Hermione lay in bed that night, staring upward in the dark direction of the ceiling, and try as she might she could not sleep. She might not be a little kid anymore, but she was still finding it unbelievably difficult to sleep on the night of Christmas Eve. In a way it felt like this Christmas, more than any other, was titillating. It wasn't that she was overly eager to learn what presents she'd received. That wasn't it.

Maybe it was the fact that, since third year when she discovered she had a crush on Harry, she'd had this fantasy about what would constitute a perfect Christmas. A fantasy she knew full well was just the notion of a silly girl; they would never come true, but it was fun to imagine. This was dangerously close to those Christmases in her daydreams. Close enough, anyway. Uncle Ben wasn't going to be present, and her grandfather would never celebrate any more Christmases with them, but Harry was with her, with her family. He was her boyfriend sharing Christmas with her and her family. It was closer to her dreams than anything had right to be in their world as of late.

Hermione rolled over and glanced at her clock. The digital read-out glowed '1:13'. Hermione huffed and turned on her back again, giving the staring into darkness method another try. It was no good. She wasn't the slightest bit sleepy.

She decided a cup of hot cider might be in order, or at least would be worth a try. With that decided she threw off her covers and got out of bed. She crossed the room and carefully opened her bedroom door, peeking out into the hallway. Her parents' and grandmother's bedroom doors were shut, and nary a sound issued forth to suggest her excursion was apt to wake them. At the other end of the hallway Hermione saw the flickering warm glow that would be from the Christmas tree lights twinkling festively. She frowned at that. She was sure they'd turned the lights off when everyone went to bed; Miranda was concerned the lights would keep Harry awake.

Silent as a cat on the hunt, Hermione tip-toed down the hall toward the light. When she came around the hallway wall to a point where she could see into the living room, she drew up short. She had a good view of the couch where Harry was sleeping. Or should have been sleeping, but he wasn't. He was sitting up on the couch, blanket draped over his shoulders, arms hooked around his crooked legs, as he stared at the tree. The lights reflected off the surface of his glasses in a dazzling miniature of the festooned tree even as it lit his face with a gentle, shimmering hue.

Harry looked miles away, as one gazing into a fire loses focus so easily, then he seemed to sense he was no longer alone. He turned his head slightly in her direction and smiled faintly. "Hi."

Hermione stepped out into the living room, no longer in prowling mode. "Hi. Shouldn't you be asleep?"

"Shouldn't you?" he countered in gentle teasing.

"I couldn't sleep; thought I'd try having a cup of hot cider. What are you doing?"

Harry turned his eyes back to the tree. "Just looking."

That struck Hermione as slightly peculiar, though in their world of trolls, ghosts, and dragons not overly so. Harry glanced back toward her, seemed to consider her a moment, then wordlessly held out one arm, opening a space within the blanket that he wore about his shoulders like a cloak.

They were fluent enough in their own unspoken language that Hermione didn't have to inquire after his meaning. Hot cider forgotten, she padded over to the couch, snuggled into the space within his arm, and quickly found her place at his side. It took them so little time to fit together these days, like there was a natural place for the other, puzzle pieces that connected together just right. Harry brought his arm around her, wrapped them both in his blanket, and Hermione nestled down and rested her head on his shoulder. Perfect contentment, her harbor from all that the world might put in her path. She found herself staring at the tree in the night-shrouded house. Definitely the natural setting to see the wonder of the Christmas tree.

"Pretty, isn't it?" she commented softly.

"Yeah." Harry tugged her closer and tilted his head to rest his cheek against the top of her head. "When I was little, I used to sneak out of my cupboard at Christmas while the Dursleys were asleep and just stare at the tree."

The calm peace of the night fled when his words registered. Hermione's brain screeched to a stuttering halt, her lungs hitched, her skin prickled with cold dread. Hermione tensed and sat up to look at Harry. He was watching her, confused by her sudden change in demeanor. "Your what?"

Harry's expression tensed at once. He'd not meant to say what he did, she could tell by looking at him.

