Chapter 19

It was the first Christmas after the war and of course it would have been impossible not to feel the emptiness left by all the people who had died. But the burrow was still full of people. There were guests in every bedroom and Mrs Weasley kept everyone busy with cooking for and cleaning after everyone, with entertaining guests and running errands for her. Nobody minded the busyness or the work.
On the days before Christmas, it was mostly Weasley relatives who filled the house. Bill and Fleur came home, and Charlie and Percy as well. They visited graves on Christmas day, when the distant relatives had left and Andromeda had arrived with Teddy. That day was heavy, but afterwards everyone seemed to breathe easier.

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After Christmas, it was friends and order members who flocked to the burrow. Hermione had insisted on spending most of her break at home and didn't arrive until the day before New Years. She had been very tense when her parents picked her up at the train station. She hadn't said anything, but Harry thought it had to be because of the memory charm. Their memories had been restored, but it had to be hard to forget that not that long ago, they wouldn't have recognized her. Luna, Neville, Dean and Seamus came for the New Years Eve party too.

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On New Years eve they all ate dinner together, but afterwards the party split into fractions. George, who was more like his old self than he had been for the rest of the holidays, left the party with Lee Jordan, Alicia Spinnet and Katie Bell to go to clubs in muggle London. They carried suspiciously large bags that Ginny said were filled with fireworks from the joke shop. The adults stayed in the downstairs rooms of the burrow, and Harry and his friends retreated upstairs.

They ended up in Ginny's room, where Luna claimed the record player and refused to give it up for the rest of the night. They passed bottles of ginger mead and strawberry mead around. There wasn't a lot of room for dancing, but that only meant the party felt bigger than it actually was. Hermione had brought some of her parent's old records with her, and Luna quickly abandoned all wizards' music for muggle music from the 70's and 80's. She traced the lightning bolt over David Bowie's face with her fingers and grinned at Harry. It was hard to tell if she was drunk or not, but she had claimed one of the bottles for herself and was gingerly sipping it while she watched them, bobbing her head to the music. The rest of them were slowly but steadily getting pissed. At one point Ginny and Hermione collapsed on the bed laughing hysterically, and no one could figure out what the joke was, since they didn't have the breath to explain. Ron pulled Hermione back to her feet and they were dancing again. Ginny grabbed Harry's hand, still grinning. He was vaguely aware that he was probably a terrible dancer, but Neville was too and it couldn't have mattered less.

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At four they were in a circle on the floor, too tired to move. Their voices were low, the conversation slow and drowsy. Luna had her head in Ginny's lap and she was braiding her hair. Ron had his arms around Hermione; Seamus was resting his head on Dean's shoulder. Neville had his back against Ginny's bed and was fighting hard to keep his eyes open. It was still completely dark outside. They could see the light from the room reflected in the black glass. When they spoke it was with frayed, hazy voices.

"It's weird that we won't be at Hogwarts next year," said Seamus.

"It's weirder that we're still there."

"Yeah."

"It's good that we get another year," said Hermione. "I wouldn't want to end it like that… "

"It's gonna be really scary being on our own afterwards. Can any of you do laundry magically? How come they haven't taught us that? I mean, I can stun death eaters, sure, but I can't do my bloody laundry."

"You're moving out on your own?"

"Probably."

"Do you know where?"

"London, hopefully."

"That's where Harry and Ron and I have talked about going too. We've sort of been looking at apartments, and if we split the rent it might be feasible."

"And George said I can work with him in the jokeshop, so I already have a job," said Ron. "But we'll probably have to stay in a shitty place no matter what."

"Sounds lovely."

"And you know how to do laundry?"

"It can't be that difficult, there ought to be books on it in the library. And Ron, you should really get your mother to teach you."

"She won't. She doesn't want me to move out. She'll never let you out of the house either, Ginny."

"I know. And as soon as I do manage to escape she'll be demanding grandchildren. Did you see how she was acting around Fleur?"

"Shit, we'll have to cook too!"

"Harry can cook."

"No way."

"Not really," he said.

Heating beans in a tent hadn't felt much like cooking, and that was what they had mostly resorted to when they were searching for horcruxes, which was the last time he had cooked anything.

"You're better than Hermione, anyway."

"Not with magic. I can cook in a muggle kitchen."

"Do you know what you're doing, Neville?"

"Yeah," he said, straightening up a bit. "Yeah, I'll be studying herbology in Sweden, actually. In Uppsala. The school has rooms for foreign students, so…"

He shrugged.

"I didn't even know you'd gotten in!"

"I got the letter just before break."

"That's so great, congratulations."

"So do you have to learn Swedish, then?"

Neville grimaced.

"Probably… most of the classes are in English, but I might have to anyway. Some of them are at a muggle school, they have this whole system of enrolling wizards for certain parts of the muggle curriculum without the muggles noticing."

"Probably good you've been taking muggle studies, then," said Hermione.

"Yeah."

There was a lull in the conversation, another stretch of silence. Luna got up from Ginny's lap to put on another record.

"I would love to go to Sweden," she said dreamily. "Father really wants me to stay with him, though."

"I'll probably live at home for a while too," said Dean.

"Weren't you going to a muggle university or something, Hermione?"

"I am. I really want to, I just can't decide where to go. It's a bit difficult, since I can't really put down Hogwarts as previous education on my application, and I'll have to translate the grades too. It will probably be hard to make it fit with further wizardring education as well."

"And you want seven different majors," said Harry.

"It's so hard to choose!"

They laughed. Dean yawned.

"Guys, this is really great, but I think I should go to bed soon."

"Bring Seamus with you, I don't think he can walk on his own."

Seamus made a noise. Dean pulled him up and held him upright as they staggered out of the room.

"We should sleep too," said Harry, but he was too tired to even think of getting up or walking all the way to Ron's room.

"I'm not tired," said Luna.

"Liar."

There were no voices from downstairs anymore either. They heard the distant crack of far away fireworks.

"This was such a good New Years Eve," said Hermione quietly.

"It was."

"You should be a DJ, Luna. We'd hire you for all the Gryffindor parties."

She smiled.

"That would be nice."

"We could just sleep on the floor…" said Ron.

"No you can't, there's not enough space."

"Fine."

Ron disentangled himself from Hermione. Harry and Neville stood up to leave with him.

"Goodnight."

"See you all at breakfast."