Aftermath

A/N: Disclaimer's in the first chapter.

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April 15, 1996, Hogwarts

In the chaos of ensuring the castle was empty of enemies, gathering and segregating the wounded ... putting the surviving Death Eaters in the same room as the defenders was a VERY bad idea ... and getting everyone triaged at least, as well as gathering the dead, the absence of the New Marauders was not noted for a good ten minutes or so.

Hogwarts had fared remarkably well in the battle. The castle had suffered a bit of structural damage, but not too terribly much. Casualties had also been surprisingly light ... only a dozen adults and students had perished in the attack. Injuries had been a good bit more prolific, but less than a half-dozen people would walk away from the battle with something more severe and permanent than scars to remind them of it.

It was Severus who finally noticed the absence of certain students. Having prowled through the Great Hall, where the injured defenders were being handled, the trophy room where the injured Death Eaters were being treated, and the Entrance Hall where the dead were being laid in state until they could be collected by family or tended to by the Ministry if no family survived without spotting Harry and company, he immediately headed back into the Great Hall.

"Black, have you seen your godson?" He snapped when he reached the man. The two of them may have more or less buried the hatchet, but that didn't stop them from still disliking each other and Severus would have preferred to speak with Lupin, given a choice on the matter. Unfortunately, the wolf was clear on the other side of the room.

Sirius eyed Severus, suddenly alarmed. "No ... no I haven't. Not since we got separated in the Entrance Hall towards the end of the battle." Sirius was not slow to realize the implications. "Shit. They figured out where Voldemort was at and went after him!"

Severus gave a grim nod. "We need to find where they have gone, and quickly." He glanced around the room, contemplating the Death Eaters he had seen, both injured and dead. "Bellatrix is not here. Nor are the Carrows, or the Lestrange brothers." He frowned. "None of his best fighters, as a matter of fact."

The two men looked at each other, and for one of the few times in their lives, were of like mind. "The Ministry." Sirius breathed. "Shit, it'll be a slaughterhouse." He straightened up and gave a loud, sharp whistle. "We need every able-bodied fighter and as many people capable of healing as can be spared to assemble in the Great Hall. The Ministry's under attack!" He bellowed into the ensuing silence.

That galvanized the people in the Great Hall. Within a few minutes, nearly half of Hogwarts' fighting force (many of them also capable with triage and healing spells) had hustled off the Hogwarts grounds to help defend the Ministry.

Of course, when they got there, it was to discover that the fight was, apparently, over. At least in the Atrium, anyway. Everyone scattered throughout the Atrium, quickly checking bodies as they went, doing a rough and fast sort of 'dead' versus 'not dead'. Crude and crass as it might have been, for the moment, the dead were simply being floated to one end of the Atrium. Unlike at Hogwarts, the casualties and injuries here had been catastrophic, and there wasn't the time or ability to be respectful of the dead.

About two minutes after the Hogwarts contingent arrived, Hermione, Ginny, and their caged opponents returned to the Atrium. Remus, who'd happened to be closest to the elevators, hustled over.

"Hermione! Ginny! Thank goodness you're all right! Where are Harry and the others?" He wanted to know. Then he took a longer look at the cage, a faintly amused look on his face. "And who have you got here?"

Hermione shook her head. "I don't know where anyone else is. We had to split up." She told Remus, looking far less than pleased.

Ginny, for her part, gave the cage a dirty look. "It's Dolohov and one of the Lestranges." She told Remus and Sirius, who'd come trotting over when he spotted the little gathering. "They were trying to force the floo open so they'n whatever of the Death Eaters are still around here could sneak into Hogwarts with Voldemort."

Sirius grimaced. "That would not have ended well." He said. "Thanks for stopping them."

"Wasn't hard." Ginny said with a laugh. "They were so busy with the floo they never knew we were there."

"Well, shove the cage in the corner there for now ... we're too busy trying to keep folks alive in here to deal with them at the moment." Sirius said, motioning towards an out-of-the-way corner of the Atrium.

Hermione nodded and floated the cage away. At that point, Ron arrived, looking disheveled and sporting quite a few bruises and minor cuts. He grinned hugely when he realized Remus and Sirius were so close to the elevators.

"Hey, Remus, Sirius! Got a present for you two!" He called, waving the cage in his hand in their direction without a care for the rat trapped within, who was getting thrown around inside the cage.

It didn't take Remus and Sirius more than a second or two to realize who Ron had caught. Both men looked at each other, then glances over to where Severus and two others were casting spells and pouring potions down Amelia Bones' throat in an attempt to keep her alive. She was one of the worst injured they'd found so far, most of her bones broken when Voldemort's spell knocked her across the room on top of the damage the spell itself had done.

