This is set Post-DH. I actually have about five stories planned out (one-shots) that are Post-DH. No promises that they'll be out soon, though.

Disclaimer: I don't own any of these characters—obviously—mostly because I'm just too unimaginative for my own good.

Before and After

It's not raining at first on the day she figures it out. In fact, it's pretty sunny to begin with and she even smiles to herself as she looks out over the lawn after breakfast.

Really, there are only things that make her smile anymore; Harry and beauty.

The sun shining over the dew-covered grass is beauty. The person standing next to her taking in the same view is Harry.

They began the walks the first week after arriving at the Burrow. At first, it had been just an escape—reconnecting on both their parts (they drifted apart so much in those final months)—and neither minded the two, sometimes three hours, these walks would eat up.

Now, though, it's more of a healing process than anything else. Both of them working so hard to become what they want to be without losing the parts of themselves they have left. And the walks help. They really do.

She doesn't really come to the realization until they've started the walk already and are a pretty good distance into the woods by the Burrow. They're not talking—words are pointless since the silence can pretty much say it all—and she glances his way for a moment.

What she sees is a simple image—the unfamiliar, grown-up version of Harry (features somewhat sharper than they used to be, but there's still a softness in his eyes) with his hands shoved in his pockets as he watches the ground spread out before him—and it's really the simplicity that makes her think it in the first place.

However it happens, she suddenly realizes how little control she's had over her life for the past seven years. Over the course of that time, somehow—without her noticing it—her life has simply become Before Harry and After Harry. After all the cruel, nightmarish events, horrible losses and gripping peril, she realizes that it's always been Before Harry and After Harry for her.

And when she thinks this, it suddenly starts to rain. It's not a slight drizzle that turns into a heavy rain. Instead, great torrents of water are falling down on them and he's grabbing her wrist and pulling her under down a small hill to a dried up stream and under a wooden bridge. She looks out past the barriers the bridge provides and smiles because it's raining.

It's raining and no one is afraid or injured or in danger or dying.

So she laughs for the first time in what feels like a lifetime. She laughs and it's not harsh or cruel. Instead it's happy and bright and he smiles at the sound, like he's been waiting all of this time to hear it. And the sight of his smile just makes her laugh harder, smile wider, and he joins her this time, his own chuckle mixing with hers in perfect harmony.

She looks at him, this amazing boy-turned-man that she's known for the best years of her life, and wonders in the fact that so few people get to see this side of him. Too many of them just see Harry, the Boy-Who-Lived. They see him as an attention-seeking has-been. Or, they used to before it ended.

But she gets to see these other sides—Harry, the friend, Harry, the healing—and, really, seeing these sides of him is a miracle in itself.

Eventually, she stops laughing and is content to just smile up at him and he joins her in this odd, impromptu staring contest. In his eyes, she sees that it's nice that they can do this. It's so nice when they can just press the pause button, stop putting on their brave faces and just be two normal people.

Just as she's beginning to form a sentence—one where she asks (very politely) what it is that's going through his head—he leans down and gently captures her lips with his own.

She doesn't respond at first (she's far too busy trying her hardest not to burst), mostly because she has this wave of memories—from first meetings to Potions class to Christmas gift-exchanges—rushing through her head at warp speed. She's thinking about all of the times she could have wanted this, might have possibly needed it, and didn't get it.

And no one is afraid or injured or in danger or dying. Just two old friends, avoiding the rain and trying to find themselves in one another.

Harry kisses her again after a moment of catching his breath, this time with more intent and she very nearly comes undone.

Because he's her best friend. He's the best person she knows and, probably, the best she'll ever meet.

But, at the same time those things mean so much, they mean so very little to her.

Mostly because all she can smell is him, all she can feel is his heartbeat against hers, his hair running through her fingers, his tongue in her mouth. He belongs solely to her and he's trying his best to assure her of this.

And all her body can scream is 'finally.'

Harry's hands are soft and warm when they take things from her that she didn't even know she had to give out—groans and sweat and a love that makes her head spin. The ground is soft beneath her back and he's gentle above her and there's so much and so little to say that all at once she feels like crying.

She doesn't, though. Instead, she presses against him, pulls him to her with abandon, hot and flushed and panting.

No one is afraid or injured. No one is in danger or dying. They're not running anymore and there's no one left to fight. No one is waiting for them, hoping to rip them from the world.

Today, they get to be just Harry and Hermione, warm and dry and out of the rain.

It's always been this way for her—even when she didn't quite understand it. Before Harry and After Harry.

She was trapped from the first sight of his emerald green eyes and shining smile, on a stuffy train in September. And she's caught, over and over again, in the softness of raven black hair and his skin and his lips all over her.

He's the before and the after and all of the spaces in between.

For Hermione, it's a simple fact that it's always been, and always will be, this way.

fin