Chapter 1

"Hello Stranger."

Hermione was bent over, digging through a drawer, and she nearly slammed her head against her desk at the sound of that familiar voice. She sat up and almost burst into tears at the sight of her best friend leaning casually against her office door.

But all she could bring herself to say was: "You grew a beard."

"Well hello to you too," his words were friendly. However, they didn't match his dark expression, and Hermione suddenly felt what it must be like to face this wizard across the table in an interrogation room. But when their eyes met something flickered behind that striking green gaze and he gave her a crooked smile. "And yes, you weren't around to nag me into shaving, so I just didn't. You know how I hate doing it."

"Oh," she let out in a rush of breath. "Well, I'm glad that I wasn't, it suits."

"Thanks, Gin thinks so too, Molly hates it." He smiled at her, the smile that reminded her of the eleven-year-old boy she'd met on the Hogwarts Express.

Hermione's heart clenched at the mention of his fiancée, but she did her best to school her features and remind herself that she was happy for them. Ginny was Harry's choice, she was a good person who made him happy, and- most importantly-she loved him. "How is Ginny...and everybody?"

"Ginny's good," he said with a soft, indulgent smile on his face. Hermione had to resist the urge to press a hand to her sternum in an attempt to alleviate the ache in her chest at the sight. "She's living her quidditch dream. Still loves being with the Harpies and she's practically a shoe in to make the English team for the next World Cup."

"Good for her," Hermione muttered.

"Molly and Arthur are the same, eating up being grandparents."

Hermione continued to nod along as she tried to find something on her desk to keep her attention off of his face.

"Fleur's pregnant again, she's quit Gringotts to be a full time mum."

Hermione kept nodding and made a concerted effort not to comment on that. She had a sneaking suspicion that decision hadn't been the French witch's idea, but it was none of her business, if she'd ever had any right to give her opinion, she'd long ago relinquished it.

"Charlie is Charlie," Harry let out a little laugh, but Hermione knew exactly what he meant. The second Weasley son was one of a kind. "Percy and Audrey had their first child, did you hear about that?"

"I heard they were expecting," she confessed, shamefaced that she hadn't even been aware that the baby had been born.

"Well, they named her after Molly. On top of that, Percy's moving up in the Ministry, just like he always wanted. And I expect a baby announcement from George and Angelina at any time. WWW is growing all the time, keeps them on their feet, but I saw Angelina cooing over Molly the other day and I recognized the look on her face," he chuckled.

"Baby fever?" She surmised.

"Yep," he winked at her.

There were a few beats of uncomfortable silence that made Hermione want to cry as she wondered to herself how they had reached this point.

"And your wedding plans, how are they coming along?" She eventually ventured.

"Honestly," he sighed, "Molly's being difficult. I think she sees this as an opportunity to basically show off her hospitality to the entire country- because we are going to have to let at least a few members of the press in. She wanted to hold it at the Burrow."

"But it's tradition for the groom and his family to host the wedding!" She gasped. If Harry hadn't known Molly as well as he did, that suggestion could have been interpreted as a major insult to his House.

"I know. She told me that she considered me one of her own, which is-" he blew out a breath, "really nice, but it doesn't change the facts. I had to explain to her that while I'm grateful for everything she's done for me over the years, I'm a Potter. Ginny is marrying into my House and the wedding is my responsibility. I think I hurt her feelings but, Merlin Hermione, can you imagine what people would say? It's already difficult to get some of the purebloods to take me seriously because I was raised in the muggle world."

Hermione just shook her head in disbelief. Molly Weasley lived in her own world, she meant well, but it often made it difficult to deal with her. There were a few beats of silence and then Hermione took a deep breath.

"And Ronald, how is he? Is he here?"

"No," Harry shook his head with a fond smile. "I'm here on a six month exchange to help train some new cadets and get some advanced training of my own in return. You know Ron. He's a good auror, but he's not overly ambitious. Honestly, I think he was relieved not to be chosen, he likes to stay within apparition distance of his mother's cooking."

Hermione just nodded.

"Frankly," he continued, "I think he'll probably put in his ten years, retire from the corps, and buy into WWW. George will certainly be in need of another partner by then and I know he'd prefer to keep it in the family. Plus, he's seeing Lavender Brown again, it's gotten pretty serious and she's not a huge fan of his job."

"Oh," Hermione blurted in surprise. "Lavender. Wow, how's that going?"

He met her eyes knowingly in response to that startled reaction and smirked.

"I don't mean to criticize," she defended. It was true, she'd just believed Ron had been well and truly done with the witch after their first relationship. She could honestly say there was no jealousy there, just surprise.

"Better than it was in sixth year," he chuckled. "She's grown up, I guess the war changed us all. Anyway, she's good for him, she dotes."

