He had made the reservation in November.
The call had been made from a payphone in London. He had asked for the earliest dinner sitting on the fourteenth, given the name Weasley, and had confirmed a table for two without difficulty.
The restaurant was on the harbor. He had known this from his research and had not been surprised by it, but arriving at it in the February evening — the light from the windows on the water, the specific quality of a place that understood what it was and had been doing it long enough to have stopped needing to prove it — produced in him the specific satisfaction of a plan that had arrived at exactly the reality it had been aimed at.
At the restaurant she looked at the sign and then at him.
'This has a Michelin star,' she said.
'Yes,' he said.
'You said casual.'
'I said more casual than formal. Which is accurate. It's a seafood restaurant, not a banquet hall.'
She looked at him with the expression that was not quite exasperation and not quite the thing that came after exasperation and was both simultaneously. 'Ron.'
'It's Valentine's Day,' he said. 'And you're wearing your hair down. This seems appropriate.'
A beat.
'It does,' she said, and the exasperation resolved into something warmer, and they went in.
The restaurant had the quality of somewhere that took the food seriously and the atmosphere as the natural consequence of taking the food seriously — not formal, not designed, simply good. The other tables were occupied by people who had the ease of somewhere they came regularly or had been anticipating: a couple of perhaps fifty near the window, clearly local, eating with the comfortable efficiency of people who knew the menu; two women at the center table with a bottle of white wine between them and the specific quality of a good regular occasion; an older man alone at the corner table with a book propped against the bread basket, eating with the particular contentment of someone who had decided the solo dinner was a pleasure rather than a concession.
He noted the room — the ambient temperature, the noise level, the light — and filed it . The table they were given was near the window, which he had requested when he made the reservation and which the restaurant had honored.
The fish had been in the water that morning. He knew this from the menu and from the specific quality of what arrived at the table, which had the directness of something with nowhere to hide.
He had the crab. She had the monkfish. They shared a starter of something in a shell that neither of them had the vocabulary for but which required no vocabulary — the kind of thing that was simply correct and did not need to be discussed.
They talked. Not about the war, not about the training, not about the certification programme or the Daily Prophet or the second task. They talked about the day — the specific things that had happened in it, the Cornish cold, the bookshop and what she had found in it. She told him about a summer she had spent in Devon when she was nine, the rockpools and the specific smell of low tide, the way the summer had felt before school began and everything became about performance rather than being. He told her about a fortnight near the coast in his previous life, the specific quality of waking up and knowing the sea was there, the way it changed the quality of the light in the mornings.
She listened with the attention she gave things she found worth understanding. He had noticed, across a year of telling her things, that she never interrupted to connect what he was saying to something she already knew — she let it be what it was first, and connected it afterward.
The candle on the table was doing what candles did in February harbor restaurants — making the light exactly the right color for exactly the right occasion. He reached across the table and took her hand, which she turned over and held properly, her thumb over his knuckles in the way she had started doing in October.
'You're evaluating the technique,' she said, at some point in the middle of the main course, watching him.
'The sauce is a beurre blanc,' he said. 'I've been working on it. Mine is almost there. This is better.'
'What's different?'
'The acid is higher,' he said. 'And the butter temperature at the end. He keeps it cooler than I do.'
She was quiet for a moment. 'You came to a Michelin-starred restaurant for a lesson.'
'I came for both,' he said.
She looked at him across the table with the expression she had when she had been given something entirely characteristic and had decided to find it more endearing than anything else. 'You're hopeless,' she said, which in Hermione's vocabulary meant something quite different from its standard definition.
'I know,' he said.
She reached across and took a piece of his crab without asking, which was something she had started doing in October and which he had never commented on because the commenting would have been beside the point.
'It's excellent,' she said.
'Yes,' he said. 'The sauce needs more acid.'
She pressed her lips together, which was Hermione managing a smile she had decided not to give him. 'It doesn't,' she said. 'It's perfect.'
'I'm going to try more acid,' he said.
'I know you are,' she said. 'You're going to tell me about it in March.'
'Probably April,' he said. 'It'll take a few attempts.'
She shook her head. He took no photograph. Some things were better left to the memory, which did not require a negative to develop and did not fade.
They walked back to the Trelawns' cottage in the dark with the cold and the sound of the water and Padstow behind them, her arm through his, the town doing its quiet February work in the lit windows above the harbor. He thought about the coast path conversation and the bookshop and the café and the morning light and the specific weight of a day that had been entirely what it was supposed to be.
They arrived back through the fireplace at Hogsmeade with eleven minutes to spare before the ten o'clock curfew the retired Charms professor had set, which was the correct margin.
He sent a thank you note the next morning with a jar of his own beurre blanc, which needed more acid, and which he sent anyway because the gesture was the point and the sauce would be better next time.