A/N: I've had this idea circulating in my head for a while, a small series of vignettes about various people in the HP Universe as they try to grapple with life in the post-war world.
It's more an experiment for me to learn to write different character voices outside of a main story where it might seem a tad out-of-place. The stories won't be in any particular order, though they will be linear regarding the progression of time (as far as I know). There will be glimpses of romantic pairings, the odd chapter here and there as a progression of their lives though nothing widespread.
Thanks to x102reddragon and NerdDragonVoid for beta reading, and Taliesin19 for helping me muster a title.
But without further ado, the first chapter, Harry I: The Train.
Harry Potter massaged his thumb across his palm to still the shakes, an effort to sap the sudden anxiety from his form.
Despite being mid-May, the day was bright and cold, a persistent gale buffeting the war-torn castle of Hogwarts, howling as it met uneven edges and whistled through fissures. Harry nuzzled his chin close to his breast, bunching robes around exposed flesh to shield him from the vile wind.
Harry ducked beneath a collapsed archway, his old, worn school shoes sending dust and debris sprawling from beneath his feet, allowing him to make his way into the castle proper for the first time since the day after the battle.
Even though the weeks had passed since the battle, the lingering aftereffects of the Cruciatus flared in an attempt to make themselves known. Harry winced, a futile effort to beat back the feeling of molten metal reigniting old wounds and sending nerve endings arching.
With gritted teeth, he soldiered forward despite the agony that time seemed ill-prepared to dull. His other injuries had begun to fade with time, the unforgivable, however, refused to be counted amongst their ranks.
The ancient yet familiar castle seemed a distant mirage, lost amidst the haze of war. Tall battlements turned short, and corridors turned cavernous. Towers misshapen by curses and foul magic reaching upwards towards the sky, making them seem more akin to cruel fingers reaching upwards into the grey clouds beyond.
Harry had not wished to brave the sight before it was due and yet, here he was. Brought at the behest of the new Headmistress, the neatly folded letter bearing Hogwarts seal tucked tightly into the pocket of his robes.
Thankfully, the progress towards the Headmistress's office was devoid of any interruptions. The castle halls remained empty for the moment, the time to rebuild would be nearing, but they all just wished to rest for now.
If only I could have it that simple too, Harry thought. His ears suddenly bombarded with a cacophony of cheers from wall-bound portraits and paintings that ignited themselves into a fervour of praises and congratulations.
Corridors were still pockmarked with curses and gouges in the old stone. Harry was forced to step over rubble and dodge dented suits of armour in pursuit of his goal.
Eventually, Harry found himself at the familiar, stalwart gargoyle. Its domineering glare remained even if curses had gouged old stone, tearing the once-proud piece into little more than a malformed piece of stone yet to be mended.
"Victory," Harry said loudly, had the situation been any different, he might've laughed at the choice of password, even if a stark departure from her predecessor's choices.
Ascending the stairs one at a time the spiral staircase flared into a room above, and Harry came face-to-face with an old sight.
The room was relatively similar to what it once was, if only slightly devoid of old trinkets and clutter. However, the centre-piece was entirely foreign.
Where he had once become accustomed to outlandish robes, lengthy beards and half-mooned spectacles, they were now replaced with a tall, rather severe-looking figure. Pointed hat askew to one side and dark emerald robes glittering in the light of the above candelabra.
That'll take some getting used to, Harry thought. A frown almost escaped his mind to land on his features but was thankfully halted. Beginning the meeting with a frown likely wasn't what anyone would refer to as a 'good start'.
Surrounded in missives with an owl sat above her on a small perch, Minerva McGonagall seemed to take her newfound position in her stride.
"Potter," McGonagall addressed, looking up from her desk, "I take it my letter found you?"
"I came as soon as I could." Harry nodded.
"I sent it a week and a half ago, Potter." McGonagall returned, the severe, biting tone of a long-time educator still present, "Could you have not thought to send a letter back?
"I was busy." Harry replied, "What with the world going spare, I think I might've missed it."
