You rub at your forehead and, when that doesn't work, try the base of your neck. That's a failure too. Your head is going to pound whether you like it or not. Draco pulls a vial out of a pocket and sets it in your hand. Funny how he never quite got out of the habit of carrying pain potions around with him. Not that you have. There's one in your bag.

"Could you say that again?" you ask. You've been looking forward to this. Counting days until you could push open this door and see these people and feel home again. Home isn't your grandmother's house anymore. Not that it ever was, not really. That's a building where your family stores cups and plates and furniture and expectations and you don't want any of them. You want this.

Or you did until you walked into a confession. One you can't quite be sure you heard right.

Theodore Nott eyes you, and he was another thing you'd been looking forward to. His casual, aristocratic honesty. No one else wants to tell the truth. They want to dance around what they mean and say things like, Wasn't she a nice girl, Neville and A young man like you should be thinking of settling down. Theo trots out some of that blunt honesty now. "Hermione killed Filch," he says.

Good riddance is the first thing that comes to your mind, which is awful and wrong. You shouldn't be glad someone is dead. Not even Argus Filch. Not even –

Voldemort

Well, there are exceptions.

Amycus Carrow

Not dead. In Azkaban with his sister.

Still an exception, your brain whispers and you can't argue. You want him dead. Want her dead. Want them both dead, but Wizarding Britain is too civilized to kill people. That's a crime. That's wrong. Just lock them up forever and –

If they were dead, would the nightmares stop? Would you feel whole again if they were gone? Do your parents sleep better knowing Bellatrix is dead? Do they even know? You've told them, but who knows what goes on in their minds, what is able to take root and grow down there in the damaged remnants of their sanity. You hope they know. You hope it brings them something like peace.

"You can't just kill someone," you say.

"Rather obviously, I did," Hermione says. Draco sets a hand on her shoulder, and she might lean into it and that, as your grandmother would say, is interesting. That's very interesting indeed because you thought they hated each other.

"I always miss the good things," Nott says. He stands up, stretching his impossibly long legs, and ambles back over to the table where you've all put your bottles. "Blended fire whiskey, Draco? Really?"

"No one's keeping you from contributing," Draco says.

"Apparently, I'll have to if I want something decent," Nott says, but he pours himself some of the maligned whiskey anyway. "Tell me how you did it."

"Avada," Granger says.

"Too fast," Nott says.

"It was a bit of an impulsive act." She sounds defensive that she didn't do a good enough job of murder, which is a bit hilarious. Trust Hermione to want to get full marks at death. "Malfoy helped me deal with the body."

You suppose that explains the sudden closeness between them. Nothing pulls people together like shared trauma.

"What do we do?" Hermione asks.

No one says anything, and you realize that all of them are looking at you. Looking to you. You set your shoulders and press your lips together. They're a bit chapped. You can feel the rough edge of the skin. "Will anyone find the body?" you ask.

"Not unless they speak snake," Draco says.

You don't want to pursue that, so you shrug and say, "As long as no one's going to find it, we don't do anything."

"Portraits?" Nott asks.

You glance at Hermione first, then Draco, and both blanch a little as they remember the castle is filled with painted informants. The portraits never told on any of you for scraping injured students off the floor and patching them back together. A whole year of insurgency and not a single painted lady ever whispered about it in Snape's ear.

Or maybe they did, and he ignored it. He was a hero, after all.

You need a drink at that thought.

"Guess we'll find out," you say. "But they were on our side last year."

You can see them relax at that. Nott slides back onto his chair, back slouched. Draco steps away from Hermione and rubs the hand she'd been leaning on against his trousers. Hermione lets out a shuddering exhale. You've given them permission to let it go. You thought you were done being a leader when the war was over. Maybe you weren't.

It feels good to have that back.

You like that.

. . . . . . . . . .

Draco almost caught three different hushed conversations between various members of the Hogwarts' staff that week. Each time, he'd walk into the room, and they'd stop mid-sentence and turn smiles far too bright toward the students at the door. Class would begin without an explanation.

Draco didn't need one. Filch was missing. No one could find him. He waited for a tap on his shoulder, for a polite request he follow a teacher out of the room, up to the Headmistress' office, away to Azkaban. If killing someone was unforgivable, surely helping hide the body was too. But the tap never came. He was as soundly ignored as he had been all year. Handed his wand. Handed his homework. But he wasn't looked at with any hint of new suspicion.

Maybe the portraits hadn't seen anything. Or maybe they'd kept their mouths shut. Draco's nerves insisted he ask Hermione Granger if anyone had cornered her in an office and asked her anything. They should have coordinated their stories. They should have –

He was panicking.

He wanted to talk to her.

He timed his exit from History of Magic to walk next to Hermione and tried not to think too hard about the way she'd felt leaning into his hand – trusting him to be nice, to be comforting, even if it'd been for all of three minutes – and put the usual condescending sneer on his face. Two Ravenclaw girls brushed past them, glanced at his mouth, and tightened theirs. They walked a little too quickly, a little too obvious in their eagerness to get away from him.

Hermione glared at their backs. Maybe it wasn't just him they were too good for. Prejudice didn't go away because one pretty Muggle-born was a hero.

"Enjoy the class, Granger?" he asked.

She tore her gaze away from the retreating backs and hitched her bag higher on her shoulder. "History is safest when it's so far removed from current events you couldn't draw a parallel with a line."

That was as neat a dodge as Draco had heard in a long time. "I don't think we're supposed to think," he said. Which was true, but he didn't really care what she thought about tenth-century Goblin incursions or even the way the class seemed to avoid anything resembling recent history. All of that was totally irrelevant to the problem at hand, which remained the missing Filch. "Anyone… say anything?" he asked.

