Chapter Ten
Harry never remembered how he got back to his house. He was pretty sure that Ron and Draco carried him into his bed, but he wasn't sure how they got him through the Floo network. It was all a blur after he brought all the Death Eaters out of the woods. It was about one in the afternoon the next day and Harry was still lying in bed. He decided that he probably stunk pretty bad and dragged himself out of bed and took a shower. His looks didn't really matter to him at the moment, so he just shoved his glasses on his face and didn't even bother to do his hair. It all seemed so trivial. He dragged on some jeans and a T-shirt and walked downstairs to make some coffee for himself.
When he got down in the kitchen, he half expected Sirius to come in through the door and greet him happily like he did almost every day. Instead, he just sunk down onto the floor and let the tears roll down his face when the person who came into the kitchen, wasn't his godfather but Draco Malfoy.
"Come on, Harry. Get off the floor," he said quietly.
"I like it here."
"Sure you do. Because we all like sitting on cold tile floors everyday. Come on, you're getting up and sitting down on a nice comfortable couch and I'll get you some coffee."
"What are you doing here? I don't need your pity. Or anybody else's. I'll get by fine, thank you very much."
"I'm not here to give you my pity. I'm here to be your friend, that's all. This is what friends do. They help each other out," he said, echoing Harry's words from two days earlier. Draco picked up Harry under the arms and hauled him off of the floor. Harry took advantage of the help and leaned onto him for support. He wasn't sure he could walk by himself. Draco led him into the sitting room and sat him down on the couch but before he could walk back into the kitchen, Harry grabbed his hand.
"Thank you, Draco."
"Just returning the favour," he said smiling faintly. A couple minutes later, Draco came back in with a cup of coffee and handed it to Harry. He took a sip and immediately began coughing.
"This definitely isn't just coffee."
"No, I added a bit of Ogden's Firewhiskey to it. I thought you could use it."
"Yeah, thanks. A bit strong though."
"I think you can take it. You're a man," Draco said while smiling. Harry smiled back at him.
"I suppose I am." He sighed then and took another drink.
"Hey, Harry. How are you doing?" Harry looked up and saw Ginny standing nervously in the doorway.
"Hey, Gin. As well as can be expected I guess. Come here." He put down his cup and patted the seat next to him on the couch. She sat down and promptly wrapped him in a tight hug.
"I'm so sorry, Harry. I wish I could do something for you, but nothing can bring back a person. I just wish that it hadn't been Sirius, he was so good for you." Harry pulled back as tears started cascading down his face.
"I know, don't feel like you need to do anything. Just you being here is more than enough for me." Ginny gently wiped the tears away from his face and kissed him on the cheek.
"I thought you should know...we've got the funeral planned for tomorrow at three. Charlie, Ron, Steve, Draco, Fred, and George are being the pall bearers. Since you and Remus were really his only family, you'll be walking directly behind them to the cemetery."
"OK, will you walk with me?"
"Won't people see me with you? I mean, you'll be Harry, not James."
"I don't care, I want you there with me."
"All right. I'll walk with you."
"Thank you. Ginny...do they know what curse killed him?"
"Yeah....I don't really remember the name of it. It was like a heart attack but different. Well, I'm not exactly sure what it does, but it hurts like one and it just slowly shuts your heart down. And if there is enough power that goes into it, it can shut down your other organs. We think that that is what happened to Sirius. Whoever did it was a very powerful wizard or witch."
"Isn't it illegal?"
"Not yet," replied Draco. "They have brought it to a vote many times but there are a lot of Death Eaters in the Ministry still and they have voted against making it illegal many times. It should be because it's just a slow death." Harry closed his eyes.
"They just had to make it painful for him, didn't they?"
"That's the way of the Death Eaters, Harry. You should know that," said Draco bitterly.
"I do know that. It doesn't make it any easier to know how much pain he was going through. He...he didn't deserve to die," he choked out. Ginny reached out for him but he brushed her aside and stood up angrily.
"Harry, what are you doing?" asked Ginny anxiously.
"I'm going to the loo. Is there a problem?"
"Oh, no. You just seemed like you were going to do something stupid. Sorry."
"It's OK," he mumbled as he stalked out of the room. In truth he had been planning on doing something but he hadn't known what. He was thinking of going out and finding every last Death Eater and killing them. But when Ginny spoke to him, his moment of insanity passed and he lied and said that he was going to go to the bathroom. When he walked through the kitchen, he noticed Arthur and Molly Weasley coming in through the front door and speaking to Brian for a moment. Brian let them through and Molly immediately went to Harry.
