Chapter Text
In the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Hogwarts, three significant things happened to the Golden Trio.
The first was the polite yet firm refusal from all three individuals when they were asked if they would like to join the Ministry in place of returning to Hogwarts once it reopened to finish their N.E.W.T.S.
While the Wizarding population of Britain was hungry for change, the so-called Golden Trio found themselves in pursuit of a well-earned rest. Hunting anything, a Horcrux, a meal, or a rogue Death Eater, was about as unappealing as could be. And thus, the Department of Law Enforcement grieved the loss of the brilliant adolescent minds and their very famous, very publicly recognizable personas, to their ranks.
The second significant event took place in the Ministry adjacent venue of the Wizemagot Tribunal Chambers. After a year in holding while magistrates and solicitors compiled cases against the accused, the trials of the arrested Death Eaters and known associates of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named began with the fanfare befitting an absolute circus.
Attendees needed to be vetted after a third attempted disruption occurred in the gallery during the first eleven minutes of the opening remarks. A witch had thrown herself bodily at the Prosecuting Wizard in defense of her husband (a marked Death Eater). After she was arrested, a wizard attempted to hex the blockading rune stones that protected the members of the legal Wizarding body, later claiming during a press interview that he was trying to clear the path for restorative justice should the sitting members feel like cursing the accused. The final disruption came from a journalist who collapsed while sitting too close to Madame Ottilie Montague, who had spritzed herself with so much perfume that he felt dizzy and fainted.
Once the trials actually began months later, the cases brought against each of the accused persons were laid out individually. Perhaps after learning from the First Wizarding War, memories and truth serum were insisted on by the Tribunal to weed through the inaccuracies of human testimony.
Although it was attempted, followers of The Dark Lord would not escape justice by claiming they were under the Imperius curse. Unless, of course, you were Pius Thicknesse, who actually was cursed by Corbin Yaxley.
Unspeakables were brought in for spell analysis.
Portraits were charmed to recount the events they witnessed in front of them in real time.
Pensives were used.
And then, of course, testimonies were heard.
The Golden Trio, for nearly all the trials, testified together. One after the other, the three war-hardened adolescents would walk across the cold, stone floors of the hearing chambers and recount the horrors of their time on the run. They would give testimony, answer questions, and respond to rebuttals with minimal difficulty. After all, they were war heroes.
The break in ranks happened fourteen months after the official end of the war. On trial were Draco and Narcissa Malfoy. The Malfoy patriarch had been quickly reconvicted of his crimes from the attack in The Department of Mysteries, a sentence he did not complete due to being broken out of Azkaban during the mass breakout of 1997. In addition to his existing sentence, he was charged with aiding and abetting a terrorist organization, crimes against humanity, multiple assaults via magic, and, of course, murder.
The remaining Malfoys stood trial for their complicity in the Reign of Terror, but also for various specific crimes.
Draco Malfoy’s use of an Unforgivable Curse, the hex-assault of Katie Bell, and two attempted murders were the primary charges leveraged against him, as the memories available were not enough for prosecutors to build a case for additional charges.
His mother faced a much lighter trial, having never been marked and only ever allowing nefarious acts to take place in her home.
The Wizarding population was torn between wanting to make the Picture-Perfect-Pure Bloods pay and feeling uneasy charging mother and son for the sins of the father.
No group was more divided than the Trio.
Harry, a survivor of years of abuse and trauma, looked at the facts laid out in each case and decided he could very well understand how the messaging a child receives throughout their life could impact or alter their worldview.
When asked, he readily agreed to testify about the history between him and Draco. He spoke of the adults who orchestrated the conflicts played out by children, about the bathroom duel their Sixth Year, and about a lowered wand on the astronomy tower when it mattered most.
He then told everyone that, despite the world view of Narcissa Black Malfoy, he had witnessed her successfully lie to one of the most powerful Legilimens in history. And in doing so, allowed him to come back from the dead and end the life of Voldermort once and for all.
People loved that last bit.
Ron Weasley, however, did not.
He did not believe that Draco Malfoy was a person worth defending. And although it would take years for him to grow enough to understand this, at the time, he could not separate the childhood bullying from the criminal intent necessary to function successfully in his assassination attempts on Albus Dumbledore.
