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Chapter 7

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Approximately One Year Ago

There were five people that had been locked up in the cellar at Malfoy Manor, each one looked more emaciated than the next as they went single file past him through the door to the stairs. Their skin looked almost grey and their cheeks were so hollow. Harry could only hazard a guess as to how long they'd been trapped down there away from the fresh air and sunshine, or how much food they'd been allowed.

He recognized Mr. Olivander, but only from his blue eyes. He was skin and bones and missing his glasses, his hair looked to have been coming out in patches on his head from the stress.

They were each holding onto a piece of string that Harry was directing the lead of.

He and Sirius had planned this mission out on their own. If too many Order members knew the exact date that they were going to attempt to free the prisoners at Malfoy Manor then it would make it back to someone on the other side and the whole plan would fall apart.

The element of surprise was all they could truly count on.

It was what he and Sirius had excelled at for the last few years.

After that time when Harry had been trapped for a full day before escaping the kit gloves had come off and Sirius hadn't shielded him from anything anymore.

This was their fourth time visiting Malfoy Manor and the first time they had found people being held prisoner. They had been prepared for it though. Things were getting ugly out there and there was no proper Ministry to stop the Death Eaters from doing what they wanted.

Sirius was under the invisibility cloak again, leading the way for Harry who was disillusioned and poking his head around the corners to make sure that those that had been in charge of guarding the Manor were still unconscious.

Progress was slow as the captives he was guiding weren't able to move quickly. Thankfully they understood that they needed to be as quiet as possible.

It had taken about five minutes to cross the property, get through the doors, make the guards unresponsive and convince the prisoners that they were being rescued, not led to their deaths.

It took twenty minutes to get those prisoners to the other side of the wards around the property and have them take a Portkey to get them to a safehouse.

It was just the prisoners that left via Portkey. Once they did, Harry looked back at the Manor and waited for Sirius to make a sound.

"There might be more in there," Sirius said at a whisper to Harry's left.

"I swept the dungeon, there weren't any more down there."

"There might be a few left on the second floor, being used for entertainment," he said pointedly.

Yeah, they'd come across that a few times.

Harry was apathetic to it now. The way that the Muggleborns had been treated as playthings had eaten away at him after the first few times he'd seen it. The women would just not stop crying over how they'd been abused. Not that he could blame them, but he didn't particularly want to stick around to listen to the details; they were saved, his part was done, time to move on.

If he was managing to get out of bed in the morning and do these rescue missions, then they could manage to keep their mouths shut until they saw a loved one and could tell them all about it. He didn't need to hear any more about what was being done by the Death Eaters, he didn't need it added to the weight on his conscience.

It did fuel his want for getting revenge on the Death Eaters though.

There had always been this hopeful light inside him that made him optimistic that every time he was stuck in a horrible situation, a light that told him this one was going to be his last. Like once the day was done he'd get to go home and lay down on his bed in comfort and that situation wouldn't arise again.

But it did. And that hopeful light was getting less and less bright.

When he was at Hogwarts it had been all different situations that were thrown at him. But it wasn't like that now; Every time it was about rescuing who they could and getting vengeance on the captors. These were the missions he and Sirius took part in on their own anyhow. Dumbledore and the rest of the Order was more concerned about hunting down the Horcruxes and stopping more people from being taken.

They had already done the rescuing part at Malfoy Manor tonight and he wanted to just set the place on fire and go home to bed, but Sirius was right, they'd only managed to rescue prisoners in the dungeon, there could be several more that were in the bedchambers on the second floor that were being forced to do things.

The four guards would be knocked out for another thirty minutes. The Malfoy's weren't there right now, Voldemort wasn't there right now.

There was a lot of destruction that could be managed in thirty minutes as well. And they might come across another Horcrux.

"We'll each take a different wing," Harry said. "I'll go left, you go right. There's a chance that the snake is in one of the rooms again so watch out for that."

