Author's Note: Hello! Thank you so much for making it to chapter 4! I'd like to give a huge thank you to those who have reviewed and everyone who has alerts turned on for this story. Your support means everything to me!


That same morning, Hannah woke to a sharp pain in her right shoulder. As she came to, her eyes adjusting to the bright light that spilled in through her windows, she realized that it was because at some point in the night she'd tossed and turned enough that her arm had been pinned down underneath her chest in an uncomfortable bend. She used her left hand to push herself up, slowly moving her shoulder so that her arm could return to a normal position. A gasp escaped her as she moved and her muscles objected to the stress that they had been under.

The sheets and blankets had been twisted around her body or, in the case of her yellow blanket, thrown completely off the bed. She didn't bother to make it, though, instead getting up and moving to the table, where she'd left her watch the night before. It was already 8:22.

"Fuck," she said quietly. Only thirty-eight minutes until Susan would be there.

Hannah tossed the yellow blanket back onto the bed and then made her way to the bathroom. She brushed her teeth, eager to rid herself of the stale taste of sleep. A chill shook her spine as she stepped into the shower and thoughts of her dream from the night before drifted into her consciousness. She scrubbed at her body with the warm water and tried to push them back out.

Her hair was dried and she was mostly dressed when three quick knocks announced Susan's arrival at the door.

"Don't kill me," Hannah said as she pulled the door open, one sock on and the other in her hand.

"I wasn't planning to," Susan said, stepping over the threshold with an easy smile on her face. "I know we work on different schedules now."

Hannah laughed. "That's one way to put it."

"Thought it was nicer than saying, 'I know it's hard for you to get out of bed before noon,'" Susan countered. She moved in front of the mirror, her long dark plait swinging over her shoulder.

"Lovely," the mirror gushed with its wheezy voice.

"Thank you," Susan said.

Hannah sighed. She took in her friend's easy elegance, from her hair to her sundress to her sandals and satchel. Susan was the picture of grace for a hot July afternoon, and Hannah wished it were that easy for her. Instead, she tucked her shirt into her shorts and pulled on her shoes. She moved next to her friend to take a look at her hair in the mirror and was met with the sight of her blonde locks lying in a state of utter flatness.

"Best to just put it up, dearie," the mirror advised.

Hannah agreed, and set to work piling her hair on top of her head. As she did so her mind went to the elegant twist her mother used to put her own hair into at the base of her neck, a look that Hannah had attempted to recreate both with and without magic but always failed at.

"Hannah?" Susan said, her voice raised ever so slightly.

It shook Hannah out of her thoughts, and she looked back at her friend where she had moved to sit on the foot of the bed. "Sorry," she said.

Susan shook her head slightly, but Hannah knew she understood, sometimes going into the same sort of reveries herself. Hannah had lost her mom, but Susan's family had lost almost everyone. "It's alright," Susan said, but her eyes were wide as they gazed between her friend, the messy bed, and the cluttered table. "When do you start your shift today?"

"I thought you knew my schedule," Hannah joked lightly before answering, "Four."

Susan made a soft noise of recognition, but was still glancing around the room.

Hannah turned back to the mirror, finishing up her hair, but saw that the results were less than satisfactory.

"Just do a ponytail," the mirror said.

"Okay," Hannah agreed, letting her hair down and taking an elastic from the top of the dresser.

"Are you still having nightmares?" Susan asked.

The question hung in the air. Hannah didn't say anything at first, just focusing on her hair. The answer she knew she had to give, the truthful one, seemed so simple, just one affirmative word. But there was more simmering underneath it that Susan would dig into, things that Hannah wasn't sure she could stand to look at. Susan wanted to unearth the skeletons. Hannah wanted them to continue sleeping and just wished they'd return the favor.

Apparently vocalizing the word wasn't necessary, though. Susan took Hannah's pause to mean the same thing.

"I do too, you know," she said. Her hand reached out to pat the yellow blanket, so familiar to her from the years in their shared Hufflepuff dormitory. "On occasion, anyway."

Hannah pulled her hair through the elastic a final time and then set to work trying to soften the look, pulling out wispy hairs. She was being silly, not responding. It was fair, nice even, for Susan to be asking these things, attempting to look out for her friend. But Hannah's stomach churned when she thought about it too much, and this was definitely too much.

Susan stood and crossed to stand next to Hannah. Their eyes met in the mirror.

"You're disappearing on me again," Susan said.

"I'm not trying to," Hannah said. Her voice came out quieter than she had thought it would.

"Good." Susan turned to Hannah, placing a hand on her shoulder. "Now let's go get some food."

Hannah nodded.

They went to one of the cafés in Diagon Alley, sitting under a cheery pink umbrella outside. A shared plate stacked tall with pastries lay on the table between them. Susan sipped on tea while Hannah stirred cream into her coffee.

"So are you ever going to tell me about last night?" Susan asked before biting into a cherry-filled pastry that was covered in powdered sugar.

Hannah smiled. "There really isn't much to tell."

"Six of the most famous people in the entire wizarding world show up at the inn where you work and you have no stories?" Susan said, her eyebrows raised.

"Is that how we refer to our former classmates now?" Hannah asked, laughing lightly. She picked at a pastry that was filled with chocolate. Her eyes were fixed on the flower pattern that had been seared into its flaky crust, no doubt by some clever wand-work. Neville's words drifted into her mind, his suggestion that he wasn't famous—if only he could hear Susan now. She smiled absentmindedly.

Susan pointed at Hannah accusatorially, "That smile says something happened!"

Hannah shook her head and took a large bite out of the chocolate pastry, flaky bits of crust falling to the table in front of her.

"You'll swallow that eventually and then you'll have to talk," Susan said, eyes narrowed.

