Jake Granger liked to think himself a decent chap. His colleagues at work were more his friends than not, he got along well with his mother-in-law, and he had a loving wife and daughter who were his world. He couldn't be a bad bloke to have been so lucky with the people in his life. In addition to all that, he tended to believe he was easy to get along with, and that he could get along with others just as well. All and all, a likeable and liking bloke.

There was only the nagging question of where to fit in one Harry Potter.

Jake had conflicting feelings about the young wizard who attended Hogwarts with his daughter, and Jake was not a person typically torn. He knew whom he liked and whom he did not. It was a simple matter. But Jake discovered, with Harry, things weren't so plain and simple. Nor was he stupid as to the cause for his ambiguity toward Harry; it all came down to Hermione.

On the one hand, Harry was a very nice young man. Soft-spoken most of the time and always well-mannered, though perhaps a great deal of that was shyness, as the boy seemed rather prone to it. He was a sportsman, Jake had learned that early on, and the purportedly talented seeker really knew how to infuse his recounts of Quidditch matches with life and excitement. And Jake noticed that when he was consumed with the telling of a Quidditch match, Harry wasn't quite so quiet or shy. Jake had never heard Harry be anything but kind and courtesy to people; even his dreadfully brusque aunt and uncle at King's Cross were shown more kindness than Jake felt they were due. For someone his age, that kind of restraint should be commended. Miranda was very fond of him, that was clear beyond any shadow of a doubt.

Weeks before the start of Christmas holiday, when Jake was in a good mood knowing his daughter would be coming home soon, Miranda had approached him with the suggestion that they invite Harry to spend the holiday with them. Jake had been blind-sided. Sure, Harry was a consummate houseguest and well liked besides, but Jake had never considered the idea of sharing their family holiday with Hermione's school friend. Not that he was unilaterally opposed to it, but he'd just never thought to consider it. After all, there'd been no owl from Hermione, like there had been last time, asking if she could bring her friend home. He'd said as much to Miranda.

"I suspect they're a bit more than friends by now," Miranda had said with a sagacious smile.

Jake hadn't been ready for that at all. But a little voice in the back of his head told him he should have been.

And therein lay the rub, the other hand to the whole matter. Jake honestly liked Harry, Miranda was well and fully taken with him, and Hermione was downright smitten. The last was what really got underneath Jake's skin and made him squirm. It woke a thing of disquiet in his bones, and part of him had to dislike Harry for it. It was like a paternal writ, necessary and unavoidable that he should object to the notion of a boy taking up his with little girl. Jake genuinely hated that conflicted feeling that arose in him. He didn't care for strife; it made life tedious and stressful. It was much easer to get along with people, and if they were decent enough then mores the better. And Harry was most certainly a kindly, good-hearted young man. Usually, that would be all that Jake required from another person to garner his favorable opinion. Outwardly, there would seem no reason for Jake to find himself torn about the boy. Not unsurprisingly, Miranda had nailed the crux of his issues with Harry in that same conversation about having Harry over for Christmas… the crux that was Hermione.

And Miranda's matter-of-fact remark that, while their little girl was off attending school, she'd turned her eye to fancying boys, and not just any boy, but Harry, nettled him.

Just what made Miranda so certain? There'd been no letters from their daughter professing any manner of 'boyfriend' come into her life… boy, did Jake hate that word. Hermione adored her books and her lessons. She wasn't a typical teenager in that regard. She was an academic, she courted learning. He couldn't wrap his head around the idea of her dating.

"Jake, love," Miranda had said in that patient kind of voice when he tried to fight her logic, "I know it's hard to hear this, but our little girl is growing up. She's fifteen; I was near her age when I first fell in love."

Jake did not like that notion one bit.

"And you think that Harry… Miri, she's fifteen. Don't you think love is a bit strong a word?" He wanted Miranda to tell him yes. "I mean, I'll grant you, they're close, best friends and all that, but she wouldn't fancy Harry."

Miranda had only kissed him softly on the cheek. "She does and has for a long time, dear."

