When Miranda came home for lunch she heard music coming from the kitchen. Curious, she followed the sound and stopped at the sight before her.

The kitchen was in full use, an almost unprecedented sight if Miranda herself wasn't the one using it. Ingredients, bowls, and utensils littered the countertops. The music was coming from the radio tuned into a station Miranda had never heard before (and soon understood why when lines like 'come fly on my broom with me' warbled from the speakers), lending comfortable ambiance to the room. Kimmy the house elf was sitting on the countertop across from the stove, her bare legs swinging as she hummed with the music. Her boxer shorts hat took Miranda aback a second, but nothing could compare to the mental start when she spotted Harry. The boy was tending the stove-top and a saucer from which a truly delicious smell was rising. He was stirring and adding spices with practiced ease. He, too, wore a pair of boxer shorts on his head, blue and white stripped.

Miranda wasn't sure if she should laugh, gape, or just turn around and sort out the strange universe that had taken over her kitchen in a safe, quiet place.

"Missus Granger!" Kimmy greeted congenially when the house elf spotted her.

Harry jumped and whirled, spoon in hand and dripping on to the floor while Harry looked at her, wide-eyed.

"Missus Granger!" Harry gulped and hastily tore the boxers off his head with a blush. "Err… hi."

Miranda stepped into the kitchen. "Hello, Harry. What's all this?"

Harry cleared his throat and tossed the boxers in his hand to Kimmy. "Oh, uh, I was just making me and Hermione lunch. Um… would you like some? It's nearly done."

"You cook?" Miranda couldn't help the note of astonishment in her voice as she moved over to the stove as if drawn by the aroma.

"Yeah."

Miranda peered down into the saucer and her mouth did start to water. "Is that vegetable soup?" She looked around the kitchen at the scattered items and understanding dawned. "And did you make that from scratch?"

Harry shifted on his feet. "Um… yeah. I don't get to make it much, my uncle usually demands heftier dishes, so it might not be the best seeing as it's been so long since I made it last. I'm sorry for using your things without asking, I was going to have Kimmy replace what I used, and I was going to clean it all up and have everything back where it belonged before you got home."

Miranda peered closely at Harry from their close stance over the pot of soup. The tone of his voice and the rushed assurances and apologies, one after another, gave her suspicious pause. "Don't worry about that, Harry. It's fine. To be honest, I'm just surprised. Do you have any idea what Jake's idea of cooking is? Or Hermione's? Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches are the best either of them can manage in the kitchen. This looks absolutely delicious. Yes, I would love to have some."

Harry smiled in relief. Miranda stopped when she realized that, when he smiled, when he wasn't tense or withdrawn or hesitant, he was actually quite a handsome boy.

"Why don't I set the table…" Miranda turned toward the dining room to see that the places were already set. And someone had not only meticulously set two places, already prepared drinks, and set out some sliced Italian bread on a cutting board, but had also placed a vase with fresh flowers in the center. As she looked on, the short-statured house elf was scurrying with a third place mat, bowl, and spoon to set a place for Miranda.

"Oh, um, Kimmy's already seen to the table," Harry said unnecessarily.

"Oh, well, guess I'll just go tell Hermione…" before Miranda could finish her sentence, Kimmy, finished setting Miranda's place, dashed through the kitchen, into the hall, and her feet slapping bare-footed on the floor marked her progression toward Hermione's bedroom.

Harry smirked. "Maybe you should go ahead and sit down?"

Miranda shook her head in wonder and smiled. "Oh, dear, I fear I could get used to this."

Harry tended to the last of the soup preparations when Hermione came in following Kimmy. "Hi, Mum. Harry! This smells great!"

"Don't pass judgment until you've tried it," he retorted, but there was a definite pleased tone in his voice as he carried the pot to the table and ladled out portions into each waiting bowl. Hermione looked around the table, frowned in thought, then got up and fetched a fourth bowl that Harry unquestioningly filled. With only a little coaxing they talked Kimmy into joining them at the table.

