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Chapter 15

They spent the night in Headmistress McGonagall's office waiting for news after explaining their presence. They were all too keyed up and anxious to sleep, so they mostly sat in silence looking out the window that was pointed towards the village. Over the next few hours there were a few sporadic flashes of spell fire, but then it went silent. Harry was going to pop over to the village and have a look, but when he said that almost everyone told him it was a terrible idea. He would have no way to know if he was going to appear in the exact wrong spot, and with Death Eaters and werewolves that may or may not have access to his house, he could see their point. Harry did try to shift to his falcon form so that he could fly over the village and see what was happening from the air, but while no-one was against the idea he wasn't able to finish his transformation.

It wasn't until after the sun came up that Professor McGonagall's fire flashed green and a head appeared in it asking to come through. Two aurors that stepped through after Professor McGonagall gave her permission, one was Tonks and the other was Cavendish, one of the aurors who had tried to take Harry from the Grangers and threatened Emma. The two of them looked exhausted. All greetings were kept short, and the first thing the aurors wanted was everyone's account of what had happened while a blue DMLE dictaquill took down everything they said.

Cavendish had follow up questions. "How was it you were able to get from the Potter house to the school? The Floo was down, anti-Apparition wards and anti-portkey wards were set up. How did you get from there to here?" Harry was about to tell him that it was family magic but Sirius got there first. Cavendish really didn't like that answer and it sent him off on a tirade. "I'm sick of these old families hoarding magical knowledge. There are people dying and these pricks want to hold onto a piece of magic that can save lives and they refuse to share it out of greed!"

"You forget yourself, Auror!" Sirius raised his voice, one of the few times Harry saw in Sirius the fact that he was raised to be the Warlock of the House of Black. "Families have no obligation to share family secrets, especially as many of them require you to be born with the gift. Even if Warlock Potter were to tell you everything it wouldn't help you, and as your department has more security holes in it than a bloody pasta strainer, all it would do is endanger Warlock Potter and others. Now drop it or I will drag you in front of the Wizengamot and have you personally censured for your conduct."

It was clear that Auror Cavendish wasn't happy but he was smart enough to know that he was on the losing side of the argument.

"What happened to my parents?" Dudley asked.

Cavendish gave him a blank look. The boy was one of the muggles and as such was barely worth taking note of as far as the Auror was concerned. "What?"

"My parents. The two people who were kidnapped by you magical freaks and turned into monsters! The normal people who just wanted to be left alone but had their whole life destroyed!" Dudley's voice got louder and louder as he spoke, the anger at this man's dismissive attitude obvious.

Seeing that Cavendish was just going to cock things up more, Tonks stepped in. "Dudley. Your parents are injured but they will be fine for now. They are in the custody of Magical Law Enforcement. The problem is that despite the fact they had no choice they were involved in an attack on the village. There are…um, legal things to clear up." Tonks was trying to be delicate but her meaning was clear to everyone.

The Ministry was going to decide whether to prosecute the two Dursleys, and the magical among them knew a convicted werewolf was most often executed. The rationale was that werewolves were too dangerous to imprison or too expensive. However, there was a lot of fear against werewolves, and killing them made the people who made the laws feel safer. This was of course stupid, given that the treatment that werewolves received made them more likely to join any cause that had a chance of overthrowing the government and the Wizengamot, meaning those policies actually made the politicians more likely to be attacked by a werewolf. Unfortunately, they were politicians, and no one ever accused a politician of having good critical thinking.

Dudley was obviously upset and asked to be taken to see his parents, which Tonks said she would do. One upside of all this was now that Vernon and Petunia were werewolves (even if their lifespan was now measured in months even without the threat of execution) they came under the jurisdiction of the magical world, and the Ministry could deal with Dudley now. Because the Ministry could declare a person in their jurisdiction dead, they could remove the Dursley estate from legal limbo and let Dudley inherit it. Dudley would have all the money he needed to finish his education at Smeltings, and that meant that Harry could walk away with a clear conscience.

