Harry Potter and the related characters are the sole property of J. K. Rowling. No malicious intent or ill will is meant by using those characters and events in this fictional work.

"Bloody hell," Ron grumbled, settling himself in one of the large sofas in the Gryffindor Common Room. He'd been woken up, rudely he would say, by muffled noises and moans from the room above his. The others in his shared dormitory slept through it, but he couldn't. Though part of him was happy for his two best friends, a bigger part of him was filled with cold resentment, loathing them for what had happened on the night of the final battle. Until that night, he'd been somewhat certain that he and Hermione were heading somewhere, personally, and for a moment he imagined her being the witch he married. He bitterly recalled a particularly awful moment in his life, when a horcrux, cursed by Voldemort himself, had forced him to confront his greatest fear of Hermione choosing to be with Harry and leave him alone, in the leftover muck.

He'c convinced himself it was only the curse playing to his fears and causing him pain, but when Harry walked back through the doors, after finally ridding the wizarding world of Lord Voldemort and his evil plague once and for all, those fears became reality and that pain became unbearable. He blinked his eyes up at the ceiling, watching a rogue snitch buzzing around near the chandelier, and he growled a bit through his closed mouth. He vividly remembered watching as Harry and Hermione had stared at each other, for a good, solid minute, tension thick between them as smoke billowed and bricks crumbled around them. He'd moved to take hold of Hermione's hand, to comfort her, but she'd moved, then, too, right into Harry's opening arms. The kiss was unlike anything he'd ever witnessed, and he'd been able to see quite clearly a puff of pink and silver smoke surround them. He'd counted the seconds, two-hundred-and-forty of them, until they'd broken apart, and, together, turned to look at him with dumbfounded expressions on their faces and tears running down their cheeks.

He'd heard them mutter half-hearted apologies, and he'd given Harry a hard shove for betraying his sister, but in the end, when the damage had been surveyed and the casualties accounted for, he'd been told that Harry and Hermione had been in love for years. Even Ginny had known, and had taken willing part in Dumbledore's wicked concealment of it all. It was said it was all for the best, to keep Harry focused on defeating Voldemort, but once the charms had expired, spells and hexes lifted, it seemed to have been the greatest love story ever told, and he'd willingly stepped aside to let his two friends, the world's heroes, find happiness.

Now, though, having to watch it day after day, minute after minute, was getting to him. The four weeks it had been since the last moment they saw each other until now gave him hope that maybe he could handle it, but the dark feelings stirring in the pit of his stomach every time he laid eyes on them, saw them snogging in the halls between classes, it made him feel a type of sick he thought was worse than death.

In fact, lying on the couch and being forced to envision what Harry and Hermione must be doing a level above him, he welcomed death. He heard the signature screech of Hedwig, the resurrected owl, and his face lost the last of its color. He'd kept his mouth shut, hoping that Harry would offer to make amends for all of the loss that was caused by him, because of him. The longer he waited, though, the more it seemed no such proposition was coming, and now, tonight, he would come out and ask. And if Harry refused to use his new-found power over the living and the dead to bring back his brother, then he was just going to have to change his mind. An evil smirk grew on the landscape of his face, below the beginnings of a scraggly red mustache and just above the stubble on his chin. He knew he could be very persuasive, especially now that he had help from a few First-Years with useful connections.

He forced out a breath as he sat up, figuring whatever it was they had been doing up there, they must be done by now, and as he made his way up the new set of spiral-stairs that led to Harry's quarters, he saw a blur of black, green, and yellow whizz by in front of him. "What the...?" he muttered, shaking his head and moving faster up the steps. As he neared the door, he realized what the blurry figure was. "Malfoy?" he asked disdainfully.

Draco Malfoy turned and sneered at Ron. "I stand by what I said when we first met, Potter," he said, staring at Weasley but addressing Harry, "Some wizards are better than others, and you really shouldn't have gone making friends with the wrong sort."

"Sorted it out, though, didn't we?" Harry offered in a whisper with a knowing look and a nod. "Evening, Ron," he said, finally acknowledging the redhead. "We know why you're here."

