Yay, the home stretch! This is the final chapter of the first Weasley Girl story! Weird to think that I started this story on a pure whim, and it grew to be the longest story I ever wrote. It's been remarkably fun to do, not to mention you guys seemed to like it... So many views, favourites and reviews!

Check out the author's notes at the end of this chapter for information about the future of this AU.

WEASLEY GIRL
Based on the Harry Potter books by J. K. Rowling

EPILOGUE

"—and after that I came back here," Harry finished, as Ronnie, Hermione and Neville all looked at him wide-eyed.

They were in the Gryffindor common room, with its cosy roaring fires and comfortable chairs — and for once, they were not "chaperoned" by Fred, George or Percy. To Harry's secret relief, this meant they weren't around to hear the story about his father...not that he particularly wanted to keep secrets from them, but there were things he felt more comfortable sharing only with the rest of Potter's Gang.

Ronnie punched the air and cried: "Yes! No more bloody Snape!" She grabbed both Hermione's hands and began dancing with her around the Gryffindor common room; an energetic and not at all graceful dance that Hermione surprisingly enough went along with with no protest. "No more Slytherin favouritism, no more greasy hair, no more sarcasm! No more being treated like —"

Hermione was giggling, but seemed to want to be fair-minded, so she said: "We shouldn't be cheering. I know I was the one who kept saying he had to be evil, but Snape did work against Voldemort, if it hadn't been for him —!"

"Yes, yes, I'll hail him as a hero all you want, after I finished celebrating that I'm rid of him!"

Neville, however, looked more thoughtful. As the girls were dancing around, neither of them with any great skill, he sat in one of the deep chairs with a thoughtful look on his face.

"Suppose we don't really know our teachers at all, when it comes down to it," he finally said, when Harry asked him if he was all right."We just think of them as our teachers. We don't consider that they have lives of their own that might not even involve us, do we? But they've got pasts. They've been kids themselves, haven't they?"

"We already knew Snape had a past," said Harry. "He was a Death Eater who reformed, remember?"

"Yeah, but there must have been a time before that, mustn't there? Snape went to Hogwarts as the same time as your parents... He must have been a kid once. He must've been our age at some point." Neville leaned back in the chair. "Really makes you think, doesn't it? We don't think about the teachers as anything but teachers, but they have to have been kids once. Even Dumbledore, I suppose. Wasn't he supposed to be in Gryffindor?"

Harry tried to imagine Dumbledore as a little boy. For some reason, it was completely impossible to imagine the Headmaster without that long, white beard, but he must have been young once. There must have been people in his past, like the mysterious Ariana.

Harry shook his head. "Well, when you put it like that," he said, "even Voldemort must have been a kid once. We know he was in Slytherin, after all. Did you notice that Dumbledore called him 'Tom'? That must be his first name."

"Can't say I noticed, no," said Neville. "Must have been after the Cruciatus curse. Took some time before I noticed anything after that."

Harry winced. "Sorry."

"Not your fault. I know better than ever why it's Unforgivable, though. I did want to feel closer to my parents, but —" Neville visibly shuddered and changed the subject. "So You-Know-Who was a boy once too. Named Tom. Cheerful thought. Any of our year-mates could be the next bullying teacher, or the next Dark Lord."

"Well, yeah... Or the next Dumbledore."

"I suppose." Neville was quiet, and for a moment or two all the noise in the common room came from the two dancing girls. Then, all of a sudden, he asked: "Did Hagrid tell you what those other three boys were named? Your Dad's friends, I mean?"

Harry shook his head. "All he said was that it wasn't a happy story. I suppose they all died too."

"I could ask Gran if you like," said Neville. "She knows a lot of people. If she doesn't know who your Dad's friends were, I'm pretty sure she knows someone who knows."

"Thank you, Neville." Harry felt oddly touched, though a little wary at the same time. After the revelation about his father, he wasn't sure if he was ready for stories about his father's friends — especially not if those stories ended up with all of them dead. "I'll think about it."

"All right. Just let me know."

And then, Christmas holidays were over and the students returned, and life started to return to normal — or at least as normal as it can get at a school of magic, after one teacher has died and another one resigned.

Apparently, Dumbledore had tried to talk Snape into staying on, but had been unsuccessful, and the former Potions master left the school quite unceremoniously. There weren't many students, apart from Slytherins, who were disappointed with this; Snape had not been a popular teacher. (They were, however, quite disappointed when it turned out that the replacement Potions teacher wouldn't start until next year, and that Professor Binns, who hadn't even noticed anything out of the ordinary going on during the holidays, would remain as the substitute Potions teacher out the year.)