"You think they'd care? Or miss him?" Sirius wanted to know, his expression somewhere between mischief and murder.

Remus contemplated the question. "Probably not. The real question, though, is whether or not Harry'd be happy with us."

The two men shared a long look, remembering Harry stopping them the last time, telling them he doubted James would have wanted the two of them to become murderers over a sniveling little rat like Pettigrew, no matter what he'd done. Both men sighed quietly, sincerely doubting that Harry'd changed his mind.

"He just damn well better make it through this." Sirius growled. He hated this, not knowing where Harry was, and knowing that even if he had known, there wasn't a damn thing he could do to help.

"Agreed." Remus said, his voice grim.

Ron could only nod agreement as he handed the cage over. The twins arrived at that point, looking rather the worse for wear, but sporting huge, triumphant grins that morphed to 'hell on wheels' grins when the spotted the rat.

"Who caught him?" They wanted to know.

"That would have been Ron." Sirius said with a grin.

"Good one, bro." The twins said, then one of them pulled his wand.

Immediately, Remus moved the cage around behind himself. "Harry ... " He started.

The twins grinned at him. "We don't intend." One said.

"To kill him."

"That would be."

"Too easy on him."

"Besides, there's nothing."

"That says we can't prank him."

"Until an Auror takes custody."

Sirius laughed. "They've got a point, Remus. Long's we don't hurt him, we're not going to get into trouble."

Remus brought the rat back around to where he could be seen, and all five men started conferring as to what sort of mayhem to wreak on the rat.

It was perhaps fortunate for Pettigrew that before any of the five could actually start hexing that Neville all but crawled out of an elevator, ghost-pale and shocky from blood loss, physical and magical exhaustion. Sirius hustled over and Neville more or less collapsed into his arms.

"Crap. What the hell happened to you, Neville?" He wanted to know as he eased the boy to the floor, and he and Remus started patching him back together again.

"Whatever it was, his core's practically gone." Remus said, having done a diagnostic. "Must have been a hell of a fight."

Neville may have been teetering on the edge of unconsciousness, but he managed to pull it together enough to mutter. "Bellatrix and Nagini. Got'm both."

Sirius and Remus shared a look over Neville's head. Bellatrix and Nagini? That'd about do it, all right. That combo would have pushed most of the adults to their limits, nevermind a still-growing teen.

"Just relax now, Neville. Think you've done your bit and then some." Remus said, then yelled over to Severus. "We need some potions here."

Severus rolled his eyes slightly. Fortunately, Amelia had finally stabilized, so he could afford to take his attention away from her. He headed over and one eyebrow headed for his hairline when he saw Neville.

"He took on Bella and Nagini." Remus said. The 'and won' was really unnecessary. With that unholy duo, it was either win or die.

They were in the middle of patching Neville back together when the floor trembled.

"The hell was that?" Sirius wanted to know.

"Offhand, I'd say that was Voldemort and Harry." Severus' tone was somewhere between mocking and concerned.

"Yeah, I really didn't need to hear that." Sirius complained, looking worried.

And then the floor shook again, harder this time. "Shit." About the only thing keeping Sirius where he was was the fact he didn't know where Harry was. He hated this.

Remus looked like he agreed, but Severus was, at that moment, a wee bit distracted to agree or disagree ... and not because he was still pouring potions down Neville's throat. No ... the moment the floor had shaken the second time, he'd felt the oddest ... twinge. For lack of a better word. He shot a look around the room, half expecting someone to jump out at them, not realizing the twinge had nothing to do with his paranoia and everything to do with the Mark disappearing from his arm.

Harry

During his swift trip the heck out of there, Harry had very little time to figure out what to tell people. There was no way in hell he'd tell anyone about the whole veil and Death thing. Just ... no. Not a chance. But he'd have to tell them something. Fortunately, the Department of Mysteries looked rather like a particularly vicious hurricane had gone through it. Harry would be surprised if there was anything unbroken down there, outside of the one room neither of them had managed to get into during the fight. The room with the prophecy spheres was particularly bad ... Harry was fairly sure that not a single sphere had survived.

The simplest solution that presented itself was to tell everyone that after Nagini was taken care of, he'd thrown a particularly powerful spell, and Voldemort had exploded. With the mess down in the Department, which included gobbets of flesh from some weird looking creatures in one of the rooms, the chances of anyone discovering there were no Voldemort remains was nil. At least, if anyone asked, he could honestly say that Voldemort was gone, permanently.

He was not at all startled to see that some of the Hogwarts crew had arrived by the time he made his way back up to the Atrium.

