The Golden Trio sat in the kitchen of Grimmauld Place silently. Three large envelopes were sitting unopened on the table, one in front of each person.

Upon returning to Grimmauld Place after leaving from the 'back door', as Tonks called the special Apparition exit from the Ministry, Harry had found both his friends watching their recently delivered letters silently.

The story of the death of Umbridge and his capture of an Auror Death Eater had been briefly covered, then surprisingly was quickly pushed aside as the issue of the Hogwarts letters unreasonably kept raising itself in their thoughts.

"Do we open them?" Ron asked, voicing the question they had all been thinking.

Harry didn't really want to. He knew that to do so was just to increase the torment of having to face the fact they were not going back. His mind had been made up weeks ago, but it had not become a reality, yet. Opening the letter seem to mean having to totally accept that that part of his life was over.

"There's no harm in it, I suppose," he said.

Hermione nodded, then quickly tore her envelope open. A gleaming silver badge fell out onto the table. It had HG embossed on it, but it was not her initials; it was the Head Girl badge.

"Oh," said Hermione, picking up the badge.

"No surprise there then," laughed Ron. "Congratulations, Hermione."

She smiled sadly and rolled the badge over in her fingers.

Harry opened his letter and stopped in shock when another badge fell out, because it was not the Quidditch captain's badge he had been expecting; it was the Head Boy's badge.

He quickly snatched it up and looked at Ron, hoping he had not seen it, but the expression in his friend's face clearly showed he had.

A look of mingled anger, jealousy and confusion ran across Ron's features. As prefect, it was taken for granted that he would have been head boy if anybody from Gryffindor was chosen. That Harry had been chosen without being a prefect smacked of favouritism.

"It's okay, Harry," Ron said, after taking a second to compose himself. "I guess it makes sense, since I wasn't really much chop as a prefect, was I?"

"Besides," he added holding up another badge, one that Harry was familiar with. "I think I prefer to have this one!"

It was the Quidditch captain's badge.

They sat quietly, contemplating the badges and letters. Hermione read her letter fastest and started talking before Harry had gotten half way through his.

"So they are not going to open for a full year, but only half a year to help with preparations for O.W.L and N.E.W.T.S," she explained. "Starting on the fifth of January. That is going to make things very difficult for the students. They are going to have almost no time to prepare-"

"What!" exclaimed Ron. "There aren't going to be house teams! That's outrageous. How can you play a proper season of Quidditch when you have a game every week made up of people from each house? That's just ludicrous that is."

"Ronald, I hardly think Quidditch is going to be big on anybody's agenda. With only half a year to prepare, I am surprised there are going to be any games at all. More important is that students are going to be very limited in what subjects they can study."

Their discussion that followed, about how vital a good game of Quidditch was to the health and well being of the students, did not involve Harry. He was still reading and re-reading his letter.

Aside from the standard letter and explanation of the short school year and changes to Quidditch, he had an additional, personal note.

Mr. Potter,

Although my sources tell me that you are intent on another course of action, I feel you should return to Hogwarts to complete your education.

As stated in the main letter, many additional protections have been, or are in the process of being, installed into the school with the help of the Ministry of Magic and with the approval of the board of Governors. I am confident in expressing my belief that Hogwarts still remains just as safe as ever for you.

Should you wish to contact me to answer any questions you may have, please do not hesitate to owl me. Letters addressed to the Headmistress care of Hogwarts will find me.

Yours truly,

Minerva McGonagall

Headmistress

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

PS

Former Headmaster Dumbledore's portrait has awoken, but is unable to convey details of the events leading to his demise, or for many years prior. You may not be aware that magical paintings are only a facsimile of a person and do not contain all of the knowledge or wisdom of the original, however former Headmaster Dumbledore's portrait appears to have even less true knowledge and memories than a normal one, leading me to believe it is defective in some manner.

The letter certainly raised some questions, but not ones she was likely or capable of answering. What sources had told her he was not returning? Nobody except Ron and Hermione knew he hadn't planned on going back, and how could a portrait be defective? Mrs Black's had gone mad, or maybe the old bat had been mad beforehand?