But neither was he fit to ignore her question. He sighed, resigned, as he said, "I didn't have a bedroom at Privet Drive until I was twelve. Before that they kept me in a cupboard under the stairs."

Her heart broke. Her heart raged. She knew her mouth was agape and her eyes unblinking as she tried to wrap her head around Harry's confession. How anyone could be so cruel to the one she loved so dearly... it was unspeakable, unthinkable. Harry was an amazing, caring, loyal person, and he'd been treated like a vile criminal, a monster. If the Dursleys were magical, she'd ask that they be sent to Azkaban for the injustices they'd so callously heaped on Harry. With Harry's fame in the wizarding world, it just might happen. If the wizarding world knew how their icon of triumph over evil had been treated... whether he liked it or not, Harry was important to a lot of people he'd never even met. Their world wouldn't stand for it, but in the muggle world no one did a thing to help a kind-hearted, neglected little boy locked away in a cupboard like an unwanted stray dog.

"Harry... I... I never knew," she whispered. How bad had it been? She thought she'd known most of the sordid details about Harry's upbringing. She'd not known this. What else didn't she know? How much worse was it than she suspected?

Harry's lips pursed. "I never told you. I never told anyone. It doesn't matter, Hermione."

"It matters," she replied.

"Why?" he asked her in a wearied voice. She could hear how much he wanted it to not matter. She wished it was that easy, for his sake. She'd give anything to just brush it all away like a fine layer of dust on a countertop. Would that a person could be put to rights so easily.

"Because it's wrong."

"I know it is. Now. But that doesn't change what happened." Harry averted his eyes and his voice turned... morose, almost on the edge of pained. "You knew I was damaged goods before you ever met me." He said it like a plea, a means to ask 'how can you still be surprised by anything bad about me?', and in the silence that followed, a clear fear 'will you abandon me, too, when you know more?'

Hermione reached out and ran her hand over the back of his neck. Harry took in a breath, despite himself, even as he continued to look anywhere but at her. "I'm so sorry you had to grow up with that wretched family. You deserve better. It's not fair that you had to grow up there just because your parents were brave enough to defy Voldemort, to fight him. There are so many witches and wizards our age who never lost their families because their parents let someone else fight for them, and it's not fair to you. But never think the way I feel about you would change no matter what you might have hidden in your past. That doesn't matter, not to me."

Harry finally looked her in the eye again... and smiled thinly. "Thank you."

Hermione returned to her place tucked into his side, sliding her arm around his stomach to hold him in a partial hug. Harry looped his arm over her back again. "Maybe one day you'll know everything..." he said faintly.

If her heart could take it, she thought, but instead of saying that she gave his middle a squeeze, because in his voice it was obvious he was scared by the idea. "Whether I do or not it won't change us, I promise you that. Your present and future are more than enough for me."

Hermione shifted to get comfortable snuggled up against him when she noticed he'd gone still... notably still. She frowned, puzzled and a little worried, and she lifted her head just enough to peer up at his face. He looked... stymied, maybe on the road to consternated. "Harry... what is it?"

He shook his head in distraction. "What you said... can I ask you something, Mione?"

"Of course."

"It's about... divination."

Hermione couldn't help her face scrunching up. First off, she had not expected such a seemingly drastic jump in topic, and second... well, it was divination, and she had no love lost for the subject. Something Harry knew perfectly well, which only made his question put to her on the topic all the stranger. "Oh. All right," she said tentatively, "What's your question? But mind you I'm not really much of an expert on it."

Harry looked fairly distracted by his thoughts as he mulled over how to go about asking her what was on his mind. "Have you ever heard of the Draught of the Foreknowing?"

If this was going to be about research, she might be able to do a fair job answering his question after all. "Yes. It's an herbal potion with elements of centaur magic. Supposedly drinking the Draught of the Foreknowing allows a witch or wizard to glimpse the future. It's generally relegated to vagabond witchcraft, witches and wizards who fashion themselves after the gypsies. Carnival stuff, though the draught's considered to be ineffective on muggles and even squibs so it's really employed more for fleecing hapless muggles than true wizardry.

