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Chapter Text

Harry Potter had never thought Diagon Alley would feel so small.

The cobbles were the same, uneven enough that his boots clicked familiarly, but the crowds pressed closer than he remembered. Children tugged at parents' hands, owls shrieked in wicker cages, and a flash of parchment from Flourish & Blotts made his chest twist with old memories.

When he'd left Britain, he hadn't expected to come back. Not really. The vow had seen to that.

I will never interfere in her happiness.

At sixteen, it had felt noble. Selfless. Slytherins were supposed to be calculating, but Harry had been nothing more than a lovesick fool who didn't want to ruin the only good thing she had. He hadn't understood what binding words like that would do to his magic, to his life.

For years, even the thought of returning had made the oath clamp around his ribs like a vice. Then last month, it slackened. Not gone, but different. It was like he could breathe again, and for the first time in over a decade, he could set foot in London without pain gnawing at his chest.

Still, he kept his head down. A Healer's satchel swung at his side, the weight of medical kits more comforting than a wand. He was here only for supplies. Burn paste, Skele-gro, fresh salves. In and out. Quiet.

He was halfway to the apothecary when a small blur darted into his path. A girl, no more than nine or ten, hair a tumble of brown curls that caught the sun like a halo. She tripped on a loose cobble and went sprawling, palms smacking stone.

Harry crouched before he thought. Years of battlefield training made his movements brisk but gentle. "Easy there," he said, voice low, steady. "That was a nasty tumble. I'm a healer, do you mind if I take a look?"

The girl blinked up at him, eyes watering more from shock than pain. A scrape reddened across her knee. "I... I'm fine," she insisted, brave as any Gryffindor. Then, with the blunt honesty of children. "You've got beautiful green eyes. Mine are brown like my mum's."

Something shifted in his chest. He smiled faintly, drawing his wand and murmuring a cleansing charm before fishing a rolled plaster from his satchel. "Yours are very pretty too. Hold still a second."

She obeyed, wide-eyed, watching him seal the scrape with quick, practiced movements. "There," he said, tapping the plaster. "Not even a scar to show off. You'll need to come up with a more dramatic story if you want to impress your friends."

That earned a laugh. Light, bubbling, utterly disarming. She grabbed his hand and hauled herself to her feet. "I'm Rose," she announced, as though gifting him with a great secret.

Harry's throat went dry. The hair. The name. The eyes. Rose. Her daughter.

Before he could find words, another voice carried across the Alley. "Rose! There you are! Don't run off like that!"

Hermione Granger came hurrying through the crowd, another child in tow, this one a younger boy, Hugo was his name, his hand firmly clutched in hers. Her hair was a little shorter than Harry remembered, her robes practical, but her presence was unchanged, a rush of command and warmth all at once.

She froze when she saw who was crouched beside her daughter.

Harry rose slowly, schooling his features into calm, though his pulse rattled like loose glass. He felt the oath stir, tugging at him like a leash. Not pain, not immediately. But a warning. Don't interfere.

"Hermione." His voice came out quieter than he meant, steadier too. "It's been a long time."

She stared at him, first in shock, then with something sharper. Confusion, suspicion, maybe even hurt. "Harry? I thought... you were gone. Out of the country."

"I was." He glanced at Rose, who was still beaming at him as if he'd hung the moon. "Not anymore."

Hugo peeked out from behind his mother's robes, curious but shy. Rose wasted no time tugging her mum's sleeve. "He fixed my knee, Mum. He's a healer! And he's funny. He said I need a better story."

Hermione's gaze flicked between them, the sharp Ravenclaw mind behind her eyes racing. Harry felt the vow coil tighter, reminding him of every line he could not cross. He could kneel for scraped knees, he could make children laugh, but he couldn't reach for her.

So he offered the smallest of smiles instead, polite and restrained. "Just doing my job," he said softly.

And Merlin help him, for the first time in years, he was able to breathe.

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione wasn't sure if her hands were trembling because of the rush through Diagon Alley or because of who she had just seen.

Harry Potter.

Not the boy she'd known at Hogwarts, though the sharp green eyes were unmistakable. Older now, steadier, with the kind of quiet gravity that spoke of years lived hard. He'd smiled at Rose as if the world itself had narrowed to a scraped knee and a child's laugh, and Hermione couldn't reconcile that image with the aloof Head Boy she remembered.

She smoothed a hand over Hugo's curls, keeping him close as they stepped into Flourish & Blotts. Rose darted immediately to the shelves, already babbling about a new Arithmancy workbook. Hermione tried to focus on her daughter's chatter, but her mind tugged backward.

Back to Hogwarts.

Back to the year she'd been named Head Girl, and to her surprise, Harry Potter, Slytherin's golden snake, had been named Head Boy. She'd braced herself for arguments, for rivalry, for long nights of butting heads.

It hadn't gone that way at all.

Harry had been… efficient. Unflappable. He'd let her lead in meetings, adding sharp, practical comments at exactly the right moments. He'd never undermined her, never tried to compete. In fact, he'd seemed almost detached, as though the whole position mattered less to him than it did to her.

And yet… she remembered the late-night patrols, when he'd walked a step behind, silent and watchful. She remembered the rare moments his mask slipped, a dry joke, a wry smile, and how her heart had stumbled in her chest despite herself. She'd already been with Ron, tangled in that messy braid of friendship and romance. Any flicker of attraction to Harry had been buried quickly, and he had never given a sign he noticed her at all.

"Mum!" Rose's voice carried across the shop. "There's a book on healing charms! Maybe it has the spell he used on my knee!"

Hermione startled. "Rose-" she began, but her daughter was already tugging a book from the shelf, hugging it to her chest with shining eyes. Hugo piped up, more reserved but no less curious.

"Mum? Was he the same Harry that Uncle Neville said went to places where people were fighting?"

Hermione hesitated. Neville had mentioned it, yes. Almost in passing at a dinner last year, when she was too tired and too preoccupied with the unraveling of her marriage to pay much attention. "Yes," she said carefully. "He worked in places where people needed him most. It's… difficult work."

"Like an Auror?" Hugo asked.

"Harder," Hermione admitted. She thought of his hands, steady as stone while tending Rose's scrape. Hands that had likely patched together soldiers, civilians, perhaps even children not unlike her own.

Rose hugged the book tighter. "He was kind. I like him."

Hermione's lips curved in a small smile before she could stop them. "Yes," she murmured. "He always was."

Chapter Text

Harry had never realized how loud Britain was.

In the cramped Paris wards, or the broken refugee camps in Croatia, the noise had always been grief, pain, urgency. Here, it was chatter. The rustle of the Daily Prophet at the Leaky Cauldron. The clink of teacups. Laughter in pubs. It should have felt comforting, familiar. Instead, it pressed on him like an itch under his skin.

Because every time he thought of picking up a quill, every time he pictured scribbling out an owl, 'Hi Hermione, it's Harry, I'd love to see you again,' the vow tightened like a noose, choking the words before they could exist.

At sixteen, he hadn't known that words could last this long, that they could shape his magic for decades. Now, he couldn't so much as imagine knocking on her door without his throat seizing. The oath didn't care what might have happened that let him come back. It only cared that Harry had sworn.

He could see her if chance allowed. He could answer if she reached for him. He could even laugh with her children apparently, because that wasn't interference, only… inevitability. But to seek her? To invite himself into her life? That path was barred, iron and absolute.

So he did what he'd always done. Buried the ache under work.

St. Mungo's smelled the same as every hospital he'd known across Europe. A faint sting of potions, parchment, and nerves. The head Healer, Aldous Greengrass, was a tall, weathered man with steady eyes and the sort of patience born from too many impossible cases. He had shaken Harry's hand firmly.

"We've been missing someone who knows what it's like out there." Aldous had said. "Someone who can speak both healer and auror. Frankly, with your background I can't imagine anyone better."

Harry had nodded, listening quietly, offering a few sharp observations that made the older man smile. It felt… good. Right. To belong somewhere that wasn't a tent pitched on scorched earth.

They were walking the children's wing when the world tilted.

"Mum, does Hugo have to get the potions? What if it hurts?" Rose was half-pleading, half-exasperated, and Hermione's laugh followed, warm, exasperated, achingly familiar.

Harry stopped dead in the corridor, every muscle locking. The oath pulled taut inside him, warning, reminding, but not choking.

A moment later, she came into view, guiding a reluctant Hugo by the hand. Rose bounced at her side, clearly unimpressed by the prospect of vaccinations.

Hermione's eyes flicked up and landed on him.

For a heartbeat, the years dissolved. It was Head Girl and Head Boy again, crossing paths outside the common room, her gaze sharp as quills, his face unreadable. Only now, her children clung to her robes, and Harry carried the weight of wars she'd never seen.

Her lips parted, surprise flickering across her face.

"Harry?"

Aldous Greengrass glanced between them, then chuckled softly. "Ah. You two know each other. Good. Potter's just come home."

Harry swallowed, forcing the restraint of the oath to shape his words. "Hello, Hermione." He kept it simple, neutral, though his heart thundered. "It seems Britain's smaller than I remembered."

Rose squealed. "Mum, it's Healer Harry!" She tugged Hugo forward. "Look, he's here too!"

Hugo peeked up at him, curiosity in his wide eyes. "Are you going to give me the potions?"

Hermione gave a rueful smile, brushing hair from her son's face. "No, love, Healer Patel will do that."

"Actually, Miss Granger." Aldous interrupted. "Healer Patel is out ill today and Healer Potter here just started. He is filling in for her patients."

But Harry wasn't listening. His gaze snagged on her ring finger, bare. Miss Granger.

Harry forced a smile, bowing his head slightly to Hugo. "Don't worry. Vaccinations sting for just a second, but you'll be braver than most Aurors I know."

The boy's eyes widened, impressed despite himself. Rose giggled. Hermione, though, was watching Harry, that bright Ravenclaw mind behind her gaze, already piecing together questions she would demand answers to later.

o-o-o-o-o

The Department of Magical Law Enforcement wasn't glamorous. At least, not Hermione's corner of it.

While young Aurors stormed into the field with their wands blazing, she worked in the background, shuffling numbers and resources like pieces on a board. Which patrols needed reinforcement? Could she spare healers for the rally without leaving Mungo's exposed? Were smugglers exploiting gaps in the northern border again?

It wasn't work that made headlines, but it was necessary. Hermione had always been good at fitting puzzle pieces together.

Her quill scratched across a ledger as she adjusted projected Auror coverage in Yorkshire, only half-listening as her assistant read the latest proposal from St. Mungo's.

"…they're pushing for a liaison," her assistant read, "a Healer with combat background who can work directly with Aurors. Supposedly it'll cut response times."

Hermione stilled, quill hovering mid-mark. A strange flutter caught in her chest. "Did they name the Healer?" she asked carefully.

Her assistant shook her head. "Not yet. But they said he's uniquely qualified. Combat-tested and used to working with paramilitary forces."

Hermione set her quill down before she smudged ink across the parchment. Uniquely qualified. Combat-tested.

She pushed the thought away, but it returned at once. Harry.

The name alone was enough to send her stomach into knots.

Twice in one week, after more than a decade of silence. He'd been polite, careful, formal. Pure Slytherin in his reserve. And yet, with Rose and Hugo… his mask had slipped. Warmth had poured through as if he'd never forgotten how. Rose had adored him instantly, and Hugo, though shy, had leaned forward at every word.

Now her children wouldn't stop talking about him.

"Can Healer Harry come to dinner?" Rose had asked at least four times in the past two days, completely undeterred by Hermione's deflections. Hugo had begun marching around the sitting room with a toy wand, announcing he was going to be "a healer like Harry, who saves people and fights too."

Hermione had smiled for their sake, but when she was alone, she found herself turning the moments over and over again. His steady hands on Rose's knee. His calm humor.

Rose had even delved into her new book on healing charms, and last night Hermione had caught her practicing Episkey on her doll, giggling when the ragged fabric stitched closed under her practice wand.

It was endearing. It was terrifying.

Because if the Healer St. Mungo's wanted really was Harry Potter, then she wasn't just going to run into him by chance anymore. She'd be working with him. Every week. Maybe every day.

Hermione pressed her lips together, staring down at the ink-stained numbers that suddenly seemed meaningless. She should be cautious, professional, prepared for anything.

But deep down, a spark she hadn't felt in years whispered otherwise.

She was nervous, excited, undone. And she hated that the one missing piece she wanted to fit into her life was Harry Potter.

o-o-o-o-o

Harry had thought war zones were difficult. Turns out, British bureaucracy could give them a fair fight.

His new office was still half-unpacked. A clean desk with a scatter of parchment, shelves not yet filled, a kettle that had already earned its keep twice today. He was scheduled to meet the Auror Office later that morning, an orientation to explain how his role would fit between their response teams and the Healers.

"Come on, Potter. You can't be late for your first meeting." Penelope Clearwater warned, leaning in his doorway with a knowing smirk. She was brisk, efficient, and one of the few Healers who remembered him from school. "Their planner will eat you alive if you're not prepared."

Harry arched a brow as he stood, following Penelope to their conference room. "Eat me alive?"

Penelope eyed him sideways. "Sharp, organized to the inch, and a spine like a Hungarian Horntail. The Aurors complain constantly, but they can't function without her. Honestly, it's half the reason your post was created. None of us full-time Healers have the patience or… tactical sense to match her. They needed someone who could actually keep up."

Harry hummed, fingers brushing the edge of his notebook. Organized. Intelligent. Capable of terrifying Aurors into obedience. The description tugged at something sharp in his chest.

The oath coiled at once, forbidding the thought of asking. His throat closed against even the hint of her name. He swallowed instead, forcing a bland smile. "Sounds like I should be worried."

"Mm." Penelope grinned, clearly enjoying herself as she settled into a chair at the edge of the room. "Best be on your toes."

The Floo roared to life.

Green flames spat sparks across the hearth, and a woman stepped through with the kind of practiced grace that came from doing it daily. She was all business. Fitted robes, a muggle pen tucked neatly into her bun, three full binders hovering at her side like obedient soldiers.

Hermione Granger.

For a heartbeat, the world narrowed. Their eyes locked, and Harry forgot how to breathe.

Excitement flickered across her face, bright as a struck match. He knew his own must have betrayed the same, because Penelope's smirk only widened as she glanced between them.

"Ah," she said lightly. "Looks like introductions won't be necessary."

Hermione's lips curved, professional, yes, but touched with something warmer. "Hello, Harry."

And for the first time in years, the oath didn't tighten.

It simply waited.

Harry took a seat near the end of the long oak table, quill and parchment ready, though he already suspected half the meeting would be about showing the Aurors he could play well with others.

They trickled in with the usual mix of bravado and weariness. Scarred, sharp-eyed men and women who measured newcomers in seconds. A few gave him curious nods. Most ignored him.

"All right," Hermione said briskly. "We're here to integrate Healer support into field operations. The aim is to cut down response times, improve casualty survival, and ensure Auror teams can be redeployed faster."

She looked directly at Harry. "This is Healer Potter. He's been in the field for over a decade, including active war zones, and he's agreed to take on St. Mungo's liasion role."

Harry inclined his head. "You'll find I don't spook easily."

A few Aurors chuckled. One muttered, "We'll see." Hermione's mouth twitched, just short of a smile, before she launched into charts and projections.

Charts floated, quills scratched, and every Auror found themselves pinned by her questions until they yielded real answers. By the ten-minute mark, even the most jaded were grudgingly taking notes.

Harry matched her calmly, filling in with real-world examples of injuries and the difference it made when a medic was seconds faster. Slowly, the skeptical faces around the table shifted toward grudging respect.

