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Leaning back in his chair, Harry sighs contentedly. The setting sun paints the sky in shades of pink and orange. Strings of fairy lights twinkle over the beer garden. The air is the perfect level of warm. Not a bad way to spend a 30th birthday.
Okay, yes, Hermione and Snape keep arguing. Like always. This time it’s something to do with an article in some Charms journal that Snape thinks is brilliant and Hermione thinks is reductive. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Harry lost track. Why they should care so deeply about Charms when her speciality is Transfiguration and his is Potions is beyond him. He suspects the main reason Snape accepts these invitations is to fight with Hermione.
And, well, the drinking contest that appears to be going on between Ron and Lavender is almost certainly a horrible idea. Ron should know by now that Lavender can drink him under the table. Harry is not holding Ron’s hair back later.
Still, Harry is surrounded by people he loves. And Snape. He has had worse birthdays.
“Mum says hi, by the way,” Dudley says.
Harry doubts that very much, but he smiles at his cousin. “Tell her I say hi back. How is she?”
“Good, I think. She and Dolores seem happy.”
Dolores. Aunt Petunia’s new partner. Harry still can’t wrap his mind around anyone other than Uncle Vernon being willing to date Aunt Petunia. After Vernon died, Dudley worried about his mum being lonely. Up until a few months ago, Harry would have said Dudley was totally justified in that worry.
“That’s good,” Harry says.
“Hey Harry,” Hermione says, squeezing in next to his chair to give him a one-armed hug. Her cheeks are flushed pink. “I’m sorry to leave so soon, but I have an early morning tomorrow. Happy birthday again.”
After assuring her that it’s fine and thanking her for coming, Harry turns back to his cousin. His gaze falls on the table where Hermione and Snape sat before. The empty table. Huh, when did Snape leave? Not that Harry is surprised. Snape is an expert at silently ducking out of gatherings undetected.
“Did I show you our holiday photos?” Dudley asks.
Harry tries—and likely fails—to not visibly cringe. Being forced to scroll through picture after picture of Dudley, Aunt Petunia, and Dolores in Cornwall does not sound like his idea of a great birthday activity.
“I don’t think so,” Harry says.
Dudley has his mobile out before Harry finishes the sentence. Forcing a smile, Harry swipes through pictures of the blue sea, a pile of Cornish pasties, and Dudley chasing after a seagull with a handful of chips in its mouth before landing on a photo that makes his brain short circuit.
Dolores. No. It can’t… Not that Dolores.
How in the actual fuck is Dolores Umbridge smirking at him from a still Muggle photograph with her arm wrapped around Aunt Petunia’s shoulders?
Harry passes the phone back to Dudley before he drops it. What he wants to do is dropkick it out of the beer garden—make the information it contains vanish, somehow.
“That’s… Dolores?” Harry asks.
“Yeah.”
“And, err, how did she and Aunt Petunia meet?”
“She moved to Privet Drive about, hmm, five years ago, maybe?” Dudley chuckles as if he and Harry are both in on a joke. “She and Mum bonded over their mutual distaste for the neighbourhood kids.”
Harry can well believe that. Did Umbridge break out her blood quill and brag about how she was responsible for the scar on the back of Harry’s hand?
Does Aunt Petunia even know that Umbridge is a witch? It’s not as though Umbridge can use magic. After a brief stint in Azkaban, the Ministry fitted her with a magic suppressing cuff and required her to keep in frequent contact with a parole officer.
Why did she choose to make her home in Little Whinging?
“Harry?” Dudley says. “You okay?
No. No, he is decidedly not okay.
An arm darts out as Hermione turns into the alley, pulling her against a lean, warm body. Her stomach flips.
“What took you so long?” Severus asks, pressing her back against the brick wall.
“I had to say goodbye to Harry,” Hermione says.
“Did you? I never find that to be necessary.”
His mouth hovers over hers, his breath fanning across her lips, both of them waiting as if daring the other to be the one to close the distance. Drawing her lower lip between her teeth, Hermione wraps her arms around him. This is one of her favourite parts: the forbidden thrill. Sneaking around like this feels like breaking the rules.
They will tell her friends soon, but for now, this is only for them. Their own little world of stolen kisses and public arguments that may as well count as foreplay.
Severus cradles her face between his hands, his thumbs brushing over her cheeks, his gaze turning almost tender. He’s the one to lean closer, touching his lips to hers in a kiss so gentle and sweet, it steals Hermione’s breath.
How has it only been a few weeks since she cornered him in his office and told him to just bloody kiss her already? It feels as if they’ve been building towards this for years. Maybe they have. When they got barred from debating anything in the staffroom, they should have known they would end up like this.
“Would you like to come back to mine?” Severus asks, as if there is any doubt.
Hermione smiles. “Of course.”
