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Chapter Text

Harry stood by the window, running his hand through his messy black hair, the afternoon light shining into their living room. His wife Hermione sat at the dining table, surrounded by stacks of parchment and books, quill moving frantically. Normally she wouldn’t even be here but she had to come home early because there was some repair work being done in her department that will be fixed by tomorrow and she couldn’t even be bothered to go up to her home office. Instead she just put her work down at the dining table and started writing without even a hello to her husband. She only stops to use her wand to summon a book from her office or drink her coffee.

“You missed dinner again last night,” Harry said quietly. “I waited for an hour.”

Hermione didn’t look up. “I told you I was busy. This legislation won’t write itself.”

“That’s what you said yesterday. And last week.” Harry turns to face her. “When was the last time we actually talked? Not about work, just... us?”

“We’re talking now, aren’t we?” Hermione snaps, finally looking up with bloodshot eyes, her face gaunt, her eyes with very dark circles under them.

Harry sighs. He has constantly tried to feed Hermione when she was home. Little things at first, leaving sandwiches by her papers, setting a plate of her favorite biscuits near her elbow while she worked. He’d wake up early to make her proper breakfasts that would go cold as she rushed out the door with just a cup of coffee. Last week, he’d even enlisted Luna’s help to prepare her childhood comfort foods, hoping the smell of her mother’s recipes might tempt her away from her desk but it was as if she hadn’t noticed.

During the nights she was here, he’d bring her tea laced with calming draught, hoping she might rest for just a few hours. Sometimes he’d find her asleep at her desk, quill still in hand, and carry her to bed only to find her gone before dawn. He’d bought her a special enchanted blanket that would warm when she worked past midnight, a gentle reminder to come to bed.

The kitchen cupboards were filled with nutrient potions he'd mix into her drinks when she wasn’t looking. He’d sent lunch by owl to her office, though he suspected most went untouched. Two days ago, he’d practically begged her to eat a bowl of soup, standing over her until she took three spoonfuls before claiming she was ‘too busy’ to finish.

Harry’s voice cracks slightly. “Look at yourself, Hermione. When did you last eat a proper meal? Or sleep more than four hours?”

“I’m doing important work!” She insists, not seeing his point.

“More important than your health? Than us?” Harry shakes his head. “If you want to work yourself into the grave fine, I guess I will just have to get used to the idea of being a widower.”

Hermione’s quill dropped from her fingers. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do because clearly my brilliant wife is being too stupid to notice she is killing herself.” Harry’s voice contains a bitterness that surprises even him. This situation has been going on for months and this is the first time he has said anything like this.

Hermione glares at her husband. “Don’t you dare call me stupid, Harry Potter!” She slams her hand on the table. “You have no idea the pressure I’m under, the expectations I have to face to make this perfect. Why you would say such a preposterous thing is beyond me.”

“Because I love you!” Harry shouts back, raising his voice at her for the first time in a very long time, certainly for the first time in their two year long marriage. “Because I keep hoping the woman I married will come back to us!”

“I am right here!” Hermione gestures wildly at herself. Her wedding ring slid loosely where it once had fit snugly, another sign of just how much weight she has lost.

“And you have the nerve to act like I’m the only one missing their lives!” Hermione shouts at her husband, standing from the table. “As if you’re any better with your schedule as a Hogwarts professor!”

Harry goes completely still, his green eyes wide with shock. His mouth hangs open for a moment in sheer disbelief. "Hermione, we had this conversation four months ago. You don't remember?"

The silence that followed was deafening. Hermione's mouth opened and closed, no words coming out as confusion clouded her features. The grandfather clock in the corner ticked loudly.

"What conversation?" she finally managed with a small voice.

Harry's expression softened with concern. "Back when you got your promotion. We sat down right here at this table and talked for hours about what it would mean for our family."

In Hermione's fuzzy, hungry, exhausted, mind, she starts to remember a conversation about her promotion back in April.

"You were worried about the twins," Harry continued gently. "About how your new position would mean longer hours and more weekends at the office. And I suggested that maybe one of us should be home more consistently."

"You... you offered to resign from Hogwarts," she said slowly, the memory come back to her more clearly. "I told you that you loved teaching. That you shouldn't have to give it up."

Harry nodded, relief crossing his features. "Yes, but I pointed out that your promotion was a once in a lifetime opportunity. That the Department of Magical Law needed your reforms and you would make enough for us to live off of. And that McGonagall would always take me back when the twins were older, I could even start as a teacher again in their first year."

Hermione sank back into her chair, her legs suddenly weak. "And I... I agreed to it? To you becoming a stay at home father?"

"You were hesitant," Harry said quietly. "You asked if I was sure about twenty times. You kept saying that you didn't want to take that away from me. But I insisted. I told you I wanted to be there for every moment with Beatrice and Sirius."

Hermione's eyes filled with tears as fragments of the conversation returned to her. "You said... you said you never had parents to watch you grow up, and you didn't want to miss a second with our children."

"And you cried," Harry said softly. "You hugged me and said it was one of the reasons you loved me so much."

‘I don’t understand,’ Hermione thinks to herself. ‘How could just I forget that Harry quit the job he loved? Forget a whole life changing conversation like this. What else have I missed? Wait, if that happened in April and April was four months ago then...’

“You didn’t remember our anniversary three weeks ago or my birthday the day before that.” Harry continues quietly

Hermione slowly looks over at the calendar on the wall and, sure enough, the date today is the 22nd of August, exactly three weeks after their anniversary. Their anniversary. The day they had promised to always put each other first. The day they swore their eternal love for one another. It was Hermione’s idea to make the day after Harry's birthday their wedding day, to help make up for all the birthdays he had to go through living at the Dursleys. Harry just gave an amused shake of his head and agreed.

“I made reservations at that restaurant in Hogsmeade,” Harry continues, clearly thinking back to that day. “The one where we had our first date in the sixth year. The one where I asked you to be my wife. I waited two hours before coming home to not even find a letter from you about how you were not leaving the ministry that night. Again.”

“Harry, I…” Hermione’s voice dies on her lips. She could see it now, Harry dressed in his best robes, sitting alone at a table for two, checking his watch as minutes turned into hours. The candle on the table burning lower as people at neighboring tables cast sympathetic glances his way.

‘How could I forget? I promised him that I would never forget his birthday. I’ve NEVER forgotten his birthday.’ With shaking hands, Hermione pulls out her planner from her pocket and, sure enough, marked down is Harry’s birthday and their anniversary; the anniversary part even includes a later note about where and when they were having dinner. ‘I’ve always marked down Harry’s birthday in every new planner I get, it’s the first thing I do when I get one. I’ve been doing that since I was twelve... when was the last time I even looked at this planner?’

She looks up at her husband with wide eyes. “Harry, I didn’t realize…”

“No, you didn’t.” Harry cut her off. “You don’t realize anything anymore, Hermione. Not when Sirius said his first word. Not when Beatrice said her first or second word. Not when Beatrice started floating her toys. Not when I stopped sleeping because I was up all night with them both while you were working.”

Hermione felt the blood drain from her face. “Sirius and Beatrice both spoke? Beatrice did her first magic?” The words came out as a whisper. Her little boy, with Harry’s untamable hair but her brown eyes, had spoken his first word without her there to hear it? Her little girl, someone Harry jokingly said was a mini-Hermione except she has his eyes, already saying her second word and doing magic?

“I told you about both instances but to tell you again, Sirius said ‘dada’ two weeks ago, as did Beatrice.” Harry said, his voice hollow. “Beatrice is enough of a mini you that her second word was ‘book’ but Sirius hasn’t said anything else yet. Beatrice also made her stuffed unicorn fly across the nursery last Tuesday. I took a picture of the magic, it’s on the mantle.” He gestures to a collection of framed photographs Hermione hadn’t bothered to look at in weeks.

Hermione’s gaze follows his gesture, landing on a magical photograph she hadn't noticed before. In it, a stuffed unicorn floated across the white nursery while a little girl with a tuft of brown curls and green eyes clapped her hands in delight while a boy with Harry's black hair and her eyes stares in wide-eyed wonder.

“I also took my memories of what happened with her and Sirius and placed them in vials for you to look at.” Harry adds absentmindedly. “If you had ever felt like looking at our children growing up… there are a lot of vials you haven’t looked at.”

“I... I’ve been busy,” she said weakly, as if that could be an excuse.

“Too busy for your family?” Harry’s voice was quiet but he might as well be shouting at her. “Too busy to remember that your husband turned twenty-one? That it was our second anniversary? That your children are growing and changing every day without their mother? Is your job at the Ministry really that important?”

“That’s not fair! I’m securing their future!” Hermione returns to her feet. “You don’t understand how important this legislation is!”

“More important than watching your children grow up?” Harry challenged, a rare anger showing in his eyes, an anger that has never been directed at her. “More important than your marriage? Insisting that your work is important is what you have been doing since before you even got caught up in writing that legislation.”

“Don’t you dare question my priorities! I’m doing all of this for us!”

“For us?” Harry laughs bitterly. “When was the last time you even held the twins?”

Hermione’s mind raced to recall the last time she’d held her babies.

“I…” Her voice cracked. She gripped the edge of the table as the room seemed to tilt sideways.

‘My God, when was the last time I touched Harry?’

Hermione tries to remember when she last initiated contact with her husband that wasn’t perfunctory. ‘When was the last time I truly reached for him? When I held his hand just because I wanted to feel his skin against mine? When was the last time I truly kissed him?’

She couldn't remember that either.

Harry took a step toward her, concern clear on his face. “Hermione?”

The realization hit her like a bludger to the chest. She couldn’t remember. She honestly couldn’t remember when she’d last held her own children or truly touched her husband out of love rather than habit. She can remember doing it sure, plenty of times, Sirius loved being held by her more than he did by Harry, and she can remember doing a lot of things with Harry but she isn't sure when the last time was.

"Don’t,” she whispered, holding up a trembling hand. Sweat beaded on her forehead as she feels like she is drowning under the shame and exhaustion. The world before her blurred, her stomach feels as empty as it actually is.

‘I’m a failure as a wife, as a mother…’

“I’m trying to help you,” Harry said softly, reaching for her. Always so soft, so kind, even when she didn't deserve it.

Something inside Hermione broke, there was too much guilt for her to handle and her mind, weakened by weeks of hunger and exhaustion, sought the easiest escape, to push away the mirror that showed her her many failures.

“Get out!” The words tore from her throat, raw and desperate. “Get out of my house if I’m such a terrible wife and mother!”

Harry flinches as though she’d slapped him. “If that’s what you want,” he whispers.

Hermione wanted to take it back immediately, to throw herself into his arms and beg forgiveness, but for some reason she couldn’t force the words out, as if she had been hit by a petrificus spell, even as Harry turned away.

With his shoulders slumped, he walked toward the door. No wand because it is still on the counter next to his cup of tea that he was waiting to cool, no nothing. The bright and cheery day seemed to mock him. A framed photo of their wedding day caught Hermione’s eye from the side table, both of them laughing as they cut into the cake, her in her wedding dress, him looking at her as if she were the most precious thing in the world. Her parents, who flew in from Australia where they now live, had been so proud that day, her father crying as he walked her down the aisle. Despite being confined to a wheelchair, George had been the best man and wheeled himself down the aisle under his own power. Luna was the maid of honor and was crying in joy the whole time.

Hermione watches, frozen in place, as Harry’s hand reaches for the doorknob. A tiny voice in her head screams at her to stop him but still she couldn’t make herself do it. 

The soft click of the door closing behind him was the most devastating sound Hermione had ever heard. The crack of apparition soon followed.

