[A/N: Thank you to Calamity Owl for beta-reading this chapter!]


They arrived home only a few minutes later, and Hermione raised her eyebrows when Harry merely scrubbed off his boots on the mat rather than take them off as she'd begun doing. "Are you planning to go back out?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "There's something I do every year after coming home from seeing Remus and Sirius." A wave of his wand unlocked a cabinet and summoned something, and another wave undid the shrinking charm.

"Flowers?" Hermione asked.

"Yes," Harry said, "under a stasis charm. The little box contains a snitch."

"That little thing you used to catch when you played Quidditch?"

He nodded. "Every summer I release a professional-grade one into the air and catch it for my father. Everyone says he would have been so proud to see me play Quiddich, so it seemed like something he'd like more than flowers. My parents' graves occasionally have visitors and that's the last place in the world I want to hear any of that 'Boy-Who-Lived' dragonshite–"

"Language," Hermione corrected automatically.

Harry smirked at her and continued, "So every year I visit on Christmas Eve. Nobody is ever there, which makes it perfect."

"I see." Hermione bit her lower lip and thought for a moment. "So you like to go alone?"

Harry was about to answer when the actual question she was asking penetrated his thick skull. "I usually do," he said, "but only because Sirius and Remus end up as wrecks and I don't want to take any of my friends away from their family time."

"Oh, Harry, you know any of us would go with you in a heartbeat if we knew you needed us," Hermione said.

"I know," he replied. "But…the whole reason I'm going is that I don't have parents to spend this holiday with. I'm happier knowing my friends are spending that time with the families they have left."

Hermione began to lace up the boot she had half-unlaced. "You'retheir family, too, so I think you know what they'd say if you told them that. Regardless, I'm going with you."

"Thank you," Harry said. Something about the way she said it sounded less like a demand and more like a fundamental fact of the universe: that no matter where his steps took him for the rest of his life, she would be right there beside him.

"Harry? Is everything alright?" Hermione asked.

"Oh, yes," Harry said. "Sorry, I just spaced out." He held out a hand and helped her up. "Are you ready to go?"

"I think so," she said as he helped her to her feet. "Am I dressed warmly enough?"

"It's in Exmoor, so it'll be a bit colder than London," Harry said. "It might be a good opportunity to try out your gift."

"Oh, yes," Hermione said. She shrugged off her coat, hung it on the hall tree, handed Harry the capelet, and turned her back to him. Harry wasn't sure why until she looked over her shoulder at him and flicked her gaze down to the capelet that he caught on.

"Here you go," he said, and put it over her shoulders.

"Thank you." A blush spread across her face as she spoke.

Harry cocked his head. "Did I…um…touch something I ought not have or make you uncomfortable?"

"No! Not at all. It's just…in books set a century or two ago, dashing gentlemen are always helping the heroines put their cloaks on or take them off. I never thought I'd have someone do that for me."

"I'm not sure I qualify as 'dashing,'" Harry said.

"Harry?"

"Yes?"

"Which of us has read more period novels?"

He chuckled. "You. You could also have ended that sentence after the word 'more' and gotten the same answer."

"Good." She smiled. "So which of us is more qualified to judge whether you're dashing?"

"You, I guess."

"Good guess," she replied. "I declare you 'dashing,' and I'll not hear it gainsaid. Now shall we go? I'll try not to throw up this time if you have to side-along me,"

"That was just the alcohol last time," Harry said. "Although a side-along is never fun. Are you sure you want–"

She silenced him with a pair of raised eyebrows.

"Thank you," he whispered as he pulled her close. A moment later, all that was left of them in the foyer was a bit of melting snow from their boots.

They appeared with a soft crack behind an old stone building with a thatched roof. Harry held Hermione until she stopped groaning about ten seconds later.

"Does that get better eventually?" she asked as she gently disentangled herself from his arms.

"Maybe a bit," Harry replied. "What wizards lack in common sense they somehow make up for in sturdy inner ears or something. I have no idea how they all handle the floo and apparition so well."

Hermione chuckled. "That might be an interesting study one day. So where are we?"

"The little village of Godric's Hollow." Harry took her arm and led her down an alley toward the front of the building, which turned out to be the local public house. "It used to be a Wizarding Village, but is now a mix of magical and muggle."