"Most authorities doubt that it even works. The theory is that it's more hallucination than divination. Even among those who profess its authenticity, it's admittedly limited in what it can do. It's said drinking the Draught of the Foreknowing only permits a look into the future of the individual who drinks it." Hermione paused to ponder his question further. "Why do you ask?"

"I drank some of it."

Hermione's eyes widened. "When?"

"In Trelawney's class last term."

Hermione was fuming in a split second. "That woman gave you a hallucinogen? I can't believe it! Did Dumbledore know she was passing out mind-altering substances?"

"I think he did, but she said she had to get special permission to use it on us."

"Of all the irresponsible, hair-brained..." Hermione seethed. If there was any question about the ethical standing or application of a potion, it should not be handed out to students. And for the sake of Divination, which was a ridiculous class to begin with... it rankled her sensibilities well and wholly. At least the touchier potions Snape had them brew were proven, ministry-accepted potions, and taught by an undeniable expert in the field (git though Snape might be as a person). Trelawney wasn't fit to hand out leaflets on the street corner, much less Draught of the Foreknowing.

Harry interrupted her thoughts by asking, "So you don't think there's any way to possibly tell the future?"

Oh, what an ambiguous question. Might as well ask her about the existence of a supreme being while he was tossing around the big ones. Hermione pinched her lips and frowned in thought. "Well, it would be incredibly close-minded of me to say with certainty that there's no possible way to tell the future. I honestly don't know. The whole field of divination is just so... unsubstantiated. It can't be tested or proven one way or the other, really. Personally, I wouldn't put much faith in anything that came from that field of witchcraft and wizardry."

Harry looked oddly... downtrodden at that, though Hermione didn't have much time to think on why that might be. "Oh... But what about the things people see when they say they're seeing the future?"

"Well... some opponents of divination believe that it's just the seer's mind coming up with the things they see in their 'visions'. A lot of the methods in divination aim at altering the way the brain perceives the world, and many believe that in such a state the seer may actually be projecting their own desires for the future... or their fears. Those are what are interpreted as visions of the future, or the present in the case of clairvoyance, when really it's just the seer's heightened imagination.

"As to those predictions that appear to come true... well, the conservative school of thought on that is that if a part of you expects something to happen it might influence your actions toward that very end, so it doeshappen, but only because you made it happen."

"I guess that makes sense," Harry mused, but he looked... almost out of sorts. Hermione frowned closely at him. "What is it, Harry?" Then it struck her. "Did you see something when you drank the Draught of the Foreknowing?"

Harry nodded silently.

Hermione was thoroughly curious now (and also rather surprised at the admission; truthfully she wouldn't expect drinking Trelawney's potion to result in anything more fantastical than a splitting headache). "What did you see?"

"You."

That wasn't quite as earth-shattering as she'd secretly hoped to hear. "Oh, well, that's a perfect case in point for what I was saying. I mean, how hard would it be to figure out that you and I would be together in the future, be it as friends or otherwise? We've been a part of each other's lives since first year, and I don't think it's making any great predictions to say we'll be a part of each other's lives in the future."

Harry didn't respond to that. He sat perfectly still, like a marble statue for how unmoving he'd become, and Hermione started to worry. She peered closer at him in the subdued lighting and could swear he'd paled. In fact, he looked a bit like he was about to be sick.

"Harry?" she reached out and touched his forearm, hoping to bring him back from his ruminations and get him to react to her.

Harry licked his lips nervously, took a steeling breath, and said in a measured, tense voice, "I saw... something else, too."

"What was it?" Hermione unconsciously leaned in closer to him, as though he were going to whisper a secret in her ear.

Harry's eyes flicked briefly to her face then he looked quickly away. "I saw a... baby."