It felt… natural. Too natural. As though this had always been waiting for them.

When the others were finally dismissed to digest their assignments, Hermione stayed behind, gathering her binders. She glanced at him sidelong, the professional edge softening.

"You made quite the impact on my children."

Harry stilled, parchment forgotten beneath his hands. The oath didn't choke him, because she had opened the subject. He smiled, tentative at first, then warmer. "Rose and Hugo, right? They're brilliant kids."

Her expression lit, just a little. "Rose hasn't stopped practicing Episkey since you showed her. And Hugo. Well, you might've inspired his new dream career."

Harry chuckled, leaning back in his chair. "Glad I didn't scare him off, then. He asked a dozen questions in the time it took to get him to swallow two potions. I think he'll do fine."

The words came easily. She had given him permission, and suddenly, for the first time since they were seventeen, Harry could talk to her about something personal without the oath tightening around his chest. He clung to it, careful but hungry.

"They're living with you in London?" he asked, careful not to sound too curious.

"Yes." Hermione's voice softened, almost absent as she smoothed a page into her binder. "It's just us at the moment."

Something flickered in Harry. Something dangerously close to hope. The oath whispered like iron chains, tugging him back from the edge of the question. Ron's name lodged behind his teeth. He let the question die unsaid, nodding instead.

"They're lucky to have you," he said simply.

Hermione looked up, meeting his eyes again. There was something there. Unreadable, complicated, but not unwelcome.

And Harry realized, with a twist of wonder and unease, that in the cracks of his vow, there might be room to breathe after all.

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione closed the last binder with a precise snap, more for something to do with her hands than necessity.

She'd tried, subtly, she thought. Mentioning Rose and Hugo had been deliberate, a door cracked open, an invitation for him to step inside the conversation she so desperately wanted to have.

And he had. To her children, he'd been warm and easy, even teasing. His smile when he spoke of Rose's determination or Hugo's relentless questions had made her heart twist. But then, as soon as the subject brushed close to her… he'd retreated.

Reserved. Polite. Just as he had been when they were Head Boy and Girl all those years ago. Always professional, always steady, always just out of reach.

Hermione tamped down a sigh, tucking quills and parchment back into her bag. She'd hoped that he would ask about Ron. That she'd have an opening to say the words that had been lodged like glass in her throat since the divorce was finalized. I'm free. I'm no longer half of a broken pair. I've reclaimed myself.

Instead, Harry had asked about her children with genuine fondness and then drawn back, as though any step closer to her might be forbidden ground.

So she shouldered her bag, lifted her chin, and gave Harry a smile that she hoped hid the storm inside her. "Thank you for your time today. I'll send along the finalized schedules tomorrow."

He nodded, his expression careful, his hand flattening the parchment on the table as though to hold something steady within himself. Unreadable as ever. "I'll be ready."

And that was all.

Hermione turned toward the Floo, feeling the weight of words unsaid pressing heavier than her binders.

Her smile faltered once her back was to him. The ache caught high in her throat, sharp as if the words had lodged there permanently. Interested in them… not me. But some part of her refused to let it end there. Because for the first time in years, Harry Potter was back in her life. And she wasn't going to let silence steal him away again.

Chapter Text

Harry had always hated how narrow the vow made his world.

Diagon Alley was worse than most places. Since the day he ran into Hermione, if he so much as intended to come here on his own, the vow tightened around him like a hangman's noose. But today, Head Healer Greengrass had given him an errand. The vow didn't strangle duty, only desire.

Supplies from Slug & Jigger's and a consultation with a potion-maker. Somehow that slipped past the boundaries. Orders weren't interference.

It was maddening. To be this close, to walk the cobbles where Hermione might be just around the next corner, and not even be able to want it.

He exhaled sharply, pushing the thought down before the vow could constrict further. The tug at his chest loosened, but the bitterness remained.

He was still chewing on the thought when a voice cut through the bustle.

"Harry?"

Harry turned, freezing on the spot. Neville Longbottom was standing outside Flourish and Blotts, parcels under one arm, blinking at him as though he'd seen a ghost.

Harry's face broke into a grin before he even realized it. "Neville!"

His godbrother's expression flickered through relief, disbelief, and then something sharper. He strode forward, clapping Harry into a fierce hug. "Merlin's beard, it is you. I thought... bloody hell, I don't know what I thought. But you're here."

Harry laughed, the sound rough with affection. "I'm here. Sorry for the shock."

Neville pulled back, studying him with furrowed brows. "Shock? Try betrayal. I heard you've been back long enough to get settled at St. Mungo's, and you didn't think to come see me? Or Hannah? Or the kids?"

The words hit like a punch. Harry's throat tightened. It wasn't because he didn't want to, but because the vow had never let him. He'd pictured dropping by Hogwarts to visit Neville, or the Leaky Cauldron where Hannah ran the bar now. Every time, the oath had pulled taut, strangling the intent before it could live.

But he couldn't say that. Couldn't explain. The vow didn't just bar him from Hermione. It barred him from admitting the vow itself.

So Harry did what he'd learned to do best. He smiled, and he didn't let the hurt show. "I should've come sooner," he said warmly. "You're right. I've missed you, Nev."

Neville's frown softened, but suspicion lingered in his eyes. He clapped Harry on the shoulder, hard. "Damn right you have. You owe me a pint. And an explanation."

Harry chuckled, but inside he felt the vow pulse, warning him against too much truth.

"Don't even think about disappearing on me again," Neville said firmly, steering him toward the Leaky Cauldron. "You're coming for a pint. Hannah'll have my head if I don't drag you in."

Harry chuckled, letting himself be guided, though a low unease coiled in his chest. He wanted to ask who else might be there, but the oath thrummed, warning him against even the hope of Hermione. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth.

The pub door swung open to the familiar hum of chatter, clinking glasses, and warm firelight.

"Bloody hell," Seamus Finnigan was the first to spot him, elbowing Dean in the ribs. "It is you!"

In seconds, Harry was surrounded. Dean's broad grin, Susan Bones with her sharp, knowing laugh, Terry Boot with his calculating eyes, Lavender Brown tossing her hair with theatrical flair. Draco, smirk firmly in place and hair still slicked back, his arm slung around Ginny, whose bright, mischievous eyes missed nothing. Padma Patil leaned in with quiet elegance, Seamus already cracking a joke loud enough for half the pub to hear, and Hannah Abbott's warm smile tied the circle together, and Pansy Parkinson arching a brow with polished disdain that somehow softened into affection at the edges.

"Where the hell have you been hiding?" Dean demanded, clapping his back.

Harry grinned, the warmth of it startling even himself. "Here and there. Mostly patching up people who've seen better days."

"War zones, wasn't it?" Susan asked, eyes narrowing in curiosity. "We heard bits, but you were impossible to pin down."

Harry nodded, careful to keep it light. "Wherever they needed someone to stop the bleeding. Not glamorous, but important."

"Not glamorous, he says," Lavender scoffed, tossing her curls. "You disappear for a decade, come back with Healer credentials and Auror training, and it's not glamorous. You realize you're a walking adventure novel, right?"

The table laughed, and Harry found himself laughing too.

They pressed him for stories, and he gave them enough to satisfy. Stripped of blood and grief, painted in broad strokes. A blizzard evacuation in the Carpathians, a dragonbite triage in Norway, smuggling refugees through cursed forests in Eastern Europe. He spoke of it like a series of puzzles, problems to solve, and they listened with wide eyes.

In return, they gave him their own lives.

Ginny, quill always ink-stained, ran a Quidditch column for the Prophet, her commentary as sharp as the glint in her eyes.

Susan worked in magical law, fierce and uncompromising, the kind of advocate who could dismantle an opponent with a single raised brow.

Dean thrived as an artist, his canvases splashed with color and stories of places most witches and wizards never thought to look.

Seamus ran a wand-repair shop, always smelling faintly of ash, spinning tales so outrageous customers came back as much for the laughter as the service.

Hannah moved easily behind the bar, her laughter ringing clear as she balanced pints with a kind of grounded grace.

Neville leaned back with the ease of a man finally content, soil still under his nails from a day spent coaxing life out of stubborn plants.

Padma consulted for Gringotts, every bit as precise and poised as Harry remembered.

Terry had turned that calculating gaze into a tidy fortune in spellcraft patents.

Lavender worked in fashion, dramatic as ever, with scarves and bangles that seemed to float around her like stage props.

Draco, still smirking, claimed the family business but carried it with less venom than his father ever had.

All while Pansy, glass in hand, quietly dropped barbed observations between softer smiles that suggested she no longer needed to prove herself to anyone.

It was… good. Better than he had expected. Warmth he hadn't realized he'd been missing seeped into him with every clink of a glass, every burst of laughter.

And then Lavender, halfway through her second butterbeer, leaned in with a conspiratorial grin.

"By the way," she sing-songed, "I finally convinced Hermione to come out for a drink tonight. She'll be by after work."

The noose yanked tight, ripping the air from his chest. Breath tore from him ragged and wrong.

He shoved back from the table so fast his chair scraped the floor. "Sorry. Work. Early shift tomorrow."

He barely heard their startled protests as he fled, the vow yanking at every step until the night air hit his face and he could breathe again.

Inside, Neville was left frowning into his glass.

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione tugged her robes straighter as she stepped into the Leaky Cauldron, Luna drifting serenely at her side with that usual air of quiet amusement. The pub was lively, firelight spilling across familiar faces, and for the first time in weeks Hermione had allowed herself to be coaxed into an evening out.

Lavender spotted her first, waving dramatically from the table near the back. "She came! Look, she actually came!"

Hermione rolled her eyes but smiled as she and Luna slid into the empty seats. Dean raised his glass in greeting, Susan leaned in with a warm smile, and Seamus was already trying to flag Hannah down for another round.

But the mood was… off. There was a ripple of unease under the laughter, glances shared across the table like a conversation she hadn't been present for.

"What's wrong?" Hermione asked, brows knitting.

Neville was the one who finally answered, careful, thoughtful. "Harry was here. Just a few minutes ago."

Hermione blinked. Harry had been here. Just minutes ago. A strange pang caught in her chest.

"He left suddenly," Neville continued, watching her closely. "Said something about work. But… it was abrupt."

Padma tilted her head, voice tight. "It was right before you came in."

Hermione's frown deepened. "That doesn't make sense. I've been working with Harry all week at the Auror Office. We've had long meetings, hours of planning. He's been… fine." She hesitated, searching for the right word. "A little aloof, perhaps, but professional. No disappearing acts."

Silence fell over the table.

It was Susan Bones who voiced what the entire table was thinking. "Harry? Aloof?"

The weight of their stares made Hermione's cheeks warm. "What?" she demanded, suddenly self-conscious. "Why are you all looking at me like that? He's… different with me, that's all."

Luna reached out, laying a gentle hand over Hermione's. "Different doesn't mean worse. Harry has never said a bad thing about you, Hermione. Not once. And when your name came up, he only ever agreed with the best things."

Something in Luna's gaze was so steady, so certain, that the flush of embarrassment eased, leaving Hermione with only questions.

Neville leaned back slowly, eyes narrowing in thought. "You know… Harry had a crush on you once. Back in fifth year. I remember. He mentioned you all the time. Until one day, he didn't. He just… stopped."

Hermione's breath caught. "What?"

Neville's expression was troubled now, gaze flicking between her and Luna. "Why this, now? He's back after all these years, and he runs out the moment you're about to walk in? That's not coincidence. Something's going on."

The table shifted uneasily, all eyes on Hermione. She looked down at her untouched drink, pulse racing.

Because for the first time, she wondered if Harry's distance wasn't indifference at all.

Hermione tried to shake it off. The others weren't going to let the night turn sour, not with Seamus already halfway into a story about a customer who had tried to "repair" his wand with duct tape. Even Susan cracked a smile at that, and Hermione found herself laughing despite the knot in her chest.

It felt good to laugh with them. To lean against Luna's shoulder while Dean sketched doodles on a napkin, to spar lightly with Padma about Gringotts policy, to hear Hannah tease Neville about dirt under his nails. For a while, she let herself believe she belonged in the warmth of it.

But every so often, her gaze betrayed her, flicking to the door. She wondered which chair Harry had taken, whose joke had made him laugh, how his smile had looked in the glow of firelight. The thoughts kept slipping in, unbidden, as insistent as tide against stone.

By the time she begged off with a smile and a promise to come out again soon, her cheeks ached from laughter, but her mind was elsewhere.

She could see it. Harry laughing with Seamus, enduring Lavender's dramatics with the kind of warmth he never showed her.

The Harry she had always wished she could know better.

But not with her. Never with her.

With her, he was still the Slytherin Head Boy. Measured steps, careful words, distance wrapped in politeness so sharp it stung.

She fumbled her key at the door, blinking hard against the sting in her eyes. It was foolish. She was Hermione Granger, planner of Auror forces, mother of two, and she was on the verge of tears because Harry Potter had smiled at everyone but her.

By the time she stepped into the small flat, she had mastered herself again.

Mrs. Weasley rose from the armchair with a soft smile. "They were angels tonight. Fast asleep an hour ago."

"Thank you, Molly," Hermione said, her voice steadier than she felt. She pressed a grateful hand to the older witch's arm, then saw her off with polite words before locking the door behind her.

The flat was quiet now, shadows stretching long across the floor. Hermione slipped off her shoes and padded down the hall to peek into her children's rooms.

Rose was sprawled across her bed, curls fanned like a halo, one arm clutching a battered book of beginner's healing charms. Hugo slept curled in a nest of blankets, a toy wand still clutched in his fist. Both of them, already enchanted by Harry Potter.

Of course they were. He had that gift, that unshakable, undeniable charm that drew people to him like stars to gravity.

Just not her.

Not when they were Head Boy and Girl and she had harbored the faintest crush in the quiet spaces Ron never noticed. Not when, according to Neville, Harry himself had once felt the same. Not even now, when she was finally free to want something without guilt.

Hermione pulled the door half-shut and leaned against the frame, pressing her knuckles against her lips.

"Why not me?" she whispered into the silence.

But there was no answer. Only the soft, even breathing of her children, dreaming perhaps of the Healer who had laughed with them, inspired them, charmed them.

Charmed everyone.

Everyone but her.

o-o-o-o-o

Harry had just finished going over incident reports with two junior Aurors when the Floo roared green. He glanced up, expecting another parchment-runner, maybe Penelope Clearwater with another warning about procedures.

Instead, Hermione Granger stepped out of the flames.

Her robes were immaculate, her binder tucked under one arm, but her eyes. Merlin, her eyes were fire.

"Potter," she snapped, not even bothering with a greeting. "We need to talk."

The junior Aurors exchanged glances, wide-eyed, and Harry could practically hear Penelope's voice in his head. She doesn't take shit. Not from anyone. He excused the juniors with a nod, then gestured toward his office.

She followed, heels striking the floor like hammer-blows.

The door had barely shut behind her when she unleashed. "Do you know how maddening you are? You sit there, perfectly charming with everyone else. Neville, Lavender, bloody Seamus. And then with me? Stone walls, Potter. Cold politeness. Do you enjoy making me feel like I'm sixteen again, doing patrols with a boy who'd rather walk in silence than speak to me?"

Harry forced a calm mask, though his stomach turned. The vow coiled inside him like a constrictor snake, warning him. Careful. Careful.

He flicked his wand, locking and silencing the door. "Hermione," he said quietly, "maybe not here-"

"Here is exactly the place," she cut in, voice rising. "Because at least here you can't run off the moment someone mentions me. Do you think I don't notice?"

