Their losses were devastating. He did not quite want to think about how he was going to have to tell all the families, but at least he had done it before, not that he wanted to have done it, not that he was grateful under the circumstances. The fact that several known Death Eaters had also fallen was no terrible relief, and not because he knew that their master would not for a moment mourn their loss.

"We've all lost someone, Michael," he whispered, down on his knees at a makeshift grave. "Hannah and Ernie were friends of mine too." He took a breath. "So was Neville."

There was no grave for him. He had met the same fate as his parents, and was with the order at the moment.

"They were the only ones to treat me half-decently after everything," he muttered. "If I died instead-"

"They would be the ones losing it," he muttered. "Ginny's survivor's guilt is about as bad as yours, if it makes you feel any better. Everyone goes through it. I can't tell you how many times I saw Cedric dying in my dreams."

"The term for that is nightmare."

"All my dreams are nightmares. I use the terms interchangeably." He frowned. "I'm not trying to make a point that some people have it worse. As much as I'd like it, I can't expect you to just walk this off. I just need you to return to your duties. You're the most experienced Healer we have, and the recruits- you know Yves, right? She wants to learn from you, along with Hubert."

"I know," he said. "I can't tell you how much staring at graves is going to be enough for me."

"It's the same with the Mirror of Erised," he said. "If someone asks you how long you're going to spend in front of it, you can't answer. There isn't an answer."

Again serving as some kind of organizer, he was happy that Ron had been brought down from critical condition, but there were several others who were in a bad way, and in fairness to Michael, he was worn out; he had every reason to be. He had been working both on himself, keeping his organs from falling out, and on others, and the pain started coming back to him after he woke up for another shift at the makeshift hospital. Everyone who could still move had taken on secondary care duties. It had not been that long since they came back from Azkaban having panic attacks, but they simply could not afford to have the same happen. He found himself in a talk with McGonagall.

"Did he say anything else to you?"

"No, after he healed me, he said that there was more that he needed to do, but he would see us again soon."

She took a long breath. He sympathized.

"I suppose you can only think of the casualties at this hour, but your response to a full assault by the Death Eaters was exemplary. The casualties would have been much higher if you had adopted any other method of defending yourself, and as you suspected, you could not have fled."

"They put anti-apparation jinxes all the way around us before they even started their approach." He sighed. If there were too many more jinxes like that, magical warfare would basically just be a game of surrounding, Go, but with wands. It was a tactic that their side had used before, to great effect. "The Death Eaters were way more experienced than any of our previous enemies. They realized that we were distracting them, but their main priority was to get me, and they overpowered our defenses. Almost all the deaths were on my side."

"That was the result of our judgement call, not your own. We suspected that you and Voldemort would not be on either side of the wall. It was impressive even to us that you had the trust in your comrades to allow them to conduct the attack from behind without you. There were few casualties on our side because Lord Voldemort was outnumbered and even though he anticipated the ambush, we were able to regain control of the situation until Albus appeared and decided to switch to single combat. Most likely, he was telling the truth when he said that he was counting on you to back him up; he knew that the Death Eaters would not manage to kill you."

"That didn't mean they wouldn't just keep me there," he said. "It was only because they made a bad decision and one of them apparated to the wrong place-" He shook his head.

"Harry."

"What?"

"I'm sorry, Professor, one moment."

"Of course."

"Hermione, how are you?"

"Daphne and I can only stay conscious for a few moments at a time. We're starving in here. Is it safe to exit the Room?"

"Yeah. There shouldn't be any Death Eaters where you are now. You can apparate, right?"

"It might be better if you come and get us."

"Again, I have to go. Hermione's all right."

"I suppose I should have guessed. I heard about her condition from the others."

He brought the witches back from the room and left them in the makeshift hospital where the Order was happy to have a problem so simple as needing food. They provided no explanation for what had happened, and he was left not knowing whether or not he should still feel like he failed. When he made a judgement call with barely any justification, he was never too pleased when it worked out. There were plenty of bad calls that he had better reasons to trust, though, and he supposed he would have to take the victories that he could get. Even if Hermione and Daphne could only stay awake a few minutes at a time, it was better than having lost them entirely, and he was truly grateful for it.

Harry found himself outside, talking to Sturgis Podmore of all people, working with one of the recruits on the barrier.

"Are we safe here, for the moment?"

"Yes, at least until we find out something to suggest otherwise. Your old Divination teacher is pretty sure of what they used to track you down, and it's dark stuff all right. We're out of its way, though."

"She's here?"

"Many of your former teachers are," he said, brow furrowing. "Where else would she be? Never mind that. Leave us to our work."

