Harry and his dragon soared through the white snowy night sky in peace. They'd been circling for an hour already, searching for any sign of disturbances. Harry held on and could only watch – wandless and useless – knowing Nhesher's fire would burn anything dead if they found danger.
There were three arrests and probably just as many escapes. They had obliterated Voldemort's force, and now was the aftermath.
The air was cold on his face and the snow pricked his skin like needles as it hit him. They were flying slowly, with the dragon's wings hardly beating. There was no moon, no stars, and no light save that from Hogwarts, but that didn't stop them finding ways to see – like shooting jets of fire around now and then. The storm was nearly settled.
They both wanted to go in or to leave the premises, but they had the same fears about doing either. Even landing posed its own risks. As Harry hunted for the horcruxes all those days ago, they had encountered this same situation several times. Nhesher would do its best to rest as they circled endlessly in the sky where no one could see, and Harry would guide the dragon by pulling on its horns to keep it from hitting into mountain sides.
They were both wide awake now looking for danger, although they were both getting quite uneasy about the choice to land and face Dumbledore and the Ministry, or take off and risk getting ambushed and killed, because Voldemort had escaped. After Dumbledore joined the party from the front, Aurors had appeared with the other Ministry officials and caught Voldemort's forces from behind. Harry had them from above and did the most damage. He was certain no more than a handful made it to freedom. Voldemort definitely had.
"We should not leave," Harry said solemnly to the dragon.
Nhesher responded by teetering its body left and right. Harry reached forward and patted the dragon's jaw.
"I mean it. It's too dangerous –"
Harry might have said more, but right then Dumbledore's voice sounded into the night from below.
"They won't arrest you, Harry!" Dumbledore said. "Come down; we need to talk…"
Nhesher growled, but Harry took a hold of its horns and steered it to Hogwart's Entrance Hall, where it had landed so perfectly just an hour ago. Looking at Hogwarts now, Harry saw the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw's tower lights on. The Owlary from this angle had a large section missing out of the side where Nhesher could fit its body into. The lights on the first floor were on and the doorway to the school was filled with Ministry and teachers alike. The dragon landed in the snow with an almighty crash and a roar. Some people inside screamed, and Harry rolled his eyes.
"Quiet!" he said with sparks on his lips.
He slipped off the dragon's neck and took his time walking up, leaving Nhesher to pad around in the cold snow. His boots crunched loudly as he walked, and he rubbed his hands in front of his mouth, sending a thick cloud of hot steamy breath into the night behind him. He was cold and stiff, but the walk made him better.
When he got to the long steps that led up to the double doors, he stopped. Light spread out over him, and he looked up at the clutter of people. Their uniforms gave them away – there were Aurors, Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures, the School Board, and within the hour about twenty Department of Magical Law Enforcement had showed up. Harry had to order Nhesher not to burn them as they walked up from Hogsmeade.
Dumbledore stood on the edge of the top step, looking down humorlessly at him. They were all quite humorless.
"I'm here," Harry said patiently, although he really wanted to run.
In the old days, with all these people around knowing exactly who he was and what he'd done for the Wizarding World, he'd have been given the benefit of the doubt – even pity. But now they were quite unyielding of their emotions. Harry was nervous.
"Oh, move aside!" declared someone from the back of the crowd loudly, pushing her way through.
Harry saw – of all people to see – Dolorous Umbridge jarring her way to him. She was so young – naturally so compared to how she used to be. She wore a large fluffy pink coat and her ears were behind muffs as purple as Ravenclaw's banner. She hurried down the steps and offered her hand right out to him.
"Harry Potter! Thank you for your services to this community!"
Harry took her hand none-so-much hesitantly now, and she beamed at him. He wanted to say something, but only nodded.
Umbridge held his hand still and turned to face the people behind her, although she said to him, "You deserve an Order of Merlin for this one! You might have just won us the war!"
Her words got the people out of their funk. Harry was looking up now at a clutter of very agreeable people. Umbridge pulled Harry up the stairs to them, and he shook quite a few hands. Always on his mind was Dumbledore, though. Dumbledore was standing off to the side rubbing his jaw, and not really joining in the celebration.
It couldn't last forever.
"He still needs to explain himself!" someone said, and when they stepped forward, Harry saw that it was Bartemius Crouch, Sr. He was head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Harry knew this…and he knew this very well.
"He can explain later!" Umbridge said – the first of Harry's fan club, apparently.
