Many hours later, Harry returned to the Gryffindor common room. James and Lily, who weren't letting him out of their sight, accompanied him. That was more then OK with him. He was still amazed at the fact that his parents were alive. Dumbledore had explained why.

"You see, everyone, we often wondered why people who were killed by the Avada Kedavra curse still seemed to be in perfect health, even though they were dead. I started to research into it. My research paid off just yesterday, when I discovered in an ancient scroll that it does not kill them, as previously thought. It transports the cursed to a barren plain, where the souls are doomed to live forever. This is why the bodies decompose at such a slow rate. Hoping that I would one day be able to revive the Potters, along with others who died far before their time, I petrified the corpses and had them hidden. It sounds ghoulish, I know, but it meant that I could return people to their bodies."

Harry stayed very quiet after this explanation. "So, if Mum and Dad are alive, then how old are they, exactly?"

Lily laughed. "Harry, haven't you learned to never ask a lady her age?" At her son's blush, she smiled. "Our bodies are about 22. Mentally, though, we kept right on ageing."

Harry nodded. It would be easier to get used to if his parents weren't as young as they looked.

Since James and Lily didn't want to leave their son again, James took the DADA position, once again vacated, and Lily became the substitute Potions instructor, since Snape was on Sabbatical in order to spy on Voldemort. Harry couldn't have been more delighted. After just getting his parents back, he wasn't too keen on having to leave them again for ten months of the year.

Ron, Hermione, and Ginny were waiting up for him. Since it was after eleven, this wasn't quite allowed, but they were all worried. Harry hadn't turned up for the feast at all. They saw the glowing look on Harry's face, and everything else was immaterial. None of them had seen him look this happy since he won the Quidditch cup. That in itself was enough to take the worry off their faces. When they looked up to see who had accompanied their friend into the portrait hole, they were stunned. Ginny didn't recognize them because she hadn't seen Harry's book with the pictures of his parents in them, but the resemblance to Harry was unmistakable.

"Guys, I would like you to meet my," Harry tripped over the word, "parents, James and Lily Potter. Mom, Dad, these three are my best friends Ron Weasley, Hermione Granger, and Ron's younger sister Ginny."

The affect that these words had on his friends was even more then Harry hoped. Hermione got out of Ron's lap and ran up to hug Harry. Ron merely sat, open mouthed, on the chair. Ginny let out a squeal and came skittering over to James.

"Mr. Potter, you have no idea how happy we are for Harry. He's had such a horrible time of it, it's about time something wonderful happened. But how?"

She echoed the thoughts that Ron and Hermione were to afraid to voice.

Harry repeated what Dumbledore had told him, and Ron's face lit up.

"Harry! This means that Cedric can come back, too!" Harry shook his head, sadly. The crushing weight seemed twice as heavy, now that he had his parents back.

"No. The Diggory's wouldn't permit his body to be frozen. It's in too bad of shape. If he did come back, he would only be a ghost." His mother reached over to comfort him, and for the first time in fourteen years, Harry could allow himself to cry in his mother's arms. Ron ran upstairs, and fetched a book that Harry didn't know he had. It was filled with wizard photographs that Colin Creevy had taken of Harry, Ron, and Hermione. There were also photos of Ginny, the Burrow, and Quidditch World Cup. All of Harry's Hogwarts years were documented in them. Somehow, there were also pictures of Harry as a small child, straight through until he came to Hogwarts. Through his tears, he looked at Ron in confusion.

"The ones at school were taken by Hermione, me, and Colin. Mrs. Figg and Dumbledore took the others. This was going to be your seventeenth birthday present, but I don't think that Dumbledore will mind. After all, you'll want to show your parents what you looked like before you became the tall, skinny nuisance we know and love today, eh?" Ron's ears were turning red. Hermione pulled him onto the couch and gave him a big, sloppy kiss right there.

"I didn't know that's what you wanted them for! Oh Ron!" And with that she started to cry, and disappeared up the stairs.

"I knew she'd gone barkers when she started dating you, Ron." Harry emerged from his mother's embrace to crack.

"Your welcome. Come, Ginny, we have class in the morning." He pulled his protesting sister up the stairs.

Five minutes later, a seething Ginny reappeared.

"The prat forgot that I use a different staircase." She said, turning pink. In actuality, she could have made it to the girls' dorms using one of the highly useful secret passageways between the two that Fred and George showed her, but she wanted to say goodnight to Harry.

"Harry?" She said, not wanting to break anything up.

"Yes?"

"Good night. You may want to get to bed soon as well, seeing as you have double potions first thing. Snape would love to dock you points." Harry nodded.

"Will do. Good night, Ginny." She grinned, and headed up her staircase.

His parents were leafing through the pictures that Ron had pasted into the book. They had started with the most recent, and were working their way back. Harry wiggled his way between them. His father put his arm around him. They looked at pictures of Harry, Ron and Hermione taken at the Yule ball, just before the huge row that gave Ron away. Ron was casting resentful looks at Hermione, beside him, while Harry was obviously trying not to laugh. Hermione was shooting the same looks at Ron. More and more photos, of him grinning while holding the cup winning snitch in his hand, and lying on the ground with his glasses and arm broken. Even the one that Lockhart had forced him to stand still for was there. He wasn't in it, though. Only his arm was, and even that was straining to get away.

Then they arrived at the ones taken by Mrs. Figg and Dumbledore. They showed Harry cleaning up, Harry getting beaten up, Harry locked in his cupboard. They also showed Aunt Petunia's disapproval, and the living room with all the pictures of Dudley, and none of him.

It took a second for his parents to digest this information. Then-

"You went to Petunia? Where was Sirius? Or Remus? Or ANYONE ELSE, for that matter, except for that horrid sister of mine? When I get through with her I'll.." Lily woke all of Gryffindor House before Harry and James could quiet her. A few of the braver ones started to emerge to discover what the crazy woman in the common room was yelling about. None of them knew precisely what was going on, but it seemed like a good idea to find out.