Six years passed, and before you could say "Crumple-horned Snorkack," the Dark Lord had been demoted to a dirty secret and everything he represented swept under a socially acceptable rug. Collective amnesia was the drug of the day. Despite unbearable losses, broken trust in the Ministry, and schisms among families, the war was packed up in official mourning and laid to rest, the reality of it smuggled out of sight like old bones buried in the back garden after dark. It would be the task of the next generation to drag it all into the open again.
Harry was just as happy to stop talking about it. He still got pestered by journalists, still cast Incendio on the dozens of marriage proposals that arrived by owl post, and avoided all the predatory entrepreneurs who hoped to fatten their Gringott's vaults by roping him into shady schemes. He still attended celebrations and said his piece at yearly memorials. But even after he stopped giving interviews and speeches, he didn't forget about the war. He would spend his life never forgetting.
He kept busy. That first summer, the grief haunting the still-damaged Burrow crashed through his defences, and for a while it was like having a poltergeist in the house. Things exploded or flipped across the room or rattled ominously whenever Harry was there. He took Ron aside and confided, in a voice so scratchy and exhausted he hardly recognised it as his own, that he was going to find somewhere else to stay before his accidental magic hurt someone.
"Hang on a sec," Ron interrupted and pointed at the floor. "Don't move from this spot or I'll stick you in with the ghoul tonight, yeah?" He stomped out of the room, and Harry heard him thumping down the rickety stairway three at a time.
"Ronald Bilius!" Molly's voice hollered through the floorboards. "What are you doing? Don't you trip on those stairs!"
"No worries, Mum!"
Within minutes, Ron had returned at a less boisterous pace, dragging a scowling, unshaven George by the arm.
"I don't know about you blokes," he said, glancing between George and Harry, "but there's something I've been wanting to do for a while. I've a feeling we all need it, so you're both coming with me." He clapped George on the shoulder. "Meet us at the cove. Should be low tide, but aim close to the cliffs just in case."
George seemed ready to put a Stinging hex up his little brother's interfering nose, so Ron latched onto Harry and Sidealong-Apparated in haste.
They landed with a clatter on a stretch of pebbly shore, sea spray flying in their faces from the incoming waves. Ragged, raw cliffs with grass-covered overhangs towered up behind them, giant arms of rock and clay reaching downward on both sides and plunging into the water. It was too steep for a path, so there was no fear of Muggles taking their dogs on meandering walks down the rock-strewn beach, and the lurching, sweeping water that thundered into the small bay was too rowdy for fishing boats. Shivering, Harry hunched his shoulders. The damp chill misted his jumper, penetrating to the skin. Wouldn't be long before his clothes were soaked. He charmed his glasses to repel moisture and waited for Ron to explain why he'd brought them there.
A crack muffled by the ocean's hiss announced George's sullen arrival a few strides downwind of them. He stood letting the salt breeze tear at his hair and stared out across the restless, rolling crests of the waves at the overcast sky.
Ron jerked his head in invitation, and with the cold wind at their backs, he and Harry trudged over. Fair-skinned under their freckles, the brothers were already ruddy-nosed and red-eared, chafed by the elements. The trimmed flesh of George's missing ear looked sore. Harry cast a Warming charm over all three of them. At the Burrow, he'd been bone-tired; now he was wet and freezing as well. He hoped whatever Ron had planned was short and to the point.
"What's up, you great gangling giraffe?" The words were teasing, but George's voice wasn't. "This had better be good, or you're in for a bloody cold dunk in Mother Nature's bathtub."
"Just follow my lead," Ron said, unconcerned. They had to shout a bit not to have their voices warped and gusted away. "You're smart lads. You'll figure it out."
He crunched a few steps toward the ribboning tide racing up the water-cemented crust of brown sand. The runoff splashed the embankment of inshore pebbles, foamed an inch or two with chattering haste, then slid back out of sight like evaporating glass. Ron glanced around, spotted what he was looking for, and braced himself. His wand arm lifted. Harry half-raised his own, confused. He saw nothing but a beach studded with dark, barnacled rocks, fizzing bubbles of spindrift, and a few seabirds hovering high up like scraps of white paper blown off the cliff's edge.
Ron cast. He didn't merely point his wand. He put muscle into it. He threw the spell with all the anguished ferocity of a man determined to obliterate his target.
Farther along the shore, a rock detonated.
Harry flinched and yelled "Protego!" as fragments flew every which way, whizzing outward, bullet-fast. The shock echoed off the cliffside like rifle reports, or a dozen earsplitting Apparitions. They were far enough back he barely felt the few chips that ricocheted against his Shielding spell, and his heart pitched like a storm at sea. Suddenly he didn't feel cold anymore. Beside him, George barked a harsh laugh - actually, Harry wasn't sure what that noise was, wild with a dangerous exultation. George started forward, Harry at his heels, to where Ron was already lining up his next shot.
"Oi, young Ronald, where have you been hiding such a magnificently destructive streak all these years?" George said, twirling his wand. "Here, step aside and let the master show you how it's done."
