Harry Potter and the Mischief Palace

by Mariann's

Harry is sent back - waaay back! Read what he gets to see! Pairings: HP/HG, RL/SB (slash!) and others. This is some silly fun - Completely AU right from the start and will stay AU!

11. 10 - Free at last!

I'm sorry for the long wait - I had to solve some problems with the story, which seemed to go into a different direction than I wanted. But now I've boxed it back onto the right path!

The end of Voldemort is nigh! Let me know if you like how I dealt with it :-)

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Chapter 10 – Free at Last!

It took them only an hour to get their things ready and leave. They took Muggle taxis to the station and rode the night train to Hogsmeade. As only the Hogwarts Express went from London to Hogsmeade non-stop it was a much slower affair, because the regular night-train stopped about twenty times in settlements containing wizarding population on the way to Scotland. But the children were asleep, so Remus and Sirius enjoyed some snogging time and a game of chess or two. Once the conductor had stopped by their compartment they had warded it off. They reached Hogsmeade very early in the morning and were expected by a carriage from Hogwarts. Dumbledore had sent it after he had been informed about their return. He waited for them in the Entrance Hall.

"Welcome back, my friends. I hope you had a peaceful journey?"

"Hello Albus! Yes, we had, thank you. The train was a lot more comfortable than the Knight bus, even though it's less safe. But we've warded off the compartment and were undisturbed."

"Good, good."

They went straight to their chambers, where they ate breakfast and told Dumbledore about their three weeks at Grimmauld Place.

"I'm so happy to be back in these bright rooms! You have to fight for every bit of daylight in that house! And it could be quite lovely there if only they'd open those curtains, shutters and windows," Remus said.

"I can imagine. How did your mother react to the children, Sirius?"

"For a moment I thought they would get through to her, but once Father was dead she returned to her coldness. She was quite docile when I set up the new rules though, but I don't think she'll stick to them. I don't really care what she does. She is on an allowance now and that is set fine for her alone, but she won't be able to spend freely on Voldemort's cause anymore. If she still does it then she'll just cut into her own flesh. She lost her access to the family vault."

He told Dumbledore about the four thousand Galleons he had been able to hold up from being sent to Voldemort.

"And he must have been furious, because he sent Lucius to inquire with my mother what happened to the money probably as soon as it didn't come in as expected. Bad luck for Lucius that I intercepted him before he could meet with her. I sent him right back to his Master. She was furious about that, too, but I told her what the new tariffs are. Father has bought his way out of the Death Eaters. He knew he could disown, but not disinherit me. That's why he forced Regulus to join. I had taken flight, but Regulus tried to follow the orders and paid with his life for his obedience. I'm still not over that, Albus! I just wish I could have helped Regulus more. He saw the light and did the right things. I don't know if I could be this consequent."

"In a way you already were, Sirius. You left your family early, which could not have been easy either. You will have to make do with the fact that your brother chose what was right over what was maybe too easy for others, but not for him. He was a good young man. It was too late, Sirius. Someone must have given him away."

"I accused father..."

"How did he respond?"

"Not kindly of course, but he didn't really deny it, so I suppose he actually was the one. This way he would have been free to only 'donate' his money every year and not have to join himself. He knew that he wouldn't be able to put Regulus in my place, so maybe he didn't care what happened to his son and only reacted with the breakdown once I held him responsible. I found out that the sum he paid Voldemort rose from roughly two thousand Galleons per year ten years ago to about eight thousand in the past five years in twice yearly instalments."

Dumbledore whistled.

"That is an awful lot of money. Could there have been blackmail in the game?"

"If, then it was something entirely between my father and Voldemort, because I haven't been threatened accordingly. In fact I have been amazed that we haven't been threatened at all. We've been there for three weeks and my mother didn't even hiss a threat of any kind. Quite amazed me, to be frank. Still, when we had to go to Gringotts together yesterday, Remus warded off the library and one of the younger house-elves looked after the children inside. There is one very nice one who was ordered not to open the door and not to let anyone in under any circumstances and she didn't. She also looked well after the children. Then I've given mother the rules for when I should turn up in the house. That I don't want to see any of the Death Eaters around at all. I leave her free hand with the house except for the library and the study, which I declared off limits and we've warded them off, so no one can get in. So far the Death Eaters haven't found any counter-spells to Remus' wards yet. But we need to clear that library soon."

"I shall have it organised, thank you for this inventory. Andromeda will be part of the group. She knows where the house is and she has the Black blood needed to touch and reduce the marked books. She will pack them off in special crates. Then we take everything here and enclose it in the secret library. The one you are going to tackle next, Sirius."

Sirius shook his head.

"The secret library? I've never heard about that one before..."

Dumbledore smiled.

"That would be because it is secret, Sirius. Usually only the staff knows about its existence. Leaving staff are obliviated from the knowledge. And we are all sworn to secrecy, but I am afraid that none of us has really had time to go through it more in-depth. Therefore it will become your job. At least until you find your new house. I would like you to establish a proper catalogue. Irma will be helping you with that if you could relieve her during parts of the day at the regular library, Remus."

"Sounds very interesting. I'm quickly becoming a very learnt man! I have read so much in the past years it's a miracle I can still do something with my wand..."

Remus snorted.

"When have you used your wand lately? Your mother HAS noticed that you're doing your magic wandless most of the time, Sirius, and I'm sure Lucius and Narcissa have noticed it as well."

"Well," Sirius stressed the word, "then Voldemort only knows there's one more thing he has to fear about me."

"True... yes, Albus, I'll gladly replace Madam Pince so she can join Siri."

"Thank you. To keep the secret library secret I will put a Fidelius on the thing with me as the Secret Keeper - then you can work with it easily. You won't be able to speak of it to anyone. And soon it will be time to set a trap for our esteemed enemy. What do you think about that?" Dumbledore asked out of the blue.

"YES! Finally! I thought it would never come to be! Do you have an idea, Albus?" Sirius asked eagerly.

"James. And to me it sounds like a good one. Ask him about it tonight."

"We certainly will."

They spent the day resting, napping when the children slept and by the evening they felt quite rested and removed from everything. They had Lily, Harry and James over to share their meal. Little Harry was now an adorable combination of James' lousy eyesight, his unruly black hair and his mother's lovely nose and beautiful emerald green eyes.

"I still wonder why he has to have all of my negatives and all of Lily's positives! At least he has a very even temper. Not so much as Alya, but... quite nice," James said.

"I'm right here, Dad!" Harry protested.

"I'm sorry about that, but the eye deficiency is running in the family, Harry, even with intermarrying with Muggle-borns it has never been eliminated. We always wondered..."

"'s okay, Dad, now that I know Grandpa has it as well it's not so bad."

They all laughed. Harry had worked hard on his speech and in the past two months he had finally managed to force his tongue around the toothless gums. His teeth developed late and he had only the four incisors out yet. And they had already been quite painful little blighters to come out. Because Harry lived through his teething consciously, Lily allowed him pain relieving potions, for which he was very thankful. With his tiny size a few drops of the potions already helped soothing the pain nicely. But he managed to speak and articulate quite well in spite of the lack of teeth.

The others smiled. Remus told them how Alya had won over little Draco Malfoy. Once they had run out of stories about their stay at Grimmauld Place Sirius asked James about his idea for a trap for Voldemort.

"Oh, yes! I almost forgot. Dumbledore seems to like the idea. It's just an outline and will have to be fleshed out considerably, but I thought that once we have the new house and before we really move in we could let it go through to Voldemort that we're moving out of Hogwarts and into our house together. He will probably try to come and kill us there. So we 'protect' ourselves with the Fidelius charm. Flitwick brought the talk to this the other day. We thought it would be brilliant. We don't need to really perform the charm, but Voldemort will think we have. The Secret Keeper would then be Snape, who has gained our complete trust! And Snape will of course tell Voldemort as soon as we've set up the trap. But we will expect him, the children will be safely at Hogwarts, and as soon as Voldie destroys the door he'll meet Dumbledore, Lily and my humble self. You will be invisible and get in his back as soon as he steps through the door. And the two of you can deck him with everything you've got. We'll take care of the Death Eaters with the Order. Of course we'll have some of them stationed outside, as invisible as you will be. We're pretty good with the Disillusionment charms. That idea can certainly still be worked over, but I thought it would have merit."

"Sounds feasible. I'll be in," Remus said. "To the Marauders of working out a plan that doesn't go wrong! We're really good at that in any case…"

"Me too. That will be sweet!" Sirius said.

"Absolutely!" James said. "And what's best, I have found our house!"

"You have? Really?" Remus asked.

"Yep. It's in Yorkshire. Somewhere not too far away from Scarborough close to North Yorkshire, but still in the coastal region. Just a bit up the hills. Anyway, this is ideal. It's an old castle, not too big, but more rooms than we'll ever need, even if Remus produces another two dozen children to avoid transformations... it's an old wizarding family's castle home. If all eight of us move in there we could still have a crateful of children and wouldn't lack space. There's an awful lot of land coming with the property, too. At least a hundred or so acres of pasture and woodland."

Remus swatted his friend. James, Sirius and Peter were the only ones who were allowed to joke about his condition, but that didn't stop him from playfully hitting them when they did. James just grinned sheepishly and showed them some pictures.

"That looks lovely. Why is it on sale?" Remus asked, baffled.

The pictures showed a classical castle with four big round towers in the corners, connected by walls and on about three levels the outer walls formed the main body of the houses inside of the castle. On two sides there were a number of floors above the walls and the towers looked quite a bit higher than the rest of the buildings.

"Owners want to leave the country. He's afraid of the Death Eaters. I talked to him, he said he has some relatives in the States and wants to move there. No family left here, only his wife and a granddaughter, as the Death Eaters have killed a good many of them. They were purebloods who intermarried with half-bloods and Muggle-borns in the last two generations. Very old family though."

"Oh dear! I've not got a good feeling moving there then..." Remus said.

"I didn't either, but as I said, I got to speak with the guy. All he has left is his wife and a grandchild. He said if we wanted the house he'd gladly sell it to people who were still ready to fight. Even if we would win he wouldn't come back anymore. He'd rather give the house to us than to any Death Eaters."

"Then let's go and see it together. It'd be a beautiful area," Sirius said.

"I think so, too."

They were all delighted. James and Lily had talked to Dari, Hope, Peter and Sabina and they were all interested to move in together. James had understated the size a bit, Remus thought. When they got there by Floo they found themselves in the entrance hall of an old fortress castle. It was decorated in old oak from the rafters on the ceiling high up above to the furniture around the two huge fireplaces in this hall. The fireplaces were situated in the middle of the side walls of a vast room. On one end there was a big oak double door, which marked the main entrance. Near the main entrance on both side walls were double doors leading to the rooms beyond. Two big staircases led up to the next floor of the castle ending in a balcony. Underneath the staircases was an ornate exit to the inner courtyard. The staircases met in the balcony on the first floor and they could see that this balcony came along the outer walls of the entrance hall forming a gallery from which another set of the same kind of staircases was visible from the hall, and another balcony. The centre was open from bottom to top.

