Everybody loves Harry Potter. Really. The wizarding world was up in celebration – dancing through the streets, sending so many letters the sky was a swarm with them, all in a matter that was disastrous for the International Statute for Wizarding Security for several weeks following – and not just because Voldemort is dead.

Harry Potter is their saviour. Harry Potter is alive. And everyone loves him. And it is a good thing.

It's just that...

Well.

He's supposed to be dead. He's supposed to be dead because he did die. And now he's back. He has explanations and they are bought at face value for what must be the first good few months.

But... This is said in settings only private, in worried, secretive murmurs, but it is said. But maybe Harry Potter should have stayed dead. Not should, actually – any wizard, ex-Death Eater or Death Eater victim with their wits about them would ever think to suggest that Harry Potter coming back to life to kill Voldemort was a mistake.

It's more like 'Harry Potter was supposed to stay dead.'

He is back. Everyone loves him. Every once and a while, looks are exchanged wondering, however fleeting, if they should.

But this is Harry Potter we're talking about. He was born of Light and raised in Darkness but is Light nonetheless – a testimony, it's said, to his goodness. This is Harry Potter we're talking about. Everyone loves him, everyone should, and if the stench of something wrong can still be smelt lingering on him then, well. Maybe it's their nose that should be checked. Not Harry Potter.

.XoX.

It's Ginny who notices it first. It's a side effect of her first year. The dead, and those who are supposed to be it, all smell the same – whether it is Tom, the parasite on the back of her mind who she can never, for the life nor death of her forget, or George's rotting corpse, preserved in a casket with money they do not have, or...

Or her best friend. Or her should be lover. The dead smell the same. The dead who walk still smell even more so distinct.

It was a rude thing to think, she'll admit. He had arrived at the Burrow a few days after the Battle of Hogwarts, the first time any of them had gotten a good look at him since they left, leaving her to only pray for their safety.

He looks different. That's to be expected – she'd really be more so concerned if he didn't look worse for wear after everything he'd been through. His clothes are dirty and faded. His hair is a wild, overgrown mess that Molly frets over immediately. He is thin, nearly gauntly, more so than both Ron and Hermione, who have refused to leave his side since... Since, well. Since he died.

Her family is in tears. A mess of redheaded yelling and crying, squeezing the trio in their arms tightly, and Ginny is running, halfway across the lard, ready to join them, when the smell hits.

Ginny sticks her heels in the ground, skitting so abruptly she has to physical stop herself from tipping over.

She knows this smell. More importantly, she knows Harry – and he is allowed change. War warps you into something disgusting and sad and pathetic. Sometimes alcoholic and regretful and, sometimes, dead.

Harry is allowed to change in the same way that he was allowed to die. There's a certain line he should not cross and a certain line he did.

Harry looks up from a blubbering Arthur in his arms to make eye contact with Ginny. There are dark bags around his eyes, something dull and painful in the sadden expression on his face. The perpetual tear tracks cutting through the grime on his cheeks seem real.

But he looks at Ginny. And whatever it is Ginny knows, or almost knows, or is coming to know – Harry knows too.

He grins at her. And he has shark fucking teeth.

.XoX.

"You've got to do something, mate," Ron begs. They're having drinks at The Three Broomsticks. Harry is the only one not drinking alcohol.

Harry breathes through his teeth, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. "It's a tough situation, Ron. And your sister isn't exactly making it easy." The hint of bitterness is small in his voice, but it sticks out sorely.

Ron squeezes Hermione's hand tightly. "You know it's been hard on her," he tries, speaking quietly. "There's nothing true with what she's saying – not your voice or, heh, smell, that's just ridiculous – but the... what's the word, Hermione?"

"Trauma," she supplies.

"Right! Trauma," he exclaims cheerfully. "Right, she's got that, and this whole You-Know-Wh... Voldemort being dead situation has got that whole thing kicking in."

"We've all got trauma," insists Harry, tapping his finger against his glass of water. "We're all handling the 'You-Know-Who being dead situation' differently. Except you don't see me out there slandering anybody, do you?"

Ron reddens and goes to defended himself, but Hermione beats him to the punch. "What Ron is trying to say," she tries, looking between them, "is that Ginny isn't well. It does not excuse her actions. That is not what he's – what we're – arguing. It does give her actions reason. Makes them not aimless, more deserving of sympathy."

Harry doesn't budge. "She's not prone to showing me any sympathy."

