Beta'd by ALRYM (id: 8427977). Make sure you check out their works.

Harry took a deep breath and tightened his arms about the beautiful witch in his arms.

"Hermione," He whispered softly, his voice heavy with resolve, "marry me."

Hermione's breathing froze for a moment before she rolled her shoulder backwards, pressing her naked back firmly against his chest and looking over her shoulder into his deep green eyes. They were even more distracting without his usual glasses but much easier to read.

"What?" She asked, so utterly dumbfounded at what she thought she heard that her brain couldn't even manage the vagaries of sensible speech.

"I said..." he paused, rolling his shoulder back as she had and leaning away from her body. Hermione watched as he raised his left arm and made an odd grasping motion at the air. After a moment of ruffling from inside the already open top drawer a small dark green velvet box lifted out and shot into his hand. Leaning back against her body and filling her with greater warmth than she'd already felt at his presence and as she wound down from the orgasm they'd shared only a few minutes earlier. "Marry me."

A pulse of magic popped the top of the velvet box open and Hermione gasped at the glint of morning sunlight catching off the average-sized, yet gloriously magical green stone in the pale platinum ring.

"Why?"

Harry smiled at her as he snuggled in tight to her once more. "When was the last time either one of us slept alone." He paused once more to plant soft kisses along her shoulder, moving up her collarbone as she unconsciously rolled forward again to allow him tighter against her, and let his lips shift higher. "We have nigh on romantic dinners together out on the town, just the two of us, every Tuesday and Friday night. Sundays are spent with your parents as you catch up with Helen while Richard and I watch the recorded matches from the week gone by."

Hermione felt her heart stutter at the soft kisses and breathy words cascading over her flushed skin combining with the images in her mind of the sheer domesticity their friendship had taken up.

"We've been dating for four and a half years now, in all but name. I know beyond all doubt that I love you with all my heart. I love your family, who have accepted me completely, without reservation or judgement. You spend more time wrapped in my arms here in bed than we do you do at the Ministry most weeks. You have more clothing in the chest of drawers over there in the corner of my bedroom than I do."

Hermione turned her head to catch the lips that had reached her cheek with her own, entangling Harry in a warm and passionate kiss. Everything he was saying was true. They were dating, hell they were living together. Her flat was an idea more than a place she stayed anymore. On the long weeks where he had to go away, she would invite Luna over and the two would 'house-sit' for him as she bundled herself up in whatever shirt or jumper smelled most of Harry that week to help alleviate just how badly she missed his arms around her.

Harry broke the kiss and Hermione felt her breath catch as she opened her eyes again and saw his own, now dangerously close to her. The only things visible, Harry's smiling earnest face, and the shimmering gem perched atop the engagement ring in his left hand.

"Our lives are already intertwined in every other way that matters. Do me the immense honour of allowing me to take your beautiful hand in marriage. Let's be Potters together and start working on making a new generation to pass our love onto as well."

Hermione could feel the heavy tears of joy building in the corners of her eyes. When most girls imagined a proposal it was something fancy. A candle or moonlit dinner. Music playing as you stared lovingly into one another's eyes. The man down on one knee. Yet here she was, naked as the day she was born, still sticky between her thighs from their recent lovemaking and thoroughly enjoying pressing her firm bum into the rising turgid form of Harry. And realized this blew away any overplanned proposal by miles.

The man she loved, and had done for years now, was baring his soul to her in the most intimate place he could. They were as open to one another now as they had ever been. The picture of their life had been on the verge of completion for so long now that it was only stubborn blindness that had kept them from falling over this final hurdle and becoming one forever.

Harry's eyes shimmered as he looked down on her with his own love shining from within. Hermione accepted the truth in her heart. She had everything she had ever wanted in this life, except for that beautiful ring adorning her finger.

"Yes." Hermione bit her lip and felt a surge in Harry's length between her bum cheeks, causing her to shudder in pleasure at how such a simple nervous tick could affect him so. "I will marry you, Harry."

He kissed her again, fiercely taking her lips with his own. They had shared many passionate embraces over the years and it only now became clear to Hermione that they had been fueled by the deepest love she'd ever known. She felt a tremor against her left hand and when the kiss broke apart, she found her hand clutched gently in Harry's, the velvet box no longer anywhere in sight.

Instead, in its place was her own pale fingers, shining in the morning light and looking divine wrapped in the warm platinum embrace of her engagement ring. Hermione recognized it better now it was free of its confines. Harry had shown it to her years earlier when they had been sorting through his parents' effects. His mother's wedding ring had become her engagement ring. To wear from now until the day they passed together from this world, where it would then adorn her heart for all time.

Hermione tore her eyes from the sight and rolled her body once more, this time moving so that she was laying fully atop her fiance. Her breasts mushed heavily into his own heaving chest as they shared themselves via the lips once again. Unveiled love at long last being shared equally back and forth between the two.

As she pulled back once more to catch her shallow and rapid breaths, Hermione felt the question leaving her unbidden. "Why today, Harry?"

