Harry

Seamus…hurts himself.

It was Ginny who broke the news to them, bursting through the door of the boys’ locker room after training without waiting for one of them to answer her knock. Ron was already yelling and halfway through scolding her, but then they both saw her face and whatever they were going to say was replaced by that sick feeling in your stomach thates when you know you were about to get bad news.

Ginny was crying.

Harry had rarely seen her cry, not since Dumbledore’s funeral or the day of Bill’s wedding. She hadn’t really even cried at Ge’s wedding, just stared at everyone with a set jaw and a face full of fury, but this time she had a quivering lip and tears slipping silently down her face.

“What’s wrong?” Ron was on his feet in a moment, arms held out like he was trying to hug her, but Ginny just shrugged him off. “What happened?”

“It’s Seamus.” She let half a sob out and then swallowed the rest, turning to kick the locker door so hard Harry was surprised she didn’t break anything. “He’s at Mungo’s. He…”

“What?” Ron was still looking for something to fight, an enemy to push his fear towards. Harry was just watching Ginny, the way she was crumbling. “Did someone hurt him?”

“He did it to himself.” She said, and then the tears came for real, a torrent of them. “He did some damage Ron.”

Harry doesn’t remember listening to her. All he remembers is that one moment his picture of Seamus included the Seamus he knew from school, the happy one that was in love with Dean, and now there was this other Seamus in his head, the one that kissed Dean good bye on his way to work and then sat down to write a note, who locked himself in a bathroom, who got found by Luna three hours later covered in his own blood and crying about how he couldn’t make himself cut deep enough, could she finish it, please.

Please, he had apparently sobbed, letting her pull him into her arms like he was still a little kid. Please let it end.

Harry felt like he had been punched in the stomach, so he turned away, but he couldn’t hide from it forever, because Ron was on his feet, one arm wrapped around his sister’s shoulders. “I’m going home.” He said, voice grim, but determined in the way it had been back when they were preparing to do something dangerous, like he was checking things off of a to-do list. “Making her a strong cup of tea. You want to go keep Deanpany in the hospital until Hermione gets there?”

No, he wanted to say, because he did not want that, he did not want to see Seamus like this, he did not want to sit in ufortable chairs and tell his friend meaningless platitudes, he did not have to be the one to deal with all of this.

But that’s not what he says.

“Sure,” He hears himself saying, reaching for his shirt to get dressed, inexplicably wishing Draco coulde but realizing in the same moment that he wouldn’t be wee. This was not about Harry’sfort. “Of course I’ll go.”

Draco

Harry was late, which meant that Draco was waiting when he came home, settled into the corner of the couch with a book spread across his lap.

“I’m late. I know.” Harry didn’t give Draco time to respond, just yanked off his coat and threw it down on the chair with an anger that Draco hadn’t seen since they were in school. “Something came up.”

“Is everything—” He meant to ask if everything was okay, but doesn’t, because the words aren’t out of his mouth before Harry is leveling his stare at him.

“Everything’s not okay, actually. You want to know why?” Draco didn’t, really. He didn’t want to know why Harry looked so pale, or why his eyes are red enough to make Draco think he had been crying, or what that stain on his shirtsleeve was. He didn’t want to know why he was so late or why his hands or shaking or why he had slammed the door so hard when he came in. He just wanted things to be okay. “Seamus went and bloody tried to kill himself, that’s why, ripped himself apart from wrist to elbow.”

He seemed to be waiting for some sort of reaction on Draco’s part, and Draco felt horribly like he was failing some sort of a test. He puts the book down and the gets to his feet, like he might actually be thinking about walking over and giving Harry a hug, of all the stupid ideas. But then Harry leaves the room entirely, and Draco follows.

Harry is kicking the chair. Repeatedly. And then he is sitting in it, hunched over with his elbows on his knees, hands yanking at his hair. And then he’s staring up at Draco like he might find somefort there, the face of someone who has reached their breaking point. “It never ends, does it?” He sounds like he has been drained of every last drop of motivation, like finally after everything, Seamus will be the one who breaks him. “It just brings more pain.”

“It’ll stop.” Draco says, wondering if this is helpful, wondering if he should leave Harry to work through this on his own. “We’ve just got a long way to go.”

Harry stares at him for a moment and then he stands, and for half a moment Draco thinks he is leaving because what he said was wrong, was unsensitive, and he’s already halfway to apologizing when Harry re-enters the room while shrugging on his coat. “I need a drink.” And just before Draco can start worrying that it had been him that drove him away from his own home, Harry turns around one last time, raising an eyebrow with something that might have been impatience. “Youing?”