Her fury was righteous, and he almost admired it, until the vow flared, clawing at him, searing his throat from the inside. He swallowed hard.

"Hermione, please," he managed, but even those words strained against the bond. His voice rasped like gravel.

She stepped closer, eyes flashing. "No. No more evasions. You owe me at least the courtesy of an honest explanation, Harry! What am I to you, that you can be warm to everyone else but freeze me out as if I were poison?"

The vow snapped tight. He gasped. Fire raced up his chest, bursting out in uncontrolled pulses. His magic sparked in the air, rattling the glass of the office lanterns. A stack of parchment curled to ash on his desk.

Hermione's expression faltered, confusion breaking through the anger. "Harry?"

He couldn't answer. Couldn't not answer. His throat burned as if he were swallowing acid, his lungs seizing, vision strobing white. The walls trembled. His wand slipped from his fingers as he staggered back, trying desperately to force the magic down-

His legs gave out from underneath him, his vision blackening.

Hermione rushed forward as his magic flickered wildly around them, hot and raw. "Harry! What's happening?"

He tried to speak. Merlin, he wanted to, but the vow strangled the words to ash. His throat locked as he met her chestnut eyes, desperate, pleading.

She caught his shoulders. Panic sharpened her voice, though the questions still tore through. "Who did this to you? Harry? Stay with me!"

The vow lashed, a whip-crack of lightning that arced between them. For one terrible moment he thought it would tear him apart.

It would kill him if needed, but it couldn't punish her.

And then, at last, the storm ebbed. The flares guttered into a dim thrum, like an exhausted heartbeat, before sputtering out.

Harry slumped into her arms, unconscious, but breathing.

Hermione held him close, rocking him without realizing it, her voice breaking against his ear. "I've got you. I won't let go."

Chapter Text

"Help! Please! Someone, help!"

Hermione's voice cracked as she yanked open the office door, Harry's body going limp in her arms. Two Healers rushed in, and within moments he was floating on a conjured stretcher, surrounded by glowing charms and urgent voices.

They swept him into the spell damage ward at St. Mungo's, Hermione following at a near run, her heart pounding in her throat. Harry lay still on the bed as wands hovered over him in quick succession.

"Vitals steady. His pulse is low, but not crashing."

"Diagnostics normal."

"No curse residue."

"No potion traces."

"That can't be right," Hermione said sharply, stepping forward. "You didn't see it! His magic was burning through him, lashing out like it was tearing him apart!"

The senior Healer, a brisk woman with iron-gray hair, gave her a measured look. "I'm not doubting what you saw, Miss Granger, but we're getting clean results. No hexes, no abnormal instability, no toxins. He presents as… ordinary."

Ordinary. Hermione's nails dug into her palms. Harry had been anything but ordinary, collapsing in front of her, his magic raging like wildfire.

Another Healer tried a more advanced screening charm, the lights tracing over Harry's skin in green and gold. After a moment, he shook his head. "No anomalies. Magical pathways are stable."

"Then what is happening?" Hermione demanded.

Suggestions were thrown out and discarded almost as quickly.

"Core fever?"

"No, temperature's normal."

"Magical exhaustion?"

"He was sitting in a chair, not dueling."

"Binding backlash?"

"No evidence of a binding."

Hermione gripped the bedrail so tightly her knuckles whitened. "You're telling me nothing is wrong, when he nearly died in his office!"

The senior Healer softened, laying a hand on Hermione's shoulder. "Sometimes, magic seizes without leaving a clear mark. All we can do is stabilize him, monitor, and wait. He's safe here."

Hermione wanted to believe that. But she couldn't shake the image of his expression just before he fell. His throat raw, his eyes pained, as if some invisible hand were crushing him from the inside.

She stayed by his side long after the flurry of spells and potions slowed, her worry twisting tighter with every passing minute. The healers could dismiss and explain and wave their hands all they liked.

But Hermione knew the truth. Whatever had clawed through him tonight—it was still there, waiting.

o-o-o-o-o

Harry woke to the faint smell of antiseptic herbs and the steady glow of ward-lights. His throat felt raw, his chest heavy, as if he'd swallowed fire and it hadn't quite gone out.

He blinked, and a familiar voice said quietly, "About time you joined us."

Neville sat in the chair beside his bed, leaning forward with his forearms braced on his knees. His expression was calm, but his eyes were sharp in a way Harry recognized all too well.

"…How long was I out?" Harry rasped.

"Couple of hours," Neville said. "Healers say you're fine. Hermione doesn't believe them. She sent me an owl. Thought maybe her presence triggered your… episode."

Harry's stomach clenched. Even unconscious, the oath had dragged him away from her, like iron chains tightening in his sleep.

Neville tilted his head, studying him. "Tell me something, Harry. In your line of work, you've dealt with magical vows, haven't you?"

Harry's breath caught, bracing for the vow's chokehold. It didn't come, at least not yet. He forced his tone into the safety of the professional. "Yes. Vows, bindings, geasa, contracts. Combat medics see them all. I've researched, studied case files."

Neville nodded, like he'd expected that answer. "And you've seen how poorly structured vows can… ruin someone's life. Trap them in ways they didn't intend."

Harry swallowed. His magic pulsed once, warning, but didn't lash out. "Yes. I've seen that."

Neville leaned back, casual only on the surface. "Humor me. A patient shows violent magical backlash, no curse, no curse residue, diagnostics clean. Wouldn't you, in your professional opinion, consider a flawed vow?"

The air in the ward seemed to still. Harry forced himself to breathe. The vow tugged at him, burning faintly, but it didn't stop him from answering. "Yes. The symptoms would be consistent."

"And if a patient came to you with those symptoms, would you at least consider a vow as a possible diagnosis?"

Harry met his godbrother's eyes. "…Yes."

Neville's gaze sharpened. "And if that was the case… would you expect the trigger for such an episode to be linked to whatever was around him? Or whoever the vow involved?"

Harry hesitated. He could feel the edges of the vow tightening, but the healer's logic gave him just enough ground to stand on. "It would be likely. Yes."

For a moment, neither of them spoke. Harry's pulse thudded in his ears.

Then Neville leaned back in his chair, folded his arms, and gave a slow, knowing smile. "You know, for a Slytherin, you've never been the best at thinking through your decisions."

Despite himself, Harry huffed out a laugh that made his throat ache. "And for a Gryffindor, you're being remarkably sneaky right now."

Neville's grin widened, just enough to be wicked.

Harry let his head sink back into the pillow, exhaustion tugging at him again. But for the first time in years, he felt something else, too. Relief. Someone had finally glimpsed the truth, and he hadn't broken.

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione had tucked the children into bed early, though it took longer than usual. Luna had escorted her back from the healer's ward with a promise to help, but Luna's help felt a lot closer to play than bed time.

Rose was insistent they ought to visit Harry in hospital "He healed me, Mum, it's only fair we make sure he's healed too" while Hugo had been unusually quiet, eyes wide and worried. Hermione soothed them as best she could, but their concern only twisted the knot in her own chest tighter.

When the house was finally quiet, she collapsed onto the sofa, head in her hands. Luna sat beside her, serene as always, a mug of steaming chamomile cradled in her hands.

"You're very tense," Luna said softly. "Like a bowstring stretched too far. If you're not careful, you'll twang."

Hermione gave a weak laugh despite herself. "I watched him collapse, Luna. One moment he was fine, the next... his magic turned on him. I can't stop seeing it."

"Harry's strong. He'll be fine," Luna said, with the certainty of someone who believed in the inevitability of things.

Before Hermione could reply, there was a knock at the door. She frowned, setting aside her tea. When she opened it, Neville stood there, his expression unusually serious.

"Evening, Hermione. Luna." He inclined his head politely. "Could I have a word? In private."

Hermione's heart skipped. She led him into the kitchen, shutting the door behind them. "Is Harry-?"

"He's awake. Stable." Neville's tone gentled. "That's not why I'm here."

She let out a breath she hadn't realized she was holding. "Then what?"

Neville hesitated, then leaned against the counter. "I think you're right. Harry's collapse today wasn't random. I think… it's tied to a vow. One he made a long time ago. And I think it has to do with you."

Hermione stared at him, the words refusing to arrange themselves into sense. "A… vow? To me? That's absurd, Neville. Why would he-?"

Neville rubbed the back of his neck. "Do you remember… when you first started seeing Ron? Sixth year? Before Christmas, after that Quidditch match."

The sharp pang of memory caught her off guard. "Of course I do."

"I teased him about it once. I said he'd better be careful, or he'd risk stepping on your happiness if he…" Neville's mouth tightened. "If he had feelings for you."

Her pulse stumbled. "And?"

"He swore he wouldn't. That he'd never interfere. I've never heard him mention you since."

Hermione's breath caught. The image of Harry, aloof Head Boy, quiet partner on rounds, professional colleague last week, flashed through her mind with sickening clarity. Not disinterest. Not coldness. A vow.

Her knees nearly gave out, and she gripped the counter to steady herself. "He... he really-?"

Neville nodded. "I think he bound himself with magic. Poorly planned wording, too. The kind that twists and strangles if he gets too close to breaking it."

Hermione pressed her hand to her mouth. Every moment she'd felt overlooked, on patrols as Head Girl, his silence in meetings, his distant courtesy. It all flashed back, each one cutting deeper. Not indifference. Not coldness. A vow.

"Merlin," she whispered. "What have you done, Harry?"

o-o-o-o-o

Harry's flat was quiet save for the soft hiss of the fire in the grate. He leaned back against the wall, exhaustion still tugging at his bones, though the Healers had pronounced him 'stable.' Stable felt like a lie. Stable felt like the brittle moment before glass shattered.

He crossed the sitting room, barefoot on worn floorboards, and stopped before the bookcase tucked in the corner. At first glance, it looked ordinary, two rows of battered manuals on healing, half a shelf of field journals, a scatter of plant guides. But with a subtle twist of intent, the glamour dissolved, and the hidden shelf shimmered into view.

The books there were rare, priceless, and, at least to him, utterly useless.

Unsealing Magical Vows. Bindings and Their Undoings. The Covenant Unbound.

Titles he had tracked down at immense cost, through years of whispered inquiries in foreign markets and sleepless nights writing to obscure collectors. All of them right there, inches from his hand.

He reached out, brushing his fingers along the cracked leather spines. His chest tightened at the contact, magic coiling hot under his skin like a warning. He had learned the boundary long ago. He could touch them, read their titles, even dust their covers. But to so much as tug one free...

Harry hissed through his teeth as the pain flared, sharp and searing. He drew his hand back, flexing it until the tremor passed. The vow burned like barbed wire under his skin, punishing the attempt.

He exhaled slowly, forcing his shoulders to loosen. The vow didn't just bind his words, his choices. It caged his mind, trapping him even from the knowledge that might save him.

The irony never failed to sting.

From under his arm, he slid free a newly acquired volume, still smelling faintly of old parchment and salt air. Advanced Magical Ethics, 3rd Edition. He had gone to great lengths to get it shipped from Athens. Carefully, he placed it on the hidden shelf.

The moment his palm lifted from the cover, his magic flared again. The book might as well have been forged from stone.

Harry stood there for a long moment, staring at the spine. His throat tightened. He pressed a hand against the shelf, fingers splayed, and whispered into the silence, "Bloody fool."

The vow didn't punish that. It agreed with him.

The illusion shimmered back into place, the hidden spines vanishing beneath a glamour of dust jackets and field manuals. Harry exhaled through his nose, forcing the knot of frustration down. It was no use lingering. The answers had always been out of reach. They always would be.

The knock on the door startled him. Three raps, light and airy, followed by the unmistakable sound of his door opening without his permission.

"Harry?" Luna's voice drifted in, lilting, as if she were stepping into a greenhouse instead of a man's flat. "I hope you're decent. I brought biscuits."

He pinched the bridge of his nose. "You always invite yourself in, don't you?"

"Of course. You'd only say no."

She floated into the sitting room, her long hair catching on the firelight. A basket swung in her hand, the faint scent of cinnamon wafting up. She didn't sit right away, only tilted her head at him as if taking stock.

"I spoke with Neville," she said, calm as ever. "He's been very worried about you."

Harry's heart gave an uncomfortable lurch, but she didn't press. Just that steady, unsettling Luna gaze that could peel a man down to the quick.

She shifted the basket onto the table. "Would you make us tea? I need to use your bathroom. I promise I won't snoop."

"You always snoop."

"That's how I learn things." She smiled dreamily, as if the matter were already settled, and disappeared down the hallway.

Harry busied himself with the kettle, lining up cups, grateful for the brief reprieve. By the time she returned, humming some airy tune, he had the tea steeping. She accepted her cup with a nod and curled up in his armchair, chattering about a Ministry owl that had gotten lost and ended up at her flat, or maybe she had just imagined the owl and it was really a very determined Niffler.

It was almost enough to trick him into thinking this was ordinary. Almost.

When she rose to leave, her cup drained and her smile still luminous, he didn't stop her. "Thank you for the tea," she said at the door. "And the company. You're always better company than you think."

He watched her disappear into the corridor, silence swelling in her wake. Something itched at the back of his mind, a wrongness he couldn't name.

Turning back to the sitting room, his gaze flicked instinctively toward the bookcase. He willed the glamour to dissolve.

The hidden shelf was empty.

Pain speared through him, white-hot and merciless, his vow shrieking in his veins. He clutched at the frame of the shelf until his knuckles whitened, waiting for the punishment to pass. But it never pressed him to act. No compulsion to chase her, no orders to retrieve what was gone.

He hadn't known. He still didn't know.

The vow still burned faintly in his veins, a dull throb like a bruise that would never heal. Every instinct screamed at him to chase after Luna, to show her which books he thought would hold the secrets to his binding.

But he also knew what would happen if he tried. The vow would twist him, drag him back, force his hands to protect his own prison. He would lock the books away in his vault, never to be seen again.

So he stayed where he was, alone in the quiet, staring at the empty shelf. The fire cracked and hissed, throwing shadows across the room.

For the first time in years, the emptiness had a crack in it. Hermione had seen. Neville had guessed. Luna… Luna had walked straight into his cage and carried a piece of it away.

Maybe, just maybe, he wasn't the only one fighting this anymore.

Harry pressed his hand flat to the bookcase, feeling the phantom ache of what was gone. "Don't let me make you fail." he whispered to the silence. He wasn't sure if he meant Luna, or Neville, or Hermione... or all of them.

Then he turned back to the fire, letting its glow hold him while the weight of the vow curled tight around his chest. Alone, yes. But not as alone as he had been yesterday.

Chapter Text

The morning was the usual whirlwind. Toast in the air, butter knives misplaced, Hugo insisting his socks didn't match even if they did, and Rose trying to smuggle her favorite colored pens into her adventure satchel like contraband. Hermione corralled them both with the efficiency of someone who'd done this dance a thousand times, tucking hair behind ears and checking teeth for leftover jam.

"You are not going to switch each other's cereal bowls again with the charmed ones from Uncle George," she warned, planting her hands on her hips. "I don't care how funny it was."

Both children dissolved into giggles anyway, and Hermione pinched the bridge of her nose. Merlin help me when they're both at Hogwarts.

The floo flared a soft green. Luna stepped out in a shimmer of ash and dreaminess, robes patterned with daisies that seemed to turn their heads toward the light.

"Good morning, Hermione. Good morning, Rose. Good morning, Hugo. You both look very mischievous today. Perfect. We'll need that sort of cleverness."

Rose bounced on her toes. "What are we doing?"

