Summary: In the trio's fifth year, they come across a little band of Slytherins who want to make their own stand against Voldemort. Their leader - the sharp and unconventional Gold - has something Harry wants. And Hermione... well, she'd like to call it a mind-crush. An exploration of culture, class structure and exclusion in the wizarding world with shades of Hermione/OC tossed in.

Epilogue

The rubble of Hogwarts was cold and bright in the morning sunlight. Silent. Harry felt empty.

A week since the final battle. The rebuilding was already well underway, bigger, better, a fitting tribute to the losses they had suffered. There was to be a Remus Lupin Room added to the library, full of defence texts and comfy armchairs - an entire new wing named for Dumbledore, decorated in lavendar - a Severus Snape memorial statue next to the lake - people were talking about a Harry Potter Hall of Multilingual Magic, though he had tried everything to get them to rename it -

It seemed their optimism was only matched by their pain.

Celebration mingled with grief until the emotion of it all was overwhelming, and Harry found, all too often, that he needed to be away. He thought of Snape a lot. And his parents, strangely. He could not yet think too much about Lupin, or Tonks, or Fred, or anyone else they had lost. Harry could not help but think how close it had all been – if they hadn't had the help of the Elves, or many languages of magic up their sleeves – if Neville hadn't had the sword, or if Harry had not been there to see Snape's dying breath – So many forms of magic that the Dark Lord knew not –

He'd drive himself mad thinking like that.

After a while, a sound reached his ears. Footsteps, speaking. Glancing up the hill, he saw a coffin making its slow way down the crest of the hill and out towards the forest, to the space that had been reserved for burials. Funerals happened every day, now.

It was a Slytherin funeral, he realized, seeing the green and silver sash draped across the coffin. An undersized coffin. Harry lowered his eyes Slughorn was leading the little procession and orating as he went. His voice carried down the hill, towards the ruined bridge where Harry sat.

"Ms. Pettyfer was one of that brave number of Slytherins who opposed the will of He Who Must Not be Named – who acted as spies from within their own house, reporting the activities of the Death Eaters -"

Pettyfer was dead?

Harry had not thought of the rebel snakes in a very long time. Thoughts of Slytherin had driven his mind to the Death Eaters or to Snape, and those two specters haunted him enough to leave little room for anything else. Now he remembered them. Their bravery. Poor Pettyfer, whose tiny mother was weeping into a silk scarf as she followed her daughter's coffin.

Harry found Neville in the graveyard, planting flowers at what was to be Pettyfer's headstone. Neville looked up at him and got to his feet, wiping sweat off his brow and leaving a long trail of black soil across his forehead. "Hiya, Harry."

He found it touching that Neville was planting the flowers with his hands instead of using magic. "How'd she die?"

Neville bit his lip. "Fenrir," he murmured. "She held him off for a pretty long time, before he got her."

"I remember her – She was tough." Harry was quiet for a moment. "Did they all fight?"

"Who- the snakes? All who could. Some of them were too badly injured. The Muggleborns, see. The Carrows tortured a few of them not long before everything went mad. The spies all attacked from the inside - Hewlett took out Knott with a Yemack Shemo – Speck knocked an acromantula off the bridge -"

Harry was struck by how plainly Neville spoke all these ugly truths. Was it still the same confused little boy who'd lost his toad on the train?

Harry had always thought of himself as their leader, whether he wanted to be or not, but in his absence so many of the others in the D.A. had stepped up to fill his shoes. And done well. Better than he could have, he thought.

"They were with us the whole way, Harry. Some of them spied on the Carrows for us - stayed in Hogwarts even after we'd gotten most of the Gryffindors out. We used the coins to stay in contact. Some of the others came with us and helped."

"How many made it through the battle?"

Neville shrugged. "About half?"

"What happened to David Gold?"

"Ahh…" Neville seemed to be searching for the right words. "Gold went a bit mental, actually. He said he'd have been no good as a spy, everyone in Slytherin already knew what he stood for, so he just resisted the Carrows every step of the way - made their lives hell. We had to stun him to get him out of there. They'd nearly killed him and he still didn't want to go - he kept saying if he was going to die it might as well be for something. That was all we could get out of him. Mental." Neville shook his head. "'Course, he didn't go properly mental until the battle. He killed three Death Eaters and a giant. Probably more. You remember the one witch who nearly cursed Hermione? He got hold of her and - well. Just utterly mental."

Harry found he could picture it. He wanted to ask Neville the obvious question, but feared he already knew the answer.

Neville seemed to read it on his face. "They're going to put him over there later tonight," he told Harry, pointing to one of the empty graves. "I've got no idea what to plant. It's always harder with boys."

"Something prickly," suggested Harry.

After the funeral that evening, the four of them – Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville – stood by the grave in the dying twilight.

"…Almost for the best, really," said Neville. "He wouldn't have been happy unless there was something to work against. He didn't do peace, did he? Always had to be fighting for somebody." He set a pebble on top of the headstone, in a heap with all the others. The snakes had all been by already. One of them had written in chalk, on the tomb, the words I must question authority.

Harry set his stone next, then Ron. The four of them mumbled awkwardly through a Kaddish, and then the boys left.

Hermione stayed a little longer, one hand resting on the headstone. In spite of herself, she smiled. Neville was wrong – Gold would have been happy enough if he had lived. The war might have been over, but there was always, always somebody to fight for.

She put her pebble on his headstone, and then went back to the castle, where Ron was waiting for her.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Granger would be by later to talk to him. Ever since she'd discovered his spirit wandering the dungeons, she made time to visit him whenever she could. In the wake of so much destruction she had become an activist among activists - had fixed herself on rebuilding the wizarding world, newer, brighter, fairer. Equal opportunities for intelligent non-human magical creatures. Advocacy for Elves and Centaurs and Goblins alike. The wiping of blood status from all forms of legislation. Increased awareness of multicultural magic. Actual real-life inter-house unity. A brave new world.

Some of the surviving snakes were in on it too. And Weasley, surprisingly. Granger seemed happy. She'd finally reconciled her heart and her head.

"What was your unfinished business, anyway? We've all got some. That's the only reason you keep going like this."

Gold shrugged. "Fixing the world. What other business can there be?"

"Haunting's always nice. Might be right up your street." She giggled. "Sooo... Now that neither one of us is corporeal..."

"I said shut up, Myrtle."

fin

There we have it. It's been a pleasure. Please drop me a review.

If you're interested in further exploration of Hebraic magic and the general universe, 'Nakhash' is a companion piece to this story.