The scent of warm vanilla wafts into our bedroom.

At first I thought I was dreaming it; I dream of sweets often, much to my wife's endless amusement (she tells me it's one of my most endearing qualities--I guess I'll just have to take her word for it). But sure enough, as I nudge my eyes open and take in another lung-full of the sweet aroma, I know I'm not just imagining it.

Hermione's side of the bed feels empty and cold. My arm lazily wanders over to her pillow, where the lavender fragrance of her shampoo still lingers. It seems she's been up for some time now, and I know exactly what she's doing.

She's baking.

Hermione didn't learn to bake until right before we got married; in fact, she barely even knew how to boil an egg up until that point. As the wedding approached, she grew into a panic, slipping into a highly irrational (yet admittedly, very amusing) fear that I might "come to my senses" eventually and call the whole thing off because she wouldn't be able to make my favorite treacle tarts. Talk about your pre-wedding jitters. That's my beloved, thinking our entire marital future rested on her heretofore nonexistent kitchen skills.

As with everything else in her life, she threw herself into learning all she could about this new subject she had decided to tackle. About a month before the wedding, she practically lived in my mother's kitchen, hanging on her every word and shadowing every movement, driving Mum nutters asking all sorts of questions every few seconds ("How much of that did you just put in?" "How do you blanche a tomato?" "What happens if you run out of baking powder?").

If Mum hadn't already decided in our fifth year that she would have no other than Hermione Granger as her youngest son's wife, I think she might have called off the wedding herself.

But all the cramming worked. Hermione learnt all of Mum's recipes, and then some (where she was able to dig up a copy of Gilderoy Lockhart's Cooking With Magical Me, I'll never know, nor do I particularly want to), all before she officially became Mrs. Hermione Weasley. And not only did she learn them, but she learnt them well, if I do say so myself. Her creations have rivaled even that of Mum's (though in the interest of keeping the peace, I wouldn't dare ever tell Mum so). At times, I think that--next to getting the highest number of N.E.W.T.'s ever and giving birth to our children--that was Hermione's proudest achievement of all.

I pad down the stairs, careful not to wake the children. It's quite early yet, and they're all still sleeping--even Elinor, surprisingly, who is usually the first one in the household to be up (we call her good morning cries, the "natural alarm clock").

There's humming coming from the kitchen, and I round the corner, then stop just before going in. I lean against the frame of the kitchen door, which is propped open to let the warm air circulate, and just watch her. Hermione's just shoved her new masterpiece into the pre-heated oven. Her hair is a mess, spilling out of a hastily and loosely twisted knot at the nape of her neck, and she's got flour all over her face and apron. She's flying about the kitchen, waving her wand in every direction imaginable, charming all of the bowls and utensils, and even the counter-top, to clean themselves up (though Jeeves the cat was more than happy to help with the clean-up by licking away at anything else that Hermione's wand may have missed).

She's so engrossed in everything that I'm sure she doesn't see me watching her, marveling at the force of nature I'm married to.

But finally she does look up, as if feeling my eyes on her; she can always sense when I'm near her.

"What are you doing?" she asks, laughing, carelessly rubbing away the flour on her forehead.

I come forward and wipe some flour away from her nose. Unable to resist, I tease, "You've got flour on your nose."

She giggles, that girlish giggle that I've always loved, that somehow never seemed like the inane giggles all the other schoolgirls had. Hers is a huskier, fuller giggle, one that sends warmth radiating through my core.

"Now you do too!"

She takes a handful from the flour jar and smears it all over my face.

"Hey!!" I protest. "What was that for?"

She answers only in more laughter, then raises herself up on her tiptoes and kisses me, wrapping her arms around my neck and drawing me close to her.

I'm still immersed in the tingly afterglow of the kiss, when she leans her head against my chest and says softly, "Do you realize, that this will be his last birthday at home?"

I ease off her to look her in the eyes.

"You all right?" I ask.

She nods, but it's not too convincing.

"I s'pose," she says. "We've got a few more months before he goes off, anyway..."

I feel her sigh tremor against my ribs.

"It's just hard to believe he's eleven already."

I smile, remembering the way she nearly broke my hand when she was in labor.

"I know," I say. "I wonder if it'll seem this fast with the girls, too..."

She looks up at me, horrified. "Oh Ron," she moans, "where did I stash that old time-turner of mine?"

Laughter bubbles to the surface. At first she seems rather annoyed that I'm finding this amusing, but then she starts to laugh as well.

"When it's just the two of us in this house again-"

"Oh, I reckon I've forgotten what that was even like-"

She swats me on the arm, both to scold me and demand my attention.

"When it's just the two of us again," she says, "promise me you won't get bored with me?"

I look at her, to see if she's actually serious. And she is.

"What?"

"Come on, Ron, I mean it... I read about this in Witch Weekly once... When a couple goes through the Empty Nest Syndrome-"

"The Empty Nest Syndrome??!" I try so hard not to laugh, that I think I might actually be hurting myself in the effort.

"-they have to start readjusting to each other again..." She sighs. "And I don't want to you get bored with me..."

"Love," I say, "you know you read too much, right?"

She rewards me with one of her ten-thousand different smiles.

"I don't think it's possible for life with you to ever be boring..."

"You mean it?"

"'Course, I do."

"And you won't get annoyed if I miss them like crazy, every single second of every single day?"

"God, I reckon I'll be the same way too."

She laughs again. "But it will be nice, won't it," she says, "to have the house all to ourselves again?"

She raises her eyebrows at me in that way, the way she knows I can't ever resist.

"Mmm," is all I can manage.

"Ron..."

"Yeah?"

"This cake's probably going to take another forty-five minutes or so..."

"Mmm hmm..."

"And the kids are still asleep... You know they'll probably sleep till noon if we don't wake them..."

Now she's flashing that smile, and, well, I'm pretty much a goner by this point. She sees my reaction, and seems pleased indeed.

We apparate to the bedroom in the next instant.