[A/N: Thank you to Calamity Owl for beta-reading this chapter! As a reminder, I'm going to be out for the next four weeks. I thought this chapter was a good place to stop, since it is both one of my favorite chapters in the story and not a cliffhanger. I hope you all have a great month and I can't wait to see how you like this chapter!]
Elf-apparition wasn't as disorienting as a side-along with Harry, but Hermione still needed Dobby's hand to steady her for a couple of seconds after they arrived in her parents' garage. Her parents never drove anywhere on Christmas Day (especially since nothing was open), so she figured it was a safe bet.
"Thank you, Dobby." She knelt down to the elf's eye-level as she spoke. "I can make my own way home on the train tomorrow."
Dobby shook his head. "Missy My-oh-knee doesn't need to take the train when she can call Dobby."
"It's alright, really," Hermione said.
"Oh, good," Dobby said. "Dobby sees you tomorrow!" He popped away before she could respond.
"That little scoundrel…" Hermione shook her head and made her way to the door to the house.
"Once more unto the breach," she muttered as she opened it. "Mother? Father?"
Footsteps pounded along the short corridor. "Hermione?" her mother Monica asked as she came into view around the corner. She wore a long, loose woollen skirt much like Hermione's, but her white blouse was much more closely tailored to her trim form than Hermione's second-hand blouse was, and she'd chosen to accentuate it with pearls despite the fact only the three of them would be present for dinner.
"I couldn't find my house key in my bag," Hermione said, affecting a sheepish look, "so I used the code to let myself into the garage."
"I see," her mother said. "Come in, then. I'll take your coat."
Hermione shrugged off her old coat and passed it to her mother. The slightly distasteful expression that flitted across the woman's face as she took the second-hand garment was easier to bear than the inevitable questioning she'd have received if she'd worn her new (to her) crushed velvet capelet.
Her mother hung up her coat in the hall closet and escorted her to the sitting room. Her father Wendell was sitting in his usual chair flipping through that week's edition of The Economist.
"Good morning, Hermione," he said as she entered the room. He made no effort to get up to greet her, and neither did she go to him. Her parents found the predilection for hugs she'd acquired from her nanny to be a bit déclassé.
"Good morning, Father," Hermione said. "Happy Christmas."
"Happy Christmas," he replied with an acknowledging nod. "Won't you sit down?"
She sat down on the chesterfield, choosing the right side for herself. Her mother sat down on the left side. "Happy Christmas," Monica said. "I confess we were surprised that you didn't arrive last night. However did you arrange transportation today with the trains and buses shut for the holiday?"
Hermione took a deep breath. "My life has changed a great deal in the last three months. My boyfriend's driver brought me here this morning."
Both of her parents' eyebrows shot up. "You have a boyfriend with his own driver?" her father asked.
"Do tell," her mother added. "I didn't know you were seeing anyone. In fact, I was starting to wonder if you would ever see someone."
"We met at the book stall," Hermione said, ignoring her parents' incredulity as best she could, which, to borrow a phrase from her favourite book as a child, was less than half as well as she'd have liked. "It turned out we had the same field of study."
Her father snorted. "There's another one?"
"More than you'd think," Hermione replied. "He introduced me to the staff at his school and they agreed to take me on as a pupil for some more specialised study in my field."
"So you're switching universities?" her mother asked.
"Yes, to a small, lesser-known school that you probably haven't heard of." It was mostly true. At least kind of true.
Her parents shared a long-suffering glance. "Dear," her mother began, "we only want the best for you. A graduate degree from University College London isn't great, but at least prospective employers will have heard of it. Are you sure you should throw that away for this new school?"
"Absolutely," Hermione said. "It's well-known in this sub-field and will be a fantastic opportunity."
"In that sub-field, perhaps," her father said. "I do wish you'd reconsider reading the law. You would be a marvellous solicitor, I've always said so."
"That you have," Hermione said. "I still love my current field, though, and I want to pursue it. If I haven't made significant progress on my current studies by autumn, I may need to reassess that."
"That's a reasonable position," the older man said. "One that I wish you'd taken a year or two ago, but I'll take what I can get."
"I'm more interested in this young man," her mother said. "You said he's also at this school?"
"He's a recent graduate," Hermione said. "He was popular with the faculty and introduced me to several who have been wonderfully helpful so far."
"I do hope there were no…strings attached to his assistance," her mother said.
