A/N: Midterms just ended. I've been putfing off posting this because the story is too close to me. I wish I have a Harry.

TW: Faces and phases of Depression.

Icarus should have waited for nightfall; the moon would have never let him go.

It's been two months and eight days.

Two months and eight days since Harry James Potter found Hermione Jean Granger, his best friend, alone in her room, in her flat, lying on her bed, and staring blankly at the ceiling.

He felt crushed, watching her.

He didn't see it coming.

Nobody did.

Hermione is a strong and powerful witch who always had a smile reserved for anyone, even if some did not deserve her smiles, everyone knew that.

Hermione is strong, powerful, and always there to solve people's problems. She had an open ear for everyone. She has a heart that forgives people easily - too easily, if you ask him. She even had the heart to forgive even Malfoy. The bouncing ferret, she said, was just a child then too, just like they had been, malleable and impressionable.

She has a smile that can power up and light up all the worlds. In his honest opinion, no one deserves her smiles. They are the purest thing on earth, much like everything that makes her up.

Not one single witch or wizard noticed it when she began to get lost in herself.

When she started to slowly… drift.

Not even, him.

He reckons it started around the time she got busy.

She told them she's busy - always busy. She started canceling on their daily lunch, and then the weekly gatherings, either for work, to go home early as she feels faint or even when, 'Crookshanks needs to be fed, Harry.' - there's always some emergency or another that needs Hermione Granger.

From being the first to arrive and last to leave, she became the last person to arrive and the first to leave, anywhere, anytime.

In hindsight, he should've at least recognized the signs. He knew them all too well after all, having gone into something similar himself, but he didn't.

The signs were different for her too.

So instead, he found herself in her room, placing one foot in front of the other, slowly, and with his heart heavy and breaking into tiny little pieces. He remembered his eyes never leaving the prone figure of his best-est and most loyal friend as he stopped at the foot of her bed and the only thing that he could think of as she looked at her was, 'She looked so beautiful, yet so sad.'

"How long?" he remembered asking, after a substantial amount of silence.

"Hermione, I-" he started again, but then she cut him off.

"It just happened, Harry." he heard her tell him then.

"I wish I could tell you when, but I'm too tired."

There was a beat, and then:

"I'm just so tired."

She didn't move. From where she's lying on her bed, he hadn't seen her move, not even a bit.

She just kept her eyes trained at the ceiling.

He moved towards the side of her bed, before turning around with his back to her and slowly slid down onto the floor. He leaned his back on the side of her bed as he let his head fall on the mattress.

Silence filled the room.

It's not suffocating, nor is it awkward - it's nothing. There is absolutely nothing in that silence and both occupants of the room reveled in it.

There was a deep breath and two long beats before he heard Hermione breaking the silence.

"Everyone's moving too fast," he heard her say.

"Everyone's moving too fast and I don't know if I'll be able to keep up."

"If I even want to keep up" she finished, followed by a pause.

"I'll take care of you." he remembered saying after a while.

"It's rotten work." she answered.

"Not to me." he countered.

"Not if it's you." he ended, and he heard her cry.

Her heart wrenching and soul rendering sobs filled the room and his heart broke more and more.

Slowly, he turned around and saw his best friend curled in on herself in a fetal position as she continued to cry. He stood from where he sat and slowly gathered her in his arms.

They stayed like that for a while, with her crying as he hugged her closer to himself while stroking her back soothingly and apologizing to her.

"Help me, Harry," she asked him then, in between sobs.

"I'm here, Hermione. Turn to me," he remembered telling her then before she fell asleep in his arms.

And now, two months and eight days to the date, on Christmas Eve, moving her last box of things, in his house, moving her stuff in the room next to his.

"I want you here, Hermione, really," he told her two weeks ago. It took far longer to convince her to move in with him for his liking, but he'd take anything at this point.

In his eyes, she's getting better. In fact, she told him, just the other night, that she's slowly starting to feel better too.

