17th September 1994, Hogwarts Castle, the Entrance Hall, 9:42 AM
Saturday arrived bright and crisp, with the particular Highland clarity that early autumn produced when it was thinking about colder things to come. The grounds outside the castle had begun their first concession to the season—the lawn still green, but the trees by the lake showing an undertone of gold, the air carrying that thin, clean smell of stone and frost and distance.
In the Entrance Hall, Filch was conducting his annual ritual of permission-checking with the surly thoroughness of a man who had never quite forgiven students for the offence of being permitted to leave the castle at all. The queue of third-years and above wound back toward the staircase. Among them, near the front, two figures were having a private and increasingly one-sided conversation.
"He'll be at the fountain," Astoria informed Luna, with the air of a sister-in-spirit imparting advanced reconnaissance. "He'll have arrived ten minutes early. He'll have checked his hair in the water at least twice."
"Astoria—"
"Possibly three times. Your knight is thorough."
Luna's pale ears began their slow, characteristic colouring—the gradual pinkening that started at the lobe and worked itself upward. She delivered three small, ineffectual punches to Astoria's upper arm.
"He is not my knight," Luna said, with the precise dignity of a girl who had been practising the sentence in her head and discovered it sounded different when spoken aloud.
"He once duelled four fifth-years for you in front of the entire Duelling Club."
"That was—different."
"He sends you a letter approximately every three days during the holidays. I counted. I had Daphne count. We compared numbers."
"Astoria."
"He's nice, Luna. I quite... approve, I'm only teasing." Astoria's grey eyes sparkled with the particular satisfaction of an Astoria who had successfully gotten under her best friend's skin. "Your knight is here to escort you. It's romantic."
Luna delivered a fourth, slightly less ineffectual punch.
Filch waved them through with a glower that suggested the punching had been duly noted and might be raised in future correspondence. They emerged onto the front steps and into the bright Highland morning.
The square in Hogsmeade village in mid-morning was already alive with the slow stir of a Saturday that had not quite fully arrived. The fountain at its centre—an ornate carved thing depicting some long-dead Founder figure leaning thoughtfully on a staff—threw a fine mist into the cold air, catching the light in small flickers of rainbow. Around it, the cobbles were damp from the morning's frost just lifting. The shops along the square were opening, their painted signs swinging gently: Honeydukes with its sugar-bright window, Zonko's with its perpetually slightly-smoking chimney, Scrivenshaft's with its quill-and-parchment elegance.
Harry was beside the fountain.
He had been there, by his own watch, for twelve minutes—which, he was forced to acknowledge to himself, was four minutes longer than he had planned to be. He had come early because he had been incapable of staying in the common room any longer, and incapable of walking down with Ron and Hermione because Ron and Hermione had left before him on a separate small mission of Ron's, which meant that Harry was entirely alone with his own thoughts in a way he was not finding comfortable.
He was wearing the brown wool jumper Ethan had bought him from Edinburgh last December, the one Luna had once said suited his eyes. He had told himself it was warm, and the morning was cold. He had also, twice now, glanced at his reflection in the fountain's water and adjusted the way the collar sat at his throat.
'It's not a date.'
His own thoughts were proceeding in this circular pattern. 'It's two friends going to the village. Hermione and Ron go together. Draco and Daphne went together for that thing about the Healing book. Friends go to Hogsmeade together. This is—what friends do.'
A second thought, irrepressible and considerably less welcome:
'It feels like a date.'
A third thought, in the voice of his Cogitation, calm and measured:
'It can feel like both. Both can be true at the same time.'
Harry sighed at himself.
He glanced down at the water again. His hair, as ever, had its own opinions; it was not going to lie any flatter than it currently was, no matter how many times he—
A small finger poked him sharply between the shoulder blades.
"You have been looking at your reflection for some time, Harry," Luna said, with serene amusement directly behind him. "I think it has decided what it looks like."