The owner of the castle greeted them. He looked a bit glum, but pleased that eight young people were interested in keeping this wonderful house in order.

"Hello, my young friends, and welcome to Green Mountain Castle. I do suppose you would like to take a walk through it?"

"Good morning, Sir Joseph. May I introduce you to everyone?" James asked.

"Yes, please do!"

"Okay, everyone, this is Sir Joseph Green. He has worked for the Ministry for the last sixty plus years but wishes to leave the country for good now to join his only remaining son in the States."

James presented everyone and then Sir Joseph gave them a big smile and said:

"I'm very pleased to meet you all. I have read about your exploits against You-Know-Who, Mr Black and Mr Lupin; I'm very proud to meet you in person!"

"Thank you, Sir Joseph. We didn't have the best feelings when James told us you would leave this behind because the Death Eaters have decimated your family. But then he said you would rather not that your estate falls into the hands of covered up Death Eaters."

"Absolutely not! No matter, how much money they offer. There are several square miles of land coming with this estate and you will get it at a good price! If I know that some people live here who fight this evil, then I know it in good hands and I will remember it fondly but without regrets! So, let us start our walk as soon as Giri has taken your cloaks..."

A house-elf had come in and collected everything the visitors preferred to leave in the hall, then they followed Sir Joseph on the walk through his beautiful house. The girls were very excited, because it was decorated beautifully. They first went into two longish rooms to the left and right of the door to the inner courtyard.

"These here are ante-rooms used for everything you wear outside. That's for this side, the other side, as you've just seen, is the wardrobe to keep cloaks from guests. Both are also good storage rooms for all sorts of knick-knacks. The entrance hall here is one of the places we used to have small parties. Let's go through there first. We will come all around the whole castle and then return here."

The corridor led them to the first drawing room. It was quite a big one, covered with thick carpets, because of the cold floors.

"There are a number of drawing and sitting rooms down on this floor. This here is usually our family room. In the last few years we haven't used it so frequently anymore as there were only my wife and one of my grandchildren left. We preferred one of the smaller rooms. Easier to keep warm. Do you have children?"

"Yes, the two of us have four, James and Lily have one so far and there is one on the way here," Sirius explained and pointed at Sabina.

"That's lovely. The children will adore this house. They will have much to explore!"

"This is furnished beautifully, Sir Joseph. I really like this Oriental ambience," Hope said.

"That was my great-grandfather when he was freshly married. The year was 1815 and everyone ran down to Brighton to admire the Pavilion. So my great-grandfather decided what the Prince Regent could do down there he could do up here, at least on the inside. No one bothered to change it much. Some of it does add to the warmth... this next room is a music room."

The music room held a grand piano, a few lovely cabinets with glass windows and a couple of upholstered chairs. They walked through the dining room and then around the corner through the vast kitchens, which followed in three separate chambers. There were staircases leading to the storage cellars. After the kitchens they crossed the house-elf quarters in the back of the castle, which looked friendly and were split into several nice looking rooms.

"We have fifteen house-elves here. Those who are closest to the family will of course come with us, but if you would like to take the rest of them we would be very relieved, because they are good people who deserve good treatment."

"Which we can guarantee!" Sabina said determinedly.

"Absolutely," the other young women agreed.

"Very good. Thank you, ladies, that relieves my fear for their destiny."

They crossed a corridor which was laid with ages old flagstones and led to another door to the outside.

"This is where we have our small stables and keep our carriages. That's the opposite side of the entrance hall across the large inner courtyard. This door leads to a small outside courtyard, and there is another door to the outside that works similar to the passage to Platform 9 3/4 at King's Cross station, you simply have to walk through the wall. But of course we don't want anyone to do that, so it's somewhat more sophisticated and password protected. The password does not open a door though; it just makes the wall penetrable. We reset it frequently. Across the little passage are the stables. Currently I only have two horses in there. And they are getting very old. There would be enough space for ten of them though. Here are the food stores for the animals and this door leads to the second round of house-elf quarters. And now we're back in the main part of the castle.

"Now these here are the state rooms. There is the state dining room, the small corner room, the ballroom and another very large drawing room at the end. We have rarely used them, but our house-elves have kept them in excellent nick. Would you prefer a little break and something light to eat or should we go straight to the upper floors? There are two floors more that go all around and then there are all the rooms in the towers and two houses above the two floors. Or I could first take you to the inner courtyard."

"Courtyard!" the ladies decided and followed Sir Joseph through the doors into the impressive courtyard. Most of it was covered with a lawn, but there were a few fountains and statues and some flowerbeds. It was big. A part had a covered passage, almost like a cloister. There were two or three doors to the state rooms. And all of the rooms had windows out to the courtyard.

"There's much you can do with this garden. None of us had much of an interest in it, so it's a bit neglected," Sir Joseph said.

"That's great. I love to garden. I was always good at Herbology," Sabina remarked.

"Wonderful!"

"I think it would be fun - this isn't too big, but cries out for a good garden design. Probably merits a visit to any of the next flower shows of the Horticultural Society mixed with some magical bits..." Lily added.

"Outside there is a very large garden. The house-elves maintain a small part for food – for your larger company it would still work well to produce most of your vegetables, fruit and herbs for the kitchen."

"Great! Autarky on the food side of things," James grinned.

It was a long day. They made the rounds through the cellars and found good rooms to brew potions. The whole castle was shown to them and they were interested in the stories the Greens told them about the different areas.

"Oh, this is a good room for me to transform," Remus whispered when they passed one cellar room that had really solid doors and was empty.

"Yes, that's true. We could make it comfortable enough. And it's not too small either," Sirius confirmed.

There were huge storage rooms in the two or three floors underneath the castle. After the cellars they made a stop in the dining room, where Lady Green had a nice lunch served for all of them. Sir Joseph did the introductions and during the meal they got to talk together.

"You know, this castle is so big... you don't need to go away. I can very well see how much you love your home, Sir Joseph, why the heck don't we buy it, move in, and you stay here with us? We DO plan a trap for Voldemort soon, and we guarantee that it will turn out well enough this time. We'll have the element of surprise even more than last time, when he tried to take Hogwarts. In vain as you know," Lily said.

The Greens looked at each other and started to smile.

"You are really wonderful young people! With so many to defend this place it could be safe enough. Though we have lost so much in the meantime that it didn't seem like we would leave much behind, you know. But I think we could discuss that with our granddaughter. We'll go with whatever she wants to do."

"Where is she?" asked Remus.

"Still at Hogwarts. She's in her seventh year. We want to leave after she leaves school. She's lost her parents and her younger brother. Her father was my older son. She was only spared because she had been at Hogwarts. She will be free to go where she likes anyway," Lady Green said.

"It's just - not only have I felt that you really love your home, I also thought we get along so nicely, and found common grounds so quickly! I'm sure we would all love to have more generations in the house. I mean, we already decided to live together as four families. None of us are related in any way. We were all friends from Hogwarts. All Gryffindors, except for Sabina, who's a Hufflepuff and Hope, who's a Ravenclaw."

"Are you? I've been a Ravenclaw, too, miss! How is good old Filius?" Sir Joseph asked.

Hope smiled and said:

"You have to ask Remus, Sirius, James and Lily, as they are still practically living at Hogwarts. They do lots of research there. I think, he's still doing very well."

"Yes, and he's still everyone's favourite teacher, too," Sirius confirmed.

"What house have you been, Milady?" asked Sabina.

Lady Green smiled.

"Oh please, do call me Gladys! I was a Gryffindor, too. My granddaughter is a Hufflepuff and loves it."

"Christabel Green! Is that her?" Remus asked.

"Yes, that's her."

"I know her. She's quite a spirited young lady. I'm giving some Defence against the Dark Arts lessons sometimes, so I know most of the students."

"Oh, do you? That's lovely."

After lively conversations and a lengthy break they all went up to the upper floors. There was a lot to discover here. There were many smaller rooms, bedrooms, bathrooms and a large library room. The rooms were built in a large rectangle around the courtyard. They climbed the stairs, turned left and followed the balcony on the first floor to the outer side of the castle. From there they entered a long corridor to the right which took them to the tower in the corner. There were many doors leading to the bedrooms along the corridor.

"My granddaughter and the two of us have our rooms here on this floor. There are seven rooms, connected inside through doors to the bathrooms or wardrobes. You could easily spread one family on one half of each of the two floors and have more rooms than you'll need for a long time!"

They were allowed to look inside some of the rooms. Many were wainscoted with oak and other woods, most had lovely oak floorboards.

Finally they reached the tower in the corner, which was part of the kitchen below, but up here a spiral staircase started to lead to the upper floors. They crossed the towers and got a walk all around the castle again. The corridor had rather small windows, but it was bright and decorated with fabrics and paintings, armours and there were many cabinets, bookcases, sideboards, sofas and chairs. A carpet was marking the middle of the corridor throughout its length. When they reached the side of the castle they saw another staircase. They went up and came to several more bedrooms.

"This is just on the sides of the castle. There are three more floors up here. All bedrooms. This part is a wood structure, very old and therefore magically fire protected. I will teach you the charms to maintain this part. It's very old, as I said, so to care for it will be worth the while."

"It looks great! Superb view out here!" Lily exclaimed.

"But a load of stairs up," James moaned, fearing that his wife might choose this part to set up their rooms.

Everyone laughed. They went back down the stairs and moved on through the corridor and looked into the rooms behind the doors. There was a large library, directly connected with two spiral staircases to the next floor, where the library continued. Again everything was done in oak, but in these rooms the oak had been painted white.

"The library is a bit of an oddity from the late seventeenth, early eighteenth century. My ancestors thought it would be nice to give it the typical baroque feel, so they had everything painted white and gilded and all those cabinets set up for the books. The furniture is period, too. I really like the rooms."

"I will love them," Remus mumbled.

Again all of them laughed and Sirius kissed his mate.

"Remus loves books. Period," he explained to Sir Joseph.

"That's nice! I thought this was a disease more common in us Ravenclaws..."

"Some Gryffindors have it, too, I assure you. But my Mum was a Ravenclaw, too. And I was probably mainly sorted into Gryffindor because I wanted to go there. Ordered by my oldest siblings to try and find friends of the human, not only literary kind."

"Splendid! You will discover a few nice things in here then!"

"Yet another library to go through," Sirius moaned.

