After the final battle, with much of the school destroyed and most of the students evacuated, plenty of the staff dead and the magical world in an uproar, there was, of course, no talk of finishing out the school year. The year spent under Voldemort's puppets could hardly have been considered adequate preparation for the fifth and seventh years who had such important tests to sit anyway. It was decided that students in these years should return to school the following September to make up for missed education under a skeleton staff, while the rebuilding process would continue around them, and the rest of the school would return following Christmas break and continue in an abridged version of the studies they should have completed the previous year, to compensate for the time and competency of which they had been robbed. All of this was settled in a rush meeting of the school board, attended by temporary headmistress, Minerva McGonagall, who would also be continuing in the role of Transfiguration professor for the first half of the year, after which she hoped to be replaced in the more senior of positions, as she considered teaching a higher calling than administrational duties.
As for the students, three in particular, Harry Potter, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, were grateful for the opportunity to catch up. They had, of course, not attended school at all the previous year, excepting the very notable day of the aforementioned battle. Several of their peers had also been kept from their lessons when forced into hiding, either by blood status or, like Neville Longbottom, rebelliousness.
When they returned to the school in September on an eerily quiet and nearly empty Hogwarts express, there was a still solidarity in the air that kept them present and calm, but in each pair of eyes there was a wariness that had slowly settled from the mixture of triumph and despair that had been there after losing so many loved ones in the defeat of the greatest enemy they had ever faced. The world in which they were now to learn and live was free of Lord Voldemort, but whether those who had ever accomplished it would share the freedom was in doubt. Hogwarts was a merry place, usually, and now it was soiled with murder and mayhem, some committed by their own wand tips, and almost all employing knowledge gained in its very halls.
The tiny crowd that stepped onto the platform glanced around for carriages but saw none, and there was neither surprise nor consternation in this. The students walked slowly up to the castle together, each fearing what scene would greet them on the other end.
"Oi, Harry!" a familiar and pleasing voice made Harry, Ron and Hermione stop and turn to see Rubeus Hagrid, the Hogwarts groundskeeper and Care of Magical Creatures teacher lumbering up the road from Hogsmead, the nearby villiage. "Ron, Hermione! Glad ter be back? I'm certainly glad ter see yeh. 'S been a long summer, mos' o' the teachers and plenty o' others round working all day. Be nice to have some students to make it feel a bit cheerier. Feast tonight's gonna be brilliant! Wait till you see!"
The four of them now rounded the last of the trees between them and the castle and stopped among the rest of the students, already standing staring at the structure to which they were all so eternally attached. There was a long moments silence as they searched the surface facing them. It was the small, quavering voice of Colin Creevy that at last broke the silence. "but… its okay!" The crowd of students gave a great whoop and began applauding their school, which now stood, slightly altered but nonetheless intact and just as majestic and beautiful as ever.
"Now, now!" Hagrid hollered as the buzz died and the walk up to the school recommenced, at a much-increased rate. "Don' be expectin' too much. We been workin' hard and the outsides done but that's a bit deceivin'. There's lots more work on the inside." But the students were now approaching the front doors at a run, and as darkness began to fall on the pleasant night that just showed the first brisk signs of abandoning summer in favor of autumn, Harry Potter stepped back across the threshold into a place he could not help but think of as home.
The feast was, just as Hagrid had promised, quite an affair. The hall was decorated splendidly and there was a live band which featured a wizard who could not have been more than five feet tall slapping a bass that looked entirely ridiculous in his hands as it dwarfed him entirely, and an exceptionally large woman, both in height and girth, playing a set of drums, only half of which was recognizable as anything that might appear in a standard kit. They played, despite first impressions, exceptionally well, and were jazzy enough to fill the little dance floor laid before them perpetually throughout the entire affair. As there were only 34 students present, the usual long house tables had been abandoned and replaced with little circular tables in a semicircle facing the teacher's table. People sat as they pleased, and though most people's friends were in their own houses, simply because the opportunity existed, if nothing else, there were plenty of exceptions and cross-house talk was furthered even more by the pronouncement that they would all be sharing Hufflepuff's dormitory until the Christmas break and would, in a practical sense, exist as one house until that point. After the meal, the music stopped, the tables cleared and Professor McGonagall stood before them, smiling.
"It is not, of course, under the most desirable of circumstances that we meet here. I would have liked to celebrate our victory here a few months ago with a grander feast and all of our students in a full school. Unfortunately, the situation does not permit this. I would like to remind you, however, that though, by all rights, half of you should be gone now, on to the lives you will lead, and half of you should be advancing into the higher level learnings that will take you there, your sacrifice of a year has meant you get to do these things in a free and peaceful world. That is all the encouragement you should need. Good night, all. Hufflepuffs, if you would be so kind?"
The chairs scraped the floor and the decreased number echoed oddly in the nearly empty hall. The Hufflepuffs, always glad to be helpful, were leading a cheerful way to a good nights sleep.