"I suppose it matters little and less now." Professor McGonagall brushed off with a frown, though her tone lightened. "The world is set to become a far busier place before all is said and done."
"You're probably right there, Professor."
I could do without the reminder, though, Harry thought.
"On the topic of a busy world," McGonagall said, "I take it you'll be present at the Ministry tonight?"
"Kingsley — Minister Shacklebolt, didn't exactly phrase it like I had a whole lot of choice in the matter." Harry grumbled, "I managed to talk him down from a speech, at least."
"And your honour?"
"Order of Merlin, First Class." Harry recited the letter that had reached him nearly two weeks ago, "For services rendered to the Ministry of Magic in pursuit of Voldemort's defeat."
"Yes, it's all very formal, or so I've been assured." McGonagall said, "Well, I'd take a seat, Potter, lest you hope to become a permanent fixture to my floor."
It sounded like a joke, it was even phrased like one, though humour seemed out of place on his former teacher.
I guess we've all got something to laugh about, even if it's the little things.
Nonetheless, Harry took the proffered seat.
"So, Headmistress?" Harry asked, "I bet that feels odd."
It was an attempt at casual conversation, a feeble one at that given the circumstances. A distant hope to interject some normalcy into a situation that was anything but.
"Odd is perhaps an understatement." Professor McGonagall laughed softly, though it lacked humour, "Whether I fulfil the position permanently or only in the interim is a matter laid at the feet of the School Governors."
"Who else would they choose?" Harry asked, brow furrowed, "It's not as if Hogwarts is overflowing with staff at the moment."
"I've long stopped trying to anticipate the Governors' next move." McGonagall said, "It matters little unless the school reopens."
"I was going to ask how the rebuilding was going?" Harry asked, "I saw the damage when I came in, it looked…"
"Terrible?" Professor McGonagall suggested.
"Probably not the word I would've used." Harry frowned, not eager to slander the debris-laden school in front of the new Headmistress. "Just looked different at the time."
"I wouldn't delude yourself into thinking it will be an easy mend." McGonagall said, "It'll be a tedious and expensive affair, but the pieces will be put back together eventually — time tends to heal most wounds."
But not all, Harry thought.
"Is Kingsley not helping?" Harry asked, "I would've thought Hogwarts would be a priority after all this.."
"We've been given the odd hand." Professor McGonagall said, "There is still a world to piece back together. It's not of great importance while the students are at their homes."
"I'd like to help then if that's alright?" Harry asked, "I doubt I'll ever be able to spend all the galleons Mum and Dad left me. I might as well put it to as good a cause as any."
"I'm sure they'd appreciate the effort in attempting to set the world to right, and I'm thankful for the offer." McGonagall said, "Though as much as I welcome the interruption to this," She nodded to her missive-stacked desk, "I take it you brought the letter I sent?"
"I did." Harry nodded, procuring the letter from the top pocket of my robes. "I wouldn't have come without."
"And you wish to see him?"
"I…" Harry started but faltered.
It was as difficult a choice as he'd ever made. Perhaps he needed answers or maybe even closure, if one could call it that. Harry couldn't tell, not even after thinking solely on it for weeks.
Harry had made an attempt to rehearse the conversation in his mind, searched for justification for his choice, sought words he was unsure would ever come.
And it had all been for nought, confronted with a choice that at one point, did not seem so daunting.
"I would." Harry decided finally, swallowing a ball of anxiety threatening to breach his throat, "Is he —"
"Awake?" McGonagall finished, "Oh, of course, for the better part of two weeks even as the letter explained. The moment we raised the wards once more, in truth, it was quite the fright."
Harry was on the edge once more, unsure whether leaping or looking was the right course.
Do I need this?
And in the end, he decided he did.
"Could I see him now?" Harry asked, his voice gentler than he intended. "If that'd be alright?"
"You may." McGonagall nodded, "Follow me."
Seats were forgotten in favour of rising to their feet, and Harry adopted a sedate pace behind McGonagall. The Headmistress ascended the stairs behind her desk in a quick, orderly fashion, making her way onto the raised dais that housed the door to her new chambers.
