Day Twenty

Hermione woke slowly, lazy and content, taking her time to open her eyes. Something wasn't quite right; her bed was too firm and her sheets were a strange texture. She took a deep breath, feigning slumber still while she assessed whether or not she was in danger. It was an old instinct honed during the war which she was beginning to begrudgingly admit would probably never go away completely.

With that deep inhale came and a familiar scent and she immediately relaxed. Harry. She was completely safe with him. She shifted slowly, now her assessment was done out of curiosity as opposed to necessity, and it brought for a much more pleasurable experience. She was in her bed but her mattress was Harry's naked chest. She remembered them falling into an exhausted heap the night before and curling up together, but she didn't know when he'd shed his shirt. She was disappointed to have missed it.

This was the third morning in a row she'd woken up with Harry. On the first, she'd known exactly where she was and who she was with but she'd also been slightly mortified with herself for stripping to just her knickers.

At the time, she had been trying to be brave and sexy as she'd assumed they were going to have sex. She hadn't regretted her actions or that they'd just ended up going to sleep. But it left her in just her knickers in the stark light of day. She'd wormed her way out from under him and snuck to the loo. She had a sneaking suspicion he'd been aware of what she was doing, but he'd let her go without commenting.

Yesterday morning she'd been too frantic to think or notice anything except for the pounding of her head and the fact that they were late to go to the Burrow. She hadn't been able to enjoy Harry's adorable confusion over the whole situation until she remembered it later.

This morning she was determined to enjoy waking up with him. She had made some noise the evening before about the two of them separating and spending some time alone, and Harry had just looked at her and said very calmly: "is that what you want, or is that what you feel like you need to say?"

He was right, as he usually was when it came to her. She had been falling back on old habits, treating him the way she would treat any new boyfriend. It had been refreshing to once again realize: this was Harry. Whenever she had a question she could just ask him and he would answer her or he would tell her it was none of her business. He might even laugh at her curious nature. But it wouldn't be hurtful. One thoughtless comment or question wouldn't destroy them.

She wriggled in his arms so that she could prop herself up and look at him properly. She was still getting used to how attracted she was to him. She'd known that he was good looking since pretty much always. He'd been a cute boy who, after a few awkward years like everybody experienced, matured into a handsome man. But knowing something and feeling it were two different things.

She didn't know what had changed in this case, if she'd put up some kind of mental block to protect herself from lusting over somebody she'd placed very firmly in the 'friend' category. Or if the changes in their behavior had her truly seeing him in a different light and drawn her to him on a more primal level. And she found that she didn't much care. Maybe one day she'd sit back and analyze everything that had happened between them, but she didn't want to get lost in her head and miss what was happening now.

Harry was laying on his back, the covers had fallen about halfway down his bare chest when she'd shifted. He was fit, in a way that a man who stayed in shape to be able to perform at his best was, because she didn't think that Harry had a vain bone in his body. She'd seen him brush off compliments about his appearance many times, he assumed, as he always did, that they were just about the "Harry Potter" personae. She wondered what he would think if he could see himself through her eyes. Not just his physical appearance, but everything. She wished she had the words to tell him.

Estelle was sleeping curled up against his shoulder on the opposite side from Hermione with one little leg stretched across his neck, which was just stupidly adorable. If she could bring herself to get out of this bed she'd find a camera and take a picture. Crookshanks was at the end of the bed, he seemed to have forgotten how put out he had pretended to be at the presence of a wizard in her bed. She wondered if he would go back to being irritable when he woke up.

She smiled to herself. It was Monday, but the Ministry was closed for the holidays now, and she, remarkably, had no plans. Nothing she had to get up for or worry about completing, not even any errands. She reached for a book on her nightstand, "Pride and Prejudice," something she'd read a thousand times before and always went back to for comfort.

She was engrossed in the words on the page and only vaguely aware when he began to stir.

"That again?" He muttered.

"Shut up, you haven't even read it."

"I watched that hellishly long movie with you. I'm an awesome friend," there was a pause, "I think I should get extra points for that now."

She glanced at him without putting the book down. "It doesn't work like that Harry."

He stretched and pulled Estelle up from beside his neck and deposited her on his chest. "Can I at least lodge a complaint?"

"What's that?" She asked, trying to keep the laughter out of her voice.

"That- what's his name? The bloke?"

"Mr. Darcy?"

"Yes. Mr. Darcy is an arsehole and I don't want to be compared to him."

