Home to me.

Carbonbased

Rating: PG13
Genres: Drama, Romance
Relationships: Harry & Hermione
Book: Harry & Hermione, Books 1 - 7
Published: 29/06/2011
Last Updated: 21/10/2011
Status: completed

Harry returns to London after five years living abroad, to find that the unfinished business he had left behind had not moved on without him.

Chapters

1. Prolouge

2. Chapter One: The Way Things Are

3. Chapter Two: Starting Over.

4. Chapter Three: The Past and the Pitfalls therein.

5. Chapter Four: Enough Rope.

6. Chapter Five: There is never a full circle.

7. Chapter Six: The paths not taken, and the problems with them

8. Chapter Seven: Mostly Broken

9. Chapter Eight: The other side of everything.

10. Chapter Nine: The Price of doing Business.

11. Chapter Ten: Tomorrows and the things they bring.

12. Chapter Eleven: Time/fragile.

13. Chapter Twelve: Whole against the Sky.

14. Epilogue.

1. Prolouge

Prologue.

"A proof that experience is of no use, is that the end of one love does not prevent us from beginning another."
-Paul Bourget

1997. London.
Harry’s head would perk up every time he heard a soft knock on the door of his smallish London flat. In his heart he knew who he wanted it to be on the other side of the door. The person he wished was there and hoped wasn’t. The person he needed to be there and prayed never would be. Regardless of his wishes it almost never was. Most of the time it would be reporters, biographers and the various people who had started what he thought was a cult that centered around him. But when it was her, when she was on the other side of that knock, she may have been the worst guest of all. She confused him in ways that he was not prepared for. None of it made sense. Nothing made sense.
Harry leaned back into the safe comfort of his couch, opened his book and shuddered against the cold he knew was mostly in his head. He had been fighting insomnia since the war, being cold was a familiar symptom. He read at night to have something to do, to try to force his too alive brain to calm down enough for sleep to finally take him. The knock became urgent, then soft again, and finally went away. Harry concentrated on his book, when the rain started it almost drowned out the sound of pebbles hitting his window. He almost convinced himself that it had, but eventually curiosity got the better of him. He got up and looked out. In the street stood Hermione, her purple sundress soaked through and clinging to her form.
Harry got up and grabbed an umbrella before going downstairs. He let out a breath of air when he reached the bottom of the stairs, shook his head and steeled himself against the rain and against what he knew was waiting outside the door to his apartment. He stepped out and felt the wet sidewalk moisten his bare feet. Hermione rushed to his side, and he brought her under his umbrella.
“Ron’s not here anymore.” Harry spoke loudly to be heard over the rain, “He moved in with his brother when you two broke up.”
“I know.” She countered, “You know I’m not here for Ron.”
Harry looked longingly at the light in his living room window. Imagining that he had never walked out in the rain, that she had never summoned him out, that he had been a normal boy and that everything for the first time in years made sense to him. He hung his head and leveled his eyes at her, hoping she could see how much pain he was in. How much pain she had put him in.
“What do you want from me, Hermione?”
She shot daggers with her eyes, “You know what I want.”
“I don’t know how to be that guy. I don’t think I ever did.”
“So you’re going to stand out here in the rain with me and tell me that.. what? that you want to shut the world out? Talk to me! Goddamn you, Harry!”
“You don’t want to do this tonight. Go home.” He said evenly.
“Can’t you see how much we all care about you? How much I care about you?”
She put her hands around his waist and pulled him to her. She held her wet face against his chest and breathed him in, mouthing those three words they were both too scared to say aloud. Harry wanted to put his arms around her, he wanted to acknowledged what the last few months had been, what they had finally begun to realize they were to each other.
Instead he looked up at the apartment that he and Ron had shared until three months ago. He recalled how hard it had been for Ron, how difficult it was for himself when his two best friends had declared war on each other. Finally he pushed her away and handed her his umbrella. He turned around and walked back to the door.
“Go home, Hermione.”

1998. London.
Harry knocked on the door of an apartment that had taken him weeks to discover the location of. He waited patiently, but after several minutes he knocked more forcefully. Finally when it had started to rain,the light but constant rain London was famous for, the door opened. Behind it stood a tall thin boy, the patchy, ill defined blond beard on his face betraying his eighteen years of life.
Draco stared at Harry, his gaze a strange mixture of loss and anger. His hand gripped the door frame until his knuckles grew white and his forearm shook. He did not open the door any wider. He did not smile.
“What do you want, Potter.”
Harry smiled, “I just want to talk, Malfoy.”
“Go ahead then.” Draco narrowed his eyes.
“Can I come in?”
“Did I forget that we were friends at some point?”
Harry reached across the threshold of the door and put his hand on Draco’s exposed elbow, “Malfoy, we still could be.”
Draco recoiled at the touch. His eyes widened and for the first time in many years he saw Harry. Somehow this poor boy had become an old man, Draco couldn’t remember when that had happened. He opened his door and let Harry in.
“I guess we can be at that.”

1999. New York City.
Harry shifted his weight to steady Draco on his shoulder. Draco moaned but otherwise made no indication that he was conscious. Harry almost tripped on a discarded bottle of scotch, but caught himself in time. He dumped Draco in the tub of their apartment and turned on the shower. Draco awoke, bleary and fat tongued, under the pouring hot water. He looked up to see Harry standing over him. It was always Harry, his rival, his protector, his vile enemy, and his greatest friend.
“This has to stop.” Harry said before he turned and left Draco in the bathroom.
When he got to the hallway he hunted down the bottle of scotch and threw it against the wall. Draco could hear it shatter from the bathroom. He tried to find comfort by burying himself in his soaking wet tee shirt.
In the kitchen Harry was emptying every bottle of alcohol in the flat into the sink.

2000. New York City.
Draco was having a quick breakfast before he left for work. He had opened a gallery to display local artists. He was proud of his gallery. It was the first thing he had built with his own hands, run with his own mind, and decided to do of his own volition. He was dating a respectable muggle Lawyer called Amber, who was the perfect combination of sweet and bossy. For the first time in his life he was happy.
Harry was down the hall in his bedroom sorting his laundry and ignoring the stack of letters on his desk. Each one addressed to him in the neat loopy handwriting of one of his oldest and dearest friends. The same friend who he had run across an ocean to escape.
He folded all of his pants and put them in his dresser. He smiled at his room. It was a complete mess, clothes everywhere, twice read books laying on or around his bed, movies on the shelves where the books ought to have been had he not wanted them close when insomnia struck him. He loved his room.

2001. New York City.
“Maybe we should just get out of the city?” Amber said.
Draco looked at Harry across the table. Harry’s jaw was set firm, his eyes clouded with the memories of his own fight against the violence in this world. Draco shook his head and Amber said she understood. They talked until the early hours of the morning about the madness of it all, the hatred it took, the state of fear in the world now and how that effected them. Harry just sat looking out the window towards the place where thousands of people had died.
When Amber caught a cab home, she had briefs to prepare for her boss, Draco pulled up a chair in the kitchen and coughed to announce himself. Harry turned his head.
“I’m okay, Malfoy.”
“I wish you wouldn’t call me that, Harry.” Draco said, “You’re my best friend.”
“I’m okay.” He repeated, “Go to bed.”

2002. New York City.
Harry jumped back onto the curb as a bike messenger zoomed past him. When the messenger was gone Harry set off across the street. He had grown to love this city, it didn’t have the ancient feeling of his native city, but it felt powerful in a much different way. The people moved about their lives in a hundred million stories about each other and themselves.
London was a city built on the hard tack past of hundreds of years of violence and love, New York was the most beautiful gasoline rainbow. Harry was headed to the coffee shop where he would pick up his black coffee, then he would buy some cigarettes from the magazine stand and get a pretzel from a street vendor for breakfast.
He breathed in the life of his city and felt it’s great arrhythmic heartbeat against the soles his feet.

2002. London.
Hermione was sitting on the steps leading up to her flat and crying uncontrollably. Her neighbors were polite enough not to open their doors and interrupt.

2. Chapter One: The Way Things Are

Chapter One.
The Way Things Are.

“Go to sleep, everything will be all right”
-In dreams, Roy Orbison.

2003. New York City.

Draco sat at the kitchen table and looked at the relics of his five years living in New York City with Harry Potter. Under the boxes of his things was the flat they had shared for so long. The kitchen sink where Harry had cured him of his alcoholism. The fridge where they had hung up the dry erase board that would contain the list of chores they were to preform around the place. The corner behind the front door where they had had the only fist fight they would have in the place. The couch in the living room where they had made up and Draco had admitted that Harry was his best friend.
Draco sighed and smiled when his eyes fell onto the hallway. The place he had asked Harry to serve as his best man the year before. He walked to his room, opened the door and noted the bed on which he and his wife had shared their first night as a married couple. He laughed to himself as a memory of Harry sitting with him on the fire escape smoking and talking. The shy look on Harry’s face when he had asked him to stuff a pillow behind their head board, it turned out that they had been keeping him upon nights when he could sleep.
Draco turned his head when he heard a key in the lock. He checked his wristwatch to make sure it wasn’t the movers, but they weren’t due for another hour. He figured it was likely Amber back with their lunch from that little Thai place she loved so much. He rushed the length of the apartment, and held the door for what had indeed been Amber. She kissed him on the cheek, and he nuzzled his cheek against her head.
“Is Harry around?” She asked.
“He’s out for his walk.”
“Good, I didn’t get him anything.” She smiled at her husband.
Draco grabbed one of the bags of food and made his way to what would soon not even be his kitchen, “I’m sure he won’t mind.”
“We got a letter for him, by the way. It’s in my purse.” She called after him.
He poked his head around the corner, “In the regular mail?”
“I know. Who doesn’t email these days.” She agreed absentmindedly.
“Yeah, email.” He said softly, “I’ll leave it for him. Just set it on the table out there.”
Amber walked in and planted a huge kiss on him. She smiled against his lips and breathed soft, almost purr like, breathes against his chin.
“Are you ready to have our own place, Mr Malfoy?” She moved her head until it rested on his chest.
Draco looked around the old apartment, the ghost of a smile haunting his eyes, before he softly said, “Yes, Mrs. Malfoy. I think I am.”

* * *

Harry,

What’s happened to all of us? I’m sorry. I’ve tried to write this nine times tonight. You would laugh at the huge pile of crumpled paper by the waste basket. I’ve been trying to find the perfect opening line, I don’t know what to use. I don’t know these magics, studious as I am. I don’t know the proper series of words, the enchantment to reach across these old pages and feel for your heart. I don’t know the words, Harry, that will bring you back to us. Back to me.
I got this address from Luna. You still have a subscription to the Quibbler. I don’t mean to intrude on you or your life, far from it. I know that the evidence points elsewhere on that score, I know that. But you won’t respond to my owls, you don’t write me, You don’t write Ron, not that I even speak with him that much anymore, but, Harry, you don’t even write Ginny or the Mr and Mrs Weasly. You don’t visit. I haven’t seen or heard from you in five years. Five years!
I miss you.
We used to be such good friends. We told each other everything. Everything. I never had anyone else I could tell these things to. It was always you. I miscarried last year, Harry. I didn’t even know I wanted to have a baby until I lost one. How pathetic is that? I wanted to tell you. I wanted to cry into your arms, not the goddamn stairs outside my flat. I need you, Harry. Nothing is working out right. Ron was supposed to be my future, then it was going to be Chaz, and none of that worked. And you were never there.
Wow, I just reread that last paragraph. I sound insane. I think I must be insane. Please, Harry, if you ever cared, come home to me.
Love From,
Hermione

* * *

Harry stood in the half empty apartment as the letter fell from his hand to the floor. He stood there for twenty minutes, his mind alternating between racing and being blank and finding no comfort in either. Finally he walked into his room and sat down at his desk. He reached out and took one of the letters from the stack. He opened it and did what he should have done years earlier.

Sitting in his bedroom an ocean away, years too late, Harry Potter got reacquainted with his best friend.

2003. London.

Hermione was eating a very late lunch at her desk. She was trying to sort out a couple of different fundraising events for her equality banquets, write a writ for legislation, organize a speech about house elf voting privileges, get a defense lawyer for a hearing about education rights for giants and all the while attempting to track down her anonymous donor. The same person had donated a substantial amount every year, but never seemed to be at the events, she had originally assumed it was Harry, but the handwriting on the bank slips didn’t match. She wanted to invite this person, she was consumed by the notion of finding out the mystery benefactor's identity. Ginny had said it was a natural response to the fact that she didn’t have a life outside of her work anymore.
Still she couldn’t make any kind of head way, hard as she tried. So she reclined in her chair and stretched her arms out. She had been sitting all day, and she hadn’t realized how stiff she had become. She rubbed her eyes and considered going home. She had been finished with her actual days work three days ago, she was in charge, and not a single one of her employees would blame her for leaving on time for a change.She bit her lip and looked at the stack of things that needed to be done for the speech she planned to make at the Ministry about granting house elves voting rights. She supposed it could wait a day, but she had so many things she needed to get just right for it to work the way she wanted it to. She smiled at her own over developed work ethic and shifted the speech paperwork in front of her.
When she removed her quill her assistant poked his head into her office.
“Ms. Granger.” He began.
“It’s okay to send everyone home, Bryan. I’m just going to finish these up before I head home.” She waved to him without looking up.
“No, um.. You have someone here to see you.”
“Tell them that I will have the notes for the legislative brief done in-”
“Ma’am. I would wager that this is something of a personal call.”
Hermione put her head up, cocked it sideways and raised an eyebrow, “Really? And who might it be, this personal caller?”
Bryan grinned from ear to ear, “Well, if his get-lost-in-me green eyes weren’t the trade mark of Harry Potter, himself.” His gaze slipped and he coughed self consciously before he added, “Ma’am.”
The words were barely out of his mouth before he was watching Hermione leaping from her desk to run past him. Bryan spun on the spot. Standing in the middle of the open floor office space was his boss, having stopped only a few feet from the handsome stranger he was sure was Harry Potter. Workers at their desks were staring. The stranger smiled knowingly, Bryan noted the way that Hermione’s shoulders slacked. He knew he was holding his breath, but didn’t know why, and when the stranger finally spoke and a collective release of air from his co-workers sounded he realized he wasn’t the only one affected in that way.
“Hello, Hermione.”
“Harry.” Hermione’s lip quivered. She blinked her eyes several times.
He raised his hand, he had a few pages of parchment gripped between his fingers, “You sent a letter.”
She shook her head, “I sent hundreds of letters.”
“I know.” He looked at the floor, a boy again for a few moments, “I read them.”
She held out her arms, “Come here.”
Harry closed the gap and took her into his arms, a friendly embrace, brief and powerful. The entire office was captivated with watching them, none of them sure if it was because of the legendary quality of the friendship before them, or the fame of Harry Potter. When Hermione broke the embrace she turned to her workers and announced that she would be leaving to catch up with her friend. They all began to nod, numb to all of the things around them, and continued to until the old friends left the building. As soon as they were gone the office exploded in conversation.

* * *

Late night in Hyde park found Harry and Hermione conspiring like the old days on a bench. She laughed at his jokes, his eyes lit up when she spoke about work, and when they finally got comfortable, when they truly were old friends again, they began to speak about the difficult things.
“You never wrote.” She said, her face suddenly a wealth of pain that he could barely stand to look at.
“I’m sorry.” Was all he could think to say.
“Why did you leave?”
“I had to get away. I had to redefine myself. I would always be Harry Potter, the-boy-who-whatever, as long as I stayed here. I had to go and find out who I actually was. I mean, I spent my entire adolescence at war.” He smiled in spite of himself, “Plus living in New York is pretty cool.”
“Why did you cut everyone out?” She paused, but pushed on anyway, “I mean, Draco Malfoy? You abandoned all of us and moved abroad with Draco Malfoy?”
“Malfoy is a good guy.” Harry said as his only answer.
“Fine, whatever. You couldn’t write?” She shot him a look that would kill a lesser man.
“I...” He looked into the sky, “I wanted a new life. One without all the constant drama. One that I understood. I don’t know. You guys just seemed to bury me in... I can’t describe it.”
“I know what you mean. I do.” She put her hands on his, “But it was a rough patch, Harry. Most people just wait for it to pass, they don’t leave the country.”
“I guess I’m not most people.”
“I guess not.” She smiled, “Forgiven?”
“Am I?”
“Yes.”
He smiled, “Then so are you.”
“How long are you in town?”
“I don’t know.” He shrugged, “I own a flat here, I own my flat in New York, I can stay indefinitely.”
“You didn’t sell the flat?” Her eyebrow shot up.

“Yeah. I guess I always thought I would come back.” He looked around, “ Now? I don’t really know what to do with my life. I haven’t been back here since Ron’s wedding, now Draco is moved out of my place with his wife. I don’t know.”
“You could move back home. I’ve missed you horribly.” She blushed and smiled, “Embarrassing confession: I have zero friends, outside Ginny.”
“I had heard that you and Ron had made up.” He searched her eyes.
“We have, but he lives in Yorkshire with Luna. I’m just never out there, you know.”
“What would I even do if I moved back here?” He said.
“Same thing you do in New York, I guess.”
“Pace my flat, read books, and watch trash telly.”
“You could get a job. I know you don’t need one, but you could get one.” She suggested.
“I tried that. I’m too high profile in the wizarding world, and in the muggle world, I’m twenty-three and have no education or work experience.”He laughed, “Who would think I would ever want a muggle job?”
“Harry, I need....” She broke off.
“What?” He looked at her, and regretted it. She looked so scared.
“When you left, we..um...what I mean is...” She bit her lip, “Did you ever think about me?”
Harry stared off into the darkness around Hyde Park, letting the air hang pregnant with anticipation. Finally he looked at her and winked, “I’m starving. Let’s get something to eat.”
Hermione tried not to let he disappointment show as she nodded, forced a smile and stood up. She offered him her hand to help him up. He ignored it and stood, and she tried not to read anything into that.

* * *

Harry tossed and turned in his London bed. He was trying to sleep, and trying not to dream when he did it. However every time he closed his eyes her face was there. Looking at her hand as he denied help up, wondering what was wrong with her, what was so unappealing to him. He looked at his clock, noted the time, rolled over and waited, but when he turned back the hands had not moved.
When he finally did get to sleep his dreams woke him with guilt, and agony, and worst of all with a powerful urge to go over to her flat. He refused himself all of this and fought back to sleep every time.

3. Chapter Two: Starting Over.

Chapter Two.
Starting Over.

“The greatest glory in living lies not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.”
- Nelson Mandela

Harry was walking around his old flat, familiarizing himself with the layout that had been second nature five years earlier. Two bedrooms connected by a very short hallway, then a door between them and the main room. The main room was a living room to the left and a dining room to the right, a kitchen hang off the right side with a wall dividing it from the left side of the room. There were shelves everywhere, stuffed with books and movies Harry had either not seen in years or had identical copies of in New York.
The fridge was empty, he expected no differently, but he was starving nonetheless. He got dressed quickly and left his place. Once on the streets of London he breathed in deeply, noting the difference in the air. He smiled and walked down the corner, figuring he would stop for a bite to eat at someplace near the Ministry. He had promised Hermione that he would meet up with her there.
He found a place that sold the most amazing fried Haddock and an outdoor patio where he could eat it. He had bought a newspaper on the walk down, so he unfolded it and scanned it over his cup of strong black tea. He sat and read for the next few hours, enjoying the sun on his back and the cigarettes he had bought the previous night, under the judgmental eye of Hermione.

* * *

Ron moved from built in owlery at his three floor home in Yorkshire to the downstairs reading area where he knew his wife would be sitting. He sat down in a plush chair across from her and smiled at her when she cast him bedroom eyes. He handed her the letter he had picked up from the owls.
“Harry’s back in London.” He said.
Luna set her book aside on the table beside her and scanned the letter. It wasn’t very long, it said only “Harry is home. You and Luna should come see us.” it was signed by Hermione, who insisted on writing her own mail, even though she had hired an assistant years before. Luna put the letter down and smiled at the boyish look on her husband’s face.
“We can put some time aside for Harry Potter, sweetheart.” She said.
“I was think that we could go down there tomorrow, maybe have lunch with them or whatever. You know, just to catch up.”
“That sounds wonderful.” She glanced at the stairs that faced his back, “Of course we can always pass the time the usual way.”
Ron blushed, knowing what she had meant, “Yes. We could..er..that is a thing which we could do.”
“I love that, after two years of marriage, you still blush when I make a pass at you.” She took his hand and lead him upstairs.

* * *

Ginny was sitting at the house that she shared with Hermione, she was sitting and she was thinking. Thinking about last night and another night, many years ago.

Hermione had walked in on air, floating from the door to the kitchen, to pour herself a glass of water which she belted down immediately. Her face was bright red, flushed from her walk the the house, or her encounter earlier in the night, or perhaps a combination of the two.

She giggled incessantly, waking Ginny from the couch where she had fallen asleep pretending that she wasn’t waiting up for Hermione. Ginny made her way into the kitchen, letting the blood return to her feet along the way. Once there she pulled up a chair at the table and sat down to stare at Hermione, who was standing at the sink.
Ginny would ask if Hermione had been drinking, Hermione would say that she had not as she drank another full glass of water. She would sit down to share with Ginny the events of her night with Harry, the highlights and the disappointments. Ginny would sit and listen, not letting it show that her best friend was breaking her heart.

* * *

1997. London.

Ginny had come around to Harry’s flat to talk with him, she had waited until she felt enough time had passed before she decided to have this conversation. When she knocked on the door she could hear him moving around behind the door. He opened it and looked at her for a few moments before finally he forced a smile. His eyes were a deep and still green. She could tell that he was still lost in the consequences of his war.
“Hello, Ginny.” He left the door open as he walked into his apartment. She followed him inside and took a seat on the couch. Harry stood and looked out the window.
“Harry, I think I need some closure about us. I need to be able to know, to clarify or to move on.” She sounded rehearsed and she knew it. Harry didn’t seem to notice.
“I guess you do.”
“So what’s the story between us?”
Harry paused for a several minutes. The air felt like a cage around her. Her heart was beating a rhythm against her ribcage. He swallowed loudly, but still his throat was dry when he began to speak.
“I don’t think there is a story between us anymore.”
Ginny went silent, and hours worth of carefully rehearsed conversation gone cold and useless on her tongue. Harry never looked back, never seemed to react at all. Not when she began to cry, or when she yelled obscenities and called him names. Not even when she got up and stormed out. He just stood there silently staring out the window.

* * *

2003. London.

Harry met with Hermione as she was leaving the Ministry. She gave him a big hug, as though she hadn’t seen him the night before. He hugged her back and together they walked to her office. Once there she gave him some things to do, so that he wouldn’t have to wait around until she got out of work. Harry was proofreading a lecture that would be presented to the Hogwarts first years. He would cross things out, replace whole paragraphs with his own thoughts on the subject of equality in the magical world. A subject he had never had a passion for until he had left a good friend buried outside Shell Cottage so many years ago.
After several minutes he had moved on to assignments that had been put off by the other workers, suddenly hungry for something to do, for a chance to express himself.

* * *

Bryan was typing up a header for the invites which would be going out later that night when Harry approached his desk. He looked up at Harry and tried not to swoon, he didn’t think that was the most professional thing in the world.
“Hello, Harry.” He swooned just a little.
“Hi, Bryan, right?”
“Yes. Bryan.” He smiled.
“I was wondering if there was anything else that I could do.” He pointed behind him to the empty desk he had been using, “I’m out of things to do.”
Bryan looked over Harry’s shoulder, realizing as he did it that he would never be able to see the completed work load from his vantage point, “You did all of that?”
“Yeah.”
“Where have you been all my life?” Bryan dropped all pretense of professionalism.
“Are you...” Harry blinked a few times, “I’m not gay, Bryan.”
“Oh, sweetie, honey. I know.” He sighed loudly, “But you can’t fault a guy for dreaming.”
Harry shifted uncomfortably, “Yeah, I guess not.”
“How about this, big guy, why don’t you go into Ms. Granger’s office and see if there’s anything you can help her do?”
“Good idea.”
Harry walked quickly to Hermione’s office, he could feel Bryan’s eyes on him the entire time. Once inside he plopped down on the empty chair across from her and pointed behind him with his thumb.
“Your assistant has a crush on me.”
Hermione looked up startled, “What?”
“It’s not a big deal, but he wants a piece of me.”
“Did...” She shook her head, “Did you come in here to tell me that Bryan wants to have sex with you?”
“Not really, I discovered that Bryan wants to have sex with me on my way in here.” He smiled, “Do you think it’s weird that Bryan wants to have sex with me? Did you not figure out he was gay?”
“No, I knew he was gay.” She defended herself, “But he has a long term boyfriend, and I find it odd and a little unprofessional that he would hit on you.”
“Well, yeah, specially if he was a boyfriend.” Harry drummed his fingers on her desk, “I’m out of things to do, by the way.”
Hermione smiled, “Just ask around for work the other’s don’t want to do.”
“I did. I finished all of that stuff too.”
Hermione stared at him, “When did you become a work horse?”
Harry shrugged, “Surprised me too.”
“What am I going to do with you, Mr. Potter?”
“We could go do something.” He looked around her tiny cube of an office, “Unless you don’t feel like leaving this drab room.”
Hermione sat back and gave him a bemused look, “You think my office is drab?”
“Well, yeah. Don’t you.” He gesticulated at things as he continued, “No windows, no plants, fluorescent lights, no pictures on you desk, Hermione, you don’t even have any magnets on your filing cabinets. It’s like a robot works here.”
“You wound me, sir.” She placed her hand dramatically over her heart.
“Let’s go get dinner.” He said suddenly, “My treat.”
Her heart fluttered in her chest, the suggestion, she knew, logically she knew, was not meant to be phrased in the way that he had phrased it. He had not meant for his sudden asking to be anything but the expression of a whim, but she found her throat dry and her chest tight all the same when she said, “You want to take me to dinner?”
“Yeah, why not? I’m hungry, I’m sure you are. Plus we haven’t seen each other in forever.” He shrugged, “But if you aren’t hungry or whatever, we can always just go take in a movie or something.”
Hermione smiled what she hoped wasn’t too broad a smile, “I would love to have you pay for my dinner, Harry.”

