Disclaimer: Standard stuff (I don't own anything, I won't be making profit, any resemblance to previously published content is purely coincidental, JK Rowling is the coolest, etc.). If I make any legal errors regarding copyrighted material, inform me and I will correct them immediately.

Pre-A/N: Read through the Author's Note for this chapter to see why important information was left out of Chapter 34 to be revealed in Chapter 35.

Harry Potter and the Lightning Scar

"Well, now what?"

Harry was forcibly reminded of the moments following the death of the Jersey Devil—at the time, he had thought it was sort of anticlimactic. A few cheap shots and a dead monster, he remembered, snorting in amusement. An accurate summary if ever there was one.

Cheap shots, indeed—he had slaughtered all of the Death Eaters (and one snake, apparently) in one fell swoop by taking advantage of Voldemort's foolish mistake of using Harry's blood to help build his new body. He had followed up that massive cheap shot with yet another, surprising Voldemort by sneak-attacking his wand (made possible by the intersection of fate, coincidence, and Ollivander), and then blasting him in the face with a huge bolt of lightning before he recovered. Despite the nerve-wracking, mind-numbing terror of those moments, Harry felt almost as though the circumstances had aligned themselves such that everything had more or less fallen neatly into place.

Now that Voldemort was dead, the nigh-impenetrable wards he had erected had fallen, and there was little left for Harry to do but gather his things and make his way back to Hogwarts. When Harry went back to the headstone where he had left his invisibility cloak, his mirror, and Wormtail's corpse, he found that the mirror had somehow been shorted out by the blast of lightning. It occurred to him that Remus and Sirius were probably frantic with worry, so he resolved to return as quickly as possible.

A tap of his wand transfigured Wormtail's corpse into a bleached-white rat skull, and Harry repeated the effort on Voldemort's remains, turning the pale, scaly carcass into a snake skull.

"Well, I guess that's about it," Harry said, looking around. He could always just send the Aurors here later to collect the rest of the corpses. He considered taking advantage of his thunderbird apparition to flash back to Hogwarts, but decided that it would be better to keep that capability under wraps for now. He could probably apparate to Hogsmeade and walk back up to the school, but he was so exhausted that he'd probably splinch himself, and he didn't want to risk making a portkey now, either. That left one easy way to get back, and once again, Harry was glad of his foresight back at the Quidditch World Cup.

"Winky!" Harry called out. Before he had even finished calling her name, the elf appeared with a muted pop, reminding Harry what a great house-elf Winky was.

"Master Harry!" the tiny elf squealed, hugging him around the knees. "You is alive! Master Harry's Siri and Remy and Daphne is all so worried!"

"Yeah, I'm okay," Harry said, not bothering to pry her off. "Can you take me back to Sir—"

With a somewhat louder pop, Harry and Winky disappeared.

"—ius and Remus?" Harry finished asking, right after he appeared in between Sirius and Remus in the command center that Director Bones had set up in the small Hogwarts classroom.

"HARRY!" both Marauders shouted tearfully, engulfing Harry in a tight hug. Winky, though slightly squished, maintained her death-grip on Harry's knees.

Over the next few moments, the small group managed to generate a surprising amount of yelling. Finally, Director Bones took charge.

"QUIET!" the stern, intimidating witch roared. "Mr. Potter, I am glad to see that you are alive, but you will explain what happened in that graveyard!"

Harry nodded, and turned to Winky. "Winky, go stay with Daphne. Tell her that I'm okay, and that I'll explain everything later. Follow her commands. If she asks, or if you think she's in danger, take her to the study."

Winky nodded, and disappeared with a slight pop. Harry turned his attention back to the group. Sirius, Remus, Director Bones, and Professors McGonagall, Flitwick, and Dumbledore were staring at him. Madam Pomfrey—who must have arrived fairly recently—was tending to Snape. Snape was slumped in a chair, the stump of his left arm wrapped tightly in red-stained gauze, but his black, expressionless eyes were fixed on Harry's face. Harry took a deep breath, and began to speak.

"Don't worry, Daph," Tracey said quietly. Pansy and Millicent had gone out to the common room, leaving Daphne and Tracey alone in their dorm, so they could finally talk. "He's Harry Potter, I'm sure he'll be fine."

"I know, I know," Daphne groaned, rubbing her face with the palms of her hands. "But I'm still so worried, because—Winky! What are you doing here? Is Harry okay?"

Winky had just appeared (pop) between the two girls, smiling happily. "Yes, Miss Daphne, Master Harry is being back at Hogwarts. He is being talking to his Siri and Remy about what happened, but he is being okay."