"Harry, I'm so sorry. I know this must be so hard on you," she said and then wrapped him in a tight motherly hug. Harry couldn't hold it back anymore and so he cried into her shoulder. She rubbed his back and made soothing noises in his ear as if he were a nine year old child with a scrape on his knee. He found he didn't really care if he was twenty-five years old. It didn't hurt any less because of his age and it definitely didn't feel bad to be comforted by the only mother figure he had ever had.
After a few minutes, he pulled back from her and took off his glasses to wipe his eyes off.
"Sorry, I've got your robes all wet." Molly smiled kindly at him.
"It's OK, dear. My, I can't believe I didn't see it before."
"See what?"
"That you are James. I guess it must have been the eyes or something."
"Oh yeah, I'm really sorry about lying to you. And this wasn't the way you were supposed to find out. I was just about to tell you when Sirius ran off."
"It's all right, Harry. You should know that we would never hold a grudge against you and Ginny already explained to us why you didn't want to say anything. We completely understand," said Arthur.
"Thank you, Arthur. That really means a lot to me." Molly started guiding him back into the living room.
"Now what I want to know, Harry, is how serious are you and Ginny?"
"Molly!" scolded her husband. "That's really none of our business! They'll tell us something when they are ready to."
"Actually, we were going to say something after I told you who I was yesterday but...you know. Ginny, come here."
"What is it?" Harry smiled widely at her.
"Well, your mum was just asking me how serious we are, and I thought it was about time to tell her," he said wiggling his eyebrows suggestively, giving her the wrong impression of what he really wanted to tell them.
"What? Harry...oh...OH, that! Right!" she exclaimed blushing. Harry chuckled softly at her and took her hand.
"Well, Ginny and I are engaged to be married." Molly took a deep breath and fell back against Arthur.
"Oh my goodness! Oh my dear little girl is getting married! And getting married to Harry!" She squealed in delight as words started to fail her. She then threw her arms around Harry's neck and kissed him on the cheek. "Oh, now we can make it official! You'll really be part of the family now. Congratulations! I'm so happy for you two!"
"Yes, congratulations, you two!" said Arthur as he shook Harry's hand but then changed his mind and hugged him like a son. "I couldn't think of anyone better for our little girl; well, maybe James Newark would have been a little better..." he said smiling.
"Oh well, if that's the way you feel, I can go get him right now."
"No, I like having you back with us," said Molly. Harry smiled at her.
"Me too," agreed Harry.
"Me three!" exclaimed Draco from his seat on the couch with a wide grin plastered on his face. He took everybody by surprise by jumping up and yelling, "Hugs!" and hugging Harry. He awkwardly patted Draco on the back but then laughed appreciatively at him once he pulled away.
"I'm sure you do, Draco. But don't ever do that again." "Agreed. Don't know what came over me. Completely uncharacteristic of me."
"I'll say."
~*~*~
Harry and Ginny walked hand in hand behind the coffin that held Sirius. Remus walked to Harry's left with his head down, tears silently rolling down his face. It didn't feel right to Harry that he had someone and Remus didn't. With the exception of himself. He was just about to let go of Ginny's hand to go to his friend when Remus collapsed on the ground.
"Remus!" exclaimed Harry. The line of people behind them stopped and stared while the pall bearers hadn't even noticed his collapse and kept walking.
"Come on, Remus. You need to get up," he said and wrapped his arm around his torso and heaved him off of the ground. Harry fought back tears as he looked at him. Remus was always the calm and collected sort of man and seeing him completely broken was more than Harry could bare.
"Why did I have to be the last one, Harry? I should have been the first to go, I'm a damned werewolf! They didn't deserve it, I did."
"No, they didn't deserve it but neither do you. Come on, let's keep walking," he said quietly. Remus wrapped an arm around Harry and started walking again.
"Maybe you should go back to Ginny," he said after a couple moments.
"No, I need to be with you now. DON'T argue!" he added firmly as Remus opened his mouth to say something. After a couple minutes, they finally reached their destination. The coffin was already set over the opening in the ground, ready to be lowered. It seemed that both Harry and Remus went through the motions without really realising what they were doing. Before he knew it, they were taking a handful of dirt and throwing it into the grave. Harry looked down into the grave feeling that everything was so surreal. When did this happen? Why did he have to bury Sirius already? That wasn't supposed to happen until after they had lived to be old men. At that moment, Harry's knees gave out and he would have fallen if it hadn't been for Remus. He held onto his friend as if he would disappear if he didn't.
