At dinnertime, everyone was sitting in the Great Hall, each house sitting at its own table. The teachers were sitting at the faculty table at the far end of the room. The elves, who had decorated the Great Hall especially for the return-to-school feast, were scurrying around, making sure everything was set properly. Most of the students, who had just returned on the Hogwarts Express a few minutes earlier, noticed the elves' little red uniforms for the first time. They had never seen house elves wearing clothes before, and they started whispering to each other, wondering what was going on.

When all the students had found seats, McGonagall rose from her seat in the middle of the staff table, and waited for the noise to die down. The room quickly quieted, and she began speaking:

"Students. Welcome back to Hogwarts. As you probably know, I have been appointed as the Headmistress of Hogwarts."

The crowd started to applaud. The Gryffindor table was especially raucous, with the students standing up and whooping, and with the older students using their wands to send fireworks flying across the Great Hall.

At first McGonagall smiled at the reaction, but she quickly recovered and remembered to be stern.

"Students, you know that fireworks are not permitted in the Great Hall. Now, please take your seats and cease the hollering and whooping."

Slowly, the room got quieter and the Gryffindors stopped whooping.

McGonagall continued. "Most of you just returned to Hogwarts for the first time since the great battle. You have heard many rumors, you have read stories in the Daily Prophet, you've talked to each other. Many of you know a lot about what has happened. But there are certain facts that I want to make sure that each and every one of you knows. So I will state them now as clearly as possible.

"First, Voldemort is dead. He died here at Hogwarts. He died while trying to kill Harry Potter."

McGonagall stopped speaking for a moment to let her words sink in. Then she continued. "This is exactly how Voldemort died. Voldemort cast the death curse at Mr. Potter at the same time that Mr. Potter cast "Expelliarmus". Voldemort's curse bounced back and killed him. Voldemort is really dead. He will not come back. You do not need to worry about Voldemort ever again."

The fact that Voldemort was dead wasn't exactly a secret. Everyone knew that Voldemort was dead. Articles about the death of Voldemort had been on the cover of the Daily Prophet for days. But somehow, for many of the students, it had never felt totally real. Until now. The students had feared Voldemort, feared even his name, since the day they were born. It was hard to imagine living in a world in which they did not have to fear him. But when the students heard McGonagall say the words out loud, something snapped inside many of them, and it finally felt real. They finally understood that Voldemort was really, really, gone. There was something about McGonagall. Maybe it was her voice. Maybe it was the fact that she was Headmistress. But for whatever reason, when she said the words, it finally felt real. The students trusted McGonagall, much in the same way that they had trusted Dumbledore before her.

It wasn't clear to the students what the appropriate response was to hearing McGonagall pronounce that Voldemort was dead. Some of the students wondered if they should clap. Clapping didn't seem right. It didn't seem like enough. It was too big a thing to clap for. But a couple of students started clapping anyway. It sounded awkward, with a few students clapping in such a large room. But then a few more students joined them. As the clapping grew louder, others joined until there was thunderous applause throughout the room. The students were sharing with each other their relief that they never had to worry about Voldemort again. But even though the clapping was loud, applauding the death of Voldemort still didn't feel exactly right.

Through the din of the clapping, all of a sudden Neville shouted the name, "Harry!" Harry – who was sitting across the Gryffindor table about 20 feet away from him – looked up to see why Neville was calling him. Neville was looking at Harry, but with a look in his eye that seemed to be ignoring him. He didn't change his expression as he and Harry looked at each other, but he yelled again, "Harry!" Harry stared at Neville. He couldn't figure out why Neville was shouting his name. Harry raised his eyebrows, as if to say,"Why are you calling me?" Neville ignored Harry, but yelled "Harry!" a third time, slowly, holding the "Ha" part of the name before saying "rry". Harry was puzzled. Again, Neville shouted, "Ha…rry!" holding the "Ha…" part and ending with a sharp "rry". He seemed to be shouting rhythmically, and he was pounding on the table each time he shouted 'Ha..' and each time he shouted 'rry'". Then, all of a sudden, Harry figured out what Neville was doing.

