September, 1998

"Can you imagine, Harry," Ron said to his friend, trailing behind Ginny and Hermione as the boys helped them carry their belongings through King's Cross Station. "After everything we've been through, voluntarily signing up for another year of sitting through classes and stressing about exams? We've already saved the whole bloody world, what more could they possibly have to teach us?" Hermione turned around, a wide, plastic carrier in her hands that, as anyone could determine from the hissing and spitting issuing forth from the caged door, contained a very large and feral animal who did not enjoy being shoved into a box and carried through the station.

"It may surprise you to know, Ron," she said, shooting him a pointed look, "that not all of us want to be aurors."

"Yeah, but a fair few of us do," Ron responded, grinning as he pushed the cart holding Hermione's trunk through the crowds of muggles to Platform 9 3/4. "Dean, Seamus, Neville, Parvati - hell, you may be the only person from our year who's actually going back to school,"

"I honestly don't care," she said, turning around and continuing to walk through the station. "Some careers need more training than others."

"Do you hear that?" Ron said, looking at Harry again, an incredulous expression on his face. "She thinks she's better than us."

"Mhm," Harry muttered in acknowledgement. Ginny had glanced back at him momentarily, her hazel eyes meeting his for a second, and then she continued to look straight ahead, ignoring the conversation they were having.

After the evening they had spent in Diagon Alley, Ginny had asked to meet with Harry again, this time at The Burrow. It was a quiet Saturday afternoon. The rest of the family was at Shell Cottage celebrating Bill's birthday, but she had stayed behind, saying she wasn't feeling up to being around people at the moment. When Harry had arrived at the house he found her out in the garden, wearing her blue dress again and sitting lazily on an old, wooden swing that looked like it had seen better days. Everything around her was so vividly green; the overgrown grass and hydrangea bushes creating a safe little haven in the Weasleys' backyard. If he hadn't had so much on his mind, Harry would have loved to lie down next to her in the grass until the sky turned dark and the clouds were replaced with stars. He wanted to talk to her about everything, but he feared that the second he told her about any number of the troubling thoughts going through his head, she would want nothing to do with him.

She had looked up when he walked into the garden, her face not as vibrant as it usually was when he found her.

"Hey," she said, planting her bare toes in the ground to stop herself from swinging. "Thanks for coming."

"Yeah, anytime," he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans, a habit he had recently caught himself doing whenever he felt uncomfortable. "What did you, er... want to talk about?" He didn't have a better way of transitioning the conversation, and didn't think he could handle any small talk at the moment.

Ginny ran her fingers through the roots of her hair, sweeping it away from her face and making Harry wish he could bury himself in its sweet, familiar scent. He had been thinking about her constantly since he had gotten her letter. He missed her laugh, her sarcasm, her freckled shoulders and the curve of her hips - he hadn't been deluding himself into thinking that he didn't want her any longer. But how was he sure he really knew what he wanted? He was realizing more and more recently that he hardly knew anything about himself. He had thought that being an auror was something he was meant to do for the rest of his life. He had thought that he would learn to outrun the ghosts of the war by now, and he had thought until very recently that the feelings he had about other men were just feelings, and nothing he would seriously consider acting upon...

"Harry, I need you to tell me something. Don't overthink it, just tell me what you're feeling." Ginny paused, taking a deep breath. "Are we... are we anything?"

He had been so taken aback by her question that his jaw had dropped noticeably. She continued, disregarding his reaction.

"There was definitely something back in school, you and I both felt it, but you've been different. You've been more reserved, more distracted, and I know we've both changed since the war but I just… I can't live my life not knowing if we're headed somewhere or not. It's driving me mad."

He paused, standing in the garden and staring at his shoes so he wouldn't have to see the look on her face when he hesitated, not answering right away as she had asked him to.

"I... I don't know, Gin. Maybe."

Sure enough, as soon as he had lifted his eyes, they met Ginny's and he saw all of the confusion, the anger, and the disappointment that he had been expecting to see. He felt a heavy weight in his stomach, knowing from this point on that there was nothing he could do to fix this. The damage had been done, and he immediately looked away, feeling an overwhelming surge of guilt. He should have told her everything - how he felt about her, how he was struggling with training at work and how he had kissed Draco at the end of June - she surely would have been able to offer him advice or at least understand why he was acting the way that he was.

"Well if you're not sure," she had said, lowering her gaze and clenching her teeth in frustration, "that's probably your answer, then."