With Voldemort gone, Mad-Eye Moody was no longer stalking around the corridors of Hogwarts, though he continued his extraordinary Defence against the Dark Arts lessons. Potter's Gang had found him in one of the corridors after one of the lessons and offered him his Warning Fangs back, but he'd refused.

"Keep them," he said. "Just because the immediate danger is over, doesn't mean you're all perfectly safe." He lowered his voice to a low growl, his magical eye spinning around in its socket. "Constant vigilance. Dark wizards are sneaky. Even the best of us can fall for their ploys - look at Dumbledore and me, both of us traipsing off to the Forbidden Forest and leaving you vulnerable to attack."

"We did have the Heads of House there," said Hermione, who seemed to want to be fair about the entire thing.

"And fat lot of good they did with that sleeping potion in them!" Moody snarled. "Another reason why it's dangerous to trust anyone but you handling your food or drink." (Now that Harry thought about it, he had never seen Moody eat anything at meal-times - or, for that matter, drink out of anything but the hip-flask he always carried.) "Then again, the four of you are special cases there, aren't you?"

Potter's Gang exchanged glances. "You know about our immunity?" said Harry. They hadn't talked to anyone about it, even after they had accidentally revealed it to Voldemort - but Moody was just the sort of person who would know things like that.

"Interesting advantage you have there," said Moody gruffly. "But dangerous. Especially since Voldemort shares the same immunity. It means he can't use certain elixirs to return to power, and that means he'll have to seek other, far more complicated means."

"Are you certain he will —" Neville began.

"Mark my words," said Moody. "This was just the first attempt at regaining his power. Only thing that's surprising is that he took so long. He won't wait for ten more years! And if I'm not mistaken, he'll probably be very interested in you four. He won't forget your confrontation. And he won't forget that you share his condition. If your immunity should wear off, or a cure be found, Voldemort will want to know about it."

Neville gulped, but didn't say anything this time.

"Of course, Potter, you remain the biggest target," said Moody, letting his magical eye rest on Harry. "Voldemort may think your friends useful, but you're the one who took his power away from him, ten years ago. He's had a decade to stew in his hatred."

"Why does Harry have to live with Muggles, then?" said Ronnie. "If he's such a big target, shouldn't he be kept somewhere safe?"

"Safe?" Moody snapped. "There are no safe places! Hasn't this Christmas taught you that much? Evil can strike anywhere, at any time! CONSTANT VIGILANCE!" This time, he yelled the phrase so loud that Ronnie jumped backwards — then, he lowered his voice again. "That said — Potter's Muggle home is hardly unprotected. There are spells protections around that place deeper and more powerful than those around Hogwarts. Voldemort himself will have a hard time even getting near the place."

"Spells... and protections? Really?" said Harry, overwhelmed.

"Dumbledore hasn't told you?" Moody, his eyebrows raising. When Harry didn't answer, he continued in an almost accusing voice: "I hope you didn't think that Albus Dumbledore, knowing that Voldemort's supporters were still out there, would leave you in the Muggle world for ten years with absolutely no protection?"

"Well, er, no, of course not," said Harry. And felt a little ashamed, because he really hadn't thought about it at all.

Moody gave him a long look, made even longer by the fact that his magical eye lingered on Harry for a long while after his normal eye had looked away. But if he suspected Harry wasn't being completely honest, he didn't say it out loud. Instead, he leaned closer and said, in a hoarse whisper: "But don't go thinking you're untouchable! Even the best protections can fail - your parents had so-called infallible protections as well, and look at what happened to them!"

"Yes, sir," said Harry. He had no idea what else to say, and Moody was beginning to make him feel just a little uncomfortable.

"Make any plans you like," said Moody. "Take any security precautions you want. I always do, and they've saved my life more times than I could count. But never — never! — think that you're on top of it all, that they can't get to you! Because the moment you start thinking like that, Potter, you're dead! Understand?!"

Without waiting for an answer, he turned around and walked away, with the characteristic thunk-thunk-thunk of his wooden leg growing fainter and fainter as he vanished down the corridor.

"Can you believe that some people say that bloke's too paranoid?" said Ronnie in an obvious attempt to try and lighten the mood.

