A/N: I'm not sure why I wrote this, or where exactly it came from! I just did it on my phone today and figured I'd share it. I hope you enjoy it :)

New

They were going to be okay.

He wasn't sure how he was still feeling, but he was… more than before. So much more. Not just the experiences, uncovering pleasure as he held a girl's hand for longer than ever before, or kissing with tongues. Because this was different, and no matter how many times he could have done it before, each touch with her was recorded on a clean slate, as if he was back to the beginning. Because every breath he took was new, a life he felt he'd won, some stroke of shell shocked luck he'd never expected to truly attain.

And he hadn't been brave enough, or good enough, or wise enough to have earned it, or even to have hoped that rejection could have come closer to that invisible line between friends and more, closer than it might have years ago. He hadn't been any of the things he'd once valued and dreamt of being, and she was so good that it wouldn't have made any difference. No point reaching for the stars when they lived so high away, outside of his very galaxy. No, but she came down, all the way, and plucked him from his world to show him every crease and corner of her own.

She'd blink and he'd breathe and it was for the first time again, every single time. His palm against her warm back as their horizontal bodies glued themselves together. His toes against her shin as she crawled closer to his heart. Her fingers curled beneath his cotton clothes as she twisted deeper into his soul. He watched her brain in awe as she worked out every puzzle piece, every riddle… and untangled their bed sheets after his nightmares.

The dust could stay because it made them real, something perfect in imperfection. And her skin tingled when he touched it just right, disbelief in his newfound abilities. The grass grew too long and her hair tickled his unshaven jaw, and she loved it that way, she'd say. With every mystery hidden in the walls, ancient words now spoken in past war, came another sigh and another goodnight… voices muffled against each other's skin.

She stripped off her clothes with a blush, and he figured out how to breathe again… and it was new once more. And afterwards, it wasn't her continuing heartbeat or the sound of her breathing that made him understand. It was her tiny stocking covered feet between his bony legs and her nervous giggle. He had lived for this, for tiny moments he could have never predicted, for his shirt and her knickers overlapping and wrinkled on the rug by the hearth. For fingernails and eyelashes goosebumping his chest. For shooting stars, through veins and every nerve in every direction.

"I love you, don't you know that?"

She held her breath before she spoke…

"I do now."

He felt her smile against his armpit, her shiver from stomach to cold ankles, not too thin at all. And he found quickly that his hand was formed exactly right, exactly the perfect size to fit over the back of her skull. Her hips were exactly the right width to fit with his on the narrow couch cushions. And his watch ticked every second of their lives, however many there would be. They were no longer separate beings, somehow.

A cool breeze blew through the half-open window, ruffling the curtains. And he pulled a knitted blanket over their heads, cocooned in warmth and life.

And damn Harry if he was blinded in the morning by their naked bodies in the sitting room. He didn't care. Because the fire was still burning and her lips were still kissing his see-through skin, patches of sun-neglected paleness on the under side of his arm.

"Oh, and I love you," she sighed, and he forgot the logic of the world and every reality but this one. Now.

His calloused fingertips traced each of her ribs, and he squeezed her as he laughed, all other noises but the sound of her laughing with him dropping out of his range of hearing.

No. They were going to be so much better than okay.

He could no longer feel time slipping away with every heartbeat. Because there was a question mark where a full stop had once seemed to be. And the mystery was so much more satisfying than all the planning in the world. Because no matter where life took him, one thing would always stay the same. The only thing that truly mattered. Her life in his world, and his in hers.