The next morning, Harry was excited to finally see Neville in person again. It would be really nice to have another friend around, and maybe the three of them could all hang out together.

He thought that if they could get past their mutual past, Draco and Neville might get on quite well. It wasn't as if they had nothing in common to talk about — there was plenty of overlap between Potions and Herbology, and they were both passionate about their subjects beyond just teaching them.

When he got to the Great Hall for breakfast, he noticed Draco hadn't arrived yet. Then he spotted Neville, toward the middle of the staff table, far away from where he and Draco usually sat, next to Septima on one side, and with an empty seat on the other between him and Filius. Harry only deliberated for a moment, before heading over to take the empty seat next to Neville.

"Hey, Neville!"

Neville turned and smiled at him. "Hey Harry. Saved the seat for you."

That made Harry irrationally pleased for some reason. He and Neville had already sent a few letters back and forth over the summer about looking forward to teaching together, but it was still nice.

He and Neville caught up a bit about what they'd been up to since their last letters as they ate, and at some point Saphronia flew in, only to promptly abandon Harry, since he wasn't paying her any attention, and fly over to Draco instead. Harry saw him feeding her sausages and petting her, and he shook his head at how much Draco spoilt her.

After breakfast, when he and Neville went their separate ways, Harry caught up to Draco in the corridor.

"You know, if you keep feeding Saphronia sausages like that she's going to become more sausage than bird, and then how will I get my letters delivered?" Harry teased.

Draco looked over at him and gave a half-hearted laugh. "Right."

Harry frowned. "You seem a bit...off."

Draco shook his head and waved his hand dismissively. "I'm fine. Just tired, is all."

"Okay," Harry said, a bit uncertainly, but decided to leave it at that.

~*~

It was a bit awkward at first, trying to put Draco and Neville together. They didn't really seem to know how to act around each other after Draco's stilted (though sincere! But also very late in coming) apologies for how he'd treated him in school.

After a week or so, however, Harry had been proven right: the commonalities in their chosen subjects smoothed the way enough for them to start getting along swimmingly, and though Harry felt a bit out of the loop sometimes when they really got to talking about the intricacies of some plants, he didn't mind so much. He preferred that they get along at least, and it was nice to just sit there and listen to them.

It was fun to watch how into it Draco got, too — the way he got a certain spark in his eyes and started talking with his hands. It was still September, so, whilst it was a bit chilly, it was still comfortable for the three of them to sit and talk outside around a small table near the greenhouses most evenings, and Harry loved to watch how the sun would set over the forest. The flickering colours would reflect off of Draco's hair as the shadows deepened, stretching impossibly long as the temperature dropped and Harry cast wordless warming charms around their little table.

And Harry found himself feeling content.

He thought to himself that he was actually pleased with the way his life was going, and wanted it to stay this way — and he thought, with an even greater surprise, that he wasn't sure he'd ever felt like that before.

~*~

The autumn semester was going by at a fast clip, and Harry found himself circling between lessons, lesson planning, marking, even more marking, meals with Neville and Draco, evenings with them when they could spare them, the odd visit to Hagrid, and occasional Floo calls and letters to everyone not at Hogwarts with him. Suffice it to say, he was kept busy, and with busyness, the time flew faster.

But he couldn't help noticing something.

The students (and ghosts, and even the portraits) who had begun to lurk around him and Draco last year went right back to doing so when school began again. Harry had thought that after finding out their apparent reasoning for doing so was completely unfounded they would stop, but they seemed undeterred, and some of the new first years even seemed to be picking up interest in it too.

Harry wasn't sure what to make of it.

Surely they couldn't still think he and Draco were...romantically involved?

~*~

Neville pulled Harry aside after breakfast one day.

"Is there... I mean, not to pry, but is there something going on between you and Draco?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"Are you two...seeing each other?" Neville tried to clarify.

Oh for fuck's sake.

"Not you too," Harry groaned. "Everyone apparently thought that last year too! We're just friends!"

Maybe he should've included what had happened at the End-of-Term Feast in one of his letters and avoided this whole thing, but...Merlin, the whole thing had been mortifying, and he'd rather just forget about it or pretend the whole thing hadn't happened. Telling loads of people about it was not at the top of his To Do list; only Ron and Hermione had been dubiously graced with that, and that was only because he couldn't help complaining to someone. Not that they'd been very sympathetic.

"Well you— Are you...interested in him?" Neville persisted.

"No!" Harry said exasperatedly.