The soup tasted just as delicious as it had smelled. Conversation at the table was light and casual, and Miranda was certain she was a third (or technically fourth) wheel as the only non-magical person present and unable to participate in the bulk of their talk, but it was all in all a pleasant lunch. Harry certainly seemed more relaxed than he had all day yesterday; perhaps he'd just needed some time to adjust to the Granger house. Hermione was glowing; she kept complimenting Harry on his cooking, enough that the boy started to blush and beg off the constant praise. Miranda couldn't help but throw in her own compliments to the chef. Kimmy slurped her soup and tracked her eyes mildly between those present at the table.

When they were finished Harry automatically stood and began to clear the table.

"And what do you think you're doing, young man?" Miranda playfully scolded.

Apparently the 'playful' didn't come across as clearly as she'd intended, because Harry froze with two empty bowls in his hands. "Uh… the dishes?" he answered warily.

Miranda, refusing to address the way Harry had tensed, stood. "Nonsense. Leave those, I'll tend to them when I get home this evening."

Harry seemed torn between wanting to do as told and doing what came second nature. "I don't mind, really."

"After all the trouble you went to to make lunch, I insist," Miranda said with an overt smile to try and soften the reaction she kept receiving.

"But it's a mess!" Harry yelped, then went immediately quiet and cast his eyes about the kitchen in something almost approaching desperate despair. It was a mess, but not a disaster by any standards.

"It's okay, Harry," Hermione said, and Miranda looked at once toward her daughter. There was a placating, heavy, wise weight to her words. She nodded at Harry meaningfully. "You don't have to."

Harry fidgeted and looked down at the bowls in his hands helplessly.

Hermione rose and gathered up the two remaining bowls. "I'll do the dishes, I ought to since you were in here making this wonderful meal while I was lying about in my room reading letters, being a right layabout. I wouldn't mind your help, though."

Harry seemed to sag in relief. "Okay."

"Kimmy will help!" Kimmy exclaimed jovially and jumped from the chair. Harry and Hermione went to the sink together and stood, shoulder to shoulder, to tend to the dishes while Miranda left to use to loo.

On her way back to pick up her things and head out she stopped outside the kitchen and looked inside. Things were moving through the air of their own accord, returning to cabinets and the refrigerator as Kimmy put away the unused ingredients. The house elf appeared merry to be absorbed in the house-keeping chore and seem to pay no mind to the two teenagers at the sink. Harry and Hermione were setting aside the bowls and spoons on a drying rack. When Harry reached across Hermione to add the bread knife Hermione caught his forearm. They both stilled. After a second Hermione said softly, "It looks like it's going to leave a scar when it's all healed up."

Harry shrugged. "Well, what's one more?"

Hermione released Harry's arm and the two parted to wipe down the counters in silence.

Miranda frowned to herself then slipped out of the house unnoticed.

❾¾ ❾¾❾¾

"Can I say it now? You were right."

Harry turned to Hermione with a querulous look on his face. Miranda had left barely half an hour ago to return to work. Harry and Hermione once again were alone in the house. Kimmy had since retreated to her closet quarters after putting away the last of the items left strewn on the counters. Once more that painfully blissful peace had consumed the house. Harry was scared he could grow very attached to this state of being… and that he could fall prey to missing it terribly when his life took another ominous turn. And it would; he had come to accept that his life always turned south.

He had just been putting the last of the vegetable soup leftovers in the fridge when Hermione had blurted her apparent non-sequitur. Harry studied her a moment, thinking he might figure out her meaning. After a second he gave up. "Right about what?"

Hermione slowly smiled at him. "You are impressive."

"Oh," Harry blushed and rubbed the back of his neck. "Just well trained, really. But it's a sight better to be cooking for you and your mum than the Dursleys."