"We're going to hunt for a rainbow Niffler," Luna said serenely, as if it were the most natural activity in the world. "They're terribly rare. They only appear when you're not looking for them, so we'll have to be very careful not to notice anything suspicious."

The children squealed, already pelting toward the fireplace for cloaks. Hermione arched an eyebrow. "And I suppose you'll feed them sugar until they're vibrating again?"

"Oh no," Luna said dreamily, adjusting her satchel. "Not until after the hunt."

Hermione sighed, already resigned. "Just, please try to sneak in a vegetable this time."

Luna tilted her head, then as the children fussed with their shoes, she turned back to Hermione. "Before we go," she said, and reached into her satchel. With casual precision, she pulled out Hermione's enchanted beaded bag, the one she hadn't even noticed was missing.

Hermione's breath caught. "Luna? Why?"

"I borrowed it," Luna said simply. "It seemed the right size. You had it tucked away, after all."

Hermione blinked, staring at the familiar embroidery, the faint hum of magic thrumming against her palm as Luna placed it there.

"I stopped by to see Harry yesterday," Luna continued, as lightly as if she were remarking on the weather. "He had a massive collection on magical vows in a hidden bookshelf. He doesn't seem to be reading them, so I borrowed all of them."

Hermione's heart dropped into her stomach. "Luna... those books. He's bound, he could..."

But Luna was already ushering Hugo and Rose toward the floo, her voice bright and airy. "Come along, rainbow Nifflers don't wait. They're very punctual creatures."

Hermione stood rooted in the kitchen, bag clutched in white-knuckled fingers, as the children vanished in a swirl of green flames.

Only then did she loosen the drawstrings and peek inside at the mountain of ancient, warded tomes.

Hermione set the bag down on the kitchen table like it might explode. Her heart thudded, guilt prickling sharp and hot in her chest. These aren't mine. These are his.

For a moment she just stared at it, half expecting wards to strike her, to punish her for even touching what Harry had collected. But nothing happened. The bag sat quietly.

Her fingers trembled as she reached inside. The first book her hand closed on was so heavy she nearly dropped it when she pulled it free. "Vincula et Vota: The Binding Power of Oaths," embossed in gold so faded it was almost invisible. She knew that title. Or rather, she knew the title referenced in fragments and half-quotations. Every record she'd ever seen claimed the last copy was lost in the fire at Durmstrang's eastern library three centuries ago.

But here it was, solid and heavy and smelling of dust and ash.

She set it down gently, reverently, then reached in again. Another tome, then another. The names leapt at her, volumes she had only ever seen footnoted, others she hadn't even known existed. Each one of them should have been locked away in archives, or under glass in some museum collection. And Harry had all of them.

Her throat tightened. What in Merlin's name has he been doing all these years?

She flipped open the first book, carefully, as though it might crumble in her hands. No marginalia, no underlines, no scraps of parchment tucked inside. Not even the kind of careless folding of pages Harry had done to his school texts. Nothing. Page after page, pristine.

And that was when it hit her.

He'd found them. Collected them. Hunted them down from Merlin knew where, across continents and years. And yet he hadn't read them. Not a word.

Because he couldn't.

Her stomach twisted. The vow. It had to be. It must have stopped him, page after page, every time he tried.

Hermione pressed her palms flat against the table, closing her eyes for a moment to steady herself. There was guilt in her chest. This was his private hoard, something hidden for a reason. Luna had taken it without permission. She herself was now trespassing in it.

But stronger than the guilt was the spark of something else.

Resolve.

Because here, in this pile of forbidden knowledge, there might finally be answers. The roots of magical vowcraft. The kind of thing no one living had likely read in centuries.

And Harry had lived his life with the weight of a vow he couldn't even speak about.

Hermione bit her lip, slid into a chair, and pulled the book closer. She adjusted her quill and parchment, her Ravenclaw instincts unfurling like wings.

"I'll find it," she whispered to the empty kitchen, to the echo of her children's laughter and Luna's departure. Her hands stopped trembling. "I'll find the key to free you, Harry."

So she read. And cross-referenced. And read again.

Every symptom matched: magical energy surging inward, erratic flares, organ strain, unconsciousness. The same patterns described in case studies of witches and wizards who had nearly broken their vows. The only reason Harry was alive, according to the literature, was that his body had forced a shutdown before the vow could destroy him entirely.

He'd done this to himself. That much was obvious.

And if Neville was right, and her own memories were damning confirmation... Harry had crafted his vow around her.

Hermione pushed the books aside and buried her face in her hands. She thought of the moments that had seemed small at the time but now felt monumental. Harry never initiating conversation outside their duties. Harry's strange restraint during their meetings at St. Mungo's, no matter how warm he could be with everyone else. The way his eyes had flickered, pained, whenever she pressed him on why.

The moment she'd stopped demanding answers, that was when he'd finally collapsed, nearly burnt out by her demands. His vow hadn't been able to let him respond, but neither could he defy her without breaking it.

It all fit. Horribly, inevitably, it fit.

And worst of all… vows couldn't be undone. Not if self-bound. Not unless the caster had left some kind of failsafe or expiry woven into the wording.

Hermione's heart clenched. He hadn't just cut himself off from her in school. He had chained himself for life.

She closed her eyes, the words whispering like a curse in her head. 'He did this for me.'

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione learned quickly that ancient vowcraft texts were not designed for working mothers with two children and a demanding Ministry post. They were heavy, verbose, their scripts archaic, and often so cautious in their phrasing it took half an hour just to untangle a single definition. Still, she persisted. Night after night, after the children were asleep, she lit her desk lamp and bent over the tomes, quill scratching furiously.

The slow build of knowledge was almost worse than ignorance. She pieced it together from fragments, from case studies buried in footnotes, from scholars who disagreed violently with one another in ink scrawled margins.

Most scholars called self-imposed vows accidents or zealotry, as if arrogance were the same as agony. None of them had ever seen what it did to a living man.

And unbinding? There was no record. Not one case of someone freeing themselves.

The only documented releases were through death. The death of the vow-bound was the simplest, whereas the death of the vow's subject often caused a magical backlash, killing the vow-bound and devastating homes and villages. The exception, rare, bitter, and brutal, were vengeance vows, where killing one's target satisfied the condition. But Harry's magic hadn't lashed out at her. If anything, it had lashed inward, searing his core until he collapsed.

The conclusion gnawed at her. It will kill him before it lets him break.

Hermione closed the book one night with shaking hands, the lamplight flickering. She pressed her forehead to her palm. Harry, what did you do to yourself?

And yet she didn't despair. Knowledge was only power if applied, and she had something else now: proximity.

At work, she watched. Observed. Tested, gently.

She began small, mentions of her children, of Rose's new fascination with healing charms. Harry responded warmly, even laughed.

She offered casual touches, a hand brushing his arm as they leaned over a map. He didn't move away. He simply didn't reach back.

And when she tried to push harder, when her words edged too close to why he treated her differently, why he'd always been distant, the memory of him burning from the inside out stopped her cold. She would not risk that again.

So she waited. Watched.

And every day, her certainty grew: the vow's leash was absolute. He could be warm, clever, professional, charming to others. But with her, he was a man trapped behind glass. He could respond, but never step forward.

Her quill hand ached, ink staining the side of her thumb, the same ink that now marked the edge of every meal plate and bedtime story. Hermione's notes in the margin of her journal were neat but grim.

"Subject bound by self-imposed vow. Cannot initiate speech, contact, or action regarding me. Capable of response once subject introduced. Pattern consistent. No cases of successful unbinding in recorded magical history."

She stared at the words long after the ink dried, her jaw tight.

Then we'll have to make history.

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione had made a habit of sitting in his office at lunch. She never asked first, just breezed in with her stack of binders or a small parcel of sandwiches from the Ministry canteen, settling herself like she belonged there.

And maybe she did.

She came most days now, always with her papers or her canteen sandwiches, always filling the silence he couldn't. He'd grown used to it, the sound of her voice spilling through the office like sunlight through shutters.

Harry never invited her. His vow cinched too tightly for that. But it never stopped her from coming, and he never once wanted her to leave.

Today she was talking about Hugo's fascination with dragons, about how Rose had discovered her textbooks and was sneaking off with Practical Healing Charms for Beginners. Harry tried not to grin too broadly, tried not to hang on every word, but he failed, as he always did.

Every detail she shared was a gift. He couldn't ask for them, couldn't nudge her toward them. But when she offered them freely, they lit him up inside.

Hermione unwrapped her sandwich, talking as though this were the most ordinary thing in the world. Her sitting here, him listening like a man parched at a spring. "She's been scribbling diagrams of spell-rotations on scraps of parchment. Says she wants to understand how the magic flows when you heal someone, not just the words you speak. Very Ravenclaw of her."

Harry's chest warmed. Just like her mother.

He wanted to say it, to reach across the desk and tell her that Rose had inherited that sharpness of mind, that restless hunger. But the vow pressed hard, hollowing the words in his throat.

Hermione glanced up then, her gaze catching his, and for a moment he thought she'd read all of it anyway. She always had been good at seeing too much.

Then, casually, like it wasn't the most dangerous thing she'd said to him in twenty years:

"I'd like you to come by the house this evening for dinner. Rose is desperate to ask you about healing, and I'd prefer she hear from someone who knows the work. The risks as well as the rewards."

Harry froze. His magic shuddered inside him, his vow flaring like molten chains tightening around his chest. His breath hitched, every nerve in his body screaming careful, careful, careful.

But the words weren't forbidden. The vow burned with warning, yes, but it didn't close his throat, didn't wrench the option away.

Because she had invited him.

Not he her.

Not interference.

He let out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding, a shaky rush of relief that left him dizzy. For the first time in years, he felt the edges of freedom.

"I'd be honored," Harry said softly.

The vow simmered beneath his skin, not in protest but in warning, as if to remind him that even hope had a cost.

o-o-o-o-o

Harry stood on the threshold of Hermione's home longer than was polite, taking it in. The wards prickled against his skin, not rejection, not welcome, just awareness. As if the house itself wasn't sure he should be here.

When she opened the door, her expression was tight but expectant, like a scientist observing an experiment.

"Come in," she said, voice carefully neutral.

He stepped inside, pulse quickening as the vow flexed against his chest. The house was… stark. No pictures on the walls. No shoes in the entryway. Everything was neat to the point of denial. The toys tucked away, the cushions perfectly squared, no trace of the chaos two children should leave behind.

Hermione hovered just beside him, eyes sharp, cataloguing every twitch in his face. She was testing him, he realized, and in some strange way, he was grateful for it.

Because nothing here triggered the vow. Not the closed bedroom door down the hall, not the stripped shelves, not the absence of family clutter. His magic was steady, coiled but calm.

If anything, the only ache was the questions burning in him. What did her bedroom look like? What photos had she hidden? What books were stacked by her bedside? Merlin, he wanted to ask, but the vow clamped down hard in his throat, leaving him silent.

Instead, he smiled faintly. "Smells good."

Hermione's brow softened the smallest degree.

Then the floo roared green, and two small bodies tumbled out, Mrs. Weasley following behind them like a stormcloud.

"Mum!" Rose shouted, barreling into Hermione before pivoting to Harry. "Healer Harry! You came!"

Hugo followed, slightly shy but wide-eyed. "Mum said you'd tell us about healing."

Harry's chest swelled. Their excitement was pure, untainted by old grudges or broken promises. He crouched instinctively, letting Rose tug at his sleeve and Hugo peek at the wand holster on his forearm.

And then Molly's voice cut sharp through the room.

"Hermione," she said, stiff as frost. "Bringing strange men into the house when your husband still hopes you'll come back. What will people think, Hermione?"

The words hit like a curse. The vow surged not at Molly's words, but at the shame in Hermione's eyes. Harry's vow constricted brutally, his breath catching in his throat. His vision flickered at the edges, magic surging in warning. His body lurched toward the door, an instinct, an escape before his magic burned him alive.

"Stop," Hermione snapped, stepping between him and the exit. Her voice was low, steel threaded with fire. "Molly, that's enough. You need to go."

Molly drew back, scandalized, but Hermione's wand was already in her hand, steady and unflinching. "Now."

The silence that followed was thick, broken only by the sound of Rose still clutching Harry's sleeve. Finally, Molly huffed, gathered her cloak, and vanished through the floo with a last glare.

Harry staggered, relief loosening his chest as the vow's grip receded. He let out a shaky breath and straightened, only to find Hermione's eyes on him, sharp, worried, searching.

"Stay," she said softly, not an order, but something stronger.

And when Rose beamed up at him and Hugo tugged at his sleeve, demanding to see a real diagnostic charm, Harry found he could breathe again.

For the first time, he was in her home.

Harry had expected awkward silences, maybe the kind that settled in Ministry meetings when people realized he wasn't going to fill the air for them.

What he hadn't expected was Rose and Hugo.

The children filled every pause with stories, questions, demands for spells and explanations, their chatter a tide he could barely keep up with. Rose wanted to know if blood really was red under every light, and Hugo insisted he show the diagnostic charm for broken bones three times so he could see the pretty green shimmer.

Harry obliged, wand steady, the vow quiet. Around children, around these children, it was quiet.

He showed them how Healers charmed bandages to shrink perfectly against skin, demonstrated a harmless glamour that made Hugo's hand glow golden like a torch, explained how potions tasted different depending on who brewed them. The more he spoke, the more the knot in his chest loosened.

He was himself with them. No walls, no tight leash. Just Harry.

But every time his gaze drifted to Hermione across the table, the vow tensed like a predator at his throat. He wanted to ask about her, about the children, her nights, her life. But the vow clenched each question to ash before it reached his tongue.

So he listened.

And Merlin, Hermione's children didn't need his questions.

They talked over each other, eager to share every detail of their world. Rose launched into a long tale about a school friend who insisted nifflers could be trained to fetch quills, and Hugo proudly announced he'd cast his first proper Lumos charm all by himself, even if Hermione had held his wand hand. Harry let their voices wash over him like sunlight, nodding, laughing quietly when they said something particularly earnest.

Even dinner itself was chaotic, plates passing, spoons clattering, Rose spilling pumpkin juice and Hugo trying to siphon it up with a charm he barely knew. Harry steadied the glass with a flick of his wand, catching Hermione's eyes as he did.

Her gaze lingered. Not just gratitude, something sharper, deeper, and more dangerous.

The vow throbbed, an ache behind his ribs, but he forced himself to look away. Back to Rose. Back to Hugo. Safe ground.

It was Hugo, predictably, who cut through the undercurrent.

"Will you come again?" the boy asked as dessert was cleared, his tone matter-of-fact, like he was asking about the weather. "You make Mum smile."

Harry's throat closed. He couldn't answer, his vow flared hot and merciless, threatening to strangle the word yes.

But Hermione, voice soft, spoke for him.

"We'll see," she said, her eyes flicking to Harry's, holding his for a heartbeat too long.

And then Rose was tugging him toward the sitting room, demanding to see a story told with illusions, and Hugo chimed in with his own suggestion, and Harry let himself be swept along.

Domestic. Warm.

But every heartbeat, the vow was there, reminding him that while he could sit at her table, share her food, and laugh with her children, he could not ask.

He could sit at her table, share her food, laugh with her children. But he was still on the threshold, waiting for a door he could never open.

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione watched Harry more than she watched her children.

Not that Rose and Hugo made it easy, between Hugo's constant interruptions and Rose's insistence on turning every page twice to tell 'the proper story,' there was plenty to keep track of. But Hermione's attention, the real thread of it, was trained on Harry.

The vow. What triggered it. What didn't.

