Vox Corpis [Harmione]

Chapter 10

If he could distill the whole of his summer to this, Harry thought, it could possibly be the best summer he'd ever had.

Harry was lying on his back on the floor of Hermione's bedroom. His fingers were interlaced behind his head, his ankles crossed… he lay as one might outdoors under a pale sky soaking up the sun. He just happened to be in his best friend's room. Hermione was sitting Indian-style atop her pink bedspread, sorting through muggle mail that had come for her while she was at Hogwarts but that hadn't been important enough to forward on by owl. The house was astoundingly quiet; Hermione's parents had both left for work that morning. Harry wasn't used to such peaceful stillness. Aunt Petunia didn't work so she was always at the house on Privet Drive, and usually when Harry was there Dudley was, too, and peace and quiet would run screaming bloody murder at the sight of Dudley Dursley. Throw in Uncle Vernon's thundering, blustering presence and Harry lived in a veritable cacophony of ugly noise, a din he was so accustomed to that he'd never noticed the anarchy of sound. Then, at Hogwarts, there were always other students in the same classroom, in the same dorm, at the same table at meals, even communal loos. There was no true solitude. Even at the Weasley home it was like a family-size train station of activity, enjoyable but still busy. When Jake and Miranda left that morning and it was just Harry and Hermione an enormous silence fell over the house.

Harry didn't know it could be that quiet without it also being a bad sign. In Harry's experience, it got very, very quiet before really bad things happened, but that wasn't the quality of this silence. It was like the house dozed off when the owners left, content and secure, and Harry thought it very much like a breath of fresh air he'd never known he wanted, didn't suspect could exist. There was also a kind of release of an underlying knot of tension when Jake and Miranda were gone. He felt calmer, better able to breathe, to relax, to finally stop worrying what he might do wrong. It was just him and Hermione and that was what he'd been longing for since King's Cross.

Hermione had mentioned her mail and Harry had just tagged along without asking. Hermione didn't question him following her around the house, right into her bedroom. While Hermione gathered her stack of letters and crawled up on to her bed Harry had wandered around her room, taking it in with his eyes and occasional questing fingertips. The room was very Hermione. A queen-sized bed with a fluffy pink comforter took up the lion's share of the room. Her walls were lined with shelves that had been put up to accommodate the rows of books. Not a surprise in the least. She had a desk with parchment, quills, and stacked books on it. It looked as though she'd last studied on it yesterday rather than before the beginning of term. Harry had stopped at the only aesthetic adornment in the room, a painting on the wall of a commanding, bearded man and a young, beautiful brown-haired woman in a dark forest. The woman huddled close to the older man's side, as though sheltering in the brace of his form. The artistry was very elegant and detailed, clearly lovingly rendered. It looked like an art museum piece, or maybe like one of the portraits in Hogwarts just waiting to begin moving. It also looked as though it meant something more than just a nameless man and nameless woman. It had made him look to Hermione in question. "It's Prospero and Miranda from The Tempest," Hermione said then smiled to herself in private amusement. "It used to be my mother's, her father's before that. Suppose you could call it an heirloom."

Harry supposed the duck of her head suggested a painting for an heirloom should have been silly, but it seemed perfectly suitable to him. Without so much as a flick of the eyes to pass judgment on her family treasure, Harry left the painting and stretched out on the floor much as he'd lain beneath the tree beside the Black Lake at Hogwarts.

He'd been lying there for half an hour in complete silence. Hermione went through her mail on the bed, unrushed and methodical. Harry listened to the sound of tearing envelopes, folding papers, smoothed creases, sorted piles. It was oddly hypnotic and soothing. He started at the ceiling, perfectly happy to lie on her floor all day while she settled back into her home life.