The kitten was the excuse this time around.
Crookshanks found it mewing in the storm, looking as woebegone and wet and quite a bit like Hermione with its long hair plastered to its body with the rain. He dragged it in from somebody’s back lot, holding it distastefully by the scruff, and deposited it between Harry, Ron, and Hermione as they dragged the tent out of its bag.
“Poor little thing,” Hermione said, crouching down next to it. Crookshanks backed away from it, hissing reproachfully.
Harry and Ron exchanged glances over Hermione’s head. “Bet the storm hasn’t reached your house,” Harry said.
Ron stuffed the tent back in its bag.
“Can we?” Hermione asked Harry, looking up pleadingly. “Really? It’s so cold… it could use some warm milk…”
It was inevitable. The tent had a leak anyways, and they hadn’t been home since Harry’s birthday. He swallowed; it’d been almost two weeks since they’d visited. It wasn’t as though they couldn’t Apparate easily enough.
Ron and Hermione watched him quietly, not pushing further.
He couldn’t tell them no, despite the awkwardness of keeping their secret, despite the mix of love and fear, of reproach and respect and grief that hung about everyone when they went home. Tomorrow could be their last day. It was too much too hope that they’d all survive the war.
Harry nodded.
The storm hadn’t reached the Burrow yet. It grumbled heavily on the horizon, leaden with the heat of the day, a looming presence long before it got close enough to cool the air. Raindrops hadn’t yet started to splatter across the drive. The windows were open to invite a breeze, begging for the unpredictable winds that would shake the rickety house.
But not break it.
Ron pushed the door open, shaking off his wet hair and stomping the mud off his boots. “Hello?” he called, standing aside so Hermione could deposit a dripping Crookshanks in the hall and Harry could drag the now soaked tent through the door.
“Ron?” Charlie padded barefoot from the living room, wand drawn. He eyed them suspiciously for a moment, but Crookshanks wound his way around Hermione’s legs, and he smiled. “The cat vouches for you. Guess you can come in.” He smiled and lead the way back to the living room. “Mum’s in the garden. She wanted basil or some such. You’re all wet. Is that why you’re here?” He was chattering uncharacteristically, as though aware that they needed time to adjust.
“Sorta,” Ron admitted, pulling the kitten out from his cloak. “Crooks found this, and Hermione wouldn’t let us leave it there.”
Charlie held out his cupped hands for the cat; it fit neatly in them, dripping and shivering. He raised it to eye level and it stretched out a paw to bat at his nose. “Hey now!” he laughed. “Don’t scratch the hand that feeds you.”
“You haven’t fed him yet,” Ron pointed out.
“But I will! Go dry off while I do.”
Harry started to dump the tent by the hearth and Charlie paused, about to leave the room. “Hang that up before mum gets in and forbids it.”
“Good thinking.” Ron helped Harry drag it out of its bag while Hermione conjured pegs in the corner to hang it from. They shook it out, droplets spattering across the room, and hung it up. It clung damply to itself, wetter than Harry’d realized. One more reason he was glad to be there.
They trudged up the steps, pausing at Ginny’s room while Hermione knocked on the door. The door crashed against the wall as Ginny realized who it was and shot out, wrapping Hermione in a hug. “You’re here! Why? You’re safe! Right?”
She released Hermione for Ron, who hugged her back as tightly. “We found a stray kitten,” he said, laughing. “We’re fine. A bit wet.”
Ginny wiggled out of his arms and reached out for Harry before freezing. Her breath came out in a soft little gasp, her arms still half extended.
The distance between them was small, so very small, just a half-step and a hug and the seven pieces of an evil man’s soul. She nodded to Harry and he nodded back, and then Hermione was going into her room to change and Harry and Ron were continuing up the steps.
They were sitting in the living room when the storm hit, warm with each other’s presence and full from an excellent dinner. Charlie was cleaning a leather something that, to judge by the burns, was for a dragon. Long straps dangled down, and the kitten batted at them.
Arthur sat by the empty fireplace, tinkering with a CD player. He probably should have been at work - they all should have - but these evenings were a time when work and the war went unmentioned. He smiled at Harry, a tired, wistful smile that didn’t seem to realize it included Harry as an adult.
Harry smiled back; this was their family, theirs to protect, theirs to love with a painful potency that made every moment bittersweet with the knowledge that there might not be a next. Arthur glanced away, trailing his eyes across the room to the kitchen, where Molly supervised the washing of dishes. Their soft clinking filled the quiet house.
Ron and Hermione were curled together on the floor near his feet. They needed this time, this safe time when wands needn’t be drawn and backs needn’t be watched. Here, now, the worst they had to worry about was the lash of Molly’s tongue if she caught them snogging.
And for Harry, Ginny‘s reproachful eyes, the fall of her hair, the empty space beside her on the couch that beckoned and could not be filled, at least not by him, not yet. It was too easy to imagine it filled by someone else, too hard to ignore curve of her legs tucked up beside her.
He knew this without looking, so he turned to the window and the waiting darkness. The storm rumbled now, deep vibrations that he felt in the pit of his stomach. Breezes gusted one way, then the next, cool breaths that teased along the back of his neck and up his arms. It smelled like rain.
Hermione giggled softly and Ron chuckled. The noises from the kitchen had stopped - Harry heard Molly’s footsteps and turned. She looked sternly at Ron (who quickly pulled his hand away from Hermione’s stomach) and brushed her own hand across her husband’s shoulder.
A gust carried heavy, new raindrops through the windows, splattering them across Harry’s neck. Lightening flashed and his hand went to his wand before he knew it wasn’t a spell; he flicked it to close the windows instead.
Molly’s face was tight as she looked first at his wand, and then to Ron and Hermione, who had tensed when he drew it and now sat frozen with theirs half-drawn as well. She opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again - Harry knew she was not afraid of him, and guessed she was afraid for him.
She didn’t know, and wouldn’t, what had taught them to move so quickly. The scar still curled across Ron’s thigh, but the time had passed when she would see that. Or question it; no questions was the unspoken rule of these evenings.
Arthur placed a restraining hand on her arm, and she smiled. “Thank you, Harry dear,” she said, voice thin.
“No problem.” Harry said, but his expression thanked her for not prying.
The kitten wrapped its paws around the dragon harness and pulled it to the floor in a clatter of buckles, breaking the tension. Molly sat down beside Arthur, who pulled her close. Ron made a face.
“You’ve no call to comment,” Charlie said. “At least he’s not tickling her…”
Ron’s ears turned red and Hermione grinned mischievously at him. Ginny watched them, eyes intent, face tight with longing. Harry felt it, the tight pressure to go to her, to wrap his arms around her and whisper in her ear and fill that loneliness for both of them.
Only to leave the next day.
Only to tear them both apart more, with the having and the wanting of those simple pleasures.
The kitten was struggling to extract itself from the harness, squiggling backwards. It finally pulled free and tumbled onto its bottom, ending up in front of Crookshanks. He hissed half-heartedly - savior he would play, but not kind uncle. “Don’t,” Hermione told her cat; he gave her a disgusted look and pushed the kitten away.
Frightened, the kitten took shelter behind Charlie’s leg, where it puffed itself up and hisses possessively. My person, its posture said.
“Pity,” Molly said. “I’d hoped to keep it here.”
Charlie ran his fingers along its side. “It doesn’t have to live here to be part of the family.”
“No,” Arthur agreed, looking at the three young friends, “it doesn’t.”