When Sir Joseph looked puzzled again, Remus explained.

"Sirius had to go through the Hogwarts library more intensively than anyone ever had to before in the last more than two years. He's getting tired of reading by now."

"Even I would probably do that," Sir Joseph admitted, "Though I've read most of what's in here. We'll only take with us what's most valuable to us and what we can accommodate, so we're leaving behind a good number of books."

When they reached the next tower on their tour around the second floor, Sir Joseph explained:

"All four towers are seven floors up. The top floor of this one contains the owlery. We have a special bell set up to call an owl down if we need one. So you won't have to march up here every time you want to send a letter, James."

That caused another round of giggles. Then Hope remarked:

"Hell, I won't even know which room to choose, there are so many!"

"That shouldn't be much of a problem. As you have seen these rooms are all in good order, but they will have to be furnished still. In the old days the guests brought their furniture with them when they visited. It's also easier for the house-elves to clean the whole house if not too many of the unused rooms are furnished."

When they left after a nice dinner they were all tired, but very happy and satisfied. They flooed back to the Three Broomsticks, because they all still wanted to talk about it and discuss the options. They had told Sir Joseph that they couldn't say anything about their plans before they would be started and that the Greens might want to be on a lengthy visit to their American relatives at that time.

Finally assembled in Sirius' and Remus' sitting room they all stayed quiet for a moment. The price for this house would be quite a lot. Peter and Sabina were very worried, but then Sirius said:

"I've only just found out what I've inherited, people. Old family in this case really does mean old money. I'm talking about something like two million Galleons! The castle would cost eighty-thousand, Sir Joseph said. With that we'd buy it including everything inside the four walls minus what the Greens want to take with them to the States, and the land. I can go to Gringotts and have that sum transferred tomorrow and be done with it. And I wouldn't even feel a dent in my possessions, even if I added another ten thousand, just because the Greens are so nice, which I'll probably even do. We're then still getting it far under value! Mother would probably go frantic, but I couldn't care less. I want that place, people. My lover and I would be happy there and I'm sure the children will be thrilled. We'd all be happy there."

Everyone except Remus stared at Sirius with open mouths. James knew he was well off from both sides of his family, but that sounded more than impressive.

"Wow."

"That's what I thought. And I thought I was well off with what Uncle Alphard left me. Anyway, it will be a good idea to spend some of that money. I buy the castle and you just care for the furniture you will need for your rooms. And some of you might throw in another house-elf or two, so the ones who are already there won't have much more to do with all the extra people in the house."

"There's also the need for quite a bit of renovation," Hope said.

"Yes, definitely - the bathrooms looked ripe for modernisation."

Sirius did buy the castle. He had the sum transferred to the Greens' Gringotts vault and they started to move into the house almost immediately. Remus of course had something to do to get it warded before they decorated and furnished their own rooms. Christabel Green had decided that she would rather move to her American relatives, so Sir Joseph and Lady Gladys would also leave the castle once Christabel came back from Hogwarts. They packed up all their personal favourites and of course the family portraits, but they left about 90% of what already was in the house behind, there was just so much stuff. They expected to live much smaller in the States and only packed the furniture they needed for a house with a small number of smaller rooms. Most of the furniture at Green Mountain Castle was antique and not suited for modern houses anyway.

The deed was in Sirius' name. He added it to all the other Black properties, of which he planned to sell a few. The house-elves were pleased to receive nice new owners. They were happy to stay with the Marauders. The group of ten would soon receive a good number of colleagues who would be added to the house. One of them was Tippy, the little house-elf from Grimmauld Place who had looked after the children so well. An elfling from one of the castle house-elves was to be trained under her guide to become a nanny as well. Almost all house-elves loved children so they all looked forward to have a house full of children joining the family.

Harry loved it. The moment he had been brought into the house for the first time he'd been in love with it and he could feel that this place would give him the happy childhood he never had. He was sat on his dad's arm as James entered the castle and after throwing a glance around the huge entrance hall he said:

"Well done, Dad! This looks great!"

"And even though this is such a big room it still feels cosy, doesn't it?"

"It does. Can't wait to see the rest of it."

"I'll be tired carrying you around after a quarter of this place, believe me, Harry."

"Well, I can apparate if need be, you know?" said Harry teasingly.

"You ain't gonna apparate anywhere yet, sonny boy!" James declared.

Harry grinned. He loved the relationship he was building with his father. They could banter like James and Sirius did all the time, never getting bored. That Harry was physically a baby still never even came to the mind of either of them; they enjoyed their teasing and having fun. Lily enjoyed it, too. She was amazed how easy it had been for James to build that relationship with his son. She had conversed with the little one every day during her pregnancy and had filed it away as an exceptionally strange pregnancy, but neither she nor James minded. They knew that it would be more difficult with a second child, but they had the example living closely with them and weren't afraid. In the meantime they both had their special baby, James on the more loose side and Lily on the more serious side, but both parents were exceedingly tender and loving with their boy. Harry had allowed them to see his memories of his first childhood, and seeing how their baby had to suffer was a sobering experience for both young parents who pledged to do their utmost that they would have a happy boy. They would have it extra-ordinarily easy as he needed no parenting; he already brought the proper manners along and as he was a good-natured and helpful character there wouldn't be much he needed to learn in terms of behaviour.

While Remus was busy with the wards all through May there were magical builders working on the renovation of all the bathrooms in the house and adding a couple more, changing the room layouts here and there to the individual families' specifics. Then, just a month before the baby was due, Peter and Sabina moved into their rooms first. Lily and James followed suit with Harry, then Hope and Dari came together with the Black-Lupin family. They all bid farewell to the Greens, who promised to come and see them if they could ever get rid of Voldemort.

"You'll get an owl from us when that happened and hopefully it's sooner rather than later! We hope it will be still this year," Sirius promised, already at the door.

The Greens waved once more, grabbed their Portkey and were gone in a flash. Sirius slowly closed the big oak door. He saw that the fire turned green.

"Anyone there?" Albus called.

"Hello Albus!" they all said.

"Did you get settled in well?"

"Of course! Would you like to come and see it now or do you want to wait for the official housewarming party?" Lily asked.

"Oh, there will be a party? I'll wait for that!"

"Good! You'll get an owl in the next days! We still have a few things to get ready."

One of the first things they had to do was to put their Floo fireplace on restricted use. They could still Floo out anytime, but to Floo in one had to know the password, which changed on a weekly basis for security reasons. Then Remus set up the wards good and well around the whole building.

They invited all of their friends to a great housewarming party which would start on Friday, 3rd July and last through Sunday. They even provided a Portkey to Lily's parents.

People could apparate during two small open time slots. Others had received a special password for the fireplace. And Lily's non-magical relatives had received a Portkey. Within an hour the large entrance hall was filled with guests who were mingling and admiring the medieval character of the hall. They were all waiting for any of their hosts, but it took a while until they heard a great gong up above and a few doors banged. And then there was a storm, as all of those people who weren't pregnant in the house came running down the staircases, screeching their welcomes.

"Hey, hey! Look who's here, we've got GUESTS!"

"Oh, act your age!" Roxanne Lupin cried out.

But everyone laughed and the young people started to go through the guests and greeted them warmly. Upon the gong the house-elves had opened the double door to the state drawing room.

"Well, everybody," Sirius' deep voice boomed over the others, "the wonderland has opened up! Enter through the door to the left of the main door, please! And then please take a seat somewhere, so we can organise who bunks where."

Inside the big room they could find enough space to take seats. There were a few children that had come with their parents, none older than little Nymphadora, who was six.

Sirius took on as the one to explain where they could go and put their things to.

"Welcome to Green Mountain Castle. Since we don't think the name is very special, we've decided to set up a small urn and collect your ideas for a better name for our humble abode. Just note them on one of the slips next to the urn and drop it in. Best one will be used and gets a special gift! Not now, Dora, but don't forget your idea!"

Everyone laughed and little blushing Dora stumbled back to her mother.

"Okay, now Dari, Remus and Peter are going to spread floor plans to you and then you can go off on the search for your rooms. They are ALL up on the third to sixth Floors and above in the towers. For all the children there is one big room and two of our dear elves will take care of them, so mummy and daddy can sleep in tomorrow and on Sunday. The room has been made childproof, too. And I mean mischievous childproof."

Everyone laughed again. They all looked at their plans and decided to go and take up their overnight bags.

"Before you go... dinner is served down here two rooms further on at half past six. Before that we'll have a little drink in this room here. Give it a good half hour. That gives you all an hour to go up to your rooms and get ready!" Sirius called.

"Great!"

Lily took Harry up on her arm and led her parents and her in-laws up to her wing. The Potters had their rooms on the second Floor on the south-west side of the castle, while Remus and Sirius were on the same side on the first floor. The other side was taken by Hope and Dari on the first, Peter and Sabina on the second floor. Each family had at least a dozen rooms.

"Here we are. That's our main bedroom, here's our bathroom, through which we can go to Harry's room. Then we'll have a series of rooms and another two bathrooms, Jack and Jill bathrooms all of them. We've prepared these two for you and they'll be your rooms whenever you're staying over."

Lily opened a door and said:

"You just make up your mind, who takes which of the two rooms. Bathrooms are adjacent."

"Thank you so much, Lily. This is one marvellous place! I'm amazed! To think that you are now living in a CASTLE!" Mrs Evans said.

"Did you tell Petunia? I didn't expect her to accept the invite."

"I might have mentioned it. She blew up like a balloon... I thought she'd go through the ceiling. She and Vernon tried to talk your husband down to a lazy lay-about…"

Lily couldn't help snickering a little.

"Well, I leave you to it. As you can see we are already prepared. Just come down when you're ready. No worries about Petunia, I don't think she'll ever change now. She's the product of her jealousy, Mum."

The others took their parents close to them as well, while all the young people went to look for their quarters higher up. With time everyone turned up in the drawing room again. The children were still with them until after dinner, when they were taken up to their common room. That was always a bit hard for Harry, but he understood well that he still needed the sleep and accepted it in good grace.

The atmosphere was meant to be familiar and was cosy and the rooms filled with laughter, just like the Greens wanted it to be. Of course the party lasted into the night. When they finally walked up the stairs to go to bed, Remus came close to Sirius and put his arm around his mate's waist.

"That was brilliant. Just as if there was no war..." Remus said.

"That's how it should always be, love. We have to build that plan soon."

"But not here. They don't know we've moved here yet, we should choose some other place. This is too good to let someone like Voldemort soil its floors."

"Yes, you're right about that. But I have a couple of ideas... first we need to know if Voldemort knows that you're a werewolf. If he does, he'll be sure to force something on us to take place on a full moon, and we can't let that happen!" Sirius remarked.

