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Harry settles into his Eighth Year at Hogwarts.
Or maybe it’s more accurate to say that Eighth Year settles over him.
It fits like an old jumper pulled over scar tissue: familiar, soft in places, still itchy where it rubs wrong. There’s a rhythm to it, a quiet continuity, since all the Eight Years are shoved into one dormitory wing. It’s unaffiliated with any particular House, just a shared space for all the returning students finishing their final year. People like Neville, Dean, Seamus, and Lavender; but also others, like Draco Malfoy, Theodore Nott, Michael Corner, Su Li, Hannah Abbott, and Ernie Macmillan. Beds are pushed together in clusters instead of neat rows, trunks stacked haphazardly along the walls, personal spaces bleeding into one another.
Houses matter less now.
They’re all just Eighth Years.
They’re all just trying to graduate.
They’re all just trying to figure out how to move on.
Ron and Hermione make it all easier to bear.
It starts without anyone ever deciding it should. Harry wakes one night from a dream where he’s back in the forest, wand shaking in his hand, and Ron is there—warm and solid, an arm flung across Harry’s ribs, bracketing him in an embrace with Hermione on Harry’s other side, her forehead pressed against his shoulder, curls tickling his chin.
The relief hits him so hard he nearly laughs.
They both hold him until Harry is able to settle back to sleep.
They don’t talk about it in the morning, but it becomes a habit, much like everything else that saved them when they were hunted and on the run. If one of them crawls into another’s bed because the dark feels too big, no one makes a fuss. Harry knows, rationally, that most people probably don’t sleep in a tangle of limbs with their best friends. He also knows that most people didn’t spend months sleeping in frozen tents, taking turns keeping watch so no one died to an ambush.
So, when he wakes with Ron’s knee wedged against his thigh and Hermione’s fingers curled into the hem of his pyjama shirt, Harry only thinks: safe.
Voldemort is gone, and they’re all safe now.
Hermione stirs shortly after Harry does, eyes fluttering open against the dim light. She squints at him for a moment, then her lips curve into a soft, achingly fond smile. “Morning.”
“Morning,” Harry echoes, matching her smile.
Ron groans and rolls onto his back, one arm flung dramatically over his eyes. “Why is it so bloody early?”
Hermione checks her watch. “It’s nearly nine.”
“Cruel and unusual,” Ron mutters, and buries his face into his pillow.
Harry laughs quietly, easing himself out from between them without disturbing Ron too much. It’s a gentler echo of how they’d slept during that hellish horcrux hunt; pressed together for warmth and safety, yet always alert, one of them keeping watch while the others rested. Now, they don’t need to be quite this close, not really, but the habit has lingered, comforting and familiar. Harry likes it. There’s a quiet ease to the morning, a softness to the day already, simply because it starts like this.
Throughout the day, during classes and outside them, they’re inseparable in a way that doesn’t draw comment because it’s always been true. They study together in the library, Ron’s foot nudging Harry’s under the table, Hermione’s shoulder warm against his. They eat together, laugh together, sit together in the courtyard when the sun is out and the stones still hold the heat.
Sometimes people smile at them.
Harry assumes it’s because they’re alive.
On a blustery October afternoon, Harry catches Ginny outside the Charms classroom. She’s been looking good, much better as the months pass and the war grows more distant behind them. Hair pulled back, eyes bright, a laugh that comes easier than it used to. Seeing her still steals his breath for a moment, though not in the sharp, painful, grief-adjacent way that he’d half-expected it to.
They hadn’t gotten back together after he’d ended things when the war officially broke out. Though they’d been around each other, moving through the same circles, neither of them had attempted to try again. Nothing said, nothing pursued. He thinks Ginny understands why their separation was for the best, but Harry still wants to apologize for the way he’d gone about it, sudden and harried as it had been.
They walk along the corridor where the windows look out over the grounds, the lake choppy with wind. He’s rehearsed this apology a dozen times and none of the words feel like enough. “I’m sorry,” he says finally, stopping so abruptly Ginny nearly bumps into him. “About how I ended things. Before we left. I didn’t—I should’ve done it better. I wanted you safe, and I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
Ginny huffs, waving him off. “It’s all right. Really. Breaking up got us both past the end of the war, didn’t it? Besides,” she adds, smiling at him with something quiet and knowing, “I think you’re happier with the relationship you’ve got now.”