"No!" cried Harry, frantically, shaking his head at Neville and waving at him to stop.

Neville ignored Harry. "Ha…rry!" he shouted. The next time Neville shouted, he was joined by Seamus Finnegan and Dean Thomas, who were sitting on either side of him. "Ha…rry!" the three of them chanted, pounding their fists on the table.

Harry groaned.

Ron, Ginny and Hermione grinned and joined in: "Ha…rry! Ha…rry!" they shouted, joining the chant that Neville had started, and slapping and pounding the table. Now that six of them were doing it, the chant took on a life of its own. Harry felt himself slowly sinking deeper and deeper, his face turning beet red.

Within seconds, all the students in the room, even the Slytherins, had taken up the chant.

"Ha...rry! Ha..rry!" The chanting grew louder. Students were pounding the tables and stamping their feet on the floor with each beat. "Ha...rry! Ha..rry!"

The whole room was pounding with the sound of his name being chanted over and over again. All of a sudden, the chant grew much louder. Harry looked up. Hagrid had joined the chant, yelling with the students and pounding his gigantic fist on the staff table. Harry groaned again and sunk deeper, wishing he could disappear into the floor.

"Oh no, not her," Harry thought, as he saw McGonagall joining the chant. He couldn't imagine in a million years Minerva McGonagall pounding on the staff table and chanting his name, but there she was. His biggest nightmare was coming true. Once McGonagall started, the rest of the teachers joined in.

Harry turned to Ginny. Ginny grinned back at him and continued shouting his name as loud as anyone. Harry glared at her.

"Ginny," Harry whispered. "This is a nightmare. I'd rather be tortured by Bellatrix than this. Make it stop!"

"Oh, I couldn't make it stop if I wanted to," said Ginny, still smiling. "And I don't want to. Face it. You're a hero. And you're my boyfriend. I have a hero for a boyfriend." She started singing to Harry, in a teasing way: "My boyfriend is a hero. My boyfriend is a hero." Then Ginny giggled, and went back to chanting "Ha..rry!" at the top of her lungs.

Harry looked around the room. He didn't know what to do. He had never heard chanting this loud and passionate in his life, not even at the Quidditch World Cup. He wanted it to stop. But it didn't sound as if it was going to stop any time soon. If anything, it was growing stronger. Everyone in the room had such strong feelings about all the things that had just happened. The feelings had been hard to express. But finally they had a way to express all of the powerful emotions they were feeling simply by shouting the name of the person who had been responsible for Voldemort's destruction. It made the people in the room feel so good to be shouting out Harry's name and pounding the table together with all of their friends that nobody wanted to stop.

Harry never wanted to be a hero. More importantly, he hated that people thought he enjoyed being a hero. He was ready, finally, to just be Harry Potter. Of course, he wasn't sure exactly who this Harry Potter was that he wanted to be. For 11 years he had been miserable living with the Dursleys. He didn't want to go back to that again. Now, for almost seven years he had been in a life and death struggle with Voldemort, and he usually ended up being the hero. He was done struggling with Voldemort and done being a hero. But what did that leave him? Who was the real Harry Potter that he just wanted to be? He wasn't sure. He didn't know exactly who he wanted to be, just that he wanted to be something different. And now this. Today, he was a hero again, and he knew he would have to deal with it.

"Hermione!" he shouted across the table.

"What?" she shouted back at him, pausing from her chanting for a moment.

"Having fun?" he asked. Harry knew that Hermione knew just how much he hated the chanting.

"Yup," she said smiling. "How about you?"

"Nope," he said, glaring.

"Too bad," she smiled, "you're a hero." And she went back to chanting Harry's name and pounding on the table.

"Ha..rry! Ha..rry!"

"Hermione," he shouted again across the table.

"What?" she shouted back at him again.

"How do I make this stop?" he asked.

"There's only one way you can make it stop."

"How?"

"You know how," she said.

Harry groaned again. "No!" he said.

"Then everyone's going to keep on chanting your name," said Hermione, smiling. "Maybe it will go on forever."

