Chapter Twenty-Eight

The Wind Up

It was a curious thing. The second war had, for the most part, crept up on the inhabitants of wizarding Britain while they slept, went about their daily routine - while they squabbled over petty things; while new mothers sang their children to sleep in little nurseries, while orphans lay restlessly under the watchful moon, errantly trying to brush away the interminable feel of the cold beds of their respective orphanages. Unlike the first war, which had spanned more than a decade, a war where Tom Riddle and his pureblood followers had to spend a great deal of time pillaging and destroying just to earn the fear that would cause people to quake in their boots at the mere mention of them, the second war seemed to magically appear out of thin air. It was a shocking thing, because people had been expected to comprehend the transformation of their peaceful reprieve back into that horrible nightmare that had been the seventies. Lord Voldemort had been quickly able to marshal an army of dark creatures and the wizarding elite, and had quickly terrorized magical and muggle folk alike, and had done so for exactly two years - two brutal, pain filled, despairing years in which the full horror of the last days of Lord Voldemort's power had been realized once more. And then, on June 15, 1997, that great terror, the violent deaths, the omnipresence of dark magic in the air, all of it was snuffed out in a flash, leaving only the wreckage of human life and shattered urban streets.

using the same fluid stealth that the PA had used to come together, it shortly disbanded, its surviving members retreating into the shadows, melting away through the walls of Hogwarts, through underground passages, Neville Longbottom, Terry Boot, Luna Lovegood, Collin Creeley, Susan Bones, Hannah Abbot and others, all returning to their ordinary lives, transforming like butterflies back into caterpillars.

They held a secret funeral, sent secret letters to the families of the dead, made secret oaths.

"If ever the Dark looms once more," Neville said in a quiet voice that dripped with restrained magic, the kind of special power that saved infant Harry's life on Halloween, 1981, "then let us return. Let us come together and stand against it."

Each one of the nineteen phoenix soldiers nodded gravely, their somber faces stained crimson by the light of the setting sun.

"Do you, Mandy Brockelhurst, swear to uphold the mantel of the light, to come to the aid of your fellow soldiers in his or her time of need?"

"I swear," said she.

Feeling the sincerity in her voice, in her rigid posture, Neville touched the tip of his wand to her heart, where a gentle tingle formed between them. "Go then."

Mandy nodded and slipped away, Sue Lee coming forward and taking her place. Neville, the near-squib, repeated the procedure, binding each soldier in turn with the same process, linking each one through the ancient magic that had given them strength to fight and succeed over the last eight months.

As each surviving soldier was honoured and brought into the fold of the PA, bound together time immemorial, each one slipped away into shadow, disappearing from view, leaving Hogwarts, returning to their cocoon out there in the wizarding world. All except five of them.

Luna, Neville Sue Lee, Susan Bones and Terry Boot remained to watch the sun complete its descent behind the horizon on the longest day of the year. slowly it went, each of them lost in a sea of memories, careful to make sure that their memories, of the second war came to a proper conclusion. To make sure that the dead were firmly settled in their place.

It was a testament to what they endured that none of them cried, though whether that was a good thing or a bad thing remained to be seen. It was almost as though there was too much to cry over.

Darkness fell, the night sky deepening to a dark blue, sprinkled with stars that were disappearing under the coming clouds. A storm approached. The halls of Hogwarts were steeped in quietude, broken by early the next morning with the crack of thunder, and the unceasing fall of rain.

By then, the remaining five had left.

Not a single person in the PA had asked about Harry Potter after Neville's assertion on the night of June 15, the night where Neville declared that the Dark Lord's death was imminent. Such was their faith in the Gryffindor.

Harry was content with that. Whatever it was that the PA had done, whatever war they'd waged; he had decided that it wasn't really his business. He wasn't a leader, and he wasn't a paragon of virtue. He didn't actually know what he was, and he was fine with that too. He was even fine with the complete destruction of the Ministry, a feat so utterly great and terrifying that people were hard pressed to believe a mere boy of seventeen could have achieved it. Still, he had done it nevertheless, and for no good reason he could think of, other than the fact that it felt good to let his magic open up like that. He now understood why only a handful of witches and wizards over the millennia were capable of executing the seventh and final spell of the Fidelius. Most people would simply spontaneously combust if they tried.

