Warnings: Mild violence. Alcohol abuse.

Disclaimer: This work is based on characters, situations and setting created by JK Rowling who retains all rights to them.

Author's notes: Many thanks to my beta, aigooism, to 0idontknow0 for the prompt, and to praevarus for modding the live journal hp_mhealthfest, of which this was part.

She heard a sound and – as she always did – Mrs Genevieve Thomas sprang from her bed and raced down the stairs. Her husband rolled over and went back to sleep. He was used to this by now. As she stumbled half-asleep across the hall she knew herself that it would be something like an upset rubbish bin, a popped balloon or a fuse blowing. It always was. Still, there was that tiny chance that it would be him – her son returning. The sound which had woken her just might have been the crack wizards made when they Apparated. She unchained the front door, opened it and looked out into the shadowy space between the house and the garage.

Her heart stopped; her hand flew to her mouth; her eyes prickled with sharp tears. There he was. Not a dream. A man. An adult man but her Dean – unmistakeably – nonetheless.

They hugged wordlessly. She pulled him into the kitchen and sat him in a chair.

'All these months without a word! And look at the state of you!' She couldn't stop stroking his back. 'When did you last have a decent meal?'

'I've had a few days on French cuisine, as it happens. I could murder a cup of tea.'

'Of course you could. What am I thinking?' She was shaking. Water sploshed around when she lifted the kettle. What was the matter with her? At last the thing she had stopped daring to hope for had happened. She couldn't pull her emotions together enough to feel the joy she was due.

Dean was saying, 'If I'd got in touch then they would have found you. I couldn't have that.'

Genevieve looked down into her sparkling stainless steel sink. They'd found her anyway. That tale could wait.

'Did you think I'd just walked off and left you for good?' He asked.

'You explained. About the registration. But I never knew. From day to day…' She flicked the kettle switch down angrily. 'You look exhausted,' she whispered gently. She had news for him. She made their mugs of tea in silence, wondering how she would word it.

Dean shrugged. 'It's alright now, though. That's all finished. I just came from the batt— the end of it. It's all going to be alright now.'

She looked him up and down. She could make him shower and she could feed him up but she didn't know if that was going to be enough. He didn't look like a man for whom things were going to be alright now.

'I'm looking forward to my bed. I was actually staying in a seaside cottage for the last week or so, so that was nice. Not like your own bed, though. Is it?'

'I've touched nothing in there. Just left you the sports section of the paper every time West Ham played. You've got a lot of catching up to do, boy.'

Dean closed his eyes and leaned his head back. He smiled softly, as though remembering something from long ago.

When he was half-way through his tea, she said, 'That's not what your father did either, it turns out. He didn't just walk off and leave us.'

Dean gave her a cynical look.

'There was a man.' She swallowed. 'A wizard. Well, there were two but the other one didn't speak. They came to the door a couple of months after you'd left. I thought I knew what they were, but then I saw that snake tattoo you'd told me about – the one with the skull – on his arm. You'd drawn me that picture of it and it was just the same. So I was sure. Your sisters were due back from school soon after that and I wanted those wizards gone before the girls got home. They looked into my eyes like you said they would and I had the strangest feeling in my head.'

Dean reached forward and stroked her arm.

'Oh it was fine. It was months ago. I'm over it. Only, after he'd seen that I didn't know where you were, I found myself thinking about your father. Things I'd not thought of for years.'

'Yeah?' Dean sounded tense and tired now.

'The wizard laughed at me then and he stepped back. '

Dean hissed through his teeth.

'It's alright. Nothing happened. Except that he said—he said something horrible about your father. That they'd killed him. How they'd killed him. Details I didn't need. My biggest shock, though, was that your father was a wizard, too. Well, he must have been. From what they said. He didn't abandon us; they killed him.'

Dean rubbed both of his hands over his hair which was cut too close to his scalp. He swore quietly, then looked up to see if she'd heard the bad word. She decided to ignore it.

'It was months,' she said, 'before I put it all together. Then I wanted to get a message to you to let you know that your dad had been magic, so you didn't need to register at all. But, of course, I had no way of getting in touch with you. You must be hungry. What am I thinking?'

'More tired than anything, to be honest, Mum. I'll wait until breakfast. It's a lot to take in. Recently, there's been a lot to take in all round. I'm knackered.' He rose to standing.

'Of course you are.' She patted his arm. 'It's so good to have you home, son.'

A few hours later he woke up screaming. It woke Lara who stood looking baffled in her bedroom doorway. Before the ten year-old could ask anything, Genevieve told her, 'Dean's home. He's having a nightmare. Go back to sleep.' She doubted her daughter would be able to sleep once she'd had that news, but at least she'd be in her room and out of the way.

Dean stared through his mother at first, then he spasmed a couple of times before jerking himself to sitting and looking at his surroundings.

'Sorry,' he said. 'Did I wake you?'

'Is everything alright?'

'Must be all that garlic in Fleur's French food. Doesn't agree with me.'

He lay back down. He was lying on the top of the bedcovers, still fully dressed with his shoes on and everything.

'Everything's fine, Mum. I'm sorry.'