He had tried writing to her after this, tried explaining as many of his thoughts as he could, but no matter how many times he attempted to put his feelings onto paper it had never seemed good enough to actually send to Ginny. He had given up trying, and instead taken up drinking with Ron after their auror training nearly every evening.

It was with tremendous shame, then, that he continued to walk behind Ginny, pushing the cart with her school trunk and catching a whiff of her hair with the soft breeze that passed them. He hadn't told Ron and Hermione about what had happened, (mostly because he wasn't entirely sure what had transpired himself), but he knew they could probably tell something was a little off with both Him and Ginny.

The Hogwarts Express was idling on the platform at King's Cross Station, steam billowing out of the engine and wafting its way through the crowds of wizarding families congregating to send their loved ones off. Molly and Arthur, having come straight from Gringotts to meet their daughter on the platform, were there to smother Ginny and Hermione in farewell hugs and wishes of good luck. After what felt like an eternity of Molly checking to make sure they had everything they needed, handing them food to take on the train and wrapping them in hugs again and again, Hermione saw the chance to slip away from her fussing for a moment. She grabbed Harry by the arm, bringing him off to the side of the platform so they could have a word. He was immediately glad to have an excuse to be away from Ginny; he could barely look at her without feeling the weight in his stomach again, wishing to fly as far away as he could on his broomstick so he would never have to face her again.

"Harry, I don't know what's going on with you two," she said, motioning to Ginny, who was now showing off her new broom servicing kit to a couple members of the Gryffindor Quidditch team."I just want you to know that she asked me if you were seeing someone," Hermione said candidly, waving uncomfortably at some first year students who were pointing her and Harry out to their parents.

"Why would she ask you that?"

"She's just curious, I suppose," Hermione shrugged. "And she obviously still cares about you. And she asked me to talk to you. And I'm about to spend a whole year sleeping in the same room as her, so please just make this as easy as possible for me."

Harry laughed, Hermione's anxiety about her proximity to Ginny for the next 8 months somehow making him feel better about all of this.

"I feel like you would have known if I were. Seeing someone, that is." He granted her a smile, which she returned half-heartedly.

"Harry, just...be gentle. Please. She doesn't show she's hurting like the rest of us. She just sort of...brushes it off." They both glanced over at the redheaded witch again, who was now excitedly pantomiming a story to her friends that, from the looks of it, contained a very elaborate and disastrous broomstick collision.

"Yeah, I know." Harry replied. In truth, that was what he loved about her; her ability to remain so strong even when everything around them seemed to be crumbling. He had never even seen her grieve Fred's death like the rest of them had. She had shut herself in her room for the first couple of weeks after the war, but otherwise she appeared to be nothing but her confident, playful self. Harry both admired and envied her for it.

"Promise you'll write to me, ok? Just let me know what's going on. Ron is rubbish at filling me in." The train whistle sounded, and the students were beginning to say their last goodbyes.

"Yeah, of course," he said, taking a deep breath. Part of him wished that he could be getting on the train with them, just to escape to the place which had always brought him solace as a child; made him feel as though he had a home. He had to remind himself that it wasn't that place anymore, and he was no longer the child who could think of Hogwarts as a refuge from his life with the Dursleys. He knew he wouldn't be able to think of the school without first remembering the war for a very, very long time.

Hermione, who must have sensed something a little off in his expression, pulled him into a quick hug.

"We're all going to be ok," she said, surely reassuring herself as much as she was Harry.

"You're just as bad as Ron's mum," Harry replied, grinning as she pulled away from him.

"Oh, shut up," she laughed, pushing him playfully in the chest. She led Harry back to the train where Ginny and Ron were standing with their parents. Harry stood in the circle of people, shifting his weight uncomfortably on his feet as Hermione took Ron off to the side and embraced him as well, sharing some words with him and then a short farewell kiss. Harry could feel his ears turning red with embarrassment; Ginny stood just a couple of feet from him and he had no parting words or affections to share with her. The fact that her parents were right beside him, looking very confused by his reluctance to speak with her, was only exacerbating the situation. He was relieved when Hermione and Ginny finally boarded the train, and Ron announced that he and Harry had better get back to the ministry before they missed any more work.

...

