Summary: AU, SHG, Hermione found comfort after the war in a person she did not expect. Her "friends" do not agree with her choices.

Beta Love: Sneaky Dutchgirl01, Dragon and the Spring Winds, Commander Shepard the Questionable Absent, and Superdimples the Barrel-Riding Acrobat of Life

Prompt: Rare delights can be found in the darkness, if you're willing to dance with monsters.


Comfort

A Corvus Short Story

"Sometimes, the best way to help someone is just to be near them."

― Veronica Roth, Divergent


"He is kind, gentle," Hermione said. "He is patient with me even when I cannot be patient with myself. He gives me consideration when even my supposed friends could not. Why would I not want to be with him?"

"There are things you don't know about him!"

"What could he possibly have done that you think would make a lick of difference?"

"He's an assassin, Hermione," Harry insisted.

"For what organization?" Hermione said.

"What do you mean for what—"

Hermione scowled. "In case you haven't noticed, even the Ministry has Hit Wizards and Hit Witches. They are, as you say, assassins."

"That's different!"

Hermione gave him a look.

"Hermione, he's a leech!"

Hermione's expression darkened. "How impartial of you," she said. "Considering the war we fought for."

"Look," Harry said. "We-I can prove it."

"We?" Hermione asked, missing nothing.

"Oh, just show her, 'arry," Ron blurted. "We dealt with 'im."

Hermione's head jerked up. "What do you mean, you 'dealt with him'?"

When Hermione realised Ron was standing at the door of her flat looking cocksure and smug, her eyes widened. "How did you get past my wards?"

Ron smiled. "Aurors have ways."

Hermione pushed by him, using a silent spell to stick Ronald to the doorframe he was leaning on as she glued his tongue to the top of his mouth and made all his teeth fall out. As Harry tried to run past him, he stuck to Ron, and they both did their best fly stuck in a sundew plant impression.

As Hermione came into her flat, she saw the remains of what had been a romantic dinner with candles and her favourite home-cooked meal, only most of it was on the floor with shoe prints in it. The drink glasses were broken on the floor, their contents lost to the crevices and now wine-stained rug.

And then her eyes fell on the bloody, lacerated body crumpled on the floor.

"NO!" Hermione cried, rushing to his side.

The vampire's eyes were swollen as if he had been in a fist fight, his skin lacerated. Silver, magic imbued manacles bound his hands and feet—somehow, Ronald had gotten them on him. How, she had no idea. Sanguini was no magicless being—

Her mind threw out the tiny bit of conversation she had overheard at work about stealth restraints for Dark witches and wizards. They had considered them for her job—but Amelia had vetoed it. Her job was not to bring people to the Wizengamot. Her job was to eliminate threats, not give them time to think of a way out of their irons. The people she eliminated had already been found guilty and sentenced.

Apparently, the restraints were more than just theory.

How had she missed this so close to home?

Cursing, she cradled Sanguini's head as he could barely blink at her.

"I fear I am not looking my best, dear one," he rasped, blood trickling down his mouth. There was blood everywhere, if she was being honest with herself. It was hard to tell where it even began. His voice, normally a rumbling purr, sounded rough and grating as if he was and had gargled with glass.

His eyes were brown like dark chocolate without even a hint of crimson. Whatever they had done to him, they had cut him from his power. They had severed him from what would have allowed him to fight back.

His power had always been like the kiss of promise, lingering under his skin. To her, it had felt like brushing against Crookshanks when the feline had felt it was time to cuddle and snuggle on his own terms. He had never shown his power save once—


She was going to die.

She had mis-calculated this monster of a man who wore a human face. The worst kind of monster was always human. This one was murdering Muggles and magicals alike. Slicing them up and leaving messages of salvation to the old gods, as if the gods expected and wanted the sacrifices only he knew of.

She was foolish to have restricted herself to normal magic.

Normal magic was for formal occasions when your life wasn't on the line.

Stupid, stupid girl.

She should have left her ethical quandary at home instead of dancing around the abilities she had gained just because it was because of Bellatrix that they had arisen.

But maybe, even if she didn't survive this, he wouldn't survive either.

She could at least do the world that service on her way out.

And have her old Master rolling in his afterlife about what an idiot she was.

And he'd probably be right.

Mostly.

