40: The Turn of the Tide

Ron elbowed Harry and pointed upward. He groaned, knowing full well what Ron was indicating. "Another one?"

"Yep. A real whopper this time."

Forcing a kind expression over his embarassment, Harry barely looked up in time to catch his poor overloaded owl in mid swoop. Hedwig puffed noisily through her bill, the feathers on her chest and belly disheveled by the huge parcel she'd hauled. "Poor girl. You've worked more this month than in your entire life!" He'd stopped carrying owl treats, feeding her ham and bacon right from his breakfast plate instead. Neville's grandmother had sent him gifts every single morning of the Easter holidays, and Hedwig looked like she needed a nice, long roost.

"Send a school owl back with your thank-you note this time," Hermione advised. "Hedwig needs some rest!"

Harry peered over his glasses dubiously. "Right. She'd peck my eyes out if I presumed to use another owl. I'm lucky she tolerates me after that whole Fawkes business." Hedwig glared at him reproachfully at the mention of her rival's name, then shook her tail over his plate until his breakfast was covered in bits of fuzzy down. She snatched an unspoiled sausage and flapped off to eat it in the rafters.

"You had to go and mention Fawkes," said Ron. "Better move, Harry, she's perched right over your head." Grumbling, Harry picked up the parcel and shifted to the other side of the table.

"Chocolate bunnies!" cooed Hermione, as a stampede of the things, each one wrapped in colorful foil, hopped out of the package. "Those are even yummier than the frogs!"

"You don't get a Famous Wizard Card with the bunnies, though," Ron pointed out.

Harry already had a lap full of wriggly rabbits, and more were leaping out of the parcel. "A little help? Come on, eat some of them. Morgan le Fay, I don't know what Gran's thinking, sending me so much food."

"Probably that you need fattening up," Ron mumbled around a mouthful of chocolate.

"Don't just bite off the ears!" said Hermione.

"What? They don't mind!" Ron replied indignantly. Several earless bunnies, their wrappers pulled down to their necks, confirmed this by bounding happily around his plate.

"I know that! Bite the legs off so they stop jumping everywhere," she snapped.

Seeing the wisdom in that statement, Ron extracted a bunny from his goblet of grapefruit juice and promptly chomped off the back feet. Undaunted, the candy began to pull itself over his napkin by its front paws, leaving a sticky trail of juice and caramel filling.

"You've made her so happy, Harry," Hermione said, patting his hand and capturing a bunny that was attempting to crawl up his sleeve. "Besides, it isn't as though it's going to waste. It's Hufflepuff's turn today; we can take these down right after breakfast." Every common room in the castle and the drawing room at Grimmauld Place had been feasting on treats from Gran lately.

Harry responded with a squeal and a lurch that sent a hundred bunnies to the floor, where they promptly scattered like a handful of ball bearings. "Gerroff!" he screeched, leaping frantically; a bunny had managed to sneak all the way to his armpit and was tickling him without mercy. His friends simply sat there and enjoyed the show.

"Some bodyguard you are," he finally growled at Viktor, after shaking out both sleeves.

Viktor shrugged. "Is not my job protecting you from candy."

The spring holidays were nearly over, and Harry hoped sincerely that Mrs. Longbottom would stop sending him packages. Not only was Hedwig working her feathers to the quill hauling loot across the countryside, but he felt distinctly uneasy about receiving so much gratitude. Percy had done all the footwork to reveal the traitor, and Arthur Weasley made a huge effort to lure Umbridge into St. Mungo's without arousing her suspicions.

Once they had her cornered, she had two choices: to confess, or to let Harry and Ondossi extract the confession from her. She had wept to Mr. Weasley about her right to a fair trial, and threatened to pull strings within the Wizengamot--until Ondossi's demonstration on her Dark Mark. Harry wished Tura had been a little more subtle, as everyone in the room blanched at her obvious use of Dark magic, but at least it inspired Umbridge to stop whining and start singing.

She released the curses on Alice and Frank Longbottom, who still remained in St. Mungo's Hospital for rehabilitation but were no longer locked inside their own minds. At that point Umbridge had attempted a plea bargain, claiming she could help others and offer information in exchange for leniency. But then Sirius Black stepped out of the little alcove where he'd been hiding with Alice Longbottom.