Harry turned.
His "Hello" hung itself, half-formed, in the air of the square and stayed there.
Luna was wearing a baby-blue cardigan over a white shirt with a small Peter Pan collar, a pleated navy skirt that fell to just above her knees, knee-high white socks and small dark leather shoes, and a navy beret that sat on her head at a slight, careless angle.
She had not put on any make-up; she did not need to. Her hair was loose down her back, and the morning light caught it the way it caught new straw. The Blue Moon necklace from Ethan rested at her collarbone. She had a small leather satchel over one shoulder.
She had grown. The realisation struck Harry with the force of something he had not registered in stages over the summer because he had not been seeing her in stages over the summer. He had seen her at the start of term—in robes, in the Great Hall, in the school's own visual context and somehow it had not landed.
Out here, in Muggle clothes, in the autumn light, with her hands tucked into her cardigan pockets, the small twelve-year-old Luna who had pressed her face close as close as possible to look at Jasper had been replaced, without him noticing, by a slightly taller, slightly more composed thirteen-year-old Luna who was watching him with serene attention and the smallest possible tilt of her head.
"Are you all right, Harry?"
"Y-you," Harry managed. He cleared his throat. "You look—"
"Knightly," said Astoria, helpfully, from approximately three feet to Luna's left. She was being firmly steered by an exasperated Draco, who had appeared in the precise moment he was needed. "Nice to see you, Harry. Goodbye, Harry."
"Goodbye, Astoria," Draco said, with the patient finality of a man who had been managing the morning. "Luna. Have a lovely day. Try not to let her elope."
Luna's ears resumed their pinkening. "We are not—"
"Goodbye, Astoria," Harry agreed firmly, and Astoria was towed off toward Honeydukes with the dignified resistance of a small queen being escorted from a conversation she had not finished.
The square, briefly, was quiet around them.
"You look—" Harry tried again, "—nice, Luna. Really. I mean."
Luna's cheeks did the same slow pink the ears had done. She did the Luna-thing she did when she was pleased and also slightly flustered, which was to look at the fountain instead of the speaker.
"Thank you, Harry," she said softly. "You also look very nice. Edinburgh-jumper-Harry is one of my preferred Harrys."
He coughed. He offered his hand, which she took with the simple naturalness that had marked this gesture between them for years. They started down the High Street.
The village was a gentle layering of small wonders. They walked together at the easy unhurried pace of two people who had nowhere else they would rather be, Luna's hand warm and small in Harry's, the sound of their feet on the cobbles a quiet comfortable rhythm.
"Hermione is competing with Daphne," Harry told her, when she asked. "Some sort of timed Charms challenge at the upper end of the High Street. Apparently they've been planning it since last term. Hermione has been making notes."
"Of course she has."
"Ron decided he ought to make it up to Lavender. We talked him into it. He's taking her for cake at Madam Puddifoot's."
"Oh," Luna said. "How brave of him."
Harry coughed slightly. Madam Puddifoot's tea shop, which sat at the bottom of the High Street with its pink curtains and its multitude of flying confetti-cherubs, was famously the destination for couples who wished to be publicly observed being couples. Harry had decided, at some point during the previous week and without ever quite phrasing the decision to himself, that he and Luna would not be going there today.
"We'll—not go past it."
"Yes," Luna agreed, with equal carefulness. "Best avoided. The cherubs make Wrackspurts. I have observed it."
They went into Honeydukes first, because Honeydukes was where one always went first. Luna had a serious and prolonged debate with herself over a jar of Sugared Snorklespurs, which Harry was reasonably certain were called Sugared Snowfingers by everyone else in the shop but which Luna had decided to rename. He watched her debate with the absorbed quiet pleasure of a boy who could happily have stood there for an hour.