Neville didn't look very convinced. "Are you sure? You two are just very...I dunno. A bit comfortable with each other?"

"We're friends!" Harry protested. "Aren't we supposed to be comfortable with each other?"

"Well...yeah," Neville said hesitantly. "But it's... I don't know how to say it. It's just a bit different. The way he is with Saphronia. The way you look at him sometimes. The way he looks at you when you aren't looking... I dunno, I just thought..."

"Well we're not." Harry blew out an exasperated breath and crossed his arms petulantly. "I really don't get it. There's never been half so much speculation about me with Ron and Hermione, not since we were adults. Especially not Ron."

"Well it's just— Like I said, it's a bit hard to put into words, but it's— I mean surely you saw the way you two looked in the Prophet? You don't look at Ron and Hermione quite like that."

"The Prophet? When were we in the Prophet?!" Harry spluttered.

Neville blinked at him. "How did you miss that? There was a full page spread in August about you two being spotted in Diagon Alley and acting 'surprisingly friendly' with each other."

"Well I don't— I wasn't looking at the paper much over summer!"

Neville sighed and clapped him on the shoulder. "Well, I don't want to be late for class, but maybe you should think on it a bit more?"

There wasn't anything to think over, though, Harry thought. Couldn't they really just be friends?

~*~

Harry found himself heading down to the dungeons as soon as his last class let out, instead of doing work and waiting to meet Draco in the Great Hall at dinner.

As he passed down the corridors, he heard the chattering of the lively portraits go strangely quiet.

"Er. Sorry," he said, as he passed a large dinner party scene. "Am I interrupting something?"

"Oh good heavens no, not in the slightest!" a large, matronly lady with an even larger hat told him, fanning herself fervently.

Two of the serving girls in the corner looked at him and giggled.

"We won't stop you, Mr Potter," a man in highly embroidered, lordly robes told him gallantly. "Please, please, pay us no mind at all!"

"Er...right," Harry said, rushing past. But he still felt their eyes on him until he made it to the stairs, and it was only then that he heard them explode into chatter again.

He shook his head to himself.

He had been noticing the portraits paying a bit more attention to him lately, but it was probably better if he just put it out of his mind rather than trying to puzzle it out. There was never any accounting for the strange personalities that moved through the frames in Hogwarts.

"I swear I don't know what happened, Professor!" Harry heard a student saying earnestly as he approached the Potions room. "I'm positive I did every step right, but then suddenly it was bubbling over and my cauldron was melting and, well, you saw it. Please, please let me redo it!"

Harry entered the Potions room, and saw Draco sighing and pinching the bridge of his nose.

"Theophania. It's a single classroom grade, it doesn't matter, you don't need to redo it. Your potions are usually fine."

"But I need to do it right!" the Slytherin girl wailed.

Draco set his hands decisively on the table he was standing at and leaned forward slightly, giving her a flat look. "You know what, ordinarily I would probably let you, but I think this is just going to keep happening."

"I said I— !" Theophania started to protest, but Draco cut her off with a raised finger and a sharp sound.

"Shht! Stop talking." He paused for a moment, and she stayed silent. "Good. The problem is not that I particularly doubt your brewing — I already told you your potions are fine — the problem is you being unable to let mistakes lie. I don't really care if it was an accident you made or something someone else threw into your cauldron, because it doesn't matter. If you want to brew it on your own just to make sure you can, knock yourself out, but you're so stressed about an imperfection that doesn't actually matter, which you've been told doesn't matter. You can't go back and fix everything. You will mess things up sometimes. You need to learn to move on, because as a Slytherin you should know that with enough scheming and effort there is almost nothing you can't come back from. But it's also important to recognise which battles are actually important, because it's impossible to be perfect. So stop."

Draco said it all very matter-of-factly, as he tended to say most things, but Harry was struck by how sincere it was underneath.

Nobody knew better than Draco about things getting completely cocked up, and having to figure out how to pick up and move on after. Sure, Theophania's issues were only school assignments at the moment, but Harry could see why Draco would think it important to change that frame of mind before life threw something bigger at her (after all, Draco's own attitudes hadn't served him very well when things had gotten difficult), and Harry thought it was...quite sweet, actually, that Draco cared that much.

Theophania pouted. "But why can't I just redo this one?" she whinged in a small voice, after a moment.

Draco gave a wry smile, and something about the unexpected gentleness in it (which Harry wasn't even sure Draco was aware was there) made something in him go soft and fond.

