The horror film was someone's idea. Kevin suspected it was his.
The living room was dark. The television, an old one that Hermione's parents had passed on, was doing its job very effectively on a thirteen-year-old witch who had fought a troll and could cast a corporeal Patronus.
Hermione was coiled in a blanket on the sofa, pressed against Kevin's side, watching through her fingers with the expression of someone who absolutely intended to see the ending and was also absolutely terrified.
Kevin, for his part, had not been watching the film for some time. The warmth beside him was considerably more interesting.
On screen, the tension built — the particular mounting dread of old horror scores, all strings and creaking doors. Kevin waited for it, let it crest, and at precisely the right moment leaned in and breathed softly against her neck.
She came straight off the sofa.
Then she turned around and saw his face.
She launched herself at him. He caught her arms but she'd already got his shoulder — biting down with the concentrated fury of someone who has been scared twice in thirty seconds and has identified a culprit.
"Ow — Hermione — I give —"
She didn't give. She bit harder.
"Complete surrender. You win. Everything. Unconditionally."
She released him. Stepped back. Looked at her work — teeth marks along his shoulder and neck, visible even in the dim light.
"That," she said, "is what you get."
"Absolutely fair," he agreed, which she found almost as infuriating as the original offence.
She threw the blanket at his face and stood up.
The hallway beyond the living room door was dark. The film had done its job thoroughly, and the darkness suddenly had dimensions it hadn't had an hour ago.
"If you can't sleep," Kevin said, from behind the blanket, "you know where I am."
"In your dreams," she said, and squared her shoulders and walked to the staircase.
Twenty minutes later: lightning.
The flash came first — the bedroom window white for one second.
Then the thunder, rolling and structural, rattling the glass in its frame.
Hermione's door opened.
Four steps across the hall. One knock. She opened Kevin's door.
He was awake. He'd heard her the moment her door moved.
She was holding a pillow in both arms and wearing the expression of someone who had a completely compelling reason for being here that would become clear shortly.
"Kevin." Her voice was quiet. "I can't sleep alone."
He sat up and patted the bed.
Her face went through several things at once.
A second thunderclap sent her across the room.
He moved over. She got in. He pulled the covers over both of them and put his arm around her, rubbing her back slowly — the way you'd calm a much younger person, which was simultaneously slightly patronising and profoundly effective.
"This is your fault," she said, into his shoulder.
"I know."
"You frightened me twice deliberately."
"Yes."
"Kevin."
"Shh." He kept rubbing her back. "It's just weather."
She was still trembling slightly. He held her closer.
"Silly," she said, meaning herself.
"Not particularly," he said.
The storm went on outside. She listened to it becoming quieter in the context of his presence, the warmth under the covers, the sound of rain that was just rain when you weren't alone with it.
Plan worked, she thought, drifting.
The horror film had been entirely deliberate. She'd chosen it specifically. The plan had worked exactly as intended.
Kevin, stroking her hair and listening to her breathing slow into sleep, had no idea.
Morning. Grey light through the curtains.
Something in his arms was waking up. He felt it — the small shift, the held stillness of someone who had been conscious for a moment and was deciding.
He kept his eyes closed.
A soft press against his cheek. Brief. Gentle. The same quality as her first Christmas kiss — entirely sincere, entirely unguarded, and followed immediately by the return to careful stillness.
He lay there for a count of ten.
Then he opened his eyes.
Her face, inches from his. Her lashes moving in the specific way of someone working very hard at pretending.
He leaned in and kissed her forehead.
The stillness broke. Her cheeks flooded with colour. She kept her eyes closed for three more seconds, then opened them.
"Morning," he said.
"Morning," she said, to the space just past his ear.
They got up without ceremony. She took her pillow back across the hall. The morning was quiet, ordinary, and entirely changed.
Kevin touched his cheek, where she'd kissed him.
He did not, he decided, have any intention of washing that side of his face.
In her room, Hermione sat on the edge of her bed and pressed a hand to her forehead — where he'd kissed her — and the smile that came refused to be reasoned away.
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