Chapter Text
It had been seven hundred and twelve days since the final boarding call echoed through Heathrow.
Since the day Hermione Granger walked out of Harry Potter’s life.
He’d counted. Every single one.
At first, he told himself it was temporary. She just needed time, space, and closure. But weeks blurred into months, and the silence solidified into something permanent.
But now, here he was, standing outside a flat that hadn’t seen her in over a year, clutching a letter with her handwriting on the envelope—his name inked as if it still meant something.
-Harry-
Just that. No title, no flourish. No “dear,” no “love.”
The handwriting brought with it things he didn’t care to think about.
He remembered that day, nearly two years ago, all too clearly.
“So this is it then?” His voice cut through the sounds of rolling luggage.
She silently wiped a tear from her eye, not answering.
“Talk to me, please.”
She breathed slowly, out then in.
“Harry. I need to do this.”
“Let me help you. You don’t have to do it alone.”
“I do, though. It could be dangerous, and…”
“Bollocks, Hermione. That’s a load of shit and you know it.”
“Stop, Harry, you’re not making this easy.”
“I’m not trying to make it easy. How many times did you follow me into danger?”
She shifted uncomfortably, arms wrapped around her chest, worrying at her lip. Her boarding pass crinkled in her hand.
“I’ll take that as plenty,” he said, barely restraining his desperation.
“That was different, Harry. This is my problem to solve. I made this mess, and I need to-”
“AND IT’S ALL MY FAULT!” He yelled. “You did it all to help me, and you did. You saved me countless times.”
"It was a war, Harry. Everything was at stake. I didn’t have a choice.”
“Please, Hermione. You are everything to me... I can’t—”
“Harry, we’ve been together for almost a year. And it’s been wonderful, but… They’re my parents, Harry. I need to go. And I need to go alone.”
“If you’re breaking up with me, at least say it right. You want to go alone.”
“Harry.” She whispered, wiping another tear from her eye. “I can’t ask you to wait for me. I won’t. I have no idea what it will take. How long I’ll be gone.”
“You are coming back, though. Right?”
Her stunned silence stretched out a moment too long.
“Hermione.” He said darkly, “tell me right now that you are coming back.”
A loud voice came on over a loudspeaker. It was barely understandable, but both of them managed to decipher it.
“That’s the final boarding call. I have to go.”
“Why here? Why at the last minute? What have I done to warrant that? I’ve never once thought you capable of cruelty.”
She looked like he’d slapped her in the face at that.
“Harry, the timing wasn’t for you. It was for me. I knew you’d try to talk me out of it.”
“Then give me more time… I… I loved you, Hermione.”
“And I, you.”
“If you did, you wouldn’t leave me… Not like this.”
“Goodbye, Harry.” She turned and walked briskly, showing him her back.
He had stood there long after she disappeared through the gate, her shoulders shaking, the final boarding call echoing in his head.
Seven hundred and twelve days later, it still did.
He blinked.
The airport faded, replaced by red brick and ivy, and a window cracked open two floors up.
The letter was still in his hand.
He stared at it, then back at the door.
His stomach twisted. It felt wrong to be here unannounced.
He should have sent an owl.
But she’d sent the letter. She’d asked.
“If you're still in London… if it’s not too much… Could we talk?”
It wasn’t much, but it was everything.
He slipped the letter back into his pocket and raised a tentative fist to knock. It hovered there for a second too long.
Just do it, he told himself.
You survived losing her. You can survive this, too.
The knock was soft. Tentative.
Hermione didn’t think twice as she crossed the flat.
Stepping quietly, as if she were trying to sneak out of the house, she cracked the door open and froze.
Harry stood there, disheveled and stunned.
Her heart stopped.
“Harry?”
He blinked once, as if he wasn’t sure he was really seeing her. “Hi.”
Then, his eyes dropped.
To the toddler on her hip.
To her wild black hair.
To the way she blinked at him with wide, sleepy, uncertain brown eyes before tucking her face into Hermione’s neck.