Ron didn't seem to have noticed Harry's avoidance of Ginny on the platform, or if he did, he hadn't said anything about it. Harry appreciated that about his friend; Whereas Hermione would drill him with questions until she got to the root of whatever problem he was having, Ron was content with ignoring something if it seemed to be making Harry uncomfortable. The two of them apparated at the ministry entrance, entering through the telephone box on the corner of Trafalger Square and walking through the giant, vaulted atrium to the lifts that would take them to the Auror Department. Ron picked up a copy of the Daily Prophet and a chocolate bar at a kiosk that had been set up in the lobby, and the two of them stood in silence as the large, brass doors of the elevator closed behind them.

"Blimey," Ron exclaimed after a moment of looking over the paper, the chocolate bar remaining unopened in his hand. "Look at this, Harry," he said, offering the paper to his friend. "I guess we missed more than we thought this morning." On the front page was a witch with stringy, brown hair and a narrow, sunken face, holding a sign with her Azkaban Prison number printed across it. The headline below her pale, ghostlike face read Hogsmeade Witch Charged in Laethelixir Death of Two Children. Harry blinked twice, wondering if he could possibly be reading the page correctly. The witch had to have been around the same age as Ron and himself. He opened up the paper to read below the fold, and felt his stomach drop for the second time that day. A small boy who couldn't have been much older than Teddy looked up at him from the page, his brown eyes large and inquisitive, a couple of teeth newly formed and protruding out from his gums like tiny, white candies. A young girl was pictured beside him, her unkempt hair making her look like a miniature version of her mother. Harry skimmed the story accompanying the pictures, learning that the father of these children had been one of the fallen aurors in the battle at Hogwarts, and the mother was trying to claim that her children had also been murdered by death eaters before the ministry had found her stash of the elixir in the apartment. She had been taken to the ministry for questioning, and was granted a life sentence almost immediately.

"Yeah, I suppose we did," Harry said, handing the paper back to his friend. He felt as though he was going to be sick. The elevator lurched down a story to the Auror Department, and Harry grabbed the railing in the gilded lift to stabilize himself.

"Reckon we'll have a hell of a training schedule ahead of us after this," Ron said, folding up the newspaper and putting it in the pocket of his robes. "They're not going to let us sleep until we've got every single one of these dealers behind bars,"

Harry nodded, keeping his eyes fixed straight ahead and trying to handle the waves of nausea that were passing over him like a storm.

"You alright?" Ron asked, his face concerned. "You look sort of green."

"No, I'm fine. Just... Didn't eat breakfast."

"Do you want my chocolate? I'm not much feeling like eating now, anyways."

Harry offered his friend as genuine of a smile as he could muster.

"Sure, Ron. Thanks."

...

Ron had been right about the new training schedule; as soon as the two of them arrived in the auror department they were shooed into a large, rounded room where the rest of the aurors in the ministry had already been meeting. Kingsley Shacklebolt was in the center of the room, his long, violet robes making him stand out in the sea of ministry workers. He granted Harry and Ron a slight nod as they took their seats in the very back of the room next to Dean Thomas.

"What did we miss?" Ron whispered loudly to Dean.

"Laethelixir crackdown," Dean responded, pointing towards the chalkboard at the front of the room, upon which an enchanted piece of chalk was frantically scribbling down the key notes from Kingsley's presentation. "They're trying to confiscate what's out there, and then shut down the source."

"Great," Ron muttered, under his breath. "And we don't have any leads, do we?"

A witch with blonde hair seated in front of them turned around and shushed Ron loudly. Dean shrugged in response, and both he, Harry and Ron focused their attention on the front of the room.

"As we have determined from the most recent round of investigations, there is now a small army of individuals distributing this product around the wizarding community. It's no longer contained to a shop as we had once believed. Our job as a department," he said, using his wand to pick up what looked like a large stack of pamphlets, and then distributing them out to the aurors, "Is to prevent this kind of tragedy from ever happening again." Harry and Ron looked at each other as the pamphlets made their way to the back row. On the front of the first page in bright, green font read "September Training Schedule". The page went on to outline all of the additional training exercises that the ministry would be implementing, including the new addition of a patrol rotation, in which the aurors were assigned to wizarding communities throughout the region with the goal of shutting down the spread of this potion.

"This," Kingsley said loudly over the chatter that was now spreading amongst the crowd, "Is what we found in the home of the most recent victims." He was holding up a thin book, which had been hollowed out on the inside to contain a small crevice into which a vial could be placed. "You will have to account for the distribution of this potion through creative means, and I must remind you to always remain on your guard." He took a deep breath, placing the book back down on the desk at the front of the room. "I think we can all say this is more of a threat than we first realized. It is up to us to eliminate it."