"Be my guest," Ron said, and before the words were out, George had whipped his arm forward, face scrunched and blotchy, as if hurling murder through the tip of his wand. Another rock exploded like a volcano vomiting up ash, louder and sharper than the surf booming off the cliffs. Chunks and splinters of pulverised stone rained down, splattering the scurrying tide. "Plenty more where those came from," Ron shouted, gleeful. He wiped flecks of foam and mist off his forehead and flashed Harry a weirdly deranged grin. "Go on, try it, mate. I swear it helps."
Harry watched his friends blow two more rocks to bits, then turned, judged the distance, and flung a sea-whitened branch into the wind. Flickers of sunlight played over its bony, spectral shape. As it gyrated downward, pale against the rain-sweep of the grey horizon, he hit it with Confringo. A terrible shudder went through him as the branch split and fell flaming into the water. It didn't really remind him of a burning broom dropping out of the sky, but it raked hard over some vengeful chord inside him. His body resonated to the bloodless violence.
Pivoting to uproot a small boulder from the sand, he Levitated it through the air, followed by another, then another, destroying them one by one like the shattering of stone hearts, the pieces plummeting into the sea, punching fountains of glittering droplets out of the deep tide as if the fish were leaping. For several minutes, the beach shook with the cracks and splashes and battlefield sounds of solid blocks being blasted apart, Ron shouting himself hoarse, George screaming "Fuck you!" with every rock he cursed to shards and grit. "Fuck you, you noseless bastard! Fuck you for killing him!" Spray drenched their flushed faces, and while the moist air turned George's hair mousy, Ron's glowed ethereally red, bog-fire in the mist-darkened day.
They were all panting now, staggering on the uneven footing of thousands of sea-washed pebbles. Harry's shoulder ached with the wrenching force of emotion, and he was vaguely aware of rain tickling over the shore, moving inland. A drop got past his glasses and ran down an eyelid. Once he paused in his spell-casting to wipe it away, the sense of chill seeped in.
Ron and George seemed to come to the same stopping point, bent over, hands on knees, their backs heaving. One after the other, they straightened up, wands down, and gazed wearily around at the damp pockmarks cratering the shore where some twenty solid rocks had once lodged. Otherwise little evidence remained of their frenzy. George wiped his face (Harry pretended not to see his red-rimmed eyes), Ron shook the cramp out of his wand hand, and they all peered sideways at one another with slightly disbelieving smiles. The seabirds had fled out over the ocean, where they rode the updrafts, white and silent. The three of them stood huddled together, the wind driving the rain at them, shrilling up and down the ridges, saturated with the smell of cold brine.
"Home?" Ron suggested, and this time it was George who took Harry by the arm, even though it was the Burrow and Harry could have Apparated there in his sleep.
Molly stopped them on sight, her wandwork an efficient blur as she wicked their soggy clothes and dripping hair dry, ignoring their protests that they could do it themselves. George hugged her briefly, pulled a handful of sea shells from his pocket, charmed them to bounce merrily atop Ron's head, then climbed the stairs to his and Fred's room with a tired wave and a wink.
At dinnertime, Harry was sent to fetch him and found George passed out on the bed. One glance around the room was enough to give him unwanted fodder for weeks of melancholy dreams. So many photos of the twins together, Fred's wicked grin, their inseparableness on display, all collected and propped in memoriam on a desk, surrounded by dusty, broken prototypes from the earliest days of their juvenile experiments. It wasn't a shrine, exactly. It was an attempt to re-connect with the missing limb.
Merlin, how did George stand it?
The floor creaked behind him, and Harry turned as Ron loomed out of the dim hall like a shambling scarecrow. He joined Harry in observing his brother's slack face. George's shoes, untied laces testimony to a good-faith attempt, hadn't quite made it off his feet, and the sand packed into the patterned soles was scattering dried-out grains all over the covers. His hands were shoved under the pillow. In happier times, Ron would have seized the opportunity to ambush him without mercy, to roust him out of bed in retaliation for similar two-against-one assaults on his own hapless snoozing. But the spirit of gleeful mayhem had departed the room. Possibly the whole house. The only spark Harry could still see was trapped in the photographs, reminders of a light that had gone out.
"Should we wake him?"
Ron beckoned him out into the hall. "Nah," he said. George's sea shells still performed their silly, clicking dance, a beach-comber's halo around his head. He looked like some lanky, amiable, lesser known prince of - not the sea, but some minor body of water. Tide pools, maybe. "He hasn't been sleeping well. I'm kind of surprised you haven't crashed, too."
"I expect it'll hit me after I've eaten," Harry said. "Blowing up rocks is hungry work." At the top of the stairs, he plucked a shell from Ron's hair and fingered its smooth underside, the brittle, corrugated back. "You want me to cancel the spell?"
Ron hesitated, one hand braced on the new banister rail. This side of the house had suffered damage the day of Bill and Fleur's wedding; the day the Death Eaters attacked. The Burrow's overstuffed, cobbled-together structure had been existed in a precarious state for years and required a mad amount of magical upkeep, but every inch of it had shaped their childhoods. The replacement handrail was expertly milled, without the gnarls and wood grain, nicks and handholds of the old one. A small change, scarcely worth remarking on. There was no replacement or repair for dead brothers and sons.
"Leave 'em. Mum hasn't said a word, but she tries not to laugh every time she looks at me. Anything that cheers her up… " He trailed off. "I'd let George hang me upside-down and shoot rainbow bubbles out my arse if it helped them forget for even one minute."
