Author's Notes: A big thank you to wemyss at FictionAlley and FreeDaChickens at Perfect Imagination for looking over this chapter. All remaining errors are my own.

4

The whispers followed him from carriage to carriage, from King's Cross to Hogsmeade Station, where the train eventually slowed to a stop. In retrospect, Harry shouldn't have expected any different: he was a hero now, not just the boy who lived, but the boy who lived to save the world; it was foolish to believe that the world would just leave him to it. It was stupid to hope that nobody would care about him travelling back to school on the first of September as a student again.

As he, Ron, and Hermione trundled up to Hogwarts' main entrance in their carriage, Harry was already questioning his decision to return. He had forgotten how claustrophobic school life could feel – all eyes on him, so little privacy, the burden of expectations weighing him down... But then, he recalled, he had had little choice in the matter. Who would have known that written qualifications held more prestige than vanquishing Dark Lords?

The irony wasn't lost on him: he was good enough to save the world, but employers regretted to inform him that they had received an influx of strong applications, so they would not be asking him for interview at this time. Kind regards, &c. He had received so many of these form letters that he could guess exactly what they said by the size of the envelope. The majority of them did not even refer to him by name, simply using the generic 'Sir'. Harry had to ball his fists to stop himself from scribbling a reply by owl – Don't you know what I've done?

Ashamed as he was to admit it, he really did think that his name alone should have ensured him several job offers – many more than the tally of zero that he had amounted through June and July. It wasn't until Hermione came to visit in August that he realized precisely why he had been wrong.

'Well of course it's not about qualifications,' she had told him. 'Your track record in practical defence is worth more to the Aurors than a couple of NEWTs could ever be. The problem is –' here, she sighed '– the problem is that they're scared, Harry. You didn't see what you were like in the Great Hall, the way you were talking to Voldemort. It was ... odd. Brilliant, yes, but frightening.'

'But you weren't scared of me!' said Harry.

'I was a little.' Hermione had the grace to blush and lower her eyes. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'It was just very strange, that's all. Very strange indeed.'

Harry said nothing, willing himself not to get angry. Hermione reached over to squeeze his hand, and he squeezed back. It wasn't her fault that he had been tainted with an unfair reputation.

He took a deep breath. 'So tell me again why I should go back to Hogwarts?'

The answer she gave him made sense.

'They just need time, Harry. A year from now, you'll see, everyone'll be vying for you. No one will remember the battle, they'll all have forgotten that whole thing about rising from the dead...'

'I didn't rise from the dead, Hermione.'

'You know what I mean. And I think if you just keep your head down for a bit, it'll blow over. And you'll become, well, more of a normal celebrity. Besides –' she met his eyes '– don't you think you could do with a break from all the fighting? I know that I could.'

Harry privately thought that Hermione could as well. The last two months had not been kind to her: she had had to find her parents and return their memories before explaining everything that had happened while they were away. He suspected their recovery had been more difficult than Hermione would have wanted, but his friend did not offer any details, and he didn't want to press her.

Harry's summer had been uneventful in comparison. For a while he had stayed at the Burrow to be there for the Weasleys. It soon transpired, though, that there was little he could do to help them through their grief.

Mrs Weasley had clung to him with a new kind of fervour. Where in the past she had just fussed over him, now she wouldn't leave him alone. She would burst in on him and Ron with trays of tea and juice and scones, make their beds for them and collect their laundry, start to tidy Ron's floor, and then head back down to the kitchen to prepare more snacks for them.

If they were planning on going outside, she would ask them to reconsider. Perhaps they'd help her with the housework instead, or maybe they could all just relax and listen to the wireless.

On the rare occasions that they did go out, just to the field nearby to play Quidditch, Mrs Weasley would accost them as soon as they returned. 'Look at the state of you both!' she would say. 'Those jeans are terribly scruffy, Harry, whip them off and I'll blast them with an ironing charm.

'No thanks, Mrs Weasley!' Harry had squawked when she had suggested this. 'They're fine. Really, everything's fine. Ron and I were just going to go upstairs.'

The only times Mrs Weasley left them to it were when she was crying. Her sobs kept them up at night and woke them up in the morning. Harry would have done anything to make her feel better. There wasn't anything to do.

On the Wednesday of the first week, she had called him Fred. He had thought it a slip of the tongue and decided not to correct her. The slips of tongue became more frequent, and as they did, so did his and Ron's trips outside – to the Quidditch field, to the village, to Diagon Alley – anywhere but the Burrow.

