Dumbledore's demise didn't exactly end the battle in the graveyard, but it was clear all that remained to do was deal with the few remining stragglers from The Order. As such, Voldemort dismissed a large portion of his Death Eaters, opting for only his most trusted circle to stay with him and deal with the mess in the graveyard. As Death Eaters began to vanish, Voldemort checked Hermione, Harry and Draco were okay, before ordering them to head home and get themselves checked out by a Healer.
Given Draco's leg, Hermione wasn't at all sure her boyfriend could manage to apparate himself back to Malfoy Manor without splinching himself, so she decided that was where they would go, before she and Harry then carried on to her house. Given she wasn't a Malfoy, she couldn't apparate directly into the property, but she conceded that Draco could do the actual apparating as long as she and Harry were right by his side, keeping him from using his injured leg.
With Harry on one side and Hermione on the other, Draco apparated the three of them to his home. They arrived in the front hallway, and while Draco had managed not to splinch anyone their landing wasn't exactly gentle and the trio toppled over in a heap. The noise instantly brought Narcissa to their aid, and judging from the speed in which she appeared, Hermione suspected she'd been on edge waiting for her son and husband to return.
"Draco, are you okay?" Narcissa asked in concern as she rushed towards the trio sprawled in the front hallway. "Are any of you badly hurt?"
"Hermione's arm is hurt," Draco answered.
"Not as badly as your knee," Hermione retorted, wincing even as she spoke as the fall to the floor had resulted in her landing right on her injured left arm.
"I'll be okay," Draco assured his mother. "I'll likely just need some pain relief potions and a bit of rest."
"And when did you qualify as a healer?" Narcissa snorted as she called for a house elf and ordered them to send for the family healer. "You will be treated by an expert, and you will follow any advice they give you."
"Yes mother," Draco muttered, knowing not to argue with his mother when she was in this sort of mood.
With Harry's help, Narcissa got Draco to his feet and they helped him hobble into the front room, where he collapsed on a sofa. With Draco at least partly settled, Narcissa then asked about Lucius, and it was clear to everyone in the room how relieved she was to hear her husband had survived the battle and would be coming back to her.
"Are you two staying to see the healer?" Narcissa asked, once she had also established that her sister was also okay and she would see her again.
"We should get home, Mum will likely be there and she'll be worried," Hermione said.
"Use the floo, it's easier than apparating with your arm," Narcissa said.
Briefly leaving Draco on the sofa waiting for the healer, Narcissa saw Hermione and Harry to the floo room. One by one they flooed to Hermione's home, and when they arrived in the large house she called home, they were greeted by her worried mother, Jean. After giving both of them a tight hug, she sat them down and as Narcissa had done before her, she sent for a healer.
"Your father?" Jean asked Hermione. While the question was tentative, it clearly held hope of a positive answer as Hermione's demeanour was not of someone who had just lost their father.
"He's okay," Hermione assured her mother. While her mother avoided any fighting and wasn't an active supporter of Voldemort's, she loved him deeply and Hermione knew she would endure anything just to have him return safely to her arms. "He's just clearing up, and then he'll be home."
"Is it over?" Jean asked.
"Pretty much," Hermione confirmed with a nod of her head. "Dumbledore is gone, and what's left of the Order must be pretty shattered. There might be the odd rebellion here and there, but there shouldn't be much of an issue when father's ready to exert his influence over the country."
"And how do you feel, Harry?" Jean asked softly, turning towards the boy she loved like a son.
"Relieved," Harry answered with a long sigh. "I feel as if a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I feel like for the first time in my life, I can make my own choices and live my own life."
"That is all we ever wanted for you," Jean said with a smile. "I just hope you know that whatever you decide to do, and wherever life takes you, you will always have a home here with us. You will always be part of our family, Harry."
"And you'll always be my best friend," Hermione added, leaning her head on Harry's shoulder. "I know you've worried that we won't have the same connection now the Horcrux is gone, and while that might be true, it doesn't mean we won't still have a connection. I will always love you, Harry."
"And I will always love you," Harry replied, dropping a kiss on the top of Hermione's head.
