This time, the last time, it happened like this:
A return from abroad. Hope for eased tensions between father and son. A chance to discover what life looked like on the other side of a war, of a mastery, of prison sentences and house arrests. Instead: a marriage contract. A future laid out in ink on parchment, in signatures.
"Do I have a choice?" he'd asked.
He did not.
A taste of defiance, but not nearly enough. Not yet.
An argument observed from the other side of closed parlor doors. The first time he heard her go toe to toe with his father, posturing with words and wands. A scolding for his eavesdropping, withstanding the sneers of disappointment. Later, an owl. A new responsibility supervising her. Something of a last resort, a compromise. Soon, gravity collapsing around his heart every time he saw the scar she wore with too much pride.
A descent into Occlumency. An attempt to know his betrothed. An avoidance of the scar that reminded him of the history he preferred to forget, buried beneath shards of impossible emotion. And also, caramel apple ice cream. An attempt at understanding. Perhaps, a beginning.
A moment. Witness to bravery he did not know could exist, not in that form, in that place. He watched her stand exactly where it happened. Owning it. Controlling it. Overcoming it.
"What was that?" he'd asked, needing to know.
A victory. Hers.
Followed by an idea. His.
A touch. His hands on her skin, healing her of the harm his home caused. The first touch of many, and only the first time he planned to heal her. A different touch, too. Of meeting minds, of understanding. Families that did not always understand or appreciate: a middle ground.
A statement. Just one.
"I rode a dragon."
And floodgates spilling open, only to be forced closed by a brutal dose of Occlumency. But such magic could only freeze the flood where it had already flowed. Reminders of something else, something more, held in stasis beneath the surface, waiting for the right warmth to melt.
A failed experiment, proof in painful lines streaking his chest. Worn beneath his shirt as he tried and failed to connect with his mother, to connect with his betrothed, to ignore a connection with her. A Cold War, but warming. Inexplicably, warming.
An accident. Not a date, not exactly. But a watershed nonetheless, frozen places thawing. Constellations hidden in freckles, flickering candlelight illuminating more than the table.
"You're left handed," she'd said.
And he'd never felt more seen.
A friend, she'd called him. An invitation, she'd given him. Crumbling self control wound up with Occlumency under the streetlamps in Diagon Alley. Later, a fight with his father over his attempt at independence. Another taste of defiance.
A hand on his chest, painting a line between then and now, before and after. He'd nearly broken, given in. Instead, a delayed moment of defiance finally came to fruition. A broken betrothal and a future cracked wide open. The gap between his wants and his father's wishes widening.
A realization of his shift in circumstances. No longer betrothed. No longer promised. A realization, too, of a shared before and after.
"Hermione," she'd said. And permission to use her name felt like a new beginning. Not the first, but one of many.
A gift. Given on a sofa, received with tears. More than a gift: a choice, and the thing he'd spent the better part of a year obsessing over. It earned him a kiss. It earned him a date. But more than that, it earned him her trust.
A year, already gone. And then:
A kiss at a wedding. Not their wedding, not yet, but still perfect. In a garden, under the moonlight, as romantic as one could imagine, and so earned after so long. An undoing, he'd called it: a prophecy from an unintentional prophet.
A dark room, menacing magic engulfing the quiet as they held each other. Growing familiarity, growing intimacy. Growing. Fullstop. A shared goal, too.
"I could teach you, if you wanted to learn."
And she did, eventually.
A date. A kiss. More. Closer. A haze, feet from an apparation point. An appetizer against a sofa, an entree in his bed. He tasted her, held her, fucked her. Memorized as much of her skin as time allowed. And when he kissed her goodbye, so late it could reasonably be called early, he felt something warm and luscious yawn wide inside his chest.
A bet over a book. A different beginning. A countdown, now, to TS Eliot. To a time when the sofa would change hands, homes. A bargain sealed with a kiss. The magic would come later.
An anniversary of the worst kind: of war, of loss, of things survived, but not by all. He'd misunderstood what they were, assuming instead of speaking. And she'd misunderstood what they weren't, sheltering out of fear. They fell apart before they came back together.
A birthday, not his, held the answer. Over a month of abysmal communication to finally say some of what needed to be said. And when he'd said his piece, and she'd said hers, realizing he loved her soothed so much of his hurt. It solidified his resolve, too.
A confession.
"A muggle," he'd said. The moment he knew he'd really changed, that pretending had become reality, a nightmare into a dream. It didn't help him cast a Patronus, but it helped her understand him a bit more. Inching closer, ever closer, back into equilibrium as they learned each other again, or perhaps, for the first time.
A mishap during a heat wave. Delicious, sweat-slicked sex. The aftermath, accidentally interrupted by an unsuspecting friend. Hilarious, humiliating, and everything in between.
A sentiment. Sentimental, she'd called him. A birthday back where it accidentally began more than a year before. An intentional date this time. An ever-growing resolve to put her fears to bed. Another confrontation with his father, over betrothals, yet again.
A Hallowe'en party at Harry Potter's house. Something that should have been his worst nightmare. And yet, he'd enjoyed himself far too much. Watching as she socialized, daring to do some of his own. He ended the evening with her in his lap, lips lingering too close together as they whispered promises that this could be real; it could be more; they could be.
A Patronus, finally.
"What did you think about?" she'd asked. Her. And his friends. And the pieces of his life that needn't be perfect to be happy. They could be cobbled together into something resembling a happiness, just like his Patronus.