She looked the psychopath in the eyes, and she called on that Darkness inside her that she'd buried so deep even as he moved lightning quick to slice her throat with his glinting blade—

Odd that he would choose a blade over magic—

She should have guessed.

She should have known.

I'm sorry, Master, she said as she opened the gate that held back the Darkness.

And just as the Darkness surged from her body in a rush, a blur of movement took her mark and slammed him into the far wall. The blade went clanking across the floor and then stabbed itself into a crevice.

She saw the flash of fangs in the dark and glowing red eyes that made malevolence a term for children trying to describe their fear of the dark, only to find out that Grues were real, and they ate children.

When the light crept back into the alley, lanterns and lights slowly fighting against the blackness, Hermione saw the pale, immaculate man wiping a trace of blood from his mouth as he smoothly removed her mark's head from his neck with what looked like an ancient dagger. The movement was so quick, there wasn't even blood on the blade before the head went toppling to the ground only to be impaled by the mark's own blade. The body sank to the alley floor with a thump.

The Dark saber-toothed creature that had finished materialising had a moment of puzzled reflection before savagely mauling the corpse and devouring it, first the body, then the head with the kind of relish a child with fresh popcorn at the movie theatre might indulge.

Hermione stared at the pale man as he stared back at her.

A fine trickle of blood moved down his cheek, and a taloned finger brushed against his skin as he stared at the blood in confusion.

She imagined anyone who looked so immaculate while murdering someone would be confused if blood randomly graced his skin.

"We seem to have—" the man said slowly, "the same mark, child."

The Dark feline licked its shadow-dripping teeth.

"Unless, I am also on the menu?" he asked, cleaning his blade with magic before sheathing it, despite the fact it didn't have any gore on it to speak of.

Hermione swallowed. "No, he was the only one that needed to be—dealt with."

"We should talk," the man said, giving her a slow blink. "There is a cafe—on the other side of town."

He offered his hand, his otherworldly talons having shrunken to a far more human appearance. "I am Mihail," he said, perhaps a gesture of trust.

Hermione tentatively took his hand, still far too captivated by his eyes to even admonish herself for such trust after a hit gone wrong.

"Hermione," she said as he helped pull her up from the alley floor.

His smile was fleeting as the crack of his Apparate carried them away.


They courted like two normal people who weren't assassins. He made her favourite foods. He actually knew what they were. He paid attention to her likes and her quibbles and miscellaneous foibles. And when he held her, it was like the world fell away and there was only him and the feel of his body against hers, his arms wrapped around her, and her mind convinced that if she were going to build a Dark nest of happiness, he would be the centerpiece.

But no matter how tender or passionate the kisses, or how enthusiastically he made love to her, he never once bit her or took her blood.

She'd sensed his hunger.

His need.

But he always reined it in and kept his courtship uncomplicated. Whatever two assassins, one mortal with Dark proclivities that took the form of a giant problem-eating feline and a vampire, could possibly have that was "normal."

Hell if she knew.

"You need blood, Mihail," she told him.

"No, not like this," he protested. "Not like this. It should—it needs to be—an act of love."

"If not this, then when?" Hermione argued. "Is this not an act of love?"

He gave her an even more tortured look through a mask of blood. "If I drink from you, I can never go back. I will crave you forever. Need you—eternal. The first time should not be like this. At my weakest. At my worst."

"You need it," Hermione insisted. "I am willing. Please—"

Sanguini shook his head, wincing.

Even with blood streaming from his body and away, he refused to take her blood, and she wanted to scream at him, shake him, but she knew Mihail was stubborn.

Whatever hangup he had—it had its hooks in his seat of stubbornness.

"Imperio!"

Hermione's face went slack as the spell caught her unaware, too distracted by Sanguini's state to notice that her friends had escaped the doorway.

"No, love, no," Sanguini choked out a protest as Hermione picked up a knife from the floor in the remains of their romantic dinner.

Her expression was blank as she raised the knife in the air with both hands to plunge it into Sanguini's chest in a very amateur and un-Hermione manner.

Shink!

She plunged it into his upper left chest—

Sanguini grimaced and saw the float of Dark oil across her eyes and realised while part of Hermione was not home to answer the door, the "cat" was listening.

She had plunged the knife into his chest where normal people thought their heart was, as if the place one swore an oath was closer to the shoulder than the sternum.

With a desperate move, Sanguini captured her mouth with his, jerking her toward him.