It was not the 'Dragon Marshal' treatment he had almost come to expect with the others. He did not bother to correct it, only walking away. Apparently, as they had suspected, Voldemort was using the last of his disposable minions for an attack on muggles just before they were notified that the Death Eaters were closing in. He shook his head, wondering if he could trust the information. It seemed like the whole thing was a set-up to help him maintain his confidence. The Order could have fudged a few of the details, but could they have conspired in a short amount of time to... He shook his head. Even if that was what they were planning, it would not work. Nothing could erase the graves, not for members of the resistance at any rank, and for that, he knew he had to go and visit the families. It was a thankless task, but it did not deserve any thanks, since it was just the basic expectation, and at the very least, he thought it was fair to not be in the mood to be thanked.

Hannah's only living relative was a mother who lived in Sheffield. The Floo Network would not get him to her house, but she had an address on file, so he could apparate there after looking at a map of the general area in a tourist center. The place was well-kept, as he found out as soon as he knocked, finding that it opened. He called out once, but there was no response. Why would she leave the door unlocked? Quietly, he decided that he could at least leave a note saying that he could not find her, and ask her to be available another time.

There was an older woman sleeping on a couch. The place was entirely muggle. He sighed, looking around. For her, it was not going to be good news that the wizarding world existed at all. As far as she knew, it did not not exist, and then it showed up and took her daughter... and now there was no way for her to come back. She was dead.

"Revervate. The authorities will be here in minutes." The old lady blinked and rolled over.

"I finally get to sleep after two shifts and- who are you?"

"I'm Harry Potter. Your daughter joined my resistance organization. It's been a-"

She started bawling and she got up from the couch, grabbing onto his jacket. The tradition of an officer coming to announce the death of a unit was long-standing, even in the muggle world. Hannah must have told her mother about the risks, and why she would not be coming back until after the war. That he was coming back was proof that the war was not even over, and there appeared to have been nothing gained by her death.

"Where are the adults?" she asked. As always, it was a fair question.

"The adults in our world are effectively the same as the adults in yours. I would know; I grew up in Surrey. My aunt and uncle listened to whatever news source suited them, and that governed their entire understanding of how the world worked. I didn't have the luxury to be so far from reality. The dark wizard that your daughter might have mentioned killed my parents, and he returned to life in front of me, killing a young man named Cedric Diggory." He sighed. "Given what they've been doing, I can't blame them for not realizing that Lord Voldemort is back, but I very much can blame them for what they've been doing, taking everything at face value."

"I want to do something."

"Do the right thing with every breath. There may be nothing you can do for revenge against the Death Eaters that killed your daughter, but you can help to make sure that the same kind of thing doesn't happen in this world. We're still suffering the consequences of offloading all of our moral responsibilities to the magical government. Tell the truth and challenge liars. As angry as I've been with the newspapers in our world, I've realized the only way to oppose them is to tell the truth, and only fight when they try to use force to shut you up. It sounds... I don't know, naive, or something, but you don't need a believable lie, and you don't need to force people to do anything; you just need the truth. Anyone who says it doesn't work is a liar."

He wondered how much he was comforting her and how much she was giving him a chance to get out everything that seemed to have been bottled up inside. The fact that he was about the same age as her daughter was not lost on her; she even demanded to see someone older and he explained, perhaps not for the first time, depending on how communicative Hannah had been. He never knew with the muggle families. On one hand, they had no context for anything, and would probably not understand if it were all explained to them, but on the other, there was really nothing they could do if their children decided to walk out one day. It was not as if any of them were really financially dependent on their parents, not in the way that muggle children were.

"I'll see myself out. I can't do anything more for you. I'm sorry I had to say this. If it makes any difference, your daughter died bravely while acting as a Healer."

Harry left without waiting for a reaction. It was too much to expect her to care that her daughter was making a difference to some other world. It was hard to imagine how it must have been for her when she found out about the war. There were other families on the list, but as soon as he got back, he found himself intercepted by Tonks.

"I heard about what happened," she said. "Do you want to talk about it?" She looked around. "I know I started the Auror Corps during what was technically peacetime, but I've lost people before."

"This isn't my first time, actually," he said.

"That doesn't mean that you've dealt with it before. You didn't even imply that you did." She offered a wan smile. "If you're hoping you either drop dead or the war's over before it all catches up with you..."

"What are you suggesting?" he asked. "If I talk with you about being disappointed, is that going to make it any easier?"

"I don't know. It might. Just tell me this- what would you have done differently?"

"I... As many choices... as I was offered, er, I don't think that I could have made a better one. I don't have a clue what would have happened with some of the other options." It was hard to even think back to it and remember what he had projected might happen if they went with a different response.

"Then, did you make any mistakes?"

"Er... I can't say that I did," he said after a moment. "Except maybe in going there in the first place. I should have known that... no, sooner or later, we would have to attack targets that they would be expecting us to attack, and they would use the same method to see us coming."

