The Goblin, the Snitch, and the Werewolf

Summary: Harry considers the future of the House of Potter. Andromeda considers the past of the House of Black. Teddy is where they collide. It isn't always pretty. Immediately post-Deathly Hallows (SPOILERS!).

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling; various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books; and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made (well, lots of money is being made, but none by me) and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

Note: This is not a romance and I will place virtually no emphasis on romantic pairings. However, I will acknowledge the pairings that were canon at the end of Deathly Hallows. If that's a problem, back out now.

Spoilers: All books. ALL. Yes, that does include Deathly Hallows. If you somehow haven't read it yet and don't want to be spoiled, back out now.

Still with me? Then let's go.

"That wand's more trouble than it's worth," said Harry. "And quite honestly," he turned away from the painted portraits, thinking now only of the four-poster bed lying waiting for him in Gryffindor Tower, and wondering whether Kreacher might bring him a sandwich there, "I've had enough trouble for a lifetime."

He tucked the Elder Wand into the waistband of his jeans. He would have liked nothing better than to rid himself of its presence right then, but the castle was still full of celebrators and mourners who saw everything, especially if it concerned him. Besides, he wasn't sure he had the strength left to walk to Gryffindor Tower, let alone dispose of an unbeatable wand so that no one would ever possess it again.

No sooner had Harry thought, not for the first time, that he was very tired, than his vision blurred of its own accord. He grabbed at a chair for support. Ron and Hermione reached to steady him, but he straightened up before he felt their touch.

"Are you all right?" asked Hermione anxiously. Harry was painfully aware of the eyes of the portraits boring through him.

"I need sleep," he told them truthfully. "You must, too. Do you think we can get into Gryffindor Tower?"

Ron dropped the invisibility cloak unceremoniously over Harry's head. "Lead on, mate."

Months, even years, of training to be aware of the slightest sign of danger deserted Harry as he dragged himself from the Headmaster's office to the dormitory that had been his own for six wonderful years. He heard nothing; his ears buzzed faintly as if someone had cast Muffliato nearby. He forgot about the trick step and sank in past his knee; Ron had to grab Harry around his invisible waist and heave him up to the landing.

At last, they reached the portrait of the Fat Lady, still at her assigned post and sharing several bottles of champagne with her friend Violet. "Password?"

Ron and Hermione stared at her. Neither of them had been in Gryffindor Tower all year.

"Fortuna major?" guessed Ron, randomly trying something that Harry vaguely remembered had once, long ago, been the password. "Caput draconis?"

"No password, no entry," said the Fat Lady firmly.

With so much effort that it was frankly embarrassing, Harry pulled off his cloak. "I'm Harry Potter, the Chosen One, and this morning I defeated Lord Voldemort, so please let me go to sleep now," he tried.

The Fat Lady swung forward. "Go in, then."

"Kind of a long password," said Ron as he climbed inside, keeping one hand around Harry's shaking arm.

The Gryffindor common room looked much like Harry had remembered it. There were a few people—whether or not they were students Harry couldn't be sure—sprawled on the comfortable chairs, but they were so full of revelry or grief that they paid Harry, Ron, and Hermione no mind.

The circular dormitory, too, looked just as it always had. Harry flung himself onto the bed that had been his. He was still painfully hungry, but it was beyond his ability to remedy the situation. He knew that he could sleep even when he was ravenous. Thanks to the Dursleys, he had learned to do so at a young age.

The bed caressed every inch of his aching body. It remembered him; it had waited for him; it had known he would come back one more time. Unconsciousness was tugging at him. He couldn't tell whether he was falling asleep or passing out, and he didn't care. Ron's and Hermione's voices droned senselessly at the edge of his awareness. He couldn't make out their words. If it was important, they'd hex him awake.

The sudden, overwhelming scent of chicken forced his eyes open and his body to sit upright. Ron was laughing, enthusiastically though not unkindly, and holding a sandwich close to Harry's face. "Knew that'd get him," said Ron, as Harry grabbed at the food and shoved it into his mouth.