"Of course not!" Hermione replied.
"So there's a perfectly reasonable explanation about why our annual Christmas card was returned with no forwarding address from your flat?" the older woman asked.
Hermione felt her cheeks heating up and fought her instinct to run away. She'd done nothing wrong…or even Harry, for that matter. That last thought sent a small smile to her face, which in turn induced frowns from her parents.
As amusing as that was, it probably wasn't helpful, so she swallowed the smile and spoke up. "He invited me to move in with him so I could study full-time. My scholarship is time-limited, so I have to work quickly if I'm to complete it."
"And he can afford to have you live with him because he's independently wealthy?" her mother asked.
"Sort of," Hermione said. "He's the heir to a minor title, played professional sports in the States for a few years, and is currently a police detective. He's quite wealthy."
Her father snorted again. "I thought we'd raised you to be more sceptical. Add in 'secret agent' and you'd have pretty much the standard pack of lies young blokes tell girls."
"No, he's legitimately amazing," Hermione said. "I visited him in the hospital after he caught a pair of serial killers. The…deputy minister herself visited him just as I was leaving."
"Probably one of his friends posing as the person," he said. "I mean, serial killers?"
"I've had young men try to sell me on sillier stories," her mother said. "Does he make you do all of the cooking and cleaning, too, or was he satisfied with your virtue?"
"We share chores," Hermione ground out. She had to stop herself from reaching for her wand. "And we haven't even slept together! Well, besides that one time when he was having nightmares about the serial killers, but we didn't do anything besides cuddle. He was a perfect gentleman." Though he hadn't wanted to be. She'd never seen that look in a man's eyes before, not directed at her, but the intent was quite clear.
Her mother raised her sculpted eyebrows. "We've been around the block a few times, dear. Don't tell us you're living with a wealthy, attractive man who's happy supporting your academic ambitions and hasn't demanded 'payment.'"
Unbidden, the image of Harry slashing his palm again in the ritual circle sprang into her mind. "No," she said, shaking her head, "I owe him so much and he never wants anything in return. He always acts like I'm doing him the favour by staying with him."
"You don't have to lie to us," the older woman said. "We'll still care for you even if you've been careless with your personal life."
"But you can't believe he cares for me like that?" Hermione asked.
"Professional athletes, if he was one, aren't known for settling down young," her father said. "And when they do, it's usually with a model or actress, not a frumpy graduate student in a field no one cares about at a school no one's ever heard of."
Tears welled up in Hermione's eyes as her father's comment hit almost every one of her insecurities simultaneously. Her previous boggart had clearly been insufficiently inventive.
She froze. The boggart was the key. A mean grin spread across her face as she fixed her eyes on her father and said, "Riddikulus!"
Her parents' eyebrows shot up at her apparent mispronunciation of the word, but she was past caring. If she could defeat a boggart with magic, she could damn well take on mere humans with words.
"I don't see what's so ridic–" Monica began, but Hermione cut her off.
"You are," Hermione said. "Both of you. I'm done trying to muster rational arguments and evidence in the face of your irrational faith in your swotty daughter's inability to snag a decent man without whoring herself out to him. So I think it's time I told you some more of the truth."
Monica smirked. "So you did–"
"Shut up," Hermione said, and Monica's mouth slammed shut in shock. "Yes, I did try to seduce him after I got drunk on my birthday, and I failed miserably because I'm pants at seduction, he's a good man, and then the whole evening went wrong for an unrelated reason. I haven't had the guts to try again, but our conversation has convinced me to give it another go."
Wendell glared at her. "We raised you better th–"
"Shut up, Wendell, or I'll shut you up," Hermione hissed as she rose from her chair. "You've said your piece and now I'm saying mine. Like I said, I should thank you both for helping me talk through my emotions, because you've helped me realise I've left a wonderful man alone on Christmas so I could have the pleasure of being denigrated by my parents."
Wendell opened his mouth again, only to shut it when Hermione whipped a finger into his face. "Speak, I dare you." She paused. "No? Pity. Anyway, I'm going to go home now, tell that wonderful man how much he means to me, and shag him senseless. I hope the two of you have a lovely dinner together complaining about your swotty, boring, undesirable daughter and what's gotten into her, because she won't be here. I will be in bed and hopefully screaming with ecstasy because the man I love is who's in me, and I wouldn't trade it for the world."
