Hermione had only gotten home a few minutes ago. It was the summer, and with it came a brief decrease in cases for the department to process. Death Eaters were by then either found or few and far-flung, and so instead she'd taken to working in her old department; the Department of Magical Creatures.
There was always a lot to be done there, though thankfully compared to the time since she'd first began her work there, now at least there was the appetite for change. No longer was it the hiding place for talentless sons and daughters of powerful people; dim darkness for the mushrooms that would one day poison the air of the highest offices in their government. Now, it brought through equal laws and returned rights to every living creature.
Many had hated that change. They had seen the rising of the lowest as the lowering of the highest. Hermione, as with those she'd worked alongside, had been gifted by Kingsley the good fortune to ignore them.
It was good work they did there. Great work, in Hermione's eyes. She'd been gifted a droplet of true purpose; the sort she'd thought only came along when she'd stood beside Harry.
And it was not that, in her absence, the department had failed to continue to overcome the inertia of conventional thought. They were as good as ever. She'd had no true reason to stay behind as lately as she had except that she'd wanted to, desperately so. At home, she would be met with the paperwork from the DMLE that she was still expected to do.
Hermione changed from her work clothes; falling into a set of Harry's pyjamas. The waist of the trousers came to the top of her ribs, the hem of the soft cotton t-shirt stretching to reach the end of her thighs. The floo sounded soon after.
It was difficult not to run toward the sound. Toward Harry.
And soon arms, arms that must've held divinity for how warm they made Hermione, wrapped around her, a feat of Atlas for how eternal such protection seemed to be, holding away the world from the heaven that Harry's presence was. Arms that at once proved fate, for how else could she ever have come to have such a gift except for looms and cut strings, and disproved it, for such arms could push away everything, fate and heaven and worry and pain and all else in between.
His mouth pressed softly against her forehead. It was the sort of thing Hermione had dreamt of, in desperate lonely days and dark and lonelier nights. A thought that'd drifted from distant fiction to deepest desire and then to delighted life, on each occasion with utter disbelief.
Hermione was glad then that her youthful self had gone without such blinding care and brilliant touches. That version of her stood upon ground too shaky to cope with having Harry hold her as her mind had begged him to.
"I have that book you lent me," Harry said. His hands brushed over the tight muscles that tensed into bunches at the top of her shoulder blades. They turned her in place until she was looking toward her coffee table, where Pride and Prejudice then lay.
"You've finished it?" Hermione asked.
Harry nodded, his nose pushing into her curls as he did. "I see why you love it," he said. He dipped his head to press a kiss to her cheek, his arms dropping to her hips. "It's very pretty."
"And you're definitely not just saying you've read it because you think I expect you to like the things I do?"
Harry laughed. "No love, I'm not." His thumbs drew circles against the cotton of her top. "I'm glad we have different interests. It means we get to share new things with each other. It's like I get to live another life just by knowing you."
Hermione turned in his arms so that she could kiss Harry, for if he continued to speak she would surely combust. His lips only offered a sweeter sort of combustion; one that propelled her weary spirit sailing out of her body, her body surely in time falling toward its own petite infinity, held aloft by Harry's arms and his hands traversing her pale skin.
And yet, she could not help herself in pulling away from Harry, her mouth soon asking, "So, what did you think of Pride and Prejudice?"
He exhaled a laugh. "I think, of everything currently in this room, it's the thing that interests me second most." A look passed between the two of them. They'd not seen one another in a week or so. Harry had been holed away in a castle in northern Denmark in an attempt to mend one or two of the million bridges that Cornelius Fudge had burned. "Very distant second."
Hermione picked the book up and held it over her heart before sinking into her sofa. "So, which character was your favourite?"
Harry gave her a curious smile before he flicked his hand toward her kitchen, setting her kettle to boil and her favourite coffee beans to grind. He sat down beside her, and Hermione stretched her legs onto his lap.
