"Hey, Ron! Hermione! Welcome to the party!" Seamus shouted as they hovered in the doorway. Ron grinned as genuinely as possible and Hermione managed a smile. The ground floor of Seamus' house was decorated all over with banners and bunting, mostly in red and gold but also bits of blue and yellow. The front page of the previous week's The Daily Prophet had been enlarged and it hung across most of one wall:
HE DID IT!
CHOSEN ONE DEFEATS YOU-KNOW-WHO!
The photograph of Harry which had accompanied his fifth-year article in The Quibbler was beside the headline. Hermione could feel Ron tense even more as he spotted it, and she squeezed his arm.
"Come on," she whispered. "For Harry."
They joined the mass of people, mostly schoolmates, all celebrating the end of the war with wild abandon. They chatted and laughed and even danced a bit to the Weird Sisters track on the radio, and if they seemed slightly more subdued than those around them then clearly they were still a little tired from the fighting – or as Ron said, "still trying to get my head around it, mate" – and no one thought any more of it.
It was a good party, Seamus thought through a comforting fuzz of alcohol. And Ron and Hermione were there and they were enjoying themselves. Harry turning up would be amazing, but apparently he was on the run across Europe, leading Death Eaters into Ministry and Order of the Phoenix hands. Ron had dropped Seamus an owl the day before asking him to avoid bringing Harry's situation up with Hermione. He's having a right old laugh by all accounts, mate, but you know how Hermione fusses. Seamus had mentioned this to the other guests and tried to make sure that any discussion of the Boy-Who-Lived's current location was quickly diverted; a difficult feat at a party like this, but he seemed to have managed it so far. At least, in Hermione and Ron's earshot, which was the important thing.
"Hey, Seamus!" Dean called. "A toast!"
Seamus and the other guests raised their glasses for about the hundredth time that evening.
"To peace!"
"To peace!"
"To victory!"
"To victory!"
"To Harry Potter, saviour of the wizarding world!" As everyone echoed this last one, cheering haphazardly, Seamus thought he spotted Ron pale in the corner and Hermione's eyes well up. It must be the Firewhisky, he decided, though he hadn't seen either of them drinking. They'd no reason to be upset, after all.