"They're tearing her apart in the media, mate," Ron argues, desperation finally showing. "Causing all sorts of trouble – Molly won't even talk to her, did you know? And family members are all picking sides, it's a mess. She can't get a job. She can't even go out in public without being harassed – all for speaking against... You. The Great Boy Who Lived."

"You used to date her," points out Hermione. "You used to love her. It can't be that easy to stop."

"You'd be surprised," says Harry. "And, in any case, I'm not the media. I don't control it. What do you want me to do?"

"No one is claiming that," insists Hermione, tiredly. "Just make a statement. Do an interview. Something small, something even one time – it doesn't matter. Any sort of leeway you give her will be invaluable."

"What if," states Harry, quiet and... strange. (Strange like Ginny is not utterly off center; like her trauma has not made her a liar or a lunatic), "I don't want to give her leeway?"

Ron stares blankly at him. He laughs, an unpleasant thing. "You're not serious, mate."

"Says who?" He sits up straighter in his chair. "She's hurting me. These are the consequences of her actions. Why should I want them to stop?"

"I understand you're upset–" starts Hermione.

"I'm not the one who's upset," says Harry, standing form his seat, swinging his bag over his shoulder. "And maybe I'm not the one you guys should be coming to about this."

He looks over his shoulder before he leaves. "On the house, I take it?"

The bartender sputters. "Of – of course! Anything for you, Harry, anything, for what you've done..."

He leaves the restaurant and Ron ponders if Harry would have ever used his status for free drinks like this, if he would have ever stayed so level headed...

If he would have done anything like this before.

.XoX.

After being asked about in the press and on the streets for some months, the truth about Harry Potter's love life comes to light. He has moved on from Ginny easier and faster than anticipated, something he attributes, when asked, to their time apart on the run and her subsequent slandering campaign once it ended.

He's moved on from Ginny Weasley to the exact opposite end of the spectrum. To Draco Malfoy.

Ron takes this the hardest out of everyone. "But, mate, it's Malfoy!" He waves his arms in the air and repeats, like Harry just isn't understanding. "Malfoy!"

Harry rolls his eyes, smiling affectionately. "He protected us at the Manor," Harry says. "I was there, when Dumbledore died. He was a child forced into the nearest position to ensure his safety." His eyes soften. "He is no monster."

"He's no monster, sure," says Ron. "But he's Malfoy."

Harry ruffles his hair – another habit he's picked up post-war (post-death); he hugs them hello and most of the time goodbye; holds their hands when they're not holding each other's; like he assuring himself through touch that they are alive – and tells him, "You'll come around eventually."

After a (in Ron's opinion, reluctant) apology from Draco, Hermione does. Ron – after apology and gifts and time spent unenthusiastically together – does not.

Draco Malfoy had publicly condemned the actions of his family and his own. He's a changed man, he says, a better one. He did what he had to survive and now that he doesn't have to, he's able to admit he never wanted to. With a strong vouching from the one (and the only) Harry Potter, he gets no jail time. Is made to pay no reparations. Is forgiven.

Ron is not as willing.

He thinks that Malfoy has spent his existence on the run from what he truly wants. He's spent every last waking moment of his life doing anything and everything to preserve it.

And Ron sees him fully; sees past this solemn exterior. And what Ron sees is that Draco Malfoy had never stopped running. History is repeating itself. He is sacrificing what he wants and who he is – whatever that nameless husk of a thing even is – in the sake of self preservation.

He is still a Slytherin. This is the same Draco Malfoy there's always been. Hermione does not see it, the wizarding world refuses to. Harry...

Ron thinks Harry must, too. Harry sees it and doesn't care or Harry has always seen it – and always been in love with it.

He does not know which, but it is not the most confusing part of this.

Voldemort – a name that Ron pushes himself to say because he will not be ruled by something beyond the grave... and a name that Harry had started to avoid – is dead. He does not get the luxury of returning. (Not like Harry.) Draco Malfoy is free from that blight on his family, on his mind, of his home.

So what is he running from? He does this to keep himself alive but Ron is not in the right position to see what will kill him in the first place.

Ron may not be. (But Ginny is.)

.XoX.

Draco Malfoy has been loved before. His father's love is... best put, subtle. He loves in the safety he provides; he loves in his sacrifice. He loves in his remorse. He had spent a portion of his childhood convinced that his father was a cold and callous man, but he is warm if you know where to look. His father has made so many mistakes (an understatement), and Draco forgives him.