"Hey!" he called, interrupting the escalating argument between his friends. "Listen to this."

After he read out the letter there was a stunned silence.

"I don't get it, is she telling you to stay away?" Ron asked.

Harry blinked in confusion. "How in the world did you come up with that?" he asked.

"Well that last bit, about the portrait. The only reason she would write that in a letter would be to tell you there was nothing there for you, otherwise she would be using it as a hook to get you back. You know 'come on back and get answers from old uncle Albus' and all that."

"Ronald, I don't think that was her intention," said Hermione. "I think she was just making an effort to tell Harry so that any hopes or expectations he may have had were not built up."

"Yeah, but she is the Head now, and the rest of the portraits heard everything that went on in that office, so do you reckon she doesn't already know everything?"

It was Harry's turn to be stunned. He had never considered that all of his meetings with Dumbledore had been witnessed. Every conversation they had, including the one just before leaving to retrieve the Horcrux, had been overheard by multiple paintings. The portraits may already have told her everything.

Ron hadn't finished yet. "Then there is that line about the Ministry installing extra security and Harry being as safe as ever. I would hardly call Harry as ever being safe at Hogwarts."

It was true. Everything Ron said was true. The Ministry of Magic was still full of Death Eaters and Fudge's cronies, the board of Governors had been used by Lucius Malfoy once, and Umbridge another time, so they were no better, and nobody could ever claim Harry had been safe while at Hogwarts, although it was often his own choices that put his life in danger while there.

Ron was right; she was warning him away.

Judging by Hermione's surprising lack of protest, she agreed, or at least could not find fault with his logic.

"How could anybody know I was not going back?" he asked. "I never told anybody, except you two."

"Ginny knew," Hermione suggested. "And I can tell you a lot of people probably guessed, especially after we staged our little falling out before leaving. Taken with the amount of time you are apparently spending in the Ministry, and I'd say it was a fairly logical conclusion."

"So why is McGonagall writing this then?" Ron asked.

"To mislead anybody who might be reading these letters," Harry said.

It was starting to make more sense now. Even the line about the portrait being defective was probably a lie, designed to throw off anybody who read the letter. He wondered why she could not have sent him the message via Lupin, since they had most likely been in contact through the Order of the Phoenix. Harry could ask Lupin when he came to visit.

Suddenly Hermione's hand started shaking and she dropped the badge on the table. With a great wrenching, sob she leaped up and ran from the room crying. After only a moment's pause and a shared look with Harry, Ron went after her, leaving Harry sitting his own badge, feeling miserable.

They were giving up so much for him. Hermione's fondest wish to become Head Girl had come true, but she was throwing it away to follow him into danger on an insane quest.

Ron had looked into the Mirror of Esried and seen himself as Head boy and Quidditch captain. While never one for strictly adhering to rules, Quidditch was his most favourite thing in the world, and captain was something none of his brothers had ever been, so it would have given him his hearts desire – to stand out above his brothers, best amongst them all. He too was turning his back on the opportunity in order to help Harry in his insane mission.

Harry knew he didn't deserve such good friends, and vowed to somehow make it up to them.

Tossing the badge on the table, he went see how Hermione was doing.

It took a while for her to become calm enough to talk to them, and when she did, it was not what Harry expected.

They were in the bedroom she had taken as her own. Ron was lying at the head of the bed, propped up on cushions with Hermione sitting between his legs leaning back on him. It was probably a very familiar position for the two, since they appeared quite comfortable.

Crookshanks was curled in his usual position at the foot of the bed purring loudly. He rarely made appearances elsewhere in the house, but Hermione had told Harry the mouse and rat population was taking a beating from the stealthy presence of the large feline. Ron loudly hoped one day the huge cat would bring her a rat that had a silver paw.

"I am sorry, Harry," she said, "but it just became a bit too much."

"I understand," he said.

"No, I don't think you do," she said. "I can't do it. I can't find all the answers. There is way too much to read and analyse; far too many leads for the three of us to follow. It could take years just to retrace where Dumbledore already went, and he took four years just to find two."

