December

tick tock

Draco spent the entirety of Christmas morning on the verge of throwing up. Breakfast sloshed uncomfortably in his stomach; conversation with his parents soured, stilted as he tried not to fidget and twist in his seat. Gift giving was a perfunctory affair, an obligation on a traditions checklist that meant very little when gifts were unnecessary. What did one give to people who could buy whatever they wanted, whenever they wanted, and truly, wanted for nothing? At least nothing that could be given as a gift; Lucius's wand did not sit under a tree, nor did Narcissa's social status, nor Draco's courage.

Draco sat quietly, nursing a single cup of tea, smiling when he was meant to smile and listening dutifully as his parents conversed as if nothing was amiss. But the day had lost its magic, leaving Draco dry and uneasy, waiting for the moment he had to tell them he wouldn't stay, having put it off until the very last possible moment.

Topsy appeared with a crack, announced that lunch had been prepared, and vanished again.

Narcissa rose from her chaise, smoothing the lines of her lavender robes.

"Shall we?" she asked. Lucius stood, shoulders relaxed, posture loose, more at ease than Draco had seen him in a very long time. Not even Lucius Malfoy could resist the touches of comfort offered by Christmas day. He offered Narcissa his arm, which she took, a graceful smile on her face. It was a lovely, simple, rare moment of affection that Draco had the honor to witness. And he would ruin it all in a matter of moments.

"I won't be joining you," Draco said, still sitting in his chair, delicate teacup clasped between his hands.

His mother paused mid-step, head tilting at a most minute angle as she took in his words.

"Whatever do you mean, darling?"

"I'll be spending the rest of the day with my girlfriend and her family."

Draco watched as his mother's grip tightened around Lucius's arm. His stomach sank, flipped, tore itself to shreds in an attempt to escape his body. He had to set his tea aside, damp, sweaty hands threatening his grip on the expensive heirloom china.

Something else, something stronger than his nerves, surged from Draco's chest, a rush like wildfire tearing through him as adrenaline took hold and shook him. Not unlike when he'd dissolved his betrothal with Astoria, he felt like he might do anything, be anything. He might finally take charge of something for himself.

Lucius's jaw unclenched.

"You will not insult your family by spending time on a holiday with some harlot we've never even met."

Anger careened down Draco's spine. He shove his hands in his pockets, hiding the way they shook. He took a deep breath—in through his nose, out through his mouth—and dug himself a grave, right there in the sitting room.

"Oh, you've met her."

Narcissa let out a tiny gasp, arms falling to her side. Lucius's jaw clicked shut, fury winding it together as his nostrils flared.

Confusion and betrayal mingled in the air between them. Questions, too.

Draco had already said so much. He might as well say the rest. He could do it. He would do it. He'd told her it was real, real enough for this.

"It's Hermione Granger. And, not that you care—though mother might care a bit, I suppose—but I love her. Very much. And I'm going to spend the day with her muggle parents, and I'm excited about it."

Draco realized he should probably stand, lest he look like a child receiving a lecture.

It took several seconds for either of his parents to say or do anything. Narcissa's brows had drawn together, arms crossing in front of her body as she watched him like he'd just polyjuiced into someone entirely unfamiliar. Lucius, on the other hand, had turned red, blood rushing to the surface of his skin.

"Disarm him," Lucius said, voice tight and clipped as he spat the order at Narcissa.

"He's our son."

"He's planning to spend the day with muggles. You heard him. He's clearly lost his faculties. That girl probably has him under an Imperius. Take his wand."

Of all things, Draco felt tremendous gratitude to the Ministry for having relieved Lucius of his wand for the duration of his house arrest. Draco might not have been able to defend himself if his father had decided to disarm him so suddenly. But his mother's hesitation, much as it broke Draco's heart, was enough of an opportunity to avoid prolonging this any longer.

He cast an expelliarmus, hating the way the spell tasted on his tongue, directed at Narcissa.

He caught his mother's wand as it flew to him. Lucius took a furious step forward before Draco switched his target, leveling his wand at his father.