Hermione spun on her heels, picked up her backpack, and strode out of the room. Although she probably had a new boggart, the looks on her parents' faces were her new Riddikulus mental image, so that was something.
"You can keep my coat!" she shouted back to them before slamming the garage door behind her. "Dobby?" she called out. Before she had much of a chance to worry about how foolish she'd look if this didn't work, the elf popped up next to her.
"How can Dobby help Mistress My-Knee?" he asked.
"Please take me home," she said.
He nodded excitedly and grabbed her hand. A few disorienting seconds later found her in Harry's foyer again. "Thank you," she said. "Is Harry home? I don't hear him."
"No, Great and Powerful Wizard Harry Potter is out walking," Dobby said. "Would Mistress like Dobby to fetch him?"
"No, thank you," Hermione said. "I'll await him here. Um…would you mind leaving the house for awhile? I'd like some private time with him."
Dobby nodded again. "Of course! Dobby knows little witches and wizards don't make themselves," he said, and disappeared before Hermione could respond.
She stood there for a moment, gobsmacked, before shaking her head and going upstairs to change. That elf was a piece of work.
The cold, wet winter air bit at Harry's cheeks, but a brisk walk along Regent's Canal still beat the oppressive silence of his house just then. Eventually, though, the annoyance of the cold overcame the memory of the silence and he turned for home. He figured he could make himself a sandwich and warm up by one of the fireplaces for a bit before the silence got too oppressive. It wasn't much, but it would pass the time.
The walk back was a bit worse because he was going straight into the wind, which was an annoying bit of information he had a bad feeling he'd forget before he got restless enough to go back outside later and make the exact same mistake. He was reduced to holding his hands over his face and blowing into them to keep his nose warm by the time he made it back home (he could have cast a quick Warming Charm, but that always felt like cheating somehow). He quickly kicked the snow off of his boots and hurried inside to get warm again.
"Hullo, Hermione," he said to the familiar figure seated in her usual place on the living room couch. "Thank you for starting the fire. I'm…frozen…sti…" he trailed off and dropped his gloves as he realised who he'd seen.
Hermione was in her bathrobe for some reason and giggled as he turned to stare at her. "Welcome home, Harry."
Four quick strides carried him from the foyer to the couch, where he leaned down and caught her lips with his for a kiss. He'd meant it to be a long kiss, but Hermione broke it off after only a few seconds.
"Your face is freezing!" she said. "Sit here and warm up by the fire."
"Snogging would also work," Harry said. His brain was now thoroughly focused on continuing their previous activity.
"We can snog after we've ensured you won't catch your death of cold," Hermione said. "Now sit and oh my God I am truly awful at this." She leaned forward and put her head in her hands. "I should just go home and tell my parents they were right about me."
Harry sat down on the couch next to her and wrapped his right arm around her shoulders. "I have no idea what's going on," he said. "I shouldn't, should I? I apologise if I should but I don't."
"None of this is your fault," she said. "My visit with my parents didn't go very well. They accused you of…well…remunerating me for…um…intercourse."
"Wait…they accused their own daughter of being a prostitute?" Harry asked.
Hermione nodded, her head still in her hands.
"That's…" Harry trailed off and thought for a moment. "Muggle baiting is against the law, you know," he said. "It's illegal to curse them for our own amusement, no matter how much they deserve it. Want to know a secret, though? We can only catch the people who are obvious about it. Like, a muggle starts growing horns or rabbit ears, stuff like that. Stuff that looks like normal ailments is almost never found out. So I guess what I'm saying is, would you like to go back there and give your parents the Christmas gift of painful haemorrhoids?"
Hermione was silent for a moment, then started giggling, and those giggles quickly turned into a full-body laugh that shook her so hard that she leaned into Harry for support. "That would be hilarious," she said once she'd mostly stopped laughing, "but they're not worth it. Thank you for the suggestion, though. That was the laugh I needed."
"As the son of a Marauder, I could do no less," Harry said. "You don't want to know what Sirius would do to them. I understand why you walked out after that."
"That wasn't the only reason," Hermione said, her voice muffled as she buried her face in Harry's shoulder. "They also implied I would never be able to keep your attention in a relationship because I made you sound so amazing that you would never be satisfied with me."
"I'm not sure I'm amazing," Harry said, "but I'm definitely not unfaithful. Are you sure I can't mess with them?
"That wouldn't make them stop," Hermione said.
