(A/N: I own nothing that JKR owns, very much including the snippets of dialogue I have taken from the end of DH. And yes, I know, another new story but this one's only three chapters and I'm going back to mainverse DV after I'm done. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out what's going on before the big reveal!)

Ron Weasley sat with his family and friends in the Great Hall of Hogwarts, telling and retelling the story of his months in the woods with Harry and Hermione.

Harry's alive, I knew he couldn't be dead, he tricked You-Know-Who somehow and killed him and now it's over—and Hermione kissed me, I think she might really like me, I know I really like her—

The knowledge of the deaths their side had suffered, Professor Lupin, Tonks, his own brother Fred, tried to shred away his buoyant happiness, and at moments almost succeeded, but he couldn't be sad for long. The war was over, they'd won, Harry was alive—

"Ooh, look!" Luna's voice rose above the noise in the Hall. "A Blibbering Humdinger!"

Ron grinned to himself. I'm glad Luna made it through. World would be less interesting without her around.

Down the table, a flash of pale hair caught his eye, as Draco Malfoy turned sharply as though to see what was behind him.

Who cares about you anymore? Ron dismissed the Slytherin with a snort. Harry used your wand to kick You-Know-Who's arse, that's probably what you'll go down in the history books for. That and being the most spineless little gobshite to ever walk through Hogwarts' doors. To think you used to get your kicks going after Neville...

Not anymore, I don't think. His friend and fellow Gryffindor was sitting at the next table over, trying to simultaneously get some breakfast into him and answer questions from a gang of adoring-looking people, mostly girls, who kept staring awestruck at the gleaming sword sitting on the table beside him.

Always knew he was a real Gryffindor at heart. That just proves it.

Unbidden, the memory came to him of saving Harry's life in the process of retrieving this same sword from the bottom of a frozen pool, of using it to destroy the locket Horcrux which had sent him away from his friends, the Horcrux which had brought to life his deepest and most secret fear, that Hermione cared about Harry the way Ron had fumblingly come to realize he wanted her to care about him...

Wonder who'll fall for Neville? Have to be someone out there for him, especially after this, they'll be queuing up to date him. Ron glanced over the girls beside his friend, finding his eyes lingering longest on the Patil twins, though he was quite sure they weren't right. Something about them, though, reminded him of the girl he thought would be.

As if I'd know, great overgrown pillock that I am. Neville'll do a lot better that way than I will. He'll know what he's looking for, and stick to it once he's found it.

He smiled ruefully at Hermione, finishing a portion of scrambled eggs with her usual careful neatness. Not like me—I never quite know what I'm after until it runs me over...

But he'd found something good now, and he was going to do his best to keep it.

She seems to like it when I think about other people. Have to work on doing that more.

A rustle between them, and a familiar voice, though nothing was visible. "It's me," Harry murmured. "Will you come with me?"

Hermione set down her fork at once, Ron swung his legs over the bench, and together they left the Great Hall. Ron cocked his head as they ascended the marble staircase, listening to Peeves singing a victory song he'd obviously composed himself:

We did it, we bashed them, wee Potter's the one,
And Voldy's gone moldy, so now let's have fun!

"Really gives a feeling for the scope and tragedy of the thing, doesn't it?" he remarked as he pushed a door open for his friends, making Hermione giggle slightly. Harry's lopsided grin became visible as he pulled off his Invisibility Cloak, which had served them so well through the war.

He looks like he needs some sleep. About a week's worth, maybe. I probably don't look so good either. But there's something weird...

Ron frowned, trying to track down what was odd about Harry's expression.

He almost looks like he's still waiting. Like he thinks it isn't over. But what could happen to us now? You-Know-Who's dead—what else could go wrong?

"I think I ought to tell you what happened to me," Harry said as they walked down the hallway towards the next flight of stairs up. "I went up to Dumbledore's office to use the Pensieve, to see the memories Snape gave me, and I found out he used to know my mum, they were kids together..."

Ron listened dumbstruck to a story which forced him to revise every opinion he'd ever had about his greasy-haired Potions Master. I knew he spied for the Order—but he killed Dumbledore because Dumbledore asked him to? And to save Malfoy from having to do it? He shook his head. Missed a bet on that one, Professor—maybe Malfoy's not a killer, but he's still never going to amount to anything.

And quite frankly, the idea of Severus Snape in love with Harry's mum made him feel slightly ill. Of course, the idea of Severus Snape in love with anyone would have made him feel ill.

He was on our side, he was brave and all that, but he was still a git who favored Slytherin and took points off Gryffindor just because he could, and I don't think he bathed more than once a month. But now he's dead, so it doesn't matter anyway...