"Me, too," Harry said quietly and slipped the shell in his pocket. Ron started down, socked feet thumping morosely, and he followed.
Through the zigzag acoustics of the stairwell, a voice filtered up.
"Ugh, Percy," Ron whispered over his shoulder, but it hardly sounded grudging at all. This was better than sea shells or bubbling bums. Percy's attempts to patch up his strained relations with the rest of the family was exactly the sort of project Molly needed right now. Percy wasn't even that much of a prat anymore, at least by classic Percy standards.
The bustle from the kitchen, the fragrance drifting up from roasting pans and sizzling skillets, more than compensated for the potential awkwardness of sitting through a meal with an anxious, contrite Percy and surly Ron. Eager to put something in his stomach before it started burbling like a baby dragon, Harry missed the fact that Ron had stopped moving. There was a near-collision, but Ron didn't budge, just stood frowning down at his striped socks as if trying to remember where his shoes had walked off to.
"All right?" Harry said. They were all so focussed on George and Molly he sometimes worried how much Ron must be bottling up.
"Yeah." Softly, to prevent it carrying below, Ron added, "You staying?"
Caught off guard, Harry swallowed. "I'm - yeah," he said and cleared his throat. "Yes. And if things get rough again, you'll know where to find me. Out there keeping the world safe from evil rocks and all that."
"A dirty job, but someone's gotta do it."
"The Boy Who Rocked," Harry blurted, then burst out with an off-kilter high-pitched laugh when Ron swiped backward and cuffed him on the arm.
"You said it, not me." The sea shell merry-go-round winked, reflecting light as Ron turned. He anchored Harry with one hand, making sure he was steady. "Fred would be proud."
The generosity of that hurt, but in a good way, like receiving a blessing from someone healed enough to pass it on. For a moment, Harry choked up. Ron's pained smile didn't waver, and Harry was almost glad when his stomach decided to complain so loudly it couldn't be ignored.
Ron snorted, letting go. "And people accuse me of having a bottomless stomach. Come on, then, we don't want Percy getting all the best bits."
He continued down the stairs.
"Ron."
"Yeah?"
"Thanks."
That earned him a sharp, meaningful look, as if Harry was mental if he believed he ever needed to thank Ron for anything. Then Molly called out, "We're not waiting dinner! If you boys aren't hungry, I'm giving your portions to Percy to take home to his crup!"
"Crup?" Ron muttered to Harry. "Bet you a dozen chocolate frogs he's trained it to roll over and show its belly." Harry hissed at him to be quiet, so Ron bellowed cheerfully, "On our way!" and without further ado, they followed their stomachs to the dinner table and proceeded to eat everything in sight.
At the end of the month, Harry drew upon his Gringotts account and leased a small flat. A month after that, he applied for admission to Auror training. He was getting on with things. He was also learning the hard way that hiding and fighting and walking to his death hadn't prepared him for departmental discipline, bureaucracy, and envious fellow recruits. The camaraderie of Dumbledore's Army or even the Gryffindor Quidditch team was missing here and would take time. He attracted trouble from the start; his fame made him both a target and a prize. After years of being lied to, of saving other people at an age when there should have been someone to save him, it was hard not to break ranks when he knew he was right about something.
Not so different from Hogwarts, really. Or the rest of his life. You'd think he would have learned by now not to let it faze him.
Looking back, it seemed to Harry that, throughout the first year, Ron and Ginny yelled a lot. They suffered spells of being angry or down, bereaved and buffeted by random emotions. Fred wasn't coming back, George wasn't coping well, and their mum was a mess. So was Hogwarts, which was forced to open under pressure, under-prepared. Everyone, even Harry, got sucked into attempts to pretend life could go back to the way it used to be. They were all off their rockers, yeah, but who could blame them? They had to believe things would go back to normal.
In 1999, without understanding why, Mr. and Mrs. Granger bought flights out of Australia into Heathrow, and that was - not a success, actually. They were utterly discombobulated, as who wouldn't be, and when Hermione tried to explain (too soon, Harry thought), it just made her poor parents stiffly, politely afraid of her. They took to treating her as a well-meaning young woman they vaguely recognised and didn't quite trust, a tour guide to a version of their lives they couldn't recall, bizarrely invested in pretending they were a family.
"Did you miss me?" she finally blurted when she couldn't stand it any longer. "Did you ever feel like something was missing?" Her parents just stared at her, keeping their distance, worried they might say the wrong thing, taking refuge in saying nothing at all. "Never mind," she said softly, letting herself out the front door of the house she'd arranged for them in their old neighbourhood. "It's all right. I'll book you a flight home. Love you, Mum and Dad."
"They didn't," Hermione said later, the next time Harry visited her and Ron in their cosy flat; 'cosy' being the estate agent's term of art for 'cramped, with a ceiling low enough for Ron to slap if he stands on tiptoe.' "Didn't miss me, I mean." She hadn't addressed this to anyone in particular, so Harry waited. From where he sat at the other end of the sofa, Ron stopped leafing through the Wheezes' latest catalogue and raised his head. Hermione dipped her quill and continued filling out the application for yet another internship. "Well, of course not," she murmured to herself, frowning, then charmed away a scribble that apparently didn't meet her standards. "That was the point, right? But I don't think - "
She frowned again, and an ink blot spread over the words she'd just erased. "They don't - they don't even like me now." A tear splashed the parchment, then another, and when she dropped her quill, Ron clambered across the sofa to take her in his arms. She hid her face in his shoulder and let herself weep for what couldn't be undone. For things that would never be the same again.