"Honestly," Hannah said, "Nothing happened. They had dinner and then some drinks. I didn't even see them leave."

"Was it like a triple date or something?" Susan asked. "You know Harry and Ginny got engaged, right?"

Hannah frowned at her friend. "Please tell me you're not reading those horrible gossip articles about them."

Susan rolled her eyes, "Of course not. I ran into Hermione at work a few weeks ago and she mentioned something about their engagement party." She sipped her tea before adding on, "And by the way, let's not forget that you're the one with a subscription to Witch Weekly."

"Not for that sort of thing!" Hannah insisted. Her voice sounded slightly indignant, but they were both laughing.

"Are Neville and Luna still dating?" Susan pressed. She had moved on to a blueberry tart.

Hannah shrugged. She thought back on the night before, when she'd approached their table. Sure, Neville and Luna had been sitting together, but that didn't mean they were dating. And besides, had they ever really been dating? During that weird eighth year at Hogwarts she knew that they had been together in some sense, she'd seen them kissing a couple of times around the grounds, but was that dating exactly? "I don't want to gossip," Hannah finally said.

"It's not gossiping, per se," Susan said. She frowned, and Hannah knew that her friend was trying to convince herself of that.

"Didn't we ask for these to be toasted?" Hannah asked, holding up one of two pecan braids they'd gotten. Susan nodded and Hannah pulled out her wand to begin toasting them herself.

Susan drained the last of her tea. She said, "Can you imagine getting married right now? Being so sure about your life already? And Ginny's a year younger than us!" Susan sighed, "It must be nice for them all, to have things fall together so perfectly."

Hannah regarded her friend with a soft smile, "I doubt everything's perfect for them." Her thoughts drifted back to when Neville had asked to stay with her at the bar for a moment, to him looking so out of sorts. To the moment her stomach had flipped.

Susan let out a small shriek.

"What?" Hannah asked, but she saw what. As her mind had drifted she'd accidentally set one of the pastries on fire. "Shoot," she muttered, putting it out quickly. She looked down at the slightly singed pecan braid, sitting next to its nicely toasted double. "I'll take that one," she promised.

Susan shook her head, "Where did your mind just go?"

Hannah faltered for a moment, not sure if she wanted to tell the truth. Her exchange with Neville, for whatever reason, felt private and somehow personal. In the end she merely shrugged and said, "Sorry, I just…spaced out."

Susan frowned, but it wasn't at Hannah exactly, and Hannah knew as much. It was one of more concern, of more compassionate worrying and care.

She really needed to not disappear again, her friends didn't deserve that sort of treatment.

"What should we do after we're done here?" she asked. When Susan merely continued frowning Hannah pressed, "We could go shopping for clothes at the muggle shops. I need a dress like yours, I don't have any nice ones that are still casual."

Now Susan smiled. "Okay," she said, "I want to get some new shorts too."

Hannah smiled back.


"I never knew being an aide for the Wizengamot would involve so much running," Hannah said, laughing at the story Susan had just finished telling her.

"Me either," Susan said. "If I had maybe I wouldn't have taken the job."

They were trudging up the stairs to Hannah's room, both with shopping bags in hand. It was still a little while before Hannah's shift started, and they were going to grab a bite downstairs after dropping off the morning's spoils.

Hannah opened her door and found that the room had gotten very stuffy in the time that she'd been gone, as it filled with morning sun. Hannah set her bags down and moved to the window, opening it in the hopes of letting some of the hot air drift out with the breeze. Susan sat on the still unmade bed, her bags by her feet.

"I'll make that if you—" Hannah stopped midsentence.

An owl had swooped inside, a red envelope clamped in its beak.

Hannah regarded it carefully. It wasn't her family's owl, and basically the only other person who sent her mail was Susan. Handsome and tawny, the owl looked very out of place in her messy room.

"Who do you belong to?" Hannah mused aloud.

Susan took the envelope and read the back of it. "It just has your name." She handed it off to Hannah.

The envelope contained an invitation that Hannah was surprised to see had been sent by Ginny.

She told Susan, "It's an invitation to Harry's birthday party in two weeks."

Susan snatched it back to read it herself. "Hmm," she said, "They're trying to get the whole DA to come? That'd be a feat."

Hannah shrugged, "It's nice though."

"It's not on his actual birthday," Susan mused, "They're having it the Friday of that week. They must be expecting something wild in that case."

"Or they're just being understanding of people's schedules," Hannah countered, reaching out to take the invitation back.

Susan handed it over, crossing her arms as she continued to think about it. "It's not understanding of yours though."

Hannah shrugged. "I could ask for the night off," she said.

"Will you?" Susan asked, "Are you actually going to go?"

That earned a frown. "Why do you sound so skeptical?"

"When's the last time you were out with a group that included more than three people?"

She had a point. "But this isn't going out, exactly," Hannah argued. "It's just at their house."

"With upwards of thirty people there," Susan said.

Hannah frowned down at the invitation. She did want to go, she wanted to see people, she wanted to have fun, but at the same time…people meant questions, and fun was never guaranteed.

"I'll go if you go," Susan said.

Hannah looked up at her friend. Susan's gaze had an edge to it, like this was a challenge, an opportunity for Hannah to prove that she was actually doing okay. In that case, Hannah didn't see how she could say no, not without it becoming a big deal. Not without other people worrying more than they did already. Hannah didn't like the thought of that. The last thing she wanted was to be a burden, someone that her friends had to look out for and take care of.

"I'm going," she said.


Thank you so much for reading! When I set out to write this I didn't think Harry and Ginny and their various events would be so important to the plot, but here we are lol. Reviews are always welcome and extremely appreciated! Next chapter should be up some time next week.