The Daily Prophet

This issue of the Daily Prophet is dedicated to the memory of those witches and wizards whose fates we still do not know.

It is time to come home.

On this, the fifth anniversary of the Battle of Wrekin, marking the end to He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named and the fall of the DeathEaters, we have sad news to impart and a message to give.

Minerva McGonagall, former Headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry and the successor to Albus Dumbledore as leader of the Order of the Phoenix has died. Prof. McGonagall was never blessed with children but the Order has always taken care of its own. Incapacitated nearly a decade before the final battle, McGonagall spent the final years of the war bed ridden and unable to communicate, left in the hands of the three sole residents of Order Headquarters – Severus Snape, Hermione Granger, and Draco Malfoy.

Two of those three were with her this morning as she slipped away.

Since the Battle of Wrekin the once fierce professor has again lived in her old rooms at Hogwarts, the rooms where she lived as Head of Gryffindor House and Deputy Headmistress, still in the care of her two one time students – both now her colleagues.

Anyone familiar with the re-built Hogwarts could tell you the sad tale. After the final battle what little was left of the Hogwarts faculty converged outside the gates – a rag tag group of wizards all aged beyond their years. The Order needed the school to care for the hundreds of us left without shelter or food, a place to lick our collective wounds and to find some semblance of peace , so they came despite their fatigue and uncaring of the rain. They brought with them their unconscious leader in the hopes that the castle would recognize her and open its gates. Open its gates and let the entire Wizarding World inside if the need be. It did not. The gates remained closed and the rain continued to fall.

In that moment, standing before the locked and warded iron gates of Hogwarts, it was silent but all of us there that day can testify to witnessing the same shocking sight, a sight that will forever haunt us. More powerful than the sounds of hell that carried You-Know-Who's soul to the afterlife, more frightening than the battle we had just fought. We watched Severus Snape cry. Through the rain and the our own despair, we saw Severus Snape cry – we watched him loose hope.

I was there. I saw this heart rending event. I knew Professor Snape, had sat through his classes before the war, had been on the receiving end of his sarcasm and his ire. I had even fought with him in the final battle. I never thought it would be possible to see such a hardened wizard cry. But when the gates did not recognize the Headmistress, Prof. Snape and the rest of the Order could no longer deny what they had to have already known. Headmistress McGonagall was gone and only her shell remained.

Remus Lupin was the first to touch the gates to see if the position of Headmaster had passed to him. They failed to open. What little was left of the staff tried, one by one, a sad and battered line of heroes. Flitwick had lived, despite all odds, by hiding in Glasgow. He tried and failed. The half-giant Hagrid, who had been like a son to the late Albus Dumbledore, tried and failed. In the end the last hand to reach for the gate, the pale and shaking hand that had helped to close it so many years before, reached out and the gates swung open with a long low screech of metal. The now Headmaster Severus Snape was the first to walk through those gates in nearly a decade and he did so carrying his long time friend and mentor. As he gathered her limp form into his arms, he gathered the hope of the Order of the Phoenix, of the Wizarding World. Severus Snape gathered our hope like Harry Potter gathered our powers the day before, he gathered our hope and our Headmistress and he stepped into our future.

Severus Snape would never allow anyone to call him Headmaster. He reserved the title for Prof. McGonagall even after the castle's magic had confirmed she no longer could claim it. For the last five years Hogwarts has had to make due without. No one has graced the Head's Seat at dinner. No one sits at the desk at the top of the stairs. Severus Snape has run Hogwarts from his dungeon office still hoping that someday the Headmistress will return.

Prof. Snape now knows something about hope and the possibility of reward, something that he couldn't have known that rainy day at the gates. His godson was thought to be fatally injured after the final battle and as Snape reached for the cold iron that marked his destiny his godson was slowly bleeding to death at the Order Headquarters. Yet Draco Malfoy lived. He is scared and often dangerously ill, but he lived and still lives. Snape was there to see his godson married to his long time love, the young Michelle Granger that he helped to train in the Order Headquarters. Snape was there to hold his godson's first born , Katherine, a little girl named for the muggle mother Michelle had lost all those years before. And Snape was there when their son, named Severus to honor him, was born late last July. That day five years ago, Snape had only a faint hope for any of these things. Today he has the reality.

Prof. Snape knows something of hope for so many reasons. His godson was not the only person close to Snape to fall in the battle. Hermione Granger was with Harry Potter and Severus Snape in those last triumphant minutes. She had survived years in the Order, on the front line, in hiding, doing the research necessary to win the war. She had suffered quietly for years, the victim of a Death Eater's curse that lingered in her system. It was her choice to be on the field that day. A choice Snape had tried to talk her out of. They both knew what would happen if she fought. The curse she bore would not allow her to do so without consequence.

