«Give me your hand

Your mother is drunk as all the firemen shake

A photo from father's arms

Cinder and smoke

You'll ask me to pray for rain

With ash in your mouth

You'll ask it to burn again» ©

Iron And Wine — Cinder And Smoke

"How much fire there was - and how little ash remained."

Pasternak about the death of Mayakovsky

"Nah, dude, she's really gone mad, completely gaga," Weasley announced solemnly, twirling a finger at his temple for greater persuasiveness. Potter looked sternly at his friend, took a sip of his beer, and ordered another round from a passing waiter.

Friday night, the trinity of friends, formed by chance, like many coincidences in the post-war world, was spent in a Muggle bar on the outskirts of London. They anticipated a football match: Bayern-Manchester, so the evening was supposed to be pleasant. Especially after just a crazy hard week of Auror operatives, disappearing without sleep and rest in the Scottish Highlands. Someone had put a curse on the faerie colony, causing the poor bastards to stop flickering, and become allergic to pollen, and the collection of magical honey was in jeopardy. Who and why inflamed hatred of the fairies was yet to be found out, but Malfoy, Potter, and Weasley vowed to get to the joker and put a beehive on his head. The fact was that the magical honey of black-tailed bees helped with magical sciatica and even healed burns from dragon flame. There were no dragons, thank Merlin, in the fairy colony, but there were salamander nests. And now the trio of Aurors went bitten by bees, burned by salamanders, and hated the whole world in general and the Mad Fury in particular. Malfoy twirled a glass of beer in his fingers, blew off the foam, and looked at his friends:

"She's a senior officer of the Auror Department, one more step and Potter will move from his chair. Or you would split departments. She is not obliged to ride over the mountains and hills, but why are you dragging yourself after me and this red marten?"

Ron shook his fist at Malfoy. Potter laughed.

"I'll punch you!"

"So you can call me a ferret, then?" Malfoy replied without raising an eyebrow.

"So, back to Mione. Personally, I'm bored of constantly writing reports, compiling interrogation protocols, and brainstorming over our ten-year-old cases. I love field practice, especially when it's possible to have an ol' good fist-fight and there aren't any Quidditch matches to come in the foreseeable future," Potter explained good-naturedly, eliciting a chuckle from his friends. "She ... after the war, a lot has changed, we ourselves have changed. Hermione, after all, also participates in field practice, only much more dangerous than saving fairies and trying to escape from angry salamanders."

"That's what I'm saying, she's a gaga," the Weasleys insisted. Malfoy was still silent and listened, fully turning on the Slytherin mode.

"Ron, you know it wasn't easy for everyone after the war," Harry tried to reason with his friend. Eternally just hero with a hypertrophied set of moral values. Probably the same was James Potter, who unconditionally believed in his friends and paid for it with his life. Potter Jr. was very proud of him. What kind of a man was his own... father, Malfoy chose not to think that evening. Weasley, meanwhile, continued, ignoring the languid remarks. He rarely listened to anyone but himself. And, perhaps, Granger, but that was a long time ago.

"Are you seriously telling me this now? My family was falling apart! Fred died, my mother cried all the time, my father fared very badly, even thought about quitting the Ministry, Charlie ran away to his dragons, Percy... he was always a dark thestral, Ginny was going to get married, George and I were left alone. I left my studies at DMLE and went to help him in Wizard Wheezes. And don't look at me like that now, without a family I'm nobody! I'm a nobody anyway, just a red-haired half-educated prat who always trailed after the savior of all Britain. I even graduated from Hogwarts only because my overly smart girlfriend always helped me. I know that I acted like the last bastard then in the forest with you, that I left you, guys, at the most inopportune moment, but ... You see, I was inspired from childhood, showed by example that the Weasleys stick together, and then suddenly the Weasleys were gone. We remained broken and heartbroken red-haired fellas who simply got lost. Someone had to take on the role of head of the family. And maybe I'm drunk and you'll beat my face, and you'll be right, but you never had a real family. Harry grew up with his crazy relatives, you, Malfoy, had a moral duty, a contract, obligations without rights, and other nonsense. You don't understand what a real home feels like, that's why you all, as the ashes from the burnt Hogwarts scattered a little, rushed off somewhere. Some got married and began to build a nest, like Harry, some went to France, where they also almost got married, like you, Malfoy, but everyone, one way or another, was in a hurry, I don't know, to build a nest or something."

Malfoy was tired of listening to this drunken confession and he interrupted his friend:

"But not Granger?"

"No, of course, what kind of mother is she, anyway? I had the family on my mind, she had the promotion of laws in the Ministry. I dreamt children, she wrote forty-five pages of an appeal against another decree against sentient races, I had Quidditch, she had ancient languages. You still wonder why you are always paired with her when we have international missions. While Harry and I were creating families, what have you and she been doing there? Learned Greek and Arabic, practiced in fencing and shooting from a pistol, went up the career ladder, and changed your occupation?"

