James laughed again and shook his head. “Last night’s excuse is no better or worse than any of the others, I guess.” He looked aside at her again, unable, at least for the moment, to take his eyes off her. “But that’s a boring thing to talk about. Tell me what’s been going on with you, Lu.”
She shot him another bemused look. “Are you sure you’re all right? You act as if you haven’t seen me in months.”
“More like years,” he grinned, his eyes twinkling with mischief.
“Tell. And I want to hear absolutely everything.”
She shook her head at him as if he was having her on somehow.
She didn’t answer his request on their way to History of Magic.
But she did answer it eventually.
In the years to come, she told him absolutely everything.
Epilogue – Nineteen years later
“It was right here,” James said to the young girl at his side.
“Right here on this stretch of lawn that I graduated almost twenty years ago. Of course, the actual ceremony took place over in the amphitheatre, like it will today, with the families and everything. But that was just the boring part, where we wore our formal robes and they gave out the diplomas and we all shook the headmaster’s hand and they played the Hogwarts salute on bagpipes and harpsichord. The real party was later that night, right here on the lawn overlooking the lake. They put up a huge white tent—only it was nowhere near so huge on the outside as it was when you went in—and we had Rig Mortiss and the Stifftones play live, and we all danced and ate loads too much, and I and Zane Walker and some of his Ravenclaw mates snuck out the back for butterbeers and even a few firewhiskeys, and Ralph and some of the teachers caught us but just chastised us for setting a bad example, since we were all already graduated and there was nothing they could do to us anymore.”
“You drank firewhiskey at your graduation?” the girl asked.
“Well, I pretended to. I never did have much of a taste for the stuff. But Zane said I was a hinkypunk’s uncle if I didn’t, and even I wasn’t immune to a little friendly peer pressure back in the day.”
The girl frowned. When she did, she looked a lot like her mother, Lily. “It’s weird to think of the headmaster as ever being young enough to get into trouble for one firewhiskey.”
“Well,” James hemmed, “I’m not officially headmaster yet. Not until Neville hands out the diplomas at today’s ceremony.”
“Neville is Headmaster Longbottom, then?” the girl asked, reaching to take her uncle’s hand. She tugged him back toward the castle and the amphitheatre beyond. “Why’s he retiring, anyway? He’s not old like Headmaster Merlin was when he retired. Or McGonagall before him. I mean, yeah, Headmaster Longbottom’s old, all right. But they were positively geologic!”
“Merlin really wasn’t all that old,” James smiled and shrugged, allowing himself to be pulled along. “He just looked like it. He’s still around, unlike McGonagall, God rest her grumpy soul. Merlin just has other things he wants to do. He doesn’t stay in any one job or place for very long. He’s restless. He did his part here.”
“Same for Headmaster Longbottom?” the girl asked, squinting up at him in the sun. “He has other things he wants to do?”
James nodded uncertainly. “Herbology is his passion. He wants to travel the world. Discover new species of man-eating trees and whatnot. Write books about them. It’s his first love.”
“What about you? Will you still be here when I start Hogwarts in a few years? Or will you get tired of being headmaster, too?”
James considered it. “You know, Arianna, I don’t think I will get tired of it. I think I’ll stay here until I am a very, very old man.
Perhaps even geologic.”
“Now that’s old,” Arianna agreed gravely.
Together, they walked around the Sylvven tower to the amphitheatre, which droned with assembling voices.
Zane was at the ceremony, as was Ralph and Rose, each with their spouses, each wearing dress robes except for Zane, who sported a dark suit with a bile yellow tie. His wife Cheshire kept distractedly checking a scroll of thick parchment, nicking it out of her purse and unrolling it in her lap, peering down at it.
“They’re fine,” Zane muttered aside at her as the ceremony got underway. “They’re with my mom and dad. They had kids of their own. Greer and I managed to survive.”
“Joanna and Quentin are a serious handful,” Cheshire whispered back. “It’s not their survival I’m worried about.”
Rose’s husband, Aleksander Volkiev, whom they had first met at Durmstrang back during James’ fourth year, sat as rigid as a statue, his chin up-thrust, his back as straight as a tyre iron. His slate grey robes fit him as if they had been sewn directly onto his body by elves.
Considering how little James knew about Volkiev’s Belarusian magical heritage, it was entirely possible that they had been.
James recalled, somewhat wistfully, that Rose and Zane had dated for a fairly long few years. In the end, his brash irreverence had overpowered his irrepressible charm, and she had tearfully called it off.
Volkiev, by comparison, was an icy Siberian river compared to Zane’s American waterslide, and was therefore (unfortunately, in James’ unspoken opinion) a much better fit for Rose’s serious, practical mind.
Their own oldest child, Fred Aleksey, was in attendance alongside them, wearing his first year Hogwarts robes. He sat just like his father, bolt upright and stoic, but his face and green eyes were entirely Weasley.
James had a suspicion that there was more than a little mischief hiding beneath that practiced posture. He would have to keep an eye on young Mr. Fred Aleksey. Albeit, not too close an eye. He did want the boy to have a little fun.
Ralph and Ashley Doone (now Dolohov) sat together on James’ right. Ashley’s belly was as round as a punch bowl beneath her strained robes. She rubbed it with one hand and fanned herself with the other.
Ralph’s face was a carefully constructed mask of respectful attention, but James knew that the big man was constantly, almost obsessively, shifting his eyes to his wife and their unborn child. Throughout the ceremony, he checked on her quietly, offered to fan her with his program, or simply stroked the back of her head, doting on her with almost comical devotion.
James couldn’t blame him. They had been childless for the nearly twelve years of their marriage, which was exactly eleven years longer than Ralph had wanted to be. Ashley bore his ministrations with affectionate patience, smiling wanly in the afternoon sun.