"I'm sorry, Mother," he said, not taking his eyes off Lucius. "But I'm sure you prefer this anyway, not having to make that choice." He flicked his gaze to her, just long enough to see the tangle of grief and fear and anger bunching up her pretty features. "I choose to believe you wouldn't have done it," he added, knowing it wouldn't be enough.

Draco took a deep breath, lowering his wand and silently begging his father not to move. He didn't. No one did, not for an uncomfortable several seconds while they all stood in the aftermath of the things he'd said, of the things he'd done.

"I'll be leaving now," Draco said, lacking any other way to conclude what might very well be the single worst conversation he'd ever had with his parents. "I'll send a Patronus letting you know where I leave your wand, Mother. I don't—I'm sorry, I don't trust you to have it just yet."

He grimaced, seeing the hurt flash across her features. He turned and left before he could change his mind and beg for forgiveness, trying to force them to see Hermione as he did.

He could have facilitated returning his mother's wand in a variety of different ways. Topsy, for example, would have gladly performed the duty. But his Patronus was something he wanted them to see, wanted them to know about him. He wanted them to see the lion's head and know that it was a part of him, just as much as the dragon's tail.

He counted seconds as he counted his steps, inching closer to the Floo and feeling more and more like a terrible excuse for a son. He'd wanted to be a good son all his life. Lacking that, at least he could be a good boyfriend.

Boyfriend.

He threw the Floo powder down and, in a flash of green, realized that didn't feel like the right word for what he was, what he wanted to be.

The word husband crossed his mind as he spun out of sight, away from the manor that might have trapped him in another life, another time.

—

Hermione gave his hand a squeeze as they stood at her parents' front door, waiting to be let in.

"I'm dying to know what you got them," she said, smiling and serene and happy in a way that soothed him by sheer proximity.

He smirked. He'd spent the entire month searching for the right gift to give her muggle, teeth-healing, academic parents, and he'd found the perfect thing. Naturally, he refused to tell her anything about it, intent on impressing her as well.

His heart skipped as he heard a noise from inside the house, footsteps approaching. Draco's nerves felt normal this time, not like those he'd had with his own parents. These were the typical kind of nerves a man experienced when he met his girlfriend's parents for the first time. At least, he suspected as much. He didn't have much experience to use for comparison.

He turned to Hermione.

"Before we do this," he started, regretting immediately the way her eyes widened in concern. "I just need you to know how much I love you. So much that I'm going to pretend the televisor in there doesn't confuse or unnerve me a little bit."

He brushed a curl behind her ear as she laughed, a bit manic as it burst out of her with a force not dissimilar to accidental magic, like she couldn't have held it in if she tried.

"Gods, oh gods. I just—oh, I'm nervous and—can you imagine? A year ago, I could have never imagined you'd willingly to subject yourself to a television for me. A meal with my muggle parents."

"A year?" He tilted his head as he watched her smile crinkle at the corner of her eyes. So light, so genuine.

"No," she said, calming, voice dropping. "Longer than that." She reached out, hand finding his jaw. "I—I love this version of you. This man you've become. I just—I love you."

It wasn't that Draco had been waiting.

Except that he had been. Desperately so. Hoping he might somehow convince her that he could be worth that, despite what he knew must surely be several thousand reasons to the contrary.

He kissed her without thinking. Without care for the crevasse that had opened up in his chest or the fact that they stood on her parents' doorstep in the middle of winter. He kissed her in a way that felt like the first time. Or rather, like the first time she might actually keep him and let him keep her in exchange, like she could be his as much as he was already hers.

The door swung open, and Hermione's father had the pleasure of witnessing Draco with his tongue in Hermione's mouth, hand creeping towards her breast, and a not insignificant erection building in his pants.

"Hi, Dad," Hermione said, pulling away from him. The flush of her cheeks could have been from the cold, embarrassment, or arousal. "This is Draco."

And considering what came before, he wouldn't have traded such a terrible introduction for anything.

