Life settled into something that felt, for the first time in years, genuinely ordinary. Not the tense, held-breath kind of ordinary that comes between crises — the real kind, the kind you can actually live in.
Kevin went back to Hogwarts for the new term. Hermione went to the Ministry each morning. They both came home in the evenings. Somewhere along the way, without any formal discussion, the house had become the centre of gravity for everything else.
Kevin had converted the basement into a proper workshop. Lesson preparation happened there, and potions work, and the occasional experiment that Hermione had learned to identify by smell before she'd even reached the front door. He kept the catastrophic ones to weekends.
It was organised. Purposeful. Some of the breathless intensity of earlier years had quietened into something more settled — less like running and more like being somewhere. Kevin thought he preferred it.
Hermione was finding her footing at the Ministry, too. She was still junior staff, still learning the machinery of how things actually worked as opposed to how they were supposed to work, and the gap between those two things was frequently maddening. But she was good at it, and the people around her were beginning to understand that. Things would only improve from here.
Harry and Ron had finished their two-month Auror training intake and were officially on the department's books. Both were already pulling proper cases. The Auror office was well-stocked with old Order of the Phoenix faces — familiar ground for both of them. They'd fit in before the first week was out.
Draco had started following Lucius to learn the family business. He dropped by regularly, and there was no awkwardness in it anymore — they'd all come too far for that. Grindelwald, for his part, had apparently decided that semi-retirement at Malfoy Manor suited him well enough but that Hogwarts had better conversation, and so he turned up occasionally to inflict his opinions on Dumbledore, who received them with every appearance of pleasure.
The wizarding world moved. Dark wizards appeared, caused trouble, and were dealt with. That was Harry and Ron's problem now. Kevin found this arrangement extremely satisfying.
Christmas break arrived, and Kevin made the most of it.
He stopped by the Ministry first to collect Hermione for lunch, got thoroughly teased by her colleagues, and left feeling the visit had been worth it on those grounds alone. He swung past the Auror department to bother Harry and Ron, who threw him out with the practised efficiency of people who had done it before and expected to do it again. He'd held out a modest hope of being actually detained. No such luck.
Then he went to Malfoy Manor.
He and Draco spent a few hours catching up properly — not the quick check-ins that working life allowed, but the longer, easier kind that needed an afternoon and no agenda. On his way out, Kevin paused at the Manor's kitchen garden, where a basket of Draco's winter fruit had been left out on the stone bench.
He borrowed it.
The basket went to the Grangers', where Kevin arrived as a guest and set the washed fruit on the sitting room table with a generous gesture.
"From a friend," he said. "Apparently very good."
Mr. Granger inspected one dubiously. "Never seen this variety."
"Magical cultivar, I think. One of the orchard varieties."
They settled in together — Kevin, Mr. Granger, and Mrs. Granger — fruit on the table, television on, the comfortable domestic ritual of people who had been in each other's lives long enough to run out of formality. A film came on. Something romantic, by the looks of it. The hero overcame considerable odds, declared himself, and was rewarded accordingly.
Kevin watched the final scene and, with no particular plan, found himself saying: "Uncle. I've been thinking about getting married."
Mr. Granger looked up from the fruit in his hand. "About time. Anyone specific?"
"Of course there's someone specific."
"Well — is she good enough?"
Kevin looked at him. "She's extraordinary."
Mr. Granger considered this with the gravity of a man who took the subject seriously. He took another piece of fruit and turned it over in his fingers. "I'll need more than that. What's she like?"
"Brilliant. Determined. Infuriating when she's right, which is most of the time." Kevin paused. "She's a lot like your daughter, actually."
"Nobody's like my daughter," Mr. Granger said immediately, with the reflexive certainty of a man who had held that position for eighteen years and wasn't changing it.
"No. You're right." Kevin nodded. "She's not like Hermione. She is Hermione."
A beat.
Mr. Granger stared at the fruit in his hand.
Kevin watched him with the careful attention of someone reading the room very precisely.
"…So you want to marry my daughter."
"I do."
"And you're asking if I'd approve."
"I'm asking if I have your blessing."
Mr. Granger was quiet for a moment. He took a slow breath. Then something in him settled — a decision arriving that had, Kevin suspected, already been made years ago — and he put an arm around Kevin's shoulders with the warmth of a man who had just accepted something he was genuinely glad to accept.
"Yes," he said simply. "You have it. Without question."
Kevin let out a breath he hadn't fully realised he'd been holding.
"Now—" Mr. Granger brightened, leaning in conspiratorially — "do you need help with the proposal? I have some thoughts."
"I may take you up on that."
"You won't regret it. Dentist families understand each other — we'll all get on brilliantly."
Mrs. Granger, who had been following this exchange from the other sofa with an expression of someone watching a play whose ending she already knew, pressed her lips together very firmly.
"So when do I meet her?" Mr. Granger said, looking around. "You should bring her by—"
The front door opened.
"Mum! Dad! I'm — oh, Kevin, you're here too!"
Hermione walked in from the hallway, unwinding her scarf, cheeks still pink from the cold outside.
Kevin turned and pointed at her.
"There she is. What's your verdict?"
Hermione stopped. "…What?"
Mr. Granger looked at Kevin. Looked at Hermione. Looked back at Kevin.
The full shape of the afternoon's conversation assembled itself in his mind with painful, precise clarity.
Which dentist's daughter, exactly, were you asking about?
Mrs. Granger lost the battle she had been fighting with herself for the last ten minutes. She doubled over laughing — properly, helplessly, both hands on her thighs — and couldn't stop.
Mr. Granger sat very still, wearing the expression of a man in the process of full recalibration.
Kevin kept his face entirely neutral.
"…Kevin," Hermione said slowly.
"Yes?"
"What did you do to my father?"
"I had a very sincere conversation with him about a young woman I intend to marry. He gave his full blessing."
Mr. Granger said nothing. The recalibration continued.
"The fruit," Hermione said, looking at the basket on the table. "Kevin, what is that variety?"
"Draco's. Assorted basket. I didn't examine every piece."
"Draco rang me. He said you broke into his garden and stole his fruit. He specifically mentioned that the dark purple one ferments in the stomach and produces effects comparable to three glasses of wine in twenty minutes."
Kevin looked at Mr. Granger. Mr. Granger looked at Kevin.
"…Uncle," Kevin said carefully, "just so we're clear — everything I said this afternoon, I meant completely."
Mr. Granger was quiet for a long moment.
Then he straightened up, and something in his expression settled into a different kind of acceptance — clear-eyed, unhurried, and real.
"I know," he said. "So did I."
Mrs. Granger wiped her eyes, still shaking with laughter.
That night, Hermione curled into Kevin's side in the dark, the house quiet around them.
"You did that on purpose," she said.
"I did not orchestrate the fruit situation."
"You orchestrated something. You always do."
"I had a conversation with your father about my intentions. That part was entirely genuine."
She was quiet for a moment. Then, softly: "What did he say?"
"He said yes. Without hesitation."
She didn't answer straight away. But her grip around him tightened slightly, and she turned her face into his shoulder.
Kevin rested his chin on her hair.
"Tomorrow's Christmas," he said. "No work. We can sleep in."
Hermione went very still.
It was barely past ten. The room was warm and dark and quiet, and sleep in was doing quite a lot of work in that sentence.
She didn't say anything. After a moment, she found she didn't need to.