Story Summary: Voldemort is planning something that could destroy half the world. Fortunetely, the information he seeks is so heavily guarded that not even he knows the whole story. He remains one step ahead of Harry, Dumbledore, the Ministry, and the Order and they need desperately to catch up to him before time runs out. The only one who can help them is keeping her lips sealed. She's smart enough to know that Voldemort doesn't have all the information, but unless she speaks out, neither Harry nor Dumbledore can protect her and more importantly the key to the world's destruction.

Pairings: Not much Harry romance in this one . . . at least on really. Year seven mostly (my year seven not jk rowling's) but in this one it's Hermione/Ron. Lupin gets a girl and a past love of Sirius' is revealed. Tonks gets Bill, Charlie gets a girl too, Neville gets a girl, blah blah blah. Harry gets a building romance. Whether or not anything happens for him is another thing. It's complicated.

"The Aftermath"

Chapter One
A Nightmare of Murder

Number 4, Privet Drive, Little Whinging, Surrey. It half past eleven and all was quiet . . . except for the smallest bedroom. Within that room, a boy was sleeping, and sleeping rather restlessly. Shuffling and rolling over, mumbling and moaning. This boy had jet black hair and his glasses could be seen on his bedside table. Through these glasses, this boy's eyeshad seen horrors and been through terrifying experiences that would turn anyone's dreams into nightmares. With a cry the boy sat up in his bed, covered in cold sweat, and his heart pounding wildly in his chest. He had had one of those dreams again. He grimaced as he remembered he wasn't supposed to be having them anymore. He had been doing a lot better lately. He had been practicing his Occlumency and was beginning to think it had finally paid off. He wanted to be in total control of his mind.But then again, he thought to himself, Voldemort was really, really, seriously moved. Of course he would have this sort of dream. And it wasn't like he was throwing up . . . just a regular twinge of the scar. Not a big deal.

He thought about what he had just seen. There had been Voldemort, of course. He was glad to know that he had not seen the vision from Voldemort's point of view. That, at least, was something. There had been a house. A rather big, pretty looking mansion. He didn't recognize it. There had been two people in the living room, and the living room had this huge plasma screen television, so it had to have been a muggle dwelling. But Voldemort wouldn't waste his time on muggles – he had wizards to deal with. But wait . . . those two people, a man and supposedly his wife, had pulled out their wands when Voldemort had entered. There had been a blinding flash of white light and when Harry could see again, the two had gone and Voldemort was running after them. The two had run to an upstairs bedroom, and barricaded themselves in. Voldemort had yelled something . . . Harry thought hard. Suddenly, he could hear it echoing inside of his head.

"What the bloody hell?" a man's voice had shouted. "Get out of our house!"

"Not until I get what I came for!"

"We have nothing that you want," the man said . . . but he had said it as if he were hiding something.

Voldemort remained silent. The door glowed red and a gasp of uneasiness could be heard from the other side of the door, as if it were taking the person great effort just to keep the door closed.

Harry remembered hearing something else. He remembered someone having a hurried conversation in the room while Voldemort was still struggling with the hex on the door.

"Run! Now! We can't hold this for much longer. Run, do you hear?" the male voice had spoken. "Run, and I don't want you to look back."

"Dad, I'm scared," a terrified voice of a girl said, almost inaudibly. Where had the girl come from?

"Honey, we've been over this before," cried a slightly trembling female voice. She sounded worried, but resolved, andthrough her voice, Harry could almost picture her face - lipstrembling but eyes on fire. He heard her take a deep breath to remove all desperation from her words."You know where to go. If we can, we'll – "

"Kate, there's no time.She has togo!" there was something like a screech of a hawk and the thud of a box or something like it and Voldemort got the door open in time to see the two adults going through a door leading out of the bedroom and into a hall. Harry thought it strange that these two people were dressed in muggle clothing - the man was wearing a t-shirt under an unbuttoned plaid shirt and the woman was wearing a sweater and khakis. They looked around forty years old, maybe a little younger. Harry had a bad feeling about what was going to happen next; a feeling well justified.