Hermione stood frozen, the enormity of what had just happened washing over her like ice water. She’d told Harry to leave. Her Harry, who had faced death for her multiple times, who had never given up on her, who never left her despite there being better choices, who had been raising their children while she buried herself in work. Her first boyfriend. Her first kiss. Her first love.

“Harry,” she whispers to the empty room, her voice breaking as tears began to spill down her cheeks. “I didn’t mean it. Please come back.”

But only silence answers her. Photos of happier times stared accusingly from the shelves and walls. Photos of their wedding day, Harry holding newborn twins with wonder in his eyes, the four of them picnicking by the Black Lake after Harry became a professor. Moments of joy that Hermione had been gradually absenting herself from. From the nursery upstairs, she hears the faint sound of one of the twins beginning to cry.

Hermione stood frozen, torn between chasing after her husband and tending to her children, the children whose lives she had barely been present for. The realization crashed over her like a wave, leaving her gasping for breath as the consequences of her single-minded dedication to work became devastatingly clear.

She glances at the stacks of books and parchment on the table, her work, the legislation she'd sacrificed so much for. The ink was still wet on some pages, the quill abandoned mid-sentence. ‘Did I really put this before my family? Before Harry's birthday? Before our anniversary?’ The answer to this question is yes.

Her legs gave way beneath her, and she sank to the floor, wrapping her arms around herself as sobs wracked her too-thin frame. The parchment that had seemed so important not even ten minutes ago forgotten, meaningless in the face of what she might have just destroyed.

“What have I done?” she whispered, as the full weight of her words and actions began to sink in. She just threw her Harry out of their home, she had gotten upset at him when he was being concerned about her long hours and never being there for their family. The crying from upstairs grew louder, more insistent, but Hermione couldn't move, paralyzed by the realization that she might have just ruined the marriage she had wanted so desperately once upon a time.

Chapter Text

There is a crack of apparition and a knock at the door and Hermione’s head immediately perks up in its direction.

‘Harry came back... Harry came back.’ Hermione thinks to herself before forcing herself to her feet and rushing over to the door. ‘Okay, I just need to apologize and ask how I can make it up to him. Do whatever I have to so that Harry forgives me. Do what I can to turn things around.’

Hermione opens the door only to see Luna Lovegood standing on the other side instead of her husband. She can’t help but notice how put-together Luna looked, her long blonde hair done in a neat braid, her clothes clean and pressed, a soft floral scent wafting from her. It was a stark contrast to Hermione’s own appearance: hair unwashed and tangled, dark circles under her bloodshot eyes, and her work robes wrinkled and stained from being worn for three days straight.

Her eyes go a bit more wide than usual but she addresses her in her usual airy tone. “Oh, hello Hermione. You normally aren’t here at this hour so I came by to see Harry.” Luna clutches a small basket in her left hand and Hermione can smell fresh treacle tart, Harry’s favorite food.

Something in Hermione cracks as her exhausted, overworked, desperate, and worried mind goes to the worst possible conclusion. The sight of Luna standing there, comfortable, familiar, clearly welcome in their home, knowing when she isn’t around normally so she can spend time with her husband, sends a jolt of irrational anger through her exhausted body.

Before she can stop that irrational part of herself, she speaks. “Why don’t you just go and sleep with my husband in your own home?” Hermione spits out, her voice trembling with rage and insecurity. “You seem to be here often enough!”

Luna blinks once, her normally dreamy expression disappearing instantly as if she had just removed a mask from her face. Her silvery eyes narrow at her and rage is clear in her features.

“What did you just say to me, Hermione Jane Potter?” Luna’s voice is no longer airy but sharp, each word precisely enunciated.

Hermione lowers her head. “I'm sorry... I'm just... hungry and exhausted and not thinking straight, you aren't the first person I've snapped at and said things I didn't mean to today.” Hermione admits. “If you're looking for Harry he isn't here, we had an argument and he left just a few minutes ago."

Luna's expression doesn't change, instead her tone is annoyed. “An argument that was entirely your fault I imagine.” Hermione nods, she can't deny it, won't deny it. “Figures.”

A baby’s cry pierces the air, soon joined by a second one, and Luna quickly draws her wand. “Get out of my way so I can take care of the children.” Luna orders her coldly.

Hermione didn’t move from the doorway and instead she protests what she is telling her. “I can take care of my children.”

“Are they still your children?” Luna’s frigid voice remains. “Do they even recognize you as their mother anymore, Hermione? When was the last time you actually rocked them to sleep? Or told them a story from all those books you bought for them when you were pregnant? Or put them before that precious career of yours? Do you even know which one prefers the blue blanket and which one needs their stuffed hippogriff to sleep?”

Without waiting for an answer, Luna pushes past Hermione and climbs the stairs, setting her basket on a table she passes by. Hermione followed, her legs feeling like lead as the truth in Luna’s words sank in, she doesn't know the answers to those questions. In the nursery, Luna moves with the confidence of someone who had done this many times before. She waves her wand over the cribs and casts a spell, a simple adjustment to the diagnostic spell used by healers but this one designed to tell you what is wrong with the baby. Nodding at the result, she scoops up her goddaughter, whose face was red from crying, humming softly as she gently bounces the baby in her arms before doing the same with her godson. "They just wanted to be held." Luna murmurs. After Sirius is calmed down she places him back in his crib.

She stares down at Beatrice and Sirius, her expression loving before changing as she looks back at Hermione. The contrast was stark, she has nothing but maternal warmth for the babies and nothing but disdain for their mother.

Luna waves her wand at the crib, casting a one-way silencing charm. “We can still hear the babies, but what we say won’t reach their ears.” She says tersely/ The spell shimmers briefly in the air, a transparent dome settling over the cribs. Luna takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly.

“How dare you?” Luna’s voice was quiet but vibrating with barely contained rage. “How dare you accuse Harry of infidelity? That man has given you everything, his heart, his children, even his very life itself, and you repay him with suspicion? With thinking he has lost his loyalty? With thinking the man who ignored almost the entire fifth year and older female population of our school going after him in favor of you during your sixth year would suddenly change his mind? Let alone who had women throwing themselves at him after he won the war and he still looked at you as if you were the most beautiful woman ever? And you think he would do it with me of all people?”

She takes a step towards Hermione, who unconsciously backs away until her shoulders hit the wall. Luna’s magic seems to crackle in the air around them, making the hair on Hermione’s arms stand on end.

“I loathe what you’ve become, Hermione,” Luna whispers, each word dripping with venom. “I despise you with every fiber of my being for what you’re doing to your husband. Harry Potter, the kindest, most loving, most loyal man either one of us have ever known, cries himself to sleep at night because his wife can’t be bothered to come home. To truly come home.” Her lips curled into a snarl. “Do you know what that does to me? To watch my best friend break while his wife, my supposed other best friend, is nowhere to be found?”

Luna’s hand holding her wand twitches almost as if she is stopping herself from hexing her. “And you have the audacity to suggest he would betray you? With me? Did your stupid, sleep deprived, workaholic mind forget everything I did for you at Hogwarts to support you? Did you forget why you said I was your best friend after Harry? Did you forget why you made me your maid of honor? Did you forget why I am the godmother of your children?”

‘No,’ Hermione thinks to herself. ‘We did all of that because Luna was fanatically devoted to our relationship. She supported it with every ounce of strength her body could muster, magical or otherwise. She even nearly killed Romilda Vane over it.’

“I don’t want to replace you, Hermione,” Luna said, the knuckles of her hand holding her wand turning white with how hard she is holding it. “I never have, I just wanted to be the eccentric godmother of your children, the one who teaches them about nargles and all the other creatures I know exist. But Harry has been struggling with the twins and maintaining this house even with magic because he didn't have you supporting him like you always have. Did you know that?” Her voice cuts through any defense Hermione could possibly muster.

Hermione swallows hard, unable to meet Luna’s gaze.

“That’s what I thought. Harry’s been drowning, Hermione, and you have always been his source of support. And where were you? Buried in paperwork, never coming home, and when you do come home you are not mentally here, you are in your office back at the Ministry or your home office. Why do you think I come here at least three days a week to help him?” Her voice cracks. “Do you have any idea what you’ve put him through? What you’re still putting him through? And do you know the worst thing? The worst thing is that through it all, he still loves you, though Merlin knows why anymore.”

Hermione finally meets her gaze and she gasps at her look, it is a look she has never seen on her face before. It wasn’t just anger; it was pure, undiluted hatred. After Harry, Luna had been her best friend, yet now she is looking at her like that. She takes another step closer to Hermione, deliberately invading her personal space until they were almost nose to nose. The floral scent that had seemed pleasant earlier now felt suffocating. “And that is the horrible thing, Harry will always love you no matter what. Even when you’re crushing him.”

Hermione wraps her arms around herself, suddenly cold despite it being summer. She then mutters to Luna “I think I might have caused him to reach his breaking point.”

Luna hums, a soft sound that holds no comfort for Hermione. “Well, if you did, maybe that would allow for someone who actually cares about him to become his wife.”

“Someone like you?” Hermione asks, that irrationality flickering up again before Luna snuffs it out.

“You don't get to be jealous, Hermione. Not anymore. Not after what you've done.” Luna tells her sharply, not answering her question immediately.

‘Luna was always supportive of our relationship, she treated it as if it were destiny, she treated us being together as if it was a sacred truth.’ Hermione thinks to herself, remembering her time at Hogwarts, how Luna gave her immediate and unfaltering support to them, she even helped Harry ask her out by clearing out the very compartment they met in.

And now the woman who had once defended her dating Harry with a dedication that scared even Hermione herself, stands before her as her harshest critic and stands as the best one who could take her place at Harry’s side. Her old insecurities flood back tenfold and her mind fills with visions of returning home one day to find her family gone, of Harry filing for divorce with Luna standing supportively at his side, of seeing her children grow up calling Luna “Mummy” while they struggled to remember who Hermione was.

With that thought in mind, her mind flashes back to their sixth year at Hogwarts, when she and Harry had first started dating. How insecure she had felt then, watching other girls’ eyes follow him across the Great Hall. Harry had grown into himself that summer, returning to school taller, his shoulders broader, his jawline more defined, combined with all the Prophet had said about the prophecy and the chosen one, he was never more fanciable. And all the girls had noticed, Merlin, how they’d noticed. And with that noticing came judgments for their new relationship.

She remembered the whispers that followed them in the corridors. “Potter and Granger? Really?” “What does he see in her?” “He could have literally anyone.” The Slytherin girls had been particularly cruel, loudly discussing how Harry Potter, destined savior of the wizarding world, Quidditch captain, and now unexpectedly handsome, was wasting himself on a bushy-haired bookworm.

Hermione remembered sitting in the common room, pretending to read while actually counting how many times Lavender try to would find excuses to touch Harry’s arm or compliment his Quidditch skills. The Patil twins had taken to giggling whenever he walked by, and Hannah Abbott had suddenly developed an intense interest in Defense Against the Dark Arts, always needing Harry’s “expert help” after class.

She would watch as girls left treats on his desk, sent him enchanted notes that only he could read, and batted their eyelashes at him across the library. Some had been bold enough to suggest that Harry could “keep Granger and still have fun” with them on the side.

Through it all, Harry had seemed oblivious. He would accept the treats with a polite smile and shared them with Hermione. He would use the enchanted notes as bookmarks without reading most of them. He did help Hannah with her spellwork but always made sure Hermione was included in their study sessions. And he absolutely ignored every flirtatious comment for what it was unless it came from Hermione herself, her awkward attempts at flirting had always made him blush and smile in a way no other girl could achieve.

“I like that you don’t know how good you are at it,” he told her once after she had fumbled through a compliment about his eyes. “It’s honest. Real.”

“What do you mean?” Hermione had asked, her cheeks flushed pink.

