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What it comes down to	By : melinda1293 Category: Harry Potter > Threesomes/Moresomes Views: 115219 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 7
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 39
- 40
- 41
Chapter 39. Timely Glad Tidings

Hermione stared up at the dark ceiling of the bedroom she and Ron shared. Beside her, he slept, his body curled on his side, facing away from her. He didn’t want to have sex tonight. It was the first time since they’d initially confessed their love for each other, and then made love while their best friend lay next to them, unconscious and clinging to life, that he’d refused her.
Well, he hadn’t actually refused her. He just hadn’t initiated it as he had at every other available opportunity. Hermione didn’t think there was anything that could dampen his desire, but Harry’s words tonight had stung him. He’d brushed it off, pretending that it hadn’t affected him, but it had. Though he appeared hard and durable on the outside, at his core, Ron was soft and vulnerable.
He never should have brought up Ginny, though. Certainly not after seeing how Harry reacted over dinner at Bill’s the other night. Ron wasn’t being malicious with his teasing. He meant no harm, but he could be callous and insensitive at times. It seemed that he had no filter, as if his stream of consciousness was constantly being broadcast, his every thought vocalized and thoroughly articulated for his audience’s listening pleasure.
His lack of censure was a trait that she’d been most critical of in the past, but actually found quite refreshing sometimes. You never had to wonder how Ron was feeling or question where you stood with him.
Harry was the exact opposite. At his core, there was solid steel. He wasn’t so much filtered as muzzled. Keeping his own council, Harry internalized everything, even more so since his terrible torture and their escape. A rampaging herd of Hippogriffs couldn’t drag out of him what he was determined to keep private. There was a part of her that found that admirable, too. But right now, it was frustrating because he’d become so much more difficult to read.
She’d hoped that things with Harry would progress smoothly. That the feelings between the three of them would grow organically from platonic friendship, beyond sexual desire, and into the fully realized, deeply loving relationship that she so desperately craved. And after the disastrous beginning, which nearly tore them apart, she’d thought that it might have. Once the fight had gone out of him, Harry stopped denying his attraction to them and capitulated, even if only to quiet the screaming grief of Dobby’s death, or to quell the terror of coming face to face with Bellatrix, his most despised tormentor again, and to quench the raging need the moon inspired in him. Whatever his motivation, he had, at last, surrendered himself.
That first time had been rather traumatic for everyone, most especially for Harry. God, she’d thought they might lose him after all when he’d gotten violently ill suddenly, and then started going into shock in the aftermath. But then things improved markedly. Harry’s moods became much less volatile, and he appeared to be stabilizing. Finally opening himself up to it, he seemed to embrace them at last. Yet the ‘and they lived happily ever after’ fairytale ending she’d hoped for, remained elusive.
After those first few promising days, a subtle reversal began. He’d refused to move back in with them, declined to return to the sleeping arrangements they’d shared here at Number Twelve since their first escape from Malfoy Manor. He’d begun to separate himself from them again emotionally, too, cutting himself off from their relationship as if he still believed he was an unwanted intruder. Although he didn’t spurn their advances any longer, he didn’t truly embrace them anymore either, only giving them physically what he thought they wanted from him. It was maddening.
She’d cautioned herself that this would be difficult, that the sudden change in the relationship with his two best friends wouldn’t magically repair all the damage done to him. But she wished with all her heart that it could. Hoping that he would accept the love they offered him along with the sex, she wished that it could heal him. But she was deluding herself. Harry had told them that, himself.
Her best friend was still deeply disturbed, and she was reluctantly being forced to consider that the damage may be permanent. Mentally, he might not ever fully recover from the trauma so savagely inflicted on him. The worst part, for all of them, was that the terror was not over. Their time here was simply a brief reprieve, and every day they grew closer to their planned attempt on the Horcrux in Bellatrix’s vault, the more Harry seemed to regress, slowly pulling away from them again and into himself.
Yet they could do nothing besides move forward towards their goal. The pressure and fear of their seemingly insurmountable task was not his alone. The dark shadow of what they had faced, and were still facing, had cast a pall over all of them. Constant dread clung to them, weighing them down. Anxiety continually clutched at their subconscious, worry turning into doubt and despair. There was no happy ending in sight for any of them, only more danger and fear and awful struggle to survive. Trying to form and strengthen a relationship amid all the terrible chaos and uncertainty in their lives, or possibly, as Harry believed, because of it, was proving an even greater challenge than she’d anticipated. She just wished she knew what to do to change it. They needed the strength of each other to get through this.
Grunting, Ron rolled over, molding himself against her side. As she turned to face him, he clutched her pillow, burrowing into it. Even as he slept, he looked troubled, restless, she thought. Hermione stroked the hair off his forehead with her fingertips, and he frowned.
Well, she thought resignedly, it wasn’t as if she couldn’t do with a break herself. Trying to keep two men at the height of their sexual prime satisfied was exhausting, even though they engaged each other almost as much as they engaged her. Perhaps they could all use a night off to reflect, to examine their true feelings without the physical intimacy clouding and heightening their emotions, or masking them. Because getting naked every night certainly wasn’t getting them anywhere. They needed to be doing a different kind of stripping off with Harry if they were truly going to grow closer. The question was; how to get him to do that? How could they get him to open the steel trap of his thoughts and feelings? How could she?
“I love you, Ron,” she whispered before leaning down and pressing her lips to his.
Then she pulled the blankets back off herself and climbed out of the bed. She didn’t know what she hoped to achieve by walking across the hall. Harry was, undoubtedly, already asleep, having gone up to bed before them. Yet even it was just to look upon his slumbering form, she need reassurance that he was still there, safe and sleeping peacefully.
Though she wore one of Ron’s long sleeve flannel pajama tops as she tiptoed to Harry’s door, Hermione was still chilled by the air that blew against her bare legs in the drafty old house after the warmth of the bed. Wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the cold, Hermione leaned against his door jamb and stared in at his dark form, feeling unnerved by the familiarity of the scene and the circumstances which had led her here.
“Are we back to this again?” Harry whispered after a few moments of her quiet contemplation.
Hermione jerked in surprise. “Damn it!” she swore, clutching her chest. “You always do that to me, Harry. I thought you were asleep.”
“Not yet,” he replied.
It was too dark for Hermione to see the smirk on his face, but she could hear it in his voice. She knew that it amused him that he’d startled her.
“I’ve just been lying here, you know. Waiting until I was sure you were both sound asleep before making my escape. But I see you’ve come to thwart me again. What gave me away this time?”
Hermione scowled at the barbed reminder of her last, unsuccessful attempt at espionage, but didn’t answer his sarcastic query. Instead, arms still wrapped tightly around her body, she walked slowly towards him. As she approached, Harry’s scooted back, but he wasn’t retreating in fear of her this time. He was merely making space on the bed for her to join him.
When she sat down on the edge of his mattress, he propped himself on his elbow. Eyebrows raised, he stared up at her questioningly while she remained silent because she didn’t know what to say now. She hadn’t expected to be caught spying on him…again!
The dim light in the room appeared to be absorbed by his eyes, making them glow eerily in the darkness as he continued to survey her curiously. Then they slowly travelled over her. Harry examined her with those strange, catlike orbs, now filtered by his dark lashes, winking on and off with the shuttering of his eyelids. Hermione repressed a shudder, holding herself still under that penetrating gaze that made her feel as if she were being x-rayed.
Harry’s lips quirked slightly as he reached up slowly and trailed a tapered finger from the center of her chest, down the placket and over the small wooden buttons of the flannel top she wore. Her heart sped up at the light contact as her back straightened and her arms loosened, her body instantly responding to his touch, the reaction unconscious and automatic.
With one look or a simple touch, he had the power to mesmerize her. It was an indefinably, unique quality he possessed which held both Ron and her completely enthralled. Perhaps it was the conflicting combination of appetence and reluctance she saw in his eyes and felt in the diffidence and fervency of his embrace. Yet, that beguiling characteristic was not present tonight. Instead, he spoke with only surety in his voice and touched her with nothing but confidence in his hands.
“So, are you and Ron sharing pajamas now?” he asked, ending the prolonged silence with his low, amused whisper. “Does he have on the bottoms?”
“Actually, he does,” she admitted.
His smile widened, revealing the tips of his teeth. Hermione almost expected to see large pointed canines from the sound of his voice and the heat of his stare, as if she were the damsel in distress of her imagined fairytale, being stalked as prey, sized up and scrutinized by the wolf before her.
My, what big eyes you have, Harry…what big teeth!
“Trying to save on laundry?” he asked next, interrupting her idiotic musings.
“No,” she replied with an embarrassed shake of her head. “I just like wearing his shirts to bed. It’s simply a coincidence that we happen to be a matching set tonight.”