Hermione looked around at the village as they stepped onto the small main square. A few inches of fresh snow blanked the old stone buildings and sat heavy on the thatched roofs. A few shops, a cafe, a greengrocer, a butcher, and a bakery advertising sausage rolls made with the butcher's sausage lined the square, with cramped residential streets curving away from them in several directions. A black obelisk stood in the middle of the square, engraved with the names of villagers who died in the Great War. Across the square, the ancient stones of St. Jerome's Church sat in silent contemplation of the winter scene around them.

"It's beautiful," she said. "The BBC could use this as the set for a Christmas movie."

"It really is," Harry said. "I can see why my parents moved here." He led her into the square and toward the obelisk.

"Harry…there's something wrong with that memorial," Hermione said as they walked. "It's like it flickers whenever I look directly at it."

"You're right," Harry said. "That's because it's been enchanted. It only looks like a World War I memorial until a witch or wizard gets closer."

After two more paces, the obelisk shimmered in front of them and was replaced by a statue of a man who looked much like Harry (right down to the messy hair) seated next to a long-haired woman cradling a baby. The man had his arm around the woman's shoulders and they both smiled down at the child.

"It's a monument to my parents…and me," Harry said. "The Wizarding community put it up a year after the attack. I wish they'd left me out of it."

"I know you don't want to hear this," Hermione said, "but they couldn't have left you out. This isn't just a memorial to your parents; it's a memorial to their love for you. I can't imagine a better way to be remembered by the world than for loving someone so much."

Harry stared at the statue for a moment, only realising his stare had turned into a glower when Hermione said, "I'm sorry, I didn't want to upset you."

He shook his head. "No, it's not you. It's…I feel selfish saying this, but I don't want to share my parents' love with everyone else in the country. I'd rather have had it all to myself and never had anyone else in the world know how much they loved me. This just reminds me of how much that wanker stole from me."

Hermione enfolded him in a hug, and it wasn't until her cheek brushed his neck that he realised she'd been crying. "I don't care if that's selfish. I'll tell anyone who'd grudge you that love to shove off. This was the life you should have had and nobody had any right to take it from you, especially some lackwit anagram fanatic."

"Thank you." Harry hugged her back for a minute before releasing her. "I might as well show you their house, too. It's on the way to the graveyard."

"Lead on," Hermione said. Harry offered her his left arm, which she took in her right before laying her left hand on his bicep in a manner that was somehow simultaneously tender and possessive.

A short walk up the street took them past the church and to a large cottage, similar in construction to many of the others on the street but with its whole second floor blasted out. Only about a third of the roof remained, and snow blanketed the structure like a shroud. Ivy-covered rubble was strewn through the yard, and the hedge around the house grew wild and untamed.

"They…they left it like this?" Hermione asked.

Harry nodded.

"But…why?"

"Allegedly as a reminder of the violence of the war and the loss of my parents' lives," Harry said. "I've always found it macabre."

"I agree," Hermione said. "The other memorial was at least a monument to love. This just seems to be a monument to violence and destruction."

"I've always hated it, too," Harry said. "I wish they'd put up a playground or something, instead. That seems like a better way to honour what my parents lived and died for than…" he gestured at the ruin, "this."

"Definitely," Hermione said. "After I graduate and become a full-fledged witch, I'm going to see if we can force them to do something better with it."

"It's OK, really," Harry said. "You'll have better things to do by then than worry about my parents' old cottage."

The look she gave him made it quite clear that she would find time to handle the cottage.

The graveyard was a short walk from the cottage and the church was still dark as they approached the kissing gate that led to the graveyard. The standing area within the gate was a tight fit for two, but Hermione didn't seem to mind the close quarters as he swung the gate past them.

After they extracted themselves from the gate, Harry gave her his arm again as they walked into the cemetery. Ancient tombstones covered with fresh snow were all around them, but Harry led them unerringly to a pair of relatively new stones marked with his parents' names. Hermione raised her eyebrows as she read their epitaph, but fortunately she chose not to ask any questions. Before he died, Professor Dumbledore had told Harry far more about that epitaph than Harry had ever wanted to know, and he didn't want to burden anyone else with the knowledge of what he was.

The fresh snow absorbed what little sound there was around them, creating a peaceful silence in the graveyard. Hermione stood a few feet back from the grave, her head bowed, as Harry knelt and placed the flowers on his mother's grave and the snitch box on the grave of his father. After a moment to compose his thoughts, he spoke.

"Hi Mum & Dad. It's been a weird year, and I wish you were here to give me some advice. I'm a full-fledged Auror now, despite my terrible grades in Potions. I thought that would make Dad proud, at least, but then Prof…Headmistress McGonagall told me that he only did that because there was a war on and he wanted to protect us."