"Make the checks quick," Sirius picked up, his voice was moving back towards the Manor and Harry followed behind him. "Once you're done clearing things on your end, knock over a statue in the hallway so that I know you are finished, I'll do the same. Then, we'll light the whole place on fire." There was a twisted jovial lilt to his voice that Harry was completely on board with.

The first time he'd been here he got a cut from the snake, the second time he'd been trapped by being strapped to a chair, the third time he'd had to cover his mouth in horror as he watched Voldemort torture a young man from the Ministry until his body had been contorted in a way that no human should have been able to bend.

He didn't ever want to come back here.

Once he got up the stairs, he bolted to the first door and cast his revealing spell on the room behind it, nothing. Second door, nothing. Third door, two people.

Harry lowered himself to the floor and pulled an inspection mirror from his pocket. It was a simple device and had come in very handy for times like these. There was just enough space under the door that he could fit the mirror and tilt it to see that there were two people on the bed. It was a man and a woman and they were having sex.

Unfortunately, this wasn't the first time he'd been witness to two people in real life going at each other. This time at least looked consensual. He recognized the couple as well; Rodolphus and Bellatrix Lestrange.

Quickly, he withdrew the mirror and moved on to the next door on the opposite wall. Burning down the Manor with those two trapped inside he wouldn't lose any sleep over.

The next door also had two people revealed to be inside, this time it didn't look so consensual.

The man had his white hair pulled back into a short ponytail and from that and his frame Harry could tell it was Corban Yaxley. He had a girl strung up by her hands on the bedpost, naked, with her bare bum facing the door, and he was flogging her. His leather strap in one hand and the other was unmistakably moving back and forth between his legs.

The room was silenced, but given the age difference between the two of them Harry made the judgement call that the girl was there against her will and likely crying and begging to be let go.

Harry got to his feet and unlocked the door and pushed it open quickly, casting a cutting hex at Yaxley precisely when he turned around to face him in surprise and the hex got him right across the neck so he dropped the strap and clutched at his neck while blood poured down his front and he collapsed to his knees.

Paying him no mind, Harry moved across the room and cut the rope that the girl was strung up with while summoning something to wrap around her.

Tears were pouring down her face and she was choking back her sobs.

She was choking them back too loudly, so he put a silencing spell on her and tugged her out into the hallway. She wasn't as emaciated as the others in the dungeon had been so she was able to keep herself upright while he pulled her to the next door. He still had two more rooms to check.

There was no one in the next two rooms though, he poked his head inside them to do a quick look for the snake and didn't see it, so he knocked over a statue that made a dull thud against the carpet and hauled the girl down the steps behind him as he made for the door.

Before he'd reached the bottom step he heard another statue fall over and more hurried steps behind him.

The girl he was leading out wasn't disillusioned like he was, and neither was the young man that it looked like Sirius had thrown over his shoulder and was carrying out.

"Ten minutes that one took," Sirius said as he passed through the front door that Harry had opened.

"The Lestrange's are in one of the rooms. Didn't want to interrupt them," Harry said spitefully. "I also think I just killed Yaxley."

"I knocked one guy unconscious when I saved this kid, just left him there," Sirius stated.

They rushed outside the ward line and pulled another Portkey from Sirius' pocket, giving it to the two rescued people before them and watching them swirl out of sight before Sirius bent down to place a the rune stone back at the ward line.

They'd pulled down the ward that informed anyone inside of a breach along the perimeter and reset it with one of their own, which made it impossible to Apparate out of that same perimeter.

"You sure you want to be here for this?" Sirius asked him.

Harry clenched his jaw. "They have it coming to them," he nearly snarled. The rush he was experiencing from freeing the innocent and condemning the damned, it made him feel powerful and vengeful. The hate he had for these Death Eaters allowed very little space for a conscience.

Dumbledore would not approve.

But Dumbledore wasn't here right now; he was back at Grimmauld Place, recovering from being nearly poisoned to death. He'd only just gained enough strength back to make it across the hall to the bathroom.

And Sirius had admitted that he too was losing patience and conscience, and would also not lose any sleep over this.