Severus Snape caught her as she fell, wreathing and screaming from the Cruciatus that had been cast on her years before – feeling it as if it was happening for the first time. The curse had twisted her magic and when she fought that day she knew it would happen. She knew she would likely die. The more magic she used, the more sever the aftershock of the Cruciatus would be. Hermione Granger used her magic. She poured every ounce of it she could into the battle until there wasn't anything left to give and she fell. She held out till the end, but then she fell.

I watched Snape carry her off the battle field. I watched him frantic as the blood poured out of her ears and her eyes and as her body shook. It took nearly an hour for the convulsions to stop. Another hour till her body stopped its trembling.

No one thought she would survive it. No one dreamed that if she did she would still have her mind.

Like his godson she lived. Like his godson there was a price to pay. But Severus Snape's hope was not wasted; her mind at least was intact.

Today the two are married and for her sake he leaves the dungeons for the warmth of the Headmaster's rooms, the only concession he would give to McGonagall's condition and his placement as Headmaster. The rooms are warmer than his old ones in the dungeons and the warmth helps his wife and keeps the still present aftershocks at bay, for the most part at least. If not for Hermione it is doubtful he would have moved into them, but for her he did. For her he still hopes.

They have no children. The curse has left his young wife far too frail. They do have the two muggleborns, Jude and Michelle, the children Hermione defied the Order to adopt one dreary evening at the height of the war. Rumors have it the younger Jude has been heard to call Snape father and while Michelle married before her adoptive mother, her younger sister did take the Snape name. Still, one wonders if in a world where so many have died for the sake of a bloodline, does he miss not having his own?

If your children go to Hogwarts they could tell more then I about the now Prof. Snape that Hermione Granger has become. She teaches History now, replacing the ghost of Prof. Binns that had held the position since time unmemorable. Some say she is barely more than a ghost herself. On her good days she walks to her classroom and can smile and banter with her students. On her bad days she has to be carried to her desk at the front of the room, her hands twisted and useless claws that lay tightly against her chest as her muscles refuse to relax, still feeling that long ago curse. Her voice is a whisper her students strain to hear. She goes each day, good or bad, and each day they learn from her so that the past will never be repeated. She calls herself a living lesson, a lesson they cannot afford to miss. She says it was her war, and Michelle's war, and Jude's war, and all the muggleborns that have been and will be and they had best never forget that fact. They had best never forget the magic of this world they now have a place in.

Snape has found ways to help his wife. Potions that block the pain from her mind if not from her body and eventually calm her spasms. Spells to help her move about the castle when the potions have not yet done their work. Warming charms that follow her, eager that the others will not be needed. And he hopes. He hopes to one day find the cure.

Today, Headmaster Severus Snape can no longer hope for his friend. Minerva McGonagall died before the war reached its peak. Today, it is Prof. Snape's hope for her that we lay to rest.

As one of your former students, let me say this to you Headmaster Snape. You taught me potions and you taught me Defense. You taught me to duel and you taught me to think. At the height of the war you taught me to survive. Now, now sir you have taught me to hope.

It has been five years since the final battle. Five years since you gathered our hopes and forged the way for us. Five years of reconstruction and rebuilding and remembering. We have so much work behind us but so much more lies ahead. The Wizarding World will never be the same. We no longer have our shops, passed through the same family lines since before the Christian calendar. We no longer have the Hogwarts Express or pick up Quidditch games in Hogsmeade. Most of us have left the Wizarding towns for the muggle cities and the only robes we own are for the bath. As we continue to rebuild our world we can only pray that we can keep half as much hope alive as our Headmaster. Hope that we are doing the right thing.

So, to close this article I have a simple message for Headmaster Snape. Please, sir, keep hoping. Please keep hoping for your wife, for your godson, for your fellow Order members that still fight to learn to live despite their injuries. Please keep hoping for the people we still have not found, hoping they are alive and still in hiding or that at least, someday, we can lay them to rest properly. Hope that this new Wizarding World we are building will not crumble like the last one. Hope that with all the changes we are facing we do not forget who and what we are. To you we send our hope, Headmaster. To you we send our children and our future. Please, sir, in their name keep hoping – for all of us.

By: Orla Quirke, staff reporter.

A/N: I want to thank everyone that reviewed this story. It started out as a quick one chapter drabble and spiraled. Thank you for all your support and kind words. They mean so very much to me. I hope you enjoyed this work and while I'm sad to see it end I hope that your encouragement will give me the motivation to finish the other stories that have been lying around the website molding. Thank you again and see you soon!