—

Things got better before they got worse. Hermione's mother welcomed him to their home with a hostessing grace even Narcissa Malfoy would have approved of, other unbecoming details of her existence excluded. As uncomfortable as their introduction had been, Hermione's father greeted Draco with a handshake and an evaluating look, eyes narrowed and knowing.

The torture show began at dinner.

Hermione found it hilarious. Her parents seemed to think it funny, too. Draco couldn't decide if they were pulling an elaborate prank on him or if Hermione's family was simply just as fucked up as his own, and she'd failed to mention that detail.

"Drills?"

"Drills," Hermione said, not even bothering to hide her snicker.

"I'm not sure I'm understanding the definition of the word in this context." Draco set his fork aside as he shoved away a lingering, unpleasant sensation of exclusion. He didn't care for it, not knowing. But he supposed his own fish out of water experience, and the humor it seemed to provide the rest of them, offered a preferred alternative to the pureblood ideologies and exclusionary belief system that would have been served at his parents' Christmas dinner.

"I'm sure I have one around here somewhere," Mr. Granger started, pushing out his chair before his wife reached out to stop him.

"Not at dinner, dear," Mrs. Granger said. The words carried with them a quiet authority that rung of Hermione's own confidence when she did something she knew how to do, simply acting for herself.

Draco smiled, finding Hermione's hand beneath the table.

"Are you familiar with machinery?" Mr. Granger asked, conversational and kind where Lucius would have sounded condescending, derisive.

"Only in theory," Draco said. "I think. I've seen films with Hermione. Those are powered by machines, yes?"

Mrs. Granger smiled, brows crinkling. Hermione squeezed his fingers before releasing his hand; he could see her teeth grazing her bottom lip from his periphery.

"That's not—quite the same," Mrs. Granger said. "A drill is—well, it spins very quickly and it's used to bore a hole in one's teeth to—"

Draco turned to look at Hermione.

"Pain potions?" he asked.

"Of a sense. Injected with a needle, usually."

He grimaced, all of it sounded excessive and inefficient and horribly painful, despite Hermione's insistence that it was all perfectly normal and routine. Morbid, more like it.

"Well, I feel confident you'll enjoy my gift," he said, trying not to think about holes in his teeth as he ate his dinner. "I believe it's quite appropriate for your line of work."

Unfortunately, they did not enjoy his gift.

Hermione laughed at first, then looked horrified, then laughed again. Her parents experienced an opposite reaction: horror, then tentative laughter, supplanted by horror once more. Mr. Granger called it unusual, while Mrs. Granger opted for the word unique, graciously thanking him while looking on in confusion.

Hermione—dutifully, and once her own surprise had subsided—tried to explain that the ancient human mandible he'd procured and presented them with was meant as a means of decoration, to display in one's office. Though the extended eye contact she sent his way suggested that she needed confirmation of that fact. She concluded by informing her parents that such modestly unsettling displays weren't uncommon in a witch or wizard's office or laboratory. Hermione's tone oscillated wildly between uneasy amusement and strained embarrassment.

Mrs. Granger gave up trying to school her expression partway through Hermione's explanation, simply letting her jaw open and close with unspoken confusion. Mr. Granger poured himself a hefty glass of brandy. He offered one to Draco, which he drank quickly and indiscriminately, silently wishing it contained a Draught of the Living Dead.

With a warm trickle of alcohol-infused courage numbing his gaffe, Draco dropped a hand on Hermione's knee, quieting her ongoing attempts at explaining away his odd choice of gift.

"I apologize, Mr. and Mrs. Granger. I did not realize my gift was—so unusual."

He very much wished for the brandy to knock him out. He needed more, significantly more.

Mr. Granger drained his glass and picked up the mounted jawbone, examining the display.

"It has"—he looked to his wife as if searching for the right word—"lovely teeth. Could have used a dentist though."

Hermione groaned as her parents laughed, a kind of tension breaking through the stifling discomfort in the room. Draco could do nothing but pinch the bridge of his nose, incapable of meeting anyone's eye, while willing the heat beneath his skin to subside. He needed to reconsider how often he made Hermione blush, having recently experienced so much of it himself. Mortification threatened to crack his bones to bits.