Running back towards the house, Sirius took the North and East side, Harry took the West and South, blocking all the doors and casting a Fiendfyre spell through each newly broken window.

In no time the two of them were back where they started and watched as the fire from the first floor lit it up entirely and made its way to the second floor. The only screams they heard from within took a full five minutes to sound off and came from only one corner of the Manor where the fire reached last, the room that the Lestrange's had been in.

All the other persons had been unconscious and their bodies burned up without their knowledge. In Harry's opinion, that meant they died peacefully and their souls should be grateful.

The window in the corner room of the second floor opened and a body fell out of it.

Just one.

With her wild hair now burnt and much shorter, she ran away from the house, her gait looking hindered by a broken ankle caused during her fall.

"Oh, you shouldn't have to see this," Sirius scoffed, "that's disgusting."

She hadn't had any time to pull on any of her clothes before rushing to the window and jumping to safety.

"Be grateful you weren't the one to check that room she was in," Harry said with a shudder.

"I'll take care of this." Sirius pulled off the invisibility cloak and handed it to Harry, then strode forward and aimed carefully before he Petrified her. "My dear cousin!" he called out. "What a surprise seeing you here! And so very much of you as well. Been having fun torturing innocent people lately?"

Harry didn't care to watch this next part as he knew that Sirius was either going to cast a bludgeoning spell or banish her back into the burning Manor so she could perish in flames. He turned to face the opposite way and look up at the trees. He didn't know what his friends or parents would think of how he and his Godfather had decided to take care of things. He could only hope that there was some sort of cosmic balance that meant the lives they had just saved had made up for the ones they had just taken.

These were terrible, horrible people who had it coming after all.

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Harry's eyes shot open and it took a moment for him to remember where he was again. His curtains were being moved a bit from the wind coming in through an open window and the light being cast between the break in the curtains was reminding him so much of how the glow of the fire looked against those tree branches as Malfoy Manor burned behind him.

He blinked a few times and had to catch his breath.

That woman that he'd rescued from Corban Yaxley, he had no idea who she was and couldn't remember the color of her hair; she'd been about his height, maybe mid-twenties and white; that was all he could remember of her. He had been in so much of a rush, his adrenaline being most of what had been pushing him forward.

He hadn't known her, that much he knew for sure.

What Ginny had told him about the sorts of punishment the students of Hogwarts had been subjected to, it had brought up dreams like this one for the last few nights and it made him feel like he'd gotten the better end of the deal.

The students knew each other, they hadn't just been faceless people that were taken away from their captors to never see them again. Each student that was freed from detention, and all that entailed, had needed to sit through classes and meals with their torturers day after day, never knowing when it was going to be their turn again to be right back in detention or if they'd be rescued from that one as well.

That was worse.

He'd been on a handful of missions like the one in his dream, but for Ginny and the others that stayed behind, like Neville, it had probably been a nightly thing.

They'd run into each other the next day after their empty classroom encounter, he and Ginny. He hadn't said anything when they wound up face to face at the landing of the stairs that separated the dorms, she had apologized for what she'd done the night before, meaning kissing him. It had been a quick 'sorry' that left her lips and an aversion of her eyes, nothing more.

He didn't want her to apologize for that though.

All he was able to say was to assure her that he hadn't meant to draw parallels between what she'd done and what she'd told him about. He said that everything was fine and apologized as well.

It wasn't fine though.

He'd had four nights of tossing and turning over thinking about how what the students had suffered through wasn't fine. And he needed to know more about it; about how they'd dealt with it. About Ginny's role in all of that, and Brian's and Romilda's. It was a scab on his mind that he kept picking off again and again, trying to convince himself that it was all over, that he didn't need to drudge up the past or get involved in anything new.

After getting dressed and packing up his bag with the books and such he needed for his classes he popped down to the Great Hall to grab breakfast to go and went straight to McGonagall's office and sat there waiting to her to show up.