And he felt the Darkness move within her, like the Dark below the sea's surface. It poured out of her pores, nose, and mouth and even her eyes and reformed into a very large, very pissed off Dark un-feline.

Tentacles surged outward, spearing Ronald in the gut through and through, emerging to the other side to swirl around his head.

The other shot through "nothingness" until that nothingness started to bleed. The feline smashed into the remains of the door with its body, tentacles slamming the two wizards to the wall, ceiling, and floor, scraping the surfaces with their faces as they screamed.

Sanguini realised that as Hermione's mind was lost to her, there was no regulator to her Dark companion. It did what it wanted—and what it wanted was blood and pain.

Suddenly, one octopus-like tentacle slammed Ronald Weasley's body in front of him, shoving his neck straight up to his face even as he bled from his countless lacerations to the front side of his body.

Well, it wasn't Hermione—

Sanguini savagely mauled Ronald's neck, going deep for the carotid, and he gulped down the blood offering with haste, ignoring the stale taste of the subpar blood in favour of survival. As he fed, his cuts and injuries mended. His skin grew paler. His hands twisted into talons. His rounded human ears grew pointed, and his scleras turned black. His irises glowed crimson.

Two tentacles that had sprouted out of the ground wiggled around the manacles on his wrists and ankles, and there was a sharp CLICK as they fell to the ground and then shot like a bullet across the room to hit the empty yet strangely bleeding air with a crack.

Harry Potter fell out of the "nothingness" to the ground in his own pool of blood from his countless lacerations.

The Dark un-cat's mouth opened in an eager snarl as it leapt upon him, tearing him to screaming shreds as it sprouted countless eyes—and even more countless teeth.

"NO! NOT HARRY, YOU BLOODY BITCH!"

The green beam of a spell zinged towards Hermione's vacant body, and Sanguini pulled her against him, taking the spell to the back as they went flying into the wall together, sliding down it with a bloody smear.

As Ginevra Weasley stepped out from under the invisibility cloak to gloat over the corpses of Sanguini and Hermione, perhaps the moment was still too hot to temper her reasoning. As she smiled over them, a cruelness to her mouth that seemed more like one of Hermione's marks than the childhood friend she had once had, the Dark un-cat rose up behind her, various tentacles writhing with anticipation, its jaws widened impossibly large to expose many many teeth and even more tentacles within.

The tentacles shot out and speared Ginny and dragged her screaming body into its waiting void.

The moment she disappeared into the gaping maw of the Void, the field of Darkness collapsed as light returned to the remains of Hermione's flat.


"That's unnatural," Sanguini said as he placed his palm to Hermione's cheek. His eyes flicked over to the sunny windowsill where a cat-shaped 'miniature' feline soaked up the sun's rays like a typical cat.

"Not as unnatural as what he ate," Hermione said with a pained smile. "Or coughed up as a hairball."

"Tom Riddle seems to have left a trail of himself and we have yet to find all the pieces," Sanguini said.

Unspeakables hissed and clicked in their shadow language, gesturing with their intricate gauntlets as they poked and prodded the mentally broken Ginevra Weasley. If there was any lick of sanity left in her, it was huddled under a thousand silent screams.

"Ma'am," one of them said without their mask on. "What do you want us to do with the invisibility cloak?"

Amelia Bones, Head Boss of You of the Department of Mysteries, sprouted a fine pair of dragonbat ears that promptly flattened against her head. "Set it on the altar of Hades and let the God decide its fate," she said with a huff of purple breath.

"And Weasley? Erm, the male one," another asked.

"Put those suppression manacles he loved so much on him and bind him to his bed at Mungo's. I want him under guard until he heals enough to go before Wizengamot. I don't care if he's coherent. I just need him breathing."

"Ma'am," they answered, levitating Ronald's mutilated and somewhat bloodless body away.

"What happens to Harry?" Hermione whispered, her expression sad. "He's been used and misled since the day he watched his mum die. To be misled by his best mate. His wife. Dumbledore—"

"I'm still trying to piece together why any of this happened," Sanguini said. "Was it all to get back at me for actually wanting you to be happy?"

"I think she still blamed me for Harry having second thoughts about marriage."

"They were married, though," Sanguini said.

"I wonder now if it was his choice," Hermione said.

"So she wanted to set this all up so you'd end up killing me, and then what—be so depressed you'd kill yourself?" Sanguini asked, his face a question mark.