"I can enjoy a story, even a romance, without holding up the male protagonist as some kind of romantic ideal," she answered primly.

"Hmmm," he said noncommittally. "And do you compare yourself to Elizabeth?"

Hermione shrugged. "I admire her. Her approach to life, her actions were revolutionary for a woman in her social class in her time."

"And she likes reading."

"Yes."

"She should have been more like you, that book would have been a lot more violent and entertaining."

"What?" She laughed.

"I'm just saying, that Wickham guy reminded me a lot of Malfoy, and she didn't hit him even once. That would have improved the whole thing a lot."

"Oh my God, Harry," she kept laughing. "Also, I think you remember it a lot better than you're pretending to. You just called Wickham by name."

"Like I said, he was very irritating. Very Malfoy-esque."

Hermione shook her head and paged through the book to find the right passage, wanting to quote it correctly. "Okay, this is what Mr. Darcy tells Elizabeth after she asks about how he knew that he was in love with her: 'I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look, or the words, which laid the foundation. It is too long ago. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun.' That's why I like this book. Something about that struck me even when I was only thirteen, which is the first time I read it. Just…"

"Just?" He prompted.

"I guess I thought something about that rang true. To just be in it with somebody, whatever it is, whatever your life looks like. The good and the bad, and all the time falling, falling, falling until one day for some reason you look up and really see this person who's been there all along, but suddenly it's like, 'hello, it's you, you're what I've been searching for.'"

She looked up and met Harry's eyes, they'd gone very wide.

"Okay, I get that," he admitted, voice a little rough.

"And. Well, he sees her."

"Sees her?"

"Yes, he doesn't put her on a pedestal. He sees her faults, all the reasons they shouldn't be together and he admits that their relationship would be controversial. Even when he proposes that first time, he goes about it the wrong way, and he's terribly arrogant about it. But in essence what he says is that he sees her, all of her, and he still chooses her. He adores her just the way that she is." She toyed with the pages of the book. "You asked if I compared myself to her."

"Yes."

"It's more that I hoped I'd be seen in that way one day too. Even at thirteen I knew that I could be difficult, that I would be a difficult partner to have, and that it would probably take somebody very brave to love me and not be intimidated by me. Ronald was far from the first person to call me a nightmare. So yes, if I'm being honest Mr. Darcy did create a romantic ideal for me, but it's not something that you need to worry about."

"You're not a nightmare, Hermione."

She shrugged. "Don't pretend like you've never thought it. But that's okay, because you love me anyway. That's what I'm saying, Harry. This book," she waved it in front of him, "will always be a comforting friend to come back to, but it's not an impossible dream. I love you so much, because of the man that you are, but also because I can just be the woman that I am with you. You said last week that you chose me, and you did. That means the world to me."

He sat up and leaned in to kiss her. "I'm glad you feel that way," he whispered. "You know I feel the same? You're probably the only person in the entire magical world who doesn't put me on a pedestal. Even the Weasleys, even Ginny, I know there have been times, especially during the war, that they looked at me and just saw The Chosen One. I was an ideal instead of a person, and that facade has never gone away completely."

She stroked his cheek and he smiled sadly.

"You, on the other hand," he continued, "I know for a fact that if you could go back and change things, give me a childhood, make me a normal wizard, you'd do it in a heartbeat."

She didn't respond, just kissed him softly.

"Are you hungry?" She asked eventually.

"I could eat."

"Okay, let's get breakfast and I want to open my calendar."

That perked him up immediately. "Oh, today's a good one! This worked out even better than I could have planned."

"Well now you have my attention."

They crawled out of bed, he pulled on a shirt and she a pair of pajama bottoms, and they padded into the living room together. He turned the lights to her Christmas tree on and then joined her in front of the Advent calendar. She opened the twentieth door and pulled out a gingerbread man. An elaborately decorated one wrapped in cellophane.

It was cute, and festive to be sure, but she felt like she was missing something. She turned to him, a question in her eyes.

He was already smiling. "The rest is in the kitchen."

She trotted in there and looked at the box still sitting on her worktop.

"You can look inside now," he encouraged her, "the rest of the things in there are for today."

She picked it up and carried it over to her little table then finally looked inside. "A gingerbread house making kit?"

He nodded, looking like an excited child. "I thought it looked like fun. And there's extra candy in there too. The kit didn't look like it came with enough to do the job properly."