"Because last year I let you redo your Wideye Potion when it turned out cyan instead of turquoise. And the Antidote to Common Poisons when you forgot to muddle the mint before adding it. And your Shrinking Solution when you boiled it too high and too long at the beginning. And sometimes things that go wrong may or may not be completely in your control, but you still have to accept them and move forward either way."

Theophania was quiet for a few moments before finally giving a huffy sigh and crossing her arms. "Whatever, fine. Is there a sturdier cauldron I can buy as a replacement or what?"

"Good old pewter is fine. Copper or brass can be good too, but both of those tend to give a bit of a notable taste, and...hmm. If you plan to stick with Potions, brass can be reactive sometimes with some of the ingredients and combinations you tend to find more often in more complex potions. Polyjuice will eat right through it, actually — not even sure what exactly does it in that one, it just really hates it for some reason. I will say, the copper and brass are good for healing and clarifying potions, they can really give those a leg up, but for a general multi-purpose cauldron, there's a reason pewter is on the school supply list."

"Right. Okay, guess I'll just be getting another standard pewter then."

Draco nodded. "Sometimes boring really is best. Now get going, or Professor Potter is just going to keep lurking there like a creep."

She whirled around to look at Harry, and Harry gave an awkward wave.

"Didn't want to interrupt," he said sheepishly.

Theophania flushed slightly and hurriedly collected her things. "Not like it was anything important," she mumbled, and hastened out of the classroom with her head down, her curly hair effectively hiding her face from view.

"That was sweet," Harry said, as she disappeared into the maze of the dungeons. "You know, in that mean way of yours."

Draco raised his eyebrows dubiously. "I'm not sure about that, but I think you just performed a pretty impressive feat of instant mortification," he said dryly.

Harry snorted, pushing the door closed with his heel and leaning back against it as he crossed his arms. "I don't think it would've mattered what I said, I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I definitely don't miss being that age — embarrassed just to exist."

"Mm, I certainly don't miss it either," Draco agreed, walking around the table and crossing the classroom toward Harry.

"Did you do that?" Harry asked sceptically. "I wasn't aware that spoilt little prat ever did ashamed."

Draco rolled his eyes and leaned his hip against the side of a table in the last row at the back of the classroom, still a few metres away from Harry. "Well of course I pretended not to. Now what are you here for."

"Right. Just something Neville said. Did you know we were in the Daily Prophet?" It felt awkward to bring up, but Harry just hadn't been able to stop thinking about it and whether Draco had known too (surely not, though, right? Or he'd have said something). Harry could feel himself starting to babble with nerves, but he didn't feel able to stop. "But, I mean, that's mad! Why would they want to write about us — I mean recently, that is. What is there to put in there about—"

"Yes," Draco cut him off. "It was pretty impossible to miss. How did you manage not to see? Or even if not, how did nobody tell you?"

"I don't know!" Harry said exasperatedly. "I wasn't really looking at the paper over the summer, and my friends are," he flapped his hand vaguely, "busy." Now that he thought about it, though, he was a little suspicious. Surely at least Andromeda had seen it? "Why didn't you say something?"

Draco shrugged. "What was there to say? I assumed you'd seen it yourself anyway."

Harry sighed deeply and deflated. "Fine, yeah, that's fair."

Draco pushed away from the table and headed back toward his office. "We've both had the dubious pleasure of being featured in the Daily Prophet far more than either of us would like, and at least that article wasn't unfavourable, so I just put it out of my mind. They're always babbling about something or other when they need a story. Now, if you're not busy, scrub some cauldrons or something, I've marking to get to."

Draco waved a hand at the cauldrons — presumably abandoned when poor Theophania's had melted and caused a mess — and disappeared into his office.

Harry rolled his eyes. Yeah, no thanks, he had plenty to do as well.

He turned to leave, but just before he stepped out into the corridor, he paused and turned back slightly.

Oh, fine.

With a flick of his hand, the cauldrons obligingly trundled over toward the sinks, and the first few poured out their failed contents and began diligently scrubbing themselves under the taps as they turned themselves on, whilst the rest of the cauldrons patiently waited their turn behind them.

The door fell shut with a muffled thunk, and then all that was left were the steadily fading footsteps disappearing down the corridor, the steady stream of water and rasp of the scouring brushes, and the occasional scritch of Draco's quill against parchment.

But Draco had a small, fond smile on his lips, even as he squinted at the fantastically smeared ink of a first year's essay (the letters in which were already wobbly and blotchy to begin with, betraying a complete lack of experience with quill and ink prior to Hogwarts, and little ease in picking up the skill quickly), making hardly a single word in five legible. That was alright, though. Draco was in a pretty good mood.