"Why did it take all night for someone to come take our statements?" Hermione asked of curiosity, and a dark look of pain and anxiety mixed with the look of exhaustion that was already on the aurors faces.

Cavendish shrugged. "It will be in the papers anyway, no reason not to tell them," he told Tonks.

"It was a trap Hermione. The werewolves and the people in masks were bait to get us aurors to respond in force. We even think the Death Eaters we caught were genuinely under the Imperius curse. They didn't just block the way out of the Potter house. They warded the whole village against anyone leaving. They had anti-Apparition, anti-portkey, and they disabled every fire in and out of the village. We could portkey in or Apparate in, but once we were in it was almost impossible to get out. A few aurors are out sick after some bad food at a New Year's party as well, so we were already a little short staffed. The Death Eaters hit Azkaban last night, and with a lot of us trapped in Hogsmeade there wasn't much we could do to stop them. Now a bunch of the worst Death Eaters from the last war have been freed," Tonks explained.

That hit Harry hard. They had used him to draw the aurors to the village. Sure, there were plenty of ways other people may have contacted the DMLE, but it was following Harry's instructions that Tracey called the Ministry. They talked for a while and Tonks had them all sign their statements, before leaving to go back to the Ministry and taking Dudley and Dan with them, Dan having volunteered to go as Dudley's responsible adult. Harry popped the rest back to the Potter house where everyone decided it was time to go to bed. No one objected when Hermione and Fleur decided that they were going to be sleeping with Harry.

The last few days of the holiday were quiet, as no one had much to say. Dudley and Dan had arrived back before everyone had woken up the next day, and when everyone was awake Dan told them about what was happening to Harry's aunt and uncle. The Ministry wasn't going to let them off. Unfortunately, it had quickly gotten around that the two new werewolves were the same two muggles that had treated Harry so badly before he was moved out of their care, and any hope of leniency had been thrown out the window. It didn't help that the Dursleys were not doing themselves any favours by calling everyone freaks and saying that the Ministry had no say or authority over decent hardworking normal people.

Dudley was understandably upset by all this. In the last twenty four hours, he had found that his parents were alive, only they had been turned into monsters who would only live a couple of months. Then, because of them being monsters, they were going to be executed. This had left Harry's cousin a blubbering wreck. Despite everything that Dudley and his parents had done to Harry while he lived there, he couldn't help but feel sorry for his cousin. He tried to go speak to him but Dudley had just started throwing things at him and yelling at him to, "Piss the fuck off, you freak bastard!" Harry couldn't even feel angry at Dudley's response, not this time. It was really confusing, because he had no love for his aunt and uncle and in truth he felt that his aunt and uncle sort of deserved this. It felt like karma coming to bite them in the ass. Yet if it was Moony or Kathryn, Harry knew he would be outraged.

Harry spoke to Hermione and Fleur about it, and while they could see Harry's dilemma and offer their sympathy and support, they had very little they could do beyond that. Fleur was still considered a French citizen. That would change a little next year when she moved to Britain for work, but even then Fleur would have very little in the way of ability to question the Ministry until they got married. Hermione was an underage muggleborn in the eyes of most people who worked at the Ministry, she also wouldn't have much say until she and Harry got married. Harry hated how the Ministry saw the two women in his life but there was nothing he could do about it until he was older.

After the girls, Harry went to Sirius, which he realised he should have done first. Sirius was a sitting member of the Wizengamot, as the House of Black held one of the few hereditary seats. He told his godfather about how he was feeling guilty not helping the Dursleys, not for their sake but for the sake of people like Moony.

"Well I can see where you are coming from, but there is very little you can do. The Ministry has been anti-werewolf for a few centuries now. The guy who heads up the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures lost his brother to a werewolf attack, so he takes a hard line against them. I'm sorry Harry, there is nothing I can do even if I wanted to save them, which I admit I don't," Sirius explained, pulling Harry into a hug for a few minutes before handing him off to Hermione, who was free to take over hugging duties.