"Probably Mrs Bennet. Reminded me of Molly." Harry's eyes never left hers as he spoke, his gaze so focused that it brought Hermione breathless, never mind they'd been together five years and known one another forever. Yet despite that, his hands could not be kept from passing over her calves. And it was without purpose or direction. His hands were just made to hold her. "I think I liked how happy Darcy obviously made Elizabeth, but I don't think I liked him, really." He laughed. "If he were a real person, I don't think we'd be friends."
Hermione laughed then. "I don't think I'd want to be anywhere near the two of them, in all honesty. If they were around today they'd be one of those couples with overly cute pet names and matching clothes and they would always say 'we think' instead of ever speaking as individuals."
"So Ron and every girl he's ever introduced to us, basically."
"Thankfully, they're fictional, so I get to pretend that if I knew Elizabeth Bennet, she and I would be best friends like I used to when I read the book as a child." A soft look crossed through Harry's eyes.
"I love you."
Hermione tilted her head. "I love you…too?"
Harry leaned over to kiss her once, departing with a soft shake of his head. "It's just a very cute image. Little Hermione reading" —he tapped the spine of the book she still held close to her— "this book. Just — I love that you're you, and that's very you."
Hermione pulled herself up so that she could sit on Harry's lap, one of her arms wrapping around his neck to steady herself as she did, her fingertips finding fascination with the strength of the muscles there.
"I like to pretend I've changed a little bit," Hermione mumbled. "And it's not as if I have any time to read fiction anymore." She sighed. "I haven't visited a bookshop in months. You know, in the summers in between Hogwarts years, I would go and get every book that had been published in the last year that I could find and read them all. Now — nothing."
When Hermione was a child, she'd lived in a house two doors away from a bookshop, and every Saturday she'd go there, pocket money in hand, ready to find something new to read for the day after having quickly burned through her parents' collection. The owner had liked her too, so Hermione had been allowed to find a quiet corner of the shop and read after school, hidden away from the rest of the world.
"I'm sorry." His eyes went soft for her again. "Do you want to go tomorrow?"
She kissed his lips. "No no, it's okay. I have a lot of work to do — there's a mountain of paperwork for a few of the cases and, apparently, I'm the only one that can go through it. Out of everyone else in the department." She buried her face into his shoulder and let out an irritable, muffled groan. "Anyway, I don't think I'd be able to enjoy it if we went." Hermione laid her lips against the side of his temple. "Maybe we can go another week, if you wouldn't mind?"
"There's nowhere else I'd rather be."
By Saturday afternoon, Hermione was finally making headway into the work she'd left herself, with Harry having left her flat a few hours before, only then mentioning that he'd missed his meeting with Kingsley last night so that he could see her. It was the sort of act that she ought to have scolded him for, but by now only made her want to disappear into his arms all the more.
She could not then help her mind from drifting into such thoughts. Though her eyes watched the words in front of her and her hands passed over one page to the next, her mind took none of it in. And though she wished to blame her mind's misdirection on Harry, she knew it to be false.
It was something that she'd struggled with in the beginning of their relationship. The unerring presence of the person she belonged next to so completely, belonged to so utterly, had become so much more interesting than the work that she did or the emotionless working friendships she made. To be with Harry was symphonic; all else, by comparison, proved cacophonic.
Some had said of her, even Ron, that she was a creature of rock and logic, immune to the blinding lights he'd fallen into, but she was not. Warmth warmed her, joy pleased her, Yet, she had some spark inside of her too, some internal fire, that allowed her to be guided away from melody and into the necessary din of work.
The fire was gone then, its cockles cold. Her eyes could not see the words in front of her. A headache formed.
She walked into her kitchen, finding the coffee Harry had set into making the evening before, yet the pair of them had forgotten. Or rather, only she had forgotten, as Harry had placed a stasis charm over the drinks. The ceramic warmed her skin the second she brushed her hand against it.