"AVADA KEDAVRA!" he shouted. The man fell as the woman shrieked.

"YOU BASTARD!" she screamed and a blast emitted from her wand – a neon blue. Voldemort deflected it with a dismissive wave of his wand.

"Wasting your time and energy on your daughter. Typical," Voldemort said, advancing towards the woman. "I'll never understand why people like you see fit bother with such useless and thankless tasks. What you should have beendoing was protecting the key. You know very well that's what I came for. There's no one left to protect you, so now all you have to do is hand it over. I'll make your death swift."

"Is that so? You have no idea what you're dealing with," the woman sent another blast Voldemort's way, this time a bright magenta and it hit it's mark. But Voldemort was only momentarily staggered.

"I'll ask you but once more," he said.

"Well, sucks for you because you can kill me now because I'm not telling you a damn thing!" the woman, whom Harry now realized was American, ducked low and kicked out, succeeding in physically bringing Voldemort to the ground. This was the last straw for him. The boy could feel Voldemort's rage coursing through him. There was another flash of green light, but the woman was nowhere to be seen.

"Accio key!" Voldemort cried. Nothing happened. "WHERE IS IT!?" he screamed. "WHERE IS IT!?"

This final moment played in the boy's mind. What had Voldemort been looking for? What was this key? What was it a key to? Who were these people? Why had Voldemort have gone to such great heights to kill them himself?

But what did he care. The last time Voldemort had desired something, it had involved him. All that he cared about now was that this time, no one he knew got hurt.

The boy got up and looked out of the window and saw his reflection. And here's the great Harry Potter, he thought. If having the ability to make those around you drop dead makes you such a great guythen yeah, I'm great. Harry scowled and sat on the edge of his bed and put his head in his hands and groaned.

"My parents – my fault," he said to himself quietly. "Cedric – my fault. Sirius – my fault. All of it, it's my fault. All of it." Harry got up and leaned against his bedroom wall. Rational thoughts kept threatening to convince him otherwise. Thoughts like "It's not your fault, it's Voldemort's. You didn't murder them . . . " But Harry just kept saying to himself that he could have prevented it all.IfVoldemorthadn't wantedHarry, his parents would still be alive. He should have taken the Triwizard Cup by himself. That way, Cedric would have seen him leave and alerted Dumbledore. And with Sirius – at this point Harry sank down, sliding down the wall into sitting position. If he hadn't been so eager to play the hero, none of that would have happened. More rational thoughts filled his head. "It's normal to feel you have to prove yourself given these circumstances . . . You just care – that's all, you care." Harry pushed those thoughts away. It was his fault, and nothing could prove to him that it wasn't. Harry's heart filled with self-loathing and self-doubt, because if he was worthless, then, he wouldn't let anyone down. If he believed that he wasn't capable, then he wouldn't try so hard and disappoint himself and he wouldn't hurt anyone else he cared about.

But besides feeling the guilt about the people Voldemort had murdered, Harry was feeling a certain fear of himself. He remembered what he had done to Bellatrix Lestrange . . . and he wasn't the least bit sorry. That's what scared him. He had sunk to their level. He knew how it felt to be tortured with the curse. He knew it was cruel. He knew it was a crime all the way up there next to murder and depriving a person of their free will. He had done it in anger . . . torturing his godfather's murderer –Sirius' own cousin! He had used an Unforgivable Curse. If he had done it just a day earlier, the Prophet would have loved to print the fact. Harry shivered. He wondered whether or not Dumbledore knew what he had done or not.

Harry had had nightmares about that night. They weren't as bad as the nightmares about the graveyard had been, but he had them. It was usually a dream of how Harry would have changed that night if he could. It never went so far as to let him choose not to go to the Department of Mysteries, or not touch the prophecy, but it did let him redo some things. Sometimes the dream allowed the whole group to stay together as they escaped row ninety-seven. That always prevented Ginny and Ron's injuries. Sometimes he got to Dolohov before he could curse Hermione. Sometimes Neville was able to dodge Dolohov's kick. Sometimes, Luna was able to close the door in time. But when it came to that one moment as Bellatrix sent the curse Sirius's way, Harry would always run as fast as he could and arrive simply a millisecond too late. He would always be too late for that.