"Oh, thank Merlin," Daphne moaned, slumping down into a nearby armchair. Tension drained out of her, and she felt like she could finally breathe again. "Thank you, Winky, for telling me. I've been going mad with worry."

"She was, you know," Tracey said helpfully. "I'm guessing you're Harry's elf?"

"Yes, Miss," Winky replied primly, smoothing her uniform and letting her happy grin fade. "Winky is helping Master Harry ever since Master Barty dismissed her. Winky is proud to be serving Master Harry."

"Well, clearly Harry is lucky to have you," Tracey said, smiling kindly to try to get past what was obviously a sensitive subject for Winky.

Mollified, Winky returned Tracey's smile. "Miss Daphne, Master Harry be saying that he is being explaining everything to you later. He also be telling Winky to stay with Miss Daphne, and make sure that you is staying safe."

"Tracey was right, Winky," Daphne said. "Harry really is lucky to have you. Take a seat, and tell us what you can."

"So, the long and short of it is that Tom Riddle, also known as Voldemort, is dead," Harry concluded, having already explained the nature of the Dark Mark and why all of Voldemort's followers had to die. "And this time, he's dead for good."

Harry took a snake skull and a rat skull out of his pocket, and placed both on the floor. A quick finite canceled the transfigurations, and suddenly the two skulls turned back into Wormtail's and Voldemort's mutilated corpses. McGonagall and Pomfrey gasped in shock, while the rest of the occupants of the room gazed intensely at the two bodies. Remus sniffed the air and nodded, quietly confirming Pettigrew's identity. Voldemort's resurrected form was somewhat more monstrous than the pale, skeletal body he had worn toward the end of the first war, but it was still clearly him (even though most of his face had been melted off by a lightning bolt, in an ironic reversal of fortune).

"And so it ends," Dumbledore murmured softly. "Mr. Potter...you have done a great and terrible thing, this night. I wonder now, how we should proceed regarding the lives you have taken?"

Everyone in the room turned sharply toward Dumbledore. Sirius opened his mouth to begin giving Dumbledore a piece of his mind, but Director Bones beat him to the punch.

"Albus, this was clearly a case of self-defense," she snapped. "Considering the fact that Mr. Potter would never have been placed in that situation if Voldemort and the Death Eaters were not hunting him. Don't you dare go all self-righteous on us now—remember that you are no longer the Chief Warlock, and you have no say in how this investigation is to be run. There is no we here; it will be my decision as Director of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement whether to press charges, and I'm leaning toward cutting a document granting Mr. Potter full immunity from prosecution for his actions tonight."

"Plus," Sirius said cheerfully, "the only reason Harry even ended up in that graveyard to begin with was your failure to realize that one of your so-called oldest friends was being impersonated for nearly a year. You are responsible for the way tonight's events unfolded, Dumbledore."

Dumbledore held up his hands, surrendering. "Obviously, I do not mean that Mr. Potter should face any legal consequences for what happened tonight—I was just wondering how the public should be informed, and what steps need to be taken to keep this from sparking yet another war."

Harry shrugged casually. "I suggest holding a press conference tomorrow. We can give the bare minimum details on what happened, and tell everyone that the nearly two dozen well-respected purebloods who died were killed during the ritual to restore Voldemort's body—that will at least give people something to think about the next time a Dark Lord asks for followers. Leave the official report for the Aurors and the Unspeakables."

"And what about your animagus abilities, and your use of thaumaturgy to kill those Death Eaters?" Director Bones asked lightly. "Am I correct in assuming that you would prefer to keep that information under wraps as well?"

"You are. In fact, I was planning on bringing up that very issue," Harry replied sternly. "Snape," he said, ignoring the chorus of "Professor Snape" from McGonagall and Dumbledore, "I have a proposition for you."

"Yes, Potter?" Snape asked, too weak to sneer or act condescending.

"You will make an Unbreakable Vow to never disclose the details of my animagus form or how Voldemort and his Death Eaters were killed, and in return, I will give you this." Harry took out his shrunken medical kit, and held up a dose of Limb Regeneration Potion. "It'll re-grow your arm, without the unfortunate tattoo. The formula is proprietary, and I only have it because I am friends with a talented brewer who works at an experimental potions laboratory. This particular batch was brewed using water from the Blue Hole as a base—the bottom line is that you will not be able to brew this potion yourself, and even if you could, it wouldn't be as good as the dose I'm prepared to give you. Do we have a deal?"

Snape stared at Harry, shock etched all over his normally expressionless face. Everyone in the room could practically see the wheels turning in Snape's head as he weighed his hatred for all things Potter against the possibility of regaining full functionality of his amputated limb. Finally, Snape responded. "Fine, Potter, you have a deal. Albus, would you act as the Binder?"

