#buom

“Can you guess?” he bit out and dumped into a winged armchair the witch had found on a flea market in Paris when out shopping with Fleur’s family and Mrs Weasley. The armchair was an awkward thing, a patchwork of green hues and suspicious stains, and Hermione had only bought it because of how Fleur’s eye ticked when she saw it, but somehow Harry just loved it. It was his armchair. Armed with a nail, lots of stealth, and bravery worthy of his facing-Voldemort moment, he’d even engraved his name on it in bold crooked lettering. Hermione had almost clobbered him to death right there.

“They ambushed you yet again with questions on how you got not-killed?” Ron offered while Hermione deliberated over possible chess moves.

“This was an awkward way of phrasing it, Ronald,” the witch rebuked, moving a pawn.

“Sorry,” the ginger muttered before sending Harry a winning smirk. The Chosen One snorted. “So, am I right?”

“It’s worse.” Harry stretched out, his legs dangling from the arm-rest, and rested his head against a pillow he had bought just for his armchair. “They’re asking about my plans for the future.”

“Well, that’s actually a sensible question.”

“It isn’t when my future is as much a mystery to me as it is to them,” Harry groaned. Lifting his chin, he scrutinised the ceiling painted by Luna, across which Hermione was engraving lines of runes in patterns known only to her.

“Send them to Trelawney. She would know,” Ron said with a snicker. Hermione’s fingers tightened on the edge of the chessboard at the mention of the Divination Professor.

And this woman tells me I hold grudges, Harry thought vindictively. Wisely, he didn’t voice his thought. With age he had come to understand how much wisdom silence contained.

“I already did,” he complained aloud instead. “And, of course, thanks to the awesome bit of Potter luck, she agreed to respond to their questions- well, interrogation, more like – and now all these wild ideas are circulating, starting from the one where I’m a Death God who wanted revenge on Voldemort for escaping my clutches and who is now to return to the world of the undead until I’m summoned by the honest citizens of magical Britain to protect them-“

Harry stifled a laugh at their horrified faces.

“-and ending with the one wherein I’m actually Dumbledore’s successor as a Light Lord and will work a couple of decades as an Auror until I somehow become Minister and bring LIGHT to people.”

Harry put all his emotions into his eyeroll, and Hermione was much moved. Tears glistened in her eyes. Then again, it might have something to do with the fact that she had just lost to Ron for the tenth time in a row and was on cooking duty for a week.

“This sucks, mate,” Ron said, extending his hands and feet with all the lazy grace of a sunbathing Crookshanks. The real Crookshanks was consoling his mistress with loud purring. “Still better than the one where you had some hidden vampire soulmate whom you were supposed to reunite with after coming into your creature inheritance.”

“You’re too damn cheerful about it,” Harry groaned. “Stop it. Where’s my good mate who beat up the guy who admitted he was stalking me because I’m his true soulmate and he has my name written on his heart?”

“Well, I was a tad a hungry back then and he was blocking the doorway-“

Harry fake-sniffed, pulled out his pillow (red with a lion stitched in golden thread, of course!) from under his head, and hugged it tightly.

“Is food more important to you than our friendship?”

“Don’t ask questions you won’t like answers to.”

“You’re both so silly I don’t know how we even ended up as friends,” Hermione cut in, her lips twitching despite the dramatic sigh she let out.

“There was a troll involved,” Harry reminded her.

“And Harry sticking his wand into its nose.” Ron paused. “Wait, aren’t troll boogies corrosive? How did the polish on your wand survive?”

“It didn’t. Erm, or at least it wouldn’t have if not for the Wand Weighing thing. Ollivander had a few words to say to me about my lack of wand maintenance skills. I was lucky that the corrosion was slow and would have taken a decade to fully eat through the protective enchantments.”

“It was irresponsible of you, Harry.” Hermione shook her head. “I hadn’t even imagined you didn’t take care of your wand properly!”

“The horror!” Ron mouthed. Harry knew it was mostly to support him; once the ginger got his own wand, he treated it like a gift from Merlin and even better than a broom, polishing and anointing it with special oils.

