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Contrary to Harry's insistence, Hermione is not running an emergency ward. She’s a certified healer, yes. She has a private clinic, yes—but she specializes in magical trauma recovery, in rare curse injuries, in memory magic rehabilitation. Yes, she may have told Harry once, that her door’s always open if he needs her. For emergency reasons, of course.
He takes this to mean he can Apparate into the middle of her office unannounced, give her a heart attack, then promptly collapse and bleed all over her carpet.
Again.
She’s just replaced that carpet too, she notes with a whine inside her head. Because of him. Because of stuff he pulls like this.
“Christ,” she yelps, immediately dropping the quill in her hands.
He raises his arm weakly from his dramatically sprawled out position on the floor. “It’s Harry, actually,” he winces, “in case you forgot.”
She purses her lips, dropping to her knees beside him. “Don’t even start.”
He manages to grin through his grimaces, as Hermione starts poking and prodding at his upper right chest. The stupid look on his face makes her stomach feel funny, which in turn makes her want to stick her wand inside the gaping wounds out of sheer annoyance at her…bodily reaction.
“Soaked through,” she murmurs, noting the blood still dripping through his Auror’s cloak. She tugs at it, wincing at the way it clings to his sliced up skin. “Off.”
A corner of Harry's mouth lifts in a way that further heightens her irritation, because honestly, in the years of their adulthood he's gotten too at ease in his own skin for her liking. “Merlin, Hermione, all you've got to do was ask nicely.“
Her narrow-eyed stare is unimpressed.
Her partner Susan Bones, of course, chooses this exact moment to peek through her office door. Her eyebrows raise at the sight before her, and Hermione sighs, because she won’t be hearing the end of this for a while.
“Oh, you’re here again, Harry,” Susan says brightly, leaning against her doorway with absolutely no regard for the tension in the room. “I’m just in time, I see—another emergency, I take it?”
Harry flushes as he laughs. “I mean, it’s not like I’m always—”
“Susan,” Hermione snaps, giving her a beady glare, “get out.”
“I need your signature,” the other girl says, cheerfully waving a sheaf of parchment in the air. “The letter to the Healers’ Congregation for next Wednesday’s meeting.”
“Put it on my desk,” Hermione says, trying to ignore the planes of Harry’s chest as he shrugs his cloak off his shoulders with a grunt. “I’ll get to it later.”
“Yeah, I see you have your hands full,” Susan quips, dropping the documents on her messy workspace and looking pointedly at her hands hovering by Harry’s waist.
When Hermione notices her lingering, she growls, “Out!”
Susan winks at Harry as she leaves, the door shutting behind her with a soft click.
“Someday I’m going to do something that will wipe that smug smile off her face,” Hermione grumbles. “See how she likes it.”
Harry watches her with amusement, leaning back on his elbows as she summons bandages and a bottle of dittany from her healer’s kit.
“What happened this time?” Hermione asks dryly, tapping her wand on his wound. She knows when he feels the sudden heat spreading on his skin, because he hisses softly; she ignores him, just watches the blood congeal with a satisfied hum.
“Slicing hex,” he grits out. “Didn’t see it coming.”
“You never do. For an Auror, you sure have poor reflexes.”
He shrugs, watching her silently as she puts in drops of dittany on the open wounds.
“That stuff is vile,” he says.
She sniffs. “Serves you right.”
The dittany sizzles as it sinks into his skin.
“There are six different slice marks on your chest.” Her voice is controlled, yet she can’t stop how it shakes, as she watches his skin stitch itself back together.
“Huh, I counted five.”
“You’re bad at maths too, then.” She scowls. “Merlin, Harry. You lost a lot of blood. Why does this keep happening? Who in god's name were you fighting this time?”
“There was a kid,” he replies. His voice is quiet. “This old Death Eater cell had him…turns out he was Muggleborn. A little kid, Hermione, barely nine years old. The minute we learned what they’d been planning to do—they wanted to extract his magical core—I just. I guess I just lost it. I wasn’t thinking.”
