I, London Man, did NOT write this story. This was written by Frosty. I am just hosting it because EF was going to cancel their account. EF allowed me to have them on my site so people can read or reread them if they wanted.

I did NOT steal this story. Also, I want to thank Frosty for letting my host their stories.

Chapter 36: Reunion, Part Two

Harry Potter and the Setting Sun

Disclaimer: HarryPotter by J.K. Rowling, the Twilight Saga by Stephanie Meyer and all related materials belong to their respective owners. This is non-profit fanfiction.

Warning: This story contains slash.

Chapter Thirty-Five – Reunion, Part Two

Harry shook his hand a couple of times as he watched Remus Lupin help Sirius up off of the floor. The boy's hand hurt, but not too terribly. He made a mental note to thank Emmett and Jasper for teaching him how to throw a proper punch.

The werewolf drew his wand and went about fixing the dog animagus's broken nose and banishing the blood from his face and clothes. Sirius dared a quick glance over at Harry, but didn't say anything.

"Let us move into the living room where there is a bit more elbow room for us to talk," the headmaster suggested. He motioned for Harry to follow him out of the kitchen.

After a moment's hesitation, Harry followed the ancient wizard into the living room and took up a position by the window. The rest of the occupants entered the room and positioned themselves as comfortably as possible.

Ginny sat herself at the bottom of the staircase while Fred and George sat just a couple of steps higher where they could watch everything between the support rails of the banister. Bill and Fleur sat down next to one another at one end of the couch and, a result, had their backs to Harry. The woman with the spiky pink hair took the seat next to them. Arthur and Molly Weasley each sat in one of the two chairs that sat on the far wall from Harry. Sirius leaned next to the fireplace with Remus Lupin while Snape leaned on the other side of the hearth in the corner of the room farthest away from Harry; he seemed rather pleased with Harry's assault on Sirius. Charlie leaned against the wall just a few feet down from Harry with a scowl planted on his face.

The last two individuals to enter the living room were Ron and Hermione. They had yet to say a word to Harry; they hadn't even made an attempt. The dark-haired wizard didn't even recall them trying to yell anything when he'd announced his marriage. They stayed at the threshold between the living room and the kitchen. Harry couldn't help but smile a little at the way Hermione reached out and gently took hold of Ron's hand.

Headmaster Dumbledore, who had been standing in the center of the room in the space between the couch and the two chairs that Mr. and Mrs. Weasley occupied, began to pace the room. "Do forgive me. I think better on my feet."

No one said anything as the headmaster assembled his thoughts.

"I must admit, Harry, that I have given a great deal of thought to the specifics of your disappearance. Early on I had considered, but dismissed, the possibility that you had fled your aunt's home in-between correspondence."

"What do you mean by that?" Harry asked.

"You were sent a letter by the Ministry of Magic informing you that you were expelled from Hogwarts and that your wand was to be destroyed. I received simultaneous notification of this because I am, after all, the headmaster of the school from which you were being expelled. I went to the Ministry and managed to prevent the Aurors from being dispatched to your aunt's home. Arthur, meanwhile, sent you a letter telling you to not leave the house.

"Arthur's letter was not returned to him, so I assumed that you had gotten it and, therefore, dismissed the idea that you had fled your home without the knowledge contained within it. By the surprised look on you face, I would assume that you did not receive the letter. I, therefore, suspect that left your aunt's home after you received the letter from the Ministry and then either your aunt or uncle received and destroyed the letter from Arthur in the same way they did your first acceptance letter to Hogwarts."

"What?" Sirius asked incredulously.

"It's is quite simple actually, Sirius. Harry believed, based on the letter he had received from the Ministry of Magic, that he was expelled from Hogwarts and that his holly and phoenix feather wand—the only protection he was aware of and the means by which he had survived his latest encounter with Voldemort—was about to be confiscated and destroyed. Though we tried to inform him that this was not he case, he was unable to receive our letter because he'd already left the house. Or, more likely, he was on his way out of the house as the owl was arriving."

"So he didn't know?" Sirius asked as he looked back and forth from the headmaster to his godson. "All of this has been because of Fudge overstepping himself and some really bad timing?"