"You never know," Harry said. "Perhaps there's a number of inflamed haemorrhoids that gives a person such a huge pain in the arse that they paradoxically stop being a pain in the arse to other people. We're never going to know unless we check, Hermione. This isn't for us; it's for science."
She shook with laughter in his arms. "The one thing they weren't wrong about is how amazing you are," she said. "I eventually realised that I was being an idiot for spending Christmas with people who treat me deplorably while leaving a wonderful man home alone, so I stormed out."
"I'm sorry that happened," Harry said, "but I'm so happy you're home. My house has never felt so empty before. I went out walking to escape the silence, but the cold eventually got to me, too."
"We'll sort something out going forward," Hermione said. "I don't want either of us to be alone like that again on a holiday."
"That sounds good to me," Harry said. "Why were you upset about telling me to sit down and warm up, though? I don't understand the connection."
She hid her face in his shoulder again. "They implied I was swotty and frigid, so I…um…told them I was going to go home and shag you senseless. As soon as you returned, though, I was back to ordering you around and ignoring the opportunity to snog you more. Maybe they were right about me."
Harry hugged her tightly and tried to focus on what he should say rather than the shagging. "I don't mind, really," he said. "Like I've said before, it's nice to have someone worrying about me for once. It's one of the things I like about you."
"Really?" Hermione asked, peeking out from Harry's shoulder a bit.
"Yes. If I didn't enjoy you being a bit swotty and bossy, I'd have to be pretty silly to start a relationship with you, wouldn't I? You are who you are, and I like you."
She was silent for a moment, but spoke up again just before Harry was about to ask her if he'd said something wrong. "You have a remarkable knack," she said, "for getting straight to the heart of a matter."
"Thank you," Harry replied. "Now, what was that about shagging me senseless? I'd like to hear more about that part."
Hermione hid her face again and mumbled something.
"What was that?" Harry asked.
"I told them I was going to seduce you and may have mentioned that I intended to be screaming in ecstasy by later today," she said.
Harry's brain completely shut down while attempting to process that statement.
"Harry?" Hermione's voice was small and scared. "You're not mad at me, are you?"
The realisation that he'd worried her kickstarted his brain again. "Of course not! That was brilliant! You're brilliant! How could I be mad at you? I mean, now I'm a little nervous about living up to your vote of confidence, but that's on me."
"So you don't think that was crass?" she asked, a bit of her normal tone returning to her voice.
He patted her head and ran his fingers through her gloriously uncontrollable curls. "To everything there is a season. That was the season to be crass as fuck and you rose wonderfully to the occasion."
Hermione raised her head up from his shoulder. "Did you just paraphrase Ecclesiastes while using foul language and complimenting me for traumatising my parents?"
"I think so," Harry said. "I saw that in one of those philosophy books I borrowed from the library so I would have more to talk with you about at our lunches."
She wrapped her hands around the back of his head and pulled his lips to hers. "You," she said, slipping the word breathlessly in between kisses, "strip. Now."
Harry grinned and pulled off his jumper and shirt. As soon as his chest was bare, Hermione ran her hands over it. "I've wanted to do this since I first saw you bare-chested," she said. "I don't even know why. I feel like I'm treating you like a hunk of meat, but you're so…delicious." She licked her lips and Harry's pants promptly tightened.
"Care to return the favour?" he asked, raking his eyes across her bathrobe.
"Um…sure." Hermione started unfastening her robe, but Harry caught one of her hands in his.
"Is everything alright?" he asked. "We don't have to do this."
"No, it's fine," she said. "I want to…but I'm not you, Harry. I mean, look at you. You're gorgeous. I am nowhere near as beautiful a woman as you are a man."
"Men aren't beautiful," Harry said. "We're ruggedly handsome."
She raised her eyebrows at him. "Is now the time to be correcting my word choice?"
He raised his right back. "Are you implying there's a bad time to correct word choice?"
"That's…a fair cop, actually," Hermione said. "Carry on."
"Anyway," Harry continued, "there are women out there with straighter hair than yours, or longer legs, or bigger breasts. I don't want them, though. I want you. I know I'm going to be happy with whatever I see under your robe because it'll be you."
"You make it sound so easy," she said.
"Because it is easy," Harry said, and kissed her. She didn't resist him when he pulled her robe off a few minutes later, or when his kisses began to trail down her neck and chest. She merely trusted him and allowed him to prove himself worthy of that trust.