He slept late the next day. His sisters were at school and his step dad was at work by the time he shuffled downstairs. She had told them he was home. Roger had looked relieved, Lara reassured, but Jade was stunned, like she'd been sure he was dead. Genevieve hadn't even noticed her older daughter giving up hope. Genevieve rang into work pretending she was sick.

She fed Dean then sent him up for a shower. He came back down for lunch in clothes he must have found in his room. They didn't fit at the ankle or across his shoulders anymore. She started to talk about buying him some more but he pointed a wand at them and they grew. She wanted to wash the clothes he'd just taken off but he said he could do that with magic too. He was a bit shaky and still had bags under his eyes, but he looked like it shouldn't take too much longer for him to settle down.

His nightmares didn't wake her again, but she would listen at his door when she went to bed and the silence in his room made her afraid because it was unnatural and absolute like he'd cast a spell.

During the day he seemed to be fine, except that he never left the house. She would catch him watching at windows. He was too vigilant. He jumped at every noise that came into their little home from the outside world.

Jade was in the middle of taking her GCSE exams, though, so there was no time to think of much except getting her through them, on top of all the excitements and sadnesses of Lara's last weeks at Primary school, and Roger establishing his plumbing business, her workload at the salon increasing because these days women wanted their sun tans ibefore/i they went on their holidays, and the usual housework, laundry and shopping. Dean wasn't in the way and most of the time he seemed happy enough; sometimes he was even helpful.

When she came in from work one afternoon in the middle of June she found Dean in the sitting room, pressed against the wall beside the window.

'Can you see her?' he asked hoarsely.

'Am I ok to put the light on?'

'In a minute.'

'You mean the woman on the other side of the road?'

He nodded sharply.

'The one with the interesting dye job? Black and white streaks of hair she's got, all down her back. She's white – very white – and tall and thin in a long coat.'

Dean swallowed. 'She really is there?'

'Sure. Did you think you could have imagined that two tone hair do? Can I put the light on now?'

'In a minute.'

Genevieve went into the kitchen to start on tea. After a few minutes Dean joined her.

'What's going on at Mrs Leyburn's house?' he asked. 'There's a iTo Let /i sign on it.' His voice shook.

'Did I not say?' she began casually, trying to radiate her fake calm to him. 'She had to go into a nursing home. Her children are hoping they can pay for it by renting out her house. I don't know, though, everyone seems to end up selling to pay for Care. She got confused. That was all. It wasn't safe for her to be on her own anymore.'

'That woman is looking round it. An agent drove up and he took her in. The name of the letting agency was printed onto the car.'

'A lot of firms seem to do that with their cars these days. Maybe she'll take the place. I'm just hoping it doesn't go to students. Remember the noise that year the place on the corner was full of students from—'

'But what if she moves in?'

Genevieve put down the wet colander of peppers. 'Do you know her?'

He nodded sharply again. He was breathing too deeply.

'Is she a Magical person? One of your lot or the bad ones? She looked like a harmless middle-aged woman, to me, one who should sue her hairdresser, but not—'

Dean left the kitchen and shot upstairs, slammed his bedroom door and then that weird silence fell on the top of the house. She couldn't hear the bathroom window fan rattling anymore.

He stopped eating. He was sleeping at strange times. One morning they came downstairs to find him in the sitting room staring at the dark and empty house opposite. Genevieve ushered the girls off to school early, asking Jade to walk Lara round to the Primary before she went on to sit her exam at her own school. Dean did not move.

Genevieve asked him what was wrong, insisting on an answer when he said he was fine. She could hear Roger in the kitchen getting his sandwiches together and boiling the kettle for his flask. Dean kept telling her he was ok, but she could see his blank eyes fixed beyond her on a place far away or long ago. She tried to hug him.

'I said I'm fine!' he yelled. His hands made contact with her shoulders. Swiftly she was pushed back, landing on the floor, the carpet scratching ladders into her tights and the coffee table knocking her elbow. It took her a moment to start breathing again, by which time Roger had backed a devastated-looking Dean into a corner.

'I'm sorry, Mum. I'm so sorry…'

'You ever do anything like that again, son and—' Roger threatened.

'No. No, I won't. I'm so sorry.' Dean started crying. Wet tears plummeted down his face.

That was more than Genevieve could bear so she struggled to her feet and pretended that she wasn't dizzy and that her legs and elbow and shoulders weren't hurting. 'It's fine,' she said. 'I'm fine, Roger. It was an accident.'

'I don't know what happened, Mum. It'll never happen again. I promise, Roger. I promise you.'

Genevieve nodded, though it was clear enough to her that if he didn't know what had happened then he wasn't going to be able to prevent himself from repeating it.

She got a phone call from Jade just over a week later at work. Jade was outdoors on her mobile, she could hear that much. There was the noise of a lorry engine which meant that she had to strain to hear her daughter.

'How did your last exam go?' she asked her. 'Good to be free of them for a while?'

'Oh. Not great actually, but it's over. I thought I was probably going to have to retake the English Language anyway. No, but, look Mum. I got home and it's Dean—'

Genevieve braced herself, waiting to hear what he'd done now. If he'd hit his sister then she didn't know what she was going to do with him.

'He's trembling, like, all over. He's in the sitting room again, in the dark, watching these people move into Mrs Leyburn's place and he's obviously terrified. I tried talking to him. I don't know what to do.'

