The building Sirius had bought was five storeys of perfectly ordinary London architecture that had been, until recently, a functioning apartment building. He'd converted one unit on the ground floor into a living space, left the rest as-is for now, and planned major renovations once Harry went back to school.
Harry stared at it from the pavement.
"The whole building?"
"Your godfather is very rich," Kevin said. "And compensating for twelve years of not being able to spend any of it."
Sirius, overhearing this, looked like he was going to say something and then decided Kevin wasn't wrong.
Harry picked the top floor — end unit, windows looking out over the street. He wanted Kevin and the others up there too. He was in the phase of happiness where good things felt best when shared.
Sirius claimed the ground floor without apology. Stairs were for people with something to prove.
The house-elf situation resolved itself.
Harry wrote to Dobby, who arrived the same afternoon and knocked on the door with the formal enthusiasm of someone who has been waiting for exactly this opportunity. He bowed so deeply his pillowcase hat brushed the step.
He charged eight Galleons a month. Kevin had suggested ten. Harry settled on eight. Dobby immediately offered to work for five. Harry said eight was the rate and that was final. Dobby looked so moved by this that he nearly cried, which was when Kevin decided to leave the room.
The Muggle summer had its own rhythm — technology moving faster than Harry had realised, streets full of noise and colour and things that weren't magic and somehow still managed to be interesting.
Kevin had shelved the Snape lessons for the summer. In their place he was working on something of his own: an enchantment designed to be cast directly onto the crowbar, layering solidification, lightening, and magical attribute augmentation into a single composite effect. The theoretical goal — a weapon that could parry curses by intercepting their energy on contact rather than countering them — was sound. The execution was taking time.
He was in the kitchen sketching runic structures when Hermione came in and settled on the sofa, book open in her lap. She leaned gradually further into his space over the following twenty minutes until she was comfortable against his shoulder.
He moved his notes to accommodate her without remarking on it.
She tucked her feet up.
This had become the ordinary geometry of their evenings.
An owl appeared at the window. Kevin waved and the letter drifted to him — wandless, silent.
To Kevin and Hermione — Harry's handwriting, notably improved. The new place was ready. Come whenever. Sirius said bring the tent if they liked.
"He wants us over," Kevin said.
"I know." She was reading over his shoulder. "Another week, like we said."
He wrote the reply. She went back to her book.
Kevin watched her scribble notes in the margins, hair loose, entirely at home, and thought that there was very little he needed to want beyond this general arrangement.
Then Hermione stretched — both arms, arching back with the unselfconscious ease of someone who'd forgotten anyone was watching. Her shirt rode up an inch.
Kevin reached over and poked the exposed skin.
"Ah —"
Hermione whipped around, grabbing his wrist. The hand was still there. Her fingers were around his wrist, not quite pulling him away.
"What was —" She looked at his expression and went immediately pink. "Kevin."
"I saw it," he said. The most honest answer available.
"That is not a reason."
"I know."
She still hadn't moved his hand.
He looked at her looking at his hand.
A pause that had no particular location on the spectrum between awkward and something else entirely.
"Does it actually hurt?" he asked. "Or were you about to pretend it does?"
She'd had a stomach ache for two days that she hadn't mentioned. The warmth of his hand was, inconveniently, helping.
"It's been a bit uncomfortable, actually," she said, very quietly.
Kevin moved without ceremony so she had more room, and kept his hand where it was, rubbing slow circles. She sat properly. The book ended up face-down on the table.
The letter to Harry got finished eventually. The last several lines were in Kevin's handwriting because Hermione had stopped being useful and had not explained why.
Harry, reading it later, would find the final paragraph almost entirely illegible and decide — wisely — not to ask.