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Potter Manor was dark, giving hints of when it had stood empty for two decades prior to Harry and Hermione's decision to restore it two years earlier. Now, it had only been a little over two weeks since it was last inhabited, but it already seemed to bear an aura of gloom that befit the moods of its two returning residents.
"I need to shower," Hermione said through a sigh as she set her bag down. Her hair was as wild as ever and her leather jacket bore traces of dirt that had followed her all the way back across the Atlantic. Harry looked just as, well, harried, his hair sticking up more than ever and shoulders hunched with a weight heavier than any he had borne since the dark weeks after the fall of Voldemort.
"Want me to join you?" he asked. It was an offer not of sex, but of comfort, the kind that they had both needed quite frequently over the past two weeks as they helped the Americans.
They had both been sent to New York within hours of the attack, Hermione as part of an emergency taskforce from St. Mungo's and Harry as part of an auror team sent to help investigate and confirm that there wouldn't be any other hijackings. Harry could have returned to Britain sooner, but he chose to stay with Hermione and help out however he could on her side.
His visit was given new purpose when he came upon a wizard who had apparated out of Tower 2 as soon as it was hit and was subsequently dealing with crippling survivor's guilt. Given that he was very, very acquainted with survivor's guilt himself, he took it upon himself to help the wizard and several other survivors.
"Maybe in a little while," she replied, hanging up her jacket and then climbing the stairs, her shoulders as hunched as Harry's were. He watched her go, not knowing what else to do, feeling like nothing that he could do right now would carry any meaning.
With a heavy sigh, he followed her up the stairs and into their bedroom at a distance. She entered the ensuite and shut the door behind her, and he went to the window, which couldn't seem to decide between showing the darkened grounds outside and reflecting the dim room in which he was standing.
Turning, he scanned the room, baffled by how much lighter and happier everything had seemed last time he was in here. They had woken up early and spent a passionate hour in bed before getting up and getting ready for what they had both assumed would be a perfectly normal Tuesday. That assumption couldn't have been more wrong.
His eyes fell on his sock drawer, and he hesitantly approached it. Opening it, he pulled out the little box hidden within.
"You better not have gotten me anything." Those were the first words she said to him on the morning of her twenty-second birthday, as they woke up in a gloomy hotel room overlooking a broken skyline.
With a grimace, he set the box down atop the bureau and shut the drawer. He would let her decide.
Turning towards the bathroom, he stripped and opened the door. Immediately, he could hear the sobs coming from the shower, and he pulled the curtain aside to find her leaning against the wall, her arm across her eyes. She lowered her arm and looked at him through her tears, and he stepped in and pulled her into a tight hug.
"You did everything that you could," he whispered, kissing her temple. "We both did."
He knew that every person that she had been unable to save was a fresh dagger through her heart, another feeling that he was familiar with. He was well aware of that perpetual burden of feeling like he could have done more, no matter how obviously untrue it was.
She buried her face in his shoulder, breathing a tremulous exhale across his skin. He rubbed her back, aided by the hot water tumbling down from above.
Grabbing the soap, he gently began washing her, massaging her muscles as he went. She hummed each time he reached one of her more sensitive spots, but he could tell that she was holding back her reactions, still feeling like she didn't deserve to be happy when so many others were still suffering and grieving. He knew that feeling well, too.
"Love," he whispered. She looked up at him, and he leant down and kissed her.
She fell into it, joining him in deepening the kiss, her hands gripping his arms. When she felt his body reacting against her belly, however, she pulled back and looked away from him. "Harry, we shouldn't—"
"Shh." He cut her off, his hand rising to turn her face back towards his. "It's okay to live, Hermione. We did everything that we could for them, and now we have to go on. We have to live and love and be happy together."
She looked at him, at first seeming like she was going to deny his words, or at least say that she wasn't ready to move on. But then her face softened, and she leant up to resume kissing him. Her hand lowered along his belly until she was gripping him.
"Make love to me," she requested.
He gently pushed her against the wall and proceeded to obey her instruction. This time, she didn't hold back her reactions, and he relished how her body came alive beneath his hands and lips. And when he finally slid into her, ending their longest dry spell since that night at Shell Cottage, she started to give those involuntary little cries that he loved.
Afterwards, they emerged from the shower and dried off together, and then her eyes immediately landed on the little box on the bureau when they exited the bathroom.
"What is that?"
He took a deep breath. "That's your birthday present. It's been here since before we left."
She eyed him over her shoulder, and again, her preemptive admonishment on the morning of her birthday sounded within his ears again. But he hadn't known what was going to happen.
And, even if he had, he still would have gotten something for her sooner or later. She was twenty-two, and she deserved to celebrate it. In his mind, she deserved it even more after everything she had done to help out across the pond, even if she felt otherwise.
Turning back to the box, she approached and stared down at it from above, looking torn between opening it and shoving it back into a drawer.
Finally, she carefully gripped it and opened the lid, and her breath caught. Her thumb ran across the platinum amulet, which was embedded with a large, shimmering sapphire.
"It's charmed to hold a memory, one of your very favorites," he explained softly. "Whenever you touch it, it will offer you glimpses, as though you're glancing into a pensieve."
She placed her thumb against the sapphire, and her eyes went glassy. He recalled the memory that he had placed inside it, which she would of course be free to swap out with any she desired.
"But Harry, what if You-Know-Who's with him?"
"Well, I was lucky once, wasn't I? I might get lucky again."
What followed was the first hug that she ever gave him, and the very first hug that he could remember receiving.
Her thumb moved off the sapphire and she returned to the here and now. Turning, she smiled at him, and it was the first smile that he'd seen on her lips since that bright, happy, oblivious Tuesday morning over two weeks ago.
"Thank you," she said softly.
"You're welcome." He pulled her into a hug that was every bit as tight as that one she gave him when she was twelve. He had learnt the art of hugging from the very best, after all.
When she pulled away, she set the box back on the bureau and took his hand. "Let's go to bed."
"Are we going to get dressed first?"
"No, the clothes will just get in the way." She tugged him towards the bed, and he went, his smiling eyes meeting hers.
It was time to live again.