"I am not going to make a speech," said Harry.

Ron stopped chanting Harry's name for a second to join the conversation. "Mate, you have no choice. The chanting is not going to stop until you say something. Just stand up and get it over with."

Harry groaned again, as Ron and Hermione went back to pounding the table with their fists and shouting Harry's name even louder.

Harry thought. He really didn't want to speak. Making a speech would be saying that everyone was right for shouting his name, that he really was a hero, that he thought he was a hero, that he thought he deserved all the chanting. He didn't. And he certainly didn't want anyone to think that he thought he was a hero. What could he say? He needed to say something to make the chanting stop. But he didn't want to say anything that would make it seem like he thought he deserved all of this fuss. He tried to figure out what to say. "Thank you?" No, that wasn't right. That would make it seem like he thought he deserved it. How about: "I don't deserve all of this. I'm not a hero."? No. That would make it seem like he thought he really was a hero and that he was trying to sound humble.

All Harry knew was that he needed the chanting to stop. It had gone on for five minutes, it was getting stronger, and it was getting ridiculous. He had no idea what he was going to say, but he decided to quickly stand up before he changed his mind. So he leapt to his feet.

When people saw him stand up, the chanting grew even louder. "HA…RRY! HA...RRY!" Now Harry was standing in a room with hundreds of people chanting his name. Standing while they all chanted his name and looked at him made him even more embarrassed, but he didn't know how to get people to be quiet. He looked at Hermione. She motioned for him to raise his hand and wave it downward as a signal for people to quiet down. He did it. And almost instantaneously the room became silent. Everyone in the room was sitting silently, staring at him. This was worse. The way everyone became silent at one wave of his hand made him seem important. Like he was Dumbledore or something. They were all waiting for him to make a speech.

Ginny took her wand, whispered "sonorus," and handed the wand to Harry.

"Thanks," he sort of grunted at her, without smiling.

"You're welcome," said Ginny, smiling at him with a big grin. "Now everyone can hear every word my hero says!"

Harry looked back at Ginny, with a helpless look on his face, as if to say, "I'd rather be anywhere else in the universe right now, rather than standing here about to make a speech when I have no idea what to say. Can't you and I just go somewhere quiet and snog for a while?"

Ginny understood what he was thinking, just from his look. She squeezed his hand, and whispered, "You're going to do fine." Then she kissed the tips of her fingers and touched his fingers with them.

Harry looked around the room at everyone staring at him. Then he caught McGonagall's eye. She was looking at him. He looked back at her. McGonagall didn't smile, but she nodded to him. Harry knew what that nod meant. McGonagall had confidence in him. McGonagall knew he could handle this. Just as he had looked into Dumbledore's sparkling blue eyes so many times and felt safe, Harry felt better after seeing McGonagall's nod.

He spoke into Ginny's wand, and his voice resonated throughout the Great Hall.

"That night at Hogwarts," Harry began, "there were many heroes here." Harry looked around the room. Then he continued: "Many of the heroes are sitting in this room right now. We all dug deep and fought hard that night because we believed in what we were fighting for." He paused. Then he went on.

"We all lost friends that night. Some of us lost more than friends." Harry looked at Dennis Creevey. He looked at Ron. Then he down looked at Ginny. She had a tear in her eye. Harry put his hand on her shoulder and squeezed it.

"Fifty people died that night. All of them were heroes. It is up to us who survived to honor their memories. Let us always remember what it was they died for. We were not just fighting against Voldemort that night. Voldemort was a person. He was a terrible person. But he was just a person. We were fighting against his ideas and his beliefs. Voldemort stood for anger, hatred and fear. He wanted us to be afraid. He wanted us to hate. He wanted us to fear Muggles. To fear Half Bloods. To fear each other. He wanted people to be divided. To fear each other, and to hate each other. Do you remember the Sorting Hat's poem two years ago. The Sorting Hat warned us. The Sorting Hat told us to 'unite'. The Sorting Hat was right. Let us always remember that there are differences between people. But the things people have in common are much more important than the things that make us different. We're all just people. Slytherins and Gryffindors, Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs, Wizards and Muggles, Full Bloods and Half Bloods. We are all brothers and sisters. Let us always remember that. Let us never let anyone make us fear each other again. So long as we remember that, so long as we reject his ideas, then we will truly be victorious over Voldemort, and the people who died that night will not have died for nothing."