Harry had smiled, reaching out to tuck a wayward curl behind her ear. “I'm not thickheaded Hermione, okay, I'm not that thickheaded. I know what they are trying to do. But, unlike you, those other girls practice their lines in mirrors and rehearse how to bat their eyelashes just right. It’s all so... calculated.”

"And them doing that bothers you?" she had asked him curiously.

“It makes me feel like I’m just a thing or a trophy to be won,” Harry had admitted with a small shrug. “Like I’m just ‘The Boy Who Lived’ or ‘the Chosen one’ to them and not just Harry.”

Harry liking her flirting aside, what had terrified Hermione the most were the explicit offers that often came his way. There would be girls who would corner him after Quidditch practice, whispering propositions that would make Harry blush to his ears. The sixth and seventh years would slip him notes detailing exactly what they wanted to do with him if he gave them just one night. She had found one such note once, accidentally, and the graphic description of what the anonymous writer wanted to do with Harry had made her stomach churn with anxiety.

Things had only gotten worse after Harry’s comment to Seamus in the Gryffindor common room one day. Seamus had been ribbing him about “getting any action” with Hermione, and Harry, his face flushed with embarrassment, had simply told him, “not that its anyone’s business but we're waiting until marriage.”

The news had spread through Hogwarts like wildfire. Rather than earning them and their relationship any respect at all, the only thing it seemed to do was make Harry an even bigger target. Girls began approaching him even more determinedly, as if his commitment to waiting until marriage was a challenge to all of them.

“You know I could change your mind about waiting,” a seventh year Ravenclaw had whispered to him one time between classes, her hand lingering on his arm. “Granger doesn’t need to know.”

Harry shrugged her off and moved away from her as quickly as her could.

Then there was another time where she had overheard a very annoyed seventh year Hufflepuff telling her friend, “I told Potter I’d let him do anything he wanted, anything at all, if he would just give me one weekend in Hogsmeade. I bet he’s dying for release after all this time with the prude. Can you believe he turned me down? For Granger?”

“What did he say?” her friend had asked eagerly.

The Hufflepuff had scowled. “He said the only person he wants to spend his weekends with is already by his side every day.” She had rolled her eyes dramatically. “Then he walked away as if I hadn’t just offered him the best weekend of his life.”

In the face of the girl’s obvious annoyance, Hermione had warm feelings spread through her chest at Harry’s response to her offer. But the fear lingered still.

The worst had been the Slytherin girls, who didn’t even bother to whisper their taunts. “Potter’s probably desperate by now,” Pansy Parkinson had drawled loudly to Daphne Greengrass as Hermione walked past. “Maybe we should offer to show him what he’s missing. Bet we could make him forget all about his little vow of chastity.” Parkinson and Greengrass weren’t even interested in him, they just wanted to torture Hermione.

These offers had haunted Hermione’s dreams and on more than one night she would wake up in cold sweats, having nightmares about Harry sneaking off to meet these girls, drawn by the temptation of what they were so freely offering to him and breaking up with her.

Hermione had wanted to wait until marriage, she wanted her sexual relationship to be something special. The thought that these girls were offering him everything while she was holding back something had kept her awake at night, wondering if her principles would cost her the boy she loved since she was eleven, since before she even knew what love was. What if Harry grew tired of waiting until marriage? What if he decided that one of these eager, willing girls was a better option than a girlfriend who made him wait? When she had first told him that she didn’t want to sleep with anyone besides her husband, Harry had nodded and said he didn’t have a problem with that, but still, the temptation had to be there.

She remembered the gut-wrenching fear that, one day, Harry would realize he could have anyone, someone prettier, someone more refined and ladylike, someone who didn’t nag him about homework, someone who didn't lecture him like she had for years. Someone who would give him what she wasn’t ready to.

Her insecurities had only grown when she overheard Lavender and Parvati discussing her relationship with Harry in their shared room, not aware she was listening.

“It’s just a matter of time,” Lavender had said confidently from her bed. “No boy waits forever, especially not one who could have literally any girl in this school. Mark my words, he’ll get tired of her frigid act.”

“A month, tops,” Parvati had agreed. “I give him a month before he moves on to someone who’ll actually put out.”

Hermione had then quietly slipped back out, tears streaming down her face and spent that night in the Room of Requirement, sobbing into a conjured pillow, terrified that they were right about how long her relationship would last.

Her only point of reassurance beyond how Harry was dealing with everything, and he was dealing with it better than she could ever hope for, was that Luna had seemed completely disinterested in Harry romantically and instead treated it like her relationship was not only set in stone but sacred, constantly lashing out at those who tried to prove her beliefs otherwise that she could get her hands on.

“Those two make sense,” Luna had one time said dreamily over breakfast when someone asked her why she supports them as much as she does. "Anyone with common sense can see that." For Hermione, Luna was important, she would fight for them on every front she could but not even Luna Lovegood could be everywhere at once or attack everyone saying something negative about their relationship, especially after her detentions started piling up.

She recalled one particularly difficult evening when she overheard Susan Bones and Lisa Turpin in the library, discussing Harry’s ‘options.’

“He could literally have anyone,” Susan had whispered. “I heard Melinda Jenkins from Ravenclaw say she would share him with two other girls if that’s what he wanted.”

Lisa had giggled. “Half the seventh years have a betting pool on how long before he dumps Granger for someone more... you know.”

“More his level,” Susan had finished with a nod. “I mean, he’s Harry Potter. He could have a different girl every night of the week if he wanted.”

For the first time in a long time, Hermione had fled the library, books forgotten. She had spent the night wondering what Harry could possibly see in her when he had an entire castle full of prettier, more socially adept, more exciting girls. Girls who didn’t lecture him about homework or proper spell pronunciation. Girls who knew how to style their hair and apply makeup. Girls who didn’t hide behind books and rules. Girls who wouldn’t ask him to wait.

But Harry had seen through her facade one night, he had found her crying behind a tapestry after a particularly painful day of watching three different girls try to corner him after Quidditch practice.

“Why me?” she had asked him through her tears. “You could have anyone, Harry. Multiple girls, even. Lavender made that quite clear when she suggested that arrangement to you last month in front of the entire common room.”

Harry had looked at her with those green eyes she adored, cupping her face in his calloused hands. “I’ve never loved anyone else, just you,” he had whispered to her, wiping away her tears with his thumbs. “It’s always been you, Hermione. Ever since the day I met you on the Express, it’s always been you. The others... I don’t even see them. Not really. Like I said, I know what they are trying to do but they’re just... noise. You’re the only voice I’ve ever really heard.”

“But-”

“No buts,” he had said firmly. “I don’t want someone who likes me for defeating Voldemort as a baby, for being prophesied to defeat Voldemort, or for playing Quidditch or whatever rubbish they’ve read in the Prophet. I want someone who saw me when I was just Harry, with my taped glasses and my clothes that were too big on me. Someone who believed in me even when I didn’t believe in myself.” His thumb had traced her cheekbone gently. “That’s you, Hermione. It’s always been you. You have stood with me every step of the way ever since I stepped into this world.”

She had stared at him, still uncertain. “But I’m not... I don’t know how to be like those other girls. I don’t know how to flirt properly or-”

“Your version of flirting is perfect,” he interrupted with a soft laugh. “When you bite your lip while explaining something complicated or thinking about something intensely, or when you get all huffy and straighten my tie because it’s crooked... that drives me mad in the best way.” His eyes had darkened slightly. “I love that you don't even realize you're doing it.”

“I do that?” she asked, genuinely surprised.

“All the time,” he confirmed. “And it’s just for me. Not because you're trying to impress anyone or get attention. It’s just... us. Real.”

“Harry, my actual attempts at flirting included me saying that you look ‘quite aerodynamic’ on your broom.” Hermione reminded him with a blush.

“And it is so genuine that it is wonderful!” Harry answered with a grin. “It is so perfectly Hermione.”

"Alright, alright, I'll subject you to more of my terrible flirting then." Hermione tells him with an eye roll. She then hesitated, gathering her courage before talking about the topic that had been weighing on her since she became aware of just how much the rest of the school is going after him. “Harry, those girls... they’re offering you... everything. And I... I still want to wait. Until marriage. I know that it-”

The relief that had washed over her when Harry gently pressed a finger to her lips while looking at her with nothing but love had been overwhelming.

“I should have been more clear the first time you told me that, I want to wait too,” he had said quietly. “I don’t want something that means nothing with someone who means nothing. I want everything to mean something with the one person who means everything. With my wife on our wedding night.”

Tears had welled in her eyes again, but different ones this time. “Really? You're not just saying that?”

Harry had shaken his head, his expression serious. “The Dursleys never taught me much about... well, anything good, really. But I always promised myself that when I found someone I loved, I would do things right. That I’d make it special.” He had taken her hand and pressed it against his chest where she could feel his heart beating. “You’re special, Hermione. What we have is special. I don’t want to rush it or cheapen anything between us.”

She had felt as if a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, a fear she had been carrying for so long going away. The relief had been so intense she started crying again, burying her face in his shoulder as he wrapped his arms around her and held her close to him.

“I thought maybe you’d get tired of waiting,” she admitted to him between sobs. “That you’d find someone else who-”

“Never,” he interrupted her fiercely. “There is no one else for me. There never has been, there never will be.” He tilted her chin up, making her meet his gaze. “I want to marry you someday, Hermione Granger. I want to build a life together with you. I want to have children with you. And I want to do it all properly, in the right order.”

She had believed him then. How could she not? His green eyes had been so earnest, so full of certainty. When he kissed her that night, she had felt all her insecurities melt away.

Hermione always feared Harry replacing her with someone else and the worst part was that she could see it happening now. Luna was already here, already caring for her children, already supporting her husband. Already doing everything Hermione was supposed to yet had failed to do. All Hermione had was the Potter name and the ring on her finger, Luna was doing everything else. Her greatest fear from those school days has appeared right before her eyes, only worse, because now it wasn’t just Harry she stands to lose, but her entire family.

Luna continues her voice as cold as ice. “You promised him your undying and eternal love, to this day I clearly remember your vows to him, and it turned out to be nothing but fool’s gold.”

Hermione then catches a glimpse of herself in the nursery mirror, gaunt, messy hair, barely recognizable, wearing old and stained clothes.

'When did I become this ghost of myself? When did my work begin to consume everything that mattered?'

Chapter Text

“With you gone there are few people Harry can turn to for help.” Luna asks, her voice barely audible. “Not the Weasleys besides George. Not after what happened in sixth year when he told them he would never date Ginny.” She trembles in anger but not directed towards Hermione this time. “Do you remember what happened, Hermione? When he said if he ever did start dating Ginny that we are to give him an antidote for love potions?”

Hermione nods, the beginning of the end of their relationship with the Weasleys is something she will have a hard time forgetting.

It was at the Burrow on the second to last day of the summer holidays going into their sixth year, Harry had been quiet, withdrawn after Sirius’ death. Ginny had been hovering around him constantly, touching his arm despite his distaste for being touched by people not named ‘Hermione Granger,’ bringing him tea he never asked for so he never drank, blushing and fluttering her eyelashes at him. That evening at the dinner table, Mrs. Weasley had made a comment about what a lovely couple Harry and Ginny would make, how Ginny always had a thing for him. She had been piling his plate with food and spoke to him so innocently about it that it was clearly planned.

“You know, Harry dear,” Molly said sweetly. “I’ve always thought you and Ginny make such a handsome pair.”

“Mum!” Ginny protested with a blush on her face.

“Oh, don't be embarrassed, dear,” Molly had continued, her voice was honey-sweet but her eyes were calculating. “Everyone knows you’ve always had a thing for Harry, ever since you were a little girl. And he needs a nice girl to take care of him, especially after everything that’s happened.”

