Four years later…

The street was deserted, wet and slippery with ice and glowing an eerie shade of orange from the old lights as Hermione sprinted down the length of it. She skidded and slid, bending her knees and ankles this way and that, but she couldn't afford to stop now, not when she was so close.

A second set of steps fell in line with hers, echoing along the pavement like twin sets of heartbeats.

"Slow down, Hermione!"

"I… will not… slow down… Harry James Potter, and don't you dare suggest otherwise!" Hermione snapped. "Damn it, there isn't enough time! Where is he?"

"Maybe it hasn't even happened yet," Harry supplied as he slowed to a halt. He gripped her elbow and pulled her to an abrupt stop. He steadied her with his hands on her shoulders, his fingers manipulating the tense muscles there in a half-hearted massage. "After all, we haven't heard anything."

"All the more reason to find him now," Hermione retorted.

"Are you sure it was here?" Harry asked, drawing in deep, harsh breaths, as he gestured at their shadowed surroundings. "I mean, this looks like every other dark and deserted street to me."

"I'm certain of it," Hermione declared. "I recognise the Christmas decorations in the store fronts. It's definitely one of these alleys." She spun in a circle, then she heard it: a single Muggle gunshot pierced the air.

She and Harry exchanged a panicked look before taking off in the direction of the blast, each taking one side of the road.

"Please, please, please," Hermione breathed to herself over and over again. Her neck snapped to and fro with every alley she ran past, looking for some sign, anything at all, of the young man – shot and left for dead – that had appeared with the tears she had been warned about in her latest vision.

"Here, Hermione," Harry shouted from across the street. "He's over here."

She dashed across the road, narrowly avoiding one solitary car, and darted along the grimy alleyway to where Harry was standing, bent at the waist, above a prone, shaking body.

It was freezing down there. Icy wind kicked up a flurry of rubbish and stray raindrops. Hermione pulled her coat tight around her pyjamas – there had been no time to change after the vision had woken her in the dark, early hours of the morning.

She could still hear the thumping footsteps of the attacker as they dashed off.

"Go, Harry!" she yelled at him. "Go find the shooter!"

Harry wrapped a hand behind her neck and tugged her forward, pressed a firm, unyielding kiss to her lips. "Love you," he muttered, then sprinted in the direction of the fading footsteps.

Hermione fell to her knees at the grim sight that greeted her. He was younger than she had anticipated; maybe only seventeen or eighteen, with a bleeding gunshot wound on the right side of his belly. Blood seeped from the wound and pooled on the ground around him, blending into the black, glittering ground.

"Missed the stomach, thank goodness," she muttered to herself.

"W-who… are you?" the young man wheezed. He coughed, jerking his whole body forward to the sounds of another lurching moan. Hermione pushed him gently back to the ground with a hand on his shoulder and brushed a hand over his pale, sweaty brow.

"Someone who can help." Hermione shot him a reassuring smile. "Now, please lie still, and try not to talk."

She cast a non-verbal Lumos and held the wand high above the wound. Somewhere farther down the alley, countless critters scattered, afraid of the light.

Hermione ripped the young man's shirt up the side seam and away from the wound. She pulled her wand from its holster on her leg and muttered, "Reveali Vulnere." She surveyed the damage with calculating eyes, taking every inch of torn skin and wounded flesh. "We got here quickly enough, thank Merlin." She took the limp fingers of the young man's hand in hers and said, "Squeeze my free hand, this next part will hurt a little. Conflatile Tollere."

She held still as the young man cried out in pain when a tiny piece of metal burst forth from the wound, landing with a clink on the ground beside them. She pressed a wad of gauze procured from her satchel bag over the injury to stem the flow of blood while she readied for the next incantation.

"Caule Sanguinem."

The flow of blood ebbed to a halt.

"Reparatione Carni."

The damaged flesh began to knit itself back together.