Harry had not drank coffee or even tea before they'd started going out together. It had proved a point of mutual exploration for the two of them; a more muted, more internal sort of exploration than the adventures they'd before shared.
Two or three times a week, provided Harry was not away with the Aurors or elsewhere, they would go out for coffee; he had taken out a subscription to a newsletter for the best cafes in England, and on most days he would apparate the pair of them into a village Hermione had never heard of. After a year or so, they'd seen more of England than Hermione had ever expected to see.
That would have to end soon, she realised. She was being groomed for a promotion in the DMLE. Soon, it would be her offering the prosecution rather than just planning the words for other people to speak. It would be her duty to speak to witnesses, and regrettably, to befriend the members of the Wizengamot so that they would listen to a word she said.
After the prosecution of a few of Voldemort's more wealthy followers, there was a law now to make sure that prosecutors were not cursed, poisoned, or killed, they were not allowed to leave the courts during the day. Soon her life would be the dim darkness of the courts of the lowest floors of the ministry.
The job did not keep people long; it brought about a troubled life, with low pay and little sleep and continuous exposure to only the worst sorts of people. Many realised that, if one was talented enough to hold the position, they were talented enough to find a better job elsewhere. Ones that did not age a person so acutely.
Hermione lifted her head from her coffee to look toward the still-present mountain of paperwork. It would be another day yet before she finished all of it.
It was, she reflected, her own fault. Hermione had always, when faced with difficult circumstances, believed that her shoulders were the only ones strong enough to bear the weight. She learned things more quickly, drew conclusions more quickly. It was easy for her to say yes to everything people asked her to do.
And then suddenly she was twenty-seven and she was doing the work of four different people. She'd not taken a day off in her entire career at the Ministry. Never gone travelling, never seen the places the books she'd read had made her fall in love with. The only explorations she'd allowed herself were the lunch hours she spent with Harry.
Was it worth it? Would those hours she'd burned away ever come to life, or would they simply drift away with time, lost in the vast vacuity of all of the work ever done? And there was no other reason for her to work in the DMLE except significance, except for that deep and cloying twist inside of her to matter; the quiet voice that had first met the air between her ears in childhood and had never left.
The DMLE had not quietened that voice; it had only made it louder. The voice illuminated every acquiescence; every moral sacrifice she'd been forced to make. Every occasion she'd failed in comparison against the person she knew herself to be able to be. She was a failure. She was a failure. She was a failure. She was. She was. She was.
And would that get any better with time? Truthfully, would it? Would this life of struggle and razor-thin margins and stress and pain ever bring her any good? Must it be so that she was forced to live miserably in order to matter? To live at the very edges of her humanity until she was just the golem of rock and logic that people had forever held her to be?
Yet, the opposite held no great intrigue, either. To waste away in insignificance; taking a job in a research team where she followed behind others and ebbed and flowed with the fundings of rich wizards wishing for the next great calamity, be it in a potion or spell or runic array. Or to teach, and watch the next her, the evolution of her, run where she had walked. Hermione the audience; her students the players.
There was honour and pride to be found there, she was sure, but there was no hope. Forever lost in the knowledge that she had seen the dark edge of the horizon and turned around out of fear rather than bravely vaulting over the end of the world.
The coffee in her hands was cold. Her breathing had grown rough and heavy, the air sulphur. She coughed and all of her bones were rattling. Her vision held a dissonant blur. Nonetheless, she shook herself, and went back to her office.
Her desk still held the same sea of legal documents. But, on top of them all, there sat a letter.
Hermione smiled at once. It was Harry's handwriting upon the envelope. A moment later, the letter sat open in her hand.
Hi love,
I love you, and I have a surprise for you. I know you're not overly fond of them, but I think you might like this one. Now, I know you've got a lot on, so whenever you're free come round to mine and see it.
