Modern Day Harry Potter

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• Her lawyer sits down and levels with her, “not even magic could save this train wreck of a marriage, Hermione.”
• Hermione uses magic every day to wash and dry her hair because who has time for that?
• “I would smile a lot more in public if disgusting men didn’t always seem to think that was a sexual invitation,” Hermione seethed.
• Hermione builds a top secret farm that uses magic to produce unlimited food. No one ever dies of hunger or malnutrition again.
• “I am absorbing life experience like a sponge,” Ron declared, to no one in particular.
• “Can’t you see I’m haunted by mediocrity?” Ron whispered to Draco in the dark. “I’m haunted by everything,” Draco spat, turning over.
• Ron visited the Burrow after he had gotten clean. He was dismayed to see how many photos of Hermione his mother kept on the walls.
• “Hey. You’re really gorg…” Hermione sighs and deactivates her Okcupid account once again.
• Harry, drunk, admits to Neville at their reunion that he often wonders if he only married Ginny for her parents.
• Harry types, “I have always loved you” into his phone. Deletes it. Sends Hermione a link to a TEDtalk instead.
• Hermione decides to not pluck a stray chin hair. Declares it feminist rebellion. Names it Gloria.
• Luna paints a beautiful sunflower mural on the side of their house. Neville makes it his new Facebook cover photo.
• Ginny decides to try the Paleo diet. Hermione lists its logical inconsistencies. They do not speak again for three weeks.
• Harry drops his wand in the toilet for the 6000th time.
• Neville cultivates numerous friendships in the pondside feed-bread-to-the-ducks community.
• Lavender Brown just loves going to Target.
• Harry misses the train by minutes. Decides tonight’s not worth going out anyway. Texts excuse. Goes home.
• Harry and Ron did not talk these days so much as mutually acknowledge Ron’s intense need.
• Harry watched Hermione’s hands as she spoke. Without thinking, he grabbed for Ginny’s. Ginny had forgotten how that felt.
• Hermione gives impassioned speech to wizards about how ridiculous it is that we have ecological destruction when we have wizards.
• Neville and Luna send sunflowers for Hermione’s birthday. Hermione is shocked to read the card and realize it is her birthday.
• Hermione uses magic to build a cabin in serenity. Can’t figure out how to connect it to WiFi. Sits unused.
• Hermione sends screamer to German President. Foreign policy is immediately revised.
• Luna celebrates Neville’s birthday by embroidering his professor robe with daisies.
• Draco finds himself in two concurrent polyamorous relationships, neither of which has a future.
• Ron and Harry drink together now, letting the disconnect between them flood warmly with booze.
• Lavender Brown tries to use magic to drop fifteen pounds before her engagement photos are shot. Breaks wand in the attempt.
• Ron eats an entire tin of chocolate-dipped biscuits alone in his idling car in front of his flat.
• Hermione liked his pictures but saw he went to business school. She sighed and immediately hid his profile.
• Neville and Luna hold hands as they browse the shelf for home decor at their local library.
• Draco finds a therapist that reminds him of his father. Now he can finally begin to heal.
• Previously undiscovered freshwater aquifer discovered, saves the world from depletion. Hermione accepts Wizard Nobel Prize.
• Hermione removes all carbon from the atmosphere. Wins second Wizard Nobel prize.
• Hermione uses magic to shrink the penis of every catcaller by two inches.
• Neville and Luna plan separate Halloween costumes as an exercise in appreciating the independent spirit of the other.
• Luna’s Roller Derby name is Luny Bin.
• Hermione decides quite assertively that Adam Levine cannot get it.
• Ron still haunted by what Hermione once said: “We can do fucking magic, Ron, why are you playing Candy Crush Saga?”
• Molly Weasley shakes her head when Hermione is the only one who remembers her birthday.
• On a recent health kick, Hermione tries out a Barre class. She does not go back.
• Draco’s second memoir is reviewed favorably in all the right places and yet still he feels nothing.
• Luna and Neville are seen pouring over real estate listings, searching for a space suitable for a tantra practice salon.
• Draco pens Hermione deep apology via Facebook messenger. Like the 12 before it, it remains unread & their friendship unconfirmed.
• During his MFA, Draco injected new energy into is life through ecstatic dance.
• Hermione accidentally walks into an Urban Outfitters, realizes where she is and walks back out again.
• Harry looks down at his thigh-high stack of unread Economists and sighs.
• Draco and Ron end up in rehab together. Make the best of it by crying naked together in the shower.
• After dating an extremely attractive muggle for two weeks, Hermione is pained to realize he doesn’t know how to spell her name right.
• Ginny plans a Sunday morning conversation with Harry to address the fact that they haven’t had sex for two years.
• Ron powers through the planning of his second wedding, this time to Lavender Brown who is going with a lavender/brown theme.
• Hermione orders pumpkin spice latte from Starbucks. Does not give a fuck what you think that says about her.
• Hermione is told she has resting bitch face for the last time and starts breaking fingers with her mind.
• Draco smokes on his fire escape, dropping cigarettes and tears through the iron grating to the alley below.
• For Harry’s 30th birthday, Ginny wants to give the gift of fatherhood. Harry just desperately wants to sleep all weekend.
• Draco invents an awkward self- flagellation routine that doubles as a workout.
• Hermione trains crack team of wizards to use polyjuice potion to infiltrate ISIS and tears it apart from the inside.
• Harry has a column in the Prophet. Writes think pieces that signal his fluency with and distance from highbrow wizarding culture.
• In his biography of Severus Snape, Draco reveals his teacher’s unexpected penchant for Pokemon.
• Draco pilgrimages to the spot at Hogwarts where Hermione punched him in the face. Composes a poem. It’ll be known as his masterpiece.
• Draco and his mother sit in silence across from one another, mirroring each other’s knowing contempt for the same man.
• Ron accidentally brushes his teeth with Lavender’s acne cream. Conserves misdirected rage for fun, self-destructive outlet later.
• Hermione removes her headphones to acknowledge the man tapping her shoulder. “Hi,” he says, grinning. His ass hair is set ablaze.
• Hermione’s phone vibrates. A text reads, “I miss u.” She walks to the window and rearranges the stars to read: “I AM FREE NOW, RON.”
• Hermione emails Viktor Krum. Is down.
• Harry has opinions on how to deal with ISIS. No one is listening.
• Ron is lectured by Wizard doctor that stupefy is a spell that should not be used on one’s self to avoid interpersonal conflict.
• “I used to be able to enjoy romance. Now I see it all as saccharine,” Hermione explained to her therapist on Tuesday morning.
• Luna and Neville decide to foster a puppy named Potato. They transfigure into dogs themselves to train him.
• For obvious reasons, Draco still wakes up in abject terror.
• Ginny pauses Netflix. “It’s time to start thinking about kids, Harry.” Harry again negotiates for the status quo.
• “Not only are we adults, Ronald, but we’re capable of magic. We owe the world more than THIS,” Hermione screeched, kicking the Xbox
• Hermione perfects alchemy on a napkin at a bar. Drunkenly sends several tons to Saharan desert with note that reads, “Sorry, Africa.”
• Ginny is getting pretty tired of seeing Fleur and Bill posting pictures of their kid all over Facebook. Likes all of them.
• Draco, rejected again by Tin House, uncaps the Jamieson and washes down two benzos at three in the afternoon.
• “Ms. Granger, you have a beautiful smile. You should use it,” the cashier said. That night, he shat burning jalapeño peppers.
• In keeping with the spirit of misandry, Hermione hands out copies of the Dialectic of Sex to men who ask for her number.
• Ginny calls her mom to vent about Harry’s emotional evasiveness. Molly knits anxiety sweaters.
• “Singlehood is a choice, Hermione,” Fleur angrily retorted. “Yes, and I’m choosing it. We are violently agreeing.” “No!” “Yes!” “No!”
• Draco asked the server for coffee, black, no sugar. He wasn’t worthy of sweetness.