And the wall that housed a portrait.
The burnished bronze frame of Armando Dippet had vanished, the enfeebled ex-Headmaster sequestered to the far walls of the room to join his predecessors. In his place was a new frame, oaken and adorned with steady-handed motifs of an artisan.
Within its frame, Albus Dumbledore.
"I'll leave you to it, Harry." Professor McGonagall said, her voice barely above a whisper.
Harry didn't spare a glance, nor notice the use of his given name. Instead, his eyes became affixed to the sight ahead.
Albus Dumbledore looked no different from when he was alive, save the lack of depth. His robes were still outlandish, dark purple and gold that clashed spectacularly, a matching hat cradled in his arms.
Though there was no twinkle to his eyes, a staple of the familiar countenance lost to the medium of the paint, or perhaps, to the situation at hand. Harry couldn't be sure.
"Hello, Harry," Dumbledore said, his voice the same as Harry had ever remembered it.
"Professor." Harry greeted in turn.
Truth be told, the exchange was more mundane then what he would have assumed. It was not the explosive declarations of anger, thrown chairs and smashed glass.
It was normal, awkward even, and not at all what he expected.
"I cannot say how much joy seeing you alive and well has brought me." Dumbledore said, his words breaking the pregnant pause that befell them, "I had feared the worst, before Minerva informed me, of course."
"When you sent me to my death?" Harry asked, breathing life into words that he'd held close for weeks.
The effect was instantaneous; Dumbledore adopted a severe look on his features. Birthed alongside the changing expression was the quick and gruesome death of a hope that the relationship between them could be mended by words alone.
But yet, he tried.
"Words will never do the pain I caused justice." Dumbledore sighed softly, "I cannot fully mend old wound and had there been an alternative I would have seized it. But having another option was a luxury we could not count amongst our own, and you suffered for that. You have my deepest apologies, Harry, for my failings cost you everything."
"Do you think words will fix this?"
Whatever hopes either of them had of the tranquillity in the quiet room remaining was finally torn apart with his words.
"No." Dumbledore shook his head on the canvas, "I doubt it ever will, and yet, words are all I have now, all that I can give."
Harry met the portrait's gaze in a more stalwart fashion in lieu of a response, a vague attempt to discern dishonesty in paint and magic.
"I didn't come here for an apology." Harry admitted, "I stayed up at night, you know, wondering had I been in your shoes, would I have done it all differently."
"And do you believe you would have?"
"I don't know." Harry said, "I want to say I would have, that I would've told the truth, that I would've been better. But I don't know if that's the truth, I can't know."
"I beg forgiveness for my bluntness on the matter." Dumbledore said, "If it was not an apology you sought, you have me at a disadvantage, Harry."
"I just want to go on," Harry admitted.
Dumbledore's brow wrinkled, confusion seemed out of place on the wizened wizard.
"Then, why come?" Dumbledore asked, "Raising old ghosts and chatting with portraits won't serve you well, leave the past behind you."
Harry blew a breath of hot air from his lips, a sigh that grated against his teeth as he attempted to find eloquent words.
"Because I don't know how."
A simple, hard truth that he'd grappled with since the moment Voldemort fell.
"I forgive what I can." Harry continued, turning to rant in hopes his problems might yet be solved, "I don't want to be caught up on the past. I just want to move forward and… and I can't."
"No one ever claimed the task ahead was one surmounted with ease, Harry." Dumbledore lectured softly, "War is a simple act, morphed into complexity. You'll bear scars yet."
"And how did you do it?" Harry asked, "After Grindelwald?"
Even if he expected the question to come, the painting looked taken aback. Paint didn't allow for much but even Harry could see the words struck true, a knife of old sorrow nestling itself in his features.
"I didn't, not truly." Dumbledore said, "I was lauded, I was praised, they awarded me titles and responsibilities. I lived my entire life on the glory of an act that was anything but glorious."