Finally, those words combined with the fact that Molly had insisted that Harry and Ginny sit together and made sure he didn’t sit with Hermione, was the last straw for Harry. The silence stretched uncomfortably as everyone stared at Harry who sat his spoon down with deliberate care, not even having taken a single bite of the meal in front of him.

“If I ever suddenly start dating Ginny,” Harry had said, his voice steady despite the tension, “I want Hermione, Luna, Neville, and Hagrid to hold me down while Madam Pomfrey administers to me a cure for love potions. I do not care for Ginny that way and I do not want to date her. She is just Ron's sister to me.”

The silence that followed had been deafening before the shouting started.

“You led her on, you bloody prat!” Ron had shouted, his face matching his hair. “What, my sister’s not good enough for the Chosen One?”

Molly had been in tears, Arthur looking stunned and disappointed. But it was Ginny’s face that haunted Hermione still. For a brief moment there was a dark and calculating look on her face before it was replaced by hurt and betrayal. Hermione knew that, just for just a moment, Ginny's mask had slipped, and what she saw beneath it had chilled her to the bone.

It wasn’t too long though before Molly got over her tears and got angry. “How dare you!” She shouted at Harry, her face flushing as red as her hair. She jabbed a finger toward Harry, who was looking completely unrepentant. “After everything we've done for you! To accuse my daughter, MY DAUGHTER, of planning to do such horrible things!”

Ginny had stepped forward, placing a comforting arm around her mother. “It’s okay, Mum,” she said softly, her eyes never leaving Hermione’s. “Harry’s been through a lot. He’s confused.”

Something in Ginny's tone made Hermione’s skin crawl. That calculated look appeared on her face again but it was gone so quickly that anyone else might have missed it.

But Hermione didn't miss it, she saw it and she knew with absolute certainty that Harry was right.

In the face of the screaming redheads, Harry's jaw tightened. His green eyes, usually so warm, were cold as he looked at the Weasley matriarch. Finally, without a word, he turned on his heel and headed for the door of the Burrow, Hermione following close behind. Soon Fred and George followed, telling the rest of the family that they were going to give Harry a piece of their mind.

Soon after Harry and Hermione marched out the front door, not even having their trunks with them, and Fred and George were missing.

“Harry!” Ron shouted at him, his face still an angry red. “You can't talk about my sister like that!”

Harry paused at the doorway. “I just told the truth, Ron.”

“Some friend you are,” Ron had spat at him while stepping closer. “First you lead Ginny on, now you embarrass her in front of everyone!”

In the background Molly's tirade about ungrateful children was still going on and Harry didn’t say another word as he walked out with Hermione in tow.

Ron followed them into the yard. “Don’t walk away from me!”

Harry grabbed his Firebolt from where it leaned against the shed. “I’m done talking about this.”

“Hermione,” Ron turned to her, his face flushed with anger, “you’re staying, right?”

She bit her lip and looked into Harry’s eyes. “You act like there is a choice, there never was one to make, Ronald.” She said softly, still not looking away from those green eyes she adores. “I’m with Harry, always.”

“Always?” Ron asked, disbelief clear across his features.

“Always,” she confirmed without hesitation and she stepped closer to Harry until their shoulders touched. “Where he goes, I follow. Where Harry stands, I stand. It has been that way since the first year.”

At those words and what she was doing, Hermione's heart hammered in her chest. The secret she’d kept buried since she was eleven years old felt like it might burst from her at any moment, how that first meeting had changed everything for her. How she had felt something, something that made her want to stay by his side forever, it took her some time to learn that it was love. It would be so easy to say she is following Harry because she loves him completely but she stops herself.

Harry mounted his broom and looked at her, his green eyes reflecting gratitude and something deeper. Without hesitation, Hermione climbed on behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist. The simple contact sent a familiar flutter through her stomach that she had learned to hide behind friendship.

“Seriously?” Ron shouted. “After everything?”

“Everything has always had Harry in it, Ronald,” Hermione reminded him sharply. Her fingers tightened slightly around Harry’s middle, protective and determined. “That’s never going to change. You on the other hand… everything has never always had you in it or if it did, it was detrimental to me or Harry.”

Harry reaches up and squeezes her hand, a silent thank you that meant more than words ever could.

Harry kicked off from the ground, the sudden acceleration making Hermione tighten her grip. The summer air rushed past them as they climbed higher, the wind whipping her hair behind her.

Below, Ron's angry shouts faded into nothing. The Burrow grew smaller until it was just a tiny speck amid green fields. Riding like this with Harry… Hermione doesn’t feel her usual fear of heights.

“Grimmauld Place?” she asked, her voice close to his ear.

Harry nodded. “I own it so we can stay there together and I can order the Weasleys locked out by the wards." There is a pause before he continues. "Thank you for coming with me.”

“Don't thank me for that,” she said, resting her cheek against his back. “I meant what I said, Harry. Where you go, I go. Always.”

She closes her eyes, savoring the closeness, committing to memory the feeling of her arms around him.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Harry says softly, the words nearly lost in the rush of air around them.

Hermione smiles and she hopes that someday she might find the courage to tell him everything. But for now, this was enough, flying together, choosing each other, as they always had and always would for forever.

The setting sun painted the sky in various shades as they flew toward London, leaving the Weasleys behind. And if Harry noticed the way Hermione held him just a little tighter than necessary, he didn't say a word about it.

“All except Fred and George, who actually believed him,” Luna continues, absently straightening a stuffed dragon in Sirius’ crib. “They saw how their sister looked at Harry. They knew something wasn't right.”

Hermione remembered that too. While the others shouted at Harry or gave him disappointed looked, the twins, who were visiting that evening, had watched Ginny with narrowed, suspicious eyes. They’d said not a single word the whole time in support of their sister. “I remember them following us out, as soon as we were out of the earshot of the rest of the family, five feet away with Molly’s screaming, they told us that we had their support, that there was something seriously wrong with their sister. So they helped us pack our trunks and took them away to the joke shop via apparition. They brought them by the next morning after we had Hedwig bring them a letter to tell them where we were staying. They told us we always had a place at the joke shop if we needed it.”

“They were always loyal like that." Luna remarked. "And do you remember what happened you started dating Harry literally two days after they threw him out of the Burrow and you followed him in support?” Luna asked, her eyes narrow but the rage is not directed at her. “How the Weasleys accused you of all those horrible things? How they said you must have been after Harry all along?”

The memory stung. Ron had soon bought into the idea that Hermione had been manipulating and using him and Harry this whole time and so he quickly started to hate her. The last words he had ever said to her had been vicious, spat across the Gryffindor common room: “You manipulative mudblood bitch.” Before anyone could stop him, Harry went punched him so hard that Ron's nose was broken with a sickening crunch, blood spattering across the carpet as he fell.

McGonagall had appeared minutes later, her lips pressed into a thin line. “One week of detention for assaulting a housemate, Mr. Potter, and three days detention for calling a housemate a slur, Mr. Weasley,” she'd said, her voice sharp with disappointment. But Hermione hadn't missed the way her eyes had lingered on Ron with something like contempt on her face before she left the room.

Later that night, Harry had held her in his lap, his arms wrapped around her and his green eyes intense in the firelight of their common room as his magic seemed to radiate out from him. “I don't regret what I did to him,” he had whispered fiercely to her. “Not for a second. No one speaks to you that way. Ever.”

Ginny had been worse. She’d sent a howler that screamed awful things at her in the middle of the Great Hall, each word cutting deeper than the last.

“YOU'VE ALWAYS WANTED HIM FOR YOURSELF, YOU PATHETIC MUGGLEBORN!” The letter had shrieked, making Hermione flinch. “YOU THINK YOU'RE SO CLEVER, BUT EVERYONE KNOWS YOU'RE JUST A DESPERATE, LONELY GIRL WHO COULDN’T GET A DATE TO THE YULE BALL UNTIL KRUM TOOK PITY ON YOU AND HAS TO LATCH ONTO HARRY POTTER TO MAKE YOURSELF FEEL BETTER!”

The howler floated menacingly closer as everyone stared in horrid fascination.

“YOU'VE BEEN PLANNING THIS SINCE FIRST YEAR, HAVEN'T YOU? FOLLOWING HIM AROUND LIKE A LOST PUPPY! YOU UGLY BOOKWORM WITH YOUR BUSHY RAT'S NEST HAIR! WHAT LOVE POTION DID YOU BREW IN YOUR LITTLE CAULDRON? OR DID YOU CONFUND HIM WHEN HE WASN’T LOOKING? IMPERIUS, PERHAPS?”

Hermione's cheeks burned with humiliation as tears threatened to spill.

“WE ALL KNOW HARRY WOULD NEVER CHOOSE A PLAIN, BORING KNOW-IT-ALL LIKE YOU IF HE WERE IN HIS RIGHT MIND! HE DESERVES A REAL WITCH, NOT SOME LIBRARY-DWELLING FREAK WHO MEMORIZES TEXTBOOKS BECAUSE SHE HAS NO ACTUAL PERSONALITY!”

Harry's hand found hers under the table, squeezing tightly and Hermione could see her boyfriend of less than a week shaking in rage. The howler had barely finished shredding it before a second one arrived, this one bearing Molly Weasley's unmistakable handwriting. Hermione's hands trembled as it unfolded itself, floating at eye level.

“HERMIONE GRANGER!” Molly Weasley's voice boomed across the Great Hall, causing quite a few to cover their ears. “HOW DARE YOU BETRAY THIS FAMILY AFTER EVERYTHING WE’VE DONE FOR YOU! AFTER WE WELCOMED YOU INTO OUR HOME! HARRY WAS MEANT FOR GINNY, EVERYONE KNOWS THAT! YOU'RE NOTHING BUT A SCHEMING, MANIPULATIVE GIRL WHO COULDN'T BEAR TO SEE SOMEONE ELSE HAPPY!”

The howler's voice dropped to a hissing whisper that somehow carried throughout the silent hall. “I always knew there was something not right about you. Too clever by half. Always so eager to please. I see through you now. You'll never be welcome in my home again. Stay away from my family, you homewrecking harlot!”

The howler burst into flames, leaving nothing but ashes that scattered across Hermione's breakfast plate. She sat there, tears streaming down her face, unable to move as whispers and laughter erupted throughout the hall.

Harry had risen from his seat, his face full of such fury that several students not named Hermione had actually backed away from him in fear. His hand had already been reaching for his wand when Hermione caught his arm.

“Don't,” she had whispered to him, her fingers digging into his sleeve. “She's not worth it.”

The look in his eyes had frightened her. Not even when they thought Sirius was an escaped mass murderer who betrayed his parents did she see the sort of pure, unfiltered rage that he was directing at the redhead sitting smugly further down the table. It had taken both Neville and Dean to help Hermione pull him away and Luna had to be restrained by several Ravenclaw prefects. Hermione was afraid that if they hadn't restrained Harry, he might have been arrested for attempted murder with just how much hatred he was directing towards the Weasleys. While that was going on, Professor McGonagall was issuing detentions to Ginny for sending a howler to a student but Ginny looked unrepentant.

That night, Harry had paced around their common room like a caged animal. “I won’t let them get away with talking to you like that,” he had sworn to her, his magic crackling visibly around him. “No one gets to speak to you that way, Hermione. No one.” That was the last thing he said to her before leaving the common room for somewhere else in the castle.

The next morning, Harry and Hermione had sat together at the Gryffindor table, both looking determined despite the whispers going on around them. When the mail arrived, four identical crimson envelopes dropped into the Great Hall, all four of them landing at the Gryffindor table split between two redheads.