• Harry decides to take up jogging almost entirely to have an excuse for not checking his phone for an hour a day.
• Lavender Brown decides to treat herself to nail polish. Ron decides to treat himself to the last two percocets he’d been saving.
• A man follows Hermione making kissy sounds. Hermione charms his lips together until he does something contributive to society.
• Ron decides to count how many times his fiancée says, “This is so cute,” while scanning for their registry. Gives up after fifty.
• Hermione reads the single’s section in the DAILY PROPHET and is astounded by how little wizards seem to do with their lives.
• “Dad, say something.” “Ron, I’m trying to process how stupid it sounds to go to rehab for a Tylenol PM dependency.”
• Hermione beats the blues by riding her broomstick over tropical bioluminescent beaches listening to Balmorhea.
• Ginny beats the blues by constantly texting Harry about what she’s doing, eating and watching; Harry wishes she would stop.
• “Technology is going to catch up to us eventually,” Harry scribbled. “We should probably make the last few years of magic worth it.”
• Hermione zaps her memory clean every time she is forced to learn what a Kardashian is.
• Harry sat awake, his knees pinned up to his chest, staring at his wife asleep next to him, willing her to stop loving him.
• “You’d think magic would make adulthood easier,” Hermione wrote to Hagrid, “but it seems what matters most is our wretched humanity.”
• Harry reads love letters from Japanese teenagers to Hermione over the phone. Ginny cries herself to sleep.
• “You know, if I weren’t married,” Bill slurred. Before he could finish, Hermione summoned for him the deepest wedgie he’d ever have.
• Hermione points out to Molly while shopping that bodywash is wasteful and bad for the environment. Ginny follows the cart angrily.
• “I don’t need to remarry,” Narcissa said flatly. Draco’s body seized in cold anticipation. “I have Draco. What more do I need?”
• Hermione kept tabs on the low-income kids living next door, leaving them fun paperbacks with pound notes stuck between the pages.
• Molly begins to think it’s time to stage an intervention for Ron but stops herself after realizing this would be her fourth in a year.
• Neville buys two biscotti with his coffee. He hands one to the woman behind him. “Cheers!” He smiles, leaves without hitting on her.
• Harry asks Hermione if she’d ever consider manning a wizard-powered space program. She nods, “maybe.” Harry learns to hope.
• Lavender Brown can’t get enough of Kim Kardashian’s fun iPhone app.
• Harry found himself with Hermione on Sunday afternoons, buying used books for kids they never met, keeping happy thoughts to himself.
• Sitting down for tea, Professor McGonagall reminds Hermione that a witch needs a wizard like a hippogriff needs a broomstick.
• Ginny turns down an offer to spend the summer touring with the Holyhead Harpies. Harry spends the night crying in the bath.
• In a fit of desperation, Ron snorts a scoop of Floo powder and his face literally melts off.
• “There will always be pieces of her I will never have—I love and hate her for that.” Harry sighed, clenching his wand.
• “Do they know who I am yet?” Draco scratched in his journal. “Do they? Do they? Do they?”
• The yoga did little to ease the cravings, Ron acknowledged reluctantly . And it always reminds me of what I’ll never have.
• Regarding her time with Harry during the hunt for the Horcruxes, Hermione said it passed like a dream. Harry smiled into his lap.
• Ron would always be upset that Dumbledore’s last words to him were, “Weasley, you look a bit pale. Perhaps drink a bit more water, yes?”
• Draco’s writing career would take a sharp turn when he releases MY APOLOGIES, a work of poetry reflecting on his time at Hogwarts.
• Ron dumped his load of crisps and candies on the belt. He tried not to make eye contact with the salesmuggle.
• Hermione opened up Google Drive, returning to an abandoned draft she had started during her divorce. She laughed and deleted it.
• Harry popped into a bookshop after work, meandering dangerously close to the self-help section when he heard Draco’s smoker’s cough.
• Harry scribbles incisive commentary into the margins of all of Ginny’s books hoping someday she’ll reread them.
• Lavender sees Hermione across the tube platform. She hides. Hermione laughs because that idiot can do magic.
• In his office, Harry kept keepsakes from a relationship that never was and memories from moments never shared.
• Arthur wakes up every morning to a note etched into his wallet reminding him which of his twin sons is dead.
• Hermione reads Lena Dunham’s memoirs and is grateful that she skipped over late adolescence fighting pure evil.
• Draco spends a good amount of time now writing and rewriting his living will, almost entirely to upset his mother.
• Luna and Neville made everyone homemade sipping chocolate for Christmas.
• Molly sews emergency contact information into all of Ron’s sweaters these days.
• Viktor begs Hermione to holiday with him in Barcelona. She agrees under the condition that they not speak between sexual episodes.
• Ron keeps a diary. Well, not so much keeps as rips the first page out repeatedly.
• Harry pulled off his headphones, his eyes scanning the subway car, wondering if he were really the muggle in their world.
• “What’d you do today?” Ron asked Lavender, half a care evident in his voice. “You’ll hate it; I spent all day pinning on Pinterest.”
• Harry fantasizes about a life he would have led with Hermione had his council of unusually wise elders advised her away from Ron.
• Harry takes a deep breath before pushing the door open to find Ginny crying into Molly’s shoulder about him again.
• Hermione reads the single’s section in the DAILY PROPHET and is astounded by how little wizards seem to do with their lives.
• “No one will love you until you love yourself, dear.” Fleur’s self-help pathology was unwelcome on Hermione’s Facebook wall.
• Harry found Draco’s Instagram completely by accident searching the hashtag #voldemorthuggedme
• Ron glanced at his flaming red happy trail, no longer able to see anything resembling happiness down there.
• Harry cradled the cup in his hands. Hermione smiled, said something disarmingly witty. Harry laughed, spitting tea on her.
• Neville carried four mugs to the table. Ron stared at his ex-wife through the window at a joy that was never again to be his.
• Harry runs into Lavender Brown at Starbucks. With nothing to say, he buys her a latte, speaking more to the barista than to her.
• “WHAT DO YOU WANT, HERMIONE? Am I not man enough for you?” “Viktor, seriously, that you even just said that…”
• “Have you ever tried attending to your emotional state before things reach a crisis point, Ron?” “What do you mean, Harry?”
• “You know what you are, Weasley,” Draco snarled. “You’re a human liferaft, carrying the plague around. The fucking plague, Weasley.”
• “You know those things have like 450 calories in them each, right?” Lavender stared at Ron, biting down hard on the straw.
• “Mom says there’s a frost advisory and she wants us to tend the garden while she’s out.” “She’s not your mom, Harry, she’s mine.”
• Every Sunday at 2pm sharp, Luna and Hagrid share a large basket of fruit while Neville attends Hagrid’s plants.
• Ron felt deep admiration for how few fucks Draco had to give about dumping that flask into his tea like that.
• Harry writes for a highbrow magazine that while widely read, seems to have virtually no influence on magic policy whatsoever.
• Hermione sucked in air. She looked down on London from her broomstick and screamed, “HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT YOURSELVES!”
• “Ha, Harry, I can do magic better than orgas—” Hermione stopped, realizing this was violating her unspoken code of conduct.
• Hermione installs a missile charm around North Korea. Is awarded her third Wizard Nobel Peace Prize.
• Draco petitions the wizarding community to scare the fear of a righteous God back into the Koch brothers and the Waltons.
• Neville volunteers to play Jesus in the wizard production of Second Coming.
• Ron was the talk of wizard social media for a hot five minutes when someone recorded him drunkenly singing “Let it Go” on broomstick.
• Ron lifted his sweater, unintentionally revealing the tribal tattoo he had across his back which had neither stretched or aged well.
• “Neville, do you think anyone would notice if you started growing weed in the Hogwarts greenhouse over summer break?” Ron asked.
• “Oh, Percy’s third wife, what’s her name—the fit one, you know—” Percy’s fourth wife was not having fitting in with the Weasleys.