After a few minutes of haggling over the wording of the vow, Dumbledore bound Snape to a vow of silence, and Harry gave Pomfrey the potion to administer to Snape, along with another dose to offer to the real Alastor Moody; though it wouldn't repair his eye (eyes were simply too complex in both structure and function for this potion—it was, after all, still experimental), it would regenerate his missing leg. With that finished, he turned back to the others.

"That pretty much goes for the rest of you, though I would like to think that I don't need vows, bribery, or blackmail to convince you all to keep quiet and stick to the official story," Harry said. Dumbledore, Bones, Flitwick, Pomfrey, and McGonagall nodded, and Sirius and Remus were already a given. "Good, I'm glad you're all willing to cooperate," Harry concluded, before turning a questioning eye to Sirius and Remus. "Now, I've been wondering, why weren't you guys able to mount a rescue by using the Triwizard Cup? I assume the portkey on it was set for the graveyard, and capable of getting through the wards."

"Blame Crispy over there," Sirius said, hooking his thumb over his shoulder at Barty Crouch, Jr.'s blackened husk of a body. "Instead of trying to defend himself against our spells, he cast a finite on the Cup, probably to make sure we couldn't use it to save you. I guess he figured that once his cover was blown, there was nothing he could do to save himself anyway, so he would delay us as long as possible. Kind of brave, in a psychopathic sort of way."

Harry nodded. At least there was a good reason—he would have been quite put out if they had simply forgotten about the Cup, considering the fact the he had explicitly pointed it out to them. "Fair enough," Harry replied, before stifling a yawn. "If you all don't mind, I'd like to get to bed now—I've had a rather tiring night, and I've still got to explain everything to my girlfriend's satisfaction or else I'll be wearing my guts for a hat. Director Bones, can you set up the press conference to take place tomorrow morning? By then, your people should have the full accounting of Death Eaters...oh, and you should probably look into how a bloody dementor ended up in that maze. I'm pretty sure that whoever authorized its transfer from Azkaban was working with the impostor-Moody, since it's common knowledge how badly I'm affected by dementors, and if it had Kissed me, my blood would still have been usable for the ritual." She responded with a curt nod, and jotted down a quick note in her statement book. "Good. Sirius, Remus, get back home and get some sleep; I'll see you tomorrow morning. Winky!"

"Yes, Master Harry?" Winky asked, appearing with a pop.

"Could you please take me down to the study, and then bring Daphne?" Harry asked. Winky nodded, grabbed his left hand, and before any of the other occupants of the room could object or ask Harry any more questions, Harry and Winky disappeared with a pop.

"Well, everyone," Sirius said grandly, breaking up the silence that stretched out in the wake of Harry's abrupt departure, "it's been lovely sharing this crisis with you all, but Moony and I really should be going, because I desperately need to get very drunk. Ta!"

With that, he and Remus strode to the fireplace, tossed in some Floo powder, and disappeared to parts unknown (most likely a bar). Director Bones glanced around the room, frowning in distaste as her eyes passed the corpses of Voldemort, Wormtail, and Crouch, Jr. Back to work, then.

"Now, I know the revelations of this evening have been...well, explosive," she began sternly, "but I must insist that you all keep your knowledge of these events to yourselves until the press conference tomorrow morning. Failure to do so will constitute obstruction of an active Auror investigation, and I promise that if you try me, I will have you clapped in irons. All of you, go back to your quarters—yes, Dumbledore, that includes you, you're just a headmaster now and I won't abide your meddling—and keep your bloody mouths shut until tomorrow morning."

Dumbledore looked as though he was about to object, but Director Bones narrowed her eyes and jutted out her chin, and he decided that discretion was truly the better part of valor. Head bowed, Dumbledore followed his fellow professors out of the room.

Finally alone (except for the three corpses), Director Bones sighed and took out some Floo powder to fire-call Auror Headquarters. It was going to be a long night.

"I only have one question," Daphne declared thoughtfully after Harry finished relating the night's events.

"Really?" Harry asked, surprised. "Only one?"

"Well, for now, anyway...give me a break, it's been a long night," Daphne replied with a smile. "Why in the world didn't you intervene while Pettigrew was performing the ritual? It seems to me like you had plenty of time to stop him."