Hermione's playful, happy expression fell at the mention of Harry's family. She scowled and sighed in annoyance. Though he hated it when people pitied him or felt sorry for him, a small part of Harry liked how riled Hermione got over the Dursleys. She took his treatment at their hands as a personal insult to her, and somehow that made Harry feel safer. Perhaps because he knew Hermione, and that she was a person predisposed to passion. Because he knew that if ever the Dursleys went too far, if ever they committed some grossly unforgivable wrong in her eyes against him, a blindly faithful and trusting part of Harry believed nothing would hold Hermione back from tearing his horrible aunt and uncle apart. Figuratively, of course. He could endure more than most from them if he kept in the back of his mind that he was taking the high road, showing them mercy they didn't deserve by bearing it, because if he really wanted to it would be nothing for him to unleash an unstoppable force against them. Unstoppable was a good way to describe Hermione. It was the same sense he got from his godfather, Sirius. Knowledge that he was no longer truly alone or defenseless, because at a word, a cry, a single gesture, and no power on this earth could protect Petunia, Vernon, and Dudley from suffering for every abuse they'd ever heaped on Harry.

Harry started from his own thoughts when he noticed Hermione was shaking. He took an immediate step closer. "Hermione? What's wrong?"

Hermione's jaw was clenched tightly. He hadn't seen her that angry since she slugged Malfoy in the nose. "How can you cook so well and yet come back from summer term every year nearly a stone lighter? Why need to put back on weight lost if you can do this?" Hermione's trembling, furious voice was proof that she knew the answer already.

"Because they don't let me eat it," Harry answered anyway.

Hermione's eyes glistened with furious tears. She seethed, her fists clenched, her lips pinched against fury. She was still trembling. Harry knew if it were him, he would have already lost control of his magic. Someone would have blown up or something would have broken.

"I hate them," Hermione hissed… hissed so lowly and menacingly that Harry wondered if he'd heard it as parseltongue.

Hermione took a breath. "I absolutely hate them, Harry. Sometimes I'm not sure who I hate more… Voldemort or the Dursleys."

Until she said it, he might have said it himself. Hearing it come from her, however, seemed to put his own feeling in a new perspective. And after the graveyard, he could never rank the Dursleys and Voldemort together. "They're not worth it, Hermione. They're dreadful people, but I won't have to live with them forever. Believe me, when I'm of age, I'm out of there and I won't look back. They won't be sorry to see me go, either. Just a few years more, assuming I…" Harry stopped mid-sentence. He somehow felt he shouldn't speak so much of his mind, not what he'd almost said, at least.

"Assuming?" Hermione pressed.

Harry cringed. "Assuming I live that long."

Hermione's eyes widened then she launched herself at him. He ended up on the receiving end of a vice-like hug. She gripped him as though one or both were physically falling. What surprised him most was how tightly he held her in return.

"Don't say that! You are not going to die!" she said huskily against his shoulder.

He wanted to argue that she couldn't know that, couldn't promise he wouldn't, but he couldn't bring himself to do it to her. She knew it all already, anyway.

It seemed they stood in the middle of the kitchen locked in an embrace forever. With no one to interrupt them, nothing to mark the minutes, there was nothing to make them move apart. As though to be like this, holding on tightly, was the natural state and it would require a force of nature to separate them. The only change across the dragging minutes was that the painful, desperate grip they both maintained loosened, became tender and soft, and they stood there a long time just wrapped together. Hermione's head on his shoulder, his face half-buried in her bushy hair, it began to seem they'd always been that way, would always be that way.

Considering everything, Harry ardently wished it could always be that way. With a sigh of resignation when he acknowledged it couldn't be, he turned his head and further burrowed his face into the thick comfort of Hermione's hair.

"Harry?" Hermione said faintly, her voice still muffled against his shirt. She turned her head slightly and her breath washed against the skin of his neck.

Harry shivered. "Yeah?"