There was one dream where he actually dived through the veil after Sirius, and for some reason, he found himself at his parents wedding. Everything was silent, but Harry could imagine the cheers that must have been coming from the crowd.

There had been just this one blinding flash of white light, then Harry saw his father and mother kiss, and then Sirius shook James' hand. There was another flash of light, and Harry found himself looking at his family, almost the way he had seen them in the Mirror of Erised all those years ago. An old man with knobbly knees, people with messy jet-black hair, people with bright green eyes, all of them looking at him kindly as he passed. This time, they were all seated at what seemed to be the wedding reception tables. Harry had smiled back, but he could not find a way to speak.

Then, when he reached the last table, the table where the bride and groom sat, the long one that is supposed to hold all the bridesmaids and groomsmen, Harry saw the strangest assortment of people. Some of them he had vaguely recognized from Moody's old photograph of the Order of the Phoenix, including the two women in bridesmaids' dresses sitting next to Lily Potter. Then there was his father and mother. Next to his father was Sirius. Harry wondered to himself where Lupin was.

Then his mother saw him. She had beckoned him with her hand, a wide joyful smile on her face. Harry's father also had a large grin on his face as he waved Harry to him. Harry stepped in front of them, the table separating him from them. His parents stood up. Sirius leaned forward on his elbow interestedly and raised his glass slightly to Harry. Lily Potter put her hands on Harry's shoulders and kissed him once on each cheek, her green eyes sparkling into Harry's own. Her look was not unlike the one that mothers usually give their sons when saying things like, "I'm so proud of you!" or "My, I can't believe what a man you're growing up into!" She pulled away and smoothed out his shirt very motherishly, and straightening the bowtie Harry had not known he was wearing.

James ruffled Harry's hair fondly. Holding a finger up as a signal for Harry to wait a moment, James produced a golden snitch from his pocket. He gave Harry a look that said, "You ready for this?" Harry smiled in reply. James let the snitch go and after about half a second, Harry had it in his hand, very much surprised that he was able to do so. Harry handed back the snitch to his father. James smiled and gave Harry's shoulder a gentle squeeze, as if to say, "That's my boy!".

Sirius offered Harry a sip from his wineglass, but Harry saw the look that his mother was giving Sirius, so he politely declined with a shake of his head. Sirius' threw his head back in a laugh that Harry couldn't hear.

Then, Harry saw Cedric. He held out a copy of Which Broomstick to Harry, winking at Harry as if it were some sort of inside joke,but Harry, feeling a slight unexplained urgency to get going, shook his head. Then, Harry saw the tattered black veil.

His parents, Sirius, and Cedric stood behind Harry as he looked at the veil, and again, he was strangely drawn to it. He started walking towards it, but his mother grabbed his hand, as if saying, "Don't go." Harry looked at their faces. Their expressions had changed from jolly to grim. They were all staring at the veil, except Harry's mother, who was giving Harry a pleading look. Harry felt the veil call to him again. He let go of his mother's hand and went to it. He pulled away the veil. Voldemort's face appeared through the darkness, pale with red eyes, and hissing like a snake. Harry had woken up in a cold sweat.

That had been the night he came back to Privet Drive. He never had that dream again. It was not until the morning after that Harry had realized that all the people he had seen in the dream were dead.

It was now midnight. Harry had been at Privet Drive for a week – longer than he could stand. But where else could he go? The Burrow wasn't safe enough . . . and Headquarters . . . Headquarters had too many bad memories. Harry sighed. He would have to tell of his dream to Dumbledore, but how? Harry stood up again. Now he was shaking. Still trembling slightly, Harry got back into bed. This time, he slept a dreamless sleep.