"He needs to explain a few things now!" Crouch said, walking up now and gaining the floor. "Like what this business is about Merlin! About how you broke into Gringotts! About why You Know Who wants to kill you! And about what to do about that dragon!"
Harry rubbed a cold hand through his hair. He knew what was coming. He looked everyone over and figured somewhere they'd have someone from the Committee for the Disposal of Dangerous Creatures. He looked behind him at the thing he cared about most. Nhesher's violent mouth was open and fuming with smoke, and it was watching them. Harry knew he was looking at a very tired dragon, but at one time in his life he would be seeing something much different.
He turned back and said to Crouch, "You better not be thinking about taking it away…"
He may have sounded aggressive about it, because this was no gentle matter to him.
"That dragon is not yours!" Crouch said stubbornly, gaining disapproving glances from many of the people around him.
"Neither is it yours!" Harry said loudly. "Gringotts kept it in chains for five years! They never let it out! You think taking it away from that place was wrong? Keeping it there was wrong!"
Someone else – a woman Harry didn't know – cleared her throat. She was from the School Board.
"You can't stay here with it, Mr. Potter!" she said. "Hogwarts – as Dumbledore well knows - does not provide sanctuary for anyone! This is a school for children! No place for a dragon!"
"You saw that storm!" A man in the crowd shouted above everyone. "That dragon couldn't fly through that!"
Still, she wasn't placated. "This dragon is dangerous! They're all wild beasts!"
Again, a stranger shouted, "And yet that wild beast carried one of the students in its mouth and two others on its back all the way here – to safety!"
"YES!" Shouted Umbridge now, patting Harry on his arm and looking out at everyone around them. "He saved three students from those horrible centaurs! An award for services to this school!"
"Please stop…" Harry muttered to her.
There was a clattering of voices in the crowd as people talked among themselves. Their conversation looped around and around. Harry was feeling like no one was quite prepared to handle the aftermath of the battle after all.
He turned around to look at his dragon settling into the snow. No one was talking to him, so he let his mind wonder.
He wondered about his latest collapse. Flying up in the air, he had been so focused on finding any danger that he hadn't dwelt on anything else. Now, with an inner calm growing, he could finally think. He had found himself unafraid these past three weeks since coming through time in the old clock. He was mostly unafraid of the future now – his future or anyone's. He thought he might have it all figured out now; he wasn't hounded by Voldemort pulling him into his dark world, and he didn't have to worry about his friends being hunted…they weren't even born yet.
These past three weeks were like heaven, and he was sorry that image was now broken; Voldemort could pull him into his mind after all. But…it seemed as if he didn't want to…or as if he didn't understand that he could.
Harry was drifting so much that all the bodies around him had seemingly stepped away from him. He was standing with that wide berth around him and no one was facing him. Alone like this, he felt as safe as a precarious dragon egg under its massive mother.
"What are these horcruxes everyone is talking about?" someone asked clearly over the voices of everyone, and that brought Harry out of his reverie.
There was silence from the three in the crowd who knew the answer. Harry and Slughorn weren't about to explain, and Dumbledore was still too unhappy with Harry to come to his rescue. But as Harry stared at the old Headmaster, and as everyone stared at Harry, they came to realize that it would be Dumbledore to answer their question.
"Come on, Headmaster. All your teachers are talking about it…what are they?" that same person said.
Dumbledore finally took the initiative and explained it quickly. Everyone jumped in with questions – questions about Merlin, about Voldemort – but the main question was what it meant for the war.
Harry's head finally kicked in then, and he suddenly joined the conversation.
"It means no more dreaming of the day this war will end!" he shouted, and got them all to shut up to listen.
Harry stood rigidly and went on, more quietly. "It means…the future is safe once they're all destroyed. It means Voldemort will be mortal!" Many in the crowd flinched at the name, but Harry went on. "It means the children here at Hogwarts can grow up safely, have kids, and watch those kids grow…It means there won't be so many orphans!"
Orphans like me.
Harry crossed his arms in front of him and looked at the snowy space between them all.
"He's got a point there!" said a familiar voice. Harry hadn't known how he had missed Mad Eye Moody in the crowd, but there he stood next to Dumbledore. "So, how do we find the remaining horcruxes?"
Dumbledore's eyes focused only on Harry, and he was as severe as Crouch and just as untrusting. Harry could feel his unyielding disapproval – it probably didn't help that he had punched him in the jaw.
"We don't need to find them," Harry said smoothly. "I already know where the last ones are."
