A/N: One more chapter to go in Book II. Reviews for last chapter are in my forums as usual.

Thanks for reading.

Chapter Thirty-Five: Weakness

The parlour of Number 12 Grimmauld Place thrummed with the sound of shouting, frightened voices. Bloodied, wounded students littered the floor while adults scrambled around them trying to help. On a sofa against the far wall, staring with a detached gaze, sat Harry Potter.

Sybil Trelawney had healed his wounds with a mixture of blood-replenishment potions and simple healing magic. Others, though, were not so easy to heal.

"Ginny won't stop shaking!" Ron shouted, on the edge of panic. "We need to get her home!"

"Mr Weasley, we can't afford to let you go…" Remus Lupin tried desperately to reason with the panicked boy, but Harry knew it would not do any good. He'd known Ron now for five years, and the one thing he knew for sure is that once Ron worked up a head of steam, nothing would change his mind.

And, truthfully, Ginny was hurt badly. She was still trembling from the effects of the Cruciatus curse the Hit Witches at Hogwarts had her under. Even after the Order members provided her the counter-potion. That was an indication that she'd been held under too long—that she might actually have suffered real, permanent nerve damage.

The idea should have brought tears to his eyes; though Ginny was the one who almost got Hermione and Justine killed last summer, she was also genuinely sorry about it and tried her best to make amends. She even went so far as to try and help them rescue Justine from a trap that Harry, with his faith in a faulty map, led them right into.

However, he felt nothing but detached interest. He realized with some curiosity that he was couched deeper in his own Occlumency than he could remember, and that detached analytical part of his mind admitted it was likely his means of dealing with shock and stress. He knew he was in shock—Dumbledore was dead, and Justine too was tortured with the Cruciatus, though he saw that she no longer trembled so badly after they applied the potion.

Leaving the drama of his friends behind, Harry let his mind wander back to the evening's activities. Dumbledore, of course, knew it was coming. He knew leading them up to that tower would mean his death—that's why he gave Harry his wand.

Harry pulled the wand from the inner pocket of his burned and tattered school robe and studied it—from his lessons with Ollivander, he recognized the wood as sambucus, known colloquially as Elder wood. The core…Harry wasn't quite skilled enough to determine the core by feel alone, but he knew the wood had been imbibed for a male Gryffindor, and had many, many generations of magic pass through it, strengthening it in a way Harry would never have believed possible.

All that power, skill and expertise, and still Dumbledore died, cursed in the back by a Hit Witch.

"Harry?"

Harry blinked, surprised at the effort in such a simple gesture, and looked at Hermione. She stared back at him in worry, her hair frazzled and frizzy, coming out of whatever charms she used to hold it in place. Behind her, Luna held Susan Bones while her aunt Amelia worked on a wounded Hannah Abbot. Neville knelt down beside his young wife, holding her hands and weeping openly.

"You're very beautiful," he told Hermione, still in his distant place. It was not an emotional statement, but rather a statement of fact.

"Harry, are you okay?"

"I led us all into a trap," Harry said.

"You couldn't have known."

"Yes, I could have," he said. "We should have left the moment we received our O.W.L. scores. We should have simply flown out. It was stupid for us to stay."

"Harry, it was not stupid!"

"No, it really was," Sybil Trelawney said wearily as she walked to the sofa. She leaned down and looked Harry in the eyes. "Where are you, Harry?"

"Occlumency"

Sybil nodded, and then sat beside him, opposite Hermione. "We all should have left the castle. I saw them coming for me; Dumbledore knew they were coming. We all got caught up in the stupid idea that they would not do precisely what they did simply because it was unthinkable for them to do it."

"It was unthinkable," Hermione whispered, astonished. "It's like the Labour Party storming Parliament with guns."

Across the room, Ron raged at Fred and Georgina that they needed to get Ginny home. The twins were obviously upset and worried too, but they also knew more than Ron about what was happening, and so were more willing to take Remus's advice to heart. It would be dangerous for any of them to leave the house at that moment.

And yet, Ginny needed help.

"Does dittany work on nerves?" Harry asked.