"Can you walk?"
Harry nodded his head dumbly and began to walk with Remus as his support.
"You know what's funny? I've always thought that I should have been the one to die first out of anybody."
"Why?"
"I was supposed to have died when I was one. Why am I still here? There's no reason for it."
"Yeah, there is. You survived to help other people survive. You helped Sirius remain sane while he was in Azkaban; you saved thousands, if not millions from dying at the hands of Voldemort, not once but twice. And you're most certainly helping me stay alive now. In more ways than one." Harry smiled at him.
"Don't you forget, that I always will help you stay alive."
~*~*~
Harry took the next week off of work so the Cannons used the reserve Seeker for the game. They won by only ten points Harry only had two days left of vacation and wasn't really looking forward to going back as he sat in his study going over bills. They all just happened to be Sirius'. Luckily, money wasn't a problem since Harry was already pretty well off and Sirius had put into his will that half his money would go to Harry and half to Remus.
But still, Harry wasn't happy with that arrangement. Remus needed the money more than he did. The job that Remus had, had just found out that he was a werewolf and fired him, so he was out looking for jobs once again. His unhappiness only doubled as he opened up a notice that Sirius hadn't had the chance to pay Remus' rent and that Remus was now going to be evicted from his flat. Harry hadn't even known that Sirius had been paying his rent. The money that Remus inherited would only help him out for a few months, if that.
Harry sighed and leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He sat thinking of possibilities for Remus but only one sounded good enough for him. He immediately got up, put on his cloak and went outside to go Apparate to Remus' flat. The wind was bitingly cold outside of the building where Remus lived. Harry wrapped his cloak around himself and knocked on the door. After a minute, the door still hadn't been opened so he knocked again, this time more urgently because he was starting to get worried.
"Remus! Are you there?" The door opened slowly to a very dishevelled looking man.
"Harry, what the hell are you doing here?" he asked tiredly. "Oh, I'm sorry. I forgot that it was the full moon last night. Did you manage to get any sleep last night?"
"About two hours."
"Well, that's better than most full moons, huh? Snape is a miracle man." Remus laughed quietly.
"Never thought I'd hear you say that. Oh sorry, come in, it's freezing."
"Yeah, thanks." Harry stepped into the sparsely decorated flat and took off his cloak and hung it up.
"So, what brings you by this afternoon? Would you like tea or coffee?"
"Tea, thanks...." Harry was about to continue but his eyes fell on boxes all over the place. "Remus, are you packing?"
"Oh, um yeah. I was."
"Why?"
"Well, I can't really afford this place anymore." Harry nodded his head.
"Right, is that because Sirius was paying for it?" he asked quietly. Remus snapped his head up and looked at Harry with wide eyes.
"How did you know about that? I thought Sirius never said anything to you."
"He didn't say anything. This is actually why I came over right now. I was going over his bills and there was a late notice. He forgot to pay last months rent and it said that you were being evicted."
"Oh, I see."
"So, what were you planning on doing? Just packing and moving out onto the streets without even telling me?"
"I don't know. I hated the fact that Sirius paid my rent but he was always so adamant about it. He wouldn't take no for an answer...." he paused and placed a cup of tea on the table and gestured for Harry to sit. Harry sat and wrapped his cold hands around the cup. "I just didn't want to do it again. I'm tired of it."
"Remus, I can understand how you feel about it; but do you really think that I am going to let you go live out on the streets? You've got another thing coming if you do."
"Well, I can't live here anymore anyway. They've got a couple lined up to move in on Tuesday."
"What? But it's Sunday!"
"I know, but they didn't give me much choice in the matter." Harry sighed and scratched his head in thought. They certainly couldn't have him move into Sirius' old flat. They had been cleaning it out all week and there were renters in there already. The idea had already come up anyway and Remus had flat out refused to do it because it held too many memories of Sirius.
"Then you're moving in with me." Remus' eyes got extremely large.
"Harry, I am not moving in with you. You and Ginny have got a wedding to plan and then she'll be moving in with you and you'll have kids. I won't move in with you."
"OK, so I won't have Remus but I'll at least have Remus' things," Harry replied and got up and Apparated four large boxes to the front lawn of his house.
"Harry James Potter! What do you think you're doing?" Remus exclaimed. Harry laughed.
"Nobody has called me by my full name since I was sixteen."
"Well, it's about time somebody starts again! Get my things back here!"