"Well he was alone when he was doing it," said Ron.

"We three together are not equal to one of him, Ron," she said, not unkindly.

"What are you saying, Hermione? That it is impossible? Because if that is what you think, I have to tell you that I don't agree, and I am not going to give up even if it takes a hundred years," Harry told her, feeling defensive for some reason.

"No, Harry. I am saying we need some help. We need people to read books and reports, and take notes, and then compare those notes. We need to have people to gather and collate and all the other hundreds of little steps that together make a thorough investigation."

"Who could we possibly trust, Hermione? Scrimgeour offered to lend me the resources of the Ministry of Magic while one of his police lay at my feet with the Dark Mark on his arm after having murdered another Ministry worker."

"The D.A." she answered.

Harry harrumphed his disbelief.

Out of all of the members of Dumbledore's Army, only Neville and Luna had responded when called before Dumbledore's Death, and that was just because they missed the classes.

However, Harry thought to himself, he had suggested to Neville to try and get a few of the D.A. to train together, so maybe he had managed to round up a few people. If Ginny had helped it was almost a certainty that some would have joined them.

"We can't tell anybody," Harry said. "If too many people know, word will get back to Voldemort. Once that happens, it might as well all be over. He will just create more Horcruxes and we'll never find them."

"Maybe we can come up with a cover story, one that sounds true and gets us results, but without letting on to what we are really doing, like with Mundungus," Ron said.

"Ronald, that is, once again, brilliant," said Hermione, smiling proudly at him and in turn causing a huge smile to appear on his face.

"Yeah, I thought so," he said. "Although I don't actually have any idea for the cover story…"

"We can say we are trying to find his base," Harry suggested. "We can make up a story about how we think he is hiding somewhere that he used to hang out, and we want to find where, in order to help out the good guys."

"What about finding what things he made into a Horcrux though?" Ron asked.

"If we find the place, we find the object," Harry answered. "But if other people are helping take the load off, we can still be doing our own looking."

They discussed the plan for a while longer and Hermione drafted a letter for Ron to send Ginny asking if Neville had been in touch about the D.A. Once they received her reply they would know what step to take next.

Hedwig was happy to once again have something to do and nipped Harry on his hand to show her annoyance at his inattention. They had taken up changing her colour before sending her out and this sometimes upset her almost as much as not going out at all. Ron, in an unexpected bout of kindness and thoughtfulness, had left Pig at the Burrow to help out old Errol, the decrepit family owl.

"Sorry girl," he said, making the magnificent white feathers a dirty brown. "It's for your own safety."

The number of times Harry had suffered for that same reason was beyond counting, but it didn't make him feel any better telling it to the disgruntled owl.

-

Lupin and Tonks arrived together after lunch the next day to take them to visit his parent's graves.

Once Harry had assured Lupin he was all right, and they had gone over some of the information Scrimgeour had managed to get from the captured Death Eater as well as Umbridge before her demise, he showed them the letter from Hogwarts and asked their opinion.

"Recently Minerva has come under close scrutiny from several different parties," Lupin told them. "She has temporarily rescinded her membership in the Order of the Phoenix until the current situation passes."

They quizzed him, but he said he couldn't say more because it could possibly endanger her. He did confirm their suspicions about the contents of the letter, although he wasn't too sure of the details. Soon enough they decides it was time to leave.

The trip to Godric's Hollow was made by Apparition.

Ron and Harry went side-along with Remus, while Tonks took Hermione. They appeared in front of a forest on the side of a steep, snow capped mountain. Below them, a lush green valley followed the meandering course of a river as it wound its way along, surrounded on all sides by more white topped mountains. It looked like a scene on a postcard.

Harry had noticed the apparition was particularly uncomfortable and long compared to when they played apparition tag, and asked Lupin about it.

"It's the distance," Lupin told him, easily slipping into his 'professor mode'. "The further you go, the longer you are in transit. That's one of the reasons why Portkeys or International Floo is better when travelling overseas. If you loose concentration due to lack of air on the way over, you might only half arrive at your destination."