She’s quiet as she applies healing salve on the mended skin. “Is the boy okay?”
“He's fine. Shaken, but he’ll be okay. He's at the children's ward at St. Mungo's. Thankfully the ritual hadn’t happened yet, but if we hadn't gotten there in time…” He sighs. “I hate that I care so much.”
“Wouldn’t be you if you didn’t.” She smiles a little, despite the conflicting feelings inside her. She knows Harry will always step up, he’ll always put others first; it's just who he is. And she knows that, witnessed it firsthand—when they were eleven and he’d climbed on the back of a troll, when they were seventeen and he’d stepped into the forest to face Voldemort alone.
But she also knows he sometimes throws himself into these situations without thinking, without caring for his own safety.
Like he wants to get hurt.
“How many were there?” she asks. “The Death Eaters.”
He hesitates. “A bunch.”
“And how many Aurors?”
“Well…” He clears his throat. “There was me…and then there was Dean.”
“Harry.”
“There wasn't time to get backup,” he protests. Then he scratches the back of his neck sheepishly at the darkened glare on her face.
“So you saved a child, got yourself banged up,” she says, “and then ended up here. Like always.”
He shrugs as she starts wrapping the bandage around his shoulder and chest. “I didn’t want to bother the healers at St. Mungo’s.”
“Oh, no, of course not.” Her tone rises to an octave higher than usual. “Why would you go to them when you could just come here, to dependable old me, and bleed all over my new rug?”
Harry grins. “I'll replace it.”
“You said that about the last one.”
“I’ll buy two rugs, then,” he insists. “And honestly, I’d rather come here…you know what you’re doing, you don’t ask questions I’m not comfortable answering, you know how to handle me.” He shrugs. “And I like going to you.”
Her breath draws in sharply but silently. His eyes are boring into hers, like he means something else—like he's trying to tell her something and she doesn't know what to do with that.
“I’m sorry I keep bothering you.”
She sighs. “You’re not a bother, Harry. It’s just…it’s just worrying, you know?”
“St. Mungo’s is too loud,” he says, “too crowded. It makes me feel like I can’t breathe sometimes, and it terrifies me. I come here because…well, I feel safe. With you.”
Her hands still.
When she looks up, she thinks his smile—warmer and easier than it’s ever been when they were kids—is infuriatingly unfair. “Until you start yelling at me for being an idiot, of course,” he continues, eyes twinkling. “But it’s just like old times, huh? You’re still here, saving my life.”
“You’re hardly dying,” she scoffs, but she feels her cheeks redden, and he’s still goddamn staring at her.
“Maybe not,” he murmurs.
She feels his eyes on her as she adds some more tape, her hands lingering on the heat of his skin.
She really doesn't have the time right now, nor is she in the right headspace, to decipher what this all means.
So she just rolls her eyes and keeps working, ignoring the way her heart races.
::
She finds him in her flat five weeks later, stretched out on her sofa with burn marks all over his arm, creeping up to his neck and jaw. He’s breathing shallowly, obviously in pain, and she gives a loud shriek when she steps out of her Floo.
He has the audacity to grin. “Dragons.”
She shakes her head in disbelief. “Why on earth,” she says slowly, settling on the cushions beside him and brushing his bangs off his forehead, “were you near dragons?”
“Dragon egg smugglers.” He waves a casual hand. “The Chinese Fireball wasn’t too pleased when we got too near her nest when we returned her babies. Bloody ungrateful, if you ask me.”
She lets out a long, careful exhale, registering the scent of ash and singed fabric.
“St. Mungo’s is better equipped to heal you, Harry,” she says, not unkindly. She casts a diagnostic charm over him, and he grunts. “Those are second-degree burns. I don’t have all the things I need here.”
Half of his face is blackened, his cloak still scorching in places. He’s tracked ash all over her sitting room floor and probably tucked it into the edges and corners of her sofa. His skin is a pink, burnt, bloody mess.
And yet he’s there, smiling at her in that tiny, lopsided way that makes her heart constrict inside her chest.
“You’re here,” he says, like it’s that simple.