"That will be Snape's job... and Peter's, but Snape can actually find out actively."

"So far Voldemort only gets teased about these two very powerful young wizards, but we haven't been in many fights yet. He doesn't really know how much we can actually achieve, because he's only really been teased..." Sirius said.

"But he's afraid of us..."

"I think he is afraid of the unknown power rather than us in particular. If his position of being the most powerful wizard is threatened he gets very irritated... he hates power he doesn't have himself."

Remus grinned.

"We should use that to do what he does - instil some more fear. Into him! Have some more legends built around our power."

"What a great idea! We'll do that while we form our plan. I thought of luring him to a place we build as a family vacation site. We will have to drop some hints around Hogwarts, when we're there. The odd Slytherin will pick it up and certainly pass it on. Through Peter and Snape we'd find out if the bait has been swallowed. Of course we'd only drop those hints once we have everything in place."

"That's brilliant, Padfoot! Much better than to 'invite' him here…"

The party lasted for the whole weekend. All their friends and relatives made themselves familiar with the castle and enjoyed quality time exploring it together. People sat in small groups and chatted, discussed the war or talked about work and everyday life. During the two days they played with the children inside and outside of the house. Nymphadora got along splendidly with Roxanne's twins and Samantha's daughter. Sirius and Remus' oldest, Vega and Polaris tried to follow them, but were still very little, so they didn't always manage.

Lily had magically tuned the grand piano and had picked up playing it for a bit, trying to remember her childhood piano lessons. She was a bit rusty, but decided it would be a good idea to pick it up again since there was this wonderful grand piano and this even more wonderful music room.

Many among their guests were interested in the library. Dumbledore remembered a lot about the Green family. He strolled through the two large rooms. There were still many valuable old books, which the Greens had all left behind.

"While I think it is a shame that they are leaving all this behind I am also very glad this has stayed in Britain," he remarked to Filius Flitwick, who was with him on that discovery tour.

"Absolutely. A shame really, the Greens were one of our most prominent Ravenclaw families for many centuries. Dwindling down like the Potters though."

"I do feel obliged to remark that Lady Gladys was a Gryffindor..." objected Dumbledore.

"That's right, but both their sons came to Ravenclaw again, though young Christabel went to Hufflepuff. Good mixture over all."

"I'm happy that this library is now owned by a good few people who will like the books as well and probably expand it in the course of the next years," Dumbledore thought aloud.

"At least five of them, that's true. Young Miss Foster had a lot of Quidditch on her mind, but she was an excellent student," Flitwick agreed.

Down in the family room Marie Rose Evans talked with Dorea Potter and Venetia Lupin about household things. The two witches told her a lot about how a wizarding household was run. She was still quite in awe about seeing the house-elves. Of course she had learned a lot from Lily over the years. But it was the first time she really had the opportunity to chat with Dorea and Venetia since her daughter's wedding and she enjoyed it a lot.

"This castle would probably be lost without the help of some of these delightful little people," Venetia said.

"I think so, too. They would be in real trouble cleaning this huge thing," Dorea confirmed.

"Well, at least you are all lucky enough that you can wave your wands and these things get done! Imagine you had to clean all this here as we have to! You'd have to have an army of servants," said Rose and laughed.

"Oh dear! I'm sorry, Rose, but I'd rather not! Not even with a wand, to be quite honest, though that DOES simplify matters a lot!" said Dorea.

"Well, you'd be in severe trouble! As it is they won't even have to clean, because they've got all these lovely little helpers," said Venetia.

"They are really lucky! But it's nice to see so many people filling these rooms, this place is so big! I do hope, James and Lily will have a couple of children, I'm so happy about little Harry! It's so nice to watch Sirius and Remus with their four little ones, too. That's what Charlus and I wanted, but... I blame my inbred family for that inability to bear healthy children."

Dorea was still quite bitter about the fact that her body would not cooperate in giving birth to more children.

"Though it came quite as a shock for me, when my son informed us that his love interest wasn't a girl, but another boy, I don't mind telling you, Marie Rose! I remember when Remus told us that he was in love... not with a girl, but with a boy. That alone didn't shock us very much. To be honest, at first we were quite happy with the situation; because we thought that at least no unwelcome 'accidents' could happen to them. He even said he was sorry that he wouldn't give us any grandchildren! And now they have given us four of them. I'm very happy about them, too."

"How could that be? I was really curious..." said Marie Rose.

"The boys got together in their fifth year and after he had watched them for a few months at Hogwarts, Dumbledore told them about a ritual that would make them bond-mates for life. Both of them were still virgins, which seems to be a condition. They had to spend a week keeping skin contact and having quite a lot of sex. And they got through it."

"You mean that any wizards and witches could do the same ritual and be changed like them?" Marie Rose asked.

"I'm not sure at all, or it would be known to wider circles. Though I'm not familiar at all with that ritual I think I've heard them say that Hope and Darielle have also undergone it successfully. On the other hand it's entirely possible that Dumbledore found it in one of his more discreet sources, and that it just has been lost. The book from which it came described experiences of two couples and in both cases one of the partners was a werewolf. Remus is a werewolf. Wolves are said to mate for life, which isn't entirely true, but of no consequence in this case. Myth had it for ages that werewolves would be mated for life with the first person they had sexual intercourse. It takes a bit more than that as Remus and Sirius learned, because the entire ritual takes a full week. But once they went through it both of them gained an enormous amount of magical power on top of the loving bond. In the year after the mating both partners seem to be getting the complete set of the other gender's sexual organs in addition to their original ones. They become fully functioning hermaphrodites. We think that Hope and Dari may experience the same - their ritual has just been a month ago, we therefore don't know if they change, too. But both Remus and Sirius are sure they had a successful ritual because of some specific results at the end of it."

"And then they can conceive? And give birth?"

"Exactly the same as everyone else. They develop breasts and they can nurse their children. Which both of them did for all four of their children," Venetia explained patiently, "and frankly, I loved to watch them; it's amazing how they both are committed to these children. With the female reproduction organs they probably also got a lot of oestrogen, because they softened down a lot, both of them. They're now also going through the full female cycle! None of them developed chest hair for example. Practically nothing on their legs and arms either. So much for recognising a werewolf by the amount of hair on the body!"

"That's amazing! You people are just amazing!"

"Basically we're no different than you! Just the magic that makes us different. I didn't say no to these grandchildren! They're all really cute. And the two pregnancies have given Remus a respite from his transformations. Whenever he's pregnant the wolf stays away and he doesn't transform at the full moon. That also means he has a dead sure indicator of a pregnancy and he'll always know that not more than a month can have passed since conception."

"Do you think they'll have even more children?" asked Dorea.

"I think it will be very tempting for Remus, because what he goes through each month, once into the wolf, once back from the wolf, is such a painful affair that going through giving birth did not faze him much. Took him thirty hours with Polaris and he hardly reacted more than with a couple of moans. The Medimidwitch asked him how he put all the pain away so easily and he calmly explained that the whole process taken together would about amount to the pain he felt during one transformation. It was like a walk in the park for him!"

"I've just seen the odd film containing werewolf stuff, but what is it really like to be a werewolf?" Marie Rose wanted to know.

Venetia explained to her what it meant to be a werewolf. Marie Rose shuddered and said:

"But your son is really a wonderful person..."

"That doesn't protect him from a lot of prejudices unfortunately."

And then Venetia told Marie Rose about the many restrictions that weighed down on Remus.

"And they haven't screamed murder that he has children now?"

"Actually that's what they would love to do. There are several reasons why they can't. First is that Remus is legally married to Sirius and that makes Sirius his guardian. None of the children shows even the slightest sign of lycanthropy and they made sure of looking at them very closely. And finally it's been made clear to them that Remus is a bit of a special case. He and Sirius are now the two most powerful wizards in the country and everyone hopes they can take on Voldemort. We are all quite convinced they can do it, but of course I fear for their lives terribly because of that. I know they're scheming something like a trap. I just hope it will be over soon. Remus and Sirius are some of the few of Voldemort's adversaries who have stood opposite the man and were alive to tell the tale. Though that particular incident was really embarrassing for Voldemort. They actually sent him packing."

In another corner of the library Remus, Ted and Andromeda Tonks discussed the contents of their new library.

"I'm sure you've gone through a lot already... anything special in here?" Ted asked.

"Quite a lot of first editions of many pretty well known books. I've found one of Most Potente Potions! There must be a few ten thousand books in this house. As you've seen there are book cabinets down in the family room and in most of the corridors. Clearly the traces of a Ravenclaw family! Sirius starts going through as soon as he's done at Hogwarts. They took about two thousand of their most valuable books with them, but kindly left copies for us."

"I thought Sirius was done with the one at Hogwarts?" Andromeda asked.

"The main library. But you might know that there are so many more books around in that place than just the main library. When you took out the stuff of Grimmauld Place you added yet another huge bunch. Siri has gained an amount of book knowledge you wouldn't believe it! He's amazing. And he really picks up knowledge fast, too... he used to have such a hard time studying. He did, but it was always a huge piece of work to get him to sit down to study. Now he's going through those books so quickly!"

"That's great. Even if it is an immensely boring job, no one will take all that knowledge away from him!" Andromeda said.

"He knows that. He's found loads of things, much of which Lily and I use as the basis for our new spells."

"Woe to Voldemort then," Ted remarked and grinned.

There was time to play some Quidditch, too. Enough players were found to form three teams and a mini tournament was played with lots of laughter on Saturday. Some people wondered about the openness of their actions, but James told them not to worry, as the castle looked to the Muggles like a ruin, just like Hogwarts.

"We're also just trying to figure out how to make it unplottable. There's lots of reference to that in the Black library and we're going to look that stuff through for this," Sirius said.

At the close of the weekend, just before the guests started to leave they picked up the urn with the name propositions. There were only six, but out of them they chose 'Mischief Palace' in an instant.

"So - I guess, you wanted to know what we will name our house now, don't you? It's 'Mischief Palace' and the person to enter the suggestion was Filius Flitwick. Congratulations, Professor, you will receive an owl as soon as we figured out the best kind of gift for you," Sirius said with a smirk.

"Oooh, I'm sure they will go and do the new name of their home honour, Filius, you're warned!" said Minerva and everyone gasped, because she actually grinned!

With the last goodbye from the last guest the eight young people all dropped into the sofas and armchairs in the family room.

"Phew! That was good!" Sirius said tiredly from Remus' lap where his head currently rested.

"Absolutely great! That was the most fun we had since Hogwarts," Peter confirmed.

He caressed Sabina's belly. She smiled at him and said:

"Soon, dear! I can hardly wait."

"Neither can I! But until then those five little ones make it easier for us to wait..."

"Four of them are now off to bed!" Remus declared and lifted Sirius from his lap to get up and grab a couple of his children.

