-1July:

On the 1st, Harry and Ron walked in the front door of Grimmauld Place, dirty, hungry, tired, but triumphant. They walked into the sitting room, where Hermione was curled up with a book, and when she saw them, saw their looks of mingled apology and trepidation, saw the way they appeared more like motherless, mischievous urchins than soldiers in a war, she felt almost three months of terror and anger wash away. "How'd it go?" she asked in what she considered an admirably casual tone. Ron still looked semi-terrified of her, but the corners of Harry's mouth were beginning to twitch upward, and she knew he understood. "Not bad," he replied in an equally casual tone. "What the bloody hell have you done to your hair?" She laughed as she touched the short curls around her ears, and Harry grinned, and Hermione felt something in her chest that had been subtly misaligned right itself as if it had never been out of place at all.

On the 7th, the Order held an official meeting of it's entire membership to discuss the matter of the Horcruxes. Harry and Ron, during their absence, had managed to destroy both the locket and a pair of spectacles that had belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw herself. Draco had been invited to the meeting in order to pick his brain on the best way to approach Nagini the snake, whom they suspected of being the sixth Horcrux. He could not offer much insight, since as a Death Eater of low rank, he rarely if ever saw Voldemort in person. As he was leaving, he brushed Hermione's hand with his when he walked by her, and when Harry asked her why her cheeks were flushed, she lied right to his face and told him the room was just too warm.

On the 15th, it began raining as Hermione was walking back from the market. For a few brief moments, she hurried forward as if to outrun the raindrops, but she almost immediately came to a halt and looked up at the sky. It was a sudden sort of shower, the kind where the clouds burst open and weep their burdens down in furious, heavy sheets. She dropped her bags to the ground, turned her face upward, and let the downpour wash over her. It felt like a cleansing, like a benediction, and she breathed in the scent of rainwater, smashed tomatoes, and spilled orange juice, thinking nothing had ever smelled so sweet, or so free.

On the 24th, Draco walked into the kitchen just after lunch. Hermione, alarmed, was about to ask him what was wrong when she caught sight of his face: haunted, and lonely. She recognized that look, felt an answering twinge of pain in her chest, and went about her chores while he sat at the table, alternatively watching her with unreadable silver eyes or staring into space. Eventually, she sat down across from him with a cup of tea, which she nearly dropped when he picked up the hand she'd laid carelessly on the table. He ran his fingers over her skin as though trying to memorize its textures and imperfections, and studied their entwined hands as though they were an unsolvable enigma. After a while, he stopped this intense scrutiny and seemed content just to sit there, holding her hand in silence. She sipped her tea and kept to her own thoughts, even when he finally rose to leave. He let go of her hand almost reluctantly and then spoke for the first time that day to say, "See you tomorrow, Granger." After that, he appeared almost every day at the same time, and although those words of parting were the only ones either of them spoke, Hermione was never lonely when he was there.

On the 31st, they celebrated Harry's 18th birthday. He got silly presents, and everyone ate Hermione's horrible birthday cake as though it had been baked by the finest gourmet. The room was rich with laughter, and bright with promise. Just as the party was drawing to a close, an owl crashed through the glass of a parlour window, clutching a scroll of parchment in its talons calling for backup for an Order reconnaissance team that were currently under attack. Harry spent the first night of his 18th year being cursed and attacked, which really, in Hermione's opinion, made it no different from any other night in his short and all-too-difficult life.

A/N: Review, review, review!