Chapter Text
One balmy, unmemorable evening early in August, Hermione says, "We have got to get on with it."
Her hair tickles Harry's nose. He's staring right at the sinking sun and it's made his vision go spotty, the crooked rise of the Burrow flickering in and out of view from behind little explosions of light. He squeezes his eyes shut and fights back a sneeze.
"Get on with what?"
"Living," she says.
So they do.
–
Harry doesn't think it's very fair that they're expected to get on with it without her, but under the bright scrutiny of her excitement, decides to keep the thought to himself.
"I'll write, of course," she says. "It's only a year and some change, and we'll be so busy, with NEWTS—"
"They don't have NEWTS in Australia," Ron says to his porridge.
"Obviously," Hermione says, struggling to keep her voice even, "but I'll still have entrance exams, won't I?" She gives Mr. Weasley a sweet smile as he ambles into the kitchen for coffee. "Good morning, Mr. Weasley. Oh, are you—you're off to work? But it's Sunday."
"Good morning, good morning. Ah, yes, well, I'm afraid the department's a bit behind these days. You know how it is, everyone has to pitch in. Here's the mail for you lot. Pig dumped it all by the coop today, don't know what's gotten into him."
The Weasleys' relic of a coffee maker has only two settings: tepid bathwater and boiling in perpetuity. Mr. Weasley braves a sip and winces as he sets down a handful of letters and the Daily Prophet on the dining table. Harry's own sullen face stares out at him under the headline Harry Potter to Provide Pensieve Testimony in Ongoing Death Eater Trials. The article begins with: The trial for Lucius Malfoy, former Death Eater who is alleged to have defected, is set to resume on the eighth of August, after previous dismissals of incongruous witness testimonies. Photo-Harry gives him an unreadable look. Harry flips the paper over.
Mr. Weasley thumps him on the shoulder. "Front page of the Sunday post again, eh, Harry? There's another Hogwarts letter in there for you, too. Write them back today, won't you? Unless—well, you haven't changed your mind about going back—"
"Of course he hasn't," Ron interrupts. "He's going. Wouldn't abandon his best friend, would he?"
Hermione's mouth thins.
"Ah," Mr. Weasley says, sharing a look with Harry over Ron's bent head. He decides the coffee in whatever state is preferable and takes a long swig. "Yes, well—I'm off. Ron, tell your mother I'll be home for dinner."
Hermione follows him out without another word. Through the kitchen window, Harry can see her make her way across the overrun garden, hands splayed out at her sides to catch the tallest reeds of switchgrass. In the pile of mail in front of him, among letters from the Ministry stamped IMPORTANT! and TOP SECRET that Harry sends flying into the rubbish bin, the Hogwarts seal is a bright, accusing red. Harry rubs the thick parchment of his invitation between a sweaty thumb and forefinger. The ink doesn't smudge.
Hermione disappears from view, eaten by the frame of the streaky window. Next to him, Ron scoops cold porridge determinedly into his mouth and avoids Harry's eyes.
"Go, then, if you want," he mutters, so Harry gets up, and goes.
He finds Hermione sat on the worn stone bench at the far end of the garden. Rambling mint has bullied the rest of the herbs into submission and escaped from its bed, now underfoot, so with every step Harry takes the air gets brighter and brighter from the smell of it. Hermione is tearing mint leaves apart with her bitten down fingernails.
"He didn't mean it," Harry lies.
"Oh, yes, he did," Hermione says, with a grim little smile. "Because there isn't one ounce of self-awareness in his body, and he won't ever ask himself what he would do, if I told him to just leave his family behind." Her eyes are dry and furious as she huffs a laugh. "Well, I suppose we already know what he'd do."
More leaves get torn to shreds as Harry watches.
"Does he think that I don't want to—don't you know, how much I'd like to stay? I feel guilty enough that we didn't go to help with the rebuilding. The way we left things, don't you think I want another chance, just to go back to school and be normal? But my parents deserve to have that, too. It hasn't been fair to them. I haven't been fair to them."
