A/N - This is where the story's rating starts to kick in, folks. Warning for one scene of disturbing imagery.
War Is Over: Chapter 6/17 - Aurors
"You may not have noticed, but this class it somewhat different than the ones we're used to," Gawain Robards had said to his new recruits.
Of course they had noticed. They had all known each other: Harry, Ron, Neville, Dean and Seamus, recreating their Gryffindor boys' dormitories after a year's break, but also other members of Dumbledore's Army joined in this class on their way to become Aurors: Padma Patil, Cho Chang, Lee Jordan, Anthony Goldstein, Katie Bell and Lavender Brown. Harry was quite sure Robards didn't mean the awkward fact that both his ex-girlfriend and Ron's were here with them, and so he had not made a comment in that spirit.
"This class is special for two reasons. The first is that after the recent war, the Auror office is in desperate need of new Aurors, therefore we have allowed more people than usual to start the training. The second is that all of you have previous experience in fighting dark wizards - and quite successfully, may I add.
"As a result, you will be given a much shorter training period than the usual one of three years. In addition, your training will be somewhat different - if the need arises, you will be sent to the field to assist more experienced Aurors."
It was a sign of how much things had changed that no one started whispering excitedly at that announcement. A year ago, Harry could see all of the present finding the news fantastic - himself included.
Not now. Not this group. They were all battle scarred, some of them quite literally so - not just Harry and the scars on his forehead, on his hand and around his neck and chest, but Neville, his face still showing some burning marks from the curse that wouldn't hold; Lavender, the side of her face pierced by Greyback's claws; and Padma Patil, the back of her hand showing a scar that wouldn't heal, probably from a Death Eater's curse. And those of them without physical scars still carried the marks of that war: Seamus, much more quiet than Harry had ever remembered him; Dean, who had spent that year on the run just like Harry and Ron; and Katie, Cho, Anthony and Lee, who had fought valiantly with all of them, who had been there together with them until the very end.
Robards was right - this was not any regular group of recruits. These were people who had already known the terrible price of war and of fighting dark wizards.
A year ago, he might have been surprised to find Cho Chang there, or Anthony Goldstein - and definitely Lavender Brown. But not now, he realised. These were no longer the kids who had gone to school with him for six years.
The war had changed all that. The war had changed all of them.
"Potter," Robards turned to Harry.
Here it comes, Harry thought and sighed inwardly, but outwardly he only asked "Yes?"
"How did you get here?"
"I... Apparated?" he half-said, half-asked, confused with the question. That was definitely not what he expected.
"You Apparated," Robards repeated his words. "The paperwork I have here says you don't have a permit to Apparate."
"What?" Harry was taken aback - and then realised. Of course he didn't have a permit. He had gone into hiding at the Dursleys', and then at the Weasleys', before his 17th birthday. By the time he had turned 17, the Ministry had fallen, and there was no way for him to get a permit. And after the war... after the war, he simply didn't think about it. By now, he had taken Apparition for granted. He never once remembered he had no legal permit to do so.
Robards seemed to be aware of it. "I take it you have plenty of experience Apparating?" he asked, and when Harry nodded, he announced, "Very well. Come to my office on Thursday night, we will let you take the test. So the next time you find yourself Apparating, you can do so legally, which is rather important to us, seeing as you're now part of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement."
Harry nodded, and next to him, Ron stifled a laugh.
"So, with that little matter taken care of, let's see what you've got. We are now in an old Muggle school, which the City of Manchester has declared unsafe and is planning to destroy in the near future. We, of course, have already taken care of the safety issues. You have fifteen minutes to make sure no Muggle will find their way here. Move, people, move!"
Harry smiled at Ron as the both of them took out their wands and started casting well-rehearsed Muggle-repelling spells.
Ten hours and more information than their skulls could probably hold later, they found their way into the dormitories, a small room that had been converted from a Muggle classroom into sleeping space, filled with five double-bunk beds and one camp bed by the door.
It was a long distance from the luxurious, comfortable dormitories of Gryffindor Tower, where Ginny and Hermione were probably getting settled right now after a good meal.
