Author's Note: Written for the HP Potions Competition (Draught of Peace - write about life after Voldemort's death), Greenhouses Competition (Palm - write about life post-war), Hogwarts Classes Category Competition (Divination - write something post-war), Colors Competition (Magenta, positive - write something post-war) As Strong As We Are United Competition (Splash, Flight, Permission, Consistent, Fireplace), and the HeadCanon Boot Camp Challenge (prompt 46, 'home').

Morag MacDougal is a canon character, a Ravenclaw in the same year as Harry. Nothing else is known about her, and in my headcanon, Katrina is her sister - a Squib four years younger than Morag.

Coming Back Home

Morag&Katrina

May, 1998

"Are you sure I should go home?" Morag said again. She was sure that she had already asked Padma this about five times, but she felt the need to ask again. She and Padma were the only Ravenclaw girls from their year left; Su and Mandy had both died at the Battle of Hogwarts two days previously, and Lisa was in hiding somewhere for being a Muggle-born.

Padma sighed. "You don't need my permission, Morag. Besides, you should go - your sister must have heard about what happened; she'll be worried sick about you." She ran a brush through her dark hair. Padma looked older than her eighteen years; her eyes held a certain weariness that they hadn't before. At least before the Battle of Hogwarts, nobody had actually died there at school. Students had been hurt and tortured, and that was terrible, but nobody really feared for their lives.

"All right," Morag said slowly. She had spent the past couple days at Hogwarts, beginning the process of rebuilding the school. The worst of the damage had needed to be repaired instantly, for fear of someone getting hurt by falling through a hole in the floor or wall, and Morag, along with many other students, had assisted with that. It had allowed her to take her mind off of all the deaths that had been caused by the fighting; the work wasn't particularly interesting, but it was much better than going home and moping about in her room, letting herself be swallowed by grief.

If she hadn't had a sister, she wouldn't have even considered going home. Mr. and Mrs. MacDougal were the rational type. Morag knew her parents would make the assumption that no news equaled good news - that is, if nobody had sent them a letter saying that Morag died, then Morag didn't die. Of course, they would also make the assumption that Morag had been smart and stayed out of the Battle, an assumption that was completely and utterly false.

Katrina MacDougal would be worried, though. She would have seen the Daily Prophet's articles about the Battle of Hogwarts, and she would have known that Morag would go back to fight. Although the sisters had never explicitly discussed what would happen if there was a fight, Katrina knew about Morag's participation in Dumbledore's Army that year. Katrina was only thirteen; she would panic. A lot.

"I'll see you around, Padma," Morag said. It was a feeble goodbye, she knew, but she couldn't think of what else to say. She didn't know when she would see Padma again, since Padma's parents were coming to Hogwarts to pick her and Parvati up. Morag knew there was a chance she and Padma wouldn't see each other for a while, but there was nothing she could do about it. The Battle - hell, the war in general - had done a lot worse than that, anyway.

Padma glanced up. "See you, Morag."

Morag left the Ravenclaw girls' dormitory with her trunk, flicking her wand at it so that she did not have to carry it down the stairs. It bobbed along beside her as she made her way to the common room. For a second she glanced at the fireplace - it would be so much quicker to Floo home from there than to walk all the way off Hogwarts grounds and Apparate - but she shook the thought from her head. She didn't even have Floo powder, for one, and the common room fireplaces didn't lend themselves well to Flooing.

The walk through Hogwarts was a quick one. Morag didn't want to linger; even though the bodies had long been removed from the corridors, she could still picture the night of the Battle in terrible clarity. The Hogwarts grounds held less memories, but still she hurried along, wanting to get out now that she was no longer working. She had to walk all the way off the grounds; the Anti-Apparition wards had been the first things to be restored when the cleanup had started, in order to help return the castle's security. It made perfect sense, but it was a pain.

When she had finally stepped off the grounds, she twisted on the spot and Apparated, remembering to grab the handle of her trunk at the last second. As always, there was an unpleasant squeezing sensation, but it didn't last long, and Morag stood in the back of the MacDougal property. The yard was medium-sized, with a small pond Morag and Katrina used to splash in when they were little, and a small copse of trees that had been perfect for hide-and-go-seek. Now, the yard just held memories of a time before Hogwarts, when everything was childish and innocent and simple.

Morag shook her head free of those thoughts and headed to the house. The door was locked, the house's only protection; the MacDougals lived in a relatively quiet Muggle area, and there was no need for magical protection, especially considering the respectability and neutrality of Mr. and Mrs. MacDougal. It only took a simple, nonverbal Alohomora to unlock the door, and then Morag stepped inside, barely managing to close the door and set her trunk down before she was thrown backwards by somebody jumping into her.

"Katrina," Morag said, prying her sister off her, "you're choking me."

