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At the beginning of the summer, Ron shook his head. “I can’t believe you would listen to that stupid git,” he said, and Harry sighed. Hermione just looked at him like she was waiting for this too to pass, much as she had when he snarled and stomped his way through their fifth year at Hogwarts.
“Harry, you have to admit he’s not trustworthy.”
“It’s not about trust,” Harry said but did nothing.
By the time summer was turning brown, and another birthday had passed, the others were starting to pay more attention. The government looked like it was teetering, and then rebuilt itself overnight into something that from a distance was airtight. They were quietly passing laws that made Harry crumple the newspaper and throw it across the room.
Hermione started reading A Tale of Two Cities, her mouth a tight line as they kept waiting, as if another storm was over the horizon and they just didn’t want to be the ones to start it.
When the leaves started to fall, Harry looked up from another news paper to find Luna sitting across from him, blonde hair pulled and teased back to the nap of her neck and her hands folded on her lap. She was entirely still as she watched him, the rise and fall of her chest gentle and Harry never could figure out how she could be so statuesque one moment and moving so quickly the next.
“Neville and I have been talking,” she said, tone dreamy and distant as ever.
“And?” Harry asked, folding the newspaper over.
“And it’s not as bad as it was,” she said, tilting her head. “But it is not good, either.” She rose, Harry tilting his chin back to watch her. “It’s still broken. Neither of us want to leave work unfinished.”
To anyone else it would sound like gibberish, Harry thought as he watched her float out, or overdue homework.
But somehow he knew she was talking about the exact same thing as Draco.
The trials started, and the line of Hermione’s mouth only hardened as they listened to death eaters be pardoned, and other’s tossed into dank holes based only on how useful they could be, or their blood ties and wealth. During Lucius’ trial—barely even a show trial for he had all but defected and still had more wealth than most families could shake their fist at—Harry caught sight of Draco for the first time in months.
He was not sneering, but there was something in his expression, something sick and hard and glittering that made Harry’s stomach turn over to realize that Draco had meant every word he’d said at the beginning of summer.
Even he looked like he couldn’t believe his father was getting off again, for that Lucius had hated Voldemort as much as anyone by the end of the war. The destruction of his home, the dragging of his family through the mud had been enough to turn his heart cold against his lord in ways that torturing innocent children or killing muggles never had.
Harry did not see Draco again, until one day in Diagon Alley when they passed each other in the bookstore. Circling around, Harry joined Draco at a shelf, pretending to look at the same books. “Neville and Luna agree with you,” he said and Draco tilted a brow over at him.
“Charming,” he drawled and Harry glanced sideways at him.
“I’d have thought you were done underestimating Neville.”
“Please,” Draco waved a hand. “I’m done underestimating Luna Lovegood. She was in our dungeons for quite a while after all. And Neville beheaded the damned snake so I can’t say I disapprove of him anymore. But,” he turned to face Harry, leaning a hip against the bookshelf and Harry found himself following the motion. “It’s not the most stirring endorsement. Luna’s always been mad and people would discredit Longbottom by saying he never got his mind out of the room of requirements in Hogwarts. He just wants the war to keep going.”
“So what do you want then?” Harry asked.
“You?” Draco offered and Harry sputtered, not sure which way he should take that with the way Draco was smirking at him as he said it. “I mean as a figure head, you arrogant twit.”
“I know,” Harry managed and Draco just arched a pale brow at him before shaking his head.
“We’ll be discredited no matter what,” he mused, tapping a long finger against his opposite elbow. “The young, the stupid, the ones who don’t understand how the world works.”
Harry laughed, shaking his head slightly. “According to you, you’re the only one who understands how the world works.”
“Finally, you’re catching on,” Draco said, and breezed away. Harry followed him.
A week later a knock came on his door and he opened it to find Ginny and George on the doorstep, red hair damp from the London rain and grim expressions on their faces. “I’d like to know what we fought for,” Ginny said.
“It was a lot to lose to change nothing,” George added and Harry nodded, throat tight at how George’s shoulders still slumped, eyes looking forever like he was looking around the next corner for someone who would never be there.
“Then come inside,” Harry said, stepping aside and holding the door.
They shook the rain out of their hair and sat at Harry’s kitchen table, an old one he got from an antique store because he couldn’t bear to go back yet to where Sirius had lived in hiding. Somehow he was starting to think it was time to refresh some of the charms, time to stock the place before they needed to hide there again.
But for the time being in the coming weeks his table kept filling, as word seemed to spread along old channels that had once gossiped about who would wear what to the Yule Ball, and later who had disappeared, and finally what the rebels at the heart of Hogwarts were doing.
Now those children had grown up and they were no longer within Hogwart’s walls.
When Draco stepped in, he found Ron standing with crossed arms, a glower on his face. “I don’t trust you.”
“I never asked you to,” Draco returned, hair slicked back and standing with more ease then Harry remembered from school.
“Good,” Ron said. “And I don’t like you either.”
Draco’s expression became like that of a man looking at something tragic before he shook his head and pushed past, stopped by Hermione’s hand on his arm. “I don’t trust you either,” she said. “And I will be watching you.”
“This is why I always liked you more,” Draco smirked and she snatched her hand back.
“I punched you in the face.”
“I can’t say I enjoyed that,” Draco said and Harry tried to hide a smile, Ginny watching with obvious interest. “But at least you always had spirit.”
“I’m not a horse,” Hermione huffed but she seemed to accept that, returning to standing between Ron and Harry.
Looking around the small apartment, crowded with students and adults who had grown up between one breath and the other, Harry was suddenly horribly glad that so many had died in the last war. Because Lupin had believed so much in the Ministry, in that order would be restored after the war and it would have broken Harry’s heart to fight against him, or Dumbledore.
So much of the last resistance had been whipped out they would not be able to counter their children’s tricks, learned as babes to survive. Some of them would surely remember what it was like to hide, to enchant houses to disappear, to use tricks and deceits to keep the fight going.
But perhaps not enough of them.
“Are you all sure?” Harry asked.
“We’re always sure,” Hermione said when there was a wall of silence. One by one they held out their wands toward Harry and he felt his stomach drop. For all their talk, for all that he’d torn out the carpeting in 12 Grimmauld Place, it had never felt real to him before that moment. That once again his friends, the people he considered his family were placing their trust and their lives in his hand because when the dust of the battle had settled they saw no world they loved.
They were still reaching out for more and hoping he would give it to them.
Desperately, he looked across the room to where Draco was leaning against the wall, his own wand held out in quiet acceptance.
So they would keep fighting, Harry thought. Much as he had since he was eleven. But oddly, for all the allies he’d had, compared to this moment he had been horribly alone in his battles, Hermione and Ron desperate to understand but unable to fully grasp his rage or the way the magic and memories of Voldemort tore through him.
But this had nothing to do with destiny or a prophecy.
Those had started him down a path and he wasn’t done yet.
“We’re not done yet.”