11. Let Me Wear His Clothes
I made it out of Hogwarts relatively unscathed, earning O's in every NEWT level class I had taken. After graduation, and a particularly confused graduation party at my parents' house that had ended with two memory charms (and a display of Miraculous Mystic Mayhem Makers, courtesy of Ron and George), I had settled into my own flat just outside of London. It was a nice flat for someone moving out on their own for the first time. The kitchen was roomy, and the living room had a window seat for reading, but being on my own was very strange and very quiet.
I guess I've never really been on my own, honestly. Being at Hogwarts during the school year and sharing a room with three other girls was enough to break you from expecting silence as you slept. And in the summers, I had almost always bunked in Ginny's room. Even when we were looking for Horcruxes, I had always been able to hear the boys, talking or snoring or just something.
I sat up in my bed, throwing the blankets off in a huff. I wasn't doing myself any favors, tossing and turning restlessly because it was just too quiet to sleep. I had tried to turn on the wireless earlier, but there was no way anyone could sleep while The Witching Hour played through sappy love songs. I padded out to the living room, book and wand in hand, fully intending on reading myself to sleep in the arm chair.
10:45 passed, then 11:15, eventually followed by 11:45. By midnight, I'm no more inclined to sleep than I was when I first sat down to read. I sighed, casting a furtive look at the telephone hanging on the wall. I couldn't call Harry, not this late. I mean, I could, but I would feel extremely guilty for waking him up. I thought briefly about making a light sleeping draught, but then remembered that I was out of lavender.
"Fine!" I relented, startling Crookshanks who was sleeping on the kitchen counter. Crossing the room, I pulled the phone off its cradle and punched in Harry's number. Ron had called me absurd for insisting on Muggle technology (that didn't work, in his opinion), but my flat didn't have a fireplace and my mum insisted that since I can call home, I should call home.
One ring… Two rings… Three rings, and then, "Hello?"
"Hi," I said meekly, twisting the phone cord around my fingers like a lovesick preteen.
"Hermione?" Harry didn't sound groggy like I had expected. "Is everything alright?"
"Erm, yeah," I sighed, relieved just to hear someone else's voice. "I just couldn't sleep. It's too quiet."
He laughs a little. "Yeah, I know what you mean." A pause, and then, "D'you want me to come over?"
I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. "Do you mind, Harry? Merlin, I'm sorry if I woke you, I just, well, I didn't know what else to do."
"I'll be there in a few minutes," he said. The line went dead, and I hung the phone back where it belonged. I twisted my hair into a messy braid just to have something to do with my hands as I waited.
If I hadn't been expecting him, the soft pop! of Harry's Apparition would have startled me, but more than anything, I was just happy to see my boyfriend. He crossed the living room, dropping a small bag on the couch as he did, and wrapped me up in his arms. "Hey," he said, pressing a kiss to the top of my head.
I looked up at him. He wasn't much taller than me, but the difference was enough for me to be able to rest my forehead on his chin. "I missed you."
"Hermione," he laughed, "I helped you finish unpacking not even eight hours ago."
"I know," I sighed for what felt like the thousandth time in the last hour. "But still. Being on your own is… Odd."
He led us over to the armchair, plopping down and pulling me into his lap as he went. "Is that what's bothering you?" He asked. "Being alone?"
I nodded, tracing the outline of the Puddlemere United logo on his t-shirt with my fingertips. "I've never been alone before. I mean, I've always had someone near."
"Being alone is hard," Harry said seriously, "no one ever really prepares you to be alone, so then when you are, you don't know how to handle it." He rested his hand on my thigh.
I laid my head on his shoulder. "You never answered me," I almost whispered. "Did I wake you up?"
The laugh that escaped his lips was devoid of humor. "You're not the only one with sleeping problems, my love."
"Stay with me tonight?" I asked, wanting nothing more than to hear his breathing as I drifted off to sleep.
"Of course."
We fell into an easy pattern after that. Harry would to go Auror training; I would go to my internship with the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. Most days, we ate lunch at the Leaky Cauldron with Ron, and sometimes George, who joined us only when he felt up to it.
By the third week of living in my flat 'on my own,' Harry had all but moved in with me. It was small, at first – his clothes in the laundry hamper, his toothbrush on the sink – but it grew into more noticeable things. His Firebolt was now propped up alongside one of my many bookshelves, and the Marauders' Map had found its way into one of my desk drawers. One day, I asked Harry if there was anything left in his flat. He thought about it for a second before shaking his head, and telling me, "No, I really don't think there is. Also, if you're going to the market any time soon, we're out of milk."
After that conversation, Harry terminated his lease with his landlady, and we went and put his name on mine, getting an extra key made even though we didn't need to. Every so often, I would find a small handful of Sickles sitting beside the grocery list or on top of the water bill – Harry's way of helping out, even though I told him it was fine.