Draco doesn’t hesitate.

Harry

Draco does not really fit with the people here, but since Harry had started dragging him along to everything as his plus one, no one thought to argue, just ordered another round of drinks and said it was on the two of them.

“You didn’t tell me it was going to be everybody.” Draco said, but doesn’t argue, just throws his coat over the chair and rolls his sleeves up to the elbow in the way that he can’t know Harry likes. “It’s not really my place.”

“You’re fine,” Harry tells him back, and he is. Truthfully, Harry didn’t know that everyone would be here, but maybe they should have. This is what they always did after the war, through the reports and the trials and the rebuilding and the grief, find a bar and drink until they can’t stand on their own. Maybe it was a bad way of dealing with things, but it was the only times he could remember being happy in that time right after the year, and they deserved a chance to be young and dumb, just for a few months of their life.

It’s all of them. Ron and Hermione are at a booth sharing a plate of fries that neither of them are eating, and Ginny and Luna are slow dancing in the corner to the song on the radio, never mind the reporter snapping pictures of them. Neville had found his way to the bar, and Ge was right beside Draco, where he had already seemed to be halfway down the road to being a drunken mess. Padma and her sister are there, too, the space beside them reminding them all of Lavender, who should have been here with them but still won’t leave her house because of the scarring. And that’s just the ones close enough for Harry to see.

“I heard.” Ge says, being the first one to break the silence about why they had gathered here. “Bloody mess.”

He seems to regret his use of the word bloody as soon as he said it, and they both kick Draco under the table when he snorts into his drink. “I went to see them.” Draco perked up at that, staring over at Harry, because Harry had not told him that. Harry knew he should have, but he couldn’t bring himself to talk about it, with the way that Dean was crying and Seamus was not waking up, how big that cut went along his arm. “It was awful.”

“How’s Dean?” This was from Neville, who came arm in arm with Hannah Abott. Harry could see Hermione and Ron behind him,ing over to join the group.

“Bad.” Harry didn’t want to think about that. “I probably wasn’t helping. Got better once Hermione got there.”

Hermione was good at things like that, thefort, the bedside manners. He’s not sure how she does it.

“I can’t still can’t believe he would do that.” Hermione said,ing up behind them all. Her voice was quivering, a sure sign that tears were about to follow if someone didn’t intervene. No one did.

“Yes, you can.” Ge’s voice cut through them all, through the noise and the music and the hiss of the drinksing from behind the bar. “None of us are even surprised.”

We aren’t, Harry thought, looking around at all of them. How many times have they gathered here after a report or funeral that dredged up something awful? The worst stops being surprising and starts being something that you have learned to live with, after a while. We aren’t surprised at all.

Draco

They are very much about to be drunk.

Draco’s not sure why no one has threatened to throw him out yet, but he thinks it’s because that Harry is right beside him and Ge has taken him under his wing, like a sort of substitute sibling when his own aren’t within arms’ length. Whatever the reason, he’s grateful, to have been included in this and not been left waiting home alone for Harry toe back, but he cannot stand the knowledge that when the lines were drawn he had found himself standing on the wrong side, the guilt of it all clawing at him, choking him.

This was my fault, he thinks, when Hermione sumbs to something between a laugh and a sob while leaning on Draco’s shoulder. I do not deserve this, when Harry gets drunk enough that he actually drags Draco onto the dance floor. You should not let me be one of you, he knows, but that does not stop him from epting the shot that Ge shoves into his hand, draining the silver liquid in one go and ignoring the burn as it goes down.

Only Ron seems to think that maybe Draco does not belong, but he is also tied to doing whatever it is that Hermione wants, so he does not mention it. Still, Draco can feel his eyes tracking him throughout the whole night, only letting his guard down when they all tumble down to sit at a table together, trying to sober up before they have to stumble home.

It’s Hermione that breaks the silence that had settled around all of them, downing her beer in one go and then slamming the bottle back onto the table. “I just can’t stand it,” She said, voice too loud, cheeks flushed, seeming not to care that everyone was staring at her. “Why is there nothing to help us? No medication, no therapy, no anything?” She stares at all of them for agreement and is only met with blank faces. “Don’t tell me you don’t have that sort of thing. Even muggles have it.”

Ron reached out for her, but she batted him away. Draco had seen her like this before, when she was in the library and searching through the shelves for that one book, not letting anyone distract her until the problem was solved. (They hung out a bit, their third year, back when she was on the outs with Ron and Harry and Draco took a moment to realize how close to each other’s level of intelligence they really are. That was the year she slapped him. He tries not to think about that.)

“But we’re not muggles,

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