Harry rolled his eyes and tossed the pillow up. “I’ve learnt better now, okay? Learnt from my mistakes, all that. Rather, let’s talk about something pleasant.”

“Like the glazed pomegranate pie Hermione’s gonna bake tonight?” Ron piped up. He stood up and set upon putting away the chess-set and clearing away the table.

“I’m on cooking duty, Ronald, not on ‘fulfilling your culinary whims’ duty.”

“I wouldn’t mind some pomegranate pie myself!” Harry supported his friend and dodged an irritated hex from the girl. “No need to resort to violence. Don’t do to your friend what you wouldn’t do to a house elf. Besides, aren’t we dining together tonight? So, I do get some say in the menu!”

“We are. All right, you can consider the pie done but only if you bring those salted caramel macaroons we had the other day. Did you find them in one of those new places in Diagon?”

Harry knew what she referred to. The couple of months right after the war officially ended, i.e. Voldemort’s death, webs of fear lingered and people clung to the habits born out of self-preservation instinct. However, now, half a year past, reconstruction effort flourished. The Ministry paid special attention to fixing Hogwarts and Diagon Alley – the two major symbols of the modern magical world. Among the many activities was endorsing the businesses and offering good deals on rent and the like, and now new shops appeared almost on a weekly basis, especially once the Unspeakables had finished the formulae needed to extend space to slot in new buildings.

Even with the subsidies, however, the start-ups often didn’t have enough resources to buy out the spaces where huge shops used to be, so they cooperated into small groups of two-four and divided the floor. Harry’s heart always twanged when he walked past the Owl Emporium. Now there was a millinery and a herbs shop there as well as the office for a charity aimed at giving raid victims new homes, for those of them who were left without.

He had entered the millinery, once. As always, he walked around in disguise, but the smiley shop assistant recognised him anyway. No matter how much Harry refused, they wanted to offer him a present – any hat in the shop, even including those that had magical properties, whether they came from creature parts, enchantments, or runes. Harry ceded when the boy told him his family would have been exterminated had Voldemort lived.

He had chosen a small bowler hat with white feathers on either sides of his head, and which allowed the wearer to float in the air in case they were falling to the ground. He would never wear such an ostentatious thing, but the feathers reminded him too much of Hedwig to throw it away, not to mention that he had never been the type of person to treat a gift ill.

“Actually, I made them myself,” Harry said, returning to the present. He blushed at Hermione’s awed sound.

“I didn’t know you could cook!”

“Well, it’s not like I had an opportunity to show off my skills at Hogwarts, with all the house elves there. And I would never dare take away the kitchen from your mum, Ron.”

“She won’t mind. Honestly? I think she’s gonna be chuffed that at least someone shares her hobby. Seriously, try talking to her ‘bout it and maybe you’ll band together to have some cooking fun!”

“You’re only so enthusiastic because if we join up, you’re going to get the feast of your life.”

Ron only grinned.

Suddenly, Hermione thwacked herself on the forehead. Crookshanks glowered at her because she had been petting him and now she stopped. “Oh, I invited Bill, Fleur, and Gabrielle as well.”

“Want to hear some more home design advice?” Harry asked with a wink. This time, he was prepared and ducked.

“If this- woman tries to vanish my furniture because it doesn’t suit her tastes again, Bill won’t have a wife anymore.”

“Don’t worry, now that my armchair’s here and Fleur hates it, I’ll protect your furniture with my life,” Harry solemnly swore. “But seriously, it’s not our usual crowd. Why did you invite them? Not that I mind, of course, just-“

“I would like to pose some questions to Bill about his job.”

Harry sat up in surprise.

“You want to be a curse-breaker?”

Not that Hermione lacked the knowledge or resourcefulness but… The girl didn’t like action and adventures, and, from Bill’s tales, being a cursebreaker was all about action and adventures.

“Oh, no, of course not. While this line of work does offer tantalising opportunities to glimpse into ancient knowledge through exploring abandoned ruins and tombs, this would be stressful in a way I don’t enjoy. Rather, I would like to know the specifics of working with goblins as well as get whatever info I can on their lifestyle, habits, and needs.”