Katrina had the decency to look embarrassed. Although they had been close as children, everything changed when Morag went to Hogwarts. Mr. and Mrs. MacDougal discovered soon after that Katrina was a Squib, and the divide between the sisters grew, mainly because of Katrina's jealousy over Morag's attendance at Hogwarts and magical ability. They had become close again, however, during the year the Carrows reigned Hogwarts. Katrina had learned what was going on at the school when Morag returned for Christmas break, and they had reignited their closeness. It still felt strange, though, to actually be friendly with Katrina - they hadn't done anything friendly for years before. "Sorry," she said. "But you should be sorry too! I mean, you didn't write - I thought you died, Morag!" She put her hands on her hips, glaring up at Morag with a fierceness Morag hadn't seen from her in a while.

"I'm sorry. I helped repair Hogwarts and stuff - it was damaged in the Final Battle." So were a lot of people. "And I had some - some things to deal with, too." It hadn't been easy, dealing with the deaths of several of her friends - not just the other Ravenclaws, but the D.A. members who had died as well. "I'm alive, though. And in one piece."

"You weren't hurt?"

"Nothing major." The Battle had given her a few more scars, but that was pretty much it. "I'm one of the lucky ones, I guess." She pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and sat down, Katrina next to her.

"So He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named is gone, then? Really gone?" Katrina twisted her hands together, looking slightly nervous. Morag knew this year hadn't been easy on Katrina, either - Katrina had been worrying about Morag, as well as worrying about herself and her own status as a Squib, which would make her extremely vulnerable in any run-ins with Death Eaters. "He won't come back?"

"Definitely not. He's gone for good." The survivors of the Battle had all gotten an explanation of why Harry had been able to triumph over Voldemort, and the circumstances that had led him away from the school all that time. It was long and drawn-out, complicated enough that the remaining Ravenclaws had discussed it more than once in order to fully understand. It was a long tale of Horcruxes - which Morag hadn't even heard of before that time - and the Deathly Hallows, both branches of magic that were not fully understood by most people. Morag considered telling Katrina a version of the story, and Katrina's next question decided that.

"How do you know? Everyone thought he was gone for good, what, sixteen years ago?"

Morag ran through the story briefly, including only the important points: Voldemort hiding bits of his soul in various objects, which were then destroyed in order to make him mortal once more. By the end of it, Katrina's mouth had formed a perfect O, her expression one of stunned surprise.

"Seriously? He did that? I didn't even know that was possible!"

"Neither did I." Morag shrugged. "Neither did most people - Horcruxes are really Dark stuff. There's nothing on them in the Restricted Section or anything like that; no student could have known."

"So what about his followers, then?" Katrina asked. "Are they all going to Azkaban?"

"The ones who aren't dead, yeah." Morag's thoughts returned to the night of the Battle, the way Death Eaters had fallen under her wand; she had gone after the one who had killed Su, especially. That wasn't her proudest moment, she would admit. "They'll get trials, but it's pretty obvious they'll all get life sentences in prison."

"And those people who were running Hogwarts and torturing all the students? Snape and the - what were their names?"

"Alecto and Amycus Carrow." Morag could hear the undercurrent of viciousness in her words, a habit developed over the past several months at Hogwarts. "They'll both be going to Azkaban. Their trials will be huge." Michael had found out from his mother - a relatively high-ranking Ministry employee - that the Ministry wanted statements from all of the Hogwarts students that year. The underage ones would have to get permission from their parents, which meant many of them wouldn't end up at the trial, but there would still be an overwhelming number of Hogwarts students testifying, as well as the teachers.

"And Snape?"

"Dead." Morag took a deep breath. "He was actually on our side - Dumbledore's spy through and through. Nobody knew that until the end, though." She still couldn't sort out her feelings about that. On one hand, she was grateful to him - he had, obviously, played a major role in the war, and in the Dark's downfall, by relaying secret Death Eater information to Dumbledore himself. On the other hand, he had sat by and allowed the Carrows to take over Hogwarts and torture students. Morag had hated him since his murder of Dumbledore, and it was difficult to erase nearly a year of hatred.

"But he killed Dumbledore!" Katrina's forehead wrinkled in confusion. "Why would he -"

"It's a really, really long story," Morag said tiredly. "Let's just say Dumbledore was going to die anyway, and he wanted Snape to kill him."

"Whoa," Katrina said. "There was a lot of stuff going on that nobody knew about, huh?"

"Definitely. And all of us at Hogwarts had no idea what Harry Potter was doing, gone for so many months. A lot of people doubted whether he would come back or not." She recalled the bet Michael and Su had made in November - or was it December? Michael had said that there was no way Harry would return and do something at the end of the school year, like he had for the past six years; Su had said otherwise. She blinked back tears at the thought of Su - that was still way too painful. She didn't know if it would ever get easier to think about her lost friends. "But then he did. And we won."

"I'm so glad you're safe," Katrina said after a beat. "I would have been so...I would have..." She shook her head, unable to put into words what she was trying to say, but Morag understood the gist of it, and she stood up, pulling Katrina into a gentle embrace.

For a moment they just stood there. Morag couldn't help but look around, taking in the familiar sight of the MacDougal home. She had been reluctant to leave at first, but she was sure now that coming back home had been the right thing to do.