Ron looked at the bunk beds, his expression mirroring Harry's disgust.
"I'll take the upper one," Harry sighed.
"Yeah," Ron agreed.
"Look on the bright side - it's warmer than a tent!"
"For now," Ron refused to be cheered up.
They had just put their bags on the beds when Padma and Lavender came into the room and claimed the bunk beds next to theirs.
"Hi Ron, Harry," Lavender said quietly.
"Hi," Harry said awkwardly, and looked from Ron to Lavender. If this reunion had been awkward for him, it was nothing compared to the awkwardness Ron and Lavender both felt. They hadn't spoken to each other - really spoken to each other - since their break up after Ron's 17th birthday. With the exception of that terrible night at Hogwarts four months ago, they hadn't even seen each other for a year - and that night there was no time for anything, especially not for catching up with Lavender, seeing as Ron was sure they would all die and cared more to tell Hermione how he truly felt.
Now Harry looked at Lavender - for the first time, he really looked at her, at the signs of her encounter with Greyback and at her happy expression - and realised Ron shouldn't feel awkward at all. Lavender hadn't come to get her boyfriend back; she was just saying hello to two old friends, who had gone through a lot together, and some of it with her. He hoped Ron could see that, too.
"Hi, Lavender. How have you been?" Ron asked her, slightly reserved, but with a perfectly friendly voice.
"Oh, you know, this and that. Mainly we've been to St Mungo's, trying to see what I can do with that - " she pointed to the scars to her face. "But apparently not much. I was a bit worried a couple of weeks ago, when they sent that letter that we all had to undergo physical examination. I was afraid they wouldn't let me be an Auror if I'm too much of a - well, you know, I'm not really a werewolf, I don't transform or anything - "
" - But some things change, yeah. My brother Bill had the same thing after he met Greyback, too."
"Oh, that's right! I had forgotten all about that," Lavender said. "How is he?"
"He's alright, he's great! He's married now. Still working at Gringotts."
"Oh, that's wonderful!" Lavender was truly delighted.
"It's not the end of the world, Lavender."
"Oh, I know - don't worry, really. It's quite alright, honestly, just requires getting used to some things."
At that point, Harry became distracted with the people who had taken the bunks on the other side of their own - Katie and Cho.
"Hi guys," Katie said as she threw her bag at the bed, and Cho said quietly after her, "Hi, Harry."
"Hi," he said, feeling a lot more awkward than he did only a moment ago.
"Funny to see you here, Harry. I'd have thought the Ministry would have made you an Auror right away," Katie said, oblivious to the tension between Harry and Cho.
"Yeah, well, I guess I don't know everything yet," he smiled.
"Well, I'm glad to have you here. It's bound to make things more interesting."
"I never knew you wanted to become an Auror, though."
Katie thought about this for a moment. "Yeah, I guess I never thought about it seriously when I was in Hogwarts. But then after spending all that time in St Mungo's, because of the curse, and then last year... "
"Yeah, I never considered it either," Anthony Goldstein joined in. "Not until the DA, anyway. And then, with the Carrows last year, I realised all I wanted to do was be one of the people who are responsible to catch people like them."
"I just spent all the time on the run," Dean added, "and all I wanted to do was fight back, but we couldn't. And then they got Ted..." he turned quiet, and Harry knew he was talking about Ted Tonks,. "It was pretty awful. And then they got you, Harry!"
"What?" this was news to the rest of the group. "When did they get you? How did you escape?"
And Harry, helped by Ron, found himself spending the next fifteen minutes telling the story of how they got caught by snatchers, how they were identified, and how they were brought to the Malfoy Manor.
Seamus whistled when Harry finished talking. "So that's why you testified for Malfoy," he said.
"Yeah," Harry really wished to avoid that subject, but it appeared this was not to be the case.
"Well, sorry to say, Harry, but I'm glad he was put in Azkaban. I don't care if he had a change of heart, or if he was too much of a coward to be a proper Death Eater. He was one of them, and that's good enough for me to never want to see his face again," Dean said. "Can you imagine, though, living with You-Know-Who in your house?"
