Chapter 2: Zero Sum

Harry didn't have much a different idea how to handle his emotions after returning to London. He too used a shower to try and figure out just where he was settling on everything.

The highs were incredible. Harry had survived his last uncontrolled encounter with Voldemort. More than that, he'd successfully captured him. Voldemort might actually see justice for everything from the last fifty years that had a chance to stick.

Harry had managed to bring Dagmar home. Maybe it wasn't perfect since Voldemort's soul was still inside of her, but it was a marked improvement over her previous situation. Harry had made it up to Malfoy by not having actually killed Dagmar. Harry was so deep in incredulity over the fact that Malfoy had nearly taken a Killing Curse for him that Harry now had no idea how he'd ever really make things square between them.

All of the adrenaline and elation would bleed out of Harry's system when he remembered again the last words he'd shared with Dumbledore. He really was gone, and he'd known it was coming for him. Harry could see it in his eyes up on the Astronomy tower. Voldemort's icy tone followed next through Harry's memory: What is it about you, Potter, that inspires everyone to die for you? Dumbledore had done it. Malfoy just about did.

And like that, Harry vaulted back into the highs. It all oscillated so fast that his thoughts had no time to form coherent words to accompany them. It was straight emotion with the occasional image fit to fly past Harry's mind's eye.

Pansy was in a similar emotional place. A certain look in her eye greeted Harry when he trekked from the bathroom to his bedroom at Grimmauld Place. Harry rightly expected her to melt when he kissed her.

The two of them had to get rid of all that energy somehow. Harry despised to cry, and the dryness in Pansy's eyes likely meant she'd had enough of that. There wasn't enough anger for something like yelling. Why bother anyway, when a perfectly decent substitute existed?

What Harry didn't expect was how animalistic he and Pansy could be. They normally tended more toward gentle with each other. They liked to stay face to face and snog while they shagged. That was important now, but it tapered off once Pansy matched Harry in nakedness. He'd never taken her from behind, so underestimated how satisfying the sound of his hips colliding with her backside would be. Harry never heard Pansy say fuck before. He wasn't even sure she realized it slipped out of her mouth. She grinned when Harry bent down over her to kiss and nibble her shoulders. It forced her down onto her stomach. Harry was cognizant enough to realize he probably shouldn't do that for too long in case it made it hard for her to breathe.

Pansy suggested they shift anyway. She caught Harry's domineering mood, and Harry was pliant to let her take over. He certainly didn't hurt for it when Pansy directed him to sit against the headboard. She straddled him, and the attention being paid to Harry through that was slightly overwhelming. Pansy felt so good around him, she moved the right away, and her usual moans had practically turned to grunts from her effort to fuck him back. Harry had to resist digging his teeth in when he hit the end. His nails ended up leaving marks on her hips. Through his panted breaths, Harry registered Pansy telling him to lay down. He grinned, giddy and lost in afterglow, when she climbed up over him and settled on his face.

That was certainly another first. Just like in any other position that Harry ate Pansy out, he made himself comfortable and went to work. It wasn't terribly long before Pansy quivered and the hand in Harry's hair tightened.

Harry felt stunned when Pansy eased herself off and shakily laid down beside him. Pansy looked a little surprised too, edging into uncertainty now that the fervent mood had passed them both.

"That's a keeper," Harry said with a sigh.

Heat flooded Pansy's face and she pressed it briefly against Harry's shoulder. When she lifted it again, she was grinning. "You didn't mind that? I don't know what came over me. I mean, I'd kind of wanted to try it, but I wasn't sure. I should've asked first."

"You know I'm a fan of anything that gets your fanny close to my mouth."

"Still was maybe a little crass just after you'd cum in me."

"I think you lost most of it on the way up." Harry idly wiped where it had started to cool, mostly on his chest. He reached for his wand before it could properly dry.

Pansy started to giggle. With lack of protest from Harry, she seemed able to lend herself completely to endorphins. She wrapped herself around him when he rolled to face her. "I liked it when you bent me over too."

"Keeper?"

"Yep."

"Can't believe we didn't try it sooner, honestly."

Pansy just shrugged before bringing him closer for as spirited of a snog as they were capable of at the moment. That wasn't saying much. Harry felt weak. His exhaustion from a shortened night was catching up fast. It hardly surprised him at all that an attempt to rest his eyes resulted in the sunbeam on the floor having altered a substantial angle. Pansy was still curled up with her back pressed against Harry. Her shoulder gently rose and fell.