Her face crumples a little, so Harry knocks their shoulders together. She wobbles to the side at his exaggerated force, and then swings back to lay her head on his shoulder. Up in one of the Burrow's misshapen turrets, Mrs. Weasley throws open the window to dust the curtains. She only goes in that room after everyone's had breakfast and George leaves for the shop. She won't come out for hours.
"Of course I want to stay with you," Hermione says quietly. "But we can't keep on the way we are. Things need to change, Harry. We need to change."
Harry doesn't even know what change looks like, anymore. Once you've died, thinking about the future feels like you're just asking to become the butt of some cosmic joke. Once you've come back to life, you're afraid to.
He leans his head against hers. Under the persistent heat of the sun, the long grass he's been watching grow all summer has begun to wither. But in the end, it will be the frost that kills it.
"He'll come around," he says.
"Well, I really don't care if he doesn't."
"Alright," Harry says easily to the mutinous set of her jaw. "Do you suppose they'll let you on a computer, at your new school? Only, I thought I'd email."
–
Hermione leaves a week before term begins, so they are left to attend to Diagon Alley on their own. Ron and Ginny don't bother with a glamour, but Harry's learned from the public frenzy of the last few months not to go outside without one. People are surprisingly easy to fool, if you show them what they expect to see, anyway; a quick charm lengthens his hair so it falls into his eyes and colours it an offensive tangerine, another lightens his skin. When he has time, he charms away his glasses and throws in some freckles to complete the look.
Ron finds it funny. Ginny doesn't.
She keeps ahead of them as they walk through the crowd, as though four feet of distance will keep people from thinking she might know the boys dogging her heels who look just like her. When they've finished with the last of their shopping, she turns abruptly and says, "You two go home. I'm meeting a friend."
"What friend?" Ron says.
She ignores him and addresses the space between Ron and Harry's heads. Harry understands the impulse; he can't look straight at her for long either, these days. "Mum knows I'm staying at hers for the next few. We'll go to King's Cross together, after."
"But we're not going to King's Cross," Ron says, annoyed. "We'll go from Hogsmeade."
"You can do what you want," Ginny says. She steps easily aside to make way for a young witch with a pram, who then clips Ron's shoulder and gives him a nasty look when he fails to move. "I'm taking the train."
"Why?" Ron demands. "You're not Head Girl. What do you have to take the train for?"
"You know," Ginny says, "I really thought Perce had the nosy parker market cornered, but you're stiff competition these days." She hitches one bag of supplies over a shoulder and levitates the rest, then finally fixes her eyes on Harry. "You're turning brown at the edges, by the way. Cuz."
"She wasn't always like this, you know," Ron says, as they watch her leave without another word. He gives Harry an accusing look.
Harry finishes reapplying his charms. The freckles go on with a little flourish. "Yeah, mate. She was."
In the end, going through Hogsmeade turns out to be a mistake. Amid the confusion at the post office over international owls—"that's how many Galleons?"---and international Floo—"so, when we said international, we sort of meant outside the country, actually," Ron's enduring sulk and no Ginny to remind him, Harry's glamour fades moments after they exit the building. Within seconds High Street, which was occupied by only a few people going to-and-fro under the faint light of the street lamps, is crawling with well-wishers and glad-handers.
"Come back to finish your schooling, have you, Harry," booms an older wizard he's never seen before, pumping his hand for so long that Harry's wrist starts to ache. "I've always said, that boy, he's a responsible sort. My grandsons are at Hogwarts, you know, first and second years—Gryffindors, of course—awfully frightened to go back, after all that nasty business, but I said, if Harry Potter can—"
He's shoved out of the way by a hooded witch holding a camera. The flash goes off inches from Harry's face, blinding him, smoke in his mouth, and then Ron's snarling, "yeah, thanks for that," and, "mustn't be late, wouldn't want the schooling to start without us, you understand," and he's being pulled away by a hand fisted firmly in his robes.