* * *

New York. 1999.

Harry was sitting around doing nothing. There was the first eight pages of a memoir that he knew he would never finish mocking him from the desk in his room, an empty bottle of rum laying under the coil heater from another in a countless number of nights Draco had spent trying to forget about his problems, there was his half finished pizza and his book and these items were the only company he had. Draco was asleep in his room, gone to bed with a thousand promises that he would try to drink less. Harry couldn’t sleep. Every time he closed his eyes he was standing in the rain, his back to her. He was ever walking away.
Sometimes he would dream of other things, in his fitful sleep, the war, the look on Ron’s face that night, the last few minutes of his life on the run, mostly it was her. She plagued him in ways that he was unable then, and years later found himself still unable, to deal with. He would shoot back and forth between his desire to love her, and his need to hate her. He wasn’t sure, at any moment of his life which one it was.
He got up to look out the window, a habit he didn’t remember when he had first acquired. His eyes would graze the dark streets and alleys outside his home. He was watching and waiting, for what he wasn’t totally clear on. He had tried once to explain it to Draco, but all he had managed was to tell him that he was looking for a spark. Of what was unclear. The divine? Madness? Sanity? Hope? Love? Violence? Redemption? He didn't know, and he didn't truly believe that he ever would. This, like the girl, was just one more of his life's big question marks.
He paced before the window, allowing his eyes to roam, hungry for the activity of the streets below him. In the morning Draco would find him, his face pressed against the pane, asleep in the window sill. Draco threw a blanket around his his friend, together they had each become a caretaker for the demons the other suffered, in in this way they had first formed a begrudging respect, and at long last a very powerful friendship.

* * *

2003. London.

Ginny rushed to her room the second she heard the key turn in the lock. She’s had a rough day, another in a long line of hopeless leads on a case she wished she’d never been assigned, and the very last thing she wanted was to she Hermione float on air into the apartment gushing about the night she had had with a man that Ginny herself once loved. It bothered her.
It was as if Hermione had forgotten what had happened to everyone the last time she had felt these things for Harry. How everything had fallen apart, how everyone had fallen apart. Ginny loathed how selfish she perceived her roommate to be. She locked the door, blasted music until even she could barely stand the noise and became completely oblivious to the fact that Hermione had not in fact been the person to walk in.
In the living room Ron pocketed the key that he still had from when he had dated a resident of this flat. He called for Ginny, but she didn’t answer. He heard the music blasting in her room, knew from long years of experience what that meant. He sat to compose a note to Harry, to let him know that he would be in town with his wife to see him. Then he got up and left. Ginny, thinking that Hermione had come in didn’t leave her room that night, and therefore had no idea that Hermione didn’t come home that night.

4. Chapter Three: The Past and the Pitfalls therein.

Chapter Three.
The Past and the Pitfalls therein.

“The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.”

-Leslie Poles Hartley

London. 1997.
Ron slammed the door, the sound of it startling Harry from the couch. Ron stormed into the living room and dropped onto the couch next to the spot where Harry had sat back down. Harry looked over at the spot on Ron’s neck where a vein was fit to burst from the skin.
“Rough night?” Harry asked.
Without turning his head Ron spat out, “I can’t be in this fucking city anymore.”
“So, yeah. That sounds kind of rough.” Harry scratched his neck nervously, “Wasn’t tonight the big anniversary date?”
“Let’s-” Ron sighed, “Harry, can we just not talk about this.”
Harry shifted on the couch. They sat awkwardly until Harry got up to grab a bag of crisps from the kitchen. Once there he stood in the kitchen, gripping the crisps bag and staring into space. Thoughts fought themselves in his head the whole time. On one hand he had been in this flat with Ron for months, watching as Ron’s world collapsed around him, helping his mate where he could. On the other hand there was a strange thing happening every day following one of his best friends fights.
“If you want to talk about it later, I’ll be around.” Harry said silently.
Harry wasn’t watching Ron walk down the hall, but he heard him stop. He heard the silence that meant that Ron was standing still, thinking of what to say, and finally he heard as his best friend in the world stormed back out, finger pointing at him.
“You know what I want, Harry?” He shouted.
“What? What do you want?”
“I want you to just fuck her like she wants so I can be rid of her, that’s what I want!”
Harry eyed his best friend carefully, “You don’t mean that.”
“How in the world would you ever begin to know what I mean?”
“What?”
Ron took four steps closer, so that he was almost nose to nose with Harry, “What do you think your little lunch dates with her are, anyway? You think she wants to see you so often because she appreciates your opinions about the world or something?”
“We’re old friends, Ron. She needs someone to talk to about all the fighting between the two of you. For Christ sakes, man! Her only other friend in the world is your sister!”
Harry...” Ron stopped and stared at him, a mixture of pity and anguish fighting for dominance over his expression, “What is it that she tells you we’re fighting about?”
For several minutes an uneasy silence punctuated every ambient noise in the flat. Harry had his suspicions about how Hermione felt about him, he even had his knowledge of how he felt about her. Their frequent lunchtime dates had been a constant source of guilt in his life. But for all the time they had spent, the good time, they had never gotten into the specifics of the deterioration of Ron and Hermione’s relationship. Finally, with nothing else to say, he told the truth.
“She doesn’t talk about it.”
“Then what does she talk about?” Ron asked.
“Mostly that you two are having trouble, that she doesn’t think it’s your fault. I don’t know. What do you want me to say?”
“Do you love her?” He spoke so softly that Harry could barely hear him.
“Of course I do.” He answered, “She’s one of my oldest friends.”
“Fuck you. Do you love her?”
Harry cast his eyes to the floor, shame working it’s way into every cell in his body. Ron reached forward, grabbed him by the chin and yanked his face forward.
“Do. You. Love. Her.”
“I... I don’t know.” He answered lamely.
“Well, mate, she loves you.” Ron said darkly, “And that is what we fight about.”
Ron stormed out of the room, slamming his bedroom door behind him. Harry stood in shock, after some time he found himself sitting on the couch again, unsure of how or when he had gotten back to it. He shook his head until he was certain that he was functioning and slowly crept past Ron’s door toward his room. Afraid that any sound he made would upset his friend.
When Harry made it to his room he found an owl waiting with a letter for him. It was from Hermione, but of course it was. It always was. It had one sentence, “I need to see you tomorrow.” Harry sighed, wrote a hasty response to the letter, giving her a place to meet him and a time. He rolled it up, strapped it to the owl’s leg, and lay in bed unable to sleep for several hours.

* * *

London. 2003.
Harry shifted on the couch, trying to get comfortable, and the movement of it dislodged him and he found himself a mess on the floor. His wrist watch read 8:14am. He sniffed the air and caught the very familiar smell of coffee brewing. He sat up and followed the aroma to his kitchen where he found Hermione standing in one of his tee shirts. She was standing in front of the coffee pot, the early morning sunlight hitting her like that was the purpose in it’s rising that morning.
“That smells great.” Harry mumbled, “I hope you made enough for two.”
Hermione swirled around, a smile on her face, “It’s all for you. I’m far too British for coffee.”
“Don’t you bullshit me.” He smiled back.
“You’re right, but I don’t need it.” She wrapped her arms around her back, “I took the day off at the office.”
“Well, isn’t that something.”
“Don’t you dare say that something is going to happen, Harry Potter.”
“You mean like pigs flying?”
“I mean like, yes.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
Hermione pointed to the counter where a very small stack of letters was sitting, “You got some owls this morning.”
Harry walked over and picked up the mail, saying his thanks along the way. There were two letters. The first was on parchment style paper and read in this way;

Harry,
We heard that you were back in London! How wonderful. My husband and I will be coming down to see you this afternoon, if you have the time to see us. Please send us an owl back with the time and place which would work for you. Can’t wait to see you!
From,
Ron and Luna Weasly.

The second letter was written on regular muggle printer paper and was far more brief,

Harr-bear,
How are things going back in the home country? Are you eating? Getting laid? You never write, Harr-bear. You never write.
See you when you get back, buddy.
- Draco Malfoy.

Harry smiled to himself as he read over the letters. He turned both over and wrote out responses on the back of each before he sent them out with his owl. By the time he was done Hermione had stuck a mug of coffee in his hand and sat down with him at the kitchen table.
“Did you pick up food for the flat?” He asked.
“Not too much. Enough if you want to eat for a few days.” The she added to explain herself, “I got up a bit before you.

Well... Thank you.” He scratched his chin, that mornings stubble against his fingernails, “I was going to have to do that at some point. Glad I can check it off the list.

“Did you sleep well?”
Harry sipped his coffee, “No, not really. I don’t sleep well much these days.”
“Something wrong?”
“No. Just insomnia.” He paused to gather his thoughts, “You ever get tired of how much of our lives seem to revolve around how well I sleep?”
“Some times, very much so.” She bite her lip, “I’m so accustomed to worry about you that I’m not certain that I know how to turn it off. I know it must be terrible for you, everyone so worried all the time.”
“Actually, having been away for so long...” Harry shrugged his shoulders, “My mates stateside don’t worry that much. Just about the usual stuff.”
“Usual stuff?”
“Yeah, Malfoy was dedicated to getting me laid a few years ago.”
“Was he now?” Her eyebrow shot up, “Much success with that?”
“Not really.” Harry sipped his coffee, “I had this one girlfriend for awhile in New York, but we didn’t last that long. Malfoy, and Amber thought that it was damned odd that a single man my age wasn’t out in the streets chasing women around.”
“Who is Amber?”
“Malfoy’s wife. He got married. I told you that, didn’t I?”
“Yes, I suppose you did. I didn’t know her name.” Hermione blushed, “ I should have expected that she was his wife.”
“No big.”
They sat in silence for awhile as Harry sipped his coffee and Hermione played with the tangled ends of her hair. The awkward moments that seeped in to their conversations had become something of an excepted terror. So much history was caught up between them, so many things that were painful or uncomfortable doors to open that they themselves didn’t always realize when one had been opened. Finally Hermione sat up and checked her watch.
“So, we’ve got the day ahead of us. Any business that you need to attend to?”
Harry glanced at the window, noting to himself that his post was on it’s way, “I told Ron and Luna that I would meet them for lunch. Are you welcome?”
“I don’t know?” She smiled and raised an eyebrow, “Am I?”
“Well, I just thought that since you’re his former girlfriend that it might... I don’t even know if you guys are comfortable...” Harry sighed, “I’m not good at group drama anymore. Maybe I never was. You’re welcome as far as I’m concerned.”

* * *

London. 2003.
Ginny moved around her flat like a woman on a mission. Every movement of her arms and legs almost as though they had been planned months in advance. Sweat beading on her brow. She was not a big home maker but when she worried, she cleaned. It was a habit she had inherited from her mother.

There was little enjoyment in the act, it had a perfunctory, almost ritual like quality to it. It was easy to lose herself in the smell of disinfectant and the feel of grim building up under her nails. The motion of her arms carrying her from room to room in a trance state. The unknowing feeling of being without embracing that being. She knew only the difficult spot behind the microwave, the tip toe reach to dust the ceiling fan blades, the day to day routine of thoughtless motion.

In this way she didn't have to find herself dwelling on the fact that her roommate didn't come home the night before. That Harry Potter had walked back into her life, without a greeting or an apology or even so much as an acknowledgment of her existence. She didn't have to think about how easy it would be to connect his reemergence with Hermione's disappearance the night before. She didn't have to let the unimagined grief of unresolved feelings, unanswered jealousy and gut wrenching fear consume her.

But all things can only be cleaned so much. She was fast approaching the moment when rag would be useless, floors would be reflective and dust would be an endangered entity. She would find herself in the emotional equivalent of a no man's land in her flat. Which she did, as she always knew she would have to eventually. She wrapped herself in a pain so profound that affected her limbs. It quaked her from follicle to finger tip. Her lip quivered unexpectedly. She felt the moist heat choking her from her stomach to the back of her throat.

She steeled herself. Forced herself to concentrate on the fraying edges of a throw rug. Trying to make her mind concentrate itself. Driving the rising tears back into herself.

Not again, She said to herself, I won't waste anymore tears on Harry Potter.

* * *

London. 1997.
“How do you...” She sniffled, her tears dried to her face. It felt like a mask, like a skin that didn't belong to her, “This isn't fair? How do you justify this?”

Harry stood staring out his window, watching the London drizzle fog the window, “I don't know where you heard that life was fair, but you were misinformed.”

Ginny blinked away her shock, “What?”

Harry didn't move. Didn't turn to look at her. His reflection, distorted by the fogged window, showed no sign of change. He was utterly impassive, “Life isn't fair, little one. I don't know why I'm the one that has to tell you that.”

Ginny stood, throwing her purse across the room, “What the fuck is wrong with you?” He didn't move so she went on, “How can you stand over there and feel nothing? How can you treat me like this? Say these things to me and not even care? Did I mean nothing to you?”

“You meant everything to me.”

“Then what is all this? Why are you...” Her voice cracked, a fresh wave of tears welling up somewhere in her that stored water, “You're breaking my heart.”

Harry didn't respond. He didn't even try to.

“Harry, please. I love you. If I mean everything to you, if I really do, why can't we be together?”

Harry sighed, “You meant. I said you MEANT everything to me.”

“So I don't now?”

“No.”

Ginny paused. The brutal honesty in his voice repellent to her, a kick in the chest delivered by a skilled opponent, “What do I mean to you now?”

“Does it matter?”

“It does to me.”

“What do you want me to tell you?”

“How about the truth? How about why you suddenly want nothing to do with me?”

“You're my best friend's little sister, my ex girlfriend, and a valuable and capable soldier in a war I fought once.”

“What was that?”

“Hmm?”

Ginny wanted to walk across the room and punch him. She wanted to see him bleed and she had no idea if she could prevent herself from making him, “That was a dossier. That was my dossier. Is that how you define people now?”

“How would you rather I put it?”

“What do you feel, Harry! What do you feel for me.”

Harry cast his eyes at the cars moving in an out of rain slick London roads. He could almost be mistaken for thinking about his answer if not for his placid features. Finally he spoke, and with one word he ruined her life, in ways even he didn't understand completely at the time. He said only, “Nothing”

* * *

New York City. 2003.
Draco smiled when he got the post from Harry. It had been owled in that morning, and Draco had reveled slightly in the nostalgia of using owl post. He hadn't had much call for it in the last five years, he had almost totally cut himself off from the wizarding world. He had carved out a comfortable life for himself as a muggle. One he enjoyed thoroughly. He had his business, which was managing to thrive even in the early part of the recession, and a wife who knew him completely and loved every tiny bit of it.

No one had loved him so completely as Amber, and he himself had never loved another as much as he did her. He smiled as he looked around his new apartment. The first apartment he had owned himself in the city, bought with a combination of his vast wizard wealth and the money he and Amber made from their jobs.

It was a nice place. One bedroom, but with a massive living area, for a New York apartment anyway. The walls were decorated with art he loved and the 70's rock paraphernalia that Amber so treasured. There was an area just off the main living room that they had left empty. They planned to build a second room there, for the child they wished to have one day.

Draco sat down on his comfortable recliner, let his feet up and began to read Harry's response. It was simple and to the point, and spoke volumes about what was happening in Harry’s life these days. It contained only one word, and that word was “Help.”

* * *

New York City. 2000.

Harry was moping around the apartment. Reading two books at once, while doing very little productive besides. One novel was propped up on the sofa cushion he was laying on, the other tucked in away safely in his bedroom. Draco was still a little burnt out from a showing that had went well into the early hours of that morning. He was spacing out and soaking his feet. The two of them were basking in the comfortable silence that people develop after friendships and hardships have been endured and won.

“Malfoy?” Harry said, his voice almost echoing against the silence that had proceeded it.

“Yes?”

“I like her. Amber, I mean.” He smiled, “She's good for you.”

“Thank you.” Draco smiled.

They returned to relaxing. Allowing several more minutes to pass. Finally Draco worked out in his head what he had wanted to say to Harry for some time.

“You saved my life.”

“What?” Harry looked up from his book.

“You saved my life. Got me to move out here with you, got me to quit drinking. Encouraged me to set up my gallery.” He paused, “I've never thanked you for that.”

Harry smiled, “That's what friends are for, you big softie.”

Draco chuckled, resigned himself to finish his thought and continued, “Why did you want to leave London anyway?”

Harry bookmarked his page and turned toward Draco, “The past is the part, mate. Why dwell?”

Draco gave him a knowing look, “You still love her.”

Harry sat up and slumped his shoulders, “I don't follow.”

“She stood up to me, no matter what I called her. She never bent or broke.” He smiled, “She's good for you.”

Harry returned to his prone position, opened his book and said simply, “Still don't follow.”

Draco shrugged and allowed himself to slowly space out again. They continued on in this way until the time came to meet Amber for lunch. Harry was going to offer her a key to the apartment, he felt it important that she knew how welcome she was. How much a part of the family, they had built between each other, she was. Draco loved her more than he had ever loved anyone, but there wasn't a person in the world he respected more than the man whose simple act of compassion had lead to a friendship beyond anything that Draco had ever known or thought that he deserved. He only wished that he could make it up to him.

* * *

London. 2003.

Ron and Luna sat in the patio restaurant that Harry had asked them to meet him in. It was a pleasant day in London, sunny yet cool. Ron held Luna's hand as she flipped through a copy of the Quibbler warning the need for a through darning of socks as a way to prevent the pixie gust related foot diseases one could catch on holiday to Norway.

“Sweetie?” Ron said.

“Hmm?” She responded without looking up.

“It occurs to me that I haven't seen Harry since the wedding.”

“Mmm.” She agreed.

“I have no idea what I'll talk to him about.”

“Ehmm.”

“I wonder if this will get awkward. I hope not. Merlin that would be bad. I feel like a drowning man over here.”

Luna put her paper down and patted his hand, her ethereal but warm smile lit her face up. He felt less anxious, he felt like reaching out and putting his hand on her face, the contact assuring him that she was real. That she was with him. He knew she would cup his hand in her own, lean into his palm and close her eyes. Soaking up his affection and assuring him that he mattered more than the sum of his last name and his best friend. That to her, he was the beginning, the end and the now. Because together they were everything, and apart so very lost.

“If we go to Norway on holiday this winter we have to be sure to pack sugar cakes. Pixies hate sugar cakes.” She said.

He caressed her face with his hand, she sighed pleasantly at his touch, closing her eyes and kissing the warm skin of his hand, “I'll write it down so we don't forget.” He answered.

“I love you, Ronald.”

“I love you, too.”

5. Chapter Four: Enough Rope.

Chapter Four.

Enough Rope.

“It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.”

-William Blake

London. 2003.

Being around her hurt him in ways that he wasn't completely prepared for, and even more so that he wasn't willing to admit. It wasn't the obvious things, the small smiles or the way that sunlight could catch the corner of her eye, that put him at ill ease. It wasn't even the harmfully prolonged silences, or the catch in her breath when she said his name. What hurt, what he now had to admit, had never been the catch in her breath. It was the catch in his own.

It was the years of hoping for the rain to stop only to watch it flood him out. He had been in this place before, this ready to close his eyes and fall kind of place, and it had turned out poorly. He wasn't prepared to go through that again. He wasn't able, in body or mind, to put himself out to be slapped away. He had never been more scared of anything than he was scared of the bottom of his stomach nervousness that her smile brought out in him.

“We have some time to kill.” She announced, “Do you want to do anything before we meet up with Ron and Luna?”

“Like what?”

“Well, I don't know.” She rolled her eyes, “You're the one that's back in town. Isn't there something that you'd like to see again?”

“I'll think on it.” He smiled.

“That's as good as saying nothing.” She smiled knowingly.

“Well, it isn't exactly true though, is it?” He answered.

“How so? You still haven't given any answer to my question.”

“I was in London two years ago when Ron got married.” Harry shrugged, “So it's more like I haven't been here in five years, minus one day.”

She dipped her fingers in her cold coffee and flicked some at him with a laugh, “That is so stupid!”

“It's true.” He smiled as he wiped coffee drops from his glasses with the end of his shirt.

They sat alone in the kitchen of his old flat. Sipping coffee and chewing on the remains of the toast they had shared for breakfast. Both thinking in the same half lucid way about the minutia of being around someone with whom so much history is shared. Harry found himself wiping his hands on his thighs. He knew that in his bedroom, even as they spoke, was a bed that she had slept in. He didn't know why that should mean anything to him, he knew only that it did.

For her part, Hermione was lost deeply in pondering what it was about London that she would want to see if she had been the one to spend five years absent from it. There were the tourist sights, but like any resident of a major metropolis, those places weren't that interesting to her. She couldn't imagine what she might want to do. She began to twirl her finger through a loose strand of hair that was hanging by her shoulder.

She caught him staring at her. There was a part of her that had been wondering if the spark was still there. If that one night so many years ago had meant anything to him beyond the physicality of it. While a stare wasn't an answer, she felt it was an important part of the puzzle. Because the question she wanted, needed, answered wasn't one that could be asked without care. When Harry had walked back into her life, and she had reemerged in his, there was always the curious nature of how they had left things, and how that would effect them now.

“You okay?” She asked, the ghost of a smile on her face.

“Hmm?” He shook his head, “Yes. I'm fine. Why?”

“You were staring.”

Harry looked confused, then the spark behind his eyes lit understanding across his features, “Oh!” He smiled, “I'm sorry. I was spacing out. Rough night, you know?”

“I see.” She let her finger tap the side of her second mug of coffee she had finally caved into pouring herself, “Just spacing out, looking at me, but just spacing out.”

“Hermione...” His eyes fell, “Don't-”

“Harry, are we ever going to talk about it?”

“What would you like to talk about?”

“You know.”Her eyebrows narrowed.

“I don't actually.” He answered, “ I imagine we have a lot of things to talk about. We could start with us, that's what I think you're interested in, or we could start with your letter.”

“My letter...” Her voice cracked, “I...I didn't mean for it to drag you back here. I was in a dark place when I wrote it...”

“Well, it did.” He reached across the table and put his hand on her's, “I thought you hated me until I read that letter, 'Mione.”

“Why would you...”

“How could I not?”

* * *

London. 2001.

Harry's head was spinning. He had not had anything alcoholic since he had cleansed his New York apartment years earlier. Tonight he had a glass of fire whiskey with his best friend after he had given the best man's speech. It had gone directly to his head. He had gone outside, loosened his neck tie and sat on the curb outside the venue chosen for Ron and Luna's wedding reception. He lit a cigarette and hoped that the building looming around him would stop seeming so ominous soon.

Before he realized it Ron had sat down beside him, “Those things'll kill you, you know.”

“Better than them have tried.” Harry smiled.

Ron's face turned serious, “That was a wonderful speech, Harry.”

“Thank you.”

They sat back and breathed in the night air. The company of each other the only constant in the odyssey they had both been going through since Harry had left. Ron turned to him then, a slight frown ruining the moment of peace they were sharing.

“She didn't come.”

Harry nodded, checked himself for balance against his single glass of alcohol, “I didn't expect her to.”

“I..” Ron smiled, “I thought that seeing her was your only reason for coming. I know it's stupid, I know that I'm your best friend, I know that I'm the one that said differently. I know this. You don't have to say it. But I thought it was all the same.”

Harry smiled, “You've said my part, mate.”

Ron laughed for a time before he said, “I suppose I have at that. Is the wedding the reason you came?”

“Yeah.” He shrugged, “I'd be lying to you if I said that I wasn't hoping that she would be here.” He paused, “Is it okay if I say that?”

Ron put his hand on Harry's shoulder, “It took me some time to forgive you. No, that's not it. To realize that it wasn't even your fault what happened between me and her. To see, to really see, the kind of asshole I had been to you. The things I said.”

“It's-” Harry began.

“No, it isn't. I was so far out of line. I was coloring without motor skills.” Ron stopped, took a deep breath, “I know it's too little too late here, mate, but I'm sorry.” He turned to face his best friend, eyes filled with, as yet, un-shed tears, “Can you ever forgive me?”