"Where did this come from?" Harry asked unintelligibly through a mouthful of sandwich. Hermione rolled her eyes with what was either exasperation or affection. Ron, who was also eating happily, pointed at Neville. Harry had no more idea how Neville might have gotten there than how the food might have gotten there. He considered questioning Neville as he swallowed, but decided to thrust the second half of the sandwich into his mouth instead.

"Luna said you wanted to be alone, and I figured you'd come here," said Neville simply, lounging against his own bed at his ease. "I wanted to make sure you weren't hungry. You can't go back down there without getting mobbed." He gave Harry the same look he had given him the night before when Harry had told him to kill the snake. "Anyway, I'll let you alone now."

"You can stay," said Harry hastily. Neville seemed to feel that he was talking to Harry, and not to the Chosen One, and that was all Harry needed. That and food and sleep and Ron and Hermione. "If you wanted. It's as much your room as ours. More, since we dropped out."

Neville gave an almost imperceptible, grateful little nod. "Alone sounds good," and Harry knew that Neville meant alone the same way he did. It had nothing to do with how many people were there and everything to do with how they looked at you.

The sandwiches made Harry feel a little more like he had some connection to his body, but sleep was still too close for him to hold out much longer. "Do you think we need to keep watch?" he asked the others. If Voldemort's last followers wanted to give a last gift to their departed master, any of their lives would be a fine choice.

"I'll take first shift," Neville volunteered hastily. "I don't think I could sleep, but if I need to I'll wake one of you."

Harry's thanks died on his lips. Secure in the knowledge that for the moment they were safe, he slid into blackness.

X

Harry was next aware of a bang and a blinding flash of light.

"Expeliarmus!" he heard himself shout before he was properly awake. He had leapt from his bed to a proper dueling position; his blood pounded in his veins and his wand was tight in his fist.

Other voices had shouted, too; he had heard Ron cry out "impedimenta!" so he knew that he, at least, was safe for the moment.

An instant later, he registered Seamus's voice: "It's Professor McGonagall."

Harry groped for his glasses and found them on the table beside his bed, where they had been for every night of the six years he had called this room his home.

He hadn't heard Seamus arrive. Nor Dean. Nor Lavender and Paravati. But they were all there with Ron and Hermione and Neville, all of them who should have been finishing their final year as Gryffindors. All of them had obviously awakened suddenly, all of their wands were drawn, and all of them were looking to him as if for some kind of signal.

"Don't put your wands down," he told the others as his vision cleared. "She might be an imposter." Voldemort was dead, but that hardly assured him of anything just yet.

"Very well, Mr. Potter, why don't you determine whether or not I'm an imposter?" asked Professor McGonagall with equal parts acidity and amusement.

Harry couldn't help but feel a twinge of guilt at accusing this woman of being anyone but who she claimed to be. He recalled, with a rush of warmth, her declaration in the Ravenclaw common room: Potter belongs in my house. Still, Mad-Eye Moody would be rolling in the grave he didn't have if Harry let this go.

"What happened when I went in for career advice my fifth year?"

She didn't smile, but Harry knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that there was genuine fondness in her eyes. "I told you I would help you become an auror if it was the last thing I did."

Harry didn't smile, either, but that was because he was trying not to blush. It was strange to understand, viscerally, that his no-nonsense, disciplinarian head of house genuinely liked him. He turned to look around at his former classmates, all alert and wary with wands raised, as a way of distracting himself. "That's her. Wands down."

They obeyed. It was a mark of how much things had changed in the last year that Harry didn't find it at all odd to issue commands and have them obeyed with admirable precision.

It was a mark of how much things had changed in the last year that not even Hermione looked the slightest bit contrite at having raised her wand to a professor.

"Sorry, Professor," Harry said, more as a courtesy than a real apology.