Meanwhile, Harry and Ginny picked up – not where they'd left off. This time they set out to have a real relationship, not a Hogwarts dalliance. They all struggled with the deceptively simple yet quite baffling expectations for growing up.
Harry finally got to have sex. Possibly the last boy in his year to get in bed with a girl and embrace a warm body. For Merlin's sake, he could have died in the war without knowing what it was like to experience this sort of ecstatic release. To be deep inside a person he loved and entirely at one with them.
In the beginning, it was enough to just bask in shacking up with his sweetheart like any other bloke. To have his own home, where Ginny could join him once she left school. He liked her immensely, maybe even loved her, liked having a girlfriend, liked the whole new experience of getting on with normal life. To his surprise, sex was the easiest part of their relationship, the times he felt closest to her. He was good at physical things, and he was good at loving people, never mind that he'd lived half his life in a cupboard. He'd survived Voldemort. There was nothing so bad it couldn't be faced and figured out.
Of course, it threw him at first, the sheer intimacy of it, like half the time he didn't know what the bloody hell he was supposed to be doing. Relationship etiquette, what was that? Ways of behaving. Maybe months in a tent should have accustomed him to invasion of space and lack of privacy, but you couldn't compare these things. Besides, that had been Ron and Hermione. Not to mention life and death.
And this was - none of that. This was his first relationship. Maybe he wasn't ready to be serious, or maybe he was too serious. Fuck if he knew. Maybe he needed to cut back on the Dreamless Sleep, but when he went two nights without, he'd make mistakes at duelling practise and have to be twice as good the day after. So what if he went off and did things on his own just as he always had? Or sought out Ron and Hermione when the world felt … he wasn't sure what to call it. Emotionally incomplete. There was nothing wrong with that. Maybe Ginny felt that way sometimes, too. That was probably why she yelled. Harry preferred to keep his nightmares under control; Ginny let hers out. Well, shouldn't lovers know these things about each other?
Sex, though - it freed something inside him that had barely stirred before. Not that it solved anything, but starving men fixate on relieving their hunger, and Harry had been hungry for years without knowing it.
They hadn't lasted, he and Ginny. Or rather, they'd lasted longer than they should have because Harry wouldn't stop believing he could make it work. That his identity would include boisterous family events and casual hugs and being the dark-haired part of a red-headed whole, a life filled to bursting with brash, big-hearted Weasleys, to whom he owed so much and who had always made him feel loved.
The day they finally called it off, Ginny came by early on a Saturday, before breakfast. She bounded out of the Floo of Harry's Hogsmeade flat - their flat, even if it was his name on the lease. She scattered ash with a quick toss of her head, then walked up and hugged him with all her might.
"Don't go," Harry said, regretting it as soon as the words were out.
Ginny stepped back and put a hand on her hip, her blue Harpies jersey hanging loose, a size too large. She'd cut nearly a foot off her hair since starting pre-season Quidditch training. Her whole bearing was athletic and vibrant, prepped for flight, the future like an exuberant Snitch beckoning her over a shining field.
"We'd just have to go through it all again for – what, the fourth time? Do you want that? I bloody well don't, love. I'm done."
She smiled, sympathetic but already far beyond him, undaunted by what he saw as a failure. Because it wasn't her failure, right? It was his. Their relationship had practically been handed to him on a platter, and he'd still somehow got it wrong.
"I do love you, Harry. But I'm glad we found out how weird it gets when we try to be a couple. We did try, yeah? No stones unturned and all that."
Harry smiled wryly, thinking yeah, and look what crawled out. But this was the right thing to do. How could he deny it when Ginny looked so blossoming and free?
The photos of his mum and dad watched him from the mantelpiece above the Floo. Knowing they were just images on paper, Harry smiled to reassure them and shrugged to show it was no big deal. "Still friends?"
"You know it, Potter." Ginny closed the gap and slid an arm around his waist, her smile tilted upward. Mischievous, she gave him a poke in the stomach. "If it were anyone but you, I'd say friends with benefits. But we'd make a right mess of it, and I don't have the patience for messiness anymore." She shrugged under his arm, her jersey slipping loosely over her slim, strong back. Knowing he'd never be naked with that part of her again, or any part of the familiar, freckled body he'd loved for the last two years, Harry leaned down to kiss the top of her head. "Ron and Hermione may be dead cert they're 'the ones'," Ginny went on blithely, "but you and me? I never thought I'd say this, but neither of us should be settling down yet."
"Yeah," Harry said, hearing Gwenog Jones' voice echoing in that sentiment. He could tell – hell, everyone knew Ginny had a crush. But he didn't have the heart to tease her about it. Not yet. Maybe someday when he wasn't being asked to let her go. "Guess I need to get a few things out of my system."
"See a few more girls," Ginny said.
Harry wet his lips. "And maybe boys."
Her body went still, then she poked him again, harder. "That, too." The grandfather clock in the hall started to bong in a meditative, resonant baritone. "Gotta get back to the team, love." She pulled away, her eyes bright, and flicked him on the cheek. "Go get 'em, Harry." When he didn't reply, her face softened, earnest and careful, the face he was used to seeing first thing in the morning on the pillow next to his. Shite. He didn't want Ginny being careful with him.