“Of course I can.” Harry pulled Ron to him, giving him the hug he had held for him for the last few years. When they broke apart, both a little more misty eyed then they would ever admit to anyone, Harry said the words he had been meaning to say all night, that he had only partly managed to say during the speech he had worked so hard on, “You're my best friend. The closest thing to family I've ever known. Everything I've ever done, I've done for you. I was this messed up kid, in way over his head, facing down this thing that was so far outside of my capabilities. I was no one going nowhere. You saved me, Ron. You told me a joke, showed me some chocolate frog trading cards and saved my life. How could...” He choked back tears, “There is no force on this planet that could ever make me stop being your best friend. There is no one that could erase what we've built.”

This time Ron hugged Harry, “Thank you, Harry. Thank you so much.”

* * *

London. 2003.

Ginny had taken down a photo album that she kept high on her shelf, tucked behind a row of old books with boring titles. She opened it up, breathing in the soft smell of Hogwarts which still slung to the pages. Inside the album she stored stored pictures taken by the Creevy boy, articles clipped from magazines, newspapers, books, pictures of them. The album was filled with Harry, and therefore filled with her demons. Pages and pages of a demon shaped like a boy with old eyes and a scar on his forehead.

Ginny used to have the album hidden behind a pile of stuffed animals in her room at the burrow. She would, every year at the beginning of each new term, put it at the bottom of her trunk and leave it there throughout the school year, chancing only the occasional night to look through it. She was son proud to have it, even if it was had in secret, that she was certain that some part of her soul was trapped inside it, just like Tom Riddle's diary.

Over the years it had transformed. Where it had once been the small, silent hopes and dreams of a love struck little girl, had become the realized affirmation of a girl who had gotten her deepest desire, and now it was a dark reminder. A cautionary tale. A relic of times gone by, heartbreak and despair. How she had hated him once. The cavalier way he had tossed her aside, so much used garbage. Ginny Weasly: The-girl-who-couldn't.

Tonight she looked at the pages and tried to feel something beyond the stubborn callous on her soul. She reached inside her to find the wind exposed flame that used to burn the night sky in her own name, and found only a damp spot inside herself which spelled out her past. Ron had said that he worried for Hermione. That the girl had never been able to move on from Harry Potter. Ginny had been polite. Had been quiet. Had been behaved.

Inside her a well sprang of spite. Built brick on top of brick of the way no one saw the storm rage inside of her. No one had noticed that she was the one, her goddamn it, that hadn't been able to pick up the pieces that Harry had shattered. Hermione had her work, her fling with Chaz. What did she have? She had exactly what Harry had said. Nothing.

The happy ending filled dreams of her youth had been battered with dismissive words. Her life had been ripped in too, spit on and raped before her by the one person she had foolishly trusted it with. No one cared. No one noticed. Not when Hermione was around. Not when her better shared a roof with her. She closed the book, threw it across the room and cried at the damned oblivion of it all.

* * *

London. 2003.

“I never hated you.” She said finally, “I needed time.”

“I gave it to you.” He fell back against the chair, “I did what you asked me too. I left.”

“I know.”

“When you didn't show up at the wedding...” He sighed, “I honestly thought I had lost you. I thought that you were done with me.”

“That's not why I didn't go, Harry.” She got up and walked around so that she could put her hand on the side of his head, “It wasn't about you. It was about me.”

Harry pulled away, “Isn't it always?”

Hermione recoiled, pulling her hand away as if he had bit it, “That was harsh.”

He hung his head, “You're right. I'm sorry.” He indicated the air around his head, “I have all this pent up aggression. Things I never got to say. I... This isn't how I wanted it to be between us.”

“Harsh, but not wrong.” She amended, “I did and didn't do a lot of things.” She rested against the counter behind her, “I know how difficult it must be for you. I can see how...”

“I'm..” He stopped to gather his thoughts, “Let's not have this conversation. I don't want to have the conversation.”

She pulled her chair around, sat facing him with one hand on his hands and the other on his face, “I think it's about time we finally did have this conversation.”

* * *

London. 1998.

Harry moved across the couch, pulled her into his arms and drew her into a kiss. He was hungry for the feel of her. For the soft electric tingle of her skin against his. Her lips parted, allowing him access. He took it, greedy for as much of her as he could get. Her drying tears rolled onto his face, but he could hardly feel them. She moved her hand to his neck, pulling him to her as she rolled back onto the cushions. She forced him to her face.

He groaned as his groin made contact with her. His jeans rubbing against him he could feel the give of her flesh under her clothes. He moved his hand under her shirt until he felt her nipple hard against his palm. She moaned into his mouth.

* * *

He lay beside her as she slept. He moved her hair from her face, ran his hand up and down her naked back. He had never taken a moment to thank anyone for anything. He did that night. He thanked whoever would listen, be it God or Vishnu or what have you, for everything, every shitty horrible thing, that had ever taken him from a boy living in the cupboard under the stairs to the man laying on the wet spot next to her. His hand rose and fell with her breathing, and he marveled at it. He marveled at her.

Smart, unassuming Hermione. The woman he had never let himself fall in love with. The woman he always knew he was in love with.

* * *

She wouldn't return his owls. She wouldn't answer the door when he knocked. She barely spoke a word to him in days, except to say that she didn't know what she was doing anymore. That the night they had spent together had been a mistake. That she wished he would leave.

* * *

New York City. 2002.

Harry had leaped back onto the curb as a bike messenger had zoomed passed him at a reckless pace. Across the street Ginny had seen it. She stood, completely at a loss. It had not been her desire to see Harry Potter, let alone in New York. She didn't even know that he was there. She was visiting a friend, the first time she had seen him years. She stood there until he arrived, staring at the empty spot where Harry had stood. Finally his voice boomed behind her.

“Ginny!”

She turned, about to scream his name, but only half of it came out. Neville Longbottom had grown up in the intervening years. He stood tall, and far more slender than she had ever known him to be. His face was three days away from a razor, his hair uncombed, and his smile uncommonly kind.

“Nev...”

“Ginny!” He answered, “I thought I would miss you. I accidentally slept in.”

“You look amazing.”

He blushed and looked about his feet, “So do you.”

“SO!” She shouted, “Why don't you show me around this giant city?”

He smiled so that the kindness lit his eyes, “I can try.” He shrugged, “I've only been a few days.”

“How is everything going?”

“Great! Really, really great!” He gushed, “I really feel like I've found my calling, it's so wonderful. I'm good with plants and everything.”

“I'll be honest, until you said anything about it, I didn't know that Hogwarts even had the position you landed. I mean, traveling the world to find rare plants? Who knew?”

“It's a start.” He smiled, “Let's get something to eat and I'll tell you about it.”

They found a charming, practically empty little basement restaurant, seated themselves adjacent from one another at a booth. They ordered a lunch and spoke in conspiratorial tones. Magical folk were almost totally lost among the muggles, but in his travels Neville had become adept at fitting in.

“This gig is like a starting point for me.” He explained, “What I'd really like to do is teach Herbology, but for now this is as good a foot in the door as anything. Plus, the perks are nice.”

“How so?” She played with the straw in her glass, forcing herself to be charmed by the attractive young man before her. Trying so desperately not to dwell on her chance almost encounter with the Great Harry Potter.

“Well, I mean, mostly it's the ability to actually see these plants.”

She smiled, “You saw them in the green house all the time.”

His brow knitted, “Not really. It's hard to explain.” He opened his mouth once, twice, smiled and began, “You know how when you see a bird in a cage, it's still a bird, but when you see it flying, swooping about in the clouds, it finally becomes a bird to you? It's the same thing with the plants. You don't really appreciate them until you see them out here. Growing wild.”

She blinked, “I've never really thought about it that way.” She chuckled, “That's a really good point actually. When did you get so smart?”

He smiled and shrugged, “I have my moments.”

* * *

London. 2003.

“You were horrible to me.” Harry admitted, “I don't know if I ever really got over that.”

“I'm sorry.” She cast her eyes down, “I know it isn't much, but I was young.”

“I know.” Harry cast about with his eyes, “People make these assumptions. They only see a situation as an outside observer. I never would have realized that if I hadn't grown up the way I did. People watch you make a mistake, everyone makes mistakes. But they have the benefit of knowing more of the complete story. They can see the consequences.”

“And they act like you intended to do what you did. Like you are actively trying to hurt people.” She finished.

“Exactly.” He smiled, “I'm not looking for you to apologize. We all make mistakes. It's part of growing up. Part of being human. I didn't come here to have you explain that to me, I left so you wouldn't have to.”

“Is that the only reason?” She bit her lip, “I was afraid that it was because I told you to leave.”

“No.” He rested his hand on her face, “I would have anyway. I was so hung up on you. I was destroyed when you rejected me. I would have left. I would have had to. To save myself.”

“I was afraid of what you meant to me.” She confessed, “It was only a little less than eight months after Ron and I split up. I didn't want you to be my rebound. I wanted to love you without modifiers.”

“I wanted you to.”

“Do you think...” She sighed, “Is there still a chance for that?”

Harry sat back, rubbing his forehead, “Okay. Wow.” He blew out a cheekful of air, “That's a conversation for a different time.”

“You're right.” She withdrew from him slightly.

“'Mione, right now, right this moment in time, I just want to see if we can even be friends again.” He pulled her to him, “We've been through some shit, both of us. We have so much to catch up on. So much to learn about each other again.”

“You're the best friend I've ever had, Harry.”

He smiled, “I get that a lot these days.” He paused, “You think I've grown up?”

“I think you grew up before I did.” She slapped him lightly on the arm, “And I have to tell you, Mr. Potter, I did not see that coming.”

6. Chapter Five: There is never a full circle.

Chapter Five.

There is never a full circle.

"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing."
-George Bernard Shaw

London.2003.

“I think... I want us to be able to talk. Like we used to.” Harry leaned forward, uncomfortable in his chair, and suddenly in his own skin, “I want this, not London, not this apartment, though I'm not denying either, but us. I want you and me to be like home for me. I want to be able to just tell you things. I want you to be able to tell me things.”

“I miss that.” Hermione nodded, “When I lost you... It was hard to move on, I would get phantom pangs.”

“Me too.” He smiled, “I moved to a different city, a different country. I made friends with one of my most bitter enemies, and hey, that's life. I know that. But I couldn't seem to move on. I couldn't manage to find myself without you. I tried. I dated this girl a couple of times. I got a job for awhile. But I would come home and stare out the window and think about all the shit we went through.”

They had moved to the couch in the living room, where Harry had slept the night before. They sat with space between them, still unable to connect non verbally. That space between them came to mean something to them, because it wasn't just on the couch, it was in the air around them, in their hearts and minds. It was a space without depth or time, without hope or truth. It was a space that had been branded on their skin, lest it be forgotten by the happiness that came in intermittent bursts in the years since.

“I dated Chaz for almost two years. We were talking about moving in together. We were talking about so much...” She turned her head, a wave of something dark passing over her, “I didn't think I could trust after him. He... I miscarried.”

“I know.” He said guiltily, “It was in your letter.”

“Right.” She let the words roll over them. Miscarried. A life had grown and ended inside of her. At the time she had no idea how she was going to live past that, “I forgot that I wrote that.”

“Really?” He arched an eyebrow, “Why would you lie about that?”

She smiled a weak smile, “Because I wanted you to think that I wrote it so casually that I could forget it.” A tear slipped down her face while he watched. It was followed by so many more, “I...I didn't...”

He pulled her to him, past the invisible space inside them, over the real space on the couch. She shuddered with her sobs against his chest, he only held her tighter. Waiting for her to regain composure, knowing in his heart that if he let her go she would fall apart. She had always been a rock, his anchor against the waves. Now he would be her rock. He would anchor her through the pain or he would drown with her.

* * *

New York City. 2002.

In her hotel that night Ginny tried desperately to make herself feel something for Neville. Wanting to fall in love with Neville was the reason she had flown out to the states. She had always remembered him as this sweet, kind boy. The kind of person that any girl would and should marry. Gentle and polite. With a courage that always came out unexpected, no matter how used to it you were. He had become good looking, he had become wise. He was perfect.

Except.

Except he wasn't Harry Potter. Which had been a problem for almost every boy around Harry Potter at some point or another, and had been a consistent problem for Ginny since she was old enough to like boys. Because none of them were Harry Potter, not even Harry Potter. He had let her down, crushed her, ruined her and left her floating in a void. He hadn't even seemed to care. It didn't seem to bother him.

And here she was, laying awake in a hotel room, thinking about him when she wanted nothing more than to be thinking about Neville. He was supposed to be the one that would cure her of Harry. Neville was supposed to be the answer to her desolation. He was going to swoop in a rescue her from her despair. Instead she was here, he was at his flat and never during the entire conversation they had shared had there even seemed to be a glimmer in his eye that was more than friendly.

She got up and turned on the light, stood in front of the mirror and examined her naked body. She was an attractive girl, she had worked hard to be so. She exercised, ate right, exfoliated. Standing there, looking at herself, she wondered what it was about her that was so broken that it showed up on her skin. She could search for years and never find the scarlet “H” that she assumed everyone else could see. She pushed her hair down, tried and failed to force a smile. Suddenly her eyes looked dark, her freckles seemed freakish, her stupid orange hair served to illuminate the unattractive features of her face.

She shook her head, looked again and saw the beautiful girl in the glass again. The person she knew she was. The person she refused to let him erase from her. She set her jaw, narrowed her eyes, and pushed her bottom. She winked at herself.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” She let her body fall to a slouched standing posture. Her features pulled by her own revulsion for herself, “Just get over it!”

She ran to the hotel bed and buried her face in her pillow. She cried. Again. It was all she felt like she ever did. How did she let herself fall apart so completely? She rolled around until she finally fell asleep on her damp pillow. In two days she would be back in London. Away from Harry, away from Neville, away from her latest pathetic attempt to move on.

* * *

London. 1997.

“He moved out?” Hermione said, “He just up and left?”

“Yeah.” Harry said softly from the throw rug he sat on, reorganizing his now emptier bookshelf, “He moved out.”

“Is it because of you?” She flopped down on the couch, “Did you finally catch him masturbating or something.”

“No.”

She sat in silence. Knowing what she wanted to say, but having trouble finding the words. Harry silently shuffled books around, the scrapping of their spines against the flimsy balsa wood the only noise in the room. She rolled her head over, guilt consuming her features, “Was it my fault.”

Harry sat silently, his shoulders moved up and down with his breathing, with his attempts to compose himself, “Yes.”

“What did he say?”

“You don't want to know.”

She sat back, thinking small dark thoughts. Part of her knew he was right, because she suspected what had driven Ron away, but she did want to know. She wanted to hear it said aloud. More so, she wanted to hear him say it out loud. The one thing they had spent years refusing to say, the thing that she knew they both wanted to say. Finally she built up her courage, steeled herself against what would likely be a very messy conversation, possible an argument.

“He won't talk to me.” She began, “And I do want to know...”

“You broke up with him, not the other way around.” Harry spun around, his eyes the dark green she had first observed when he really began to fight his seven year war.

“So?” She had become reckless with passion, love and war are so very few degrees separated.

“So? So!” He stood up, “Hermione, he's the one that needs closure, not you! He's the one that needs to understand why you left him. Because he thinks it's something else.”

She rose from the couch to meet his face, “What? What does he think, Harry? What is he so off base about that he needs all this closure? What did all of the arguments we had make him think was the signifier of a healthy relationship?”

Harry backed down, his eyes shifting back to their usual light emerald, “I didn't mean to say that it was wrong to break up with him. I only meant that...”

“Meant what!” She shouted, “Goddamn it, Harry! What is this about? Did he think I wanted to fuck you? Is that it?”

Harry turned his head away from her, “Yes.”

“Say it, Harry.” She poked him in the chest, “Say the words.”

“Why?”

“I need to hear it! SAY THE WORDS!”

“What is this!” His head snapped back, anger in his face and his dark green eyes. Passion boiling below the surface, “What the fuck is into you!”

“I want to hear it! I want to know what it is that the good saint Ronald had to fight against in dark sinning little me!”

“I never said that!”

“Are you taking his side?!” She bore down on him, but he rose to her face, all fury and indignation.

“I'm not taking sides! I'm tired of having to take sides!” He grabbed her shoulders, “You're the one that isn't supposed to ask me to. You're the one that's supposed to understand that I don't want to choose between the two most important people in my life!”

“Well, I don't understand!” She shot back, “For once I want you on my side! I want you to love me more!”

His eyes widen, his eyebrows rose until his brow furrowed, “Is that what this about?” He asked quietly, “Is he right?”

She boiled for seconds, trying to keep it contained and failing, “YES!”

“What?”

“Yes, Harry. Yes. Good God, YES! I want you to love me, I want you to make love to me. I want you to be a part of my life and a part of my body.”

“I...” He stepped back.

She stepped closer, her finger pointed at him, “And don't you dare pretend that you want differently. Don't you look me in the face and tell me that you don't love me. That you don't want me.”

Harry backed himself into a wall. He glanced behind, as much to assure himself there was a wall to his back as to let her know it too. She reached out, grabbed two handfuls of his hair and yanked his head to her own. Pushing her mouth onto his until not even a stray thought could separate the two of them.

He pushed himself off the way and into her. Returning the kiss they had waited years to share. Giving her every ounce of his loneliness. When they finally came up for air, after having some how found their way to the ground, him on top of her, she smiled, threw back her head and let out a satisfied moan.

“Finally!”

Her elation was cut short when she felt him get up. She sat up to find him sitting in front of his bookshelf, arranging the books. She blinked twice before her sense returned to her.

“Harry?”

He breathed out once, a ragged, barely controlled animal breath, “I think you should go.”

“Harry, I don't-”

“Go.”

She collected herself and left. He sat arranging what was left of his books, their spines scrapping the flimsy balsa wood the only noise in the room, save for the faint sound of his restrained sobbing.

* * *

London. 2003.

Harry set down a cup of tea and some biscuits on the table in front of the couch, Hermione sniffled, wiped her nose on her sleeve and thanked him with big puppy dog eyes. He rubbed her shoulders as she sipped her tea and nibbled at one of the biscuits.

“If you'd like I can whip up some cucumber sandwiches.” He said, “It always seemed to cheer up Malfoy to have a couple cucumber sandwiches, not that I'm in any way comparing you to Malfoy, I'm just-” He smiled and rubbed his head, “Honesty, I'm just trying to be useful.”

“Been awhile since you've been around a crying girl, hasn't it?” She gave him a weak smile.

“Uhm... Yes. Yes it has.” Harry's smile started to show teeth, “Whenever Amber cries that is a strictly Malfoy task. I go to my room.”

“Do you miss it?”

“Living with Malfoy?”

“Yeah. You two seem to be very close these days.”

Harry sat down on the couch, “You know, I actually do a little.”

“How on Earth did the two of you ever manage to get along?”

“Patience.” He answered, “We had our problems. Both of us. Mine were with you, his with the world. We solved them in different ways. He picked drinking.”

“Wow.”

“Now there is no alcohol allowed in my home.” He smiled at her, “And Malfoy is married. I am one hell of a problem solver.”

“How did you deal with your problem?”

Harry sat forward and put his hands on his knees, “In a couple of ways, really. I started reading a lot, walking all the time, staring out windows, stopped sleeping too well.” Suddenly his expression grew dark, “And I took out my frustrations with you on Ginny.”

Hermione leaned back and reflected on her roommate, “I had always wondered about that.”

“I was so stupid for you, and I didn't want to admit it.” He shook his head, “And the worst part is, when she came over I knew that I was being horrible to her. I could feel it in my bones, but I couldn't stop myself.”

“What possessed you to be so mean?” Hermione put her hand on his leg, “That's not like you.”

“No. It's not.” He sighed, “I just... I guess I thought I had to be a little mean to make my point. I didn't want her dwelling on me. I... I know I botched that one. I know I did it all wrong.”

“You were young, the had just ended. You were so introspective and mixed up then.” She rationalized.

“I know. There are a million of excuses for what I did. But none of it changes that I did it.” He shrugged, “I had always wanted to talk to you about it, but you and I were doing the love-you-hate-you dance by then.”

“People make mistakes, right?” She cupped his hand, “Maybe that has to apply to you as well.”

He smiled at her, “I really missed this. Just talking to you, telling you about this crap. I forgot how much it made me feel better.”

“I know.” She pointed to the tea and biscuits, “You're the only person I've ever really been able to share with.”

“Where did it all go so wrong?” He mused.

She put her head in her free hand and sat contemplatively for a moment, “I think it would be difficult to trace it back to one particular moment.”

“Yeah.” He leaned back on the couch, freeing her hand from him, “You probably have something there.”

“Do you think it's always going to be this way between us?” She asked.

“What way?”

“You know.” She indicated the both of them with her hand, “The sometimes it's okay to touch, sometimes it's okay to talk, sometimes it's awkward and trying just to muscle up the nerve to do either.”

“I don't know.” He leaned forward so he could look her in the eye, “But that kind of gets to the heart of what this talk is about, doesn't it?”

“Yeah, but how do we get it to go away?” She smiled.

He shrugged, put his hands up as if to gesticulate but lowered them instead, “No, what I mean is, I don't know if it ever will. It will or it won't. But right now it's hard to be around one another.”

“True.” She slumped back.

He pulled her forward, he needed her to see him, to understand him, “So, is our friendship worth putting up with the moments that are hard or awkward? Am I worth it to you, because if not that's okay, really it is. No hard feelings. But I want to be your friend. You're worth all the shitty pain, 'Mione. You're worth it.”

She raised her hand to her mouth, her eyes watering against her will, “Oh, sod it all. I'm going to cry again.”

He smiled and stood up, “Cucumber sandwiches, coming right up.”

* * *

New York City. 2000.

“Don't go anywhere.” Harry raised his arms to show Draco that he didn't want him to move, “I'm going to make us some cucumber sandwiches.”

Draco could feel the laugh all the way from the pit of his stomach until it left his mouth and filled the room with a warmth he didn't think possible only moments ago. Harry winked and dashed off to the kitchen. Draco could hear him cutting cucumber and humming one of the random muggle songs he would come home obsessed with. Draco could picture the endless hours of Harry trying to find the official music video on Youtube, so desperate to show Draco the song in the best way possible.

An hour ago Draco had learned that, after spending so long sobering up, getting his life in order, meeting Amber and finally finding direction in his life, the place he had wanted to put his art gallery had been bought out by some trendy coffee house instead. It had seemed a crushing blow at first, but Harry had sat and talked him through it, promised that they would start first thing in the morning trying to find a new and better place for Draco to hang his friend's silly paintings.

“Harry Potter and his famous cucumber sandwiches.”Draco said loud enough for Harry to hear him, “If you ever write an autobiography that just has to be the title.”

“Scoff now.” Harry said as he brought in a tray of cucumber sandwiches and weak green tea he had bought cold from a 7-11, “But once you've had a couple of these bad boys, you'll be singing a different tune.”

Within an hour every last sandwich had been eaten and Draco and Harry sat laughing. Talking about Amber, designing a game plan for the hunt they would embark on the next day, and telling dirty jokes until the world around them, all the pain and bullshit they had both been put through in all the years since they had met to get their robes fit, faded into nothing. When Amber came by to console him she found Draco hearty and in good spirits.

She pulled Harry aside to thank him from the bottom of her heart. To tell him that Draco was lucky to have him, that she was lucky to have him, for a friend. He brushed it off in true Harry style. When she insisted, when she tried to make him understand how truly remarkable he had been, he had always been, he turned to her and pointed backwards at Draco.

“That's what friends are for.”

* * *

London. 2003.

Hermione put her sandwich down, grabbed Harry's hands and looked into his eyes, “Yes.”

Harry blinked, “You mean it?”

“You made me sandwiches.” She smiled, “You are so worth it.”

“Man.” Harry smiled, “If I knew that was all it was going to take I'd have made you sandwiches in '98.”

Hermione flexed her shoulders, “This feels right. You and me are friends again. It is such a weight off of me.”

Harry nodded, “I know what you mean, I actually feel like myself for the first time since I came back to London.”

Hermione looked at him sideways, “You are a remarkable man, do you know that?”

“With all the books about me? You kidding, 'course I know that.” He smiled as she snorted and giggled.

“Would you look at that, “ She began when she regained her composure, “You're making jokes again. I missed you making jokes. It feels like forever since you made jokes.”

“It's good to hear you laugh at them, though that might actually be a first.”

“I laughed at your jokes before!” She put on a mock agitation, “I'm sure I did at least once.”

“Okay, maybe once.” He smiled.

She leaned forward, putting her hand on his knee, “Harry, not to bring this back down to the serious talk again, I'm really enjoying how light this new branch of our conversation is going.”

“Okay.”

“But I have to know, and I know that you don't care if I apologize and I respect that, but I need to know if you can forgive me for what I did. For the way I was.”

Harry put his thumb and forefinger to his chin, deep in thought for a few short moments before he turned to her, “Have you ever heard of the Doctrine of Unintended Consequences?”

“Sure. Who hasn't?” She said, “Everything we do causes something. One good turn can cause something bad to happen and vice versa and everything in between.”

“Everything that's happened. Me and Ron patched things up, me and Malfoy became friends, and this right now, are all the consequences of the thing you want me to forgive you for.”

“And that's all fine and well.” She chuckled, “But do you forgive me?”

He smiled without an ounce of fear, regret or remorse, “Absolutely. That's what friends are for.”

* * *

London.2003.

