Disclaimer: I own nothing. All is JKR's.

While Harry gets a well-deserved sleep in Gryffindor Tower, he has a few visitors.

Visitations

Part One

--Minerva McGonagall—

In all the years that Minerva McGonagall had spent at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry she had never seen her beloved Gryffindor Tower in such disarray. Standing just inside the entrance concealed behind the portrait of the Fat Lady, the aging professor stood rigid as she inventoried the damage.

Much of the furniture, the beautiful red plushy chairs, the carved wooden tables, had been overturned or broken and was piled in heaps to her left. A large, ragged hole gaped to her right. The tapestries were torn or gone entirely, there was dust and debris everywhere and the stairs leading up to the dormitories looked precarious at best.

Minerva sighed tiredly. Gryffindor Tower would always hold a place in her heart and Hogwarts would always be her home, but as she gazed at the destruction that had occurred, Minerva wondered if she'd be able to return.

She took one last sweeping gaze of the common room and was about to turn to leave when the sight of footprints in the dust caught her eye. Her gaze narrowed and her eyebrows scrunched together. There shouldn't be anyone in the Tower right now with the state it was in. And who would want to be anyway? Family and friends were still gathered in the Great Hall, mourning and celebrating as one.

Minerva stepped briskly across the room, following the footsteps that led up to the boys' dormitories. With determination, she stepped quickly up the stairs, which, in their damaged condition, creaked and protested under her weight.

The footsteps stopped on the landing of what would have been the seventh year boys' had they not all been living in the Room of Requirement for the last few months. The door was slightly ajar but Minerva could hear no sound from within.

With a caution learned from years spent with mischievous adolescents, and now with two wars under her belt, Minerva eased the door open, careful not to make a sound. For a moment, the room was too dark to see much of anything but when her eyes adjusted, Minerva saw a figure lying on one of the beds, still but for a silent breathing.

Her first reaction was to be indignant that someone was sleeping in her Tower without permission when everyone should have been in the Great Hall. But as her eyes further adjusted to the dim lighting Minerva caught sight of a mop of untidy black hair and any anger was instantly forgotten.

The first thing Minerva did was to make sure that he was in fact breathing and she hadn't just imagined it before.

There was a steady rise and fall in his chest and she let out a little sigh of relief. Minerva took a step further into the room and gazed down at her student, he always would be, and her lips quirked upward. She hadn't seen him look this peaceful in a while, not that she'd seen him at all for some time.

Harry Potter had not been the ideal student by any means in his time at Hogwarts. He had received more than one detention in Transfiguration and other classes for dozing off or his smart mouth, but he had a clever wit. Minerva had known from the time he entered Hogwarts that he would be a student to watch. But not only had he become an intelligent and confident young man, he had proven to the world, and to her, that he was incredibly compassionate and brave and the personification of hope in the wizarding world.

She couldn't have been prouder.

As Minerva watched Harry sleep, his chest rising and falling reassuringly, she thought of the last time she'd seen this. Sixteen years ago when Harry was placed on his aunt and uncle's doorstep with nothing to his name but the letter he came with, Minerva had hoped that the son of Lily and James Potter, two of her greatest students, would be all right.

And now she saw that Harry Potter would be.

Minerva felt now that, while something was beginning, something was also coming to an end. She had seen hundreds of students through their Hogwarts education but only now did she feel ready to leave. And only now did she know that Hogwarts would be all right without her.

Taking care to leave as quietly as she had come, Minerva eased the door closed behind her until there was only the tiniest gap in the doorway. She made her way down the treacherous stairs feeling calm despite the view of wreckage at the bottom. She put a quick stabilizing charm on the stairs before leaving the tower and ignored the destruction on either side.

As she made her way through the quiet corridors of the bruised and beaten school Minerva knew that Hogwarts would make it back together again. Harry would see to that. But for now he deserved a nice, long rest.

This is a repost. I think I may have changed one or two things in this section, but it's largely the same as it was before.

Same deal as before, except there will now be a total of seven parts. Please Review!