—

"Thank you for coming," Hermione said with a small sway, feet unsteady as they apparated to his flat. "I think that's the longest uninterrupted time I've spent with them since before the war."

She hugged him, sliding her hands into his back pockets under what he suspected was a guise of steadying herself. Draco's embarrassing gift giving had required several glasses of wine and bouts of giggling between Hermione and her mother in order to come to an agreement that Draco was not, in fact, slightly insane.

"Are you certain you want to thank me?" he asked, sweeping her curls over one shoulder, thumb brushing across her cheekbone. "They—must think I'm very strange."

"They do." She preempted his instinct to put space between them by pulling him closer instead. "But they think most things about the wizarding world are strange—which is better than the outright contempt they had for it a couple of years ago. That could have gone"—she sighed, resting her cheek against his chest—"much worse."

He wrapped his arms around her.

"Happy to mitigate the damage with my decided failure of a gift."

She chuckled, coasting warm breath through the fabric of his shirt.

"You mitigated it with your excellent manners and preternatural charm."

"I was raised by Narcissa Malfoy, after all."

He stilled, not realizing what he'd said until he said it. He never quite knew how to talk about his parents around her. He hadn't told her about his morning, about telling his parents that she was the woman in his life. He didn't want to bring it up now, either, knowing that his parents' negative reaction would sully the lovely buzz of alcohol they shared.

Hermione seemed neither to notice nor take offense. Instead, she squeezed his backside from inside his pockets, giggling as she did, forcing a laugh from him in return.

"So handsy when you drink," he said, leaning to kiss the crown of her head, lost for a moment in a wild, lovely tangle of curls.

She made a happy, humming sound against his chest before she leaned back, a smirk twisting her lips.

"You don't mind."

"Not a bit. I'd say I'm strongly in favor, in fact. But I'd like to give you your gift before you have your wicked way with me."

He looped his hands beneath the crook of her elbows, lifting her arms and removing her hands from his pockets. She pouted, the ghost of a smirk twitching at the edges of her mouth. He would have kissed the look from her face if he felt confident enough it wouldn't entirely sidetrack him.

He led her towards the green sofa and nearly jumped out of his own skin at her squeal of delight. She grabbed her copy of The Count of Monte Cristo from the coffee table, noting his bookmark in the back cover.

She looked up at him with lifted brows, with a smile, with a bit more hope than he deserved. He sank onto a velvet cushion.

"That is not my gift," he said. "It's already yours."

She sighed, rolled her eyes, and shook her head all at once. She curled up next to him on the sofa, limbs loose as she tucked her feet beneath her.

"Did you finish it?" she said, tugging at the bookmark in the back of the book.

"I did."

"And?"

"Haven't I made this Christmas uncomfortable enough, what with my gift to your parents—"

"You still didn't like it?"

He wished he'd let her have her way with him. And that he'd had the foresight not to leave that book right there on the table in the middle of his living room, knowing he intended on bringing her home with him tonight and, ideally, not letting her leave until morning. Or perhaps, ever.

"It was not to my tastes," he said. Simple, without judgement. A fact.

"Your tastes? Well, maybe if we discussed some of its—"

"—Hermione—"

"—you know, thoughtful discussion can sometimes illuminate things you might not have—"

"—Hermione, I hated it."

Her hands, which had been holding the book a prop between them, a reference for her passion, dropped. Draco winced as the book landed with a thud against his thigh.

"But I love you," he said. Then, with a smirk, "So, I won't hold your literature preferences against you."

"Against me? Against me? What do you—I should be holding it against you."

He knew that would wind her up; he laughed. He pried the book from her grip, ignoring her indignant little huff, and set it aside on the table.

"Of all the things you could hold against me, this isn't it."

She softened, affront draining.

"I wish you'd stop saying things like that."

"It's the truth."

She frowned, lifting a hand to cradle his jaw. A year ago, the contented little noise originating in the back of his throat, almost inaudible, would have embarrassed him with its raw vulnerability. In the present, he raised his hand and placed it atop hers, extending his moment of contact for several thumps of his heart, beating behind his eardrums.