“Is this part of your creatures and beings welfare promotion scheme?”

Hermione nodded, rubbing behind her cat’s ear absently. Ron excused himself to prepare them some tea – he confessed that he never trusted Hermione to make it right.

“Do you remember the trial? The one which determined how much money we owed Gringotts for destroying their property and freeing the dragon? The goblins were treated so horribly even though we were the ones at fault.”

“At least you insisted on a fair deal,” Harry reminded her. That trial had happened a few days after the war, and the memory was hazy. “Even if it means that a great part of your money will be going towards fulfilling it.”

Of course, the boy insisted on paying everything himself first, but both his friends hissed at him, reminding him that they had broken into Gringotts together and they would pay for the damage together, splitting the whole cringe-inducing sum into three. Thankfully, even though neither Hermione nor Ron were the Chosen One, they still received gifts from the grateful population, yes, including monetary ones.

At the same time, this spurred both of them to find temporary jobs at Hogwarts and Hogsmeade. Harry joint them occasionally, but McGonagall didn’t allow him to help out anywhere without paying him, and he couldn’t take money for extending his help to people in need when he had enough to subsist. Thus, he donated most of the time.

He also filled his days with redecorating Grimmauld Place. With Kreacher’s help, the house elf becoming more and more amicable with each day, he cleaned out the cupboards, the storage rooms, the old wardrobes… He separated the artefacts he discovered into several piles, some to give away, some to store in Gringotts, some to use, some to throw away, some to put away in a secure place so he could research their effects. He enriched the Department of Mysteries almost as much as Hermione and Ron’s attic.

Ron bumped into the doorway and cursed, driving Harry’s thoughts away.

“Here it is!” He called out cheerfully, levitating a tray onto the small carved table, another flea market find. Levitation to this day remained one of Ron’s very favourite spells. “The best damn tea in the whole of Britain!”

Hermione frowned. “Why are there four cups?”

Ron dropped into his seat, shooing away Crookshanks.

“You get two, no arguments. One is the normal kind, which you’re drinking now, and the second contains a sleeping potion because you’re definitely taking a nap soon. Don’t think I didn’t notice that you slipped away to read till morning again.”

“Hermione!” Harry exclaimed. “You spent our entire Hogwarts life convincing me to take care of myself, and now you’re flaunting those same rules.”

The girl flushed.

“Well, it’s not like I have much time during the day! I mean, there’s the job, some extra work with the Ministry because Kingsley asked for my input, SPEW, and my NEWTs are coming up!”

Harry blinked a few times and leaned forward. Ron levitated his cup into his hand, and the green-eyed boy took a distracted sip.

“Are you seriously preparing for your NEWTs?”

“Of course. There is no reason why I wouldn’t.” Hermione frowned at the both of them. “I get that neither of you has fully decided what you want to do with your lives yet, but you will need good grades either way.”

“You’re really clever but you tend to overlook some things,” Ron butted in before she harangued them on the subject. “There exists a great number of professions that don’t require NEWTs; actually, it’s mostly just the jobs in the Ministry that do – the jobs that we both know we don’t want. Besides, it’s not like someone will turn away our job applications-“

“For your own sake, Ronald, I hope you are not snatching the chance to use your hero status to procure yourself a job when you might not be even qualified for it! In such a case you could be robbing a specialist of-“

“I’m sure Ron didn’t mean it that way,” Harry cut in hastily, throwing his hands up into the air.

Hermione sniffed.

Ron gave her a nervous smile. “H-Harry’s right, of course I wouldn’t think of getting a job that easily! Ridiculous, really.”

“Still, Harry, the reporters aside, you have to decide what you want to do in life, whether you want to follow in your parents’ footsteps and become an Auror, or join the ranks of the Healers like you told me you considered, or be a DADA teacher-“

“It’s still too early!” Ron protested. Harry agreed.

“I’m not trying to push you, I’m just scared that after spending your life fighting Voldemort you have no idea that there are other ways of life.”