~*~

"You've had suspiciously few papers this week," Draco commented idly, glancing up as Neville joined him and Harry outside Greenhouse One and pulled out a single scroll and a self-inking quill.

The three of them had settled for multi-tasking as they'd got further into the semester, and had begun spending evenings together less just to talk and more to work on lesson plans and mark assignments in companionable silence with the occasional distraction.

On the one hand, this meant they were free to meet up every evening instead of less frequently, but on the other, it did make Harry feel dreadfully old and boring.

The weather was only continuing to get colder as well, despite the warming charms Harry cast around them, and the daylight was always long gone by the time dinner was done with now (though Draco had once brought a few empty ingredient jars and cast Bluebell Flames into them for light, and it had become a habit which had proved much more useful as they'd moved to bringing their work with them), so they would likely soon have to find a new spot to congregate indoors.

"Yeah, well," Neville said distractedly, unrolling the parchment and scanning over what he'd already written. "It's not as if Luna gives me deadlines, but I'd like to get this book written before I die of old age, and quite frankly, what with wanting to spend as much time as possible with Hannah before going right back off to Hogwarts, and with teaching classes again, I haven't done any work on it in months and it's about time I sent her something." He marked out something on the parchment and scribbled a small note. "And went over the three chapters she's sent me," he mumbled, almost as an afterthought. "As much as I like Rolf, and think he adds some great insight on the magizoology side of things, he certainly didn't inherit his grandfather's writing skill and really should not count as an editor."

Draco hummed speculatively, watching him and tapping the end of his eagle feather quill against the table. "Harry did tell me you two were writing a book, and I have to say I'm intrigued. How is Ms Lovegood, by the way?"

Neville looked up. "She's fine," he said after a moment. He glanced over at Harry. "Harry writes her, he hasn't said?"

Draco shrugged. "He mentioned it, but there can be quite a difference between letters and what you see in person."

Neville paused again, and set down his quill. "She's fine," he repeated. "Better than she was two years ago, and definitely better than she was eight years ago, but I think that can be said for most of us. The rainforest is good for her — or at least so far it has been. It's easier to distance yourself from everything that happened when you're not surrounded by it."

"Well I certainly understand that," Draco said. "I ran away to France for five years as soon as I could." His tone was light and joking, but neither of them could ignore how terribly serious he was.

"I probably could've learned a thing or two from her," Neville said. "Sometimes running is the thing to do. My time in the Amazon was good for me too, and it might have been smart to go with Luna to begin with instead. The first couple years after the war were...rough. I mean, obviously they were for everyone, but maybe it wasn't the smartest to throw myself pretty much right back to Hogwarts, and then not give myself a break for years, but—" Neville gave a wry laugh and a small, half-shrug. "Stupid bullheaded Gryffindor insistence on facing everything immediately the hard way, as Hannah would tell me."

Harry snorted. "Maybe so, but I'm not sure running away from it was particularly better. For me, at least. Ginny either, for that matter." He drummed his fingers on the table. "Felt like a bit of a coward," he admitted after a moment, "but I hadn't been back here at all since, and when Remembrance Day rolled around, I couldn't manage to even step a single toe into the Great Hall. But— I mean— How was I supposed to, when all I could think about was all of the bodies?"

Neville nodded in solemn agreement, but then waved a hand in dismissal. "You're no more a coward than I am. I skipped out on redoing my seventh year just to avoid this place and only came back to sit my N.E.W.T.s at the end, and then the whole first year I taught, I didn't step foot in the Great Hall a single time. Nor the forest, either."

Harry let out a breath. "Yeah, I couldn't come back either. I just...needed to be done with Hogwarts, and if they were willing to bend some rules to let me on the Auror force anyway, I wasn't going to look that gift horse in the mouth."

"I don't know whether I'd have come back," Draco said quietly. "I didn't really have a choice, and it was already difficult to get them to let me take my N.E.W.T.s, but...I don't know. I'm not sure whether it would have been better or worse having already been stuck back in the castle for a year. Maybe I'd have gotten used to it some. Or maybe it would have just stayed awful and distracting." He shrugged. "No use thinking about it, I guess. I'm not sure I can imagine the anniversary not still being...heavy. Uncomfortable."

Neville nodded. "Minerva's good about understanding that sort of thing, though. I mean, when I started teaching, we were still climbing out of the aftermath of the war, but even now... It's not like it's ever going to really leave, is it? Not for the people who were there."