Harry had enough of a mind to see if maybe anybody had sent him an owl. He dressed to head downstairs, but stopped at the top of the landing when he heard voices down below. Harry was in no condition to see people. He had little illusion that it wouldn't be blatantly obvious what he and Pansy had been up to. Her scent lingered on his chin.

He was in the middle of cleaning up again in the bathroom when light footsteps padded down the hallway. Rapid knocks followed at the door. Harry let Pansy in. She wore his tee shirt, which fit long enough to hide that she had no knickers on. She had a fresh pair balled in her hand.

"Who's downstairs?" she asked as she took a seat on the toilet.

"Not sure." Harry rinsed his washcloth in the sink. "I just heard voices and didn't bother going down. Figured if anyone needed me, they would've come and knocked on the bedroom door."

"It's possible they had an idea what we'd be up to."

"Very."

The two of them shared a quick laugh before Harry left Pansy to properly clean up after everything. He dressed in his room and headed on.

Although the conversation in the parlour carried up the open entrance hall, Harry couldn't discern what they said, or who even spoke. He could've guessed that Ron and Hermione would've eventually reconvened here. The twins were also there, as was Ginny. All looked various degrees of tired, but Ginny was the furthest gone of them all.

"You got to leave Hogwarts?" Harry asked her before taking a seat beside Ron on the couch.

Ginny nodded. "Professor McGonagall is letting the ones that got caught up in everything go home for the weekend. I'm still debating if I want to. I don't want to tell Mum what happened. Dad knows. I saw him up there."

"He's there for work?"

"His office is dealing with some of the objects they've found." Ginny rested her head back against the couch she shared with the twins. "I don't know if you noticed that mace in the Great Hall?"

"Er. . ." Harry's gaze wandered as he tried to recall.

"Voldemort showed up with it. There was a rune on it, and Dad figures some other kinds of enchantment done. When Voldemort used it, it was very efficient. Too efficient for just a regular weapon."

"What did he use it for?"

"It's how he killed Dumbledore."

Harry felt what colour that had returned to his face flush away. "What, just. . .hit him over the head?"

Everyone else's gazes fell downward while Ginny nodded. "I have a strong feeling I might've been next. Voldemort kind of implied it."

"He did?"

"He recognized me as the one who opened the Chamber with his diary. We had a bit of back and forth and he said something about here I was, drawing attention to myself in a dire situation. He pointed that mace at me, and had talked before about using us like bargaining chips. I'm really glad Charlie was with me."

"Yeah." Harry slipped into the dumps, mood-wise. "Snape never made it back to the Astronomy tower with the map?"

"He did, but we got overwhelmed by all the Death Eaters. Dumbledore told him he needed to undermine us from our side of the line." Ginny quietly sighed. "I think he was minimizing the damage, at that point. I mean, it worked. I think if Voldemort wasn't hell-bent on Luca, he might have even spared Dumbledore. I would've thought he'd like to rub it in with him later. Or torment Dumbledore by making him see the people he was responsible for get picked off one by one."

"It was like that down in the Chamber." Harry folded his arms. "He nearly did me and Malfoy in. Maybe would have, if Snape didn't show up with Hildegard and Mr Malfoy."

"Malfoy really just about took a Killing Curse for you?" George asked, eyebrows up. "Was he trying to block it?"

"Don't think so. Just tried out of reflex and it worked."

"Good luck on him ever letting you forget that," Fred said.

Harry couldn't laugh with the others, even if what they managed was strained. When Malfoy had been knocked back against him, Harry thought for sure he was going to catch a corpse. Malfoy pushing himself back upright was not a sensation Harry would ever forget. "I'd rather that than the alternative. I can't imagine how bad it would've been if Voldemort killed him and then Mr Malfoy showed up. Don't really want to think about it."

"None of us do," Hermione said in a quiet voice. "It was horrible, waiting with Ron and Pansy to see if you'd be coming back from down there. I didn't expect Voldemort to do anything to Malfoy. He's the one I thought would be safe."

"He just wouldn't get out of the way." Harry shrugged. "I'd be dead right now if he hadn't stood between us. Voldemort wasn't hesitating. He tried to give Malfoy the chance. Even forced Dagmar out to convince him to move. She didn't realize I was behind Malfoy. She said she didn't have any control unless Voldemort gave it to her."

The fear in her tone was another thing that stuck with Harry. He'd done that to her, and he was very nervous for her now to still be trapped with a furious and cornered Voldemort. There was no telling how that experience would go. It might not make much of a difference that Voldemort was no longer running free.