They watched a small magical street-show in the square—a conjurer who made coloured smoke into running animals, a small fox of orange smoke chasing its own tail until it tumbled into a smoke-rabbit and they reformed, laughing, into a cat. Luna applauded with the full enthusiasm of a small clap held close to her chest, which was the specific clap she did when she was delighted and did not wish to be loud about it.
They stopped at a stall selling roasted chestnuts. Harry bought a paper cone of them and Luna ate them one by one, very slowly, blowing on each before placing it carefully in her mouth.
They went into Scrivenshaft's, where Luna bought a peacock-blue ink. They went into a small antique-book shop where Harry watched Luna trail her fingers along the spines with the same gentle reverence Hermione gave the library at Hogwarts. They came out and stood for a moment on the pavement, and Luna leaned, just slightly, against Harry's shoulder, and said quietly—
"This is very nice, Harry."
"Yeah," Harry said, with about half the words he meant. "Yeah."
Her hand squeezed his.
The awkwardness had, somewhere in the last hour, dissolved into something easier. Not less; easier. Whatever this was, friend or otherwise or both, was a shape they had been growing into for years, and the village had simply held them in it for a morning.
17th September 1994, The Three Broomsticks, Hogsmeade, 1:47 PM
The Three Broomsticks at lunchtime was warm and crowded and smelled of roast potatoes and butterbeer and the particular pinewood smoke of Madam Rosmerta's enormous fire. The pub was full of students and weekend villagers and a small contingent of Hogsmeade locals who had come in for their habitual Saturday meal and were tolerantly accepting the noise.
Hermione, Ron, and Draco had claimed a large round booth near the back corner. Hermione had a small cluster of papers spread before her—the timed Charms challenge had apparently been a draw, by Daphne's grudging admission, and Hermione was already drafting her terms for a rematch; Ron, looking considerably less burdened than he had on Friday morning, was working his way through what appeared to be a meat pie of architectural complexity.
"He apologised properly," Draco was reporting to Hermione as Harry and Luna arrived. "I observed the entire exchange. Lavender was magnanimous. He bought her cake. He listened to her describe a divination she did about her cousin. He said that's interesting in a tone that contained no irony detectable to the human ear. Redemption is, in my professional opinion, adequately achieved."
"My professional opinion also," Ron mumbled around a mouthful of pie.
"You're the one being assessed, Ronald, you don't get a vote."
"I'm only saying."
Luna slid into the booth next to Hermione; Harry slid in next to Luna. The waitress brought butterbeers without being asked. Outside the window, a line of small green and gold leaves performed a slow autumnal descent past the glass.
The bell over the door chimed.
The pub registered the two men who had just walked in approximately three seconds before Harry did, which was the lag time required for the room's collective brain to process the fact that a known former-fugitive who had been formally cleared by the Ministry approximately fifteen months earlier had just walked into the pub looking enormously well.
Sirius was in tan. There was no other way to describe it. He had spent some considerable portion of the summer somewhere with strong sun and clean air, and the Azkaban-pallor that had clung to him for over a year was simply gone, replaced by the warm colouring of a man who had been outside doing something pleasant for whole days at a time. His dark hair was cut shorter than Harry had ever seen it, falling in a roguish wave across his forehead. He was wearing a deep blue linen shirt that had no business being worn in Scotland in mid-September, a pair of cream trousers, and around his neck a small leather cord with a silver charm Harry did not recognise. He carried a leather hold-all over one shoulder that was visibly straining at the seams.
Beside him, Remus looked the best Harry had seen him in years. His sandy hair had been recently trimmed, his face had filled out, and the faint perpetual exhaustion that had hung about him as a teacher had retreated to a quiet middle distance. He was wearing a soft grey-green jumper over a collared shirt and a blazer of an unidentifiable but expensive Muggle cut, and he was carrying a smaller, neater hold-all than Sirius's, also visibly heavy.
They were dressed, Harry registered slowly, like men who had been on holiday and had not bothered to change. They were also dressed, he registered with growing affection, like two men who had decided, between them, that the village of Hogsmeade in September could deal with them in their holiday clothes and could lump it.
