A Story of No Consequence
Pockets of Peace
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The reality of the post-war Wizarding world and the fantasy are almost completely unrecognizable from one another. This is generally what it means to go to war.
You see, after you've spent four years killing your neighbor and ducking curses from your cousin, it's hard to go back to the uneasy peace from before. Muggleborns and Half Bloods really weren't too keen on turning the other cheek and forgiving those who were trying to cram them into dirty ghettos and, ultimately, into filthy concentration camps. And those same Purebloods, even those who didn't march up in step behind Lord I Make Out With Snakes and Not Humans Voldemort, still clung to those same prejudices that got them into two wars and a list of idiotic laws in the first place.
Old habits die hard. Kind of how Draco won't marry Hermione because he worries about what his parents would say even though his father is dead and his mother is just as freaking crazy as the Longbottoms. Or crazier. Sometimes it's really hard to put a gauge on crazy.
This is a world where Molly Weasley became gray after she lost two sons, Bill and Percy, and two daughters, Fleur and Ginny, even though Fleur was technically a daughter-in-law. But that doesn't really matter because Fleur was pregnant with Molly's first grandchild when she died and that made her Weasley enough for everyone. Especially Lucius Malfoy.
This is a world where some nameless nobody becomes the Minister of Magic and tries to pass things like marriage laws and things like Jim Crow laws and desegregation at the same time. It's a world where Hermione Granger stays up all night smoking cigarettes and downing coffee, driving her recently moved in boyfriend crazy, while coming up with a new way to talk the well meaning Minister out of his latest moronic plan. As per usual, Harry is the focal point of this plan. This drives Draco up the wall, even though he knows that Harry is the only one that can talk Mr. Well Meaning, but ultimately completely retarded, out of completely destroying the fragile peace that has overtaken the Wizarding community.
It takes nearly twenty months until the Ministry wises up and Kingsley Shacklebolt becomes Minister of Magic. That night is the first night that Hermione gets a good, deep sleep in nearly six years.
Which is probably a good thing because Draco would have probably, most likely, stopped sleeping with Hermione if she hadn't eventually stopped fixating on Harry like he was a shinning, perfect beacon of light. Because while she never had romantic feelings for Harry, hero worship bordering on actual god-like worship is almost bad enough.
Seven months into Harry and Pansy's relationship, the couple is sitting on a couch in the flat Ron bought because his ex-wife liked that it overlooked a park. See, while Ron eventually gets over Hermione, it takes him far too long and his brand new blushing bride, as is her want, eventually gets fed up and leaves. Files divorce papers in Canada and sends them via owl post. It's not really a shock to anyone, even Ron, because really the whole marriage was based around the fact that she was fluffy haired, not frizzy, brunette, and really really way too easy. And so they're sitting around Ron's flat, which was decorated by Ron and not Mary, listening to the wireless.
The flat, not just the living room or Ron's room or the kitchen is decorated Cannon's orange. The living room, and just the living room, is plastered with Cannon's memorabilia, which is understandable because not only has Ron been a huge Cannon's fan his whole life but he was recently made first string Keeper. This is mostly because Ron is an amazing Keeper and not because the former Keeper, Mallory, broke both his legs and his pelvis so badly that he didn't even want to look at a broom even after the Healer deemed him fit to fly.
Four hours and twenty three minutes later.
They includes Hermione and Draco, who has his arm draped around the rather bored looking witch who would rather be shagging in Ron's impossibly small bathroom than listening to United beat the crap out of the Falcons. Draco would probably agree except that he's really enjoying drinking good Muggle beer and yelling at the Falcons to do something more than fly around and let United tromp all over them. Parvati, Ron's flavor of the week, is bouncing in his lap, cheering heartily even though she really isn't listening. This can be evidenced by the fact that she keeps jumping up to check the curried chicken in the oven and getting beers for Ron's guests. Pansy's sprawled over the couch, head in Harry's lap, hands fisting the faded denim of his jeans every time United makes a goal.