"We saw her, Ron and I," Hermione said with a glance across the room at him. "We revealed the manors. She left Hogwarts along with her mum, the Malfoys, and Mr Nott."

"I'm really curious to hear what all they've got to say about what happened on the island," Harry replied.

"I think we all are," Ron said. "I'm honestly surprised Madam Bones let Mr Malfoy go with them. Yeah, maybe he helped pin Voldemort down in the end, but. . ."

"He helped with the other Death Eaters too." Ginny idly pulled her hair out of the messy ponytail it'd been in and set about redoing it. George leaned away before he had the chance to catch an elbow. "I was close enough to him when that went down to almost see Bellatrix do him in. He's lucky Helka threw her off her balance. Got a pretty nasty burn."

"Mr Malfoy did?"

"No, Bellatrix. Second degree, at least."

Harry idly nodded. She hadn't shown any signs of being in pain when he saw her, but she might have been angry enough to ignore it. Bellatrix also seemed unbothered in general to the concept of pain.

"Voldemort said something about Mr Malfoy, and I have no way of knowing if it's true," Ginny went on. "He said Mr Malfoy didn't give me his diary."

Harry's eyebrows rose. He remembered the expression on Mr Malfoy's face as he'd looked the diary over when Harry gave it to him after all that business with the Chamber. He studied it hard, but what exactly did that mean if Mr Malfoy hadn't previously owned it? What about his challenge that Harry prove he had been the one to give it to Ginny? To Harry that sounded guilty, because Mr Malfoy probably knew nobody could. Or was Mr Malfoy just reminding a twelve year old boy the same age as his own prat of a son that you don't just accuse people of things and then the law takes over?

"Voldemort said the diary was tucked into one of his old school texts," Ginny said. "So I don't know. Who wants to trust Voldemort on something like that? He didn't really have reason to lie at that point, is the thing. He'd already done Dumbledore in. He was waiting for someone to contact him from the Ministry so he could start seeing about getting Luca in exchange for us."

"That's not really for us to figure out." Harry shrugged, feeling tired at the very thought of looking into it. "Have you told anyone else that?"

"Everyone that was in the Great Hall heard it."

"Leave it to them, then." Harry rubbed his eyes. "If you don't want to go home, you're always welcome to hang around here. Pansy's upstairs, just having a shower. We could all get some lunch or something? Don't know about the lot of you, but I haven't bothered to eat yet."

Everyone grumbled in agreement, so Fred and George took orders and headed to Diagon Alley. Ginny looked a little smaller when they no longer flanked her on the couch. Ron moved over to sit by her, not managing to pull so much as a weak smile when he squeezed her shoulder. Harry wondered if she'd actually seen what happened to Dumbledore, but it was hardly a stretch of the imagination. He would never ask, either.

Harry couldn't think of anything else to talk about. The silence was nice in a way, but also agonizing. He was relieved when Pansy made it downstairs, since she had things other than what all happened today to talk to Ginny about. The idea of a girls' night in Croydon seemed to draw Ginny out a bit before the twins returned. They all moved down to the kitchen.

When Harry was starting to push things around his plate rather than actually eat, the fireplace wooshed upstairs. A call down had two sets of footsteps following. It was Mr Weasley and Kingsley.

Mr Weasley smiled fondly at all of them, although it was tight. He stood behind Ginny and rested his hands on her shoulders. She seemed to relax with it. "How're you all doing?"

Harry shrugged, which was a pretty common gesture around the room.

"What about you?" Ron leaned back in his seat to address Kingsley. "Right back to work then, or what?"

Kingsley shrugged too, arms folded. "The last two weeks while they were preparing to hit Hogwarts, I was cooped back up in my room on the island. Lots of sitting around waiting to see what would happen. I'm kind of relieved to have something to do now. Time to clean everything up and put this ugly war behind us for good."

"What's there to do, exactly?" Harry asked. "What about Voldemort?"

"He's gone for now," Kingsley said. "Hiding somewhere inside Dagmar. Probably sulking. All the Death Eaters need to be transported to Azkaban. There are a couple more names I'd heard on the island that needed to be taken care of, that weren't with the rest. Edgar Selwyn and Arlo Jugson have both been arrested."

"Jugson?" Harry's stomach flopped. He'd never worked with the man in Enforcement since they were in different offices, but he knew of him. "Those were the last of the Ministry spies?"