'Ok,' Genevieve said as crisply as she could, 'you get back in the house and make a pot of tea. Put a couple of sugars in Dean's. If he'll talk to you then that's good, but if he doesn't want to don't push it, just give him the cup of tea. I'm on my way home now.' More time off work. 'I'll be about twenty minutes. You see to your own lunch and I'll sort out food for Dean when I get there.'

She was going to have to make him a doctor's appointment. They couldn't live like this. He couldn't live like this and who'd say that he was really living anyway: watching the telly all day and mooching round the house? Whatever he'd been through, her baby, in his year away, it was more than he could cope with and he was hurting. She wiped a tear away and blew her nose. That wouldn't do, crying at a bus stop. People would think she was drunk or something.

Two removals men were manhandling a fancy carved dressing table into the house opposite when she got there. Her sitting room curtains were closed and the light appeared to be on behind them. A young lad about Dean's age came out of the back of the van dragging a trunk like the one Dean used to take to school. He was pale like the woman had been, but his hair was shorter and white all over. He shot a quick look at Genevieve as she passed; she thought he looked scared behind his poker face.

Jade was wonderful. Genevieve could have stayed at work. Jade had got Dean eating noodles and laughing at some quiz show the two of them were watching together. He looked relaxed.

He said, 'Hi Mum!'

Jade said, 'There's tea in the pot. It might be a bit stewed.'

'How was the English paper?' Genevieve asked, as though for the first time.

'I dunno. I thought I'd failed it, but I was talking it through with Dean and I might be exaggerating the damage. Counting it up, I think I've lost less than 30 marks.'

'That should be enough. And you can always retake.'

The tea was ok. Genevieve took a moment to drink it in the kitchen before going through to join her children in front of the telly.

When Roger came in later he opened the curtains. By then the moving van had gone. There was no sign of the new inhabitants over the road.

In late July the woman started coming out to the front garden to pull up weeds and tidy it up. She looked a little lost as though gardening wasn't something she was used to, or at least not something she was used to doing by hand. Genevieve wondered why that young man she'd seen couldn't help with trimming the hedge instead of leaving his mother (presumably she was his mother) to snap at it with shears as she barely balanced on a step ladder. Dean watched her from the upstairs landing window.

'Should I offer to lend her our hedge trimmer?' Roger asked. 'Or I could do the job for her in five minutes. She'll be all day at this rate and she's making a right mess of it.'

Genevieve wondered what Dean's reaction would be. She didn't reply.

Roger sighed. 'It's the neighbourly thing to do.' He was across the street before she could stop him.

The woman with the black and white hair froze to watch Roger. Then she scurried down the step ladder and disappeared inside the house before he reached her. Genevieve put the kettle on.

'You'd think she'd never seen a black man before,' Roger muttered when he got back indoors. 'Have we still not got any biscuits?'

Gloria at work had been asking after Dean, about where he'd been, and when he was coming into the shop so she could have a look at him. Her middle girl was about the same age as him and they'd been joking since the two of them had both been in nappies about setting them up together. Genevieve couldn't explain.

She never normally told lies, apart from the little ones about why he'd been off at boarding school and what they'd taught him. She might have gone overboard on the number of GCSEs she'd allotted him and she'd looked up when A level results day was so she'd be able to claim him some of those, too. She was thinking a couple of Bs and a couple of A stars. Those were just small lies the Ministry made her tell to cover up the magic. She was shocked by herself when she told Gloria that Dean had gone to Cambodia because he was going to spend his gap year travelling. It was a relief after she'd done it, to know she wouldn't be expected to get Dean out of the house and down to the salon. But it was terrible to be someone who could lie so easily.

It was late on a Thursday night when the strange pale boy knocked on their door. She answered with the chain on. He asked if Dean was in. He asked for her son by name.

'Who shall I say is calling?' she asked, pulling on the formality as a protection.

He swallowed. She wasn't sure what he replied. It didn't make sense. She closed the door and left him on the doorstep.

Dean was in the kitchen, putting leftovers in tubs for her. She told him there was someone to see him and he flinched. When he asked who, she wasn't sure what to say.

'The young man in Mrs Leyburn's house. Dayto Malby? I couldn't hear what he said properly.'

'Can't be Dayto; that's not a name,' Roger said. He was drying dishes.

Dean looked into a pot of red cabbage. 'Draco,' he said. A shiver ran the length of his body. 'Draco Malfoy.'

Roger sucked his teeth. 'That's not a name either.'

'Shall I tell him you're out?' Genevieve asked.

'No. It's fine,' said Dean in a small voice. 'Only don't leave—I mean, stay around.'

'I can do that,' she reassured him. The blond man was so slight, and Dean was so tall and he had those shoulders these days. She couldn't imagine why he was so scared.

Dean opened the door. She lurked by the bottom of the stairs – just out of sight but within hearing.

'I… uh…'

'What do you want, Malfoy?'

'I found this. I mean, you left it.'

There was a silence.

'Aren't you going to take it? It was in the cellar when—'

'Yeah.' Dean's voice was rough, almost aggressive, cutting off what the other man was going to say. 'Is that it?'