And there it was.

Hermione sighed in frustration. "You mean she's good for him the way that I wasn't."

"That's not what I said and it's definitely not what I meant." He ran a hand through his hair in a gesture that Hermione knew also demonstrated how frustrated he was becoming. He'd spent most of their fifth year tugging at his hair at the very sight of Doelores Umbridge. "If you recall I supported you when you broke up with him and when you decided to move to America."

She'd basically fled from Britain in shame. Not over the breakup with Ron exactly, but that she'd allowed herself to be in the relationship to begin with. She'd settled for a man she was comfortable with because she couldn't have the one she really wanted. A man she'd known she could never fully trust again after his actions during the war. She'd run from her own cowardice, which was, in and of itself, cowardly. But it was what she was convinced she had needed at the time.

"Yeah, but you expected me to have my little adventure and then move back to Britain, throw myself at Ron's mercy and hope he would take me back and we could all be one big happy family," she countered.

Harry pushed away from her door, planted himself in the middle of the doorway, feet shoulder width apart, arms crossed over his chest and glared at her. Most people probably would have been intimidated by the power he radiated. She just thought that he was beautiful.

"I did and still do wish that you would move home, but not for Ron, I miss you." He hissed. "And yes, there was a time I hoped the two of you would end up together. But with time and distance, and especially seeing Ron with Lavender, I've realized how unsuited the two of you are. I said that Lavender dotes on him. He needs that, he needs a woman who will make him and their family her whole world. You're far too ambitious to ever be that woman. Which is fine, Hermione. I have great admiration for your ambition. You shouldn't have to change for him nor should he have to change for you."

"Oh," she breathed, feeling thoroughly chastised.

"Yes," he snapped.

She frantically looked around her desk for something to distract her again. "You said that you were here on a six month exchange? You must have known about that for awhile. Why didn't you tell me you were coming?"

He scoffed. "Oh I don't know Hermione, maybe I didn't want to give you a chance to find another place to hide."

"Hide? I haven't been hiding."

"Which is why nobody has heard from you in months?" He stormed into her office proper, but stopped a few feet in front of her desk, and it was obvious that he was reigning in his temper. "Why you never come home? If you're not hiding from us, what are you doing?" He demanded.

"I've just been busy! You know how I am," she defended. "And I've been back," she added weakly.

"Hermione, this isn't getting lost in the library and missing lunch. I haven't heard a word from you in months! Your letters keep getting shorter and shorter, and you haven't been back since the Christmas before last. That's almost two years!"

"I had a big project I was working on last December!"

He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose before replacing them and spearing her with that emerald glare. "We would have come to see you, if we'd been invited. But we weren't, we never have been!"

Hermione looked away, she didn't have an excuse. At least not one that she could share Harry, no matter how furious he was. She couldn't explain that it was too difficult to watch him with another woman. That the longer she was gone the easier it became to lock that heartache away, but the more difficult it became to contact anybody from her old life. And, as a result, her correspondence had become fewer and further between until it had dropped off almost completely. She missed them, but she learned to bury herself in her work and her life in America, and the pain had been reduced to a dull ache that she could mostly ignore.

"I supported you when you said you were moving because I understood. I could have used a break from Britain too, but I had House responsibilities that made that impossible," he added to her guilt. "But if I'd known you were just going to disappear from our lives I would have chained you to the radiator!"

"I didn't disappear!" She shot back frantically, knowing that she was lying even as the words left her mouth.

"Yes you did!" His magic crackled around him, and far from being afraid, as she was sure most people would have been, Hermione had to grip the arms of her chair to keep from running to him. "You don't know the simplest things about anybody's life. People have started to talk about you in the past tense! As far as Teddy and Victoire are concerned, you're basically a myth! Were you even planning on coming to my wedding!?"

She opened her mouth to answer but he interrupted. "Never mind, I don't want to watch you lie to me again. Tell me though, do you just not care about any of us? Because I'm out of the country for work a lot, but I make it a point to be home for the important things."

"It's different for you, you have a place there, you have family!"

He paused then, and his face dissolved into an expression of such utter sadness that it was difficult to continue to hold her head up against the burden of having hurt him.

"And what am I? Because I certainly counted you as family. I thought you were the woman who would always be there, no matter what! But now I'm starting to think I was just a project you marked complete at the end of the war." He laughed, a long bitter sound. "Well, congratulations! We won, I guess that counts as an Outstanding for you Miss Granger!" He turned on his heel, marched out of the office, and slammed the door behind him.

She just stared at it for the longest time. "You, Harry, you are everything," she eventually whispered, far too late. And then she laid her head down on her desk and cried.

What had she done?