After all, is Draco much better?

His mother's love is gentle. His mother's love is obvious. She makes him lunch when he visits the old Manor, something he does not do often, and frets over his hair and clothes. She gives him potions and apologizes over all the big things so many times they have started to seem small – and she likes to say it, too. I Love You. She repeats it a lot and it would lose its meaning if she wasn't wholehearted about it every single time.

Draco Malfoy has been loved before. He's seen the vastly different ways people love and knows, perhaps better than most, how vague they can come.

He can say for certain, then, that Harry Potter does not love him.

They had drunk together one time. More like Harry had water and Draco drowned his worries in enough vodka to kill a grown Muggle. It was that evening that Harry told him – untruthfully and fabricated, looking back on it – he had always had a schoolboy crush on him. Ginny was great and Cho was a disaster and Draco...

Draco, to him, was something different.

And then the next evening, when Draco was sober, Harry asked him if he'd like to go on a date with him. Draco had immediately seen the value in having Harry Potter on his side – he was sure that, before this, he and his father were destined for death row.

Draco starts dating Harry for the power his name carries. A vouch from him is worth more than any sort of legal proceeding and everyone knows it.

They start dating for that reason... and continue dating because Harry died and came back and he came back wrong.

(Ginny noticed it first and Draco would like to take credit for noticing it second.)

He's obsessed with Draco. Not in the way of their sixth year – the suspicion, the stalking – but in the way that he is obsessed with his body. He holds his hand, his wand hand in particular, all the time. When they sleep and when they eat and it becomes a rare thing for Draco to have both his hands free.

Draco asks about it. He does get explanations. They are not bought, even at face value, even at first.

"Is it really so unbelievable that I want to hold your hand, Draco?" he teases.

Yes, thinks Draco. Yes, it is.

He is given an answer – a real answer, and not just for the hand holding, for the protecting him, but for the getting together. For the everything.

They sit, curled in armchairs beside the fire. It's an old Malfoy property. They are the first to occupy it in decades.

"Do you remember," says Harry out of the blue, voice small, "when Dumbledore was killed?"

It is a jarring question. "Yes," says Draco. "But I don't..." He doesn't know how he intended to finish the sentence. He didn't do it? He didn't want to?

"I was there."

Even more so jarring. "What?"

Harry seems to be talking to himself more than Draco, staring dead at the fire. "I was there. You... before he died... and I didn't realize it, the significance of it at the time... but you disarmed him."

Draco remembers it in terms in no manner described as reverently. "What does that mean, Harry? Why are you bringing this up?"

Harry looks like he's about to answer, but he shakes his head, stands for bed, and tells him quietly, "No reason, Draco."

He's lying, though. Draco was obsessed with harry Potter in the same way Harry was obsessed with him; he has been living with him for months; does not love him in the same way that Harry Potter does not love him, but knows nonetheless.

He is lying.

There is... significance in Dumbledore's disarming. Or in Dumbledore.

Or in Dumbledore's wand.

It is solidified later, when Harry takes him by the hand to visit Dumbledore's grave. Harry kneels beside it for a while. "I am sorry," he whispers eventually, "that you died. You would join me, if you were alive. I would have offered to let you join me."

It could be taken as simple remorse for someone held dear. Simple grief. Draco has reveled in his own fair share of it.

Dumbledore and Harry were close. Dumbleodre is dead. Harry is sorrowful.

But Draco gets the sense that it isn't that simple. That it isn't like that at all.

Join him? Join him like Draco has joined him? Like how there is a slowly growing group of people who think Harry is not right in the mind, body, or soul and it's not only families that are being torn apart? Join him, his side, because there are sides now.

It is not that simple. This is not just grief for Dumbledore; it's grief for whatever possibilities he presented.

A thought comes to Draco, unbidden. Harry Potter is dangerous. Being not on Harry Potter's side is dangerous.

He's not exactly sure why he thinks this, why he believes it so adamantly, but it is the only reason he, even after his family's name is cleared and Bellatrix considered an outliner instead of the average, even after he has no real reason to stay in a relationship with someone he does not love and is not loved – even after all that, it's the only reason he stays.

There are two sides here. Ginny and Harry. Trust and suspicion. People will call them all sorts of names, but Draco qualifies them in the same light he qualified Death Eaters and Phoenixes: the winning side and the losing one.