Molly's comment earlier had been unmistakable, the way he'd stiffened, the sudden flare of something almost violent under his skin. But that was about Ron. And his last episode, the one that had nearly killed him in his office, had nothing to do with Ron at all.

So. Not Ron. Not exactly.

Her love life?

The thought was uncomfortable, but Hermione had spent her entire life digging through uncomfortable truths. She wasn't about to stop now.

"Why don't we show him the album?" she suggested lightly, once dessert was cleared away.

The children brightened instantly, bolting to fetch the thick leather-bound book from the shelf. They carried it over like treasure, plopping it onto Harry's lap without ceremony.

"Start here!" Rose demanded, flipping to a holiday in France when Hugo was only a toddler. "That's when Mum tried to order snails but really it was frogs, wasn't it, Hugo?"

Harry's mouth curved, quiet but genuine, as Hugo recounted the tale in vivid detail. Hermione chimed in only when the children faltered, filling in where the memories blurred. Harry's eyes tracked every photo, every story. He didn't flinch.

Photo after photo, honeymoon, christening, Christmas crowds. Harry looked at each with the same quiet focus. Not a flinch. Not a single question. Just that blank attentiveness that had begun to feel like a wall.

Nothing.

If anything, the absence was louder than a reaction. He wasn't avoiding the images. He wasn't uncomfortable. He was… blank. Attentive, yes. Focused. But he didn't ask a single question. Didn't comment on the way Rose had Ron's nose, or the crooked tie Ron wore to Hugo's first day of primary school, or the places they'd traveled.

Hermione's suspicion solidified. It wasn't about Ron, not precisely. It was about her. About anything that touched the edges of his feelings for her.

She set the book aside after an hour, under the pretense of bedtime. Her mind was buzzing too much to listen to one more rehash of Hugo's 'epic' tumble off a broom at age five.

As the children argued over who would brush their teeth first, she turned back to Harry, carefully casual.

"Do you need to leave?" she asked.

It was meant as a test, but his answer came swift, unguarded.

"No."

Quick. Almost too quick.

Someone who wanted to leave would have seized the chance. But Harry hadn't. He was still here, still steady in her sitting room, long after a polite guest might have excused himself.

Hermione folded her arms, studying him in the lamplight.

Whatever the vow was, it wasn't pushing him away. It wasn't even allowing him to make that choice. No, he wanted to be here. His silence wasn't disinterest. It was restraint, forced and absolute.

The realization sat heavy in her chest.

And it made her more determined than ever to unravel it.

Bedtime was mercifully uneventful. Rose always tried to angle for just one more story, and Hugo always insisted his stuffed owl had to be tucked in properly, but tonight both settled quickly under the covers, worn out from the excitement of Healer Harry sitting at their dinner table.

Hermione kissed their foreheads, whispered the usual goodnights, and closed the door. She found Harry exactly where she'd left him, perched in her sitting room chair, back straight, hands folded, as though he wasn't entirely sure whether he was a guest or an intruder.

"Stay," she said softly. It wasn't quite a request. "Just a little longer."

Something eased in his shoulders. He nodded once.

Hermione sat across from him, folding her hands in her lap to keep them from fidgeting. She took a steadying breath. This was too important to rush.

"You are free to leave," she began carefully, watching his face. "And you are free not to answer any question I put to you. I want that understood."

His brow furrowed, but he inclined his head. No flare of pain across his eyes, no twitch of magic in the room.

"I have been researching," Hermione continued. "Self-binding magical vows. And I believe you may be affected by one. In fact, I think you may have been… for almost twenty years."

Something flickered in his eyes, sharp and unguarded. His throat worked, but no words came. The silence stretched.

Hermione didn't press. Instead, she tilted her head and asked, gently, "When did you start acting differently around me?"

Harry blinked. His lips parted, closed again, then finally. "Sixth year." The words rasped out low, but the relief on his face was undeniable, he could answer.

Hermione nodded slowly, her heart thudding. "And before that?"

His mouth curved faintly, bittersweet. "Not differently."

She swallowed, tightening her grip on her own hands. "Is your vow about me?"

The change was immediate. His face pinched, his jaw locked, and he flinched as though invisible bands had pulled taut across his chest. His hand twitched toward his throat. Not an answer. Not even a shake of his head. Just stillness, locked down tight.

Hermione's heart clenched. She leaned forward, lowering her voice. "Alright. Not that question."

The tension in him loosened fractionally, though his breathing remained uneven.

She pressed on, softer now, probing at the edges. "Can you tell me… did you choose this vow freely?"

A long pause. His eyes closed. "Yes."

Hermione exhaled, dizzy with both relief and frustration. She was building the outline, slowly, piece by piece. He couldn't answer everything, but he could answer something.

Hermione sat forward, elbows on her knees, her eyes fixed on Harry. The lamplight caught in his hair, made him look both older and younger than she remembered. The war-hardened healer and the boy she'd once known, fused uneasily into one.

He didn't speak, didn't fidget. Just waited.

Hermione licked her lips. "You said sixth year," she began, carefully choosing her path. "That's when you started… being different with me."

His jaw tightened, but he didn't flinch this time.

"That was… about the same time I started dating Ron."

The change was immediate. His throat constricted. His hands clenched white against his knees. No words. No movement. Just the silent roar of a line she had stepped over.

Hermione pulled back at once. "Alright. Not that question. Let's… shift."

The tension bled out of him by degrees. He let out a slow breath through his nose, eyes closing in relief.

Hermione's mind whirred. So, Ron, then. His silence lives there.

She tried again. "You left Britain soon after Hogwarts, didn't you?"

"Yes."

"By choice?"

A beat. "Not… entirely."

Her pulse quickened. "Because of your vow?"

His face twisted, and she knew at once she'd pressed too far. His lips parted, but no sound emerged, just the faintest shudder of pain across his features.

Hermione leaned back, hands raised. "Alright. I hear you. Not that one."

For a long moment, only the fire crackled.

Then she tried again, softer. "Can you tell me what your vow does?"

Silence.

She rephrased. "Can you tell me what your vow stops you from doing?"

His chest rose and fell once, hard, as though he'd been punched. "Interfering."

Hermione felt her breath catch. Interfering.

"With… who?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

His fingers twitched toward her, stopped mid-air, then curled into a fist in his lap. The closest thing to a plea he could give.

She swallowed, adjusting her angle. "Does your vow prevent you from interfering with… people you care about?"

His mouth opened, then closed. His expression said enough. Too broad.

She narrowed it. "With me?"

The silence wasn't the hard, choking silence from before. This was different. His lips pressed thin. His hands trembled. But finally he gave the smallest of nods.

Hermione's heart lurched.

"Alright," she murmured. "That fits. It stops you from interfering with my… happiness."

Harry's shoulders jerked, like a string pulled taut inside him. But he didn't deny it. He didn't collapse, either.

Hermione pressed a hand to her lips, thinking fast. "You made this vow when I started dating Ron, didn't you?" Her voice cracked. "You wanted to prove you wouldn't get in the way."

This time the reaction was unmistakable, pain flashed across his face, his magic sparking faintly around his fingertips. Not words. Not confirmation. But enough.

Hermione leaned forward, voice soft and breaking. "Oh, Harry. You... oh, you foolish..." She stopped herself, chest tight.

She tried one last angle, carefully. "You've been living under this vow ever since. That's why you couldn't stay in Britain. Why you avoid me. Why you can never… ask."

His breath hitched. And though he couldn't say yes, couldn't give her the neat confirmation she craved, the tears standing in his eyes told her all she needed.

Hermione sat back, shaking, her mind a storm. He bound himself to me. To my happiness. And it's been killing him, little by little, for twenty years.

Chapter Text

When he apparated home, the silence of his flat wrapped around him like a balm. For the first time in two decades, Hermione knew. He hadn't been able to say it outright, his throat still locked like a vice when he tried. But she had pulled the threads together herself. And somehow, that was a relief.

He leaned against the doorframe, eyes shut, and let the tension ebb. She knew. He didn't have to keep lying with half-answers and silence. He hadn't broken his vow. He hadn't interfered.

But when the quiet stretched too long, the magic inside him shifted. The binding stirred like a serpent uncoiling in his chest, whispering that he was already too close. That staying would tempt her to change her choices. That he was standing in the way of the happiness he had sworn to protect.

Harry pressed a hand hard against his sternum, as though he could hold the magic back by force. "No," he muttered to the empty flat. "She's free. She's divorced. She's… she's allowed to..."

The vow surged, burning hot, cutting off the thought before he could finish it.

He stumbled to the kitchen, grabbing a glass of water, breathing through the pain. It eased, eventually, but the message was clear. If he stayed, if he let himself bask in her presence, the vow would force him away again.

He slept poorly, dreams splintered between Hermione's eyes and the sharp crack of his magic turning on itself.

By morning, it was worse. His stomach twisted as he tried to button his robes. The simple act of readiness brought the curse alive again. The vow seized on the thought, coiling through him, dragging his magic down into something heavy and still.

Harry sat on the edge of his bed, the world narrowing to breath and heartbeat. There was nothing left to reason with, nothing to argue.

All he could do was obey.

With shaking hands, he pulled his old travel bag from the wardrobe and began to pack.

Again.

o-o-o-o-o

Harry didn't show up to the morning coordination meeting.

At first, Hermione told herself he was still recovering, that the incident in her office and the collapse afterward had left him drained. But when he failed to appear for the follow-up with Penelope Clearwater and when no owl arrived with so much as a note, her worry curdled into fear.

By midday, she was at his flat. The wards let her knock, but no one answered. When she coaxed the door open, the flat was half erased, a life already in retreat. Counters bare. Bed stripped. Closet half emptied.

No. No, not again.

Hermione's hands shook as she shut the door behind her. He had run once before. Run so far he'd buried himself in war zones and emergency tents just to keep from breaking the vow that chained him. Was it happening again?

She went straight to Neville, catching him between lessons in the Hogwarts greenhouses. He listened quietly, his jaw tight. "If he's leaving," he said grimly, "the vow might be driving him. We can't let it take him a second time."

Hermione nodded sharply, relief breaking through her panic. "Luna too. We'll cover more ground."

Messages flew. And then, barely an hour later, Hermione's enchanted coin flared in her palm. Luna's voice whispered through it, calm as ever. I've found him. Kings Cross, Platform Seven. He looks… very tired.

Hermione's heart stuttered. She grabbed Neville's arm. "Come on!"

They apparated as close as they dared, the crack of magic muffled by the din of the city beyond. The station was alive with motion, the scent of oil and old iron rails.

Luna's pale hair caught the station lights, a small, impossible moon amongst the crowds. And there, hunched forward with a battered bag at his feet, sat Harry.

His elbows rested on his knees, his head bowed, eyes fixed not on the departures board above him but on the floor. As though he was waiting not for a train, but for judgment.

Hermione's breath caught.

"Harry," she whispered, and started forward at a run.

His head jerked up, eyes wild, and she saw it. The readiness to bolt, to vanish before she could tether him again. Neville shifted, blocking one flank, while Luna sat serenely on his bag as though it were the most natural bench in the station.

"Don't." Hermione's voice was raw, breath catching from the run. "Don't you dare walk away from me."

He trembled, shoulders taut as bowstrings. "Hermione… I can't. You don't understand. If I stay, if I..."

Her heart clenched. "Interfere with my happiness?"

The words struck him like a blow. His jaw locked, his throat convulsing, but he couldn't answer. Couldn't deny it, either.

Hermione's breath shook. "That's it, isn't it? Your vow? What's driving you to run?"

Luna tilted her head, watching Harry's pain with solemn eyes. "Always has been. And he's kept it. Too well."

The silence that followed was deafening. Around them, commuters slowed, murmuring at the tension hanging in the air. Harry's fists curled so tight his knuckles went white, his whole body straining like a man at war with himself.

Hermione stepped closer, heart hammering. She wanted to touch him, shake him, but she didn't dare, not when she could see the vow clawing at him beneath his skin. "Harry. Listen to me. If you walk out of here, I won't be happy. Neither will Rose, or Hugo, or any of your friends. That isn't interference, Harry. That's just fact. Do you understand?"

His breath hitched. His magic shivered around him, wild and unsettled, but this time it didn't lash out. He didn't bolt.

Slowly, painfully, he sank back onto the bench. His head dropped into his hands. "You weren't supposed to know." His voice was hoarse, barely audible. "That was the point. You weren't supposed to ever know."

Hermione sat beside him, her tears hot and unrelenting. "Well, I do. And you're not running again. Not from me. Not from this."

Neville's hand came down on Harry's shoulder, solid and grounding. "We'll work it out," he said quietly. "Together."

Around them, the station moved in its indifferent rhythm. Trains sighing, announcements echoing, a tide of strangers parting and closing again.

The silence between them felt sacred. The vow still pressed against him, she could feel it, the way his magic hummed like a live wire too close to breaking. But for once, it didn't drag him away. He was still there. Still choosing to stay.

Hermione drew a slow breath, forcing her mind to steady. Logic whispered there would be a counter-curse, a loophole, a way to undo what bound him. But beneath that, deeper, something more human spoke. The fragile relief of knowing, of no longer searching blind through years of absence.

When Harry finally met her eyes, she saw it reflected back. The vow still held him, but now it wasn't a secret. They could name it. And in naming it, she realized, they had already begun to break it.

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione moved through the living room, picking up Rose's crayons and Hugo's toy broom from the floor. Neville had insisted on staying with Harry for a few days, keeping watch while he recovered. It left her grateful, Neville was one of the few people Harry seemed to trust implicitly, but also unsettled.

She caught herself staring at the empty doorway more than once, half-expecting Harry to step through, awkward smile tugging at his lips. Ridiculous, she scolded herself.

Rose came skittering in, curls bouncing, Hugo close on her heels. "Mum," she chirped breathlessly, "when can Healer Harry come back? He promised he'd tell me more about blood-replenishing potions!"

Hugo nodded solemnly, clutching his stuffed kneazle. "And he said he'd check my knee. He said the scar might fade faster if I stretch it."

Hermione smiled despite herself, crouching to brush Rose's hair back from her face. "He's resting right now. But soon."

The knock at the door startled her.

Her stomach sank when she opened it.

Ron stood there, hands shoved in his pockets, like he'd rehearsed this moment and lost his nerve halfway through. "Hey, Hermione."

"Ron," she said flatly.

His eyes flicked past her, into the house, searching. "The kids home?"

"They are."

His smile was tight. "Good. Good. Look, I've been thinking..."

"Always dangerous," she muttered.

He ignored it. "I've been thinking… maybe we could try again. For the kids. For us, maybe."

Hermione blinked. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me. I've… I've not been great, I know that. But Mum says she saw Potter here the other night. And the kids... Merlin, they don't stop talking about him. Healer Harry this, Healer Harry that." His jaw tightened. "I won't have him stepping into my place."

Anger flared hot in her chest. "Your place?" she said softly, almost pitying. "You walked away from that, Ron. You can't blame someone else for filling the silence."

His voice sharpened. "I'm still their father. And I think you're letting them get too attached to him."

Hermione folded her arms, refusing to flinch. "They're attached because he cares for them. Because he treats them with kindness. That's not a threat, Ron. That's what they deserve."

He ran a hand through his hair, frustration bleeding through. "I can do better. I can be better. Just… don't shut me out. Don't let him take what's mine."

Her throat ached, but she forced the words steady. "Ron. My happiness isn't yours to bargain with. And neither are the children's."

His expression faltered. For a moment, she thought he might say something real, something honest. Instead, he muttered, "We'll see," and stalked off into the night.

Hermione shut the door with a trembling hand.