"I would have been quite surprised if you'd reacted any other way," she told him. She pointed her wand at Harry in turn. "Tell me, Harry, where do Vanished objects go?"

"How's he supposed to know that?" Ron muttered; meanwhile, Hermione's eyes were bouncing back and forth between Harry and McGonagall in a way that Harry would have found insulting if it hadn't been justified. Harry had a sneaking suspicion that if he had been Sorted into Ravenclaw, he would have spent a good many nights sleeping in the hallway, waiting for someone else to answer the eagle door knocker's questions. He had a new respect for Luna, Cho, and all the other Ravenclaws he had known.

"Into nonbeing, which is to say, everything," he told her, with a mockingly superior glance at a surprised Hermione, who now appeared to be thinking that perhaps that answer had proved that he was not Harry Potter.

"Nicely phrased. Do you answer for the others?"

"Yes," Harry agreed, even though he had an odd desire to watch Professor McGonagall test each of them in turn.

"I suggest that you all bring yourselves and your belongings to the Great Hall within the hour. Those of you who temporarily find yourselves without homes to go to may very well end up staying for a few more weeks, but we do need to sort ourselves out." Her eyes flickered over each of them in turn, resting a second too long on Harry. "I believe most of you are well-situated."

"Mum says Harry's coming with me," Ron put in, before Harry had a chance to wonder. Visiting Ron's family during school had been one thing, but now Harry was an adult and the Weasleys were in mourning. Harry swallowed hard. He wasn't ready to think about Fred yet.

"Very well. You are all, of course, welcome to help us reassemble the school this summer when your other obligations have been met."

Harry turned over the exact meaning of the delicate phrase "other obligations" in his mind. He found too many answers. Funerals. A newly orphaned godson he had never met. Hermione had her parents to rescue from Australia, and perhaps Harry should inquire as to the state of the Dursleys. Now that Kingsley Shacklebolt was the Minister of Magic, Harry had to decide how much to tell him about Voldemort, and then maybe Kingsley would help him decide what to say to Wizarding Radio and the Daily Prophet. He was fairly sure he couldn't say nothing, which would have been his first choice.

His mind was suddenly so full that he didn't mind not being allowed to return to sleep. He glanced at the watch that had once been Ron's Uncle Fabian's and thought that perhaps it had stopped working; it claimed that more than fourteen hours, not the blink of an eye, had passed since he'd lain down to sleep. Irritably, he reached for Ron's wrist to check his watch, and found that it gave the same answer. The others had taken their turns keeping watch without waking him. He knew they'd all meant well, but he still hated to be singled out as much as he always had. At least that was coming to an end now. There was no Voldemort; there was no need for a Chosen One.

McGonagall departed with a swish of robes. The girls went scurrying back toward their own dormitory, murmuring about getting ready, wands drawn "just in case." Professor McGonagall hadn't so much as raised an eyebrow to find boys and girls sleeping in the same dormitory, though it had probably been rather obvious that they had not been having an orgy of any sort.

And, Harry reminded himself for the umpteenth time, they were no longer students. They weren't boys and girls; they were men and women, legally of age, and veterans of a deadly war.

A few moments later, he and Ron and Dean and Seamus and Neville walked together down the stairs and to the Great Hall for the last time. For the past year, Harry had had nothing but "last times." The last time he'd left Privet Drive. The last time he'd played inter-house Quidditch. The last time he'd seen Remus, or Tonks, or Fred alive… but he wasn't ready to think about that.

The tables in the Great Hall were again laden with food—it took more than a battle for the future of the world to keep the house-elves from their appointed duties—but, like the night before, wizards and witches of all ages were seated in causal groups that were not drawn along house lines.

One thing that hadn't changed was the way so many eyes focused on Harry when he entered, and the way a murmur ripped through the throng: What did he do? How did he do it?