Harry blinks, tilting his head slightly. Friends, he thinks. That’s what she means. They’re better as friends, closer this way, able to laugh and lean on each other without the complications of…whatever it had been before. He feels a warm, easy sort of relief settle in his chest. He’s glad for that, glad to have her in his life like this, familiar and still solid, but without the pressure of romance.
“Yeah,” he says, smiling back at her. “Yeah, I am.”
That evening, Ron suggests they go down to Hogsmeade.
Hermione pretends to protest about homework but is already tugging her scarf on, cheeks pink from the cold. Harry goes along because he always does. They walk close enough that their shoulders bump, Ron complaining about the weather, Hermione shushing him with a smile. They end up in the Three Broomsticks, pressed into a corner table. Ron buys the drinks, Hermione insists on sharing a plate of treacle tart, and Harry watches them bicker over whose turn it is to choose the song on the wireless.
It feels easy. It’s nice.
At some point, Hermione reaches across the table and wipes foam from Harry’s lip with her thumb. Ron’s eyes flick to the gesture and soften, his mouth curving into a fond smile. Harry flushes, embarrassed, and mutters thanks. And when they head back up the road under a sky full of stars, Hermione slips her hand into Harry’s. Ron takes Harry’s other side, fingers brushing his sleeve.
Harry thinks, absently, that it’s nice how they look out for him.
***
Classes pass in a routine that feels almost indulgent now.
It’s a strange luxury after the chaos and fear of the war. Mornings stretch without the sharp urgency of life-or-death decisions. Afternoons drift without the heavy weight of constant vigilance, every lesson attended is an entirely ordinary thing he can actually notice instead of just endure. Evenings are long and unhurried, spent sprawling in the dormitory with Ron and Hermione.
It’s always with Ron and Hermione.
They’re rarely ever out of arm’s reach, more casual with touch than they’ve ever been before, often pressed together without thought. Once, while they’re studying there, Ron leans over and presses a quick kiss to Hermione’s temple, absentminded and easy, before returning to his essay. Later, when Harry hands her a completed Arithmancy chart, she presses a soft, fleeting kiss to his cheek. He flushes, but doesn’t question it. And when Ron slings an arm across his shoulders and leans down to press a brief kiss to the top of his head, it doesn’t startle him either. Harry attributes it to the natural kind of closeness that only comes from surviving together, from having faced the worst and returned intact, and finding a home in each other along the way.
People notice, of course, and people tease.
“Blimey,” Seamus says, one afternoon. “You three are practically joined at the hip.”
“Yeah,” Dean adds, grinning. “How long’s it been?”
Harry tilts his head. “How long’s what been?”
Dean gestures vaguely toward them. “You three.”
Harry follows the motion, to where Ron is triumphantly knocking over Hermione’s king in a chess match behind him. “You know we’ve been together since First Year.”
“Have you really?” Seamus asks, eyebrows raised.
Harry isn’t quite sure why he needs the confirmation. They’ve been in the same House for years, shared classes, duels, and the DA meetings, and surely both of them know by now that Harry has been close with Ron and Hermione since the troll in their first year. It isn’t a secret. It never has been.
Even Voldemort knew Ron and Hermione are his best friends.
Harry rolls his eyes. “Wasn’t it obvious?”
Dean’s grin widens. “More than ever.”
Which is a weird response, and Harry blinks at him, a little confused by the comment, but he doesn’t call him out on it. There’s no point, really. Dean and Seamus are already laughing and nudging each other toward the door, clearly done with whatever game they’d started. He shrugs, figures some things aren’t worth untangling, and ends up back at Ron and Hermione’s side as they pack up the pieces to their finished chess game.
Harry leans back, elbows resting on the soft carpet, and soon enough, Ron stretches lazily beside him, one arm tucked behind his head, while Hermione curls close on Harry’s other side. It feels peaceful. The dormitory is empty save the three of them, with the rest of the Eighth Years off somewhere else in the castle, and there’s a contented weight that settles in his chest as they talk about everything and nothing at all.
Though, Harry does listen more than he talks.