When I told my mum that Harry had moved in with me, she laughed, saying, "Finally, dear. I knew that wouldn't take too long."
I rolled my eyes even though she couldn't see me through the telephone. "it's… Nice," I told her, winding the cord around my fingers as I watched Harry dance to the Wireless as he cooked dinner.
"I don't doubt that, dear," she said, and I could hear the smile in her voice. "Now, Hermione, I hate to ask, but are you… well, are you being careful?"
"Mum!" I shrieked, causing Harry to look at me curiously and Crookshanks to glare at me. "Merlin's sake, that's not – we're not – I mean –"
"I only assumed!" She said, laughing openly now. "Typically that is why couples move in together, you know."
"God, Mum, no. Okay? No." I blanched, not wanting to have this conversation over the phone – or ever. "Don't worry about it, okay?"
"Alright dear," she said. "I love you! And the boy and the cat as well!"
"Love you too, Mum," I told her. I hung up the phone and collapsed on the couch.
"Everything okay, Hermione?" Harry asked, poking his head over the bar that looked out over the living room.
I groaned. "Define the word 'okay'?"
"Are you going to live?"
"Maybe," I said melodramatically as Crookshanks crawled up onto my stomach. "Mum asked if we were being, y'know, careful."
"No!" Harry laughed, picking up a steaming pot from the stovetop.
"Yes," I called back. "I just didn't even know how to answer her."
"Screaming seemed to work pretty well," he quipped.
I threw a pillow at the wall.
I let the conversation with my mum fall to the back of my mind for several weeks. It wasn't until Harry was getting ready to leave for his very first official Auror mission that it got brought up again. Only, this time, it was from Harry himself.
"'Mione?" He said, looking up from the rucksack he was packing. "Have you seen my comb?"
He was leaving in the morning, and I was very vehemently ignoring that fact. I didn't know where he was going, which worried me, but he was also going to be gone for three nights.
"Your comb is on the dresser, dear. Though I really don't know why you bother with it," I sassed, turning the page of the report I was reading. It was dull and dreadful and full of grossly legal words. Internships.
"Oh, come on now, Hermione," Harry teased. "You know I always try my best to look handsome for you."
I rolled my eyes as he army crawled from his side of the bed to mine, smiling at me like there was no tomorrow. "Try harder, Potter."
He flopped over on his back, disrupting my papers. "But aren't you going to miss me?"
"Of course I will," I told him, gathering the rest of the report and tossing it on the floor. It could wait until tomorrow. "I'm trying to ignore the fact that you're actually leaving."
I laid back against the pillows and Harry scrambled up beside me. "It's only for three days, though."
"Three horribly, awfully, long, boring days," I teased. "I'll simply die without you."
"No, you won't," he leaned over and kissed me, a gloriously slow kiss that I lavished in. I tugged on his bottom lip with my teeth, teasing him, and he reciprocated by pining me to the bed with his weight. He kissed up my jawline to my ear, where he whispered my name, his breath hot against my skin. It gave me chills.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling his mouth back to mine, and his hand found my thigh, sliding up my pajama shorts as though it had a mind of its own. Slow, my brain told me. Go slow.
Then I felt his hands on my waist and his lips on my collarbone, and I knew then that if I didn't stop him there, then I was a goner for sure.
"Harry," I whispered, my voice catching in my throat. "Harry!"
"Mpf?" was his only response as he rolled off of me and onto his back.
I propped myself up on one elbow, tugging my tank top back into place as I did. "Harry, I'm sorry."
"It's okay," he said, letting out a long breath, running his hands through his hair. "Slow… Slow is okay."
"You don't mean that," I responded, picking at the quilt. "I know you don't."
He looked up at me a little guiltily. "Alright, maybe not. But, I mean, you've thought about it, right? I'm not going crazy over here, am I?"
It wouldn't be the first time, my mind supplied. I ignored it. "I… have," I admitted after a long pause. And I had. I'd thought about it a lot, actually, not that I would ever admit that to my mother or to Harry. I wanted to take things slow, and Harry knew that. We'd talked about it, agreed to it, even.
"Hermione," he said, grabbing my hand. "Look. I know that we've talked about it, and I agree with you that we should take our time, but… I don't know, 'Mione. I just, I feel like we've waited a long time." He paused. "I'm not going to let it become the focal point of us, but darling, I think it might be a good idea to take the next step."
I looked down at our hands. Maybe he was right. And I had been thinking about it a lot more, recently. Especially since he'd moved into my flat, into my bed.
He leaned over to give me a quick kiss. "I love you, darling. Get some sleep, okay?"
I pulled his glasses off and put them on the nightstand. Too often had he fallen asleep wearing them. "I love you, too."
He rolled over, turned his lamp out, and was asleep in minutes. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, trying to reconcile two very different parts of my brain – two very different parts of myself.
I woke up the next morning to Harry kissing me on the lips. It wasn't an unpleasant way to wake up, but it definitely startled me. "What're you doing?" I stammered, fighting to disentangle my legs from the covers.
