"I don't think she's coming."

Severus tried not to roll his eyes; he wasn't supposed to be listening, after all. Eavesdropping was second nature, but he had learned to be discreet. He was only at the party for form's sake, after all. Wouldn't want to ruin it by drawing attention to himself.

Minerva had badgered him into attending the engagement party for Potter and the Weasley gir. It was, as expected, full of vague Weasley relations, former students, and a smattering of the sort of people who go through a lot of trouble to get themselves invited to the parties of celebrities. He had spent most of the evening dodging the Prophet's latest incarnation of Rita Skeeter—a young reporter whose name he had deliberately forgotten. He'd found that the best way to keep her at bay was to stay near the happy couple; they seemed to distract her.

Potter and Weasley had, for the past few minutes, been having a quiet argument at the bar. Potter was waiting for somebody to show up, Weasley didn't think she was going to show, and they continued to talk about it as though their belief or non-belief would make a difference.

"She said she was going to be here. She'll be here."

"Harry, she hasn't been the most reliable person—"

"Really, Ginny? Really?" Severus had to roll his eyes that time. "She's the most reliable person I know. Look at all she's gotten me through."

"You know what I mean," Weasley said sharply. "Since she's come back she's different. You saw her last night. She was distracted. It was like her face was smiling, but her mind was someplace else."

"She wasn't that different."

"When was the last time you talked to her, Harry? And I don't mean chatted. Caught up. I mean really talked. Meaning of life stuff."

Potter paused before answering. "When I was with her after the hospital, I suppose."

"And that's not odd?"

"I don't—"

Weasley interrupted. "I'll tell you. It is odd, Harry. It is."

Severus glanced down the bar at the pair of them under the guise of finishing off his butterbeer. (It was too sweet.) Weasley had her fists on her hips, broadcasting their argument to the room. Potter looked slightly baffled. His hair was a mess.

"She was one of your best friends for a long time. She was one of my best friends for a long time. We have both noticed the changes. They're not necessarily bad changes," she said quickly, holding a hand up to keep Potter from interrupting. "But they're changes. She's different. I don't know, yet, if it's something we should talk about with her. I think something is going on."

"Something is going on?" Potter asked skeptically. Weasley blew out an annoyed breath, then tossed her hair over her shoulder and flashed a smile at the room.

"Now isn't the time or place, don't you think?" She faked a laugh, leaning into him.

"Should we be worried?" Potter asked. "She has been kind of… vacant… since she's come back, but I thought that might be just, you know… memories."

Weasley stepped closer to him, and they descended into an intense conversation too quiet for Severus to hear from his place down the bar. After a few minutes, they seemed to remember where they were.

"We'll talk about it later," Potter said. "You better kiss me now, or that reporter lady will think we're breaking up at our own party."

They kissed long enough to get a few catcalls from their friends, then moved off into the room. Severus ordered another drink, then stared into it and thought about what he had overheard. The comment about a "vacant" friend rang in his ears.

During the first war, Bellatrix had tortured people quite often. Her favorite thing was to use curses to push them over the edge, to the point where they could feel the pain and react to it, but they weren't people anymore. Human-shaped animals. Before she had honed that "skill", though, she had tried other things. One of those things had to do with Muggle methods of inflicting pain—she had favored a little flaying knife, but there had been other things as well. One instance that sprang to mind as if it had only been yesterday was a wizard she had tortured until he died, and then she'd resuscitated him so that she could do it again. She'd done it at least three more times before the wizard had glazed over. He would talk and scream, move around and sleep, but his soul was somewhere else, walled off maybe. Or on the other side of the veil. That had frustrated Bellatrix; the fun went out of it for her. Severus couldn't remember if she'd killed him or not when she lost interest, but she had given up the Muggle knives in favor of her spells.

Severus turned away from the bar for a moment, looking over the crowd. He was trying to see who wasn't in attendance. It was difficult to gage, though, because he hadn't kept track of Potter any more than he could help.

Granger is absent, that little voice in the back of his mind supplied when his eye caught a glimpse of Ron Weasley. The Granger girl is not here.

Frustrated with himself, with his own stupid fixation on a dead girl, years gone now, Severus turned his back on the room again. He tossed back his shot; it burned all the way down, but it didn't chase out any thoughts.

Intending to leave, he made his way to the happy couple to give them his good will and all that. They accepted politely. Potter tried to thank him, again, for his "service in the war." Severus looked down his nose at the boy, trying to think of something to say. He wanted to tell him he was an idiot, but it was his engagement party and that wouldn't do.

"Didn't bloody do it for you, did I?" he muttered, making his way through the crowd. He headed for the door, but spotted Minerva in a booth on her own before he got there. She caught his eye and motioned him over, and he was trapped.

"Hello, Severus," she said, chipper.

"Minerva." He had been aiming for a drawl, but, to his ears, he simply sounded gassy. Minerva smiled at him.

