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He had never had a great love for mornings. For much of his life, mornings began early, with sharp raps on his cupboard door and his aunt’s shrill, clipped voice. ‘Up! Get up!’
Then had followed mornings of kinder rousing, but still early. The low murmurs of his dorm mates, the shuffle of their slippers against the creaking floorboards, the groan of the hinges of their trunks, the muffled sound of the shower. During the holidays, the Burrow started each day with a similar hum of activity; the clink of dishes as Mrs Weasley prepared breakfast, the moaning from the ghoul upstairs, the cockerel outside, the rumble of footsteps on the stairs, perhaps even small explosions from Fred and George’s room.
Then, of course, that horrible winter, where Harry would be woken by the sheer cold, or the pangs of hunger in his stomach, or the sound of Hermione softly sobbing.
Harry had always been woken by others, and he had always had to rise, because something needed to be done. Chores for his relatives, classes or Quidditch training to attend, Mrs Weasley’s breakfasts to devour, packing up the tent and moving to some other desolate and damp corner of the country.
All in all, Harry realised that he had never truly been allowed to wake in his own time. There was a lot in his life that he was realising he had never had control over until now.
It was quiet in the house. If he had really tried, he might have been able to hear London traffic, but the whole point was that Harry wasn’t trying to do anything. He was simply being, and at that moment simply being was making him happier than he had been in several years.
Golden light had slipped through the gap he had left between the curtains, throwing a beam across the worn varnish of the hardwood floors and over the cracked plaster of the walls. They were in the middle of renovating, stripping away the sinister layers the Black family had wrapped around the bare bones of the house, and though Harry was increasingly suspected that it would not be enough, that he would not want to stay here forever, in that morning light the room was peaceful.
Gimny stirred slightly, and sighed softly. Her bare skin was pleasantly warm and heavy against him, her leg flung over his hips, her head resting against his shoulder, her small hand relaxed over his heart. Her hair was bright against the white of the sheets, and still smelled gently of flowers. He turned his head so he could press his nose to the crown of her head, his arm holding her close with his hand resting in the hourglass valley of her waist.
’D'you want some coffee?’ she murmured. He had not realised she had woken. Her voice was a little hoarse from sleep, and it was so endearing that he instinctively squeezed her a little closer to him.
He had never had anyone offer to get him anything in bed before. The summer after Sirius died, Mrs Weasley had sent up a breakfast tray after he arrived in the early hours, which he had very much appreciated, but that fell into a whole other category. There was no choice in receiving her mothering, even though he was grateful for it. There was something so different about her offering to drag herself out of bed and into the cold basement kitchen, and it stirred an oddly embarrassing swell of emotion in him. Such a little offer should not affect him so, but he supposed it was all part of his astonishment that he had found such happiness. He was glad that she could not see his eyes.
'No,’ he said quietly back. 'No, thank you. Do you want some?’ He did not want her to get up and leave the bed. He wanted them to stay entangled in this warm bed for as long as possible, and if coffee had to be fetched he would be the one to go and fetch it, so that he could be sure he had this sanctuary of bedsheets and freckles and quiet to return to. They had no reason to get up, no obligation or duty or responsibility, and that felt like an especially precious thing.
'No, I want to sleep,’ she replied, a little grumpily, which made him smile.
'Me too,’ he said. He wanted to tell her how much this quiet experience meant to him, how much it amazed him that life could be like this, and that he was lucky enough to live it. He wanted to explain to her just what she meant to him, how deeply he loved her and how the way she loved him was beyond anything he had ever expected in life, and that sometimes he wondered if he had simply died in the forest, and that last thought of her had weaved into a rich tapestry of a dream never meant for him.
'It’s nice,’ he told her, 'that your voice was the first thing I heard today.’
Her hand moved lightly across his chest, caressing him lovingly, though he knew that the scar tissue there had left it rough. 'It’s nice for me too,’ she said.
Mornings, Harry found, could be the best part of the day.