Sirius grumbled at being dropped so unceremoniously, but he got up and got the remaining two of his children, Alya and Polaris.

"Say goodnight everybody!" Sirius told them.

The children complied and went around for goodnight kisses. James got up and took it on himself to take Harry. The tiny boy got his kisses, too and the three men took their children to bed. The remaining people started to discuss their evening's activities. James returned first because Harry always made it easy for his parents, Sirius and Remus had a bit more to do.

Sirius sat on the bed of his older children and read them a bedtime story. Since Vega and Polaris had been used to sharing their big bed at Hogwarts, Sirius and Remus had decided to let them share their bed for a while longer. They thought that at one point they would ask for their own and until then it would be nice for them to have someone to cuddle. In the second room they had so far decorated for the children Alya and Antares shared another big four poster.

"That's it, my little ones, now it's off to sleep for you!" Sirius said, banishing the book on the sideboard as he got up from the bed.

Both children stood up on the bed to get their good night hug and a couple of kisses from Sirius, who held the duvet open for them to crawl under. Vega grabbed her favourite teddy, Polaris had a monkey and both slipped under the duvet, which Sirius placed around them, tucking them in.

"Goodnight, my loved ones! Sleep well and sweet dreams..."

"Goodnight, daddy," Vega mumbled.

Sirius looked down on them for a few minutes, then he turned and left the room. There was a single candle burning above the door for them, which he left on. He closed the door up to a small opening left open and joined Remus, who was coming out of the other children's room. They held hands, shared a quick kiss and went down to meet the others.

"Well, now that we're among ourselves I think, we should talk about that trap for Voldemort," Lily said.

"We have to take our time in preparing that well. Nothing should go wrong with it..." said Hope.

"But it would be good to do it soon. He's almost deprived of Death Eaters now. I'm quite sure that his other followers will back down, once he's gone," said James.

"Well, how about that then... let's find some not too big house somewhere a bit far off, which we could set up as a vacation place. Then we could drop somewhere that this place still has to be renovated and covered with wards and give a date when we want to do that. Say, we could meet at Hogwarts and discuss it briefly. I'm quite sure that someone there would take that straight to Voldemort. Through Snape we could find out, if the guy got the bait," Sirius offered.

"That's a lot better than letting anyone of them in here. I was actually thinking that I didn't want to set up that trap here!" Dari said.

"Quite right. We thought the same. That's why we thought of this," explained Remus.

"It sounds like an easy set-up. And then? How do you think we can play this out?" asked James.

"You guys, the Order and a few Aurors could take on the Death Eaters outside. We'd welcome Voldemort together with Dumbledore on the inside. I'm quite sure he'd not come in with a ton of people, just a few..."

"On the contrary. He'll want to show off in front of his Death Eaters," Hope objected.

"So there we have a problem. How could we get him to come alone? Or almost alone..."

"Well, he doesn't have all that many of his Death Eaters left, now does he?" asked Sabina.

"No, we estimate the remaining crew to about fifty, but about twenty of them are his elite, some of them quite formidable wizards and witches," said James.

"Then we could take them on outside. I do think, we could gather at least four times as many to give them hell, while Sirius and Remus take care of Voldemort," Peter said.

"All in the open? We'd still need something that would lure Voldemort out. That would be Sirius and Remus. He really wants them."

"A rather questionable honour..." mumbled Remus.

"But something to hang him up on. I'm sure, he'd come running for a chance to get rid of Sirius and Remus. Or, maybe he'd come out even faster if he knew that only one of them is there," said James.

"That's a very good idea, James! Because he knows that we have a lot more power when there's two of us. I have clearly let Lucy know that we are unbeatable when we're together. One of us needs to hide then. And Voldemort needs to think there's only one of us around. Should be easy to spread the information that one of us always stays with the children," said Sirius

"How does it feel to know that someone like Voldemort fears you two?" Peter wanted to know.

"Terrifying none the less, Peter," Remus said, "and it weighs heavy on us that we are to take such an important role in that play. I would rather see my children grow, you know."

"We have to find a good site, which would bring the advantage of the terrain to us," Lily remarked.

"That is going to take a while. I think, you could look into that, Dari, if you sneak around the country no one will think anything about it, you're a reporter."

"Consider it done. What are we looking for?"

"Some kind of a house, I think it should be surrounded by a bit of forest in the best case. A bit hilly would be good, too. And not too close to any lived in areas, but it should possibly be a good touristic area, because we're pretending to renovate a vacation home..." James ticked off on his fingers.

"Duly noted. I'll look around."

"Oh, and Remus, if you and Lily could possibly find a way to stick the anti-apparition wards only on people carrying the Mark that would be extra good," James added as another idea.

Harry was completely moved when his birthday came up and he got his first real birthday party. It was a lovely affair, a bright sunny day made it extra special and the outer gardens of the Mischief Palace were at their very best for the celebration. No one apart from his parents, Remus and Sirius knew about Harry and his special abilities. Harry only talked to them when they were alone. In the company of others Harry displayed talking abilities of a normal child of his age. It was easy for him to copy his 'siblings' by using their limited vocabulary. He did still articulate much better than normal children, and he didn't think he needed to downplay everything. He loved it how he got to cuddle with the four Black children. They all played together day in and day out. In the evenings they all fell into their beds and slept without any problems. Harry felt as safe as he'd never been able to do before. While he had feared that he might be cut off for the entire time of his childhood he now found that he enjoyed slipping between being a baby and thinking like an adult a lot. With the children he was a child; with the adults he could still focus his mind on the more complex things. Even if he only got half an hour of time alone with his parents, Sirius and Remus it made him very happy.

He missed Hermione though. Before he had been conceived he had managed to find baby Hermione and had fallen in love straight away. He had signalled to his Mum that he wanted to meet her before going to Hogwarts and Lily had promised to be on the lookout for the Grangers' address in due time.

"I've got the place!" Dari called.

It was near the end of August, when Dari came barging into their castle home with the news. But before she could pass her information, Sabina went into labour and that kept the household on edge for the rest of the night. Siri and Remus declared everyone to babysitters and helped Sabina. Peter was ordered to stay with his wife and then the Medimidwife was called in through Floo. She received a special password and turned up only a short while after the call. Sabina went through a tough time. Peter went through an almost as tough time. He couldn't see her suffer and it took Sirius and Remus' combined efforts to keep him just calm enough for Sabina to go about her job.

Finally, mid-morning of 26th August, Paula Pettigrew was born. Peter was overwhelmed and Sabina was exhausted, but well enough to take in what had to be done with her daughter. She was quite glad to get Remus and Sirius' help. The Medimidwife had thought it very strange that two men were around Sabina not only to help, but to tell her exactly what to do. Only when there were four little children in the room early in the morning and when she was told that the two had given birth to them and nursed them all four did she understand. James and Lily took them back out again after they had seen that their daddies were still around, just unavailable.

Peter fell in love with his little daughter on the spot. He beamed, held her on his arms and said:

"I can't believe we have her, Sabina! And she must be about the first girl in a century; usually the Pettigrews just produce boys! I'm so happy!"

"I am, too, Peter. She'll be good for us. Someone to hold on to."

Once mother and daughter had found some sleep the others marched down and finally listened to Dari's proposition. Lily had Harry with her, so he could hear the discussion first hand.

"Well, it's an old cottage, needs some repair and is a wizard house. It's been owned by some old codger until seven years ago, when he died without any legal heirs. So it's now fallen into a right old state and can be bought for... hold yourselves... six hundred Galleons from the Ministry! As you asked for it's in a rather hilly area and there's a lake nearby. Forest passes on one side, the other is free, but away from the next village by quite a bit. We could work on it a bit more openly than we would if we really wanted to keep that place. Like doing the roof first, painting it the Muggle way and so on..."

"Sounds good, Dari. Really the kind of thing we look for. We'll have to work with Lily's and my new invisibility charms for those who are waiting outside. They may only see us working on the house. I'll come and have a look at it with you tomorrow, okay?" Sirius offered.

"Sure!"

"And who knows, maybe the people at the Ministry let us use the house for free... after all, we're trying to get rid of the menace of the world for them. Who is responsible for the sale at the Ministry?"

"Someone in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Do you think we should contact your dad, Remus?"

"Definitely. He'll pull some strings in the department."

As soon as he was alone with his parents, Remus and Sirius, Harry reminded them of the remaining Horcruxes.

"Do you have any power over your family members' vaults, Sirius?" he asked.

"I'm not sure - oh, you mean the cup that's in Bella's vault? We need to talk to the Goblins about it. I'll do that tomorrow, okay?"

"That's fine. I'm not sure they would be too keen on having such things in any of their vaults. What about the one in Malfoy's library?"

"With my new good standing with Kreacher I might have him snoop around there for a bit…" Sirius mused.

James, Remus and Lily grinned. That sounded like a very good idea to them.

"Yes, but give him an order that he could use as an excuse for being at the manor, just in case he's caught. Or make him get in touch with Dobby, one of the Malfoy house-elves. As I told you he's not too keen on the Malfoys and would probably help."

"Can you give me a hint on how this thing looks?"

"It's a black diary, and on the backside there's an address of a retailer in Vauxhall Road. It's dated at some time in 1942 and there's also the name Tom Riddle embossed on the front. I don't think they'll have anything else like that in that library. Take my memory…"

"Good. I'll talk to Kreacher about that."

Sirius called Kreacher and showed him in a Pensieve what he was to look for. He knew that the elf had free entrance rights at Narcissa's home. He asked:

"Kreacher, this thing you've just seen in Harry's memory is another Horcrux, like the one Regulus was trying to destroy. Do you think you can get it from the library at Malfoy Manor?"

"If Kreacher went in the night I is thinking it would work."

"Good. It's another one that the horrid wizard made who had Regulus killed! It will be the last one he has made that we need to destroy; if that is done he cannot return."

"If it has been made by the murderer of my master I is going to take it back to you, Master Sirius!"

Sirius grinned.

"Thank you, Kreacher. You will have done an important service to the peace in this country if you come back with it. In this sense I order you to look for it at the Malfoy library. I think Dobby, the house-elf there would be willing to help you if you told him that it was a coup against Voldemort or better, one against his current master."

"I is going tonight, master Sirius."

The very next morning, even before Sirius could go to Gringotts, Kreacher was back, holding the item in his hands. Sirius pulled the old house-elf towards him and hugged him.

"Well done! At the moment you can't tell anyone about this, Kreacher, but when we have killed Voldemort you will be rewarded, I'll see to that! Did you need Dobby's help?"

"He found me and wanted to raise alarm, but when I is telling him I was looking for something evil from the one we do not name he was helping me searching. We is making a copy that looks the same, but is not being the same. I sense great evil in this, same as in Master Regulus' locket, Master."