"It would appear so," the headmaster said wearily as he stopped pacing. "Perhaps, Harry, you can enlighten us on things from your perspective."

"I think you're right about the timing thing," Harry said with his eyes fixed on the floor. "I grabbed some of my stuff and flew out the window on my broom as soon as I got the letter that said that the Aurors were coming. I never got a second owl. But getting and destroying the letter seems like the sort of thing my aunt and uncle would do."

"Believing that you were about to be made a, I believe the phrase is 'sitting duck,' by the Ministry, you fled your relative's house. You then used polyjuice potion to assume you uncle's appearance. With his appearance and his pilfered passport, you were able to fly to America via Muggle means. And that is where we lost track of you," Albus Dumbledore said.

"I figured that you'd followed me at least that far. I took another flight out of the same airport and then started taking buses and stuff. I figured the Aurors weren't very far behind me, so I just kept going. An owl kept following me until I hit a certain town, then it veered off. I waited there for a couple of days. No owls. No wizards. I decided it was a reasonably safe place to hide out, so I stayed there."

"The owl veered off, you say? Curious." Headmaster Dumbledore sighed heavily. "What I do not understand, Harry, is why you didn't try and contact us. You know that we could have helped you."

"Helped me do what?" Harry asked in exasperation. "I get that you managed to intervene so that I wasn't expelled, but I didn't know that. As far as I was concerned, if I'd been able to get to you—and that was a pretty damn big if—I was still expelled. The best you could have done was help me be a fugitive like Sirius. The difference between him and me being that I underage. If I tried to use magic before I turned seventeen, I'd get caught. Hiding out as a Muggle was the best option," Harry defended himself. "I was sidelined at least until I turned seventeen. Given the way things worked out in the past, I figured that it was best if I was the only one who knew where I was hiding."

Dumbledore didn't have an answer to that. On its face, Harry's logic was sound. The boy had no way of knowing that the man had been able to intervene on his behalf. From Harry's prospective, the best that he could offer the boy was what the man had been able to offer Sirius: practically nothing. Hiding as a Muggle was the best option and, as Peter Pettigrew's betrayal of Harry's parents had proven, the boy was safest if no one knew where to find him.

"Still," Mrs. Weasley began, "you could have done something to let us know that you were okay."

"But I did," Harry protested. "I used a special service to send a letter to Hermione's house through Muggle post a few months after I was settled in. I told her that I was safe and that I would be back after I turned seventeen."

Every head in the room whirled around to look at the bushy-haired muggleborn. Her eyes were downcast.

"'Mione?" Ron asked uncertainly.

"I-I'm so sorry, Ron," she croaked out. "There was a letter from Harry waiting for me when I went to see my parents over Chrismas break. I was just . . . just so angry at him that I tore it up and threw it in the fireplace without reading it," she confessed.

Hermione's confession stung Harry deeply. He knew that she had every right to feel angry and betrayed, but to destroy the letter without reading it . . . To not even let the others know that she'd received it seemed to be beyond the pale.

"How could you?" her boyfriend exploded as he yanked his hand away from hers. "You knew he was alive and you didn't tell us!"

Hermione was looking back and forth between Harry and Ron in rapid succession as tears began to well up in her eyes. "I was just so angry with him. Please, Ron, you have to understand," she pleaded.

"You were angry. Fine. That doesn't explain why you hid it from me. I was angry too. I was angry and worried. I was scared that my best mate had run out and gotten himself offed," Ron said dangerously.

"I don't know why I did it. I just did," she said in a quiet and defeated voice.

Ron looked angrier than Harry had ever seen him.

"Please," Harry interrupted quietly. "Don't be mad at her. Be mad at me. I'm the one that ran out."

Ron didn't look entirely convinced. The red-haired boy couldn't meet either Hermione or Harry with his eyes; he just looked down at the floor.

Hermione looked up at Harry through teary eyes. "I don't know what to say to you, Harry. That was such an awful thing for me to have done."

"Just forget about it," Harry replied blandly. "I'm the one that caused all of this, not you."

"How about we all forget about what's happened in the past and try to look to the future," Arthur Weasley interjected. "Harry's back now. He's safe and unharmed. Let's just move on from here."

