'Hey, Ron! Hermione! Welcome to the party!' Seamus shouted as they hovered in the doorway. Ron grinned as genuinely as possible and Hermione managed a smile. The ground floor of Seamus’ house was decorated all over with banners and bunting, mostly in red and gold but also bits of blue and yellow. The front page of the previous week’s The Daily Prophet had been enlarged and it hung across most of one wall:
CHOSEN ONE DEFEATS YOU-KNOW-WHO!
The photograph of Harry which had accompanied his fifth-year article in The Quibbler was beside the headline. Hermione could feel Ron tense even more as he spotted it, and she squeezed his arm.
'Come on,' she whispered. 'For Harry.'
They joined the mass of people, mostly schoolmates, all celebrating the end of the war with wild abandon. They chatted and laughed and even danced a bit to the Weird Sisters track on the radio, and if they seemed slightly more subdued than those around them then clearly they were still a little tired from the fighting – or as Ron said, 'still trying to get my head around it, mate' – and no one thought any more of it.
It was a good party, Seamus thought through a comforting fuzz of alcohol. And Ron and Hermione were there and they were enjoying themselves. Harry turning up would be amazing, but apparently he was on the run across Europe, leading Death Eaters into Ministry and Order of the Phoenix hands. Ron had dropped Seamus an owl the day before asking him to avoid bringing Harry’s situation up with Hermione. He’s having a right old laugh by all accounts, mate, but you know how Hermione fusses. Seamus had mentioned this to the other guests and tried to make sure that any discussion of the Boy-Who-Lived’s current location was quickly diverted; a difficult feat at a party like this, but he seemed to have managed it so far. At least, in Hermione and Ron’s earshot, which was the important thing.
'Hey, Seamus!' Dean called. 'A toast!'
Seamus and the other guests raised their glasses for about the hundredth time that evening.
'To peace!'
'To peace!'
'To victory!'
'To victory!'
'To Harry Potter, saviour of the wizarding world!' As everyone echoed this last one, cheering haphazardly, Seamus thought he spotted Ron pale in the corner and Hermione’s eyes well up. It must be the Firewhisky, he decided, though he hadn’t seen either of them drinking. They’d no reason to be upset, after all.
~
2. Ginny
The attic room was the perfect temperature. There were so many spells on it that it couldn’t be avoided even this late at night. Ginny was comfortable in her loose summer robes, sitting beside the room’s more permanent occupant.
Harry slept as though it was a struggle. Even in the controlled temperature of the room there was a light sweat on his skin; he frowned at whatever he was feverishly dreaming, and every now and then his incomprehensible mumbling would be come a crying out. He turned his head slightly at nothing, the lines in his forehead deepening. Ginny reached out a hand and brushed his fringe out of his eyes.
'You’ll need to cut that hair soon, sweetheart,' she said softly. Endearments seemed to come easier when he wasn’t awake. Harry had been in a coma for a week after the final battle. Although he was no longer comatose now, he was unconscious or sleeping most hours of the day – and when he woke, he was not lucid. He had managed it once, when he’d came down to see what Hermione’s scream in the kitchen had been. But it had only lasted a few minutes, and then he was back to his fitful nightmares.
Ginny’s eyes were often drawn to Harry’s right arm as it lay on top of the blanket. At the moment, it was bandaged, but every few days the dressings had to be changed and then you could see the ugly, welt-like scar that ran across his palm. The veins in that arm were unnaturally dark blue streaks, standing out against the pale flesh. Madam Pomfrey was doing all that she could, but the spell that had rebounded on Harry had been both virtually unknown and extremely powerful; and for the time being, at least, Harry was having to fight it on his own.
Ginny heard the clock downstairs; midnight. She swallowed, and brushed a hand across Harry’s cheek.
'Happy birthday, Harry,' she murmured to him as he lay there, oblivious. 'Eighteen today.'
~
3. Molly and Arthur
Molly could easily have spelled the dishes to wash themselves, but sometimes her hands needed something more to do while she thought.
The door to the living room was ajar and through it Molly could see Ron and Hermione leaning over books and parchment. She smiled fondly. It was the first day of September and after exchanging letters with Professor McGonagall Ron and Hermione would be working towards taking their NEWTs just after Christmas. It was good that they were getting their lives back on track – and distracting themselves, at least a little, from Harry’s lack of recovery…
Molly sighed. Ginny was supposed to be working with them, but she spent more time upstairs in the attic than anywhere else. Sometimes she took her books up with her, but Molly wasn’t fooled.
She glanced up at the family clock just as Arthur’s hand swung to ‘travelling’ and then onto ‘home’ as he stepped through the floo. She hurried over to take his travelling cloak and welcome him with a kiss. How long it’s been since first we did this…
'How was work?' she asked him as she pulled out a chair for him. He sighed.
'Long,' he said wryly, sitting down. 'And not very interesting. Mostly we’re chasing parchment at the moment.' Arthur hesitated, and then glanced briefly up at the ceiling. 'Any change?' he added softly.
Molly shook her head. Arthur looked through to the little bit of the living room and watched Ron and Hermione for a few minutes while Molly put the kettle on.
'No news from Tonks either,' he said finally. 'But we’d have heard if something had gone wrong.'
'I suppose the Ministry’s still pushing hard?' Molly asked, and Arthur nodded grimly.
'They want to know where he is – say they’re the only ones who can really protect him. Though I agree with Moody – we can’t trust any level of the Ministry yet. Thanks, dear.' He took his mug of tea from her and sipped before continuing. 'Scrimegour is promising a reform, says he’s got some way of clearing the Ministry of traitors, but that might just be talk.'
Both of them were silent then, drinking their tea, every so often glancing up as though they could see through floors and ceilings to The Boy Who Lived, unconscious in the attic.
~
A/N: I used "NEWTs" instead of "N.E.W.T.s" as the former is how it is in my copy of OotP. Please let me know if that is incorrect. Thanks!