Continental Holiday

CHAPTER-1

A/N: Hey guys, Excited to share this story with you! It's the first of three parts, so Harry/Hermione won't be together until the end. It will be worth the wait I promise! Besides, it wouldn't happen overnight.

Anyways, this first fic deals with all the baggage that was surely left by everything that happened in Deathly Hallows and how it effects our favorite trio. Please Read and Review! Feedback is most appreciated!

Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or anything from JK Rowling's works. She does. Though it'd be nice to have that cash flow....

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"...and the first to reach him were Ron and Hermione, and it was their arms that were wrapped around him, their incomprehensible shouts that deafened him. Then Ginny, Neville, and Luna were there, and then all the Weasleys and Hagrid, and Kingsley and McGonagall and Flitwick and Sprout, and Harry could not hear a word that anyone was shouting, nor tell whose hands were seizing him, pulling him, trying to hug some part of him, hundreds of them pressing in, all of them determined to touch the Boy Who Lived, the reason it was over at last-" Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, page 744

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Harry was sitting underneath a tree in Rome, Italy with his eyes closed just feeling the breeze blow against his face. In the August heat, it felt delightfully cool. Ron and Hermione had stopped at a small ice cream shop for a moment and Harry had gone ahead to the top of a hill for a quiet moment alone.

They had spent the last year on the run fighting a war. Now it was time to catch up on all the life they missed out on. Not to mention that an extra week would be spent in Australia afterwards, putting some lost pieces back in the puzzle.

Ron caught up with him and took a seat next to him in the grass.

"Hey mate, you're a million miles away. What's on your mind?"

"Have you gotten over being bone tired yet?" Harry still hadn't shaken the feeling of being weary down to his core. If he could, he would curl up and sleep for the next two weeks, months, or years..

"Can't say that I have, but then again, it's been like being in another world this week. You'd think a war never happened down here."

They had already been through Paris, had visited the same southern village that Hermione had vacationed at on the Mediterranean coast, and had spent a weekend in Lisbon before passing through Madrid on their way here to Rome. It had been a memorable week and a half with his friends and though they were enjoying the time away, they had yet to get much real rest. They all had trouble sleeping.

Harry had to agree with Ron. The Continent had clearly not suffered as Britain had during Voldemort's reign of terror. In fact, Harry found he was even relatively anonymous. Not that he was complaining. "I envy them. This is what normal life is supposed to be like." He hadn't meant to sound so defeated.

"Cheer up mate. We're still here. It's over now. We won." Ron was trying hard to sound optimistic, but the dark bags underneath his eyes told another tale. Fred's death was still weighing hard on the Weasley clan. Harry certainly could relate. He couldn't go a day without seeing Remus and Tonks being lowered into their graves, holding his godson next to a stone faced Andromeda Tonks.

"Where's Hermione?" Harry changed the subject.

"You know her; she caught a glimpse of some monument or other and had to get the full experience. She'll be up eventually." Ron sounded amused at the very predictable behavior of the third member of their Trio.