Regretfully, he peeled her hand from his face, dropping a kiss on her knuckles before releasing her entirely.

"May I give you your gift now?" he asked.

She sighed, letting the sound dance through her throat, deepening into a giggle. Gods, she was beautiful.

"I suppose you can," she said with a long-suffering tone of obligation. She smirked. "I'm not sure how you can possibly top last year's literally life-changing, bespoke, experimental potion." She waved her hand as if the whole affair were beneath her, pulling her lips between her teeth as she fought a laugh. "Impress me," she said: an order, a command, a new ideology around which to build his entire purpose.

When her eyes met his, she stilled, perhaps noticing the severity of his look, or the way the tone in the room had shifted, or the way his hand, formerly resting on her knee, had crept closer to her thigh, hardly acknowledged by either of them. She swallowed, and he watched the motion travel down her neck, knowing intimately how that action felt beneath his lips.

He cleared his throat, dragging his eyes from her skin. "Now, before you try to insist we're not together—and I would be sorely offended should you do such a thing—know that this is not jewelry."

He pulled a small velvet box from his pocket. "Not jewelry," he said again, watching her eyes widen briefly.

She leaned forward, perched on her knees and hovering for a moment as she steadied herself. She kissed him, meant as a quick action that he stole more from, his other hand finding the back of her neck, threaded into her curls. He took her quick reassurance of a kiss and made it his own: a brush of his tongue, a piece of his soul.

Just in case.

She braced herself on his shoulders, not pulling away even as the kiss broke.

"We're definitely together," she said, an arrow of honesty nocked and aimed so perfectly at his heart that it pierced him with barely a breath's worth of effort.

"That's good." His voice came out hoarse, nowhere near as sure as he'd wanted it. He pressed the box into her hands, pushing her gently to lean back on her heels against the cushions again.

"In fact," he said as she opened the velvet box, "I'd like to be together more regularly."

"A—piece of parchment?" she asked, pulling a tightly folded parchment from the box. "With spells on it? What are these? They look like—"

"My wards. Here. I—I know you've been keyed into them for a while, but I wanted you to have the spellwork, to know it. You should always know the wards to"—a pause, a gulp, a leap—"your home."

If Draco's heart beat any harder, he might need a visit to St. Mungo's for certain spontaneous combustion.

She read the spells silently.

"I—was hoping you would want to live here. With me. Together." He couldn't seem to stop talking in the absence of any sort of response from her. "You're here so often already. And I don't especially enjoy watching you leave, and that flat of yours—it's just so small. I have the space—"

Draco's fingers prickled, the surface of his skin suddenly vibrating at the same rate his heart hammered in his chest. It might have been easier when she told him they weren't in a relationship. At least then she'd said something. Now, she'd yet to tear her eyes from the parchment in her hands.

Carefully, she refolded it and returned it to the box, snapping the lid shut, flinching at the sound.

"That's—are you sure?" she asked. "I've never lived with someone before, outside of school, that is. Never with—Ron and I never even—"

"Please don't compare this to him."

"No, I didn't mean it that way"—she finally looked up at him—"Crookshanks could come, too?"

His breath rushed from him in a surprised gust.

"What? Yes—of course, Crookshanks would come, too." Draco blinked. Was that really a question?

She clutched her heart: literally, hand to chest, fingers flexing at the neckline of her dress, leaving red splotches on the skin dragged beneath her fingertips. She looked like she was experiencing physical pain, confusion etched in the furrow between her brows and the tight pursing at her lips.

Draco cracked a knuckle, fingers pulled so tightly into a fist that his thumb popped from the force, startling in the silence.

"If you need time to think about it—of course. That's—I completely understand." And he did. Except that he didn't. He wanted Hermione Granger in his life, all the time. He wanted a piece of every day in her heavily scheduled week, and that probably made him exceedingly selfish, but it didn't change the intensity of the want, the need. Self-consciousness heated him, creeping towards a boil in his throat. The idea that she might not feel similarly, want similarly, burned away all the brandy he'd had to drink, all the liquor he'd used to find bravery.