She’s still annoyed, because the burns look painful. She’s still annoyed, because he’s put himself in danger once more. She’s still annoyed, because he still makes her worry, time and time again—and it’s been a nearly endless cycle for the last few years, ever since he finished training and became a full-fledged Auror, constantly in the field.
She applies the burn salve with more force than necessary.
He inhales sharply at the sudden pain, and when he fumbles for her hand, she lets him.
Like an idiot.
::
He greets her by the Floo of Grimmauld Place for their standard Thursday night dinner, smiling and teasingly waving a bottle of her favorite wine. The sight of him—cozy jumper, hair astonishingly more disheveled than usual—almost makes her forget she’s still cross with him, but not quite. She hasn’t quite forgiven him, for that entire hour he spent shivering in agony on her office floor, all because he stupidly touched an unknown artifact in his last field assignment.
So when she notices him wincing and holding his side when he gets up from the sofa, her eyes immediately narrow.
“What was that?” she asks sharply.
“Nothing,” he immediately says, in that way one does when they’ve absolutely done something.
Her eyes turn into tiny, suspicious slits. “Then you wouldn’t mind if I—”
He jumps and yelps when she pokes her wand at his side, and she would laugh, if it weren’t for the sight of the ghastly black and yellow bruise below his left rib.
“Got thrown into a wall,” he sheepishly says in explanation. “Might have broken a rib, I think?”
“You absolute menace,” she hisses, tugging at his shirt in annoyance. “Why didn’t you tell me? Why didn’t you come to me earlier?”
He looks startled when she pushes him backwards until he’s swallowed by the sofa cushions, where he blinks up at her.
“I—” He falters at the look on her face. “It’s practically nothing, Hermione. And I thought I was—well. I thought you hated it. Me coming to you…injured and bleeding, that kind of thing.”
“Well, of course I hated it!” She doesn’t know why her pitch is way too high, why she sounds nearly hysterical. “But it’s not like I’ll ever say no, and you’re never really a bother, but it doesn’t negate the fact that you’re always hurt, and it’s like you don’t care! I’m always bloody worried about you. I’ve always been bloody worried about you—for fourteen years now, Harry!”
The wide-eyed look on his face is almost funny. “Hermione—”
“I’ve watched too many people die on me.” Her bottom lip is trembling, and damn it, she hadn’t meant to break down like this. “You’re not just a random patient to me. You’re—”
She stops. Her hands are shaking.
His expression is softer now. “Hermione, I didn’t—”
“No, shut up.” She sniffles. “You don’t get to talk right now. Tell me you have a healer’s kit here somewhere before I hex you.”
“I—I do,” he says, looking a little dazed. “In the bathroom.”
He’s quiet, when she performs the healing charm.
He’s quiet, when she hands him a vial of Skele-Gro, then another of anti-pain potion.
He’s quiet, when she dabs on some foul paste that would help with the bruising.
It's almost peaceful, Hermione thinks—the way she falls into the familiar, methodical patterns, the way his breathing is an anchor, the way his presence fills in the spaces within her with warmth more than she'd care to admit.
It almost dulls the sudden panic that came over her, the sheer terror that always lingers, that always comes to the surface when it comes to him.
She should tell him to stop showing up like this, bleeding and grinning like it’s a private joke between them. Like it’s nothing, like her heart isn’t worrying about him all the damn time. But she doesn’t. She never does.
Her hand trembles a little when she applies some last bit of salve, pressing her fingers down on his bare skin with finality. “All done,” she says.
She doesn’t meet his eyes, a little embarrassed now that the adrenaline’s gone. Now that she’s had time to really register the way she’d reacted. It’s mortifying, really, how transparent she is, and how utterly obvious it is, how much she cares—when it comes to him.
She clears her throat, attempts to stand, already prepared to flee.
Except his hand’s there, fingers warm on her wrist.
“I’m sorry,” he says, voice low and almost tender. “Don’t be mad.”
She sighs. “I’m not mad.”
“You sound mad.”