Harry moved on in his story, and Ron thankfully abandoned thoughts of Snape to listen to what had happened in the forest. Hermione's eyes were enormous as Harry recounted using the Resurrection Stone, walking with his parents and Sirius and Lupin towards his certain death, stepping out to face Voldemort and feeling the Killing Curse strike him—

"And the next thing I knew, I was lying in a bed," Harry said, pushing aside a tapestry. "Or sort of lying—someone was holding me up, hugging me, saying my name and crying. Someone with loads of red hair."

Hermione drew a long breath. "Your mum," she whispered. "She was really there, wasn't she?"

Harry nodded, his eyes bright behind his glasses. "As real as we are. Realer, if that makes any sense."

"Your dad come too?" Ron asked.

"Yeah, he showed up a couple minutes later." Harry grinned. "Sirius and Lupin were with him, and you'll never believe who else."

"Not—Wormtail?" Hermione hazarded tentatively.

"Nah, not him," said Ron, dismissing this thought with a wave of his hand. "Snape, maybe?"

"You're both right," Harry said, his grin broadening. "Maybe this won't be so hard after all."

"What won't?" said Hermione.

Ron wasn't sure he could say anything. Wormtail made it to wherever Harry's parents are? I mean, sure, I tried to stop that hand from killing him, but I'd have done the same for anyone...

Still, who was he to say who should and shouldn't get rewarded after they died?

Maybe it was enough that he let Harry live, and that I got his wand and used it to help get us all out of there. He fingered the grip of the brittle rod of chestnut he'd won that night. Or maybe it works by different rules than anything we understand. That sounds about right.

He'd missed whatever Harry had answered to Hermione's question, Ron realized as he started listening again. "—there for long, just in to say hello and then gone," Harry was saying. "And Snape didn't stay much longer. He thought something was awfully funny, though, he had that look on his face he always used to get when he knew Neville was going to make a mistake in class. Mum kept glaring at him, but he didn't seem to notice much."

"So then it was just you and that same four you got out of the Stone?" Ron asked as they climbed another flight of stairs. "What happened with them?"

"They told me I had a choice." Harry looked down at the two wands in his hand. "I could stay there with them, and they'd try some other way to 'finish what needs doing,' was the way Lupin put it. Or I could come back and try and fix things myself. Trouble was, if I did that, I wouldn't have a lot of time after killing Voldemort to get it all done. And one of the people I'd need probably wouldn't be too willing to help." He smiled. "But Sirius told me a way to get around that, and it worked just like he said it would."

"Harry, you're not making any sense," said Hermione. "What else did you come back for, if not to kill Voldemort and have your life afterwards?"

"And who do you need besides us?" Ron added.

"You'll see. Both of you." Harry came to a halt at the gargoyle which guarded the Head's office, now slumped over on its side and looking rather bewildered. "Can we go up?" he asked.

"Feel free," groaned the statue.

Harry climbed over it, Hermione following him. As Ron started to do the same, he thought he saw something around the corner behind him, but it was gone when he turned to look.

I'm seeing things. Too bloody tired...

The staircase lifted them into the office as it always had. They stepped inside, and Ron nearly stepped right back out at the thunderous applause and cheering of the portraits hanging on the walls. Nor was he alone—Hermione emitted a little gasp at the noise, Harry yelled in shock, and a squeak came from further down the stairs behind them—

Who's back there?

Ron whirled in time to see a pale, pointed face topped with familiar silvery hair ascend into view.

"You!" He grabbed the front of Malfoy's robes and dragged him into the office, shoving the Slytherin into the nearest wall and making his gray eyes bug out satisfyingly with the impact. "What're you following us for? Don't you get it yet? You lost, it's over, there's nothing else you can do to us—"

"Ron, let him go!" Hermione shouted.

Grudgingly, Ron released his grip. Malfoy gasped in a breath, then straightened his robes and hair. "Potter brushed against me on his way past," he said, staring at Harry, who stared right back. "I looked around to see who it was, but no one was there, and then I saw you two getting up and leaving with a big patch of nothing between you, just about his size. So I thought I'd come and..."

"And what?" Ron demanded. "Spy on us? What for? Your Dark Lord's dead, if you hadn't noticed—"

"Let him finish, Ron," snapped Hermione. "The war's over, there's no need to be rude to him."

"No need to be rude to him?" Ron gaped at her. "After all he's done to us—after he's threatened us, tried to kill us, stood and watched you get tortured, Hermione?"

"You think I liked that, Weasley?" Malfoy shouted before Hermione could answer. The portraits had all fallen silent and were watching in fascination. "You think I liked listening to her scream? Watching her bleed? In my own house?"