"Here at Hogwarts," Dumbledore said at last, looking now at the woman so adamant to get Harry and the dragon to leave. "That's why I let him stay…he told me You Know Who had hid his last two horcruxes here."
"Just one, actually," Harry clarified, much to everyone's confusion, but not to Dumbledore's. Dumbledore knew now that Harry was one of them.
"If you know where they are, why haven't you destroyed them yet?" Someone demanded to know.
Dumbledore looked over the heads of everyone at the speaker. "Because, Mr. Weasley, we've been busy!"
Harry felt his stomach roll and his heart skip a beat. He arched his neck and stood on his toes to see past the people blocking him…and then he saw the tall, red-haired man. In fact…he saw two of them.
"Who are you?" Harry asked suddenly, and the two men seemed a little put off by the question.
"They are Aurors," Dumbledore told Harry.
"Gideon," one man said, and indicated his twin, "and Fabian, my brother."
Harry wiped his suddenly sweaty hands on his hips, staring at these two men who were Molly Weasley's brothers. She had named Fred and George after them…of course Fred and George – like Fabian and Gideon – had been murdered by Antonin Dolohov.
"Can you kill him after you destroy the two horcruxes?" The woman from the School Board asked.
Harry looked down at her, but he was lost for words.
"How is it you even know about them?" Crouch asked – ever the detective and ever against Harry.
Harry looked sideways at the head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He took a few deep breaths – readying his self to speak after the surprise of seeing more ghosts from the past. He looked all around and saw that clearly he wasn't going to get any help from any of these people.
"When I was a baby," Harry stated none-too-loudly, "the Dark Lord came into our house…and he murdered my parents…and made me one of them."
There was shocked silent all around, and odd looks here and there.
It was Slughorn who talked first. "He made you one?"
He was quite literally shaking with fear. Harry could relate…he was starting to shake, too.
Umbridge moved away.
There was a clattering in the crowd again as people talked animatedly. Their conversation wasn't looping now, though; they were hounding each other for details – details that none but Harry, Dumbledore, and Slughorn could provide…and none of them seemed willing to provide them.
This was when Slughorn turned away with fear on his face. He was nearly gone into Hogwarts when Harry shouted, "No one blames you!"
Slughorn stopped and turned around, and everyone quieted down and looked at the nervous man. People chattered a bit, before Slughorn finally found his voice.
"Especially not me," Harry continued to say.
"You should blame me. You all should!" he looked now at Dumbledore, and made his confession. "Thirty years ago…I was the one who told the child that became You Know Who what horcruxes were!"
"He started this?" Some ignorant person from the crowd asked.
There was some outrage that made Slughorn panic and look between them all. But Harry stepped forward again to Slughorn's defense. "You told him what they were…but you didn't create them!"
Slughorn focused only Harry now. He seemed to need Harry's assurance.
"You have to forgive yourself, Horace; no one knew that young man would become the Dark Lord." Dumbledore said this, and Harry was glad to know the two of them agreed about one thing, at least.
Harry looked evilly around at everyone, and said to the doubters, "It's in the past! None of us can change what's in our pasts…"
Except Harry was a walking-talking contradiction of that.
Dumbledore was staring at Harry now. Harry could feel his uncertainty and his disappointment in him, and he hated it. He looked at Dumbledore and said, "I can't change what's in my past…but I don't have to become evil because of it."
"But you have a horcrux in you!" Mad Eye Moody said – always with Dumbledore.
"Not for long!" Harry declared, tightening his hands into fists and shaking his whole body with defiance.
"Why have you kept it for so long?" Fabian or Gideon asked.
Harry was surprised that he wasn't the one to answer this; it was Dumbledore, who said, "Because three years ago, the Dark Lord imprisoned him – stopping him from destroying them."
Harry nodded. "But now that I'm free…" he looked to Dumbledore and both their demeanors became even sturdier. "I am going to make sure he dies…like I nearly did when I was seventeen."
All around him, the thirty people from the Ministry, the dozen from Hogwarts, and even Harry himself, couldn't find a single thing more to say for quite some time.
Umbridge finally broke the silence. "How will you destroy the thing inside of you?"
Harry looked down on the small pink woman, feeling numb.
"By killing myself," he said solemnly.
She gasped – many did.
Harry looked at Dumbledore, and saw finally that he was showing something more than severity.
"You see why I won't ever become evil?" Harry asked. "I was never going to survive this long enough to."