"Why, when you are moving to my house? That would be completely pointless," Harry smiled devilishly at him but Remus planted his feet on the floor and crossed his arms like a kid
"Harry, I am moving in with you," he said firmly. Harry walked up to him so that they were only a foot apart and looked him in the eyes.
"Do you not want to move in with me because you think it will interrupt my life or because your pride would be hurt?" THere was a long silence until Remus grudgingly said,
"Both."
"OK, for one, you will not, and I repeat, will not be interrupting my life. You are a part of my life and as for Ginny, she loves you just as much as I do. She'll be fine with it. She has been ranting and raving about how worried she is about you the past week, about your emotional well being and your living situation and how skinny you're getting...Come to think of it, she kind of sounds like her mother," he added with a grin and then grinned even wider when he was rewarded by a smile from Remus. It was a rare occasion that he would smile anymore.
"And as for your pride, well, you'll just have to get over it somehow because I am not taking no for an answer."
"But Harry..."
"No, Remus. Sirius requested some things from me before he died. The first was to tell everybody who I am. And I intend to do that as soon as I have some business finished. The second was to marry Ginny and have kids, which I also intend to do. But he also told us to watch out for each other. And I intend to do that until we're old men with canes and I am a great-great grandfather and you're, well you're like my uncle so that'd make you a great-great-great uncle? Well, anyway, we'll be old together in the same house."
"It'd be great-great uncle actually. Thanks for making me feel so old already."
"It's what I'm here for! So...what do you say Remus?" He sighed deeply and ran a hand through his already dishevelled hair.
"Fine, I'll move in with you."
"Great! Now, are you all packed or is there still more?"
"I haven't gotten to everything in the living room yet but everything else is packed." Harry moved about the place and levitated the few things that weren't in boxes, into them and then magically closed the flaps.
"There, now what about the furniture?"
"I don't want it, and besides I won't really need it I guess." Harry scratched his head in thought. All the furniture was pretty old and he figured that they wouldn't make much money off of them.
"What would you say to having a bon-fire tonight?"
"What? What does that have to do with anything?"
"It has to do with everything! I'm suggesting that we just burn it all. It'd be fun. We'll have s'mores, butterbeer and mead and a bunch of friends over. It'll be good fun!" Remus was looking at him as if he had grown a third head that looked like a hippogriff, but then he laughed and agreed.
"I've never had a Muggle style bon-fire before. Should be interesting. And what are s'mores?"
"I'll explain them later, trust me, you'll love them!"
~*~*~
Two hours later, Remus was busy unpacking his things and making the guest bedroom into his own. Harry was busy out in the yard putting flame repellant charms on the grass and trees so that they wouldn't catch fire. He then levitated all the furniture into the backyard and stacked it up neatly. There really wasn't that much but it would keep a nice large fire going for an hour or two without the help of magic.
When he was finished, he fire called everybody and asked them to come and then Flooed over to Steve's house in LA.
"Hey, Steve! Are you home?"
"In the kitchen! Is that you Harry?" Harry walked into the kitchen and saw his friend pouring himself a glass of soda.
"The one and only! That stuff will rot your teeth you know." Steve shrugged noncommitally.
"It's damn good for cleaning rust off car batteries too though. Where else can you find multiple uses for a beverage, other than drinking it of course!"
"I can't think of any," Harry said smiling.
"So, Harry, how are you holding up?"
"I'm doing OK. You know, it's still hard to know he's gone but I'm sure that will never go away." Steve nodded his head and took a drink of his drink.
"And Remus?"
"Not too good. It didn't help that the full moon was the last couple nights, you know? I can tell that he hasn't been getting enough sleep as it is and then add that to it. And he's not eating nearly enough, but hopefully Ginny will be able to fix that now that he's moved in with me."
"He moved in with you? Why?"
"Long story. But what are your plans for tonight?"
"Nothing right now. Why?"
"I'm having a bon-fire in my back yard so we can burn Remus' old furniture. We wouldn't make any money off of them so we decided to have a little fun getting rid of them. We'll be having s'mores, butterbeer and mead if you want to come."
"Sure, who's going?"
"Ron, Hermione, Fred, George, Ginny, Remus, me, Draco might come, and you. Nothing big. Just a couple people."
"Sounds good, what time?"
"In an hour and a half. Gets dark around six so I told people to come around six-thirty."
"Nice, I'll be having my evening out in London and then I'll come home and still be able to go out and pick up a girl." Harry shook his head.
"You'll never change."
"You know what's changing?"
"What?"