Bugger of it was, Miranda was usually right. He'd married a cracking smart woman (Hermione got her brains from Miranda, that was certain), and Jake knew better than to dismiss anything she said out of hand. Though he might want to ever so terribly, as he did then. He resisted at first, but in the end he had to concede to the truth. His little girl was a young woman, and she'd begun to have grown up feelings that he'd sooner she save for much, much later in life.

Jake had never doubted that Harry probably had some ignoble intentions toward Hermione. He was a teenage boy, and Jake knew only too well how a teenage boy's mind worked. And in the presence of an intelligent, funny, beautiful girl like Hermione… Harry might be chivalrous enough, but he was an adolescent young man and he'd have impure thoughts. He'd just never figured on Hermione being just as bad. Somehow she should be… above all that, better than the poor mooning sods that were thick as flies during the teenage years. But then, Miranda had always said he saw their daughter as unrealistically perfect. Was it such a crime to be so proud of one's child?

The whole notion of Hermione taking a fancy to a bloke sat ill in his stomach for days, as though he'd lost a loved one, and he couldn't rightly say way. Miranda had curled into his side one night and explained it all to him, as she was wont to do.

"Hermione's realizing she can love a man besides her father. It's not an easy thing for a father to admit that he'll have to learn to share his little girl."

"She's fifteen…" Jake retorted, his flailing protest to the whole idea.

"The very age when we might have expected her friendship toward Harry to blossom into something more. If it hadn't been this year, it would have been the next."

"You act as though this was bound to happen," Jake groused.

Miranda had sighed, resigned to the new facet of their young daughter with far more grace than Jake was finding within himself. "Hermione's been taken with Harry since first year, whether she knew it or not. It was in every letter she wrote and every story she told when she was home on holidays. I think the ground was laid for her to develop a crush on him long ago. We should be thankful that Harry had the sense to develop feelings for her, too."

"Thankful?"

"You remember how horrible unrequited love was back in those days," Miranda answered simply, with years as a buffer able to look back on those youthful heartbreaks with bittersweet recollection. "And you know how Hermione is… once she's committed her heart to something it's a force of nature to change her. A one-sided crush that had been allowed to build so long would have been awful for her to bear."

Jake couldn't decide how to side on that topic. Yes, Hermione would have been crushed if she cared for someone who didn't care for her, but then again if the boy didn't return Hermione's affections then there was no need to bother with that dreaded 'boyfriend' word.

"And we should count ourselves lucky that Hermione chose Harry," Miranda added.

"How is that?" Jake was a long way from considering his daughter in a relationship with anyone 'lucky'.

Miranda had smiled at him and said, "Because Hermione could not have found anyone who thinks more highly of her than Harry does."

Despise it though he might, Jake had to confess that point to Miranda. Even Jake could see that Harry thought the world of Hermione. As well he should. Hermione was an absolutely wonderful person, a shining light to anyone who bothered to spend as little as five minutes with her. And it irked Jake when his own certitude turned against him. 'Harry does see that,' he had to acknowledge with a foul taste on the back of his tongue. He might not have been the sharpest eye in the crow's nest, but he'd seen that much when Harry was staying over with them during summer holiday.

"Give him a chance, Jake," Miranda had pleaded then. "For Hermione's sake, try to like him."

"But I do… I mean, I did… I liked him when he was just her friend, I had no problem with that, but boyfriend… well, that's just such an ugly word."

"Best get used it to, because Hermione's not a child anymore. She'll have a boyfriend, and one day a fiancé, and one day a husband if life is good to her."

"Please, I can only take so much," Jake protested, his chest a cage of ache, "you don't presume to say that Harry will be all those things?"

Miranda had smiled in that wise, knowing way she had that made Jake think he had to be one of the dumbest blokes in England. "Perhaps he will. And for that very reason we best welcome Harry to join us for Christmas."

"How so?" At that point, Jake merely wanted to know why it was so critical.

"Because the truth is that one day Hermione won't pick us anymore. A girl's parents will win out in her heart over all others for only so long. Eventually, her boyfriend will become more important.