The Weasley family’s grief became a physical presence at The Burrow. It was ham sandwiches made by Arthur because Molly was locked away in her room. It was Bill taking his new wife and leaving for France, vowing to be back when he could. It was an old drop cloth, covered in paint and the occasional singe mark, that had been draped over the Weasley clock. Arthur standing in front of it instead of tinkering in his shed.
It was the absence of anything resembling the gregarious George Weasley. No longer wearing purple crushed velvet or charming his golden ear to sparkle obnoxiously with jeweled earrings. Instead, he was somber, a wraithlike fixture whenever he could be bothered to leave his room. He hadn’t laughed in a year, the drawn thin line of his lips locked tightly. It was like he had suffered The Kiss during the Battle.
And Ron? Ron looked around at all of it and exploded when his socks didn’t match, when the Cannons didn’t qualify for playoff Quidditch, and when his two best friends seemingly conspired against him to testify for the ferret.
As such, he told Harry, his first friend and The Chosen One, that he was fucking barmy. The silence between them became a palpable distance during the entire Malfoy trial.
What was worse, in his mind, was the fact that Hermione Granger, the so-called “Brightest Witch of Her Age”, didn’t share his opinion.
Dragging herself from her own bed in her borrowed room at Grimmauld Place had become a Herculean task every morning for the last year. On days she managed, she took her potions, glamoured herself from head to toe, and wondered if she would ever feel warm again. And the days she didn’t manage? The sobs that would wrack her body felt like they could bring down the entire house. Her limbs and head ached. Her brilliant mind clouded with thoughts of those she had failed, the missteps she had made. Her stomach ached from the loss of her parents. Of her classmates. Of her childhood.
She didn’t want to argue with Ron; she simply wished for closure. Something to make the pain stop. The logical way forward was to ensure each trial continued to stay rooted in facts, not sensational emotions. In another life, she loved facts and figures. She thrived on order.
In this version of her life? She craved silence. Her thoughts were too loud, her grief was too huge, and the weight of the stares her friends thought were noticed felt impossible for her to ignore.
Shouldn’t nothingness feel less heavy?
The mask she constructed was made of tears and silence. On manageable days where the potions numbed the aching throb of her arm and the jolts of pain behind her eyes, she would sit and stand upright while managing to organize her thoughts into simple sentences. Nodding and shrugging, even attempting a soft smile, however fake, allowed others to believe she was coping.
Each visitor to Grimmauld, each adult who had asked too much from them, seemed appeased by the act. Perhaps they weren’t sold, but she was convincing enough that they never commented, even if their gazes lingered or the hugs goodbye held for a moment longer than they should.
As the arguments between Harry and Ron escalated and the trial grew closer, she focused inward. Sleep often evaded her, leaving her staring at the ceiling as night met morning. She would often attempt to organize her thoughts about the Malfoys and what role she would play in their condemnation or redemption.
Draco had been awful to her. He was her first bully. From his sneering lips spilled the slur that was now etched into her skin, if not her very being. He truly was the first ugly piece of the beautiful Wizarding World that she had been so eager to become a part of.
And yet, he hadn’t identified the three starving, filthy individuals that were hauled in front of him by Snatchers in the pristine elegance of his own home. He stammered and made excuses about the credibility of his memory. He pretended it was a logical conclusion to draw that if Ronald Weasley and Hermione Granger were together and in the presence of a third, male companion, it might not be Harry Potter.
She also countered the idea that he had the intent to harm the three friends in the Room of Requirement. Yes, he was a real prick about it. But wasn’t he just looking for his wand? He appeared ready to retreat as soon as he got what he had come for; she was sure of it. If it wasn’t for the poorly cast Avada followed by the stupidly cast Fiendfyre, it’s possible he would have left the Room and then the battle completely once he had recovered his wand.
Although she had felt confident in her decision-making for the first time in a long time, these answers had been unacceptable to Ron when she finally voiced her opinion. He had continued to move through his grief using the lens of a young man who had grown up envious of Draco and everything he represented. To him, this felt like yet another concession being made for a boy who had no idea what life was like without being prioritized. And one more loss? That wouldn’t stand.
“Why can’t you just stay quiet about this?”
