Chapter 2

Six years later…

Friday, February 14th, 2003

Hermione was breathing hard and fast. "Please, Harry, now!"

"I'm trying," he panted. "Just—move a little…"

She didn't know how much longer she could wait. "Harry, you need to put it in now!"

"One second… almost…"

Hermione grunted in frustration. "That's the wrong hole, Harry! Higher!" She felt him reorient his hand next to her leg. "There. That's it! Slide it in—quickly!" Harry let his breath out as it finally slipped in. "Come on, Harry," she pleaded with ragged breaths, "Can't you go any faster?"

Harry did seem to be putting in his full effort and concentration, his hands rapidly manipulating everything in just the right way. "YES!" he shouted, finishing more quickly than he had expected, as she collapsed on the desktop. Harry followed a moment later, landing beside her.

Their breathing gradually slowed, while they started to relax, satisfied now that it was over.

She rolled her head on its side to face him. "Harry, if we ever try that again together, we're going to have to do a Reducio charm. This thing of yours is simply too huge to deal with any other way…"

He turned his face to hers, wearing a devilish smirk.

"What?" she said, unable to help smiling a bit in response.

"Do you realize what you just said? About my huge… thing?"

She rolled her eyes, as she pulled herself up. "Yes, Harry. Ha, ha, ha. You know I was talking about your enormous desk." She held out her hand to help him up.

"Didn't sound like that to me..." Harry said as he stood, eyeing her steadily.

A cough came from across the room, causing them both to turn suddenly. "Kreacher heard some rather loud noises," the house-elf said. "Are Master Harry and Mistress Hermione all right?"

Hermione rolled her eyes again, as Harry replied, "We're perfectly fine. Just assembling some furniture. Thank you, Kreacher."

Kreacher's eyes went back and forth between them for a moment. "It is good to have Master Harry here again," he eventually said, bowing before disappearing with a pop.

Hermione was shaking her head. When Harry had convinced her to take off from work early today so they could spend Valentine's Day "celebrating being single together," she hadn't quite imagined that he had meant she'd be helping him move his belongings out of his ex-girlfriend's flat and back to 12 Grimmauld Place. Still, it was better than spending the day alone, as she had expected to be doing. Not that she really gave a second thought to the fourteenth of February one way or the other. But if there was someone she was happy to see today, it was her best friend, especially now that he would be moving back in as her housemate.

"Honestly," she said, sliding a box along the floor and away from their recently reassembled desk, "I've worked for years to get Kreacher to stop that annoying habit. I'm just 'Hermione,' not someone's 'mistress.' But now that you're back here, he's going to start with those silly old-fashioned titles again."

Harry shrugged. "We got him to accept a salary and even a couple days off each month. He's just trying to show you respect." He grabbed one corner of the desk. "Can you help push this against the wall?"

While they half-lifted and slid it together, Hermione reflected on how they ended up with this monstrosity in the first place. It was, admittedly, partly her fault. After the war, Harry began to take his work more seriously, and Hermione convinced him that he should have a place to focus so he wouldn't get distracted at home. She suggested that he buy a desk to keep himself organized.

As his first piece of real furniture, Harry became strangely obsessed with getting something built to last and of high quality. Hermione remembered a Muggle shop in London her parents had used which could create custom hardwood furniture, and the two of them had spent a Saturday morning picking it out for him, with Harry adding a few customizations later. Despite the fact that he was working out the plans to move into a flat with Ginny at the time, the whole task felt very domestic and adult for Hermione. She enjoyed imagining him settled somewhere, living more peacefully after the defeat of Voldemort.

Yet, since then, this desk had become a bit of an annoyance in Harry's subsequent moves. As a large corner model, it disassembled into three pieces for transport, but the design did not make it easy to put back together at all. The two sides needed to be tilted and lifted to fit into dovetailed grooves, while bolts were simultaneously pushed through from the other side. During Harry's past two moves, Ron had been there to help with the most awkward part, but it had been a struggle today with just the two of them. And while Harry was willing to reduce the size of the desk for transport, he didn't want to risk magically enlarging or reducing the desk while assembled, as he thought the connections to the center piece made it a bit fragile, an assessment Hermione had to agree with. It was a Muggle design, after all, not intended for magical manipulation.