When she turned back, Rose and Hugo were watching her, wide-eyed. Hugo hugged his kneazle tighter. Rose whispered, "Mummy? Healer Harry wouldn't leave us, would he?"

Hermione knelt, gathering both children against her. Rose's hair smelled of soap and crayons. "No, love. He wouldn't," she whispered , too gently, too quickly, as if saying it fast enough might make it true.

The words felt like a spell, fragile and necessary, a lie she wanted to believe. She looked past them to the empty doorway again, where Harry's absence hummed like static.

Ron offered the easy path back, the familiar one. But ease had never been what she wanted.

She wanted something worth the risk.

And for the first time in years, she wasn't sure that hope and heartbreak were different things.

o-o-o-o-o

Harry's flat had never felt so crowded, even with just Neville in it.

Neville had moved a bag into the guest room as if it were the most natural thing in the world. He brewed tea in Harry's chipped mug, watered the plants Harry forgot he owned, and tutted at the half-dead sprigs on the herb shelf.

It was domestic in a way Harry hadn't been in years, and that, somehow, was worse. Tonight, Neville sprawled in Harry's armchair with a Butterbeer, while Harry nursed his tea on the sofa.

"You know," Neville said, swirling the bottle lazily, "most blokes would've just asked her out."

Harry shot him a look. "Neville..."

"Don't 'Neville' me." His grin was maddeningly calm. "Twenty years, Harry. Twenty. Years. You've been halfway across the world, patching up mercenaries and peacekeepers, living out of field tents, and you still look at her like a lovesick fifth-year."

Heat crawled up Harry's neck. "It's not that simple."

Neville raised his brows. "No? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks exactly that simple."

Harry let out a long, heavy breath. He rubbed his thumb along the rim of his mug, staring at the way the steam curled upward. "It's… a lot. Always has been."

Neville leaned forward, eyes sharp despite his relaxed tone. "So you ran."

"I had to." Harry's voice was rougher than he intended. He swallowed, forcing the edge out. "It wasn't safe. For me, for her, for anyone. Staying… it would've ruined things."

"Funny," Neville said, leaning back again, "because from what I've seen, your leaving didn't make her life better. Didn't make her happy."

Harry flinched. He hated how much the words landed. Neville wasn't wrong.

"I'm not saying you were wrong to try, Harry. You always try, it's the only way you ever knew how. But this time…" Neville's voice softened. "You've been bleeding yourself dry for a promise that never even let her choose. That's not noble, it's bloody stupid."

Harry gave him a crooked smile, wry and tired. "That's the Gryffindor talking."

"And what's the Slytherin say?" Neville shot back.

Harry hesitated, his thumb worrying the mug's chipped edge. When he spoke, his voice was raw. "It's been a lot."

The words sounded thin, but they carried years of exhaustion, of magic wound too tight and never released.

Neville nodded, satisfied enough. "There it is."

For a while, they sat in companionable silence, the kind that only old friends could manage. Harry felt both exposed and strangely lighter, as if saying even that much was more than he'd been allowed in two decades.

"Merlin, Harry," Neville said finally, shaking his head with a grin. "You really are an idiot."

Harry chuckled hoarsely. "Took you this long to figure it out?"

Neville smirked, raising his bottle in salute. "Nah. Just thought you should hear it out loud."

Harry huffed a laugh, but for once, the sound didn't hurt.

o-o-o-o-o

The vow hadn't lashed out again. Not since King's Cross. Something in Hermione's defiance had… shifted it. Not broken. But loosened, like scar tissue finally learning how to stretch. He could still feel it pulling when he let himself want too much. But it no longer strangled every breath.

And that little slack was everything.

It meant he could work. He'd gone back to St Mungo's that week. He'd been balancing St Mungo's coordination and Auror liaison duties before, but since King's Cross, it had felt different. The meetings with Hermione were no longer careful dances around silence; he could breathe in the same room as her without the vow twisting his lungs.

And she…

Merlin, she was brilliant.

Hermione commanded meetings like no one else. Efficient, razor-sharp, always three steps ahead. But outside of them, over lunch trays in the Ministry canteen or quick tea breaks tucked in cramped offices, she softened. She'd start talking before he even asked, telling him about her latest headache with scheduling patrol rotations, or Rose's obsession with Ancient Runes, or how Hugo was pestering her for a broom despite her protests.

Harry had listened, the way he always had. But now. Now he could ask.

"How's Rose getting on with her runes project?" he'd asked one afternoon. A small, ordinary question that would've choked him months ago. Hermione's face lit like sunrise.

"She's ahead of the syllabus! She's writing comparative notes on Norse inscriptions and Egyptian glyphs, Harry, can you believe it? I showed her my old notes from Hogwarts and she corrected me. Oh, you'd love it."

Her beaming smile had nearly undone him.

It wasn't much. Tiny questions. Safe questions. But they were his, and Hermione responded as though each one was a gift.

Back at the flat, Neville caught him smiling faintly into his tea after one of those lunches.

"You're asking her things," Neville noted, not even pretending it wasn't an interrogation.

Harry ducked his head, ears burning. "Small things."

"That's more than nothing." Neville's voice stayed quiet, but his eyes were kind. "Feels lighter in here, doesn't it?"

Harry didn't answer, but he couldn't quite suppress the little huff of agreement in his chest.

For the first time in twenty years, the vow hadn't taken that away from him.

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione hadn't realized how much she'd missed being asked about her day, not out of duty, but out of care.

She wasn't unused to people listening. Her colleagues respected her, her children adored her, and even Ron, in his clumsy way, had always sort of listened when it suited him. But with Harry… it was different.

He'd always listened. That much hadn't changed. But now he was asking. Quiet, careful questions that seemed so small on the surface, yet enormous in the way they reached her.

"How's Hugo's broom campaign going?"

"Did you ever manage to fix that broken time slot with the Irish Aurors?"

"Have you slept at all this week, or should I talk to Greengrass about prescribing Dreamless?"

Each question warmed her more than she wanted to admit. Each question was proof that the vow wasn't absolute, that Harry could reach for her, even a little.

And it left her torn straight down the middle.

Because what future could there be, really? Every word he spoke was weighed against that vow. She could see it in the way he measured his tone, in how he never pushed past safe ground, never risked stepping too close. He couldn't. He'd bound himself so tightly to her happiness that his very existence bent to it.

And then there was Ron.

He'd turned up twice this week already, buoyed by his mother's meddling and his own jealousy. Ron Weasley, suddenly eager. Suddenly attentive. Suddenly convinced he could put in the effort to win her back.

"Think of the kids, Hermione," he'd said, standing in her doorway with that easy grin that had once worked on her, before she had learned how empty it could be. "They'd be over the moon if we sorted this out. We were good, weren't we? We could be good again."

He was wrong. They hadn't been good. She'd left because his attention always strayed, toward work, toward his own wants, toward anything but her. He'd been selfish in ways he didn't even understand. But he was her children's father, and she could still remember the brief, easier years when they'd made it work.

And what was she supposed to do? Tell him no, absolutely not, when Harry couldn't even tell her yes?

Late at night, after the children were asleep, Hermione sat by the fire with a book open in her lap and her mind far away from the page. She thought of Harry's quiet smile when she'd rambled about Rose's runes project. She thought of how Hugo lit up whenever Harry dropped by, as though Harry were an uncle who had always belonged. She thought of how her heart ached with every "what if" she hadn't allowed herself in years.

And then she thought of the vow, that invisible chain still dragging at Harry's heels.

How could she ask for more, knowing he was still trapped by it? How could she not want more, when every tiny crack in that vow let him shine through?

Hermione pressed her face into her hands. The fire snapped softly, like it was trying to fill the silence for her.

She was enjoying her time with Harry. She couldn't pretend otherwise. But between the vow, and Ron suddenly circling again, and the children's happiness hanging in the balance, Hermione Granger found herself staring at the one problem she had never learned how to solve.

What would make her happy?

Chapter Text

Hermione didn't need to mull too long on whether Ron was a good match for her. Their past together made it clear enough they only worked when it was easy.

But still, Ron was relentless.

She had thought, apparently foolishly, that if she made it clear she wasn't interested, if she kept her boundaries crisp and polite, he would eventually back off. But instead, he seemed to take her refusals as encouragement, as though every "no" was just her waiting to be worn down.

The children didn't help. Rose adored her father's rare attentiveness, and Hugo hung on his every word when Ron remembered to show up. And Ron used that, leaned into it with practiced ease, his voice warm and coaxing whenever they were near.

But with her? With Hermione? His warmth was gone, replaced by a simmering frustration that grew sharper every time Harry's name slipped into the conversation.

By the third knock that week, something in her just broke. Not from anger, but from exhaustion. From wanting something that wasn't duty or negotiation, just peace.

So she did something bold. Something selfish. Something she wanted.

At noon the next day, she turned up at Harry's office, tugged him from his chair, and marched him down the street to a café tucked away near the Ministry. He looked startled, wary even, but he came. He always came when she asked.

And for a blissful half-hour, it was perfect. Harry sat across from her, shoulders easing as he listened to her ramble about Hugo's latest obsession with Quidditch statistics. He even asked, his quiet, careful questions that made her heart ache in their simplicity. He looked like a man starved who had been given a crumb and treated it like a feast.

Until Ron walked in.

Hermione's stomach dropped as his voice carried across the café, boisterous and familiar. She didn't know how he had found them, who amongst the café's patrons might have told him they were here, but that didn't really matter.

He spotted her instantly, his smile twisting when his eyes flicked to Harry. "Well, well. Fancy seeing you here."

Harry went very still, his fork halfway to his plate. Hermione saw it in the tightness of his jaw, the way his eyes flicked down. Retreat. Withdrawal. The vow tugging at him.

Ron didn't miss it. Of course he didn't.

"Didn't know you two were such close friends," Ron said, his tone a little too casual. "Harry Potter, swooping in after twenty years, taking my kids to dinner, sharing lunches with my ex-wife. Bit odd, isn't it?"

"Ron," Hermione snapped, heat rising in her chest. "Don't."

He ignored her entirely, his gaze fixed on Harry, sharp and searching. "What's the matter, Potter? Nothing to say? Or do you just like hanging around places you're not wanted?"

Hermione's pulse thundered. Harry didn't rise to it, couldn't rise to it. He lowered his fork, shoulders folding inward, as though making himself smaller would keep the vow from tightening its leash. His silence landing like a raw wound he couldn't heal.

And Merlin, how Hermione hated Ron in that moment. Hated the smug way he needled Harry, hated the way Harry's silence left her defending them both, hated the vow that bound his hands and gagged his voice when she wanted nothing more than for him to tell Ron to sod off.

"Enough," she snapped, rising to her feet. "Harry is my colleague. My friend. And you, Ronald Weasley, are out of line. If you can't speak civilly, then don't speak at all."

Ron's smile faltered, and for a flicker of a moment she saw it. The jealousy, raw and ugly, barely masked.

"This isn't over, Hermione," he muttered, turning on his heel and shoving out of the café.

Hermione sat back down, heart hammering. Harry wouldn't meet her eyes. His hand was tight around his fork, knuckles white, but his voice was calm when he finally spoke.

"You don't… need me making things worse for you."

Her throat closed. She wanted to scream, to tell him that he wasn't making it worse, Ron was, that what she wanted was for him to be able to fight for himself, for her, for them.

Instead, she reached across the table, her fingers brushing his wrist. "Harry," she said softly, "you're not the problem."

And the damned vow kept him from saying what she wished most to hear in return.

The café had gone silent around them. A few patrons were still pretending not to stare. Hermione forced a steady breath, forcing her hands to still. She'd meant only to have lunch, a moment of normalcy. Instead, she'd torn open everything they'd both been pretending not to feel.

Outside, sunlight streamed through the glass, warm and indifferent. Inside, Hermione realised she'd stopped pretending.

o-o-o-o-o

Harry had grown used to Hermione's presence the way a man relearns sunlight. Pain first, then warmth, then the quiet shock of realizing he'd been cold for years.

Every smile she offered was a reminder of how long he'd been cold. But as days became weeks, he realized he could breathe around her. She filled the silences without crowding them, drawing him into lunches, into her laughter, into small stories about her children and her work.

And the vow no longer fought him with every step.

Hermione's words in that station still echoed inside him. 'If you walk out of here, I won't be happy. That isn't interference, Harry. That's just fact.' Somehow, those words anchored him, gave him more room to move.

Her words lived behind his ribs now, an anchor that gave him room to move.

But there were moments, sharp and cruel, when the old chains yanked tight. Almost always when Ron Weasley was involved.

Hermione's warnings kept Ron at a distance, but Harry always sensed him circling, like a storm looking for a weak wall to break through.

That afternoon, Harry was in his office at St. Mungo's, reviewing the latest coordination reports with the Auror department, when the door slammed open.

Ron Weasley filled the frame, freckled and scowling, looking thoroughly out of place in the pristine corridors of the hospital.

"Potter." he said, voice rough as gravel. "We need to talk."

Harry's instinct was immediate and ancient. Retreat. The vow coiled under his skin, ready to choke. But Hermione's voice steadied him, quiet and factual. Breathe.

He set his quill down carefully and met Ron's glare. "What about?"

"You know damn well." Ron stalked forward and shut the door. "You've been sniffing around Hermione. Playing at family dinners, smiling at my kids. I won't have it."

His magic stirred, hot and sharp under his ribs, warning him. His hand tightened around the edge of his desk.

Ron paced once, jaw working. "Do you really think you belong in her life? After twenty bloody years? You disappear, then come slithering back? What, you think she'll just..." His voice cracked, then hardened. "You're making things harder for her. For all of us."

Iron bands tensed around his lungs. Leave, it whispered. Silence, obedience.

Harry almost obeyed.

Then Hermione's voice threaded through the panic again. 'That's just fact.'

He forced a breath through his teeth. "Hermione decides who belongs in her life," he said quietly. "Not you. Not me. Her."

Ron froze. For a second, the anger faltered. Something like shock crossed his face.

"That's rich," he said, but it came out uneven. "She's confused, that's all. I'm her husband-"

"Ex-husband," Harry said, the word careful, steady. His pulse roared, but the vow didn't crush him. "And if you think she's confused, then you don't know her at all."

The magic inside snarled, but it didn't clamp down. Didn't force him to stop.

Ron's expression twisted. Jealousy, pride, grief. "You think you're better for her than me? A bloody Slytherin who ran away from everything?"

Harry stood, the old habit of flinching gone. "What I think doesn't matter, Weasley. Hermione decides. That's what matters."

Silence cracked between them. For a moment, Harry thought Ron might hit him. But Ron just muttered something bitter and slammed the door behind him.

Harry stood still for a long time, chest heaving, the aftershocks humming through his blood. For the first time in twenty years, he'd spoken without permission.

And Merlin help him, it felt like breathing sunlight.

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione was halfway through reviewing a logistics schedule for the next Auror training rotation when Penelope Clearwater's blonde head appeared in the doorway.

"Do you have a minute?"

Hermione blinked away the blur of numbers. "Of course. Come in."

The door clicked softly shut behind her. Penelope looked unsettled, fingers worrying the edge of a parchment folder. "I thought you should know… about something that happened this afternoon. With Harry."

Hermione's heart lurched, the parchment bending under her grip. "Is he alright?"

"Oh, he's fine," Penelope said quickly. "It wasn't that kind of incident. But... your ex was there." Her nose wrinkled, a fleeting show of solidarity that Hermione couldn't help but appreciate.

"Ron," Hermione said, her voice tightening.