Jean smiled at the pair, content to let them have their moment, but it was only a moment as the floo sounded from another room, signalling the healer had arrived. The healer in question was a private healer attached to the same practice as the one the Malfoys used, and he was a wizard who had treated Hermione and her mother for years, so therefore knew the family pretty well.
Since Hermione had a more obvious injury, Harry insisted she was seen first, and he sat quietly while his best friend was examined. Luckily her injuries were nothing serious and after cleaning her up, the healer strapped her left arm up in bandages and gave her a pain relief potion and a potion that would help fix the damage. She was then ordered to take it easy for the next few days, and to see him in a week to check on how her arm was healing.
Harry was also issued a pain relief potion, but he'd suffered no major injuries and as he'd said back in the graveyard he was simply battered and bruised. However, the healer did point out that even with the pain potion he would likely be sore and tender for days, and as with Hermione getting some rest wouldn't be a bad thing.
"I'll make sure both of them take it easy," Jean assured the healer as she thanked him for his time and showed him out. "Right, it's time for you two to get on up to bed," she declared when she returned.
"Mum, we're not kids," Hermione complained. "Father isn't even back yet."
"You can speak with your father in the morning," Jean said in a stern voice. "Right now, you both need your rest. So get up those stairs, get cleaned up properly and get into bed. And if you argue with me again, I will personally take you up to your room and lock you in."
Hermione huffed out an annoyed sigh as she got to her feet, but she knew better than to argue with her mother. A lot of her fire and passion came from her father, but her stubbornness came from her mother, and quite honestly as stubborn as Hermione could be, her mother was worse. Accepting that there was no chance of persuading her mother that rest didn't mean going straight off to bed, Hermione slowly headed off upstairs, followed by Harry, who had no problem with the idea of getting cleaned up and going to bed.
"Are you sure you're okay?" Hermione asked her best friend as they reached their bedrooms. Harry had a designated room in the house, and it was located directly opposite Hermione's.
"Yeah," Harry answered with a nod. "I don't regret the path I chose. If I had to do it all over again, I would still be standing right here with you."
"Even with what it might have cost you?" Hermione asked quietly. She and Harry had never really talked about Sirius, and how Harry felt about him, but earlier in the graveyard it had been clear that her best friend thought an awful lot about his godfather. So maybe now he was regretting that he might have lost the one wizard who might as well have been his family.
"Maybe it hasn't cost me anything," Harry said, knowing exactly what Hermione was referring to. "I didn't see Sirius fighting. I honestly think he took my advice and left."
"And if he did?" Hermione asked. She knew her father would be able to tell Harry if Sirius had indeed fought as he would check with everyone there about their experiences so he would know exactly who had stood against him, and who had done the sensible thing and fled.
"If he did, then I want to go and see him and try and explain my standpoint," Harry admitted. "I suppose if I'm really lucky, he'll understand and we can rebuild some sort of relationship."
"And if he doesn't?" Hermione whispered, fearing that it was a more likely outcome.
"Then I've still got my family here," Harry answered with a warm smile. "I won't force anything on him, Hermione. Whatever choices he makes, are his alone, and I will accept them."
Hoping that things worked out for Harry, Hermione said goodnight to her best friend as they parted and headed into their respective rooms. Getting cleaned up was her priority, and she headed straight for her adjoining bathroom. Once she was washed, she got ready for bed, but didn't for one minute expect to actually fall asleep. She figured she would just lie and rest, and maybe hear when her father returned home. But barely five minutes after settling down on the bed the adrenaline of the battle wore off and as exhaustion overcame her, she drifted off into a sound sleep that would last all night.
The moment the barriers fell and the fighting begun at the graveyard, Sirius hesitated, not quite knowing what to do. Then he spotted Harry, and without giving it another moments thought, he pulled out his wand and apparated away. He landed back at Grimmauld Place with a thud as his concentration had slipped at the last moment. Although rather than pick himself up off the floor, Sirius merely sat there, too stunned to even think straight, let alone get up.
He didn't know how long he sat on the floor in a stunned stupor, but eventually he hauled himself to his feet. Knowing that his decision had been made, and he would now have to live with the consequences, he adjusted the wards around the house so that no-one but himself and Harry could enter. Although depending on how things went when he finally saw his godson again, he might end up revoking his right to access the house as well.