His fingers had journeyed to the hem of Ron’s night shirt lying against her inner thigh. Licking his lips so they glistened, he flicked at the fabric lightly before turning those lamp-like eyes on hers again, making her heart throb in her chest.
“I like you in them.”
Hermione felt heat creep into her face, which was at odds with the tiny shiver that went up her spine at his suggestive words and sensual tone. But he was distracting her, she realized suddenly, and masterfully at that. Harry may still be a terrible liar, but he was an expert at deflection and misdirection. And in this intimate setting, she was all too willing to allow herself to be taken in by him, to be led off course to the familiar destination that brought both comfort and contentment, but not the closeness she was truly after.
Harry was never this forward. He never ever instigated, only reciprocated, which meant that he had a purpose. He’d known she’d come to talk to him. Clearly, he would rather give her his body instead of willingly enter into a discussion about his thoughts and feelings, as if the former meant nothing to him and the latter was to be avoided at all costs. The thought made her suddenly irritable.
“All right. So, if you haven’t come to check I’m still here. Then have you come to try and seduce me again?” he asked playfully in a drawling voice, eyebrows raised. He was still weaving his spell, still offering himself to her unashamedly. But she wasn’t going down that rabbit hole with him tonight, she told herself firmly.
“That depends,” she replied. “Are you going to get hysterical again if I try?”
Harry’s eyes widened in surprise, and the grin abruptly vanished from his face at her unexpected reply. “Damn, Hermione! That’s just mean.”
“Oh, are you the only one who’s allowed to make unkind remarks?” she asked waspishly. Her tone was overly harsh from her annoyance at how easily her body had responded to him. At how much she did want to crawl in next to him and feel his warm body against her own, now craving the feel of his soft lips and velvet tongue on her skin.
“What have I said that was unkind?” he spluttered. His face showed genuine confusion as Hermione fixed him with a stern gaze.
“Harry, I think you hurt Ron’s feelings tonight. You know he says things sometimes without thinking first, but he was only teasing. He never meant to upset you.”
“I see. So you’ve come here to demand an apology from me? Is that what this is about?”
“Of course not,” she responded irritably. “I don’t want you to apologize, Harry. I just want you to talk to me, like we used to. We don’t communicate anymore. We’ve lost that closeness we’d begun to share here, and I don’t know where you’re at anymore.”
“Great. Instead of seduction, more therapy is what you had in mind tonight, then,” he grumbled sullenly.
“I believe Doctor Ron is off rotation this evening.”
“I don’t think I called him that,” Harry replied tightly, sounding offended.
“Actually, you did.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I said he was utter crap at it, too, then.”
“Fair enough,” she agreed. “But two people can just talk, you know, Harry. It doesn’t have to be painful.”
“Right,” he scoffed disbelievingly.
When she remained expectantly silent, Harry sighed heavily and looked away from her. “Look…what I said may have been unkind, but it wasn’t untruthful, all right? Maybe I shouldn’t have said it like I did, but he caught me off guard.”
“Because he brought up your feelings for Ginny?”
Harry flinched, his hands curling. It was a reaction almost identical to the way he’d reacted to Bellatrix’s name, as if he’d replaced Ginny for her as a subject that was now taboo around him, which said a lot about the place Ginny held in his psyche. The fear and hatred that assaulted him at the mention of Bellatrix’s name had been replaced with the guilt and betrayal that consumed him when he heard Ginny’s. Neither reaction was healthy for him. Yet Hermione now realized that Ginny was the barrier he’d erected to insulate himself against them, and her willingness to allow him to make her off limits as a topic of conversation in his presence was allowing the distance to widen between them.
“No. Because he made me question if what he said was true. What if he’s right about me, Hermione? What if I’ve fancied him all along and was just too thick to realize it?”
“Harry, I don’t think you truly believe that. Ron didn’t believe it himself when he said it,” she argued.
“Are you sure of that?”
“Ron meant it as a joke, trusting that you would think it absurd and banter back. We were in fourth year during the tournament for heaven’s sake! You’d just begun to fancy Cho. Ginny wasn’t even on your radar at that point. And you and Ron had only recently reconciled after a bitter, prolonged estrangement. Of course he was the thing you’d miss the most at that moment. His friendship was what you had been desperately missing from the instant your name came out of the goblet, until after the first task. It doesn’t mean that you felt anything romantic towards him.”
“Maybe,” he conceded. “But there are a lot of things about myself that I didn’t believe I would ever question, yet I’ve been forced by recent circumstances to reconsider.”
“You were only fourteen then, Harry,” she explained, remembering that Ron, at that age, had only just spotted she was a girl. “I expect you probably weren’t having any real romantic or sexual thoughts for anyone, yet, and certainly not for Ron.”
Snorting incredulously, Harry raised his eyebrows at her.
“What?” she asked defensively.
“Maybe not actual romantic thoughts about anyone yet, Hermione, but definitely sexual ones. I had hit puberty by then, you know. By fourteen, I’d been wanking almost nightly in my bed or covertly in the shower right along with all my other dorm mates.”
“That’s an unfortunate image,” she said, slightly repulsed by the thought and feeling even more indignant at the plight of the Hogwarts house elves who were tasked with cleaning up after them.
“Please. Are you telling me that, at fourteen, you didn’t diddle yourself at night behind the hangings of your own four-poster after you thought everyone else was asleep? That’s why they put them there. So the students could have a bit of privacy.”
“Actually, no, I didn’t,” she admitted, flushing. “And I’d rather not think about the other girls in my room doing that behind theirs, either. But I didn’t come here tonight to discuss the masturbation practices of my adolescent schoolmates or the disconcerting forethought of the Hogwarts staff. There’s more to what’s been going on with you and Ron than simply a joke taken too far. You’ve both been so aggressive with each other lately.”
“We’re just blowing off steam, Hermione,” Harry said, deflecting again. “Feeling anxious and nervous about this trip to Gringotts, is all.”
“You’re lying,” she accused. “It’s more than that, Harry. Tell me the truth.”
Groaning in irritation, Harry rubbed at his face before glaring at her. “It’s just… there’s still a lot of stuff between us, Hermione, still a lot of anger that needs an outlet, you know?” he admitted finally, and his words rang true to Hermione this time. “A little rough-housing is the safest alternative for us both to work some of it out. That’s all.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“Just stuff, you know?”
“No, I don’t. That’s why I’m asking.”
Harry’s jaw had clenched shut, and he remained stubbornly reticent. Hermione waited, but he refused to elaborate. The silence grew between them as the seconds ticked by before she was forced to break it herself.
“Ron thinks you’re angry with him for not being able to help you at the Malfoy’s. Is that it? Are you?” she asked.
“No, of course not, and I’ve already told him I’m not. I’ve got a lot of anger about what happened there, a lot of hatred. But absolutely none of it’s directed at either of you. I promise you.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s you, Hermione,” he finally blurted in exasperation, clearly frustrated that she would not let the matter drop.
“Me?” she spluttered, stunned by the admission.
“Don’t be so naïve. Of course it is.”
“I don’t know wha—”
“You know as well as I do that Ron would have killed me himself when we got out of that hell-hole if I hadn’t beaten him to the attempt. No matter what either of you says to the contrary, I know that a part of him still hates me for what I did to you.”
“Harry, that’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. Now it’s time for you to stop lying, Hermione. Whatever the circumstances, I took what didn’t belong to me…something that was yours to give, not mine to take. And all the apologies in the world won’t make up for that.”
“You did what you were forced to do. Ron knows that, and more importantly, I know that. It’s certainly not down to him to avenge my honor or something equally as chauvinistically absurd.”
“Hermione, you don’t understand how badly it affected him having to see that. Didn’t he ever tell you what that Horcrux in the locket tormented him with?”
“No, he hasn’t,” she admitted hesitantly. It had never occurred to her to ask. She was so furious with Ron at his abrupt reappearance after his devastating departure that it never entered her mind to ask for details about the destruction of that Horcrux. Once she’d finally forgiven him for abandoning them and rupturing their friendship after several weeks of punishing him with her stony silence, the matter was in the past. Her thoughts had then turned to finding the next Horcrux and working out the clues in the book Dumbledore had left her.
“Then ask him to sometime.”
“Will you not tell me?”
“No,” was his curt response.
“Harry—”
“Look, I’ve given you enough to go on, all right? But those are his private fears. I wish I hadn’t been there to witness them, myself, and not just because I thought I was facing certain death for the second time in about ten minutes. I’m convinced that for a moment he was considering splitting my skull with that sword instead of the Horcrux, even though I wasn’t even guilty of anything at the time.”
Harry had given her enough to work out what must have happened that night in the forest, she realized. Now that she thought on it, she understood that part of the reason Ron had left them was because he’d been jealous and thought they were excluding him. Then he’d accused her of choosing Harry over him when he’d asked her to leave with him and she’d refused. She hadn’t learned until much later that he’d been in love with her for a long time until he’d confessed it to her after their escape from the Malfoy’s.