The climb up to the castle is shorter than he remembers. Or they're just faster, these days, disinclined to linger, but even then, they've come too late for the Sorting; the worn oak doors of the Great Hall open to a feast already underway, lit up by a thousand candles and bright laughter. It looks, Harry thinks, like no one had ever died here at all.
Ginny's sat at the end of Gryffindor table closest to the entrance with the rest of her class, but returning eighth years have been squeezed in near the front, by the newly sorted first-years. There's eyes on him as they walk past the length of the tables, but there's always eyes on him, these days. For a moment Harry wishes that he could be rid of his glasses. Then everything around him would shift and blur into a pocket of warmth, and there would be comfort in its ambiguity.
If he looks up at the High Table, it's only for a second, just to catch McGonagall's nod.
Their plates shudder and overflow with food as soon as they take a seat. Harry's sandwiched between the new Head Boy and a tiny first-year sporting glasses so massive there's hardly anything left of his face. Sat across are Neville and Dean Thomas, who grins at him and shouts to be heard over the din: "That's Harry Potter, you know! This one, over here, with the hair and the scar—you might have heard of him—" as though his name isn't being muttered under a hundred breaths already.
The boy next to him turns and blinks his big owl eyes. "Hullo then, Harry Potter," he says seriously, and sticks out a hand.
There's laughter as he takes it, but the boy just nods, satisfied. When Harry risks another look at the High Table, McGonagall has the faintest of smiles on her face.
He doesn't remember much of the feast beyond that. It takes effort to keep the noise from giving him a headache, and the number of unfamiliar faces around him makes him feel as though he's walking backwards, a bit, getting farther away. The tables aren't as crowded as he remembers, even with returning eighth years taking up room. Behind him, Slytherin is sparser than most, but he can't get a good enough look to see who's there.
Someone asks him about the ceiling, but he doesn't understand the question, and then he hears Ron snap, "How should I know why she didn't come back? Not her bloody keeper, am I?" and Dean says, "alright, touchy," and Harry gets up before Ron's sour mood can turn into a fight.
They get the new password off the Head Boy and head up to the tower before everyone else. The old, worn stone of the castle is forgiving in this way, Harry thinks, that it's impossible to tell what's been repaired, and where. Hogwarts' magic has stitched its own foundation together again. Harry runs a hand along the wall as they climb and feels the last of the restlessness fade away. He remembers this place. It's always been whole.
The eighth year boys' dormitory has been expanded from what used to be a linen closet off of the common room to house four familiar poster beds and as many writing desks, some odd bookshelves, and a workbench. The thought of ending up back in the cupboard, even transformed as it is, makes Harry snort.
"What?" Ron asks suspiciously, flopping onto his bed.
"Nothing." Harry pops open Ron's trunk, and pulls out his chess set. "Come on. It's early."
Ron protests, content to sulk the rest of the evening away, but Harry's only really got a chance at victory when Ron's distracted and he's not willing to pass it up. They trudge back out to the still empty common room and settle down in front of the roaring fire to resume a game Harry's been almost winning for eight days.
"I meant it, you know," Ron says, instead of making his move. The combination of annoyance and warmth from the fire has turned him red. "I won't write her."
"Alright," Harry says. One of his rooks lunges threateningly at Ron's remaining knight.
"She said it herself, didn't she? We have NEWTs to worry about now. And I haven't got the funds to spend a fortune on international owl every week," Ron continues, picking up steam. Harry's a little surprised it took him this long to get started. "I'm not Viktor bleeding Krum, if that's what she's expecting."
"You do kind of look like him from this angle," Harry says.
"And you can work that whole—Muggle mail, the hot one—but I've got better things to do, alright? This is the start of the rest of our lives, or whatever. Just sign my name on. She won't even notice the difference, I bet."
"Sure, mate. Should I write Love, Ron, or is that a bit awkward at the moment?"
"Piss off," Ron says grimly. "Knight to B4."
