Notes: Epilogue, What Epilogue? This Epilogue! A lightning tour through post-war Wizarding Britain.

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It had been five years.

Five long, occasionally awful, often difficult, but on the whole good years in which the wizarding world in general and the Golden Trio in particular had picked up the pieces, put themselves back together, and moved on from the war. The grief of their losses had slowly — all too slowly — shifted from unbearable anguish through devastating agony to finally settle in a deep and abiding sadness. Harry had predictably become an Auror, and just as predictably, a good one. He also had occasional screaming nightmares, like just about everyone else who'd survived the Second Voldemort War, but Harry had grown up Muggle and, like Hermione and unlike most wizards, had actually heard of PTSD. Harry and Hermione combined had persuaded not just Ginny but the rest of her family to seek help — although Hermione suspected that Arthur Weasley's recovery from the devastation of his son's death had been accelerated by his delight in participating as something so thoroughly Muggle as therapy.

They were all doing, more or less, fine. Hermione herself slept through the night five times out of seven now — six if she was lucky. She'd returned to Hogwarts to take her N.E.W.T.S's and earned an O on every subject, blitzed through her Mastery in Potions under old Slughorn and taken a position with Malfoy Incorporated.

Working in the research department of Draco's attempt to rebuild the family name and fortune had started out as a way to keep an eye on Draco, but it hadn't taken her long to realise he really was a different man, these days. Something had changed in him when Harry had saved his life. He was still a long way from a good and selfless man, but she'd caught him being polite to the house-elves on occasion and she'd seen a copy of The Times on his desk, flat and motionless beside The Daily Prophet. They weren't exactly friendly with each other when their paths crossed, but they were civil.

Hermione had a nice salary, a routine that suited her, a flat in London and a busy social life, right up until the owl from Minerva had arrived.

It had been a long letter but it had boiled down to: Slughorn is retiring. Do you want his job?

Her answering letter had been just as long, but had boiled down to Yes.

Or perhaps it had boiled down to of course, because although she could have Mastered any one of the subjects she'd studied, she'd chosen Potions as much because of the man who'd taught her as her own affinity for the area. If Severus Snape had survived the war, Hermione might have chosen Potions as a speciality for the delight in being challenged daily by his keen mind, or she might have chosen Charms or Defence Against the Dark Arts and simply enjoyed intellectual sparring against him when their paths crossed. If he'd survived, he would have been teaching Potions at Hogwarts for as long as he'd wanted.

If he'd survived, then no doubt some other memory of the final battle would have replayed itself across her eyelids on her bad nights. Whatever it might have been, Hermione was utterly sure it could not have been as bad as that whispered Look at me and the life fading from Severus Snape's eyes.

But he had not survived. They had doubted his loyalty and then, finally, despaired of it, and all the time he had been constant. All the time he had been the one who had played the hardest part. And he had died knowing that everyone who served the same cause he did believed him a traitor.

That was the worst of it. Remus and Tonks — she'd shed buckets of tears for them, for Fred, for all the people they'd lost during the last battle and in the horrible months before it. But Harry had told her what Remus had said to him, in those brief moments in the Forbidden Forest — that he knew his son would know one day that he had died fighting for a better world. That was true of all of them. Every one of them — except Severus Snape.

And from what Harry had said, they were together now, all of them. It made the horrible ache of missing Tonks a little easier, knowing that she was with Remus and that Remus was reunited with Sirius and James Potter — Mooney, Padfoot and Prongs together again. From what she'd heard from Harry, that wasn't a companionship Snape would be welcome into, or want to join. And who would want to spend their afterlife in the company of the woman you love watching her love a man you hate?

So, Potions, in some oblique and futile apology to a man so horribly misjudged by everyone but Dumbledore. That being the case, when Minerva's owl rapped on her window with his hooked beak there was only ever going to be one answer Hermione could give. Will I teach the class he can never teach again?

Of course.

Steeling herself, she opened the door.