“I’m scared,” she corrects, “every time you’re impossibly injured like this. It comes with being friends with you, I’m afraid.” She glowers. “Why’d you have to go be a bloody Auror, anyway?”
He shakes his head, hand tightening. “I dunno.”
“Well, you’re lucky I became a healer.”
His mouth twitches. “The luckiest.”
They sit in relative quiet, only broken by the cracking of the fire. For a beat, Hermione just leans back, listening to his breathing, the steady rhythm calming her down.
Until his hand moves, and gently slides into hers.
Her heart stutters.
“I’ll be more careful next time,” he murmurs, bringing her hand to his face; the press of his lips on her skin feels like something forbidden and addictive all at once. “I promise.”
This is dangerous territory, the little voice in her head warns.
“I’ll believe that when you replace my carpet,” she replies, and honestly, the way he laughs against her skin reaffirms that this is, in fact, completely dangerous territory.
::
He shows up at her flat with a large cut above his brow, the blood already congealing, and dried up where it’s obviously slid down his temple.
She takes one look at him, then sighs loudly.
“Harry,” she grumbles, “there’s blood on your face. Again. I’m busy knitting.”
“I was careful,” he protests, his grin large and annoying like it’s some sort of victory. “It was Dean’s fault—he got a little enthusiastic in training.”
“You couldn’t even manage a Scourgify?”
He shrugs, and she rolls her eyes and doesn’t say anything—just grabs his elbow and drags him through her bedroom and into her tiny bathroom, still vaguely steamy from her shower.
“Can’t even manage a bloody cut by himself,” she says under her breath, grabbing her healer’s kit before hopping on top of the sink, putting her at eye level because he has to be annoyingly tall, too. “Come here.”
Lips still twitching, he steps between her legs—like it’s casual, like it’s not one of the most emotionally compromising positions she’s found herself in with him. It's a little too cramped, a little too warm, and the corners of his eyes crinkle when he smiles, and oh god, maybe this was a bad idea.
But no, she’s a professional. This is Harry.
She places delicate fingers on his jaw, tilting his head so she can see better under the fluorescent lighting. Her thumb grazes just below the cut, feeling her entire body go warm at how near he is, at the way he's standing way too close, at his scent—freshly-mown grass, treacle tart, spearmint toothpaste, and something else, something familiar and quietly intoxicating.
She swallows with difficulty.
He flinches when she applies the antiseptic, making her snort. “Don’t be a baby; it’s not even dittany,” she scolds, and feels the way his body vibrates as he laughs, as she watches the cut close with a wave of her wand.
She carefully peels open a band-aid and smooths it over the wound with only the slightest tremble in her fingers.
The look on his face is fond and amused. “A band-aid; really, Healer Granger?”
“My dad used to patch me up, you know.” She shrugs lightly, trying to hide how it still stings, even years later—the thought of the only two people she’s never been able to fix, to heal. She swallows. “He was my first trainer; that was our thing.”
His smile softens. “Got into loads of little scrapes, have you?”
“I was a precocious child,” she says, smiling mischievously despite her nerves. “I was always getting into trouble…getting into little petty fights on the playground. Nothing’s changed much, I suppose—somehow you still always manage to drag me into trouble.”
She doesn’t know when he got even closer, but he's there, crowding into her space, his breath warm across her cheek.
“Do I?”
She’s suddenly aware of her knees are bracketing his hips, his hands on either side of her on the sink. She meets his startling green eyes and feels the air grow thinner, feels her entire world narrow down until all that’s left is this—his eyes and his smile, a stuttered breath and a hand that brushes her waist in an agonizing touch.
“Yeah,” she whispers. Her fingers push back the messy strands of hair on his forehead before she slides them down across his cheek, then his jaw. Her thumb catches on his bottom lip, slow and reverent, and she watches his eyes darken into a deeper green, no less startling. “I think you're all sorts of trouble.”
He laughs, low and dangerous.
“I could say the same about you, Hermione,” he murmurs, voice rough and just a touch devastating, making her shiver. “You’ve been trouble for a while now.”