The portrait swings open as Harry's contemplating his move, admitting two girls he recognizes in the way you do people you've passed by dozens of times but never actually spoken to. Harry pretends not to notice how they trip over themselves when they see him in the corner and hopes they won't approach, because he doesn't remember their names. Everyone's started looking the same to him, these days, indistinct and unmemorable, one large amorphous mass of nervous smiles and oh, wait, are you—aren't you—you know?
He wonders how long it will take for people to start calling him You-Know-Who. It's funny in his head.
"Were we ever like that?" There's a scowl on Ron's face, and the girls scowl back before they start climbing the stairs. "Like, happy? Without any problems?"
"Not you," Harry says. "You were born with problems."
"I know it," Ron says, watching with a frown as Harry's queen gleefully beats his knight unconscious. "Cursed, really. Rook to A12. If one bloody thing goes right this year, I'll drop dead from the shock of it. Oh, yeah—checkmate."
–
His dreams are harmless now.
There's Hermione under the sun, eyes crinkled, hair wild. "Don't worry, Harry," she says. "We're home."
Behind her rises the discoloured canvas of a familiar tent. Harry can see a few places where the fabric has torn and been patched up badly. It looks like his work.
"It's just like we left it," he says, pleased. He steps inside and bats away sticky spider webs, breathes in the comforting smell of dust and disuse. When he sits, Hermione sits across from him, knees drawn up tight to her chest. Their feet overlap. Ron must be outside, of course, because there isn't enough space in here for all three of them. They'll trade off in a bit, Harry thinks, after a nap.
The spider in Hermione's hair is dead. Harry closes his eyes to the sound of footsteps thundering down the stairs.
–
"You're somewhere else," Luna says. She's licking the jam from her toast.
"Yeah," Harry admits, as his eyes focus on her face again. From anyone else, it would be accusing. The noise from the Great Hall filters back to Harry, raucous but friendly. Ron's chewing a sausage practically in his ear; he doesn't know how he managed to tune it out in the first place. "Sorry. I don't mean to be."
Breakfast is a relaxed affair, compared to the Sorting feast. Upperclassmen don't have classes until the afternoon, so they've slept in while first-years are up trying to manoeuvre around the staircases and running headlong into each other trying to dodge Peeves. The tables are still piled high with food, but only half occupied. When Luna joined them at Gryffindor table, Harry doesn't know, but then he doesn't know much of anything this morning; he woke up twice in the night to cast an imperturbable around Ron's bed, and couldn't sleep, after. Couldn't wake up all the way, either.
Luna is looking at him, in her patient way. "Where do you go?"
"Nowhere," Harry says honestly, and she nods like that's what she expected.
"You were looking at the ceiling."
It's hard not to. Harry hadn't noticed it last night, when the sky was cloudy and starless and there were so many candles overhead. But in the daylight, his eyes keep stuttering back to the great colourless stain that's spreading from the centre of the ceiling and eating away at the clear blue sky. Every now and again parts of it will flicker, throwing off sparks, and everyone's heads will tilt back in wary unison.
Harry's never seen a charm collapse like this before, in slow motion. He doesn't understand how it could have gotten damaged in the first place.
"It's rooted in the ground, I suspect," Luna says, when he says as much. "Like lianas. We only think they're suspended in the air because we can't see where they begin."
"I thought all the repairs were finished," Ron says, finally free of the sausage. "That's what it said in the letter, anyway."
"Well, people wouldn't have come back, otherwise," Luna says, in her matter-of-fact way. "I think we did a passable job. There's no big holes left in the walls, you see? They were making the castle so draughty, it would have been quite unpleasant in the winter."
"Just the hole in the ceiling, then," Ron says, though the sheepish look he slants at Harry tells him he's thinking the same thing—that at least Luna, unlike them, had come back to help. Not so lacking in self-awareness, Harry thinks. Not entirely.
Guilt is such an old friend. Harry doesn't have any secrets from it, anymore. The conversation continues around him, and Harry catches bits and pieces of it—"as it's supposed to be," and "the gargoyles are still too frightened to stand guard, they've holed up in the dungeons." Harry tilts his head back as far as it can go, letting his vision blur until the biggest splotch of failing magic looks like a fist crushing the clouds. Under his watch, it flickers once, and again, as if signalling its distress.
