The Hollow Beneath Hogwarts

11. Tomorrow

Ron, like Ginny, had become a regular presence at the house. Most mornings or afternoons he would appear at the front door without warning, hands shoved in his pockets and hair windswept from the journey, as though Grimmauld Place had quietly become another version of the Burrow to him. Sometimes he came because he wanted company. Other times because sitting still anywhere else left him thinking too much. Harry never questioned it. Hermione always made tea the moment he arrived. It simply became routine.

The three of them drifted through the final weeks of summer together in a strange sort of half-life. The war was over, but none of them quite knew how to exist without it.

Some days they wandered Diagon Alley with no real purpose, weaving through crowded streets full of witches and wizards trying desperately to return to normal. Shopkeepers smiled at Harry too brightly. Mothers nudged their children to wave. Complete strangers stopped them to shake their hands. Ron soaked up the attention more easily than the others, though even he occasionally looked uncomfortable beneath it all. Hermione remained polite but guarded, while Harry endured it with the same strained smile until his cheeks hurt.

Other days were quieter.

They visited graves.

Fred's first.

The Weasley family plot sat beneath a wide ash tree, and despite the warmth of late summer, the air there always felt cold. Molly changed the flowers every few days, though Ginny often arrived beforehand with fresh bundles tucked beneath her arm. George never said much while they stood there. He usually just stared at the headstone with his hands jammed into his coat pockets, looking as though half of him had been carved away and buried alongside his twin.

Remus and Tonks rested together not far away. Their graves were simpler than Fred's, but somehow harder for Harry to look at. Teddy Lupin was too young to understand what any of it meant yet. Harry often wondered if that was a blessing or a tragedy.

And then there was Snape.

Harry had fought harder for Severus Snape than he had expected to.

He had argued with Ministry officials, with the Wizengamot, with members of the Hogwarts Board who had spat Snape's name like poison. He had sat through meeting after meeting with Kingsley beside him, reliving memories he would rather have forgotten just to prove the truth.

Only after Harry revealed Snape's memories — every painful, humiliating, devastating piece of them — did people finally begin to understand.

Reluctantly, they agreed Severus Snape deserved to be buried among the Headmasters of Hogwarts.

Harry made certain his portrait hung within the Headmistress's office too, positioned beside Dumbledore's as though the two men were finally at peace after years spent circling one another in mistrust and secrets.

But it was the portrait itself that haunted him most.

Harry had insisted the painter use a younger version of Snape. Not the bitter, exhausted man he had known at Hogwarts, but someone softer around the edges. Someone not yet entirely consumed by grief. And beside him, almost hidden within the enchanted canvas, stood Lily Evans.

Her long ginger hair fell over her shoulder as she leaned gently against Snape, smiling in a way Harry had never seen outside old photographs. Sometimes, when Harry visited the office, he would catch Snape looking at her as though he still could not quite believe she was there.

It was unsettling. Beautiful. Painful.

Harry quickly learned not to linger too long in that office anymore. There was something strangely intimate about seeing them together like that — an alternate life trapped forever behind paint and magic. He deliberately avoided any resemblance to his father within the portrait. No James Potter. No reminder of the bitterness and rivalry that had poisoned so much of Snape's life.