Harry had given Sirius his father's wand, and this time it had worked as if it had belonged to his godfather all along. Fiery sparks issued from it as he rounded the corner, and he shimmered as though furious magic was pouring from him in waves. "Oh, you'll have leniency, Umbridge," Sirius said, "just as much as you granted me. Release the curse you put in my head, or I'll break it myself by killing you right now." At first glance, Harry couldn't tell if he was bluffing or not. Apparently neither could Umbridge, as she turned ghostly pale and croaked the Finite charm like a toad.

The rush of memories made Sirius stumble, but he caught himself and stood staring at Umbridge for some time. "There was no trial, no bargaining for me, was there?" he finally hissed. "You took me, after Fudge brought me in for 'murdering' Wormtail. Threw me into the Seat of Judgment and forced Veritaserum down my throat. Between that and the Cruciatus, you learned all you wanted to know about Harry and the Horcrux he'd borne."

Sirius turned away from her in disgust and faced Arthur Weasley. "The Lady herself stopped my tongue from revealing the Sisterhood. I was able to claim I acted alone to destroy the Horcrux, despite the Veritaserum. Otherwise you and Molly and the Daughters of Modron would have been next." He whipped back around and jabbed his wand under Umbridge's chin. "I'd kill you right now," he breathed, "but the Starlight Lady doesn't approve of murder in cold blood. I won't stain my hands over the likes of you."

Arthur Weasley nodded in approval and handed Sirius a Portkey to Siberia. "Best leave her to the Order, lad," he said, patting the younger wizard on the shoulder. "Maybe she can help us narrow down your search."

Harry and Ondossi spent the next two days relentlessly combing through Umbridge's mind for information. It proved challenging, not because her mind was difficult to open, but because its contents were so utterly repulsive.

"Why don't you just do my whole fifth year?" Harry growled, livid from Umbridge's sadistic recollections of making him write lines with her "special quill." Harry learned it been Voldemort's idea all along, in order to weaken him with anemia and better penetrate his dreams at night. "I'm sick of finding out just how many ways people were conspiring against me."

Tura, who had nearly killed Umbridge upon discovering that she had recommended the Alaskan tundra as an ideal spot to hide away a secret child, agreed with a snort. "I hear that!" she said. "It's nice to know that I'm not just paranoid--hags like this really were out to get me." They finally decided to work together, in hopes that one would stay calm during the other's murderous moments.

Using Polyjuice Potion to disguise herself as Cornelius Fudge, Umbridge had driven Voldemort to Godric's Hollow (with a helpful map drawn by Peter Pettigrew). She watched the green flash of the Kedavra curse through the front door, then out of an upstairs window. But then to her astonishment, a great burst of red/orange magic blasted the house to the ground, nearly flipping her automobile onto its side.

She'd never seen magic of that color before. Wondering if the Dark Lord had cast some special curse to annihilate this upstart, she felt a peculiar tingling in her left arm. She knew intuitively that, were it not already disguised, her Dark Mark would have faded right before her eyes.

Lord Voldemort was dead. That cursed fraud Trelawney had been spot on for a change with her insipid prophecy, and now things were about to become incredibly complicated. Umbridge resolved to exact revenge for that at some point.

Ever the optimist, however, Umbridge knew there must be a way to take advantage of the situation. She rushed from the car to find the Master, who was most definitely dead. Her first instinct was to haul the corpse out of the wreckage and hide it. Eventually people would catch on, but for a few critical days, perhaps she could maintain the illusion that he was alive and well. A lot could be accomplished in a few days.

Once the evidence was stashed safely in the trunk and she was driving away without the headlights on, she took a moment to ponder her next few moves. Dumbledore had hidden this family away because he suspected their child was the one mentioned in the Prophecy--the one who had the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. He, too, was spot on with that assessment. Furthermore, he would undoubtedly broadcast that fact at the earliest opportunity. As soon as Dumbledore saw the ruined house, he would know the Master was defeated and her machinations would come crashing to a halt.

