"Adrian!" Sirius called out warmly as they approached across the garden. "About time you showed up. We were beginning to think you'd decided to hide at your plantation like a hermit rather than face Molly's interrogation about why you never visit."
"I've been invited, and I accepted," Adrian said. "I'm hardly a hermit."
"You're definitely a hermit," Remus said, falling into step beside them. The wrinkles around his eyes deepened as he smiled. "You spent most of the summer at your plantation with only Dobby's company, didn't you? I sent you two owls few weeks ago that I'm fairly certain you didn't reply to for a fortnight."
"It is productive solitude," Adrian corrected. "There is a difference between being a hermit and simply preferring focused work in a peaceful environment."
"That," Sirius said, pointing at him with an expression of delighted vindication, "is exactly what a hermit would say. Word for word. I'm fairly certain Remus has a book somewhere that quotes it verbatim."
He clapped Adrian on the shoulder. "But we'll forgive you, since you did defeat Voldemort and all that. Saving wizarding Britain earns you a very generous eccentricity allowance."
Harry, who had been watching this exchange with silent enjoyment from a few steps back, grinned broadly. "It's good to see you, Professor Westeros. We were hoping you'd come."
"I wouldn't have missed it," Adrian said honestly. "How has your summer been?"
"Brilliant, actually." Harry ducked his head slightly as he said it. "Sirius and I went to Diagon Alley a few weeks ago to get my school things. We spent nearly three hours in Flourish and Blotts because Sirius wanted to buy me half the store, then we went to Fortescue's and sat there for ages and just talked. About school, about Hogwarts history, about what my dad and Sirius used to get up to when they were students."
"It was perfect," Sirius said softly.
He cleared his throat after a moment, recovering his usual lightness of manner.
"We're planning to travel together later this summer as well. Show Harry some of the places James and I used to visit when we were young—there's a wizarding village in the Scottish Highlands I've been wanting to take him to, and Remus has suggestions about the Continent. A proper introduction to his heritage, without Death Eaters and dark lords hovering over every excursion."
"That sounds wonderful," Adrian said, and he meant that sincerely too.
Watching the relationship between Harry and Sirius had been one of the more rewarding aspects of the past year—seeing them finally able to build the family connection they'd both been denied for so long.
"Mrs. Weasley is trying to convince us to stay for dinner," Harry continued, "though I think she's trying to convince everyone to stay for dinner. She keeps saying there's far too much food for just the family."
"That's because she made enough food to feed the entire village," Ron interjected. "I've been trying to eat my way through it for days and I've barely made a dent. I'm beginning to think the dishes are refilling themselves."
"Ron," Hermione said patiently, "several of the dishes almost certainly are refilling themselves. It's a fairly standard domestic charm."
Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Fred and George Weasley, who appeared simultaneously from different directions. Both were grinning widely and carrying what appeared to be bottles of Butterbeer.
"Professor Westeros!" Fred said, or possibly it was George—Adrian still had trouble telling them apart when they were in identical mischievous moods.
"The hero of the hour!" the other continued immediately.
"Or rather, one of the heroes of the hour—" the first corrected.
"Since we find ourselves celebrating a rather impressive collection of heroes today—"
"Harry, for surviving years of being Voldemort's personal obsession—"
"You, for actually finishing the business once and for all—"
"Ourselves, for successfully and completely evading Mum's cleaning assignments since nine o'clock this morning—"
"Which was perhaps nearly as difficult as defeating Voldemort—"
"Though perhaps not quite as life-threatening—"
"Stop," Hermione said a slightly weary tone, even though the smile she was suppressing told a different story. "You'll give Professor Westeros a headache."
"Too late," Adrian said, with perfect flatness. "It began approximately thirty seconds ago and has been building steadily since."
The twins laughed at this and moved off to distribute Butterbeer to other guests, their synchronized commentary was continuing to amuse or annoy people as they went.
"They've been like that all day," Ron said, with the tone of someone born into a situation he had accepted as simply the permanent condition of his existence. "Ever since the shop started doing well, they've become completely impossible. Success has given them confidence, which is genuinely the last thing they needed more of."
"Their shop really is impressive, though," Hermione said loyally. "I went in last week. The range of what they've developed is extraordinary—I don't think people appreciate how much genuine magical innovation goes into some of their products. Several of the defensive items in particular could have real practical applications beyond jokes."
"Don't let them hear you say that," Ron warned. "They'll try to recruit you as a spokesperson or something."
The afternoon continued in this pleasant fashion, with Adrian moving through the gathering and engaging in conversations with various guests.
He spoke with Arthur about some of the changes happening at the Ministry in the post-Voldemort era, with Kingsley Shacklebolt about the ongoing efforts to round up remaining Death Eaters who hadn't yet been captured, and with Tonks about her recent Auror assignments that had become significantly less dangerous now that the war was over.