Ignoring this, as well as the applause, Harry and Ron instinctively sought and sat on either side of Hermione. Soon the other Weasleys, all red-eyed and weirdly subdued, were around them. Ginny placed herself beside Harry as if she had always belonged there, which, Harry supposed, she had.

Hermione, on Harry's other side, was fumbling under the table with what looked suspiciously like one of the horrific homework planners she had once given Harry and Ron as poor excuses for Christmas presents.

"Hermione," said Harry out of the corner of his mouth, "We don't have any homework. We barely have a school." He glanced upward at a strange mixture of enchanted ceiling and actual sky.

"I'm not doing homework," she hissed back just as quietly. "I'm drawing up a schedule. Do you know how many things we'll need to do? The funerals alone—there are over fifty dead, not that we knew them all— and the bodies aren't even claimed yet, they're setting that up now—"

"Good thinking," he told her, and she looked mollified. "First priority?"

"My parents," she said firmly, and Harry nodded. "And I suppose we'll—you'll— have to make some kind of public statement about what happened. No one will let you be until you do."

"I was wondering if we," he said with emphasis, not wanting Hermione to believe, even temporarily, that she and Ron were going to leave this last hurdle to him after a seven-year six-legged race, "should talk to Kingsley, er, Minister Shacklebolt, first. In case he has ideas about what exactly we should say."

Hermione nodded. "Good idea. I'd forgotten we had a competent Minister of Magic. What about Professor McGonagall? Should we invite her, too? I mean, she's got to be the Head of Hogwarts, maybe not officially—"

"Definitely," Harry agreed. "But no one else. Kingsley, McGonagall, you, me, and Ron."

He glanced at Ron, who hadn't paid Harry and Hermione's conversation the slightest mind. Instead, Ron, like the rest of his family, was pretending he wasn't staring at George, the remaining half of what had so recently been a matched set.

The day before, Ron, like Harry, had been too overwhelmed to dwell much on anything that had happened, even the death of his brother. Now Harry could see that there was nothing in the world for Ron other than the knowledge that he would never see Fred again.

He followed Ron's gaze to George. Unlike Ron, though, Harry couldn't look at George for more than a second or two. Harry had seen the corpses of children and the fate to which a mutilated soul was condemned, but he did not think he had ever seen anything so awful as this waxen-faced echo of George Weasley, without a joke at the ready, a light in his eyes, or a twin brother.

Fred, Harry knew, was like his parents and Sirius and Remus: he had moved on and he was happy. But whatever Fred was, George was the opposite in the same brutal way a Horcrux was the opposite of a human being. Harry felt a wave of something like irritation at the dead for being quite so pleased about it all while the living were—not that he was thinking about any of the newly dead. He couldn't keep looking at George. Instead, he returned his attention to Hermione.

Hermione, though, had shifted her focus to Ron. Her hand rested on his arm with a weird kind of grace which Harry had never seen in her before, but which he suddenly knew had always been there, hidden. When Ron looked back at Hermione, there was a kind of wonder shining through the mask of pain, and something even deeper in Ron asserted itself as Hermione murmured their plans to him.

Ron nodded. "I'll be there. We'll do that, and that's it."

Hermione stood. "I'll check with McGonagall."

In Hermione's absence, Ron resumed staring at George. On Harry's other side, Ginny was mutilating her eggs as if they, too, had lately laid siege to Hogwarts.

To a man, Ron's brothers looked like they'd already been crying or wanted to start. Ginny, instead, had taken on the hard look that she got every time she did a hard thing. She caught Harry's eye briefly, but said nothing. There was nothing to be said, not yet.

Hermione returned quickly. "Kingsley will be back here in fifteen minutes, unless you want it to be later, Harry," she told him.

Harry chose not to dwell on the fact that he had expressed a desire to speak to the Minister of Magic the day after war's end and the Minister had dropped everything to come to his side. Still, this was better than Rufus Scrimgeour showing up uninvited and attempting to force Harry to speak to him.