"Can't let you gloat all the way to the Prophet, can I, Albus?" she muttered aloud. As long as the body was not recovered, there would be plenty of doubt in Albus's claims. The Death Eaters would be the only ones that knew for sure that Voldemort was dead, and they could hardly run about raising their sleeves and saying, "Yes, Dumbledore's right! Look here! My Dark Mark has faded!" Still, the old fool's story would dispel their own doubts about the Master's status, and that would make coercing them very difficult. Confound that meddlesome geezer! There had to be a way to keep him quiet long enough for her to take SOME advantage of the situation.

There were Muggle rescue vehicles approaching, and Magical Catastrophes would not be far behind. Umbridge pulled the car off the road and parked it in a stand of trees. Careful not to be spotted from the road, she trotted the quarter-mile or so to the scene of the disaster. "Mr. Fudge!" someone called. She nearly ignored the voice until she remembered her disguise.

"What happened here?" she demanded gruffly. Might as well suss out the prevailing opinions.

"Explosion of wild magic, sir. Leveled the house and killed the occupants. We haven't identified the cause just yet."

Excellent! "Keep working, then. The victims--Muggle or wizard?"

"Sorcerers, sir. Two of them: James and Lily Potter."

"Two?" she asked, showing far too much surprise. The Auror gave her a slightly suspicious look. "Only the Potters have a child," she blustered. "Wasn't his body found as well?"

The young man frowned. "No, sir. We scanned the rubble magically, and the Muggles have already found Lily Potter. She was found next to a child's bed, but it was empty. I'll contact the next of kin; perhaps the child was spending Halloween elsewhere, but there might have been a kidnapping--" He stopped abruptly; Umbridge had cast a silent Petrificus.

Dumbledore must have already taken the child! Blast that man! But this was merely another complication. She'd already staved off the truth by hiding the Master's body. The disappearance of this child would simply have to be obfuscated in a similar way. So Dumbledore would soon claim to have the Boy Who Defeated the Dark Lord. Hem, hem. What better way to discredit him than to claim that the Ministry had the boy? That would create plenty of confusion about the child, and the distrust would naturally spread to the accompanying story about Voldemort's death. Oh, it would all unravel in short order, but it would buy her some time. All she needed was another baby, and there were always plenty of those around.

She had to work fast, as the Polyjuice would be wearing off any minute. Umbridge stalked through the rescue effort with her hand inside her robes, implanting a phony memory in everyone there, Muggle and wizard alike, of the boy being found and rushed to St. Mungo's. It was crude, but no one would question it once they saw the boy in London.

By the time she finished the crew working the crime scene, she could feel the telltale tinglings of the Polyjuice wearing off. To her dismay, a small crowd of onlookers had accumulated, a row of dimly lit faces on the edge of the wreckage. Well, it didn't matter; they were late arrivals and would assume the baby had already been taken away by the time they showed up. She gave a stern, officious glance to the nearest bystanders (a little old man and someone who looked unsettlingly familiar but she couldn't quite place), and disappeared into the shadows to revert to her own face.

The Master had planned to visit the Longbottoms next. Umbridge smiled. They had a child that would suit perfectly. She Apparated to Lancashire and watched through their windows as they tidied up from a Halloween soiree. She waited until Alice was ensconced in the kitchen, carefully orchestrating a parade of dishes through the washing/rinsing/drying/stacking process. Knocking quietly so as not to be heard amongst the clanking tableware in the kitchen, she smiled politely at Frank Longbottom, then Stunned him as soon as he let her past their wards and into the house. Alice Longbottom never knew what hit her from behind, sending all their dishes crashing to the floor.

She needed some information before she could kill them, and it really ought to look like an accident. There simply wasn't time to do things properly right then and there. Confiscating their wands, she bound them with a Petrificus hex and cast a Silencing Spell around them in case they somehow managed to call for help. She'd deal with them later.

Wearing her own face, Umbridge made quite a show of arriving "straight from St. Mungo's" with the "Boy Who Lived." To her chagrin, rumors were already flying about Voldemort's death; apparently some Azkaban guards had seen the Dark Marks fade from the inmates. Cursing inwardly even as she beamed over the baby, she made a mental note to remove all non-Dementor personnel from Azkaban at her earliest convenience.