She knew who he was and she'd been there last year. He needed to know if she knew the extent of what had been occurring.

He hadn't brought it up to anyone else. With the way that the other students had been keeping it to themselves, like they were protecting the new and returned students, he didn't want to be the target of their hazing again for asking questions. The past weekend had been torture enough, and it had only truly lasted the one day. If they found out that he was blabbing about what he thought had gone on, then he didn't want to see what kind of retribution would be in store for him.

He believed her though, Ginny. From the way she'd been right after the battle and the way that one Ravenclaw had reacted to getting a detention for throwing a Fanged Frisbee, he knew that it had been bad.

"Potter?"

He looked up to see McGonagall coming towards him. It had been thirty minutes he'd been sat there waiting and hoping she would come there before heading to her fist class.

"Professor," he said and got to his feet. "I have a few questions for you, if you've got a minute."

She didn't hesitate before opening her door and inviting him inside then closing and sealing the door.

"I take it, from the way Mr. Weasley and Ms. Granger are now acting around you, that you have shared your secret with them?" Her tone was hopeful.

"I have," he told her. That part was still a great relief for him. "What I have to ask you though, it isn't about that, or me. It's about the other students."

She turned her head slightly in question. "The other students? Whom do you mean?"

He was standing behind the chair he was meant to sit in, holding on to the top of the back and bracing himself, trying to derive strength from it to get the question out. "Last year, and possibly the one before. How bad did things get?"

She gave him a fixed stare for a minute before closing her eyes and he saw her jaw clench before her lips grew thin. "The other professors that joined our staff," she started carefully, "they were not pleasant. They were teaching the students all kinds of propaganda and teaching them spells that should never have been in the syllabus. Madame Pomphrey saw well more students come through her infirmary than she should ever have seen. She'd confided in me at the start of the year that she had taught a few students from each house several pertinent healing spells and neither of us knows to what extent those students needed to use them. There was only so much that I, Fillius, or any of the other teachers that remain on the staff could do without losing our posts and removing what little protection we could provide the students. And they did very much need protecting."

Her voice had grown so quiet at the end, but he caught every word.

Harry came around and sat down in the chair.

"You don't know exactly what kind of detentions the students were being subjected to by the other professors?"

She regarded him carefully then before answering. "I know what spells and potions Pomona needed to teach those students, and from those I was able to draw conclusions."

Harry had no doubt that whatever series of spells or potions were provided to the students told her exactly how bad things had gotten.

McGonagall held up her hand before he could say anything else. "I assure you, Mister Potter, if I had done to those other teachers or students that had new 'privileges' what I truly wanted to, they would simply have been replaced by someone else and I would have lost my post. A lot of us were lucky to have been there for the final battle to get all that pent up retribution we needed out of our systems and some of the students didn't get that, which was why we now have a Mind Healer on staff that they are still refusing to talk to."

He nodded. What he'd really wanted to know was if she hadn't been blind to it. She was right. What could she or the other teachers have done? There were so many students to protect and if they attempted to take back the castle after Dumbledore had been poisoned, they would have failed.

"I do know though," she started again, "that there was some kind of resistance formed among the upper-class students. There were certain instances where those in charge of detentions would go missing for a day or so, only to come back looking worse for the wear and unable to explain what had happened to them."

"Worse for the wear?" he wondered over what she meant.

There was a twitch at the corner of her mouth and a glint of a sadistic twinkle in her eye that went away quickly. "They were looking a bit emaciated and were in need of a days rest and recovery. Whomever was responsible for them being in that state has never owned up to it. It seemed that even when the other professors," she said the word with a loathing that told him which ones she was referring to, "attempted to find out who it was that had done it, they too would seem a little worse for the wear and move on."

Harry could do no more than stare at her in confusion as he processed this.

It sounded like she as saying it was the Junior Death Eater students that had been in charge of the detentions were being punished and locked up somewhere, then when the Death Eater professors went looking for the perpetrator they too wound up in the same state. And yet they didn't look any harder to find out who was responsible?