Also, I couldn't sleep last night — a week without seeing your pretty face left the idea of sleeping rather than looking at you seem rather stupid — so I borrowed some of your parchment and I wrote my full thoughts about Pride and Prejudice on it, so that's the other letter in this envelope if you couldn't tell already. I remember you saying you were sad about never getting to actually study English at school, so I thought it might be fun if we both read each other's opinions and talked about it. I know it's not quite the same, but I thought it might be nice.
I miss you. And I know that's sort of ridiculous, we only saw each other four hours ago, but I do. I don't think I'm ever going to stop missing you when you're not here and wishing the time I spent without you would end.
My meeting with Kingsley went fine; he didn't say anything about not seeing him last night. I shouldn't be out of the country again for a while now, so I shouldn't miss our dates for ages.
I hope your day isn't too horrible. I'm always here if it is.
Forever Yours,
Harry
P.s. I'm making that risotto you like tonight. If you're too busy to pop around, I'll send it over so you can have it when you find the time.
The last words of Harry's letter were read through mist. Her body was warm all over with the words, her cheeks glowing hot and her lips refusing to do anything else but smile.
She was in the living room of Grimmauld Place before she knew it. Harry was sitting there and looked upon her with a grin she'd known for a decade and had loved for what seemed like longer. He stood and soon she was wrapped around him.
"I love you," she said against his chest, with a breathless laugh soon following. "And I missed you too."
"I love you so much." Harry squeezed her tightly; she'd never felt safer. "It's difficult not to feel like it's special when we feel like this, isn't it?"
"Impossible." Hermione held his jaw in her hands. "I'm yours."
"And I'm yours," Harry said. "Now, I have a surprise for you—"
"—I don't care." Hermione laughed. "I just want you."
"You always have me," Harry said. Fondness glowed on his skin, warm and golden. "And I think you might change your mind when you see the surprise."
He picked her up — something he was terribly fond of doing; Hermione yelped every time — and set about walking up the ornate bannister at the centre of his manor, stopping only at the door of a bedroom that Hermione recalled was Harry's in the summer before their fifth year. He placed her on the ground and then opened the door.
Light streamed through the bay windows as books filled the world that her vision held.
"Now, I don't know if this is every book published in England over the past ten years, but it's pretty close. Magic really helps with this sorta thing." Hermione turned to meet Harry's eyes as he spoke. She would fly off the ends of the Earth for this man. She knew he would be there to catch her if she did. "So, whenever you have time, and the urge to read takes you, you can come here and find something. It's all yours."
She could not believe it. Any of it. Her luck. That she managed to have Harry. That he was like this; she could hardly believe that anyone was like this. Yet, as she walked through the tens of bookcases and thousands of books, Harry once more proved to be so much better than anything her mind could begin to manage to imagine.
"I love you," Hermione said, in the middle of them all, "so, so much."
Harry was blinding with his smile. "I love you so, so much too."
Hermione did not read any of those books that weekend; she found Harry's arms and mouth and touch stayed there instead. But, she did begin to tackle them in the coming weeks and months until, eventually, she'd read almost every book in that room.
She never did finish parsing through those legal documents, nor did she ever again drift down into the depths of the Ministry. By the first week of Autumn, her old office in the Department of Magical Creatures was hers once again.
"Did you read my analysis, by the way?" Harry managed to ask, breathless, lost in the depths of Hermione.
Hermione's eyes were big upon her pretty face. "It is the second most interesting thing in the world to me at the moment," she said. To her own shock, she jumped into his arms; he caught her easily. "Very, very distant second."
I hope you enjoyed this!
Finally, I've managed to write a Harmony fic. I really enjoyed writing this one. Thanks have to go to the members of Saliient's server for putting the idea of writing Harmony back into my head. You should check it out ( discord.gg/NskqMeMX8e).
I love this pairing, and I'm glad I've finally managed to contribute something to it. Had so much fun, honestly.
Anyway, let me know what you thought with a review. Thanks for reading!