The dark-haired boy decided to interrupt before anyone got any ideas. "But that's the thing. I'm not 'back.' I'm not staying."

"What do you mean you're not staying?" Ron asked. It was the first thing he'd said that was actually directed at Harry.

"I told you earlier. I'm married. I didn't intend for my absence to be anything permanent. But . . . I found things while I was away that I'm not willing to give up. I'm married. I have a family: a husband, two new brothers, two new sisters, and two new parents."

"'Husband'?" Ginny Weasley asked from the steps in tone that made it sound as if her world was crashing down around her. She was by no means the only person in the room who looked shocked at Harry's use of the term 'husband,' but she was the only one who managed to say anything on that particular topic before someone else asked a far more relevant question.

"But, but what about You-Know-Who?" The still unnamed girl on the couch asked.

"Potter is far too selfish to live up to his responsibilities, Nymphadora," Snape answered for Harry.

"My responsibility?" Harry asked, an edge returning to his voice. "How exactly is this my responsibility? I ripped his soul out of his body when I was a baby and I stopped him getting is body back in my first year at Hogwarts. I've done my part. If you want to talk about responsibility, then let's start with that tattoo on your arm."

Snape pushed himself away from his place at the wall and started to make his way towards Harry. The headmaster reached out and placed a hand on the professor's chest to stop him.

"Harry," Sirius began in utter disbelief, "he murdered your parents."

"And I'm pretty sure they'd prefer me to not end up the same way. Besides, I've got more to live for in my life than revenge."

"I am afraid that things are not that simple, my boy," the headmaster said. "Voldemort's power has been growing these past two years. He has a great many more followers than he did the last time you met. Even if you run back to you new home, he will find you."

"Because he's got such a great track record for that so far," Harry retorted.

"This family that you claim to love so much, are you willing to risk their lives?"

Harry spoke with more confidence than he felt. "They're all pretty handy in a fight. They can each hold their own, not that they'd have to. We're a family. If Voldemort messes with one of us, he messes with all of us. And that's a level of trouble he doesn't want. Trust me on that."

The headmaster shook his head. "I am afraid, Harry, that you have no choice in this matter. You must remain here and participate in the fight against Voldemort."

The boy could feel the mobile phone in his pocket vibrating. Something was up. Unfortunately, there was no way that he could get out the door; there were just too many people in the room that would have been able to stop him. He began hoping that whatever had caused Edward to call Harry's phone would create a suitable distraction to allow him to escape.

"You want to send someone with a fourth year education to fight a wizard that you've never been able to beat," Harry said as he turned around to face the window that had been to his back.

"We will train you, Harry. Give you every bit of support we can to make sure that you are ready to do this. I am so very sorry that things have to be this way, but there is simply no other way."

Harry was looking out into the darkness beyond the window, hoping to figure a way out of the situation. He couldn't see anything except for the reflection of the Burrow's living room in the glass. The occupants of the room had a myriad of expressions on their facing. Snape looked rather smug with the way things were progressing. Others, like the twins, looked very uneasy.

"You're a fool and a coward," Harry said firmly as he looked out the window. He was desperately searching for any sign of his husband. The boy was beginning to fear that the protections around the house were too great for Edward to overcome.

"How dare you!" Snape spat as his smug attitude melted away. The man once again tried to move towards Harry, but the headmaster still refused to allow him to pass.

"Harry-" Albus Dumbledore began.

Harry refused to allow the man to finish. "You're just a scared old man trying to send someone else out to do what you won't."

"What I can't, Harry," the old man countered desperately. "I can't beat Voldemort. You are the only one who can."

The boy shook his head. "Whatever advantage I had over him is long since gone. The protection my mother gave me was lost when Voldemort took my blood. And my wand was broken months ago."

"Your wand was broken?" Mrs. Weasley interrupted sharply. "I thought that you didn't have any encounters with wizards."

"I didn't," Harry replied simply.

"But you've had encounters with other creatures. Ones whose presence keeps owls away," the headmaster concluded.

Harry cursed himself for giving away the detail about how owls avoided the town he'd settled in. "Wrong. The wand was broken by accident when I was moving in with my husband," he lied. "If I'd encountered anything like what you're suggesting, I would have used magic to defend myself. And you would have known it."