"No," she said. "But I keep seeing staff in nervous little groups."

She didn't try to pretend she didn't understand him, which was a bit new. Pansy was sharp, but she had shellacked a veneer of fashionable ignorance over herself and pretended to need things explained lest anyone think she cared enough about events to follow them. And Greg and Vince –

Oh, God. Don't think about Vince. Don't think about him screaming as he fell. Don't think about the smell of burning flesh, the smell of burning hair. Don't think –

– had both been so stupid they always needed things spelled out for them. Talking to a woman who followed him without needing small words and a map was a pleasure. And he wanted to keep talking to her.

"What you said." Draco had to step around a bench to stay at her side. "Before the holiday about fixing things. Do you think it's possible?"

"I'm talking to you," she said, and she sounded almost playful. From any other woman, he'd have called that tone flirtatious. "And so far, I haven't hexed you. Anything's possible."

. . . . . . . . . .

excerpt from a gossip column in The Daily Prophet

… handsome, young Ronald Weasley out in Diagon Alley with an unknown young beauty. Has this war hero moved on from Muggle-born Hermione Granger? Friends refuse to answer questions, but a picture is worth a thousand words.

[Photograph of Ronald Weasley with his arm around a young woman in a sequined dress. She has black, smooth hair twisted up in a neat coiffure. Her face is turned away from the camera. He's smiling broadly and winking at the photographer. The wink plays out over and over and over again in the wizarding photograph.]

. . . . . . . .

You see Hermione fold the morning paper with hands far too precise. She's angry. Or hurt. The girl next to you – a fifth year, you think – watches her face, then giggles with nervous malice. "I guess the war is really over," she says. A friend at her side licks her lips and waits for Hermione's response. You remember her. She cried for her mother as you poured a pain potion into her mouth. She said she hated the war and everyone connected to it. Even Harry, she said. I just want it to stop.

Hermione stands and shoves The Daily Prophet down into her bag. Her breakfast is almost untouched.

You push your own plate away. "I was going to ask you to check on some of my plants," you say. Hermione's eyes flicker ever so slightly. She knows a lie when she hears one, but also an out. A graceful exit. She takes it.

"On the way to the greenhouses, maybe you can listen to some of my thoughts on post-War policy," she says. "I'd like to run them by a few friends before I write them up for class."

"Happy to oblige," you say. You hold an arm out with a polite gesture, waiting for Hermione to go before you. You're the sort of gentleman your grandmother wants you to be only, for a moment, it isn't pretend. For a moment, it's natural and exactly right. Then you feel stupid holding your arm out like some actor in a play about the 1800s, and you drop into step beside Hermione and let her open the door out of the Dining Hall for you.

"Bad news?" you ask.

"Ron made the paper," she says shortly. You're confused, and that must be obvious because she explains. "On a date. With another girl."

"Didn't you two…" You trail off, not sure how to ask if they'd ended it. You thought they had, but it's not like you pay that much attention to her love life.

"Yes," she says. It's a neat and clipped answer that doesn't invite you to ask for more details, so you don't. She walks in silence with you all the way to the greenhouses, and you open the door with a sense of relief. The air is warm and wet and it surrounds you. You breathe in. Plants. You see a rose unfurling. Some dirigible plums have bloomed. And there's the scent of licorice.

"About time you showed up," Theodore Nott says from the table. His books are out. He's been doing Arithmancy. He glances at Hermione. "Didn't expect you."

"I'm not staying," she says. "Neville rescued me from breakfast."

He doesn't ask why she needed rescuing. Instead, he says, "You fucking Draco yet?"

She gapes at him, and you almost laugh. "I… no. What? Why would you ask that?" She can barely get the words out. She's outraged and confused, and if she had feathers, they'd be puffed out all around her.

Theo laughs. "I give you until Easter."

She breathes in through her nose and glares at him before she turns and stomps off. The greenhouse door doesn't slam, but not for lack of trying on her part. And you are alone. With Nott.

"How about us?" you ask. It makes your stomach sink down to your shoes, but you cut the head off a snake. You led a rebellion. People look to you for answers on what to do, and you can manage this. You can ask a boy who's made it more than clear that he's interested if he wants –

He's smirking at you, and sliding a bookmark into his text and closing it with so much deliberation you have time to feel the blood creep up into your cheeks and you are burning. You and Draco just happened. There was no discussion. No embarrassing sharing of feelings. You were lost, and sex was a distraction. You've never had to ask someone out before. It's awful.

And then Theo is standing, and he has his hands on your face, and you're kissing.

He tastes of stale tea and smells like licorice and hasn't shaved yet today. You hadn't noticed when you looked at him, but the feel of stubble against your skin has you pressing harder against him, pushing him until his back is up against one of the Victorian support beams. Another Slytherin. Your grandmother will have kittens.

Another boy. She'll have multiple litters of the things.

And you don't care.

Fuck all their expectations.

When you pull away, you study Nott's face. Theo's face. "Don't do this if you don't mean it," he says. It's the first time you've heard him sound unsure. You start to answer, but he goes on. "If the war hero breaks my heart, I don't think I could put myself back together again."

"I'm not," you say. "I won't."

"You are." He presses his lips first to one side of your mouth, then the other. "You're like a light, Neville. People are drawn to you, and you don't even know it."

"You're wrong," you say, but you have better things to do than argue right now, and if your blood is still rushing, it's not to your cheeks.

. . . . . . . . . .

Theodore Nott was only half wrong.

. . . . . . . . . .

A/N – Thank you to galwaygirl2 for beta reading, and to all of you for reading at all.