The first howler burst open, Fred’s magically amplified voice thundering: “RONALD BILIUS WEASLEY! HOW DARE YOU CALL HERMIONE THAT WORD! YOU ARE NOTHING BUT A DISGRACE TO THE WEASLEY NAME! THE TWO OF US ARE ASHAMED TO CALL YOU BROTHER AND SO WE WILL DENY WE ARE RELATED TO YOU UNTIL YOU APOLOGIZE!”

At the same moment, George’s howler exploded near Ginny: “GINEVRA MOLLY WEASLEY! YOUR OBSESSION WITH HARRY IS PATHETIC AND DISTURBING! HE’S A PERSON, NOT A PRIZE TO BE WON! HE DESERVES BETTER THAN A FANGIRL WHO WOULD GIVE HIM LOVE POTIONS WITHOUT A SECOND THOUGHT! GET SOME BLOODY HELP! UNTIL YOU APOLOGIZE WE DENY THAT YOU ARE OUR SISTER!”

But the twins were not done yet for a third howler from them arrived at the Burrow, landing in the kitchen in front of Molly Weasley. When it burst open, Fred and George's voices combined in perfect unison. “YOUR BEHAVIOR IS ABSOLUTELY VILE! SENDING HOWLERS TO A TEENAGE GIRL FOR DATING SOMEONE SHE LOVES? WHAT KIND OF PERSON DOES THAT?! HARRY AND HERMIONE ARE FAMILY TO THE BOTH OF US WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT! YOUR PLANS TO MAKE HIM GINN'S EMBARRASSING! AS OF THIS MOMENT, WE NO LONGER CONSIDER OURSELVES YOUR SONS! DON’T BOTHER SENDING US CHRISTMAS JUMPERS OR BIRTHDAY CAKES! WE WANT NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU UNTIL YOU GIVE HARRY AND HERMIONE THE HONEST APOLOGY THEY DESERVE! WE’RE PROUD TO STAND WITH THEM!"

Harry's howlers were even more scathing.

To Ron: “SOME BEST FRIEND YOU TURNED OUT TO BE! I SHOULD HAVE NEVER FORGIVEN YOU IN FOURTH YEAR WHEN YOU ABANDONED ME FOR MY NAME COMING OUT OF THE GOBLET! YOU WERE NEVER A GOOD FRIEND, JUST SOMEONE WHO WANTED THE FAME OF BEING WITH THE BOY-WHO-LIVED! CALL HERMIONE THAT NAME AGAIN AND NEXT TIME I WON’T STOP AT BREAKING YOUR NOSE!”

To Ginny: “I HAVE NEVER SHOWN INTEREST IN YOU! EVER! THE ONLY WAY I'D EVER DATE YOU IS IF I WERE DRUGGED WITH LOVE POTIONS! STOP SPREADING LIES AND LEAVE US ALONE! I’D RATHER DIE ALONE AND CHILDLESS THAN SPEND A SINGLE DAY WITH SOMEONE WHO WOULD TREAT HERMIONE LIKE THAT! YOU SHOWED YOUR TRUE COLORS WITH THAT HOWLER, AND I’LL NEVER FORGET IT! I DON'T CARE IF YOU WERE THE LAST WOMAN ON EARTH, I’D CHOOSE LONELINESS OVER YOU EVERY TIME! HERMIONE IS WORTH A THOUSAND OF YOU, AND I’D RATHER FACE VOLDEMORT AGAIN THAN CALL YOU ANYTHING BUT AN ENEMY AFTER WHAT YOU DID!”

While that was going on, Hedwig personally delivered a howler to Molly at the Burrow with the snowy-owl looking very satisfied: “MRS. WEASLEY, I SPENT BARELY THREE WEEKS TOTAL AT YOUR HOME OVER FIVE YEARS! YOUR ATTEMPTS TO MOTHER ME AND PUSH ME TOWARD YOUR DAUGHTER ARE DISTURBING! HOW DARE YOU PRETEND YOU COULD EVER REPLACE MY MOTHER! LILY POTTER DIED FOR ME! SHE GAVE HER LIFE TO PROTECT ME! YOU THINK YOUR KNITTED SWEATERS AND MEDDLING MAKE YOU MY MOTHER? MY MOTHER'S LOVE SAVED THE WIZARDING WORLD! IS IT MY FAMILY’S MONEY YOU’RE AFTER? WELL I WOULD SOONER LEAVE IT TO SNAPE THAN I WOULD LEAVE ANYTHING TO ANYONE IN YOUR FAMILY NOT NAMED FRED OR GEORGE! AND HOW DARE YOU SEND A HOWLER TO HERMIONE! SHE’S WORTH A THOUSAND OF YOUR DAUGHTER AND TEN THOUSAND OF YOU! STAY AWAY FROM US BOTH! I WOULD RATHER FACE VOLDEMORT WANDLESS THAN SPEND ANOTHER MINUTE IN YOUR MANIPULATIVE PRESENCE! YOU WILL NEVER BE MY FAMILY, I WILL NEVER BE YOUR SON-IN-LAW, AND YOU WILL NEVER SPEAK TO HERMIONE THAT WAY AGAIN!”

Harry reached for Hermione's hand, his touch gentle.

“They deserved that and more,” he said simply, loud enough for those nearby to hear.

And then another owl arrived with two more howlers that dropped in front of Ron and Ginny.

Ron's howler burst open first and Luna Lovegood's usually dreamy voice now sharp as a knife echoed in the hall: “RONALD WEASLEY! YOU’RE NOTHING BUT A PATHETIC BULLY WHO WOULD STILL BE STUCK IN FIRST YEAR IF NOT FOR HARRY AND HERMIONE! YOUR JEALOUSY IS AS OBVIOUS AS A WRACKSPURT INFESTATION! PERHAPS YOU SHOULD FOCUS ON DEVELOPING A PERSONALITY BEYOND ‘HARRY POTTER’S SIDEKICK’, ‘WALKING FOOD DISPOSAL’, AND ‘WANNABE CHESS PLAYER!’”

The howler to Ginny unfolded next, Luna's contempt clear: “GINEVRA WEASLEY, YOUR OBSESSION WITH HARRY IS DISTURBING AND FRANKLY EMBARRASSING. HARRY AND HERMIONE HAVE BEEN IN LOVE SINCE THEY WERE ELEVEN, ANYONE WITH EYES CAN SEE IT! THEY COMPLETE EACH OTHER IN WAYS YOU COULD NEVER UNDERSTAND. HE LOOKS AT HER LIKE SHE IS THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE WORLD, AND SHE LOOKS AT HIM LIKE HE'S THE AIR SHE BREATHES. YOU’RE PATHETIC IF YOU THINK YOUR SCHOOLGIRL CRUSH OR LOVE POTIONS COULD EVER COMPARE TO WHAT THEY SHARE. DO YOU REALLY THINK YOUR HOWLERS MATTER? STAY AWAY FROM THEM OR YOU'LL DISCOVER EXACTLY HOW CREATIVE MY HEXES CAN BE!”

The howlers shredded themselves and everyone stared at Luna, who sat calmly at the Ravenclaw table, buttering her toast with intense focus.

When she noticed everyone looking at her, she simply shrugged. “Screaming into envelopes is fun,” she said in her usual airy tone. “I should do it more often. Much better than keeping things bottled up inside where the wrackspurts can feed on them.”

Meanwhile, at the Burrow, Molly Weasley, whose ears are still ringing, sees another cursed red envelope and she hears what might be Xenophilius' daughter shouting at her.

“MOLLY WEASLEY! HOW DARE YOU SEND HOWLERS TO A TEENAGE GIRL ABOUT HER LOVE LIFE! HERMIONE IS THE BRIGHTEST WITCH OF HER AGE AND HARRY’S PERFECT MATCH! YOUR MEDDLING IS SHAMEFUL AND PATHETIC FOR AN ADULT WOMAN! PERHAPS FOCUS ON YOUR OWN MARRIAGE! EVERYONE KNOWS ARTHUR WOULD LEAVE YOU IF HE HAD THE CHANCE!”

The silence of the Great Hall was broken as Professor McGonagall slowly brought her hands together in three deliberate claps, her eyes wide with astonishment. The sound echoed through the silent hall as her lips twitched upward briefly before she schooled her expression back to neutral. Several students gaped at this reaction from their typically stern professor.

“Well,” she murmured just loud enough for the teachers near her to hear. “That was... certainly something.”

McGonagall then straightened her robes and cleared her throat, seemingly remembering her position. “I suppose I should be giving out detentions to Mr. Potter and Miss Lovegood, but I find myself suddenly needing to reorganize my schedule. Perhaps next week.”

With that, she walked out of the Great Hall, her shoulders slightly shaking in what looked suspiciously like suppressed laughter.

“The funny thing is that none of us coordinated that. I just sent Fred and George a letter telling them what happened.” Harry had told Hermione with a chuckle.

The next day the twins had sent their congratulations, sending a small box of their products with a note that simply read: “About time. Be happy.” Hidden at the bottom had been two potion testing kits with another note: “Just in case.” Harry and Hermione had used it for the rest of their time at Hogwarts, testing anything Ginny or Ron might have been able to tamper with.

Molly Weasley never apologized to either one of them, in fact she had sent Harry a howler in anger over him sending her a howler. Harry, having done some research, simply fired a reducto at it, and did the same for her next three howlers.

Chapter Text

“Do you remember your sixth year? How ardently I defended you and your relationship?” Luna asks idly, leaning back against a wall on the opposite side of the room from her.

Hermione does remember.

Luna had supported them from the beginning, actually from before the beginning. Harry had actually asked Luna to help him confess to Hermione on the Hogwarts Express on their way back to school at the start of their sixth year. For Luna, her task was securing the compartment that Harry and Hermione met in and keeping other people out.

"Harry, where are we going?" Hermione asks, laughing as he pulls her by the hand through the Hogwarts Express. "I need to do my prefer duties you know."

"Just trust me. It's important." Harry tells her and that is enough for Hermione. After all, she would always trust him.

As they got closer to a compartment near the middle of the train, the two of them started to hear strange noises and, when Harry slid the compartment door open, Hermione sees Luna Lovegood standing on one foot on a seat, waving her wand and conjuring a purple cloud with it.

"Oh hello," Luna says to them dreamily. She then hops off the seat and starts twirling around in a small circle in front of them. "Don't mind the yirandingle infestation I'm cultivating around me. They're quite harmless unless you're being an interference to true love or are allergic to tap dancing." She pauses mid-twirl. "Even I think this is rather odd, but daddy says the more ridiculous the dance, the more they multiply."

She suddenly sticks out her tongue and crosses her eyes, causing a passing Ravenclaw prefect to back away slowly.

"I've added nargle bells to my shoes," Luna adds, lifting her foot to show tiny jingling attachments. "The combination seems particularly effective at creating a student-free zone."

Then a group of second year Hufflepuffs walk by and Luna starts flapping her arms while making goose noises and causing them to run away.

Harry grins and pulls a very confused Hermione inside. "Thanks for you help, Luna."

"Of course, Harry. I will patrol the corridor with the yirandingles so take your time." Luna walks out, humming an off key melody while occasionally making popping sounds with her cheeks. "Even the ghosts find this disturbing," she happily tells them over her shoulder. "It's quite useful."

Luna makes sure to close the compartment door behind her and Hermione turns to look at Harry. “Okay… that was odd… even for Luna.” Hermione says slowly as she hears Luna, if she is not mistaken, singing in the style of a Byzantine chanter about nargles. Since when did Luna know Byzantine chanting?

Harry just kept grinning. “I asked her to make sure this compartment was empty for us, I needed us to be alone here.” 

Hermione glances around the empty compartment. "What's so special about-"

"You don't recognize it?" Harry asks softly. "This is where we met back in our first year. You came in looking for Neville's toad."