Ron poked Harry hard in the side, pointing to the training schedule in his hand. "Harry, it says we train for 6 more hours today. We're stuck here every day until after dark!" He slumped back into his chair, his head turning up towards the ceiling. "I think Hermione was onto something," Ron muttered, shutting his eyes. "At this rate I'd rather be a student."

...

The training rooms were more crowded than Harry had ever seen them, some Aurors pouring over Muggle police reports for traces of leads that might have been missed initially, some of them practicing spellwork and agility training as he usually did on Tuesday afternoons. He followed Ron down the sloping stone hallway leading deeper underground into the simulation rooms, which is where they had been assigned to for the rest of the day.

They shut the large, wooden door behind them when they stepped into the darkened room listed on their training schedule. Harry looked around, noticing a couple other aurors he didn't recognize standing around the room as well. The trainer, who stood in his dark maroon robes at the center of the room, had biceps around the size of Harry's head, and a tight crew cut that emphasized the severity of his square jaw. Harry longed instantly for his own trainer, who understood his shortcomings and worked with him in an encouraging, constructive manner. He couldn't imagine that this man would give him the same attention or patience that Curtis did.

Sure enough, as soon as the last aurors had entered the room and all were accounted for, the trainer began explaining the simulation, which included "fire, water, and curses they had probably never heard before". Ron exchanged a daunting look with his friend, and then began to roll up the sleeves of his robes. Harry remained rooted to the spot, his nerves mingling with the terrible feeling in the pit of his stomach that he had felt since seeing the picture of the boy in the paper. He wanted to turn around and leave the room as soon as possible. He didn't know if he could handle any sort of simulation at the moment, much less one that sounded more difficult than anything he had done before.

"On your marks," the trainer bellowed, as the aurors lined up at the start of the course. Ron was leaning forward, his jaw set and his body ready to spring into motion. Harry felt a fierce wave of admiration for his friend's determination to whatever obstacles were thrown their way in these training rooms. He was truly resilient enough for this job. These exercises were bringing out Ron's best qualities, while it seemed to only be showing Harry his weaknesses.

"Go!" At the trainer's words, the 12 aurors in the room began sprinting into the simulation, which was concealed initially by several feet of dense fog. Harry followed them into the clouded haze, his wand held firmly in front of him. He soon realized the fog was so thick he couldn't see any of the aurors around him, he only heard the sound of spells being fired and curses being blocked within the mist. He continued onward, his feet propelling him forward despite his fears of what lay around the corner. A curse shot past his ear as he ran, and Harry cast a deflecting spell over his shoulder for good measure. He continued to sprint through the room until he stepped in something wet on the cobblestone. He cast a quick lumos spell to light the path in front of him, and found a lake of water running through the middle of the course. He could see the other aurors swimming across to the other side, several of them emerging onto the opposite bank and continuing on. He performed a shield charm on himself, not knowing what the waters contained, and took a deep breath.

The water was frigid, certainly almost as cold as the frozen pond he had dived into when he was trying to retrieve the sword of Gryffindor. His illuminated wand outstretched, he held his head above the lake and began to swim through the waters. As soon as he had started swimming, he knew something was wrong. There was a coldness beginning to envelop him that had nothing to do with the freezing waters. He looked above the lake and noticed several dementors beginning to swarm overhead, their chilling cloaks and concealed faces making him feel a familiar, impending sense of dread. He knew he wouldn't be able to safely cast a patronus until he was on the other side of the lake. He made a decision to tuck his wand away and began to swim with all of his might, determined to reach the other side before the dementors got too close to the waters. He accelerated as fast as he could, using wide, overhead strokes to push himself forward, but he soon realized he wasn't going to be fast enough. The hooded figures were closing in on the room, and he could feel the terror of what was going to happen next before it even started.