Harry shook his head. "I wonder what kind of protections are supposed to be around the Dursleys' house," he pondered out loud. "I've lived there for ten years, and I never noticed anything like that."

"Of course you wouldn't," said Hermione, just a little haughtily. "Magical protections aren't noticeable when you're inside them, and usually not even for anyone other than the people they are meant to protect against. We're not noticing the protections around Hogwarts right now, are we?"

"Er — protections around Hogwarts?" said Ronnie, making Harry feel relieved that he wasn't the only one who hadn't known.

"There are several," said Hermione. "There's the Anti-Apparition Charms, and —"

"Didn't stop You-Know-Who, did they?"

Hermione made a face. "Well, it's like Professor Moody said, isn't it? No protections are a hundred percent infallible... especially if you know how to bypass them. The Hogwarts protections are rather famous, and who knows if Quirrell didn't know about some way to get around them. But if the protections around Harry's Muggle home have held up for ten years, without any Dumbledore there to further scare off potential attackers, they have to be good, don't they? Maybe your relatives know more about it, Harry?"

"The Dursleys?" Harry almost laughed. He could only too well imagine what uncle Vernon and aunt Petunia might say if they knew their home was protected by the magic they so despised. "I doubt that."

"You could at least ask them," said Hermione.

"No, I couldn't."

"But —"

"No, I couldn't!"

"You could ask Dumbledore," said Neville suddenly. "He'd know, right?"

"I... suppose. I don't know, though." Harry thought about it, trying to put words around his reluctance. Partly it may be that the Dursleys had pretty much raised him to not ask questions, but... "Dumbledore's already told us so much lately," he finally said. "I don't want to start bothering him about every little thing. He does have other things to do."

"This isn't a little thing," Hermione insisted. "Besides, Dumbledore is a teacher! What could be more important to a teacher than educating his students?"

"I don't know, Hermione," said Ronnie. "Why don't you ask Snape about that?!"

Hermione opened her mouth, then closed it again. "Let me rephrase that," she said after a few moments. "What could be more important to a halfway decent teacher than —"

"Hermione, please drop it!" said Harry, a little more harshly than he'd intended.

They were silent for a while.

"Just... let's be careful, okay?" said Hermione.

"Yeah," said Ronnie, sighing and looking away. And then, slowly, she started to smile.

Harry looked in the same direction, trying to spot what she'd seen, and saw a large window, looking out over the snow-covered school grounds.

The outside was a cold, silent vision of grey and white; it was still January and Spring would be several months in the coming. Harry didn't, at first, see anything that would cause anyone to smile - but then it was there, the flash of red and gold soaring in the sky like a tiny spot of fire.

It was Fawkes, fully regrown and on his wings again.

Harry felt himself start to smile as well. He thought he could hear the faint sound of the phoenix's trilling song; a song about hope, and rebirth, and life after death has come and gone.

Maybe - just maybe - as long as there were creatures like Fawkes in the world, or wizards like Dumbledore and Hagrid, and friends like Ronnie, Hermione and Neville, things couldn't get too bad.

THE END! (For now...)

Author's Notes: And that's that! I realise that this chapter is awfully short for having taken such a long time in the coming, and that nothing much happened - but, well, the story really ended in chapter thirteen. The plot was wrapped up, the mystery solved, and apart from a few loose threads (that'll hopefully be solved in the sequel) there's really no more to tell for now.

So, until the time of the sequel, let's give Potter's gang a nice, uneventful spring term at Hogwarts. They've earned it.

I'm already in the middle of planning out the sequel, which will be called Weasley Girl: Secrets of the Past. It'll feature the first appearances of this universe's Luna Lovegood, Lucius Malfoy and Crookshanks... and perhaps a few others.

You might be wondering if I'm planning on writing all seven of Harry's Hogwarts years, but the answer is no. That task would be too big and I'd never finish all seven books. (Seriously, are there any fanfic writers who manage to write full AU stories for all seven years, and keep interest throughout? If you know of any, let me know!) I think instead I'll aim for a much-more-manageable trilogy. Three stories, and I'm not necessarily sticking to "one Hogwarts year per story." We'll see.

Until then, thank you for having stuck with me through thirteen chapters and an epilogue; and an extra special thank you to all those who favourited, put the fic on notice or reviewed (Over two hundred reviews! I'm still in awe!). If you've had half as much fun reading this story as I had writing it, then you'll... have had exactly half as much fun as me.

And that's it for now. Hope to see you again for Secrets of the Past.