Hermione's eyes widen as she remembers that day five years ago today. "I remember, you had dirt on your nose," she whispers. "Right here." She reaches up, touching the spot on his nose.

Harry catches her hand, his cheeks pink. "I wanted to ask you something... without an audience. Something important."

“What?” Hermione asks, her heart suddenly racing.

'Could this be...?'

Harry's eyes shift nervously around the empty compartment, the same one where they had first met all those years ago. His fingers tremble slightly and he is clearly nervous.

“I've been wanting to say this for so long,” he begins, his voice barely above a whisper. “Ever since our first year, actually.”

"Harry?"

“Do you remember when we met?” he asks, his green eyes finally meeting hers. “Right here, in this compartment? You came in looking for Neville's toad.”

A smile tugs at her lips. "Of course I remember that day, I was rather bossy back then wasn't I?"

"You were brilliant," Harry corrects, his voice gaining confidence. "I'd never met anyone like you. So clever and determined and..." He swallows hard. "And Hermione... I think I've loved you since that very moment."

Her eyes widen as the words she has dreamed of hearing for years finally reach her ears.

"I know it's taken me forever to say it," he continues, words coming out faster now. "And I understand if you don't feel the same way. But after everything we've been through, I couldn't keep pretending that-"

Hermione didn't let him finish that sentence. Instead, she threw herself into his arms and wrapped her arms around the back of his neck as she pressed her lips firmly against his.

For a moment, Harry was frozen in surprise at what was happening but then he wraps his arms around her waist, pulling her closer. The kiss was clumsy and inexperienced but filled with years of unspoken feelings.

When they finally break apart, both breathless, Harry looks dazed, his glasses slightly askew. "I... wow."

Hermione lets out a small laugh, her cheeks flushed. "I love you too, Harry. Ever since that day when a boy with broken glasses and the kindest eyes I'd ever seen let me ramble on about spells and Hogwarts in this compartment without making fun of me."

"Really? All this time?"

She nods. "All this time. I just never thought... I mean, I was afraid you'd never see me that way."

Harry smiles, pressing his forehead against hers. "I've seen you, Hermione. Always. I saw nobody but you."

Their second kiss was slower, more deliberate, but no less meaningful. Around them, the Hogwarts Express continued its journey through the countryside, carrying them toward new adventures, just as it had the day they first met.

And outside the compartment, Luna Lovegood smiles happily. True love was finally being acknowledged by the both of them.

Had Luna just done that, it would have been more then enough but no, she did more. Hermione expected some support given how she helped set the stage for Harry's confession but she was truly shocked by Luna's fierce protectiveness of their relationship. Unlike her usual dreamy demeanor, Luna became someone else entirely whenever anyone threatened what she called 'the purest love at Hogwarts.'

Once, when a group of fifth year Ravenclaws had been talking particularly nastily about their relationship in the library while Hermione was studying nearby, Luna had walked up to her year and dorm mates, her wand twirling between her fingers.

"Harry and Hermione belong together," she had stated as if she were speaking to painfully slow children. "Their souls recognized each other as their one true love from the moment they met. Anyone who tries to come between them will find themselves dealing with more than just wrackspurts."

The threat had been unmistakable and the Ravenclaws scattered. After the last one disappeared Luna had walked over to Hermione and took the seat across from her, a smile on her face.

"I'd like to be godmother to your first daughter." she had said simply.

"Daughter? I... but... we... Luna we aren't even talking about children yet." Hermione had told her, blushing fiercely.

"So you haven't been thinking about it?" Luna asked with a tilt of her head. "And I notice you used the word 'yet.'"

"..."

"The silence is deafening, Hermione." Luna told her with a very small smirk.

Hermione had refused to say anything but, privately, she had already been dreaming of a little boy with Harry's messy black hair and her brown eyes or a little girl with her curls but Harry's green eyes. She had already pictured their family growing, had imagined herself round with Harry's child, his hands touching her belly, his face filled with wonder. It was a future she wanted desperately, as soon as they were married. At some point she had resolved herself, a proper wedding, and then babies. Lots of babies, starting on their wedding night if possible. Giving Harry a family, something he never had and giving her children siblings that neither she or Harry had growing up. That led to many nights of detailed dreams for her thanks to her hormones.

Another time, when someone in the teenage edition of Witch Weekly, had published an article suggesting Harry was too good for Hermione, Luna had written a scathing rebuttal to the Quibbler, defending their relationship. “Harry Potter deserves someone who loves him for being Harry, who sees the boy beneath the legend, who challenges him to be better while accepting him exactly as he is,” Luna had written in her article. “In Hermione Granger, he has found exactly that person, and anyone with eyes unclouded by Wrackspurts can see they belong together.”

Then there was the time that Luna confronted a group of seventh year Ravenclaws who were been planning to ambush Harry with an enchanted mistletoe that would trap him until he kissed the person who'd set the trap.

"I don't care if I'm expelled," Luna had told them, her voice maintaining its dreamy quality but sparks were coming from her wand. "And with that in mind, if any of you try to force Harry into anything, anything at all, I will make sure you regret it for the rest of your natural lives."

Coming from anyone else, it might have sounded like an empty threat. Coming from Luna, it had been enough to make even the most determined would be seductresses reconsider, especially since she was already being threatened with expulsion due to her detentions constantly piling up.

"Why do you protect us like this?" Hermione had asked Luna one evening as they studied in the library.

Luna had looked up from her upside down copy of The Quibbler, her face deadly serious as she looked straight into Hermione's eyes. "You and Harry are my friends and friends protect each other's happiness," she had said as if that was sufficient but she did elaborate further on it. "Your happiness is Harry. Harry's happiness is you. That will never change for either one of you so the math is rather simple. Plus anyone with eyes can tell you are meant to be together."

Things came to a head near the end of their sixth year when Romilda had taken a draught of strength and cornered Harry in an empty corridor, forcibly pressing him against the wall and attempting to kiss him despite his protests, her lips having been covered with a love potion converted into lipstick. Luna had rushed around the corner with her wand at the ready and Hermione followed close behind with her own wand drawn.

“Get away from him,” Hermione had growled at her but Romilda had laughed and tightened her grip on Harry's robes, Luna's response came just milliseconds before Hermione's and, compared to Hermione's stunner, Luna's response was more violent as Romilda was blasted twenty feet down the corridor, landing in a crumpled and bloody heap.

“I don't particularly enjoy violence,” Luna had explained calmly, turning to the two of them and tucking her wand behind her ear as if nothing unusual had just happened. “But some boundaries shouldn't ever be crossed. Harry has only ever kissed you, Hermione. That’s special. I won’t let anyone take that from either of you.”

If it wasn't for medical intervention from Madam Pomfrey, Romilda would have died. However, Luna wasn't punished for nearly murdering another student because the only people who could for certain say it was her kept quiet, including Romilda herself.

For the rest of their time at Hogwarts, Luna would maintain a respectful distance behind them on their dates, always protecting them. Harry had jokingly called her their chaperone and she merely smiled.

When the two of them finally got married when they were nineteen, it had been Luna who stood beside Hermione as her maid of honor, a choice that had shocked Luna herself.

“But you have other friends,” Luna protested when Hermione asked her to be her maid of honor. “Normal ones.”

In response, Hermione had hugged her tightly. “I don't want normal. I want my loyal, brutally protective, slightly terrifying friend who once threatened to disembowel Cormac McLaggen for suggesting Harry should ‘trade up.’”

Luna had blushed slightly in response but returned Hermione's hug. "He deserved it. He was being disrespectful of true love." After they separate, Luna nodded at her. "I'll make sure no nargles infest the wedding flowers and I'll hex anyone who objects during the ceremony."

Hermione had laughed, but she'd known Luna wasn't joking and she proved it when she began collaborating with George in order to protect the wedding from 'negative energies and enemies of true love.' Which apparently included the two of them working to rig the entire venue with defensive charms that would activate if anyone objected during the ceremony. She and George even used his blood to create a ward to keep all Weasleys but him out.

"Just in case," Luna had said to Hermione with that serene smile, while George was working on some of the charmwork in the background… actually that was him levitating an anvil to hide in the ceiling. "No one will ruin your perfect day. We’ll make sure of it."

On their wedding day, Luna had tears in her eyes and her toast at the reception was a very simple one but said with a brilliant smile. “To Harry and Hermione Potter, the only people I have ever witnessed whose love rivals what my parents shared. May nothing ever come between you.”

Come the day Beatrice and Sirius were born, Harry and Hermione surprised her by not only giving her a goddaughter but a godson too and the young woman burst into tears, promising to protect them with her life, that they were the produce of pure love. When George wheeled himself in, always stubborn that way, wanting to wheel himself in under his own power for big things, but with a big grin on his face, Harry and Hermione asked him to be Sirius’ godfather and to stand in Fred’s place for Beatrice, twin godfathers for their twins, Fred would have loved it if he could have seen it.

Chapter Text

But Luna’s defense is not the only thing she remembers. She remembers moments of what she herself did over those years.

She remembers the day of the Battle of Hogwarts, a day that she knows will haunt her nightmares for as long as she will live and singlehandedly changed her boggart into something else. She remembers the flashes, the explosions, Fred pushing George out of the way to save him. The school that she had called home for years being slowly reduced to rubble under the weight of all the spells being cast by both sides.

She remembers how the two of them fought side by side, taking down anyone who might threaten them, as the fight spilled into the castle itself, but then, in the one moment they had gotten separated, Hermione saw the killing curse hit Harry, killing him right before her eyes.

There was a pause as the fighting died down but Hermione broke that pause with a scream as she started firing spells at the death eaters left and right, mentally begging them to kill her, to send her to Harry, even as she fought. But no, she had to be the brightest witch of her generation, she had to constantly train in order to protect Harry, she had to be too good to kill and even go so far as to kill Bellatrix Lestrange in a duel. She had to be too talented to be able to join Harry in death.

Words will never capture her relief and joy as Harry got back up again and continued the fight, killing Voldemort and ending the fight once and for all. As the death eaters started to surrender or retreat, she practically ran to him and threw herself into his arms before snogging him senseless and tearfully demanding that he never do that again, that he never leave her.

Later that night, the two of them laid together in a bed in the Gryffindor dormitory, Hermione laying on his chest, just to listen to his heartbeat to remind herself that he was still alive.

“I had a choice.” Hermione lifted her head to look at him and he continued. “I had a choice whether or not to come back or not after I was killed. After I was killed, I met with Dumbledore and the two of us talked and he said I could either come back or move on. I choose to come back, I couldn’t leave you alone ‘Mione. I just couldn’t.”

Hermione moves a bit further up and presses her lips to his after a moment she pulls back and whispers. “Thank you for coming back for me.” She then manages a smirk. “But just to let you know, if you had chosen to stay dead, I would have thrown myself through the veil in order to hunt you down and drag you back.”

Harry gives her a fond smile. “I can see it now, I am just sitting there enjoying a picnic with my parents and Sirius, if the afterlife has food anyway, and I suddenly hear the love of my life shouting ‘Harry James Potter, how dare you die on me!’”

“Oh I would have more words than that Harry, trust me.” Hermione says with a gleam in her eye.

Harry chuckles and turns sober. “Hermione, if something does happen to me, I don’t want you to throw yourself through the veil or anything to hunt me down, I would want you to live.”

Hermione frowns and looks at him seriously. “Harry, I love my parents and I like living but, without you here, it would be a half life, a life in a world that would have lost its most beautiful treasure. I love you and I always have loved you.”

While moments such as after the Battle of Hogwarts were important, there were less dramatic moments that probably were more important to the longevity of their relationship.