"Suppose not," Harry said.

Neville gave a small huff of laughter. "But if any of us had actually gone back to retake seventh year, we might've actually had a fighting chance at figuring out where the bloody castle had moved everything before we were supposed to be teaching here."

Draco snorted. "Honestly."

Harry just blinked at them incredulously for a moment. "So it was different!" he demanded, sounding incredibly wronged.

Neville and Draco both burst out laughing.

"Yes, Harry," Draco said. "Why did you think nothing was where it was supposed to be?"

"I didn't know! I thought my memory must've somehow gone bad! You never said anything about it or seemed to have any trouble finding anything!"

Draco laughed again. "Well you never asked or seemed bothered, so I figured you had it sorted somehow. Part of your perfect Chosen One thing or something. I asked Minerva if I could come a couple weeks early just to get the lay of the place, since it was already pretty fucking obvious when I went for my N.E.W.T.s it was quite different."

"That was an option?" Harry sounded betrayed. "You've no idea how many times that goddamn trick stair being earlier than it should be got me. In front of students, too! And the vanishing step being on an entirely different staircase!"

Draco smiled. "Ah well. I'm sure it helped them realise the Saviour is just a very human klutz like everyone else. Probably hard to spend all day gawking at you in awe when you're busy falling through stairs that even most of the first years have figured out like a fool."

Harry sat back again, looking somewhat mollified. "That's probably true. This year's first years are still being a bit tricky to disillusion, but I didn't have as much trouble last year as I feared I might."

Draco nodded sagely. "Falling through the stairs a few times will do that."

"'Til Binns did the second war unit," Harry added, rolling his eyes.

Neville made a sound of agreement. "Yeah, I eventually got used to that just being a thing. Once a year in the spring, they suddenly start looking at you all moony-eyed, as if I'm some myth come to life. And all I did was organise the resistance at Hogwarts and lop the head off of that bloody snake — if they're cowed in the presence of that, I hate to think what your classes are like."

"A lot of gawking," Harry said. "And a lot of 'Did you really?' even though I've made it quite clear at the beginning of the year I don't take questions about the war. It all just flew out the window, though, and it was a brutal couple weeks of constantly having to take points from all my classes to get them to shut up."

"Mm," Draco drawled sarcastically. "I'm sure being adored and admired is very difficult. My classes had trouble looking at me, and they all got quite skittish for a while. I'd love to just be unthreatening and assuage their fears, but no, there were always ones whispering amongst each other trying to draw short straws to push someone to ask me something until I glared at them threateningly enough that they didn't dare. I don't want them to think I'm evil, but for Salazar's sake, I'd rather have them afraid of me than deal with one of them asking if I ever tortured someone, or if I really tried to kill Dumbledore, or what it was like to live with th— Voldemort, or if they can see the Dark Mark, or...whatever their little minds fancy.

"I get that they're curious, but I have to live knowing that stupid bloody photo that ran in the Prophet is in those new textbooks of theirs. You so nobly speaking at my and Mother's trial after we'd just gotten out of Azkaban, alongside a complete list of our charges, just like all the other Death Eaters. And I think that's much more than I'd prefer them to see of me, so I think I might be forgiven for being disinclined to share more."

Harry ran his fingers aimlessly over the tabletop, staring down at it instead of up at Draco or Neville. "Sometimes I wonder if they'd look at me the same way if they knew what it was really— all the things we actually did," he said after a few moments. "Everybody did terrible things during the war. I did a lot of terrible things during the war. I don't feel guilty about them. But would they look at me the same way if they knew I'd used the Cruciatus Curse? I'd even tried to use it before, actually, but Bellatrix was right; you have to really mean it. I'm not the only one either, not at all, and then there's people like you and your mother and Regulus Black, and the books have nothing to say about the good— the necessary things. I read the new textbooks too — couldn't resist — and I found that part funny too. How they found the time to stop and talk about me speaking in your and your mother's defence, but never actually included anything I said. Just...didn't feel the need to mention that either of you did anything — what you did, I guess."

He gave a bitter laugh, and continued. "I shouldn't have looked at it. They didn't even acknowledge that the Ministry had proper fucked up with Sirius — imprisoned him, in Azkaban, for twelve fucking years, and then never stopped hunting him, made him live in hiding until the day he died. They just glossed over it with the explanation that Sirius had been originally suspected of selling my parents out to Voldemort, but that it had later come to light that it had been Peter Pettigrew, who had gone into hiding in his illegal animagus form. That was it."