"Harry James Potter," Sirius announced.
The pub turned, registered, and, after a pause of perhaps two seconds, decided politely that this was a private family matter and went back to its meals. Sirius crossed the floor in three large strides and hauled Harry up out of the booth into a hug that lifted his feet briefly off the flagstones.
"You've grown," Sirius said into his hair. "Properly this time. A whole inch. Stop it."
"I—mm—" Harry, who could not quite breathe and was, also, not minding it, hugged back.
Remus came next. His hug was longer and quieter and he pressed a careful hand to the back of Harry's head, the way he had done since Harry was nine.
"You're both looking well," Hermione said, with genuine pleasure, as both men turned to greet the rest of the table.
"South of France for two months," Sirius said, settling himself onto the bench beside Ron with the easy confidence of a man reclaiming furniture. "Then a fortnight in Tuscany for the wine. Then a small house Remus rented in the Pyrenees because he is, as ever, the responsible one. We have been... if I may say so—recovering. I look better, don't I? Tell me I look better."
"You look better," Harry confirmed.
"Sirius is in tan," Draco observed, with restrained Slytherin amusement.
"I am in tan," Sirius agreed proudly. "I have not been in tan for thirteen years. I am taking it as a victory."
Remus Lupin produced his hold-all and set it on the table with the careful expression of a man delivering ordnance. Sirius produced his hold-all and set it on the table with the considerably less careful expression of a man who had bought too many things and was eager to redistribute them.
Gifts.
There were a great many gifts.
There was a leather-bound notebook for Hermione that Lupin had found at a bookbinder's in Florence; there was a small silver charm bracelet for Luna that Sirius had picked up in a market in Provence and that, when Luna held it to the light, hummed faintly with something unspecified; there was a Honeydukes-sized parcel of Italian sweets specifically for Ron, which Ron received with the religious reverence of a boy who had been waiting for this exact moment all his life; there was, for Draco, a Healers' Compendium in French and Italian that Draco's expression suggested he had been searching for unsuccessfully for the better part of a year; there was for Harry—
There were a great many things for Harry, in fact, and Sirius would have continued unloading them onto the table with the cheerful unconcern of a man for whom the pub's sightlines were not a consideration, except that Remus's hand closed gently around Sirius's wrist with the practised firmness of a man who had been managing Sirius since they were eleven.
"Some of them," Remus said gently, "we could perhaps wait to give him at home, Sirius."
"Spoilsport."
"Family," Lupin said, with affection.
Madam Rosmerta arrived with butterbeers the table had not ordered. She set them down with a small smile and a discreet flick of her cloth at the far end of the table. "On the house. The lot of it." She looked at Sirius. "Welcome home, Mr Black. It's good to see you walking through that door as a free man."
Sirius took her hand and kissed it with the precise grace of a man who had been charming before Azkaban and had, against all odds, retained the capability. "Madam Rosmerta. The world has continued to be unfair in only one respect, which is that you have not aged a day."
"Get on with you."
She left. Ron's eyes had developed a particular gluttonous shimmer.
"Free butterbeer," Ron breathed, "at the Three Broomsticks, every weekend Sirius is in town—"
"Ron," Hermione said.
"What?"
"No."
"I didn't even finish—"
"No."
Draco's amused look agreed with Hermione, and Ron subsided with the mournful air of a boy whose best plans were habitually trampled by his colleagues' moral standards.
The conversation found its way naturally to the term ahead—and, inevitably, to the Tournament.
Remus's eyes had gone bright with the academic interest he had never quite stopped having about Hogwarts. "Three schools. The Tournament hasn't run in over a century. The procedural negotiations alone—Crouch's department and Bagman's—must have been enormous."
"Atid Stella is involved, isn't it," Harry said, more statement than question.
