Harry set his hands on top of the desk. Sunlight streamed in through the window at his left, illuminating them and the papers beneath, his application. The portkey he had used to come sat on the desk out of the sun's glare, a dull green pincushion looking even darker in the shadows.

He was sitting opposite Minerva McGonagall, who had been lost in thought for quite some time, the maroon velvet of her blazer bright gold in the sun. The only sounds in the office were the wind ruffling their robes and the occasional flutter of parchment.

"What do you suggest then, Professor?", said Harry, breaking the silence at last. He had thought the matter was closed when McGonagall revealed there had been another applicant for Defence Against the Dark Arts that nearly all the Governors had approved of. Harry was ready to leave for his office in Law Enforcement at the Ministry and tell them he was not resigning after all, but McGonagall had told him to wait. Her mouth had thinned and she had jabbed her quill at him, ordering him to sit back down while she thought of a way through.

She looked straight at him now, a strange, warm light in her eyes. "Well, I won't have this inconvenience you, Potter," she said, "the Governors will be informed tomorrow," she took off her glasses delicately, "I suppose it's a good thing you didn't wait any longer ... "

Harry didn't understand. "What are you saying, Prof—"

She sighed impatiently. "The applicant will have to be dismissed," she said, "I don't see how anyone could qualify better for this than you."

Harry had not expected this. He looked down, feeling strangely embarrassed.

McGonagall caught the look on his face and cleared her throat. "Of course, " she said, "it would not be entirely ethical to simply reject our applicant ... but even with a proper evaluation, Potter, I'm sure you would—"

"Professor, no."

"I'm simply suggesting a quicker process," she went on as if she had not heard, "there is no bias involved, I'm merely trusting my knowledge as to which individual is a better fit for the position ... "

"I don't want you pulling any strings," said Harry, becoming increasingly uncomfortable.

McGonagall gripped the table and leaned forward. "It would not do me well, Potter, to not pull all the strings I can when I was the one to propose this," she took a sharp breath, "in the first place."

Harry shifted in his seat, wondering how to escape this. He had never wanted to teach, and he was not about to fight for it, especially when it put another applicant, whoever it was, at risk. Someone had willingly applied for this, unlike Harry, who just saw no other place left for him. But McGonagall was wrong about one thing. Harry did not like how she had almost held herself responsible for all of this.

"And I'm glad you did, Professor," he said after a few moments, "but you wouldn't have had to if I had just," he looked down, "cleared my Auror training." Like Ron, like Justin Finch Fletchely, like the girl from Ravenclaw who was a year younger than Harry and had trouble with the Reducto curse all three years but had still managed to fight off the three successive bogarts in their final test and she hadn't ended up on the archway containing the Veil, and she hadn't almost been swallowed by it like Harry ...

He realized he had trailed off. He licked his lips and tried again, "What I meant was, Professor, if it's anyone's fault, it's mine ... I understand you felt bad about what happened—"

"What happened was terribly unfortunate and I," she straightened up, "would have made sure that the Auror Department paid what they owed if you still hadn't woken up after those three weeks in St. Mungo's, Potter," she said, her voice fervent and matter-of-fact.

Harry bit back a groan, he wished she would stop finding new things to blame. There is no bias involved, she had said. None at all, apparently. He sighed and thought miserably of the trial he was supposed to be at right now had he not been resigning. He felt the urge to laugh but didn't, the loss of hope surrounding him like a cloak. But he was sure of one thing.

"But I won't have it, Professor," he said in an even voice, "this ... dismissal thing. I'd like to," he paused, "withdraw my application actually."

McGonagall fixed him with a hard stare. "I suggest you think this through, first, Potter—"

"I have."

"No, you haven't, you're worried it won't be fair," she nodded, "of course, I expected nothing less of you—"

"Professor," said Harry, leaning forward, "I won't have it," he said firmly.

He sat back and braced himself for the outburst that never came. She simply looked at him for a long moment, then nodded, the lines on her face deepening.

Harry dropped his head. "Who is it, anyway?", he asked, very guilty and not curious at all.

"Draco Malfoy."

He looked up at her, sure he must have heard wrong, but McGonagall was staring at him with a calculating expression, watching his every move. Harry swallowed, and stood up quickly. He stood slightly on his toes to angle the sunlight away from his eyes and was greeted with the familiar tugging sensation in his chest, from where he still had not healed. An after-effect of what had happened at the Ministry, something that would leave in a year or so if he was lucky. But why would he be here if he was?

"Right," his voice was shaky with shock, he cleared his throat. "I should head back. Hawkworth appreciates an early notice. And Professor ... thank you for meeting me."

McGonagall stood up too, a little slow in her movements. Harry tried not to notice how much older she looked. It made him feel emptier. His eyes suddenly crossed over a half-written letter laid out on the desk, dated today.