Harry gulped and shot Ron a look. He looked pale at the news. Nobody had given them that titbit of information before, or if they had, the two had not paid attention, and they had been talking about Apparating to various places around the world!

Lupin led them around the hill towards a small town nestled near the river curling its way along the valley floor.

"That's Godric's Hollow," said Remus, pointing out the small town. "There are quite a few squib and magical families living here – have been for centuries. The Muggles mostly live further down toward the valley floor. Your parent's house is near the edge of the town, further up the slope than the others."

They walked the scenic path, down through the soft, rolling, meadows in silence, partly because they were admiring the scenery, and partly because of the apprehension they all felt at approaching a place of such personal tragedy and historical significance.

Harry's mind raced as he tried to remember the places around him. Had he ran along this path with his parents? Did he ever watch his dad playing Quidditch over that field? Was that tree a place his mother may have sat under on a chequered picnic blanket feeding him in the warm summer's sun? Everything seemed familiar, but that was probably because he was trying so hard to make it so.

Staring into the distance, he tried to pick the way to his old house before Lupin told him, but he kept getting it wrong. Finally they rounded a corner, and he didn't need anybody to point out where his parents had lived, and fallen.

The house was a complete ruin.

Whatever Harry hoped to gain, whatever he had thought to find, what hopes for enlightenment or revelation he was expecting, it was not present in the collapsed wreck of his parent's final home.

Standing on a path running through what had once been a small garden but was now a jungle of weeds, they could see no way to enter the tumbled over, fallen down building. The roof had collapsed, dragging three of walls inwards, crushing the upper floor completely, and sealing off the doorway with debris. There was no way to make out even a general layout; it had all crumbled so badly.

"I don't understand," said Hermione, looking at the pile of rubble "The house couldn't have been in this condition before, otherwise Hagrid would never have found you."

"It wasn't," said Lupin, coming to stand next to Harry.

"Then what happened?" she asked.

"Time," the werewolf answered simply.

Harry stayed silent. There was possibly a wealth of family memories buried just a few feet from where he was standing, a virtual treasure chest of his parent's artefacts, but he could not bring himself to even think of digging through it; it was just too depressing.

Instead, he plucked a few flowers from the badly overgrown garden.

"Let's go," he said sadly.

Ron turned away, refusing to add anything to the pain Harry was suffering by speaking. Hermione opened her mouth as if to say something, but a quick glare from Ron silenced her as effectively as any spell.

Lupin nodded in understanding and led the way to the graveyard with Tonks following alertly behind them.

On the edge of the wood, innumerable headstones marked the resting places of generations of Godric's Hollow's inhabitants, both magical and Muggle. Many were ornate statues or large, elaborate pillars set by grieving relatives for unique individuals long since forgotten, but most were simple marble slabs with the name, birth, and death dates of the entombed carved with elegant simplicity into the face of the stone markers.

Harry's parents' graves were of the latter kind.

"James always said he wanted a simple grave," Remus told them, after stopping some distance from the actual graves. "He said people should show respect while you are still alive and not worship a rock on the ground after it was too late."

Harry walked on, as the others hung back to give him some privacy.

Approaching the graves of his parents alone, Harry didn't know what to feel. In a sense, he did not know the people lying forever beneath the grassed earth at the foot of those stone markers, but at another level, he keenly felt the pang of their loss.

Emotions warred inside of him as he stood there, flowers picked from the sparse remains of the garden at the house cradled in his slightly shaking hands.

Finally he knelt down and placed half of the impromptu bouquet into each of the receptacles on the sides of headstones and then filled the vases with water from his wand. He spent a few minutes just looking at the simple graves, but it meant nothing to him; it was just a place for people he didn't know.

For some unexpected reason, he felt hot tears begin to run down his cheeks.

It hit him then; he was kneeling next to the graves of his parents. They were people who had loved him so much they had given their lives for him without a moment's hesitation, people whom he loved, although he didn't have a single happy memory to explain his attachment.

"Hello, Mum. Hello, Dad," he choked out quietly. "I miss you. I'll always miss you."

It was all he could say - there was nothing else inside of him to give.

