Aftermath

Standard Disclaimer: No, I don't own anything of the Harry Potter empire. Nope, nada. No money is being made here, which is solely due to sleepless nights and a disgruntled muse who has a penchant for excessive caffein. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, is entirely unlikely and is unintentional if it does happen.

Timeframe: Hogwarts immediately after the Battle, with some slight time alterations of events during the battle. Sort of canon up to that, but AU afterwards.

Warning: The aftermath of a battle is never pretty. A bit of bashing of Dumbledore throughout.

Chapter 1: Molly's Mind

He limped into the Great Hall with those who had fought in the courtyard, still rather dirty from the battle outside.

A wizard in a green robe came up to him, and announced "I'm Healer Thompson. Just need to check you out." With this, he waved his wand in front of Harry, and said. "Interesting, you seem to be okay right now, but that you had died earlier today but got better." Waving his free hand to the chaos in the Hall he continued "When this is all over, I would like to talk to you about that. Otherwise, please just try to keep out of the way." Gesturing to a younger student beside him, he headed back into the Hall. Harry looked around. He could see Madame Pomfrey and several green robed wizards and witches moving around the room so fast it looked like they were apparating.

The girl, who Harry supposed he should know but could not recall at the moment, handed him a beaker of a warm liquid and told him "Here, drink this. You look like you need it".

Sipping the brown liquid, he found the potion sweet and a bit bitter, and unlike any potion he had been dosed with to date. He looked at the girl and asked "What potion is this?"

Smiling, she said "It's a muggle concoction which is similar to the Pepper-up potion, but it's cheap and we can make it by the barrelful by people who are pants at potions. The helpers in the Hall, like me, are mostly younger students who aren't very good at brewing yet." At his expression of curiosity and frankly disbelief of anyone passing out muggle potions at Hogwarts, she continued "It's strong tea with a lot of sugar. Should give you a bit of a boost in energy. Oh, it also has coca leaves in it. They told us that in the mountains of South America, the locals drink coca leaf tea to fight off altitude sickness and fatigue." She then heading off to pass more beakers to the others returning into the castle.

Grinning briefly at her comment, Harry Potter looked around the Hall, and his smile faded. The were many on cots who appeared to be in distress, and far too many where a sheet had been pulled up over the faces. Mentally, Harry had known that there would be deaths on their side, but now it was viscerally apparent to him. He remembered reading the book '1984' as Hermione's suggestion, and coming across the Newspeak term 'Bellyfeel'; he could now bellyfeel the presence of death in the room.

Looking round to see if there were any of his friends in the crowd or on cots that were still uncovered, he spotted a few on the injured and went to say hello to them. Searching for his best friends, he could not see either Ron or Hermione, and his heart sank. Wandering over to the cots with the covered faces, he asked one of the healers "Which ones are Ron and Hermione?"

The helper shook her head. "They're not here. They went out to search the castle and bring in any who needed help getting here." Seeing Harry's distress, she smiled and added "They were fine, last time I saw them."

At that moment, Harry saw his two friends enter the hall. Hermione was carrying a young girl who was bleeding badly and looked like her arm was broken. A boy followed her in, carrying part of his arm in his other hand. Ron came after them, guiding a levitated stretcher the body of a young woman with blond curly hair. Lavender's throat looked like it had been torn out. Running over to them, Harry asked what had happened.

Hermione turned to him and said "Greyback!"

Harry grimaced and asked "Did he get away? We have to find him!"

Hermione, with a nasty smile he did not wish to ever see again, said "He won't get far without his head. We made sure of that."

He strolled over to the rows of the dead, discovering who hadn't made it through. Some were good friends, and some he barely knew at all. Finding Remus and Nymphadora (formerly just Tonks) among the dead broke his heart, and reminded him that he now had some serious responsibilities with their new infant.

Harry looked over towards the entrance to the Hall, and saw Neville Longbottom and Luna Lovegood entering the room, hand in hand. He smiled. It was good that two of his best friends had found each other in the year he was away on the quest, and from the look of it, were finding some happiness.

As the young witch handed them both their beakers of tea, Luna tasted it and smiled. "This reminds me of when Daddy and I were in South America looking for the guanocoalas in the Andes. The people there drank something like this too." Turning to Neville she said, a bit sadly, "Unfortunately, we found that the Peruvian alpine subspecies had gone extinct, because the eucalyptus tree they inhabit wouldn't grow in the highlands. Luckily, the Peruvian lowland variety in the Amazon rainforest are thriving and the Chilean populations in the lake districts were doing very well."

Neville and Luna came up to Harry, and Luna gave him a tight hug while Neville shook his hand with his left. Harry looked down to Nev's right hand at the great sword of Gryffindor still clutched in it. Neville gave a weak smile, and said "It came to me, and now I can't seem to let it go." Harry smiled back and commented "Well, you certainly earned it! I guess it is yours now."

Luna smiled to him and announced "I assume you heard about the Peruvian guanocoalas I saw on my last trip there. Neville has agreed to come with me next year to study the Chilean alpacaderms. They live around the vineyards south of Santiago and are attracted to the smell of wine. Their coats are usually pink but after the harvest and vintaging, the vintners put out the used grape skins for them and their coats turn purple for a couple months. Daddy told me about them years ago and I have been eager to see them myself, and now Nev will be coming with me." With this, she downed the rest of the drink, smiled and tugged Neville into the Hall.