"If we don't make it clear that Harry's welcome in our home… we may start to lose her piece by piece. If she's fallen in love with Harry, and I'd wager she has, then a choice between us and him won't play to our favor.

"If we turn Harry away I fear we'll be turning her away, too. I don't want to start the chain of events that means we lose our daughter. She'd probably visit now and then at first, then it would dwindle to coming by only on holidays, and before long we'd see nothing more of her than an occasional post."

"Not Hermione," Jake said firmly. "She wouldn't do that."

"She already has," Miranda said plainly. When Jake frowned, she spoke gently. "We didn't have her here with us last Christmas because she stayed at Hogwarts… with Harry."

"Bollocks," Jake grumbled.

"But if Harry's invited I'm certain Hermione will come home."

"So Harry's the cross we must bear to have our daughter?" Jake countered sourly. It was the principle of the idea that bothered him more than the prevailing theme of Harry coming to their home for Christmas.

Miranda looked quietly at Jake. "Is he such a cross? He's gentle and kind, he has a good heart, and you've seen how good he is at making Hermione laugh and smile."

"You'd almost prefer Hermione take up with this Harry chap for the rest of her life, wouldn't you?" He wasn't angry, just blunt, because all the ways Miranda had described Harry were accurate. Miranda had taken a real shine to Harry, and the part Jake hated to admit was that a great many of the reasons behind Miranda's fondness for Harry were not lost on him, either. He'd liked Harry for many of those same reasons. A part of him stubbornly continued to like Harry for those reasons, even as the father in him riled at the boy moving in on his little girl. Were it not for the contention point that was Hermione, Jake could easily like Harry without reservation. It made it all so much harder, in his estimations.

"Maybe I do," Miranda had answered. "He's been good for her so far, I don't really need to tell you in how many ways. He's been a wonderful friend to her when we'd begun to fear Hermione would never connect with someone her own age. You know, at times… I think I can even see myself one day coming to love him as though he were my own son."

Jake's eyes had widened at that pronouncement. Miranda was not one to blithely throw around such predictions. She had a very loving heart, that was without question, but not one prone to cavalier attachments. She didn't shower that level of affection on people who came into her life; she wasn't predisposed to that kind of fickleness. She could be very fond of people, friends and colleagues, but that was far from love. She gave her love intensely but sparingly. It's what made it so special.

"And I think you could, too," Miranda said earnestly, "if you give him the chance."

Jake had thought several days on that. It had haunted him, if truth be told. Harry part of the family. It was strange to imagine. For so long it had been him, Miranda, and Hermione. But Miranda had the right of it. Just because Jake didn't care for the idea of Hermione with a hormonal teenage boyfriend didn't mean he wanted her to be alone the rest of her life. And he knew it would be so dangerously easy for Hermione to be alone. She turned to her books and her inner world to such exclusion that most of life could pass her by without her knowing it. In her first year at Hogwarts, when she'd written them and told them about the two friends she'd made, they'd breathed a sighed of relief to see that her life wasn't still set on that solitary path that had been her destination practically since she learned how to talk… and chose to talk to adults as opposed to other children.

But he'd seen how Harry drew her out of that self-imposed, leather-bound exile. She was a different person around him. She was happier.

And for that, Jake decided in the end, he could deal with Harry in their lives.

The next day, he'd told Miranda to go ahead and mail the kids inviting them home for Christmas.

