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Warnings: A bit of angst, mentions of war Word count: 1.3k
August 3rd 1998 - three months and one day after the Battle of Hogwarts. Seventeen weeks after the war had ended and so many had died. 123 days since you had last seen your boyfriend. Boyfriend. Did he even consider himself as such anymore? Whatever his answer to this question might be, you still did.
All you had wanted to do when the walls of Hogwarts lay in ruins was run up to him. Hold him. Breathe him in. Be with him. But your parents had found you sooner. They had shown up minutes after the final conflict and wouldn't let you stay for another second. So they had taken you home, where you were safe and demanded you to stay there until it was sure even the last Death Eater had been captured. They weren't going to take another risk, like years before when it was rumoured that Voldemort had been defeated by a child. Not again. They had to make sure the world was safe and that meant you could not reach out to Dean. For your and his own sake. He lived with his mother, step-father and sisters, who were all muggles. So after days of begging and whining, when you finally understood that a simple letter could potentially put them in mortal danger, you had accepted that waiting was the best and only option.
Waiting was harder though, when owls had shown up by your window. They'd brought letters from him. Either he wasn't afraid, or he simply didn't care about people seeing strange animals flying through his muggle neighbourhood. At first they were frequent and sweet. But week after week, when he hadn't gotten a single response, they turned stale and blue, until eventually he had stopped sending them. Your mum had even offered to put them away, somewhere you couldn't find them, because you kept reading them over and over again. But you had denied. They kept you from going insane, even if they reminded you of how much you missed him with each line of his squiggly handwriting.
Three months had passed. Heart-wrenchingly slow to say the least. Three months without any known incident of usage of dark magic. Three months where dozens of Death Eaters had been detected and penalised. Three months of you in your room, trying to recover from everything that had happened, while you knew you could never fully do so. Especially without being whole. Three months until your mother knocked on your door at eight p.m.
"We think it's time," she had said sweetly. "Tomorrow."
You knew what she meant as soon as she had said it, and the way her eyes shone as she watched your reaction told you she was aware.
So you stood in front of his house on August 3rd, three months and one day after you had last seen him. It was a very special day for more than one reason. Your parents must have known. Still, you hesitated before knocking. What if he wasn't home? What if he was home and didn't want to see you? What if he had moved on already? If he thought you had ignored him on purpose, because you didn't love him. That thought alone brought tears to your eyes, but you quickly blinked them away. There was only one way to find out. It was now or never.
You knocked three times and waited. Impatiently you started tapping your heals on the stone step, hoping that someone would open the door. After a while someone did, and the sight of that someone brought tears right back into your eyes.
Dean's face fell as well, his expression full of shock and surprise, posture completely stiff and you could see him holding on to the doorknob as if his life depended on it.
You must have looked pathetic. So you tried to remain calm, tried to ignore the swarm of butterflies rotating in your stomach, hoped to succeed brushing off the tension from your chest.
"Happy birthday," you said quietly, but the last syllable came out as a whimper.
He reached out for your hand, pulled you in hastily and shut the door behind him in one motion. The hallway of his house was empty, so he pushed you against the wall, with more force than he had intended, and held you by your shoulders to just stare at you for a moment. His gaze was drawn in pain, sorrow screaming from his parted lips when he laid his forehead against yours.
"Why didn't... Why haven't you answered?" he asked with a stricken crack in his voice, and whispered yet another 'Why', before he pushed his mouth against yours. There was no time to say sorry, as he took each and every apology from your lips, his hands cupping your cheeks at first, until they wandered down to your waist, where they stayed, strong and decisively, his fingers sending warm sparks through your clothes. The way he clung to you, how his weight pressed you against the wall, let you know he hadn't moved on even a bit. He had been waiting. So long to hold you again. To kiss you, to make sure you're safe.
Once you had parted he pulled you close again and held you tighter than ever before. "Where have you been?" he asked, his voice muffled against the fabric of your top.
"I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry," you whispered.
"I know." His words were almost inaudible. "I know."
"My parents wouldn't let me reach out until they were sure it's safe again," you explained and let your hands brush across his back. "They thought it could get us in trouble."
He lifted his head to look at you, his caring smile back in place. "I see."
"But you didn't care for that at all, did you?"
"My letters?" He smirked.
"Yeah."
"Well I didn't spend as much time thinking about what could happen as your parents did, apparently," Dean explained and took a tiny step back to hold your hands. "So I sent one after another and when I you didn't answer for weeks, I thought I'd check in on you."
"You came to our house?"
"Sure. But I couldn't enter the lot."
"Protecting spell," you said simultaneously and Dean nodded.
"So after that," he went on. "I wasn't sure if the letters would even go through, so I stopped sending them."
"Oh hun," you said frowning and brought your hand up to his cheek. "I'm sorry."
"It's fine," he said softly and rested his head in your hand for a moment. "I just hoped you would send me a sign eventually. And there you are." His smile was even brighter than before and he leaned in for yet another kiss, as sweet and bracing as three months ago. "On my birthday."
"Now that you say it," you grinned, fumbled for your bag and pulled out a stack of envelopes. "I got something for you."
"Are those my letters?" Dean asked as you gave them to him.
"No silly, they're mine," you told him laughing.
"You wrote some too?" He asked as he flipped through them one by one.
"Well, I started answering the first one until I realised I couldn't send it," you explained. "So I thought I'd answer every single one anyway and give them to you when I can."
"Thank you," he said and went in for another hug.
You held him tight again. "It's not much but-"
"It's the best," he cut you off and you could hear the smile in his voice. "When are your parents expecting you back?"
"In the evening, I guess."
He chuckled. "Well, I got bad news for them."
"Why?"
"Now that I have you back, I'll never let you leave."