"And you would feel right, it's exactly the same. You have done superbly, Kreacher. Thank you very much! You can now return home."

"Thank you, Master."

Sirius looked at the thing and went up to James and Lily's to show it to Harry to verify that it was the right thing. Harry grinned and said:

"Yep! That is it exactly. Don't start to write into it, it has a very strong compulsion curse on it. Once you do the writing vanishes and Voldemort writes back."

"Okay, I'm now off to Gringotts to look for the last one!"

"Can't wait to see them gone, Siri!"

"Neither can I, Harry."

At Gringotts Sirius contacted his own bank manager and asked him:

"I have a matter and a question of a very delicate nature. What is the Gringotts stance on items of an extremely dark nature?"

"Gringotts does not really control what's in the vaults."

"We have knowledge of an object in the vault of one of my relatives, Bellatrix Lestrange. She, her husband and her brother-in-law are all imprisoned at Azkaban for life as you know. There are no other living relatives in the Lestrange family and since Bellatrix was a Black I believe to have the legal right as her head of house to get access to her vault. Can you confirm that? The object in question is an item Tom Marvolo Riddle has stolen from one Hepzibah Smith in the year 1945 or 1946, the day she was murdered. In fact, Tom Marvolo Riddle was the murderer, even if her house-elf was accused and sent to Azkaban for this murder."

"You could only mean the golden cup believed to have been Helga Hufflepuff's?"

"Exactly."

"What is Dark about this object - apart from it being stolen and in her vault?"

"It serves as a container for a Horcrux."

"And that would be what?"

"A Horcrux is a container for a fragment of a soul. It can only be achieved by a cold blooded murder, and a ritual each before and after the murder. This cup holds a fragment of the soul of Lord Voldemort. It will have to be destroyed before Lord Voldemort himself can be eliminated."

The Goblin jumped and cried:

"What? If it's an item made by that abomination I want to contact my superior about it - then we will probably have to go higher up to decide if you can have access to the vault. What would you do with the object?"

"Destroy it. We already destroyed three of the horrible things and have a fourth lined up. This one is the last one. After that his attempts at gaining eternal life are crushed and we can kill him. You would have to act quickly, we want to lure him into a trap within the next three weeks."

"You'll have your answer within an hour. Do you wish to wait or do you have another commission?"

"I'll be back in something over an hour; I'll head out for a few quick errands then."

"Good."

After a quick trip to the general store where he bought something nice for his children and another little shopping trip he returned to the bank where he found not only his manager, but two other Goblins - one of them introduced himself as Ragnok.

"Human, I'm not often leaving my office like this, so be warned. If this is a hoax, Gringotts won't understand the humour."

"Ragnok, I wish it was! Please search the Lestrange vault for a golden cup, which is decorated with inlaid badgers and used to belong to Helga Hufflepuff. It is a Horcrux. It needs to be destroyed, because Voldemort used it to place a fragment of his soul inside. It is an anchor that would make it impossible to kill him. It is the last item of five, the other four are already in our possession and bar one, which I received this morning, they are all already destroyed."

"How can it be destroyed?"

"Either by breaking it with a Goblin forged item, or by using Fiendfyre or Basilisk venom on it. We have used Fiendfyre for the ones we've already destroyed."

"I see. You do sound serious. I'll send a Goblin teller down to do the search. You are holding head of house over Mrs Lestrange, is that right?"

"Yes. I know of no relative of the Lestrange brothers anymore. With their life sentence the family has practically died out."

"Well. Do you wish to go along?"

"No, if the teller can find the object he can bring it here. It is not outwardly dangerous."

They didn't have to wait long. The teller brought the object into the office where Sirius found that it was exactly as he'd seen in Harry's memory. The third Goblin tested it and confirmed:

"This item contains great evil! I could not determine exactly what it is, but I think we should trust this human, Ragnok."

"We are agreed that we destroy the item here and now?" Ragnok asked and all in the room agreed.

"Teller, get a guard."

"Yes, Ragnok!"

The Goblin guard made quick order. Two blows with the Goblin forged sword and the cup was unrecognisable. What was very recognisable, at least to Sirius who had instigated and witnessed the other Horcrux destructions, was the otherworldly scream that came out of the object as soon as the soul fragment was banished from it. When it was done, Sirius pointed this out:

"That was exactly what happened to the objects we destroyed with Fiendfyre! It must be Voldemort's scream. I'm sure that we'll hear the same when we destroy the last Horcrux."

"And then this horror can end?"

"And then this horror will end. We have already set plans in motion. I can't say any more than that. All walls potentially have ears."

"We understand. We're looking forward to seeing the results though."

"We cannot rush; I don't think we have more than one chance. He'll never know that we have destroyed his Horcruxes. He'll be extinguished and that's that."

Ragnok grinned.

"I do like a warrior with such a healthy self-confidence. But I do remember having read the articles in the Daily Prophet about your achievements against this monster. You can probably guess that we are doing the business with his henchmen most grudgingly and that we like them as little as you do."

"I hope we can get rid of the Death Eaters as well as Voldemort himself, but that will be a political process as well as a legal one."

"Unfortunately that is only too true. I am glad that Gringotts has been able to help in this matter. It would have been most unwise not to, even if for once we did have to remove an object from a vault."

"Well, there's the gold from the cup. You can always put that back…" Sirius suggested.

"It's still damaged. Strictly speaking we could be held responsible."

"I wouldn't worry about that. No one has ever broken out of Azkaban yet. Unless Voldemort himself manages to free his Death Eaters already in there I'm not too afraid of any of them getting out. My cousin can rot in there and add to her already existing madness as much as she wants. The Lestrange brothers as well. They all certainly deserve the horrors they must visit every day, they've sown enough horror onto too many people! I'll be sure to mention that you have helped from your end to undo Voldemort's damage."

Sirius returned home and called Kreacher again. He showed him the diary and asked:

"Would you like to be with us when we destroy this? It is the last item we have to get rid of before we can actually kill Voldemort."

"Kreacher would very much like to watch, Master. But I is thinking that Dobby would like to see it, too… he is being very helpful to retrieve this evil."

"Can you call him in?"

"I is thinking I can do."

Kreacher left and returned two minutes later with the Malfoy house-elf who trembled all over his body, but who nevertheless looked up to Sirius and introduced himself:

"I is Dobby, Sir. I is helping Kreacher to find this book. Does Sir know what it is?"

"Hello, Dobby. Yes, I know what it is. It contains a fraction of the soul of Lord Voldemort. As long as this thing still exists, Voldemort cannot die fully. As soon as we have destroyed it, he will be mortal again. – Are you happy with your Master and Mistress?"

"Mistress treats Dobby fairly well, but Master…"

Dobby trembled and ran to the nearest wall to bang his head in, but Sirius held him back and said:

"Don't harm yourself, Dobby. Don't say anything anymore. I shall see what I can do. If you don't like to be the Malfoys' house-elf I can possibly buy you from them, what do you think?"

Dobby's eyes went even larger and he looked up to Sirius admiringly. Since Sirius knew from Harry, how unhappy the house-elf was and how badly he was treated by Lucius and Harry had also told him about his friendship with the house-elf, he hoped he would be able to free the little being. Dobby immediately started to wail and nodded.

"Dobby has never been asked something friendly, Sir, Dobby never knew there were kind wizards like you! Dobby would very much like to be bought, Master."

"I'll talk to my cousin. You may have to hold out until we have dealt with your master, Dobby, but then you'll be freed from them! But now let's go somewhere safe to destroy this."

Sirius took the two house-elves, James, Remus, Lily and Harry out to the nearest forest clearing and set up the book on the ground. Remus and he cast the Fiendfyre spell together and waited for the screams they've already heard before several times. They didn't have to wait very long and as soon as it was over they contained the fire and extinguished it. Sirius turned to the house-elves and asked:

"Did you both hear the scream?"

"Yes, Master."

"That was the soul fragment we have just extinguished. It means that Lord Voldemort only has a very small part of his soul left and we do hope that he will follow his Horcruxes soon."

Both looked very hopeful. Dobby, because he hoped that he would soon be freed from that hell that was Lucius Malfoy's treatment and Kreacher, because he hated the formerly admired Dark Lord as much as all the others in Sirius's surrounding, since that very same Dark Lord had killed his beloved master. Once Kreacher understood that Regulus had turned against his former associates and even more so his family he had become quite radical. He wasn't even so keen on serving his mistress anymore. But Sirius had given him a job, and that was to watch over the two young house-elves at Grimmauld Place and to see to his own job as the main house-elf. For that he took the services of all three house-elves on a regular basis for odd jobs for himself, just so they were able to come out of that horrid place on as many occasions as he could find. Sirius ordered Kreacher to inform him as soon as his mistress should turn to punish him. He was also ordered to report contradictory orders to Sirius' own.

When the next Order meeting took place the young people brought up their ideas. Snape had some objections, which were of course regarded as important, since he was inside of the Death Eaters and knew about the risks best. But together they figured out how the information could be passed through to Voldemort in a way to make him swallow the bait. He also offered to have them experiment with his Mark, to find out if they could possibly tweak some anti-apparition wards that only worked for carriers of the Mark.

"He's complained that I haven't been able to give him any news for a while, he'll jump on it if you want me to pass this on. I can always tell him that Albus has talked about it to someone else and that I've overheard the story. Just give me your go ahead when you have the okay you need. I'll give you the meeting dates and places for Pettigrew to go and listen in. We have to be absolutely sure about when he plans to attack. I don't think we have more than one chance."

"That is what we all believe, but it is a good start in the right direction then. Richard, I am sure you could do something about the use of that house?"

"No problems. It's one of the lawyers in my department who's handling that sale; I'll call it off for a while. It can be handed to the Aurors for their use for the time being. Inside the Ministry we can always say that they will use it as a training ground for some strategic training in a certain kind of terrain before we take it back on for sale. They will leave you free hands there and will be at hand for help. Even Barty will agree to that. Since every Death Eater caught is a menace less for him he should let Alastor handle the case."

"No one can go there except for us until we are ready. The Death Eaters will certainly spy on us and only we must be seen around the house working on it..." Lily said.

"On the contrary, my dear. We're not letting you all alone there in the open. From on next week there will be twenty Aurors on the premises, together with another twenty Order members and they will all be under your new Invisibility charms. How long does that one last by the way?" Dumbledore said.

"Until it's taken off. It needs a counter-charm. Both will be classified by the Ministry."

"That's perfect."