Hermione didn't lift her head as she said, each word a new warm rush on his throat, "Do me a favor? After you defeat Voldemort, when you leave the Dursleys once and for all… let me be there, and let me tell them off."

Harry didn't linger on the fact that Hermione seemed to believe, as he secretly did, that it would be before the end of Hogwarts when the final showdown with Voldemort happened. That he would not escape facing Voldemort again, and that somehow it was left to him, an underage wizard, to stop a dark wizard that no one else so far had been able to. It seemed inescapable, Harry's cruel fate. Instead he focused only on that fire in Hermione that made her forever and always his champion. He squeezed her and let that hug tell her everything he didn't know how to put into words. "I promise; I look forward to seeing that."

Hermione laughed and nuzzled his neck with her nose. That stomach-flip returned with a vengeance and Harry pulled away. Hermione stepped back and wiped at her face; he hadn't even realized her tears of fury had actually fallen.

"Well, um… what would you like to do now?" Hermione asked.

He shrugged. "Dunno. What do you want to do?"

Hermione bit her lip, as though reluctant to truthfully answer.

"Well, what would you normally do if I weren't here?"

Hermione looked away, insecurity crept into her features, and she answered meekly. "Homework." She wouldn't meet his eyes, for some reason brought down a notch by the confession. Then Harry remembered what Ron had said when he heard about Harry going home to the Grangers for the summer. 'Won't be as much fun as the Burrow, I'm sure it'll be lots of books and you'll probably be made to do homework.' He saw how the crestfallen look on Hermione's face now was very similar to the wounded look that had etched into the lines of her face at Ron's thoughtless comment. Not that Ron and noticed what he'd done. She was afraid she was only proving Ron right, ruining Harry's summer with her bookworm ways, falling short just for being who she was. Ron's unwittingly callous words were hurting Hermione even now.

Harry decided he'd have to have a talk with Ron. This certainly wasn't the first time in his years of bickering and fighting with Hermione that he'd hit home and hurt her feelings. That wasn't right, they were supposed to be friends.

Nor was it right now how Hermione looked smaller, weaker, as she waited for Harry to take Ron's side.

He wouldn't; he hadn't when Ron said it at Hogwarts. He didn't find homework necessarily vile or repugnant. He only really despised it when it cut into Quidditch practice time, or when it was from Snape. In fact, during summer it was something of a retreat for him when his aunt and uncle would forbid even the mention of magic, but in a textbook he could remember what he had to go back to when term began. Then, he regarded it as a promise, a reminder, a light to cling to as he endured his home life. Granted he didn't enjoy homework, but it certainly wasn't the dastardly chore Ron believed it was. And if it was with Hermione… well, homework with her had always been more bearable. If Ron had just shut his mouth now and then during their group study sessions in the library and the common room he might have taken note of the same humor and life in Hermione while bent over a book that Harry had noticed. Hermione had such a passion for learning, and even if Harry didn't share it or understand it, that didn't mean it couldn't appreciate the way it lit Hermione from the inside out. She was in her element between the pages of a book, and it was strangely beautiful to see her right where she belonged as if born to it. He wondered if he looked as right on a broom.

"We can do homework if you want," Harry said simply.

Hermione flinched. "No, no, we don't have to."

"Ignore Ron." He surprised himself with the harsh edges to his tone. Apparently it startled Hermione, too. For a second she looked stricken to be caught out agonizing over what Ron had carelessly said. Harry shrugged it off and said, "He's a prat sometimes, you know that. I don't mind if we do homework; we'll have to eventually anyway, right? Besides, when end of holiday comes 'round Ron will be wishing he had you to do homework with."

Hermione smiled and studied him for a moment. If she was looking for insincerity in his face, she'd have to look a very long time. Finally, she took him at his word. She nodded and the first flicker of that light of academia glinted in her brown eyes. "Right then, well, want to gather your things and I'll meet you in the library? I bet we could completely finish with transfiguration by dinnertime."

"Right."