Harry sighed deeply. "I feel like most of it is propaganda anyway, at this point," he finished, sounding morose.

"Propaganda," Neville said. "Yeah, that's a good word for it. I think it feels like a lot of the wizarding world is just really eager to get over the war, and to rebuild, and to be strong, and in order to do that, it helps to brush the narrative of the war — both of them, and the things in between, really — up into something neater and easier and more victorious. That was part of what was really nice about being out in the rainforest. It was just...a big break from all of that. I'm already missing it sometimes, if I'm honest. I mean, I am happy to be back, but...I dunno. It was good. It was nice."

"No, I know what you mean," Draco assured him. "I went back to visit France over the summer, and...well, like I said, that was where I went as soon as my house arrest was up. I lived there five years, and I just...miss it sometimes. I think... Britain will probably always feel like home to me, but I think when you live somewhere for a long time you leave a part of yourself there. I don't know whether that's a good or bad thing."

"Maybe it just is," Neville said.

Draco gave a small huff. "Yeah. I guess so."

Neville picked up his butterbeer cap, flipping it round and round between his fingers. "I didn't actually know you'd gone to France," he eventually said. "What was it like? I guess you have mysterious French friends there, if you're going to visit them?"

Draco gave another small, amused huff. "Yeah, I do. They're not very mysterious, though, and one of them is also a foreigner like me, so I guess they're not all French either. They're... It's nice, though. My name wasn't really notorious enough to ever make it that far; hell, the Dark— Voldemort's barely was. Half of them called him Who-Is-He or Which-Man-We-Speak-Of or other similar things." He cracked a small smile. "They could never remember You-Know-Who or He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, it didn't seem any substantially different to them, and it wasn't like it really mattered if there was confusion about who exactly you meant." He shook his head. "That was kind of refreshing, to be honest."

"Did they ever...find out about your past?" Harry asked tentatively.

Draco frowned. "No. I'm just sort of hoping to keep it that way forever. As far as I know, none of them have any reason to ever come here, and even if they did visit, it's long enough past that it's less likely to come up. They made fun of me sometimes for being like a vampire: already so pale and I'd only ever roll my sleeves up a little bit when it got hot, with the room of simmering cauldrons and the French sun sometimes, but." He shrugged. "Small price to pay. What else can I do? They like me."

"Oh, was this for a potions apprenticeship?" Neville asked.

Draco nodded. "Yes. I don't know if you've heard of Madame Alphonsine Jaubert?"

Nevile shook his head.

"She's..." Draco searched for words for a moment. "Well, if you're in the potions business, especially in Europe, she's definitely a well-known name. But she doesn't take apprentices often and she's very picky." He shrugged. "I just got really lucky with the timing and whatever she saw in my letters that made her willing to take me on. So I apprenticed under her." Draco looked slightly baffled still, even as he said it. "I can't imagine there weren't plenty of Beauxbatons students who got high marks too. Her last pupil was so promising she didn't even wait for his N.E.W.T.s; she took him on at sixteen, and had Beauxbatons count it as a separate Potions class, and now he's her assistant. But, I don't know. She's kind of an odd woman — great, but odd — and I certainly wasn't going to turn it down if I was being offered the chance.

"And her last pupil. Honestly, I'd like to be jealous of him, but Hervé is just brilliant behind a cauldron and he lives up to his position as her assistant. And he's stupidly good at thinking up clever puns to try to distract me and get me to laugh, because he says people as proper and uptight as me are the most fun to annoy." Draco smiled. "I'm not really annoyed, but I like the effort, so I'm never going to tell him that. He decided to take on his own apprentice a few years after I started with Alphonsine, and that's how I met Perlah. She's eleven years older than me and absolutely never lets me forget it — but, to be fair, they all treat me like I'm hardly more than a child, even though Hervé isn't much older than me at all. And then there's Alphonsine's partner, Georgienne, who is just a regular milliner, but likes to drop by quite frequently to see Alphonsine and chat with us, and usually brings food or pastries too, because she's just the sort of nice that makes you wonder how it is people haven't taken advantage and broken her yet. Except I'm certain they've tried, and even more certain that's exactly why she is the way she is."

Draco fiddled with his quill absentmindedly as he went on. "There were a few more acquaintances — friends of Hervé's that Perlah and I tagged along with sometimes, and a few people in the potions business, since I was still considering my career options — but we didn't bother to keep contact. Perlah still has a couple years left on her apprenticeship, so she'll be there for a bit, and she might decide to stay after as well, who knows. If not, I could always book a portkey to the Philippines sometime. It might be nice to see some of the things she's talked about."