They sat in silence for a few minutes. Minerva was watching the room, and Severus was thinking of Lily Potter.

Yes, Lily Potter. Not Lily Evans, not even in his mind anymore. The end of the War had seen that door finally closed. He held her in the soft part of his heart, tucked away in the crusty fold that was his childhood; one shining bit of happiness in all that gloom. One friend.

He used to spend long evenings patrolling the castle, simply missing Lily Evans. He had thought he had missed her beautiful eyes and smile, and her wit, and her laugh. But what he had really missed was a friend. Not a friend the way Lucius Malfoy had been his friend—the conniving sort of friend, more of an ally, but one that needed to be always watched. A snake kept in the house for killing the rats, but that would turn and eat him just as soon as it would eat a rat if he let his guard down.

The war had ended his need to distance himself, though. Not to say that he had gone out and joined a book club, of course. There was twenty years of ostracism and deliberate off-putting between him and his peers. His name was cleared. The truth came out, though everybody he met seemed to believe different bits of it. But he was free to make connections, and he did so. And he was free of the terror that was living at the beck-and-call of Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Minerva, sipping happily at a dram of something, interrupted his thoughts. "If you had asked me ten years ago if Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley would be getting married, I wouldn't have believed it."

"Why not?" he asked. Personally, he had thought it painfully obvious. Ginny had been making eyes at Potter since she met him, and he had been so oblivious to the opposite sex (Veela being the exception), the constant proximity of a girl of her doggedness was the only thing that could've seen through to a relationship. "Did you expect them to die?"

"Well, there is that," Minerva said. He wondered how many drams she had had before he'd joined her, and just what had been in them. Usually, she wasn't so maudlin. "However, I assumed they were dating for convenience."

"Do tell."

"Potter and Weasley—that's Ron Weasley—were friends from the beginning. Then, it was Potter, Weasley, and Granger. When Weasley and Granger paired off, it was the logical next step that Potter would latch on to a pseudo-Weasley—that's Ron Weasley, again. A pseudo-Ron Weasley."

"Are you saying Potter was in love with Weasley?" Severus asked. "Ron Weasley."

"I haven't decided yet," Minerva said. She narrowed her eyes, looking across the room to where Potter stood surrounded by Weasleys, including Ginny and Ron.

"When did they let Weasley—Ron Weasley—back into the fold, as it were?" he asked, hoping to pull the topic off the romantic attachments of former students. For one thing, he didn't believe for a moment that there had been any romantic inclinations between Weasley and Potter. There had been the usual run of boyish spats and falling outs, but it had never been tinged with the sort of charge that would have indicated an attraction simmering beneath the surface. And he would have been the one to see it, watching them as closely as he had.

"A few months ago," Minerva said. "I suppose you would have ignored it." She fixed him was a look he assumed was supposed to be annoyed, but didn't quite make it. "Molly said they ran into each other in Diagon Alley and ended up hashing things out. There were apologies on both sides."

"Isn't that grand," he said, sarcasm dripping form every syllable, though Minerva ignored it completely.

"Yes, it is," she said stoutly. "They were friends for a long time, through a very hard youth. It would be horrible if the War tore them apart."

"Indeed." She continued to ignore the sarcasm.

"Anyway, I thought their falling out was mostly driven by Granger's death," she said. She didn't look at him, so she didn't notice that he had frozen. "Whatever events led up to the battle at Hogwarts, they both felt guilty for not being with her when she died. Not being able to save her."

He remained silent, and she continued to look away.

"They would have forgiven each other much sooner if she had been here."

He stood and left, Summoning his cloak from the peg by the door as he went. He didn't look back to see if Minerva was watching him, and he deliberately ignored everything he heard. She might have called after him; she might not.

As he walked through the crisp air, back up the mountain toward the castle, he fumed quietly to himself. He was furious, but not at Minerva. He was furious because every single aspect of his life seemed to turn 'round and feed straight back into Hermione Granger. She held the end of every string. She was in the bottom of every bottle of firewhiskey. She was in the faces of his students, and in the minds of his colleagues. She leaked into every conversation he had. She was in his dreams. She was even in his waking thoughts, slipped into his conversations.

Sometimes, her presence was welcome. There were odd moments when he felt grateful to her. He was glad she had saved his life. He thought of her, and thanked her memory for the chance to watch that snotty first year turn into the Head Girl, or for the chance to grind herbs in his mortar again and feel the accomplishment of creating something with his hands.

Most of the time, though, he found himself circling back to that sacrifice. Everything he did, even those positive moments he grabbed from her, was because of her. Because she saved his life. And she had died. And there was no way he could repay her for that, or thank her for that. And he hated her for saving his life, and for putting him in such debt. And then he hated himself for thinking badly of her.

In truth, he couldn't even remember what her voice sounded like. That, for some inexplicable reason, was more alarming than the transition from Evans to Potter.