Shaking a pinch of Floo powder out of the jar, she turned with relief visible in the loosening of her spine, the slight cockiness of her smile, still fond and friendly but completely done with him. "I'm glad we ended this way. No hard feelings, right? And don't go blaming yourself, Harry. Sometimes it just … happens."
He waited until her heels were disappearing through the flames before saying sadly, "It does?"
Whatever 'it' was, it kept happening. This promising start and dying fall set the pattern for his subsequent liaisons. Harry wanted them so badly, especially as time went on and his attempts to find someone who could make up for all that self-denial ran smack up against the glass wall of his fame, and beyond that the mountain range of his hurt, and beyond that the small, locked door of his privacy.
Apparently he was easy to love but impossible to live with. Or just easy to like. Certainly easy to fuck.
Besides, he had work that demanded everything he could give. At that point, he'd been with the DMLE for three years. He was a fully qualified Auror and on course to be one of the department's best. Yes, it was dangerous. Yes, it was hard on whoever happened to be in love with him at the time (although Harry started doubting they ever were, because the failure rate wasn't exactly flattering). He was faithful to his job. Not that he was unfaithful to his lovers. They left, or he left, or he lost himself in an assignment and emerged to find a goodbye letter and sometimes an irate interview covering three gleeful pages of the Prophet.
Being an Auror was the one constant in his life. And Ron and Hermione, always. It was amazing how quickly the years could fly by while something that was supposed to be temporary became the only kind of life you knew. A life in which being alone no longer seemed so bad.
So six years passed, and one morning before work, long before the sun had started rising, Harry was startled out of sleep by a frenzy of wings bashing at the windowpane. It took him a second to light the bedside lamp and jam his glasses on, and then – Pig, oh God. Harry spelled the window open instantly, his grogginess burned off by fear.
The little owl no sooner tumbled in out of the dark than a red Howler tore from its claws. The letter flew at Harry, shouting in a voice he barely recognised, "Did you know? Did you, Harry? Did everyone know but me? 'Oh, she thinks she's so smart, how long will it take her to figure it out?' Well, I did, I know all about it now, and Ron – Ron had better – " There was a gulping noise. "Tell sodding RONALD WEASLEY to stay out of my way or I'll – I'll tie his bollocks in knots and use them as bloody paperweights!"
The Howler tore itself to shreds in a fiery ball of rage, scattering scraps of ash and nostril-scalding smoke all over the room. Pig had fled the second the shouting started. Harry stood frozen in his pyjama bottoms, Hermione's vulgar threat echoing in his skull. He couldn't believe it. He had no idea what she was talking about, but the likeliest explanation sent a slinking sort of foreboding through him, a sense that the world was once again on the brink of falling apart.
A second later, his parlour Floo chimed, and Ron's hoarse, desperate voice called out, "Harry, you there? Oh God, I've fucked up. Harry, you've got to help me, I've fucked everything up."
He was already sprinting for the parlour. "Come through!"
Ron tripped as he exited the hearth and crashed onto the rug. He made it to his knees before looking up, so strained and pale his freckles stood out like a rash under his morning stubble. His bloodshot eyes made brief contact with Harry's before he hung his head.
"She's left me," he said and staggered to his feet. "Oh Merlin. I've cocked it up, Harry. Real bad."
"What's going on?"
"Look, you're going to kick my arse, but – " Ron took a deep breath and flashed him another chastened glance. "I – right, so I mean, there's – there was this really sweet girl who kept dropping by the Wheezes, pretty and funny and just plain likeable, you know? At first I thought she was interested in George. He was on the outs with Angelina again, and I reckoned he could use some cheering up, so I – " He squeezed his eyes shut. "I might have encouraged her too much. Sophie. Talking to Sophie was a bright spot during those long crazy days with a hundred screaming kids. It got to be a habit. And Hermione's like you, Harry, she works all the time."
Ron should have known better than to push that button. "Don't you put this on Hermione, mate."
Ron looked up, startled. "Sorry, that's not what I – I mean, you can already guess. Sophie and I hit it off a bit too well." He wrung his hands and rubbed his elbows, turning away, twitching with nerves. "It's not like I meant it to happen. I didn't think it would be more than once, I swear, but I – " He threw himself into a chair and bent forward, hiding his face. "Fucking hell."
"And Hermione found out," Harry said, shaky with disbelief. Fuck, Hermione must be feeling so betrayed. No wonder she'd lashed out. And he didn't care if it was selfish, his friends were one of the few solid anchors he had left. They had to stay together. "Of course Hermione found out. Ron, you absolute pillock. How could you do that to her?"
"I know," Ron moaned into his hands. "I did this whole justification bollocks to myself, it's a fling, it won't matter, and – God, Harry, I'm an arsehole." He lifted his head, eyes red-rimmed. "Hermione's gone. I don't know where she went, and I'm scared out of my wits. What if she doesn't come back? And Merlin, I've never seen her cry like that. Do you know how absolutely shitty that feels? I hurt Hermione so badly she could hardly breathe." He covered his face again. "Fuck. Fuck me for being an idiot."