The tea doesn’t taste like Aunt Petunia’s. It’s too good—not watery and weak enough. Harry wonders whether she used a fresh teabag because she remembered his birthday. Probably not.
“Of course I know Dolores is one of your lot,” she says. “She told me right away. Unlike some witches and wizards, she is open and honest. I also know how your awful Ministry has unfairly targeted her.”
Unfairly targeted her. Harry pinches the bridge of his nose in a way he fears he picked up from Snape. Why did he think having this conversation was a good idea? Words rise up his throat of their own volition. He’s never been good at holding his tongue.
“Yeah,” he says. “They had the radical idea that she should be punished for contributing to the persecution of people like Mum and Hermione.”
He’s not a child any longer—not forced to remain in this house a second longer than he pleases—so Harry spins on the spot and Apparates away before Aunt Petunia can reply.
After retrieving an inebriated Ron from Lavender, Harry spends the rest of his birthday wandering aimlessly around London with his friend. And because Ron keeps laughing and saying, “Fucking hell, mate, Umbridge could be your aunt soon,” Harry sticks to his resolution to refuse to hold Ron’s hair back when Ron inevitably gets sick.
Early in the morning, Harry sits on top of Primrose Hill next to a snoring Ron. Expecting Ron to sympathise—particularly after he’d been drinking with Lavender—was foolish. There is only one living person who can truly share Harry’s horror at Aunt Petunia and Umbridge joining forces.
Harry blames the sleep deprivation for making him think it’s a good idea to drop Ron at home and head for Snape’s house. It’s still obscenely early, but Snape is an early riser; Hermione once said she’s forever running into him walking around the castle before sunrise.
Snape takes ages to answer Harry’s knock. Long enough for Harry to doubt whether Hermione was right about Snape’s early bird tendencies. When the door finally flies open, Snape greets Harry with wet hair, no shirt, and a scowl.
“Potter,” he says. Nothing else. That single word is enough when it’s said in the same tone of voice he once used to scold Harry for flying a car to school.
“Hi, sir,” Harry says. Apparently they are both reverting to his school days. All right. Harry can work with that. Probably best if he isn’t quite as argumentative as he was back then, though. “I’m sorry to disturb you so early. Something… Something has happened.”
A hand reaches out from behind the door, opening it wider. It takes Harry a moment to take in the sight before him: Hermione in last night’s clothes. He blinks.
“Harry?” she says, familiar concern turning her mouth down at the corners. “What’s the matter?”
“I, err…”
There it is again: that short circuit in Harry’s brain as he tries to make sense of the incomprehensible. Hermione’s wet hair drips onto the dress she wore to the pub. Like she just got out of the shower. Harry glances at Snape’s hair, then back at Hermione’s.
He passed out in the pub. That’s the only explanation. He hit his head somehow and hallucinated the whole business with Dudleys holiday snaps, the visit to Aunt Petunia, and whatever the hell this is.
Hermione pats his cheek. “Harry? Say something, please.”
“Aunt Petunia,” he croaks.
“Did something happen to her?” Snape asks. He looks delighted.
Harry shakes his head. “She’s dating Dolores Umbridge.”
Hermione claps a hand over her mouth, her eyebrows shooting up. Snape takes a moment to react, his face going blank as if his brain is short circuiting like Harry’s. Well. That’s something.
“Petunia and Umbridge?” Snape says. His mouth curves up into a malicious grin to rival the Grinch. “Hermione, I will need your Transfiguration expertise. I wish to become an Animagus as soon as possible. I need to be a fly on the wall and see this for myself.”
Hermione. He called her Hermione.
“I imagine you should alert your employers, Potter,” Snape says. “The combined force of Petunia and Umbridge will unleash so much misery upon Little Whinging, the Ministry may well assume a flock of Dementors have gone on a rampage.”
“Snape,” Harry says weakly. “This is not the reaction I expected.”
“Is it not? Come now, Potter. Imagine the decor if they combine their households.” Snape snorts. “Have you told Minerva yet?”
“No. Just Ron.”
“Excellent. Allowing me to tell her can be your payment for showing up at this hour.”
Hermione pats Harry’s shoulder. “You don’t see your aunt often,” she says. “Ever, really. So you won’t have to actually put up with Umbridge at family gatherings.”
That’s a fair point. Something Ron could have mentioned several hours ago instead of taking the piss out of Harry. Looking at Hermione’s damp hair again, Harry frowns.
“What are you doing here, by the way?” Harry asks.
“She spent the night, obviously,” Snape says, then carries on as if this is a perfectly reasonable statement. “We’ve been together for weeks. Do keep up, Potter. Now, do either of you have a camera I can borrow to capture Minerva’s reaction?”
It’s official. Next year, Harry is staying home on his birthday.