'I'm trying to do the right thing. I'm trying to work out what the right things are. I thought it would be right to give you back your wand.' It was a quiet, tremulous voice.

'Yeah. I suppose. Was that everything?'

'Not really.'

'Do you expect me to ask you in?'

A sharp intake of breath. 'No. No, no, no. Here is—this is—I don't want to go—'

Dean laughed with a cruelty she had never heard in him before.

'Never been inside a Muggle house, Death Eater? Or only to tort—'

'I never did –I… I never did. I mean… I did bad things. But not Muggles. Not in their houses.'

'Why are you here, Malfoy?'

'To give your wand back.'

'No here. There. Living there.'

'Malfoy Manor's under investigation while Father's being held by the Ministry. We had to move out.'

'I don't care. Why there?'

'It was advertised. We were in a hurry. Oh.' Genevieve could hear the nervous swallow from where she stood, leaning against the wooden slats of the bannister. 'We didn't know you lived here.'

'You just rang the doorbell and asked for me by name.' Dean sounded as hard as nails.

'I saw you. At the windows. I recognised you. Of course I did. We were in classes together.'

'I know we were. Is that everything?'

'How have you managed? Without your wand? I thought you might need it.'

'I picked one up at the Battle. No idea whose. Probably someone who doesn't need it anymore.'

Battle? He'd said nothing of a battle to her.

'Probably not. How's that one working out?'

'I don't use it much.'

The blond man made a confused noise.

'I live with Muggles, Malfoy. There's a Statute. Right?'

'Oh. Right. So how do you do—?'

'The Muggle way.' Dean slammed the door shut.

By the time she reached him he was squatting down with his back to the door, his head on his knees and his long arms wrapped round himself. He made a low keening noise. Now was not the time for questions, though they swirled in her mind like snowflakes in a paperweight. Genevieve put her arms round her son and held him tight. He leaned in to her.

Her knees were cold and her joints ached by the time he was ready to go to bed. As his bedroom door closed, Jade's opened. She went into Jade's room.

'Dean's not right,' Jade said.

'You don't need to tell me.'

'Has he—is there…?' Jade sighed. 'Has he been violent at all?'

'Oh it was nothing. It was an accident.'

Jade nodded. 'Look Mum, I'm going to get some information together, some leaflets. You know Vietnam?'

All Genevieve could think of was that it was near Cambodia. She clenched her fists against the lie she'd told her best friend.

'The war, right?' Jade qualified.

'The Vietnam War?'

'Yeah. So, like, after it, the soldiers, when they came home and that, right? We did it in History. They had this Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, a lot of them. It was like what Dean's got. We don't know what happened to him this last year, but I'm guessing it was stressful and traumatic.'

Genevieve sighed. 'It looks like it must have been. PTSD is a mental illness, isn't it? Dean's not mad. He's just taking a while to get used to being back home.'

'It's an illness, Mum. It's just an illness. So we get it cured. Don't get hung up on all that mental or physical. Dean's not right. He's not well.'

Genevieve nodded. 'You're a good girl, Jade,' she said.

'Good night, Mum!' said Jade.

The next day Jade said she was going out to look for a summer job, but she came back with leaflets and printed-out pages from websites, and an address and a list of phone numbers. She laid them out on the kitchen table. Jade was full of breezy confidence.

'These numbers are for mental health helplines,' Genevieve said, less convinced. 'Dean's not a nutter. You know that. You've known him all your life.'

'Those numbers are just for when he has his bad patches. To give him someone to talk to.'

Lara came nosing in so Genevieve sent her back in to the telly. She didn't want Lara thinking anything was wrong with Dean. Jade scooped up the papers and marched confidently up to Dean's room, opening the door anyway when he didn't answer her knock. Genevieve was just behind her so she saw Dean leaping from the bed in shock. He stood with his back flattened against the West Ham posters on his wall. Jade deflated.

'I just wanted to give you these,' she said, offering the bits of paper to him. When he didn't move, she put them down on the bed.

'Tea's nearly ready,' Genevieve said.

They backed away to leave him with the information. He came down to tea looking thunderous half an hour later. He ate quickly, but at least he was eating. Lara babbled on about the school disco they were calling a prom this year. Roger grumbled about the price of the new dress she wanted for it. It covered over the silence between the rest of the family. Dean stayed downstairs afterwards to help wash up. Genevieve sent Lara up for her bath. She was just about to start talking to Dean about doctors, when the doorbell rang.

Roger answered it. Dean stared into the soapy water. He must have been aware of his mother and sister watching him.

'You can tell your mother she can borrow my hedge trimmers any time,' they heard Roger say after a moment. 'They're electrical ones; do the job in half the time.'

Roger was spluttering and shaking his head when he came back into the kitchen. 'It's that Drayto youth from over the road,' he said. 'I asked him in but he wanted to wait on the doorstep. Reckons they don't have any electricity over there. In this day and age!'

Dean shuddered, but he went out to the hall. Having been given no other instructions, Genevieve took up her previous listening post by the bannisters again. Genevieve saw Dean shake his wet hands in the other young man's face before she tucked her face out of sight and couldn't see them anymore. Dean laughed cruelly.

'It's just soap,' Dean said. 'It won't burn you.'

'I suppose you'd like it if it did,' Draco hissed back.