Harry returned her gaze with his brightest smile. "New years are supposed to be about change. Bringing something new to your life. And yet when I looked back on mine, I realized that there wasn't a single thing I wanted to change about it. I love my work. I live with the most amazing woman on the face of the earth and love her with every fibre of my being. The only thing missing from my life was this," he gently fingered the ring that already felt at home on her hand. "Hindsight is supposedly twenty-twenty, but looking back on life the only thing I needed going forward in mine was you."

Hermione was lost in his gaze as she explored his very soul through his eyes and knew what he said was true. It had been a very long time since either one of them had been able to keep the truth about anything of consequence from the other. It was hard enough keep Christmas and birthday presents a secret. Her heart hammered away in her chest and she rolled her body fully over so she was now laying flush atop her future husband, her hardened nipples pressing into his firm chest. With a movement perfected by a lot of delightful practice, she captured his pulsing length, welcoming it back once more into her own warm sheath.

Her eyes remained locked firmly on his as Harry's hands began to travel her skin, lighting an even brighter fire in her with every inch they covered. Her entire body was receptive to him these days. He could quite literally play her body like an instrument, drawing just the right moan or keening shudder from her to play music.

The more she considered their situation the more certain she became that Harry was right. They were married in all but name. And had been so for years now. This was the only step forward they could take beside the one she hoped to accomplish next.

Feeling his solid form within her had always sent Hermione into the highest of pleasures and she was riding him now for all she was worth. The amount of movement she could coax out between them while maintaining almost complete skin contact with him was unbelievable, except that they had done just that time and time again, together.

Harry cupped two cheeks at either end of her body as he drew her slowly down to meet his lips once more. The tenderness of the kiss equal to the slow, languid movement of their hips as they shared their love as physically as a couple were humanly able. The last blinder had fallen away and if anything, this sex was better than any they had shared before. This time, they were both fully aware of the deep love that guided their every movement.

Hermione broke the kiss as she arched upwards, pressing her soft belly and chest hard against Harry as intense pleasure spread from her nether regions. A constant stream of blissful shudders travelled up and down her spine leaving her entire body, every millimetre of skin not being pressed against Harry's own tingling with something more amazing than any magic she'd felt before.

She was rapidly reaching her peak, despite the slow pace, and knew this was going to be one for the ages. Familiarity with her fiance informed her that the twitching member inside of her was also nearing its apex. Hermione keened, biting down on her well-abused lower lip as she recalled that she was at her most fertile time of the month. That was why Harry had not finished in her the night before, but this morning, she wanted nothing more than for him to do so today.

"Inside, Harry." She whimpered, locking eyes with him once more. "Let's get started on that new generation today too."

The hand of her face slipped into her wild hair as she felt them both slide over the edge of that abyss together and the sounds of their combined orgasms filled the room, just as he was now willing her womb.

Hermione understood true bliss at that moment. It was fact to her now that while sex didn't need emotion to be fun, it most assuredly took it to a whole other level when present. She had never climaxed like this before in her life. Simply acknowledging the hidden love she had probably always harboured for Harry had elevated this beyond anything she had experienced in her life.

It was several long and blissful minutes before either one was coherent enough to speak.

"My body feels so alive, I don't want to move," Harry whispered into her ear.

"Mmmm, me either. That was…"

"Magical." Harry chuckled softly, his arms trailing slow paths up and down her back, leaving tingling gooseflesh in their wake.

Hermione finally loosened her grip on his solid shoulders and turned her head to snuggle deeper into his throat. The many times she had finished atop him and lacked the power to move had let her know Harry was more than capable of supporting her weight like this for a good hour or so. Once they had even fallen asleep in this position and woken hours later still held in his solid embrace.

"How did we not notice, Harry? Seven years we've been doing this." Her voice was muffled against the skin of his throat, his racing pulse slowing under her lips as they panted their way down from the tips of the mountain they had climbed together.

"Maybe we did. I've not looked at another woman this way since the first time we were together. I've always felt at home in your arms. And coming home from a few days away to find you sleeping on my bed covers wrapped in my fluffiest jumper has always warmed my heart more than I could possibly put to words." Harry paused as his hand buried once more in her hair, pressing her firmly against himself and he breathed the scent of her deeply. "Just the smell of you is comforting. Your presence brings me peace. I think we noticed, we just weren't ready to admit it to ourselves yet."

Hermione nodded against his skin, her mind telling her that she felt the same about everything he had said. Her hugs had started as a way to comfort Harry but had grown to be something she craved. And now she would find any excuse to hold him to her. And his scent was enough to throw off the yoke of a horrible day at work. Harry was home for her, and he had been for more than a decade now. This morning's events were simply the logical next step in the lives of Harry and Hermione, for they had been that for so long now it was an immutable fact of the universe.

She allowed her mind to freely drift among her thoughts, viewing them all through the newly polished lens of their revealed feelings. Every scene brought a smile to her face.

"Mmmmm," she cuddled as tightly against Harry as she could, once more thinking that her short time as a catgirl had left more cattish traits in her than she initially believed, "I'm going to sleep now. But I want to wake up like this for the rest of my life."

"As do I," he replied, somehow managing to get the loose sheet by their feet up over their naked entwined form. "Sleep well, my love. I'll be here when you wake."

Hermione let herself drift into sleep, knowing that her true life had just begun and she would cherish every moment of it in the arms of her fiance.