Lupin's face went, briefly, into the resigned half-smile of a Director of Operations who had recently become aware of a great deal of incoming paperwork. "Atid Stella," he said, "would not under any conceivable circumstances allow an event of this magnitude to occur in Britain without involvement. I have been informed by Ms Rogeiros of approximately one hundred and twenty additional forms requiring my attention upon return. Your father, Harry, smiled at me when she told me."
"His business smile?"
"His evil business smile."
"Oh dear."
Sirius, less interested in administration, leaned forward with both elbows on the table. "Tell me about Moody."
"Moody is mental in the best possible way," Ron supplied immediately. "He turned Theodore Nott into a ferret for trying to hex Hermione. Bouncing. It was art."
"I read that report," Lupin said, not quite suppressing a smile. "McGonagall's note was excoriating."
"He's also—" Harry hesitated. He glanced at Sirius. "He pays particular attention to me. Not in the way Colin does. In a—professional way. I can't tell yet whether it's because I'm Harry Potter, which everyone does, or because of something else."
Sirius's expression sharpened, briefly. "Watch him. Don't avoid him; that draws attention. But watch him."
"Constant vigilance," Harry said, with a small wry smile.
"Exactly."
Across the pub, near the door, a small figure sat alone at a corner table. He had a mug of butterbeer that he was nursing, and a half-eaten plate of chips, and he was looking at neither of them in particular. His shoulders were hunched in the specific way that belonged to boys who had spent a Defence lesson watching the Cruciatus Curse demonstrated and had not, since, found their footing.
Harry's eye caught the figure. Luna's eye, a moment later, caught it as well. They glanced at each other across the booth, and a small wordless agreement passed between them.
"Neville," Harry called, gently. "Come and join us."
Neville's head came up. He had the brief, startled expression of a boy who had not expected to be seen and was uncertain whether being seen was a kindness. Harry waved him over. After a moment's hesitation, Neville gathered his mug and crossed the pub.
"Sit," Sirius said warmly, sliding to make room. "Anyone Harry calls over is family."
Neville sat.
"Sirius, Remus," Harry said, "this is Neville Longbottom. Our year-mate. Best Herbologist in the school, by some distance."
Neville blushed. "I'm—thank you, sir—"
"Longbottom," Sirius said.
It was not an exclamation. It was a registration. The name had landed for him with the precise weight of a man who had spent the last summer's recovery asking, quietly, after old friends. His expression had, briefly, gone somewhere far away.
"Frank and Alice's—"
Lupin's elbow found Sirius's side with the speed of a man who had been managing his friend since they were eleven years old.
"—son," Sirius finished, with smooth recovery. "It's an honour to meet you, Neville. Your parents were extraordinary. I knew them in the—They were two of the bravest people I ever served with."
Neville's eyes had grown bright, but there was no awkwardness in him—only the quiet pleasure of a boy who had not been spoken to about his parents in this register before. "Thank you, sir," he said softly.
"Sirius. Just Sirius."
The conversation shifted gently around Neville, including him, and after a few minutes the brightness in his eyes was the brightness of welcome rather than grief.
17th September 1994, Outside The Three Broomsticks, 4:13 PM
The afternoon was tipping into early-autumn dusk. The High Street had gone golden, the lanterns above the shops beginning to come on one by one with their small magical flickers. Sirius and Remus were leaving—Sirius for London, where there was a house he was replenishing, he said, with the proud air of a man stocking a fortress; Remus for the Atid Stella offices, where Hermione's notebook of incoming gifts had grown to cover one full page and Remus had cheerfully volunteered to deliver the lot to the children's homes by owl post over the next week.
The hugs at parting were long. Harry's was longest.
"Letters," Sirius said, "as often as you can manage. And come to London at half-term. Both of you—" he indicated Luna, who had come quietly to Harry's side, "—and any others Ethan can spare."
"We'll come."
"Good."