"You said Georgienne was your mentor's...partner?" Harry asked, confused, when Draco finally fell silent. He was still a bit stuck on that part, and had barely heard the entire last bit with how preoccupied he'd been with it. "If she's a milliner, how does that have anything to do with potions?"

Draco gave him an odd look. "Obviously not business partner. Partner. Like romantic partner, life partner. They're not really interested in marriage but they may as well be, they've been together almost twenty years."

"...Oh." Harry wasn't quite sure what else to say to that. They were both women? Draco's mentor had a partner who was a woman like her and...it sounded like nobody had an issue with it. Of their friends, at least. Maybe things were different in France. Or they had just gotten very lucky with their circle of friends. They had accepted Draco without any question, after all.

"Wow," Neville said, changing the subject back. "Well it almost sounds like you had a whole different life there."

"I did. I thought about maybe not even coming back," Draco admitted, sitting back again. "I had friends and a promising career there. But I...missed it here. Maybe some foolish part of me thought I could come back to the home that once was, or that the war was far enough over that... I don't know."

"That's fair," Neville said. "Sometimes I just thought about not coming back too. I mean, Luna hasn't, and I get it. I think it's good for her out there. But..." He shrugged. "I'm not her. I think sometimes you have to go somewhere else to find yourself, and sometimes you have to come home to find yourself, and I've just got to face that I'm one of the second type of people."

Draco made a face. "Much as I hate it, I think I am too. French Draco was an important part of my life, but it wasn't sustainable. Or, rather, when I thought about it, it seemed like it could have been, but I'd have had to choose to just let go of everything and become someone new. Which didn't always seem like a bad idea, but I suppose my maudlin tendencies and wanting to be close to my mother won out over my self preservation."

Harry and Neville both gave amused huffs.

"Yeah," Neville said. "I might've stayed out there longer, but Hannah didn't like visiting the rainforest, so I had to pop back in from time to time anyway, and, well. I suppose this is just the place for me."

"D'you—" Harry started suddenly, only to stop himself.

Neville looked over at him and Draco cocked his head slightly.

"Go on, share with the class, Potter," Draco drawled.

Harry huffed and crossed his arms a bit uncomfortably. "Wasn't really relevant."

Neville shrugged. "Not really all that important. Unless one of you passed out a conversation syllabus I missed at some point."

"I did last year," Draco said seriously, "but you've been keeping to it admirably so I didn't bother writing you out a copy."

Neville blinked at him. "You know, it's disturbingly hard to tell when you're serious sometimes."

Draco laughed and Harry shook his head in mock disappointment.

"No conversational syllabus," Harry assured Neville. "I'd have burned it if he'd tried to give me one."

Neville nodded. "Good. So what were you going to say, then?"

"Yes, no weaseling out by changing the subject, Potter," Draco teased.

Harry rolled his eyes and turned to Neville. "It was just about, you know..."

"We don't," Draco assured him.

Harry threw two fingers up at him without even glancing his direction. "You and Hannah," he finished lamely.

"What about me and Hannah?" Neville asked, looking puzzled.

"Well you're..." Harry waved his hand vaguely. "You're never home," he finally spit out. "Hermione said the problem with me 'n Gin was we were never home and we jumped into getting married too early in the first place. But I still don't really... I mean, why does it seem to work for everyone else just fine? Everyone I know around our age in a relationship either got together at Hogwarts or not long after, and even when you look at, like, Molly and Arthur got together at Hogwarts, and so did my parents, and... I just don't get what was so different about us."

Neville gave a small, thoughtful frown. "Well, when we got together, Hannah already knew I'd be taking the position at Hogwarts. She gave me the push I needed to take it — I wanted it, but I was also still afraid of going back, and she told me it was stupid to do it but it would be even stupider to pass it up, because she remembered the way I'd been, leading the D.A." His lips turned up in a small smile as he stared into space vaguely over Harry's shoulder. "I think she said something making it out to all sound very noble, like helping people like that is where you belong or something, but the long and short of it is she thought I'd be good at it and enjoy it once I got used to being here again, and she was expecting to be mainly long-distance pretty much from the beginning."