"I can't pop in to visit my best mates?" Ron scoffed, narrowing his eyes. "Malfoy shouldn't even been out of the dungeons this time of night, and yet, I'm the one who needs a bloody good reason to be up here?"

"Relax," Harry said fast, holding up a hand, preparing to use a defensive spell if need be. "I just meant...well, your little Slytherin buds let Draco in on your stratagem, here, and I...I just want to say, before you even ask, I simply can't. You know why. The ministry looked the other way, because it was an owl." He took a step closer to Ron, heat filling his palm and spreading to his fingers, readying a mentalexpelliarmus just in case. "Don't you think if I could...if I was willing to...I'd have already brought back my parents? Tonks, Lupin, Moody, or even bloody Snape? I'm not refusing to bring back Fred, I'm not denying to do you or your family any favors, but resurrecting a human being has terrible..."

"Oh, damn it to bloody hell with the consequences!" Ron fumed. "You didn't give a rat's arse about consequences when you stole Hermione out from under my feet, or broke my sister's heart! You didn't think about consequences when you told the whole of Hogwarts the truth about Dumbledore and Voldemort, and you damn sure didn't think about consequences when you stepped into the role of King Potter, high and mighty! You're eating this up, aren't you? The attention, the fame, the fact that you could do anything you damn well please and no one will question it!"

Harry felt the sparks of his spell sputtering under his fingernails, hoping he would be able to quell them in a moment, and not use them. "Damn it, Ron," he hissed, shaking his head. "You know fame never mattered to me. I would've just as soon been ignored for the last seven years than be The-Boy-Who-Bloody-Lived! You think I enjoy people popping out in front of me for a photo every five minutes? You think I appreciate people asking my wife inappropriate questions and trying to grab her bits? You honestly think, after all this time, anything at all would take priority over you and your family?" He choked back tears and tried to lower his voice and calm his agitating temper, the spell would fire at will if he didn't. He took a deep breath. "Your parents, they're like mine. Your brothers, are mine. Your sister...she knew...the whole time, what she was doing, and all about Hermione. In fact, she took it upon herself to cast a few of those memory charms on us when she didn't think Dumbledore would. But I still think of her like a little sister. I would never, and you have to believe me, refuse to do anything for any of them. But this...this one thing is... I mean, do you even know what you're asking?"

Ron, hot tears rolling down his face, shook his head and crumpled to the floor, letting out the pent up emotions that had been eating away at him for weeks. "You don't understand. I thought you, of all people, would get it, but you just..." he paused, looked up and to his left, and the anger crept back in. He clenched his jaw tightly, shot to his feet, and whipped out his wand. He aimed it first at Draco, but then turned sharply and pointed it at Harry and said, "Malfoy? Really? Since when are you best mates with the scum of the earth? The hell he put all of us through? The foul things he said to Hermione?"

"She got even with me for that," Draco said, wagging his jaw from side to side and rubbing his cheek, remembering the punch she'd landed on him so long ago. He looked at Ron. "I apologized, after this whole ordeal...we've all been through enough. You all aren't the only ones who suffered a great loss that night. I, unlike you, am willing to accept that loss, knowing it had to happen for us to end up where we are, where we're going." There was something swirling in his eyes as he spoke, and he waved the fingers of his left hand around unintentionally. "I realized I'd been fighting for the wrong side all my life. I understood that my father wasn't the great man I thought he was, he was a coward and filled his own head with false conviction to save his own hide, not caring who was left to die, including me." His eyes clouded over with hazy green smoke and he said, "I'm grateful for that night, though I am deeply sorry for the lives that were lost, but I'm honored and thankful to be able to say that my life was saved by the one person who had every right and reason to let me die."

"Draco," Harry warned, taking a hesitant step toward him and slowly reaching for his left wrist.