Ginny's skin was crawling. Her house was clean, her tears, the ones she had promised not to shed, had been shed. She had to get out. She had to move. She had to find something to take her mind off of Harry. She needed a place without him in it. She looked at the album she had tossed across the room. She thought about how every now and then she would look in the mirror and see some ugly woman who wasn't her. She remembered every night of doubt and pain. Every soft spoken vow she had ever sobbed out.

She knew what she needed, what she had needed for years. What she had denied herself in one of a hundred thousand different ways, and what had been denied her by the absence of a chance. The chance was there, but she was playing the same old game. She needed to talk to Harry. She needed to get the closure to move on, she needed something only he could give her, or so she presumed. She needed absolution.

7. Chapter Six: The paths not taken, and the problems with them

Chapter Six.

The paths not taken, and the problems with them.

"How can I be reasonable? To me our love was everything and you were my whole life. It is not very pleasant to realize that to you it was only an episode."

-W. Somerset Maugham

London.2003.

Ron and Luna were not overt in their love. There was the casual touch, the whispered aura of peace in their movements and their easy smiles. They were not showy in their happiness. There was the laughter behind their words, the almost telepathic looks shared between them. Standing across the street, having spotted them sitting at the table, Harry and Hermione were dealing with a mixture of contradictory emotions.

It was in this state that the two of them made their way across the street. Luna saw them first, a warm smile working it's way into her features. She waved to them without fully extending her arm, like it was a secret hello just between the three of them. Ron turned in his seat to watch them approach, a broad smile lighting his features. When they had taken their seats Ron beamed over the table, a king on his thrown.

“I never thought this would happen again.” He said, “All of my greatest friends in one place.”

Luna took Ron's hand and squeezed it slightly, “We're very happy that you could make it.” She turned to look direcly at Harry, “I don't imagine that you brought an umbrella.”

Harry looked up then back to her, “It isn't raining.”

“Does it have to be?” She smiled, a far away look in her eye, “I think they're awfully fun to save for when it rains.”

“The living non sequiter.” Harry smiled, “I've missed you.”

Ron turned his gaze to Hermione, “Hello.” He smiled, “I had gotten the feeling that you weren't speaking to me anymore.”

“Popular idea.” She answered.

“I'm glad I was wrong.” He threw his hands on the table, “Now! With the pleasanties past us, let's get down to the nitty gritty. How the hell have the two of you been anyway?”

“Let the waiter know that I want the omlette.” Luna said to Ron as she stood up, “I'm going to run to the ladies room.”

“Let me know if it passes.” Ron said off handedly.

“She inspects the bathrooms?” Hermione shot up an eyebrow.

“You'd be surprized what can sneek into a bathroom these days.” Ron winked.

“Ron, buddy, I have to say...” Harry looked at the empty seat that Luna had vacated, “You two seem remarkably happy.”

Ron shrugged dismissively, but couldn't hide the smile in his eyes, “We do alright.”

“I'm glad for you, buddy” Harry patted Ron's shoulder, “Jealous as a snake, but glad all the same.”

“You'll find someone.” Ron said, “If you ever get back to looking.”

Harry recoiled, “What?” His eyes narrowed, “Have you been keeping tabs?”

“I call Malfoy now and then. Sue me.”

Harry gave Ron a love tap in the shoulder, “When did you get all sneaky and devious like?”

Ron rubbed his shoulder, “You do what you have to.”

Harry gave him a solemn look, “I guess you do, at that.”

* * *

New York City. 2001.

“I'm not leaving the city.” Harry shouted across the living room, “I will not be scared off by some insane man and his designes on wrapping humanity in that insanity! I didn't back down when I was eleven, I won't back down now!”

“I'm not saying that we leave permanently, Harry.” Draco stood before the couch, Amber behind him as always, “I'm only saying that we go for a little while.”

“Aren't you even a little scared?” Amber rose from the couch as well, “It's dangerous in this city enough without worring that we might get murdered by madmen!”

“I'm not leaving.” Harry turned his back to them, “That's final.”

Draco exchanged a quick look with Amber, “I don't think we're going to convince him.”

Amber broke away, throwing her finger out at Harry, “Why? Why on Earth would you put yourself at risk like this? What does it prove?”

Harry let out a ragged breath, “When you give in to the terror around you, you have let it win. You've let it own you. What does it prove? It proves that I'm not giving in. It proves that they haven't won.”

“And you think that you staying is going to send that message?”

“You do what you have to. Nothing more and nothing less.”

* * *

London. 2003.

Harry scratched hs neck just below his hairline, his mind searching for the words that his heart knew were the first step in releaving the weight around it. Lunch had gone well, laughter and joy and all points between. Ron and Luna had been the model example of a married couple, while Harry and Hermione had dealt with the dread silence between them by staying engaged with their gender matching counterpoint, though there wasn't a soul born on earth that could get out of sharing an inside joke with Ron or a curious bit of advice from Luna.

When the girls had decided to go inside Ron and Harry had stayed outside so that Harry could smoke, or that's what Harry had told them anyway. He knew that he had to ask Ron, he knew it was now or never, but never can be tempting when now is so damnably hard. Ron smiled an easy smile, the kind designed to put someone into a comfort zone. He patted Harry on the shoulder.

“You want to ask me something, Harry?”

“I do.” Harry paused, “I'm just not sure how to phrase it.”

“Start with a word and end with a question mark.” Ron said helpfully, “I've found that works best for me.”

“This is slightly more difficult than that.” Harry replied, “It requires careful wording and a lot of beating around the bush.”

“Does it really? Or is that just what you've worked it out to in your head?”

“That is a fine point. Also, it isn't even slightly helpful in any way.”

“I try.” Ron winked, “Look, Harry, if this is about Hermione. It's cool, we can talk.”

Harry withdrew, “Not that I don't need a lot of advice and guidance and a stunt double in that area, I do, but this isn't about that.”

“What is it, mate?” Ron had on his best concerned friend expression, the well worn one he had perfected over seven years of life and death adventure, “You can talk to me. You can always talk to me.”

“Talking isn't really my strong suit, I'm more action oriented. I always screw up the talking part.”

“There is a bit of truth there, I'll grant you.” Ron cast a glance inside, “But the girls won't be gone forever, and I get the feeling this is a private sort of discussion.”

Harry worried his hands together, pushed his eyebrows up, then down, and finally opened his mouth, only to close it four times before he worked up the courage to say what needed to be said, “It's about Ginny.”

“Merlin's beard, Harry.” Ron rubbed his forehead, “I would consider it a personal favor if you didn't bark up that tree for romance again. She didn't take it well the last time.”

“It's not for that.” Harry sighed, slumped his shoulders, “I think I need to apologize to her. I made a real mess when we parted, and I don't want to leave it there with her. She meant so much to me once, and I just feel like she decerves better than I gave her.”

“Right on every point.” Ron nodded, “But everyone is a git now and then. What do you need from me?”

“Right. Okay.” Harry bent forward, hoping to keep the conversation even more private than it already was, “She's Hermione's flatmate, and it would be odd and a little awkward if I just showed up and Hermione was there.”

“True.”

“So what I need from you, if you can manage it, is to get word to your her that I would like to speak to her, tell her to come round my flat, the one I lived in before I moved. She'll know the place. Can you do that for me?”

“Harry, yes. Yes I can.” Ron beamed at him, “I can do that for you. I think it's something that needs to be done for her anyway.”

“Thanks, Ron.”

“What're friends for?”

“Balancing out disporportionate numbers of enemies.” He smiled.

“Yeah, that too.”

* * *

London. 2001.

Ginny was staying awake, watching cartoons on the muggle television that Hermione had brought with her when they moved in together. She was trying to follow the plot, what of one there was at the very least, but her eyes would wander. First it was just to the floor below the Television, but soon it ended up on the picture. It always ended up on the goddamn picture.

The picture was of them at Hogwarts. Their last year their, really their last year together. Ron had Hermione wrapped up in his arm, Neville was laughing at a joke she couldn't remember who told, she was swooning over at Harry, who stood just out of frame. He had the ghost of a smile on his face, but his eyes were elsewhere. At that time his eyes were always elsewhere.

She remembered waking up and walking down the stairs from her dormitory to the common room one night. She couldn't sleep because the curtain on her four poster had been caught up in the wind and would constantly brush across her face. She saw a fire burning from the foot of the steps, which wasn't unusual, as it always seemed to burn when someone was around. Bathed in the light from the flame sat Harry, his back to her. He was sitting on the floor, deep in thoughts. A darkness seemed to cling to him, his shoulders holding a weight so much beyond his sixteen years.

She remembered the desire in her to reach out to him. To walk over and sit beside him, rest her head against him and share some of his solitude if she couldn't share his pain. She remembered thinking foolishly, If I could only show you the love you need. But she hadn't reached out to him. She hadn't sat beside him. And sitting there in her living room watching cartoons and pretending not to dwell on the picture of them, she realized that she hadn't been able to show him the love he had needed either.

She switched off the set and made her way to her bedroom. Hours later she heard Hermione come home. She had been the night away at her boyfriend's flat. Ginny kneaded the pillow below her head, she knew that things between Hermione and her boyfriend had been dicey lately, but she also knew that Hermione was the last person she wanted to talk to at that moment. The girl that had driven Harry away, the girl that had won him out from under her, the girl who would always be The Girl to him.

Ginny rolled over and pulled the covers over her head. She hated herself for feeling that way.

* * *

London. 2003.

The doorbell had rung four times before Ginny had gotten to the door. Her heart beat quicker with the transferred sense of urgency she felt from the rapid fire rings. When she got the door open there stood Harry Potter, and all of a sudden her heart didn't need any help beating faster.

She looked at him for a beat before he offered her a bottle of wine.

“I brought this for you.” He shrugged, “It seemed like it would be a good thing to give to you.”

Ginny rolled her eyes, she had become accustomed to how awkward the man could be in another life, now she was finding it hard to remember how she was meant to deal with it, “What do you want, Harry?”

Harry rubbed his elbow with his free hand, “Yeah. I deserve that. I just...” He paused and raised the wine bottle, “Can I come in?”

She leaned against the door, “Harry, the last time we spoke...”

“I know.” His eyes moved to his feet, hair falling before his eyes, “I know.”

“Okay.” She stepped aside, “But if this goes to a weird place, you're out. Got it?”

“Got it.” He smiled.

Once inside she took the bottle from him, pointed toward the living room and walked with it into the kitchen. He walked into the living room, working out what to say and how to say it in his head as he observed the apartment. There was a window caddy corner to where he was standing which afforded a wonderful view of a bust London street, he consiously chose to ignore it. There was a TV sitting on the floor, a throw rug before the coffee table in front of the couch. A small cushioned bench sat next to a bookcase, and he could imagine Hermione sitting there on stormy days totally engrossed in a book, her hair falling in her face. Next to it sat a large cd player and speaker set, he smiled at the thought of Ginny dancing about the apartment to the latest from the Weird Sisters like she had about the common room when they had dated. He took a seat on the couch, flipping the magazines and newspapers around to get a look at their titles and contents.

From the other room Ginny's raised voice floated into him, “What brings you to this side of the city?”

“I just want to talk.” He answered.

Ginny walked in, rubbing her hands on her pant legs. Her eyes darted around the living room, looking for anything incriminating, before she met his eye, “I set the wine in the...” She shook her head, “What do you want to talk about?”

He grinned a sorry little grin, no teeth and pain in the eyes, “About how big an asshole I was to you and why you have every right to punch me in the face.”

Ginny sat down on the reading bench, “I don't want to punch you in the face.”

Harry's eyebrow shot up, “Really?”

She smiled, “Okay, a little. But go ahead and talk first.”

“Okay.” He shifted in his seat, put his hands out, thought better of it and put them back down, “Why don't you just punch me in the face.” He closed his eyes, “It'll at least be less messy.”

“Let's assume that I'm not going to hit you.” She rolled her eyes, “What else have you got?”

“I'm sorry.” He said gravely.

“You are at that.” She smiled.

“I suppose I am.” He rubbed his neck, “This is hard.”

“You expected differently?”

“Yeah. Good point.” He blew out a great amount of air and rubbed his hands together, “Okay, look: Thing is that I treated you badly and I shouldn't've and it's my biggest regret in how everything shook down before I left. I never wanted to treat you that way, I never wanted you to feel like I didn't cae about you, because I did and I do. You're one of my greatest and most treasured friends and I acted like you didn't matter and, really, that says some shit about me that I think is evident.”

“Like what?” She probbed, perhaps enjoying the moment more than she wanted to.

“I'm a fuck awful human being and I didn't desreve your love when I had it.”

“That's true.”

He looked at her, “I just want to talk, Gin. Seriously. This isn't a set up.” He hung his head for a second before raising his eyes to her again, “I don't want you to hate me, but if you do, well... I just need you to know that I never meant it to be like this.”

She sat up on the bench and sighed, “Harry, I know that.”

“You...” He blinked, “What?”

She moved her hair from her face, “I know you're not a bad person, and even if I didn't believe me enough people reminded me of that after our break up.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Not finished.” She smiled.

“Sorry.”

“Harry, You were in a bad place, you were eighteen and you didn't convey properly what you meant to say. And you know, fuck you for that, because it really hurt me in ways that you can't possibly imagine, but I do get it.”

“I know...” He sat back, “I just had a talk that I should've had years ago, and I feel like what I need is to have a similar thing with you. So, if you want, can we talk?”

Ginny looked up to the ceiling, her eyes looking for clues to her answer and finding none. Finally she looked back down at him, sucked in a lungful of air, let it out, checked her hand for shakes and said, “Yes. I think we ought to.”

“Do you have anything you need to ask me?”

“When you....said what you said, were you fucking her?”

“No.”

“How much of it did you actually mean?”

“None.”

“Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in love with me?”

He looked at her carefully, gauging her reaction, “No.”

She nodded her head, “Did you ever?”

“I... I think so. Yes.”

“What does that even mean? You think so?”

He shrugged his shoulders and met her eye to eye, “I think I was, once, years ago. I think... No. There was a time when you meant everything to me. When I would wake up and you'd be resting on my mind where I'd left you before I went to sleep to dream about you.”

“What happened then?” She gripped the corner of her shirt.

“I don't know.”

“Don't you bullshit me, Harry. You don't know? Someone doesn't go from what you described to telling me that I mean nothing to you without knowing what changed.”

“Okay. Fuck. Okay.” He slumped in his chair, “How do I even begin?”

“You could try the truth for a change.” She narrowed her eyes.

Harry shrank into himself, “Are you sure you don't hate me?”

“I have my moments.”

“No kidding.” He ruffled his hair, “Okay, I'm going to tell you this, and when I'm done I would just like to remind you that we're working on the assumption that you won't punch me in the face.”

“Deal.”

“After the war.” He leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees, “After the war everything about me was different. I had lived my whole life under one kind of attack or another, one threat to the next. Seventeen years of my life and I had spent that time with two souls living inside me. One morning I realized that I couldn't talk to snakes and it hit me like a ten ton weight.”

“What?”

He turned his head to look at her, “I didn't know how much of who I was had been tied into who he was.”

“You thought...?” She covered her mouth with her hand, “No.”

“It wasn't exactly like you're thinking. Yes, for a moment in time I cosidered the idea that I maybe wouldn't have been attracted to you without the Voldemort influence.”

“Oh Merlin.” She whispered, “It makes so much sense. His diary, me and his diary. You and his soul, you and me and his soul. Oh shit.”

“No, Gin.” He waved his hands around in front of him, “No, it isn't like that!”

“You loved me because of Voldemort!” Her shoulders rocked gently with each intake of air, “It all makes so much sense. I... I don't knw why... I am so fucking broken that it took a monster inside you...oh fuck.” She fell apart.

Harry lept from the couch to crouch in front of her, his hands wiping the tears from her face, “No, Gin. Listen to me, that isn't why.”

“Of course it is! I was just so stupid to think it could have been anything but. I actually though-”

“No!” His scream brought a deafening silence in it's wake before she looked at him and he spoke softly to her, “No. It was the chamber of secerts when I first loved you, Gin. Riddle was saying how weak you were to let yourself be clouded by emotions, and I thought to myself that he was wrong, that you were so strong to have fought him, to carry that emotion with you morning and night and still be able to function. I'd never felt anything as strong as that.”

“What do you mean?” She wiped the tears away with her wrist.

“I mena that I first loved you because I admired your ability to love. Voldemort thought love was a weakness and you, glorious, wonderful, powerful you. You knew it to be a strength before even I did. That's why I loved you.”

“So why?”

He cast his eyes down, “That's more difficult to answer.”

“I imagine so.” She put her hand on his shoulder, “But please. For me.”

“It wasn't a snap thing. I didn't wake up one morning and not love you. It was kind of slow. It was a back of my head thing.”

“What was it?”

“I realized that I loved some one else.”

“Hermione?” She asked.

“Yes.”

“Of course.” She sat back and crossed her arms, “Of course.”

Harry leaned back, his body slack agaist his arms, “I've loved her since I was eleven years old and she told me that I was worth something.”

“What?”

His eyes glazed, he was far away in his past, “No one, no girl, had ever said that I was good for anything, no one had ever assigned any kind of worth to me. I had come up in this life where everyone hated me for being alive and suddenly there was this girl... this girl with bushy hair and buck teeth and she thought I was special. That I was good, that I mattered. And my God, Gin. I loved her for that.”

“But Ron liked her too.”

“Exactly.” He snapped into the present, “So I backed off. Occasionally it broke through, a moment here, and hugg there, and I could love the girl in some dark secret part of myself. But mostly I backed off.”

“And when Ron and her finally broke up...”

“Not exactly.” He smiled, “Because no person is an open book, and no story is as straight forward as it should be. Nothing is neat and because of that, no. I didn't make my move. In fact I rebuked her's.”

“Why?”

“I don't know.” He rolled his head to the side, “Guilt. I'm nothing if not guilty deep down to my core. There was the guilt about you, about Ron, about how I still sort of think of myself as this piece of shit no one can love. There was pride. I don't think I was comfortable with being second choice. There was this self righteous indignation about having to be caught between my best friends and their bullshit, and it felt like they were both trying to, I don't know any better way to put this, but it felt like they were both trying to win me in the divorce. You know?”

“Wow.” She shook her head and smiled, “Think about this much?”

He chuckled, “For the past few years I've done little else. I've been stupid about this girl since I was eleven and she broke my heart over and over until finally it was one time too many. I just had to get away from it, and I didn't even realize that when you came to talk to me that day.”

“Why did you say those things?”

“I honestly thought that telling you that was the neatest possible way to end things. I thought that if you hated me, if you actually hated me enough, that you wouldn't love me anymore. And that gem, that's the bit that I think I picked up from sharing a soul with Voldemort. I had actually convinced myself that hate could overpower love.”

She ruffled his hair, “Silly boy.”

“Gin, I know I hurt you. I know I don't really deserve to have you as my friend, or anything like that, but there you have it. I just need you to know how sorry I am about all of this.”

“Oh, Harry.” She smiled, “You deserve so much more than you've been given.”

“Do you forgive me?”

“I do.” She bit her lip, “But there's something that I need to know.”

“What?”

“I've spent the last five years a complete mess because I still love you, and I know that it's retarded to feel that way after all of this, I know that. But I can't help how I feel. So what I need to know, so I can at least have that much closure, is if it's even at all possible for you to love me like you used to.”

“Gin...” Harry shook his head sadly, “I'll always love you, I'll always admire you, but no. I can't love you like I used to. I don't know if I'm capable of loving anyone like I used to anymore.”

She swallowed a lump in her throat and nodded, “Okay. I needed...” She wiped a tear from her eye, “I needed to hear that.”

“I'm sorry.”

“Don't be.” She smiled warmly through her years, “Sorry doesn't fix anything. I think, and feel free to admire the strength this takes for me to say, but I think you need to stop saying sorry to everyone and forgive yourself a little. Or at the very least stop assuming blame that belongs to others.”

“You're right.” He smiled, “I do admire the strength that took for you to say.”

“Good.”

“So...” He sat up right, “Friends?”

“I think we're basically family at this point.” She patted his head, “No one other than family can drag each other through so much shit and still love each other.”

“You have a good point there.”

“So I get to have the rather dubious honor of being the little sister that you had sex with that time.”

“Well, that makes this a whole lot more uncomfortable.” He smiled.

“Aunt?”

“Not any better, actually.”

“Well, then the family analogy has it's limits, but it applies.”

“Agreed.”

Ginny stood up and wiped her eyes, “Let's go get something to eat. Sound good?”

Harry stood up and indicated that she go first, “Sounds great.

8. Chapter Seven: Mostly Broken

Chapter Seven.

Mostly Broken.

“To have become a deeper man is the privilege of those who have suffered.”
-Oscar Wilde

London. 2003.

Harry sat up in his bed, sweat moving slowly down his forehead and between his shoulder blades. The scream had choked out in his throat, the way that years of bad dreams had trained him to react. He cast his eyes around his room, and just for a small moment didn't realize that he wasn't in New York. When finally he calmed down he lay against the soaked sheets and closed his eyes, though he knew that he would not sleep again.

When the sun finally came up he stared out the window at the early morning noises of a city coming to life. He sat up when he smelled coffee. He strolled from his bedroom to the kitchen where he found Ginny making coffee. She waved to him and turned back to finish.

“I've got eggs on the table, but you know I'm no cook so if you don't like them compliment me anyway. It'll make me feel better.” She said.

Harry sat down and devoured what were possibly the worst eggs he had ever had, before he sat and drank the worst coffee he had ever had, and the whole time he smiled like an idiot. Ginny told little jokes, he had forgotten how funny she could be.

“How was the guest room?” He asked, “Not too stuffy I hope.”

“It was fine.” She smiled, “Thanks for letting me stay over. I don't think I had it in me to face her right this moment.”

“Yeah.” He rubbed his head, “I know the feeling.”

“So, our talk.” She paused, “It was good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She cocked her head, “I'm not saying that I'm ready to storm the breech into a new relationship with anybody, but yes. It was good. I feel better.”

“Glad to hear it.”

“So how's the breakfast?”

“Great.”

“Because I made it and I think it tastes like rubbish.” She pushed her unfinished plate of eggs next to his clean plate, “So, yeah, no offense if you didn't like it.”

“I'll never tell.” He smiled.

Her face grew serious, the warmth shut out for a moment, “So, you're in love with Hermione?”

“I don't know.” He shrugged, “Okay, no I do know. Yeah. I'm in love with her.”

“So why not do something about it?”

“Because I don't really trust her not to hurt me again.” He shook his head, “How fucking pathetic is that?”

Ginny snaked her hand across the table to rest on top of his. He looked up and met her eye and saw the strength there, the warmth that had made it's return, “It's not pathetic. It's natural. We're all afraid of giving one person every ounce of ourselves, because once given it is a powerful weapon against us. But we can't let that fear rule over us. We can't.”

“I know.” He sighed, “But I need time, Gin. I'm so terrified of what she is and what her and I might mean.”

“Everyone hurts each other, Harry. If you don't expect that by now, you're fooling yourself. We hurt everyone we ever love in one way or another. Pain is part of the process.”

“Isn't that a little jaded?” He smiled.

“Life is a little jaded, Harry.” She smiled back, “We just have to actively look for the diamonds in all these lumps of coal. It's our lot in life.”

“Find you bliss, and whatnot?”

“Something like that.” She winked, “And listen, I know that I'm the last person in the world to give you relationship advice, seeing how badly I've botched every single one of mine, but believe me, sometimes it's worth seeking out.”

New York City. 2002.

“I'm leaving for Boulder.” Neville said.

“What?” The digital ghost of Ginny's voice answered.

Neville was standing on a corner, one finger jammed in his ear against the city noise the other ear had a cell phone against it. On the other end of the line was Ginny Weasly, and everything in between them was cell phone static and small, sad unrequited things. Neville moved under an awning to try to afford himself a better buffer against the toxic noise of city living.

“It's a town in Colorado.” He said, “I'm going to be out there for a few weeks.”

“Something good popped up?”

“Yes. Sort of.” He shrugged even though she couldn't see it, “Just reports, but it might turn into something.”

“Will you send me your new mailing address?”

“I...” Neville sighed, “I don't know.”

“Why?”

“Because it's now or never for me right now, Gin.” He waved his arm around, “I keep reading the letters you send, looking for that one letter, the one I really want you to send, and I know it isn't coming and that's killing me.”

Ginny was silent for awhile, “I... I don't know what to say.”

“I know.”Neville rested his head on the crook of his arm, “I know.”

“Tell me what you want me to say.”

“Tell me that you love me, like I love you.” He whispered to her, “Tell me that, one time and I'll never ask for anything else ever again.”

“I... I can't.”

“I know that too.”

London. 2003.

Harry cleaned up the table while Ginny talked at length to him about the ways in which she had botched her chances for happiness. He winced every time his mind connected his unique fingerprint to her consequences.

“And I haven't spoken to him since.” She slumped in her chair, “And I regret that. Becauce I think I could love Neville. I really do. But I was...”

“Unresolved on other points.” He contributed.

“Yeah.”

Harry turned around and sat down, “Maybe you should try to talk to him. Do you still have his phone number?”

“Yeah, but... I don't know. What would I even say?”

“Ask him to coffee.” He shrugged, “Tell him that you want to see him. I have no idea. I suck at this sort of thing.” He indicated his apartment, “Second time I've had a beautiful girl in my flat over night since I came back, and both times nothing happened.”