Harry hadn't expected an answer, not truly, though a naive part of him persisted in its hope. Life was not destined to be simple.
"Is that it?" Harry asked, "I've got Auror escorts and award ceremonies; the papers won't stop going spare about me. Everyone wants something of me, and you've got nothing?"
A sombre incredulity rose within him. The man had dealt with exactly what he was now and had done so until he died.
It was a series of sudden truths that did nothing to embolden him on the path ahead.
"They won't stop," Dumbledore interjected, "And they likely never will."
"I need something." Harry practically begged, "You dealt with this your whole life, happily?"
"Happily?" The painting scoffed, "Certainly not. Had I known another path, I would have followed it. It often falls to men like us to heal a fractured world."
Harry slumped back, his posture defeated, hope fleeing from his form in spades. This had been the last idea, the final gambit to try and find answers that had evaded him for weeks. Andromeda didn't know, Mrs Weasley didn't know. No one knew.
"I saw you at King's Cross, you know?"
Silence.
"I'm afraid I don't quite follow," Dumbledore said.
"I was dead, I think." Harry explained, "I saw you, and we talked, about… well about a lot really. I'm not even sure it was real."
"I'm sorry to say I don't possess any knowledge on the matter, real or not."
Harry hadn't expected the man to know anything of it instead anticipating a furrowed brow and a confused stare. He was unsure how he could reconcile the difference between the two, the one on the platform and now, or if they were even different at all.
Perhaps none of it had happened, maybe he saw what he wanted to see, heard what he wanted to hear.
"You told me…" Harry said, struggling to find words, "You told me I could board a train if I wanted to."
"And where would that train take you, Harry?"
"On."
Being on the other side of the conversation felt odd, to say the least.
"You're not suggesting...?" Dumbledore said, leaving his words hanging.
"No," Harry shook his head, "I'm not. You told me if I returned fewer souls would be maimed, fewer families would be torn apart, that I could help. Now that it's all over, I don't think I know how to do that. Part of me thought it would all end with the war."
Save everyone.
A voice that echoed in his mind, a pale, cruel imitation of the man — portrait, in front of him. The suggestion had seemed benign on the alabaster hued platform of an ethereal King's Cross Station. Saving them all had seemed so easy when it was only Voldemort that needed to fall.
Now, the dust had settled and saving anyone, let alone them all, seemed a sentiment lingering only to mock him.
"But it didn't." Dumbledore surmised.
"But it didn't." Harry said, "Did you ever catch that train, sir?"
"No," said Dumbledore simply, "I'm not sure I did."
"Could I?"
"I suppose it's possible, to say, catch that train." The portrait fumbled with his beard, "I'm unsure of where it would take you, or if you would rest any easier for having taken the journey."
He had hoped asking the same question with different words might yield a different answer, but Harry was brought back to the same words he'd been repeating for an age.
"I don't know."
"Neither do I," Dumbledore said, "No words I can have will give you the answers you need; that is something you must do on your own."
And silence came once more.
"I'm truly sorry I could not be of more use to you." Dumbledore offered.
Harry's hand fished out a silver pocket watch he found in Grimmauld Place, tremors in his hand shaking the delicate gears. Truthfully, it was more to break the man's gaze and attempt to forget his words in a way that did not seem so overt.
"I best be going." Harry announced abruptly, "Kingsley is awarding the survivors the Order of Merlin tonight."
"Yes, Minerva told me of such." Dumbledore frowned, "It would not do to be late to such a ceremony."
Harry turned on his feet and stowed his watch away into the pockets of his robes. Dumbledore's final parting words halted his first stride towards the exit.
"Harry," Dumbledore called, "Don't be afraid to seek me out, should you need counsel. I would try to sew the wounds close if you'd let me."
He had once idolised the man. Now they felt strangers at best. The state of affairs was odd, to say the least.
Harry didn't have an answer for him. The Professor had said himself that dwelling on old portraits and the past would not help him move forward.
It was a question for another day, answers to be pondered anywhere but here.
He simply walked from the portrait's view and into the world beyond.