The conversation then turned into safer grounds - as much as the war could be considered safer grounds. But they all had similar stories - those who went into hiding, those who had stayed at Hogwarts, resisting the Carrows, and those who had come back to help. It soon became obvious that Anthony Goldstein and Padma Patil had grown quite close over that year; that Seamus was spending a lot of time with Lavender, much more than he had done before, at least as much as he did with Dean; that Katie Bell and Cho had become quite good friends; and that any insecurity Neville might have possessed before that year seemed to have gone.
Harry was slowly coming to the realisation that, as full as his own year had been, and as hard, and as much as everyone else in the wizarding world had wanted to hear about it, he had missed quite a lot of his friends' stories, as well. So he sat on his bunk and listened, rarely joining in with the conversation, but mostly trying to catch up, to hear all about the people around him, and what happened to them.
He was tired, but still he refused to go to sleep, even after they turned out the light and the conversation became quieter, whispered between the bunks. He wanted to hear all about it - more about Neville's rebellion, about how Seamus had fought the Carrows. More about Cho and Katie's involvement with Potterwatch and with helping those members of the Order of the Phoenix they could find, about how Dean managed to escape the Death Eaters for so long, hiding in the forest.
Dean started telling in length of the forest - how he learned to fish, how they learned to recognise the signs that Death Eaters were getting near, how they learned to disguise themselves. It was bad luck that Ted Tonks was captured and murdered, he said sadly. They had such great luck until that point, but the Death Eaters were closing in on them and they had to Apparate somewhere else. It wasn't snowy then, rather, it was already spring. The ground was wet, but that was good, because no one would hear him as he approached. The wet ground had swallowed his footsteps. He wasn't sure why he wanted to get there undetected, except that he wanted to face Voldemort on his own terms, not on Voldemort's. So he followed the Death Eaters quietly.
"No sign of him, My Lord," said the Death Eater, and Voldemort looked truly disappointed, almost angry. And then Harry revealed himself, and Voldemort looked at him in his cold eyes, holding his hand to Harry's scar, and Harry couldn't move, tied to the tombstone with Tom Riddle's name on it, and his scar exploded with pain and he screamed.
"Harry!" he heard a familiar voice - was it Dumbledore? No, it can't have been, it was Ron, and he opened his eyes.
The light was switched on, and around him stood ten people, some looking at him with concern, other curious. Harry put on his glasses and realised where he was - Auror training. Dean was no longer telling his story. From the way he was blinking - from the way they were all blinking - he had finished telling his story a long time ago.
"You were shouting, mate," Ron said.
Harry took a deep breath. The war was over. They had won. Voldemort was dead.
"Sorry," he mumbled. "Bad dream."
"Yeah."
"Sorry for waking you up, guys," he mumbled again.
"Don't worry," he recognised Seamus's voice, and the rest of them went back to bed.
"You sure you're alright?" Ron asked, concern in his voice. Harry grabbed his towel, drying up on the frame of his bed from that night's shower, and dried his face from the sweat.
"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine. Just a bad dream. Go back to sleep."
"Sure," Ron said, and waved his wand. The room returned to darkness, and Harry, heart pounding, tried to go back to sleep himself. He had classes, first thing in the morning.
Day after day, it was school. Not school as he had known it, not even like Hogwarts, but still: school. Classes, homework, exercises, things to memorise. Harry soon discovered that not going back to Hogwarts for their N.E.W.T.s might not have been the best idea after all - he and Ron, together with Dean, were hopelessly behind on some things the others mastered easily. And so they worked even harder.
The days flew by. On Thursday he had his Apparition test, which he passed with flying colours, but already the next day he had forgotten all about it - they had to look for clues in a forest, and Harry and Ron soon realised they were in the Forest of Dean.
That night, he had nightmares again.
