It was almost March.

Harry hoped the potion would be done before March so Ron could have something to celebrate for his birthday.

The whole month involved Tom conducting meetings at the Manor and on random days whisking her away to some obscure place they needed to go to find ingredients she'd never even heard of. Some of these were places Tom travelled to after Hogwarts. One was a forest in Albania that he said was chalk full of resources but wizards were too scared to go into it because it was also packed with vampires.

"There are vampires here?" Harry gasped, clutching his arm in a death grip.

"Yes, but they won't hurt me or you. I have an agreement with them."

"Oh," she breathed in relief. Well in moments like these it really paid off being married to a scary dark lord.

She learned about a lot of new ingredients and what they did from him. Picking them fresh was also the most fun she's had in a while. Harry even got to oversee as he brewed the potion, but she wasn't allowed to touch anything. Instead, she tried to make sense of his Arithmancy charts and equations that he cross referenced with herbs and their magical properties that he then cross referenced with a book he had where he logged certain reactions of mixing unknown ingredients.

Harry was in awe of his mind. It was truly the greatest she'd ever seen.

When the potion was finally ready, she had dozed off in his chair. He picked her up and carried her to bed with him, when she jerked awake.

"What? What happened?"

Setting her down in the bed he said, "You fell asleep."

"Is it done?"

"Yes," he said, sliding in under the covers next to her.

"I want to see!" she sat up. He pulled her back down and pressed her close to him.

"Tomorrow. Go to sleep now."

It was the first of March. Ron's birthday. Harry really hoped he was about to receive a good present and not a tragedy for his birthday.

She didn't know what exactly made her trust Tom so much. But the effort he put into creating this potion couldn't be to harm her. He wouldn't go to such extents to make Harry angry and upset. He would know that she really would find a way to divorce him then.

"Harry," Ron greeted, opening the door.

"Happy birthday!" Harry engulfed him in a hug and pulled away to present him with a wrapped gift.

"What's this?"

"Hopefully something good."

Ron opened the box to reveal a small vial of potion.

"Is it—"

"Yes!" Harry squealed. "I helped find the ingredients! Once, I had to crawl inside an erumpent's mouth to get a sample of it's saliva. It had to be really fresh."

"There's erumpent saliva in this," Ron's nose crinkled in disgust.

"There's a lot disgusting things in there we can never tell Hermione about."

He sobered up at the mention of Hermione, as did she.

"Should we do it then?" he asked nervously.

"It's the best chance we have right now," she answered.

Mrs. Weasley came to complain about the door being left open and saw Harry. When she noticed the vial of clear liquid in Ron's hand, she gasped.

"Ginny, Arthur!"

They all gathered around and discussed the pros and cons of giving Hermione the potion, again. Eventually the decision came back to Harry and Ron and they agreed to do it.

Hermione was napping. Ron gently coaxed her awake and sat her up. She blinked tiredly at the lamp on her bedside table.

Harry sat on one side of her while Ron sat on the other.

"Here, Hermione drink this," Harry said, bringing the vial up to her lips. She tipped her head back and Hermione drank the potion without complaint. Then her lips puckered in disgust and she almost spat it out but both Harry and Ron closed her mouth with their hands, to force her to swallow.

She swallowed but she was panicking and not happy.

"I'm sorry, it's going to be okay," Ron said, rubbing her arm. They waited expectantly. Ginny knelt down in front of her to wait for a reaction.

Hermione blinked at them all, not at all different.

"How long does it take to kick in?" she asked.

"I don't know," Harry shrugged.

"How can you not know?" she exclaimed.

"Who were we supposed to test it on, Ginny? He just invented this potion!"

Hermione was groggy and wanted to go back to sleep.

Disappointed, Ron laid her back down and pulled her duvet up to her chin, letting her sleep. Then they all moved downstairs.

"I don't get it," Harry whispered for the sixth time into her teacup. "Why didn't it work?"

"I knew it was too good to be true," Ron grumbled, chugging from his Firewhiskey.

"No, you don't understand! I looked at all his work and charts and theories—it had to do something."

No one said anything. It was now eight in the evening and she should be going home, but Harry couldn't stand the idea of going home.

She couldn't fathom being near him. If he lied to her this whole time and made it seem as though Hermione could be fixed and put in all the effort to make it look like he tried when he knew it wouldn't work—she wouldn't know how to ever forgive him. She would say something out of pocket and put them back in each other's bad books.

On the other hand, if she left and started a fight with him and it did end up working, that would be even worse. After all the work he put into it, she'd be doing the same as him by throwing it back in his face.

So Harry stayed and drank tea. A couple times she got it topped up with Ron's firewhiskey. She hated herself for getting his hopes up on his birthday, enough for him to resort to drinking to dull the pain.

"Ron?" a hoarse voice said.

Harry and Ron looked at each other in shock before looking back and seeing Hermione at the bottom of the stairs with a blanket wrapped around her.

"Harry?" she croaked.