"I don't know," Hermione said. "Tom Riddle was a messed-up individual. What he thought would be fair and reasonable is nothing I can fathom. She was influenced by that diary early in life. That's a lot of years to have him whispering to her. What she or he couldn't have planned for, however, was my Dark familiar. Or that Bellatrix would have endeared me to the Dark with her torture. Or that she or he had no idea where the anatomical heart was."

"Lucky for us. Lucky for me," Sanguini said as he placed her palm against his actual heart.

Hermione's eyes widened as she realised it was beating.

"You—"

"It beats for you," he said. "I bleed for you. I want you. In my life for now. For later. Forever. What I so desperately wanted to say to you the night everything went pear-shaped and you tried to stick a dagger in me."

"Under the Imperius Curse!" Hermione protested.

Sanguini smiled at her. "Be my mate. For now. For always. May my blood sustain you as yours will me until we are no more."

Hermione's lips trembled, and she bit her lower lip.

He pulled a pendant out from his shirt. "This was my mother's. She gave it to me to protect me during the war with Rome. It is one of the few relics of a time long past of which I still have and keep it close to me." He pulled out a golden band and used his magic to shrink the pendant down and seal it to the band to make a ring. "Marry me. Be mine. May it blend our blood and magic together to a new life together." He shrugged his shoulders to detach the clinging Lethifold, and the Lethifold peered at her with its senses and then promptly affixed to her neck and shoulders.

Hermione stared at him, unmoving.

A flicker of doubt passed before his eyes. "Have I misinterpreted your interest?"

As Sanguini's face fell, the healer chastised the vampire. "Be patient, I had to paralyse her so she'd stop wiggling during the treatment!"

As the healer let Hermione go from his spell, Hermione pulled Sanguini down on the bed with her with a breathy, "Yes!"

Sanguini, sprawled over her awkwardly as his emotions both ran away with him and tried to gather simultaneously, managed to get the ring on her finger as she snogged him in front of the gathered Unspeakables and one Amelia Bones.

Amelia sighed as if she'd seen it all before.

The dark un-cat rubbed up against her, getting Dark plasma residue on her robes.

"Don't eat any of my Unspeakables," she ordered.

The Dark familiar did not reply, but he didn't devour anyone else either.


"Go ahead, say it."

Hermione sat down in the chair by the hospital bed. "It would hardly make things better," she said.

Harry slumped even more into the mattress. "I'll be lucky if I can even keep my job or home or anything after attacking both you and Sanguini. Molly won't even talk to me. Called me a homewrecker."

"I think you're looking at this in the wrong way, Harry," Hermione said. "Instead of caring about what any Weasley thinks of you, why aren't you thinking about what you actually want in life?"

Harry frowned. "I want a home. A family like the Wea—"

Hermione sighed. "Make your own family, Harry. When you're well again. Your own life. Don't try to make your life someone else's. You'll be chasing smoke. Do you really want to be like Arthur slaving away for too many children only to get browbeaten by a nagging wife for the rest of your life?"

Harry looked like he wanted to protest, and then he wilted. "They had everything I thought I wanted."

Hermione grunted. "So my family was what? Defective?"

Harry startled.

"Every family is different," Hermione said. "The good and bad mixed together. Sometimes more good. Sometimes bad. Lots of bad. But in focusing on just the Weasleys, you ignored what other families had. You were so intent on running away from the Dursleys, you latched onto the first family you thought had everything, but then you never let go of it enough to even care about other families."

Hermione closed her eyes for a few seconds before looking at him with furrowed brows. "And they were right there to tell you how right it was, weren't they? Encouraging you. Feeding you information to twist your perception in just the right places."

Harry turned his head away.

Hermione sighed deeply. "It's fine. When you're ready to talk, you can find me. I'll be here however long it takes, but Harry—"

Harry jerked his head up.

"Others won't. Be careful who you shun in this time of recovery."

Harry frowned, but Hermione turned and smiled as Sanguini walked to her side and raised her hand to his mouth and kissed her knuckles.

"Beloved," he purred.

Hermione pressed a kiss to his cheek.

"We have an assignment," he rumbled. "Or a dinner date. However you wish to view it."

Hermione grinned with a flash of fang. "You do know how to woo a witch."

"May it never end," Sanguini said with a wiggle of his eyebrows."

Rowwwrrr! The Dark un-cat said, headbutting Sanguini over.