Kingsley nodded. "That's all of them. The only one missing out of everyone is Peter Pettigrew. He wasn't on the island, and I never heard where he is since he wasn't much a topic of discussion. Narcissa never mentioned him either, whenever she would tell me things. Madam Bones plans on debriefing the Malfoys, Wesley Nott, and Hildegard and Dagmar once they've all gotten some rest. I'm sure one of them will know."

"He won't be easy to find anyway," Hermione commented as she pushed around the remnants of a potato salad with her fork. "He'll probably be living as a rat again, wherever he is."

"Most likely," Kingsley agreed. "The good news is, hauling Pettigrew in isn't crucial to our success. I would personally be willing to let him go in exchange for how things went today, but it doesn't mean we shouldn't try to find him."

"What about Dumbledore?" Harry asked before he could help himself.

"Well, I hope none of you—especially you, Harry—will blame yourself for that. From what I've heard happened, we were lucky that it was only him. This could have gone a lot worse." Kingsley rested a hand on the back of an empty chair. Harry noticed a slight tremble in his grip. "Dumbledore and I had many, many long talks about how such a situation might go if Hogwarts became the target. He always said he would trade his life or freedom to Voldemort in exchange for everyone else's. He was right to think that Voldemort would see his death as the crux for our side's defeat. You were just a nuisance at that point, although Voldemort believed after what happened in Bergen that nothing connected you and him anymore. He wasn't making any plans about getting to you, or anything."

That was slightly comforting, Harry supposed. And yet, it hadn't stopped Voldemort from lifting a wand in his direction down in the Chamber of Secrets. It didn't even stop him from trying to kill the son of who Voldemort still thought at the time were faithful followers. In a flash that left Harry feeling a little strange, he wished that Malfoy was here. Harry just wanted to see that he was still all right, although he likely was if he'd curled up with Dagmar somewhere.

"I told Voldemort when I informed him where Luca was that whatever happened was between him and Dumbledore at that point," Kingsley continued with a sigh. "I knew defences would be up after Scrimgeour was assassinated. I just hoped it would be enough. I'd hoped you would figure out who Luca was."

"Yeah," Harry flatly replied. "We did."

"I wish it didn't actually happen that way, even if Dumbledore was at peace with it."

The look in Dumbledore's eyes on the Astronomy tower visited Harry again. He wouldn't say it was exactly peaceful. Harry ducked his chin, not wanting to confront the emotions at all surrounding Dumbledore making such a decision. He'd never told Harry he had, and Harry couldn't really blame him. If Dumbledore had told him he intended to stave Voldemort off by letting him kill the main person that always stood between him and greatness, Harry would not have left the Astronomy tower. He would have fought to the death to protect everyone, just like Dumbledore ended up doing.

Harry almost had fought to the death, he reminded himself. He was glad that he didn't end up whittling away some point to Dumbledore's death by throwing himself into the fire right after him.

"Anyway," Kingsley quietly said. "Could we borrow you for a moment, Harry?"

"Yeah, sure."

Harry rose from his seat and followed Kingsley and Mr Weasley upstairs. In the parlour, Mr Weasley reached inside his cloak.

"I can't actually give this to you yet, but I thought you might be interested to see it," Mr Weasley said. "I took a glance with my subordinates through the library on the hafgufa. Voldemort was using it as his base of operations."

Harry's eyes widened at the clear bag Mr Weasley extracted from his pocket. Inside were two pieces of light-brown wood. "My wand!"

Mr Weasley nodded gravely. "Snapped, as you can see. The core is missing. We haven't checked yet to be certain, but we believe that Voldemort may have used it to enchant a mace he was brandying about."

"A mace." Heat roiled in Harry's stomach. "The mace he used to kill Dumbledore."

Mr Weasley and Kingsley exchanged a glance, and that was all Harry needed to know it was true. He started to pace.

"He used my wand to kill Dumbledore," Harry fumed.

"Just the core—" Mr Weasley started.

"Are you really so surprised, Harry?" Kingsley spoke over him. "He knew how close the two of you were. I wouldn't doubt at all that he did it on purpose."

"No, I'm not surprised," Harry said. "Doesn't mean I'm not pissed."

Harry ran his fingers through his hair. Just what the fuck was wrong with Voldemort? It wasn't a question Harry asked himself that often because he took for granted at this point that he embodied the absolute worst qualities of a human being. He'd managed to involve Harry in Dumbledore's death, as if to ensure that every single person Harry ever leaned on for guidance in his life would be wiped off the face of the planet. Parents, gone. Godfather, gone. Auror partner, gone. Headmaster, caretaker, mentor, leader, and whatever else Dumbledore had ever been to Harry—gone.