Afraid of discovering that they might have taken up with each other after he’d left and nervous at how he might be received on his return, the locket must have manifested those fears to torture Ron. Yet so much had transpired since then. Ron might have been worried initially that she preferred Harry, but now he knew that she had always been in love with him, too.
“Harry, whatever happened then was a long time ago now. Things have changed for all of us since that locket was destroyed,” she explained.
“That’s what he said when I confronted him about all this,” he retorted, waving a hand between them. “He pretends that he’s happy with what’s going on between the three of us, but I’m sure it’s a lie. It has to be.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t attribute your own feelings to him. Why do you assume he’s lying? He’s the one that initiated things with you. It could have remained between him and me, but he chose to include you. Pursued you quite persistently, even, when you resisted.”
“Yes, but did he do that because he truly wanted to? Or because he felt pressured to and wanted to be in control of it?”
“I didn’t pressure him.”
Harry stared sternly at her.
“I didn’t!” she insisted.
“Something was starting between us, Hermione. Something neither of us wanted to admit or knew what to do with. Ron would’ve had to have been blind not to see it happening. Why else would he suddenly want me? There’s no other explanation for it.”
“What had started wasn’t just between you and me, Harry. The attraction was growing between all of us. It might have taken you both more time to reconcile yourselves to that, but you know it’s true.”
“I don’t know what’s true anymore. But if it is, then that just leads me back to what I said before and nullifies your argument. That I was attracted to him all this time and just didn’t recognize it.”
Hermione stared at Harry in frustration. “Fine. I give up,” she said in exasperation. “But you’re being deliberately obtuse, and you know it.”
Harry merely shrugged.
Damn but he was bull headed! It was useless to point out that she was trying to reassure him that his fear that he’d been attracted to Ron when they were both fourteen was unfounded, not that they weren’t attracted to each other now. Somehow, he’d managed to twist her words into confirmation that he’d been both sexually attracted to Ron early on and that Ron was only responding now as a compromise to control things in an effort to appease her desire for Harry. Neither was true, she was sure of it.
Maybe she should reconsider her resolve and resort to simply throwing herself at him, just rip off her top right now and crawl onto his lap. The result would surely be more satisfying than this maddening conversation. She’d thought they were getting somewhere, but in reality, he was merely leading her in circles.
“I just wish I could be like everyone else,” he suddenly confessed. “I wanted just one damn thing in my life to be normal. . . one thing that didn’t make me a freak!”
“You’re not a freak, Harry.”
“Yes I am! Everything in my life from the time I was a year old, all my experiences have been bizarre and abnormal. Even my pathetic love life and most certainly my sex life. The first girl I ever kissed was in love with my rival in the tournament, whom I’d watch get murdered. The whole thing with Cho was bolloxed from the start. I fancied her, and she knew it, but she chose Cedric instead. And then after he died, she turned to me as the person who’d been the last to see him alive. The reason he was dead, actually. It was some fucked up attempt to be closer to him. I was a substitute for him, and I knew it, but I let it happen anyway. Then with Ginny. . . She’s my best friend’s sister who’d had a crush on me since before her first year. I’d known that all along, too, but didn’t feel anything towards her before she started going out with Dean. Then suddenly, selfishly, I wanted her for myself. And now I’m afraid that I wanted her for entirely different reasons. Maybe, like Cho, I was just using her as a stand in for him, taking advantage of her because I knew how she’d felt for me.”
Hermione sat quietly, absorbing his words. Ron’s thoughtless taunt had certainly caused a chaos of conscience in Harry. He was struggling to understand his own motives, but nobody who’d ever seen him with Ginny could deny that he was in love with her. Not as a substitute for Ron, but Ginny herself. If she were to walk in the door at this very moment, Harry would likely never even glance back and her and Ron.
“I’ve watched you with Ginny, Harry. Certainly more than you know, and probably more than I should have. The way you looked at her at Ron’s party…You love her. This wouldn’t be tearing at you if you didn’t, and I’m sorry we caused that.”
“Then that just makes me an even bigger bastard,” he said with disgust.
Hermione watched him scowling down at his hands which were fisted again in his lap. She wanted to reach out and touch him, to stroke his face and cover his fists with her hands consolingly. She wanted to reassure him, but she didn’t have the words and was afraid he would reject her touch. So she sat motionless instead, worried and afraid that the conflict within him could not be overcome, dreading the thought that he was working up the courage to find a way to break away from them without destroying their friendship in the process.
“Harry… Do you regret this?” she asked hesitantly.
Those eyes pierced her again as he studied her while considering his response. Then he sighed heavily. “Yes,” he admitted after a moment, which sent a stab of pain to her chest. “I regret a hell of a lot of things, but you already know that. You know I wish it had never started between us. So ask the question you really want me to answer, Hermione.”
Hermione swallowed hard, curling her arms tightly around her abdomen as if to protect herself from the devastating blow she feared was coming. “Do you want to end things with us?” she whispered, terrified of the answer but at the same time, needing to hear him say it.
As painful as it was, she had to give him the opportunity to back out if that was what he truly wanted. Yet, it went against her every instinct to let him go. She wanted to cling to him, plead with him to stay, but that would only prolong the agony for all of them.
Harry sat quietly for a few moments, smoothing the sheets while her anxiety mounted. She held her breath. Then he glanced at her briefly before looking away again.
“I wish I could. I truly do,” he said quietly. “At first, I told myself it didn’t mean anything, you know? I justified it by pretending it was purely physical between us… just sex. I wanted it to be. I thought I could keep the emotion out of it and with Ron at least, I did. With him, it felt more carnal, almost casual. I think I gravitated towards that because it was safer and less complicated. It felt like less of a betrayal with him, even though I knew it wasn’t. But with you…”
“With me, what?”
“You mix me all up, Hermione. You spin me around and make me want what’s not mine.”
“I am yours, Harry.”
“No, you’re not. You don’t belong to me.”
Hermione watched him thoughtfully for a moment as her tightly coiled insides loosened, feeling some relief at his admission. He was confused and afraid of the emotions they stirred in him. As equally conflicted by his desire to stay with them as he was to return to Ginny, which undoubtedly made him feel like a complete bastard, but made her feel hopeful again.
“You know, Ron told me once, in the beginning when he saw the changes coming in the relationship between us, that I held all the power over him. But he was wrong. You do. You think I’m not yours, but Ron and I both belong to you. We always have.”
“There’s no future in this. You have to know this can’t last. Am I not allowed to try and shield myself from that?”
“There’s nothing to shield yourself from, Harry. This will last for as long as you allow it. I know this is complicated, but neither Ron nor I want just sex from you. We want so much more than that. And the only one of us who won’t embrace this…who wants to pull away, is you.”
“I’m scared. This frightens me, Hermione. You both keep putting pressure on me. Asking me to bend just a little bit more, but I’ve given all I can without breaking completely. Still, it’s not enough. You two always want more. Ron wants more from me physically, and you want me to confess my undying love for you, or something, yet you don’t feel the same for me. You said it yourself.”
“I said it was just as intense. And it grows deeper and stronger every day. Ron has my heart, but you’re my soul, Harry. Ron and I aren’t asking for more physical intimacy with you, we want more emotional intimacy.”
“Where do you see yourself in five years, in ten?” he questioned suddenly. “Do you imagine us all still living here together, playing house?”
“Frankly, I don’t see further than what’s right in front of us. There is no planning beyond getting this Horcrux, and then working towards the next. That’s my future right now, the only one I can entertain.”
“Christ, I don’t want that for you. I want to imagine the two of you growing old together. I want to picture you with several fat babies with curly ginger hair running around and Ron going bald and slightly paunchy, still squabbling with you over the most trivial things.”
“And you? What do you see in your future?”
“Tom Riddle. All that’s in my future is this prophecy.”
Hermione sighed sadly. “What happened to the privilege of our youth, Harry?”she asked wearily. “Did we ever possess it?”
“The ravages of this war have stripped it from us, disillusioned an entire generation of young witches and wizards. But that’s what we’re fighting for. To make sure the next generation doesn’t grow up without it.”
“I hope so,” she said, reaching out to cup his face at last.
“Damn, Hermione! You’re freezing,” he exclaimed, pulling her hand from his face and quickly covering it with both of his own.
Hermione shrugged unconcernedly. But the heat of his hands on her cold skin had made her shiver, goose flesh erupting up her arms.
“Come here. Get under the blankets so I can warm you up. A few minutes with me and you’ll be sweating in no time.”