Harry stopped speaking, and he sat down. As he sat down, he thought to himself, "Please…please….please…. please….don't applaud."

It was as if McGonagall could read his thoughts. Just at the exact moment that the Great Hall was about to explode into another round of clapping and chanting, McGonagall spoke again:

"Thank you, Mr. Potter. You're right, of course. And you said it very well.

"Now students," McGonagall continued, pretending to be stern, "if you continue to interrupt me like this, we will never get to eat dinner. I was down in the kitchens earlier, and the elves have whipped us up an extra special dinner that I am personally looking forward to eating. So, please try to minimize the interruptions.

"As I was saying, there are certain things I want you to know. As we have already established, Voldemort is dead." She held up her hand before anyone could clap or cheer again. She continued. "The Death Eaters are all locked up in Azkaban, and the dementors are back under the control of the Ministry of Magic."

"When I say that the Death Eaters are in Azkaban, that includes the Carrows." McGonagall didn't even bother to hold up her hand because she knew it would be no use. The students cheered, clapped and whooped again when they heard the Carrows were in Azkaban. A couple of fireworks flew across the room, but McGonagall ignored them.

"I will continue. Now I wish to speak to you about my friend and colleague, Severus Snape."

There was murmuring in the Great Hall. McGonagall had called Snape her "friend and colleague." But Snape was a Death Eater. Snape had murdered Dumbledore. Snape had become the Headmaster at Hogwarts working for Voldemort. The Carrows had tortured students with Snape in charge. It was true that some of the students had heard rumors that maybe Snape had really been working for Dumbledore, but they were just rumors. And it didn't make sense. How could Snape have been working for Dumbledore if he killed Dumbledore? Did Dumbledore want to die? The murmuring in the room continued.

"Let me continue," said McGonagall, and the Great Hall became silent. "Severus Snape was a hero. He pretended to work for Voldemort for many, many years while he was secretly helping Professor Dumbledore. Professor Dumbledore was already dying, from an incurable illness. Professor Snape killed Professor Dumbledore because Professor Dumbledore ordered him to. And it was still perhaps the hardest thing Professor Snape ever had to do. He was Albus Dumbledore's friend.

"When Voldemort decided that Professor Snape should become headmaster of Hogwarts, Professor Snape followed Professor Dumbledore's orders, and spent this year keeping all of you students as safe as possible without the Death Eaters ever finding out that he wasn't one of them. He protected all of us. Severus Snape was always loyal to Professor Dumbledore, and devoted to Hogwarts. Professor Snape was murdered by Voldemort last week. Severus Snape sacrificed so much for so many years to help fight Voldemort. He was a true hero, and we should all remember him that way."

The room was silent, as everyone thought about what McGonagall had just said. It was hard for many of them to think of Snape as a hero. But they trusted her.

"Next," McGonagall continued. "You may have noticed that the elves are wearing uniforms. As my first act as Headmistress of Hogwarts, I set all of the house elves free. They are free elves now, not slaves. They work for Hogwarts, and are paid a salary for working. They have certain responsibilities, and they are free to do what they want to do the rest of the time. You will all treat the elves with respect. I hope that is clearly understood by all of you.

"I am personally grateful to Hermione Granger for helping me to understand that the way we were treating the house elves simply wasn't right. A person is never too old to learn new things. Ms. Granger taught this old person something very important. Thank you, Ms. Granger." Hermione smiled at McGonagall and gave her a little wave.

"Next. With the Carrows locked up in Azkaban, we seem to be without a Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher once again, as well as without a Muggle Studies teacher. There are only three months left in this school year, which is not enough time to hire new teachers. So this is what is going to happen. I will personally teach Defense Against the Dark Arts to 5th, 6th and 7th years. As for the students in years one through four, you will be taught Defense Against the Dark Arts for the remainder of this year by the newest member of Hogwarts's faculty. Please let me introduce you to…Student Teacher…Harry Potter."