The was no real rest on the weekend, either. Technically, it was their own free time, but they all used it to catch up with their work - it felt like that year when they took their O.W.L.s, spending entire weekends studying. There were no distractions here, no Quidditch, or Ginny, or some mystery to solve with Hermione, but by 5 p.m., all eleven of them had had enough, and they left the premises to get a drink in a near-by Muggle pub, courtesy of Dean who still had some Muggle money with him. They saw Robards there, but he didn't say anything - apparently, there was no problem with them leaving the premises on their time off. Why should there be? Katie complained loudly - they had no time off anyway.
They hadn't seen much of Robards after that first day. The head of the Auror office, of course, had more important things to do than to train each new class of Aurors. He would never have had the chance to do anything else that way, and these days the Ministry needed him more than ever. No, it was Dawlish who became their instructor.
None of them liked the idea - John Dawlish had cooperated with the Pius Thicknesse regime, with Voldemort. But he was brought up before a committee and had managed to prove in a satisfactory manner that he had no sympathies for the Death Eaters. "I had a job to perform," he pointed out, "and a lot to lose if I spoke up against them. I wasn't a member of the Order of the Phoenix, no. And I had my family to think of." And so, he was cleared by the committee. Neither Kingsley nor Robards liked the idea of keeping Dawlish as an Auror, though, and at last, a compromised had been reached. Dawlish will not be an active Auror anymore, but instead had been delegated with the job of instructor, training new Aurors.
Harry knew all of this, because after their very loud protests at the sight of him, Gawain Robards explained the situation. The new recruits accepted the explanation, but didn't like it. They all seemed to look at Harry, see first how he reacted to this, and then, when he shrugged and said "If you must," the rest had accepted it, too.
Dawlish knew that his story was not a secret - just like he knew that, unlike himself, all of the people he was training had picked up a side, and fought for it, risking their own lives. They had a reason to look down at him, he knew, and he seemed as unhappy with the situation as they were. There was some tension between the teacher and his students, but things had been mostly civilised, until Sunday afternoon.
On Sunday afternoon, everything changed.
They were in their dining hall, working on an assignment given to them by Dawlish. Usually, these assignment would be an individual work, but they were all friends - they were doing this together.
"Harry, do you remember this spell?" Cho was just showing her book to Harry, seeking his advice, when Dawlish opened the door with a loud bang and they all jumped.
"Get your stuff. Real emergency. We're leaving in five minutes."
They all looked at each other - stunned that this was happening so quickly - and got up from the chairs. Harry had just enough time to rush to their dormitories, pick up his invisibility cloak, and join the others in the dining hall as Dawlish showed up again.
"There has been an attack by Death Eaters in a small village named St Nevis. We're getting mixed reports, some say they are still there and that they have hostages," he briefed them, and grabbed a book - Cho's spell book - and turned it into a Portkey. "Let's go."
They all grabbed the book, and Dawlish tapped it again with his wand. Harry felt for a second the familiar sensation behind his navel, and off they were.
The Portkey had brought them to a small wood, just outside of the village. It was already getting dark.
"Wands out," Harry whispered, out of habit, and the ten people behind him immediately pulled their wands out. Dawlish seemed slightly irritated with this, but said nothing. This was not the time. Instead, he had led them further into the woods.
It wasn't long before they could see a small cottage ahead. And before it - every Auror still employed with the Ministry. Kingsley was there, as were Robards, Hestia Jones, Dedalus Diggle, and a dozen other Aurors that Harry didn't recognise.
Kingsley approached them, looking worried. "Harry, you and the others spread in a perimeter about 500 metres from the house. Don't get any closer, don't engage anyone - unless they're starting to run away. We've put spells around so they can't Disapparate from the house. Is that clear?"
"Yes," they all answered, and spread around the house.
Harry found a position 500 metres from the house, like Kingsley ordered him, and directly in front of the door. His wand ready, he looked at the battle that had started in front of him. The Death Eaters were the ones who started: spells started shooting outside of the house in every direction. A team of Aurors started retaliating, then, with a burst of flame from someone's wand that must have been a signal, stormed the house. in all directions.