Swallowing the urge to shout, Harry crouched down beside him and laid a hand on his arm. The jumper sleeve fell a few inches short of Ron's wrist, the soft orange threads unravelling in places as if chewed. It was probably the oldest Molly jumper he owned. "Look, mate, I'm sorry, but I have to get ready for work. Why don't you stay here? You might want to hide from your family for a while until you can get your head together. Things are going to be mental at home."
Ron stood up. "I have to find her."
"You have to leave her alone," Harry said sharply, and then swore under his breath as he got to his feet. "Sorry, I didn't mean to snap at you. But she doesn't want to see you right now, and forcing your apologies on her isn't going to help."
They stood awkwardly for a moment side by side. Ron brushed his uncombed fringe out of his eyes with a desolate gesture, as if he were facing himself in a mirror and didn't like what he saw.
"Will you talk to her for me?" he said quietly. "I want her to know how sorry I am. I mean, I don't want Hermione thinking I'm not ashamed of what I did. And if she's ready to hear it, tell her – tell her I'll wait as long as it takes for her to come home."
Harry's instinct was to jump in and agree, but he could still hear the sob in Hermione's voice. "I can act as liaison, but not if Hermione thinks I've been covering up for you the whole time." His adrenaline was starting to ebb, the sense of doom shrinking to a level he could handle. To be honest, all he wanted to do right now was crawl back into bed and hide his face in a pillow. "Just before you Firecalled, she sent me a Howler."
Ron frowned at him, his thoughts fogged by exhaustion. Then he scrubbed a hand over his eyes. "Bloody hell. I've really done it this time. Feels like a cauldron exploding in slow motion."
"Pretty near, yeah," Harry said, and then, because he couldn't help it, "Your mum's going to kill you."
Ron squinted at him with a spark of mournful humour. "Yeah, thanks, Harry. I've been avoiding thinking about that, all right? One panic attack at a time."
A more subdued message arrived from Hermione that evening. In the time it had taken his owl to find her, she'd muzzled her emotions and was doing her best to sound reasonable. I've leased a bedsit in London. Your owl knows where. I'm not ready to talk yet, but I'm sorry I jumped down your throat like that. I should have known better. Harry's heart ached at how hard she was holding back. He would almost have preferred another Howler.
As the days crawled by, Hermione divided her time between her flat, her office, and her parents' home. Her door in the Ministry was always locked. Harry didn't see her. Neither did Ron.
The days turned to weeks. Up to her fuzzy bun in departmental projects, she wrote, Please don't fret. I'll get myself sorted. I just need space to think. Between you and me, I need the Weasleys to stay out of my business. And I need to find out for myself what's so bloody wonderful about having an affair.
Anything Hermione didn't explicitly forbid, Harry shared with Ron. Except this. The weight of that knowledge – that Hermione was going to 'research' infidelity, and there wasn't a sodding thing Ron could do about it – felt like a serious betrayal. But it was something Hermione would have to tell Ron herself.
It was in the middle of all this that the rumours started.
First, that Snape was back. (Harry asked around. Bloody hell, the git had turned up over a month ago, and nobody had bothered to let him know.)
Then, Snape was under contract to the Ministry. (Harry dropped a casual reference into a private meeting with Robards and weathered the subsequent tirade about Minister Shacklebolt's foolhardiness in hiring former Death Eaters who should have been forbidden to set foot inside the seat of government. Well, there was that question answered.)
Snape was back and working three floors below him. (All right, so Harry indulged in a bit of Snape-spotting, so what? He took unnecessary detours to the third floor. This netted him a few glimpses from afar. Snape didn't bother seeking him out, and Harry wondered if that was a deliberate snub, then reminded himself it was nonsense to imagine he mattered to Snape in the slightest.)
Six years, though. He was curious. Not that Snape's absence had festered, exactly. It wasn't like his departure from Harry's life had left a wound, so it wasn't as if it needed healing. It was more of a gap. Other people had left gaps, too, and in the last six years, some of those had been filled. But the space where Snape had been - the blackened, shattered space - was so specific and strange no one else had the right shape, the proper depth of painful history, to stopper it.
As the years passed, Harry had sometimes wondered if freedom would do something to Snape. If he would someday return hale and hearty, a changed man.
Clearly, even from a distance, the answer was no. There was something in Severus Snape that would never be sufficiently fed, and this starvation, spiritual or emotional or whatever it was, afflicted him physically. Harry didn't know why, but when he laid eyes on Snape, he felt … relief that he was still recognisable. Still couldn't be mistaken for anyone else.
Harry didn't approach, no matter how stupid it was to pretend he hadn't seen Snape; and Snape, who had to be aware of Harry loitering nearby, chose to ignore him. Besides, there were always other people about. Really, it was silly how many of them still treated such a physically unimposing specimen as a threat, giving Snape a wide berth in the corridors or looking alarmed when they came face to face with him.
Well, except for Calvin Micklethwaite of the Accidental Magic Cover-up Squad, who often detained Snape in the hall for a chat. And always felt compelled to lay a hand on his arm.
Or Charlotte Parchment, who clerked in the Department of Mysteries and practically ran after Snape's black-clad figure if she happened to spy him in the open.
Or Demetria Seymour, whom Harry had seen several times sitting at table discussing something intently with Snape in a manner that apparently rendered her sneer-proof.