"Meet you then," Harry told her. "There's one other person I have to talk to first." His hand grazed Hermione's shoulder and then Ginny's, and he slipped into the shadows to look for Neville.

It didn't take long to find him. He was sitting with his grandmother, Luna, and her father. They all seemed very happy.

Before Mrs. Longbottom or Mr. Lovegood could react to his presence, Harry got a good grip on Neville. "Excuse me, Neville, could I have a word in private now?"

"Of course." Without being told, Neville understood the dangers of standing too long where the throng could see them, and he led Harry swiftly outside into the early summer air. "We can't go back into the castle, everything but the Great Hall and the front entrance are spelled. They're trying to keep track of who's where."

"Right. Neville, we don't have much time—"

"Why's that? He's gone—isn't he?" There was a flicker of the old fear that Neville had used to get when confronted with forgotten passwords, bullies, or Professor Snape. The flicker was quickly replaced by the determined, rough-edged Neville Harry had met in the Hog's Head a few days before.

"No, I mean, yes, he's gone. But there's something you ought to know, and I think it's down to you finding out the nasty way or the nastier way."

"Blimey. All right, nasty it is."

Harry drew in his breath, and tried not to look at the white tomb. "Two years ago, when we were in the Ministry, with the prophecies, you—everyone—thought there wasn't one the Death Eaters wanted, or that it was destroyed before anyone knew what it said." Neville listened patiently, intently. "But Dumbledore heard the prophecy when it was made."

"This is the prophecy that made you the Chosen One?" asked Neville in awe.

Harry smiled wryly. "Not exactly. See, eighteen years ago, Professor Trelawny was applying for a job at Hogwarts, and Dumbledore met her at the Hog's Head. He was planning to leave divination out of the curriculum, but while he was with her she made a prediction. Voldemort's spy heard part of it before Dumbledore's brother threw him out."

"And?"

Harry closed his eyes. The words had never, for two years, been far from his thoughts, and now that he had decided to share them with someone other than Ron and Hermione, the butterflies in his stomach threatened to fly away with him.

"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies. And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies."

Neville chuckled humorlessly. "How does that 'not exactly' make you the Chosen One?"

Harry wished Neville would have jumped to the right conclusion right away, but he hadn't either, back when Dumbledore had first shown him the prophecy. "Because it wasn't exact until Voldemort," Harry gestured at the scar on his forehead "marked me. His spy only heard the end. There were two baby boys born that July who had parents working for Dumbledore who had already had three near misses with Voldemort."

Now Neville looked like he was trying hard not to let his jaw drop to the ground. "You and me," he managed at last.

Harry nodded. "It could have meant either of us. Dumbledore thought he chose me because I was the half-blood, like Voldemort. If Voldemort had known about the whole prophecy back then, he might not have done anything. He wouldn't have wanted to mark anyone as his equal."

"He wouldn't have, no." There was a pause. "Thanks for telling me." Harry didn't really know what to say to that. "Anything else?" Neville prompted gently.

"That wasn't enough?" Neville had changed quite a lot over the years, but Harry thought that this was a bit of an under-reaction.

"I guess it's a shock, thinking how different things could have been" said Neville. "But it's over now, isn't it? You were the one he chose, you were the one who brought him down."

"I had help," Harry reminded. "Loads of it."

Neville brushed this off with a hand gesture. "You did it." He laughed again, this time with a hint of amusement. "And if one of us had to go through all that, I'm glad it was you."

"Thanks," said Harry sarcastically, knowing that Neville's life had hardly been easy. They turned back toward the castle; Kingsley would be there soon. "You aren't angry?"

"Angry?"

"That I knew about it and I didn't tell you?"

"You did what you had to do." Neville clapped Harry on the back as they approached the doors. "You're a good friend, Harry."

"You're better," said Harry softly, and then pulled on his invisibility cloak to seek out Kingsley, McGonagall, Ron, and Hermione.