Penelope nodded. "He went straight into Harry's office, shut the door. There was shouting, about you. It was mostly Weasley. But near the end, I heard Harry's voice, too. Not loud, just… enough. Then Weasley stormed out looking like he'd swallowed a dungbomb."

Hermione stayed very still, her quill frozen between her fingers.

Fury came first, sharp and clean. How dare Ron? Barging into Harry's work, dragging her name through the muck, when Harry of all people deserved peace. It was reckless. Petty. Entirely in character.

But as the heat crested, another feeling broke through. Smaller, stranger, and impossible to bury. A flicker of something bright and dangerous.

Harry had raised his voice back.

The vow hadn't stopped him.

She drew a slow breath, smoothing the parchment she'd crushed. "Thank you, Penelope. It was good of you to tell me."

Penelope's mouth twitched in sympathy. "It's not my place, but… your ex seems like a real piece of work."

Hermione allowed herself the faintest smile. "You wouldn't be the first to notice."

When Penelope left, silence settled like dust. Hermione leaned back, pressing her fingers to her temples. She should be livid, she was livid, but behind the pulse of anger, hope flared, small and insistent.

Harry had spoken to defend himself.

And oh, how she wanted to hear that herself. Out in the open, unbound.

o-o-o-o-o

Harry hadn't been nervous like this in years. Not even the chaos of St. Mungo's made his palms sweat, but here, at Hermione's kitchen table, surrounded by clinking silverware and the smell of roasted chicken. His stomach tied itself in knots.

Rose to his left, Hugo opposite, Hermione to his right. Ordinary, yet every time he lifted his fork his mouth forgot how to work.

He was careful. Always careful. Careful not to reach for her hand when she leaned across him, careful not to let warmth slip into his voice when she laughed.

But with the children there, it was easier. They pulled him into the flow of family in a way Hermione never could, not while his vow clamped down on every choice he wanted to make.

Rose, though, was watching him. She had her mother's sharpness, the same eyes that saw more than anyone wanted them to. He could almost feel her studying him between forkfuls, tilting her head just so, weighing something in silence.

After dessert, treacle tart, Hermione's concession to him when he finally managed to tell her what he liked, Hugo excused himself to work on a drawing. Hermione followed a moment later to fetch a stack of laundry. That left Harry at the table with Rose.

She leaned forward, conspiratorial. "You're different with Mum."

Harry froze. "Different?"

"Yeah." She gave him a look that was far too old for her age. "With me and Hugo, you're relaxed. You laugh, you tell stories. But with her…" Rose's brow furrowed. "It's like you're holding your breath all the time."

He swallowed. A warning stirred faintly, though Rose wasn't Hermione. "Your mum makes me… careful."

"She deserves someone who isn't careful," Rose said simply. "Someone who tries. You do try..." she tilted her head again, measuring him. "but not enough with her."

Harry's chest ached. Merlin, he wanted to tell this girl everything, to tell her how hard he tried against invisible chains, how every question he asked Hermione felt like scaling a mountain. But Rose's words cut in their simplicity. She deserves someone who tries.

"She does," he agreed, voice rough. "More than anyone."

Rose smiled, soft and certain in that fearless way children had. "You could come round more, you know. I wouldn't mind."

Harry's throat closed. It was the closest anyone had ever come to offering him permission. Not the vow loosening, not Hermione insisting he stay. Just this girl, Hermione's daughter, saying she'd be glad if he were part of their lives.

"I want to," he said softly. And then, quieter still, so only Rose could hear, "I just don't know if I can be enough for her."

Rose reached out, touched his hand briefly, the way a child does when they don't yet know the weight of comfort. "Then try harder."

And she hopped down from her chair, padding off to join her brother. Harry sat very still, staring at the empty plate before him, and let himself feel the ache of wanting to stay.

o-o-o-o-o

Hermione had been short with Ron that morning, and she hated herself a little for it.

He had shown up on time for once, smile bright and easy, promising the kids a day out. "I'll prove it," he'd said, leaning in the doorway while Rose impatiently tugged on her shoes and Hugo waved a half-eaten piece of toast. "I'll prove I can be the better man. Better than Potter, that's for sure."

She'd snapped before she could stop herself, something about fatherhood not being a competition. The words lingered after he left, a splinter under her skin.

Ron was trying, but his idea of effort had always been about show. Fun days, sweets and broom rides, being the 'fun dad.' Never the unglamorous part. Late-night fevers, school schedules, the relentless work of consistency. Still, he was their father, and she couldn't take that away from him.

And then there was Harry. Harry, sitting across from her now in the Auror Office briefing room, the parchment between them filled with draft response protocols. The vow was always there, standing between them, keeping him restrained. And yet… he tried. He asked her questions. Small, tentative ones, but questions nonetheless. And it warmed her more than she dared admit.

She pressed her quill to the parchment. "If the incident involves spellfire near civilians, St. Mungo's needs-"

Her words froze in her throat. A silvery spaniel bounded through the glass wall of the conference room, Ron's voice urgent and unmistakable.

"Hermione! Trouble at the park! Greyback! Help!"

Her chair scraped as she stood so fast the legs toppled. The Patronus dissolved in a shimmer of light.

"Harry-" she began, but he was already moving. His chair clattered backwards, eyes blazing in a way she hadn't seen.

"No Aurors yet?" His voice was clipped, hard, already knowing the answer.

She shook her head, her throat dry. "They're... they'll need to be dispatched..."

And then, with a sound like the air tearing, he was gone.

The echo of the Apparition crack hung in the air, sharp as breaking glass. Hermione's heart hammered against her ribs as she stared at the space he'd left behind.

Her children. Merlin, her children. She forced herself to move, to breathe, to run, to do what she did best, organize Aurors. But beneath the panic, a realization struck through her like lightning.

Harry hadn't waited. He hadn't stopped to think, hadn't let the vow hold him back.

Harry had chosen them.

And for the first time, the thought filled her with as much hope as fear.

o-o-o-o-o

The world snapped back into place with the acrid stink of smoke and the high, panicked keening of children.

Harry landed hard on uneven ground, the magical park's bright banners drooping in tatters, half the rides smoldering. Parents huddled behind overturned carts, shielding their little ones, while black-robed figures herded screaming children into two lines.

Pureblood.

Half-blood.

Harry's gut turned. The flash of pale, terrified faces nearly undid him, until he saw them.

Rose, clinging to Hugo's hand, her chin trembling but her eyes steady as she tried to shield her brother with her small body. Hugo looked too stunned to cry.

"Oi…" Ron hissed from behind a toppled cart, eyes blazing even in the dim light. He edged forward, voice tight and low. "Potter… where are the Aurors?"

Harry didn't have time for this. His wand was already in his hand.

But Ron wasn't finished. " These are my kids! We need protection, not a glorified knee mender!"

And that was when it hit.

The vow coiled around his ribs like barbed wire, tightening until breath itself rebelled. Ron's words hammered against him like a curse. You're interfering. You'll ruin her happiness. She wanted Aurors, not you.

Harry staggered, gripping the wand so hard it cut into his palm. The vow's old fire seared through him, a command written into his very soul. Leave. Disappear. Do not touch what is hers.

And then he looked at Rose again. At Hugo, shrinking behind her.

An epiphany broke like dawn.

If she lives in a world where they don't survive today, she will never be happy. Not with me, not with anyone. My vow won't protect her happiness. It will destroy it.

"Damn you," Harry whispered, to himself, to the vow, to fate. His grip steadied. "Damn you all."

Harry rose from behind the wreckage of a crumpled brick wall, wand leveled, every pulse of pain drowned in a single, defiant thought.

The first curse came streaking, blood-red, shrieking through the air. Harry's shield flared, solid as stone. He moved forward, wand flicking in a motion drilled into his bones, healer's reflexes sharpened into soldier's instincts.

Twelve of them. Feral grins at the possibility of a fight. One hulking shape, hair wild and eyes feral, Greyback.

The duel erupted.

It was true Healers didn't train for pitched battles, not like Aurors. At least not the ones that worked at St. Mungo's.

But Harry had worked war triage in Europe, years of patching bleeding witches under fire, holding back death while battling vampires and giants. A battlefield medic learned quick. If you wanted to save anyone, you had to survive the fight first.

"Stupefy!" A masked figure dropped. Harry pivoted, wand slashing. "Depulso!" The ground exploded under two more, scattering them.

And then, suddenly, a ripple of courage spread. Other parents leapt from cover, wands flashing, improvised charms sparking off overturned carts and broken rides. A mother slammed a firework into a werewolf's chest. A father cast a quick binding spell to hold back a screeching attacker. Even Ron, face tight with fear and fury, was in the fray, blasting curses to shield Rose and Hugo.

It wasn't much against Greyback, but it bought Harry seconds. Seconds they needed.

Greyback lunged, wand in one hand, claws reaching. Harry's spell slammed him backwards into a concession stand, the wood splintering like kindling.

But the vow burned hotter. Every strike felt like fire racing under his skin, like lightning sparking in his veins. His shield shuddered, not from curses, but from the vow itself clawing at him. Stop. Leave. She did not ask for this.

Harry gritted his teeth, sweat pouring down his back. She'll never be happy if they die here.

Another curse snapped past his shoulder, close enough to sear his robes. He retaliated blind, wand flicking faster than thought. Someone howled and staggered as a bone-breaking hex shattered their leg. Harry pressed forward, relentless, even as the vow seared hotter, trying to burn him hollow.

"Harry Potter!" one of the werewolves jeered, firing curse after curse. "The Healer Hero!"

Harry barely heard it. He was fighting two wars at once, against twelve enemies, and against the vow threatening to gut him from the inside. His chest convulsed, a cough ripping free, blood on his tongue.

Cracks of apparition surrounded them as Aurors entered the fray, spells firing from their wands and taking some of the attention away from Harry.

As he saw a bush of wild brown hair crackling with magic, the vow surged hot and sharp, twisting like a knife. Harry faltered. His wand arm dipped, his knees threatening to buckle.

Greyback surged up, snarling, wand flashing with a cutting curse. It struck at the same moment the vow reached its limit.

Lightning split the sky, the sound shaking the world apart. The curse struck just as the vow tore loose inside him, agony meeting agony. Harry's scream drowned beneath the storm of his own magic, blinding, boundless, breaking free.

And through the smoke and light, the last thing he saw was Rose's small body thrown over Hugo's, her eyes wide and unflinching, before darkness claimed him.

o-o-o-o-o

The crack of her Apparition split the air. Smoke, screaming, the metallic tang of burnt magic. The park was in ruins.

And then the world split with lightning.

Hermione flinched as the sky itself seemed to scream, the shockwave rattling through the ground beneath her feet. And there, in the center of it, Harry.

He crumpled, lightning writhing around him, not striking, but born from him, like a dying star trying to hold itself together.

"Harry!"

She surged forward, wand raised, shoving past an Auror squad fanning out to pin down the remaining attackers. Her mind screamed at her that she was support staff, that she was meant to coordinate, not fight, but instinct burned through her hesitation. She was a mother, she was a witch, and her children were here. That was all the permission she needed.

"Stupefy!" An attacker dropped. "Expelliarmus!" A wand spun into the dirt. She cut through the melee with cold precision, curses snapping off her wand in rapid succession. This wasn't theory, this wasn't drills. This was her children.

The Auror reinforcements pressed hard, and with Harry's earlier devastation weakening their numbers, the fight was over in minutes. Bound and stunned werewolves littered the trampled grass.

Hermione ran, skidding to her knees beside Rose and Hugo.

"Mum!" Rose sobbed into her chest. "We're okay. We're okay."

Hugo clung tighter, shaking, but alive. Both alive. Relief so fierce it left her dizzy flooded her veins.

"Mum, Harry!" Rose's eyes darted back to where he lay. "He... he saved us."

Hermione's heart twisted as she looked over. Harry sprawled, his body convulsing as wild light rippled through him. Magic tore loose in snapping arcs, searing the air, the scent of ozone sharp and bitter. The lightning didn't strike from the sky, it struck from him, spilling outward in desperate, furious waves.

Hermione froze, the world narrowing to that impossible light. He wasn't casting anymore; the magic was escaping him, tearing its way free.

"Kids!"

Ron barreled over, wild-eyed, wand still smoking from whatever curse he'd just cast. His voice was too loud, too sharp, a man still in protective mode. "Come on. You're safe now. We're going home."

Hermione's head snapped toward him. "Home? Ron, Harry's down! He's bleeding!"

"And the Aurors are here!" Ron shot back, voice cracking under the strain. "We've done enough. I'm not keeping my family in the middle of this." He reached for Hugo's arm, his movements jerky, uncertain.

"Ron, he saved them!" Hermione's shout broke, raw with disbelief.

"I know that!" Ron barked, rounding on her. "But look at him, Hermione! He's... he's not right. You saw what his magic did."

"Daddy, no."

The word hit him like a curse.

Hugo stood small but unyielding, tearstained but fierce. "Harry's hurt. He saved us. He needs us."

"Yeah!" Rose added, clutching her brother's hand. "We're not leaving him!"

Something in Ron cracked. The fear twisted into something meaner, sharper, easier to bear.

"You think he's a hero?" His face flushed dark. "When he's dead, I'll still be your dad."

The silence that followed was brutal.

Then he disapparated, leaving only the sound of wind and the echo of what he couldn't take back.

Hermione gathered her children close, shielding them with one arm as she looked back at Harry's body. Lightning still crawled over him, fragile and furious, like the storm hadn't realized the battle was done. Her heart pounded. Fury, grief, and something like prayer tangled together.

He wasn't going to die here. Not if she had anything to say about it.

Hermione dropped to the grass beside Harry, her knees already wet, her wand out.

"Clear some space!" she barked, her voice cutting sharper than she'd ever heard it. Aurors drew back instantly, giving her a bubble of room. Her children hovered at the edge, clinging to one another, their wide eyes fixed on Harry.

She cast a diagnostic charm, then another, layering them quick and ruthless, her wand hand steady even though her insides were shaking.

The results flared across her vision in stark, damning lines of light.

No, no, no…

Harry's pulse was erratic, surging high one moment, dropping dangerously low the next. His magic was devouring itself, tearing at muscle and bone like a storm with no sky to escape to. A cutting curse had ripped through his side, bleeding freely, but her healing charms skittered off his skin like sparks off glass.

"His magic's rejecting it," she muttered, pressing her lips tight. "He's tearing himself apart."

She grabbed his wrist, his skin clammy and hot. "Harry, listen to me. You are not leaving us. Do you hear me? Not after everything. I am not letting you go."

His eyelids fluttered but didn't open. His breathing hitched, jagged.

"Mum!" Hugo's voice cracked, desperate. "He can hear you. I know he can."

"Harry!" Rose pushed forward, ignoring the Auror trying to hold her back. She knelt on Harry's other side, small fingers brushing his sleeve. "You fixed my knee. You made it better. You have to fix yourself now."

Hermione braced herself and reached again, deeper this time, reckless, letting her magic crash against his. It burned like fire meeting lightning, every nerve screaming in protest. Somewhere far away, someone shouted her name. Rose. Hugo. She couldn't look.

Her magic slipped through the chaos, thread by thread, until she found it. The heart of him, pulsing wild and bright.

"Come back," she whispered, voice cracking. "You don't get to leave us, Harry. Not again."

Lightning tore the sky open above them. The ground hummed under her knees. Sparks leapt between their joined hands. Blue, gold, silver, until she couldn't tell where his magic ended and hers began.

And then, silence.

Hermione gasped, lungs full of ozone and blood. Harry's chest rose once, shallow, then again.