-ϟϟϟ-

The end of the first Friday of the year was taken up by packing, as everyone would be leaving to return to their homes or schools tomorrow. Hogwarts didn't expect their students back until Sunday evening, but Harry and Hermione were going a day early. After the attack on their home, and all the repair work his aunt and uncle had left the house needing, Harry was a little paranoid that a trap would be waiting for them on Sunday. Fleur was also travelling back to France, and Sirius and the Grangers were going back to London where they were going to start moving into Grimmauld Place. Ms. Richards was going back to her home outside the city.

Sirius had apparently hired a team to clean out his old family home. He had previously checked it to see if it was fit for Dan and Emma to move into but had found it full of dark magic, dark creatures, and even darker artefacts. So he hired a team to clean it out, it had cost him a fair sum of gold, but the team had been working hard over the holidays, shifting on and off so that they had the opportunity to spend at least some time with their families.

It was going to be an adjustment for the Gangers to live full time in a home where everything was done by magic rather than electricity, but it wasn't as if Dan and Emma were totally giving up electricity, though. They would still have it at the dental practice; there was a TV there, and Dan had promised to set up the VCR from the house so that even the shows they liked to watch would record in the evenings so they could watch them as they worked the next day. Everyone had every confidence in their ability to cope, especially after Dobby and Sassy had jumped at the chance to help them after Sirius had found that the house elf his family used to have, Kreacher, was no longer at the townhouse. From what Sirius could guess, when his mother was dying she must have sent Kreacher to one of Sirius's cousins. They knew he hadn't gone to Narcissa as Dobby would have known, but there were plenty of cousins around that Sirius's mother had apparently liked, and as Sirius really didn't like the elf he couldn't see the point in tracking him down.

Harry, Hermione and Fleur didn't bother with the bed their last night there together, instead falling asleep in a little cuddle pile on the sofa in front of the fire. Despite how everything had gone this Christmas, they had really loved being together again, and Fleur splitting up from them again tomorrow felt like someone was trying to cut their hearts out with a spoon. Harry, Hermione, Daphne, and Tracey decided to go back to school early the next morning, as once the rest of the family had stepped through the green flames taking them to London the house had just felt empty. There was still lots of snow on the ground and there was no way for them to call for a coach, so Harry Stepped them all one at a time to just inside the Hogwarts outer wall before they walked up to the school together. Harry found it a lot easier to make more trips like he did today, rather than trying to take two people at a time like he had done a few days ago. He guessed that there was a bigger strain the more he took with him, which was useful to know. He would have to practice with his Stepping, if he could jump around that easily he could even possibly include it in a duel.

The four of them got back to school with no more hardship than some cold and wet toes, each of them going to see their heads of House and tell them that they were back in the castle. The Slytherin girls headed to Professor Sinistra's office on the ground floor; she had given up her office in the Astronomy Tower when she became head of Slytherin, but she had absolutely refused to have an office were she couldn't see the stars by looking out of her window, so the ground floor office was the closest she could get to the Slytherins. Harry and Hermione made their way up to see Professor Babbling, who had been more than happy to move into the head of Gryffindor office. Unlike the tartan that had been there when Professor McGonagall held the office, it was now covered in soft comfortable furniture, and one wall was dominated by a massive floor to ceiling blackboard where the professor was working on a project of her own. The head of Gryffindor was surprised but happy to see Harry and Hermione back a day early.

The next day everyone else got back, and that meant an encounter Harry and Hermione were both dreading. The Weasleys came into the common room early looking incredibly downtrodden. Fred and George, normally so full of life and joy, moved more like zombies than anything else. Both Ginny and Ron showed obvious signs of having been crying. Hermione pulled Harry with her to go greet them, and in that moment all the bad arguing that Harry and Hermione had done with Ron (and to a lesser extent Ginny) was put aside. The Weasleys were Harry and Hermione's oldest friends again, as they pulled each one into a hug offering more comfort and support than words ever could. The twins were just able to hold themselves together, but it was a close thing. Ron ended up crying into Harry's shoulder while Hermione got a similar treatment from Ginny. Hermione sent the Weasleys' trunks flying off to their rooms on their own, and then she and Harry pulled them over to one of the more private tables in the corner.