Harry got up late the next morning and for once in a long time he had a restful sleep. He was able to grab a bit of leftovers before his Aunt Petunia cleared the table brusquely giving him a rather dirty look. Harry had a feeling the Dursleys wouldn't care if he told them what he had been through not two weeks before. They probably wouldn't see it as an excuse for his behavior anyway. Harry spent a lot of time locked in his room, everyday waiting for the post. This morning he had found an owl waiting for him on his desk. It was carrying the Daily Prophet. Harry was eager to read it.

Harry perused the paper for a story on what he had seen. There was nothing. Did they not know? Or were they keeping it quiet? Harry resolved to write for answers and then there was something that quite distracted him. On the last page there was a story that made his stomach turn. Apparently, Dumbledore was trying to convince the Wizenmagot of Sirius's innocence. But everyone blatantly refused to believe this despite the testimony of Dumbledore himself, and all the members of the ministry who were in the Order.

Albus Dumbledore was litagating to a skeptical Wizenmagot this afternoon. Many people who are old enough to remember recall that Dumbledore actually testified against Black when he was convicted. Dumbledore also was very adamant in thecapture of Black when he escaped from Azkaban three years ago when, as it was revealed last week,it was believed by the Ministry that Black wanted to kill Harry Potter.

Another version of the story has now been released. Apparently, Black and his schoolfriends, including James Potter and Peter Pettigrew, were illegal Animagi, which would account for Black's escape fromAzkaban. This new theory which has yet to be fully proven, involves the fact that Peter Pettigrew was never really killed and that Black had not been the one whohad led He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to the Potters' cottage.

This story shocked many. Even more shocking was that this story was not new to the Ministry.Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge himself admitted that three years ago when Hogwarts students were almost out for the summer holidays, he was told this same story from Black himself and a garbled version from Harry Potter and his friends, who were all in the hospital and at the time considered too confused and injured to be taken seriously. They had mentioned that the Ministry had gotten the wrong man and that Pettigrew was the one they needed - the one who had escaped.It surprised many witches and wizards of the court that had not known this that this version of events had not even been taken into consideration.

But there were other factors involved, as was discussed in court, such as the fact that there were no reliable eye witnesses attesting to the livelihood of Peter Pettigrew at the time and no evidence that they were in fact Animagi. As Black is allegedly dead (his body is as lost where it is as it would be on the bottom of the ocean)) and Pettigrew nowhere to be found, this story is too hard to believe for many. However, the questioned Death Eaters have confirmed, however indirectly, that the spell You-Know-Who used to bring himself back must have required help from a capable enough wizard and Harry Potter's own story of what happened a little over a year ago says that Pettigrew was there. Many people have testified that for the past two years, Black has been fighting against You-Know-Who.

The Death Eaters being held in custody have also confirmed that Black had not been with them and one had also sustained an injury from Black himself. Apparently, Harry Potter's own prized Firebolt broomstick was a gift from Black - who is indeed Potter's godfather.The only thing needed to prove Black's innocence once and for all is Peter Pettigrew.

Harry threw the paper across the room. Half because he was angry that he wasn't allowed to defend his godfather for once and for all, and half because he was still feeling responsible for Sirius's death. It took him a while to settle down enough to sit down and write his letter to Remus Lupin. They had told Harry in their first letter to him (they being Dumbledore) to address all his letters to Lupin so that his letters weren't too suspicious as Lupin was the only remaining good friend of his parents. There was no name on the outside of the envelope. Hedwig was a smart owl. When Harry said "Lupin" she knew where to go. Harry used the code he was taught – every ten words in the letter was part of the message he wanted to convey. The in-between words just rubbish. When Harry was finished he made sure that every ten words were right.

"I . . . had . . . another . . . dream . . . something . . . you . . . need . . . to . .. know," Harry mumbled to himself. "Yeah, good enough." He rolled the parchment up and tied it to his Hedwig's, his owl, leg. "This is my update, Hedwig. Take it there." She hooted serenely and headed off into the bright morning light.

Harry didn't know exactly what he expected. He knew someone would be sent down. He probably wouldn't get an explanation, but he'd probably be able to wheedle out some important information, like the date and time he was going to be liberated from the Dursley Death Camp.

Now all Harry had to do was wait.