She hums. Her mouth hovers above his now, and she watches the way his eyes drop to her lips.
She knows she shouldn’t be doing this. She knows the minute they cross the proverbial line, there’s no taking it back. And she’s spent way too long, way too hard, trying not to cross it.
But oh, she is so tired of trying to fight it.
So she whispers, “How much trouble?”
He moves before she can even think.
He swallows her little gasp, lips hot and hungry against hers—and absolutely, terrifyingly dangerous.
“Harry,” she breathes, when his fingers press into her skin under her shirt, pulling her impossibly closer. All rational thought flies out the window, because her entire world narrows even further, to this—his tongue, his fingers, his hips pressing into hers, her name tumbling out of his mouth in a way that feels almost sacred.
Her hand slides into his hair, and she loses herself in the moment, in him.
::
They’re halfway down the hall when he nearly trips over his own boots, one on, one half-off. He impatiently kicks them away, and she laughs when he backs her against the wall, pressing the entire length of his body against hers.
“This is,” she breathes out, tugging his shirt up over his head, “wildly irresponsible.”
“You’re off the clock, Healer Granger,” he mumbles against her collarbone, where his tongue drags lazily across her skin. “There are no healer-patient boundaries being crossed here.”
She laughs, tugging at his hair as he sucks at her skin. “I meant emotionally.”
“Trouble,” he grins, before his mouth descends on her again, like he’s trying to taste the words she wants to say but doesn’t. His hands snake around her thighs, and he lifts her, pushing her into the wall. Her legs wrap around his waist, pressing close and gasping when she feels the hard length of him against her.
“I’m not going to drop you,” he smiles. “Can’t afford any more injuries today…my regular healer’s otherwise preoccupied.”
She slaps at his shoulder halfheartedly, and he swallows her laugh as he fumbles for the doorknob to her bedroom. She doesn’t know how they end up on the bed, but suddenly he’s lowering her in a heap of sweaty skin and tangled limbs. By the time Harry climbs over her, licking his way up her neck, Hermione’s half-undressed and breathless, filled with something like hunger and disbelief.
His tongue laps above the curve of her breasts, then he flicks his eyes to hers as he moves the cup of her bra to the side, then takes her nipple in his mouth.
“God.” Her back arches, her hands sliding into his hair as his fingers trail down her stomach.
His hand plays with the button of her trousers as he unfastens her bra and removes it completely, sliding his tongue to her other breast. “Can I…?”
At her nod, his fingers slip into her knickers, and she tugs tighter at his hair. “Please,” she breathes, and he feels her smile into her skin, when he brushes over her, and Merlin—she will never be able to look at his hands and think of anything else, except for the way his fingers circle her clit agonizingly slow, the way they slide into her heat and make her breath stutter.
“Harry—” she gasps when his mouth sucks on the sensitive peak the same moment his fingers curl inside her, right there. “Fuck. I want—”
She loses all train of thought, her cry hoarse and breathless when she comes.
When he kisses her again, it’s slower. Like he’s trying to memorize the curve of her lips, the sound of her sigh. His free hand pulls gently at the end of her curls, their kisses almost lazy and reverent.
“Why are you—” she gasps against this mouth, “annoyingly good at everything?”
He laughs, then brushes a nipple with his thumb, making her back arch.
“Harry,” she breathes, reaching inside his boxers until he’s groaning into her mouth. “You’re not—playing fair.”
He’s hard in her hand, warm and leaking at the tip. She’s thought about this before, in the bottom bunk inside a tent with a hand down her knickers, his name in her mouth forbidden and secret. She hadn’t been able to look him in the eye when they traded posts the next day, but the moment had lingered in her mind, especially when they’d danced, and had stood too close in the aftermath.
He moans when she squeezes, moving her hand slowly along his length; fumbling, he pushes it away, then pins her arms down on the mattress. “If you keep doing that, this will be over way too soon,” he whispers. “I want to come inside you.”
She shudders when he moves his hips, feeling his cock straining against her; he pushes his trousers and boxers down, then hers, with an air of impatience—until it’s skin sliding against skin, breaths caught in each other’s mouths.