His question made Hermione and Sybil both pause and study him for a moment. "It's not a specific agent," Hermione said. "The post-Cruciatus potion isn't covered in our texts at all, since no one is supposed to use the curse in the first place."

Harry stood from the couch and moved the centre of the room where Ginny lay—the witch working on her was one he had seen before, and who reminded him of Lieutenant Vance in the WestCon.

"How is she, Ms Vance?"

Emmeline Vance looked up at Harry with a frown. "She needs professional help, and we can't afford to get that for her."

Harry knelt down beside the girl. She actually was quite pretty, with bright red hair and a galaxy of freckles across her eyebrows and the tops of her high-boned cheeks. "How would St. Mungo's treat her?"

"They would dose her to the nines with the Cruciatus potion and then flash-charge her magical core to get it to saturate."

"Do we have enough potion to do that?"

"Yes, but we don't have…" Vance stopped and studied him a second. "You're not just a visual, are you? You're a tactile Aether."

Harry nodded, still firmly couched in that distant blanket of his Occlumency.

Vance said, "Sybil, bring the rest of the potion. I say we let Potter try flash-charging the girl."

"What's that mean?" Ron said frantically.

"I'm going to push my magic into her to make the potion work better," Harry said. "I've done it before—after they beat us up, right before O.W.L.s, I flash charged Skele-Gro as a lotion to preserve it."

"Oh, and the dittany rub!" Tori Greengrass said. "You know the one that made me cream…"

"We get it, Tori," Hermione said quickly, while rolling her eyes and blushing.

Ron looked at Harry's wives, then at him. "You're not bonding my sister."

"Merlin no, I have enough girls in my life already," Harry said.

Sybil knelt beside him while Vance propped up Ginny's head and forced her clenched mouth open. They poured five phials of the potion down her throat, one after the other. Harry followed the magical traces of it—a cool, soothing blue—as it moved down her throat and into her stomach.

He reached a hand out to help spread it out, but realized with a start that he couldn't quite grab it the way he needed. "Er, I know this is going to sound bad, but I need to be able to touch her skin."

"What?" Ron gulped.

The twins suddenly grabbed Ron and carried him bodily from the room while he kicked and threatened Harry not to look at his sister. Vance and Sybil, though, shared a look. "Remus, Kingsley, get out," Sybil said.

"We're gone," Shacklebolt said as he dragged Remus out of the parlour. Neville followed a moment later, carrying a healed Hannah in his arms with Susan a step behind. Amelia moved to join them as the other witches banished Ginny's clothes.

Harry blinked, feeling briefly that same pull from the base of his loins at the sight of an attractive, naked girl. He took a deep breath to steady himself, and then placed both hands on her stomach. Pushing his magic into her was astonishingly easy after the practice he had working on Tori, Luna and Hermione.

His pulse of magic struck the blue of the potion and caused it to disburse into her body. He wasn't sure what he expected, but suddenly he could see the veins of her magic, as if she were a ghost, save the magic was red and strong and vibrant except at certain junctures where the Cruciatus had damaged her magical pathways.

The potion gathered at these points, but seemed to falter as her magic had trouble moving past these same blockages. Without even seeing her skin, he placed his hands over the first blockage and pushed more magic into it. Freshly charged, the potion did its work and healed the blocked passage, allowing Ginny's own magic to carry it into the limb. He reached across her for the next blocked point and did the same, and then a third and fourth point.

He studied her magic flows again, satisfied that she was doing better, and sat back. In doing so, he felt a sense of shock at how very exhausted he felt. "I think that did it," he managed to say. "The curse caused blocks in her magic."

"Mary Carlisle could not have done a better job," Sybil said. "He did it, Emmeline. I can see her magic flowing normally now. Let's get some clothes on this girl and get her to bed. Tori, be a dear and let her brothers know that she's going to be okay."

The Auror conjured a simple dress for Ginny's modesty, levitating her enough to slide it on. Harry started to stand only for his knees to buckle. Hermione and Luna both caught him, Hermione looked worried, but Luna was unsurprised. "That was a good thing you did, Harry," Luna whispered. "But you need to sleep now. Come on."

"What about Justine?" Harry demanded.

"The potion worked fine on her," Sybil said. "Her magic is running so high it metabolized the potion in a second. We'll continue to watch her, but for now you need sleep."