• Pansy Parkinson and Lavender Brown found out they had a lot more in common than they were led to believe after Hogwarts.
• Molly looked at the way newly-divorced George eyed Hermione across the table and wondered what new fresh hell this would bring.
• Hermione receives a box of only marshmallow and blueberry Bertie Botts Every Flavour beans. Only George ever insists on that combo.
• “I’ll just put on one of these jumpers, Molly.” She reached down to the pile. George couldn’t help but notice she pulled out a G.
• Though they literally burn holes through the skin, Draco puts an Acid Pop to his tongue just to check if he can still feel.
• Draco still carries a dark mark on his forearm. On his other forearm, however, is a sleevie.
• Cho Chang finds her way to the coffeeshop in Harry’s office building too often for it not to be obvious.
• Draco answers the door to a dungbomb. Sighs. Grabs his coat and hat and goes to wait it out at the sex shop across the street.
• “You know, Hermione, I thought I’d never be happy again.” Oh, no, she thought. George was confiding. Confiding!
• “At least I can still summon a patronus!” Ron snapped at George, the Weasley family shocked by their youngest son’s insensitivity.
• Ron had always known exactly why he was chosen for the Deluminator and he would never live it down.
• “I’m trying to cut out sugar but it’s so hard, Ron.” “Lavender, you’re capable of magic, love.” Oh, god, he thought, now I get it.
• “Hey baby,” before he could finish, Hermione had summoned the winds and was in the process of severely ruining his day.
• “Your troubles are largely your own doing, Ron.” Arthur had lost all of his patience with his living children at this point.
• “You know, you’re on that thing so much, Harry, it’s like you’re part machine now.” Ginny didn’t know how right she was.
• Hermione sat there, watching the last fuck she would ever give streak violently across the night sky.
• Harry had taken to wearing his invisibility cloak around the flat at this point.
• “I don’t know how to lay down my burdens,” Draco wrote. Then immediately hated himself.
• Hermione’s work at the Department of Mysteries continues to serve as testament to the value of state-financed magical education.
• “Beyonce is my spirit animal.” Hermione nodded at Ginny politely, smiling at half-mast.
• George handed her back the book she had lent him three days before. “It was perfect, thank you.” Hermione blushed against her will.
• No adult wizards give a shit about school house affiliation.
• Luna’s paintings are featured in am exhibition entitled, “BLISSMAKERS.”
• Harry sees that George sent Hermione a book with a note that read, “I’d be honored if you’d read this (if you haven’t already).”
• Neville receives a sign for his greenhouse from his students which reads, “KNOWLEDGE GROWS HERE.”
• Neville, Luna and their blind rescue dog Potato spend a happy hour jumping in mud puddles.
• Hermione wrote an essay for the Guardian about men who were neither Keepers nor Chosen Ones; muggle women suddenly understood.
• “The present keeps making opportunities happen but my past makes me incapable of realizing them.” Hermione whined, imitating Draco.
• On the floor of the storage locker she’s been renting since the divorce, Hermione finds her wedding dress and sets it on fire.
• “Hey Hermy,” the message began, “I haven’t talked to you since Hogwarts, how are yo—” Hermione deletes the message. No fucks given.
• Draco doesn’t remember swiping right on any of these matches, but he’s too drunk to care. “Let’s meet,” he writes, to all of them.
• Harry opens his http://Mint.com account and is astonished to realize almost a third of his income goes to espresso.
• Arthur spends six months in federal prison for fucking around with drones over Downing Street.
• Ron cuts himself shaving. Teeters dangerously too close to existential questions. Loses the rest of the day to SAY YES TO THE DRESS.
• Luna is honored with plaque from community for her dedicated service to the arts. Neville gives her a standing ovation and a pie.
• Ginny, week four into the Paleo diet, eats nothing but steak. Harry becomes vegetarian to have valid excuse to avoid eating with her.
• Neville sends a box of gourmet hot chocolate to Harry’s office. Harry breaks down into tears, confronted with his own selfishness.
• Enraged, Draco yells: “No one has done more for women in creative writing than I have!” Hermione immediately gives him jock itch.
• Draco starts a twitter account that starts off fresh and poignant, but within weeks descends into a deluge of cat pictures.
• “Why don’t I see you and Ron carousing about anymore, ‘Arry?” Hagrid asked sincerely. “Hagrid, you know he’s an alcoholic, right?”
• George buys Hermione a tiny cactus from a sidewalk vendor. He attaches a card that reads: “Like me, thrives under benign neglect.”
• George aborts Hermione’s efforts to apply chapstick. “No, don’t tease me like that. I find your dogged pragmatism intoxicating.”
• Lavender decides on Daenerys Targaryen as a wedding theme. Ginny can’t even.
• “Harry, mother says we need to plan the rehearsal dinner for Ron and Lavender.” “Ginny, I can’t. I have, um, things. Many things.”
• Wide awake again, Hermione spends her insomniac mania attacking the plastic-in-the-ocean problem. Dumps it in Wisconsin.
• Hermione attends magic conference. Drinks four cups of free coffee. Uses twitchy, defensive body language to maintain personal space.
• “Oliver, I’m in love with my deadbeat brother’s childhood sweetheart, to whom he proved the disutility of men,” George deadpanned.
• Neville uses his wand to evaporate puddles for Luna on their after-school strolls through Hogwarts trails with Potato.
• “Harry!” Harry’s face melts with dread before he turns to say, “Cho!” Hugs her mechanically. “You look great?” He asks dumbly.
• Ron opens his mouth to whine about his life. George sends him to the middle of a refugee camp.
• Ginny orders sushi to Harry’s office as a surprise. Harry tells the deliveryman, “I pain that she loves me so.” He nods, knowingly.
• “You know, I read something about this today,” Harry started, stopping halfway, realizing, no, Ginny won’t appreciate his analysis.
• Flipping through a catalog, Lavender yawns, “Daddy says we need new furniture. I think we should go with a Coca-Cola theme.”
• Ginny listens to Lavender describe her wedding as if marrying her alcoholic brother were the equivalent of graduating from Oxford.
• Draco writes an essay about the gentrification of Diagon Alley. George writes an essay examining Draco’s projected class guilt.
• Neville invites Ron in for tea. Luna spends the rest of the week purging negative energy out of their tiny, woodland cabin.
• “Ron’s karma is scarred by many successive lives of unexamined privilege, Hermione.” If only Hermione understood Luna at 19.
• “I’m afraid, Harry.” Ginny whispered in the dark. “I’m afraid I’m going to die alone.” “We all are, Ginny.” “Harry, please.”
• “Kanye cheated on Kim but I know you’d never do that, Ron. I know I won’t ever be lonely again.” Lavender smiled desperately.
• “I’m alienated from both wizard and muggle worlds,” Draco told a reporter. “I occupy the same pathetic limbus as leprechauns.”
• Draco put out his cigarette, “My autobiography isn’t about me. It’s about the idea of me in the great narrative of Harry Potter.”
• “My father reinforced my role as Potter’s foil. I was fated always to be Draco Malfoy, the Prince of White Wizard Supremacy.”
• Hermione,” Draco mused. “Hermione Granger is my hairshirt.” “Anything else about her?” “I said she’s my hairshirt, for chrissakes.”
• Hermione’s Dphil degree from Oxford still sits in its envelope under a stack of unread mail, as it has for the past 18 months.
• The office bathroom is out of toilet paper. Harry isn’t quite sure what the protocol is for summoning it from the supply closet.
• Moaning Myrtle finally gets the book deal almost no one was waiting for.
• Draco watches himself interviewed on YouTube. Uncaps a bottle of merlot. Throws his phone in the toilet.
• Hermione finds herself in the sorrowful company of a self-righteous Silicon Valley venture capitalist. Pays his tab. Inflicts piles.
• The animosity between Molly & Fleur is palpable, but her daughter-in-law is a gatekeeper to the only grandchildren she’ll ever know.