"You have every right to be angry about it." Mr Weasley stowed Harry's snapped wand. "There are lots of long faces at Hogwarts right now about it. There'll be even more across Britain—the world, really—once news hits the public ear what happened this morning."

"This was all you wanted to tell me?" Harry asked. "That you found my wand and that I had a bit of a hand in how gruesome Dumbledore's death was?"

"Harry, don't mistake me telling you I found your wand as implying any blame falls on you," Mr Weasley replied. "We have far too much experience with how creative Voldemort could be with his cruelty. If it wasn't your wand, you know as well as anyone else that he would've found another way to dig at you."

"If he even let me live long enough to see it." Harry resumed his pace. "You know about that, don't you? He didn't mean for me to walk out of the Chamber of Secrets. He made sure I knew that Dumbledore died for me, along with everyone else that has."

"Again, Harry," Kingsley said, "are you really surprised?"

"You just about died!" Harry gestured at him with a broad wave of his arm. "Do you even know what that was like for all of us after Azkaban, Kingsley? At any point I thought about you, you could've been writhing on the ground somewhere. Maybe they weren't feeding you, or talking to you, or anything like that."

"They treated me fine, Harry," Kingsley replied. "Don't worry about it."

"But we did! We had no idea what was going on except that you would've still been alive. The Lestranges were there. They would've drawn it out as long as they could."

"Oh, they wanted at me, don't be mistaken. Voldemort wouldn't let them."

"That's not the point. We were scared! You—" Harry hesitated, hoping he wouldn't sound stupid. "You took me on. Nobody that ever did made it."

"Count me lucky, then." Kingsley appeared tired when Harry stopped long enough to really look at him. "I know I was, Harry. He had a plan for me. I never outright heard what it was, but I can wager a pretty good guess. Voldemort fully intended to take Hogwarts and then pivot to the rest of magical Britain. If Hildegard didn't plan to shatter his soul, I don't know that he wouldn't have managed. He got Hogwarts. Have you really thought about that yet? Yes, he lost it. But he had it for a moment. If you, Luca, and Draco had managed to leave the castle like planned, Voldemort would've started killing hostages. He came very close to getting what he wanted, and he was already starting to plan beyond that. What purpose would Voldemort have with a magical community that despised him? Leadership isn't all it's cracked up to be when all you get is pushback. He was using me as a barometer for what it would take to drive compliance from the more stubborn corners of resistance. He didn't want to have to force it. Too much work on top of all he'd already done to get where he was."

Kingsley unfolded his arms and started rolling up his left sleeve. Harry's stomach ran cold, and his feet froze to the floor. Harry stared at the faded white lines comprising a skull and snake. They stood out on his dark skin.

"He marked me," Kingsley said. "Against my will, obviously, but he allowed me a good, long look into what being a Death Eater is like. You want to know what I did during my time on the island? I had to sleep behind bars, but I walked free during the day. Rowle and Gibbon got up early with me so that I could go for my morning runs. I ate meals with them. I talked to them, laughed with them. Voldemort wouldn't allow anything like a broom or wand around me, so they played football instead of Quidditch. To include me."

The longer Kingsley talked, the more uncomfortable Harry grew. It percolated to the point of climbing up his throat and sitting beneath his gag reflex.

"I knew what he was doing." Kingsley fixed his sleeve. "Even if Narcissa didn't warn me he wanted me turned, I could've figured it out easily enough. I don't mean any disrespect to anybody that's ever been tortured by them, but it almost would've been easier. As individuals, hell, even as a group really, they weren't awful. I ate well, had fun. . .I had a good time. I knew pretty early in that they were looking for Luca, so it wasn't like I could panic about Voldemort possibly finding him when we were on our way to the Balkans. I already knew where he was and that he was safe, so I just enjoyed the ride.

"But as time wore on, I knew I would eventually have to act. Luca wouldn't be at Hogwarts forever. He would leave in June. I remembered Kat mentioning before she died that he had applied at the Romanian dragon reserve. She was wondering if Luca would move back to his grandparents' place, since their villa wasn't very far away from it. Depending on how long Voldemort planned on sticking around the Balkans, they might have found him entirely by accident. All it would take was one picture in a paper, and it would be over.