Safely locked away from the world, Sirius poured himself a large slug of firewhisky and downed it in one go. Refilling his glass, he took that and the bottle with him into the front room, where he collapsed onto the sofa, finally ready to try and process what had just happened. Although he wasn't even sure where to begin trying to get his head around the fact Harry had betrayed them all and had secretly been working for the dark.
Sirius knew that until he had spoken to Harry, he wouldn't know the full story and wouldn't know how things were going to go from here on in. But even without the full picture, he had plenty to digest. Starting with Dumbledore, and the revelation that he'd planned on sacrificing Harry when he'd deemed the time was right. Just thinking about it sent red hot fury blazing across Sirius's skin, and despite himself he found himself hoping that the headmaster had come off worst in his battle with Voldemort.
In Sirius's eyes it was unforgivable for Dumbledore to have made plans like that about Harry, and that alone made him somewhat understand his godson's decision. Putting himself in Harry's shoes, he could certainly understand why he had turned on the headmaster and aligned himself with his enemies. But how had he justified turning his back on the rest of the Order? How had he justified the horrors that had played out over the last few weeks?
Sirius had no answers to those two questions, and try as he might, he couldn't see a valid reason for Harry to turn on everyone else the way he had. They hadn't been ready to sacrifice him the way Dumbledore had done. Or had they? Sirius had never had any such knowledge of what Dumbledore had been planning, but what if other members of the Order had known? He knew from firsthand experience that Dumbledore didn't tell everyone everything, and in the first war there had been several times that he'd learnt something from James or Remus that Dumbledore had told them and not him. So had the headmaster told some of the Order about his plans, and was that why Harry had been willing to betray them?
If that was the case, then Sirius wondered if they'd been happy to go along with his plans. Had anyone else been willing to sacrifice Harry if it meant saving them all? Sirius wanted to believe that people would have baulked at the idea, and fought against it, as he knew he would have done. But deep down, he wasn't so sure that everyone would react the same way.
On the surface of things, the Weasleys were people who could have taken the same approach Sirius felt he would have taken. They loved Harry and they would have fought against him being sacrificed for the greater god. But would they? If it had come down to a choice between allowing Dumbledore to sacrifice Harry or risk losing any of their own children, would Molly and Arthur really have objected? Or would they have let Dumbledore sway them and convince them that Harry dying was the only way to save them all? Truth be told, Sirius just didn't know what the Weasleys would have done, or if they'd even know about Dumbledore's plans.
However, what he did know was that Dumbledore had always been a persuasive old goat, and if anyone could convince people to get on board with the idea of sacrificing a teenage boy for the great good, it would be him. For all Sirius knew, he'd had the entire Order onside, including Remus. It broke Sirius's heart to even consider that Remus had known of Dumbledore's plans for Harry and said nothing, but he had to admit it was a possibility. Remus had always been ridiculously practical, and if spun the right way, Sirius had no doubt that Dumbledore could have persuaded his friend that what he'd planned on doing was a necessity, even if it wasn't a pleasant one.
Not wanting to face that possibility, Sirius knocked back more potent firewhisky before refilling his glass. The truth was, he could sit here all night playing the possibilities over and over in his head, but it wouldn't get him anywhere. At the end of the day, it didn't matter who had known what. What mattered was that Dumbledore had betrayed Harry so badly that he'd driven him into the arms of the enemy. Of that, Sirius was certain. If Dumbledore hadn't planned on sacrificing Harry, then he was sure his godson wouldn't have been swayed over to the dark side, even with Hermione in their ranks. No, Dumbledore was to blame for this entire mess, and Sirius fervently hoped that he was suffering for the decisions he had made.
As for Sirius, he didn't know what his future held, or what decisions he would be making in the coming days and weeks. All he knew was that he'd possibly lost Harry for good, and it was all Dumbledore's fault. That thought alone was enough to have him reaching for the firewhisky time and time again, and when you added the loss of Remus on top of that, it ensured that Sirius drank far more than was good for him. It resulted in him eventually passing out on the sofa, his mind still not totally wrapped around the fact that Harry had turned to the dark side and might well be lost to him forever.