Draco knows which one he prefers.

.XoX.

Hermione urges him to go to the hospital over dinner. "St. Mungos' wouldn't even charge you, Harry," she begs. "Please, just a check up. You don't look well–"

"I am fine, Hermione," he says. He swallows his food and takes a sip of water. "I've never been better."

"You've looked better," Ron retorts. And he has. Hermione and Ron have filled out substantially since the war's end. There are scars that will never heal and things about them that will never be restored – but, physically, they're okay. Mentally, they are getting there.

Harry, on the other hand, is still a pale, ragged thing resembling more a corpse than any living thing. His clothes and body are no longer dirty – in fact, he's never been more stunningly dressed; courtesy of dating a Malfoy. But his eyebags are still heavy and eyes still dull and sad. He is worryingly thin, it's like he's gained no weight at all since everything went down.

When Harry touches them, like he is so prone to do, his skin is ice cold.

"Draco's told me things," Hermione insists. Ron's face scrunches at her side. He still does not like her calling him his first name.

Harry pauses. "Like?" he asks.

"Like the potions you've been taking," she says. "Like the fact you won't tell him what they're for." Draco told her he suspects they are in some way keeping him together. Harry is a doll who's seams are coming undone, something rotting off the bone that's only still intact because of something unnatural. (Something Dark. Something in these potions... and something that's out of theme.)

"I," Harry says slowly, "get headaches. They help."

"You know what would also help?" says Ron. "Going to the doctor."

"Nothing wrong with me could be fixed by a medi-witch." He adds, "Not that there is anything wrong with me."

Ron thinks he is good at this. He's been doing it all his life. Looking and acting a mess but protesting he is fine. He's never been better. There is nothing wrong with him. Ron sees through it. Hermione does, too.

"We don't know what kind of things dying can do to the body," says Ron. "No one has ever done this before, Harry, and the risks associated could be–"

Harry snaps, suddenly cold, "You're starting to sound like Ginny."

Hermione tries to diffuse things. "He's just worried, Harry–"

"Maybe Ginny is onto something," says Ron lowly. "Maybe she's not as crazy as the press is making her out to be."

Harry's shoulders sink. "You don't mean that," he says, quietly.

Ron sighs deeply. This is his friend. His friend is hurt like Ginny is hurt and not everyone is acting as their best self. "I don't," he says. Not completely. "I'm sorry."

Harry runs his cold hand over Ron's. He suppresses a shiver. "It's alright," he murmurs. "I understand your concern." That does not mean he listens to it.

.XoX.

"We don't know what kind of things dying can do to the body," Ginny tells the reporter. "We don't know – I certainly don't – but we can guess. I've a few."

"Tell us, Ginny, how a former lover of his can turn decisively against him – and what influenced you to do the same to others? Statistics tell us that most – if all – accounts of distrust of him spawned prior to you coming out about your suspicions."

She tells, for the first time ever, what happened in her first year of Hogwarts. Rumour had been tossed around at the time and everyone had a different version of events to tell. She had handed out details – as did Harry – at her leisure, but most of the attributes of the event are held close to her cheat.

Until now.

She talks about Tom. About how it was the first of Voldemort's horcruxes and the first one destroyed. How she was manipulated, used. She did not realize it until this awful stench came about her. No one else noticed it. She would spend hours past curfew, scrubbing at her skin until it was raw and red, how this would continue for weeks but still hang tightly to her and everything she owned, everything she touched.

Especially the diary.

She smelt like death. She smelt like death because Tom smelt like death.

And then he died and Ginny almost did and she has never been the same. Almost dying changes you. Actually dying, she suspects, must do much worse.

Harry has always stank of it. It was subtle, ignorable, dismissed, for the first seven years she'd known him. (It was subtle until he died.) And he was a cute boy, who she held as a hero at first then as a friend and then as a lover – why would she ever think too much into the weird, familiar, ugly smell surrounding him?

She does not know why this was before. Does not know why it does now.

But she's got some theories. "Why did he not die and stay dead? He's lying. He says Dumbledore sent him back, but Dumbledore... he's just dead. He's just a mortal wizard and when Harry died, he was just dead."

"What do you think is the cause, then?"

She shakes her head. "I don't know. But I know one thing: Whatever he did – whatever he gave up, exchanged, for his continued life... he's not himself anymore."

"Who is he?"