The most frustrating thing was that there was nothing to see, not from this distance. Harry was on his feet, itching to jump in, to help. Through the windows, Harry could see flashes of green and red, but then, these stopped as well. Someone had won, but there was no way to know who.
Hestia Jones was the first to get out of the house, and Harry breathed in relief. It was over, and the Ministry had won. Not thanks to them, of course, they had just watched - but still, it was over.
But something was wrong. Hestia didn't look happy as she left the house, but instead walked straight to Kingsley, talking to him quietly, urgently.
Next to Harry, Ron showed up. "What d'you reckon is going on?" he asked.
"No idea," Harry said, and an idea came to him. He pulled the invisibility cloak, and together with Ron, they sneaked closer to the house.
There was no problem going in through the open door. Most of the Aurors had already left the small house, and no one was watching it - the emergency was over, after all.
And when Harry and Ron walked into the house, they realised why only Aurors came out of the house. Everyone else was dead.
There were three bodies of Death Eaters near the entrance, where they must have met the Aurors. But behind them, in the main room, Harry and Ron could see more bodies. Bodies that didn't look like Death Eaters. Bodies of people who were too young to ever be Death Eaters - a family. The father had tried shielding the rest with his body, slumped over them. From the awkward angle his children were lying, it seemed they had tried to get out after a curse had hit him, and were hit by other curses in turn. A couple of feet from them their mother could be seen, her hands stretched.
Whether the Death Eaters had killed them or the Aurors, there was no way of knowing. In the mayhem that ensued as soon as the Aurors broke into the house, the hostages could have died from any misaimed curse, cast by any of the participants. But that didn't matter now, not to Harry.
He was angry. He wasn't sure with whom, or why. He was angry with the Death Eaters, of course, but they were dead. And what about the Aurors? Was he angry with the Aurors, for failing to save the hostages? He didn't know, not for sure. All he knew was that it shouldn't have looked like that. That with more than a dozen well-trained Aurors, there shouldn't have been so many innocent people killed.
They left the house in a hurry and joined the other Auror-trainees, Harry hiding his cloak in his bag. The others all looked confused, not quite sure what had happened - but then Dawlish gathered them, and took them back to their training facilities.
"What happened?" Seamus demanded.
"The Death Eaters. They killed all the hostages before we had a chance to even go inside," Dawlish said.
Harry lifted his head in surprise, and looked at him. He had seen the house - he couldn't say so, of course, but he had seen it. He had seen the victims, the way they were huddled together, the expressions on their faces. Whichever curse had hit them, whoever was directly responsible to their death, it was not the way Dawlish described - of this, he had no doubt. These people were not executed, Harry was sure of it. They had died of stray curses that were not meant for them.
But when they looked at the Daily Prophet the next day, the newspaper had repeated Dawlish's version, that the hostages were murdered by the Death Eaters before the Aurors could get inside. Still, the paper had dedicated a long article to criticise the Ministry and describe how sluggish the response from the Auror office had been, how the disaster could have been prevented - should have been prevented.
By the end of the week, however, things had changed. It was Friday afternoon that Harry sat with copies of the Daily Prophet, and tried to understand what, exactly, had happened.
On Tuesday, two days after the incident, the Prophet had published that the Smith family, the dead hostages, had all been Slytherins. It was possible, the editorial suggested, that they had not been chosen at random, and that the Death Eaters had been given entrance to their house, rather than the previous assumption that they had broken in.
On Wednesday, the Prophet's main headline was that one of the Death Eaters who had been killed in the incident was a cousin of Jeremiah Smith, and a Ministry official had been quoted as saying that there are more and more signs that the hostages were never hostages at all, but that this was a plan comprised by the Death Eaters and Mr Smith, a trap to kill as many Aurors as possible. "It is a tragedy that there have been so many deaths," the Ministry official had said, "but our Aurors did what they had to do in order to defend their lives. In the end, the responsibility lies solely on the Death Eaters and the Smith family."