By the time he and his wife had gone to pick them up at King's Cross, he was even a little more amenable to the idea. He'd had a lot of time to think, and not without a little help from Miranda to coax the subject. There were things to be said for Harry that threw their lot in his favor. He was kind, that much was true. He would never be cruel or mean to Hermione. Harry was always polite to him and Miranda. He cared about their opinions, which was more than Jake could have said for some of his own attitude toward his girlfriends' parents when he was that age. That was good; it meant Harry would take them into consideration if any silly, half-baked ideas like him and Hermione running off into the sunset together came to their addled, lovesick brains. He definitely thought Hermione had hung the moon as far as respect and adoration went. Honestly, Jake couldn't say he'd been as respectful or as properly doting to his own teenage girlfriends before Miranda came into his life. Harry wasn't likely to get cross with Hermione or try to order her around. If anything, Harry would probably obey Hermione to a bloody fault and do anything she asked of him. Which was just the sort of bloke Hermione ought to have, because his girl deserved that kind of devotion. And though he felt guilty to admit it, the fact that Harry would sooner be rid of his family was a boon, because it meant that if Harry and Hermione by some wild chance ended up married some day in the distant future (which Jake was still not willing to concede out of hand), he and Miranda would never have to fight the in-laws for the couple. Every holiday, every special occasion, every whimsical vacation or impromptu outing, Hermione would be there, albeit with Harry in tow. That wasn't so bad, really. And he and Harry might even go to some football games together, or even a Quidditch match or two. Jake could see that being a good time, and Harry did have quite a grasp of sports. It'd be nice to have another bloke with whom to talk guy-stuff.

Besides, this was all based upon Miranda's assumptions about this newly-changed status in their friendship. Harry and Hermione might not even be boyfriend and girlfriend at all. He wouldn't let himself get in a fretful state over nothing, and if it turned out Miranda's instincts were on the mark… well, as Miranda had said herself, Hermione could have done a lot worse than Harry Potter. He wasn't good enough for her, but no bloke ever would be. Jake would have to settle in any case, and he could settle for Harry better than most others.

At King's Cross, Miranda had hugged Harry same as she had their daughter, and Jake shook the boy's hand and had been very well-behaved. With the pair of them standing in front of him, he admitted that it wasn't so bad. Hermione looked more beautiful every day, more and more like her mother, and Harry wasn't half the bashful, reticent boy he'd been when they met him at the start of summer holiday. He was more comfortable around them now. Jake was glad for that; it bothered Miranda to have Harry so twitchy. She hated that it said so many unsavory things about his early childhood.

They'd piled into the car, driven home with the kids in the back (Hermione giving them a recount of their midterms, as expected), and it was all right. Nothing to really set off Jake's radar as far as Harry and Hermione's predicted 'relationship' was concerned. They weren't acting appreciably different from the way they had acted around each other previously. They looked just as they had during the summer, though Harry was taller and Hermione's hair longer. At the house, Miranda fixed them lunch first thing, and they'd sat down together at the table. Miranda chatted classes with Hermione; Jake got the highlights of some of the latest Gryffindor Quidditch matches. When lunch was over, and the kids retreated to their rooms with their trunks to settle in, Jake was feeling pretty good about everything. Miranda had been premature to think Hermione and Harry were dating. Christmas might be merry after all.

Jake joined his wife in the kitchen as she was washing the dishes from lunch. He stepped up behind her and when she glanced over her shoulder at him, a smile on her face, he smiled back.

"You saw it, too?" she asked.

He nodded, in a good mood. "Yes."

Miranda put aside a plate on the drying rack. "Harry looked scared half to death, the poor boy, but knowing Hermione I imagine we'll have the announcement before the end of the day."

Now he was confused. "Huh?"

"Now remember to be nice about it when they tell us. Harry's a good kid. Just keep in mind how my father used to scare you," she said with a teasing smile.

"Your dad didn't scare me any more than he would have scared any bloke with sense, he had those horseman's hands, you know, but just a moment… what are you talking about?"

Miranda turned to face him and favored him with a sympathetic look, "Oh, Jake, it was obvious. They hardly ate any lunch, I'm sure their stomachs were all in knots. Hermione barely finished a sentence without getting a terribly distracted look on her face. Didn't you see how they kept looking at each other during lunch?"

"No." Really, he hadn't. He remembered Quidditch and feeling relief that Miranda had been off the mark for once. How did Miranda pick up on these things? He wondered if perhaps she wasn't just a little bit witch herself.

Miranda gave him a peck on the cheek to placate his recently demolished cheerful mood. "Be happy for Hermione, love. She's at a wonderful point in her life. You remember what those years were like, don't you?" Her smile then made him remember those years all the better.