Sirius, Remus and Ron spotted him at about the same time, and converged on him, with Hermione, Ginny, and the twins following swiftly on their heels. Harry found himself being passed from person to person, being hugged and shaken (gently) amidst a babble of voices that scolded, congratulated, and demanded information all at the same time. It took a good five minutes for everyone to calm down enough for Harry to tell them the false version of what happened.

April 30, 1996

The next two weeks were rather hectic for everyone. The extra defenses in and around Hogwarts were dismantled, and the rebuilding of Hogsmeade and the Ministry Atrium and Department of Mysteries begun. The final tally of dead and wounded at the Ministry and Hogwarts both was published, and innumerable funerals held, as nearly a hundred people had died in the Atrium. Amelia, despite her grave injuries, was back on the job within three days, against Healer's orders. She'd told them flat out that there was too much to be done for her to be lazing about.

Trials were held for the surviving Death Eaters, and every last one was convicted and given the Kiss. No one wanted a repeat of what had happened after the first Voldemort war. Where such fates meant that a family had died out, their worldly goods were sold off and the money (as well as all contents of any vaults) were used to fund the rebuilding, and distributed to victims of Death Eaters as compensation, as paltry as it might have been, for the death of loved ones or their own injuries and trauma.

Through it all, the New Marauders hid in Hogwarts, trying to evade the press and a sudden flood of fans from all walks of life. Harry and Neville especially came in for a lot of attention, and all of them, much to their amusement and horror, found themselves the recipients of quite a number of marriage proposals, business offers and the like.

Harry was just glad that no one was questioning his tale of Voldemort's death. He really didn't want to have to explain, and he had a feeling that people would think Voldemort could still come back, if they knew that he had just disappeared, no matter who (or was it what?) had done the disappearing.

In a lot of ways, if felt odd to still have two months of school left ... usually, when all heck broke loose, it was at the very end of the school year. Not that much in the way of schooling was being done, actually. The atmosphere in the school the last two weeks had been very relaxed. Of course, they had nothing on the parties happening in the wider wizarding world. The first week especially, most everyone had been partying hard, celebrating the final, true end of Voldemort and his followers.

There had even been talk of delaying the OWL and NEWT tests, probably until the end of summer. For one, there'd been about a month or so when everyone'd been sent home while Hogwarts was repaired from the surprise attack last year, which had lost everyone a good bit of time. And while those who had returned had been working hard, the vast majority of what they'd learned had had more to do with fighting and surviving than the requirements to pass OWLs and NEWTs. While that meant that pretty much everyone would pass Charms, Transfiguration, and DADA with flying colors, the other classes were far from certain.

And too, there was the fact that practically half the school had not returned after the surprise attack. While some of them had been the children of Death Eaters, most had been children that had been withdrawn by frightened-out-of-their-minds parents, who were now allowing said children to return. They'd lost months of schooling, and while most of them were not OWL or NEWT year students, they were still far behind everyone else.

It had taken the better part of the last two weeks, but eventually the teachers had all agreed, and for the first time, Hogwarts was going to have 'summer school', for everyone that wanted and or needed it. Hermione, of course, had been thrilled, though most of the rest of the New Marauders had been less so.

On top of all of that, the Weasleys were gearing up for a wedding. Bill had, evidently, taken to Fleur Delacour, and she to him ... a state of affairs that had passed Harry right on by. Molly and Ginny were somewhat less than pleased with Bill's choice, but were soldiering on.

Better still, Harry was fairly sure that Remus had finally got off his ass where Tonks was concerned. That, Harry'd seen plenty of, and they'd been circling each other since the start of summer last year, so it was about dang time. Sirius, of course, was having all sorts of fun teasing the two of them, and mock-threatening both of them in turn, since Remus was his best friend, and Tonks was Sirius' cousin, and therefore needed a 'big brother' to vet her boyfriends. Or, at least, that's what Sirius had said yesterday.

He was still sporting tentacles from Tonks' retribution. The rest of the Marauders had been too busy laughing themselves silly at Sirius to help him get rid of them.

Things finally seemed to have slowed down a bit. Enough, at least, for Harry to finally risk hanging around outside. He was currently sitting on a rock by the lake, tossing bits of bread to the Giant Squid as he relaxed. It was the first time in two weeks he'd had more than a brief moment alone.

He'd not really thought much about what he'd do 'after'. To be completely honest, he'd not expected to survive, at least not until things had changed last summer. A kid against a sixty-or-seventy-something Dark Wizard ... well, even Dudley would have been able to tell that wasn't going to end well for the kid. But now, Harry found himself alive and with an entire life to look forward to ... and needing to figure out what he wanted to do with it. At least he had time to think about it ... two whole year's worth, before he passed his NEWTS and left Hogwarts behind forever. All he knew was that at this point, becoming an Auror was much less appealing than it had been.