Harry nodded drunkenly as the two girls walked him up to the same room they used over the holidays. He was asleep before they even got him undressed.

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

In his dreams, his mother and a young, red-headed Albus Dumbledore sat at a table playing chess while the ghost of Voldemort and Dame Delia watched from the shadows. James Potter stood behind his wife with a sad, slightly confused expression on his face.

"Did you know, Dad? What Mum was up to?"

James Potter looked at his son and shook his head. "No, I don't think she trusted me that much."

"I couldn't trust you," Lily said without looking away from the chess board.

"Did you love her?" Harry asked the man who should have meant so much to him, and yet was so marginalized by his extraordinary mother.

James opened his mouth to answer, but then paused. "I was infatuated with her," he admitted. "Her magical draw wasn't as pronounced as I thought it would be which was also nice. I think I did love her, but I don't think she ever loved me. I'm not sure she was ever able to love."

"I love our son," Lily said, still without looking away from the chessboard.

"Then you should have left England with him," Dumbledore said, speaking for the first time. As a young man, he had a thick mane of red hair and a well-trimmed, pointed red beard that actually reminded Harry a great deal of the portrait of Godric Gryffindor. Looking at the man in his vision, Harry could believe that Dumbledore was a direct descendent of the famed founder.

"I couldn't do that," Lily said.

"Ahh, but you could," Dumbledore said. "James would have gone with you—he would have done anything you asked."

"I did do everything she asked," James whined. "It cost me my friends too!"

"And you could have requested asylum with Morgan and Garrick," Dumbledore continued as if the other wizard had not spoken. "You did not have to fight, Lily. You chose to fight."

"I had to!" Lily said, her beautiful features warped by a rage that suddenly reminded Harry or Dame Delia. "They spurned me, Albus. I was the most powerful, skilled and learned witch of my generation, and they spurned me. They threw me away like trash, me and all the other Muggleborns who could have saved the witch-born."

Harry struggled to accept this side of his mother. "So what, all of this was just for you to get revenge?"

Lily shook her head, but like throughout the conversation never looked up from the chessboard. "You don't understand, Harry. It wasn't just revenge. It was justice, and even more. You won't just right their wrongs. You will save all of them. In a thousand years they will hail you as the new Merlin."

"And you, a mere Muggleborn, as the new Morgana," Dumbledore said with a dry smile.

"It's a bitter thing to learn that you are nothing but a woman's tool," James said bitterly.

"Stop whinging, James," Lily said. It had a rote sound—like something she said a lot.

"Why am I having this dream?" Harry suddenly demanded. "I didn't want to see this. I don't believe this. My mother loved me—she gave my life for me."

"She gave her life for her cause," Dumbledore said. "I do not doubt that as much as she was able, she loved you. But Harry, remember what I said. It is a difficult thing to learn those you look up to are not perfect. I should have had Sybil out of the castle sooner—I should have fled with you and your friends. Or better yet, I should have taken the same route as Morgan and destroyed my enemies. Sadly, such violence was beyond me."

"Which is why you did exactly what I told you," Lily said, "and placed him with my family."

Harry felt a sudden stillness. "What do you mean?"

Lily finally looked him in the face, and her expression spoke of vicious glee. "You can kill, Harry. You are a light wizard who can kill your enemies. You have no idea how rare that is—ask Shacklebolt if he has ever killed directly with magic. Or Albus. You killed dozens of witches and your magic is untainted. You were raised in the Muggle world so that you would not be indoctrinated in the prejudices and limitations of magic. Magic is the soul—and your soul is one of righteousness and justice."

"You were raised by adults who hated you because you were always intended as a weapon," Dumbledore elaborated. "A noble, beautiful, powerful weapon."

"But…but…Mum, you…."

"I did what I had to, and look what I accomplished—you!" She spoke exultantly.

Suddenly the dream room burned away in a wall of fire—Harry and Dumbledore stood alone on the Astronomy Tower as the eastern horizon turned grey with the promise of the coming dawn. "I don't understand," Harry whispered. "She loved me, she said so. She's protected me all these years."