"There was a chance of stopping him at Hogwarts. I didn't want to play into his hand, but I didn't have much choice. I knew it wasn't a guarantee. Even if Dumbledore upped security after Azkaban, and even if you figured out who Luca was. I had to be okay with the possibility I might be killing Dumbledore. I might be killing you. I had to actively decide that. Stay passive, and I might as well lean right into the feeling that hey, you know, maybe it wouldn't be all that bad if Voldemort takes over."

The parlour fell quiet. Anxiety accompanied the discomfort Harry experienced, making all the nerves in his chest hum. He looked at Mr Weasley for some sort of indication on what he was supposed to feel right now. Mr Weasley just looked at the floor in some kind of mix of thoughtfulness and respect. Harry wasn't sure he was supposed to be disgusted and disappointed.

"You're the Head Auror," Harry told Kingsley. "You're supposed to be tougher than that."

"I know," Kingsley replied. "What I mean by telling you all this is that when we're prepped to deal with dark wizards, we go in thinking of them as something different from ourselves. Physical pain is expected. Emotional pain as well, from things like blackmail or fear for our loved ones. We fought against that during the first war. Maybe we were all onto something that the Death Eaters revere Voldemort out of fear, but it's not totally true. They love him because he treats them well. Some who returned to him in 1995 did so because it was like a homecoming. They're human beings doing monstrous things, not monsters in human skin. We really were not prepared for the psychology of their organization. And now we face the challenge of how exactly to punish their actions without making martyrs of the lot of them."

"Are you telling me it's going to be like 1981 all over again?" Harry asked. "That they'll claim they were under the Imperius Curse or had been tricked, and then they'll walk free?"

"I haven't had much chance to talk to Amelia yet today, but I don't believe she'll be sympathetic in the slightest to that claim. Fool me once, so the saying goes. We're in a very unique position, is what I mean. We have the opportunity to stomp this out once and for all. I'm telling you after my experience that it's more important than we could've ever expected. This ideology is very easy to fall into because it's not entirely about the ideology. It was about family and fighting for what you believe—the exact same things we fought for. You can't draw them entirely equivalent, of course. But there's enough humanity in it to make it appealing for anyone slightly vulnerable toward the tenets of blood supremacy or anti-Ministry sentiments."

"Not to mention." Mr Weasley cleared his throat. "Voldemort is still inside the Ramstad girl. There's no way to get him out without his consent. I wouldn't doubt Voldemort's patience in the slightest. He'd rather sit back and watch her entire life slip away before giving up that easily."

Harry's stomach sunk with the reminder of the reality of Dagmar's situation. "You really think so?"

"Well." Mr Weasley shrugged. "We've been dealing with Voldemort in some capacity since the early seventies. Nearly thirty years of this codswallop. If we don't want to just wait him out, we need to get creative on how to draw him out instead."

"Yeah." Harry was too tired right now to really think about how to do that, much as he wanted to. The internal preening Harry had done earlier about having brought Dagmar home started to fade in its prideful glow.

"Don't worry about it, Harry," Kingsley told him. "That wasn't why Arthur and I pulled you aside either. Snape said you had all left that armour Voldemort was wearing down in the Chamber of Secrets?"

Harry nodded.

"I was just wondering if you'd be able to take me down there sometime to grab it," Mr Weasley said. "My office would like to inspect it, catalog it, store it. All those exciting things."

"Oh, sure. I can do that."

"Doesn't have to be now. It's certainly not a pressing matter, and there are plenty of other things to go through. We found what we believe to be all other wands that were stolen from Azkaban. We also found Slytherin's locket. At first glance it doesn't seem to have any charms or curses on it, but one can never be sure until it's completely stripped."

"Right."

There had once been a time that Harry would've been deliriously excited and ready to jump right back into the action with mention of that locket. He missed when this entire situation was as simple as finding that sodding thing, however much a mountain it had felt at the time.

"I spoke to Gawain about what me being back means for the Head Auror position." Kingsley rested his bum on one of the couch arms. "He told me I ought to take the weekend to readjust, go home and rest and all that, but I don't believe I need it. He was content to hand the office back. You were back to work, yes?"

Harry nodded. "We needed all hands on deck. I don't think I need any time off after everything. I'd rather help."

"See you Monday, then," Kingsley said. "You should at least take the weekend. De-stress. Revel a little bit if you feel like it. Feel sad or angry about Dumbledore if you have to. Then we'll get to work, yeah?"

Despite everything, Harry managed to smile. "Yeah."