With a shaking hand he reached out to gently trace the name of his mother and father, striving to reach them somehow, to feel more than an empty sorrow, but all he felt was the hard stone lettering worn smooth by wind and weather of an uncaring world.

A cold breeze blew, rustling the trees and making Harry shiver. He wiped the tears from his face with his sleeve and noticed just how cold it was – too cold.

Goosebumps run up Harry's arms as another cold seeped into his veins, the cold of fear.

A dozen towering, hooded figures moved out of the nearby trees, gliding above the ground, moving like shadows that had come to life.

Dementors, Harry thought. How could they have gotten so close to him without giving away their presence? It had to be a trap. The trees weren't thick enough to have hidden them from view for so long. Somebody had concealed them at the edge of the wood until Harry had come to his parent's graves, and then released them when he was at his closest.

He grabbed his wand and tried to scream a warning to his friends as he struggled to his feet, but the unnatural fear washing over him, like storm driven waves on a rocky shore, robbed him of his voice.

Leaning on his father's tombstone, he managed to stagger upright, but when he tried to let go he found his hand stuck to the rock as if it had been glued.

"Harry!" screeched Hermione from behind him somewhere. She had evidently seen the danger.

They were further away than him and so were less affected, and Harry had always being much more susceptible to the happiness destroying aura of the vile beasts anyway.

He raised his wand and tried to cast the spell that would drive the horrid creatures away, but the involuntary memory of his dead mother's voice pleading with Voldemort filled his head, stopping him from summoning a happy memory to work the charm with its intensity.

"Expecto patronum!"he gasped desperately, but not even a mist erupted from his shaking wand.

The breeze stirred slightly, bathing him in the putrid smell of the Dementors, and something almost worse. Moving between the shadowy outlines of the Dementors, human figures shambled unsteadily towards him.

Harry knew that stumbling walk, he had seen it before in a dim cavern lit by the nightmare green glow of a potion filled basin; Inferi.

A hand grabbed Harry's shoulder almost making him fall. He swung his wand around to confront his attacker only to recognise Lupin's face.

"Expecto patronum!" the werewolf yelled.

A glowing silver shape erupted from the older man's wand and charged the Dementors, forcing them away a short distance.

Instantly Harry felt the fear that had been paralysing him withdraw, and the ghostly voice of his mother faded to almost nothing.

With his mind clearer, Harry noticed more silver shapes driving his attackers back. The Dementors fled as each of the Patronuses challenged them, but the Inferi continued on, ignoring the phantasms as if they didn't exist.

"Expecto patronum!" he called, adding his own impressive stag Patronus to the attack.

Lupin grabbed Harry's arm and tried dragging him back towards the others. "We have to get out of here," Lupin said urgently.

"My hand, it's stuck!" he said, tugging ineffectually at the rock.

Lupin looked confused for a moment, then tapped the top of Harry's unmoving hand with his wand. When nothing happened he tried again, this time voicing the incantation aloud.

"Finite Incantatem!" he said, again tapping Harry's trapped hand, but to no avail.

Nearby Hermione and Tonks were casting their Patronuses again while Ron rapidly fired various spells at the Inferi, dropping them where they stood.

Harry's stuck hand stubbornly resisted Lupin's attempts to free it. Uncontrollable anger filled the void the fear had left behind in him.

'Flagrate maximale!' he yelled, flicking his wand across the line of approaching Inferi.

Bright flames cut across the animated corpses, burning rotting flesh and the tattered remains of clothing alike. Acrid smoke billowed from the open mouths of the horrors as they silently screamed their torment at the incandescent fire consuming them. The whole line dropped to the forest floor, never to rise again, and even the Dementors seemed momentarily put-off by the intensity of the flames bathing their fallen allies.

"Sorry James," Lupin mumbled, raising his wand again. "Reducto!"

The marble Harry was attached to disappeared in a dulled explosion, jarring his hand badly, but setting it free.

"Let's go" yelled Lupin, grabbing Harry by the arm before he could object.

With a sickening wrench, Harry was pulled into the blackness of Apparition and away from their attackers.