"Sometimes it can be harder to accept that you've made the right decision than actually making it," Tonks said. "I don't know if you did or not, but I can tell you that even if you did, it wouldn't be easy to accept the losses. Most of the faces that haunt our dreams aren't really motivated by guilt, at least not in my experience."

"Thanks," he said after a moment. "I... I need to get on to the others-"

"I won't keep you from it. I just think that the adults are going to have a hard time seeing that you're in charge of the unit. They probably feel like they would have a hard time yelling at you."

"That was exactly what happened with Mrs. Abbott. She wanted to see an adult." He frowned. It would be an especially cowardly, manipulative thing to make a child a spokesperson for a cause. "I'm not far off."

"Well, that was what I thought too. Then, when I was seventeen, I wasn't a 'proper adult'. Like I said, I wasn't born into a war, so I had to keep proving myself in order to demonstrate that I was really mature, and not that I had just reached the age where they technically have to allow me to use regular spells when I need to because that's the agreed-upon rule." She shrugged. "Not that I'm not grateful. For the record, this is the only reason that we're taking you as seriously as we have been."

"What, because it's really a matter of how mature you are inside?" he asked, frustrated. He had heard a thousand times that he was advanced for his age, but it never seemed like it mattered, not in the way people treated him.

"Yes, and no one can see that until you demonstrate it. Maturity is just what it's called when you're able to do things that you don't really want to do in order to accomplish something. It's not strictly selflessness or responsibility... or wisdom, though I suppose we expect adults to be wise and responsible, if not selfless. That's what we expect of parents."

"I... er..." None of that sounded fun, but then, no one was ever instructed to be mature in a fun way. Come to think of it, no one ever complained that someone else was having too little fun at all. "I think I get it," he said after a moment. "I think cowardice can be mistaken for maturity, though. I think a lot of the 'proper adults' out there are just going along with having their country's future stolen from them and they're telling themselves 'such is life' and getting over it."

"I suppose," she said. "You could say that's the consequence of making maturity about reaching certain 'life stages' and not about making hard choices. They think they know best just because they've been around, they've always done what they were supposed to do, and they get incensed when someone else isn't doing what they're supposed to do, even when it doesn't cost them anything. I would say it demonstrates far less responsibility and independence to stick with a career for fifteen years than it does to plan out a course schedule at Hogwarts, and if your idea of reaching adulthood is just using your head and taking risks so that you can get to a point where you can totally relax, you haven't really learned anything. Quite a few people are like that; they're like the kids who suffer through a class they don't like just because it's a one-time thing and not genuinely learning. If they want to be like that, in most cases, I would think that's fine, as long as they're aware of it and they don't cause problems for anyone else." She paused. "If you're someone who's not going to think through things because you don't care enough to get it right, you really shouldn't bother reading the news, any news, even ours, and you shouldn't bother voting, though a lot of people don't do that already."

Harry decided to get the rest of the list crossed off before anything else. If the other families hated him for having the tiniest bit of clarity rather than being a barely disguised wreck, then he could accept that. He resolved to visit them anyway, while everyone else was still processing, most likely, and started by going to the Macmillan family, which had not joined the cause, despite being offered. It was easy to find them, since their house was heavily monitored, but that also made it hard to get in. Waiting for a changing of the guard, he walked in under the Cloak, catching the door as it closed. The man of the house looked back, raising an eyebrow.
"Who the hell are you?" He became visible once more, stashing his cloak in his pack. "Get the hell out of my house."

"I'm Harry Potter, sir," he said. "For the past several months-"

"I know who you are and I know why you're here, now that I can see you. All I want is for you to get the hell out."

"I..." He felt like it would be an injustice if he did not say anything to commemorate Ernie. Before the young man died, probably by Dolohov, who had himself been killed already, one of the last things he had done was getting Harry to respond to the emergency. "He died fighting-"

"Yes, in your pointless war-"

"It's anything other than pointless-" He shook his head. "I suppose you're not concerned with that right now. I'll be going."

"Excellent. Never return."

It was hard to say that he had ever had a worse conversation. Even directly after criticizing adults for not taking part in the war, he had no desire to throw it back on someone who had just lost his son. Technically, he was supposed to ask if someone else was at home, but apparently Macmillan was alone, at least for the past few years. His son, Ernie, made reference to having had a mother, but only in the past tense. Quietly, Harry supposed it was too much to hope that he and Hannah's mother would just randomly meet up somewhere and console each other over the loss of their children; that was the kind of thing that only happened in particularly sappy movies. Only sighing, he apparated back, grateful that they had the address on file, even if the announcement could have gone better. Had he hoped it would take up the whole rest of the day, and that he would feel even better afterward?

Perhaps the change in perspective was for the best.