He was in the castle and it was nearly midnight. The rubble from the destruction of the corridors mingled with the fallen bodies in the hallways, and everywhere he looked he saw dueling, spells being hurled every which way. He saw Fred's grinning, lifeless face, like he had seen so many times in his dreams. He saw the face of his professor, his father's old friend, a new father himself - the man who had cared about him enough to put his life on the line for Harry more times than he could count. He tried his best to suppress the memories, struggling to recall the good, happy thoughts he had practiced thinking of when learning to produce his first patronus. He thought of the Weasleys, of sitting around a roaring fire during the Christmas holidays and exchanging stories and gifts, and then realized he couldn't use this memory anymore - it was forever marred by Fred's death, and now his own guilt for what he had done to Ginny. He thought of broomsticks, of flying on the quidditch pitch back when he was in school, and remembered only the destruction and death that came with the war, all of which was his fault. The last thought that entered his mind was Malfoy's grey, longing eyes, and how they had looked right after Harry had kissed him. He thought of the taste of Malfoy's mouth, the moans Harry had elicited out of him, the memories that Harry usually recalled when he was feeling incurably, insatiably aroused in the middle of the night. The memory was like a lifeboat in the middle of freezing waters for Harry to cling to. He continued to press on, his breathing becoming shallow, choppier as he moved forward, using every bit of his strength to break through the water until, finally, his hand reached the cobblestone on the other side.

Harry pulled himself up onto the shore and quickly got to his feet, reaching for his wand so he could conjure a patronus and move past the dementors, who were now lingering just above the bank of the waters. He tried to recall the memory again, of his hands exploring Malfoy's body in his kitchen, but when he held his wand and tried to utter the spell, the memory faltered. Draco was leaving, the sound of his apparating filling the room, removing himself from the situation before they were given the opportunity to talk about what had just happened. Harry was alone, sitting in the study and wishing he had the courage to write to Malfoy. He was alone, sitting in the study and wishing he had said something different to Ginny, that he could do anything to repair their friendship.

One of the dementors appeared to have sensed Harry's thoughts, and began to close in, drawing it's hooded head nearer to Harry's. Harry was yelling the spell now, trying as hard as he could to produce his stag, but only a flicker of blue light was issuing forth from the tip of his wand. He saw the young, innocent face of the boy in the paper again and then saw his godson, an orphan of the war, who would grow up wishing more than anything that he knew his parents, just as Harry had done. A silver terrier was conjured in the darkness, a patronus that quickly sprinted towards the two dementors looming over Harry's head, but it was already too late. Harry heard Ron yelling his name as he fell, tumbling backwards into the waters behind him, everything fading to black.

...

"Potter."

Harry blinked, jolting upright and realizing he was in the same, brightly-lit room he had found himself in several weeks ago, only instead of his trainer, Kingsley Shacklebolt was sitting in the desk chair facing Harry.

"What did I - what happened?" Harry asked, grabbing his glasses from the bedside table and quickly placing them back on his face. "Why am I here?"

Kingsley took a breath, folding his hands in his lap and giving Harry his full attention.

"Potter, I've been speaking with your trainer about these incidents, and I think you'll understand we're both a bit concerned about your... Performance in some of the more challenging training sessions you've encountered."

Harry swallowed quickly, shaking his head at Kingsley's words.

"I'm so sorry, Kinglsey, I didn't mean to-" Kingsley held up a hand to silence Harry before he could say anything else.

"There's no need to apologize, Potter. It's nothing you're doing wrong. If anything, this entire situation is an oversight on our part that could have been avoided, were the appropriate healing methods administered at the correct time."

Harry stared at Kingsley, getting the terrible, sinking feeling that this conversation was leading into something he had feared since he first started working in the Auror Department. Kingsley continued to speak, disregarding the panicked look that had crossed Harry's face.

"War affects each of us in different ways, and we all heal from it in our own time. I know for you, it was more than just the battle at Hogwarts. It was those who lost their lives during the last four years, and the guilt you're bearing from their sacrifice. I think I was a bit too optimistic about how fast someone of your age could recover from tragedies of the magnitude that you have experienced."

Harry stared at Kingsley, his eyes growing wider when he realized that he was about to lose his job. His lifeline, the only thing providing any structure or semblance of normality in his life was about to be taken away from him, just as quickly as it had been bestowed upon him after the war.

"Kingsley, I'm 18 years old, and I can do this. I want to do this."

"I was 22 years old after the first war. I'll be the first to tell you I was too young for the things I had seen. It was a long, painstaking process of recovery. The ghosts of the war followed me home and lingered far after some of my peers were moving on with their lives. It's nothing to be ashamed of, Harry."

Harry ran a hand through his messy, black hair, Kingsley's words stinging him like needles.

"So what are you saying, exactly? Am I fired?"