"I don't know," she repeats. She thinks of the grin he gave her. Of the way Ron says he talks about her. His viciousness, his calm, simmering vengeance. The way he no longer says Voldemort and the way he is dating a Draco Malfoy who has not changed. "But they are not trustworthy."

.XoX.

Fudge has been impeached and removed from office. He regrets his actions but cannot take them back. The position is vacant and people are fumbling to fill the vacuum. It is a speedrun election; two weeks' time is all that is allotted for campaigning.

Hermione gathers the group and announces she's wanting to run. "I think a Muggleborn can offer a unique perspective essential for progress in the wizarding world," she gushes, excited. Behind her is a chalkboard with notes so complex surely she can only understand. "Reparations and consecutive reconstruction of the wizarding world are in order – I already have several things mapped out, listed here, though I'm open to suggestions – and if someone is elected only because they are known, we may not yet be able to avoid another war–"

"I must say, Hermione, I thought you had known my intentions." Eyes in the room swing to Harry, who is draped across his chair, sipping on a glass of ice water. His lips are cracked so hard they are bleeding. He is a sight that causes sore eyes. His fancy robes contrast harshly to his rupugent body.

He rises from his seat smoothly and approaches Hermione. She glances around the room and chuckles nervously. "Your intentions for what, Harry?"

He stops in front of her. "To run for Minister, of course."

Ron is to his feet in an instant. "Harry!"

Hermione holds up a hand and Ron shuts up but does not sit down. His jaw is clenched tightly. "Harry," says Hermione, carefully, "... Do you not like my plans? As I've said, I am open to suggestions."

"Oh, Hermione," he says, laughing a little. He places a comforting hand on her shoulder. "It had nothing to do with you. What you have here is great. It's really thought through."

"So," she says. "What's the problem?"

"There's no problem. It is just ideal – for both of us – to let me run for Minister. You'll be at my side the entire time, of course."

"Why? If I'm to be consulted on the policies and there's no problem with me running, then why shouldn't I?"

"It's going to be a fast election," he says, shrugging. "You won't gain popularity fast enough. I will."

Hermione goes silent, considering this. Ron snaps, "Why don't you just tell everyone you back her instead? Wouldn't it have, like, I dunno, the exact same results?"

Harry sighs deeply. Like Ron is exhausting, like Ron is not worth his breath. "It'd be important to be influential throughout the term of office," he says meticulously. "So that my policies will be implicated with a higher degree of acceptance."

"Half the world hates you right now." Half the world. Including my sister.

"Not half." Not yet.

"You knew," Ron says, taking on an accusatory quality, "that Mione wanted to run for office. She's talked about this, implied this, for years now. Why are you doing this? Undermining her?"

"Ron," she says. She is ignored.

"I am not undermining anything," says Harry, turning toward Ron. "I am doing what is best for the wizarding world."

"No," says Ron. "You're doing what's best for you." And now – implausibly – Harry resembles the type. He used his status for free drinks; used it to bypass an already fragile legal system; used it to turn people against his sister; used it, used it, used it.

Harry wants something. He will get it by being Minister. Ron does not want to allow it. Hermione might.

Harry spreads his too thin arms out in front of him. "You are permitted to think so. You are permitted to try and stop me. You are also," he cocks his head, the light catching on his glasses, "likely to fail."

Hermione places a hand on his shoulder, tearing his impenetrable gaze away from Ron. "It's alright, Ron," she says. "He's right."

"But! Mione–!"

"It'll be okay." She smiles at Harry. "I trust him."

.XoX.

"Congratulations, Harry," says Draco. They do not have pet names, do not say Babe or Dear or – god forbid – my love, because there is no love here. "I did not expect it to be such a close thing."

Harry tucks himself deeper into the blankets. "Ginny has always been a smart girl. She's charming, convincing, certinaitly. But I am more so."

"If even just slightly?"

"If even just slightly."

"Do you have plans? One does not become Minister for no reason." Nor does Harry do anything for no reason. Draco has a loose grasp on what moves him and what he does know he is afraid of.

"Yes," says Harry, turning on his side to face Draco. "I will not have to do much. Everything is already in motion. That is the beauty in mutual hatred: It goes both ways."

And Draco cannot help but ask, "Am I safe?"

Harry runs his fingertips – cold, artificially cold – along Draco's cheekbones. "I," he says, voice barely a whisper, "can guarantee no such thing. I will not be working against you, if it is any consolation."