"Your accent. Everytime I see you, it gets thicker and thicker."
"That's what happens. Oh do you have any chocolate bars or graham crackers?"
"No, but I could pick some up for you if you want."
"Yeah, that'd be great. I still need to go to the Leaky Cauldron to get the drinks. I'll see you later then." With a final wave, Harry Disapparated with a pop to the Leaky Cauldron, making Steve jump and mutter under his breath about crazy wizards.
~*~*~
"Come on, Harry or we're going to start this fire without you!" yelled George impatiently. Everybody was gathered around the pile of furniture, shivering in the cold. Harry ran out the back door of his house and yelled the incantation for fire rather enthusiastically, making the fire jump up to the level of the roof top. Everybody jumped back in surprise.
"Calm down, Harry! The Muggle police will be called if we do that again!" exclaimed Hermione as she put a charm on the fire to make it stay at a reasonable level.
"Sorry. You guys were rushing me." He clapped his hands together and rubbed them together enthusiastically. "Time for some s'mores!" he exclaimed happily. Everybody gathered around Steve for him to show them how to make them while Harry pulled Ron back to talk.
"So, where's Harry Jr?"
"With my mum and dad."
"Oh, Ron...I need to talk to you a bit later. After we're done eating, maybe."
"All right. How come you've never told me about s'mores? They sound so good!" Harry laughed and went to help a frantic Steve. He was having a bit of trouble explaining the process of making s'mores in lamens terms to a group of wizards.
***
An hour later, the small group was sitting lazily around the fire, drinking either butterbeer or mead. Harry stood up from his seat next to Ginny and pulled Ron out of his so that they could sit in different chairs set away from everybody.
"OK, I wanted to ask you how the effort is going with the Death Eaters and how many you have caught since last week." Ron sighed deeply and sunk down into his chair.
"I was afraid you would want to talk about this.....Well, to be honest, the effort isn't really going all that great. And we haven't caught anymore Death Eaters since you caught those other ones last week."
"You haven't caught any at all?"
"No, Harry, you don't understand our situation at all. We've only got about fifteen aurors in all right now. More than half of them are fresh from auror training. They aren't experienced at all."
"You only have fifteen aurors? There has never been that low of a number...ever."
"I know. After the last battle, a large group quit because they thought they would get to work for you. They wanted somebody like you to lead them. And then after Voldemort was gone, nobody has had an interest in becoming aurors. We're in desperate need of them."
"Why would they even think that I would get a higher position?"
"Because there was one ready for you. You were going to get the promotion the day of the final battle but then well, the battle happened and of course nobody ever got around to it. And then you disappeared. So they promoted some other guy. I can't even remember his name. He moved to the States about two months ago and I got promoted up to Lieutenant."
"You're Lieutenant now? How come you never told me?"
"I don't know. I wasn't too happy about it. We're in such a tight spot, it's not an easy job."
"I can imagine...Ron, do you know how many Death Eaters are still out there?"
"We think about twenty. There used to be forty-two, but then you took out seven of them last week."
"But that would leave thirty-five. What happened to the other fifteen?"
"See, that's the thing. We don't know. Well, we know that they are dead, we found them, we just don't know how they died."
"You don't know how that died? Do you even have any leads on who would have killed them? Not that it really matters. They were Death Eaters."
"Um...yeah, we have an idea who may have done it..."
"Well..."
"....We think you did it." Harry's mouth dropped open as he looked at his friend.
"What? And how come I don't have any memory of this?"
"Because you don't remember anything that happened to you when you were kidnapped."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
"Possibly everything. You see, the day before you were kidnapped, we detected some Dark magic in this house in Wales. I was getting a crew together to go and check it out, but then you were kidnapped and that was first priority for everybody. The house was just forgotten.
"So, when you came back, the house was first on our list of things to do. The weird things was, was that there were no signs of Dark magic there anymore. There wasn't anything going on. But I decided to go anyway but with only two other aurors. We walked into literally, a blood bath. Every Death Eater in there was dead, except for one. The bodies were completly mangled up.
"When the autopsies came back, there was no cause of death. Yeah, the bones were misshapen and made the bodies looked distorted but they weren't broken. Their bodies were bleeding but there was no open wounds on any of them. There wasn't even a sign of 'Avada Kedavra' being used on them..."
"Hold up. There isn't a possible way to tell that Avada Kedavra was used unless if there is nothing."
"No, it's a new discovery. It has something to do with the heart; I'm not a doctor so don't ask me to explain it. The doctor who explained it to me was using all these medical terms that I didn't understand."