"Food for you too, beast," Mihail tutted. "Leave some for the Lethifold."

The Lethifold rustled at the Dark familiar as terms seemed to be reached.

"Roww." The familiar nodded his head in agreement.

"If we hurry, we can have both dinner and a movie," Sanguini suggested.

Hermione stepped into his embrace as they swirled together and disappeared in a silent whorl of mist shaped like bats.

Harry stared at the empty space they left behind and thumped his head back on the pillow.


Hermione tucked herself against her snuggly mate's body as she attempted to nest against him, bound and determined to have a lie in regardless of whatever other things were on the schedule.

"Mmm," Sanguini murmured into her hair. "Hello."

"There is a dagger under my pillow again," Hermione murmured.

"Imagine that," Sanguini said with a chuckle. "We are a family of assassins, and there is a dagger under your pillow."

Hermione snuggled against him a little deeper. "Mmfphf."

He placed his palm to her cheek and pressed his lips to her forehead. "I am glad you are here with me. Here and today. Tomorrow. And beyond."

A babyfold squeegeed off Sanguini's forehead with a tiny squeak, flopping between them.

Hermione giggled, scooped it up, and tucked it against his neck.

Sanguini sighed, chuckling. "At least we know our Lethifolds are happy."

Hermione smiled. "It helps they are well fed and—"

Her eyes flicked to where her un-cat Dark familiar was having a case of the zoomies, a clutter of babyfolds clinging to his back.

"Entertained," Hermione finished.

Sanguini snorted.

"Mihail?"

Sanguini froze in place, a flutter in his stomach as he pondered what she was going to say next. The tone alone—

"Yes?"

"I was wondering—"

Sanguini felt that worry pool in his gut a little more.

"Would it be okay if we tried for a child?" Hermione bit her lip, her fang tips showing with the strength of her conflict.

Mihail's eyes widened as a broad smile broke over his face. He covered her mouth with his in a passionate kiss. "Beloved, of course we can try for a child. Why does this cause you such tension?"

"I wasn't sure—you wanted to risk—"

"Love, there is nothing wrong with you," he said. "Nothing."

"I don't want to disappoint you," Hermione said.

"You could never," Sanguini said. "Unless I find out you are actually Harry Potter, and then, yes. You could disappoint me. Greatly. A thousand times over."

Hermione burst out laughing. "I shouldn't laugh."

"But it is funny," he replied.

Hermione squinted and smiled. "Yes. At his expense, yes."

"He has had more time than most to find himself anew," Sanguini said. "To find what he truly wants versus what others want for him. You stepped away to allow him his choices and his life. You gave him time to discover what you had always given him and what it meant when it was gone by his own actions. It is all we can do when our time is so much longer. We must allow those with finite time to discover value in what they have been given. Now, I will stop sounding like the guru on the mountain and smother my mate with all the love she deserves."

Hermione eeped as Sanguini pounced her and did that and more.


Harry sighed, pushing away the last of the paperwork reports and setting his quill down.

A head poked around the door of his office. "You still here, boss?"

"Yeah, just finishing up the last of this paperwork on the Silver Fork Heist," Harry said.

"Never thought anyone would smuggle Dark artefacts as silverware through Muggle fêtes."

"That's probably why they thought they could get away with it, Mark," Harry said with a shake of his head. He picked up the photo on his desk where a young girl danced with her mother in the Ministry atrium.

"You going to take off to see your daughter off to Hogwarts, boss?"

Harry grunted. "I should—but I have that meeting."

"Meetings happen every day," Mark said. "Your daughter goes off to Hogwarts for the first time once in a lifetime."

"I—" Harry paused. "You know, you're right."

"You know it!" Mark said as he slung his brown coat over his shoulder. "Don't keep the wife waiting too long, boss."

Harry shooed him away as he cleaned his desk and stood, stretching. His days of being out in the field chasing down Dark Wizards was behind him. He had too many aches and too many old injuries to rely on his body to dodge in the right direction. He left to people like Mark to do the heavy lifting anymore. While he had married later in life than most, at least the second time, he did have a cheeky little spitfire for a daughter that would probably be Seeker before she hit second year.

Harry exited the Aurory with a bit of weary mundanity. He'd worked hard to be where he was, but he did miss a bit of the—adventure of when he'd been younger.

As he walked out of the Ministry exit, he saw them.