Dean's shadow on the hall carpet shrugged. 'Sure you won't come in? So I can repay the hospitality I received at your place?' Dean's voice was too cold.

There was a silence.

'Look, I never did—'

'Maybe not but your house guests did. Your family did.'

Draco sighed. 'That's why I'm here.'

'To finish what your pet werewolf started?'

'He's not—he was never—You're not the only one who—' There was a pause. 'I can't remember whether I apologised yesterday. I know I gave you back your wand but I meant to apologise, too and I can't remember—'

'Apologise?' Dean shouted. 'What good's that?'

There was a sound of movement, then a cry of pain and the hard noise of something – someone—falling onto a concrete path. The front door was slammed. Dean pounded on it, growling and screaming. Genevieve retreated to the kitchen.

Roger was making for the door. She put her arm out to stop him.

'Just give him a minute to calm down,' she said.

'Did he hit you again?'

'Not me, no. I mean, no. Nobody. Sit down. He'll be calm again in a minute.' Genevieve sat at the table.

Roger obediently sat opposite her. Jade was already sitting, still and shocked.

'Lara,' Jade said after Dean had been howling for a couple of minutes.

'I'll check she's ok,' Roger said, leaping to his feet.

'She's in the bath,' Jade said.

'I'll shout through the door.'

Genevieve let him go, knowing he couldn't bear to sit and do nothing any longer.

Dean's crying fit didn't last long. He sloped into the kitchen looking sheepish.

'Cup of tea?' Jade asked, springing over to the kettle without waiting for an answer.

'I fixed the door,' Dean said. 'I'd cracked it, but it's as good as new now.'

'With magic?' Jade asked.

'Would it help if I hugged you?' Genevieve asked.

'Not this time.' Dean slid his wand in and out of his sleeve. Genevieve wondered which wand it was: they all looked the same to her.

'Did you read the PTSD info?' Jade asked.

Dean rubbed at his face and sank into a chair. He looked exhausted. He nodded.

'Is that young man, Draco, alright?' Genevieve asked.

Dean shrugged.

'You don't want any trouble from the police.'

'He won't go to the police.' Dean sounded beaten, his voice not much more than a whisper.

'I'm going to make you an appointment with the GP in the morning,' Genevieve said.

'Don't bother,' Dean whispered.

'Don't you want to get better?' Jade demanded.

In an unexpected burst of furious energy Dean thumped the table. 'What am I going to tell her?'

'That you had a bad year, and now—'

'She'll want to know what happened, and even if I can fob her off I'll be sent off to a counsellor or a psych nurse and what am I going to tell them?'

Genevieve and Jade waited. They didn't know how he might answer because they didn't know what had happened.

'As soon as I mention flying broomsticks and magic wands they'll have me locked up somewhere padded! I can't fucking tell anyone anything, can I?'

'Well, what about witch doc—Magic world doctors?' Jade asked. 'You must have that sort of thing.'

Dean started shaking. 'I can't leave the house. I can't go out there. I don't know who might snat—I don't know what's there. I do but there's shadows and dark corners—Look, a couple of friends of mine died and I just need to get over that. I'll be ok when I've got over it but it's taking a while.'

'You never see anyone,' Genevieve said. 'How can you get over anything if you don't talk to anyone?'

'Who?' He looked at the two of them like he despised them. 'You? What would you understand?'

Genevieve stood up to get kitchen roll to press to her eyes. 'Why hasn't that nice Irish boy visited? Seamus. He was your friend.'

'He's in a hospital in Dublin,' Dean said in a dreadful, flat voice. 'He had a year of hell.'

'Has he got PTSD too?' Jade asked.

'He's got fucking Crucio damage!' Dean snapped. He looked into his sister's face. 'You don't even know what that means.' He stormed upstairs and slammed his bedroom door.

After a couple of minutes Lara came running down the stairs as though she'd been waiting for his room to take him back. Her hair was wet and she was in a dressing gown and she was sobbing. Genevieve held her while Jade made that pot of tea.

Saturday mornings were usually slow starts, but the next morning Roger packed his daughters into his car bright and early to take them to the shopping centre. 'To cheer them up,' he'd said, but Genevieve knew he was as desperate to be out of the house and away from Dean as the girls were. She'd been invited along but Genevieve didn't think Dean should be alone in the house. He was her son, after all. Her responsibility. He'd never called Roger 'Dad', but growing up that's what he'd been. There was more distance now; Roger didn't understand much except that his women needed protecting.

The usual weird silence came from Dean's bedroom for most of the morning. Suddenly, just after eleven, he came charging down the stairs with his shoes and a jacket on over his tracksuit.

Genevieve had just enough time to ask where he was going before he opened the front door.

'Out!' he shouted back to her, closing it behind him.

Astounded, Genevieve watched him through the front window. He rushed to the centre of the road, then slowed and looked round warily. A white van drove past. Dean got to the front doorstep of the house opposite. He stood still for a minute or so. Then he turned and ran back towards the house. A motorcyclist swerved to avoid him. Genevieve got the front door open for him before he reached it; she closed it behind him. He watched her put the chain back on.

He sank down onto the sofa. She waited while he gathered his thoughts, staring at the ceiling.