"Within her own way, she did love you," Dumbledore said. "But her protection is weakening as you grow older, and your own bonds overpower those she had over you. You are growing up, Harry, and with age comes additional understanding."

"I still don't understand why I'm having this horrid dream!"

"Do you really think this is a dream, Harry?" the old wizard said, smiling sadly at Harry. He was old, Harry suddenly realized—just like when he last saw him. "Seers don't just pierce the veils of time—but of life as well."

The old wizard's body suddenly, inexplicably flew over the parapet of the tower, leaving behind the red-veined cloud of magic that was Dumbledore's soul. "You are here to learn a hard truth—adults are not perfect," the soul of Dumbledore said, speaking as if his body did not just die. "The Order does not know everything, because Lily did not trust anyone, and I was under an unbreakable oath to hold my tongue. But our time is done—the last controls your mother had over you are falling away. What happened to you on the train this summer—that is a skill she never had. You are your own wizard, now, Harry. And you are going to have to lead the Order if any of you are to survive."

"But…but…I'm not even sixteen yet! What the hell do I know?"

"You know enough to surround yourself with people you trust, and to listen to them," Dumbledore said. "You know enough to know you have much left to learn. Use your power, Harry. Lily gave you great power—use it. Do what I could not—destroy your enemies to save the greater world. Do not just be a weapon—be the general that commands it. You can do this, I know you can. But you will have to be strong, Harry. War has casualties on both sides. Don't let your losses weaken you."

~~Firebird~~

~~Firebird~~

Harry woke with a start with Dumbledore's voice fading in his ears. He looked around the room and recognized it as the master suite he, Luna, Hermione, and to their chagrin, Justine shared last holiday. Now, the bed was ridiculously crowded with Luna on his left, Hermione on his right, and Tori draped over Luna. The girls were all dressed in the remnants of their clothes they had on when they escaped Hogwarts—evidence of their exhaustion clung to them like their knickers and wrinkled shirts.

Surrounded by the three girls, Harry felt a sudden, intense feeling of peace he had not felt since the vision he had after the graveyard, when his mother told him she loved him so much she gave her life for him.

It seemed so different from the dream he woke from—he wasn't sure which was the real Lily Evans Potter. What he did know, though, was that he felt as much peace and warmth now with these amazing girls as he ever did in visions with his mum.

You are growing up, Harry.

Harry sat up, and the girls were so exhausted he was able to lift himself over Hermione to roll out of the bed without waking them. He pulled on the trousers tossed haphazardly on the floor and stared to leave before he caught himself in the mirror. The reflection shocked him for a moment by how different what he saw was from how he thought of himself.

The young man who stared back was taller than he remembered, with unusually wide and powerful shoulders and a flat, hard-looking stomach. A line of hair rose up from his navel to the centre of his chest, and his cheeks were dark with stubble. He absently ran his hands over the new set of scars he had received last night.

With a shrug, he pulled on his shirt and left the master suite. He was not even half-way down the hall when he heard male voices from behind one of the doors. He stopped and knocked softly until the door opened to reveal Ron.

"Harry!" he said, eyes wide.

Before Harry could say anything, the taller boy was pulling him into a room crowded with Weasleys—by blood or marriage. Fred, Angelina, Georgina and Lee were all gathered around the four-poster bed where Ginny was sitting up. She smiled at Harry with furiously blushing cheeks, even as she pulled the sheets up a little higher to cover her nightgown. "Hello, Harry."

"Hi, Ginny. How are you feeling?"

"A lot better, thanks to you."

Harry shrugged. "It was because of me you got hurt in the first place. So it is least I could do. Is everyone else okay?"

"We'll live," Angelina said. "So, now that we've got you, what the hell is going on?"

"It's like what we talked about in Hogsmeade," Harry told her. "This is the Order of the Phoenix, or what's left of it."

Ginny's eyes widened—she wasn't a part of the original meeting, but if anyone had earned a right to join, it was her. "But…but…Mum said the Order were seditionists as bad as Voldemort!"

"Considering Voldemort was working with Covens of the Sabbat to target their enemies, I guess the Order was," Harry said. With a glance at the others, Harry walked to the edge of the bed and gave the furiously blushing Ginny a chaste side-hug. "I'm sorry you were hurt, Ginny. I wouldn't wish that on anyone."