She rummaged through her beaded bag for the small container filled with a dozen different vials, each containing a single dose of an individual potion. She plucked the pale blue from its slot and tossed the cork stopper down a nearby drain. She dimly registered the tiny splash it made as it fell to water.

"Here." She held the vial of Pain Relieving Potion to the young man's lips and slowly poured the contents down his throat. Relief coursed through her: she saved him. She could almost feel the weight of the Postea Visus curse lift off her. "This is all I can do for you for now. I can take you to a hospital where they will fix you up properly. There might be more internal injuries I can't treat here."

"Wait." The young man paused her movements with a hand on her arm. His grip was weak, but firm, much like his tone. "How did you know I was here? There wasn't another soul for miles."

She smiled apologetically at the young man and pressed a hand to the leather-bound journal in her coat pocket. She'd added to it over the years, stuffing it with torn pages and other random pieces of flotsam that might be of future use. She had done all she could with it. Now, it was time to pass it on. "There is much you need to know," she told him. "Later."

XXX

"Do you feel any different?"

Hermione sighed and rubbed at her tired eyes. Since they had arrived home to their shared flat at a little past four in the morning, after taking the young man to hospital and bringing the shooter to the Auror offices, Harry had been driving her spare with his incessant babying. He stood in front of her with his hands planted firmly on his narrow hips in a frighteningly accurate imitation of Molly Weasley.

"For the final time, Harry, no."

Harry tugged the blanket he had draped around her shoulders tighter, pulling it up to her chin and cocooning her before stepping back with a frown. "You'll need your hands free for the tea," he muttered. He plucked a pair of gloves from the coffee table and tossed them to her lap. "Put those on," he said before darting back to the kitchen.

"I'm not cold anymore," she muttered as she unwound the blanket from her body. She leapt up from the plush chair he had all but shoved her into when they returned home and stood at the doorway to the kitchen. Harry stood at the sink, his shoulders tense and body tight as he worked furiously to clean and rinse her favourite tea-cup. "I told you, Harry, I'm fine."

He dropped the cup and rounded on her with a fierce stare. "Are you absolutely certain? I know you'll disagree, but what just happened was pretty big. You've had that curse for years, Hermione."

"All I feel right now is complete and utter relief," she told him, sighing. "I don't have to worry anymore, Harry, and everything is a mystery again. It's a beautiful feeling."

Harry sighed and stepped forward to engulf her in his arms. "I'm happy for you," he said, his words muffled around a mouthful of hair. "Truly, I am."

"Thank you," she said, squeezing him just that little bit tighter. "Now will you stop fussing over me like an anxious mother hen?"

"What other opportunity will I ever have to do so?" he volleyed, letting her go and turning back to the sink. "Even when you're ill you tell me exactly what to do. How else am I ever supposed to feel like a proper boyfriend who takes care of you?

Her mind flashed for a moment to a vision she'd had not long after they'd left Hogwarts; of her and Harry together sometime she estimated to be about five years from then. She'd been pregnant with (she assumed) their first child, and Harry… she'd never seen Harry so doting. During the vision, his hands barely left the curve of her belly, moulding over the shape and stroking so reverently she'd wanted to cry.

"You'll have your opportunities," Hermione replied.

"I know that voice," he said, and she could hear the smirk in his tone. "You know something I don't."

"I know a lot of things you don't."

"Rude." Harry wiped his hands off on a floral towel and leaned back against the bench, his arms crossed. "So, now that you aren't burdened by the curse, are you still obligated to keep everything under wraps?"

She crossed her own arms and leaned against the doorframe, mirroring his stance. "It's been a good long while since I had those initial visions; it's hardly as though you have to wait much longer."

"Have you seen many come to fruition? Besides Ron getting that Howler back in our last year?"

She felt the tiniest bit guilty, even when she knew she shouldn't, when she admitted, "I knew you were going to lose the Quidditch cup that year to Hufflepuff."

His jaw dropped, and he clutched a hand over his heart. "And you didn't think to warn me?"