• “We should really be buying free-range eggs, Harry.” Harry grunts. “Are you listening?” “Something about eggs.” “Harry!”
• “Molly, do you ever fantasize about just up and disappearing to the States, kids never finding us again?” “Arthur!” “Just a thought.”
• Hermione receives owls nightly from suitors from around the wizarding world. She invites George in solely to register his reaction.
• Headless Nick gives an exclusive interview 10 years too late to the PROPHET about how he’d always known Ron was no good for Hermione.
• “I know about sex tourism, but what about, like, life tourism. Is that a thing I can do?” “Ron, this is AA, that’s why you’re here.”
• Hermione hears of a national Red Cross blood shortage. Flicks her wand. “Accio blood.” Problem fucking solved.
• Harry walks up to Hermione’s flat Sunday morning with coffee. Hermione is asleep on the floor with a book over her face.
• Neville and Luna take their brooms on a tour of German castles. They bring Potato. Potato throws up on Germany.
• Neville publishes a volume on freshwater seaweeds. “A compelling read from start to finish!” says MAGICAL HORTICULTURE MONTHLY.
• George finds himself stalking Hermione’s Goodreads account, trying in catch the scent of a trail to her heart.
• “You ever read the Bible, ‘Mione?” “Yes, Harry, of course.” “Are fathers supposed to be like God or Jesus?” “I…I don’t know.”
• Draco reboots the TWILIGHT franchise, shocking but nevertheless weirdly delighting everyone.
• Percy lives out his dream of auditioning for X FACTOR. Is eliminated before he opens his mouth. For smugness.
• Hagrid rents FROZEN. Is simply delighted.
• Hermione wakes up to a dozen owls perched on her flat window, eleven telling her the UN needs her now. One owl says, “No buts.”
• Neville heals interhouse conflict at Hogwarts with bonfires and s’mores. Luna plays guitar
• Ron sleeps all day while Lavender spends most of her time planning their wedding. Muses about going back to technical college.
• “Oh, you know, Ron’s between things,” Lavender explains to her new best friend Pansy Parkinson. “He’s had a rough life.”
• Virtually all wizards and witches are employed in some fashion by the Ministry of Magic, which makes dating very, very hard.
• Pansy Parkinson truly loves her job as an Obliviator with the Department of Magical Accidents and Catastrophes.
• “What if you got a job at the Department of Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, Ron?” “You mean like a wizard dog catcher?”
• “Arry, you know muggles have these magic things that stick to metal?” “Do you mean magnets, Ron?” “Yeah, what spell is that?”
• “If given a listener,” Hermione said, reaching for the wine, “lonely men will say just about anything to keep you listening.”
• “Don’t you ever think, Ginny,” Hermione inhaled, exhaled, “that if given more agency, you might have become your own hero?”
• “Luna,” Neville spoke to the ceiling, “we travel hand-in-hand. That’s what marriage is—the constant renegotiation of travel plans.”
• “Propaganda works best on people who don’t want to think too hard but want credit for thinking anyway,” Hermione sighed.
• “There’s always a ‘good girl’ in every story, Ginny, because there is always a need for girls to be the good in every story.”
• “Nev,” Luna whispered, “I have no idea where I’m going.” “It doesn’t matter,” Neville whispered back, “I follow you, regardless.”
• Draco leases a renovated church. He carries a space heater and typewriter up to the steeple. He writes with pigeons and demons.
• George, a blackhorse pillar of the wizarding community, is repeatedly asked to consider running for mayor of Hogsmeade.
• Dean Thomas works at Wizarding Wireless Network Headquarters, hosting the morning wizarding talk show for the past 10 years.
• “I didn’t marry you because you were the best. I married you because you were Luna.” Neville said, brushing her cheek with his thumb.
• Neville’s involvement with the SECOND COMING goes well. Instilling the fear of God into Muggles is a time-honored wizard tradition.
• Hermione shuts her flat door behind her. Sinks to the ground, exhausted. Texts George, “Can you talk?” Of course he can.
• Every anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, Hermione has to avoid having anything close to a conversation with Ron at the ceremony.
• “You were always meant for things most of us would only comprehend in retrospect, ‘Mione,” George sputtered.
• Harry’s calls to Hermione kept going to voicemail. He might have to go home to his wife tonight.
• Draco marks muggle Karaoke nights on his calendar, to listen to songs he’s never heard before sung by people whose wants are so pure.
• Hermione woke up in her hallway, the phone next to her ear. Outside her locked door, George had left a note and a bag of pastries.
• Hermione grabbed her broomstick, her vape pen and flew for miles over the Mediterranean, searching for distracting rescue scenarios.
• George sat at the piano, pecking major chords, “She’s a wish you wrap a life around. That’s all I can say about it.” He smiled.
• “I believe in you the way I believe rain falls from the sky, Luna.” Neville said, pushing her tear-soaked hair out of her face.
• “Ginny, for the love of Merlin, can I just have two minutes?” Harry said, shaking off his wet umbrella in the hallway.
• George and Hermione watched the Chinese New Year fireworks from broomstick, tossing a bottle of Zinfandel between them.
• Ron buys from a teenager on the subway. Lavender finds it, bins it and exclaims, “oh, Ronny Weaz, what would you ever do without me?”
• Hermione takes an assignment to infiltrate the Russian Ministry of Mysteries after a mysterious death at the British Magic Embassy.
• Harry requests assignment to join Hermione. Is told he is too indispensable. He laughs, “and she’s not?”
• Molly is still listed as Hermione’s next-of-kin. Hermione never trusted Ron for the role.
• Hermione agrees to teach Dark Arts at Koldovstorits, the Russian School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
• “Hermione, what the hell do you think you’re doing going to Russia?” “My fucking duty to humanity, George.”
• Ginny hears about Hermione’s assignment and for the first time in eight months, she can sleep without Benadrylling herself.
• “Don’t you usually spend Sunday mornings with Hermione, Harry?” “She’s in Russia.” “Who isn’t?” Seamus was hard to be with.
• Ron hits the damp pavement hard. Looks up to see he’s been unceremoniously dumped in front of yet another NHS emergency department.
• “Bloody hell,” Ron spurts as he spits out an incisor.
• Harry begins his memoirs only to realize his entire life is only the first chapter of the epic biography of Hermione Granger.
• “Mum, do you think Harry still loves me?” “Ginny, dear, if I thought that was the right question, I’d answer it.”
• Draco sits down. “Three fingers of whisky, neat, please.” Barkeep slides it over. Draco drains it, slaps a tenner down, moves on.
• “Lucius and I, we loved. But we hated more. Hate kept us together long after the love had gone,” Narcissa answered the reporter.
• Harry recoiled at the tone of certitude his muggle peers demonstrated as they wrote about Russia, not knowing a thing about Hermione.
• “They write as if they’ve got their cock cradled in their left hand,” Harry moaned, eating every analysis despite himself.
• Ginny began finding great comfort in her CrossFit community, sublimating depression into burpees and squats.
• Low on funds, Draco finds himself teaching a creative writing course, begging students to explode their pain across 10,000 words.
• “She’s just got more, like, midi-chlorians than the rest of us,” Lavender said to Ron. Ron shook his head.
• Parvati Patil attended a fine wizarding college, asked no hard wizarding questions and now works in wizarding finance.
• Draco’s overnight guest was both impressed and unnerved by the sheer number of towels in his possession.
• Padma Patil spent a good amount of her college career smoking hookah and seeking deliverance from Alan Watts recordings.
• “I don’t know how to talk to you anymore, Ginny. It’s like there’s an entire life between us.” “Yes, and her last name is Granger.”
• “No, I don’t really drink. I’m post-alcohol,” Draco murmured. “Fuck, I didn’t mean to say that. Did I mention I have an MFA?”
• “What did I learn at The Workshop? Primarily how unreliable I am as a narrator.” Draco whinnied like a sick horse.