Luna looked at Harry and thought for a short moment. "Harry, I need to tell you something. While you were fighting Voldemort, a very large number of golden beams of light converged on him. Some of them were coming from the Death Eaters in the courtyard near you, and they were all grasping their left arms and looked like they were in agony. As your fight went on, the ones we could see all collapsed, and died while at the same time the beams from them quit. The beams that were coming from far away lasted a bit longer but also vanished. It looked like he was sucking the life and magic from them through their marks, because once all the beams had stopped, he collapsed under your spell and died himself. I just thought you should know."

Luna turned to Neville taking his hand again. "Okay now Mr. Longbottom, I need you to take me into a private room and make love to me until we both pass out." Turning to Harry she smiled a predatory smile and said, "He earned it and there's nothing like surviving a lethal confrontation to get you excited!" With that, she dragged Neville from the Hall. Neville left with a goofy smile on his face.

Harry laughed to himself. Luna and Neville were two of his best friends and he was glad to see them find each other. It now seemed destined that they would be together and that Nev's life would never be boring.

It was then Harry spotted the Weasley family around a cot with a sheet covering a body. He immediately went over to see what he could do for these people who had become so important to him. Nudging Ron, he tipped his head towards the family, silently saying to go over there with him.

As he headed towards the family, Arthur moved to intercept him, preventing him to proceed further. "Harry," Arthur said, "I need to tell you a few things before you talk to Molly. The most important thing is that this was not your fault! You are not to blame for Fred's death! Please understand that."

Harry shook his head. "I should have been able to do something. Something more."

Arthur grabbed Harry by the shoulders and growled, "Damn it young man! This was not your fault! I know that the family you grew up with tried to teach you that everything that went wrong was your fault, but they were despicable and they were wrong!"

"Harry, today you went into battle and died, then came back and rid the world of that bastard. That is something which the Order could not accomplish over the last twenty years or more, not that Dumbledore let us do anything proactive for a lot of that time. What more could you possibly have done?

"Now tell me, did you kill your parents?"

Harry shook his head "Of course not."

Arthur said "Of course not! That wasn't your fault. Now, did you torture and kill Gideon and Fabian?"

Harry looked puzzled. "No, who were they?"

Arthur replied, "They were Molly's older brothers. Both were Aurors who were captured, tortured, and murdered by Death Eaters. This happened before you were even born. They were not your fault either. Their deaths were why a lot of the Aurors carried death pills until after whatever it was you or your mother did got rid of Voldemort the first time. No-one wanted to be captured. And that wasn't your fault either!"

"They died shortly before you were born. We had five young boys and Ron was on the way. Molly had been intending to get a Mastery in potions after Hogwarts, but decided that being a stay-at-home mom was more important at the time. I think that her brothers' deaths seriously broke something in her."

"I think this is in part why she made sure Ginny grew up with all those trite 'Boy-Who-Lived' books. In her own mind she needed 'The Hero', even if he didn't really exist, and she taught Ginny to fall in love with the idea, rather than the person you really were. Dumbledore made sure nobody really knew what happened to you, but people wanted, needed, to believe in the myths after the horrors of Voldemort's first reign of terror."

"You know that when she sees a boggart, she sees the rest of the family lying dead and mutilated. You have seen our clock – it indicates for each of us where we are. But the things it shows are 'At Home', 'At Work', 'At school', 'In Transit', or 'In Mortal Peril'. In her mind, there are no other options."

"I think this is the reason that she over-mothers people, yourself included. You saw how she took over running the house at Grimmauld Place, which Sirius hated. After all, it was his house! But she just took over. I think that she needs, absolutely needs, to be the housewife. She has to be 'normal, with normal things and normal happenings. Anything else is intolerable to her."

"This is one reason she was so devoted to Dumbledore. He told us all half-truths and outright lies, but he seemed to be in control and she could pretend things were normal and under control, with nothing threatening her family."

"When LeStrange attacked Ginny here in the hall, I had never seen Molly react like that. She exploded like a volcano, or fire elemental, or a demon or something from hell. Bellatrix LeStrange had no idea what hit her – I think the mess she left on the wall was no thicker than five sheets of parchment. Molly was not going to tolerate any attack on her family. She just couldn't!"

"So now, with Fred dead, I don't know if she can hold it together. To be honest, I'm not even sure that I can hold it together either. So please, when you speak with her, be careful."

"At the same time, be gentle talking with George. He was the younger of the twins, and so he has never been without Fred, even since birth. At times, I thought that they could have been conjoined, because they seemed to be two parts of one person. Maybe, mentally, they were; they certainly spoke that way. I think he is going to feel like he just had a vital organ amputated, and I don't know how he is going to heal from this."

"Harry, we would love to see you at the Burrow, but you will need to give us time. We would really love to hear what plans you have for the future. Particularly Ginny."

Harry pulled Arthur into a hug as they both cried, then went to speak briefly to the rest of the family promising to visit soon.

Before he left the Hall, Harry went over to the young witch who was passing out the beakers of 'restorative potion' and asked, "I didn't mean to be rude earlier, but I didn't get your name. May I ask who you are, as I don't recognise you".

The girl smiled. "My name is Andrea Brandywine, and I'm a first year Hufflepuff. Are you the Harry Potter that people talk about?"

Harry nodded. "I suppose I am. I guess we haven't met before because I was away from Hogwarts this last year. I'm glad to meet you, Andrea."

She smiled. "Andy, please."

Harry smiled back. "Well Andy, can I have another couple beakers of that 'potion', please? It's been a long and tiring day, and I could use some extra energy."

She passed two beakers to him, which he drank quickly, and then said "Thank you, again" and left the room.