"No, not at all." The older man imparted an encouraging smile, recognizing Harry's anxiety about losing his position. "You have an excellent aptitude for this work, and I dare say you'll make one of the best aurors of your generation." Kingsley stood up, looking like he was about to head back to the training rooms once more. "I am, however, forcing you to take some time." He handed Harry a stack of papers that he withdrew from the desk in the room. "We have a ministry sanctioned healer at St. Mungo's who specializes in post traumatic stress disorders, and I've made arrangements for you to take the next several weeks off training so that you can get the help you need."

"But what about the Laethelixir, what about all the training I'll miss while I'm gone?" Harry's head was spinning; he couldn't imagine being away from Ron, from his job for that amount of time. Even the thought of him sitting in his house by himself for longer than a week was making him start to feel nauseous.

"When you're ready, and I do mean really, truly ready, the healer will discharge you, and we can discuss the next steps in terms of reintegration and additional training. We'll have your spot saved here until then."

Harry stared at his hands, feeling an overwhelming sense of disappointment with himself at his inability to conquer his own demons. He felt embarrassed, and angry with himself, and clueless about how he was to spend an indefinite number of weeks without his job to focus on. As though Kingsley could read his thoughts, he put a comforting hand on Harry's shoulder.

"There's never any shame in asking for help, Potter."

...

Harry couldn't bring himself to return home. It was only a bit after 2:00, and as he exited the ministry and began to walk down the muggle streets towards Trafalger Square, he couldn't stop thinking about the boy in the paper, and how much his face had reminded Harry of Teddy. They had the same large, hopeful eyes and plump, rosy cheeks, and it broke Harry's heart to think about the lethal consequences that the war had dealt to both of them. It had been several weeks since Harry had paid a visit to Andromeda and his godson, and the more he walked, the more he knew that was where he needed to go. He couldn't really go anywhere else - He needed some space from the probing questions Mrs. Weasley would ask him about Ginny, and everyone else he knew was either headed back to school or in the middle of work at the moment. Everyone except Draco, the voice in the back of his head whispered, but he quickly suppressed it. He hadn't written to Draco yet, and he wasn't even sure he was still in Diagon Alley. Besides, he didn't know what he would say to Draco if he saw him, even if they did have the crutch of alcohol to make things a bit easier for them. There were too many feelings that he had not sorted through yet, and he needed more time before he felt comfortable facing Draco again. Fantasizing about kissing him in his kitchen was one thing, but seeing him in real life was entirely another.

Deciding that he would have to go somewhere that wasn't home or the ministry, he stepped into an alley between two brick buildings and disapparated, picturing the small farmhouse that Andromeda had once shared with Ted Tonks, which she now inhabited with her grandson.

The wind was much stronger in the countryside than it had been in London, and as Harry approached the front garden of the house he shivered inside his robes, which were still slightly damp from the water in the training exercise. He knocked on the front door, hearing the distant sound of a child wailing from inside the house. Andromeda came to the door after a few moments with his five month old godson on her hip, and smiled as soon as she saw Harry. The more he had gotten to know her over the past several months, the sillier he felt for ever comparing her to her older sister when he had first seen her. Her soft brown eyes were filled with kindness, and although she was still grieving the loss of her husband and only daughter, she always made time for Harry whenever he was able to visit. She pulled him into a hug as soon as she saw him. Teddy had stopped crying, and was reaching curiously for Harry's glasses as soon as he had noticed his godfather.

Andromeda invited Harry in for tea, which turned out to be exactly what he was needing at the moment. They sat around the square table in the kitchen, Harry holding Teddy in his lap to give the boy's grandmother a bit of a rest. Teddy kept trying to pull off Harry's glasses, until Harry finally took them off and gave them to the child to keep him occupied for a moment. Andromeda laughed as Teddy promptly began slobbering on the earpiece of the glasses, and Harry smiled, letting his godson continue to explore the strange contraption he wore on his face.

"How have you been doing lately?" Harry asked once they had a couple cups of tea and biscuits between them on the table. "Have you been able to leave the house much?"

Andromeda shook her head, smiling slightly.

"Not much. Every now and then Molly will come over to watch him so I can shower or sleep as long as I need to, but it's mostly just been the two of us." She pinched Teddy's bare toe lightly, and Teddy grinned toothlessly at her.