"What will your parents say?" she asked, deep crevices of confusion finally relinquishing their hold on her features. They smoothed as she asked the question that presumably bothered her the most.

Draco, mostly relieved she'd said something, had no control over the laugh that escaped his throat.

"I already told them."

Hermione's gaze snapped to his before he'd even finished his sentence.

"You what?"

"I told them. About you, well—I told them I was spending the day with you and your muggle parents and that you were my girlfriend and I love you and—"

She had her hand at her mouth, covering her awe.

"I told you this was real," he said. "It was the most defiant I've ever been. I—I disarmed my mother. I just left them there and went to you. I think it was brave? You're a horrible influence, really."

He saw the moment her shock shifted into something else, something exciting, something that looked an awful lot like she might be several seconds from launching herself at him, from having her way with him as earlier promised.

But then the owl rapped on his window.

—

"What does it say?" Hermione asked, delivering the whisky he'd requested. Draco needed substantially more alcohol in his body to handle a letter from his parents, considering the state he'd left them in.

He stood near the window, watching the owl's wingspan silhouetted against the moon as it flew away. He ought to close the window, but the chill did something to brace him, reminding him of the sharp difference between the pleasant warmth cozied there, with Hermione, and the consequences of actions he'd taken that morning, knowing they would not be met favorably, but done all the same.

He thought about burning the parchment, throwing it out his window, vanishing it, flushing it down the toilet for all he cared. And yet, he couldn't seem to unclench his fist, bunching it in his hand, crinkling it where he couldn't quite let it go.

"I want us to have a nice holiday," he said, looking neither at Hermione, nor the letter. He blindly accepted the drink she'd brought over, stared at the amber liquid, and then set it down on the windowsill.

He changed his mind. He was already comfortably buzzed, happy and pleasant. He didn't want to tip that scale into something desperate, not at his parents' words delivered at the end of the day.

"Draco."

Her hand found his shoulder before it slipped down his back. Ultimately, she settled on encircling his waist from behind. He could feel her lips pressed between his shoulder blades. "What does it say?" she asked again.

"They want you removed. From the decommissioning. They've said they plan to inquire with the Ministry."

Her hands squeezed him for a flash before she broke away, stepping back. He turned when he heard her sharp intake of breath, his own wallowing abandoned the moment he saw the shine in her eyes, glassy, as her jaw clenched tight.

"I've been nothing but professional," she said. Then, quieter, "Mostly." She wrapped her arms across her front, gripping her waist with pointed, painful-looking fingers digging into her sides.

He'd be a fool if he thought she hadn't kept track of every kiss, every touch, that happened while she was meant to be working. That guilt crashed with the force of a rockslide spilling across her face, stone after stone beating her sense of professionalism, the sensibilities that she took so seriously.

"My career," she whispered. It wasn't so much a statement as it was a question. Perhaps a eulogy.

"Hermione you haven't done anything wrong. They have no basis to have you removed—you've done incredible work."

He pulled her to his chest, hands threading through her hair, a stroke at her jaw, a brush of her arm, a pressure to her waist. Any motion, any action he could conceive, to quell her worry. With both hands occupied by comforting her, he realized he'd dropped his parents' letter somewhere between worrying about himself and worrying about her.

"Don't let them do this," he whispered into her hair. "Don't let them ruin a nice"—she wrapped her arms around his waist, finally unwinding the self-soothing she'd been engaged in—"mostly not-awkward holiday that we got to spend together." Her breath came out in a stutter, an acoustic laugh against his chest.

She slipped her hands into his back pockets again.

"Did it say anything else?" she asked, melted against him.

"My father has revoked control of the account I was managing." He forced a small shrug. "I hated it anyway so—"

It still hurt. And he hated that it did, as much as—perhaps more than—he hated the account itself. He didn't want its loss to mean anything.

"You're disappointed," she said, as if counting the scale of his conflict in the beats of his heart.