Harry found that he didn't even really care all that much about the fallen soldiers, like Katie Bell, or, at least, he could only drum up the sort of vague pity that people had for the tragedies of others. Again, it wasn't his problem. The deaths of Ron and Hermione were different, however. For a brief moment during his execution of the Luminaire spell, he had felt them somewhere deep below him. His magic had touched them, and in turn their magics had touched him. It was as though they had been reunited one last time, and he felt the distinctiveness that marked the presence of the golden trio manifest itself, flood him, fill him with the warm memories of days passed in front of the common room fireplace, imaginative predictions of his death transcribed for scrutiny by batty old Trelawney, pages of Hermione's arithmancy equations scattered about. He had felt the taste of butterbeer on his tongue, like fine wine, his friends staring across that great chasm, staring at him, as though they were sitting no farther than a few feet, as though they were all together at the Three Broomsticks.

It had been sweet in its intensity and bitter with its transience.

And now, once more, they were gone. Not dead, exactly, but not in Kansas anymore either. He found himself mourning their loss.

He watched the sun rise in the east, the slow trickle of people moving through the streets of downtown London, their collective presence breathing life into the architecture. He continued to sip from a wax cup filled with lemon ginger tea. Soon, he would go home, hold Minnie, tell her sweet things. Maybe he would make love to her, maybe they would go to a park and walk around, enjoy the sight of children playing hide and seek, or tag or some other game that children played. He had all the time in the world, it seemed.

Tossing a five on the table, he stood and walked out of the little cafe and lost himself in the throng of muggles.

THE END

A/N: Hi all,

sorry for the delay. My laptop bugged out on me and it had to be shipped to a far off place (by camel, apparently - if the transit time is any indication), and I only had it returned to me last week, wherein I was busy steeping in the library.

Ah well, I doubt anyone out there really cares, so long as it gets posted eventually, which, if you're reading this, you'll know that it is. Enjoy, and, now that you've reached the end, do please feel free to drop a review and let me know what you think. I'm partial to the thumbs system, but if you want to rate me on the stars or the 10 point system (or, God forbid, a letter grade, because clearly I don't have nightmares about those as it is), then you can do that as well.

As always, thanks to everyone who reviewed. I suppose I should thank people who didn't review also (only slightly though), because you did boost the numbers on my hit counter and that does give me a nice feeling too (again, only slightly). The real utility's in the reviews.

Thanks to everyone for putting up with my atrocious spelling. I have no doubt it was a bit of an eyesore, as more than one person elected to point it out. I wish I could claim that English wasn't my first language, but alas I can't. The simple fact is that I'm constructively illiterate. I'm still coming to term's with that.

Some thoughts about the story:

I hope nobody's too disappointed with the ending. I don't think there was anything in there that you couldn't see coming from a mile away. I actually felt that the true climax of the story was Harry's battle with Voldemort in the AU, and that everything that occurs after his return is part of the denouement.

I suppose there's a few loose ends that I never cleared up. Ginny, for example. She shows up in one chapter and then promptly disappears, never to be seen or heard from again. Her chapter's basically an info dump, but hopefully it's an enjoyable one.

Looking back, the story's fairly conservative. There's a distinct lack of , and there's a distinct lack of a strong female lead. The story also tends to revel in gratuitous and gruesome violence.

Writing humour has always been rather foreign to me, though I attempted it in this story. I am curious to know if I succeeded at all.

I know very little about guns. It just happens that I'm fond of guns and sorcery type fiction. I did some cursory research on-line, but I have no clue how well I integrated it into my story. shrug Hopefully, my ignorance in the area wasn't so egregious as to drive people away. (Certainly not if you made it this far).

I could probably go on, but it's not really necessary. I think I'm just suffering from completion anxieties, or something. I should probably just say good-bye and be done with it.

All right.

Here goes.

Good-bye.