Hermione raised her eyebrows, her lips quirking in sudden amusement. “Is that a promise? Slightly boastful for you, isn’t it, Harry? I mean, I knew you were trying to get me into bed tonight, but you’ve abandoned all subtlety now.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he retorted, sounding mortified. “I just meant that I’m so hot all the… I mean… because of the damn fever!” he amended when she started laughing. “Bloody hell!” he cursed, before chuckling. “Stop laughing and get in here before I throw you out of my room.”
Harry pushed her until she stood up so he could pull back the blanket, then she crawled in next to him. When she’d burrowed in close, nestling her back against his chest, he threw the blanket back over them, resting his arm over her protectively and enveloping her with his incredible warmth.
“Better?” he asked.
“Mmm hmm,” she agreed, nodding her head while shivering again at the abrupt change in temperature.
“M’kay. Just tell me when you get too hot.”
Hermione tried to stifle a snort.
“Shut it” he growled.
God, he was warm, she thought, still smiling. It really was a remarkable gift, though he thought it a curse, the evidence of some horrible affliction.
“I know the fever bothers you, Harry, but I think Ron was right. I think it’s your magic or the metabolism, or a combination,” she said softly after several minutes of their quiet breathing.
“I knew you weren’t asleep that morning,” he murmured accusingly into her neck.
“No, I wasn’t, but I didn’t want to disturb the two of you. What Ron said was true, though. I think it’s your power. Sometimes, I picture you like a lump of coal, under immense pressure from all that you’ve endured. I imagine the fever as a manifestation of the compression inside you. That incredible force squeezing you relentlessly until you become something even harder, stronger and more beautiful. You said you were afraid of what you’re becoming, Harry, but I think you’re evolving.”
“Well, that’s even more terrifying…thanks,” he said dryly.
“You’re incredibly powerful, Harry. I believe the sun rises and sets at your command, and its flames burn within you, ready to be unleashed at your discretion,” she explained, shifting even closer to him.
Harry pulled his knees up quickly, his arms tightening when she’d spooned against him, but it wasn’t fast enough to prevent her bum coming into contact with his hips.
“Sorry,” he apologized. “I can’t help it. I’m always ready for you, Hermione. I have been from the moment you appeared in my doorway tonight, but I swear that’s not why I asked you to get under the blankets with me.”
“I wouldn’t mind if it was, you know.”
Harry didn’t reply, but relaxed his stiff limbs again.
“You know, that morning I was desperate to turn over and watch you two, to see the expression on Ron’s face when you took him into your mouth, but I’m glad I didn’t. Sometimes Ron can say the most insensitive things, but at other times, he can be quite insightful. I enjoyed listening to that conversation.”
“I didn’t much enjoy having it,” he replied.
“No. You never do,” she said with a sigh. “But, darling, it helps to talk about the things that trouble you sometimes, or hear the things you might not want to hear.”
“I don’t need to have an actual conversation with you two to hear what I don’t want to hear. You’re both in my head all the time anyway, telling me what I should do.”
“What do you mean?” she asked in surprise.
“You’re the voice of my conscience, Hermione, and Ron’s the voice of my courage. You tell me to plan carefully and tread cautiously while Ron tells me to leap without looking, to trust my instincts.”
“You actually hear that as our voices?”
“Yes. Is that weird, too?”
“I don’t know,” she answered hesitantly.
“Well, that makes me feel loads better,” he said sarcastically.
“No. It’s just that… I guess I’ve never really thought about it before.”
If she had to give her conscience an identity, she supposed she would say that the internal dialogue she sometimes had with herself were the voices of her parents offering advice and encouragement. She assumed it was probably like that for most people. The thought that she and Ron were the voices in Harry’s head struck her as unusual. But Harry’s parents died when he was very young. He had almost no memory of them. If he could recall any of their advice, it would probably be simple things like; “spit that out,” or, “don’t squeeze the kitty.”
“Are there other voices in your head besides ours?” she inquired curiously.
“Yes, but I try not to listen to them.”
“Why? Who are they? What do they tell you?”
“Nothing ever very nice. They sound like my aunt and uncle, and Snape and Tom, too, sometimes. They’re the voices of my doubt and fear.”
“And Ginny? Is she there, too?”
“No. Ginny never tried to tell me what to do. She only told me when I was being a prat. Like when I thought I was being possessed by Tom or when I was so obsessed with the Half-blood Prince’s book,” he explained. “But I don’t have to hear it in my head because she was never afraid to say it to my face.”
“Yes,” Hermione agreed. “She’s the only one of us who could ever truly put you in your place, you know.”
Harry nodded into her neck. “Well, and Fred and George really, too,” he amended. “They can puncture anyone’s inflated ego.”
That was a better reaction, Hermione thought as she nodded in agreement. Harry didn’t seem to flinch that time or fist his hands. He didn’t even hesitate in his response when she’d asked about Ginny. Perhaps they were making progress tonight after all.
“Why do you call me that?” he asked after a few minutes of silence.
“Call you what?”
“Darling. You don’t call Ron that, but you’ve started calling me darling a lot.”
“I didn’t realize I had. Does it bother you?”
“No. I kind of like it, actually,” he admitted. “I was just wondering.”
“It means favorite, cherished, beloved or much admired,” she explained.
“I know what it means. Though, I’m not surprised you’d be able to recite the definition from memory. Do you read the dictionary in your spare time for fun, or something?”
“I like to know the meaning of words, and that one best describes what you mean to me, Harry. You are all of those things and more. You’re my protector, and Ron and I are yours.”
“I didn’t protect you, then… at the Malfoy’s… and I don’t know if I can if we’re facing that again. I don’t think I have the strength to endure it again, Hermione.”
“None of us can, but you won’t have to, Harry. You made me a promise the night before we met with Snape. Do you remember?”
“Yes, but—”
Hermione rolled over to face him, gazing into his shadowed face. “You vowed you would never let them take us again if we’re captured, that you wouldn’t let us suffer,” she reminded him.
“I know, but I don’t know if I can, Hermione. If it comes to that, I don’t think I could truly do it.”
“You promised.”
“I don’t want to…I don’t want it to be me who snuffs out your future. I can’t be the person who ends your life. Even if it’s a mercy. I can’t do it, Hermione.”
“It won’t hurt, Harry,” she whispered, stroking his face reassuringly. “They never uttered a single scream of pain.”
“They were unconscious!”
“Well, then make sure we are, too.”
“Oh, God!” he moaned, trembling all over.
“You don’t have to be afraid, Harry. I know you’re strong enough for this. You did protect us then, in every way you possibly could. And you’ll never let them hurt us again. I know it,” she whispered.
Then she kissed him, softly at first to comfort him. But Harry slid his hand into her hair, cupping the back of her head. As the kiss deepened, she leaned forward and pushed him onto his back before draping herself over him.
“This is what I want from you, Harry,” she whispered as she stared down at him, stroking the fringe off his forehead. “This…this openness. You don’t have to confess your undying love for me and Ron, and you don’t have to stop loving Ginny, either. But I don’t want to be just your friend, or just your lover. I want both.”
Harry nodded in either agreement or understanding before slipping his hand up the back of her night shirt as she kissed him again. Holding his head in place with a hand on either side of his face, she threw her leg over him and crawled onto his lap at last. Gripping her by the hips, he tilted his head back, closing his eyes and sighing in pleasure as she moved over him, rubbing herself against his patient arousal.
“Does this mean the therapy session is over now?” he questioned softly as she moved to his neck, placing soft kisses against the fevered, stubble-rough skin of his jaw and throat. “Is this my reward for being a good patient?”
Hermione bit him on the neck, and he grunted in surprise, holding her against him tightly as he shuddered under her.
“Nope,” she replied into his ear before tracing it with her tongue and nibbling on the lobe. “This just means that we’ve moved past the verbal therapy and into the physical.”
Harry snorted and relaxed, releasing the tight grip on her waist to slid his hands up her sides and back.
“I definitely prefer that kind.”
“I know you do. That’s why I saved it for last.”
Sitting up, Hermione brushed her hair back her off her shoulders as Harry’s hands moved to her thighs. Looking up at her, he stroked her with his thumbs while she began to unbutton her top.
“No. Wait,” he whispered, sitting up, too.
Touching the back of her hands lightly with his fingers, he stilled her movement. His eyes examined her again slowly, glowing once more with the fire burning inside him. Then he looked into her questioning face.
“Leave it on,” he murmured as he brushed his soft lips across her cheek.
Leaning into her, he pressed his mouth and tongue against her neck before sliding his arms around her, one in the small of her back and one at the base of her head. Then he pulled his legs under him and lifted her. Hermione wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, clinging to him as he got to his knees. Then he dropped one hand to the bed to support them as he reversed their positions, easing her back down to the mattress.
She relaxed her legs around him as he yanked at the blankets now wadded under them. Then he sat back on his haunches, gazing down at her while his hands crawled up the outside of her thighs and slowly removed her panties.