"So, what next?" Georgina asked.

"Next, we make sure it's safe for you to go home," Harry said. "My first priority is to make sure everyone is safe. Everything else can come after that."

He hopped up from the bed, but before he reached the door, Ginny cleared her throat. "Harry?"

When he turned, he saw all of them staring at him intently. "Whatever happens," Ginny continued, "I'm with you. I almost got Hermione and Justine killed—you should hate me. Instead, you helped heal me. You…" Her eyes watered a bit. "So, you know, I just wanted you to know. I'm with you."

"We all are," Fred said.

"Yes," Ron said. "We are."

That strange sense of peace he woke with returned to Harry as he smiled back at his friends. "Thank you. It means a lot. Now, let's go see what's happening."

What was happening was breakfast—a large pile of eggs, bangers and hash in the centre of a large, rectangular dining room table that dominated the formal dining area. Amelia Bones, Sybil Trelawney, Arabella Figg, Remus Lupin and the large black Auror who reminded Harry of a slightly less handsome version of Sergeant White sat eating already. Shacklebolt was the man's name.

"Ah, Harry and the Weasleys," Sybil said.

"That should be a band name," Fred said from behind Harry.

"Yeah, like Gladys and the Pips," Angelina said.

"Who?" Fred asked.

"Purebloods," Angelina snorted.

"Come eat," Amelia said, smiling tiredly. "I'm glad to see you all up and about, especially you, Miss Weasley."

"Thanks to Harry," the youngest Weasley said with yet another burning blush.

"Any word from the Ministry?" Harry asked.

"The Ministry has been shut down and all employees sent home—they will be returning Monday to a reorganized Ministry," Amelia said. "I will not be a part of it, nor will Shack here, unfortunately. However, we think Emmeline escaped notice so she should be able to return. It's a risk, but we're going to need people on the inside."

The others sat and helped themselves at the table; as they did so Amelia studied young Ginny Weasley. "Everyone at this table has signed a parchment binding their secrecy except you, Miss Weasley."

"I'll sign it," she said quickly, perking up at the idea.

"Somehow I thought you would," Amelia said. Her smile, though, faded. "Harry, there is something you need to know. Justine…"

Harry felt as if he were punched. "Justine what? What's wrong with her?"

Sybil stood, frowning at Amelia. "You should have let the boy eat first, Amelia. Come on, Harry. The rest of you stay here, please."

She led Harry through the house and back up to the stairs, thought they stopped on the first floor rather than the second where the master suite was located. Without knocking, she stepped into the room. Harry blinked in surprise to see a familiar face, and instantly brought up his best Occlumency shields.

Healer Mary Carlisle was an audio Aether—and in his first year Harry almost bonded with her by accident. It almost killed him.

"Hello, Harry," Carlisle said with a sad, gentle smile.

"What are you doing here?"

"Being a traitor to the Ministry," Carlisle said lightly. "I received a fire call from Sybil that she needed me, and given how much help she was when I was a student, how could I say no?"

Harry stepped past his Divination teacher, mentor and friend to the bed of the girl he was going to form a coven with. Justine lay terribly pale and unmoving, her small mouth pulled into a frown of pain. Sweat stood out on her forehead, and he could see a muscle tick in her neck.

Her magic, though, looked like molten rock in her chest—it was even hotter this morning than the previous night. Unthinkingly, he reached out to it, but stopped when a firm hand gripped his wrist. He looked up into the healer's bright blue eyes as she shook her head. "Harry, Sybil told me that you can flash-charge potions. If you do that to her, she will die immediately and you will follow her."

"What…what happened to her?"

"A poison," Sybil said sadly. "They must have poisoned her before you had a chance to reach her."

"It's burning away her magic," Mary said. "All of it. And when it is gone…not even her soul will remain. I'm so sorry, Harry. I know she was special to you, but there is nothing we can do. Justine is going to die."

Don't let your losses weaken you, Dumbledore's words whisked through his mind like a hurricane.

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Author's Note: Very special thanks as always to Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading. If there are any major faux-pas, they are entirely of my own doing.