Draco sinks into his touch. "It is."

And then they sink into their routine; a tentative and quiet round of love making that is not accurately named. It is convenient. Two men in a relationship who do have sex drives, who do find each other, in some sense, attractive.

Afterwards Draco asks, sweat still dripping down his chest, teasingly, "Was I your first, Harry?"

Harry looks at him out of the corner of his eye, then stares at the ceiling. "In sex... yes. But you are beat on... other forms of intimacy."

"Am I?"

"There are some details of the horcrux hunt I do not talk about. That Ron and Hermione do not even know."

Draco studies his face, white as a sheet as always, still gleaming with sweat, intensely. He is not following whatever is being said here.

"I was a horcrux. The unintentional one, the second youngest one – I was his horcrux."

Draco laughs at him, baffled. "Granger had said that–"

"Only objects could be horcruxes?" Harry shrugs. "She'd assumed that. So did You-Know-Who. So did I. But we were wrong, the lot of us. Do you know what it feels like, to have your body not belong to you? To be a shared vessel without your say so? And then to die, be brought back with it gone?"

"A relief," Draco guesses.

"No," says Harry, staring deep into Draco's eyes. "A pain. A horrible, horrible thing – to be so incomplete, to be so broken. I had spent so long with my soul attached with his, I had no idea who I was without it."

"Are," Draco chokes on the words, "are you in pain now?"

Harry turns back to the ceiling. "No," he says simply. "I had that problem dealt with quickly. And I am better now. I experience the most intense form of intimacy on the daily. We explore each other's bodies, Draco. He shares mine."

"Who is he? Why – how is it possible?"

"No reason, Draco."

And Draco goes to bed. He knows Harry better than anyone by now and recognizes a dismissal when he hears one.

(Well. Better than most anyone.)

.XoX.

The thing that ends, officially, Ron and Harry's previously rocky friendship – draws the line deeper into the sand between the war of public opinion of Harry Potter – is something Ron thinks about on a daily basis. He will tell the tale to friends and foe alike and no matter who it is, no one believes him.

It's okay. He wouldn't believe him, either.

Ron and Harry are walking to the Minister building when a bomb – preusamaly Muggle; possibly magic – goes off. The circumstances of the attack will be investigated thoroughly, blamed on Ginny's people, and always suspicious. Ron does not know who did it, does not buy that his sister did, but, you know.

He has his theories.

There is screaming and fire and dead who died instantly and alive who are in the slow process of dying. Harry rises slowly from the rubble, helping Ron up absently. They alert nearby Aurors and begin rescuing people from the rubble.

Dust clogs his lungs, shoving him into violent coughing fits. Harry coughs, too, into his hand, and though it is too hard to see clearly, Ron thinks he sees blood come away on his hand.

They find a young man with his organs spread out beside him. He is sitting in a puddle of his own blood. He is moments from death. He is beyond the point of saving.

"Ha...Harry Potter?" His voice is hoarse. He coughs weakly. Harry kneels beside him, his face carefully cleared. "Is... that you, Harry?"

"It's me," says Harry softly, kindly. "I'm here."

Ron stands, walking a few feet away, turning his back to the scene. This is not his place. That man is dying and if he wants a few moments with his favorite celebrity before he does, then he can have it.

He hears Harry and the man exahcnage words, hushed whispers Ron cannot make out.

Eventually they stop.

But Harry does not rise from his spot and approach Ron, does not say solemnly that he is gone and now, they have to look for more survivors.

Harry doesn't do anything.

And Ron is sure that they have stopped talking. He is sure the young man is dead.

Rn glances hesitantly over his shoulder–

And then he stares. He feels sick to his stomach and stares and stares and cannot stop staring.

Like how Harry is obsessed with feeling those are alive, he, too, is fixated on touching the dead.

His fingers, his hand, is buried in the young man's stomach, in his remains. Harry's face is flushed, lips partly softly. His hand moves inside his orgas. Like he's fucking groping them, Ron thinks, sick to him stomach. Like he's groping his organs.

Are they warm? Soft, squishy? Harry knows. Harry wants to know and what Harry wants, lately, he's been determined to get.

And suddenly Ginny makes so much sense. Ron had doubted her at first, had taken to even listening to her with an uncertain, skeptical demeanor – but now, she's the beacon of truth in the rubbles of a Ministry building filled with the dead.

