Disclaimer: title borrowed from the John Mayer song, and everything else borrowed from JK Rowling.

I eased the rental car out of my parents' driveway and onto the quiet street, the same slightly hollow feeling still sitting in the pit of my stomach that I always got after a visit with them. Nothing had quite been the same between us since their return from Australia almost three years ago. My spellwork hadn't been irreversible (my worst fear), but the damage was still there. Nothing that would strike their colleagues or friends as glaringly wrong. Just off. Childhood vacations they couldn't quite remember taking with me. Calling the neighbor's cat Crookshanks because they know the name but forget whose pet it belongs to. And there were a thousand minuscule, mundane things that could temporarily put their memories in a blender, but the only one I could always count on was my use of magic. Hence the rental car.

It wasn't that they didn't know I was a witch, or that I hadn't told them all about the war and my part in it once they returned to Britain. But it had only been four years since the fall of Voldemort, and we all had our scars. Ginny, who still struggles in matches against Puddlemere because one of their beaters looks just a bit too much like Fred out of the corner of her eye when she flies past him headed for the hoops. Harry, who found that the only place to live the normal life he had always craved was on the other side of the Atlantic, where the American magical community was more intrigued by his accent than by his part in the war. Ron, who had dealt with everything by working himself into the ground, training with the Aurors during the day and then helping George reopen the joke shop at night, spending weekends at the Burrow so that his parents were rarely without at least one of their children in the house. And me, who was still living half-muggle after all these years just to stave off the fear that my next apparition to the house I grew up in would be one too many and would send my parents and all the memories we had worked so hard to recover right back to Melbourne.

It wasn't all bad, of course. There were bad days (bad weeks sometimes, usually around May 2 or major holidays), but for the most part we had all settled into our post-war, post-Hogwarts lives. I was, unsurprisingly, the only one of the three of us who had gone back for our seventh year after the war ended, finishing school alongside Ginny, though not as Head Girl as I'd always planned. Professor McGonagall had offered the role to me, but I had declined. It hadn't seemed fair to Nancy Ackerley, the Ravenclaw prefect who had been my presumptive successor for the job practically since the Sorting Hat had touched her head; after all, it was her rightful seventh year, not mine.

There was also the matter of my weekends being occupied by the Ministry's victory tour. After everything, Harry was still viewed as the same symbol of hope that he had always been to Wizarding Britain, and the Ministry felt it was important to show the greater global wizarding community that its greatest threat was now gone, by parading the victor around the world. Harry would never have agreed if it hadn't been for Kingsley's appointment as Minister, and he refused to take as much of the credit as they were trying to give him, insisting that Ron and I come along, at least as much as our busy schedules allowed.

Harry was drifting after the war. We both knew it. And it had always been our job-ours, the two of us, together-to look after him. So Ron and I divvied up the itinerary to keep Harry as supervised as possible; Ron went to Romania, I went to Egypt. Ron went to Spain, I went to France. The three of us didn't make a public appearance together until our trip to America just after Christmas. This was deemed one of the more important destinations (from the Ministry's political standpoint, in any case), so they had scheduled this particular stop when Hogwarts and the Auror Academy were both on an extended break for the holidays, and Ron and I could both attend: The Golden Trio, appearing together at last.

The international portkey that landed us in the lobby of the MACUSA headquarters was about the last piece of the victory tour that went according to Ministry plan. Harry had taken one look at the plaque hanging next to the visitor check-in desk that commemorated the 12 American wizards who made up the first state-side Auror corps, including an Abraham Potter, and decided he wasn't leaving New York. We attended the victory celebration as scheduled on New Year's Day, and two days later, Ron and I were taking the return portkey to London by ourselves and Harry was enrolled in the American Auror Academy.

The spring term at Hogwarts rolled by quickly. Ron and I wrote constantly, the bulk of our letters consisting of worry about Harry interspersed with trading of encouragement about our respective upcoming exams. Harry wrote to us both too, but the logistics of international magical post meant his letters were few and far between. I didn't actually see either of them again until the first anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts. There was a huge memorial planned at the school, and although Harry had originally planned on missing it (not wanting to create a spectacle, or so he said), something had changed his mind.

The event was mostly comprised of Ministry officials and foreign magical diplomats, many of whom we had met before Harry had cut our international adventure short. A couple of hours of rubbing elbows was enough for me, and after Ginny pulled Harry away from the party, claiming the need to show him some rebuilt part of the castle that I was quite sure neither of them intended to pay any mind to, Ron and I had snuck a bottle of Firewhiskey up to the Astronomy Tower.

His exams were done, and though he was still waiting for the results, he was sure of passing with flying colors. So naturally, the half-drunk conversation had turned to my plans after Hogwarts. I knew I would have a spot in Kingsley's Ministry, if I wanted it. Headmistress McGonagall was still in a pinch for teachers on a more long-term basis; the school had reopened for the year with a collective effort from the community, but she was in horrible need of more permanent teachers for Potions and Defense, either of which I would have been qualified to teach.

But I suppose to a certain extent, I was drifting too, and neither of those options sat quite right for me. But the only other option at my disposal was, "In the No-Maj Liasion Office. You remember Alice Douglas, we met her when we were there? They're setting up a program for muggleborns, help them get acclimated to our world before they start at Ilvermorny, and she's offered to have me head it. Could you imagine?" I passed the bottle back to Ron, and he took a long swig of it, and then another, before he said, "You should go."

I looked up at him, startled. I hadn't even really been considering it until that moment. "I should?" He nodded. "We both know you don't want to teach. The Ministry still has a long way to go before you'll want any part of it. This job sounds great for you, Hermione. And Harry's there; doesn't sound like he's coming back any time soon." This last bit was accompanied by a roll of his eyes and another sip of firewhiskey before he handed the bottle back to me.

"You think he's happy?" I asked, taking a drink. It was so hard to tell from his letters, and if he was going to be more honest with one of us over the other, it would be Ron.

He shrugged in reply, one corner of his mouth twisted up into a smirk. "Only one way to find out."

And I had been running the MACUSA's No-Maj Pre-Education Committee ever since.

I realized with a start that I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I was nearly back into London already, with plenty of time to spare before my late portkey back to New York. My mobile started ringing as I rounded the corner headed back to the car rental and I reached across the passenger seat for it. It wasn't uncommon for my mum to call after I left, worried that I had forgotten my slippers, or a towel, or something else that had probably never even made it as far as my Hogwarts trunk, so I answered it without even looking. "Mum?"

"Hermione." Ron's voice on the line was oddly flat. (After dealing with Harry's trans-Atlantic letters for months that spring, convincing them both to invest in muggle telephones had been easy. Teaching Ron to use his had been the hard part, at least at first.)

"What's wrong?" I asked immediately. There was a pause from his end, and then he returned, "Are you still in Britain?"

"My portkey isn't set to leave for an hour. Ron, what's wrong?" Three years with an entire ocean between us hadn't changed the fact that he was still my best friend, and I knew from his voice that something wasn't right.

Another long pause, and then, "Hermione, it's Dad."