Hermione pulled her feet through, and he tossed them on the bed behind him. Then he ran a hand through the soft curls between her legs before gripping it firmly between his fingers and pulling the skin taut. Hermione moaned in surprise as he stroked her with his thumb and then leaned down to follow it with his tongue.
In Hermione’s admittedly limited experience, both Ron and Harry were excellent lovers. Yet they were completely different in almost every way. Ron approached sex almost instinctively. He did what felt natural to him. He was bold and unafraid, exciting and unpredictable. Harry, on the other hand, had a much different experience with his sexual initiation. At the first touch from either of them, he always flinched, his body tightening as if expecting pain because unlike Ron, whose sexual encounters were based on mutual trust and love, Harry’s early experiences were violent and traumatic, full of malice and hatred.
Slowly, he was losing his fear, but he was still quite shy. At first, his technique with them was to mimic. Only when he was certain that it was allowed, did he touch her where she touched him, understanding intuitively that she was telegraphing where she wanted to be caressed by where and how she caressed him. Once he’d started to feel safe and more sure of himself, his intuitiveness had grown more acute, as if he could sense what she wanted before she even realized it herself or at the same moment.
She had never experienced Legilimency, but it was as if he were inside her own head at times. Yet it always felt as if he were holding himself back, too, as if he were capable of much more, but terrified of unleashing it. The stifled power and arousal seared under the surface of his skin until his body temperature flared dangerously to release it.
While Ron was by no means rough, he could be rather aggressive in his desires. He held nothing back, which she liked. Harry, in contrast, was infinitely gentle, which she also liked. Sexually, Ron was naturally more dominate, and Harry, more passive. Hermione, herself, went back and forth. But tonight, Harry had, for the first time, taken command.
Her heart pounded with excitement as he stroked her with his tongue and teased her with his hands. Then her back arched and she came the moment he slipped his fingers into her. Before she’d even ridden out her orgasm, he was inside her, prolonging her release with the gentle thrusting of his hips.
When she’d stopped contracting around him, he demonstrated that amazing intuitiveness. As if he knew she needed more aggressive lovemaking tonight than he was willing to supply, he lifted her again and sat back. Relinquishing himself to her control, he gripped her by the waist as she pulled herself onto him over and over while he bit down on his lips and squeezed his eyes closed.
Though he might crave it himself, there were certain things Harry was simply unable or unwilling to do, like take her roughly, or on his knees behind her, though he’d seen Ron do both on several occasions and knew she enjoyed it. And though he tolerated it for a time, he disliked being flat on his back with either of them over him. Face to face, or side by side were his preferred positions. Everything else likely reminded him of something horrible that he had yet to overcome. Still, it had excited him when she’d bitten him earlier, a reaction she’d not expected. So she decided to try that little experiment again.
“Oh, God, yes!” he gasped, his skin flaring with sudden heat when she bit down on his neck for the second time as his hands tightened around her, and his body jolted upwards, slamming into her.
Hermione smiled, her teeth still clamped around the pulse point in his neck where she could feel his blood surging beneath the skin through the tip of her tongue. That simple maneuver had made him move vocal than he’d been in ages. She resolved not to share it with Ron, however. He should have to figure it out on his own. It would be unfair to reveal Harry’s secret and ruin the silly contest between them.
Squeezing around Harry, she moved faster and with more force until they were both panting in pleasure. Then his muscles began to tighten and his body stiffened.
“Hurry,” he urged her through gritted teeth, moaning as his hands clenched around her waist and his head tilted back, the chords of his neck straining.
But Hermione didn’t need the warning. Grasping his head, she kissed him hard, her own body soaring again as he came inside her, groaning into her mouth and shuddering in her embrace. Panting in the aftermath, they lay, head to foot on the small bed. Hermione was wet with sweat.
“Sex… in flannel is not advisable… I’ve discovered, unless you’re outside in the snow,” she quipped breathlessly, lifting her shirt rapidly to fan her overheated body.
“Sorry,” Harry chuckled, dragging her foot onto his stomach and stroking it. “It turned me on tonight.”
“Well, that’s good to know. That tells me I won’t have to spend money on expensive lingerie to hold your interest.”
“You could be wearing a burlap sack covered with itching powder and stitched together with barbed wire and I’d still be interested,” he replied. “But if you’re ever in the mood for black satin and lace or something like that, feel free to indulge.”
Hermione grinned. Then she pulled his foot by the big toe and dropped it onto her chest to reciprocate. As she expected, he groaned when she pressed her thumb into his arch, his toes curling in pleasure.
They lay quietly together on his bed while Harry continued to stroke her leg and foot until sleep clung heavily to her eyelids, weighting them down.
“What was in the journal?” he questioned unexpectedly, breaking the silence.
“Hmm?” she said in confusion, blinking the grogginess away again.
“The journal…It was yours, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, of course,” she confirmed, before sitting up on her elbows and yawning.
“Several pages are missing from the front. Did you keep them?”
“No. They were utter nonsense, so I threw them away.”
“What did you write about?” he asked curiously.
“Nothing in particular, just ramblings, really. I got it as a gift the Christmas before last, but hardly ever used it. I packed it in my bag, foolishly thinking I might document our journey, as if we were going on some grand adventure, but then I forgot about it until Ron asked me if I had anything that you could use to write on.”
“My head aches, and I’m dizzy a lot,” he announced. “Those were the first words I wrote in it,” he added in explanation of her concerned look. “You’d think it would have been something more profound. I mean, I’d been mute for days, and desperate to communicate, but it was just me answering Madame Pomfrey’s questions about how I was feeling. Half of what I’ve written in there seems bizarre and disjointed. Just my part of the conversations.”
“What about the other half you’ve written?”
“Bizarre and disjointed,” he admitted with a small smile. “And most of it’s really dark.”
“I imagine it is. But that’s the place to put those thoughts, Harry. You need to be able to express them in some way if you can’t talk about it.”
“I never told you how much it meant to me. I never thanked you for giving it to me.”
“It was my pleasure, Harry, but it’s Ron you should be thanking.”
“I owe you both my thanks,” Harry said, nodding in agreement. “For a lot of things.”
“And we owe you ours,” she pointed out. “So, is that why you were still awake tonight? Were you working in the journal?”
“Not really. I thumbed through it a bit… reading some of the entries, and remembering the things that have happened here since we arrived… I don’t sleep that much anymore,” he confessed.
“Nightmares?” she asked.
“Some,” he admitted. Yet the quickness in his response and the vagueness in his answer made her suspect it was more than some. Still, he hadn’t woken them up with his night terrors recently. Maybe they really were ebbing in frequency or in intensity. Or, maybe, in an effort to prevent the nightmares from forming in his subconscious, he simply wasn’t allowing himself enough sleep. It would explain the chronic headaches he’d been suffering from lately.
My head aches, and I’m dizzy a lot. She wondered if that wasn’t still the truth.
“Do you ever have nightmares… about what happened there?” he asked.
“Yes. But not about what you think, I suspect. I have dreams that I’m drowning or swallowed in fog, cut off from you and Ron, soundless and sightless,” she explained. “And I’m panicked when it comes to claim me because I can’t break free of my bindings. I can’t stop the cold mist engulfing me and taking you from me. Terror grips me with the certainty that if I lose sight of you both, you will be lost forever in the silent shadows, never to return to me should it recede. I wake up feeling like I’m suffocating, cold and shivering in the darkness. I tell myself it was a dream, a nightmare, but I have to light my wand just in case. Even though I can hear Ron beside me and know we’re safe, I search for you, but you’re never there anymore.”
“Can you two wind it down in there please?” Ron shouted suddenly. “It’s lonely over here, and I’m cold. Send Hermione back to my bed you selfish bastard or I’m coming over there so we can all get some damn sleep!”
Harry snorted with surprised laughter while Hermione sat up, spluttering in outrage.
“Ron, you’re an insufferable git!” she shouted back.
“Come on. Harry doesn’t need to snuggle with you to keep warm,” he whined petulantly. “I’m freezing.”
“He’s right. It’s time for you to go back to your room now so we can both get some sleep,” Harry agreed, still smiling as he sat up to search for her discarded undergarments.
“Come with me,” she urged him. “There are no nightmares when you’re with us, unless you count Ron’s terrifying snoring.”
“I can’t, Hermione. I’m not ready yet.”
She nodded, stroking his face once before leaning in to kiss him goodbye. “It was worth a try,” she said with a shrug, pulling her dangling knickers off his finger. “But the door’s always open, and I don’t mind the middle. When you’re ready, we’ll be waiting.”
Harry nodded as she slipped on her panties and got off the bed.
“Leave the wand this time, if you would, please,” he requested, unsuccessfully suppressing a maddening smirk.
Hermione huffed out a sigh of indignation. Then, holding both hands up, fingers splayed wide, she turned on her heels and marched from his room.