She's gone back to work the day after he found her in his flat but he made sure to fetch her for lunch every day since then. He joined her every day for breakfast and picks her up in her office after work so they could grab dinner together. Ginny, Ron and the rest of the Weasleys and their friends were immediately on to Harry and Hermione's case a week after this, catching on the irregularity of their actions. How their strong Hermione suddenly turned very dependent on Harry and seeks him out whenever they're in the room with their friends and how she looks caught up in herself sometimes. How the two arrives together and leaves together everywhere, but Harry just shrugs them all off with a scoff and tells them that if they really want to know, they could ask Hermione, but none of them ever did.

Everyone knows, after all, that that's how Harry Potter threatens them when there's something he doesn't want anyone to figure out, not if they want to cross wands with Hermione Granger, the Brightest Witch of their Age.

They talk during breakfast and dinner.

'Did you have nightmares?'

'How did you sleep?'

'What happened at work today?'

'Did you hear about what happened to Brocklehurst this morning? We went to school with her, didn't we?'

Mundane things.

Simple things.

They both cherish them.

Lunch is not for talking, it's an unspoken rule for them, no pun intended. He just picks her up, they eat and he takes her back to her office. He told her it's for both of them since she worried that he's not eating his lunch, and he worried the same thing for her.

It happened slowly for them.

Ironically, it was Harry who realized it first.

The day Hermione told him that he probably should head to work first and she didn't show up the rest of the day - it was the longest day of his life.

He went to her apartment after his shift only to be spit back out of the floo when he was barred. He apparated near her house immediately and realized that something was amiss. His subconscious is telling him to leave for something, but Harry has always been able to throw off an imperious, a simple confundus charm is nothing against him.

He disintegrated her door when she refused to answer his calls, in case she was behind the door.

He was wrong.

He found her on her en suite bathroom, sitting inside the bath tub overflowing with water, as she stared blankly at the wall. It seemed to him, that she didn't hear him come in, because the next thing she did was submerge herself in the tub.

He acted on pure rage and impulse.

"What are you doing?!" he bellowed as he pulled her up.

She doesn't have a stitch of clothing on her but he hasn't been focusing on anything but the witch bearing a blank stare.

He shook her when her eyes remained dull.

It was the most heartbreaking thing he saw in his life.

"Hermione," he called her, "Please, love, talk to me" he urged her before hugging her for all he was worth.

He was shaking so bad.

That was the day he realized how much Hermione meant to him.

The day he realized how much sadder, greyer or bleaker a world would have been without her. That as much as she craves his companionship, he craved hers.

"Don't - don't leave me too," he begged, still holding her close, uncaring whether his clothes get wet or ruined.

He hugged her and held her as if letting her go would mean both their ends - it probably is, but he didn't dare dwell on that, he couldn't.

He pulled her out of the tub completely and she let him, without a fuss. He turned off the tap and the shower before draining the tub and wrapping her up in a towel.

He carried her to her room and sat her on her bed as he rummaged through her clothings.

He dressed her mutely.

Panties.

Bra.

Pyjama bottoms and a matching top.

He carried her back to the bed and laid her down, pulling up the covers to her.

Throughout this, his best friend's eyes remained glassy and unseeing, almost the same when she was petrified, except this time, she wasn't.

He knew that.

He laid on the bed with her, on top of the covers, before pulling her close to her chest.

"I swear I was getting better," he heard her whisper before she felt her small arms wrapping around his middle.

"I WAS GETTING BETTER!" her voice sounded through the silence of the dimly lit room and his heart continued to drop as a thought came to him:

'What if I wasn't able to get there on time?' he shuddered at his own thoughts.

The night ended with the two of them curled together.

He vowed to never ever let her out of his sight since then and made her promise that if they really have to part for some reason or another, she must send him a patronus with her exact location when the emotion overwhelms her again.

She did, but made him vow the same to her.

He did, anything to make her promise to him.

Two months to date, after that, he started pestering her to move in with him.

"Either I move in with you or you move in with me, Hermione" he told her.

Two weeks after that, found them here, moving her things in his house.

"Your room is next to mine, of course," he told her after he entered the living room, levitating her boxes behind him.

"There is a side door that would make it easier for you to enter my room without the hassle of going out of the corridor," he added after meeting her eyes.