"No one expected so many of them to come back," someone's saying now. "Or at least, none of us did, after everything—"
"I thought the whole table would be empty, s'not like they're big on nerve, are they?"
"Malfoy had to come back, though, it was that or Azkaban, that's what I heard—"
Harry's pulled back from his contemplation of the ruptured sky by some old instinct, like so much white noise finally hitting a channel on the wireless. He knows the rest of the people sat near him as seventh years; Ginny's friends, though Ginny herself is absent.
"It wasn't anything like that," says one of them now, a curly-haired girl with a prim voice. "He was pardoned. My da, you know, he's worked at the Sentencing Commission for Unforgivables and Magical Misdemeanours his whole life, practically, and he said it's just like the Malfoys to get away with everything, they've only been doing it for generations—"
"Why come back, then? He's hardly got any of his posse left, either—"
"Well, NEWTs, I reckon—even he can't do without an education—"
Ron gives Harry a sideways look and raises his brows. "Like Malfoy's going to work a day in his life. Anyway, he's already exceeded all expectations at being a double-crossing prick."
"Excellent marks across the board," Harry murmurs. "Pureblood Poncery. Outstanding."
Ron snorts loud enough that people look over. Harry takes a long swig of his pumpkin juice to avoid curious eyes at the end of the table. That the simple mention of Malfoy's name can inspire irritation in him is comforting in its familiarity. The change Hermione was so eager for hasn't arrived at Hogwarts after all. Harry doesn't know what he's doing here, surrounded by what remains of his friends and too many friendly strangers, under a vast sky that someone's cracked carelessly open like an egg, but all must be well, because Malfoy is still a git.
Malfoy is not, however, here.
"Probably scared of what everyone's saying about him," Ron says with a shrug. "Hiding out in the dungeons is what he's good at, innit? The coward."
Harry eyes the handful of students huddled at the Slytherin table, unconvinced. That isn't Malfoy's style; he doesn't so much lick his wounds as he does immediately set out to inflict pain on everyone unlucky enough to be within arm's reach. Malfoy, Harry has often thought, suffers humiliation like no one else he's ever known-–like he thinks shame itself stands to be shamed before he does.
Draco Malfoy's trial had been one of the first as, with some heavy-handed manoeuvring on the part of several higher-ups, he was tried as a minor. Harry hadn't attended. It wasn't until weeks after he got his full pardon that Harry had run into him again, in the Ministry atrium, standing in line for the Floo.
Even hooded and with his back to him, Harry recognized him. Torchlight did little to warm his pale face, but it did darken his eyes. He was alone, and wandless. It was the first time Harry had seen him since saving his life—twice, and no thanks given—and when Harry cleared his throat, Malfoy had turned to look at him like he'd crawled straight out of the rubbish bin.
"Might be easier on you to act like we get on, Malfoy," Harry said wearily, when the Ministry officials on either side of them shuffled in displeasure and gave Malfoy unfriendly looks.
"No one's that good of an actor, Potter."
The witches hovering behind Harry muttered something that sounded a lot like, well he's got some nerve, and got off too easy, nasty little prig, and Death Eater, wasn't he? Doesn't matter how old he was, I say—we need to put them all in their place.
"I have your wand," Harry said, to say something.
Something flickered on Malfoy's face. Harry didn't have enough time to peel it apart.
"Seems to have served you well," Malfoy said with a thin smile, before turning back around. "Keep it."
Harry mailed it to him that evening. He didn't send a note with it, and got no reply. Ron was furious—"what'd you go and do that for? Like we need to do that bastard any more favours!" and Hermione, bemused—"odd that he would bait you, isn't it? He must have wanted his wand back, surely, I can't imagine why he wouldn't—" but Harry thought the whole thing was rather normal, really. In a world where nothing else was making a lot of sense, Malfoy was, reliably, an arsehole.
Harry's almost looking forward to seeing him again. It sounds absurd even to him.