The Three Broomsticks bustled with laughter that didn't reflect on the faces of the group in the middle of the room. Everyone was cramped together, alcohol absent from the table. Ron had bags under his eyes, they looked purple in the low candlelight. Bill's face was buried in Fleur's hair and had his arm wrapped around her. He avoided looking at Ron.

Everyone else's eyes and sympathies, however, replaced the happiness that would otherwise be the tradition. Ron conceded for the night around 8 pm. He didn't want to bring down the celebrations. It was May the 2nd after all. It's been five whole years. No reason not to celebrate.

But Ron couldn't celebrate. Hermione had just left him, only she hadn't just left. It had been 5 months. Or was it 6 months? Ron couldn't remember. Bill could. The last day he had seen Hermione was days before Hermione left his brother. Ron didn't know about Bill, and Bill didn't intend to tell him.

He didn't want to tell him, not because he felt guilty, but because he still thought about Hermione. And somehow, in the finality that came with Ron's announcement that Hermione had left him, he thought he would be faced with the reality that Hermione had left him too.

Bill did in fact not feel guilty. He could in fact bear to look at his brother as he got out of his chair and exited the same door that Hermione had done two years prior. And he felt nothing. He knew his face showed nothing and disguised this by burying his face into his wife's hair, smelling her, and longing for the smell of parchment and ink.

Hermione dulled everything he felt or didn't feel inside and enveloped him in something completely new. And he didn't know it, but he was terrified that he would never get that again. Once Ron had left the Three Broomsticks, Bill blurted out, "Is she coming, then?".

He had thought it would be harder to fake disdain. It was easy.

"She said she might, but didn't want to upset Ron." Ginny said. Harry looked at Ginny and then said after what looked like a ponder. "I'm going to go after him, someone should be with him tonight."

Ginny pecked Harry on the cheek and smiled sadly as she watched Harry leave. She then turned to everyone else. "They always have their trouble, they always get back together."

Bill's face remained indifferent.

Two hours later, a tinkle at the door sounded no different to the rest of the night's jangling. Hermione quietly walked in and sat beside Ginny, the furthest seat away from Bill and smiled in greeting to everyone. A forced smile, expectantly waiting on everyone to tell her to leave. Ginny called Rosmerta over and ordered a gin and tonic, hugging her shoulders sideways.

"You guys will figure it out," Ginny said reassuredly. "He's getting better, he didn't have a single drink tonight."

Hermione smiled weakly and actively avoided looking at Bill.

"I'll only stay for one drink." Hermione said shortly. "It's tradition, I almost would have missed it."

"You could have." Bill said in a quiet voice. It was in a harsh and hoarse growl. Fleur's eyes had flashed in panic at her husband's words and she shushed him.

"'E doesn't mean it, 'Ermione." She said hurriedly.

Bill ground his teeth, annoyed everyone mistook his annoyance with Hermione as sympathy for Ron. He was angry at Hermione because he didn't exist to her anymore. He was invisible and he wanted her to acknowledge that he sat there. His glare intensified as Hermione gulped back the gin and left in a hurry. She forgot her jacket on the rack, everyone had noticed too late. Bill hadn't, but he let her go into the cold this time.

Bill gazed at Fleur's silver head in the moonlight and counted her breaths, trying hard to fall asleep. Visions of Hermione swam through his head, her eyes were filled with tears. Her hair whipping around her face and then her disapparition. When she was gone that night, he felt nothing. Where something was before, sitting in his chest waiting to burst forward, there was nothing. He bloodied his hand on the wall and had to heal himself. He did a poor job and bore the silvery scars across his knuckles to show for it.

Bill had to be at Hogwarts the next day, so they stayed at the Hog's Head Inn at Aberforth's semi-persistence and Fleur's fondness for his humour, which had considerably increased after the battle.

Bill grunted as he got out of bed, Fleur didn't stir. He put his boots on outside of the room and walked to the Three Broomsticks. The lights were on, it was 2:30 am, but the place was empty. He knocked softly and Madam Rosmerta answered the door. She looked him over before stepping aside and letting him in.

Bill dressed with his back to Rosmerta. She lay in bed with the sheets pulled all the way to her neck. Her face was layered with guilt. Bill knew Rosmerta would sleep with him because he was younger than her, and she felt younger when she was with him. She also felt some guilty pleasure knowing Bill would sleep with her while he was married to Fleur, Fleur being as beautiful and young as she was. But that's where her guilt stopped. She was not tied to anyone. Bill liked that about her too.

The sun was coming up over the hilltop past Hogsmeade and he got back to the room as Fleur stirred awake.

"Are you getting ready to leave? What time did you have to meet zem." she said sleepily, her eyes unopened.

"Yes dear, you can go home when you're up." Bill said as he stripped for a shower. His body felt hollow and the warm water reminded him of Hermione's body.

He walked to meet Filch at the gate of Hogwarts. As he gazed at his past, a pang tugged at his insides. Low in his gut, a throbbing ache. Hogwarts was whole again, and he had returned, less than whole.

On the walk to the castle, with Filch grunting from the effort of keeping up with Bill, he thought about how he felt nothing as he stared at Ron's face the night before. And the nothing he felt when inside of Rosmerta. He thought for a bewildered moment, that he felt nothing now, as he stared at the place where his brother and so many others died.

Then for one tiny painful prick of a moment on his memory, he felt the crushing weight of something he had ignored for the past 5 years and managed to bury it again behind the darkness of the nothingness that resided in him to his very core.

He plastered a smile on his face as he entered the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom to greet the bored students. Their attention had mildly peaked as he entered in his long strides, in a dragonhide jacket and boots, a fang dangling from his ear half hidden by his long hair tied low.

He smiled wider, grotesquely,, his scars contorted his face. He saw some students wince away, and he smiled more genuinely at the fear he saw flash through their eyes.