She's been a Puddlemere United fan ever since she was seven years old, mostly because they're a fairly good team, but also because they always employ dashingly good looking boys to play and because Draco was born a hardcore Fallmouth Falcons fan.
Harry's a Cannons fan by default because his best friend is so fanatical about the piss poor team, but, really, he'll be thoroughly enjoying a victory shag for Puddlemere later that evening.
It's taken almost all of the seven months Harry and Pansy have been going out on dates to secluded locations, taking long walks around St. James Park, and fucking like crazed rabbits to get to the point where Harry's friends can stomach the fact that Pansy V. Parkinson, supreme Slytherin bitch, is dating Harry James Potter, Gryffindor Boy Wonder. Which is a double standard really because no one minds that Hermione and Draco have been fucking in an actual bed serious for a little over thirteen months and living together for two of them. Or that Ron, who has shagged more women in the four months he's been divorced from his wife than most people shag in a lifetime, has been with at least five Slytherin women at least ten times more bitchy than Pansy.
But this is Harry we're talking about, so the bar is set just a little higher.
It's not fair, but, even the tabloids would agree. Which is mostly the reason for the dates in secluded locations.
Pansy, funny enough, wins them over because she always helps Mrs. Weasley clean up after dinner when she goes with Harry to the Burrow and brings over pictures of PT, her cat, like the calico was her child. Once Molly Weasley has given someone the seal of approval there's really nothing you can do but approve. So everyone approves, even Hermione.
It takes five years, after Hermione and Draco pop out their first kid, for her to come around to Mr. Stupid Ferret Face. Well, Hermione did the popping, not Draco, but, he probably wished he could have switched her places just so he wouldn't have had to stand there and let her squeeze his hand nearly off.
If he had known it would have stopped Mrs. Weasley from trying to hex his precious blonde hair off of his head every time he went to the weekly Weasley family and friends dinner, he would have gotten her knocked up way sooner than that.
If Hermione ever heard him think like that, God forbid talk like that, she would probably smother him with a pillow. Or something.
Post war means lazy Saturday evenings laying around Ron's flat, unless the Cannons were playing and then it meant crazy Saturday afternoons packed between half rabid fans cheering on Ron, who played brilliantly even though his team sucked.
It also means Harry and Pansy, Hermione and Draco, Ron and whoever, and every other surviving member of the Order gets their faces plastered on pages of wizard tabloids because war heroes are the new celebrities.
It means Luna Lovegood becomes Professor Luna Lovegood-Nott and teaches Divination at Hogwarts until she becomes Headmistress at the ripe old age of seventy three.
Really, though, she would have much rather become Luna Lovegood-Weasley and lived on the dragon reserve in Romania with Charlie. For some reason, during the war, she developed a one sided crush on the second oldest Weasley son that never really went away. Thankfully her husband never figured that out.
Not that he could have said much, seeing as he never stopped fantasizing over Pansy after that one night of rather frantic intelligence gathering. He nearly choked to death on his tea when he found out she was dating Potter, courtesy of a rather bold magazine headline. Luna smiled and muttered something under her breath about building a home for the garden gnomes that had infested their garden.
To keep from looking like a moron, he quickly agreed.
This is how things were better, and worse, after the war.
And, just for the record, I think most of Luna's friends would have preferred she married Charlie. This isn't because Theo is such a horrible, terrible person but because he has a tendency to get drunk and talk too loudly about his rather exciting sex life. And garden gnomes. Not that he has an exciting sex life with said gnomes, but, his brain gets a little jumbled after too many shots of Jack Daniels.
But everyone would agree that weird stories about rabid garden gnomes and sex with Luna are much more enjoyable than playing duck and cover against the Three Unforgivable Curses. During peace time, however, that's generally the way things go.
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Note: I know what you're saying, chapter 6 so soon after chapter 5, but, I'm on a roll here people. One or two more chapters and we're going to be all done here.