“I’m—” she manages to stutter, as she feels him against her folds, “on the potion.”
When he pushes inside her, the sound that leaves his throat is low and ruined—and for a minute, everything stills.
Then he slides in deeper.
It’s desperately slow, and she pants into his ear, feeling every inch of the heat and the fullness of him. She adjusts her hips, and when he pulls back and thrusts harder, the angle makes him curse into her hair. Her nails drag down his back as one of his hands finds hers, his fingers squeezing in the spaces.
“Hermione,” he moans against her neck, sounding wrecked, “Jesus, fuck—” a hard thrust, “you have no idea—how long I’ve—”
She silences him with a kiss.
He feels like he’s everywhere—hands and tongue and hips and heart—and she lets herself drown in him. Her free hand tightens around his neck like she’s anchoring him to her, as their rhythm grows desperate and aching.
It all feels almost surreal, something incandescent that she can’t quite comprehend. When her eyes find his, it’s a confession and an unveiling—one that feels too much, and so terrifying real.
Stars explode behind her eyes when she comes, and he follows. Her fingers still on his neck feel the beat of his pulse, and she basks in it, in this moment, this feeling—warm and full and alive.
::
In the morning, she finds him in her kitchen, standing over the stove—shirtless, messy-haired, and sleepy. Her eyes trail over the muscles of his back, on the dips and curves of his stomach down to the trail of hair disappearing under the trousers hanging low on his hips. She feels her cheeks become warm when she notices the scratches on his upper back and the memory flashes into her brain unbidden, the way he’d slid into her the first time.
She shakes her head, as if to rid herself of the feeling, but then she notices—he’s whistling as he flips an egg.
Then, looking around—she notices the tiny details: a pot of coffee in the machine, bread in the toaster, jars of jam laid out on the table.
And Harry’s cooking.
God. This scenario is new, and warm, and cozy—Harry in her kitchen like it’s routine. It scares her, how much she completely, utterly is hopeless in wanting it.
He shuts off the stove, looking at her over his shoulder with a disarming smile and a soft, “Morning.”
She doesn’t really know what to do, so she just keeps standing by the doorway, watching as he dries his hands, remembering the sinful way his fingers had trailed over her skin. “Hi.”
He stands in front of her, his bare chest inviting and distracting at once. “Hi.”
“You made breakfast,” she murmurs.
He waves her off, hands settling tentatively on her waist. This close, in the hazy morning light, her eyes track the scars on his chest, stretching across his skin—every line a story, a witness to his life, a testimony of his selflessness, and bravery, and recklessness. Breath caught, she wordlessly traces them with her fingers.
“I like doing stuff for you,” he says, watching her. “Taking care of you, for once.”
“You look good in my kitchen,” she blurts out, then grimaces, because sometimes she can be an idiot, too.
His mouth twitches, and the sight of his lopsided grin does things to her chest. “Do I?”
“It’s almost unfair,” she grumbles. “Who in the hell allowed you to be so fit?”
He’s laughing openly now, fingers tugging at the hem of her shirt, dancing teasingly along the bare skin of her legs.
“Like this is any less fair.” One hand slides along her thigh, teasing the edges of her knickers. “My shirt looks good on you.”
“Oh,” she says innocently. “Is this yours?”
His smile undoes her, and then she’s on her tiptoes, catching his bottom lip with hers.
When they pull away, he’s still smiling.
“We should talk about it,” he says.
“We should.”
There’s a beat.
“Do you…” She swallows. Her hand shakes where it settles on the back of his neck. “Are you…”
“Scared? A little.” He exhales. “But I don’t regret it.” He tugs at a strand of her hair, loops it slowly around his finger. “I’ve been…thinking about it for a while.”
She stills. “A while?”
“Yeah.”
“How long is ‘a while’?”
“I assure you—long.” His little chuckle is sheepish and soft. “You’re amazingly obtuse about your own attractiveness.”
She just sputters.
He laughs again, then pulls her closer, lips descending on hers.