McGonagall inclined her head slightly, raising her eyebrows, "can you think of no reason they might find that… embarrassing? Or why they might not want it getting back to their 'Dark Lord'? After all, their entire job was brainwashing a bunch of children."

'Ah,' Harry scoffed internally at how he hadn't drawn to that conclusion himself.

"To be fair," he smirked, "Voldy took a few runs at me and failed as well. Then I, a mere child, was the one to bring him down in the end."

"Yes, well, as an educator for many decades I can tell you that you, my dear, are not anywhere close to the most problematic student I've had to deal with."

"It helps that I missed out on three years of your schooling," he grinned. "Imagine if I'd stayed?"

She gave in and allowed a smile to grace her face also, "I'd rather not."

There was one more thing though. "You must have had some idea of which students were leading this resistance group," he pressed.

"I'm sure you do as well. Otherwise, I can't imagine why you would be bringing this up to me. And I am not going to be naming any names. I've kept your secret, and I will be keeping theirs."

He nodded. "That's fair. Thank you for chatting with me about it. I didn't want to broach the subject with Ron or Hermione. I can't picture either of them being able to leave that one alone until the mystery of it was solved."

"And no doubt, because of who they had to leave behind," she agreed.

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That following Saturday his, Ron and Hermione's names had been removed from the bulletin board in the Gryffindor Common Room. It hadn't bothered he and Ron so much as the week had progressed, but Hermione on the other hand, she'd been kicking herself the whole week. It was a black spot on her record, even though it would not reflect in her official file, she treated it like it would.

"What people thought of you when you are at Hogwarts will affect your life outside Hogwarts as well," she told he and Ron numerous times.

Harry was feeling better after having his chat with McGonagall, and he'd firmly decided that he wasn't going to broach the subject with his best friends. It was clear to him who was partly in charge of leading the student resistance, but how sweet little Ginny Weasley had wound up like she now was, he could only picture the worst scenarios playing out in his mind to make her that way.

He couldn't stop himself from reflecting on that kiss they'd shared a week ago either.

It had been his first kiss. And he had thoroughly enjoyed it.

He recalled a time where she could do no more than blush and run away in his presence, it was like she was a completely different person now.

Though, they were all completely changed now.

They were all trying to recover. He knew he wasn't the only one that was filled with this suppressed darkness and rage, rage that they didn't have anyone left they could take it out on. And he so wanted to just lash out and try and get the darkness that surrounded his brain when he was alone and feeling that call of the void out of his system; just one breakdown here and there was what he wanted so that he could get his head right and carry on with his day.

He wondered what she and the rest of the student resistance might have subjected the torturers to last year as punishment for what they were doing to the other student body. Surely, they wouldn't do anything awful like what he'd been needing to do to rescue others from, their perpetrators had returned to the school confused and a bit worse for the wear… eventually. But they'd been left alive.

Pushing that out of his mind he got through his breakfast and headed straight down to the pitch with Ron for their Quidditch practice.

This year was supposed to be about rebuilding his friendship and enjoying one year at school where he didn't have to watch his back.

"So, I know that the Hogsmeade trip is coming up, and normally we'd go together, the three of us," Ron started as they made their way down to the pitch. "But, I sort of promised Hermione we'd go together, as a date. You know, before you, er, told us."

Oh, right. Hogsmeade. And Ron and Hermione were dating. He didn't want to be tagging along with them like that either.

"Don't worry about it," Harry assured him. "I'll go by myself or find someone else to hang out with."

"Cool," Ron relaxed.

"Been meaning to ask you when that all started."

"It was last fall," Ron grinned. "We'd both decided at the end of Sixth that we weren't going to be coming back considering what was going on and that we were both of age. Plus, you know Hermione wouldn't have been able to come back anyhow. So, one day we were doing some studying because Hermione was trying to keep up with the Seventh-Year curriculum, I helped her out with a spell she was having trouble with, next thing I know we're snogging. Been together ever since."

