The escaped prisoners became the Ministry's immediate priority and, consequently, everyone else's secondary one. Kevin spent the better part of a day going through what information was available, concluded that the operation's actual target was almost certainly too well-hidden for him to locate faster than Voldemort had already moved to protect them, and filed it under ongoing — Dumbledore's problem for now.
Tonight was Slughorn's dinner.
Harry and Ginny dressed in the common room. Kevin observed from the sofa. Harry had managed to get his tie on backwards twice.
"The other way," Kevin said, without looking up from his book.
"I know which way—"
"You've done it backwards twice."
Ginny reached up and fixed it with the brisk efficiency of someone who has been dressing other people correctly for years. Harry turned to say thank you to Kevin, who was demonstrably the cause of this situation, and found Kevin looking at the opposite wall.
Ginny tapped Harry's shoulder. Once, firmly. He turned back.
She looked at him with the particular expression that said: I am right here.
Harry's face did the thing it did. Hermione, from her armchair, laughed into her palm and managed to turn it into a cough about a third of a second too late.
Ginny hooked her arm through Harry's and walked him out.
Kevin waited until the door had closed, then looked at Hermione.
"He's going to be fine," Kevin said.
"He was going to be fine regardless," Hermione said. "Did you actually just help them?"
"I straightened out the tie situation. That was practical assistance."
She gave him the look. He returned it with complete composure.
"Kevin," she said eventually, "if Harry doesn't manage to get anything useful out of Slughorn tonight—"
"Then we adjust. But he will." Kevin set his book aside. "Slughorn's attachment to Harry is genuine, in the way that his attachments to anyone are genuine — he sees himself in the connection, which makes it feel real. Harry just needs to give him a reason to stop protecting the memory and start feeling proud of what he knows."
Hermione considered this. "His mother," she said. "If Harry makes it about Lily."
"Guilt and pride, in the right combination. Yes."
She was quiet for a moment. Then: "The Christmas ball."
He looked up.
"Slughorn's hosting one. I want to go." She said it simply, with the directness she saved for things that actually mattered to her.
Kevin thought of the last ball — the Yule Ball, fourth year, the catastrophic evening that had ended with them sitting on the stone steps at midnight and her telling him, very calmly, that she was furious with Ron, and him realising that he'd been paying more attention to Hermione's face than to the conversation they were meant to be having.
Things had resolved themselves significantly since then.
"Obviously," he said. "You'll need to tell me what colour your dress is so I can sort the flowers."
She beamed. Then, because she was Hermione and couldn't help it: "Don't pretend you'll remember to sort the flowers without a reminder."
"I'll remember."
"I'll remind you anyway."
"Fair."
He reached over and clicked on the record player. The needle found the groove and something warm and slightly melancholy filled the room. He stood, held out his hand with exaggerated formality. She looked at it for a moment, then placed hers in it with the performance of someone taking this extremely seriously.
They made it approximately two rotations before Kevin's foot found the exact wrong place on the rug and the whole enterprise collapsed in a tangle of limbs and suppressed laughter, with Hermione ending up sprawled across his chest and laughing so hard she was barely making sound, just shaking.
He laughed too. He couldn't have said what was funny — the physical comedy of it, the absurdity of the pretension, the simple fact of it — but it didn't matter. She was laughing, and he was laughing, and the evening was warm.
She eventually settled, face turned into his shoulder, still shaking quietly.
Outside the door, Ron's raised fist hovered two inches from the wood. He looked at Draco. Draco looked at him.
They both took a step back.
"Come back in ten minutes," Draco said.
"Twenty," Ron said.
They retreated.
Kevin ran a slow hand down Hermione's back, feeling her breathing settle.
This, he thought, was what the rest of it was for. Not the fighting. Not the strategy. This — specifically this, her warm weight against him, the record player spinning something gentle in the corner, the castle settling around them.
Voldemort had a finite number of Horcruxes left. One of them was a cup sitting in a vault. One of them was a soul fragment in a boy who deserved none of it.
Both were problems with solutions.
When those solutions were implemented: Kevin was going to find Voldemort, wherever he was hiding, and end it.
Simple as that.