They looked like a young couple standing under the lamppost. They were dressed moderately Muggle. One would barely even give them a second thought in the Wizarding or Muggle world. Plain. Ordinary.

No one would have looked twice, save for that when they looked at each other, they had that look that couples who had been together far longer than their age belied—and a palpable affection that seemed to glide from their gaze to the other.

It was what he'd imagined his parents would have had—what he thought they had. What he thought the Weasleys had.

What he thought he'd had with Ginny—until it had all come crashing down.

As he approached, Sanguini lifted his head from his wife's neck, having placed kisses there like any couple in love who didn't care who was watching.

"We bought out the restaurant so there won't be anyone there with loose lips," Sanguini said casually. "The steak is to die for."

Harry smiled tiredly.

"Your wife is there waiting already," Hermione said. "Your daughter is protesting having a babysitter at the old hag's age of ten."

Harry snorted. "I'll get her a take away," he said.

"Let's not keep her waiting," Sanguini said. "One should never keep their witch waiting long. She might take a bite out of something without us."

Harry winced, his mind immediately going to what Sanguini or Hermione might be biting in their spare time.

Sanguini smiled, having obviously read his thoughts or his expression all too easily.

As the three walked at a casual pace down the streets of London, Harry watched how Hermione so easily looped her arm around Sanguini's and leaned against his shoulder occasionally. Happy. At ease.

He realised that while he was chasing the ideal he wanted so badly for the parents he never knew, he'd neglected the people that had tried to be there for him all along, and now—

They had moved on without him.

Only Hermione had the patience (and perhaps, he admitted, the lifespan, to be able to wait for him to figure things out.

"Don't be so maudlin in your head, Harry," Hermione said as she opened the door for him to walk into the restaurant. "When the kids leave the nest, Neville and the rest will be looking to reconnect. You just have to put aside some extra time to make time for them in your obsession with work."

Harry jerked his head up. Was she reading his thoughts?

"Don't be paranoid," Hermione said. "Your expression is an easy freebie."

As Harry walked into the restaurant, the darkened room lit up brightly as colourful streamers and wizard crackers went off.

"HOORAY!"

Harry read the banner that was sparkling with colour.

End of the War Reunion!

Neville leaned against a support beam with a smug smile as he lifted a mug of something frothy at him. "Ey, 'arry. Good to see you."

"Neville," Harry whispered. "It's really good to see you."

"You working too hard or hardly workin' these days?" he asked.

"Feels like both depending on the day," Harry said.

The pair sat together at the table as others sat down around them. The gatherers were, as promised, a smaller crowd of trustworthy people.

The kind that weren't as loose of lip as a runaway Rita Skeeter with a bedbug problem. Many were from the Department of Mysteries, people who knew how to keep a secret.

"I know you were keeping to yourself with that drama with the Weasleys," Neville said, but if you ever want to, you know, hang out. Catch up—"

"I'd love to," Harry said in a rush. He sighed. "I've realised I cut myself off from people a bit too much after that. People I should have kept in touch with."

"Hey, we get it," Neville said. "But at least you realised it before I got too much grey hair. We all can't be like 'ermione that ages like she found the Fountain of Youth."

Harry stared into his drink. "Yeah." Did Neville know—Harry shook his head. It wasn't his place to tell Neville if he hadn't figured it out. He'd learned his lesson with Ron's runaway mouth, who had to blab about everything like he was dosed with Veritaserum.

Well—except for the actual truth.

But, as he saw the worn, tired but genuine smiles of those at the party, he realised he didn't have to be so alone. He hadn't missed everything.

"Harry, you better order before your wife orders for you!" Neville teased.

Susan gave Neville an affronted look, but she grinned, pointing a fork at him threateningly but in good humour.

Harry chuckled.

As he saw Hermione's hand curl gently around Sanguini's fingers, he realised you didn't have to outgrow the small comforts.

He tentatively reached out to take his wife's hand and squeezed it. She rewarded him with a brilliant smile.e

He would have to get out more. Maybe take up Susan on her offers to join friends for drinks or dinner. Seeing his wife's smile interacting with other people—he could do that for her.

And maybe help himself in the process.

As he caught gazes with Hermione across the table, she smiled at him, and it was that old smile he remembered.

It wasn't too late, after all.


And he pulled his head out from his arse ever after—


A/N: (Babyfold squeegee noises as they slide down the screen)