“Point.” She punched him softly in the arm, “Also, gross.”

“There you go, I'm gross now.” He smiled, “You ought to at least talk to him. Where's he at these days?”

“He works out of Hogwarts now.” She rested her forehead on her hand, “He does work for the green house. I'm told that he's a year or two away from teaching.”

“Sounds like you've been keeping tabs.” He said accusingly.

“Girl's got to have hobbies” She said weakly.

“If you're interested enough to follow his career, I mean to even know that sort of thing, exactly why don't you love him?”

“I do love him.” She smiled, “But I'm too afraid that he'll turn me down or hurt me.”

“Look at us, we are in the same boat.” He smiled and shook his head, “We should've done this years ago. I could really have used a friend in misery.”

“It does love company.” She added.

“It does at that.”

* * *

Yorkshire. 2003.

Ron walked in from his morning run to find Luna reading the directions on the back of a box of pancake mix. She kept furrowing her brow, as if she was having deep problems with the numerical order of the instructions. Ron grabbed an apple from the counter and sat down behind her at the table.

“What's shakin' gorgeous?” He said through mouthfuls of apple.

“I can't figure out at what point this stupid thing wants me to flip the pancake. I always see the cooks and stuff flip the pancake, but this just says to add water and milk.”

“I don't think it's meant to be a cook book, dear. Just a handy list of ingredients.”

“Well, that's dull.”

Ron walked up and put his arms around her waist. He kissed her neck and she leaned into him, “I think I can live without pancakes.” He said.

“Good.” She added before she spun around, “Because I wasn't going to make you any, anyway.”

He smiled as she kissed him.

London. 2003.

Harry had walked Ginny out with the promise that she would try to talk to Neville if he tried to speak with Hermione. He stood in the overcast London street smoking his second cigarette while trying to think of what he could even say to the woman that had owned his heart for longer than he really wished she had. In two days he had had two very good friends mention her name at the heart of his issues in life, and for once he was beginning to see the trend of thought.

He paced a little, thought about everything he wanted to say and do and finally stopped dead in his tracks. Standing in front of him, as if out of thin air, were Draco and Amber.

“Malfoy?” He squawked out.

“Harr-Bear.” Draco said in response.

“What're you two doing here?” Harry asked while Amber gave him a hug.

Draco smiled and presented an empty hand, “I was going to dramatically hold out the note you sent me, but I left it on the kitchen table.”

“Wow.” Harry smiled, “The note thing would've been cool.”

“I know.” Draco beamed, “So are you going to show us up to your home away from home, or are the wife and I going to have to live out of our suitcases on the sidewalk from here on out?”

“Of course.” Harry smiled, “Come on up.”

* * *

Draco was walking about the flat, giving himself the non-guided tour, while Harry and Amber drank coffee in the kitchen. Amber had immediately poured out the pot that Ginny had prepared and made another of far better quality. Draco's mug sat steaming at the empty spot where he was supposed to be sitting.

“I don't think I've ever been in you flat before.” Draco announced as he walked in and took a seat, “It is very Harry.”

Harry cocked his head to the side and gave Draco a sly grin, “Is that a insult or a compliment.”

“It's both.” Draco smiled back, “So, how bad have things gotten that you need me to fly all the way out here to bail you out?”

“Malfoy, you have no idea.”

“That bad, is it?” Amber asked, “Draco said that you might have to confront some of your demons out here.”

“And I did.” Harry answered, “I'm still hale and whole but maybe a little worse for the wear.”

“Care to expound?” Draco asked as he picked up his coffee, “Or do I have to beat it out of you.” He turned to his wife, “Sometimes you got rake him over the coals to get anything out of him.”

“I've noticed.” She screwed up her eyes in silent laughter, “But sometimes I thin that that is half the fun.”

“It's no big deal really.” Harry cut in, “I've had two, count that out on your fingers, I can wait...”

Draco threw some napkins at him, “Smart ass.”

“But seriously, I've had two very difficult conversations, and I'm fairly certain that I've got at least two more ahead of me before I can say I'm done patching things up.”

“Then what?” Amber asked, “I mean, are you coming back to New York at the end of all of this?”

“I don't know.” Harry rubbed his chin, “I really do love that city, it's as much a part of me as anything else in my life...”

“But?” Draco added.

“But.” Harry said gravely.

Amber looked back and forth between them, “Is this some kind of wizardy telepathy that we mere mortals can't vibe to?”

“No.” Draco grinned, “I think it's called guy talk. Or at least that's what I've heard.”

“So what's 'But'?” She asked.

“This is his home.” Draco said softly, “Just like Brooklyn is yours.”

“But I don't live in Brooklyn. I live with you.” She paused, “In Manhattan.”

“Yeah.” Harry said, “But Brooklyn is a cab ride away for you. A walk if you're feeling ambitious. This is a little different.”

“I'll grant that.” Amber stated rationally, “But Draco isn't packing up to come back here.”

“He has you, though.” Harry said, “I don't really have something as powerful as love holding me down anywhere.”

“Oh!” She slapped her forehead, “But you think you have that here. Is it that one girl... Harmony?”

“Hermione.” He and Draco corrected.

“So is it her?”

Harry sat staring at the wall for a beat before he let a small smile develop on his face, “It's complicated.”

Amber put her hand on his, “Oh sweetie, it always is. You think dealing with all the hocus pocus was easy for me?”

“I wasn't suggesting-” He began.

“If you think there's a chance for something with this girl, something real, something special, you have to make that leap. You just have to.” She reached over and squeezed Draco's hand, “It is so worth it. So worth it.”

Harry smiled, “I'm glad you guys came out here.”

“What're friends for?” Draco said.

“Keeping a balance against the number of enemies.” Harry smiled.

* * *

In a neat stack exactly four feet from the bed Harry slept on was a stack of letters. They had been written to him over the course of five years, they were all from Hermione. Most had not been read before the night he had decided to fly to London, but there were two letters which he had read and re-read a dozen times in those years. One was the first letter she sent him, before he had even moved out of London. The other one was the letter that had brought him back.

The first letter read;

Harry,

There is some logic to the thought that what happened between us is my fault. I acknowledge that. I'm not trying to make this more difficult than it is, because believe me I know how hard it is for you. It's hard for me. I'm going to say this, because you said it to me, and I think you deserve at least this much from me.

I love you, Harry. I think that I always have, in my own way. But everything that's happened. Me and Ron, you and me. Sex complicates things, I think. I don't even know what I'm doing anymore. I barely know who I am. For so many years I defined myself as your best friend and Ron's girlfriend, that now, this moment as I sit here writing this, I have no idea who I am.

Ron hates you, and he hates me and it's not fair to me that I have to be caught up in it. Ginny stalks around the flat like a woman without a purpose and I think to myself, “I shouldn't have had sex with Harry.” And I know how that sounds, I know. Because I needed that so badly, I needed to feel you there after all this time. And when you told me that you loved me. When you said those words.

I exploded inside, Harry. I had wanted so badly for that to be true. I had spent so many nights wishing that I would hear that from your lips. And when it was spoken I was so amazingly overjoyed, and we got carried away. That's what we did.

Because look at the mess we've left for ourselves. Is that the future you want? Having to fight all the time, waking up every day knowing that a struggle was ahead of you? Because that's what we're standing in line for. What happened between us, it was wonderful and I'm so happy it happened, but it was a mistake. It was a mistake that we shouldn't have made, and that I wish you hadn't let me make.

Remember that night when I was standing in the rain and you told me to go home? I was so mad at you, Harry. I couldn't believe you would just reject me out of hand like that. But this morning I woke up and I realized that I wish you had done that same thing a week ago. I wish you had had the strength to turn me away again. I sound horrible, but I need to say these things.

And I can't say them to your face.

I love you, it makes it hard to speak logically, to think straight. I can't see you anymore. I can't manage it. I don't have it in me to go back, but I don't like what lay ahead. Sometimes I wish one of us would just leave.

I'm sorry, Harry. I am so sorry.

-Hermione.

It was this letter that harry found himself reading that night before he went to bed. Because this letter held all of his worst fears about trying to pursue something with Hermione. It was the wellspring from which all of his years of exile and pain had come from.

In the time since he read her letter begging him to come home he had read through the other ones. They had varied in tone, from caustic to apologetic. Some were borderline love letters, others had been more like hate mail. And nearest the top of the stack, where the most recent letters were kept, they were mostly tear filled admissions of guilt and shame. And each and everyone of them was written with the same inscrutable code of semi insanity. Filled with frenetic sentences, incomplete thoughts and in some instances, actual panic.

Each letter had been from her heart, and that made the ones filled with hate that much more unbearable to read. He got up and walked to the door, casting a glance at the letter on his bed before he closed the door and padded his way past the guestroom where the newlyweds slept. When he got to the kitchen he saw Draco sitting at the table drinking a glass of water.

“Malfoy?”

Draco turned his head in surprise, though upon realizing it was Harry he smiled, “Jetlag. It's a killer.”

“I can see that.” Harry pulled up a chair and sat down, “Amber still asleep?”

“She conked out a few hours ago.”

“So, how have you been filling the time?”

“I watched some TV for awhile. I tried to read one of your books.”

“Yeah?”

“Couldn't get into it.” Draco shrugged, “Sorry.”

“No big deal.”

“Have you thought about what Amber told you?” Draco leaned back in his chair, “About going after Hermione?”

“Yeah. I have.” Harry confessed, “Actually I've done little else.”

“Which explains why you're up so early.”

“I don't sleep too great mostly, anyway.” Harry said, “Less so when I'm thinking about something major.”

“I know.” Draco propped himself on his elbows, “So?”

“What?”

“Hermione.”

“Oh.” Harry hung his head in his hands, “Oh.”

Draco shifted uncomfortably, “Look, Harr... If it's not something that you...”

“I know, Malfoy.”

“I'm not trying to pressure you into anything here. I'm just trying to help.”

“And I appreciate that. I do. It's just hard.” He sighed, “There's so much history there. If things went badly, if she didn't like what I turned out to be... I don't know.”

“The world is filled with a million 'what if's, Harry. It's how it works. But just because something might, maybe happen if you do something doesn't mean you shouldn't.”

“I feel like this is all happening too soon.” He looked up, “Does that make sense? Like maybe all of this is just too sudden. I haven't even had a chance to digest the shit that I've sorted out in the last few days and now I'm losing sleep over what the next step is going to be.”

“Yeah.” Draco looked out the window, then looked back to Harry, “You know how sometimes when a window breaks it shatters but it doesn't fall apart?”

“Yeah. Like it gets all spider webbed. I've seen that happen.”

Draco leaned back, “When I was a kid I did that. I tossed a rock at a big window in this abandoned house down the street from where I lived. I don't even know why I did it. It was the only window left in the whole house, I had no good reason to break it. I convinced myself that it was for the purpose of symmetry, but I mean, who knows why, right? I sure don't.”

“This going somewhere?”

“I'm getting to it.” Draco said defensively, “Point I'm trying to make is that the window shattered but it didn't fall out. It just sat in the frame all cracked up and whatnot. I knew, I wasn't dumb, I knew that if I touched it the whole thing would collapse. But there was a part of me that wondered, is it staying put because it's a deceptively strong pane of glass or because it's that one off thing where it's all just resting on top of each broken piece in the right way.”

“And?”

“I touched it and it fell apart. I got cut really bad on my palm and my father yelled at me the whole time I was at Mungo's. It was a fucked up kind of day.”

“Okay.” Harry gave him a confused look, “And this means what?”

“I think that's where you are now. You and Hermione, what you were and what you could have been. You're a cracked up window pane that hasn't fallen apart. So you're looking at it and wondering if touching it would cut you or if it's a strangely strong pane of glass.”

“There could be something to that.” Harry said.

“Harr, we're all a shattered piece of glass. No one gets out of life without a few cracks, and we all fought a war before. We're fucked up and mostly broken.”

“Wonderful.” Harry threw up his hands and let his head rest on the table, “That's what I need to hear, thanks for the pick me up.”

“Come on, man. Calm down. What I'm saying is that we're all these damaged, hurt miserable, mostly broken and pathetic slobs. We limp on, going from one place to another, leading these quietly dignified lives and we hope that everyone or no one notices us. But some people, and I think that you and her are this kind of person, some people have all these fault lines, and cracks, but they don't just limp on in quiet dignity. They put their lives back together with spello tape. Because they were always that one remarkably strong pane of glass. Get it?”

“How tired are you?” Harry asked without raising his head from the table, “Exactly.”

“I was in and out the whole time I was just talking to you. I think I was just talking to stay awake.”

“Ah.” He lifted his head, “See now I'm worried.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. Because a lot of that made sense to me.”

“Wasn't my intention, buddy.”

9. Chapter Eight: The other side of everything.

Chapter Eight.

The other side of everything.

“Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never.”
-Charles Caleb Colton

London. 2003.

Hermione woke up and prepared for work. She had left by quarter to eight and arrived at her desk in quiet solidarity by only a few minutes later. She worked, rhythmically and methodically and with only a very slim amount of mirth. She glanced at the clock above her wall of filing cabinets a few hours into her work day. She mentally noted that the time was only a few minutes short of being three days since she had last heard from Harry.

Seventy-two hours. Four thousand Three hundred and Twenty minutes. Two hundred Fifty-nine thousand and Two hundred seconds.

She had told him that an apology was not something one scheduled with the brother of the person being apologized to and he had taken off for the flat that she shared with Ginny. When Hermione had arrived home later that evening, after having spent the rest of the day in often pleasant, and sometimes sickening company of Ron and Luna, she had found the flat empty of her flatmate. Ginny didn't come home that night either.

Hermione hadn't worried about it. She had told herself that there was nothing to worry about and, as if by some magic she had never learned in school, she found that the sentiment was true. Somewhere inside of her, maybe in her heart or her bones or even in that wasteland of trivia she called her mind, she trusted Harry. A deep and powerful trust that she had not known herself to possess. She had wiled away a few hours of the night luxuriating in the surprising skin of someone who didn't realize that she could trust another so completely.

When that grew dull, as all good feelings invariable do in one way or another, she spent the rest of her night trying to decide where she wanted to get take out from before she broke down and ate all the cereal in the flat. She fell asleep full and happy. When Ginny arrived the afternoon previous there had been no confrontation, no accusation and no time wasted in idol chit chat. Because Hermione was not the sort that wasted time in that way, and for that matter she had never been the type to count seconds in days before.

However Ginny had shared one fact with her. One thing which changed the landscape of her life and her habits concerning the counting of fractions of hours and days. Ginny had said, simply and without reservation,

“He's in love with you.”

And so Hermione found herself counting the seconds until that would be a revelation which Harry himself would provide to her.

* * *

Neville,

Have you ever thought about how short life is? I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I've been going back over my life, piecing together the monumental failures and the unexpected victories. And in so doing I've had a little help from someone I had always marked as a monumental failure. I don't know if you'd heard, and really considering the grapevine my mother keeps I would say shame on you if you hadn't, but Harry is back in town.

I was sitting in his kitchen, you remember his old flat? He's back there now, it's just as you remember it, it even smells exactly like boy. But anyway, I was sitting in his kitchen and he was apologizing to me for how we had left it and I was suddenly struck by an odd notion. I asked him if he thought that we, by which I mean him and myself, had a chance at rekindling our shared monumental failure.

I wasn't looking for him to tell me that he was in love with me, and to confess a dark little secret I was actually hoping that he would tell me how much our breaking up had hurt him. What I got was exactly what I didn't even know I wanted. Because, Nev, what I got was neither. He didn't love me in that way anymore, he hadn't for a long time. And in that moment, as he spoke those words, I can't really explain what happened to me.

It was like going back into your flat because you forgot something and deciding that you were rather comfortable there and why should you even leave at all. It just clicked, like a lever in my brain. I didn't love him like that either. In truth, I hadn't loved him in that way in years. I just felt badly about myself because of the harshness of his rejection.

It can be difficult to be a girl, Nev. Because self image is how we are defined. No one walks into a room and sees a bookish girl in a stained tee shirt, jeans and too many year old trainers and thinks to themselves, “My, what a catch.” They don't bother to find out if that girl is an amazing person or not, and she very well may be, because they don't put stock in the personality traits of the female of the species. It's about looks. Or, at least that has been my experience on the subject. We're judged by how we present ourselves, and I know it seems shallow, but there is this part of us that is all too well aware of that fact. Our self image is so important to how we define out worth, even though we all wish it could be about so much more.

Harry destroyed my self image. Not just because of how I dress, that actually would have hurt less. He claimed that I was worthless to him, and I had put so much stock into his opinion of me. The world had put so much stock into his every opinion on everything. And that, silly as it seems, is why I was so hurt. It's why I couldn't love you when I should have. Because, at the time, I didn't love myself.

Well, I'm trying to now. I'm going to try a little more every day to appreciate who I am, and who those around me are. Because, like I said, Harry and me started to piece together my life in fractured moments. Weighing monumental failure against unexpected victory and we discovered that some were the opposite of what I had qualified them as.

I've gotten to know you, over more than a decade of time and trail. And that, just knowing who you are, having you in my life, for all the good and bad of it, It has been my most unexpected victory.

Love, Ginny

* * *

Hogwarts. 2003.

Neville put the letter down next to his numerous herbology books and essays on his desk in his staff lodgings. He nodded his head in the direction of his dresser drawer, which also happened to be the direction of London. He stood up, got dressed, stuffed Ginny's letter into his pocket and ran from the school that had been his home for so long. He made it into Hogsmead in record time, found a floo ready chimney and was in London a few minutes later.

He apparated into Ginny's flat only to find Hermione coming home from work. Surprised to see him appear so suddenly in her living room Hermione sat down and smiled.

“I wish you would have owled, Neville.” She held her hand over her heart, “You've scared the daylights out of me.”

“Er... Sorry.” Neville reached into his pocket to present the folded letter, “I've only come to see Ginny.”

“Well, she stepped out, according to the note she left on the table.” Hermione indicated the vague direction of the side table next to the door, but managed to convey to Neville only some place behind her, “She ought to be back any moment now.”

As if to prove the point the pair heard the sound of a key being fit into the lock. Neville looked to Hermione, his eyes almost seemed to be asking permission. She nodded and he took off for the door. Unfastening the latch and throwing it open in so little time that Ginny, shocked on the other side of the door at seeing Neville so unexpectedly, dropped her keys to the floor. She bent to retrieve them. While consumed with the task, the little time that it took, she racked her brain to come up with the perfect combination of words. Something that spoke of her eagerness to apologize to him and her desperation to try and find a place for herself in his heart and in his arms.

When she returned from the floor she had her letter held up in her face. She took the letter and read the first two lines, though that was mostly habitual, as she had known from the paper with green lines rather than blue that it was something she had written. She looked at him, expectantly at first and then, as the moments passed with only a look of extreme concentration on his face to give away his mood, with mounting anticipation.

Finally he spoke, “Do you mean it?”

“Of course I mean it.” She could feel the tear in her eye, but she willed it not to fall, “How could you even ask that?”

“No second chances.” He said stone faced, “If you're in this, then you're in this. Not for the penny, but for the pound. Are you willing to be in this?”

She nodded once, wiped the stubborn tear from her eye and said, “I am.”

He pulled her close to him and kissed her.

At the end of the hallway Hermione stood watching the spectacle. She kept quiet until the two of them had stopped simply kissing and had begun to all but dry hump with the flat door open for the neighbors to see. She cleared her throat, but that didn't seem to work, so she clapped her hands. Finally, at a loss for a hose to turn on them she threw up her arms and muttered something about an explanation coming as she walked to her room.

* * *

“When the dust settles I think we'll have something edible.” Draco stated as they all looked on a basket of damaged cookies that had been sent to the flat care of Mr. N. Longbottom.

Harry had discovered them, with only the in care of label and without any indication of intent, at the floor by the door of the flat when he and Draco had heard the faint sound of a courier's knuckles on the door. He had swept them inside and placed them on the table. The courier had not been delicate with them. The basket should have been a rather nice talking piece but was instead a bent up wicker basket filled with the crumbled remains of cookies so broken up that the exact type was a total mystery.

Harry pulled a small piece from the box and scrutinized it, “Chocolate chip?”

“Could be a raisin.” Draco commented, “And really, why would Longbottom even send you a basket of cookies.”

“That, I would think, is obvious.” Harry put the piece of cookie back into the cookie coffin and wiped his hand on his shirt, “Ginny must've made her move.”

“I had always credited her with more taste.” Draco said with a wry smile.

“I said the same thing about Amber.”

Draco smiled and patted Harry's shoulder, “I don't know what New York is going to do without your wit, Harr-bear.”

“How do you know I'm not going back?”

“Come on. We both know you aren't.” Draco smiled, “Why on earth would you?”

“I guess so.” Harry looked around his flat, taking in the walls he knew would keep him for the indefinite future, “I guess New York will just have to figure it out.”

“Or do that collective sigh of relief thing when it figures out it's rid of you.” Draco offered.

“Or that.” Harry Agreed.

* * *

Hermione had cranked up the volume on her stereo and padded her headphones with tissue paper, she had even taken the precaution of stuffing towels under her door, but she could still hear them. They were in the living room, giggling like school children when they came up for air from kissing. She wondered if the human mouth could possible contain enough saliva to keep their mouths from sticking together after all this time.

Finally she got up and placed a silencing charm on her bedroom. She sat with her music blasting in her ears and wondered if she could still hear them out there or if it was a trick of her mind.

* * *

When finally Ginny and Neville had stopped kissing they sat down to have the talk. About where the relationship was going, about how they felt about one another after all these years, about what they each wanted from the other and about whether or not they should take it slow or plow ahead like an out of control train on a non-stop to wedded bliss. They had sat down intending to have the talk.

What they managed was a conversation about what they should call each other as pet names that lasted for four hours. Ginny had just decided that perhaps “Neviekins” was the route to go, and Neville was sure that Gin-and-Tonic was perfect, when Hermione slammed a book down on the coffee table only a few feet from them. They both looked up. The book was one of the complete works compilations and weighed about the same as a passenger jet.

Hermione crossed her arms and tapped her foot, “How're things.”

“Good.” They replied in unison, which Hermione wished they hadn't because it caused them to erupt in euphoric giggles the likes of which she had not heard since her heady days as a nine year old school girl.

“Would someone like to explain why you two have been attacking each other with love all day, or do I have to wait for the sextape to make it to the internet before I figure out what's going on around here?”

“Sextape?” Ginny said.

“You have the internet here?” Neville said.

“You have both sucked the intelligence from each other's faces. You realize this, yes?”

“I sent him a note. Told him about how I felt. That I spoke with Harry yesterday.” Ginny answered.

Hermione indicated them, “Just like that?”

“Slow day?” Neville offered.

Hermione blinked, then nodded, “I'm happy for you, I am. Congratulations and all that. But if I don't get out of this lovefest for a bit I am going to repaint the walls with my lunch and possibly the back of my head.”

“Pleasant.” Ginny said.

“I'm going out.” Hermione left, retrieved her purse and walked out leaving them staring at the door from the couch.

“Is she okay?” Neville asked.

“Not as a rule.” Ginny answered before she pulled his face to her lips.

* * *

Yorkshire. 2003.

Luna heard the whip crack sound of apparition from her study. She walked down the stairs to see if Ron had returned from the store and found instead Hermione standing in her kitchen, looking through the cupboards. She would open one wooden little door, maybe shift some things around and maybe just give it a cursory glance, before shutting it and moving to the next in line.

Luna cleared her throat, “We keep the really good things to stare at in the library.”

Hermione spun on the spot and saw Luna. She had a harried look about her. The hair was at odd angles, the lips tighter than they ought to be, her eyes a frantic mess, only half focused on anything.

“Was there something I could help with?” Luna asked.

“Fire whiskey. I could use fire whiskey.” Hermione replied.

“Fresh out.” Luna shrugged, “How about some tea. Or we have a nectar that I've read can cure head aches and grant clairvoyance. Though I haven't tested it because it smells like socks and mold.”

“Just the tea, then.” Hermione said, “Can I sit?”

“Preferably on a chair.” Luna answered, “Are you okay?”

Hermione fell into a chair and hung her head in her hands, “Top of the world.”

“Yes.” Luna was boiling water, “You certainly seem that way.”

“I came to see Ron.” She pointed to the clock above the stove, a relic from another time in Ron's life. It was a clock that featured both of their names and indications for where they were (Home, at work, away, ect.) and how they were, (Healthy, In mortal peril, ect.), “He appears to be away from home and distracted.”

“I find it distracting to be away from home as well, poor dear.” Luna dropped to tea bags into the cups before pouring hot water over them. She had never been much good with tea leaves, “Of course you could always talk to me.”

“I wouldn't want to waste your time.”

“Well.” She placed the cups of tea on the table and had a seat, “I would say you have, at the very least, until we drink this tea.”

“I don't know if that'll be enough time.”

“It's quite hot, right this moment.” Luna pointed to the steam rising, “I could spare you a few days while it cools.”

“Ginny and Neville are snogging like it's the last week it'll be allowed.”

“And this is bad because?” Luna leaned in close and squinted as if to see Hermione better, “Wait. It is each other that they're snogging, isn't it?”