Mrs. Weasley found him eventually, as Adrian had known she would.
"Adrian," she said, stopping in front of him and folding her arms. Her cheeks were flushed from the kitchen and there was a small dusting of flour on her left sleeve that she hadn't noticed. "You haven't visited nearly enough this summer, and I would like to know the reason."
"I've been maintaining the plantation and preparing materials for the school year," Adrian said, which was true even if it was also somewhat of an excuse.
"You said almost exactly that last time," Mrs. Weasley replied, her tone showed she was not satisfied with this explanation.
"I'll make a real effort to visit more regularly," Adrian said, and meant it. "Teaching at Hogwarts means I'll be in Britain for the full school year now. It will be much more practical than when I was travelling."
"Good." Mrs. Weasley said with satisfaction "Now, you need to eat properly. You look thin. Have you been eating regularly at that plantation of yours, or are you living on tea and sweets and forgetting meals like Albus Dumbledore?"
"Dobby ensures I eat," Adrian said in amusement in being compared to Dumbledore.
"House-elves," Mrs. Weasley said decisively, "do not count. They will tell you whatever you want to hear. You need someone who will look you in the eye and scold you properly when you're not taking care of yourself."
She summoned the plate from a table with her wand before he had a chance to respond and steered him toward the nearest of the food tables.
What followed was a thorough and precise introduction to around a third of the food on offer, with running commentary on the origin, preparation, and specific virtues of each dish and precise instructions on what he was required to try.
Adrian accepted all of this without resistance. Mrs. Weasley did not fuss at people she was indifferent to. Her form of attention was its own kind of warmth.
For a man who had spent most of his adult life in conditions of self-sufficiency, where meals were functional and solitude was simply the baseline state of existence, there was something unexpectedly, almost embarrassingly comforting about being on the receiving end of it.
He ate what she gave him, and did not object to any of it.
As the afternoon transitioned into evening, the character of the gathering shifted slightly. The younger children were beginning to tire from their games and were being settled in various spots around the garden with snacks and drinks.
The adults gathered more closely, their conversations were becoming deeper and weightier as the initial excitement of celebration gave way to thoughtful consideration of everything they'd survived and what came next.
Adrian also was included in a small group that had Remus, Sirius, Kingsley, and Arthur. They had claimed a spot beneath one of the trees where conjured chairs provided comfortable seating, and someone had passed around glasses of what turned out to be quite good wine.
"It still doesn't feel quite real," Arthur said thoughtfully, swirling his wine and watching the liquid catch the evening light. "That Voldemort is actually gone, not just defeated and waiting to return. I keep finding myself scanning the Prophet in the morning and bracing for the news that he's resurfaced."
"He won't resurface," Adrian said with certainty. "His soul was destroyed and nothing remains to resurrect or rebuild. There are no more backups waiting to regenerate. He's gone in a way that makes return impossible."
The group received this in silence. The evening sounds continued around them: voices from across the garden, a burst of laughter from somewhere near the house, the low musical sound of wind moving through apple branches.
Sirius raised his glass then.
"To permanence," he said softly. "And to the man who made it possible."
"To Adrian," the others said, raising their own glasses.
Adrian accepted the toast with a small nod, meeting each of their eyes in turn and saying nothing.
"The strange thing," Remus said, after a moment, turning his glass slowly between his fingers,
"is that I find I'm not entirely certain what to do. I've been fighting, or preparing to fight, or waiting in fear for the next thing to fight, for so long that I'm not sure I remember what life without that constant underlying tension feels like. There's something almost disorienting about a morning that doesn't begin with calculating what the news might bring."
"We rebuild," Arthur said firmly. "The Ministry, our communities, our sense of security and trust. We take the lessons we learned from Voldemort's rise and we make sure the conditions that enabled him can't easily occur again."
"The underlying problems are still there," Kingsley said.
"The prejudices that Voldemort exploited, the resentments and the hierarchies and the small cruelties that become normalized over time—defeating him didn't dissolve any of that. It was all there before he rose, it's still there now. If we allow ourselves to treat his defeat as a resolution rather than the beginning of harder, slower work, we'll have wasted everything it cost."
"You're right," Adrian said. "But what we have now, that we didn't have before, is the space to do that work without having to simultaneously manage an existential threat. The urgency has changed. We're not trying to prevent civilization from being destroyed while also trying to reform it. That matters. It's not a small thing."
Sirius looked at him from across the circle with an expression of open amusement. "You sound like Dumbledore,"
Adrian raised an eyebrow. "Is that a compliment or a criticism?"
"Both," Sirius said cheerfully. "Dumbledore's usually right, but he's also usually annoyingly patient about being right, which can be frustrating when you want immediate solutions to complex problems."
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