"I agree that there should be Aurors and Order members around. And we have decided that Voldemort only gets to see either Sirius or Remus at most times. We're going to talk about how one of them has to stay with the brood or something. The same with Lily and myself. They should believe that and that should also lull Voldemort into thinking that there's only one of them around. He'll decide to attack more easily then, don't you think so, Severus? In reality the one who's not to be seen will of course be covered with the Invisibility spell," said James.

"He does seem to have some healthy respect of them as a team," Snape admitted.

"Well, I'll have the Aurors ready. I know that the Invisibility spell will not be out there for everyone to use freely, so I need those of you who can cast it over at the Ministry to cover the Aurors," Moody said.

"You have a mirror, contact us when you got a crew ready and we'll be there in a jiffy," Lily promised.

"Something else just comes to my mind - it would be good to hear some feedback if Voldemort swallows the reports of his minions. Like that they actually only see us and that the invisibility spells really hold up… try to pick up anything that hints to them possibly being unstable. They might get suspicious if the spells don't hold up perfectly," Peter remarked.

"Duly noted, Pettigrew, you're right about that aspect" Snape promised.

Even Snape started to appreciate the creativity of the Marauders. Their prank scheming at Hogwarts had taught them a lot in strategic thinking and planning - the Order now profited from that enormously. With brilliant minds such as Lily's and Remus' involved they usually held not only a main plan, but a plan b and sometimes even c ready as well. Some of the older members were simply stunned by the flood of ideas these young people contributed to the cause. And they took their hats off at the young people's will to contribute with much more than only ideas. It was remarkable how the younger Order members reached their working conclusions when they threw around ideas that sounded crazy at first, but were then discussed until a workable solution was found. Dumbledore himself was very proud of their ability to think outside the box.

Lily usually just shook her head and remarked:

"Frankly, that's how you have to work to be creative…. It's what the Muggles do all over the place. Just remember what they say about the best laid plans – they rarely withstand the first contact with the enemy."

Not that some of the more conservative members in the Order liked to hear that, but as it was a very successful method so far they had to live with it.

Two weeks later, an old house that looked like a rather derelict, but still promising cottage, started to buzz with activity. The Aurors and Order members had a boring job the first few days, while the Marauders worked on the cottage, but in their invisible and silenced state they were able to see a number of things going on around the cottage. There were lots of clandestine Death Eater visits to spy on the Marauders. With every one of those spying visits the Aurors grew more attentive and got themselves ready for the day of the awaited attack. They had prepared a code for the Marauders to go into action as soon as the Death Eaters decided to attack them.

As Peter had suggested, Snape brought them the information that Voldemort in his arrogance had bought the situation as they had planned. He obviously believed his spies who couldn't see anything else but a few cheerful young people working on the renovation of an old house. The new invisibility spells worked.

The Death Eaters chose a very early morning, apparating and taking spots around the cottage where they awaited the Marauders for an ambush. One Auror quickly disapparated to the Mischief Palace to inform the Marauders. Lily cast the Invisibility spell on Remus and James, who apparated alongside them to go about their daily tasks at their normal time, as if nothing was awaiting them there. In one of the movements of their work they also added the wards that would not allow the Death Eaters to disapparate.

The Aurors and the Order Members had stocked up and were ready to apparate on the site as soon as they were informed, too. One Auror apparated home to the Auror Headquarters and informed Moody:

"There are about forty Death Eaters and You-Know-Who is with them, sir."

"Very well. We have another forty Aurors ready to apparate in less than five minutes. We expect to find the battle in full swing already. How many are you there?"

"Thirty, all counted. We should get along quite far already. The Marauders have only just arrived; I suppose the Death Eaters will wait for another few minutes before they attack."

"Very well. Return and tell them we're in a waiting position and will head out in a moment."

Back at the cottage Dari, Peter and Lily worked on the outside of the cottage, painting the parts between the beams white. James was with them but could not do anything of course, as he was invisible. In the days before they had removed all of the weeds around the house, to free the walls, then replaced the rendering. Now they were happily going up the scaffolds to start on the top and paint the Muggle way, because that seemed to be a lot more fun. Hope and Sirius were on the inside, where Remus could help them, starting on clearing the rooms of all the debris. They went about removing the plaster from the ceilings and walls. Two invisible Order members, Dumbledore and McGonagall were also on the inside of the cottage, while the older Potters, Venetia and Richard and their daughters were among those who were going to help the Aurors outside.

Silently the Death Eaters approached the cottage, not even suspecting that the Marauders could be anything but alone. It was a sunny late summer morning and nothing was heard besides the occasional remarks and laughter from those working on the cottage walls. Insects were humming, birds were chirping, but the sudden silence from the birds around them warned the Marauders of the approach. They got their wands ready and whipped around in the same moment that the Death Eaters and Voldemort turned up on the scene.

James had his first stunners out before any Death Eaters were even able to utter a word. That was the signal for the Aurors and Order members to carefully cast one stunner after the other and for Remus to cast the anti-apparition ward. Voldemort tried to vanish on the spot, noticing that this was a set-up, but found himself right back on the ground because of the effective ward. He swore and turned to cast Avada Kedavra curses, but he didn't see anyone but the Marauders on the scaffold. And then he saw Sirius coming out of the cottage. With a grunt he threw another Avada Kedavra curse, but Sirius jumped aside and dodged the green flash of light.

Unbeknownst to Voldemort he already had Dumbledore in his back, together with Minerva and the two started to curse him with Impedimenta and other slowing curses. Then they ducked down on the grass, because a moment later there were hundreds of the sharpest knives flying at Voldemort. He was still unable to move fast and was hit by a whole swarm of those knives, wounded to the death in the midst of his stunned followers. The knives had slaughtered him and blood was flowing in all directions, he was screaming at the top of his lungs for his Death Eaters, but they couldn't save him. With more than relief the defenders of the Light noticed that Voldemort sank down, the knives still attacking him violently until he was completely and utterly dead. Silence at first as everyone on the spot was out of words, then a scream:

"MAAAAASTER!"

It was Antonin Dolohov's voice that screeched through the air. He threw himself on Voldemort's body, only to become another victim of the still flying knives, before anyone could do anything.

The Death Eaters had been subdued in a matter of minutes. By the time the last batch of Aurors under Moody arrived they were just in time to catch the last ones who tried to get away, but couldn't because of the anti-apparition wards. Remus had set those wards specifically to let anyone apparate in but no one could get out. He smirked as Sirius countered his Invisibility spell. Everyone else who was invisible was counter-spelled as well and soon the united Aurors and Order members and a reporter or two who were among them were dancing over the patch of grass that had once been a nice lawn. Everyone joined in and all of them were hooting and laughing. Eleven years of precious little reasons to laugh and be happy were coming to an end.

Dumbledore took the initiative as usual:

"Everyone! There will be a better time to celebrate tonight. Today we have to clean this here up. Please take all the suspects back to the Ministry!"

First, all the masks came off the Death Eaters. Twenty-eight men and eight women were found and most of them were known to at least one person around them. The most prominent Death Eater was of course, Lucius Malfoy, who was there next to his wife. Sirius grinned, but he really felt sorry for Draco Malfoy who would have to grow up without his parents.

Moody got some order into his Aurors and there were two of them to one Death Eater. Remus lifted the ward again, so that they could apparate their prisoners to Auror Headquarters. As soon as they were gone Richard left to get the Minister on the scene as a witness. He was very glad that he had been able to participate, even if his position as the director of the DMLE would not normally have allowed him to do so. But he had decided that this was an opportunity he couldn't miss, especially since it had fallen on a weekend, so he could take part as a member of the Order rather than as a member of the Ministry.

The remaining people stood around the two bodies, which looked terrifying. The knives had slashed them, cut off limbs, cut deep gashes into every bit of their bodies. Voldemort's face was just still recognisable, but Dolohov was completely destroyed. Sirius and Remus had called their knives off, but it had been too quick.

"Nothing we can do about it. He must have been really dedicated to follow his master to the death like this," Dumbledore said.

"You could call it dedicated, I call it fanatic," said Sirius.

"Yes, maybe."

Sirius and Remus both sighed. Sirius closed his eyes and admitted:

"Even though we knew that he couldn't live on it's horrible - I've killed. Two people. Their death will be on my hands forever..."

"You're not alone, Sirius, we cast this spell together," Remus reminded him quietly.

"And you did stick out your neck for the whole of wizardkind, Sirius!" Peter cried out.

"Yes, but you were with us the whole time, you could have been hit with an Avada Kedavra at any moment, you were in as much danger as we were," Sirius objected.

"Do not for one moment think you are a murderer, Sirius and Remus. This monstrous being had to be killed in order to prevent more deaths of innocent people. We have already seen too many people killed by it and its cronies. That Dolohov was hit as well is not your fault at all, Sirius," Dumbledore said soothingly.

At that moment, the Minister appeared on the scene with Richard and several members of the Wizengamot.

"Good day, ladies and gentlemen! Would you care to give us a report of what happened here?" the Minister asked.

"Good morning, Millicent. I will sum it up for you, if you will take my statement," Dumbledore said.

"Yes, Albus, please do."

Dumbledore went over everything that had gone on, then the Minister asked a few questions to the others in the crowd and finally nodded with a smile on her face:

"Mr Black, Mr Lupin, we have much to thank you for. I would be pleased to see you at the Ministry in a week's time to officially thank you. You all have helped to free us from the greatest menace that our kind has known for many centuries. I have been around when Grindelwald was at his worst and Albus will agree with me that it was not half as bad as things have got to be now! I am very old now, but I wanted to see us through this war. The Ministry is in great disarray, too, so we shall have some work to clear it up. Expect news from the Wizengamot in the next weeks!"

Two hours later they were all back to the Mischief Palace, even Dumbledore and McGonagall, who had to go back up to Hogwarts. Term had started and Minerva had left her students unsupervised for the day so she needed to get back as quick as she could.

"We'll prepare a celebration tonight. You're all welcome to the feast at Hogwarts," she promised.

"Thanks, Professor! We'll be there!"

Hogwarts was brimming with activity and guests that night. By the time the Marauders arrived at the castle the Daily Prophet had already an extra edition out with the news and the whole wizarding world had gone crazy! Everyone celebrated on the roads, in Diagon Alley, in Hogsmeade, even in the midst of the Muggles! School had been cancelled for the whole next week and all the students were allowed free time to celebrate with their families.

Hogwarts was *the* place to be at this particular time. Everyone who was directly involved with the fighting and the victory was there, so the Ministry's most prominent members were seen there as well. The Great Hall had to be enlarged to hold all the guests and still it was full to the brim. Dumbledore had decided that families should be together at such times, and the privately owned and the school owls were busy finding the parents and siblings of the Hogwarts students. In fact there were so many owls that swooped up and down the country that it even became known to some of the more attentive Muggles.