"Do you wanna talk about it?" Harry asked. There were times even now when Harry was upset about the loss of his parents and didn't want to talk about it, and that was with barely any memories of his parents. The Weasley had years of good memories and amazing experiences with their father, and Harry couldn't fathom how much more it must hurt to lose that.

"Not really, but there is something we need to tell you, Harry," George said. At least he was wearing a jumper with a big letter G on it and Harry didn't think they were up for their jobs right now.

"What?" Harry was confused.

"Well it's a little complicated, so just listen till the end okay?" Fred said, and Harry and Hermione nodded their agreement. "We found out about our dad almost as soon as we got off the train. Mum wasn't there to collect us, instead it was our oldest brother Bill. He took us to the cafe on the muggle side of the station and told us that dad had been killed while working for Dumbledore. He took us to a house somewhere we had never been before. We can't tell you anything about it as Dumbledore has it under some type of charm so that only he can tell people about it. If we were to take you there, you wouldn't even be able to find it even if you were standing two feet from the door until Dumbledore told you it was there. Anyway mum was there, upset obviously. But so was Dumbledore, he was all apologetic about our dad, but then he started pressing us for information on you. And I don't just mean how you're doing like a normal person may ask, but creepy levels of interest."

Ron spoke up. "Yeah, he kept asking me how you were doing in class. How long did it take you to learn a new spell, had you accidentally blown anything up while practising your spells. How quickly were you grasping the theory? Have you been more violent than you used to be? He asked if you had been having nightmares, if you had been getting headaches. Even your few stalker fan girls haven't gotten that pushy for information." He threw out the last line as a weak joke.

"I have stalker fan girls?" Harry asked, surprised.

"A couple, Romilda Vane in my year is one of them. She is convinced that you and Hermione will break up soon and she will sweep in and she will be your happy ever after." Ginny was incredibly quiet and subdued as she spoke.

"We can discuss your fangirls later Harry. Let's focus on Dumbledore for now." Hermione didn't sound like the talk she planned would be a fun one.

"Well, as we were saying Dumbledore wanted to know everything about you, then everything about Hermione. But the impression we got was he was only interested in you Hermione because of how close you are to Harry," Fred explained.

George picked it up. "Later, we were asking around about where we were. Dumbledore has apparently started some secret society to stand against Voldemort. It's called the Order of the Phoenix. Mum is a member and so is Bill."

"So was dad until it got him killed." Ron understandably sounded pretty bitter about that.

"So is Snape," Fred said darkly. "We listened in on a few of their meetings and they were going on about two things. One was guarding something that is being kept in the Ministry, the other is gathering information on Voldemort, the Death Eaters, and you. It's like Dumbledore thinks you're going to be the next Dark Lord or something. He kept pressing Snape for more information on you."

"What did Snape say?" Harry asked, feeling the anger spike in him.

"Nothing you wouldn't expect. Headmistress McGonagall may be making him act like a decent human being while he is in the school, but his opinions haven't changed one bit. He still thinks you are an attention-seeking show off who struts around the castle like he owns the place and that all the professors are way too lenient on you. Of course, he would think they were too lenient on you for not using thumb screws on you if you sneezed in class."

"I don't suppose you have anything you can share about who is in this Order of the Phoenix?" Hermione asked. "If people are spying on us, it would be good to know who to watch out for. Actually what about Death Eaters, who do they know are Death Eaters as well?"