On Thursday, the Prophet had published a new proposition by "officials high in the Ministry of Magic", suggesting all known Slytherins to be tracked. "If we would have kept an eye on the Smith family," an unnamed source in the Auror Office told the Prophet, "none of this would have happened. We would have identified their contact with the Death Eaters before their nefarious plan could be executed and - ironically enough - their own lives and their children's lives would have been spared in the process. It is not just in order to catch Death Eaters and criminals that we need to keep an eye on the Slytherins, but to defend our entire society, Slytherins included."
And now it was Friday, and the headline said that the Ministry was creating a preliminary system for tracking down suspicious movement within 'select individuals and those who will be determined to belong to suspect groups.'
"And it's about time, too," Dean said with his mouth full of chips as he looked at the paper over Harry's shoulder. He swallowed, then continued, "They should have done that back in May."
"What? So last year they were making lists of Muggle-born and now you want them - "
"Come off it, Harry. No one's talking about making lists of all Slytherins - as if we don't know who they are," Seamus said. "They're talking about checking which ones of the Slytherins have ties to known Death Eaters, that's all."
"What, like Tonks's mother?" Harry was now standing, facing Seamus and Dean. "That's exactly the kind of thing that makes people give her grief!"
"No one's questioning Tonks's mother!" Seamus was now raising his voice as well. "But maybe the next time people like the Smiths prepare a little surprise for us we won't be so lucky! I'd rather know what I'm going into!"
"They weren't - four days ago everyone said the Death Eaters killed them before the fight even started! Now you're listening to the Prophet and their conspiracy theories?"
"As I remember," Anthony Goldstein interrupted, his voice calm, but also slightly cold, "it was you who told us how you got in there and saw that they were killed in the fight."
"Yes, but - "
"But what? They never thought the Aurors would get so far in, and they paid the price!"
"They wouldn't have kept their children there," Harry said stubbornly.
"How do you know? These are Death Eaters, Harry. You know how they were all happy to sacrifice everyone they knew for Voldemort, including their kids," Dean pointed out. "Who knows how Death Eaters think."
"Forget about it," Ron finally got up, his pudding finished. "Come on, guys. Do we really need to be fighting over this?"
Dean and Harry stared at each other for a little longer, then Dean backed down. "Nah," he said, and grabbed another bowl of pudding. "They're not worth it. They're just Death Eaters."
Harry threw another look at the Daily Prophet, then shrugged and left the table.
He still needed to pack a bag.
"Have fun," he told Dean and Seamus as he was leaving. Dean threw a pastry at him in response, and Harry laughed and left the room. The Auror trainees were assigned to help the Ministry in reorganising some of the mess left after last year, and this weekend it had been Dean and Seamus's turn to suffer. Harry knew himself and Ron were scheduled for the next week, but right now, he didn't care. Right now, they had the weekend off and both he and Ron were planning on spending it at Hogwarts.
This would be the first time Harry would go to Hogwarts since the battle, and as they packed the last of their things, he found himself oddly excited. Not just to see Ginny again, although he had been missing her terribly these past couple of weeks. No, seeing the school rebuilt, visiting Hagrid's hut, even seeing the teachers again, the very idea had cheered him up considerably. The Prophet could wait, Death Eaters and Slytherins didn't matter right now. All that mattered was that within an hour, they would be in Hogwarts.
They had Apparated, not to Hogwarts - which was impossible, anyway - but to the Hog's Head. Harry wanted to say hello to Aberforth, and since they had to Apparate somewhere, Ron didn't object. "We'll bring the girls some butterbeer," he suggested, but Harry was somewhat doubtful - the Hog's Head's butterbeer had more dust than could ever be cleaned, the last time he checked.
"Potter! Weasley!" Aberforth greeted them as they entered the pub.
"Hey, Ab," Ron greeted him enthusiastically, and Harry just smiled at the old man in affection.
"How many butterbeers will it be?" Aberforth asked them, and Ron and Harry looked at each other with surprise. How did he - ?
"Since the two of you are on Auror training, I'm assuming you're not just here to admire the view," Aberforth muttered.
"Just the four," Harry answered, laughing. Of course. Everyone knew what Harry Potter was up to these days.