Ron was smiling at her scowl when she crawled back into her own bed beside him. Punching her pillow into the right shape, she turned her back to him as she lay down. Unrepentant, Ron spooned himself behind her, his face in the back of her neck and his arm draped over her.
“Is everything all right with him?” he asked quietly.
Hermione nodded, his concern immediately thawing her heart. She should have realized that the absence of his snores must have meant that he’d been lying here awake and listening to their soft voices.
“I think we may’ve made a bit of progress,” she whispered back.
“Good,” he mumbled. “You’re the best, Hermione.”
Hermione laced her hand in his, pulling his arm more tightly around her.
“I know. And you’re still a git, Ron, but I love you.”
He chuckled, nuzzling her hair.

The following morning, she was the last to rise. When she woke, she found herself sprawled face down in the middle of the mattress. Lifting her head, she blew the hair out of her face and stared around at an empty, sunlit room before rubbing the sleep from her eyes and yawning hugely.
It was late, she realized. She could hear distant voices. Reaching for her dressing gown, she tied it around herself before staggering down the hall to the drawing room.
“Do you know if Bill has a tent we can borrow?” Harry asked Ron as she came around the doorway.
“What?” Ron asked, sounding totally thrown by the question. “Oh, hey beautiful,” he added in cheerful greeting when he caught sight of her.
They were both sitting on the couch at opposite ends. Ron was eating toffee from what remained of the chocolate eggs Mrs. Weasley had sent back with Bill for everyone at Shell Cottage the day before yesterday. Thank goodness she didn’t send Errol because she’d also sent along a glazed ham and a basket of hot cross buns, which would have probably killed the poor elderly owl if he’d been tasked with delivering them. It had been Good Friday without them even realizing it, which meant that another holiday was upon them, and March had crept past them while they sat planning in the smallest bedroom.
Knowing his fondness for chocolate, Hermione was surprised that Ron had any of it left at all. Then she realized that it probably belonged to either Harry or her, and Ron had simply helped himself to it when they’d left it unattended.
“Well, I don’t know if he has one. But we can ask. I still don’t understand though…Why do we need a tent?” Ron asked Harry as she sat down in her favorite chair and tucked her knees under her.
“We’ve grown too lax here. I’ve been thinking it over, and we need to make contingency plans for when we make our attempt on Gringotts. It would be foolish to come back here and risk losing this place again like we did after we broke into the Ministry,” Harry explained.
“I agree,” she said, joining the conversation. “That’s a good idea, Harry.”
“You mean just for a short while, right? You don’t intend to abandon this place and start camping all over the countryside again do you?” Ron asked.
“No. I was thinking only for the one night. Just to make sure it’s safe before we come back here. If we get our hands on that Horcrux, I want to destroy it as quickly as possible. Somewhere out in the open, not here in the house.”
“You’re too right about that,” Ron concurred. “This place has enough bad juju as it is. We don’t need to bring another dark object into it and release whatever horror is inside this one.”
“Actually,” Harry considered. “We might think about taking Griphook with us the night before. That way, we won’t have to wake up Bill and Fleur early the next morning with you two already disguised. If they see both of you like that, I don’t doubt that they’ll put up a fight.”
“That’s probably true,” Hermione said thoughtfully.
“No way I’m sleeping in a tent with that goblin. He’ll probably murder us all in our beds with the sword before stealing off with it in the night,” Ron objected. “Plus, if we give Bill that much of a head start, he’s bound to call the Order to set up a perimeter around the bank by morning to prevent us getting in.”
“That’s also probably true,” Hermione conceded. “I mean, the part about Bill calling the Order, not Griphook going on a murderous rampage.”
Harry nodded in agreement, though Hermione was unsure on which point.
“Well, I’ll keep thinking on that part.” Then he turned his attention to her. “You better hop in the shower if you’re coming,” he advised her. “Ron and I were about ready to leave without you.”
“No, I’m coming,” she replied jumping back to her feet. “I’ll only be a minute.”
“Good, because you know Harry and I are rubbish at taking notes,” Ron called to her retreating back as she hurried from the room.
Hermione showered in record time. Chewing a piece of toast Ron had handed her on her exit from the loo, she fumbled one handed to put on her clothes while desperately wishing she had some tea or pumpkin juice to wash it down with. Wiping crumbs from her mouth and fingers, she returned to the drawing room where the boys stood waiting for her.
“Damn! I forgot my bag,” she growled in exasperation. “One sec.”
Harry rolled his eyes as she dashed back to her room to retrieve it before hurrying back to them.
“Ready now?” he asked.
“Ready,” she confirmed.
“Sure you have everything?” Ron teased.
“Yes, I’m sure,” she insisted. “Let’s go.”
“She’s the one who has the lie in, and now she acts like it us who won’t get our arses in gear!” Ron told Harry in mock outrage.
“Oh, shut up,” she snapped, tucking the bag inside the waistband of her jeans and grasping both their hands.

After arriving later than usual to Bill’s, they compensated by breaking early for lunch, for which Hermione was immensely grateful. She was starving. They ate their ham sandwiches in the walled garden because it was a beautiful day, and they could all use the sunshine. Lunch, she discovered, was early because Fleur need to start preparations for Easter dinner.
“What do you need us to do?” Hermione asked.
“Zere are plenty of ‘elping ‘ands in zis ‘ouse already,” Fleur insisted, shooing off her offer to help. “Too many cooks will spoil ze broth, as ze say.”
“Are you sure? We’d be glad to help.”
“Of course. If I allow zat many of us in ze kitchen, someone will surely be elbowed in ze face again,” she reasoned, smiling radiantly at Harry.
“Come on, Fleur,” Ron pleaded. “Take pity on her. Hermione woke up grouchy, and I think she’s had her fill of Griphook for one day. I have, at least, and it’s a holiday. We shouldn’t have to spend the whole day cooped up in that room.”
“No, that’s not it,” Hermione insisted. “And you haven’t seen grouchy yet, Ronald Weasley. I still haven’t forgiven your rudeness last night!” she added, pointing at him sternly.
The grin on his face, however, said he knew that she had already forgiven him. Hermione glowered at his amusement before turning back to Fleur.
“It’s just that I feel like we’re taking advantage of your hospitality.”
“Non-sens,” Fleur insisted. “Vous êtes notre famille. Bill and I are ‘appy you all are ‘ere.”
“Then let us help,” she urged their host. “We don’t do nearly enough for you.”
Ron was right. She needed a break today, though she didn’t appreciate his astuteness. They’d barely even gotten started this morning, anyway. They might as well call it a day and start fresh in the morning.
“Très bien,” Fleur finally capitulated. “Ron, you and ‘Arry can go and collect some firewood. It will grow cold tonight. And ‘Ermione, you can ‘elp Luna wiz ze quiche.”
“Thank you,” Ron said, jumping up to hug her. “You’re the best sister-in-law a bloke could have.”
“I am your only sister-in-law, silly boy,” she replied with a grin, patting his cheek affectionately.
“Still, that doesn’t make it untrue,” he replied.
“Don’t encourage him, Fleur,” Harry warned as he stood up to collect their plates. “I’ll go tell Griphook our afternoon plans have changed.”
Harry took much longer than she expected giving Griphook the news. As she sat at the table with Luna slicing up mushrooms and green onions for the quiche by hand, as Luna didn’t have a wand, he came through the kitchen on his way to find Ron. She stared at him questioningly and he gave her a little grimace in response, tilting his hand back and forth as if to say that the goblin had been less than enthusiastic about the change in plans this afternoon.
“I’ll be right back,” she informed Luna and Fleur as she set the knife on the table and followed him from the room.
“What happened” she questioned in a whisper, pulling him by the arm into the empty foyer.
“Nothing really. He’s just being Griphook,” Harry explained. “He says we’re not taking this seriously, accusing me of trying to wriggle out of going and reneging on my promise to give him the sword. It got a bit heated actually.”
“Oh, dear. That’s not good,” she replied worriedly. “Maybe we should change plans again and go back in.”
“Nah,” Harry said dismissively. “I think he’s just nettled at the idea of having to spend the Easter holiday out here among all of us. If we try to force Ron and him back together this afternoon, things will only get worse.”
“That’s true,” she conceded. “Still, I wish things with him were on friendlier terms.”
“So do I,” Harry agreed. “So where is Ron, anyway?”
“He’s outside with Dean. They decided not to wait on you.”
“All right. I’ll go catch up to them.”