• “Their Jesus has scars on his forehead, too.” Draco said. “By their telling of it, Potter has only three years left to die for us.”
• “It’s a shame wizards have no mythic pantheon,” Harry pondered. “I would have been assigned so many more epic struggles by now.”
• Harry finds a joint in his sock drawer. That day, stoned during an editorial meeting, he bites into a pastry and erupts into tears.
• “Your stare was holdin, ripped jeans, skin was show — DAMMIT.” Ten years Hermione has been working on an earworm spell to no avail.
• It’s clear to Harry that whoever owns the PROPHET also owns the Ministry of Magic. Who that someone is, however, remains a mystery.
• “Ron, I can’t actually Obliviate you, you know.” “Pansy, I know, I know, but hear me out.”
• “Molly, why don’t you run for Wizengamot? Arthur’s got no obvious political skill and yet he somehow gets re-elected every term.”
• “And how’s Harry?” “Oh, you know, still using SKYRIM to avoid engaging in our marriage,” Ginny spat.
• “Come home, ‘Mione. London is empty. And if I weren’t already color blind, I’d say the color’s all bled out. George.”
• After magically interrogating Putin for 11 days, Hermione emerges full of Russian secrets and an insatiable thirst for moral purity.
• “Professor Granger, you’ve been missing for 11 days.” “Have I? Surely not 11.” “Yes, where have you been?”
• In a journal in his garden shed, Neville plots surprises.
• Hermione stumbles, her hands trembling. “Professor Granger, are you ok?” A student asks. “Yes, yes. Ok is a fine benchmark.”
• George and Arthur murmur with bowed heads in a cathedral pew, discussing broken dreams, basking in muggle faith.
• “At present, you’re little more than spigots of piss,” Draco paced around his seminar table, “you need to learn how to bleed.”
• “Do you think anyone likes hanging out with writers? No. Writers write so they don’t have to keep themselves company.” Draco spat.
• “Your homework,” Draco reflected, “is to listen to Death Cab for Cutie and kill off whatever part of you still resonates with it.”
• “The Tri-Wizard tournament is simply barbaric stupidity. I insist that we end it.” Molly’s political platform was on point.
• “This is your 7,356th infraction with the Ministry Spirit Division, Myrtle. It’s almost like you’re horrifically alone forever here.”
• “Sir, don’t you think it a bit cruel to confine the ghostchild Myrtle to Hogwarts for all eternity?” “Why? She can’t vote, can she?”
• “I think it’s long due that we put an end to all house elf slavery once and for all!” Molly’s campaign pulled no punches.
• Hermione opens her hotel door to a Mariachi Band. The lead guitarist hands her a note; it reads: “The only one in St. Petersburg. — G”
• After several complaints, Draco is asked to stop probing into the ontologies of non-majors.
• Ginny begins to explain how THE LITTLE PRINCE had changed her and Harry realizes that’s about as far as she ever got.
• “You never had it in you to be an auror, Ron,” George sighed. “You lacked — I dunno — sobriety?”
• “Sounds like someone’s about to be sent to the Centaur office, if you ask me.” Ron often forgot that he was sent to muggle rehab.
• “Would you prefer rehashed O-Captain-My-Captain bullshit or would you like me to actually instruct you in writing?” Draco asked.
• Draco brings a lighter to his palm. “Write it down,” he seethes, “write whatever the fuck this is down, you cretins”
• “Tell me how Jesus shits,” Draco asks, deadpan. “Tell me — in 5,000 words — how Jesus shat. That’s your assignment. Go.”
• “Hermione, twin love is a brand of obsessive narcissism. No girl could compete. Not even the great Hermione Granger.”
• Harry pulls his invisibility cloak over his head. He opens the flat door. “Harry Potter, I know you’re under that.” “Dammit, Ginny.”
• Luna is painting in her studio. Neville surprises her from behind with a bouquet of wildflowers.
• Whenever Bill and Fleur visit the Burrow, George plays the theme from Beauty and the Beast on the piano just to fuck with them.
• “It doesn’t stay, you know, up. Is there a spell for that?” “Ron,” George sighed, “the spell is called stop the fucking drinking.”
• Lavender unburdens herself of her bags. “I went in for just some mascara and I spent 200 pounds! How does that always happen?”
• Molly Weasley, local witch, embraces socialism and is a radical voice for the magical poor.
• “Of course I support my wife’s political ambitions. That’s an idiotic question.” Arthur Weasley is quoted in the DAILY PROPHET.
• Harry is at his laptop. “Harry,” Ginny asks, “Why don’t you talk to me anymore?” Harry stops to wonder himself.
• Narcissa stops by with several containers of soup from Whole Foods. Draco opens the door a crack, drunk. “Mum, I have sex over.”
• “Of the Weasleys, I’m most likely to inherit the architectural masterpiece that is the Burrow, so there’s that to consider. ‘Mione.”
• Luna wakes up to find a thread tying her finger to a balloon. It reads, “I LOVE YOU.” It pops and turns into a chocolate croissant.
• “We should see a therapist, Ginny” Harry blurts out. “A muggle one. One who doesn’t know who I am.”
• George stares at Ron at dinner, begging the question over and over again, “Why did Hermione ever marry that guy?”
• “How’s Hermione, George,” Molly asks, forgetting for a moment that Hermione’s ex-husband is awkwardly her other son.
• “Mum, she and I, we’re not, no, that’s not a thing, no.” George gulps down his glass of wine. His face is red. “No. Definitely not.”
• “At least I still have both my ears!” “Ron!” Somehow, fights at the Weasley dinner table still always came to this.
• “George, you should let me back in the store.” “Ron, you took 600 galleons from the register and blew it on heroin.” “Years ago!”
• “Granger, do I have this correct: you set off a Weasley’s Wildfire Whiz-bang in the Duma?” “I needed to distract the muggles, sir.”
• “Merlin’s balls, Hermione. That you’re using Weasley Wheezes to infiltrate the Kremlin is about the hottest thing you could ever do.”
• “I worry, Ginny,” her doctor said sincerely, “You’ve sustained seven head injuries in three years. Magic can’t erase brain damage.”
• “Secrets are just interpersonal knots. You untie the knot, you reveal the secrets,” Hermione reflected, chewing on her wand.
• Lavender looks around the Burrow’s living room. She laughs, “So dusty! I guess the maid has off this week?” Molly chokes.
• George and Ginny walk around the Burrow garden, talking about his divorce and throwing screaming lawn gnomes across the clearing.
• Harry stared long at the portraits of the trio that still hung on Molly’s walls. Hermione and Ron unfathomably in love behind glass.
• “Arry,” Arthur hung his arm around his son-in-law’s shoulder, “you’re not as complicated as you hoped you’d be by now.” Harry sighs.
• “Technically, in the settlement, Angelina got the loft in London. I’ve been sleeping in the shop for three months now.” Molly gasps.
• Percy and his fourth wife, what’s her face, appear in the fireplace. Ginny and Harry exchange a glance they haven’t shared in years.
• A man taps Hermione on the shoulder. He whispers in thick Russian, “You are heavenly, I — .” In that moment, his rectum prolapses.
• “Every curly brown hair that ever found its way into our flat was a reminder of my place in our broken love triangle!” Ginny cried.
• Hermione winced at her soup, cringing at something Ron had said to her during sex seven years ago.
• “Luna,” Neville wrapped his arms around his wife. “Life is hard. Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”
• Draco poured the 7th sugar packet into a neat pile, shaped with his fingers. “Could you not?” The barista asked, her eyebrow cocked.
• Narcissa cataloged a list of spells to use on muggle servers who did not pay her the respect she thought due a woman of her station.
• “There are places you go when love leaves you, Ginny.” George said, flinging a gnome. “Most of them lead you back where you started.”
• George paused and said, “When Angelina asked for the divorce I swore I couldn’t hear music or taste food for at least three weeks.”
