They came home to the Grangers, which was where the word home kept resolving itself, and Mrs. Granger appeared at the door before the car stopped moving and had both of them inside before Kevin could finish a sentence about not wanting to impose.
"You're not imposing," Mrs. Granger said, in the tone of someone who has removed this word from the available options. "Sit down. I'm making tea."
Hermione sat and let herself be fussed over, which she did not always permit, and Kevin understood that the train attack — which they had not disclosed and had agreed not to disclose — was sitting in the room with them as a kind of absence. The Grangers could tell something had happened. They'd decided not to push.
Kevin made a note to be grateful for this.
After dinner, the Grangers on the sofa, Hermione demonstrating her year's academic progress to her mother in the indirect way of someone who is actually seeking approval while appearing to simply report facts, Mrs. Granger reached over and touched her daughter's hair.
"It's getting so long. Do you want it cut?"
Hermione touched it. Looked at Kevin.
"Suits you either way," Kevin said. "If it's a lot to manage, cut it. If you want a change without cutting — high ponytail." He paused. "You'd look like you're about to solve something extremely difficult."
"I'm always about to solve something extremely difficult," Hermione said.
"That's why it would suit you."
She turned to her mother with the expression of someone who has made a decision. "Can you show me?"
The ponytail took four minutes. When Hermione turned around it transformed her in the specific way that a change of style sometimes does — not a different person, but more fully herself, the one she was growing toward. Sharper. Brighter. Less apologising for taking up space.
Kevin looked at her.
She looked at him. "Well?"
"Told you," he said.
She was extremely pleased about this and showed it by being extremely composed about it, which he had learned was the same thing.
Kevin asked Mrs. Granger to teach him basic hair care. The request surprised her briefly and then made her very happy, and he learned quickly — he was good with his hands, and hair care was mostly geometry and attention — and by the end of the lesson Hermione had found herself at his mercy with a comb and was enjoying it far more than she intended.
He tried a braid. It was slightly experimental.
"Kevin —"
She chased him twice around the kitchen table. He let himself be caught on the third pass and submitted to a thorough rearrangement of everything he'd done, and the Grangers watched from the doorway with expressions they were not working very hard to control.
The orphanage visit happened two days later. Kevin had prepared for it over the preceding weeks — he took three bags of food, clothing that the director had identified as most needed, and an envelope that made Hope look at him with the specific expression that pride produces when it arrives unexpectedly.
Hermione came. She helped with the younger children, read to two of them simultaneously, corrected three of their maths problems without being asked, and at some point during the afternoon was found sitting in the kitchen with Director Hope while he told her stories about Kevin at seven years old.
Kevin arrived to find her holding her side from laughing.
He gathered the relevant stories for future deployment at the Grangers' house.
Christmas morning.
Kevin had slipped out and back before Hermione was fully awake, which required a certain amount of speed because Hermione woke up quickly and completely rather than gradually.
He came back through the kitchen door. She was already downstairs in her dressing gown, mid-yawn, holding a mug, looking at him with the expression of someone who is suspicious but doesn't yet know why.
He held up the cat.
Orange. Large. Broad-faced, with the look of an animal that has assessed every person it has ever met and found them acceptable on a provisional basis. It regarded Hermione with amber eyes.
She made a sound that was not a word.
She put down the mug. She took the cat. She pressed her face into its fur and made the same sound again, but more.
The cat sat in her arms with the composure of something that had expected to be held and found the experience adequate.
"I watched your dorm's cat for about a week last term," Kevin said. "You kept staring at it during breakfast."
"I was observing —"
"You were staring. You made small sounds." He kept his face neutral. "I know the difference."
She burrowed into him, cat held between them, and the cat — showing remarkable tolerance — allowed this.
"Name?" Kevin said.
"Crookshanks."
"Big Orange."
"Crookshanks."
"He doesn't look like a Crookshanks."
"He absolutely looks like a Crookshanks." She addressed the cat directly. "Crookshanks. Crookshanks. That's your name."
The cat looked at her. Then at Kevin. Then at the middle distance.
Kevin waited until she looked away, flicked his wand behind her back, and the cat said meow with the mild interest of something that has decided noise is appropriate to the situation.
"See?" Hermione turned, triumphant. "He knows his name."
"Clearly," Kevin said.
She had no reason to doubt the result. Crookshanks — it was going to be Crookshanks, Kevin had accepted this — was already completely at home, investigating the back of the sofa with the quiet authority of an animal that has decided this is its house now.
Kevin opened her gift.
A scarf. Deep blue wool, two white stripes running the length of it, the kind of careful work that takes many evenings and the willingness to start over when something doesn't sit right. He could see where she'd fixed a section two-thirds through — the tension was slightly different — and could imagine her noticing it and choosing to redo it rather than leave the flaw.
He turned it over. Ran his thumb along the edge.
"Hermione."
"It's nothing special," she said quickly. "I just — you wear the cloak and — I thought they'd — "
"It's perfect," he said.
She went quiet.
He put it on. The blue against the blue cloak, the white against his collar. The match was exact.
She looked at him from across the kitchen with the expression she wore when something had landed the way she'd hoped and she was trying to be composed about it. Crookshanks wound around her ankles, unaware of the moment.
Kevin took her hand. "Thank you."
She looked at their hands. At the bracelets, warm against their wrists.
"Merry Christmas, Kevin," she said quietly.
"Merry Christmas."
Outside, snow had started sometime in the night. The street was white and still. Inside the house next door that was theirs, the rooms they'd chosen were waiting — the furniture they'd picked together, the walls they'd argued about, the space that was being slowly and specifically inhabited by two people who were becoming, without fully deciding to, each other's home.
Crookshanks jumped onto the kitchen counter and knocked over Kevin's mug.
"Crookshanks!"
Kevin caught the mug.
The cat sat on the counter and looked at them both with the expression of an animal that has made its position very clear and expects to hear no complaints about it.
Kevin scratched behind its ears.
It purred.
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