On the second night after they had started dating, she had completely upended her planned schedule that she made going into school year in order to make time for the two of them and cutting back on her extracurriculars and change up her study time. Harry, of course, quickly figured it out since she had made the original plans when he was sitting next to her and in fact she had talked a lot about them to him.

"I know you have cut back on your extracurriculars and study time and I want you to know you don't have to do that," Harry had told her at that time, sitting next to her on the sofa in the common room. "I know how important those things are to you and-"

In response to those words, Hermione had cut him off by simply smiling and taking his hand in hers, interlacing their fingers. "You're more important," she had said with absolute certainty before raising his hand up to her lips to kiss it. “I want us to work, Harry. And that means making time for the two of us to be together." Her smile widens a little. "Besides, when it comes to studying, study dates sound very nice compared to doing it alone so I wouldn't be cutting back on things as much as it seems."

He raises her hand to his mouth to kiss in kind. "Study dates do sound 'very nice' now that you mention it."

Speaking of things Harry had found out, she remembers the time that she was secretly giving herself flying lessons in their sixth year to work on getting over her fear of heights and Harry had caught her one night. How he had to go down to the quidditch pitch because he forgot something only to find her sitting on an old cleansweep, floating a few feet off the ground.

"You don't have to change for me Hermione." He had told her with a concerned look, reaching what Hermione felt to be the wrong conclusion.

Hermione landed and got off the broom with shaking legs. "Harry, I am not changing who I am. I am wanting to learn more about the things you enjoy, about the things that matter to you." She takes a breath and steadies herself. "If you can read more books and talk with me about them, if you are willing to do the things I want to do, then it is only fair that I try to do the same with the things you like. Not because I think I have to change myself to be with you or that you will leave me if I don't do something like this but because you matter to me and having a love of flying is part of who you are."

Then there was that time during their seventh year and they had been out at Hogsmeade on a date for the first Hogsmeade weekend. The two of them were enjoying butterbeers at the Three Broomsticks when a journalist from Witch Weekly had approached their table, her quick-quotes quill already hovering above a notepad.

"Harry Potter," the woman addressed him while completely ignoring Hermione. "The readers are dying to know, what's it like dating the Brightest Witch of Her Age? Is it exhausting keeping up with her intellect? Do you ever wish for someone more... relaxed?"

Before Harry could respond, Hermione had placed her hand over his on the table and spoke in a cool tone while staring at the reporter. "I believe that you are interrupting our date. And for the record, Harry has never complained about keeping up with me. In fact," she looked at him and smiled, "he's quite brilliant himself, though he's far too modest to say so."

The journalist had tried to press him more on an answer to her questions but Hermione had been firm. "No interviews today. We're just a young couple out on a date together and we would prefer to keep it that way."

After the woman that reminded her too much of Rita Skeeter, Hermione actually had half a mind to see if she wasn't a polyjuiced Rita, had left in defeat, Harry had given her a grateful smile. "Thank you."

"You hate the press and I hate it when people try to create problems between us that don't exist." Hermione had replied simply "I have had to deal with enough people insinuating things about our relationship or outright trying to wreck it during our sixth year and I am done just letting it happen. I’m your girlfriend and woe to anyone who says otherwise."

In response to that, Harry had leaned across the table and kissed her right there in the crowded pub, not caring who saw while Luna was outside throwing hexes at the reporter.

That wasn't the only time she had defended their relationship that year. When a fifth year Hufflepuff had made a snide comment about how Harry Potter could do better than her, that he didn't need to stick by his old sweetheart when he was the slayer of Voldemort and so was even more famous now, Hermione cornered her in a corridor.

"I know people like you think my boyfriend is just a trophy to claim," Hermione had said in a low voice. "But Harry is a person with feelings and dreams and fears and I love every part of him. Not the just Boy Who Lived or the Man Who Conquered or whatever other nonsense you all are calling him this week but Harry himself. I love the boy whose favorite food is treacle tart, who falls asleep in History of Magic despite actually liking history, who would work and put everything on the line in order to protect those who matter to him, who to this day still wants his mother and father more than almost anything else and would give up every coin in his vault to be with them again, who still has nightmares of the life he has lived but never complains, who shoulders all the burdens he can despite being surrounded by those who would happily lighten his load, including me. The boy who is the kindest and most loving boy you will ever meet." She then stepped closer to the shorter girl, looks her straight in the eye, and speaks even lower. "Unless you can say you know him like that, unless you can say you'd love him even if he lost everything tomorrow like I would, don't you dare presume to know what's best for him and who he should choose to love."

That Hufflepuff never said anything about her relationship while she was within earshot again.

Even during the stressful planning of their wedding, she had remained focused on what mattered most, the man she was marrying. She consulted wedding books, took dance lessons with Harry, tried different kinds of cakes to determine what flavor they should have, and more and ran most ideas she had by Harry since it was as much his wedding as it was hers.

She still remembers that one evening where she was sitting surrounded by piles of fabric swatches, examining different colour palettes and floral arrangements. She wanted their wedding to be perfect in every way she could make it and yet here she was sitting and feeling overwhelmed by all the choices available to her.

“We could just elope you know?” Harry had offered, sitting down next to her and putting his arm around her when she was staring at two near identical shades of blue, wracked by indecision. “Run away to somewhere together.”

She had looked up at him and one look at his face told her that he was being completely sincere when it said that instead of joking like part of her expected. "You wouldn't mind us not having a wedding ceremony?"

He had shaken his head, taking her hand in his. "All I want is to marry you, Hermione. That is all I have ever wanted."

For a moment, for one sweet moment, she had been tempted by the idea. So tempted to throw all the planning aside, to set it all on fire and just run away with him. But instead she smiled and squeezed his hand. "No, I want to do this properly. I want everyone to see me promising myself to you instead of just hearing about us eloping." She had then leaned forward, pressing her forehead against his. "I want the world to know that we have chosen each other. That our love is actually what Luna says it is."

Compared to the wedding colors, picking out the colors for the nursery, light blue and yellow, was fairly simple... Well, actually, they hadn’t decided on colors until after her pregnancy was confirmed. Hermione kept going back and forth on several different choices and Harry was much the same so they couldn't decide on anything. Her successfully getting pregnant however made that a much more pressing priority so they finally settled on something.

She still remembers how she rolled her eyes at Harry when he insisted she rest while he painted the whole nursery, he felt that it would be more of a labor of love if he painted it by hand instead of using magic, and told him in her old bossy tone, “Harry James Potter, I’m pregnant, not dying. I can at least help you paint a wall.” Harry could only laugh and say that he forgot that he had married the most stubborn witch alive but he insisted on bringing up a chair for her to sit in when she needed a rest.

Chapter Text

‘Harry is always my choice.’

Those were words Hermione has said so many times over the past nearly ten years and she had always meant them. Always, no matter what, Harry was more important. Their relationship was more important. It always had been, from the moment she realized she loved him and had since the day they met.

Hermione looks in Luna’s direction but not at her, at the picture next to her, a picture of her and Harry holding the twins in the nursery, both of them looking tired but happy going by their grins, Luna had actually been the one to take that picture of them. Next to it is a picture of Luna holding Beatrice and George holding Sirius in his lap.

“Nothing to say for yourself?” Luna asks blankly.

"What can I say?" Hermione whispers. "That I forgot what I promised? That I am a terrible wife? That I am a horrible mother? That I don't even recognize myself in the mirror? Anything I can say wouldn't be nearly enough to cover it.” Hermione's throat tightens. "I am all those things and more Luna."

Luna opens her mouth to respond but before she says anything there is a distant knock at the front door. "I doubt you know but do you know if you were expecting anyone?" Luna asks curiously.

Hermione shakes her head, equally puzzled. "I don't know." Her voice trails off and she can feel her gut tighten as a look of worry crosses her face, she does not believe in divination despite the prophecy but she has a bad feeling about this.

They make their way downstairs, Luna following closely behind Hermione but reaching for her wand. Like Hermione, she has a bad feeling about this and she actually does believe in divination.

The knocking comes again, more insistent this time. With a shaking hand, Hermione grabs the handle and pulls open the door only to find herself face-to-face with a woman in red Auror robes with a grave expression.

"Mrs. Hermione Potter?" the woman asks formally.

"Yes?" Hermione responds, her fingers tightening around the doorknob. ‘Aurors don’t make these kind of calls unless… oh God, what happened to Harry?'

"I am Auror Euphemia Willows." The woman speaks with a clearly rehearsed line. "I am sorry to tell you but your husband is in St. Mungo's in critical condition."

Hermione covers her mouth in shock and a pale faced Luna asks, "what... what happened to him?"

Auror Willows glances at Hermione. "Is it permitted for her to hear sensitive information?" Hermione nodded dumbly and she continues. "He was attacked by three men in former Death Eater regalia in Diagon Alley, he didn't even have his wand on him."

Hermione slowly turns around, her eyes fixing on Harry's wand, still where he left it on the kitchen counter next to the tea cup. ‘Oh no, no, no.’

"I didn't mean for him... I didn't want him to... I... I..." she whispers. ‘What have I done? What have I done?!’

Luna follows her gaze, her eyes widening at the sight of Harry's wand and quickly connecting the dots about what that means. "This is your fault," she hisses whirling around to glare at Hermione. "He left his wand because of you!"

Hermione doesn’t argue with that, she can’t argue with that. "I need to see him," Hermione says, her voice barely steady. Her mind raced wildly, panic setting in. "The children-"

"Go to him, I'll watch the children." Luna manages both to glare and look upset. "If he doesn't make it, Hermione, I'll never forgive you. And I WILL make sure your children know exactly who took their father away from them."

“Luna…”

"Just go!" Luna snaps at her. "He's lying there because you forgot what you always promised him. Your perfect husband might be dying now because you forgot that you promised to always choose him. You forgot everything that mattered!"

Hermione gulps at the words Luna is throwing at her. 'She's right, I have, and now I don't know what to do anymore.' Wiping her eyes, she turns back to the auror, "can you please take me to him? I don't feel well enough to apparate."

Auror Willows nods. "I can escort you directly to his room at St. Mungo's, Mrs. Potter."

As Hermione follows the auror out, all she can think about is Harry's abandoned wand and her last words to him: "Get out of my house if I'm such a terrible wife and mother!"

'That can't be the last thing Harry hears from me, that can't be.'

"Please be okay," she whispers as she takes the auror’s arm. "Please."

With a crack of apparition, Hermione arrives at the St. Mungo's reception room with Auror Willows. "This way Mrs. Potter," Auror Willows says as she guides her out of the reception room and through the corridors, her hand steady on Hermione's elbow.

Hermione barely pays attention to where she is being guided. Her mind is too busy replaying their fight on loop, Harry's hurt expression, her realizing how much she has failed as a wife and mother and screaming at him, his wand abandoned on the counter.

"What happened to him exactly?" she manages to ask, her voice small and unlike her usual confident tone. "I know you summarized but..."

"Three men in full Death Eater regalia cornered him in Diagon Alley when he was out on a walk," Auror Willows explains gently. "Thanks to their masks we're not sure who they were and we cannot ask Mr. Potter if he knows due to his condition. Witnesses say he fought back physically and may have broken the wand hand of one of them but..." She hesitates a moment before continuing. "they subdued him with several different curses. Then... they used the Cruciatus Curse on him. All three of them, simultaneously."

Hermione's stomach lurches violently. Harry, her Harry, defenseless against dark wizards who had waited years for such an opportunity. She remembers the countless times she had lectured him about constant vigilance, about always carrying his wand, lectures he had followed to the letter even as he would kiss her forehead and talk about how the war is over, that they won and there was no need to worry anymore.

‘But the war is never over for some people.' Hermione thinks to herself, feeling sick to her stomach. ‘Some people are always waiting to strike back, to take revenge for the previous defeat.’