An introduction on a doorstep, with his tongue in her mouth and a hot desire coursing through his veins. She'd said she loved him, and it nearly undid him. Undoing, indeed. A Christmas lovely enough that he could almost forget the fight with his parents and the uncertain consequences of announcing her as an inextricable part of his life.
Another year gone in the blink of an eye. And then:
A breakfast. A feast. An intentional avoidance of anything involving her. But she'd moved in with him,and in more ways than one: his home, his heart, his head. And no amount of denial from his parents could erase that fact from the fabric of his reality. His father talked about business in lieu of anything else. He might have cared if he'd ever been allowed any part of it.
A new life, announced in the presence of friends he still felt out of place with. But he saw the joy on her face, the love in the room, the first inklings of what longevity could look like with her. He drank tepid tea and watched, wondering if one day that might be them.
A lesson in learning to fight. Learning how to find middle ground. Learning that some things were more important, more precious, than one's anger or disappointment.
"We're kind of stuck together," she'd suggested. She'd never been more astonishingly accurate in her remarkable life.
A son comforting his mother, recognizing a role reversal with stinging, painful clarity. This was how it felt to become his own person. Not just a son, but a man with a life and priorities of his own that did not always align with those his parents had for him. He loved his mother. But if he had to choose, and he feared he would, he loved her more. Admitting such a thing to himself felt like the worst sort of betrayal.
A proposal, in a sense. An accidental sort. On the heels of insecurity and growing pains and learning how to live together, in learning who contributed what and how much. He needed her to know how much he cared, how much he loved her, even if he fumbled his execution.
A final straw with his parents, relationship already so strained. Their attempt at dining for his birthday ended in insults and anger.
"Disgraceful," his father had called it, called her.
Disgrace by virtue of her existence, a sentiment he could not tolerate. He left them at the table, spending his birthday elsewhere.
A ring, pulled from an ancestral vault and given to no one. Not the right time, not yet, not now. Her fear of ruining his already crumbling relationship with his parents paralyzed their forward momentum. If she needed time, he could give it to her.
A birth that changed everything. A shift in perspective, seeing her with a child. Not theirs, not yet. But suddenly he could see a one day, wanted for such a thing. How could two become three? How could it be that simple?
An attack. Unexpected, unwanted fear wound around his spine; a desperate need for his father to survive, to be alright. But that need existed separately from any wants—or lack thereof—to see more of him. He sat in a hospital room, head in his hands, experiencing an unusual guilt over his worry.
A dinner, their first since the attack, since wishing for his father's survival and struggling to reconcile that sympathy with his distaste for everything else about him. Disinheritance not directly spoken into existence, but implied. But he'd been preparing for such an eventuality, should it find him.
An infuriating optimism. A request he was willing to entertain, for her, despite his misgivings. Despite the sinking sensation inside his chest screaming what a terrible idea trying to force civility with his parents would be. And yet, an agreement.
"We can manage that," his mother had said. And he almost believed it.
A Christmas. A disinheritance. A disaster. A defiance, but too late. He should have known. He had known. But he'd hoped, too. And he'd harmed her, shed her blood with shards of glass. She had nightmares the next few nights, broken screams about shattering chandeliers. It gutted him with guilt. Glassware might have literally exploded at that dinner table, but his relationship did, too. It just took longer, and hurt much more.
Another year; they went so fast. And then:
A breakup. She couldn't bear being responsible for his family falling apart, infuriatingly obstinate even when he insisted she was his only family that mattered. She insisted he had to be sure, but didn't believe him when he said he was. He could have put up more of a fight, but for as much as it hurt, he had things he couldn't bear, too. He couldn't bear that she might never be safe from the stigma of his family name, that she would be forced to carry his burdens, that he might be the cause of her nightmares. He didn't want that for her.
Ultimately, he picked her and she picked him, but somehow, they couldn't pick each other.
It broke his heart.
She won the sofa, too.
A disinheritance he insisted on, even without her. A legal and magical distraction: meetings and owls and so many signatures his head spun. But he began the long process because he'd meant it. For himself as much as for her. If he distracted himself long enough, spent enough time reading every bit of information on magical disinheritances he could find, he hoped he could forget how much he missed her.
A regression. Time kept passing and he kept missing her, failing to understand how they'd given up on something so wonderful, so easily. He'd had a ring in his valet box. He'd wanted to marry her, have a family with her, live a life with her. But he wanted that life to be one where she'd be free of his family's influence, of their hate, of their infectious qualities.
"You can't spend all day in your bed," his friends had said.
A potions shop that became his refuge, brewing and brewing and brewing to try and forget. It got him out of his bed, out of his flat, out of constant owls back and forth about accounts he no longer had access to, money he could no longer spend. Part of him wondered: at what point would she believe him, believe that he meant it? The accounts? His flat? The wards? The family magic?
An eviction at the end of the month. His flat finally taken away. A last minute move into his friend's Estate, drifting between homes, states of beings. He thought he might miss her less, the more time that passed. But instead, he missed her more: an ache in realizing that perhaps those years had been his best, difficult as they had been at times. He wouldn't have changed them for anything. And he didn't. He'd never even had the choice.
In the end, they were made of tougher stuff than five or thirty minutes might unravel. There were moments that changed. But most persisted, stubbornly bound to something called fate, or destiny, or prophecy. Or perhaps: hope.