He likes letting the easy cadence of their voices wrap around him, Hermione’s soft laughter threading through Ron’s teasing words, the familiar rhythm of them filling the space. Harry interjects now and then with a comment, a laugh, a small observation, but mostly he just breathes them in, sinking into their closeness, their safety, their comfort, their warmth. Happiness pools in his chest like sunlight, spilling into every corner of his heart, bright and steady, carried entirely by their presence, and how bright life can feel when they’re together, because—
“I love you,” Harry breathes, swept in the emotion.
They are the truest words that he’s ever spoken.
Hermione and Ron go quiet all at once.
It’s abrupt enough that Harry notices immediately, and looks up from where he’s half-sprawled on the carpet between them. They’re both staring at him, expressions unreadable in a way that makes his stomach give a small, uncertain twist.
“What?” he asks, half-sitting up now. “What’d I say?”
“It’s just—” Ron rubs at the back of his neck, ears pink. “It’s the first time you’ve said it aloud.”
Harry frowns, thinking back a few seconds. I love you, he’d said, easy and unguarded, like it hadn’t been a thing at all. He searches his memory, honestly confused. Surely he’s said it before. They’re Ron and Hermione. They’re everything. But maybe he hasn’t. The Dursleys never exactly encouraged that sort of thing, and the war had a way of making feelings feel assumed rather than spoken.
“Er, well,” Harry says, then shrugs, a little sheepish. “I do love you guys.”
Ron’s smile breaks through instantly, bright and warm. “Love you too, mate.”
“We both do,” Hermione says, and her eyes are soft in that way that always makes Harry feel like she sees straight through him, past the scar and the history and into the quiet parts he doesn’t have words for.
Something warm and overwhelming is overtaking his chest again.
He grins, suddenly sappy, suddenly eleven again and desperate to belong, and then he’d met these two, and they’d been the greatest friends he could ever hope for. He wants to sink into this moment forever, into the mundane and comforting, set right between them, and Harry lays back, bracketed on either side.
And then Hermione leans in and presses a kiss to his lips. It’s brief, casual, like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Before Harry can process that at all, Ron leans in too and does the same; quick, affectionate, utterly unhesitating.
His brain stutters; thoughts scatter like startled birds.
Wait, he thinks, distant and faintly panicked. Aren’t Ron and Hermione dating?
Yeah, they’re definitely a thing. An established thing. Everyone knows that. Harry has known that. He’s watched them bicker themselves into circles and then fall quiet, has learned the particular cadence of their arguments, the way they orbit each other even when they’re pretending not to. He’s always understood his place in that picture: adjacent, supportive, best friends with them both.
Except—
Except Ron’s arm is still draped easily behind him, solid and familiar, not pulling away like someone who’s realized they’ve made a mistake. Except Hermione hasn’t gone awkward or flustered or anything that suggests this wasn’t intentional. Except they both look calm. Certain. Like nothing unusual has happened at all.
And maybe, to them, it hasn’t. They have kissed him before; on the cheek, pressed warm to his hair, always soft and affectionate and easy to explain away. It had been easy to write them off as friendly gestures, because they had never been like this. Never so direct, so unmistakable, so hard to misinterpret once he actually stops and looks at it.
Except—
Except they sleep together, all three of them. Not once or twice, but habitually, deliberately, night after night, bodies tangled, breath falling into the same rhythm because it’s easier that way, because the dark doesn’t feel so sharp when he isn’t alone in it. Except they go to Hogsmeade together, always as a unit, never peeling off into pairs. Except there hasn’t been a single walk by the lake or quiet meal or late-night conversation that hasn’t included him, shoulder brushing shoulder, knees touching under tables, like it would be strange any other way.
There haven’t been any dates that didn’t include him too.
The thought lands, settles, clicks into place.
Oh, Harry thinks.
The world doesn’t tilt. Nothing shatters.
His mind isn’t thrown off balance by the revelation.
It just…rearranges itself, like a puzzle piece finally turned the right way around.
Oh, he thinks, again. It’s like this.
He looks at them: Ron, open and earnest and impossibly steady; Hermione, brilliant and fierce and looking at him like he’s something precious. It settles something deep and quiet in his chest, and Harry supposes there’s nothing really to be done. If it’s already been like this, he has no complaints, other than how long it took for him to realize. And really, he’d quite like what they have to continue. The thought makes him grin a little wider, because he doesn’t have to chase them, doesn’t have to carve a space for himself, because he already has it.
Harry is already between them, exactly where he belongs.