Ginny, meanwhile, had distanced herself from Harry. The bond he had previously felt between them had diminished, its cords pulled tight and taut. It wasn't for lack of trying: they had both fought to reclaim the ease that used to characterize their relationship. Harry didn't know which one of them had changed, or if it was simply the situation, but there was an awkwardness about their dialogue. No longer did it flow.

Ginny took the Floo to George's every evening and stayed an hour before returning and comforting her mother until it was time for bed. She would kiss Ron goodnight, avoid looking at Harry, and head upstairs. She would wake up earlier than him and already have gone out by the time he sat down for breakfast.

Eventually it occurred to him that he was just getting in the way.

'I think I'm going to go back to Grimmauld Place,' he said in the darkness of Ron's room one night in early July. 'It should just be family.'

'You are family, you know that, Harry,' Ron told him.

'Yeah, I know that. But...'

'Yeah,' said Ron, 'I know.' He paused. 'I'm sorry it's been so weird here.'

'It hasn't! It's been...'

'It's all right. I know mum's been ... not herself lately.'

'She will be,' said Harry firmly. 'It's going to be all right, Ron. And you can come over to stay whenever you want to, and your mum and dad too if they like, and George and Ginny...'

'I'll tell them,' said Ron. 'Thanks, Harry. Give me a couple of weeks, but I'll definitely come over.'

Eight hours later, having hugged everyone goodbye, Harry had Apparated to the door of Grimmauld Place.

He had spent a month doing nothing but filling in application forms and cleaning. Kreacher was thrilled to see him, and initially he had enjoyed the new lifestyle, but the countless rejections and the monotony of day to day life became laborious after a while. It was with open arms that Harry welcomed Hermione and Ron, and two weeks before Hogwarts term started, all three had decided to go back.

If Professor McGonagall had been surprised to admit them, it was nothing compared to the atmosphere that greeted them when they stepped onto Platform Nine and Three-Quarters. Whispers and pointed fingers marked their progress onto the train, interspersed every now and then with a gasp, a shout, or an excited 'Did you see? I told you!'

Harry too was curious to see who else had returned for their NEWTs. On the train he met Dean and Seamus, who both expected to take their exams in December.

'Me mam would have killed me if I didn't come back. And it's only three months.'

Harry wondered vaguely whether he could manage to pass his exams in that time, but he brushed the thought away. It was a whole year he had missed out on; even if he could cram everything into three months, it would not help the employment issue.

'Better you than me,' said Ron, who had more of a brightness about him lately. 'I think I've forgotten everything. I'm dreading June.'

'You'll be fine,' said Hermione, threading her hand in his. He smiled in response.

The rest of the journey passed peaceably. At Hogsmeade, Harry and his friends parted ways with Dean and Seamus, sharing their own carriage up to the school. The nearer they got, the more Harry started to think that he should have stayed at home with Kreacher. But it wasn't until they reached the grounds that the terror gripped him.

It came from nowhere, like a blow to the guts, painful and winding. There, to the west, the Whomping Willow: the entrance to the passage they had crawled through to see Snape killed by Nagini. Up ahead, the front of the castle, magically mended but still crumbling in places; Fred had died up there, had been murdered in the blink of an eye. A few feet away from them Harry had lain as if dead; here, Neville had chopped the head off Nagini, the penultimate Horcrux. A moment before, Neville had been writhing and screaming under Crucio.

And there, behind him to the left, the path he had walked to what he thought was certain death, the trail through the forest, the numbness that gripped him replaced by the warmth and courage emanating from the most powerful weapon of all, his parents and Sirius and Lupin rising shadowlike from the Resurrection Stone.

The Resurrection Stone. He had not mentioned it, had not voiced the thoughts aloud, but it had called to him in dreams, danced in his mind on waking. As he stood outside the castle, it was all he could do not to run towards it, to find the place where it had fallen, brush the leaves away, lift it from the ground and turn it over...

'Come on, Harry.' Hermione's tone was soft but firm and there was something like sadness in her expression. Harry allowed her to take his arm and lead him past the Thestrals up to the castle, with Ron on the other side of Hermione, his arm around her shoulders.

They huddled close as they scaled the stone stairs and stepped from the cold into the bustling glow of the Entrance Hall.