Malfoy simply laughed and moved out of the way, staring intently at Ron as he said, "Seems the tables have turned, now, haven't they? You're the one plotting against them, and I'm the one standing here, telling you, you'll have to go through me, first." He quickly raised his arm and a glowing, green orb flew out of his palm and struck Ron in the chest, knocking him back into the wall of the corridor. There was a bit of smoke, and the impact left a few cracks in the stone.

"What...what did you do?" Harry muttered with wide eyes.

Hermione heard the crash and ran out into the hallway, her wide eyes darting from Draco, to Harry, and then to Ron, who was flat on the floor with a blank expression on his face, out cold. "What happened out here?"

Draco shook away the remaining magical energy surrounding him as he calmed himself, and he took a breath as he smoothed out his green and silver striped tie. "Remember, Hermione, when I asked you if you wanted me to help you forget all of this?"

Hermione nodded and wrapped both of her arms around one of Harry's, pulling herself into him. "Yes, of course," she said. And then she gasped. "You didn't!"

"When he wakes up," Draco said, tugging down his jacket sleeves, "He won't remember."

Harry balked for a moment, and then took a step toward Draco. "What won't he remember, Malfoy?"

Draco looked at Harry, his expression half-apology and half-smug. "Anything, I hope. But he definitely won't remember this," he said with a single nod. He moved then, quickly, and picked up Ron's fallen wand. He snapped it in two, ignoring the squeal from Hermione. "It isn't his," he said, and he tugged gently on the string-like core dangling between the two broken pieces. He held it up between his two fingers, letting the hallway torch light bounce and reflect off of it.

"Is that..." Hermione began, moving closer in a mix of awe and fear. "Oh! Oh, Harry!" she turned to look at her husband, color gone from her face as she trembled a bit. "Ron was...if he would have..."

"What is it, anyway?" Harry said, rolling his eyes, unsure of what all the fuss was about. "It's probably unicorn hair or..."

"Thestral," Draco said, his lips flattening and his eyebrow arching. When Harry didn't react, he rolled his eyes. "You may be the most powerful wizard to walk the earth, but you're still a git, Potter," he said, teasing him. "Thestral hair...the same thing that lives in the core of your other wand. You know the one."

Harry's eyes narrowed, and then widened. "The Elder Wand," he said on a breath. "I thought it was the only one of its kind."

"It's the only one that works," Hermione said, correcting him as she was one to do. "Thestral hair is very unstable, and if it's used as the core of a wand, the unpredictable nature of it causes every spell that's cast to be more intense, with more damage than intended done as a result. If it's not contained in the right shell, a simple wingardium leviosa could send a person flying through the roof." She looked at Draco, and then at Harry. "The Elder Wand is the only one of its kind that can be controlled, and it's why it only answers to one person at a time. In the wrong hands, it would be disastrous." She looked down at Ron, still and sleeping. "He meant to make you teach him how to use it. He was trying to get his hands on the cloak and stone, too, I'm sure of it."

"You think he wanted to bring Fred back himself?" Harry asked.

Draco curled the Thestral hair around his long, thing finger and hummed an affirmative sound. "This must've been what that little shit brought to him from Borgin and Burkes. The only people who'd even attempt to create one are those bleedin' dark bastards." He smiled, then, tossing the hair into the air and flicking his own wand at it. The hair caught fire, a swirl of amber flames engulfed it, and then faded away. "There's only one way to find out."

"No, mate, you can't," Harry said, shaking his head. "You said Ron wouldn't remember..."

"I said he wouldn't remember now, tonight, this," Draco said, trying to emphasize the unsure nature of his spell. "I was right pissed off, bloody furious, but I wasn't consciously trying to wipe his entire life away. There's no telling what he'll actually remember until he wakes up, and if he still has wicked betrayal in his heart and that mental idea in his head, we need to be ready for him, don't we?"

"What are you thinking of doing, Draco?" Hermione asked, though she knew she wouldn't like the answer.

Draco grinned at her. "You and Harry know I'm not an evil son-of-a-bitch anymore," he said with a laugh. "But Caractacus Burke sure as hell doesn't."

Peace and Love

Jo

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