Or at any other day, for that matter.
Harry gave the old barkeep a Galleon, and they said their goodbyes. Only when they left the Hog's Head he had noticed there were five bottles in the bag, not four.
Ron shrugged when Harry showed him the bag. "Just don't go and complain," he warned his friend. Together, they walked the path leading to Hogwarts.
They could already see the school from the road. The heavy gates, the Astronomy Tower, the shadow of the Dark Forest. And as they got closer, they could see more. All the rubble had long been removed, the school rebuilt. It looked exactly as it did before Voldemort had brought his entire army of Death Eaters there.
They were a bit early, Harry realised as they walked through the empty grounds. Everyone was still in classes. Which was just fine with him - he had had his share of people staring at him in his six years of Hogwarts, but he was sure that however intolerable it felt then, it would be nothing compared to the amount of staring he would get this time. And he wasn't looking forward to it.
"What do you say we go to the common room?" he asked Ron casually. "Surprise Hermione and Ginny."
"Sure," Ron said, and if he realised the real reason behind Harry's wish not to stay out in the open, he said nothing.
But they didn't quite make it to Gryffindor Tower. As they were walking through the Great Hall towards the stairs, they heard a voice calling to them, an all too familiar voice.
"What are you two doing outside of class?" Professor McGonagall saw the backs of two culprits and was quick to stop any possible skiving. "Classes don't end until - oh my goodness!" she stopped mid-sentence as the two of them turned around, grinning widely. "Potter! Weasley!"
She rushed towards them, and - hugged them both. Harry returned the hug, completely confused. That was one thing he never expected of Minerva McGonagall.
It seemed Professor McGonagall had realised she had let herself get somewhat carried away, as she immediately pulled back, sporting her familiar stern expression. "You did not say you were coming," she said.
"It was a bit unexpected, Professor," Ron had managed to recover before Harry. "We didn't know we'd get this weekend off, so we thought we'd drop in to say hello."
"Yes, well, that was very thoughtful of you. I'm sure everyone will be excited to see you. As it is - "
"Professor!" she was interrupted by a voice - a very familiar voice. Hermione was rushing down the stairs. "Professor, there was a small - what are you doing here?" Hermione had noticed Harry and Ron.
"Nice to see you, too," Ron mumbled.
"You didn't say you were coming!"
"We didn't know until - "
" - But why didn't you send an owl or something? Oh, we thought we'd - "
"What's happened, Ms Granger?"
" - I mean, if we'd only known - "
"Ms Granger?" Professor McGonagall's voice was becoming slightly impatient. "What did you wish to see me about?"
"Oh, there was an... accident. In Defence Against the Dark Arts."
"Accident?"
"You're needed in the Infirmary."
"I see. Well, lead the way. Potter, Weasley, please wait in my office? The password is 'kitty'."
But Ron wanted to go with Hermione, of course. Harry was more reluctant to follow - if there was an accident serious enough to require the Headmistress to be called, everyone else would be there, too.
"See you later?" Harry mouthed to Ron and Hermione, and set out to McGonagall's office, to wait there for the rest to show up. He found that he was glad that everyone was still in classes. He wondered what they would say to him. He had no doubt he would have an answer to that question - obviously, he would have to face it sooner or later. But right now, it was still comfortably far away in the unknown future.
For one second, he thought he had been wrong, that there were enough people outside classes, when a voice called to him, "Harry Potter!". But as he turned around, he realised it was only the centaur, Firenze.
"Hullo, Firenze," he greeted the centaur, who still appeared to be Hogwarts professor. "Still teaching, I see?"
"Yes," Firenze nodded. "The war between the wizards might be over, but the centaurs do not forgive or forget."
"I think you'll find plenty of wizards don't forgive and forget, either."
"That is, of course, to be understood," Firenze nodded again.
"That's also written in the stars?" Harry asked whimsically - but Firenze did not understand the joke. His face darkened, and he seemed sad when he nodded.
"Yes, Harry Potter," he answered. "Many things are written in the stars. And now, Mars is under the shadow of Jupiter."