It was foolish of you to expect any support from Hogwarts, Cornelius, it was written, least of all from me—

"Of course," said McGonagall. Harry hastily looked away and reached for his wand.

"And, Potter," she continued, "... you did not fail your Auror training," she put a hand to her collar, "it was the whole Auror business that failed you."

Harry had no idea what to make of that. Smiling cautiously and not believing one bit of it, he nodded in farewell and reached for the glowing pincushion.

Hogwarts disappeared behind him in a rush of movement and color.

Harry had met Draco Malfoy for the first time since the war in the winter following it when they were both eighteen and trying not to look at each other across the small courtroom at the very bottom of the Ministry. The trial was short, the jury biased and the only reason Malfoy had got off was that Hawkworth was interrogating on Harry's request, Chief Warlock even four years ago.

Staring down at Malfoy from that seat beside him, Harry had argued in his arch rival's defense as if he were Malfoy's own attorney, and it had worked. All charges had been dropped, except for one.

"Wood got through most of these while you were gone," came Hawkworth's voice in between scratches of his quill as soon as Harry stumbled out of thin air next to a bench, "you can finish where he left off."

Harry pocketed the pincushion and gritted his teeth. Hawkworth had apparently not doubted for one second that Harry would be back in front of him. And as his Vice-Chancellor still, not a Hogwarts Professor. It had been more than a year, but Harry still wore that title like an ill-fitting shirt, something stiff and unwelcome. There were wizards even in the jury who were at least twice as old as him and Harry had never known how to look them in the eye from that ridiculously high seat next to Hawkworth on every trial he attended.

It was very different for Hawkworth. Harry's eyes fell on his downturned head, the hair that was still muddy brown and fading to grey only slightly at the roots. The descendant of a former Warlock, he was elected one too by all fifty members of the Wizengamot at the age of thirty-two. Hawkworth may not have been the right age, like Harry, but he was in the right place. He was where he belonged.

Harry walked over to the desk in the middle of the courtroom. He could appreciate, at least, the lack of any snide remarks and how his resignation letter was never mentioned, just put to the side, as if it was an accident. It was, Harry thought now.

"I'll go down with you to the first one," continued Hawkworth, "the rest you'll have to head yourself." He finished writing and stood up, heading towards the door.

Harry sighed.

"... or I'll just leave them to Wood if you want," said Hawkworth, stopping with his hand on the doorknob.

Harry tried to hide a smile. So Hawkworth had taken his letter seriously. Did he think Harry's work was too much for him, that too many hearings on his list were what had pushed him to resign?

"I'll get to them," said Harry, not bothering to add the sir. Hawkworth was wrong anyway, thought Harry as he followed him out in the hallway. Harry had spent the whole year trying to defend his aversion to this work, this job, that he knew millions would break their wands for. It was still as excruciating to walk up from the Aurors floor now as it was ten months ago, the first time Harry climbed these stairs.

And Harry still felt just as unqualified walking beside Hawkworth as he did then, when any skill he had was from Malfoy's hearing, the only trial he was ever in where he wasn't the accused.

He felt his mind slipping back to it and what happened after. Harry had no explanations to offer anyone, even himself. Maybe he knew this was the only way he could have ever repaid Narcissa Malfoy, bargaining with half the court to release her Death Eater son. Maybe it was the way Malfoy's clenched jaw and steely glare had broken at the sight of Harry sitting there. Harry had known, of course, that it was nothing but surprise, but it was persuading enough.

Or maybe it was just that, Harry still had a hawthorn wand in a battered trunk under his bed, with a unicorn hair core that had won him the damn war. And it had just felt so wrong seeing its owner sitting on the chair beneath him, arms shackled and wands digging into him from every direction.

But Malfoy's fate afterward was what Harry assumed the Slytherin would have preferred Azkaban to. After months of negotiations and proposals to every employer imaginable in the Wizarding community, Malfoy was hired as a mail handler in the Ministry's Post Service.

Adam Henn, Head of Law Enforcement at the time had demanded a retrial. The rest of the Wizarding community had taken it just as well, no one wanted to believe Draco Malfoy would be walking free while Lucius was chained in Azkaban. Draco Malfoy, whose crimes they thought were just as bad as his father's. Draco Malfoy who was a Death Eater just like his father ...

"Who were you meeting again?" asked Hawkworth, cutting into Harry's thoughts as they reached the bottom of the staircase.

"Draco Malfoy," said Harry numbly, his mind in a distant courtroom from four years ago.

Hawkworth's eyebrows scrunched together. "Why?" he asked incredulously.

Harry blinked. "Oh," he shook his head, "I meant Professor McGonagall, er— Minerva McGonagall, sorry," he finished lamely. The empty hallway around them was silent. Harry sighed and leaned his head back on the stone wall, his vision flooded with light from the torch above his head.