Or Bentley Copestakes, who – all right, never mind. The point was, Harry was starting to feel distinctly overlooked.
Or – wait. Hermione. Hermione Granger-Weasley. Hermione and Snape.
Holy shit.
The sight of Hermione was almost as much of a shock to him as his first glimpse of Snape had been. His heart leaped, and all he wanted to do was run over and engulf her in a hug, Snape be damned. But he respected her wishes and kept his distance. He also felt the uneasy desire to tell Ron, but it wasn't his place to mention it. Harry didn't know why, but he sensed Hermione would consider her – her friendliness with Snape none of his business.
At that point, Harry decided he had more important things to do than keep tabs on how many and precisely which people seemed willing and eager to tolerate Snape's company.
They finally met one morning, walking in opposite directions. Harry stopped in the hallway, and Snape, after a moment when it looked as if he might stride right by, paused mid-step, wand in hand. From the perspective of six years on, he looked more like a gaunt-faced long distance runner than the greasy bat of Harry's schooldays. The dungeon miasma that once clung to him had been replaced by a haunted, tight-lipped air of determination. He'd paid his pound of flesh, and death had released him, but he still carried himself as if conscious of borrowed time.
"Hey," Harry said, watching Snape's gaze rove over him, assessing, drawing conclusions. Harry wondered if he'd changed much, or if to Snape he still looked like an insufferable prat, handed rewards he didn't deserve.
"Auror Potter," said the git, his face betraying no interest whatsoever, and was off down the hall in a swirl of robes.
"Good to see you," Harry called after him, reluctant to cut the encounter short. "I'm glad you're back."
"Are you? I can't think why." Snape's voice resonated slightly as he turned through a doorway and vanished from sight.
So the rumours circulated, and Harry didn't mention them to Ron, and he didn't inquire further because every other rumour about Snape he'd heard so far had turned out to be true.
You'll never guess who I had drinks with, Hermione wrote to him. Then, later, Well! I'm rather surprised, Harry. I can see the appeal. At least enough to hold onto my patience if my jerk of a husband truly wants to explain himself.
Nothing specific. Nothing that said Snape. Besides, it was unthinkable, right?
If only Harry could stop thinking about it.
To everyone's relief, within a week of Hermione's non-confession, a letter arrived for Ron. This was followed by Firecalls and at least one exploding fireplace. But they admitted they were miserable living apart and were looking for opportunities to mend the damage. For the first time in two months, Harry got enough sleep because Ron no longer showed up late in the evenings, half-pissed and wanting to talk about it.
The weekend Hermione decided to come home, she invited Harry to join her for drinks. She'd almost finished packing up the tiny London bedsit she'd leased for her brief flight from matrimony. Harry had been there once before, when Hermione had asked him over, both to explain her reasons for giving her marriage a second chance (not as if Harry needed justifications, but Hermione apparently felt better laying it out in carefully constructed debate points) and to prove she could be perfectly fine alone if it came to that. This time they embraced, Hermione got a bit teary, and Harry petted her hair and patted her back until she dried her eyes, laughing.
"Right. Enough of that. Time for a drink!"
Half a bottle of Ogden's and Hermione's "I don't enjoy being single" later, Harry let his head fall back against the wall with a thud of relief. It was going to be all right. They'd got the most emotional part of the evening out of the way. The people dearest to him in all the world weren't going to abandon each other – or him.
It was a pretty little room, even emptied of the bits and bobs Hermione had acquired to cushion her loneliness. Sitting on the floor with his back against the wall, Harry finally felt emboldened to ask, "So, is it true? Are you really sleeping with Snape?"
Beside him, Hermione crossed her legs at the ankle and gave him a look that said I wondered when you'd get around to that. "No," she said primly, "I really was sleeping with Snape. Shagging him, actually. But not anymore." Her smile was bashful and a tiny bit smug. "I deserve a badge saying 'I fucked Severus Snape,' don't you think?"
Harry had no idea of the right thing to say under the circumstances, so he went straight for the wrong thing. "How the bloody hell did that happen? You're not the type to just sit there while some git takes advantage."
"Don't be silly. If there was any advantage being taken, it was all on my side. Though that's a bit dramatic. I was still stewing over Ron's idiocy, and I spotted Professor Snape coming out of a shop in Hogsmeade, and it just – " She waved a vague hand, and a spoonful of whisky sloshed onto her skirt. "Well, it struck me, here we are almost seven years later, and I wondered, what's he like?" She examined the pungent stain and dried it with a dreamy tap-tap-tap. "He was a horrible teacher, but I'm not a student anymore and I wanted something outside my experience. Something as different from Ron as I could get." Her voice grew smaller with the memory of betrayal. "Snape was it."
Harry was silent for a moment, frowning into his glass. "So, how was he?"
"Much as you'd expect. A bit gritty and cynical and underwhelmed by my presence, making it clear he wanted to get home without being waylaid by former students."
Harry fidgeted. "No, I mean – "
Hermione's confidence came back, and she grinned. "He was perfectly fine with getting laid by former students. Up for a shag once he realised I wasn't after his company, only certain salient parts of his anatomy."
"I'm sure I don't want to know," Harry said. Then, after a moment, "So," he tried again, "how was he?"