'I was just thinking,' he said eventually. 'About what you said. That there is someone round here who would understand.' He sat forward: elbows on knees and head in hand. 'I can't, though. I just can't.'

'Who died?' Genevieve asked cautiously.

Dean shook his head. 'Nobody you know.'

'Still. Tell me.'

'Colin Creevey. He was only a kid. Snape. Professor Lupin and his missus, Fred Weasley—'

'Is he related to your friend Ron?'

'His brother.'

'That's a lot of people. Did you see any—?'

'Not all of them. I saw some of them being killed. Dobby, Lavender, Ted Tonks and Dick Cresswell who'd looked after me…'. A pause, then, 'I killed Dolohov.'

Genevieve tried to control her intake of breath. She looked across the street to the house where the pale mother and son lived. He was just across the road and Dean was right, he could understand, but she could not. She'd never seen anybody die. She'd certainly never killed anybody.

'Did that man deserve to die?' she asked.

'Oh yes.'

'Well. That makes you a hero, then.'

'That doesn't stop me from being a murderer.'

Genevieve didn't know what to say. She nodded towards the house opposite. 'Are they evil? Did they deserve to die?'

Dean sighed. 'Maybe not. Misled and scared, I think.' He paused. 'Malfoy was trying to apologise which makes it look like—' he broke off to stare into space for a moment. 'Perhaps Dolohov was misled and scared, too.'

There was nothing Genevieve could do. She thought about making fairy cakes to cheer Dean up. She dismissed the idea as too stupid. She shook herself. There was only one thing she could do.

She crossed the road carefully, unlike Dean. She straightened her spine and she knocked on the door of the house opposite. She noticed thick tape covering the doorbell. Perhaps they really didn't have electricity in there. The young man – Draco – answered the door and – sure enough – there were candles burning in candle sticks attached to the wall behind him.

'Draco. I'm pleased to meet you,' she said, as confidently as she could. She extended her arm so he could shake her hand, but he didn't. He stared at it with fear. 'My name is Genevieve Thomas. I believe you know my son, Dean.'

Draco nodded, turning his enlarged eyes from her hand to her face. His mother appeared in the hallway behind him. Her long hair was straggling all over her face and she still hadn't done anything about that awful dye job. She put a protective hand on her son's shoulder.

'I would like to invite you over. He could do with some company his own age and, erm…' His own type, but she didn't know the polite way to say that. 'Are you free now?' They both looked frightened and neither of them had said anything yet. Genevieve remembered Draco's reaction when Dean had invited him in. He was scared of Muggle houses for some reason. 'It's a nice day. You two could sit out in our garden. You can go down the side of the garage to reach the back gate. No need to walk through the house. I'll bring you out some drinks and snack—'

For the first time in their conversation, Draco's eyes met hers. They were weak, pale, bloodshot eyes with the irises in a strange grey colour. 'A drink?' he asked.

'Draco,' his mother murmured. It sounded like a warning.

Draco shrugged his mother's hand off his shoulder. He was the most animated she'd ever seen him. 'Beer?'

Genevieve was a little taken aback. 'Well, I suppose—' it was just about late enough to have a lunchtime drink. She could raid Roger's supply of cans in the fridge. Dean was over eighteen; she would have to assume that his friend was, too. Whatever it took. 'Beer, certainly. We've got some Pimms somewhere.' That was more alcoholic but, somehow, more respectable for a late morning drink in the garden on a summer's day. 'Will you come over and talk to Dean?'

Draco was pulling the door open.

'Draco, just one,' his mother said. 'Don't forget your cloak.'

'Mother!' he snapped.

'It's not that warm,' she protested as he left the house. She didn't look at Genevieve.

Genevieve stepped back to make space for Draco. 'Just one,' she said to the strange woman.

Draco shivered. He turned back to his mother and demanded, 'Get me my ijacket/i, then.'

'Jacket, yes, that's right. I meant jacket,' his mother muttered as she walked off down the hall. 'Or coat if it's longer or thicker,' she added under her breath.

'Just one?' Draco asked Genevieve. 'Really?'

'Not really,' Genevieve said.

'What's Pimms? How strong is it? Have you got Firewhiskey, or Muggle whisky? I get that from the shop in—' he stopped abruptly when his mother reappeared with a tailored tweed jacket over her arm. He thrust out his arm. 'I won't be long,' he said, grabbing the jacket from her and marching to the road.

'Thank you,' Genevieve said to his mother, but the pale woman closed her front door without a word.

Dean watched them through the sitting room window as they crossed the road. Genevieve could not read her son's expression. She took Draco down the side of the house and unlocked the back gate for him. She went in the back door. Dean stood in the kitchen door, still looking blank.

'I… I… I invited him round for a drink,' she said cautiously.

Dean nodded.

Genevieve took a couple of cans out of the fridge and two glasses off the draining board. She handed them to Dean. He looked surprised.

'I… erm… I thought. You're both eighteen, after all so why not? Roger won't mind.'

Dean shrugged and took the drinks.

'You two get started on those and I'll make up some Pimms. I'll put some crisps in bowls. Do you know if there were any of those little sausage rolls left?'