She doesn’t say that she’s been thinking about it for a while, too. Doesn’t admit that this here, now—the way his kiss grows hungry, the way his tongue licks its way along her jaw, the way his fingers palm her breast under her (his) shirt until she whimpers—is something she’s fantasized about for god knows how long.
She doesn’t really need to say it. She knows Harry knows in the way he swallows her gasps. In the way his fingers pull aside her underwear before sinking into her. In the way he completely and uninhibitedly smiles into her mouth as she gasps his name, helpless as she shudders against him, almost like a surrender.
::
In hindsight, nothing really changes.
Harry still shows up unannounced; she’s still annoyed and worried. Only this time he’s not always showing up with fresh injuries. Sometimes he shows up, and then he’s shoving her against her bedroom door, or he’s dropping down to his knees in front of where she’s sprawled across her work desk, or he’s slowly sinking into her from behind in the front hallway of Grimmauld Place, both of them half-drunk, still half-clothed, with her knickers pushed hastily to the side, movements hard and fast and heavy.
She complains about new bruises she finds across his ribs when she unbuttons his shirt, scowling when he starts laughing at the tirade she unleashes. He brings her tea and her favorite scones during long nights at the clinic, pretending not to watch her out of the corner of his eye as he waits for her to finish up for the day. She tends to a nasty gash on his lower back as he lies face down on her bed; when he’s all bandaged up, she kisses her way up his spine before tucking herself into his side, burrowing herself in the warmth of his body.
They don’t know what this is, exactly.
But for now, Hermione shuts her brain off and just revels in the feel of him.
::
It figures that the first time he goes to St. Mungo’s, it’s not on his own terms.
Hermione barely registers anything except the ringing in her ears and the panic coursing through her veins when she runs into the emergency ward, nearly knocking Dean Thomas over in the process.
“Harry,” she says breathlessly, eyes frantic, “where’s Harry?”
“Hermione, breathe,” Dean says in that low, soothing voice of his, taking her shoulders in his hands. “He was Crucio’d and lost consciousness for a while, but he’s fine. Got a few lashings but we got to him in time. He’s resting now.”
Except it’s not fine.
Because when she’s finally let into his private room, after several arguments and intense discussions with his healers, she takes one look at his sheepish, smiling face and bursts into tears.
“Oh, no—Hermione,” he says, eyes wide, struggling to sit up as she walks to his bed, sniffling and sobbing and not doing anything to hide it. She takes his offered hand, and then she’s on the bed beside him, face in his shoulder as he rubs up and down her back. “Please don’t cry.”
“I hate you,” she says into his neck. “This was not you being careful.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Instead—” she hiccups. “Instead you get yourself cornered by a bunch of cultists, and tortured for Merlin knows how long before they found you—”
“I couldn’t—” He winces. “I couldn’t call for help.”
“And this is how I find out you listed me as your emergency contact,” she continues, “when I get that bloody Patronus telling me you’re unconscious because you didn’t wait for Dean, and then they found you all sliced up—”
“It’s—it’s all healed, look!” he says, almost desperately, gesturing at the bandages wrapped around his torso. “It wasn’t that bad—”
“They told me you lost so much blood,” she snaps, pulling away to look at him, eyes blazing. “That’s not nothing.”
She fists the blanket around his hips, trying to control her breathing. Harry is silent; just keeps moving his hand in circles on her back.
“You can’t imagine how scared I was,” she says quietly, “when I Floo’d into Grimmauld for our weekly dinner and you weren’t there. Kreacher didn’t know where you’d gone. Then I got the Patronus and—and—and I thought—”
She hiccups, and he pulls her towards him until she’s leaning on him, his arms around her and his mouth on her temple.
“I’m sorry,” he says again, voice soft.
“I know I always complain,” she says, “when you come to me all bloodied and injured. But the truth is…healing you’s always been about more than that. It terrifies me all the damn time, because it’s you, but—but it helps, seeing for myself that you’re okay.”
He stills.