Harry stared at him blankly. "And that's... bad?" he ventured.
"Things in the shadow have a tendency to whither and die," Firenze answered. "Or come out of the shadows."
"O-kay," Harry muttered, not expected anything more intelligible from the Divination teacher. "Anyway, good to see you - gotta go," he muttered again, and left towards McGonagall's office. He didn't feel like hearing prophecies of doom - or any kind of prophecies - at the moment. Or, if he was honest with himself, ever again. He'd had enough of prophecies to last a lifetime.
The Headmistress's office, too, had been rebuilt. The old gargoyles, who Harry had last seen lying on the floor, unable to perform their duty, were once again reinstated, and eyeing him.
"Well, well," said one gargoyle. "Who do we have here."
"Kitty," Harry repeated Professor McGonagall's somewhat uncreative password.
"Well," said the other gargoyle, "you look better from this angle, definitely. And less dirty."
"Kitty," Harry repeated, impatient.
"Although you could use a haircut," the first gargoyle commented. "Don't you think he could use a haircut?"
"Kitty," Harry intoned dully, waiting for the gargoyles to get tired of the game.
"He seemed to have lost his sense of humour," commented the second gargoyle, and moved to let Harry enter.
"And he doesn't even say 'thank you'!" the first shouted after him, but Harry didn't care anymore. He was already at the door to the office.
It looked different. And not just because all of Dumbledore's devices were gone. And not just because, in addition to the large portrait of Dumbledore, the walls also sported another familiar face, a newer portrait. The room had changed - it had become smaller. Less mysterious.
Harry didn't consider that it may have been him who had changed.
The old Headmasters and Headmistresses on the walls feigned sleep. Harry knew better these days than to assume they really were sleeping, but he didn't challenge them. Nor did he challenge Dumbledore - snoozing in his armchair, in his position over the fireplace, his half-moon spectacles over his nose, his long beard coming all the way to his belt.
He felt a slight pinch, looking at the portrait. A lot of things have changed since the last time he had seen the man - alive, and later, dead. But despite everything, everything he had learned, everything he had found out, he still missed him, his dearest teacher.
But his eye didn't stay on Dumbledore for long. It was drawn to the other portrait. Alone of all of Hogwarts' past Headmasters, Severus Snape did not feign sleep, did not snooze in an armchair. His black eyes were open, following Harry around the room.
"Everyone knows what you did now," Harry said, and was surprised at the words that came out of his mouth. He had meant to praise, but it sounded like an accusation. "You're a hero."
Snape's eyes narrowed, but still, he said nothing.
"I never - " Harry didn't quite know what he wanted to say, and so let the sentence roll without completion
"I think," said a kind, familiar voice, "that whatever you have to say, you could say later. Severus isn't going anywhere."
Dumbledore's eyes sparkled behind the half-moon glasses. "It is good to see you, Harry. I assume that for you it's not quite the same, but I can still enjoy the spectacle."
Snape snorted in his frame.
"And as I said, your conversation with Severus, as important as I am sure it is, can wait weeks, months, even years. Until you are ready. I do not believe Severus is interested in having that conversation any more than you do, although I daresay there will come the time you would feel differently.
"As long, of course, as you allow me the small courtesy of being present when that conversation takes place. I have found that not a lot happens to you once you are a portrait. It is only fair, I suppose. As I am not truly alive, I cannot expect to share the excitement of the living. And yet, it does become somewhat dull at times."
But for better or for worse, Harry didn't have a chance to reply. The door had opened, and in came Ron, Hermione, and Ginny.
"Hey, you," Ginny said, giving the portraits only a fraction of a glance, then focusing straight on him.
"Hey, you," he replied, and found her hand.
"Young love," Dumbledore said approvingly from his frame. Snape only snorted again. The comment didn't go unnoticed by his friends, either: Ron rolled his eyes, and Hermione giggled. But Harry didn't mind. Here at Hogwarts, with Ron, Hermione and Ginny, he could almost feel like he was home.