X

Harry, Ron and Hermione agreed to tell Kingsley and Professor McGonagall the everything that included everything. Telling the story was almost as exhausting as living it had been, but when it was done it felt like something awful had been excised from Harry's chest.

They were all in agreement that Harry would not tell the newspapers or Wizarding Radio about the Horcruxes. Harry had always hated the idea of newspapers hiding information from the public; he remembered only too well their insistence that Voldemort had not returned. But keeping the Horcruxes a secret seemed more along the lines of not publishing a complete list of Quidditch fouls. Sometimes, it was better not to give anyone any ideas.

There was more debate about the Hallows. Like the Horcruxes, theirs was a power better left unused. Still, everyone in the Great Hall had heard Harry and Voldemort arguing about the Elder Wand. Harry agreed to speak about the Wand briefly without touching on the Stone or the Cloak.

"All right," said Kingsley in his deep, calm voice when the ordeal was drawing to a close. "We'll have you go on Wizarding Radio to make a brief statement about what you've been doing this last year, omitting what we've decided to omit. There will be a break for an advertisement, and then you'll be asked a few questions—if you have anything to say to the bereaved and the like. The text will be printed in the Prophet tomorrow, and as far as I'm concerned you won't need to speak to them again. Of course, you can if you want to."

"I won't."

Everyone laughed. "That's what I thought," said Kingsley. "I've already announced you'll be receiving the Order of Merlin, First Class. All three of you, of course," and he looked around at Ron and Hermione. "Any thoughts on the ceremony?"

"Not having one?" asked Harry hopefully. Ron looked slightly put-out.

"I'll present it to you quickly, right before you make your statement. Ron and Hermione can have a real ceremony in a few weeks when everything has settled down."

"Great," said Harry, as if speaking to someone like Rita Skeeter could possibly be enjoyable. "Who asks the questions?"

Kingsley smiled. "A new and upcoming Wizarding Radio host I think you'll like. Everything's set up in the Great Hall."

With more than a little trepidation, Harry walked with Kingsley to the Great Hall. Ron, Hermione, and Professor McGonagall trailed after them. The high table where the teachers sat during the school year was covered with magical megaphones and odd little devices that Harry assumed were used to transmit signals to wizarding radios.

He gave a startled cry of delight when he saw who was seated behind the tangle of equipment. "Lee!"

Lee Jordan, like everyone else Harry had seen recently, looked a bit worse for wear, but he grinned back at Harry. "If I say or do anything you don't like, feel free to punch me. Or tell me."

The next half-hour went by more pleasantly than Harry could have imagined. Lee asked no questions that were remotely awkward or required Harry to do much thinking. His comments were as funny as they had always been when he had commentated on inter-house Quidditch matches long ago, although Harry could tell that Lee was forcing himself to be upbeat. Fred Weasley had been one of Lee's closest friends.

The Great Hall was still full of faces staring raptly at Harry, Kingsley, and Lee as they spoke to wizards and witches all over Great Britain through the magical transmitters.

Just as Lee was explaining, during a break to advertise Gladrags Wizard Wear, that Harry need say only one more goodbye before going "home" to the Weasleys, Harry gasped in horror and reached for his wand.

She's dead, he reminded himself. Mrs. Weasley finished her.

But he was sure he saw Bellatrix Lestrange sliding along the back of the Hall, avoiding contact with all the people who were busy staring at Harry.

Perhaps Bellatrix had had a Horcrux of her own? Perhaps the bundle she carried was a dead unicorn, a dead baby, some innocent creature she had used to prolong her own miserable life.

By the time Harry realized that he had mistaken, not for the first time, Andromeda Tonks for her sister Bellatrix, everyone else in the room had followed his gaze.

Her shoulders back, her movements steady, her grandson (Harry now recognized) in her arms, Mrs. Tonks ignored the gaping of the throng.

But she did spare a glare for Harry that pierced him as cleanly as her sister's sometimes had.

TBC.