• “You get so used to a life, Gin,” George looked up. “I wonder now how much of my love for her was just the fear of starting over.”
• “For three months, I waited at closing an extra hour just to see if she’d show up to close shop with me just like she always had.”
• “We treat love like a fortress,” George said, loading his gnome slingshot, “when, really, it’s a boat with a slow-draining leak.”
• The students at Hogwarts organize against hosting the Triwizard Tournament on the grounds that it exploits child labor.
• “Ron didn’t take Hermione for granted, George.” Ginny said. “He couldn’t keep up with her. She couldn’t help but leave him behind.”
• “I loved Harry even after he became just Harry,” Ginny ducked under the fence. “I loved Harry, bacne and all.”
• “Ginny loved a hero,” Harry told his therapist, “And that was fun — until I realized that I was also in love with the hero.”
• “When I saw that pregnancy test in the bin, it was like a deadend, like my life would be over, done. Poof.” Harry flicked his wand.
• “About your wedding, Ron, have you made an invitation list?” Molly asked. “I’ll just use the same one from last time.” He shrugged.
• “Charlie, you’re 37 years old. Don’t you think it’s time you found someone?” “No?”
• Draco opens his Okcupid profile. Deletes his self-summary. Writes, “I am rewinding Kerouac’s legacy.” Closes it. Goes to bed.
• George is never seen these days without a book Hermione has rated 5 stars on Goodreads. Harry, having already read them, knows this.
• Wizards don’t have phallic insecurities. They have magic.
• Ginny confronts Harry about his browser history. “Magic porn can be really weird, Ginny. You can’t blame me for being curious.”
• At the head of the seminar table, Draco unwraps and shoves fives pieces of Juicy Fruit into his mouth. He masticates ruefully.
• “No, Hermione’s last words were to me: ‘I hope you learn to love yourself first, Ron.’ I still don’t know what she meant by that.”
• Harry and Ginny go to IKEA to shop for glassware after Ginny throws a quaffle at the cabinets. Also new cabinets.
• Harry is surprised by how aroused he is by Ginny’s newfound asperity towards him.
• “How do you know it was me who sent the dancing bear to your hotel room? Hermione, really, it could have been anyone.” “George.”
• “You need to take it back a notch, George.” Bill advised. “Shes’ skittish. I mean, look at Ron. We love him because we have to.”
• “I wish we went to an American high school and I could ask you to prom.” “George, you’re 33 years old.”
• “There are like a dozen Weasley brothers to choose from and you picked Ron?” “George.”
• Luna and Neville spend the afternoon planting a pumpkin patch.
• “George sent Hermione a bear.” “You what?” Molly yelled. “The entire wizarding community must think I dropped you all on your heads.”
• “I’m perfect, don’t you see? That means I’m not real. You won’t like the parts of me that don’t fit, George.” “Try me.” She hung up.
• “I think Hermione has this this Mr. Darcy thing right now where she needs me to hate her first to prove that I can love her.” “What?”
• Harry and Ginny have sex for the first time in two and a half years.
• Hermione closes the hotel door room behind her. Screams. George had somehow managed to apparate himself with an entire grand piano.
• “This is a song about how much I can’t stand you, Hermione Granger, and how I find you barely tolerable.” “GEORGE GET OUT.”
• Luna finds a stray kitten and tucks it into her pocket. She brings it to Neville’s greenhouse where it will be known as Beets.
• “Have you heard from Hermione?” “No, it seems I took the Darcy thing a bit too far. I’m not giving up though. Darcy didn’t.”
• Harry and Ginny house-sit for Bill and Fleur at their seaside cabin. They do nothing but fuck and fight for four days.
• George opens his office door. “Daphne,” he yells at the cashier, “What is a Gilbert Blythe? Do you know?”
• “Harry,” Ginny panted, “I never actually liked that.” “Liked what?” “Everything you just did now.” “But I always do it like that.”
• Luna builds a colorful Christmas carousel made out of recycled materials and donates it to the town of Hogsmeade. Neville is proud.
• Draco is introduced at a poetry reading. He approaches the podium. Wipes his mouth with his hand. Proceeds to scream.
• Hermione’s mission is aborted after two of her colleagues are discovered washed up on a beach in Bulgaria, their memories obliviated.
• “With all due respect, sir, Putin is a war criminal. It’s probab — “ “Granger, you’re a national asset. We don’t jeopardize assets.”
• “Harry, if you thought for like 5 minutes about how absurd gold is considering we do magic, your head would explode like mine did.”
• “I plan to disrupt the broomstick industry,” George said. Deadpan. Within seconds, everyone had erupted into a hysterical fit.
• “I can’t even begin to discuss how antiquated wizard-goblin legislation is without shaking,” Molly said, clenching her fists.
• Luna churned an antique ice cream maker. “Sometimes I love how simple everything can be,” she said happily to her blind dog, Potato.
• “What are you doing tonight, Harry?” “My wife. She’s spontaneously developed a third dimension.”
• “Mr. Weasl — George — there’s something wrong with the register.” “We still use a register?” He stares at it. “Do we not have an iPad?”
• The cop killed him.” “How could you possibly know that, Hermione?” “There are are cameras mounted everywhere.” “Oh. Right. Yes.”
• “Do you know what wizard privilege is, Ron?”
• “Granger, these gloves are linked to an OS. You don’t need your wand anymore.” “That’s profane. I’m not ok with this.”
• Harry received an Apple watch to review for the Prophet. “What am I supposed to do with this? We’re wizards. We perform magic.”
• “On a good day, I can write 10,000 words easily.” Draco marched authoritatively about the table. “But good days produce bad writing.”
• “Any writer of weight will tell you that writing is the metabolization of horror,” said Draco. “You eat fear. You breathe terror.”
• Hermione squinted at the cybernetic glove. “Sir, you can’t expect me to embrace what I can’t understand. It’s against my nature.”
• “Granger, in a battle situation, wands can be broken, lost, stolen. It’s 2015. We have to at least pretend to keep up.”
• “Harry, the Ministry wants us to stop using wands by 2025.” “That’s utterly profane.” “That’s what I said!”
• “What’s this about phasing out wands, Molly?” “Harry, you’re not supposed to know about that yet.” “Molly, I’m Harry Potter.”
• “Hermione.” Hermione picked up her pace. “Hermione. HERMIONE.” “GEORGE, I WILL SHRINK YOU AND STUFF YOU IN MY POCKET.” “PLEASE!”

• Ron is obsessed with the Transformers franchise.
• “Have you ever met someone who sets off fireworks in your brain, Harry?” “You did.” “Yes, well I want a me, too,” sighed Hermione.
• Hermione reactivates her long-docile Okcupid account. Browses matches for an hour. Sighs. Deactivates again.
• “No one knows Hermione, George,” Ginny sighed. “You ran into a warehouse of unmarked boxes and declared your love for it wholesale.”
• “Hermione’s like a university library,” Ginny said, “you can’t say you know her if you only study on the first floor.”
• “Hermione has always thought herself inscrutable.” “Then Ron made her feel less known than anyone,” George said. Ginny nodded.
• Harry and Hermione walk in on George and Ginny having tea. “Oh, hi, uh, yes, um, bye now.” Harry walked out of his own apartment.
• George excuses himself, saying he better get home. Goes to a nearby pub and explains to the muggle barkeep how currency isn’t real.
• Luna opens an art exhibit of gifthorses with whimsical mechanical dioramas in their mouths.

• “I’ve met Edward Snowden, actually. You know he’s actually a wizard, right?” “No.” “Yep.”
• “You don’t have weekly massage night?” Neville asked Harry, genuinely surprised.
• Hermione follows George to the pub. Orders three bourbons. Puts one in front of George, downs the other two. Collects her thoughts.
• “You can’t skip steps, George.” Hermione said eventually, “I’m a process. You skip steps, you fuck up the process.”
• George stared at Hermione’s face framed in the mirror behind the bar. “So just how fucked up are you?” He asked it.
