After that, time moved the way it does after the big moments are over — quickly, without drama, full of smaller things.
Harry graduated. Kevin watched from the staff table and felt something that took a moment to name. Pride, maybe. Or the particular satisfaction of watching someone arrive at something they were made for.
Within half a month, Harry had a godbrother.
Remus Lupin and Tonks brought Teddy to visit Sirius. The baby was six months old, round-faced and perpetually curious, with hair that couldn't commit to a colour. Tonks had been pregnant since the previous Christmas — Kevin had known for months, as had the rest of them, but this was the first time they'd actually seen him in person.
Sirius had declared, loudly and repeatedly, that he had no interest in being anyone's godfather and was far too irresponsible for the role. He had then held Teddy for approximately forty-five seconds and immediately begun lobbying Lupin with the focused determination of a man running out of time.
Lupin, amused and perhaps always expecting it, caved.
Harry acquired a small, round, extremely opinionated godbrother and promptly had no idea what to do with him.
"Congratulations," Kevin said, clapping him on the shoulder. "How's it feel?"
"Terrifying," Harry said, watching Teddy try to grab Hermione's hair from Tonks's arms. "I don't know what big brothers do."
"You'll work it out. Just be around."
The gathering expanded naturally — the Weasleys arrived to see Lupin and Tonks, Mrs. Weasley and Tonks having become, over the course of the pregnancy and birth, something quite close to family. Bill and Fleur came too. Fleur was visibly, brilliantly pregnant, and Bill had the look of a man who had been anxious for months and was beginning to consider it might all work out.
Sirius's building had enough room for all of them without crowding, which was one of the things he'd planned for when he bought it. The afternoon stretched out in the particular way of good days — full and warm and in no particular hurry.
They found themselves talking about jobs, eventually.
NEWT results were in. Everyone had come through well. Harry had received a direct Auror track invitation from the Ministry — a courtesy, given that defeating Voldemort in open combat was probably the best audition in the department's history, but the paperwork still mattered. Ron had applied through the standard process and been accepted fast enough that the letter had probably been drafted before he sent his own.
"Department of Magical Law Enforcement?" Harry looked at Hermione.
"Sent the application the day my results arrived," she said. "Response came back in two days." A pause. "Onboarding starts next month."
Harry grinned. "Yes. We're all going to be coworkers."
He hadn't quite believed it could happen that way — that the people who had spent seven years keeping each other upright in a corridor could turn the corner into actual adult lives and somehow still be together. But there it was.
Draco, wherever he was, would be doing something else — something that suited a Malfoy heir better than government work. But they'd see him.
A month after graduation, the school year began.
Hermione started at the Ministry. Kevin stayed at Hogwarts, by arrangement. They kept the house — the rental next to the Grangers, the one Kevin had been paying for since third year, which had become home by accident and by intention in equal measure.
She left each morning in crisp work robes, and Kevin was in the basement most of the time she was gone, working on something that had been nagging at him since before graduation.
Grindelwald's Doppelganger technique — the clay construct that could fight, speak, cast spells, and convincingly occupy space — was, in principle, the solution to his scheduling problem. A professor who could also be home when he needed to be home. He'd spent the month pulling it apart theoretically, studying its architecture, looking for the piece he could use without importing the whole apparatus.
He'd found it. The standby mode — a construct that idled without drawing on his concentration, dormant until triggered, at which point he could slip into it from a distance and take direct control. Not elegant. Not something Grindelwald would have bothered with, finding standby modes inelegant. But functional.
He heard the front door open.
"You're back."
He poked his head out of the basement. Hermione stood in the hallway in her Ministry robes, not yet changed, with the particular look of someone who'd been on their feet since seven in the morning and was now trying to decide which part of the day to explain first.
She crossed to him and climbed onto his back without preamble — arms around his neck, chin on his shoulder.
He caught her without thinking about it and walked them both to the sitting room.
"Rough day?"
"No," she said, and then paused. "…There are bad laws in there, Kevin."
Her voice was quiet. Not angry — something more complicated than anger.
"House-elves have no legal standing. Barely any protections. Everyone treats it like a given. The elves themselves treat it like a given. And when I mention it, they look at me like I'm trying to solve a problem that doesn't exist." She shifted against his back. "My colleagues say it's always been this way. Like that's supposed to settle it."
Kevin kept walking, slow circles around the sitting room.
"What are you going to do?" he said.
She was quiet for a moment. "Push for reform. Draft something. Find whoever will sign it and find them early."
"Then do it."
She lifted her head to look at him properly, something uncertain in her face. "You think I'm right?"
Kevin thought about it. "I don't know if you're right," he said, honestly. "Rights for magical creatures — it's complicated. I don't know how it ends."
She looked disappointed.
"But," he continued, "that doesn't matter. You want to do something about it. So do it. Future people will decide if it worked. You're not responsible for being right — you're responsible for trying."
He stopped walking.
"Society's held together by people who push at the things that don't sit right, even when the outcome isn't certain. That's not naïveté. That's just how anything gets better." He looked at her. "And if you make a new mess while you're fixing the old one, you fix that too. Beats leaving the first one untouched."
Hermione was quiet for a long moment.
Then she kissed him on the cheek, bright and quick.
"Okay," she said, into the side of his neck. "I'll do it."
He hadn't told her she was right. He'd told her something better: that being right wasn't the prerequisite. That trying was enough to justify the trying, and that the outcome, whatever it was, would be hers.
She would doubt herself, eventually — she always did, when the work got hard and the opposition got organised. But when she did, she would have this moment to return to. Not you're right — which she could talk herself out of — but go ahead anyway. Which she couldn't.
Kevin had learned, over years of living alongside her, that there was a difference.
She stayed on his back a little longer than strictly necessary, watching the last of the evening light fall across the floor.
Crookshanks jumped onto the sofa, regarded them both, and began very loudly demanding dinner.
Kevin set Hermione down and went to sort it out.