His face had been contorted by rage, cheeks flushed, and spit flying from his grimacing lips. It had been the first time she had spoken in weeks, a dinner between three war survivors, three best friends. But instead of a meal shared in love and companionship, it had devolved to a screaming match. When Hermione voiced her support for Harry and confirmed her decision to testify on behalf of Malfoy, Ron’s glare had turned her stomach. The blue eyes that danced when speaking about Quidditch or winning a match of Wizards chess, the face that hid giant dimples between a sea of freckles and ruddy cheeks, was now so distorted in anger that he looked like a completely different person. Feral. His growled retort had been enough for Hermione to turn away from him both physically and emotionally. They were done.
Never again would she allow herself to be looked at like that. With hatred. Her ability to stand up and walk away had been hard won; she deserved peace and craved ease. If she no longer found that in Ron Weasley, then time and friendship wouldn’t keep her here. Her duty had been done.
And so, the day that Harry and Hermione testified on behalf of Draco Malfoy was the day a piece of their friendship fundamentally changed. It wasn’t irrevocably broken, because undoing years of codependency and shared history would be harder to break than that. But the stark contrast in values that all parties stood rooted in would never again allow the three of them to be on the same page again. They simply were no longer united against a cause.
Which is why the third event to take place about a year after Malfoy had been sentenced was only surprising to the witches and wizards who were not intimately familiar with the new dynamic of the friendship they had settled into.
Ron decided that he needed to escape the lingering sadness that clung to him by way of his last name. He was the brother of a lost brother. The brother of a scarred brother, two even, if you count missing an ear as a scar. He was the surrogate brother to the most famous wizard in London. And the last brother in a long line of threadbare Weasleys, known for their fiery hair and personalities, and the bit of dirt on their noses.
Travel was never something available to him, with the exception of the Egypt trip he took with his family. And really, he was less than enthusiastic about bouncing from place to place, at least for a while. Instead, he bunked with Charlie in Romania. Extra sets of hands were always appreciated at a dragon reserve, and visiting a now-grown Norberta felt a proper type of nostalgia for him.
Harry had wished him well. Ron was his friend, his first real friend, and no matter how many silent treatments or explosive arguments they would get into, the bond they had would never break. Truthfully, he was happy for his friend to go do something new. If anyone needed to carve out their own space, it was him.
What Harry wanted from the world was to fade away from its bright light. Not in a scary, final, call your Mind Healer sort of way. But in a distinctly purposeful, leave me alone, way.
He could have been happy living at Grimmauld if it didn’t remind him of Sirius so much. Each room held the ghost of the life they could have had together. And the more he tried to move forward, the harder the house seemed to suck him back.
It wasn’t until Andromeda Tonks suggested that he leave the old safe house, temporarily, that he realized how much better he felt. When he was with Teddy, he could picture a faraway future, not just the things he had to do that were necessary to get to tomorrow. He envisioned buying his godson his first broom, experimenting with Bertie Botts' Every Flavor Beans, and shopping for Hogwarts.
In these daydreams, Harry felt whole. And yet he also felt hollow, because he knew how lonely life would be for an orphan boy. He would do anything to prevent a child from feeling like they had no one, and so he did.
Potter Home for Magical Children (an orphanage for children of the war) opened on the third anniversary of the Battle for Hogwarts. He partnered with Andromeda for programming, but took charge of the day-to-day routines of housing children of all ages and backgrounds.
He couldn’t have done it without help from Hermione, who procured every book and resource she could find on magical children, childhood trauma and loss, and Ministry grant writing. Research has given her a purpose when she felt utterly lost at sea.
The passing years did nothing to assuage the guilt she carried for the Obliviation of her childhood from her parents' memories. It had saved them from the immediate danger of being hunted by Death Eaters, but it did nothing to keep them safe from themselves. Memories, she learned, are deeper than just the thought of an event. They are tied to senses and to our body’s nervous system. Removing a memory only creates an echo where it once was. And too many echoes can become overwhelming for a human brain.
The Australian Ministry hired healers to explain the cognitive decline her parents had suffered rapidly after moving. And she understood, logically… academically, truly.
But that didn’t mean she forgave herself.
So while Ron and Harry found themselves heading towards new opportunities to heal something within themselves, Hermione did the opposite. She looked for a way to withdraw. To ease the pressure and pain that somehow continued to mount despite having won a war.
On a perfectly ordinary Wednesday afternoon, she rose and sent off some letters. On Thursday morning, she received two replies. And by Friday, she could be found Nowhere.