Hermione's voice ricocheted through the Head Boy and Girl common room with all the subtlety of a rogue Bludger.
Harry didn't look up. He had perfected the art of ignoring her — a craft honed over the last few increasingly tense months. The privacy wards he had wrapped around himself were practically baked into the air at this point.
"Hmm…?" he murmured, not bothering to make it sound like actual speech. Definitely something about studying. It was always about studying.
"Don't you 'Hmm' me!"
"Hmm…"
Hermione's shoulders slumped dramatically before she threw her hands up toward the heavens, silently begging some divine being to grant her patience — or possibly a tranquilizer dart.
Ever since Harry defeated Voldemort three and a half months ago, he'd shut down. Not in the dramatic, swooning-on-a-chaise-lounge way, but in the kind of quiet that made people worry something was deeply wrong.
And something was.
Ginny Weasley had died that night — on Valentine's Day, no less — just hours after Harry proposed. The roses he'd given her that morning had ended up lying across her coffin that evening.
Hermione had watched him retreat further and further into himself since then, locking his emotions behind walls she couldn't scale.
One more "Hmm" later and she finally cracked.
"Harry…" she tried again, softer this time.
"Hmm…?" He didn't look up, still writing in his journal — the one thing he treated like an extension of himself. Unlike Riddle's twisted diary, this one was a quiet sanctuary of memories, thoughts, plans, and pain.
"Would you please say something? You've been like this for months!"
"Hmm…"
"Harry James—"
"Don't waste your breath, Hermy," he said calmly, still scribbling. "I just don't feel like talking."
Her mouth fell open. "Harry! Don't call me that! And—wait—you're talking! Oh my gosh, you spoke outside of club meetings! Someone alert the Prophet!"
Harry didn't take the bait. Not even a twitch.
Hermione deflated, huffed, and stormed to her room — probably to rant to Ron. Again.
Harry just rolled his eyes and finished his entry, then headed out for his nightly rounds.
Life was horribly boring without danger nipping at his heels. Ron and Hermione's on-again-off-again relationship was exhausting. Ron had used Harry's fame to latch onto every party and interview opportunity. Hermione forgave Ron for cheating with the kind of speed that made Harry question her sanity.
He'd once thought he was in love with her, back before Ginny. But what he felt with Ginny had blown every old crush out of the water. Now, the thought of forgiving Ron and Hermione for accusing him of turning dark made his stomach sour.
They'd caught him training in the Room of Requirement — illusion magic, combat illusions, spells designed to give him an edge against Voldemort's numbers. They'd freaked out, called him dark, lectured him about his soul. He'd been practicing for a year to keep them alive… and they'd repaid him with fear and accusations.
He had torn into them that night — loudly — and they'd deserved it.
Ginny had been the only one who understood. The only bright thing he'd had for months.
And then she was gone.
After the final battle, Ron and Hermione apologized. But Harry had been too numb to respond. Too numb to care. Now they wanted him to reignite the friendship, to referee their arguments, to comment on their relationship drama. He refused.
He didn't have room in his head for their nonsense. He had grief. He had instincts screaming that something big was coming. He had tension wound tight in his gut that refused to ease.
Peace was… weird.
He didn't trust it.
Couldn't trust it.
And worst of all — it annoyed him. He needed something to do. Something more than playing security guard and the unofficial patron saint of Anti-Snogging.
They called him "Mr. Anti-Snog." He called it "keeping students alive past curfew."
He'd already lost too many people.
He wasn't losing anyone else.
Not on his watch.
...
Harry took his Head-boy duties seriously much to the teachers' delight. Some students thought he was a bit harsh when handing out punishments but several teachers disabused that notion when they talked about previous Head-boys such and the corruption of power they wielded.
Ron, of course, was jealous that Harry was Head-boy when he'd never been a prefect like him, but he quickly learned to curb his tongue after the third time in as many weeks he found himself in the Forbidden Forest with Filch for detention. As for late night rendezvous locations, Harry made sure nobody could use the Room of Requirement. That door was now sealed where only Dumbledore, the Flamels, or the professors could unlock it.
After his rounds were done and the last of the amorous students had been rousted out of their hiding holes before they could bless the world nine months later with the results of their coupling, Harry sat on a hill outside Hogwarts. He was allowed to leave the castle whenever he wanted to. Not like any one could stop him, especially at night. One of the advantages of being a Shadow Mage is that he could travel through shadows. All it took was the will to move and the imagination to conceptualize where he needed to go and the shadows would absorb him, only to place him where he wanted to go in the blink of an eye.
While sitting under the stars, Harry pondered and organized his thoughts. After the final battle had ended, at least half the students in Slytherin were gone. When Harry killed Voldemort with a soul destroying curse, he and everyone linked to him with the Dark Mark died. That included many students, and not all from Slytherin. Snape had been killed at the end of Harry's 6th year after showing his true colors. Those Slytherin students not killed outright had been suspected sympathizers and public outcry against their return was too much for Dumbledore to ignore. Most of those students had transferred to Beauxbatons Academy while a few had gone to private tutors.