Unlike Luna, who seemed completely at home in the kitchen, Hermione had never been much of a cook, which had been a bone of contention between Ron and her when they were still back in the tent. Harry was the only one of the three of them that had been accustomed to preparing his own meals. As Ron was used to being served three delicious meals a day of his mother’s amazing cooking, he was unable to hide the fact that he found her efforts less than satisfactory, particularly when it was his turn to wear the locket. But she did her best today with the tasks given her, asking questions of Fleur about the dishes she was preparing and the Easter customs of the French while Luna enlightened them all with the odd traditions the Lovegood’s observed for the holiday, like wearing new clothes on Easter for luck or cutting their hair on Good Friday to prevent headaches in the coming year.
Though her own family’s celebrations had had almost nothing in common with Luna and her father’s, Hermione had learned that the English had many traditions in common with the French, such as serving lamb at dinner. They also shared the practice of exchanging elaborately decorated chocolate eggs. While in England, Easter dinner was usually served at lunch, in France, it was served as the evening meal and was a bit more elaborate. Of course, French meals were usually more elaborate. They did love to eat.
The French Easter meal consisted of several courses. The first was usually a light dish, normally served cold, like the quiche Fleur had chosen, or a salad. After the main course, which tonight was to be a rack of lamb braised in an herb sauce, family and friends drink wine and are served a traditional cheese plate with many different kinds of cheese; one bleu, one camembert or brie, one harder cheese, and goat’s cheese if it could be found, along with other uniquely French varieties, some of which Fleur described that Hermione had recalled trying while on summer holiday.
After the quiche went into the oven, she and Luna were assigned the task of cubing the different varieties of cheese and arranging them on a large silver platter while Fleur explained that guests don’t leave the table during this course. This gave them a chance to linger longer over their meal, allowing the heavier, main course to digest a bit and conversation to flow before the final course was served.
Dinner is topped with dessert which generally includes something chocolate. Tonight, Fleur was preparing an almond cake drizzled with chocolate sauce. This would, no doubt, delight Ron as the English often times serve simnel cake. Hermione was sure that Ron wouldn’t turn his nose up at either sweet offering, but given his choice between the two, she was certain that he would always choose the chocolate.
When all the prep work was done and the whole house smelled of warm spices, of baking bread, and cooling quiche, she followed Luna to the garden to gather a selection of fresh flowers for the vase they had planned as a centerpiece on the table.
She felt happy and relaxed when she stepped onto the patio, until she saw Harry and Bill standing face to face in the far corner of the garden, talking urgently. Their body posture told her that the discussion they were having was not a friendly exchange. It was the second conversation Harry had evidently volunteered for today which had turned into a confrontation. Shaking off Luna, she walked cautiously over to the pair of men locking horns again.
“I’ve seen your vault, Harry,” Bill hissed angrily. “There’s nothing in there, unless it’s concealed, that you could possibly need. So whose vault are you really breaking into?”
Harry glanced over at her as she approached, his lips pressed into a thin line before he turned back to face Ron’s eldest brother. “Stay out of this, Bill,” he warned the older wizard. “We’ve confided too much in you, already. Don’t make me regret that any more than I already do. We’re doing this, with or without your blessing. If you don’t want to give us your help, that’s fine, but don’t try and stop us either.”
Bill went red in the face, ignoring Hermione’s intrusion into their heated exchange entirely. “Are you threatening me, Harry?” he asked, taking a step closer to the younger man and thrusting his scarred face into Harry’s in an obvious attempt to intimidate him.
“No,” Harry replied coolly, standing his ground. “I’m just warning you not to interfere.”
“And you think you can stop me, do you?”
“Yes, I do,” Harry confirmed quietly. “Please don’t put me in a position that forces me to have to because I will.”
Bill’s hand shot out to grip Harry’s arm, and Hermione immediately placed a hand on Bill’s shoulder to calm him.
“Bill…” she began in a soothing tone.
“Let go of me, Bill,” Harry said calmly. His words were spoken softly, not threateningly, but there was no gentleness in his tone, either. It was not a request.
“He’s my baby brother, damn you!” Bill growled, squeezing Harry’s arm tighter. In the next instant, he released Harry quickly and stepped back, shaking his hand as if it had been burned or more likely, numb and stinging smartly from an electric shock. He stared wide eyed and a little fearfully into Harry’s neutral face.
“I’m sorry, Bill. I truly am. I know how worried you are for Ron—”
“For all of you!”
“Fine, for all of us, but we have no choice… I don’t, at least. You can try to talk Ron into staying here, I won’t stop you. I’d be relieved if you could, actually. Try reasoning with Hermione, too, if you would please. God knows I’ve tried my best,” he added, looking at her with eyes that burned with fire and sadness.
“Ron and I would never allow Harry to leave us behind,” she stated firmly while frowning at Harry, closing the door on that conversation before it even had a chance to get started.
“Why can’t you three just stay here with us?” Bill pleaded. “It’s safe here!”
“For how long?” Harry asked. “How long do you suppose you can sit here safely while the entire country falls at his feet with almost no resistance? How long before his followers find you and your wife… your parents and your siblings? I can’t sit idly by and let that happen. I won’t watch them all get taken from me one-by-one, Bill. I won’t live my life on his terms, cowering and waiting for him to find me. I’ll go out and meet him on my terms, whatever the consequences. I’ll die fighting, not hiding.”
“Fine, then let me come, too. I’m not completely useless, you know, and I know Gringotts better than you do. I can help.”
Harry shook his head grimly.
“Then at least let the Order help you with the fight. I know you’ve got some plan, some secret assignment, but it’s a fool’s errand, a suicide mission to go this alone while there are soldiers willing to help. No single person wins a war, Harry!”
“I know that, and the time may come when we will need the full support of the Order, and anyone else who’s willing to fight, but that time is not now. People might believe that I’m running away, and I don’t give a shit if they do, but I never have, and I never will. This is a race we’re running, Bill, only not a quick sprint. It’s more like a marathon through a mine field, and Ron, Hermione and I are the only ones who have some idea where the explosives are buried. Sending others headlong into that will only spell disaster. Patient planning and careful preparations are what needs to be done right now if we have a hope of winning it.”
Uncharacteristically, Harry put a hand on Bill’s shoulder, who was looking at him with a mixture of wonder and respect, as if Harry were the wizened old general and he was the new, green recruit. Perhaps that was exactly what they were. Harry may be quite young in years, but he was certainly combat tested, having been thrust into battle against Voldemort since he was an infant. Yet his leadership qualities had never been more clearly defined than in this moment. Hermione, herself, felt a little dazed by his speech.
“You have helped… you are helping by opening your home to all of us and Griphook. I can’t thank you enough for that. And right now you can help us further by loaning us a tent if you have one we can borrow,” Harry finished, making the same request that had no doubt started this argument one final time before dropping his arm from Bill.
Bill’s shoulders collapsed in defeat as he stared at the ground for a long time. Then he looked back up at Harry resignedly. “No wonder they follow you,” he growled before pulling Harry to him unexpectedly, which made Harry stumble slightly, off balance at being caught unawares. “You better do you’re damndest to bring them back safely!”
Bill embraced him like a brother, squeezing Harry hard as if they hadn’t seen each other in a very long while or that they might never see each other again. “You hard headed fool,” he complained into Harry’s ear before releasing him. Then he turned to Hermione and pulled her against him. “All three of you are! This is complete madness, but no one can move any of you an inch once you’ve got your minds set. You’re like an impenetrable wall of stubborn determination that none can break through.”
Hermione nodded her head against his chest in relieved agreement.
“No one has the balls to talk to me like that except Mum and maybe Fleur,” he exclaimed with a shake of his head before smirking at Harry ruefully, which reminded Hermione strongly of Ron in that moment, the family resemblance with his face in that expression too strong to deny despite the extensive damage to his facial features.
“All right. I do have a tent you can have. It was the other tent Perkin’s loaned Dad that we used at the World Cup. He didn’t want them back since his lumbago is so bad, and I don’t want it back either. Fleur hates camping.”
“Thank you, Bill,” she said gratefully, patting his back as he finally released her.
Sliding an arm around Harry’s shoulder and holding out his other arm to her, Bill led them back into the house.
Ron was standing in the living room, watching the three of them enter from the garden with eyebrows raised as they passed him. Without a word, he followed them to the hall closet where Bill rummaged around for the tent.
When he’d finally located it, he straightened up and turned again to face them. Then he handed it to Ron before putting a hand on his neck. “Please be careful,” he whispered urgently before squeezing Ron’s shoulder and walking off.
Ron turned to them questioningly as he held the tent out to her. “Um…anybody want to tell me what that kumbaya moment in the garden was all about?” he asked in bewilderment as she pulled the beaded bag from her waistband and took the tent from him.
“It's not important, Ron,” she answered. “He’s just worried about us.”
Harry said nothing. He was not having his best day ever, and perhaps thought it prudent to avoid pressing his luck with any further potentially explosive conversations today. Turning back towards the living room, he walked off. They followed.
