Chapter 9

A Happy Ending

Harry woke in a dark room. He was a little stiff, but after a quick check of his vital functions, he concluded that he was alright. A light bobbed down the hall towards him, accompanied by muttering.

"Don't know why they make me come down here-they're dead, aren't they? Don't need checking up on. Place gives me the creeps, anyway."

"Hello?" Harry called out, sitting up. The matron screamed, dropping her lamp and running back the way she came. "Sorry," he said lamely after her, knowing how it must look, a presumed dead person sitting up and saying hello. The matron might never be the same after that.

The matron raised the alarm of a talking dead person, and several officials came down to the room Harry was in shortly after she had disappeared up the stairs. After saying several times that he wasn't and Inferi, or a zombie, or any type of living-dead creature, it was assumed that he'd just been in a very deep coma. Harry let them think that. He didn't want to be stuck in the insane asylum.

"We were about to notify your aunt and uncle," a Healer said, after Harry had been checked out and it had been verified that he was functioning normally. "But now that you're okay, which is miraculous, we won't bother."

"Thanks," Harry said. "Not that they care, either way. Er, why is it miraculous that I'm perfectly fine?"

"Usually a coma as long as yours, and the injuries you sustained, you would think something would be wrong. But there's nothing I can see."

"Oh. Well, that's good, then."

"Very well, Mr. Potter, you're free to go," the Healer said, clearly not paying attention to what Harry was saying. "Since you're seventeen, we don't need to release you to anyone."

Harry walked out onto the crowded Muggle street in front of St. Mungo's and visualized his destination, and with determination, he spun on the spot and Disapparated.

He appeared in front of the Burrow, just like he'd planned. He opened the creaky front gate and walked down the path to the front door. He couldn't have pulled it off more casually than if he'd been holding a box of Girl Scout cookies. He knocked softly on the door.

"Coming!" he heard Mrs. Weasley call.

"Don't worry, Molly, I got it," Harry heard Lupin say.

"No, no, dear, you sit down. I got it." The door was pulled gently open.

Mrs. Weasley gasped. "Harry!" she said, crushing him in a huge hug.

"Hey, Mrs. Weasley," Harry said with the air of someone who just had all the air squeezed out of his lungs.

"We saw you-dead-how..?" Lupin stuttered.

"You wouldn't believe me if I told you," Harry said wryly as he was released from Mrs. Weasley's grip.

"Mrs. Weasley, where's Ginny?"

He saw her beam and clap her hands together. "Out back in the garden, dear, with Ron and Hermione."

Harry headed to the garden door, nodding at Nymphadora and her bright pink hair.

"For the last time, Ron, it's a telephone, not a 'fellytone'," came Hermione's exasperated voice. "And don't hold your nephew like that." A small cry from Bill and Fleur's three month old baby issued from around the corner.

"Well, how am I supposed to hold him, then?"

"Like this. Now, what's my address?"

"415 Wisteria Place."

"What are you guys doing?" came Ginny's voice.

"Ron's coming over to my house next week to meet my parents."

"Good luck with that," Ginny said bitterly.

"Oh, Ginny, I'm sorry-I didn't mean…" Hermione said softly, and went over to her. Ron went back to playing with his nephew.

"Ron, you don't hold it like that," Harry said to exasperatedly. "Haven't you ever held a baby before?" Ron stared at him in shock. Harry looked around, scanning the garden.

"Where's Ginny?" he asked him.

"Uh, up there," he said, pointing. "On her balcony…"

"Hey, Ginny, watch out!" came the voice of one of the twins. Something exploded from their room, knocking one of the shutters down onto Ginny's balcony below. She stepped back to avoid it, and lost her balance, falling over the railing.

"I got her," Harry said in response to Hermione's gasp of horror, and caught Ginny in his arms as she fell. "That would have been a nasty fall," Harry said to her, and set her on her feet. Ginny's eyes widened in shock as she saw Harry, and touched his face gingerly-just to make sure he was real.

"Harry!" she gasped, unable to believe what she was seeing. "How-how are you here?" she asked, trembling. "You were dead…I saw you!"

"I was given a second chance," Harry replied simply, barely finishing his sentence before Ginny kissed him.

"Don't go out into the garden," Fred announced to the kitchen at large.

"Why not?" asked Mrs. Weasley shrewdly. "What did you do?"

"Who said it was us?" George asked. "If things got any mushier out there, I think they'd both melt away."

"What do you mean?" Mrs. Weasley went over to the window and looked out. "Oh," she said in a happy voice. "How sweet."

"That would explain why he asked about Ginny, not Ron and Hermione," Lupin said calmly.

Harry looked over Ginny's shoulder into the shadows behind the Weasley's house. He felt that there was someone watching him there, but couldn't see anyone. He stared harder, and he could barely make out three shimmering figures leaning against the wall.

You just have to know where to look, his mother had said.

Sirius grinned at him, and his father gave him a thumbs up. I'm so proud of you, his mother mouthed at him. We all are.