"Well, why didn't you do something about it, then?" Ron challenged. "Why didn't you ever speak up—"

"And say what?" Malfoy sneered. "You stupid Gryffindors have it so easy. You were born on the side you're on, just like I was, but if you'd wanted to join mine, you could have done, any time you wanted. How well do you think that would work for me?" The words came out in a snarled hiss, reminding Ron startlingly of the Parseltongue word he'd used to enter the Chamber of Secrets. "How long do you think I'd have lasted if I even hinted around my father, or my Aunt Bella, that I didn't always care for everything they did and I might not want to do it myself?"

"A gilded cage," Hermione murmured. "And you didn't even know it was a cage yourself until this past year, did you?"

Malfoy shook his head jerkily. "I tried," he said, looking at her with something like pleading in his eyes. "When they brought you in, when they wanted me to tell them who you were. I tried to pretend I didn't know you. But then Mother remembered you from Madam Malkin's, and I knew it hadn't done any good." He turned away, but not before Ron saw something sparkling on a pale cheek.

Who knew Malfoy could cry? And over Hermione, of all people...

"Nothing I do ever does any good," said a choked voice. "But you three—all you have to do is wait around and everything falls into your laps. That's why I've always hated you so much. Because everything works for you, everyone thinks you're wonderful. Even now, you've won the war, you're heroes, and if I stay out of Azkaban it'll only be because I can claim I was a kid and didn't know any better. And I don't think my parents will get off anywhere near that easy, not this time."

Ron had a strong urge to beat his head against the wall. I don't believe this. I'm feeling sorry for him. I'm actually feeling sorry for Draco sodding Malfoy.

He glanced over at Harry. His friend was leaning against the edge of the Headmaster's desk, watching Malfoy closely, with a sparkle in his green eyes of—could that be happiness? Even more, triumph?

Add it to the list of things that don't make sense. Like Malfoy blubbering in front of us.

But if he were going to be truthful about it, Malfoy wasn't blubbering. He might have shed a tear or two, his voice might have sounded thick, but he was back to his usual self as he turned to face them again. "So, now that you're all feeling disgustingly sorry for me, what I actually came up here to ask was, can I have my wand back now, Potter?" He shot Harry a look of challenge. "Now that you've told the world you took it off me, and used it to get a better one?"

Harry tossed Malfoy's wand in his palm, seeming to weigh it. "You can have it on one condition," he said, looking up. "Have a drink with us."

"A drink?" Malfoy and Hermione said in chorus, then looked at one another in surprise (on Hermione's part) and disgust (Malfoy's).

"Yes, a drink." Harry pretended to lift a goblet. "You take something liquid and you put it in your mouth, and then you swallow it."

"Very funny, Potter," Malfoy said coldly. "Why do you want me to drink with you? I thought you hated me."

"Maybe I do," Harry shot back. "Maybe I'm trying to poison you. But since I'm planning on pouring all our drinks out of the same bottle, I'd have to poison us all, and you can judge for yourself whether or not I'd do that."

Malfoy looked from Ron to Hermione, then back to Harry. "It still doesn't make sense," he said. "Why would you—"

"And you say I'm thick," Ron snapped, fed up with the Slytherin's stupidity. "Ever occur to you he's trying to say he wants peace? Or a truce at least? Merlin's robes, Malfoy, get your head out of your puckered-up pureblood arse for once!"

Hermione shot him a look. "Ron's right, though," she said, taking one step closer to Malfoy, who watched her warily. "This is Harry's way of saying he doesn't want to fight anymore. That we may never be friends, but he'd like it better if we could stop being enemies." One hand rose to her neck, to the thin scar Bellatrix's knife had left behind. "And for what it's worth, I believe you. About not liking what you had to watch."

Malfoy stared at her fingers as though they were the tip of a wand pointed at him. "I hate seeing blood," he said softly. "Anyone's blood. Pure or not. And I wanted it to stop, I would have done anything to make it stop, but I couldn't. Do anything, I mean. It wouldn't have worked." He cracked half a smile. "Like I said. Nothing I do ever seems to."

"I think even you can manage having a drink," said Harry, looking up at Dumbledore's portrait where it hung on the back wall of the office. "Professor, is there anything like that around?"

"Why, yes, Harry, there is." Dumbledore beamed down benevolently at the little group. "Severus kept a rather special bottle in the bottom left-hand drawer of the desk. I doubt he would begrudge it to you today."

Harry was already on his way around the desk. "Hermione?" he called over his shoulder. "Think you can make us some goblets?"

"I'll try," Hermione said, drawing the walnut wand a bit doubtfully. "You know I'm not as good as I could be with this."