He sighed. "I'm sorry I quit Quidditch, but after awhile the victories just felt hollow, since I was just making money for the same Purebloods who sat by while a madman hunted down people like Mum. So now I don't know what to do. Some days I'm half-tempted to let Britain just sink into a cesspool of its own bigotry, but I can't leave that fate to Neville or Susan or the Weasleys. Or Hermione. Right, she wasn't here last year. Um…I don't even know where to begin describing her. She's my brilliant girlfriend who had her magic bound and still somehow figured out about magic and how to cast a Levitation Charm. It took Ron three weeks to figure out how to do that and he had a teacher helping him. She worked it out all from the few books that skirted the Statute. We're helping her learn enough to pass her O.W.L.s this year so she can legally be a witch. Watching her learn is tremendous fun. Mum, you'd be proud of her, and Dad, I promise I'm making sure she has fun sometimes.

"She's the only reason I don't feel completely lost right now, to be honest. She has a goal, I can help with that goal, and that's that. I'm not sure what to do next, though. As an Auror, I feel like I'm shovelling the country's shite–"

"Language!" Hermione hissed. "Your mum's right there!"

Harry had the weird desire to both laugh and sob simultaneously, but he just swallowed both and continued talking. "And as a Quidditch player, I felt like I was just feeding the people who…um…excreted [here Hermione nodded approvingly at his choice of terms] the dung that I'm shovelling as an Auror. There's got to be something more out there, but I don't know what it is. You saved my life for a reason, so you must have had an idea. You didn't leave it for me, though, so I've got nothing."

He knelt there for a moment, out of words, before Hermione knelt next to him. "May I say something?" she asked.

Harry nodded.

"Your parents didn't save your life because they expected anything of you, or because they had some sort of grand plan in which you were a key piece," she said. "They saved your life because they loved their baby boy more than anything, and they'd rather die than live in a world without you in it. That's all. No expectation of repayment or your life's work in exchange. Just love."

"They must have wanted something for me, though," Harry said. "I've spent my whole life hearing about them and how great they were. I want to live up to that, but I don't know how. I've been an elite athlete and now I'm in the elite of our law enforcement and nothing feels like enough."

Hermione took his hand. "They loved you, Harry. You were enough. Realistically, all they wanted for you was probably what they had: a loving family. Everything else is just gravy. If they were here right now, do you think they would love you one whit less if you had failed to make it onto that Quidditch team?"

He knelt there silently.

"Harry, look at me," Hermione said. He did so, and found himself gazing into chocolate-brown eyes with flecks of silver moonlight flashing out of them. "Tell me you don't think that."

He shook his head. "I wish they'd just given me to Tommy. They could have had other children."

The vise-like hug hit him so hard that he toppled over into the snow. "No," Hermione said, tears in her voice. "Please believe me. That's not how love works. Sure, they could have had another kid someday, but they loved you. Not because of who they thought you might become, or because they were Boy-Who-Lived fanboys avant la lettre, but because you were you: a little bundle of crying, laughing, and pooping joy that ruined their sleep. That was enough because they loved you."

"I don't deserve that," Harry said, his cheeks wet with tears of an uncertain provenance he was in no hurry to sort out.

"Nobody deserves love," Hermione said. "Love cannot be 'deserved,' only gifted."

"I've never thought about it like that," Harry said.

Hermione nodded. "You've been asking the wrong questions," she said. "Don't ask what your parents wanted you to do, because we already know the answer: be a happy young man with a loving family and a fulfilling life. Instead, ask yourself how you get there."

"I'm not sure about that, either," he said.

"It's OK," Hermione replied. "That's not an easy question for anyone. At least it's the right one, though."

He nodded. "I do feel better now, thank you. I'm…um…also feeling a bit wet, though, so perhaps we should get up."

"Oh!" Hermione scrambled off of him and helped him up. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be," Harry said, "though I wouldn't mind a Drying Charm if you've learnt it."

"I skipped ahead for that one," Hermione said. "It seemed like a quicker way to dry my hair in the morning."

"Great!" Harry said. "Learning magic is one thing, but I'm glad to see you making it a part of your daily life, too." He turned around and reveled in the blast of warmth from the Drying Charm. "Thank you."

"No worries," Hermione said. "It was my fault in the first place."

Harry smiled. "The hug was worth it. Would you like to head home now?"

"Sure, let's–"

Just then, someone flipped on the lights inside St. Jerome's.