"He was exactly what I needed." She sighed, scooting over so she could rest her head on his shoulder. "A good fuck." She must have felt his slight flinch, because she leaned away from him and wrinkled her nose. "Oh, Harry, if you're going to be a prude, I refuse to talk to you. You see, I wanted something vulgar, and Snape sussed that out so fast it was scary." She tucked her head down on his shoulder again, probably to hide her face. "He pushed me this way and that around the bed, taking what he wanted, and he gave me anything I asked for, even when I didn't know how to ask. We both went away satisfied. He was – " Her shrug joggled Harry's elbow, and they both got whisky on them that time. "Well, you know. A bit raw around the edges. That dark streak in him – dirtiness comes naturally to him in a way it doesn't to Ron." Apologetic, she dabbed at Harry's damp sleeve. "And I wanted to get a bit dirty."
Harry shifted, but the discomfort wouldn't go away. He felt a terrible, almost angry compulsion to know more, but it felt personal and – yes, all right, dirty, and he didn't want to give away how weirdly important this was. "You didn't find him physically disgusting? When we were kids – "
"Exactly. We were kids. What did we know?" Hermione pushed herself back into a sitting position and wrinkled her brow, as if thinking was hard. They'd both crossed the sober limit for sure if Hermione of all people was having trouble thinking. "I have to say, the 'greasy git' thing didn't once occur to me. I suppose he's not good-looking, certainly not compared to Ron, but his body is fine. He's not a centrefold for Witch Weekly or anything, and it's not the sort of body one stands around and admires, but I liked touching him. His body's good enough to touch."
"So why'd you stop?"
He almost blushed at the look she gave him. "Because I got it out of my system. I'm not that interested in shagging for shagging's sake. And sleeping with him didn't change how I felt about Ron. Snape barely lifted an eyebrow when I said thanks but I'd had enough. He made some dry remark about how common it is for people to use him as a revenge fuck and that he's tired of wayward wives thinking his penis is a form of self-punishment." She tipped the dregs in her glass down her throat and coughed a little. "Or wayward husbands, for that matter."
"What?" Harry said.
"Oh, right. His parting shot? That it was just as well because he preferred men."
"Men?" Harry said, and blinked. He didn't think this conversation could get any more surreal. "Snape prefers men? Are you kidding me?"
Hermione snuggled back against the wall and gave him a strangely flirtatious look. "I thought you might like that part."
The place inside him where he kept sealed away the horrible idea of his mum and Snape developed a sudden full-length crack down the middle. "You're bonkers."
"I'm drunk," Hermione said, raising her glass with pride. It was empty. She repeated, suddenly uncertain, "I'm drunk, aren't I? Merlin, Harry. Please, in the morning, let's forget we ever talked about this." For a moment, gazing around at her empty bedsit, she seemed on the brink of becoming maudlin again. "You haven't told Ron, have you?" When Harry widened his eyes at her in theatrical horror, she vanished her glass and clasped her arms around her knees. Mischief lit her face. "Good. I want to tell him myself."
However she ended up explaining the whole disaster to Ron, it wasn't a dealbreaker. She moved back without a single exploding fireplace, and life resumed its balance. Even if Harry was still adrift, Ron and Hermione proved the world wasn't doomed to fall apart; that people could make mistakes and survive.
From then on, of course, Harry noticed Snape, be it at a Ministry function where crowds acted as swarming, chattering distractions to shield them from each other, with Snape a black-clad, disapproving outpost standing in some far corner of the room, or a glimpse in Flourish and Blott's of an ink-dark surprise in the righthand aisle, thin as a broomstick under the excess of robes that rippled with the draught of Harry's passage.
If he let his eye linger a second too long, he'd catch the slow paging of fingers through a book, see them shift from elegant to tensely skeletal as Snape realised he was there, his grip tight enough to make the book's leather binding creak. If Harry paused, the corner of Snape's eye would slide across his own like a line of paint, black smearing over green. If he succumbed to a fit of middle-class manners, nodding hello to a man who rejected pleasantries with extreme prejudice, he'd end up skewered on a suspicious glare. The cold eyes would turn back to the brittle page and stare at it fiercely, unseeingly, until Harry took the hint and walked away.
He didn't know why he noticed Snape, why he couldn't just ignore him. Why something inside him prickled to attention like hackles rising, like goosebumps on bare skin. They had said what they had to say to each other. Each had absorbed the contradiction of the other's survival, bowed to history, and backed away.
They had nothing in common. They didn't owe each other anything – no, that wasn't true. Harry owed Snape something. He doubted the cantankerous bastard would agree. He doubted anyone else would, either. Harry had no idea what it was he thought he owed or how he meant to pay this nebulous debt. It was a private reckoning he kept to himself.
It didn't explain why his senses saw fit to inform him whenever Snape was nearby.
Spotted through the half-open door warily taking a seat in the Minister's office.
With the late afternoon sunlight pointing a yellow finger at him as he glowered down at a shop window.
In a Hogsmeade street drawing his wand on some idiot spitting obscenities about how his shrivelled black heart should be pulled out through his anus and sewn up in a Gobstones bag.
Standing just inside the entrance to the Great Hall during the annual commemoration of the Battle of Hogwarts, wine glass in hand. Not drinking. Not acknowledging the distrust directed his way.
Disappearing between one toast and the next.