The silence between them was sudden and explosive.
Harry looked back up at her slowly, something shattering across his expression.
Hermione felt her throat close.
“Harry… This isn’t—”
“Is she mine?” he cut her off, low and sharp. He already knew the answer just by looking at the little girl, and hated himself for needing confirmation.
Hermione swallowed. “Ours.”
His face contorted. “You’ve had a daughter, my daughter, for how long? And you didn’t think I had the right to know?”
“I did,” she said instantly, stumbling over the words. “I did, I swear, I just—”
“How old is she?”
“Harry,”
“How old?”
“Fourteen months.”
He swore under his breath. Harsh. Bitter. “So what? You figured I’d just never find out? That I’d go on with my life while my—” his voice failed him for a moment, “my child… was out there somewhere?”
“No!” she cried. “I wrote letters, I—I tried, Harry. I didn’t know how. I was terrified.”
“Of what, Hermione? That I’d be angry? That I’d show up?”
“I didn’t want to wreck your life!” she burst out. “You were rebuilding. You were healing. You deserved peace and a future that wasn’t bound to me, let alone—”
“Don't you dare tell me what I deserve. I’ve always been bound to you.” His head spun with rage, surprise, and something new and ancient that had hit him the moment he’d seen his daughter’s eyes.
“Ever since third year, probably earlier… And if you didn’t want to wreck my life, you should have thought of that at the airport.”
Tears were streaming down her face, but there were no words to accompany them.
He took a step forward, hand shaking as he pointed. Not at Hermione, but at the toddler now peeking out from her shoulder, shy, curious, and quiet.
“You don’t get to decide what I would or wouldn’t have chosen. You don’t get to decide what kind of father I’d be.”
Hermione flinched. “I know.”
“I missed everything,” he said, voice breaking properly now, fury curling into grief. “Her first steps. Her first words. Her first bloody birthday.”
“I didn’t mean to take that from you.”
“But you did.”
Hermione flinched as if the words had weight.
“I know,” she whispered again, but it sounded thinner this time. Frayed.
The toddler shifted on her hip, small fingers clutching at the collar of Hermione’s jumper. Harry’s eyes dropped instantly, tracking the movement as if it were the only stable thing in the room.
Hermione swallowed.
“Australia was… harder than I expected.”
Harry didn’t respond.
She pressed on anyway, words tumbling faster now, slightly breathless. Avoidant.
“They didn’t recognize me, obviously. That was the point. I’d erased myself so thoroughly that even I was startled by how complete it was. They had different friends. Different routines. They were happy.” Her mouth twitched faintly. “Safe.”
Silence.
“I watched them for three days before I approached them. Just to make sure they really were all right. I rented a room above a bookshop two streets over. I thought—” She stopped, shaking her head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought.”
Harry’s jaw tightened.
“I reversed the spell slowly. Carefully. It’s delicate work, memory modification. You can’t just rip it back into place. It… hurts.”
“Did it?” he asked quietly.
She blinked at him, startled that he’d spoken at all. She could see the muscles in his jaw straining. “Yes.”
He didn’t clarify whether he meant the spell or her parents’ reaction.
“They were furious,” she continued. “Confused. Hurt. Betrayed. My mother cried for hours. My father wouldn’t so much as look at me. I had to explain why I’d done it, and then explain why I hadn’t come home sooner, and then explain why I was… alone.”
Her voice faltered on the last word.
Harry’s gaze didn’t lift from their child.
She had Hermione’s eyes.
She had Harry’s nose.
Hermione shifted her weight.
“I thought it would only take a few weeks,” she said softly. “To fix things. To settle them. To come back and… talk to you properly.”
His throat worked, but he said nothing.
“I only found out a month after I arrived.” Her fingers tightened almost imperceptibly against her daughter’s back. “I was tired—exhausted, really—all the time. I assumed it was just stress. And then I…” She let out a shaky breath. “I took a test. In the bathroom of that tiny flat above the bookshop.”
Harry’s head lifted then.
Slowly.