"I'm sorry I haven't been 'round as much as I should have been," Harry said, taking a sip of his mint tea with his free hand. "It's been... A hard couple of months."

"I can imagine," Andromeda said, giving Harry a pained, sympathetic look. "How has training been for you?"

"I got suspended today," Harry said, grinning in spite of himself. "For medical reasons. They're having me see a healer at St. Mungo's before I can continue."

"You know," Andromeda said, offering him another biscuit from the table, "It's not as ridiculous as it sounds." She surely had been able to sense his incredulity at the decision. "Often times the first thing that starts to go when you're struggling with trauma is your magical ability."

"I can still do basic spells and stuff like that, I'm not entirely useless..."

"What about your patronus? Have you been able to conjure it as easily as you used to?"

Harry blinked, remembering the instance earlier that day with the dementors in the water. He had blamed that particular problem on the dementors, but when he thought about it, he hadn't struggled with his patronus like this since his third year at Hogwarts. In fact, he couldn't remember producing one at all since the war had ended.

"How did you know -"

"Dora went through the same thing," She said, and Harry suddenly remembered Tonks after his fifth year at Hogwarts, when Bellatrix had killed Sirius in the Department of Mysteries. She was solemn, her appearance remaining the same for once in her life, always looking like she was on the verge of tears. Harry hadn't really given much thought to what she must have been experiencing until now. "She couldn't conjure a patronus for the longest time, and when she did it had changed entirely," Andromeda said. Harry could tell she enjoyed talking about her daughter, even though the memories brought the fresh pain of her absence with them.

"I think I may be having a bit of the same problem," he said candidly. Teddy was now beating his glasses against the table again and again, making Andromeda laugh.

"I struggled with it myself, actually," she said, taking the glasses from her grandson and performing a cleansing charm on them before handing them back to Harry. "Tonks was born in the middle of the first wizarding war, and for what felt like months, I couldn't bring myself to do anything but sleep and eat and try my best to keep her alive. I couldn't have done magic if I had tried."

"What did you do?" Harry asked, finally adjusting the glasses back on his face. "How did you get out of it?"

"I had help. From Ted, and Molly and Arthur, and Frank and Alice and the other families we were close with. It was a matter of finding my own way to push through the darkness, so I could be strong for Dora."

Harry felt more guilt than he thought he had felt in ages, but reminded himself that Andromeda didn't blame him, that nobody in the wizarding world held him responsible for the deaths that had taken place during the war. Teddy squeezed his finger with his small, chubby hands, and Harry couldn't help but smile at the boy. There were so many people that Harry needed to be strong for, and it was good to have a reminder that there were still people who depended on him. It gave him a newly bolstered sense of purpose.

"He looks so much like her, doesn't he?" Harry asked. Andromeda nodded, beaming at her grandson. "

"He's like her in so many ways." She suppressed a large yawn behind her teacup, which didn't go unnoticed by Harry.

"If you need to rest, I can watch him for a bit," Harry offered. In truth, he got along very well with Teddy, and didn't mind spending time with him at all. He had so much of his parents in him already, and it helped Harry miss them a little less whenever he could spend time with the boy.

"It wouldn't be a bother?" Andromeda asked. Harry shook his head, picking up the child under his arms and swinging him overhead, making Teddy giggle.

"I would be so grateful," she said, taking her saucer over to the sink. "If you wouldn't mind changing him too, everything is back in his playroom. She came over and kissed the top of Teddy's head, which had a couple strands of brownish blonde hair already. Harry had never seen it himself, but had heard that Teddy's hair changed colors from time to time, just as his mother's had.

"Thank you, Harry," she sighed, sounding exhausted now that the possibility of sleep was on the horizon for her.

"Don't mention it," Harry grinned, bringing Teddy into his playroom, which had flying quidditch players soaring across the wallpaper. He set Teddy down in front of his toys, amusing the child with his stuffed animals and playthings until Teddy began to rub his eyes himself, and Harry put him down in his crib for a nap. He spent a couple minutes perusing the bookshelf in the playroom, which he was realizing now must have been Tonks's old room. There were old school books stacked up on the shelves, and Harry grinned as he picked up a copy of "A History of Magic", which he didn't think he had ever opened at school, despite Hermione's nagging. Tonks's name was scribbled inside the front cover, and it made Harry feel closer to her. He sat in the large armchair in the room, flipping through the pages and listening to the soft, steady rhythm of Teddy's breathing as the boy fell asleep.