"What? It's not as though it would have changed anything."

"Well, aren't you a piece of work?"

"Harry!" She laughed and threw her mittens at him. He caught them out of the air and grinned at her. "I'm sorry I didn't tell you."

"No, you aren't."

"You're right. I'm not."

"So, any other bombshells you'd like to drop on me while I'm reassessing everything I thought I knew about this relationship?"

"I knew about Seamus and Pansy well before they knew about it themselves."

"Hmm."

"I also knew I would graduate top of the class from St. Mungo's Academy."

Harry scoffed. "Everyone knew that was going to happen. Anything else?"

Hermione sighed. "Do you remember, last week, when we saw Ginny and Ernie having tea at that new café in Diagon Alley?"

"Yes."

"I knew that was going to happen. And I know it'll progress, too."

"Anything big?" he questioned. Hermione wanted to laugh; Harry was as big a gossip as Lavender Brown. "Besides the random hook-ups of our friends?"

Hermione shrugged and took the dripping mug from the bench and dried it with the discarded towel. "Nothing terribly major," she said, and it was true. For how random the futures she was shown were, the ones she considered the biggest seemed strangely themed: her and Harry, moving through each stage of their lives together. She considered herself lucky, especially when she considered the potential for the curse to reveal something catastrophic.

"How dull."

She ducked around to the other side of the kitchen and reached up on the tips of her toes to put the cup back into its proper spot in the cupboard.

"I would never consider a curse like Postea Visus to be dull, Harry."

When she turned back to face him, Hermione gasped.

Harry was bent on one knee before her, his hands holding aloft a box containing a thin golden band, brightened by a single, solitary diamond.

Hermione tried to form words, but any capacity she had for speech was lost. Her knees buckled beneath her, and she latched a hand out to the bench to hold herself upright.

"I take it you didn't see this coming, then?"

"I…uh – no?"

"Good. I'd been worried about that."

"What are you… Harry?"

He smiled, indulgent. "Yes, Hermione?"

She swallowed the lump in her throat. "Is this what I think it is?"

He arched a wry brow. "If you have to ask, I think I'm doing something wrong."

"Well, you haven't even asked the question yet."

He grinned. "Hermione Granger, I've loved you since long before I even knew what it meant. You've been right there alongside me through every step of our journey, and I don't believe it's an exaggeration to say that I would not be alive without you. Would you allow me the honour of making you as happy for the rest of our years as you've made me? Marry me, please?"

"Why now?"

His grin dropped. "Why not now?"

"Because it's four in the morning, neither of us has had any sleep, we're standing in the middle of our tiny kitchen with only one working light." As if it heard her, the single light flickered.

Harry sighed, but he didn't get up. "Hermione, I always knew I was going to propose after you passed on the curse."

She gaped at him. "That could have taken years, Harry."

He shrugged. "A chance I was willing to take. Now, please, answer me, before this all gets very embarrassing for me."

Really, there was no other answer.

It was always going to happen this way.

Hermione all but threw herself at him, wrapping her arms around his neck and sending them both to the floor in a mad pile of laughs and kisses. Even with the weight of his proposal between them, there was no room for words at that moment.

Later, when they were lying in the centre of their kitchen, their clothes strewn about the room like bizarre decorations, covered in sweat and salt and each other, legs and fingers twined together until she had no way of telling where she ended and Harry began, Harry pressed his forehead into her temple and asked, "So, was that a yes?"

Hermione smiled and twisted to press a kiss to his bare chest before resting her head there. "That was always a yes."

AN: So, that only took me forever. Apologies for taking so long to add what ended up being a far shorter finish to this story than I had anticipated. In any case, I hope you enjoyed this little fluffy epilogue.

Regarding the spells Hermione used, I'm oping enough information can be inferred for you to know what they mean. If not, Google Translate is your friend.

I'm ally147writes on Tumblr if anyone wants to say hello.