They walked back toward the carriages together—Harry, Luna, Hermione, Ron, Draco, Neville. The air had turned cold, and Hermione had pulled her cloak closer; Luna's hand had returned, by old habit, to Harry's. The lanterns of Hogsmeade lit them in small warm pools as they passed.
It was Luna who noticed first.
She had walked half a pace ahead with her serene unhurried gait, and she had glanced over her shoulder at Neville—who was walking with Hermione and saying very little. Luna had stopped walking. She had turned around. She had looked at Neville for the length of one full breath. Then she had said, very gently—
"Neville. You were more frightened by the curses than you were when we read about them in the textbook. More than the spider screaming explains."
Neville stopped walking too.
The whole group stopped, slowly, and the silence was the careful silence of people who recognised a moment and would not crowd it.
Neville's face did something that had been waiting all afternoon to do it. It went very still. Then it crumpled, briefly, and then, with the particular dignity of a boy who had been carrying a thing for so long that putting some of it down was almost a relief, settled.
"My parents," he said.
The group waited.
"My parents are not—they're not dead. People assume." Neville's voice was small but steady. "They were Aurors. In the first war. After Voldemort fell, four Death Eaters came to our house looking for information on where he'd gone. They used the Cruciatus Curse on them. For—a long time. Hours. They wanted to know things my parents didn't know to tell."
His eyes found, very briefly, Harry's.
"They didn't die. They went mad. They've been at St Mungo's for as long as I've been alive. I visit them at Christmas. My mum gives me a sweet wrapper every time. She doesn't know who I am. She just—gives me a wrapper. It's what she does."
The silence that followed was the silence of friends who knew that words were not, immediately, what was required. Hermione's hand had found Neville's elbow with the same unconscious gesture she had used in the Defence classroom. Ron, very simply, put one large freckled hand on Neville's shoulder and left it there.
Draco was the last to react—and his reaction was not what Harry had expected.
He had gone very still. His grey eyes were fixed on Neville's face with an expression Harry recognised from their long Healing-talks of summers past: the precise, intent attention of a boy who had been preparing, for years, to fix things he could not yet name.
"The Longbottoms at St Mungo's." Draco's voice was quiet. "Janus Thickey Ward. Long-term spell damage."
"Yes."
"How long has the diagnosis stood unchanged?"
"Since I was a baby. Healer Strout says there's been no progression and no regression in fourteen years."
"And the curse damage was—identified as Cruciatus exposure of more than two hours, sustained by four casters?"
"Yes."
"Who was the lead caster?"
Neville's mouth tightened. "Bellatrix Lestrange."
A small flicker passed across Draco's face. 'Cousin,'
"Healers have given up," Draco said, more to himself than to anyone. "Fourteen years without progression—they've classified it as permanent. They stopped looking. But in continental research, in Italian research—there are new techniques for compounded long-term curse trauma. Magical-neural reconstruction. They've been trialling it in Florence on Aurors damaged in Sicilian crime work. It's—it's very preliminary. But it is not nothing."
Neville had stopped walking entirely. He was looking at Draco the way a boy looks at a door he has not previously known existed.
"Is that—do you mean—"
"I mean," Draco said carefully, "that I am going to write to Uncle Sam tonight. And to the Healing journal in Florence. And I am going to read every paper they have published in the last six years. And I am not promising anything, Neville. I will not lie to you. But it is not nothing. Hope is not irrational here."
Neville's eyes had gone very bright again, in a different way.
Harry watched this exchange with an expression Hermione would later describe as quietly devastated and quietly proud at the same time, which was approximately accurate. He was already, in his head, drafting a letter to Ethan: Dad, can we meet about Sirius and Lupin, and also—Neville Longbottom told us about his parents today. Draco thinks there might be Italian research that...
The carriages waited. The lanterns of Hogsmeade glowed gold behind them. Above, the first stars had appeared, sharp and clean in the deepening blue of the September sky.
Luna's hand found his again in the dark, and held.