Harry was grateful for the time alone he had with Ron and Hermione on the way up to the seventh floor and was more than happy to just make the journey in silence, which was without any awkwardness that would usually come between friends in a prolonged silence, however, as they knew each other so well, there was nothing of the sort. They all knew there would be plenty of time for talking soon enough.

As they arrived outside the Head's office though, Hermione was the one to break the silence, 'Oh for goodness sake, we've forgotten to ask for the password! We'll just have to wait until McGonagall comes up.' She looked incredibly annoyed at herself for forgetting something so obvious.

'I think,' said Harry, as he stepped forward to face the stone gargoyle that protected against unwanted access to the office, 'That this should do it -' 'Hogwarts!'

At this, the stone gargoyle immediately sprung to one side, with the split in the wall giving way to the familiar spiral staircase that would take them up to the office itself.

'Good guess mate,' said Ron with a grin, as they all stepped onto the magical staircase that was already moving, taking them up to the highly polished oak door at the top, 'Maybe you should've passed Divination after all.'

As they entered Professor McGonagall's office, Harry's first instinct was to glance up at the portrait that sat right behind the desk in the centre of the office, however, he noticed that it was empty and after doing a hopeful sweep of the other Headmasters Portraits, who were all waving happily at them, felt a sudden rush of irritation that Albus Dumbledore wasn't anywhere to be seen, so instead, he decided to sit himself in one of the four seats in front of the desk with Ron and Hermione beside him.

'I wonder why we're here ...,' began Hermione.

'Well, it's quite obvious isn't it?' Ron interrupted, matter of factly, 'McGonagall's clearly going to try and convince us to stay on and finish our NEWT's now that Voldemort's gone.'

'I hardly think, Ron,' Hermione snapped back, 'That Professor McGonagall would drag us up here on today of all days, to discuss our potential future at the school. Anyway, I fully intend to -'

Hermione never did get to tell Ron her intentions though, as at that moment, the door of the office swung open and Professor McGonagall, closely followed by Kingsley Shacklebolt, entered the room. Kingsley stayed a moment or so at the door to allow a third person to enter, then slowly closed the door after Neville Longbottom had entered, looking utterly nonplussed as to why he was there.

'Neville,' Harry said, rising to greet his friend, 'It's great to see you'. Harry certainly hadn't forgotten the huge influence Neville had had on the battle and was so glad to see his once extremely shy and nervous friend finally flourish into a great wizard.

'Yeah, you too, Harry. Ron, Hermione,' he added with a nod and smile at them.

'When you are ready please, Minister,' said Professor McGonagall, 'I don't wish to intrude on our friends day any longer, as I'm sure they would much rather be with their families than stuck in an office with us.' She had taken her seat as she said this, which left Kingsley standing beside her, facing Harry, Ron, Hermione and Neville.

'Of course, Minerva, I completely agree,' Kingsley stated in his instantly soothing, deep voice, 'This will not take long, I merely have a proposition for Harry and his friends.' He smiled at Harry and continued, 'As you will all have heard me say earlier, some of Lord Voldemort's most prolific followers have yet to be detained. We, at the Ministry, can not rest until they are all apprehended, but it's proving extremely difficult to locate them, as resources are so stretched. Also, due to the fact that a huge chunk of the Ministry is currently suspected of supporting the Death Eaters whilst they were in power, there are currently a limited amount of personnel we can fully trust at the moment.' He paused to allow them to process what he had said thus far and then continued, 'Therefore, I would like to offer you all a position within the Auror office, to help bring down those who have managed to flee. I have the utmost confidence that you are all more than capable of this and, more than likely, already have more experience in dealing with the Dark Arts than some of my fully trained Aurors. So, naturally I will overlook the fact that from an examiners point of view, none of you have yet acquired the qualifications to become Aurors - if you wish to accept.'

He smiled at the reaction this produced from them all. Harry was looking at him with real hunger in his eyes, as if determined to go and start straight away, Ron looked excited, but nervous, continually glancing at Hermione to see how she was reacting, but she was merely staring at the floor, biting her lip fervently, as if trying to force an answer from herself. Neville, on the other hand, looked immensely proud and was the first to answer ...

'I'm with you all the way Minister, Gran will be so chuffed, she's always hoped I'd somehow manage to be an Auror!'

'I think after yesterday, Neville,' said Professor McGonogall kindly, 'Your Grandmother would have been proud of you, even if you had decided to devote the rest of your life to raising Flobberworms.' She added with a hint of a smile.

Harry almost laughed out loud at the look on Neville's face as he'd not only, for the first time in his life, been addressed by his first name, a real sign of equality, by McGonagall, but also been paid a compliment at the same time. He had an expression on his face, not too dissimilar to that of Dobby the House Elf, when Harry had bought him a years supply of socks, in return for Dobbies help in the Tri-Wizard Tournament in his fourth year.