Harry laughed at me. "I thought I'd kiss you goodbye before I left."
"Typically that's goes over better when the recipient is actually awake and can reciprocate."
"Noted," he said, bending down to pick up his bag. "I love you, Hermione," he said softly, resting his forehead on mine before kissing me again.
"I love you, too, Harry," I replied, wishing that he wasn't leaving. You can do this, I told myself. It's only three nights.
He turned on his heel, Disaparating to the Ministry where he, and the rest of his team, would catch their Portkey. I flopped back on the bed, not mentally prepared to take on the day. Crookshanks joined me after a few minutes, curling up sympathetically against my side.
"At least you're not going anywhere," I crooned to him.
He purred loudly in response.
The first night without Harry passed without a real incident. I called and talked to my mum for almost two hours, flipped aimlessly through the channels on the telly (yet another Muggle invention that Ron was completely baffled by), and read until my eyes were tired and my nerves were frayed. The shower helped, and so did a hot cup of tea, and 11:00 saw me sitting cross-legged on the bed, wearing one of Harry's old shirts and thumbing through yet another report. Even freshly laundered, the shirt smelled like a mix of his cologne and his aftershave, and a little bit of broom polish even though he hasn't polished the Firebolt in weeks.
I woke up somewhere around 2 AM with a piece of parchment stuck to my face. I moved the papers off of the bed and curled into a ball beneath the covers, Crookshanks a complacent keeper of Harry's spot on the bed.
Maybe I would be okay.
The second night wasn't so easy. A storm raged outside, rain pounding the windows and wind pulling on the building. I laid on top of the covers, taking up the whole bed, my mind racing. My mother had brought up sex again when I had called her after dinner, and reluctantly I told her about what Harry had said the night before he left.
She wasn't much help. "It's only logical, Hermione," she had told me. "It's not like he's some Joe Schmoe that you met at the pub six months ago. Even though you haven't been 'dating' very long, you should consider the depth of your friendship with him as well."
What was I afraid of, really? Harry loved me, I knew that. In a silly little way, I knew that he had always loved me – rescuing someone from a mountain troll kind of creates a special bond. But it was more than that, I thought, memories of my boggart resurfacing. I was afraid of failing him; I was afraid of falling short.
And that was an insecurity I would have to learn to deal with. Otherwise, the world was going to eat me alive.
Harry had left on a Tuesday morning, and somewhere in the wee hours of Thursday morning, I began counting down the minutes until he returned on Friday evening.
I was almost a total train wreck Friday after work. I paced, I knitted, I read, I baked, and I cleaned, all in an effort to burn out the nervous energy. I'd made up my mind about several things the night before, and I was more than ready for Harry to be home.
I hadn't heard from him since he'd left, which I had expected, but it still worried me. After seven years of being on Voldemort's radar, I had come to expect the worst when it came to Harry and life-threatening situations. I reminded myself over and over again that it was just training, and that everything would be just fine.
At approximately 7:06 PM, I heard keys jingling in the door and nearly jumped out of my skin. The door swung open, revealing a very tired look Harry Potter, whose robes were ripped along the hem.
"Harry!" I vaulted off the couch and across the room, throwing my arms around his neck. "For heaven's sake, what happened to you?"
He hugged me back, and shut the door behind him. "Nothing bad, Hermione, I promise."
I leaned forward and kissed him, relishing in just having him home. "I missed you."
"I missed you, too," he murmured against my lips. "It's good to see you."
I tugged on his bottom lip with my teeth, deepening the kiss, digging my hands in his ever-messy hair. He reciprocated by pressing me firmly against the wall, one hand planted firmly over my shoulder, grounding him to where he stood, the other at my waist and traveling.
"If this is the kind of welcome home I get every time I'm gone," Harry whispered, "then maybe I should leave more often."
I laughed, a husky sound that caught me off-guard. "Harry," I said, my fingers playing with the hair at the back of his head. "I've… changed my mind. About, well, about going slow."
His eyes widened in surprise. "What on earth did you spend the last three days thinking about?"
"You," I said, honestly. "You and me, and where we've been and where we are. I love you, Harry Potter, and I want what's best for the both of us."
A wicked smile spread across his face. "Well then," he said, picking me up bridal-style. "I think we have matters to attend to then."
I giggled, feeling giddy. "Yes, yes we do."
"And love," Harry said as we crossed the threshold to the bedroom. "As much as I love the way you look in my shirt, it's rather in the way, don't you think?"
Words: 3,075
(A/N: I think this is the longest thing that I've ever written in one document. Wow. Okay. I hope this was worth the wait! I'm hoping to finish this fic by the end of the summer, but we'll see. Also, in case anyone's confused with the times in this chapter... I'm hopelessly American, and military time confuses me, so, the 12-hour system is my fail-safe.)