Sirius looked over to the Slytherin table. Its occupants were partly subdued, but Sirius noticed that there was a good number of students and their families who looked more than relieved, daring to celebrate, because Snape had given them all the hints they needed. Then he let his glance go over the other tables. Even though the Hall was larger than usual it was apparent that there were fewer students these days. Many families had fled the country and it wasn't sure that they would be coming back.

Lily and James had baby Harry with them, he sat on his father's lap, looking very happy. His relief had been immense knowing that this time he would be rid of the menace that plagued all of his first life. He watched the procedures with interest.

Before the feast started, Dumbledore stood up to speak a few words:

"It is wonderful to see this old Great Hall overflowing with people! We have had precious little to be happy about in these past few years, it is thus a welcome pleasure to see this many happy people congregated for this occasion. I don't have to tell you why we have this assembly. You all know already what happened this very morning at a small cottage somewhere in this country. For once I can confirm that the Daily Prophet has told the story in full accuracy. Our world has been rid of the darkest Dark Wizard of all times, though of course one could say that each time we have been able to defeat some of this kind in history, they always were. In truth now that we have got rid of the latest one we are most probably going to become complacent and forget about it fairly soon, but that is a whole new can of worms.

"I regret to say that with his death the line of Salazar Slytherin has come to a sad end. He was the last descendant and as far as we know Lord Voldemort never sired children. So tonight is for us to commemorate all those who have died in the past eleven years on both sides of this civil war.

"Let us give mournful thoughts to those who were killed because someone had the arrogance to declare who had a right to live and who had not.

"Let us not forget that many have died following a master that was not a leader, but a slave owner. I do not know how well most of you were aware of the fact that his followers enslaved themselves to him unconditionally. I know of only one single man who was able to get away. I know of at least seven who were killed by their master's own hand for trying to leave his fold proving that Lord Voldemort rather killed a human than let it out of his grasp.

"Let us remember how easy it seemed for some of us to succumb to Voldemort's promises of power, but to learn that the only power he left his followers was that to torment the rest of the community, to torture and kill at their whim, to disregard all that's human and lawful for the 'pleasure' they found in depravity and blood rush. It is with equal amount of sadness and relief that today we have been able to apprehend a great many of these followers. I strongly believe that the rest should be taken care of in the next days. There will be many trials coming up.

"Let us not forget that many have refused to follow Lord Voldemort and have paid for that decision with their lives."

Dumbledore threw a glance to the direction of the Slytherin table, where some students sat with tears in their eyes, because a few of them had lost relatives left and right and were only spared when attacks on their families happened while they were at Hogwarts. Dumbledore clearly expressed his respect for them and their lost relatives.

"I would like to take this opportunity to once again express my sympathy and condolences for all losses. I would hope that the concerned students know that this community will not leave them alone in the world. Even if some of you have no one else left in your direct family, know that you will have a home here until you leave Hogwarts!"

On all house tables, heads were turning in the direction of house- and classmates, many in sympathy and accordance with the headmaster's words.

"In remembrance of all who have died - I would like us all to stand and keep silence."

Everyone got up. Not one remained seated. One could have heard a hair dropping on the floor of the Great Hall but no one spoke a word until Dumbledore moved after several minutes and said:

"Thank you all. Now that we have given our respect to all who left us and all those who are left behind without their loved ones we can move on to the good reason for our feast tonight. We will have peace again. You will all be able to walk without fear again. We will all have a chance to build up our society again and we will have a lot of work to do this. So let us celebrate. Let us celebrate life and the return of peace!"

With these words the food arrived on the tables. There was a lot of applause for Dumbledore's speech. Then the people started to relax and eat and the longer the meal lasted the more relaxed everyone was. Dari was sitting with Hope at the Ravenclaw table. The two of them chatted with some of the seventh years, people they still knew from their own school years.

The rest of the Marauders enjoyed a good time at the Gryffindor table.

Of course the whole of the wizarding world was delirious for weeks.

Dumbledore called one last meeting of the Order. He told them:

"While the rest of the wizarding world celebrates the new peace, I have to tell you one important thing. Lord Voldemort has done his utmost to find a way to cheat death. It certainly looked like he was killed but there is a small possibility that he might still return and we must be prepared…"

"Pardon me, Albus, but I can tell you that this is not the case, your information is outdated," Sirius interrupted, looking very smug.

"I'm afraid that…"

"I can guarantee that Tom Marvolo Riddle is absolutely, finally, terminally and finitely dead. He has ceased to exist, kicked the bucket, is no more, has gone to meet his maker. His bloodless cadaver has bought the farm, in short: he's gone."

The very few in the room who knew Monty Pythons and their infamous parrot sketch had started to grin and outright laugh at Sirius' listing of euphemisms for death, in a good rendition of John Cleese to boot, as he went on:

"He has no way of returning to this plane of existence except as a ghost. Not a spirit, a ghost. Tom Marvolo Riddle has managed to produce five Horcruxes in his life. Fife Horcruxes, four of which he made from remnants of three Founders of Hogwarts: a golden cup owned by Helga Hufflepuff, the famous lost diadem that belonged to Rowena Ravenclaw and two heirlooms of his own family, a golden locket and a signet ring which were both coming down the generations from Salazar Slytherin. The fifth, which was probably his first Horcrux, was made when he was still here at school, under your very nose, I might add, Albus. He used his own personal diary for the container. All five items have been found, identified and destroyed. In all five cases we heard the same scream as when he died under our knives. Have you all noticed how distorted he looked? That was the result of splitting his soul into several pieces. The first half of his soul was left in his diary. The next quarter was put into the second Horcrux. An eighth of his soul went into the third, a sixteenth into the fourth and the 32nd part of his remaining soul went into the fifth Horcrux. He was absolutely clueless about the loss of his soul containers and he has kept them strictly secret even from his closest associates. In the past few months we have located all of these soul containers and have destroyed them."

While everyone was either puzzled ("What's a Horcrux?") or speechless (mainly Dumbledore) Remus picked up the thread:

"I can see that almost none of you have ever heard of a Horcrux. Please don't ask for further information as these things are so horrific you don't really want to know. Suffice to say that they have vanished from this earth, either consumed by Fiendfyre or destroyed by a Goblin forged sword. We have locked away every written document about these terrible things; no one will ever touch these documents anymore. None of us here would ever think of making even one of these things, so let it suffice to know that he made them and we destroyed them. In fact we had to destroy them before we could even think of killing him. Had we left even one of them he would now be a spirit, able to possess other beings of any kind, until he could be restored to a body. I think that's what you thought was the case, Albus, isn't that so? This restoration would ask for a ritual so horribly dark you don't even want to know how this could work, but in making these Horcruxes Voldemort already welcomed the need, no matter how much suffering he would cause."

The whole room apart from James and Lily were speechless. They stared at the two young men who talked about something so horrible with confidence and obvious understanding. Dumbledore was naturally the first who wanted to know how they knew what they knew. It was Lily who stood up next.

"We knew because someone among us has returned from a future where Voldemort has really destroyed almost all that's good. That someone knew exactly what the items were and where they were. That someone has suffered so badly in this future he was sent back by higher beings and allowed to get another chance at life. When we learned about these horrible things we started to look for them immediately. What in this person's past life has been left on the shoulders of a mere child we could do with relative ease. This person had been isolated and singled out from before their life began and had lived seventeen years of absolute horror with countless premature and sometimes horrific deaths, so bad that the Fates had decided to intervene. I understand that all of you are now immensely curious, but that is all I am going to say. And no, that person wasn't myself. Do not ask. Do not carry this outside of this meeting. Do not tell anyone else, because you would open a can of rotten worms so large it could kill all the good we have now been able to do. In fact we call for an oath from each of you to be certain that this remains amongst us."

The Dumbledore of Harry's first lifetime would have started to ask on and insist that he needed to know, but this Dumbledore, guided by Fate, understood a bit better. He guessed that the person would have to be Harry, which would also explain the boy's incredibly fast development. But it was also clear to Dumbledore that if Harry was to live a happier life he would have to be left unnamed and unharmed. This child probably helped the wizarding community as much as Remus and Sirius and so the old man simply accepted, probably for the first time in his adult life, that he had received a fact he could neither form nor disprove or prove. It was simply a fact.

The day after this meeting brought another big headline when the names of the Death Eaters were published who were among the forty or so with Voldemort. No one amongst the Marauders was surprised that Malfoy was one of them. In the days after their arrest the Death Eaters were stripped of everything they had and questioned for hours under Veritaserum. The crimes they described and the degree of depravity they displayed in their nonchalant description of the most gruesome murders and torture sessions, often combined with sex was so horrid that more than one Auror left the questioning rooms and vomited their latest meal into the loo. Even the watered down written accounts, which was what the public got, created such an outcry amongst the people on the street that the court that tried them, sent most of them through the veil and the rest for life to Azkaban. Some of them had actually tried to get out of it by claiming to have been under the Imperius curse, first of them Malfoy, but Richard Lupin was not ready to believe any statement of a Malfoy, he ordered, with the backing of the Minister and the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot, that all of the Death Eaters were also questioned publicly under Veritaserum in court.

This naturally also bled out a good part of the Wizengamot, which saw an influx of younger members of the old families, who were unfortunately not much more progressive than their forefathers. But a few had enough sense to stay mostly neutral.

Some families had seen two entire generations of males executed. One particular family, the Hendersons, was almost completely eradicated, the grandfather who was the Wizengamot member and head of the family, his three sons, a daughter and six of the eight grandchildren of the family turned out to be Death Eaters, some even in the closest surroundings to Voldemort and all of them weren't just happily playing along, they thrived on their collective cruelty. Their statements under Veritaserum had to be classified for all the horrors in them. The worst was that they had acted completely innocent about it all to the outside and not even their direct neighbours had ever suspected anything amiss. While being questioned they thought that what they had done was their prerogative as pureblood wizards and witches. They even seemed to wonder why their interrogators turned green upon hearing the atrocities. Amelia Bones, the deputy head of the DMLE was quoted as saying that this family would have put the Borgias to shame and that this earth was probably well off to see them all pass through the veil!

As his cousin was among those sent to Azkaban and her husband sent through the Veil of Death, Sirius was able to buy out all the Malfoy house-elves for a token, just as he had promised Dobby. The little elf was so happy he immediately became the bubbliest elf Sirius had ever seen. The Malfoy elves were integrated at the Mischief Palace with all the other elves and Dobby was soon one of the best among the Marauders' little helpers.

On the other hand little Draco still had two aunts on his father's side, who collectively got custody of the boy. Sirius hadn't been too keen to take in any spawn of Malfoy, but Draco still was a baby after all, he could have been brought up to think entirely different. Unfortunately that was out of Sirius' hand.