"But I don't regret it."

The chill from the open window stopped feeling like a reminder of the balance—the push and pull his life required of him—and felt instead like a creeping threat, seeping beneath his shirt, attacking his skin. His only defense: Hermione's arms, wrapped around him and providing a tiny scion of warmth to batter the cold.

"You'd hoped you could have both," she said.

"I dare say I was optimistic. I told you, you've been a terrible influence on me."

"We should talk about this again tomorrow," she said. "When we're not both so tipsy."

"You're probably right."

He knew she was. He couldn't separate the types of heat in his blood: liquor, guilt, love, longing, failure, shame. They felt so similar, so jumbled. A twisted tangle of confusion where one kind of heat gave him the woman in his arms, a kind of comfort, of love. And another gave him shame for having failed his father again—and again—and perhaps for the last time? Or just another one of many?

What did it matter if he couldn't tell one type of heat from the other, if they all boiled his blood in the end? Did it matter what burned him alive, after the fact? He'd welcomed it once, at the behest of Hermione's touch. Ruin had felt romantic, then. Now, it mostly felt like disappointment.

"I keep going back and forth," he said, quietly, to a curl in his periphery, glinting golden as it swayed in the tiniest gusts of cold winter air. "I need—lines. Clear lines. Not this winding, meandering back and forth. I keep gaining ground with Father and then losing it nearly as fast."

He dropped his head to the top of hers, requiring her support lest he fall—down, apart, or back in line—she held him up. Had he done this to himself? When he first came back to England, it had all looked so simple: a clear path with a clean, straightforward relationship with his father, a healthier power dynamic.

But it hadn't been simple at all. He'd fumbled, he'd fallen apart. He'd barely put up a fight, accepting a betrothal, accepting what his father wanted of him. He'd touched a time turner nearly as soon as he'd returned, and who knew how that act alone had sent cracks spiderwebbing across his life's trajectory. Was any of this meant to happen? Was anything meant at all?

He held her tight, an anchor in a choppy sea as he lost sight of the shoreline, drowning in an expanse of self-doubts and what-ifs and regrets.

"Maybe this is your line," she said as her hand rubbed a calming path up and down his back. They'd stood there long enough that the chill had taken over, more cold air than warm inside his flat.

His bones pulled him down, heavy inside his skin. Guilt was an exhausting thing.

"What do you mean?" he asked, finally lifting his head from the cushion her curls offered, leaning back so he could see her face.

"Here, tonight. You and me. Maybe this is the clear line you need between who you are and who your parents want you to be." She gave him a small smile, and he realized she'd been crying, tiny watery trails slipping from the corner of her eyes. "Does it make me conceited to think that me moving in with you might be worthy of such a thing?"

The heat he'd thought might burn him up buoyed him against the chill instead, a new flood spiraling from his chest.

"Are you? Moving in with me?"

"You've spent an awful lot of time being ahead of me in this relationship," she said, definitely not an answer to his question. "I don't like coming in second. But—I like even less that you keep choosing me and, well, you should know, I'm choosing you, too. I'm sorry it's taken me so long to catch up."

Fuck her apology; he would have waited however long it took.

He could have kissed her. He could have fucked her. He could have done any number of things. But instead, he nearly crumbled, holding her as close as possible.

"This is the line," he said, words nearly drowned out by his pulse roaring inside his skull.

He almost didn't hear her, head buried in her curls once again. I love you.

It came through louder the second time, as she broke from their hold, hands cradling his face, steadying him. "I love you," she said on a whooshing kind of breath, as if she had to force it out. She smiled, saying it again, steadier this time. "I love you."

When she'd said it that afternoon, he hadn't had the chance to respond, not properly.

Now, he had the pleasure of saying, "I love you, too."

She dragged her bottom lip between her teeth, fighting the motion with a smile that stretched her mouth wide, beaming. Her hands glided down his neck, down his chest, before winding their way around his torso again.

"Crookshanks is going to love that sofa," she said, laughing into his shirt like it was the funniest thing in the entire world.

In their world, in that moment, it was.