“So far.”Hermione smiled, “But I don't know what'll happen when they bore of that.”

“So what's the problem. Is it that he's too tall, because I've found that getting up on your tip toes and having them bend slightly makes that issue go away a little.” She put her finger on her chin, “Though Ginny could have very short toes, I suppose. I don't recall what her bare feet look like.”

“There's nothing wrong with them or their toes.” Hermione said, “I'm just horribly jealous.”

“Because?”

“Because they have each other and I have no one.” Hermione leaned forward, “Come to think of it I'm not certain what a visit to the happily married couple was meant to do as far as making me feel better. I just don't have a lot of friends.”

“You have Harry.”

“I can't go to Harry.” She recoiled from the table, “I just can't.”

“Because?”

“I'll make a total fool of myself.”

“I was doing handstands when I told Ron that I would like to go out with him.” Luna said unabashedly.

“You were? Why?”

“I wanted to make sure that he was as good looking upside down.”

“Really?”

“It's terribly important.” Luna said wide eyed, “You have no idea the things that can live up someone's nose.”

“Was he? Good looking upside down?”

“I thought so.” Luna put her hand on Hermione's, “My point is, I think, that where love is concerned I'm not so certain whether it matters if you make a fool of yourself.”

“And that's all fine and well for you. You're-” Hermione blanched, went wide eyed and stopped talking.

“Loony.” Luna provided.

“I wasn't going to say.” Hermione answered with a blush.

“I don't mind.” Luna smiled, “I find that those sort of names only bothered me before I had people I loved to love me back, for all I am and all that I'll never be.”

“You're a smart woman.” Hermione said, “I wish I was as brave as you.”

Luna laughed until Hermione grew uncomfortable. Finally she wiped a tear from her eye and said, “You're a Gryffindor, Hermione. You fought the darkest magic from the darkest wizard ever to do darkly dark things.”

“Thanks?”

“You're one of the single bravest people I've ever known.”

“Then why is this so hard?”

Luna blew some steam from her cup and set it back down, “Because it isn't bravery one needs to be in love. It's a reckless kind of stupidity that's required to look at another person and say 'let's fall in love'.”

Hermione rested her head in her cupped hand, “That's a lovely thought, but it doesn't account for some of the harsher facts of the situation.”

“Oh?”

“I hurt him. Badly.” Hermione's eyes swept the area but found no prying eyes, “I think I came very close to destroying him. I don't know if love between two people is capable of surviving that. I have some experience with it.”

“Yes. I had heard.” Luna said gravely.

“When I miscarried.” Hermione paused to gather strength, “When I lost the baby, I was devastated, I had never in my life been so miserable. Some days I would wake up and cry for hours. I didn't think I could ever get over it, sometimes I think that I'm still not. And what made it worse was that the father didn't want any part of the kid's life, and after everything happened he didn't want any part of mine either. You can't imagine what that did to me. I felt so used and worthless. I felt dirty or sick or stupid all the time.”

“And you believe that Harry feels this way?”

“I do. Yes.”Hermione lowered her voice to a conspiratorial tone, “I'm the reason he left London. I asked him to go.”

The sound of Ron moving around behind her sent shivers down Hermione's back,

“No you aren't.”

Was all he said before he walked by and placed the groceries on the counter.

Luna jumped up and did a graceful little hopping kind of jaunt over to give her husband a quick kiss just below his ear. He smiled and kissed his finger before placing it on her nose. Then the two of them set about putting away the groceries together. Hermione cradled her cup of tea, letting it warm her hands, as she sat and thought about the scene and the words that had stolen the air from the room only moments earlier.

“What do you mean?” Hermione said.

Ron turned around and gave her a little smile and wave, “Sorry, I couldn't help overhearing. I walked in and no one noticed so I just stood there and listened for awhile. Didn't mean to startle you or anything.”

Luna slapped his arm gently, “Eavesdropper!”

“Guilty.” He smiled at her, “What can I say, I like to watch you talk.”

“You can't snake out of this with a compliment.” Luna stuck out her tongue, “It's going to take two.”

“I'm sorry but-” Hermione began.

“Well.” Ron said to Luna, “There are so many nice things I could say about you... it's tough to pick just one.”

“You are a very good flatterer.” Luna reached up and hugged him, “I love you, Ronald.”

Ron wrapped his arms around her and swung her in a tight circle, her ankles almost hitting the table, “I love you, Luna”

“Yes, but-” Hermione tried again.

“I've missed you terribly.” Luna said, “Earlier I was going to move a trunk out of the study and you weren't around. I thought about doing it with magic.”

“Sensible.” Ron confirmed.

“But I like to watch you lift stuff, so I left it.” Luna kissed him.

“For Merlin's sake!” Hermione threw up her arms, “The man was gone for twenty minutes at most. Is all of this really necessary?”

Luna turned to look at her, “No.” She admitted, “But it's fun.”

“It would have to be.” Hermione said.

“So what's up her bum?” Ron asked Luna.

“She thinks that Harry hates her in secret because Ginny and Neville are doing the horizontal polka back at her flat.”

“Really?” Ron blinked, but smiled all the same, “That's the gentlest way you could think to tell me that my sister is having sex with someone?”

“It is.” Luna crossed her heart and gave an earnest expression, “I didn't even use the diagrams that I had thought up.”

“Well, then.” Ron nodded, “Very subtle of you, in retrospect.”

“I don't think Harry hates me. I never said that.” Hermione interjected.

“Good.” Ron said as he pulled up a seat, “Because that's silly.”

“What did you mean that I wasn't why he left?” She asked.

“Luna, can I have your tea?” Ron asked. Luna nodded and he took up the cup and swallowed it down in one go, “Thank you, sweetheart.”

He turned to face her, his expression serious, “Harry left because he needed that. We all have different reactions to the trials and tribulations of this life. Mine and Harry's reaction has always been to go away and find space and get some perspective. That's why he left.”

“But I asked him to.” Hermione confessed.

“Then why did he take Malfoy with him?” Ron leaned into the table, “Did you ask him to do that?”

“Well, no. Why would I?”

“It's all about perspective, Herm.” Ron smiled, “Malfoy had a much different perspective and that helped Harry put everything else in check. Harry left because he needed, somewhere deep inside of himself, to get out of London for awhile. To figure out what he wanted his life to be.”

“True.” Luna nodded as she assembled a tuna fish and cream cheese sandwich on the counter top, “All he's done since he got back is have one meaningful conversation after another.”

“He's putting his life back together.” Ron nodded, “But this time he's doing it on his own terms.”

“Has he spoken with you?” Hermione asked Ron.

“Once. Year ago.” Ron reached behind him and patted Luna's thigh, “When I married this one. Him and me, we talked. It was good.”

“Why did you get special treatment? Being put straight two years ahead of the rest of us.”

“I'm his best friend.” Ron shrugged, “That's how that works.”

“I thought I was his best friend, too.” Hermione sank low in her chair, “That's perspective for you.”

“You weren't there.” Ron pointed out, “If you had been at my wedding, we did invite you, he probably would have squared things with you then. He was disappointed when he realized you weren't there.”

“He was?”

“Dude's nuts about you.” Ron smiled.

“So I keep hearing, but it's been three days and he's radio silent.”

“Perhaps you should be trying to talk to him.” Luna said through a mouthful of sandwich, “He could've had his voice stolen away by mermaids. I've heard of that happening.”

* * *

“You know.” Draco was shoveling cookie crumbs into his mouth, Amber was barely holding in a fit of giggles, “This would work well with milk.” he concluded.

“Haven't got any.” Harry smiled.

“Of course you don't.” Draco said before he flicked his tongue around the top of his mouth to dislodge a clump of wet cookie bits.

10. Chapter Nine: The Price of doing Business.

Chapter Nine.

The Price of doing Business.

“The heart is the only broken instrument that works.”

-T.E. Kalem

London. 2003.

There had been a moment, years ago, when Harry had thought that he shouldn't extend a laurel to Draco. He had thought that involving his once bitter rival to a shared co-habitation would be tantamount to throwing a wolverine into the bath with himself. He had put those feelings away and shaken the hand he had once denied, only to to find that it was one of the wisest decisions he had made.

No one could ask for a better friend than Draco, once he was sober that is, because so few people had cared for the man as he was that when Harry did it changed the nature of the relationship. That morning Harry found himself mixing tea in the kitchen for three people before Amber walked in to tell him that she had to fly back to the states for a little while. Some crisis had come up at the gallery and she wanted Draco to be in London for Harry. Harry said he would explain the situation to Draco and told her that the door to his flat was always open to her.

Harry finished making the tea and sat down at the kitchen table to compose a letter that he knew to be overdue. The letter was to Hermione, and was nothing more than to set up a time to get together the following day. He looked around for a scrape of paper to write it on and came up empty.

On the fridge he saw a note in Draco's familiar handwriting addressed to Amber. It read,

Amber,

It is Two in the morning and you're already asleep. Since you'll be awake before me I just wanted to let you know, Good Morning, Beautiful. I love you more today than yesterday, and less than I will Tomorrow.

-Draco.

Harry took it down, hoping Amber had read it before she left and wrote his note to Hermione on the back of it. He summoned an Owl from Diagon while he sipped his tea and squinted into the light of the sun every time he looked out the window for it.

When he was lashing it to the leg of an owl Draco walked in and pulled up a chair. He was rubbing his eyes.

“You see Amber?”

“She had to fly back home. There was some kind of thing happening at the gallery. Something about a guy calling himself Roanoke.”

“That asshole?” Draco waved his hand dismissively, “That guy is the biggest pain in my ass there ever was.”

“High praise.” Harry smiled.

“Dude paints these tripped out, completely unrecognizable portraits of people from his life who he thinks don't 'get him'. Shit doesn't even look like people, just paint splotches and pseudo geometric shapes. It's ridiculous. Throws a shit fit every time some one hangs one of his paintings upside down, which is every time. He's threatened to walk out a hundred times. Says he won't use our gallery again if the problem isn't fixed. Insists on speaking only to one of the owners every time it happens.”

“So why even hang his shit in your gallery?”

“Believe it or not, his shit sells like hot cakes. I see a portion of that every time it's sold off the floor in my gallery. Got to host him so I can afford to host the talent I really want to.” Draco shrugged, “Price of doing business.”

“That kinda sucks.” Harry commented.

“It does, but it's life.” He rubbed his temple, “It's very kind of Amber to deal with him. I had to fly back and deal with his sorry ass and I woulda put him in such a leg binding jinx...”

“I'll bet you would.” Harry smiled, “So, breakfast?”

“You're not going to cook something?”

“I never cook something.” Harry pointed to the take out menus by the fridge, “I'm rich. It's a luxury I have. How soon they forget.”

“Forget nothing.” Draco indicated the fridge, “You have food in your fridge. Nobody keeps food in there fridge doesn't expect to cook something eventually.”

“That?” Harry waved it off, “That shit is just for show.”

“Same old Harry.”

“From you, I get this?”

Draco shrugged, “You didn't take your walk yesterday, I figured it must be some kind of personal growth or something.”

“Heaven forbid.” Harry said evenly, “My life has just been too hectic for a walk lately.”

Harry pulled a cigarette from the pack in his shirt pocket and lit it up, “You wanna order something?” He asked after the first puff.

“I guess we can do that.” Draco scratched his chin, “We could always go somewhere, if you're in the mood to put on your big boy going out pants.”

Harry glanced down at his paint stained and elderly sweat pants, “Something wrong with these?”

“Not if you're looking to pull off homeless chic.” Draco smiled, “But in any other context, I'm afraid that there is a lot wrong with them.”

“Fine.” Harry took a long drag, “Let's assume that I'm willing to take off these tremendously comfortable sweat pants, which I love despite your mockery, where would you even want to eat?”

“I could go for some fried eggs and a couple of kippers.” Draco patted his stomach, “Haven't had kippers in ages.”

“We could do Indian food.” Harry pointed out.

“That sounds like a take out kind of thing.”

“They are really comfortable, man.”

“You are the laziest person ever. You know this, yeah?”

“I had read that somewhere.” Harry agreed.

“Long as you know.” Draco stood up, “I'm going to get dressed, I'm going to go out and get some breakfast. You can join me, but the sweat pants aren't invited.”

Draco left the room whistling an old wizarding world tune. Harry looked down at his sweat pants, stroked them affectionately.

“Don't listen to him.” He said soothingly to his sweat pants, “He just doesn't 'get' you.”

After a moment he heard Draco reply, “I heard that.”

* * *

Hermione was walking around her office in a slight daze. Her talk with Ron and Luna had not managed to convince her stomach not to turn when she had walked on Ginny and Neville staring into each others eyes and making vague references about the depth of each others souls when she had returned home the previous night. It did little, in fact, to help her out that morning when she found them feeding each other either.

Hermione was convinced that if she didn't move out at some point in the near future she would find herself unable to keep even the softest foods down before long.

At work she was lost in her head. She had received an owl from Harry asking if she wanted to do anything the next day. It was almost sad because it read exactly like a note between friends ought to read. She knew that they had agreed to see where things went between the two of them. She knew that. And it had made so much sense to her when they had said it.

Now? Not so much.

She wanted nothing more than to take a second stab at love with him. Her mind had worked itself out to one simply fact. That fact was that love had turned Neville and Ginny into barely functioning retarded people. Simple as that.

What that meant to her in the grand scheme was that if those two idiots could find one another anything but utterly ridiculous then her and Harry, two people of solid intellect, should have little problem forgoing the unbearable awkwardness and get underway with becoming functioning retarded themselves.

It made good sense.

Except that the note was ruining that supposition with it's friendly demeanor. She hated that stupid note. She hated that her reply held the same stupid jovial “let's be friends forever!” tone. She even, after much scrutiny, discovered that she hated the wallpaper in her office and the color of the sun. Also she had discovered that the laughter of babies was off putting and smiles were totally intolerable.

She blinked twice before she stopped rummaging through the file cabinet just outside of the break room. She couldn't remember what she was looking for, or why she had decided to look for it in the only empty file cabinet in the whole office.

She excused herself for lunch and left the office.

Once she was gone Bryan clapped his hands to get the attention of the team.

“Yes, the Boss is acting odd. No, you can't have the day off. Yes, get back to work.”

* * *

Draco had ordered fried eggs, two rashers of bacon and four extra orders of kipper. Harry ordered a coffee and some oatmeal. He then watched as Draco buried his face in the plate and sucked up all of his food.

“Hungry?” Harry ventured.

“A bit.” Draco said without pulling his face from his meal, “Now don't ask me questions that need responses until I'm finished.”

“What am I supposed to ask you?”

“You suck at this.” Draco looked up, “Just tell me about you and Hermione and why you're such an unbelievable wimp while I eat. I swear I'll listen.”

“Right. Okay.” Harry leaned back, “I'm not a wimp, by the way, and you eat like a monster does. I'll just warn the owners not to seat any children by your mouth, less the suction draws them in. Because I don't think you'd even notice.”

Harry crossed his arms, “And it's not like I'm lost and confused with Hermione. We're just in a bit of a gray area there. What would be the point of rushing into something when it would almost certainly backfire and hurt us both. It just seems stupid.”

“Not that I wouldn't like to do that, I would. I'm human at best and that means I got urges and needs and desires and all that crap like normal people, the kind not currently impersonating a hurricane on top of their breakfast, you know normal, I'm just like that. Which is to say, not like you, freak show.”

“But you have to understand what a daunting task it would be to just open myself up to her. I mean it would be like offering my innards to be crushed. Imagine how your eggs feel right now. All huddled, worried that the big scary monster with blonde hair and no personality is going to destroy everything that ever mattered about them. That's where I am.”

“I'm your breakfast, that sad, lonely, doomed plate of food and Hermione is your ugly mug. All teeth and destruction. You can see how that might be scary.”

Harry paused.

“None of this is even bothering you a little?” He waited for a reply that didn't come, “Dude, you are really locked into that breakfast.”

Harry sighed and shrugged his shoulders, “Okay then. It's like this, since I have to fill the silence with something other than the sounds of digestion, I love her.”

Harry smiled to himself, “Ever been happy just saying something? Like the words reach into your heart and caress it. Tell it the tender, beautiful lies that life requires to be happy. It's like that every time I say that I love her. Because it's the barest truth that there is. I love her. But it's a beautiful lie, man.”

Harry paused, looking for the words to articulate his point, “Not the loving her part. That's untouchable. But, me? Not even a little. I'm touchable, man. I get hurt. And that's the oldest lesson out there. Kid sticks a paper clip in a socket and it shocks him. He's hurt, but he doesn't go around sticking metal in light sockets anymore. We learn to avoid the things that have hurt us. It's so simple. It's fucking biological.”

“And she hurt me. She hurt me really badly. No one had ever hurt me like that. Not Ginny, not Cho, not Voldemort, and not even you. In all those years, all the shit you said to me and mine, that hurt, but it a scratch on the surface of my resolve. She left scars.”

He put his hands together and leaned forward, “I mean when you're not good enough for your best friend in the entire world, the one person that's always supposed to have your back and like you for who you are. Faults and all. I mean, who then is supposed to assume that they're good enough for? It's a fucked up kind of cycle.”

He shook his head, “And when I was finally over it. I mean, dude, I was finally living my life again and all of a sudden there it is. Round two. What am I even supposed to do with that? How do I look at her and not think, she's going to hurt you again. She's a light socket, man, and I'm a fucking un coiled paper clip.”

“Shit.” He leaned back, “It's weird just talking about it.”

Draco spun his finger to indicate that Harry keep going while he moved on to his second helping of bacon.

“Fine.” He rolled his eyes, “I love her, but I don't think I can trust her. I want to trust her. I want to so badly. And she's grown. She's this whole new person, with all this shit I know nothing about. Hard working, had a serious boyfriend in the interval, she's lead this life and she's an adult now in ways I never saw coming. Because I wanted to hate her when I first got her. I was prepared to.”

He paused, lost in the recent past, “Then she smiled at me. Goddamn her. She smiled at me.”

He played with the handle on his cup of coffee, “All of a sudden I wasn't even mad at her, not really. All that pain was still there, bubbling below the surface, but I wasn't mad at her anymore. I couldn't hate her. I couldn't throw it in her face.”

He laughed, “I was going to storm into her office and tell her off. Be all, 'You did this! You threw me to curb and you just expect me to forgive and forget and fuck you!' but I just didn't have it in me.”

“Have you ever seen her smile? It's the most amazing thing in the world. Her eyes light up and it moves down her from there. She glows, like she was lit from within and behind. Sometimes she'll curl her lower lip slightly, so that her top row of teeth stand out on that blanket of wonderful pink skin. Your insides turn into liquid and your stomach gets warm and all of a sudden you're smiling back. It's involuntary, like a reflex. She has a smile that creates smiles.”

He shook his head, “Would you listen to me? I sound like an idiot. Here I am, telling you about how wonderful she is in the same breath as I tell you how horrible she is. I don't even know how to separate the two notions. They just battle it out all day in my head, and it has it's effect. There are these moments when I just can't talk to her. We get all quiet and let the silence become stale around us and then like magic I'm in love with her and want to chat away like a fool.”

“And I see what it does to her. She isn't plagued by it like I am. She suffers the silence because she's waiting for the talking to start again. She's waiting for the laughter. I know it has to bother her. It bothers me just looking at it. But I can't help it. And I think, maybe even more than my desire not to let her hurt me, and this is just a thought, a once in a while kind of thought. But I get the feeling that inside of me there are two more notions fighting. One says that she'll hurt me again, the other... The other says fuck my feelings. I don't want to hurt her.”

“Do you think you might?” Draco asked.

Harry looked over and saw all three of Draco's plates clean and empty. His eyes popped a little, “How long have I been yammering away?”

“Long enough.” Draco answered.

“Clearly.” Harry rubbed his neck, “Blimey.”

“So.” Draco leaned forward, “Do you think you might end up hurting her?”

“I don't know.” Harry worried at the fraying ends of the table cloth, “How would I know something like that?”

“Okay.” Draco stacked his dishes and moved the salt and pepper to the center of the table, “You love her, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, she's the salt shaker and you're the pepper.”

“Okay?”

He started to bang them together, “You guys keep hit or missing. You keep doing this dance of collision, neither one walking away together.”

“Following.”

“Everyone knows that salt stands next to pepper. That's where they belong.” He placed them side by side at the end of the table, “It's how it works. They look right together.”

“Sure.”

“Because if I were to keep forcing these stunted collisions on them, well, they would break.”

Harry smiled, “So we belong together?”

“You don't?” Draco countered.

“How do you mean?”

“Since you were eleven with this girl, Harry. Eleven. Always together, always side by side. Two people fighting for each other and themselves, the whole time. Even when other people left you, there she was. Always by your side. Until you gave her up.”

“Ron-”

“Ron is Ron's business. He always was. You? Your business is being a self martyr. Always giving up on you and what you want so that other people, sometimes people you don't even know, can be happy and safe... And sober.”

“Malfoy-”

“And you picked that. No one made that call for you, as easy as that is for you to cling to. It was your choice. You made it with her and you've been making it every day of your life since you gave up on her, because that's who you are and that's wonderful. But every now and then you have to be able to step outside of the problems in other people's lives and say to yourself, 'This is what I want. This is what I want for me' because if you don't this is what you get, buddy.”

“And what is this?”

“An empty life in an empty flat with the girl you ought to be sharing your life with nowhere in sight.” He crossed his arms, “That's what this is.”

* * *

When she returned from lunch Hermione went straight to her office and looked over her event planner for the upcoming weeks. She knew that she had to attend the big events indicated, that was in stone. She had to be there to drum up donations and support. The note from Harry was on her desk. She picked it up and read it again.

She knew what it said but she scoured it for some deeper meaning that wasn't present to her mind on her first dozen times read through it. It wasn't there again. She turned it over to check the back. She knew that Harry hadn't picked up any paper to write on and had a habit of reusing others. She had seen him do it.

She stopped dead in her tracks. The note was written to that girl Amber. It was just a note saying how much he loved her and was signed by Draco Malfoy. But it wasn't contents which caught her eye, it was the handwriting.

She sprang up and spent the next few minutes digging through her files and her desk until she found what she was looking for. She laid it down next to the note and compared the handwriting. It was a match. She held up her long sought after piece of paper.

It was a donation slip, with a generous amount filled in, for her charity donations. One of nearly a half dozen she had received from the same person over the last few years. The slip had “Name withheld” filled in where the name was supposed to go. Now she knew who it was, her mystery benefactor, the man she had been so consumed for so long with finding so she could invite him formally, and it was Draco Malfoy.

“No fucking way.” She said.

She got up and left the office, telling Bryan to clear her schedule for the rest of the week on her way out.

Bryan Stood up, clapped his hands and insisted that, despite how odd her behavior was today, that work was still not canceled for them.

* * *

When Harry and Draco returned home they found Hermione sitting in their living room. She looked mildly put out, but otherwise almost euphoric. She turned her head when she noticed them gawking at her from the corner of the room. She composed herself and pointed at them.

“We need to talk.” She said sternly.

Draco elbowed Harry in the ribs, “You're up.”

“Okay.” Harry agreed.

Hermione shook her head, “Not you, Harry. I need to speak with Malfoy.”

“What?” The boys both said at once.

“Harry, if you wouldn't mind giving us some time.” She said.

Draco shrugged, “Looks like you get your walk today after all.”

“Looks like.” Harry nodded.

Draco turned to Harry, apology in his eyes, “Her, I'm sorry.”

Harry raised his hand to quiet him, “Price of doing business.”

He stepped out and found himself at the footsteps outside his building. He looked up, confusion covering his face. He shook his head and picked a direction. He walked off, letting everything drain from him, or expecting to.

He couldn't seem to squelch his anxiety. He found himself waling without purpose and with a deep well off bile boiling inside him. He knew that Draco was loyal, he knew that Hermione wasn't interested in him, he knew so many things that made so much sense.

But he was jealous anyway. Deep down, ugly, in his bones jealous and no matter how much walking he did, how much he ignored himself and concentrated on the sights and sounds around him, there is was. There was not heartbeat in city, no wanderer's sense of accomplishment, there was only the vile jealousy and the afternoon spread out around him like a suffocating pillow.

* * *

Ginny and Neville were curled up on the couch, watching a DVD from the collection beside Hermione's bookshelf. It was a curious muggle thing, but they both discovered that they enjoyed it. So they both got under a blanket, arranged themselves with the twin purposes of comfort and maximum physical contact with each other and turned on Dark Crystal.

Within minutes the of the opening of the movie the problems on Thra and the heroic journey of Jen the Gelfling were merely background noises. As is often the case with new love, for Ginny and Neville, the world around them was an inconvenience and the time spent together their reward for suffering through it.

11. Chapter Ten: Tomorrows and the things they bring.

Chapter Ten.

Tomorrows and the things they bring.

“Do you really want to go much faster?

Anything but love is disaster.”

-Faster, Seven Mary Three.

London. 1998.

Harry stood in the house that had found Draco residing in it's halls after the war. It was nice, if run down place. There was no staff and the carpets felt damp even with shoes on. It was a far cry from the way he had been living at Malfoy Manor. Draco pulled up a chair for Harry to sit on and then fell back onto his sofa, which was likely the nicest piece of furniture in the entire house.