She fought not to cry around the words. “I didn’t know at the airport.”
That hung between them, fragile and sharp.
He stared at her.
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.” Her answer came instantly. Fierce. “If I had known, Harry, I wouldn’t have left you standing there like that. I wouldn’t have—” Her voice broke. “I wouldn’t have done that to you.”
He stood, statue still, looking at the little girl in her arms.
“Please,” she said hoarsely. “Come inside. I don’t want the neighbours listening, and she—” She adjusted the little girl slightly. “She’s nearly due for her nap.”
Harry stepped forward.
Not toward Hermione.
Toward the child.
He crossed the threshold without breaking eye contact with his daughter. Hermione moved automatically to let him pass, closing the door behind them with trembling fingers.
The flat was warm. Small. Lived in.
Harry stood in the middle of it, breathing carefully, like one wrong movement might shatter something irreplaceable.
“You’re really sure? You didn’t know before you left?”
“I swear it on anything.”
His shoulders dropped a fraction.
Only a fraction.
She kept going before she lost the courage.
“I sat on the floor for nearly two hours after I found out, just staring at the wall. I remember thinking… I knew I’d hurt you, and that it wasn’t something I could logic my way through. There isn’t a right answer.”
Her laugh was hollow.
“I wrote to you that night. Three pages. I told you everything. I told you I was sorry. I told you I loved you. I asked you what you wanted.”
Her eyes flicked toward the small writing desk across the room from them.
“I never sent it.”
Harry’s voice was steady, but thinner now. “Why?”
“Because the next morning my mother asked me if I planned to stay. And I didn’t know how to tell her I might leave again. I didn’t know how to tell you to come halfway across the world for something I had already shattered.” Tears slipped down her face unchecked now. “I thought… if I told you, you would come. And you were rebuilding, Harry. You were healing. You deserved peace. You deserved the chance to choose a future that wasn’t tied to the mess I’d made.”
“Don’t,” he murmured.
“I thought I was setting you free,” she said, finally breaking down completely. “I thought you needed space from me. From the war. From all of it. From someone who could so easily disappear.”
His eyes finally left their daughter and fixed on her.
“I never stopped loving you,” she whispered. “Not for a single day. But the longer I waited, the harder it became to admit what I’d done. And then she was born, and she was so small, and she had your little nose, and I thought—” She sucked in a breath. “I thought you’d hate me.”
The toddler peeked out again, studying Harry openly now. Curious. Quiet.
Hermione’s voice went small.
“I was out of my depth. I’ve never been so out of my depth in my life. I kept telling myself I would write tomorrow. I would call tomorrow. I would fix it tomorrow. And then tomorrow turned into fourteen months.”
The hallway fell silent.
“She’s mine,” he said quietly. Not a question this time.
“Ours,” Hermione repeated.
He looked at her again, really looked at her.
“You didn’t know,” he asked slowly.
“No.”
“And you would have told me. If you’d known.”
“Yes.”
He studied her face like he was trying to find the lie.
He didn’t find one.
Something in him shifted. Not forgiveness. Not even close.
But the edge dulled.
Just barely.
“There’s still a mountain between us.”
“I know.”
“I don’t know how to climb it.”
She swallowed, eyes shining. “I know.”
Their eyes met.
“And I don’t know if I want to.”
She looked down and away from him, wiping at her face before lifting her chin again.
“I—I understand.”
His gaze softened as it drifted back to the toddler, who was now staring at him with solemn intensity.
“But she’s not part of that mountain.”
Hermione’s breath hitched.
“No,” she whispered. “She isn’t.”
For the first time, his hand lifted. Slow. Hesitant. Shaking slightly. But not toward Hermione.
Toward his daughter.
She watched him carefully, her right side still tucked into Hermione’s jumper.
Then softly, as if she was just testing the shape of the word—
“Dada?”
Harry froze.
Tiny fingers curled around his.
Hermione’s breath caught.
The little girl tilted her head, dark hair falling into her eyes.
“Dada… stay?”