• Draco didn’t need to go to the laundromat. He was a wizard. But laundromats at 11pm on Sunday nights were better than Tinder.
• “Neville!” Luna yelled. “Potato ate my paint and then I turned him inside out to get the paint out and — ” “You did what?”
• “I don’t commit,” Draco dropped, “That would require self-investiture and to be honest I need all the self I can get.”
• “Luna, you turned the dog inside out?” “Neville, it’s not like I did it on purpose. I mean, OK, it was on purpose, but I had to!”
• “I have enough caves of my own,” Draco whispered to the body next to him in the dark, “I needn’t spelunk the caverns of others.”
• “I don’t know what anyone wants from me in a relationship.” “Ron, you fu — it’s sobriety, for Christ’s sake. Why don’t you get that?”
• “Why don’t we just hire house elves? I mean they might be liberated or whatever, but they’re still cheap as shit,” Lavender laughed.
• “I could make house elves dry clean my boots!” “Lavender, you’re a witch.” “So?”
• “Hey, gorgeous, do you have a boy — “ Hermione flicked her wand. That night, that man found all his pubic hair indelibly pink forever.

• Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras wakes up to find his house filled with galleons. A note reads, “Fuck the man. — Harry.”
• “I was up late.” “Doing what?” “Writing to Sylvia Plath about how pathetic she was.” Draco never gave his mother anything.
• Wizard twitter accounts are verified with tiny owl icons because obviously.
• “Owls are perfectly efficient. I see no reason to get a muggle startphone.” “Smartphone.”
• Truth be told, it took considerable begging on the part of the Ministry of Magic to get Hermione to start carrying a cellphone.
• “Muggles are all about software coding, Ginny. All about it.” “But like magic exists.” “I know.”
• George and Hermione start playing Bananagrams for ridiculous stakes involving world landmarks.
• “Have you seen George lately?” “Hermione instragrammed his ass against an iceberg like two hours ago.” “Oh, oh good.”
• Padma Patil gains prominence in Harry’s wizarding circle as the only one of them who ever has a fucking hookup.
• “Granger, if I can make the world throw off the chains of capitalism, would you date me?” “Yes. Yes, under that condition yes.”
• “Since you won’t use the cybernetic gloves, Granger, we’ve equipped this wan — “ “WHAT DID YOU DO TO MY WAND?!”
• “During the Battle of Hogwarts, mandrakes were dropped on, we — y-yes?” “But Professor Longbottom, you’re a wizard.”
• “Actually, there were a few months after Fred died where I went fallow, dropped a few stone, went to Lithuanian metal shows.” “What?”
• “Do you ever wonder if, like, Voldemort ever had, you know.” “What? No.” “Come on.” “No. Gross.”
• Voldemort-themed porn is a niche industry in the wizard community.
• “Potter, your hot takes haven’t been coming in so hot lately.” “Maybe because as a white male writer, my takes aren’t relevant?”
• George’s instagram feed became a trophy case of moments spent reveling in making an ass of himself for the sake of Hermione Granger.
• “Who is ‘torturedfoil’? Do you know?” “Oh, yeah, yeah that’s Draco’s screen name.” Harry laughed. “Obviously.”
• Harry often reviewed Draco’s publications for the PROPHET with generous praise, infuriating Draco to no end.
• “Harry Potter thought your last book of poetry, ‘the architecture with which to build nightmares.’” Draco seized.
• Draco’s publisher took every effort to stoke the flames of a Potter-Malfoy literary rivalry.
• “It might never go anywhere, but it’s not a waste of time if it means being a chapter in the life of Hermione Granger.”
• “Do you realize how energy inefficient Hogwarts is? Anyone?” Neville’s non-sequiturs during faculty meetings were still on point.
• In a fit of romantic fancy, Ron bought a pack of condoms and a Powerade. “Big night,” he told the cashier. The cashier frowned.
• “Malfoy dances around many of Franzen’s known stuckpoints, ascending beyond his neuroses i — ACH I HATE HIM.” Draco spat.
• “May you all experience the exquisite agony of being the archnemesis of the only critic who gets your work,’ Draco told his students.
• “The ironic thing about Gin turning 28 has been the abrupt end to her giving a fuck about my happiness and how that makes me happy.”
• “Granger, need I remind you that you are one of the most targeted agents in the Department?” “Need you? No. No. I know. I’m a woman.”
• Hermione stared straight ahead. Unflinching. “Granger, how did yourself banned from Singapore?” George broke down laughing.
• “If it makes you feel any better, ‘Mione, I can’t go back to Estonia. Charlie and I are wanted for grave robbing.” “What?”
• “You robbed a grave?” “More like we were hunting relics that happened to be stuck. You know. In the ground. With the dead.”
• “What does Charlie actually do these days, George?” “Yeah, mum asks that question all the time. He never tells her, either.”
• “Actually, there is a portkey somewhere for the moon in the Ministry of Magic.” “Have you ever touched it?” “No, too afraid.”
• Harry attends the Yule Ball at Neville’s behest. Expecting to be fawned over, he realizes that despite being Harry Potter, he is old.
• “Do 15-year-old girls just not fawn anymore, Neville?” “No, Harry, we’re 30.”
• “George, you’re nothing if not a giant redheaded container for silly romantic notions.” “Redheaded romantic notions.”
• “It’s easy to watch lives slip away from each other like untethered boats. Not you, though, Granger. You’re impossible gravity.”
• Ginny clenched her teeth in a wide smile listening to Fleur make content marketing sound like a worthwhile wizarding career.
• “Life has improved vastly, I’ll admit, since Ginny and I have begun comparing notes on how much of the world we mutually hate.”
• “George told me I should watch this American show called ENTOURAGE.” “George was fucking with you, Hermione. You’d kill yourself.”
• Seeing his ex-wife on the National Wizard Network awarded yet another medal, Ron sunk into his chair, deflated by his wasted life.
• Draco never read the comments. Draco marinated in them, basting in the irrational hatred he now identifies with.
• “When did you realize you have to do things before your wife asks you to?” Neville looked at Harry and frowned.
• “Mother, you realize that the void of evil left by Voldemort has been filled for me by the spewing hatred of the masses, right?”
• “I’m a chemist; I like to mix pinot noir and social anonymity and see what happens,” Draco told the reporter.
• “Lav. Are you throwing up in the bathroom after you eat? How long have you bee — “ “Since you broke my heart the first time, Ron.”
• Neville lights some hovercandles and draws a bath for two. Luna will be home soon.
• George runs into Angelina. They juggle some flattened sentiments. She no longer sees herself in his facial sympathy. Closure.

• “Did you know,” Draco paced his freshman comp. class. “I know secrets about the dead that I can never share? Guess them. Go on.”
• “The best writers, I offer, are the ones who roll around in their own vomit on purpose.” He paused. “Ice cream comes up easier.”
• “There are things about being a woman, Harry, that I am only just now realizing about myself.” “That’s good? Right?” “No.”
• Draco has a closet set aside, papered with literary journals he still receives but has long ceased reading. He regularly shits in it.
• “How is there only one magical literary agent in all of England? Why must I share you with Draco?” Harry asked, earnestly baffled.
• Sitting atop the Acropolis late one morning, George and Hermione compared notes on inciting riots.
• “Siri.” Draco said, staring at himself in the dresser mirror. “Siri, where is my heart?”
• “Siri.” Draco asked again, “Siri, when will I be redeemed?”
• “Siri,” Draco sighed. “Siri, when will I be forgiven?”
• Harry and Ginny sat across from each other at the yogurt shop. “Do you feel that?” “What?” “There’s not a cloud between us.”
• “I was supposed to be the Sam to your Frodo, Harry!” “Ron,” Harry sighed, “Ron. Ron, I — .” He adjusted his glasses. “Ron. I’m sorry.”
• “Is it normal to only love yourself in fragments, George?” “How else could you?”