Neville paused to consider something for a moment before continuing, "Looking back, I think we kind of did rush into marriage with the shadow of the war still hanging over us. I think we just needed something to cling to, and the long-distance factor kind of made that hard, so," he shrugged, "marriage kind of helped with the feeling I guess. But, I don't know. It's not as if we haven't had our problems, and things have changed a bit, but we set our expectations pretty early on. Neither of us were very willing to jump into a relationship at the time if it wasn't going to last, so we took it kind of slow and talked a lot about the future and what we wanted. There wasn't anything that particularly conflicted that didn't have a satisfying compromise, so we decided to give it a go."

Harry sighed. "You make it sound so simple."

Neville laughed and shook his head a little. "I mean, kind of. It's work, but it does feel kind of simple with her. I like that." He waved a hand vaguely. "I don't know a lot of how it was with you and Ginny, but Hermione's usually right about things. And given the examples I have... I mean, her and Ron may've been together since the war, but they waited ages to get married and it's going swimmingly as far as I can tell, and the same can be said for Dean and Seamus. Except I'm actually starting to doubt at this point one of them will ever actually pop the question. Don't know what they're waiting for, but the point still stands."

Harry's brow creased. "Dean and Seamus?"

"...Yes?" Neville said quizzically.

"Like...as a couple? Romantically?" Harry clarified.

Now Neville looked confused. "Obviously I meant...? Did you really... How could you possibly not know about that? They've been together for nine years."

"I didn't— I thought they were just roommates!"

Neville blinked at him for a few moments. "I mean I suppose they are?" he eventually offered. "But that wouldn't be my first choice of words."

Harry was stunned. "Are— Does everyone know about this?"

"I don't see why they wouldn't? They haven't exactly kept quiet about it. I think they'd be more shocked that you didn't."

"I—" Harry stuttered only to stop again. "And they're all okay with it?"

"...Yes?" Neville said again. "Why?"

"Well they're..." Harry made a vague gesture, but Neville only continued to look mystified. "You know. Both men."

"And why should any of us care about that?" Neville asked. "Do you?"

"No— I mean. No. I suppose not. It's just. Muggles do. I didn't... I never thought to notice if it wasn't the same."

"Huh." Neville looked speculative. "I mean, Gran cares a lot about tradition and she always sort of gave me the impression that sort of thing was for other families, but it's really only the staunch pure-blood traditionalists that have any issue around that sort of thing. And even then, the issue is more personal. They don't care so much what others do, they just care about making sure their own continue carrying on their bloodline."

"Yes," Draco put in. "My parents never would have stood for me marrying a man before, but me rejecting their arranged marriage was just as blasphemous. If everything hadn't gone to shit, I never could have done it, because all of that is the same to them; it's denying them a proper heir and a chance to carry on the family name. They don't really think much about non-pure-bloods doing whatever they wish, because they don't expect them to do anything the so-called 'proper' way anyway, and it doesn't really touch their lives, though when it's other pure-bloods, it certainly can be fuel for gossip. Talk of poor decisionmaking and such." He rolled his eyes. "As if ensorcelling your child to push them into an unwanted marriage is a brilliant decision."

"Yeah, the way some of those families act is frightful," Neville said, shaking his head. "At least I knew, even when I was too afraid to stand up to her, that Gran would never do something like that just because she didn't approve of who I fell in love with."

"No, my parents wouldn't either. They may have thrown a fit, and tried everything else to convince me out of it, but they wouldn't force me. They...They do love me," Draco said quietly.

Harry supposed he couldn't argue with that — not with as spoilt as Draco had been, as resolutely assured that Lucius would always be behind him if he had something to complain of, and as desperate as his mother had been to be sure he was okay during the final battle.

But the rest of this was still a lot for Harry to process. It felt hard to just suddenly believe that the way he'd been viewing the world was upside down, and that nobody seemed to really care about two wizards or two witches together at all, even though he'd heard Draco mention his mentor well enough, and apparently Dean and Seamus had been together all this time... He wondered if there were any other couples he'd simply never noticed because he just hadn't thought to, had just always assumed it could only be friendship.

He didn't know quite what to think. He heard Neville changing the subject, saying something with a light voice and earning a laugh from Draco, but Harry wasn't properly paying attention — he couldn't.

Draco glanced his way and cleared his throat. "Well. Perhaps we'd better go inside for the evening."

Neville followed his eyes, and then began rolling his scroll back up as Draco gathered and extinguished two of the bluebell flame jars, leaving just one to see by and stowing the empty jars in his bag. "Yeah, that's probably a good idea. I'm pretty tired."

Harry automatically started gathering his papers as he noticed the other two packing up, and utterly failed to notice them exchanging a glance as Harry gave them a vague wave and the three of them parted ways.

He had a lot to think about, apparently.