'Whose idea was the booze?' Dean asked, moving to the kitchen to look out onto the garden, where Draco was gingerly touching the garden chairs as though they might bite if he wasn't careful.'

'Well,' Genevieve indicated Draco. 'But I don't think it'll do any harm.'

'I thought I'd smelled it on him,' Dean said softly, before leaving through the back door. He closed it carefully and when he'd gone silence fell abruptly onto the garden. Genevieve couldn't hear the birds or the traffic or next door's radio.

She watched them circle each other for a while, before they both sat down on opposite sides of the garden table. Draco had put his tweed jacket on and Dean was still wearing his denim one. The sky was grey; she didn't know how long they'd be comfortable sitting out there. Dean poured one of the cans into the glass, slowly, watching Draco's fascination with it. When he handed the glass over, Draco gulped down half of it in one go.

Dean poured himself a drink and the two of them started an uncomfortable-looking conversation. Genevieve pulled her best tray out of its niche and started to fill it with drinks and nibbles. She made up a jug of Pina Colada as well as the jug of Pimms and lemonade. It probably wasn't the best thing for Draco (judging by his eagerness to booze) but it might make conversation flow easier and give him an incentive to come back. She was mostly interested in what was good for her own son.

Dean leaped to his feet to come and help her when she carried the tray outside. He flicked his wand as he did so and the sound came back on.

'—doing what I was told,' Draco was saying. 'Oh! That looks very nice, Mrs Thomas. Thank you very much.'

'There's some sausage rolls, mini scotch eggs and that's cream cheese on the crackers,' Genevieve said. 'The only crisps I could find were Monster Munch, though.'

'It all looks delicious,' Draco said, but his eyes were not on the food.

'Very appropriate for this little monster,' Dean said, looking at Draco, but there was a warmth to his voice when he said it. Or, at least, he wasn't cold as he had been when she'd heard him speak to Draco before.

As she walked back into the house silence fell once again over the garden. She left them to it and got on with the laundry. After a couple of hours she was ironing in front of the cricket on the television when Roger sent her a text to say that that girls wanted to watch a movie, so they were going to stay out for pizzas and then he would take them on to the cinema; they wouldn't be back until about ten o'clock. Genevieve went to the kitchen window to take a look at the boys in the garden. Their body language had softened; they were talking intensely. That was good. Dean actually looked relaxed.

While she had her head in the kitchen cupboard, getting out pasta to cook for the three of them for their evening meal, Dean suddenly rushed into the kitchen.

'Erm. Draco's been sick. I cleaned it up, but…' he shrugged.

Genevieve went out into the garden where Draco was doubled over in his garden seat, retching onto the grass. Guilt twisted her gut. She'd made the drinks strong because she had wanted him to stay, because her Dean needed him to, but she'd known as she did it that it had not been the right thing for Draco.

He lifted his head. His eyes were unfocussed. 'Need a wee wee,' he croaked.

The nursery language sent a shot of fondness through her. 'You'd best come in. Do you want a hand?'

Draco shuddered. He stared at the back of her house. 'I'll go home,' he said. He turned to face Dean: 'Have you got any…?'

'I haven't got anything,' Dean replied. Some of the ice had returned to his tone and Genevieve was sorry to hear it. Dean took hold of Draco's shoulders gently enough, though, as he hoisted him to his feet. 'I don't have Sobriety Potions or Hangover Remedy or anything like that. I came from the Battle to here, from the cottage to the Battle and before that I was imprisoned in your cellar, and before that I was on the run. No time to pop to Diagon for drinker's potions.'

The booze had clearly loosened Dean's tongue, too. He hadn't spoken so freely in front of his mother in all the time he'd been back. A prisoner in their cellar? What did that mean?

'But, Mother!' Draco whispered as the two of them lurched up the garden path. 'I can't go home like this.'

Genevieve had been watching and feeling helpless. Wanting to be useful, she offered coffee.

Dean laughed drily, 'Thanks, Mum, but I think it's gone beyond that.' He stood upright.

She watched Dean watching Draco. She realised that she'd been seeing him look only inwards for weeks.

'Right!' Dean said decisively. 'Is it ok if Draco stays over?'

'Sure,' Genevieve said, 'I could make up the sofa?' But how would she explain the wizard in his sitting room to Roger?

'I think he'd better be in with me, where I can keep an eye on him,' Dean said.

Genevieve nodded. They didn't want him choking on his own vomit after all. 'Shall I give you a hand getting him up there?'

'Nah. If you're not around to mess up the Statute I can Levitate him.' Dean turned to Draco, 'You'll have to enter a Muggle house and piss in a Muggle bog and live with it.'

Draco objected weakly. Genevieve held open the kitchen door for them as they struggled inside.

'Don't give me that!' Dean snapped. 'You're happy enough with Muggle drinks. You've been buying from the offie, you said so yourself, and you've necked enough of Mum's booze today. What's the difference, eh?'

Draco looked around him as though he had just noticed that he had entered the building.

Genevieve backed away to give him some space to adjust. She had an idea: 'I'll just pop over the road and let your mother know the plan,' she said.

Mrs Malfoy's pale face and weird hair peered out at her as Genevieve gave the barest of details to her. Her pale eyes looked down to the floor. 'Is he drunk?' she asked.

'Oh. A little.'