George shrugged. "In our former headmaster's little club there is mum, Bill and Snape like we already said. Then there is Mad Eye, a young Auror called Tonks, another called Hestia Jones; her cousin is the captain of the holyhead harpies. There's Elphias Doge, a wizard who looks as old as Dumbledore, though Dumbledore is looking surprisingly spry. I guess not trying to hold down three full time positions agrees with him. Let's see…there is Mundungus Fletcher, he is a sneak thief who apparently knows a lot of people in low places, the kind of people who know stuff. There were more but we never got their names." George listed, and Hermione was writing them down in a mundane notebook with an ordinary pen.

Fred picked up. "As for Death Eaters, there are more than a few of those. Malfoy, Crabbe, Goyle, Parkinson, Carrow, Pettigrew, the LeStrange bitch, her husband and his brother. And let's not forget all the rest of the people who were broken out of Azkaban a few days ago." Fred did not need to list those names. They were plastered all over the newspapers for the last couple of days. The public and the ministry were all in uproar that so many of them had been broken out. It didn't help that more than half the Dementors of Azkaban had left with them, choosing instead to follow Voldemort. The public were in a panic over this, and rightly so; the worst offenders of the last Blood War were out and running free, and now they had the backup of soul sucking unkillable horrors. It didn't help that the Minister of Magic was still trying to say that Voldemort wasn't back. With everything happening, more and more people were believing Harry and the truth, and it was making the Ministry look incompetent.

Ron suddenly went very red in the ears and looked nervous. He rubbed the back of his neck before asking, "Harry, Hermione, I know I have no right to ask this, but I know you both know the patronus charm. Would you be willing to teach us how to do it?" Harry hesitated, the Patronus wasn't an easy spell to learn and Ron wasn't exactly the most studious of people. Ron, though, took Harry's hesitation for something else. "I understand I have no right to ask a favour of you after what happened in our third year, but please don't spite my brothers and sister because of what I did."

Hermione held up a hand stopping Ron, understanding Harry's hesitation perfectly. "Ron, this has nothing to do with third year, that was a long time ago. But the Patronus is not an easy spell to learn. It's not something we could teach you in an afternoon, it could take weeks. If we agree to do this, then you need to promise to put the effort in. This is our O.W.L. year, if we take the time out of our revision to teach you and you don't put in the effort to learn, you won't have to worry about the Dementors because I'll kill you myself. "

Ron gulped, he knew not to mess with Hermione when it came to her exam studying. If he agreed to do this, Hermione would hold him to actually doing his best. But this wasn't school work, this was to keep himself and his family safe. "I promise that I will do everything I can…" he paused and looked right at Harry and Hermione. "My family are considered the biggest bunch of blood traitors in the country. Chances are that at least some of those Dementors will be sent after us. We have already lost our father to this war. We won't lose anyone else just because we didn't put the work in." Ron not only promised himself but his sister and the twins as well. Considering that the twins were slapping him on the back, it was obvious that they approved what he was saying.

"Fine, we will teach you. We will tell you where and when after we work it out," Hermione answered. The boys all thanked them and promised again that they would do their best. Ginny had just sat there looking like she was on the verge of tears.

Over the next few days, a few people had approached Harry and Hermione about learning the Patronus. First was Susan Bones and her best friend Hannah Abbott. Susan's aunt wanted her to learn the spell but didn't have the time to teach her, and Susan actually had a letter from her aunt for Harry asking him to teach her. After reading the letter Harry had felt obligated to try, and they were already going to be teaching the Weasleys. As it was turning into a thing, Harry and Hermione asked Daphne and Tracey if they wanted to learn as well. Of course, word had quickly gotten out about it after that, and Harry and Hermione quickly started turning people down. The only others they let in were Neville and a fourth year student by the name of Luna Lovegood who had become Ginny's emotional support far better than her brothers could manage. Harry had met the girl in his third year, and as he remembered that the girl (like he and Susan) had a hard time around Dementors, he couldn't bring himself to say no to her.

A/N

Well, this is the last post before Christmas and we are about halfway through Hanukkah and today is the winter solstice. Whatever it is you believe in have fun.

Remember my writing is fuelled by energy drinks and your comments and if you're not supplying energy drinks...