Pushing that image out of his mind, he looked Kingsley in the eye, thinking that he still had a lot of unfinished business with the Death Eaters that had caused him and his loved ones so much pain, 'I'm ready too, Kingsley - tell me when you need me and I'll be there.'

'If Harry's in then so am I,' Ron blurted out suddenly, 'It wouldn't feel right not being right there with you, mate. He added as an afterthought to Harry. Harry patted his best friends shoulder - genuinely touched by his loyalty.

'And finally, Hermione?' Shacklebolt asked softly.

'Erm, well, I'm extremely flattered, I really am, but, well, I really did want to come back to Hogwarts and complete my studies while I still can. I haven't really decided what it is that I want to do yet, but I think I may have had enough of fighting the Dark Arts for a whole life time. I'm really sorry.'

Kingsley smiled at Hermione, 'Well, I can't say I'm surprised that the brightest witch of her time would want to complete her studies. When you are ready, I can assure you there will be a job, of your choice, waiting for you at the Ministry.'

Hermione beamed back at Kingsley, 'Thank you! That's really very kind of you.'

'Well, I think this proves how clever you really are Hermione,' laughed Ron, 'You're the only one that realises we've been doing this sort of thing for far too long!' This earned Ron a bright smile from Hermione - she had clearly been worried about what he would think of her choosing to stay on at school.

'Well, I think my work is done here,' boomed Kingsley, making his way round the desk and shaking each of their hands in turn. 'I must leave now, I have many things to attend to, in particular, an extremely irate Norwegian Minister of Magic who, for some reason, has been trying, rather unsuccessfully I may add, to force a meeting with me all morning!' He looked quite amused at this thought, then said finally, 'I will be in touch with you all in the next few days, after the memorial services, to let you know when I propose to start your initiation training. Thank you all once again for taking the time to see me today.' And with that, he was gone, hurrying down the stairs, the door swinging shut behind him.

'Well, I must say, it's quite a shock to be losing three Gryffindors all at once!' Professor McGonagall said, her voice slightly higher than usual, 'but I really can't deny that our new Minister has an excellent eye for talent. Now if you would be so kind, lets head back downstairs so we can finally get you back to your families.'

Everyone was up and ready to go, but just as they were making their way to the door, Harry called out ... 'Er, Professor, do you think I could have a quick word ... in private?'

Professor McGonagall turned round and eyed him quizzically for a moment, as if trying to determine whether he was serious or not, then told the others to wait for them at the stone gargoyle below.

When they were alone, Harry thought about the best way to phrase what he was about to say, then decided it would be best to just come out with it, quick and clean. 'Professor, I -'

She interrupted him almost immediately, 'Harry, as we have already established you are no longer a student here at this school, I would much rather you drop the title, it's Minerva to you now.'

'Oh, right... Er, Minerva...' She had completely thrown him off track with that, and he tried to get his mind back on what he had decided to confide in Minerva McGonagall. 'I've had a pretty strange dream...' was all he managed eventually.

'Define 'strange' for me, Harry.' She patiently asked.

'Well, it was last night, after the battle of course, and I was at a castle. I'm fairly sure it wasn't Hogwarts though,' he added quickly. 'The thing is, it sounded like it did last night, as if there was a full battle going on outside the castle, but I made my way into the castle and along a corridor. It was another one of these dreams that I somehow knew where I was going, knew what I was looking for almost, but it doesn't make any sense because I really didn't recognise the place, so I'm fairly sure I've never been there, but of course, the last time I had a dream like that, it was because Voldemort was inside my mind ... I know this is different, but I still had the feeling that I was someone else in the dream and that I knew exactly why I was there ... Any ideas why?'

McGonagall continued to stare at Harry for several moments after he had stopped speaking, her lips pursed in a thin line, then finally stood up and without a word, pulled her wand out and placed it against her own temple, from which she extracted a thin, silver material, that Harry knew contained a memory.

She then made her way over to the same cupboard Dumbedore used to store his Pensieve and placed the memory inside the Pensieve currently stored there.

'Sorry Harry, I wanted to make sure I got all of that, so nothing slips my mind. I am almost certain you will merely be suffering from the stress of the battle, however, I will examine our chat thoroughly later and let you know if I have anything else to add.' She smiled when she saw him frown, 'I assure you Harry, if I thought you or your loved ones were in any immediate danger I would tell you straight away, however, I somehow get the feeling that you would know before I would - the time for me being able to protect you has passed, I feel, in fact, I would say the roles have been reversed, don't you think? - Now, lets get going, I imagine our friends will have had quite enough of standing around waiting for us by now.'

And with that they both made their way out the door and down the staircase to join the others, with Harry feeling a lot better about getting that off his chest.

What they didn't see, was that as soon as the stone gargoyle had once again sealed the entrance, Albus Dumbledore slipped back into his portrait, looking worried and solemn. He immediately began digging through the mental notes he had made since Harry had been in the office, his brow creased in deep concentration as he tried to make sense of what he'd heard.