Mrs Malfoy nodded. She looked worried. 'I hope he hasn't been a nuisance,' she said in her cut-glass voice.

'Not at all. He's a lovely young man,' Genevieve said. 'Very polite,' she added.

Mrs Malfoy smiled at that.

Genevieve didn't text Roger. She knew that Jade had been worrying about Dean and thinking he was ill and so on, though, so she did text her. She must have said something to her dad, because when they all got back later, Roger said, 'I don't want no hanky panky in my house.'

Outraged, Genevieve asked him what that was supposed to mean.

'The two of them sharing a bed. I don't want them getting up to anything. Not in my house. I don't want to hear that.'

There had been only unnatural silence from Dean's room since the two of them had gone up there. Dean had not even come down for his pasta.

'That's not what this is about, Roger, and even if it was—'

'Would you allow Jade to have a boy in her bed overnight?'

'That's hardly the same! Her friends sleep over!'

'They don't share the bed.' Roger stormed into the bathroom.

Genevieve knew full well that Roger just wanted reasons to stay cross with Dean, but she wished he wouldn't put ideas in her head.

In the morning at breakfast Dean looked sheepish, though. Draco was still sleeping, he said. There was a flushed, clear-eyed look to Dean. Genevieve found herself wondering, but she did not know. She wished that she had heard their conversations the day before.

'You look better,' Jade said to him, frankly, when she came in for her own breakfast.

'Like you said, talking helps,' he replied humbly.

Jade was very pleased with herself and accepted that there was no more to it than that. 'Just keep it up,' she said. 'You'll have relapses.'

'Thanks, nurse,' Dean snarked.

It was nice to have them back to something like normal.

Dean was the one behaving like a nurse. Genevieve remembered her own troubled times, how it had been concentrating on Dean and looking after him which had got her through. Dean had purpose. It couldn't hurt. She smiled as she watched him taking nurofen and cups of peppermint tea up to the room, and heard him coaxing Draco across the landing and into the bathroom. Jade was right, this didn't mean the end of Dean's unhappiness, but it might just make a beginning, whether they stayed friends or became something else, or even if they fell out and hating Draco again persuaded Dean to get in touch with his other friends.

'You're a clever girl,' she said to Jade, 'and a good sister,' just to see Jade smile.

Dean and Draco were in and out of each other's houses like ten year-old best friends all summer after that. More than once she came home from work to find them springing away from each other on the sofa. Dean would fly into the kitchen to make a round of teas and Draco would sink his face into a cushion. Genevieve didn't tell Roger; she hated proving him right.

When Jade was invited to a 'leavers' party she begged extra invites for Dean and Draco. Genevieve was amazed that they went along to it. They didn't last as long as Jade did, but when they got back they were tipsy enough to ask permission for Draco to stay over in Dean's room again.

As the door closed and the strange silence fell, Roger gave her a look. She cocked a questioning eyebrow at him.

'I don't mind being right,' Roger said. 'Whatever makes him happy. And he's a damn sight easier to live with like this, batty boy or not.' He muttered the end of his sentence but they both knew she'd heard him.

There were still bad days, of course. There were days when Dean would sit in the sitting room with the curtains closed and the lights off, when he wouldn't speak to Draco or the family or anyone else. There were days when Draco peered at her out of bloodshot eyes, stinking of the drink from the night before. There was an afternoon when Dean started battering Draco in the street. When Narcissa and Lara grabbed his hands, Dean burst into tears and sat, howling on the pavement. The nosy old bat from Number Eleven asked Genevieve about it the next day. Genevieve called it a 'lovers' tiff' with only the tiniest cringe of embarrassment.

There were good days, though, and the bad ones were easier to cope with because Genevieve had had glimpses of what an end to the troubled times might look like.

In August they were all surprised when a pair of owls flew into their street carrying Hogwarts letters.

'I think we had one of these a few years ago,' Narcissa said drily.

'I'm sure the first one was less of a shock to you than it was to us,' Genevieve replied.

The two women were walking home from the bus together, both carrying bags full of bargains. Genevieve had been showing Narcissa where to shop. After swooping low over the two women, both owls flew through the Malfoys' open front door.

Genevieve went home to wait for Dean to cross the road to tell her what was going on.

He did after a while, sitting at the table, his knee jerking up and down with agitation. The school was reopening and those whose last year of education had been interrupted were invited to return.

'I don't know,' Dean said. 'I don't know. So much happened there and – you know – we're neither of us – Draco or me – neither of us the same as we were. I don't know.'

Genevieve wanted her boy where she could keep an eye on him. 'You can look after each other,' she said. 'Here or there or somewhere else.'

Dean looked at the floor. 'Seamus is going to kill me.' He swore. He apologised for swearing.

'Why?'

'Because Draco,' was all Dean said.

'Not if you tell him before. Not if you explain,' Genevieve said, though she'd never been told herself, not really. She sighed. 'You need to go somewhere. I'd love to keep you here, but you're ready to go. You won't get better staying here. Maybe it's time to face Hogwarts again, or maybe it's too soon. You and Draco, you should go on holiday. Get away. Or go travelling. Would you like that?' With a sudden, guilt-tinged flash of inspiration she suggested, 'What about Cambodia?'