Hermione doesn't know what the difference is between going to class each morning and to work, but she feels the distinction in her bones and in the glasses of tea she consumes to stay awake. She loves what is accomplished in the Department for Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures (though sometimes she wishes they had a nice abbreviation), but she misses the chance to go into the Gryffindor common room and read until dawn. There are no friends to pull her out of her many projects, and Hermione has never been very good at pacing herself.
But this morning is different. The bed is still too warm to leave, and she hums to herself as she rolls onto her back, blinking sleep from her eyes and smiling a bit as she dangles an arm in the air and watches her fingers move. It may be noon, but her mind is still lingering over the dinner she attended the night before.
Last night was the celebration, the first party she attended in years: her transference to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. She smiles at the thought of the dress she bought for the occasion, the new shoes, and the hair that took her an hour to tame.
Mostly, she smiles at the thought of who she saw.
Hermione had heard of both Ron and Harry's admissions into the Auror Office, but she hadn't had any contact with a single Hogwarts student since a year or two after the defeat of Voldemort. It made her feel guilty, often, but she wasn't particularly good at juggling both her work and social life, and so she had let the latter fall apart in hopes of accomplishing something with the brain everyone had always assumed she would use so well.
She had spent the first hour of the evening wandering around the room, receiving congratulations and handshakes like a politician. Hermione had jokingly wondered if anyone would offer her a baby to kiss to complete the image. Instead, an Auror she had not recognized had grabbed her by the shoulders and said, "Hermione Granger… Didn't you go to school with Potter and Weasley?" She had winced when the Auror then yelled across the room, "Potter, over here!"
The swarm of people around her slowly reshuffled to produce a young man with black hair and eyes so green they made her own squint. Hermione managed a grin as the Auror who had singled her out placed her hand in Harry's for a good shake, saying drunkenly, "There, friends reunited!" before wandering on to bother someone else.
Hermione slowly withdrew her hand from Harry's before asking, "How… how are you?"
Harry ran a hand through his hair, causing the small layers to branch off as if he'd been electrocuted and allowing Hermione to see the outline of the lightning scar on his forehead. "I'm all right enough," he said, staring around the room before letting his eyes rest on her. "You look good, Hermione; how are you?"
She didn't know why her face warmed up at his statement, but she managed to answer the question. "I'm about the same as you, I suppose; just all right enough." When Harry didn't make any further comments, she asked the first question that came to her mind. "Are you and Ron getting to work together?"
"Oh, no; didn't he tell you that he's been assigned to help protect the Muggle Prime Minister?" There was a strange note in Harry's voice, and Hermione thought, for just a moment, that it could have been jealousy.
"Honestly, I don't believe I've seen or spoken to Ron in three years! Sad, isn't it? I've just sort of fallen out of touch with everyone."
Harry gave her a faint smile before responding. "I know exactly what you mean."
On her first day at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, Harry takes Hermione to lunch. It strikes her as a nice way to rekindle their friendship, if a bit awkward. Neither of them feels inclined to speak much as they sip their butterbeers, but Hermione laughs when Harry accidentally tips half a pint onto the floor as they're leaving, and they retreat from the café amid a chorus of chuckles and apologies to the owners.
"You're a mess, Harry," she says as she walks with him to his flat down the street, the two of them in search of a dry shirt to replace his soaked ensemble.
"Hermione, I don't think it's quite fair to compare me to your perfection, is it?" he replies as he guides her to the appropriate door. "Be warned that my living style is not particularly orderly, either."
The flat is exactly as Hermione would imagine it: a broomstick or two scattered around the main room, a tiny kitchen containing almost no food, and a bedroom strewed with a few articles of clothing that may or may not be clean. She wonders around the place as she waits for Harry, who changes his shirt in the bathroom. Hermione finds it hard to believe that, just a few years before, they were living in the woods and on the run from a murderous tyrant.