Hawkworth looked at him carefully for a while, then continued up the stairs, disappearing in his too-big office.

Harry apparated beside his front door almost an hour later. The night was quiet, even for the countryside. A distant hoot sounded from somewhere behind the stairs leading up to the bedrooms. Harry found the small, grey feathered owl on the railing, and an even smaller square held tight in its beak. He tugged it away, and the owl flew off, the flapping of its tiny wings unsettling the soundless night.

The postcard was from Ginny, Ireland's flag etched into its corner. Another training site, she had written, the next one's in London. Mum told me about the awful accident at the Ministry, I'll come see you. Harry's eyes fell to the bottom where a single sentence was squeezed in. Feel better, Harry.

He let the postcard fall on the stair he was leaning on and swallowed thickly. Mrs. Weasley had apparently told Ginny nothing of what had happened to Harry. He was lucky to be alive, lucky that he was walking, lucky that the only remnants were three horizontal, jagged scars on his ribs. It could not be reduced to an 'accident'.

Harry trudged upstairs and into the room where he slept. He fell back on the bed he had once shared with Ginny, the past circling softly in his head. A pair of dead lilies sat inside an empty perfume bottle on the table beside his bed, put there by her more than a year ago, dried to the core and their petals hard and cracking. Harry had never moved them. Just like he had not cleaned up the small puddle of ink in front of his closet, spilled there by Ron before Ginny had moved in. They might write now and then, Ron and Ginny, maybe even visit him, but Harry thought it was this, the lilies and the ink, that really showed they had ever lived here.

He shut his eyes.

Feel better, Harry.

Hermione draped an arm around Ron's shoulders, enlarged as they were with Quidditch gear. Her hand caught in the sunlight, and their marriage of two years lit up on her third finger. She looked over at Harry and pressed her lips together slightly.

"Are you still mad at me?" said Harry in a muffled voice, his jaw pressed against his palm.

Hermione's eyes were warm. "Do I look mad at you?" she asked amusedly.

Harry thought about it. Ron had decidedly opted out of the conversation. He rubbed his broom handle vigorously with polish, his face set.

"No," said Harry at last.

"No," confirmed Hermione. "It's not that I think you showed great wit back there in McGonagall's office, Harry. At times like these, I'm almost convinced you're more stupid than noble."

Harry felt briefly wounded by this, but the front door to the Burrow flew open before he could tell her.

"Ronnie," came George's voice, slightly out of breath, "That broom doesn't need to match your hair just so you know."

Ron scowled at his older brother and got up with difficulty, his helmet clanking. "I'm Keeper," he declared.

"We know, mate. It's all over you," said George dismissively. He skipped back out to the garden, and Ron followed. The game commenced with a series of loud cheers. Harry's ribs hurt notably worse today, but that was not the excuse he had given Ron for not playing. He had neglected to take his potions two days in a row now. The pain ran through in twisted lines on his chest, which Harry thought was preferable to the slow, bitter atmosphere the medicine created inside his brain.

"You know, you don't seem too tired to me, Harry," said Hermione, forcing Harry's eyes away from the window where he had been watching the game. "I doubt Fleur makes a better Seeker than you."

"And I think," said Harry, bothered by her perception, "you'd make one better than me, Hermione."

She snickered and flicked her wand at him. Tiny bubbles materialized in his hair. He shook them out, pretending to be annoyed.

Two years ago, he had gone to their wedding, Ron and Hermione's, held outside the Burrow like Bill and Fleur's. The guests exceeded the invitations that had been sent, by far, and Harry remembered Hermione's blush when Viktor Krum had shown up, a little late, pulling her into a dance.

But before that, the three years following the war, Ron and he lived in Harry's country house. Harry could not help but resent Hermione just a little the day Ron had stood in his doorway, looking around slowly at the house that could not have been emptier. Harry had grabbed him by the arms and told him to come and visit any time he liked, but he never had, except on the day he was made an Auror.

An hour later, Harry was just getting up to leave when the door burst open again. Ron burst in, with his teammates behind him, identical grins on all their faces. Harry smiled back and went over to thump Ron on the back.

"We didn't stand a chance without you, Harry," said George from behind him, his expression sour. Harry shrugged apologetically and said his farewells. Ron and Hermione followed him to the fireplace.

"I'm not letting you sit out next month," said Ron assertively. "I don't care how sick you say you are."

Harry took a sharp breath and saw Hermione narrowing her eyes at his side, no doubt remembering Harry explain to her how tired he was this evening, not sick.

She leaned into Ron's side as Harry climbed over the hearth, looking at him shrewdly.

"Watch what you eat, mate," said Ron, not helping the situation in the slightest. Harry threw the Floo powder around him as fast as he could before Ron could say more. The last thing he saw were Hermione's fingers, the ring outstanding, forcing Ron's face towards her own. Harry was wrenched upwards before the two could kiss.