"Oh, so how do you figure that it was me?"
"We found the cloak that you had been wearing in the hospital in a room where it looked like they might keep somebody prisoner. There was only a small cot and a bedside table." As Harry sat and listened to Ron, he was slowly getting angrier and angrier. Why hadn't they told him anything?
"Ron, why, in your right mind, didn't you tell me about any of this?"
"Well, I didn't think that it was that important."
"Whatever, well, did you check for magical signatures? Because if you had, you would have known what happened. What kind of magic I supposedly did to kill these people. Because if nothing had disturbed anything between the time they were killed and the time you got there, the signatures would have been there; and you would have known what kind of magic was used."
"We did check for signatures. That's where it got really weird. There was nothing in that house except for some locking charms on the door and the Dark magic that we had been detecting and then normal stuff like cooking and unlocking the door. And the only magic used in the room where we found your cloak was a transfiguring charm where somebody transfigured something into a shepherd's pie and they conjured a fork." Harry's head shot in the direction of Ron.
"I did that," he said quietly. "They were trying to feed me this mouldy stuff so I transfigured it into something edible."
"Maybe we should have..."
"Should have told me? Damn straight you should have told me," he interrupted. "Who cares if you didn't think that it was bloody important. I've been wondering how I got away and at least now I know that I somehow killed those bastards."
"I'm sorry,' Ron whispered. They were silent for a while, looking into the flames and listening to the others talk. Harry spoke so suddenly that Ron nearly jumped out of his chair.
"I want to help."
"Help with what?"
"With the Death Eaters as an auror."
"Are you serious? What'll Ginny think?"
"I don't know. I know she probably won't like it but I have to do it...for Sirius."
"All right, luckily it won't be so hard getting you in since we have been wanting you back for quite some time now. And plus you don't need to go through the training again. I'll talk to the Head of the Department tomorrow. You'll probably be in by tomorrow evening at the earliest."
"Thanks. It really means a lot to me.
"What about Quidditch, Harry? Are you just going to give that up? I mean, people will notice when the star Seeker is gone again."
"I don't care, let them wonder."
"But Harry, professional Quidditch has been our dream for as long as I can remember. You're just going to give it up now that you have it?"
"I didn't say that I was going to give it up. I'm just going to take a break until I get every last Death Eater. Then I'll go back. I'll never give up Quidditch until I get hit by so many bludgers that I can't stay on my broom. You know that."
"I know, I've always wanted one of us to be in Quidditch. I didn't just want you to give it up." "I won't. Oh and when's Pettigrew's trial?"
"This coming Saturday. You'll need to be there. The notice will probably be coming in the next day or two."
"All right...What I wouldn't give to beat the living day lights out of that little rat," he said venomously. Ron looked Harry up and down.
"Nah, I don't think you could."
"Excuse me?"
"You wouldn't be able to hurt a fly," he said with a mischievious smile on his face.
"Oh and who was the one who pinned you in the hospital that one time? I don't think that it was Fred or George."
"That was luck. I say we try it again."
"You're on." They both stood up and Ron tackled Harry. They were so engrossed in their wrestling match, that they didn't realize that everybody was placing bets on them. After ten minutes, Harry got tired and levitated Ron head first into the snow bank.
"Ha! I told you that Harry would be the smart one and resort to magic! Hand it over, George!" exclaimed Hermione.
"Damn," muttered George as he gave Hermione three galleons. Harry walked over to Ron and helped him out of the snowbank.
"Well, mate, looks like we're pretty evenly matched," he said smiling.
"Looks that way," said Ron smiling back. But he was smiling for a different reason. He actually accomplished getting Harry's mind off of the Death Eaters and Sirius for at least ten minutes. If there was anything he was going to do for his friend, he was going to help him to remember how to have some fun. They would all need it after this battle was over.
A/N: This is so annoying! I had to rewrite the last half of this chapter because my disk wouldn't open it! So this is up later than I originally would have liked it to be. So, I'm sorry if this is pretty boring. It's just leading up to some things that will happen in later chapters! In the upcoming chapters, you'll get to see some of Wormtail's trial, Ginny driving Harry nuts with wedding plans, Harry as an auror, and possibly some more deaths but no more of the main characters. I'm still angry with myself for doing that but hey, I had to do it. So please please review! I'll be thanking all my reviewers in the last chapter of this story. Oh and if you want to know what is going on with my current stories, like where I'm at with them, please go to my Bio and I'll give as many updates as possible. I just updated today!