“You’re always risking your bloody life,” she says. She’s tired. He’s okay, but not okay; this is a cycle that keeps happening. “I’ll never say no to taking care of you, Harry. I always will. But I just wish you’d take care of yourself, too.”
He brushes her tears away, and she lets him hold her. Or maybe they hold each other—it’s one in the same.
::
She accompanies him home when he’s discharged, heading straight to the bedroom, where Harry gently pulls at her hand and makes her sit on the bed beside him.
For a minute, with their backs to the headboard, they sit in silence as he threads their fingers together.
“I’m going to talk to Gawain.”
She blinks. “About?”
“About figuring some stuff out,” he says. “Maybe stepping away from fieldwork for a little bit.”
She pauses. “Are you sure?”
“I am.” He exhales slowly. “I’ve been thinking about it for a while, since—well, since that thing with the broken rib. I just…didn’t know how to stop. So I didn’t.”
Her thumb brushes over his, eyes watching him carefully. He looks deep in thought, his hesitation and vulnerability rolling off him in waves.
So she waits.
“I think part of me still believes I’m only good for the fight.” A corner of his mouth lifts wryly. “Maybe I crave it sometimes—the adrenaline, always wanting to run to someone’s rescue. Getting hurt and running into danger because that’s been pretty much status quo my whole life. Because—otherwise, I feel like I’m not doing enough.”
Hermione’s hand tightening around his. “You’re not just here to get hurt and save people,” she says quietly. “You’re allowed to be happy too, you know.”
Her palm finds his jaw, gently moving his head so he’s facing her. There’s something tenderly fragile on his face; it reminds Hermione that even years after the war, Harry’s never really left, not totally—one foot still in the door, flashes of memories still haunting his dreams.
She leans her forehead against his and closes her eyes.
“You’ve done enough,” she adds, gentler now. “More than enough.”
He sighs, nose brushing hers. “I don’t even know what another kind of life is like.”
“Well,” she smiles against his mouth, “let me help you figure it out.”
When he presses his lips to hers, it feels different, with words neither of them are ready to say tumbling out of his kiss.
She slides her other hand down to his chest, feeling his heartbeat echo beneath her palm, and feels her breathing start to even out in tandem.
::
The carpet is new.
Hermione blinks at it when she walks into her office weeks later—deep navy, dotted with tiny constellations that blink and flicker at her like a secret joke. She’d remembered spotting it at Diagon Alley last week, pointing it out to Harry, and joking that it fit her love for Divination quite well.
Of course he’d remembered.
This explains the smirk Susan flashes when she peeks into the room. “Oh,” she exclaims, the picture of innocence. “You redecorated.”
Hermione’s mouth twitches.
“Big Divination fan,” she murmurs, still gazing at the carpet.
She finds the note on her desk, crisply folded, sitting on top of a stack of patient files.
Way overdue for a replacement, it says in his spiky handwriting. Dinner tonight? Learned a new recipe in cooking class you’re gonna love. I promise to leave your kitchen in one piece. - H
Her grin widens further.
Susan hums from behind her shoulder. “Harry’s taking a cooking class now?”
“Yes,” Hermione says, snatching the note from view. “And stop reading my mail.”
“You’re not worried this is how he gets himself into some sort of new trouble?” Susan grins. “Last time it was that knitting class.”
“He managed to make me a tea cosy,” Hermione replies, “unexplained injury notwithstanding. Uneven stitching and ghastly colors, but made with love. And it’s quite a long sabbatical.”
“Mm-hmm.” Susan watches her as she takes off her cloak, then settles in her seat behind her desk. “And he seems to be spending much of it with you.”
“Does he?”
Susan beams as Hermione glances at the note again, before tucking it carefully in her pocket.
“You look happy.”
Hermione hums. The smile makes it way on her lips before she can stop it.
“I am,” she says simply.
Later, once Susan’s gone, she takes out a fresh piece of parchment.
Dinner sounds lovely, she scribbles. Fingers crossed my kitchen stays unharmed when I get home. Those burn marks are still on my counter, you know.
She pauses.
But I’m a Floo trip away, she adds with a tiny smile, just in case of emergencies.