Still, Hermione couldn't believe how much the thing weighed, particularly the one side she had to lift up a few minutes ago. And Harry's insistence that they keep most of the drawers in place while they moved it baffled her. "What do you keep in this thing? Gold ingots?" she wondered aloud, gasping again with her effort, as they finally managed to get it against the wall. "And what do you mean by 'respect'? Calling me a mistress?"

"Well," he said, standing up straight and taking a few breaths, "with all the yelling and grunting and how you were going on a few minutes ago, Kreacher probably figured you had assumed the role," he smirked. "You know, with all those comments like, 'Slide it in quickly, Harry!'"

She felt her cheeks grow warm. "Oh, shut up," Hermione said with a laugh, as she gave him a shove and turned away.

But Harry caught her hip and rather forcibly threw her back around, standing close in front of her and pinning her with her back against the desk. "I could make you scream, you know," he said, his voice suddenly gravelly.

Hermione's heartbeat quickened substantially, and for just an instant, she thought… but no, she could see the glint of mischief in his eyes. She narrowed her own, returning his stare, now quite certain what was going to happen. "You wouldn't dare," she whispered, with more than a hint of warning.

But a fraction of a second later, Harry's hands drove into her sides, his fingers wiggling and clutching in a way that had her loudly squealing instantly. She countered as soon as she could, but when he seemed immune to her hands on his sides, she moved up to tickle his armpits. At that, he jerked back and began laughing uncontrollably, stumbling backward as she pursued him with gusto. Unfortunately, he backed into one of the boxes on the floor, setting him off-balance and tumbling toward the ground. With his hands still on her sides, she found herself pulled along and falling with him, landing almost directly on top of him as she felt the breath squeezed out of him.

"Are you all right?" she said in concern, her hand involuntarily coming up to his face, which was now only inches below her own.

"Fine," Harry replied, gazing up at her for a couple seconds, breathing hard. But the lull didn't last: as she began to move off of him, his hands now inserted themselves deeply under her arms, causing her to erupt in another shriek of laughter as she struggled in vain to fight back. But Harry seemed more determined than ever, his hands skipping blithely from her neck to her sides to the back of her knee.

When he began to yank at her shoe, she cried out, "Stop! Not the feet!" But that request only seemed to urge him on, as he turned his attention back to her sides, pinning her wrists above her head with one hand, his strength overwhelming her while she continued giggling, having lost all control.

"Are we done?" he panted, pausing his tickling for a moment. His face was lit up with the joy of apparent victory, again mere inches from hers, as she contemplated whether to nod and end it. But his eyes were dark and wild, igniting new energy inside of her.

Somehow, she managed to wrench one hand loose from his grip and dig her fingers deep into the back of his neck an instant later, causing him to yelp aloud. Taking the element of surprise to her advantage, she now went at him full force: her right hand flying to all the right spots on his upper body, avoiding his ineffective attempts to bat her away, while her left hand remained clenched tightly, though continuing to wiggle, on his neck.

In his retreat, he rolled onto his back, and soon she straddled him, watching him writhe about as he howled, "Stop! Stop!" That only caused her to bombard him more incessantly until he finally yelled, "Okay, enough! I yield!"

She loosened her grip on his neck as they continued to laugh quietly, smiling and shaking their heads while staring intensely at each other, until Hermione caught her breath. She then collapsed on top of him, feeling sapped of energy, rolling sideways to cuddle up to his side as she put her head down on his chest, hearing his heart still beating quite vigorously.

They let out a sigh together. We're grown adults, getting into a tickle fight, she thought. And yet, nothing made her happier than this. Not the actual tickling, which was oddly fun and thrilling but also slightly annoyed her. However, she knew it would lead to this, an excuse to cuddle up to her best friend, even on the floor with boxes strewn about. As their breathing slowed, and Harry's arm came up around her, she closed her eyes and reflected for a moment on how much she had missed this in recent months, how much she had missed him...