Her children cried out behind her, voices blurring. The world tilted, colors bending in the afterlight. She thought she saw him stir, his fingers twitching toward hers-

-but then everything went white.

And when the light faded, Hermione was falling, her body spent, her hand still clasped around his as darkness claimed her.

Chapter Text

The pain wasn't clean.

It wasn't even pain, not really.

Something ancient and cruel ripped through him, pulling threads of memory from his marrow, twisting them until the world folded inside out.

He was sixteen again.

The corridor outside the Astronomy Tower glowed with torchlight. He remembered the way her hair caught the flame, the stubborn tilt of her chin as she defied Professor Flitwick, Neville's knowing look as he caught Harry's eye across the room.

"Harry, you can't keep doing this," he'd said, voice breaking on his name. "If you wanted to ask her out, you should have done it last week, last month, Merlin, even last year... but you were scared, and now she's dating Ron. Maybe it won't work out, but you have to let her have some space. Just let her have her own happiness."

He'd smiled, because it hurt too much not to. "I just want her to be happy, Neville. That's all I'll ever want."

That evening, alone in his dormitory he drew his wand.

Three words carved the shape of a lifetime into his soul.

I will never interfere in her happiness.

The vow sealed with a shimmer of green fire, wrapping around his ribs like ivy made of glass.

Seventeen.

Walking behind Hermione on rounds, every joint burning with fire, telling him to flee, to get away. Being in the same school was torture enough, being near her made his mind bleed fire.

Nineteen. France. The air thick with salt and ash.

He remembered sand and blood and the scent of antiseptic charms. A girl screaming in a language he barely understood. His hands were steady, always steady, even as his heart cracked open with every life he couldn't save.

Because this, at least, wasn't interfering.

Healing was safe. Distant. Useful.

Every bandaged wound was a penance he didn't have to explain.

At night, when the tents were quiet and the wind hissed across the dunes, the vow would whisper through his veins.

She is laughing tonight. You are far from her. This is good.

And he would believe it.

He had to.

Twenty-two.

The fields of Croatia buzzed with the drone of cicadas in the evening.

A letter arrived by owl, gold-inked, careful hand.

Hermione Granger and Ronald Weasley invite you to their wedding.

He stared at the words until the ink bled. His chest burned so hot he thought his heart would catch fire.

The vow whispered, Do not go.

His hand, trembling, tore the letter in half.

And the vow hummed approval.

Thirty.

The vow was quieter now, more like a scar than a chain. But it was still there, an echo in the back of his skull every time he thought of home.

The vow whispered, She is married, she has her children, you can never interfere.

He believed it.

Thirty Six.

Harry awoke in his sleep, his chest lighter than it had been in years. The vow loosened, not gone, but slack, as if magic itself were waiting to see what he'd do next.

For the first time, he dreamed of London. Of rain on glass, of the echo of her laughter in the Ministry atrium.

He thought of returning home, of maybe seeing her again, and felt the chains tighten against his ribs, against his hope, against his choice.

But it didn't stop him.

And now-

The vow screamed. Every promise, every restriction, every year of silence, burning to ash in his veins.

He'd broken it to save her children. To save her.

To interfere.

To finally choose her happiness, not as an idea, but as a life worth living.

The magic tore free like a dying star, leaving only the hollow ache of freedom in its wake.

And as the magic ripped through him, Harry thought, with something like peace, that maybe this was what it felt like
to stop running.

o-o-o-o-o

Harry woke to silence.

No, not silence. The faint hum of spellwork in the walls. The soft shuffle of footsteps somewhere down the corridor. A healer's charm ticking faintly like a metronome by his bedside.

But inside him, where the vow had lived, wrapped like chains around his ribs... there was silence.

For the first time in twenty years, he breathed without resistance. No tug when his thoughts turned toward Hermione. No tightening when he pictured Rose's laugh or Hugo's bright, curious eyes. No invisible tether yanking him away from what he wanted. He exhaled once, sharp and disbelieving, a breath that seemed to echo in the empty space the vow left behind.

He sat up too fast, nearly tearing the monitoring charm off his wrist. It's gone.

The door burst open and a familiar figure swept in, Head Healer Aldous Greengrass. His eyes went wide. "Potter, you're awake?"

"I'm awake," Harry said, his voice rough. "And better than I should be."

Aldous flicked his wand over him, muttering diagnostic spells. His expression darkened. "Better than you should be is right. You've stabilized, but your vitals don't match the baselines we have on file. It's like you're… I don't even know."

Harry exhaled, slow and even. "You wouldn't. You've been working off a flawed baseline reading from the start."

Aldous froze.

"I was bound," Harry said, meeting his stunned stare. "A self-bound vow. For about twenty years. It skewed everything ever measured on me."

Aldous almost dropped his wand. "That's impossible. Self-bound vows don't break. They… they kill."

"Well," Harry said softly, his chest rising with a steady breath he could hardly believe was real, "apparently not always." A laugh slipped out, too thin, close to a sob, and he pressed a hand against his ribs as if to feel the absence.

Aldous whispered, almost reverent, "Oathbreaker."

The word rang in the air like a verdict, heavy and new. A name, not an insult. Something that belonged to him now.

Harry didn't linger on it. "Hermione?" His throat caught on her name.

Aldous's expression softened. "She's here too. Stable. Exhausted herself nearly to collapse, but she'll recover. A few days, maybe less. The field aurors told me she saved you."

The ache in his chest wasn't vow-born this time. It was his own.

Aldous left him with instructions, but for once there was no compulsion, no invisible leash telling him what he could or couldn't do. He dressed in the spare set of robes at the foot of his bed, hand shaking only once when he realized, he could choose.

So he chose her. The silence inside him filled with one thought. Find her.

He found out which room she was located in and made his way to the open door.

Hermione lay sleeping, pale but peaceful, in a private room down the hall. Rose and Hugo were curled in chairs at her side, half-dozing themselves. They startled awake when Harry stepped through the doorway.

"Uncle Harry!" Hugo scrambled off his chair, nearly tripping over his own feet in his rush. "You're alive!"

Rose's eyes were shining. "Mum said you'd be okay, but... but you were amazing. Where did you learn to duel like that? That was almost as cool as the healing stuff you do!"

Harry chuckled, low and warm, and let them tug him toward Hermione's bed. He sank down into the empty chair between them, Rose immediately curling against his arm while Hugo clambered onto his lap.

Hermione slept on, steady breaths rising and falling. Harry watched her, felt her children pressed against him, and for the first time since he was sixteen, no vow clawed at his insides.

Only choice.

And he chose to stay.

The children eventually tired themselves out and dozed beside Hermione, leaving Harry in a rare stillness. He sat with his hand half-curled against the blanket near hers, watching the rise and fall of her chest. Every so often, he caught himself holding his breath, waiting for her to do the same.

When the door clicked open again, Harry's wand was in his hand before he realized it.

Neville leaned in, one hand raised in placation, the other clutching a leather folder stuffed with parchment. "Easy, Harry. It's just me."

Harry lowered his wand, embarrassed but not apologetic. "Old habits."

Neville came in quietly, his gaze flicking first to Hermione, then to the children curled against her. His mouth softened into something almost fond before he crossed to Harry's chair.

"You look better than I expected," Neville said. "They said it was touch and go."

Harry shrugged. "It was. But I'm… free." He didn't realize until the word left his mouth how much he meant it.

Neville stilled. Then, very softly, "So the vow's gone?"

Harry huffed, half a laugh, half a sigh. "It was a vow I shouldn't have made. But it's broken now."

Neville set the folder down on the small side table. "That explains why this turned up today." He tapped the top sheet, a roll call list Harry recognized instantly, the Wizengamot attendance list.

Two names glowed faintly under Neville's finger, both struck through.

Potter. Black.

Harry's throat closed. "Taking up my seats would have killed me before, but it was always a moot point, wasn't it? Too many traditionalists."

"That might have been true yesterday," Neville said. He pulled up a chair. "But yesterday isn't today."

"The Wizengamot was in session when the news broke about the attack. The chamber was already in uproar."

Neville paused, glancing at Hermione as if the sight of her reminded him why any of it mattered. "Half-blood children," he repeated, quieter. "They were sorting them like livestock."

Harry blinked. "I don't follow."

"I'm saying," Neville cut in, leaning forward, "there's momentum. Enough voices are calling for protection for half-bloods and Muggleborns that we might actually get reforms through. And if you take your place…" He nodded at the parchment. "…two more progressive votes. Two names no one can ignore."

Harry stared at the glowing letters. Potter. Black. Titles he'd never thought he'd touch. Legacies he'd buried as far from himself as possible.

"I'm a healer, Neville," Harry said, almost to convince himself. "Not a politician."

Neville's mouth curved into something wry. "You've been a battlefield medic in three countries, and yesterday you faced down a dozen werewolves with nothing but your wand and sheer bloody-mindedness. The Wizengamot isn't asking you to make speeches. It's asking you to show up. To choose. And-" His gaze cut briefly to Hermione. "-it seems like for the first time, you can."

Harry sat back, the truth settling on him like fresh air after years underground.

He could.

The vow wasn't there, yanking him away, whispering that Hermione's happiness lay elsewhere. For once, he could walk toward her, not back. He could sit in the Wizengamot chamber, not vanish into another warzone because his vow dictated distance.

Neville rested a hand on his shoulder, steady. "I know what that vow cost you, Harry. And I know you've spent twenty years paying it. But this? This is your chance to put that pain to use. To make sure the next child sorted by blood status never has to wonder if anyone will come for them."

Harry swallowed hard. His gaze returned to Hermione, sleeping so pale but so alive, and to the two children nestled close to her side.

"I broke an oath to save them," he said quietly. "Maybe it's time I did something with that."

He brushed his fingers against the blanket near Hermione's hand. For twenty years, he'd sworn never to interfere.

Now, at last, he could choose what came next.

o-o-o-o-o

When Hermione woke, it was to the heavy weight of her children curled against her and the sterile brightness of St. Mungo's. Rose had one arm flung across her stomach, Hugo tucked under her other, their steady breathing anchoring her more firmly than any charm ever could.

She tried to shift, but her body protested. Everything felt wrung out, as if she'd emptied herself down to the marrow. Which, she supposed, she had. The memory came back in shards. Lightning tearing the sky open, Harry in the middle of it all, blood across his abdomen, his magic arcing off him in wild, sparking bursts.

Harry.

Her gaze found him immediately. He was slumped in a chair beside her bed, chin on his chest, asleep in a stubbornly uncomfortable way that fit him, too proud, too tired, and too used to discomfort to care.

Her throat closed. He should have died, he nearly had. He would have, if she hadn't pushed herself far past her own limit trying to work a single thread of healing through the chaos of his magic.

She remembered Hugo's voice trembling as he spoke to Harry, Rose whispering that he had to stay, he had to. And somehow Harry had.

She shifted again, brushing curls from her face, and Rose stirred, murmured something, then resettled against her. Hermione let her eyes close for a moment, only to snap them open when Harry shifted.

He was awake, blinking himself into awareness, and when his eyes found hers, green, impossibly tired, but awake. Her breath caught.

"Hi," she whispered, because it was all she could manage.

His mouth curved faintly. "Hello."

It was so like him, quiet, minimal, reserved. She still wasn't sure how to handle it. She wanted more. But a life with a man who only answered, never initiated, was a lonely kind of future. And still, she couldn't stop herself from pushing.

"You nearly died," she said softly, searching his face. "I thought... Merlin, Harry, your magic was tearing itself apart, and you still kept fighting. Why would you do that?"

He looked away, jaw tightening. "Because someone had to."

"Because of the children?" She pressed. "Because of me?"

His silence stretched, and Hermione felt the familiar ache, the wall between them. He could never say. He could only let her talk, ask questions, drag answers from him one syllable at a time.

She sighed and leaned her head back against the pillows. "Sometimes, Harry…" She hesitated, too tired to filter herself. "I don't know how this could ever work. You never say what you're feeling. I keep talking and it's like you're behind glass."

He shifted in his chair, and she braced herself for more silence. But instead-

"Hermione," he said, voice low and rough. "Can I try something?"

She blinked, uncertain. "What?"

But he was already moving toward her.

Her eyes snapped to his, and before she could process it, before her mind could gallop into analysis and reasons and impossibilities, he leaned forward and kissed her.

It wasn't tentative. It wasn't one of the quiet scraps of attention she'd grown used to coaxing from him. It was sure, firm, the kind of kiss that said he'd thought about it for years and finally decided to act.

He can't... his vow... how could he... but he is... Merlin, he's kissing me!

Her fingers tightened in the sheets, every argument she'd carefully built unraveling with the warmth of his mouth against hers. She'd been falling for him in increments, small conversations, late nights, the way he always asked about her children, but now she was plummeting.

And then it ended. He pulled back, breath uneven, and the space between them felt impossibly charged.

Hermione stared at him, her pulse still racing, and laughed through the tears stinging her eyes. "I have so many questions."

Harry leaned forward a little, green eyes steady on hers, and for once there wasn't a wall of silence between them. No vow, no weight. Just Harry.

"Then ask them," he said quietly. "This time, I'll answer."

o-o-o-o-o

The garden at Hermione's house was loud with laughter. Rose and Hugo were chasing each other around the patch of lawn with a bewitched ball that kept changing shape mid-bounce, shrieking every time it sprouted wings or legs. The sunlight made everything softer, warmer, and for once Harry didn't feel like an intruder on the scene. He felt present. Allowed.

Hermione sat beside him at the little wrought-iron table, a book open but forgotten. She had her legs curled under her and a smudge of dirt on her cheek from fussing with her herb pots earlier.

Harry watched her for a moment, the easy way she leaned into her chair, the crease of concentration fading from her brow. He still marveled at it, this ability to simply look at her without the vow's chokehold dragging him away. And he found himself greedy for more.

"So," he said, tilting his head, "that book, you never did tell me why you keep going back to it. Third time in as many months."

Hermione blinked at him, then gave a small, delighted laugh. "You noticed?"

"I notice everything about you," he admitted before he could second-guess it. Then, quieter, with something hungry in the words: "Now I finally get to ask."

She closed the book, smiling with a warmth that was more than fondness, it was joy. "It's not about rereading the same words—it's about seeing how I've changed since the last time I read them. Books are… mirrors, for me."

Harry leaned closer, elbows on his knees, hanging on every word. "Then what's it showing you now?"

Her cheeks flushed faintly, but she held his gaze. "That I'm not who I was when I thought happiness meant… being chosen by someone else. I know better now."

The words landed with quiet devastation. For years, loving her meant staying away. And now, she was here, and he was allowed to stay.

The words sank deep, but before Harry could answer, Rose came barreling over, breathless, Hugo hot on her heels.

"Mum, Harry! Did you see that? It sprouted claws! Actual claws!" Rose's eyes were wide, glittering with excitement. "Can we show Uncle Neville's kids when they come later?"

"Only if you promise it won't eat them first," Harry teased, and both children laughed, clambering up onto his chair until he had one perched on each arm.

Hermione reached across the table and brushed her fingers against his wrist, casual, natural. Like it had always been this way.

"Didn't Neville say something about cornering you later?" Hermione asked, lips quirking.

Harry groaned, though he couldn't help but smile. "Something about reform proposals, I think. He'll want to talk policy."

"You'll do brilliantly," she said, her voice carrying that same quiet certainty she always had when she believed in him more than he did himself.

And Harry, for once, didn't argue.

The children laughed, Hermione's touch lingered, and the air was full of promise instead of dread.

After twenty years, Harry felt free. And the life unfolding before him was already more than he'd ever dared to hope for.