"Oh my God," Harry's bottom lip shook and she burst into tears. Ron tore across the living to pick Hermione up in a hug and spun her around. Ginny was hugging Harry as they cried and Mr. and Mrs. Weasley came to see what happened.

After much crying in relief, enough for Hermione to get really scared, they sat her down on the sofa to explain.

"Harry, what happened?" Hermione asked her. Harry opened her mouth to explain, when she added, "You look so different."

Oh.

Well, they had all aged almost a year. But looking down at her robes, her jewelry, her shinier hair and clearer skin, Harry could see why she immediately stood out. She's come a long way from the scrawny girl with the overly messy hair.

A silent agreement passed between them. They would not tell Hermione about Harry's marriage, nor about who it was that healed her.

Not yet.

"Hermione, do you remember anything? What's the last thing you remember?"

Hermione frowned, looking off to the side. "We had just taken the NEWTs. You and I talked about moving in together after Hogwarts."

They had planned that. They were going to live in a busy Muggle street to blend in better because at that time the kinds of people it was most dangerous to be in the wizarding world were Muggleborns and Harry Potter. It was not safe for them near Diagon Alley.

"That was almost eight months ago," Harry said. Hermione froze, her eyes widening. She looked at Ron.

"There was a Death Eater attack," he explained. "You got hit with a nasty curse. You couldn't mentally function. It took months to even get you to walk."

"I lost eight months of my life?" she gaped.

"No, you gained the rest of your life," Mr. Weasley corrected. "We didn't think you'd ever get out of the curse. We thought it was permanent."

"W-what happened? What curse was it? Who cast it?"

"Jugson," Harry answered. "He died about three seconds later. We don't know the curse, it was something dark."

"Well, what's been going on? What did I miss?" she looked around frantically. "Where is everyone? Are they all okay? Fred? George? Bill?"

"Everyone is just fine," Mrs. Weasley said warmly. "In fact, the war is over."

"It is?" she asked, confused. "What happened?"

Her eyes landed on Harry, taking in her appearance again. "You won? Y-you killed him?"

Harry's gut twisted. It was so long since she thought of having to kill Tom to survive.

"Erm, not exactly," Harry answered. "We did win, yes. Actually he won too. It's a truce, of sorts."

The others nodded in agreement.

"A truce? You managed to strike a truce with Voldemort?" she gaped.

"Yes, but that's quiet enough talk about distressing things," Ginny said. "Let's talk about something happier, like your NEWT scores."

Hermione's eyes widened at the realization that her scores were ready. Harry stayed back to watch with a smile on her face as Hermione squealed in excitement at her twelve NEWTs and immediately began asking questions about what the Ministry was like to prepare herself for a job.

"Easy, tiger," Harry chuckled. "You need to fully recover first, and then we can discuss finding work."

Catching Hermione up on lighter topics was the happiest she'd been in a while. It was a relief for Hermione too that she was being told things like 'Fred and George opened a second location in Hogsmeade' and 'Ginny might play for the Holyhead Harpies' rather than 'On Christmas we lost Bill' and 'A week later we lost Charlie'.

It was eleven o'clock when Hermione yawned again and Harry realized how late it was getting.

"I should probably head home," she announced, standing up.

"Oh? Where do you live?" Hermione asked curiously.

Good question.

"Erm, north," Harry guessed. She still didn't know exactly where she lived.

"Who are you living with? I'm assuming I stay here, right? All my things were in Ginny's room," Hermione said, looking at Ron.

"Yes, Ginny's moved to Percy's room now," Mrs. Weasley said. They hoped that would take Hermione's attention off Harry, but it didn't work. She looked back at Harry expectantly.

"I live alone," Harry said awkwardly.

"Oh," Hermione said. "Well, you'll come back soon, right?"

"I'm not too certain, it's a little rare for me to be out now. But I will try to come see you a lot," she promised.

Hermione could tell something wasn't right but she smiled anyway. Harry hugged her tightly one more time before putting on her cloak and leaving.

Harry barged into Tom's study unannounced, making him look up from the book he was flipping through by the bookcase. Barty, who was on the other side looking at another book also glanced up in confusion.

Tom barely set his book down before Harry pounced on him and pressed a hard kiss to his lips. His hands immediately found her waist and he hugged her close, returning the fervish kiss.

"I'm assuming it worked?" he breathed, pulling away so he was centimeters away.

"Yes. I'm going to let you fuck me so hard tonight," she mumbled against his lips, kissing him again. Tom smirked into the kiss.

"Right, I'll just be going then, my lord," Barty said awkwardly, as he left. He was ignored.

"Hang on," Tom said, detaching himself from Harry to walk to a small cabinet. From there he pulled out a case of two dozen small purple vials. "She needs to take this every night."

"Okay," Harry nodded. "Any specific time? With food or without?"

"Without food, before bed."

"Okay," she repeated, breathless, "I'll be right back."

She spun on her heel to head out when he pulled her back, his hands groping her bum.

"You come right back. I'm not patient and you know that," he murmured in a low voice.

"Of course," she grinned, kissing him again.