Malfoy regarded the wand in her hand with a bit of amazement—obviously he had recognized it as his Aunt Bella's—but said nothing, for which Ron was grateful. He thought one more sneering or self-pitying comment might well have forced him to punch the little ferret in the face.

And I swear, if he so much as starts to call her a Mudblood...

Harry emerged with a dusty bottle in his hand just as Hermione finished conjuring a fourth long-stemmed glass goblet. "You're sure about this, Professor?" he said, looking at Dumbledore's portrait again. "I mean, I'm doing the right thing?"

"Absolutely, Harry." Dumbledore's face was solemn, even a bit stern, and Ron wondered what they could be talking about. "You may even have left it a bit longer than you should. But I have no doubt Sirius will be able to improvise as usual."

Malfoy looked openly bewildered, and Ron and Hermione exchanged puzzled glances. What had Sirius got to do with anything?

"Hope so." Harry uncorked the bottle in his hand with Malfoy's wand, sniffed at it, and smiled. "Trust Snape to keep the good stuff for himself. Oak-matured mead, just like you tried to give the Dursleys that one time, Professor, only they wouldn't take it." He came around the desk again and poured for them all. "Didn't know what they were missing."

Ron accepted the goblet Harry handed him absently, his mind wandering. Oak-matured mead... that sounds familiar, except I know I never saw Harry's relatives with Dumbledore...

Hermione picked up two goblets and held one out to Malfoy. "In case you really want to convince us you've changed," she said. "You can take it down below, we don't have to touch at all."

Malfoy started to fit his palm around the base of the goblet, then stopped. Slowly, his hand came up until it was at the same level as Hermione's, which was wrapped around the goblet's stem. He reached forward and slid his fingers around the cup of the goblet, brushing them against Hermione's as he did. "It's a new world," he said. "I'd better learn to live in it."

"That sounds like a toast to me," said Harry, lifting his own goblet. "To a new world, and a better one. And to better lives."

"Better lives," Ron and Hermione echoed, lifting their goblets in response. Malfoy raised his with only a nod, then sipped from it, as did Hermione. Harry put his to his lips, glancing from one to another of the group.

Ron took a drink and was surprised by the taste, sweet and tangy and familiar. I knew I recognized the sound of it. Oak-matured mead, oak-matured mead... come on, Weasley, think, where've you had this stuff before?

"Your wand," Harry said, holding it out to Malfoy, who snatched it with the hand not holding his goblet. "And I think I should probably put the Elder Wand back where it was."

Ron nearly choked on his second mouthful of mead. "What? Harry, are you mad? It's the best wand there ever was, it's unbeatable, and it's yours, mate, yours by right..."

"But I don't want it." Harry reached into the pouch he wore around his neck and pulled out his own broken wand. "I was happier with mine." He lined up the pieces of his wand and touched the Elder Wand's tip to them. "Reparo!"

Hermione lowered her goblet from her own second drink and smiled. "Some things can be fixed, I guess," she said as Harry picked up his wand, seemingly as good as new. "And I think you're quite right about the Elder Wand, Harry."

"And I think he's mental," muttered Malfoy, draining his glass. "Not that it matters."

"That wand's more trouble than it's worth," Harry said, with the force of someone making a proclamation. "And quite frankly..."

In the silence of his pause, Hermione's tiny sigh as she crumpled to the floor was entirely audible. Malfoy stared from her to Harry to the empty goblet in his hand, a look of horror growing on his face, then flung the goblet into the opposite wall, shattering it, and turned to run. His knees buckled before he'd got more than a few steps, and he collapsed limply and did not move again.

Ron's hands and feet went cold and numb as he recalled where he'd tasted oak-matured mead before.

Slughorn's quarters, on my birthday... the day I nearly died, from poisoned mead...

He heard his own goblet smash on the floor, but did not see it fall. His eyes were fixed on Harry, his best friend, the last person in the world he'd thought capable of something like this.

But is it really him?

What if we missed a Horcrux somewhere along the way?

What if it wasn't You-Know-Who that died down in the Great Hall?

Harry smiled at him and raised his glass, as though he were toasting Ron's death. "Quite frankly," he repeated in the softest of tones, "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime."

The floor came up to meet Ron, and blackness began to cover his eyes. The last thing he saw was Harry tipping his head back to drink the entire goblet of mead in one go.

Showing off how he can never die...

The sweet aftertaste of mead and the bitter knowledge that his family would be following him very soon indeed accompanied Ron as he fell.

Well, most of them will. Fred went on ahead of us.

At least he and George won't be apart for long.

And then he knew nothing more at all.