"How bad is it?" Harry's voice asks, and Hermione turns from staring at a small picture of him when he first came to Hogwarts, smiling and waving a hand back and forth, to the man now watching her from across the room. She notes that he seems to have grown even another inch or two since they left Hogwarts behind.
"Really, Harry," she says teasingly, "would it kill you to wash a dish or two?"
He grins at her and says something about how it very well might, but Hermione has difficult focusing on anything but the strange sensation she feels in her stomach when he mentions something about how he'll have to look into finding someone to clean up after him. "Maybe you can come be my personal maid, Hermione," he jokes, and she wonders why that suddenly sounds like such a good idea to her. She has to stamp down the thought to catch the sincere offer attached at the end.
"I know I'm a mess, but do you think we could maybe do lunch again? Since Ron's been gone, I've just… not been particularly good at finding any new friends and, too, we ought to catch up some more. That is, you know, if you actually want to deal with me pouring food and drinks everywhere."
Hermione smiles at the hesitancy in Harry's voice; he's awfully unconfident for being the boy who lived. "Sure," she replies, "I'll bring napkins next time."
Lunch starts out as a weekly thing, works its way into Hermione's daily schedule, and before long it's customary for her to spend a good 75% of her time with Harry. They eat their meals together, do their grocery shopping (because Hermione insists that Harry actually have some form of subsistence in his kitchen), and are so often spotted together that, occasionally, people begin to assume they are a couple. Hermione always quickly squashes such assumptions with a firm "Oh, goodness no," and she's just finished repeating these words to their server at dinner one night when Harry gives her a glare across the table and says, "Hermione, you don't have to be so forceful about it." She feels a blush of shame creep its way up her neck as Harry lets out an exasperated sigh and directs his gaze to the ceiling.
Their meal goes by without either of them speaking a word, and even when offering to pay the full bill Harry only states his intentions by grabbing the receipt for her meal out of her grasp.
When they are back on the street, he gives her a quick nod and mumbles, "See you tomorrow," before walking off, and Hermione becomes so furious at his attitude that she pulls him around like that Auror did the first night she saw him again and says, "Are you really going to just up and leave like that? I wasn't trying to anger you, Harry, and I wish you'd stop acting like such a child."
Hermione watches his reaction; he looks like he's swallowing a reply and so she says, "Come on, Harry; out with it."
"Hermione, what exactly do you call two people who spend all of their time together and have agreeable feelings towards one another, eat meals together and are generally in each other's presence more than anyone else's?"
"I'd call them two people who are obviously quite friendly," she says, and perhaps this time she does intend to anger him, because she has a feeling about where this conversation is headed and she doesn't like his roundabout manner of approaching it.
"Oh, come on," he says, yanking at his hair and fumbling with his glasses, "Hermione, you know what I mean!"
"Harry Potter, if you are attempting to ask me if we are dating, the answer is no."
Harry's fidgeting stops at this, and he stares at her with surprise. "So you don't have any feelings for me?" he asks.
"I said that we're not dating, Harry, not that I lack feelings for you."
"Then why did you say we're not dating?" he asks, and his confusion is so evident that Hermione has the urge to shake him.
"Harry, you can't just assume you're dating someone! You have to ask, you know!"
Harry doesn't reply and, in her own fit of rage, Hermione begins to turn to head home and leave behind her apparently oblivious companion. Before she's moved a foot, though, a voice asks over her shoulder, "Hermione, would you please be my girlfriend?"
She stands still as she feels Harry move up behind her and wrap his arms around her waist. "I'm sorry, Hermione, all right? I'm sorry."
Hermione glances back at him and sees a fringe of black hair resting on her shoulder and two bespectacled eyes waiting for her answer. She smiles at the urgent look reflecting out of them and says, quietly, "I suppose I could give it a try."
Later, when she is back home in her apartment and smiling once again at her ceiling, she swears that she has never been kissed more soundly than by Harry, standing in the middle of a London sidewalk.