Coffee
The swirling, grey liquid against a back drop of tacky orange counter-tops are a prominent contrast. They act as reminders, mirroring the small, dark patches that they had pushed to the back of their minds and that they now forever retained.
They had been coming back here for three years now; just the two of them, getting pleasantly lost in the other's eyes and hair and curves and the stupid conversations that meant the world to them.
They always sat in the same booth; the one they had sat in back when they were still kids – or at least, more of kids than they are now. There's a small scorch mark on the wall above their heads from a rogue spell that obviously couldn't be repaired. Each time, when just a second of the easy silence sets in, their eyes drift away from the person sitting across from them to the mark.
She admits that she had let a thought cross her mind on that night; that they, sitting together in the cheap café, supposedly just each other, would have looked like a couple out on the date, and the thought had made her blush back then, silly as it was.
He admits that although he was panicked and sick with worry for his family, he hadn't been able to keep his thoughts on track and five words had bounced around his head all night. You look nice in purple.
The coffee's repulsive. The waitress is rude. The chairs are uncomfortable. The lights are dim. They don't like it there. But they enjoy it. Because it's hard to go anywhere that resurfaces memories of strife and panic and pain and his brother; Hogwarts; the Burrow; Gringotts; Shell Cottage. But the café is so very dismal that it pushes many thoughts out of the way.
And each time, they leave the money at their booth for the gum-popping waitress and walk slowly from the place onto the busy street, each time hand in hand.
Um, yes. Sorry.
It's not very obvious; I was going to try and make it less bewildering. But it's Ron and Hermione returning to that shitty café they go to after the leave Bill and Fleur's wedding, and Harry's under the invisibility cloak.
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