• Draco signed into Twitter only to see that over night he had been banished by the official town of Hogsmeade account.
• “Hey, remember that time Dumbledore told you to stop being such an assclown, Ron?” “What, no, did he?” “Probably.”
• “What’s this thing going on between you and George?” Harry asked Hermione. “Revolution.” “…Ok, I wasn’t expecting that answer.”
• “Harry, aren’t you sick of being so powerless? I mean you’re Harry Potter. You killed Voldemort. Now you sit in a fucking office.”
• “I mean some of the stuff I do matters, ‘Mione.” “Yeah, but shouldn’t all the stuff you do matter?”
• “Muggles are shit.” “Ron, seriously, take your sad ignorance somewhere else because I don’t have time for this today.”
• “In his latest manuscript, Gilderoy Lockhart channels Ayn Rand in championing a bizarre neoliberal wizarding utopia.”
• Hermione actually stops using owls, steps up her game and trains a fucking falcon because come on.
• Draco looked down at the student’s dragon-themed poker shirt and scoffed. “Who are you kidding. Get out of here. You’re soulless.”
• Gilderoy feels lionized by Donald Trump’s American success. Launches campaign to Make Wizards Great Again.
• “Lavender, I’m sorry, I forgot what is it that you do again?” “I’m an analyst.” “Of what?” “Magical transference.” “Which is?”
• “Ok, but surely, if you wanted to topple the wizarding economic system, there’s a way,” George obliquely asked his accountant.
• “I’ll have anything with pumpkin in it,” Hermione said to the barista, still giving zero fucks what you think that says about her.
• Wizards have a kind of x-ray vision so it’s really obvious when wizards are trying to overcompensate,
• Hermione spends the next year writing a book about the phallocentric origins of the wand in wizarding history.
• Dean Thomas invites Ron to work the to the 1am-5am shift at the Wizarding Wireless Network radio station. Shit gets weird.
• On Ron’s 6th day hosting the graveyard shift of the wizarding radio station, he calls Lavender on air to have her berate him live.
• At a birthday party of a mutual friend, Hermione and Ginny steal a bottle of wine and get sloshed in the laundry room.
• On the 11th episode, Ron called Lavender’s parents to ask them what they didn’t like about him live on air.
• Luna and Hagrid together build delightful fall lawn ornaments for his cottage to the delight of all Hogwarts students.
• On the 16th episode, Ron played a montage of him singing the same song in the shower every day for a week.
• “Do you think this new radio show of Ron’s is a mistake?” Molly asked Arthur by the 21st episode. “Worse than the heroin?”
• “Siri?” Draco asked, “Do you think I’m doing ok?”
• “We’re a generation of women beaten into submission by a bro culture that makes ‘going out’ a fucking chore,” Hermione spat.
• “George, why don’t you go out and try to talk to some birds.” “Birds, dad?” “Birds, you know, ladies, witzchelles.” “Witchelles?”
• “Mom, Dad is making up slang words again.” “Arthur.” “Witchelles is a legitimate muggle term for bitches.” “ARTHUR.”
• “Dad, where do you even come into contact with muggles, anyway? I’m 33 years old and know maybe four of them in the flesh.”
• Ron’s binging is starting to catch up with him as he can no longer fit into his wedding pants.
• By the 49th episode into his early-morning radio show, Ron was attracting a cult following of dedicated fans.
• “Ginny, are you eating raw meat?” “Yeah?” “When did this start?” “You mean that whole year we were totally falling apart?”
• Hermione had spent seven months now doing nothing heroic, nothing spectacular, nothing noteworthy. “Am I done?” she asked herself.
• “What do you say, Hermione,” George held out his hand, “you want to ruin a city’s worth of memories tonight or what?”
• Ron spends an episode torturing himself over how his ex-wife is regularly seen in the Daily Prophet gossip page with his brother.
• Ron calls a therapist on air to talk about freebasing.
• Ron threatens to do Ecstasy on air until Dean calls in to say he’ll be fired for it.
• “I’m almost always just ready to fall apart,” Ron croaked.
• Draco sends Ron a box of wine. On the box he had sharpied the message: “HIT BOTTOM ALREADY”
• “If you could boil down the entire universe, what do you suppose it’d taste like?” George loved when she asked questions like this.
• Neville and Luna make all their friends and loved ones special autumnal spice blends for their morning coffee.
• “Love is a choice. I choose it. That’s a platitude, sure, but that in no way diminishes its truth,” texted Harry. Ginny smiled.
• “Your reviews have gotten, I dunno, more tender, Potter.” “Have they?” “Like you’re wrapping your heart around every book.”
• Ron takes a call, “Aylo, it’s 4:25, you’re on Ron’s Recorded Breakdown, who cares?”
• Draco ducks into a Gamestop to scream “GAMERS ARE DEAD!” every chance he gets.
• At the gym, Ginny looked down at her phone. “NETFLIX AND CHILL?” Her husband was boring. She knew this.
• “BASIC, POTTER.” Ginny texted back. Harry felt insecure now. He did some pushups. Still insecure.
• “How is women’s magic affected by menstruation?” “You’ve never thought to ask this in 31 years, Harry?” “No.” Ginny let out a sigh.

• “Do I want to take this lecture position at the Salem Witches Institute, George?” George paused. “Are you asking me?”
• “Voldemort was incapable of doing worse to our planet than what late stage Capitalism has already done,” Hermione delivered.
• George and Hermione broomdrop anti-Capitalist tracts and pamphlets over every social housing complex in London.
• The relatively fascist internal espionage of the Ministry of Magic has always made Molly uncomfortable.
• “Charlie managed to wipe out a satellite.” “What?” “Yeah, he’s been working on that spell for a while.” “What?”
• “You’re listening to hour 26 of Ron Weasley’s Marathon of Shame. If you have any leads on something shameful I’ve done, call in.”
• Wizard twitter is even worse than muggle twitter.
• “People worry about the bigs, the schools, the salary. They forget the smalls” George tapered off, forgetting himself in a memory.
• George starts freestyling Marxist lectures over YouTube, goes viral.
• “If you’re just tuning in, this is hour 34 of Ron Weasley’s Shame-a-Thon. I’m taking all callers.”
• Gilderoy Lockhart finds considerable traction as a conference keynote speaker.
• “Molly?” Arthur called his wife, “I’ve been listening to Ron’s shame cycle for two hours now. What on earth did we do wrong?”
• Molly addresses the Wizengamot. “I’ll be frank, fellows. Marriage is antiquated bondage and we should abolish it.” The room gasped.
• Luna, Neville and Potato spend the morning raking leaves together into neat, orderly piles Neville will later compost responsibly.
• Harry will spend the morning nursing a sour whisky hangover.
• “I feel like we need to be doing more for homeless magical creatures, Neville.” “I agree.” So resolved, the pair found a sanctuary.
• Dean Thomas and the rest off the staff of Wizarding Wireless aren’t sure what to do with Ron as his ratings are remarkable.
• George changed the accessibility options on Hermione’s iPad so she can make the text read out loud to her. She is amazed.
• “I’m talking too much.” George stops himself. “No, I always like your enthusiasm.” George, 33 years old, squeals like a 4-year-old.
• Draco stares deeply into his mother’s glass of white wine, watching the bubbles pop, ignoring her pleas for attention.
• In the Three Broomsticks, Ron signs coasters, hands shaking, too elated from a long deprived sense of affirmation to contain himself.
• “Depression is dark magic.” Luna brushes her way into Hermione’s apartment with a vase full of clipped sunflowers. “Mindfuck magic.”
• “Do you realize, Luna, that you and Neville are the only two graduates of our year at Hogwarts who don’t suffer PTSD?”
• Harry and Ginny play Bananagrams to decide who will decide their costume theme. This will be Harry’s example of compromise for weeks.
• Harry opens the drawer. “Remember how we sent passive aggressive notes back and forth all over the apartment?” “We?” Ginny retorts.