"And I suppose you'll have the same privilege as I do when it comes to that door? Entering my room without going through the corridor?" he heard her say, and he had the good graces to blush at her raised eyebrows.

"Not without your consent," he quipped after a while making both of them laugh.

It was easier for them both after that.

Slowly, she started talking to their friends again and then to her co-workers, without his need to prompt her.

He became her rock as she became his. They both assured each other that they'd be there for the other should the other find themselves relapsing back to their dark thoughts.

They kept talking - no, communicating.

In a way he realized that they saved each other.

It didn't even come as a surprise to him when one morning, almost three years to date after she moved in, when he came to the kitchen and found his best friend there trying to cook something and realized he felt complete and content.

There was nothing else in the world that he needs more than that woman, in the scruffy apron, with the furrowed brows, who couldn't cook to save herself, trying to make breakfast for them both even at the detriment of their house.

He chuckled and their eyes met. His, with mirth, and hers, narrowing in annoyance.

"Something funny, Potter?" he heard her say as he stalked towards where she is before encircling his arms around her middle, holding her close and breathing her scent in.

"Godric, Hermione, I am one hundred and one percent in love with you," he said with a chuckle.

He felt her stiffen in his arms before he felt her wriggling out from his embrace, but he wasn't finished yet.

He needs to tell her now, in case she misunderstands.

"I don't have anything I own that I wouldn't dispose of in replace of you. You are very strong and very beautiful and I don't know how in Merlin, did I ever deserve your company, but I am very thankful to whatever power in the world made it happen."

There was a pause after his speech, but he felt her struggling less in his hold before relaxing completely.

Slowly, he felt her head move upwards and he looked down, meeting her eyes with his.

"I thank your parents every night for your life," he heard her say, making his heart soar with hope.

"What do you love in me?" he heard her ask after a while, still in his embrace, cooking forgotten.

"What do you love in me, that wasn't because of you?" he heard her ask again.

"Hermione, I -" he started but was immediately cut off.

"I love myself now." she told him.

"I am strong, confident and beautiful," she continued, locking her eyes completely with his, as tears trickled slowly from their eyes, both of them smiling through it.

"I am strong, confident and beautiful because you were strong for me, first; had complete faith and confidence in me first; and, you told me and made me feel, every day, without fail, how beautiful you find me."

He couldn't help himself then and kissed her full on the lips.

His lips were soft and insistent on hers, but he found her pliant in his arms. She gave as good as she got in their kiss, meeting him halfway.

When they pulled apart, he could see her smiling, and he's sure how his lips are mirroring hers.

"Marry me?" he asked her after a while, watching with adoration when she pulled her head back and laughed with all she got.

"Skipping the dating scene, I see," he heard her tease.

"I'll court you everyday for the rest of our lives, but I want you to know how much I'm sure of us, right now" he told her honestly, his eyes sparkling with amusement.

"I'd marry you in a heartbeat, Harry James," he heard her answer softly before she pulled him close and kissed his lips.

When they broke for air, he saw her smile before saying, "If not for your kisses or your hugs, then I'd marry you for your cooking skills," and he found himself laughing out loud.

There were many rocks in their relationship but they made it work. Anyone worth a stone could see how perfect their tag team is. Sometimes the other find themselves going back to their dark thoughts but their partners really became a beacon to them - a lighthouse in the middle of a stormy sea.

In the Potter household, after they got married, they quickly established the first rule: Never sleep while mad at the other; the second rule is much simpler, and one they were already following way before their marriage, "Communicate".

When their family of two became three with the birth of their son, they thought life couldn't be more perfect, until they were blessed with twin boys, two years after their first child was born, they couldn't have been more happier since.

Their youth was as dark as it could get, they couldn't escape it, not even as they grow old. However, they found light with each other, and now their children.

Harry was her moon, she was his, and their children are their stars.

Harry felt as if he could fly high in the sky without fear of burning as long as the moon and stars stay with him, and he knew for certain his Hermione felt the same.

Their life together wasn't perfect, but to them? it is as good as.