“You want a game of exploding snaps?” Ron asked Dean when they’d settled themselves around the coffee table to wait on dinner.
“Sure,” Dean responded with a shrug.
Two hours later, they were all crammed around the kitchen table in lively discussion while Bill and Fleur cleared away the remains of the delicious lamb supper when an insistent pounding on the door quickly silenced them.
Pulling his wand, Bill ran for the door. Everyone at the table, who had wands, pulled theirs as well, gripping them firmly and staring around at each other nervously.
“Who’s there?” Bill called warily, his voice loud and commanding in the silence of the kitchen.
“It is I, Remus John Lupin,” came the muffled reply through the door. “A werewolf, married to Nymphadora Tonks and member of the Order of the Phoenix. And you, Bill, secret keeper of Shell Cottage, bid me come in an emergency.”
At the sound of Remus’ raised voice, Harry began to rise from his chair. Hermione placed a restraining hand on his arm and he stopped, turning to look at her. His eyes were blank, his face expressionless as he remained frozen, half sitting and half standing.
Before Lupin had even finished speaking, Bill had yanked open the door. “Remus! What’s happened? Is everyone all right?”
“Where is he, Bill?” Remus demanded, his voice growing louder as he entered the house, his footsteps thumping quickly on the rug in the hallway.
Lupin rounded the doorway then with his hair windblown and his face blotchy and strained as if he’d been crying. His wild eyes searched the faces of the crowd around the table for a moment before landing on Harry, who stood to his full height at the werewolf’s abrupt entrance. At the sight of him, Remus slumped back against the door frame, breathing hard as everyone in the kitchen stared at him in fearful expectation of some terrible news.
“It’s a boy!” he shouted, as if they were on opposite ends of a Quidditch pitch. “I… I have a son!”
“Oh, my God!” Hermione squealed, throwing a hand up to cover her mouth in astonishment as the table around her erupted into exclamations of joy.
Yet Remus accepted none of their praise and adulation. His dazed, red-rimmed eyes had never left Harry’s. Both men stared at each other in stunned silence, oblivious to everyone around them. The room grew quiet again as they all watched the pair. Then, without a word, Harry walked slowly around the table and straight up to Lupin before engulfing him in his embrace. Hermione burst into tears.
“Congratulations,” Harry said quietly into Lupin’s ear.
Remus nodded into Harry’s neck, shaking all over.
While the two men continued to embrace, Lupin gripping Harry’s back, clinging to him as if his life depended on it, Bill scurried past them.
“Wine!” he bellowed. “We need wine to celebrate!”
Throwing open the cupboard, he scooped up an armful of glasses and a two bottles of wine. Fleur hurried to help him with his burden while everyone continued to watch the embracing pair. Tears were still streaming down Hermione’s cheeks as Ron reached across the table to grip her hand in his own, grinning widely at her.
Through her blurry vision, she watched as they finally broke apart. Lupin looked disoriented, stunned by his own happiness. Ron released her hand and stood to help Harry lead him to the table as if he were blind. The new father dropped into Ron’s vacant seat next to Hermione, still gripping Harry’s hand.
Hermione flung her arms around his neck. “Oh, Remus,” she sobbed. “I’m so happy for you!”
“But how is everyone? Is he healthy? Is Tonks okay?” Ron asked, as if still expecting some awful revelation to follow.
“Yes, yes, of course. They’re both fine,” Remus assured him as Fleur sat down the platter of cheeses and Bill filled glasses of wine, passing them quickly around the table. “It’s been a very difficult pregnancy for Dora, but she was incredible…just amazing!”
“What’s his name?” Dean asked.
“Who does he look like?” Hermione asked eagerly.
Everyone was talking over each other in their excitement, asking questions before Lupin had a chance to respond.
“Yes, all his fingers and toes,” Remus was saying as he accepted the glass from Bill with a grateful nod of thanks. “He came into the world screaming, so he appears to have a healthy set of lungs, as well, but he quieted down quickly once he was in his mother’s arms. Dora says he looks like me, but I think he looks like her. His hair appeared to be dark at birth, but I swear it had turned ginger within the hour! It will probably be blue by the time I get home. Andromeda said Dora’s was like that, too, when she was born, so I suppose he’ll look like whomever he wants to!” he said with a chuckle.
“’E in’erited ‘is mozer’s gift zen?” Fleur asked in breathlessly fascination.
“It would appear so,” Lupin confirmed. “We named him Edward… Teddy, after Dora’s father.”
“It’s a shame he wasn’t born on Friday,” Luna lamented. “A child born on Good Friday and baptized on Easter Sunday has the gift of healing, my daddy says. But I suppose being able to change his appearance at will might come in handy, too.”
Everyone at the table exchanged bemused sorts of looks, but Luna appeared oblivious to it all. Remus cleared his throat before beaming at her fondly.
“I’m sure it will. Thank you, Luna.”
Bill lifted his glass then. “To little Teddy…” Pausing, he glanced at Lupin inquiringly.
“Remus,” he supplied with a silly, proud grin.
“To little Teddy Remus Lupin. May he grow up to be as wise and strong as his father, as kind and clever as his mother, and more mischievous than them both!”
“Hear, hear!” they all shouted, clinking their glasses together.
“Blimey, a baby,” Ron exclaimed, wiping his face, as if he’d never heard of such a thing before.
They nibbled on cheese while listening to Remus’ tale, peppering him with questions while their glasses were filled and re-filled and Fleur served dessert.
“You must take some food ‘ome to Tonks!” Fleur exclaimed, jumping up again to prepare it. “Wiz all ze excitement on zis special day, you will not ‘ave been able to ‘ave a proper ‘oliday meal!”
“That’s not necessary, Fleur,” Remus replied politely, standing to follow after her as others began clearing the table.
“Don’t be silly. Of course it is. Teddy’s mama will need to build back ‘er strength if she is to provide for ‘er child properly so ‘e will grow up ‘eathly and strong. And a good papa and ‘usband will ensure zat ‘is wife is well fed as she nourishes ze miraculous child zey made togezer wiz sustenance from ‘er own body,” Fleur explained.
“But we have food,” Remus argued. “You don’t have to go to all that trouble.”
“Bill and I ‘ave no ozer gift prepared. You will accept zis from us wiz all our blessings and deepest love for your new family!” she insisted tremulously as the platter shook in her hands.
Remus took the china from her and set it back down on the counter. Then he gripped her hands in his and pulled her against him. “You are a wonderfully warm and nurturing woman, Fleur,” Remus said softly into her hair. “Tonks and I are already blessed with the amazing gift of friendship from you and Bill. But I would be very grateful to accept the food you’re so lovingly offering to us.”
Fleur nodded, wiping at her face as he released her. Hermione, too, was wiping more tears from her eyes as several people around the table took the opportunity to slink from the room, including Ron.
“When my sister was born so tiny and pink and perfect, I watched as my papa fed my mama food from ‘is fingers, marveling at ‘er strength and sacrifice while she nursed Gabrielle, ‘is child, ze greatest gift a woman can give to any man. You will do ze same for Tonks, no?” she said sternly, her eyes blazing, giving him no doubt as to what the only correct response was.
“Of course I will,” Remus agreed wisely.
“Zat is good,” she pronounced, kissing him on both cheeks before turning back to the counter and pulling the platter back towards her.
Red in the face, Remus turned back to the table where she, Harry and Bill still sat, looking for some help with an escape before he had to agree to anything more, like washing his wife’s swollen feet with his own tears of gratitude. Bill grinned at him unsympathetically while Harry merely looked dumbstruck by the exchange.
Boys, Hermione thought with a roll of her eyes. Then she cleared her throat loudly and stood up, handing Harry the vase of flowers and Remus his half finished glass of wine.
“Harry? Why don’t you put these on Dobby’s grave,” she suggested pointedly at his quizzical look. “It’s traditional to put fresh flowers on a grave at Easter.”
Remus gave her a grateful smile as she shooed the three of them out of the kitchen while loudly collecting the plates and empty wine goblets to cover their exit. Then she carried her burden to the sink beside Fleur.
“Well, did I do ze job properly?” Fleur asked without looking at Hermione, but Hermione saw her face split into a sly grin just the same.
“Brilliantly,” Hermione pronounced, nodding in appreciation as she grinned back.
“In such times, men need to be reminded which of us is truly ze stronger sex.”
Then she bumped her hip against Hermione’s conspiratorially, which made both of them giggle. Maybe it was all the wine, she thought as she placed the dishes in the sink, but she was really beginning to like Ron’s sister-in-law.

~ .~

Well, it turns out that the preview I gave months earlier had to be moved to the next chapter instead of this one since it grew too long to include here, and I found a nice stopping point. My apologies again for the extended delay in getting this one to you. I hope you like it.
Greycie
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What it comes down to

Chapter 39. Timely Glad Tidings