Sebastian—

Bast was Sorted into Ravneclaw. He earned the top O.W.L. scores in his year and was a Prefect, then Head Boy his seventh year. He joined the Aurory straight out of Hogwarts, and excelled like most everything he put his mind to.

He married a pretty Slytherin named Brenna. After a few years, Fortescue retired and they bought the ice cream shop. It was good timing, as they'd been talking about starting a family if he could find himself a position that didn't put him in danger so often. (He could remember what it felt like when he'd realized how much danger his parents had been in when he was young, and he didn't want his own children to have to worry about him the way he'd worried for his parents.)

He settled very happily into running the shop, much as his uncle Ron had settled into managing the Hogsmeade premesis of Weasley Wizard Wheezes after he'd left the Aurory.

Bast and Brenna had one daughter, Emily.

Sofia—

Sofia was Sorted into Ravenclaw. In her third year, she was a second string Chaser for the House Quidditch team, and was moved up to first string starting her fourth year.

After Hogwarts, she spent a year working at Flourish & Blott's before beginning her career in the archives at the Ministry. Taking after her parents, she loved every moment of it.

She lived with Ellie in Inverness, clearing out the old Prince residence (their father having gotten bored one summer when they were kids and removing the worst of the curses). When Ellie moved out, her boyfriend, Jack Porter from the Records Office, moved in. They were engaged for nearly a decade before they married.

Sofia and Jack had one son, Alexander.

Ellie—

Ellie was Sorted into Ravenclaw. In her third year, she was a second string Chaser for the House Quidditch team, and was moved up to first string starting her fourth year.

She took a Potions apprenticeship straight out of Hogwarts, living with Sofia in Inverness. She was quickly recruited by the Department of Mysteries following her apprenticeship and worked as an Unspeakable for six years, often owling her father potions questions she wasn't allowed to give him any context for.

When there was a vacancy for a Potions professor at Hogwarts, Ellie took the job and spent the rest of her career at the school. She fell in love with the Defense professor, Frank McTavish, almost immediately, but they spent years ignoring the attraction to preserve their friendship. Eventually they did marry, but they never had children.

Hugo—

Hugo was Sorted into Slytherin. He joined the House Quidditch team in his fourth year as a reserve Keeper and held that position until graduation. He was also a Prefect.

School was easy for Hugo, but the real world took some getting used to. After Hogwarts, he held quite a few part-time jobs—from a cook at the Three Broomsticks to seasonal help at Weasley Wizard Wheezes—and was even a reserve Keeper for the Chudley Canons for two seasons.

Then he met Ana North, a Muggle, in a coffee shop near the Leaky Cauldron. It was instant, head-over-heels love. They married the summer after they met.

Hugo enrolled at Oxford because that's where Ana was enrolled. He ended up with a degree in mathematics and went on to teach at a Muggle college. (She went into astrophysics.)

Eventually, they got around to having children and he was finally able to tell her about magic. It became a side project for them to catalogue magic using the principles of math and physics.

Hugo and Ana had three sons, David, Jeremiah (Jem) and Rory.

Severus—

Severus took time off following the war. The hardest part about it all being over was watching life carry on. Normal lives picked up around them, routines taking over.

He and Hermione didn't bicker about the curtains, but any time they tried to go out in public together (let alone with any or all of their children) it attracted crowds. Crowds made them both jumpy, and it made Severus snarky. It was what eventually drove him back to Hogwarts—not only that he enjoyed teaching, but he could take points when a student tried to tell him that he was a hero and nip that little annoyance in the bud, as it were.

They raised their children. They enjoyed the Prince inheritance because it meant they didn't need to worry about finding work for awhile. He removed the curses from items and properties in his spare time.

In 2011, when the population explosion following the war had reached school age, he returned to Hogwarts to teach Defense. He taught the N.E.W.T. students, and another professor taught the younger levels. He was Head of Slytherin House again, and his second year back he was Deputy Headmaster when Minerva retired and Pomona stepped up from Deputy to Headmistress.

When Pomona retired, he was offered Headmaster again. He only accepted because the Governors threatened to bring in an administrator from outside the school.

Ellie had been hired as Potions Mistress before he was made Headmaster, which saved quite a bit of a headache. Every so often, he'd get a letter about nepotism, but they fell off quite a bit after he locked Ellie and McTavish (the bloke who taught the first – fifth year Defense classes) in the staff room while the rest of the school was out watching Quidditch. Having two Professors McTavish was much preferable to having a Professor Snape and a Headmaster Snape. All he had to do was remind them to be discreet every so often.

Eventually, Severus retired. He and Hermione hadn't lived in the cottage properly since he'd been made Headmaster again, and they enjoyed the peace and their garden. They researched whatever they thought of until they ran out of interest. They published a little too often to be properly retired (or at least that's what the children told them). They spent time with their grandchildren.

Severus died within spitting distance of 140. He needed reading glasses, and a cane to walk (the arrow through the knee all those years ago revisiting him). He made a habit of thwacking the cane against door frames and the like to startle young people who got on his nerves. His hair was white, his face was wrinkled. He'd shaved his whiskers when they started to go white, swearing he'd never look like the cliché old-man-wizard with the long white beard.

He went quietly in his sleep one morning. He and Hermione had woken up together, he'd kissed her, and she'd gone to fetch them tea in bed (since she'd lost their morning bicker about who would go down to the kitchen). When she returned, he was gone, the gentle smile he'd had on when he watched her leave the room still on his face.

The funeral was even better attended than Dumbledore's had been. Severus would've hated the whole affair.

Hermione—

Hermione played a large part in opening the Muggle Relations Office(a resource for Muggle-borns and their parents), personally burned the Muggle-born registration records, and generally stomped around like an angry toddler (as she liked to describe it in retrospect) until the Ministry timidly toed its way out of the Victorian Age. They were still quite old-fashioned, and still ridiculously backwards at times, but she felt better about it.

Hermione spent years after the war advocating for werewolf rights, centaur rights, house elf rights, and even goblin rights on occasion. There were many fights—some of them with the more backwards members of the Wizengamot, some of them with those she was advocating for.

Once there were full moon resources available on a pay-what-you-can basis and hundreds of plain-English pamphlets for Muggle parents, Hermione took a month off for her son's wedding and never got back in the swing of it. Instead, she immersed herself in the sort of pure research she hadn't had the time to focus on since the war. Severus was back at Hogwarts by then, so she had full access to the school's library, and Sofia's job in the Ministry's archives was another bonus.

When Severus retired, they returned to the cottage. They researched together, and it was lovely. She baked bread on Sundays, and Severus tinkered with spells. There were always children or grandchildren underfoot, checking up on them.

Severus died four years before Hermione. She missed him terribly. She spent her last years visiting Severus's portrait at Hogwarts more often than the current headmaster found convenient.

END

A/N: Thank you. I can't say it enough. Never have I ever had such incredible responses to what I've been writing; it's been amazing to putz around with a chapter, edit it up, post it, and then get this outpouring of appreciation and constructive criticism and feedback. Also, I've been told I made some of you cry; I'm sorry, I think.

You guys are fantastic. Thank you for sticking with me through these last seven months and nearly 300,000 words. It would've been a lot shorter without your reviews.

Cheers!

—M

Disclaimer: These characters are not my own; I just borrowed them to play with in my sandbox of painful character development for a bit. Now I'm putting them back. Really. They're back. They're exactly where you left them. Just go open any of the "Harry Potter" books, and they'll be there. Just as they've always been. Up to their eyeballs in the adventure that started it all.

*No humans, animals or mythical creatures were harmed in the writing of this fic. I can't speak to any damage caused by reading it.