"Ah," Harry said. He had actually been anticipating that question, knowing that Daphne was not quite as well-read as he was with regards to how magical energy moves around during spells and rituals; the adults had understood without any further explanation, but then again, they all had a full war's worth of experience in such matters. "Well, after that explosion hex, I retreated to heal the injury from the shrapnel," Harry explained. "Then, by the time I healed myself, realized that Wormtail wasn't chasing me, and caught back up to him, he had already started the ritual. The thing about rituals, especially those as powerful as the one Wormtail performed, is that they consume huge amounts of energy—if I had interrupted the ritual once it had begun, all that energy would have had to go somewhere, and it probably would have turned the whole graveyard into a smoking crater."

"I see how that could be a bad thing, what with you being in the blast radius and all," Daphne said wryly. "Actually, now I do have another question—why the hell didn't anyone know about the true properties of the Dark Mark? If someone in the Ministry—an Unspeakable, or the Aurors—or even Dumbledore's little vigilante group had ever really investigated it, they would have known that the Dark Marks were keeping Riddle alive over a decade ago!"

"That one is even easier," Harry responded bitterly. "The Ministry was already compromised, because Cornelius Fudge was in charge of the postwar investigations after Crouch was marginalized by the incarceration of his son. It's easy to imagine that Lucius Malfoy and the rest of the Death Eaters who received "Imperius Curse" pardons would increase their bribes to keep anyone from looking too hard at the actual properties of the Dark Mark, if they even knew about it, which is doubtful anyway—I can't see Riddle trusting any of his followers with the truth about his plans for immortality."

"Fair point," Daphne said, nodding. "But what about Dumbledore?"

"Dumbledore probably did inspect Snape's Dark Mark, but he considers thaumaturgy to be dark magic," Harry replied, rolling his eyes. "The only reason he didn't raise any objection during the second task was because he knew how bad it would look for him, as Percy Weasley proved. Since thaumaturgy is too "dark" for Dumbledore to study, he wouldn't have had the background knowledge necessary to figure out exactly what the Dark Mark could do. Plus, it was already pretty much common knowledge that the Dark Mark was a communication system, so he could have just assumed that was all there was to it."

"Hmm," Daphne murmured, catching on and coming up with another idea. "You know, it's also entirely possible that Dumbledore, the Aurors, and the Unspeakables actually did investigate the Dark Mark, but weren't able to find anything, and that it was only the blood connection between you and Riddle allowed you to break into the Dark Mark network. I'll bet it was probably some combination of all of those things—the Ministry's corruption, Dumbledore's lack of thaumaturgy knowledge, and the blood connection giving you an advantage."

"Full marks, Miss Greengrass," Harry said, grinning—he hadn't considered that angle. "Top of the class."

"Is that so?" Daphne asked coyly, raising an eyebrow. "Well then, why don't you show me what I've won?"

Harry's grin widened, and he opened the door connecting the study to the bedroom. He was tired, after such an eventful night, but he wasn't that tired. He followed Daphne into the bedroom, already starting to shed his robes. It had been an eventful night—Harry had won the Triwizard Tournament, he had destroyed his sworn enemy, and now he was fully prepared to receive his reward.

Author's Note

Harry returns to Hogwarts! Snape's bad day continues! Amelia Bones makes good decisions!

As of the end of Chapter 35, HPatLS is at 105,300 words.

There were three major (and inevitable) questions about how things unfolded in the graveyard (specifically, the Cup portkey as a potential rescue plan, Harry's apparent inaction during the ritual, and the relative ease of his figuring out the Dark Mark). I had originally planned to supply the answers in the narration of Chapter 34, but I was already going to be breaking up the flow of the action with POV switches and descriptions of Harry's use of thaumaturgy against the Dark Mark and the phoenix feather wands, so I didn't want to let the pace of the climactic chapter get bogged down by additional technical details. Plus, I wanted to show Harry directly addressing them, as it would indicate more clearly that he actually was using his brain the whole time, while it was the audience (that is, the reader) who may not have had all the information. Thus, the solution was have Harry demand an explanation about the Cup from the adults, and have him explain the ritual and the Dark Mark to Daphne, all in Chapter 35. So Chapter 34 was "this is what happened," and Chapter 35 was "here's why it worked."

It might come as a surprise that I'm posting Chapter 35 so soon after Chapter 34—the reason is that I wrote most of Chapter 35 (which is short anyway) at the same time as I wrote Chapter 34, because of how I wanted the aforementioned technical details to come out in Harry's conversations with the adults and Daphne.

Timeline note: In canon, the third task takes place on June 24, the Leaving Feast is on July 2, and the Hogwarts Express departs for London on the morning of July 3. Chapter 35 leaves off late at night on June 25, so there's just over a week before the term is well and truly over. I estimate one or two more chapters in HPatLS, to finish wrapping things up.

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