Malfoy scratched the bridge of his nose: he hated to admit that the Red Marten was right, which absolutely did not mean that Granger became less annoying or Malfoy understood the reasons for her unbearable behavior. He, unlike the Weasel, never had a craving for powerful women.

"And how did she end up in Auror Department?" Malfoy asked a question that had been tormenting him for a long time. "She was, what, going to be the next Minister for Magic.

Ron got distracted by a passing waitress and began to shamelessly glare at her under the formidable whisper of Potter, who was once again included in the role of public conscience.

"Hey, Ron, Brown will turn your brains upside down if you don't stop now."

"Mille pardons, mademoiselle, my friend is a little out of his mind," Malfoy added with a radiant smile. And while the charming brunette was thinking about how to casually write down her telephone number on a napkin for this mannered gentleman with a French accent, he ordered another beer from her. Weasley returned to reality and chuckled, turning to his friends:

"Here's your answer, why are you paired up: French, Greek, Latin, Arabic, what else is there?"

"Hittite, German, and Gaelic," Malfoy answered absent-mindedly. "So what's up with the Ministry?"

"Who knows," Weasley shrugged, taking a long sip from his glass. "We all were looking for a way out of the reality in which we found ourselves, and everyone dreamed of proving something to someone. I learned new magic tricks to entertain the kids who kept coming to the Wheezes store. It was destroyed almost to the ground by your former friends, and what they did not finish off, the rest of the haters plundered. George locked himself in the back room and drank Dreamless Sleep, and I first tried to reason with him, but n the end I joined him. We all depended on Dreamless Sleep, I think. Like the people who lost their minds at the Mirror of Erised, or fall in love with portraits of dead wizards. We saw beautiful dreams, some of the past, some of the loved ones, some of the future that will never come true, and we kept increasing and increasing the dose. I tossed myself between Lavender and Hermione like crazy. Sometimes, utterly drunk, I would tumble into Mione's apartment, cry in her arms and fall asleep on her sofa. And she ... was just there. My mother, you know, had been planning our marriage since we were teenagers, planning the wedding, somehow, it went without saying. Yes, you yourself almost flew into a marriage contract, what I'm telling you. Hermione was like... like a fifth wheel. Although I knew perfectly well that Muggles usually have the fifth wheel for a spare one. I still couldn't figure out how to live on until both of them, when Hermione and Lav had my brains set right, each in their own way. And I finally made up my mind."

"I think you made up your mind during the Battle of Hogwarts," Harry, who had been silent until now, put in his two knuts, "I still remember, how you, in defiance of Greyback, rushed to protect Lavender, and instead of gratitude, you received a jinx from her. Say, she does not need knights in shining armor and protectors in the robes of Gryffindor, either. But she did a good job, your wife, she tweaked our brains a bit. And she still is doing just that for Malfoy."

Draco gave Potter an obscene gesture, but the gist remained the same: Lavender Brown-Weasley had been his Healer for years and excelled where others had failed.

"But why did she leave the Ministry? Since we're having a gossip night," Malfoy insisted.

"Hell if I know," Weasley spread his hands, "I think she got bored in the Ministry. The same faces every day, the same failures, she was tired of proving herself to someone, ask Lavender, she will decompose cause and effect for you. Why are you grilling me?"

"You kind of were in a relationship with her."

"That's just it, that "sort of like."

Ron and Malfoy continued their verbal skirmish, and Harry thoughtfully blew off the foam from the beer and stared into the glass: Hermione, indeed, had drifted away from everyone after the war. Even from him and Ginny. She took on the most difficult tasks, risking her life ten times a week, and when he and this impromptu trio of Ferret, Marten, and Hero went to drink in a pub, she rushed abroad to help her colleagues fight evil there. She was respected and feared in DMLE, and Moody often gave her a bonus and a reprimand in one bottle. She didn't seem to appreciate her own life anymore, and Harry despaired of understanding why. She was still his best friend, and he didn't want to pry into her soul until she told him herself. She wouldn't tell, Potter knew that too. He liked working with her, so at least she was always supervised, not that he would ever admit it to her. But Harry was used to taking care of his own. There were too few of them left, anyway...

"Okay, gang, football is about to start, and something has taken us in the wrong direction," Weasley said after finishing his beer, but his friends did not hear him, each thinking about their own past. Years passed, children were born, and they went forward, but just like that, a phrase thrown by chance, an accidental memory, and the past rose before their eyes, looked at them condemningly, and they wanted to ask it for forgiveness, but there were no more those before whom they would like to repent. How to know what exactly Granger was hiding from, and whether it was worth getting under her skin?

Malfoy seemed to understand some of Weasley's drunkenness, but that didn't mean he wanted to tolerate her. On other days, she was for him like a thorn in his side. But, it was worth admitting, without her help, they would have even more cold cases and uncaught criminals. Not in vain, probably, even... the godfather considered her a smart, albeit insufferable know-it-all.

Malfoy didn't want to think about the past. He wanted to watch football and drink his beer.