She let out an excited little squeak and a laugh and jumped into his arms. "Oh this would be fun, and do you know what else?"

"What?"

"We should bake Christmas cookies!"

He blinked at her. "You want to bake?"

"I have all these recipes I've never had time to try! Mum made me a book when I got my own flat!"

"Apparently your mum has never seen you in the kitchen," he deadpanned.

"Oh be quiet, I'm not that bad. And anyway, I have you, and you're quite proficient!'

"Do you have any ingredients at all?"

"Probably not. But we can go shopping. Please Harry? It'll be fun. We can take them to our friends and to the Weasleys, they've never really had muggle treats!"

"You want to bake for Molly Weasley?"

"Yes! Nobody ever cooks for her, we should!"

He sighed. "I don't really have a good reason to say no. But don't blame me if it's a disaster."

"Yes!" She gave him a victory kiss.

Three hours later the first batch of shortbread came out of the oven, and it was a disaster.

After declaring it unsalvageable, Harry had forced Hermione to ring her mum so that he could asked her about some of the notations she had made in the recipe that he assumed he hadn't properly interpreted. He ended up putting her on speaker phone and they chatted through every recipe Hermione wanted to tackle, and together they convinced her to whittle it down to just three.

Her mother ended the call by asking Harry to join them for Christmas. Hermione literally dropped the bag of flour she was holding when she heard that. Harry just graciously accepted, then said his farewells and ended the call.

"I knew you'd win her over eventually, but I didn't think it would happen this fast," Hermione marveled, staring at him and ignoring the cloud of flour that was beginning ot coat the kitchen in a layer of white dust.

He quirked an eyebrow. "Did you consider, love, that it was more about you and not me?"

"I didn't do anything."

"You're trying something new, a muggle tradition that she obviously wanted to pass onto you," he said, gesturing to the handwritten cookbook. "And you came to her for advice, when was the last time you did that?"

"I-I don't know." She sighed. "I took it as a dig at my lack of skills in the kitchen and about my magic when she gave me that. She said something about there not being anything wrong with learning to do something the old fashioned way,"

Hermione considered that. How many times had she complained to her mother about not being able to help Molly in the kitchen, and about how household spells didn't come naturally to her? Had her mother just been trying to help? Had Hermione rejected her?

She had never really used this cookbook, or asked her mother for help learning, but she kept going back to Molly, and her mother knew it. No wonder she resented the woman. No wonder she was constantly referring to Molly's lack of career outside the home. A career was something that she and Hermione had in common. Something that she didn't have in common with Molly. But she avoided talking about that with her mother because it was so magical in nature that she assumed her mother didn't want to hear about it.

"Oh God, Harry, I cut her out and replaced her with Molly! All Mum ever really hears about Molly is complaints when I feel like she's being overbearing, but I still choose to go to her over Mum anyway for mother-type help!"

Harry's expression turned sympathetic. "I'm sure it's not that bad. And I'm definitely sure it can be fixed, she didn't hesitate to help just now, she sounded pretty thrilled."

"Yeah. I just feel like a terrible daughter."

"You're not."

"You don't know that," she countered, after all, she'd kept her parents pretty isolated from all her friends.

"I do, I know you. You're trying your best. Listen," he stepped forward and lifted her chin with one finger. "You told me earlier that I see you, and I do. You have a tendency to be too independent. You don't ask for help, you don't want to be seen as weak. That's something you should work on, but it doesn't make you terrible."

"My parents lost their child a lot earlier than most parents do. I mean, they didn't actually lose me, but I grew up really early. I've always known that, that's one of the main reasons they resent magic." She sighed and considered her thoughts. "But I've never fully considered what that meant. I've tried not to be a burden on them and to impose my magic on them, but in doing so I cut them out."

"So include them," Harry shrugged. "They invited me for Christmas. Invite them to go to the children's home for the Christmas party with us. It wouldn't be like dragging them into the Ministry, throwing magic in their faces. As you well know these kids are just like muggle kids, and I think your parents have a pretty perfect record of dealing with magical children anyway," he smiled at her. "Plus, they can see some of the good you do in our world. Give them something to be proud of that they can see and understand."

She nodded. "That's a really good idea. I'm ashamed that I haven't thought of anything like that. That I've just kind of shunted them to the side."

He put his arms around her and kissed her temple. "Like I said, I don't believe for a second that this can't be fixed."

She reached up to cradle his face. "I love you so much, I wish I had a better way to say it."

"The way you say it is perfect."