like his Dad did. Professor Lupin might have been a good man who had a sense of humour about everything, but he was still damaged in the end. He still suffered, he was still afraid of what would happen to his son and Tonks, wanted to run away from them to protect them from himself, and he shouldn't have had to. The only reason he should have left them was because he was more useful to them in battle than at home, and not because he didn't want to be like a stain on their lives. I regret some of what I said to him, but I don't regret my making him stay... do you remember his face when he told us Teddy was born?"
Hermione's eyes were shining with unshed tears now; her voice was barely above a whisper when she replied, "Yes."
"I can't remember him ever being happier, not even all the time he was with Sirius.... Damn, he should be here with Teddy now. I mean the way he died has done wonders for werewolves, but if he could speak for himself about them... tell the truth and not Scamander's bile..." he trailed off as Hermione slipped one of her hands out of his grasp and put it over his.
When he looked at her puzzled, she said, "I think he doesn't mind as much, considering the person speaking for him now... considering the person taking care of Teddy now. You're the best substitute he could have asked for, and one day you'll be as great for your own children."
At this Harry snorted, "My own children? I'm an immature pillock who's more concerned about snogging pretty birds and going to the pub on the weekends. I might have earned the moniker `The Boy-Who-Lived-To-Defeat-The-Dark-Prat', but that's about it for responsibility and maturity. Hell, when you think about it, I was more or less a tool; Severus Snape was the one who deserves credit for getting Moldieshort's arse kicked. And Narcissa Malfoy, because if she wasn't so concerned about her Ickle Drakeykins that story would have ended much differently."
Hermione pulled her hands from his and said coldly, "I don't like when you joke about things like that."
"It's true," said Harry, plainly. "I've been extraordinarily lucky, from having you and Ron to help me from day one to the wonderful deus ex machina that saved my skin every time it came to facing Riddle. Children, unfortunately, are not raised by luck though, so I am eternally grateful to have Mrs Tonks and you undo all the damage I do to Teddy whenever I'm with him."
She stifled a laugh now and playfully swatted his arm, then stopped staring at him a while before releasing a slow, deep breath. Harry quirked a brow, "What...?"
She shook her head, and said, "Sometimes I think Ginny doesn't deserve you."
Then her expression changed rapidly. Her eyes widened in shock, her jaw dropped and her hands clapped over her mouth as her expression became horrified behind them. Harry looked at her in shock too, and then asked, "Hermione...?"
She pushed her chair back, to escape his clutches, but he went with her. Grasping her hands to stop himself from falling flat on his face, he repeated, "Hermione...?"
Now she spoke, and surprisingly her voice came out like a plea, "I'm so sorry, I don't know what made me say that. I'm clearly tired, I should go home and get some sleep, I'm not thinking straight...."
She stood, probably to begin packing up her papers, but he rose with her and asked, "Why did you say that?"
She stopped and looked at him at once mortified and puzzled, but then replied with a groan, "Because I'm an awful person."
Harry rebuked her lightly, "No, you're not, just a jealous one...." When she looked up at him sharply he continued, "Which is weird, considering you and Ron... or did I miss something?"
Hermione closed her eyes, "That's why I'm an awful person; things are fine between me and Ron."
"They're not if you're saying stuff like that," said Harry.
"Would you accept that I'm a coward and a flake?" she asked.
Harry smiled, "I'd sooner believe that you don't like the idea of another woman being my centre of attention. Well I'm here to tell you, Hermione Granger, that you will always be first in my mind. Always."
"How is that going to work?" asked Hermione, turning back to her papers but peering at him from the corner of her gaze.
"There is no question," said Harry, quietly. "You're my first in everything, hands down, and no one, not even... Ginny, is ever going to change that."
She could not stifle the broad grin that broke out on her face, not even if she wanted to. Harry found himself grinning back, looking at her, and then was assaulted by a wild desire to lean over and kiss it off her face. But as soon as it came to him, someone peered in the door and said, "Potter! I've been looking all over for you-don't know why I didn't come here first-anyway, we've got a sighting on that Death Eater you mentioned in the last meeting, it's him all right."
They both looked up at the man in the door, but he was already turning to go, and Harry at once made to follow. But when he stood at the door he turned back and repeated, in a singsong voice, "Always...."
She laughed, "If you're trying to make me feel better, you're only succeeding to annoy."
He shrugged. "Don't forget to feed the puppy by the way, you better not be responsible for traumatising my godson."
Her laugh disappeared to be replaced by a scowl, "Why you... you git!"
He did not reply to this but instead continued walking out of her office. If she only knew, it was more as if he were trying to convince himself that he hadn't just thought to kiss her.... Because that would be silly right? She could read him like a book, knew him better than he knew himself and he had practically just sworn to her three times that she would always come first in his life, so obviously he was crazy for thinking about kissing her. That wasn't someone you kissed... right...?
Fin
A/N: And I'll leave it at that, naughtily. So, what do you think?
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