“So, what're you selling, Potter?”

Harry sat down and shifted until he could find a comfortable place, “I'm going to be leaving the country. I was thinking of going to America.”

“I hear New York City is something.” Draco offered.

“I'll take that into account.” Harry paused, “And I'm hoping that you will too.”

Draco sat up, “Why would I?”

“I'd... I came over to ask you to come with me.”

“Why?” Draco searched his eyes, “I mean, why me? Why not take Weasly?”

Harry smiled a small, sad smile, the smile of a man that sleeps too little and worries too much, “Because I want to start over. I want to start my life over.” He looked around Draco's house, “And I get the feeling that this is something you and I might have in common.”

Draco scratched his chin as he looked over the squalor he was living in, the bottles of fire whiskey covering every surface, the over flowing ashtrays and the discarded plates with half finished meals stuck to them by age alone, “Yeah. You might be right about that, Potter. You might be right.”

New York City. 1998.

Draco was drunk. Draco was usually drunk. A strange combination of being in a new place and feeling hopeless had mingled into something that showed all the early warning signs of a crutch if not a dependency. From the couch, where he awoke to find himself with his face against the floor and his groin pushed in the cushions, he could hear a strange sound.

It was sound he knew, a sound he was completely familiar with. It was the sound of a man in pain. He could hear Harry pacing, he knew the insomnia was fast and loose with Harry's health, but didn't know much besides. He got up, finding himself stiff and filled with small and varied aches and pains. He looked down at the couch and wondered momentarily how long he had been passed out there. He reached for his half empty forty of Evan Williams Whiskey, a brand that he hated the taste of but loved the price for.

He limped down the hall, one hand clutching his back for support the other hand clutching his bottle of whiskey for the same reason. He saw the light trickling out from the side of Harry's door and bathing a spot of the hallway in bright florescent light. He walked over and put his eye to the gap where Harry's door stood open.

Harry's room looked a mess. Things were thrown around, books torn up and the alarm clock smashed in. Harry sat on the edge of his bed staring out his window like a death row inmate. Next to him on the bed there was a letter, it was slightly torn at the edges and crumpled all over but had been smoothed out since.

Draco closed the door and walked back down the hall to disappear into his own pain and his bottle of support.

New York City. 1999.

Draco had been in bed for three days, sweating out cheap whiskey. Three times a day Harry would bring in a tray of soup and some light solid foods for Draco to eat. He sat and talked with him the while. Draco was feeling stronger, less sick to his stomach at the very least. He sat up, wiped the seat from his forehead and took a long sip from the glass of water Harry left by his bed.

He got up, to test out his legs, and then doubled over and vomited onto the floor beside his bed. He collapsed face down in his own sick and passed out wondering how he had let it get this bad.

* * *

Harry had been in charge of Draco's wallet. He had been for the last three months, but today he had given it back, trusting Draco to not spend it on alcohol, like he had the last time, his first and only relapse. Draco had accepted it, admiring the man who showed him such faith and trust.

Draco had gone out, to pick up something quick to eat and to look around for the space on which he would put up the gallery he and Harry had talked about for so long on so many late nights while he recovered. He walked past a liquor store.

He felt the pull inside him, the inner coward looking for a simple out. He turned around and walked back, to stand in front of the door. To look inside. He could see everything through those glass doors. He reached out, put his hand on the handle.

He stopped and shook his head. He moved his hand back, withdrew it and repeated for twenty minutes. Finally he went home and wrote a check out to send to a charity that he had heard about through some old acquaintances in the wizarding world, the kind of thing he would have scoffed at not too long ago. Like Harry. He would have scoffed at Harry not too long ago.

* * *

New York City. 2000.

Draco was running a vacuum over the hardwood in the living room when Harry walked in. Draco cast him a glance that said, “help me.”. Harry nodded and walked out of the room. Draco threw his arms up in air, the handle of the vacuum hitting the hardwood lost under the noise the machine put out in general, as where the sounds of Draco swearing.

When the sound of the vacuum stopped Draco cast his gaze around. He spotted Harry holding the power cord, unplugged, in his right hand. On Harry's face was a look of benign amusement and in his left hand was a swiffer mop.

“I'm pretty certain that you don't vacuum hardwood floors, Malfoy.”

Draco rubbed the back of his neck, “You don't?”

“Sweep or mop, but you don't vacuum.” Harry concluded.

“Why?”

“I have no idea.”

“I just want the place to look nice.” Draco confessed, “Tonight is really important to me.”

“This I gathered.”

“She's a really great girl.”

“I know.”

“Do I seem nervous to you?”

“Very.”

“What do I do?” He looked small and childlike for a moment, “I want her to like me.”

Harry patted his shoulder, “She will, mate.” He indicated behind him with his finger, “I'll clean up the bathroom, you go make her something to drink for when she gets here.”

“What do we have?” Draco asked.

“We have tea, coffee and a shit load of juice in the fridge.”

Harry went off to clean the bathroom and Draco stood in the living room flexing his hands again and again. He shot a glance at the door and knew where his feet would take him if he walked out now. He wrote out a check to his favorite charity before he made up a concoction of several different fruit juices and named it The Malfoy Special.

* * *

New York City. 2001

Draco rolled over in bed to see Amber sleeping next to him. He sat awake and stared at her for what he wished would turn into forever. The small patch of light from the window left a haunting circle of light on her forehead. He traced the lines of her face, as if to memorize it, to keep it inside of himself forever. She smiled in her sleep, some pleasant dream fantasy chasing her fancy, and for the briefest of moments he knew that her smile had been meant for him.

He heard Harry walking around the living room, the forever insomniac tracing out his desire path along the floorboards of an apartment just big enough to shelter him from the demons of his past. Draco sighed and resolved to send another check in the morning.

New York City. 2002.

Draco fixed his signature to the check and mailed it. He took small pleasure in the notion that his check would arrive in London around the same time that Harry arrived back in New York. It was almost as if he was paying for the privilege of a good friend and a remarkably happy life. While the total sum of his donations to his charity, his “sober-from-here-on-out” charity, he felt like he owed the world a far greater amount for all of the blessing heaped on him in the last few years.

His apartment was home. A home that was because he shared it with the two most important people in his world. He could her Amber, as much as feel her some days, moving around in the kitchen. She had decided to get him eating better, and had taken it upon herself to fix the meals he would enjoy. She had long ago given up on getting Harry to quit smoking, acknowledging in defeat that all people are allowed one vice.

Draco knew what his vice was, and so did she. But they both pretended that it was his charity. They both pretended that giving away money was a vice and not an act of contrition. They loved each other, and love has a remarkable way about it when it comes to changing the hearts and minds involved in it.

London. 2003.

Harry sat on a park bench, letting the afternoon sun warm his face. In the field by him were children spinning in circles, their arms pointed out. They would spin until the fell down, dizzy and laughing like mad. Harry smiled to himself. Not because these children exemplified a simpler time in life, but because he couldn't imagine how great it would feel to spin in circles until everything made sense in a totally frenetic whirl of activity and joy.

Harry Potter then stood up and spun himself in circle until he fell down laughing, and if only for that small amount of time he was deliriously in love with being alive.

* * *

Hermione presented Draco with a slip of paper. Draco looked down at it to see his familiar handwriting donating money to his familiar charity.

“Where did you get this?” He asked.

“I run the charity, Malfoy.” She crossed her arms in front of her and scowled, “Care to explain?”

“You run this?” He blinked, “I've been donating to this thing for years.”

“I've noticed.”

“I had no idea it was yours.”

She dropped her arms and blinked, “You didn't?”

“No.” He shook his head, “I just... I needed to do something. Neville suggested that I should donate to a charity.”

“You talk to Neville?”

“He came around the apartment a few times to see Harry. We got to talking.”

“When?”

“When he lived in the states.” Draco shrugged, “If it's a problem I can stop donating.”

“Why do you donate?”

“At first it was something to do whenever I felt a compulsion to drink. I had this dark booze stained period in my life.” He smiled nervously, “After that, it was kind of about personal growth. I had misjudged Harry and I started to think that I had misjudged some of my notions about equality in the world as well.”

“You... you did?”

“I did.” He rubbed his arm, “Is this what you wanted to talk about?”

Hermione doubled over onto the couch and stared ahead of her, “I though it was... I thought... I don't know what I thought.”

“You wanted it to be Harry who put me up to it.” Draco sat down and took her hand into his, “You wanted it to be about you and Harry.”

She nodded, “I did, didn't I? How miserable is that?”

“It isn't.” He smiled, “And I just totally understood you for the first time.”

“Good or bad?”

“Both.” He sat back, releasing her hand, “We're all a little bit of both.”

“You must think I'm so stupid. I should be happy that you support my charity. I should be thanking you.”

“Yeah, you should. But we'll get to that.” Draco grinned mischievous, “You really love him, don't you?”

“Of course I do.” She shook her head, “I've always loved him. Always.”

“And you probably know how he feels about you, then.”

“I hear things.” She wiped her eye, “But that's all. He doesn't do anything. People keep telling me how much he loves me, how much he loves me like I love him, but he only wants to flirt with the notion of us being just friends. I don't know what to do. Do I give him time to figure it out, or do I push him? It's complicated.”

“It really is.” Draco agreed, “You fucked him up badly. Hurt him like no one ever had.”

“I know.”

“Is he worth waiting for?” Draco paused, “People are falling in love all around you. Ginny and Neville are starting, Ron and Luna are married, I'm married for Merlin's sake.”

“Thanks for the reminder.”

“Point is, do you think he's worth waiting for, or do you think you just want to be loved by someone and he just happened to be around.”

“I don't know.” She confessed, “I do love him. I really do.”

“I believe you.”

“But you're right.” She hung her head, “You're so right. I thought I was okay with letting it happen naturally. Two days ago I was so happy just to have him back. Two days.” She scoffed, “And now look at me. Anything but love is a disaster. What's happened to me?”

“You fell in love.” Draco said, “Happens to the best of us.”

“But if I love him shouldn't I be comfortable with waiting?”

“Who told you that?” Draco blinked in surprise, “I mean, shit, that is about the dumbest thing anyone has ever said to me. I thought you were smart.”

“Huh?” She blinked.

“Love has no concept of time. Any amount of time between the spark of love and it being returned might as well be forever. Agonizing goddamn forever.”

“That's...what?”

“Man, when I fell for Amber I felt like I was walking around of needles all the time she wasn't around me. And when she was around me? Fuck all, it was bad. I wanted to just confess everything all the time. I wanted her to love me in big, bold, vibrant capital letters. And also I wanted to shrink into nothing so she would never notice how I felt about her, because that was so embarrassing in so many ways, to feel that way for someone.”

“Makes sense.” She shrugged, “In a blunt kind of way.”

“Look, love isn't this passive or quiet thing, it's loud and violent and charged with energy. It's a man screaming in a crowded room. It doesn't go unnoticed, and when it does, when you don't realize you love someone, it isn't love.”

“It's weird, this thing happening right now.” She smiled, “Draco Malfoy is giving me advice on love. Good advice on love for that matter.”

“What can I say?” He smiled, “If things didn't change how would we know that life was happening?”

“Fair point.” She patted his elbow, “Thank you for this, Draco.”

He smiled and patted her hand, “You're welcome.”

* * *

Harry stood outside the door to his flat, wondering if he should knock or if he should just go in. On one hand he lived there, on the other he was a little afraid of what he'd find on the other side of the door. Finally he opened the door to find Hermione on the other side. From further inside he could make out the sounds of Draco watching TV. Hermione looked at him shocked, her hand still extended to grab the door knob that was no longer there.

Harry looked at her and it all came crashing back, the hard to define jealousy that had swept through him when he had left. He sighed and released the door. She let her hand fall to the side. They stood looking at each other, and trying not to at the same time. She moved her hand to her face, reaching for an errant strand of hair. He reached out and tucked it behind her ear. She smiled, he smiled.

They both blushed furiously.

“Can we talk?” He asked her.

“I've been doing a lot of talking lately.” She smiled, “But sure.”

He stepped away from the door and let her follow him down the stairs. Within minutes they found themselves walking the London side streets, avoiding crowds, and not speaking even a little at all as the sun went down against the hard line of London's skyscape.

The smell of a city at night prevailed, a combination of cooling cement and the leftover odor of human bodies in movement, the smell of foods cooking and paper. He smelled honeysuckle and dark chocolate and he knew it was her, it was the heady smell of her and he knew it by name because he had once stood in a corner of his flat breathing it in, wishing his flat smelled like it in more than the spots it clung to when she left him.

“Are we friends?” She asked him.

“Of course we're friends.” He answered.

“Because I'm walking with you and enjoying the silence between us, just enjoying the company of you. And I don't know what that'll mean to you, but it means something to me.” She blurted out.

He stopped walking, “This isn't what I wanted to talk about.”

“Then what do you want to talk about?” She spun around to look at him, “Because if not this, then what? We maybe need to let this air out.”

“I'm scared of you.” He said, “I'm scared of you because of what's happening right now. Are you even sure this is the road you want to go down?”

“I don't know, Harry. I don't know what the future will hold for you and me. I don't.” She shifted from one leg to another, “But if I don't at least to try to go down this road I'm going to regret it.”

“Why were you talking to Malfoy?”

“Because I found out today that he's been the one making those mysterious donations to my charity and I thought, like a fool, that it might have had something to do with you.”

He looked away, “Oh.”

“Did you know?”

“I suspected.” He shrugged, “I knew he donated to something. It made sense that it would be you when you told me about it.”

“Why didn't you tell me?”

“Things were hard enough.”

“What does that even mean?” She threw her arms out, “What are you talking about? Were you angry at me?”

“No.” He looked up at just so he wouldn't have to look at her, “I didn't want you to be thinking about other men. It was selfish, it was stupid and I'm sorry.”

“And that, that right there, you wanted to be the only man on my mind, that doesn't mean anything to you?”

“Of course it does.” He looked down at her, pleading with his eyes for understanding, “But I'm not ready to try this with you. Don't you get that? I got burned the last time.”

“I've changed.”

“Everyone says that.” He smiled sadly, “Everyone always says that they've changed but it doesn't stop them from leaving me.”

“I know.” She put her hand on his face, “I know. But I'll never make that mistake again.”

“I don't believe you.” he answered, “I'm not saying this to be mean, please don't think I am, but I just can't believe you.”

“What's it going to take for you to believe in me?”

“I don't know.”

She removed her hand and put her back to him. She let several moments, and lots of breaths escape between the two of them before she turned around again, “You tell me what I need to do and I'll do it. I'll fight for you, Harry Potter. I'll fight to prove myself to you.”

“It isn't about you.” He sighed, “It's about circumstance.”

“I know that the people you love either leave you, die or betray you. I've been there through a lot of it, and I was guilty of it once.” She kissed his cheek, “But if you give me another shot I'll be by your side forever and I swear to you that I'll try every day to make up for all of it.”

“I need time. It's totally selfish and stupid but I need time.” He pulled a few steps away from her, “I need to just get to see us as people before we rush into anything.”

“You just want to be friends?” She shook her head, “I think my heart will break if you say that to me.”

“No. I don't want to just be friends. I want something else, something big and important and forever, but I don't know if I can give that to you right now.” He turned to her, “I don't have it in me to close a door on you again, 'Mione. I'm not strong enough to walk away from you again, either. I need you to be a part of my life and a part of what I'll be. But right now, it's all too confusing and muddy. It's a fucking mess and I need to sort it all out, find out what it is, exactly, that I'm so afraid of. Once I've put a face to it...”

“I think I can handle that.” She gave him a teary eyed smile, “I can wait for you, you waited for me. It'll make us even.”

“It's not about being even.” He said quietly.

“Then what is it about?”

“I love you.” He looked her in the eye, “I've always loved you. But every time we get here, to this place where we start to let each other feel these feelings openly something happens and ruins everything. I'm in love with you, and I think you're in love with me too and right now I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm waiting for the catastrophe that keeps us apart this time.”

“What if this time there isn't one coming?”

“Then waiting for awhile to see shouldn't be a big deal.”

“What if it's waiting that ends up keeping us apart?” She let her hand fall on his chest, “We could just love one another and let what happens happen.”

“That's what I was trying to do.” He smiled, “But you wanted to have this talk. And you know what? I suck at this talk. You always had this talk for me.”

“What talk?”

“The relationship talk. Defining what we are. I'm bad at it. I don't like it.”

“So what are we?” She asked.

“Does it matter?”

She shook her head, “Not tonight.”

“But it will one day.”

“Yes.” She nodded, “And on that day we'll air all of our fears and our demons and I'll love you even more. I promise.”

Harry nodded, but somewhere inside his brain the warning bells were ringing. It was happening too fast. Much too fast. He just kept nodding, and eventually they each went to their separate homes. Neither got much sleep, both worried about tomorrows and the things they bring.

12. Chapter Eleven: Time/fragile.

Chapter Eleven.

Time/fragile.

“All the art of living lies in a fine mingling of letting go and holding on.”
- Henry Ellis

London. 2003.

Against a self in a room farther down the hall there rested a small photo album. For years it had been a record of the trials and failures of Ginny Weasly. I had been a book the sole purpose of which to be hidden away. A weak and secret shame. Now it was being filled with pictures of smiling people, with the happiness that love can bring into a world where, for so long, a darkness seemed to prevail.

Without much fanfare, and with no real reason, one day the book came out from it's hiding place and took on a new life. And it's it's own way it became emblematic of the changes to wider world around it, though of course it did this without any idea that it was. It was a book after all.

* * *

“There is a something wrong with a man that knows who he is and not what he wants to be.

I don't know if I can really claim to be either sort. I sometimes sit in my room, watching the rain on the nights when it rains, and wondering what the future will hold. Debating whether freedom is something that one earns or something that someone gives to them.

I wonder if Hermione has the ability to give me the freedom you have found or if it is something that I will have to find for myself. I usually stay up into the lonesome hours of the night thinking about these things, coming to one decision or another and disregarding them as soon as I have enough sleep in me to realize what and idiot I am, have been, and continue to be.

I think that, given time, I will realize how much of it I have wasted asking for more of it.”

-Harry Potter, In a letter to Ron Weasly.

* * *

Draco opened the door one morning and found Amber standing there smiling at him. He had hugged her, given her a kiss, and told her how much he had missed her. And then they wrapped themselves around one another and stayed that way, taking breaks for meals and and sleep, for the next four days.

* * *

“Love is in the world to remind us that we don't have it. Or perhaps only to remind us that we are too small and weak to grasp it.

I look at how happy Draco and Amber are and I wonder if I'm missing out on that because I am so scared to try for it.

I don't know what it is that's holding me back, my inner pessimist maybe.”

-Harry Potter, in a letter to Ron Weasly.

* * *

Harry found himself standing on a dock and looking at the huge sailboat he had just purchased. He grinned to himself, the assured grin that men have when they know that their futures are unclear, and walked away from the docks.

At his flat he knew that Draco and Amber were caught up in marital bliss, at Hermione's he knew that Ginny and Neville would be there spending every moment of their new relationship happiness in each others company. In Yorkshire he knew he would find Ron and Luna caught up in their perpetual newlywed bliss.

Not wanting to be surrounded by love when he was so unsure of his own, and not wanting to see Hermione for fear of the things they would say or do and that the knowledge that he would do nothing to stop them from saying and doing those things, he found himself walking the busy London streets.

He stopped off at a diner and ordered a coffee and some eggs and beans. He ate his meal in deepest introspective thought. He would list back and forth in his head, like the boat he had purchased would against the waves of the harbor. He knew what he wanted out of life, and he knew what he didn't and he was facing down a choice that was both of these things and neither. He found himself wishing for some kind of sign. For an answer he could trust for a source he knew to be honest.

A man came over and sat down at his table. Harry looked up at the man and knew instantly that he wasn't going to relish the conversation.

Ron waved down the waitress and ordered himself an English breakfast and tea, “black as the night and sweet as a stolen kiss” as he told the waitress. He looked at Harry a smiled his slow, knowing smile. He tapped his fingers in the silence while he waited for his breakfast to arrive.

Harry put down his fork and looked at his best friend, uncharacteristically quiet. Ron continued to tap his fingers and smile. Harry looked around, expecting something to come at him any moment. Finally the waitress returned with Ron's meal. Ron began to eat.

“Hello, Ron.” Harry said finally.

“Hello, Harry.” Ron said with his mouth full.

“What are you doing here?”

“I came to speak to you.”

“Funny way of speaking to me.” Harry said, “How'd you know I would be here?”

“I'm a wizard, Harry. How do you think I did it?”

“Point.” Harry sipped his coffee, “So what do you want to talk about?”

“What do you want out of life?”

“Big question for this early in the morning.”

“The only questions that matter are the very big ones and the incredibly small ones.” Ron answered, “Regardless of the time of day.”

“I guess so.”

“So, what do you want out of life?”

“I don't know.” Harry said, “I hadn't really thought about it.”

“Yes you have.”

“What do you want me to say? What's the answer to that?” Harry sat back and crossed his arms before throwing them out again, “Happiness? I want to be happy. Is that the answer to your riddle?”

“You know what your problem is?” Ron put down his fork and knife.

“No. What's my problem?” Harry said curtly.

“You're pain is all that matters to you.” Ron leaned forward, “Look, mate, you've done a lot of good for a lot of people. You're a good man, ever there with the elegant solution to the moral conundrum. But you always used your own pain, always, to center you. To root you through all the darkness to the earth. You used it to feel human. And there is nothing wrong with that, in moderation. But you're out of hand. You're selfish.”

“What?”

“Everyone gets hurt.” Ron said simply, “You think you're the only person ever came out of life with a scar or two? Everyone gets hurt, everyone heals and everyone moves on.”

“I never assumed that-”

“And it isn't brave or smart of you to pretend that you aren't playing the cautious game. And that's a long fucking game, Harry. It's a long wait for a train that don't come.”

“I don't think-”

“And you know what? Fuck you. You want to be happy, that's what you want out of life? Well happiness isn't something that waits around to jump up and surprise a body. It's something we have to look for. We have to fight for. You can walk around with your head up your ass the rest of your life, doesn't matter to me because you'll still be my best friend, but you'll never accidentally be happy. Never.”

“I don't know why you would—”

“You want to be a man, you act like one. You see something you want, someone you love, and no matter what's between you and that you gotta reach for it. You have to fight until you have it and fuck the noise around you. You want to be happy, Harry, go be happy. Stop being a fucking idiot.”

Ron stood up and paid for both of their meals before he left the diner. Harry sat at the table looking forward at a wall that would never give him the simple and plain truth.

* * *

Smoke curled up from the storm drains, crawling toward the sky and the heavy sheets of rain falling to meet it. There, between the sodden earth and the dark sky a dance began between the rain and the smoke. Weaving around and through one another, one destined to dissipate into the nothing of air currents and dark sky and the other to splash against the earth and be no more.

Transient things, in their briefest of moments, that had, but for the occasion, nothing more profound to be done with them.

Light, the forever being amidst all this temporal trappings, shown through a street light. It cast itself against the slow, sensual, wraith like dance. Illuminating everything, for no one to see. It would travel, the light, from that street light around the world and into forever from there. It would always be, in the way that light has always been, and it would outlive it's source.

These three things mingled for a moment in time. The temporary and the eternal.

* * *

Harry sat in his room and watched the rain fall. He wanted to stand in it, he wanted to rise from his life and stand in the rain.

He got up and went out, standing against a street light and in front of a storm drain and he screamed remarkable freedom into the sky and the rain. He spun circles and he laughed and he raged at the sky and in his own youthful folly he thought himself free.

* * *

As the weeks passed Harry would spend more time with Hermione. They would find themselves talking about life and the future and all points within and without. As time grew again between them it came to fill the silence that had been there. Until one day, without either one noticing right away, the silence was gone as the moments of their friendship had filled in the hole it left behind.

* * *

“I'm worried all the time because I'm happy most of the time. How fucked up is that.”

-Harry Potter, in a letter to Draco Malfoy.

* * *

Draco had gone home, to New York. He and Amber were happy, they were always happy, and in that happiness they had a heart that belonged to one another. They kept, in their great shared heart, Harry Potter, always. They thought of him often and spoke to him every other night once the phones had been installed.

Sometimes Amber would see Draco bent over his desk composing a note to Harry. She had never known someone that communicated through letter until she had met Draco, and for this she loved him as well. She would always ask him to send her love with his own.

Every night before they went to sleep Draco would tell her that he loved her more than yesterday and not half as much as tomorrow. Together they would make love, or fall asleep or look out at the night sky and wonder. But it was always together.

* * *

“Life moves with a speed of it's own. Sometimes it seems amazingly quick and other times unbearably short. It is with no consistency that people change and grow. It is without prediction when love begins, ends or blooms.

Human beings are a rare sort of guest. They give the world nine months to prepare for their entrance and hardly any warning at all for their depart. They are one hell of a party guest in the meantime.

It is because of this that the world has never seemed to know what to do with us. We are that odd combination of planned and spontaneous. A controlled super chaos. It is with time that we realize we are fragile and it is with love that we realize we are not.”