Harry was shocked. "What the…" he started to sputter, as the crowd burst out into a round of applause, and another chant of "Ha…rry! Ha…rry!" Harry looked up at McGonagall in despair. She just smiled, nodded her head at him again, and waited for the noise to die down. Then she continued.

"I will continue to teach Transfiguration to students in years five through seven," continued McGonagall. But between my duties as Headmistress and teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts, I won't have time to teach all of the Transfiguration classes. So, for the rest of this year, Transfiguration for years one through four, and all Muggles Studies classes will be taught by the best student Hogwarts has seen for many, many years. Please allow me to introduce you to…Student Teacher…Hermione Granger."

Hermione was stunned. But as the people in the room clapped for her politely, Hermione began to think, turned to Ron, and said, "You know, I know it's a big deal being a teacher when I'm really only a student, but I really think I can do this. You know I'm pretty good at Transfiguration. And I'm good at explaining stuff. I've probably taught you more magic than most of our professors put together."

She smiled. Ron glared.

"And this isn't even O.W.L. level stuff. It's just years one through four. I should be able to teach this fine. Muggles Studies shouldn't be a problem. I was raised by Muggles. That should be easy. Transfiguration will be the real challenge. I wonder if I should teach Transfiguration exactly the way Professor McGonagall did, or whether I should come up with my own lessons. I mean, of course she is an excellent teacher, but maybe there are certain things I can do to improve on her teaching methods. For example, did you notice how when she wanted us to transfigure an animal, she would have us put it on the table in front of us, before we picked up our wands. What if instead of doing it that way, I have the students hold the wand in one hand and the animal in the other hand. Well, not always. But if it's a small animal. Then, they can…"

Ron was laughing. Hermione stopped talking, and asked, "Ron, what are you laughing at?"

"Oh, nothing," said Ron, and he leaned forward and snogged her. Hermione snogged him back.

By then, the students had stopped applauding for Hermione, and McGonagall was ready to speak again.

"Students, this is the first meal we will be eating together at Hogwarts since we have been free of the Death Eaters, free of the Carrows, free of Voldemort. It is also the first meal most of you will be eating here since our house elves became free elves. You are all about to enjoy the taste of freedom."

McGonagall waved her wand, and the tables were covered with platters of roast beef, roast chicken, shepherd's pies, steak, Cornish pasties, lamb chops, kidney pudding, steak and kidney pie, roast potatoes, boiled potatoes, mashed potatoes, chips, Yorkshire pudding, peas, carrots, and gravy. The smell was incredible. "Wow," said Seamus, "this is amazing."

"Wait till you taste it," said Neville.

All around the room, arms were flying as the students filled their plates with food as quickly as they could.

Whack. "Ow."

"Sorry, Hermione," said Ron. "I didn't mean to whack you in the head. I just couldn't wait to get to that shepherd's pie."

"We need to work on your table manners, sweetie," Hermione said, rubbing the sore spot on her head.

The room got very quiet, as the students were too busy filling their plates with food and wolfing it down to do much talking. They were extra hungry, because McGonagall's speech had gone on for so long. And they had never smelled or tasted food this good before.

Once Ginny had finished her first plate of food, and while she was filling her plate with another helping of mashed potatoes and gravy, she turned to Harry. "So, what do you think about teaching Defense Against the Dark Arts?"

"Well, I've been thinking about it," said Harry. "My first thought was that this is kind of crazy, the idea of me being a teacher and all that. But then I realized something. This is basically what the DA was. I already know how to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. This will be the same. Only I won't have to do it secretly and I won't have to worry about Umbridge torturing me if she finds out. I think it could be fun."

"That's what I was thinking," said Ginny. "They'll be lucky to have you as their teacher."

"I guess," said Harry. "Well, at least I know one thing. I'll be better than Lockhart."

They both laughed, and filled their mouths with mashed potatoes and gravy.