"I had wondered," Harry admitted. "When I saw the two of you at the meetings. I could tell you fancied each other, but I didn't know for sure."

He was happy for the two of them. There had always been the question of whether there was more to their bickering. Particularly after the scene Ron made at the end of the Yule Ball.

The next morning Harry woke up just before 6:30, and as it was a Sunday, everyone else was still in bed. His dorm mates were all asleep and the Gryffindor Common room was empty. He liked the castle like this. Even the paintings as he headed down the stairs and through the Entrance Hall were resting in their canvases.

It was peaceful.

His habit of going for a run had continued two or three days a week. Exercise was a high, he'd learned. And there was the added benefit that it made him 'dishy', or whatever Demelza had referred to him as; he enjoyed getting those appreciative looks from the girls at the school and wondered if that meant he might be able to spend some more time snogging in empty classrooms. He ran to the edge of the forest and did a full lap of the school a few times as the sun rose higher in the sky, the whole time wondering if there was someone, besides Ginny, that he might be interested in.

His mind kept being pulled back to her though, and that kiss.

On some mornings he would run into Hagrid and his new dog and stop for a chat, this morning though they weren't out an about yet and he stopped his run when he passed the Quidditch Pitch for the third time. It looked like the Hufflepuff team was just starting in on their practice, so he stole into the showers in the changeroom that they weren't occupying.

Part way through his wash he heard someone else come into the changeroom and start up the shower a few stalls down from where he was. After sharing a dorm with so many guys now, it didn't bother him in the slightest. The water felt like it was hotter and better at massaging out his muscles in these showers over the ones in the dorm.

It wasn't until he was coming back out of his shower with a towel around his waist that he realized it had not been one of the other guys using the other shower; Ginny was standing at the sink with a toothbrush in her mouth, wet hair and only a towel wrapped around her.

He felt all the breath leave his lungs at the sight.

Their eyes locked in the mirror and he was surprised to see a blush come to her face.

"Hello," he said and gave a hard swallow. He could see her bare shoulders and the towel dipped a bit low at her back. It still hung down to mid-thigh, same as her school uniform. But this was different. She was all freshly bathed and only had the one item of fabric keeping her modesty.

"Hello," she said back through a mouth full of toothpaste. Then she bent over and spat it into the sink. She caught his eye again in the mirror again after wiping her mouth. "There, er. There are a lot more girls in my dorm this year. Doesn't make getting a shower for a decent amount of time much of a possibility."

He offered her an unconcerned single shoulder shrug and a slight shake of his head. "I'm in here too. Not for the same reason, but, you know." He sucked in a breath that had him standing up straighter, attempting to look unconcerned about their situation. "I just wanted a nice, long shower after my run."

He continued on his way out to the changeroom, wishing the stalls had been set up differently now to allow for more privacy and possibly a spot to change in.

"Potter, wait," Ginny called.

He stopped with his hand on the door and turned back to her.

"I'm sorry. Again, you know, about the other night," she managed. "I'd had a touch too much to drink and, well, you. You're a good-looking bloke." She got the last sentence out as fast as humanly possible while still making sense. "But, yeah, considering everything that went on here last year, and what we had just been talking about. I shouldn't have done it. So… again, I'm sorry."

"Do you want to go to Hogsmeade with me?" he blurted out.

She looked awestruck by the question. "What?" Her expression was completely justified, he himself wasn't sure where the hell that had come from. It just came out of his mouth without warning.

"Do… do you want to… go to Hogsmeade with me?" he asked again. The first time it had just spilled out of his mouth. The second time it was like his brain was finally connecting to his mouth and screaming at him about how this could be problematic.

For an eternity she stood there staring at him.

"O-okay," she said finally.

"Really?" he said in disbelief as the wave of relief washed over him.

"Yeah, okay," she said, this time with more conviction.

"Okay."

"And Po-Harry," she called as he was about to turn and walk away.

"Yeah?"

"It's an unwritten rule that this changeroom is for the girl's. Might want to keep that in mind for the future."

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