"Oh," Hermione replied absently, then a second later it sank in. Then it floored her. Her eyes went wide. "Oh!" Before she could school herself not to withdraw, she took her hand from Harry's arm.

Harry worried a loose thread on the blanket with his fingers just to have someplace to focus his nervous energy... and to keep his eyes off of her. His voice was barely above a whisper when he ventured, "Do you think I was just... seeing what I wanted to see?"

"I... is that what you want?" Part of her didn't want him to answer. She almost couldn't take it all in. Her heart was racing at the same breakneck speed as her thoughts. How in the world had idle conversation about pretty Christmas trees turned into this?

As Hermione sat there and ran furiously through her thought processes, she looked at Harry as though seeing him for the first time, and in a way, she was. She was seeing him in a way that she never had before. She was looking at him as a father.

Harry abruptly let the thread on the blanket alone and raked his fingers through his dark hair, agitated and jittery. Hermione could feel the tension radiating off of him, the same way he braced when he saw a Dementor (she knew because she'd been by his side when the Azkaban guards showed up on more than one occasion). He risked a sidelong look at her as he winced and said, "Please don't freak out, Hermione, but... yeah, maybe."

Hermione sat back in shock. She was in overdrive. She had to break it down. Yeah, maybe Harry wanted to have children. If she stuck to her personal views on divination, that it came from the wizard's subconscious rather than any real ability to predict the future, then some part of Harry wanted them to have children. Then the deluge. Thoughts and fears and hopes and uncertainties flew at her from all directions and all at once. Without realizing it, she backed away from Harry under the onslaught. Motherhood. She'd never thought about it. Before Harry kissed her in the common room, she'd never let herself dare to believe that she might one day have the romantic kind of love, to say nothing about children. One needed to work up to the idea of starting a family; she felt like she'd been shoved into the exam room starkers without a clue what the test covered. Even if she had thought about having kids some day, it would have been in the extreme abstract. Harry wasn't talking abstractly.

So it was down to a question of how she felt to what he felt.

Did she want to have children? She couldn't honestly say, not yet. She needed time to think on it. She needed time to think a lot on it.

Did she want to have Harry's children? There was no way she could deal with that, just no way, it was too recently sprung on her.

But she knew she wouldn't want to have anyone else's children.

Hermione's hand flew to her mouth as she choked on a gasp. Merlin! Where had that come from? And why, why did it ring so true the moment the thought came to her? What did her subconscious know that the rest of her didn't?

Harry was watching her in mounting panic. "Pleasedon't freak out. I'm sorry I brought it up."

That snapped Hermione out of her whirlwind thoughts. Harry looked fit to have a seizure with anxiety as he saw her pull away. She forced herself to act calm and stop retreating from him. "No, no... it's... you just... surprised me."

Harry looked ready to bolt. "I didn't mean to. Can we forget I said that?"

Hermione reflexively took his hand in her own. That, at least, still felt natural and right (even if his palm was clammy), no matter how colossally awkward everything else had become in a half-second. "I... I don't want to pretend you didn't say it. If that's how you feel... Harry... I'm not upset, I just... I wasn't expecting you to... I'm still processing here." Understatement of the millennium, but Harry seemed to relax marginally when she spoke calmly to him and touched him. He wouldn't figure she'd take his hand if she was flipping out, so he waited and watched cautiously.

Hermione took what time he gave her. He gave her what seemed a good ten minutes just sitting there on the couch with neither of them saying a word. Hermione continued to hold his hand, because in the back of her mind she worried he'd up and run if she wasn't holding on to him.

Finally, she felt she had some semblance of her wits about her. She took a deep breath, collected her thoughts, and turned her eyes up to Harry. He was studying her like she might erupt without warning, or maybe bite him if he didn't keep an eye on her. She managed a feeble smile and chewed on her bottom lip. "So... you drank the Draught of the Foreknowing and saw us having a baby." It helped to parse it down to facts. It was nearer to textbook that way.

Harry gave a careful nod, never once taking his eyes off her.

"When exactly did this happen?"

"The day I kissed you."