"The bystanders who tried to help were stunned," Auror Willows continues. "By the time backup arrived, the damage was... significant."

They turn a corner and a healer with a clipboard approaches, his white and green robes splattered with what looks like blood which causes Hermione's heart to nearly stop. He is clearly exhausted and near the end of his rope.

“Mrs. Potter?” He asks Hermione tersely and she nods. “I'm Healer Simeon Matthews. Your husband suffered multiple curse injuries, including a particularly nasty one to his chest that narrowly missed his heart. The good news, however, is that we just managed to stabilize him a couple minutes ago.”

"What... what exactly were his injuries? Auror Willows mentioned curses and the cruciatius curse." Hermione asks, dreading the answer but knowing she needs to hear it.

Healer Matthews sighs heavily and rubs his temples. "Mrs. Potter, I won't sugarcoat this. Based off of eyewitness estimates and memory reviews, your husband was under the cruciatus curse for approximately three minutes and fourteen seconds with the spell being performed by multiple assailants simultaneously."

Hermione's knees buckle and she would have fallen to the ground if the auror didn't catch her and steadied her. ‘Three minutes and fourteen seconds. One hundred and ninety-four seconds of unimaginable agony. Harry, what have I done? What did I cause?’

Hermione wants to throw up as the knowledge she has flickers unwillingly through her mind, how, under prolonged Cruciatus exposure, the human body begins to break down, how the nerves fray and snap, how the mind fragments under the onslaught of pain beyond human endurance. And her Harry, her husband, the boy and man she had sworn to always love, had been under that onslaught not for seconds but for minutes. 'It is my fault. It is all my fault.'

"The witnesses reported something else," Auror Willows says softly while exchanging a glance with the healer. "The whole time, even as they increased the intensity, your husband never begged for mercy. He just kept screaming one word over and over."

Hermione looks at the auror, tears running down her face that she makes no effort to stop. "What was it?"

"'Hermione.' That's all he said." Auror Willows says gently. "The bystanders said that no matter how much they intensified the curses, all he did was scream your name. Over and over again. It was as if he was calling for you to give him strength to endure it."

The tears fall faster as she remembers how Harry had always called for her when he needed help, how her name on his lips had been both plea and prayer throughout their years at Hogwarts. It didn't matter if he was facing professors, basilisks, dementors, dragons, and more, he always thought of her.

“And when we found him,” the auror continues hesitantly, "when the attackers finally fled and we were able to reach him... he was barely conscious, but he kept murmuring your name. The mediwizards couldn't get him to respond to any questions. He just kept saying ‘Hermione’ over and over, like it was the only word he remembered.”

Hermione's legs give way completely and the auror half carries her a nearby chair and sets her down, she buries her face in her hands and starts sobbing. The image of Harry, broken and bleeding on the cobblestones of Diagon Alley, calling for her, calling for his wife who had been too busy, too distracted, too absent to save him is unbearable.

"He was delirious by the time we got him here," Healer Matthews adds gently. "Incoherent from the pain and trauma. But even then, your name was the only clear word he spoke before he slipped into a coma, likely due to all the stress his body and mind was under."

"I should have been there," she says between sobs. "I've always been there. Always."

It was true. Since the day they met on the Express, she had stood beside Harry in nearly every battle. She had faced three-headed dogs, Devil's Snare, flying keys, and giant chess pieces. She had brewed Polyjuice Potion and figured out the basilisk. She went through time with him and faced down dementors with him even if she couldn't cast a patronus yet. She trained him for the Triwizard Tournament, helped him gather Dumbledore’s Army, and followed him into the Department of Mysteries. Stood with him to try to figure out Malfoy’s plot, hunted down the horcruxes at his side, and fought together with him at the Battle of Hogwarts. She had been there for nearly everything except the graveyard and the Chamber of Secrets itself and even then she had offered support as best she could leading up to those events.

And now, the one time he was truly defenseless, it was because she had driven him away. Screamed at him to get out of their house. 'It is my fault, this is all my fault. I'm sorry Harry, I'm so sorry.'

“Beyond that,” the healer continues, checking his clipboard, “he has four broken ribs, a punctured lung that we've already repaired, severe nerve damage from the cruciatus, a concussion, presumably from hitting the cobblestones, and multiple lacerations from cutting hexes." He pauses for a moment as he reads over the next part. "He also suffered bone-breaking curses to his left arm and right leg.”

The healer's expression grows even more grave. “And we're particularly concerned about that dark curse that struck just centimeters from his heart that I mentioned earlier. If it had been any closer…” he trails off meaningfully. “We’re still working to counteract its effects. It's causing irregular heartbeats and some internal bleeding we haven't fully controlled yet.”

Hermione can feel the bile rising in her throat as she listens, each injury Harry suffered being another sign of how she failed him. 'If he had his wand... if I hadn’t screamed at him to leave... if I had been home more often… if I had taken care of myself… if I had remembered our anniversary... if I had been the wife he deserved and promised him I would be...'

“We have already healed most of his injuries such as the broken bones, most of the lacerations, and the concussion. That being said, after the curse that just missed his heart the most concerning issue at the moment is the prolonged Cruciatus exposure. As you likely know, extended torture of this nature can cause permanent neurological damage. Once he is awake, we will have to monitor him closely for any signs of mental deterioration.”

“Like the Longbottoms?” Hermione whispers, remembering Neville's parents. The image of Harry, her vibrant, loving Harry, reduced to a hollow shell who wouldn't recognize her or their children suddenly causes her imagination to kick into overdrive and she grabs a nearby garbage bin and starts throwing up bile in it.

As she vomits, she imagines herself years from now, leading Beatrice and Sirius to the Janus Thickey Ward. She imagines her children older, perhaps seven or eight, clutching her hands tightly, Beatrice still looking like a miniature version of her and Sirius being a perfect blend of her and Harry's features.

"This is your father," she would say to them, her voice catching as she brings them up to a chair by the window where Harry is sitting, his black hair prematurely grey and his body thin.

Beatrice, with her features but her father's eyes, would approach cautiously. "Daddy?" she would whisper, reaching out a small hand that Harry wouldn't take.

Sirius would stand back, confused and hurt by the blank stare from the man in all the moving photographs at home, the man who once tossed him high in the air and caught him with strong, sure hands.

She imagines Harry staring blankly ahead, perhaps handing his children empty gum wrappers like Neville's mother did sometimes. Maybe sometimes looking at them with no recognition in his eyes at the sight of his family. Those beautiful green eyes that had sparkled with mischief when he played with the twins, that had stared at her with desire in their bedroom, that had brimmed with tears of joy when he first held their children, now vacant, seeing nothing, recognizing no one until the day he died.

Hermione pictures herself sitting beside him day after day, telling him stories about their children's achievements. “Beatrice lost her first tooth today, Harry. And Sirius flew on his toy broom for the first time.” Sentences spoken to a man who would never respond, never celebrate these milestones with her, never tell her how proud he is of their children. And her never being certain if he understood a word she said.

She imagines holding his unresponsive hand during birthdays and holidays, bringing the children to unwrap presents before their father who would look at them but not truly see them. Perhaps sometimes running into Neville when he is visiting his own parents but, unlike him and his parents, why Harry is there is her fault and her fault alone.

She can see Luna, her eyes hard with righteous anger whispering to the children, “your father is here because your mother sent him away without his wand.” She can see Luna kneeling before older versions of Beatrice and Sirius, her voice gentle but her words cutting as she kept her promise as faithfully as she kept all other promises she made, unlike Hermione. “Your daddy loved you both so much that he gave up everything. And your mother gave up nothing at all.”

And worst of all, she imagines him, locked in that broken mind, still calling her name. Still believing she would come for him as she always had before. Still waiting for a rescue that never arrived because she had been too late, too absent, too consumed by work to protect the man who she had once lived for and dedicated herself to keeping safe. She sees herself growing old beside a husband who would never again hold her, never again laugh with her, never again tell her how he feels. A lifetime of one-sided conversations and broken promises until they both died.

“I should have been there,” she whispers after she finally stops vomiting, her voice cracking. "I've always been the one to save him."

The healer takes out his wand and conjures a cool glass of water for her which she drinks slowly. "We cannot rule out any aftereffects but the Longbottoms spent far longer under it than he did, nearly half an hour under four wands for each of them compared to Mr. Potter’s three minutes under three. The next twenty-four hours will allow us to make a good prognosis about his condition."

'Twenty-four hours of not knowing if the man I love will come back to me. Twenty-four hours of imagining a future where Harry might not recognize my face or remember the names of our children. Twenty-four hours of knowing that if I had simply been the wife I had promised to be, if I had made the choice that should have been second nature to me, that had been second nature to me for years, none of this would have happened... it is hell.'

"Where is he?" she asks desperately. "I need to see him. Now."

Healer Matthews nods, "if you will come with me, Mrs. Potter." The three of them walk through the halls together before finally entering a private room with two aurors stationed outside and inside Harry is laying motionless on a bed. His skin is pale with dark bruises blooming across his exposed arms and face. A particularly nasty gash runs along his temple, magically sealed but still angry red. His usually wild black hair is matted with dried blood the healers hadn't fully cleaned away.

'Harry, what have I done to you?'

Magical monitors hover above him, tracking vital signs with soft beeps and glowing numbers in various colors - one flashing red intermittently, making Hermione's heart clench each time. Bandages wrap around his chest, visible above the sheet pulled to his waist, spotted with seeping blood in places despite the healing charms. A faint blue glow pulses beneath them, some healing spell fighting desperately against dark magic.

His breathing comes in shallow, ragged gasps that make his entire body shudder. His fingers twitch sporadically and his lips, cracked and pale, move occasionally as if he's trying to speak, though no sound emerges.

Hermione collapses into the chair beside his bed, taking his limp hand in hers. It's cooler than it should be, but she can feel the faint pulse in his wrist. She looks down at his hand and sees his wedding ring, the simple gold band that matched hers, and a sob escapes her as she remembers the day he slid it onto her finger looking at her with love and adoration the whole time.

"I'm so sorry," she whispers, pressing his knuckles to her forehead as Healer Matthews and Auror Willows make themselves scarce. "I didn't mean any of it. I've been so caught up in work, in proving myself, in thinking I was making a difference that I forgot what matters. Please come back to me. The kids need you... I need you. We all need you."

She rubs the back of his hand with her thumb. "I'll make this right," she promises, though she's not sure how. "I'll be better. Just please, please wake up."

Outside the room, she can hear Auror Willows speaking, probably to the aurors standing guard outside. Hermione, however, can only catch fragments of their conversation thanks to her state of mind.

"...tracking them through Knockturn..."

"...might go after the family next..."

"...secure her office at the Ministry..."

For a moment Hermione feels terrified out of her mind because now there is a chance that her children could be a target and neither she or Harry are there to defend them. But then she remembers who is with them: Luna. 'No matter how she may feel about me, I know Luna would sooner die than let anything happen to her godchildren.'

"At least they're safe," Hermione whispers to make that thought more real, clinging to this one small comfort. "Luna would tear apart anyone who tried to harm them."

She can perfectly imagine Luna now, standing with her wand at the ready, those normally dreamy eyes sharp and dangerous as she guards the nursery. The same fierce protectiveness that she had called upon to defend their relationship in Hogwarts on full display.

As if summoned, a silvery hare patronus floats through the wall and Luna's voice, as cold as winter, rings out. “Aurors are setting up protective wards around your house. Beatrice woke up crying and Sirius won't stop saying ‘Dada.’ What should I tell them, Hermione? That mummy sent him away without his wand and now he might die? That their daddy might leave them too?”

Each word reminds just what she has done with her relationship with her best friend after Harry. The friendship she had grown to treasure now lies in ruins, just like her marriage.