-Draco Malfoy, in a letter to Harry Potter

* * *

As the new relationship novelty wore off and the real bond strengthened Ginny would send Neville a note every day. He would send a reply in kind. They didn't see each other as often, but savored the nights when they could. Somewhere in those weeks between dating and loving one another they hatched the idea that they would get their own place closer to Hogwarts.

For her part Hermione supported them, though she did admit to the fact that she would miss having Ginny around. And as the weeks turned into months and finally into a year they bought a small cottage, a starter home they called it, and moved away.

Ginny and Neville stayed in constant contact with all of their many friends and families, and invited them over often.

* * *

“We'd love it if you could make it to the wedding. We want you and Hermione to be part of the wedding party. This would make your third stint as someone else's best man.”

-Ginny Weasly, in a letter to Harry Potter.

* * *

Hogsmeade. 2004.

Ginny and Neville were married in a small ceremony. Ron and Luna, Draco and Amber, The Weasly family, Harry Potter and Hermione Granger were in attendance. When her father gave her away she cried and when she saw her mother crying she cried all the more. When Neville kissed her and they were man and wife she beamed at him.

London. 2004.

Harry had taken to sailing his boat around the harbor on weekends when the weather permitted. He and Hermione would weigh anchor and eat sandwiches and laugh about the small nuances of work and life. They would touch, casually as ever, and share and in an honest if quiet way, they would both pretend that they were together for a few hours every weekend that the weather permitted.

* * *

One day Hermione came home from the office and found a photo album resting against a shelf. She thumbed through it and smiled. She closed it and put it on her half empty shelf, ate her dinner and went to bed. When she woke up she would fight down the knowledge that she was alone and carry on with her day.

* * *

Harry would sit back against his window when the rains came, and feel as they hit his back through the glass. He would look at his empty home and wonder when he would be strong enough. He would turn to press his forehead to glass and think about what Ron had told him.

* * *

“If I were to claim to know what the future holds I would be lying. But I know what I want it to hold. I know what I want out of life, and if I have to fight to get it I think I'm ready now.

Thank you.”

-Harry Potter, in a letter to Ron Weasly.

13. Chapter Twelve: Whole against the Sky.

Chapter Twelve.

Whole Against the Sky.

“Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky.”
- Rainer Maria Rilke

Hogsmeade. 2004.

After the honeymoon Ginny and Neville returned home and began there lives as man and wife. Neville worked for the school and Ginny had decided that what she really wanted to do was own her own business. A lofty goal, she decided, but one that she felt suited her.

After getting tips from Draco and a loan from Harry she opened a bar. She called it Gin & Tonic's, after a nickname from Neville that had somehow stuck around. “And why not have a bar?” She had said to herself. After all, if one is going to take a risk in life it seemed appropriate to take a risk on one more bar in her sleepy little town. Sink or swim, had become her mantra.

When the thank you letters had all been mailed out, taking far longer than either of the newlyweds had anticipated, finally reaching post months after the wedding, the newlyweds had time to work out a routine for themselves.

Neville would find himself at the bar with Ginny every night after work, sometimes just sitting around and talking to her and other times helping out with the work load. Word spread around town that he was the “Tonic” referenced in the bar's name, an oversight that no one bothered to correct.

Slowly the bar became a presence in the community and the bar's owners a fixture in town. Ginny had learned, in a strictly business sense, to swim.

* * *

Neville came home one evening and found Ginny pouring over the financial statements for the bar. He kissed her temple and went about making them a quick supper of boiled eggs and fruit. They ate in silence as she reviewed her paper work and he graded some papers that the Professor had turned over to him.

Finally he heard her put down her work. He looked up to find her staring at him. He did a quick check to make sure he didn't have anything on his face. She rolled her eyes but smiled all the same. He found himself smiling at her as well.

“I love you.” She said for no reason other than that it was true.

“I love you, too.” He answered for the same reason.

That night they cuddled against a storm raging outside their bedroom window. They let the sweet sound of rain on window pane loll them gently to sleep.

London. 2004.

Harry slammed the door behind him and raced for the bathroom. He had never had to pee so badly in his life, that he could recollect anyway. He made it to his toilet and unleashed his bladder, a glazed look in his eyes, the kind a man gets when all of his will power is being taxed by a singular task.

He had been awake for just shy of three days. Unable completely to sleep at night and unable to speak with Hermione during the day. The problem, it had turned out, with suddenly making up one's mind about who and what one wants was a threefold issue.

Firstly, there was what was to be said. He would waste huge parts of his day working out drafts by hand and available light that he would discard when the sun rose on a another day of bitter waiting. He couldn't seem to make his words, to force them or pattern them, into what he felt. He began to have serious doubts as to whether English had ever even been structured in such a hollow way as “I love...” while the language was developing.

Secondly, there was the issue of timing, mostly the fact that his was terrible. Hermione was in full swing at work. She was organizing events, making and taking meeting, wheeling, working into the late hours of the evening, dealing and generally being totally unavailable to any human soul that wasn't working for her, helping her out, or opposing her goals. As Harry was doing none of those things he was pushed to the periphery of her life with heartfelt apologies and vague rain checks for unspecified dates.

Finally, there was the fact that if he didn't start taking better care of himself he was likely to drop dead before he could even speak to her. He was not in the habit of running himself ragged but there had been little else he could do. Missed appointments with her, false starts and the crushing goddamned futility of trying to see her at all was seeing him running around like a chicken with it's head cut off during the day and insomnia saw to it that he was unable to sleep at night.

Harry finished peeing. He stood in the bathroom staring straight at the wall ahead of him. He realized that he had to move. He then realized that the pressure on his bladder and cigarettes and the last piece of hope he could muster were the only things that had kept him moving during the day.

Harry walked from the bathroom in a daze. He made it to his bedroom, and as it was inevitable that he must, he fell unconscious just inside the door frame. Three days without sleep had finally caught up with him, and over the next two days he would do little else but sleep. He would occasionally stir, momentarily convinced he was awake but then realizing he must be dreaming. During one of these dreams he could swear that he saw her, sitting on the edge of his bed, weeping gently and smiling wide.

But dreams can be an odd thing. Insubstantial at best, true at worst, and bizarre for the most part.

Yorkshire. 2004.

Ron opened the kitchen door from the outside of the house. He discovered Luna standing in the door frame, her smile writ large upon her face. He smiled back at her, though there was confusion dripping into his face while he did.

From behind her back she took a small white stick, more of a tube that was fatter on one edge best he could tell. He took it from her, looked it over and let it fall to his feet. He picked her up and spun her around in slow circles before letting her down so that he could kiss her.

She threw her arms around him and laughed and cried and made noises that were both and neither and he grinned wide as the world as he kissed her cheeks and hugged her a hundred times. She looked him in the eyes, happiness evident beyond the serious tone, and asked if he was ready. He said that he was, that he wanted nothing more, and she kissed him and that night they made love and held each other until they fell asleep. They woke up still holding each other.

The moonlight trickled through the window, they told each other how much they loved one another, how happy they were, and then they didn't speak. They held each other and they smiled and the breathed in the musty sweet smell of their own love making. She closed her eyes as she nuzzled into him and he played with her hair and ran his fingers up and down her bare thighs.

In the doorway of the kitchen the pregnancy test with the positive marking sat unaware of any of the commotion it had caused. Such is the case with inanimate objects, they can forever change lives but have no power to enjoy that they have such a power.

London. 2004.

Hermione had left work, saying that she needed a minute to herself, if only to catch her breath. Her workers didn't seem to mind the long lunch she took as it gave them a chance to relax as well. When she got to Harry's flat, unsure what force had made her decide to go there, she fiddled with the lock until she realized that the door was closed but not locked.

She gently pushed the door open. Once inside she heard the noise of Harry snoring from a a farther room. She saw his feet hanging out of the door to his room and into the hallway. From the fridge she fixed herself a sandwich and a glass of milk. When she was through she walked over to him and thought briefly about moving him more into the bedroom.

She decided against it, but thought it would be kind to get him a pillow at least. She stepped over him and walked into his room. Once inside she saw that his room was covered in balled up bits of paper. She uncrumpled one and let her eyes run over it's contents.

She looked from the page to the man sleeping in the doorway back to the page. She laughed for a moment, then she wept. She shifted on the bed, letting both emotions wash over her at once and fight between themselves. She wiped her eyes, she smiled, she cried again.

Finally she got up and returned to work, knowing in her heart what had to be done.

Somewhere in all of that he rustled but slept on.

New York City. 2004.

Draco leaned against the wall he had just hung up a painting on. The painting was wonderful, it depicted the city from an overhead three quarter in hues and colors unlike anything most would attribute to the buildings. Draco took a sip from his bottle of water and smiled weakly at Amber who stood across the gallery.

It was evening and the lights were only on it the showroom. They were a gentle sort of florescent, meant to imitate natural light, and doing a fine job of it most of the time, so long as the doors were left closed and the mood was just right.

Amber walked from the corner she stood in and wrapped Draco in her arms. She kissed his forehead and then his cheek and finally his lips.

He held her against him as he returned her kiss. The gentle, almost natural, light warmed their skin. They breathed in each other. They had quarreled earlier in the evening about money and time and the little things that only matter in the short sighted world of life and moment. They had fought to the quick, giving as good as getting on both sides. Tears had been shed and he had walked out.

He had finished the display in the gallery, letting himself ignore the guilt he felt at the things he had said and the shame at the heart of the things she had. When she had finally cooled down, regret winning out over the argument in her heart, she had followed him. She knew where he would be, because his work and her and his friends were the only things that mattered to him.

Once there she watched him work, the lean muscles flexing and relaxing against his too pale skin. She loved him then, as she had once and forever loved him. He felt the presence of her eyes but didn't want to fight anymore. He wanted to be wrapped in her love and so he said nothing but finished his work with her eyes on his movements and the prickly shame of impotence at his own inaction.

But when she kissed him it all melted away, all of it, and they were once more a part of each other. They melted into one another and let the trivialities melt away entirely from their shared bones.

In their lives there were always going to be arguments and pain, there would always be the quiet moments of darkness but they would yield to the bright light of new days and promises kept. There had to be, it was the march we all march, and it was as broad as it was specific to them and to all of us.

Their life, the one shared between them, like all things that are and end, was both sides of the human puzzle but it was held together by them. Always held together.

Together.

London. 2004.

Harry slept. In dreams there were whispers, fleeting moments of things which were truth masquerading as fiction. Dream logic is not easy to follow and harder still to explain. Suffice to say, Harry Potter slept like the dead, and when he awoke he rose like the living.

In his mind he would know things, he would have the words, and he would find the patience to wait for a moment and in that moment he would have the strength to fight, he would see the light at the end of his tunnel. He would cup it in his hands to keep the wind from blowing it apart, and with that simple resolve he would know the path that he must take.

But before that moment, Harry slept and he dreamed and he longed. He longed to share his sleeping dream with his waking life.

Yorkshire. 2004.

Ron and Luna held each other, sometimes crying happy tears and other times dry eyed and loving. He would run his hand against her belly and let it rest there. She looked into his eyes and smiled. She took his hand and ran it lower on her abdomen until it rested on the right spot.

“Here.” She said to him, “Right here.”

“Right here.” He confirmed.

They smiled at each other, laughter came light and breezy and they let it. There were no wrong emotions, there was no moment that did not call for a kiss. She leaned into him, letting her naked back feel the skin on his chest, staying long enough that their skin would stick together.

His hand stayed on her and her hand stayed on his.

London. 2004.

Hermione worked like a woman possessed over the course of the next two days. Finishing what had to be finished and getting done what had to be done. She alerted her workers about the status.

Life was hectic movement and ticking clocks until one day she came in and left Bryan in charge. She left work and told them she would be gone for a few weeks. They understood, mostly because there was so little remaining to be done.

She stopped at a take out place and had them put together a basket of food for her. She bought a bottle of soda and stopped by Harry's flat, to make sure she was right about where to find him.

He wasn't at his flat, so she set out for the harbor. She had a small spring in her step, and a smile that she couldn't wipe from her face. She had such news in the last few days.

* * *

London felt empty to Harry most days. Almost all of his friends lived outside of the city, and being unemployed gave him a large amount of time with nothing much to do. Most days he could be found at the harbor working on his boat. Over the last year his boat had become his go to hobby. He brought everyone out in it at one point or another.

He brought Hermione out most of all. If there was ever anything that could keep him from the open sea it had become her. He liked being around her, he liked the easy confidence of sitting and talking with her. He would sometimes swing by her office and take her out to lunch. Though lately it had been more difficult to arrange.

Their constant meetings had made them something of an item in the rumor columns of the wizarding world press. They had taken it in stride and told any reporter who popped up that the rumors about them were unfounded, that they were just friends.

Lately it was difficult for them to say that.

That day he was changing out some of the ropes around his boat. He could smell the food before he even saw her coming. He had eaten when he woke up, but it hadn't seemed like enough. He turned and smiled and waved to Hermione, who was approaching with something in a basket that smelled fried and wonderful.

Harry wiped his hands on a rag he had laying next to him on the floor. He stood up and greeted her from the deck of his boat. She smiled up at him from the dock, the blue sky framing her face, and Harry thought she looked like heaven. He waved her on board.

She set down the basket on top of the table in the kitchen and sat down. From the basket she removed some fried fish and chips wrapped in newspaper. She took out two sodas and placed them, one in front of her and one in front of where he would sit.

Together they ate the meal. Together they spoke in loud and happy tones.

Together.

* * *

The meal finished Hermione crumpled up the wrappers and stuffed them back into the basket. She winked at him.

“Hope you liked your surprise.” She said.

“I did.” He smiled at her, “I hadn't realized how hungry I was. Thanks, 'Mione.”

She wrapped her fingers together and leaned forward, “So, what do you want to do this evening?”

“Aren't you working?”

“Nope.” She smiled, “I'm taking a vacation. Bryan is more than capable of covering for me.”

“How is Bryan?”

“He's the same.” She turned her head, “So what do you want to do?”

“How long is your vacation?”

“Three weeks.” Hermione said, “I seem to have gathered a lot of vacation days by never taking off.”

“I heard that you got elf kids attending Hogwarts.” Harry said, “No idea how that'll work out.”

“Hopefully for the best.”

“But isn't their magic kind of ingrained in them? Do they really need to learn it?”

“It isn't about them learning it. They work off of a modified curriculum. Mostly they will concentrate on building skills that will make them more attractive to future employers in the job market. They aren't going to Hogwarts to take their O.W.L.S and their N.E.W.T.S. They're going to be immersed in our culture, because they're now a part of it.”

“That's amazing.” Harry smiled, “You're amazing.”

“I try.” She shrugged.

“Don't be so modest.” Harry grinned, “I fought a bad guy, but you've made the world a better place. Voting rights for elves and giants, fair medical treatment for werewolves. You've left the world a better place than you found it, and that counts for something.”

“You're too kind.” She put her hand on his shoulder, “But I think history will still only remember me for my involvement in the war.”

“That's history's problem.”

“It really is.”

“Sail away with me.” Harry said suddenly.

“What?”

“For your vacation. Can you extend it?”

“Extend it? To what?”

“A year.”

“A year?”

“One year, maybe eighteen months, sail away with me. We'll go the world in this boat. Together.”

“That's a really big request.” She sat back, “I don't know if I could do something like that.”

Harry looked the other way, “You're right. Dumb idea.”

“It isn't dumb. It's wonderful.” She reached forward and to his hand in her own, “But whatever made you think of it?”

“It's kind of why I bought the boat.” He looked at her, “I like the idea of going somewhere and losing myself for awhile. I like the idea of taking you with me. I bought the boat because of that.”

“You do?”

“Of course I do.” He paused, bit his lip and continued, “I'm in love with you. I spend most days just thinking about how we would make such an amazing couple. And no one lives in London anymore anyway. It's just us, and you're ahead in your work, apparently. You've done so many wonderful things, a sabbatical wouldn't kill you. And we could be together without the posturing of our stations.”

“We wouldn't have to dodge the paparazzi.” She said.

“We wouldn't have to sit down for monthly interviews.” He added.

“And you think you're ready to try with me?” She interrupted the train, “Why now?”

Harry looked away, remembering the words Ron had spoken to him so long ago, “It's kind of hard to explain.”

“Aren't you still afraid?”

“Terrified.” He admitted.

“Then why?”

Harry stood up and paced around the small kitchen. He turned to face her and spoke softly at first, but with a raising level of animated emotion, “I want to be happy. We all want to be happy. That's what life is meant to be about. And You, 'Mione. My wonderful, smart, beautiful 'Mione, you make me happy. You make me so happy that I'm fit to burst at it. Every time someone asks about us for their paper it's a struggle to tell them that you and I are just friends. It's hard because it's such a pathetic half truth. There's no one else for me. No one.”

He paused and collected himself, “And, yes. Okay. I'm scared. But I woke up this morning and I realized that if I let fear hold me back from the things in life that I really want then I'm letting it have power over me. When the towers fell, in New York, I refused to leave. I refused to let anyone have that kind of control over me. Now... I'm doing it to myself, and I don't want that. It's stupid.” He turned to face her, joy mingled with something less defined danced across his face, “I'm so tired of loving you and not being able to love you like I want. I looked at myself and I asked what it is that I want out of life and I could only think of you. I want you.”

She looked at him, surprise clear on her face, “You mean that?”

“Of course I mean that!” He put his hand to his mouth, “Sorry, didn't mean to shout. I'm passionate about this.”

“So what are you saying?”

“Be with me.” He moved over and sat beside her, her hands in his own, “Be with me and leave with me, screw the nonsense about waiting and forget the advice we've been given. What could be more important than you and me and right now?”

She kissed him then. Tears in her eyes and in his own and an uncertain future, unanswered questions and the ocean and she kissed him.

* * *

His question was not answered that night. They both went home, having kissed and danced and smiled and laughed. The total events too fresh in their minds to be anything but a blur of movement. In his flat Harry fell asleep, effortlessly for the first time in many years.

In her own half empty flat Hermione smiled in her sleep, his taste still on her lips, and even as unsure as she was about what she would do about his offer to sail the world, his lips were a part of her lips, his heart was her's as her's was now his and that was enough.

Author's Note:

Went back over the chapter, because it read poorly and it needed to be proofed badly. So here you go. I apologize that some of your comments are now gone. I'm not allowed to save them when I replace a chapter.

14. Epilogue.

Epilogue.

“What you leave behind is not what is engraved in stone monuments, but what is woven into the lives of others.”

-Pericles

London, 2011.

It hadn't rained in days. The summer had been oppressive, heatwaves and drought. Everywhere you looked there were signs that spoke of how badly people wanted to keep out of the sun. Still, they had all made it out that day.

After the ceremony they had found their way to the docks. They chatted amongst themselves, because some had not seen each other in a great while. Mostly that talked about the newlyweds. When finally the newlyweds arrived their were words exchanged and hugs given.

The scene was makeshift family, friends and those loved ones more important than that. Family had been taken care of the evening prior.

Ron and Luna had their daughter with them. A little red headed girl all of almost six years old and holding tight to her father's leg. Neville stood while Ginny sat to rest her tired ankles, her pregnant belly poking out of her shirt at the bottom. Draco and Amber had flown out to be there, all smiles and blown kisses the bride and groom.

Harry released the lines that had tethered his ship to the pier, Hermione gave a teary eyed wave to the friends assembled, and the newlyweds were off to parts unknown, if only to the two of them. Strange and foreign waters. A change in latitude, attitude, and longitude.

* * *

London, 2010.

Change, he had been told, was a thing that came on slowly but with the finality of death about it's aspect. Everything changes, and time and tide wait not. Still, with his heart in his throat, asking her to marry him had been the biggest challenge of his life.

A single tear had escaped her eye before she threw her arms around him. She whispered, half sobbed really, her response.

“Yes. Merlin, a million times, yes.”

They held each other in the bed they shared, warm a content, long after their love making had concluded. In the morning they would tell their friends and family. In the morning it would be all good news and congratulations, about time and the afterglow.

Tonight belonged to the the lovers. Tonight was their moment to bask in the wonder of their lives. Tonight was their chance to savor the way time had changed everything.

* * *

New York City, 2009.

The group had gathered around the table to celebrate Thanksgiving, a peculiar American holiday that Draco had become enamored with since he had become a full fledged American citizen. And they waited for him to finish in the kitchen, checking and re checking the turkey until he could deem it edible.

Amber showed them all pictures that she had taken on their last big trip out to see everyone.

Was it really that many years ago? We do try to get over there when we can, after all.

Here was one with the boys, see how Ron is giving Harry a wet willy? Look how it makes Draco and Neville laugh!

And don't the girls look so wonderful? But, of course, don't they always?

When Draco sets down the meal and tells them all that what he is thankful for is his second family. He is thankful for each of them and the place they have made for him in their lives. They pat his back or rub their eyes, though none of them are crying about anything, not a thing at all.

Together they all share their thanks, each and every one of them thankful for things exactly the same and totally different.

Because they had not always been friends, because there was a time, not too long ago when they had all drifted apart and to some degree even hated one another. And no matter what they were thankful for in words expressed the sentiment behind the words was consistent. They were thankful for the changes.

And on that peculiar American holiday they are a family, just like they always had been, and just like they always would be.

* * *

London, 2008.

Sitting on her desk were pictures of Harry. There had once been piles of paperwork, calendars with the dates filled in, and random scraps of parchment, odd and out of place, thrown here or there. She didn't have those things anymore because there was so much less work for her to do these days. Harry and joined her office, showing a real aptitude for work of any kind.

Eventually the people that had once been her assistants had become so capable at her job that she could find more time to spend away from work.

And she did. Her and Harry set sail for far away lands once a year, as a vacation. One week out of every year, and then the bliss was over and they came back to work.

But she could see the distant day on the horizon already. The day she would not be able to say no to his suggestion of sailing the world with him. The day that the work, sometimes over her head as it was, would no longer need her.

There was a part of her that would miss it. Because it had been her calling, it truly had. Once and long ago it had been her passion. But passions change, everything changes, after all.

* * *

Hogsmeade, 2007.

Ginny would wipe down the bar while Neville stared at her. She knew he was staring, and he knew that she knew, but together they both pretended that it was nothing. They did so because, years of marriage later and they still wanted each other. They had no desire to say it aloud and watch it go away.

Sometimes, because she had to know, she would turn her head and catch his eye. He would smile a silly little smile, half embarrassed and half poorly maintained bedroom eyes. She would love him all over again, like it was brand new. It didn't matter that it didn't happen as often as it used to. It only mattered that it happened at all.

They had tried, the year before, rather unsuccessfully to get pregnant. Unsuccessful, but not in the usual way. There was nothing wrong with either of them physically that prevented it, but when finally they both admitted to not being ready for a child, the air around them was palpable with relief.

Still, after a long night of work, her hair matted to her head in several places by sweat, she took comfort in the fact that her husband was still attracted to her.

* * *

London, 2006.

Harry and Ron would meet for tea every other Wednesday. They would catch each other up on the goings on in their lives. Ron had a child and Harry had just moved in with Hermione not that long ago. Together they would share, and laugh and talk.

However they could feel the distance between them all the while. Ron was a husband and a father, his problems made Harry's seem trite in comparison. Ron, saint that he sometimes way, he never said a word of it, but unspoken between them it was acknowledged. It wasn't a rift, not exactly, that had grown between them, but something was there. Just out of the reach of words and a shared sense of humor.

Ron had become a man, and Harry was struggling not to be a man-child. Still, every other Wednesday they would try to ignore it and, for the sake of their friendship, they would sit down to tea together.

* * *

London, 2005.

When the last of their things had made it's way into the new flat, Harry and Hermione collapsed on the bed. They laughed about it not having sheets on it yet, and they fell asleep. Their hands touched the whole night.

When they woke up in their new living space, in their new lives, they kissed. It had been a spontaneous thing, with little to no passion. It was the reflex kiss two lovers develop when they don't live together. A kind of, “It's so good to see you again” kiss.

They blushed at one another before having breakfast. Made small talk about the decorations, the way the sunlight came in through the kitchen window and about how awkward the kiss had been.

And as awkward as it was, that first morning together, they kissed each other first thing in the morning every morning afterward.

* * *

London, 2004.

When Harry woke up the next morning he put the fact that she hadn't answered his question out of his head. They were together, finally and wonderfully together, all of the little things seemed to melt away. So why too, should this not?

He loved her. He loved her in ways he didn't know, only hours ago, that he could. And he knew, with the clarity of the morning after, that if there was one thing in the universe that would always change it was that he loved her.

Every day, for the rest of his life, that feeling would change. He would love her a little bit more. He would awake one day to find that “love” is an inadequate word for how he feels about her.

He smiled to himself, looked at a stack of sailing books by his bed, at the brochures for travel destinations resting on the table.

“I have her.” He said to himself, “Who needs the world?”

Author's Note:

Quite a wild ride. I want to thank you all for joining me on it. More so I want to thank you for your heartfelt, honest, and supportive comments. They have meant the world to me.

This is how I always intended to end the story, from the time I wrote the prologue as a matter of fact. I wanted to sandwich the story between years counting up at the start and years counting down at the end. Though I had planned to end the story after Chapter Eleven: Time/Fragile back then.

Any way, enough of me! This is about you, and about how much it has meant to me what you guys have said along the way. You're the best people I could have picked to read this story. Thank you, again.

-Carbonbased