Ginny knew. Ginny always knew. Ron was a fool not to listen.

Ron leaves then, his feet moving before Ron can think better of it. He imagines Harry sitting, kneeled beside a dead man, fingers feeling his organs up, looking at his receding figure.

(They will never speak again.)

.XoX.

Hermione does not believe him. Does not understand. "Maybe you saw wrong," she suggests, locking their fingers together. "Harry isn't–"

"Harry Potter is a monster," Ron says.

"He's no monster, Ron," sighs Hermione. "What has gotten into you?"

"What has gotten into me?" He takes his hands from her. He imagines them as Harry's; cotated in still fresh blood. "No, Mione! What has gotten into him?"

"I know that Ginny has her reasons, and Harry holds it against her, but I don't–"

"This isn't about Ginny, mate." It's about what he saw. It's about what he's been seeing. Ginny just saw it first. His voice drops to a whisper. "Think about it, would you? Think about what he's been saying, what he's been doing. He's different. He's not our Harry."

"War will change people, Ron," she says, shifting her weight on her feet. "It changed me."

"And it changed me," says Ron. "It changed me and you and Ginny and the whole damn wizarding world – but it transformed him. Do you understand? Look at him. He looks dead."

"We don't understand the effect–"

He resist the urge to grab her by the shoulders. "He won't say his name. Voldemort's name. And us Purebloods used to cower in fear of it, watch him in awe as he had no problem in saying the very thing he was said to vanquished. Fear of the thing increases the fear of the thing itself. Harry was not afraid. He should not be, especially now, especially now that Voldemort is dead. And there is nothing to be afraid of."

"We can't get inside his head, Ron," she says gently. "We don't know why he changed in the matter he did. What we went through was not pleasant, and, sometimes, people cope in ways that are not conventional."

"He flocked to Malfoy," Ron rushes on. "Pretty much immediately, he's friends – and lovers – with a man he's hated for over seven years."

"Well, the 'school rivalry' thing always has been a little gay–"

"Draco hate crimed you," says Ron, voice quiet. "And he forgave him. You forgave him."

Hermione looks uncomfortable. "He apologized."

"After Harry practically forced him. And he didn't mean it. He could not have meant it. Why would Harry bring such a horrible man into situations in which you could have to be civil with him?" Ron shakes his head. "It's cruel. It's callous and Harry was not cruel."

"Harry is not now." Stubborn. Harry's man, through and through.

"He tore the position of Minister out right from under you," Ron argues. "There were ways you could have been in charge – which he knew you wanted to do – and he didn't care. He was selfish."

"I trust him," is said softly.

"You shouldn't," is said even softer. "I don't."

"We don't have to let Harry tear us apart. I love you," she says. Nearly a beg. "I love you and that is not untrue because I also love him."

"He is a monster," Ron repeats.

Hermione shrugs. "He's my friend. He's trying his best."

"He's going to send our world into a civil war."

"But isn't that the thing with civil wars?" She tilts her head. "They are usually required to be two-sided."

Ron goes silent.

(They will never speak again.)

.XoX.

Ginny stands with her fists at her side and a level stare. Harry stands six feet from her. Appearing casual... but in no way relaxed. His skin is waxy. His hair is falling out in patches.

He smells now. It's no longer just Ginny who can sense it.

"Hello," he greets. "It's been a while. Hasn't it, Ginny? Since we spoke directly, at any rate."

"A year," she says. "More or less two."

"Has the news got around to you yet?"

"It has," she says. "Has mine?"

"No. But I can guess what it is, can't I? An agreement to our declaration of war. Winner takes the Minister, decides whether I live or die, decides everything. Winner takes all."

"I do not want to do this," she says quietly.

"I do," says Harry. "And we're both doing it anyway. In what world do intentions matter?"

"In mine.

"Not in mine. Winner will decide who's right. Winner takes all."

"You will die," she says firmly. "My people will kill you."

"You are permitted to think so. They are permitted to try. You are also likely to fail."

"Why?" she begs. "Why are you doing this?"

"I'm not doing anything. I am living. Is it a crime?"

"It is," she says, "when you should be dead."

"I'll tell you what, Ginny." Harry grins. A disgusting thing. "Kill my people. Win the war. Save me for last. And before you kill me, we'll have one last conversation. And I'll tell you everything."

And Ginny says, "Okay."

(They will never speak again.)