It was simply the worst night ever. The brat never stopped crying, even whimpering in his sleep. Millicent Bagnold, the Minister of Magic, was furthering her own agenda by spreading the story of wild magic exploding from Godric's Hollow and the child being the only survivor, all of which took place at the same time the Dark Marks vanished in Azkaban. Before dawn, every sorcerer in the UK had heard an "Official Report" that Lord Voldemort was dead, brought down by a baby, and all of Umbridge's efforts to hide the truth were rendered useless. Meanwhile, she was stuck looking after a squalling brat instead of conscribing the last free Death Eaters into her service.

Dumbledore made absolutely no attempt to counter the claims in the Daily Prophet, but he hardly needed to! According to Bagnold, someone in MLE recognized that the brat wasn't the Potter's child, and she was most anxious to cover up the whole issue. Umbridge offered to take charge of "finding the poor dear's real home," before someone else recognized the boy as Neville Longbottom. Morgan le Fay, was ANYTHING going to proceed as expected? She scanned the Wizard Wireless as she drove back to Lancashire: not even a peep out of Dumbledore about the real Boy Who Lived. He was up to something, she was sure of it. She'd simply have to consult her sources at Hogwarts.

She sent an owl to Argus Filch asking him to meet her that afternoon in Hogsmeade. He knew of no infant in the castle, but noted that Hagrid was nowhere to be found. So that was it: the halfbreed giant must have Potter. But even Dumbledore wasn't loony enough to entrust a child permanently in Hagrid's care. No, Hagrid was merely the delivery boy, and he would be back. Umbridge smiled again. She would be waiting.

His hut was filthy and reeked of dirty, wet dog (which was unsurprising, given the presence of his slobbering, untrained puppy). She waited in the far corner, her wand pointed at the door. She grew tired and hungry, but the absolute nastiness of the place precluded any possibility of dining or napping. "He can't be too much longer," she sighed to herself whenever her stomach rumbled. She considered taking a bath in a tub full of bleach when this ordeal was over.

Despite sitting stiffly upright, she had managed to doze off when a great rumbling roar awoke her. Great Merlin's beard, Hagrid had returned on a motorbike! Chastising herself for falling asleep, she prepared once again for the difficult magic required to subdue a Giant. She had to cast three Dark spells before he'd even closed the front door, but it was enough to render him complacent.

He rambled obediently about where he'd been and what he'd done, even as she grew more and more agitated. Dumbledore had hidden the child with Muggles? Umbridge was a pureblood and had no idea how to find a child in the vast Muggle world, and of course the furry nitwit had tossed out the scrap of paper bearing the child's new address once he was finished with it. But Hagrid mentioned the boy's godfather, Sirius Black. He might know something useful.

She managed to partially Obliviate Hagrid's memories, but his cursed Giant blood was immune to the Compescogito spell. No matter: she was a good enough Obliviator to snip out the offending memories seamlessly. "There now. We won't have any other Death Eaters tracking down the Boy Who Lived," she chirped brightly at the addled gamekeeper, then flounced out of the cabin and took a breath of wonderfully clean air.

"Hem, hem! A motorcycle! They do seem such an exciting means of transportation, I must admit." A good ride in the crisp night air might be just the thing to blow away the grime of that horrid hut. She cast a Reducto charm until she could reach the handlebars and, after a few false starts and one near backflip, she soared skyward and headed for London.

It was easy enough to find Black, for he was already in custody of the Aurors. How delightfully convenient, she thought to herself with a prim smile. Black proved most informative after a bit of persuasion. Not only had the Master placed a Horcrux in the boy, Black had promptly destroyed it. "Interesting," she thought aloud as Black gasped for breath after the last Cruciatus. She had reckoned years earlier that the Dark Lord was making a Horcrux; she could think of no other reason he would have wanted a soulless child.

"But that didn't work out," she muttered to Black, though he couldn't possibly understand her point. "And with his flair for the dramatic, he would naturally want to save that Horcrux for an auspicious occasion. Such as the night he destroyed the enemy foretold to vanquish him."

She giggled, noting that Black was a rather good-looking young man, even more so than his brother Regulus (whom she had rarely seen without a mask anyway). He'd done her quite a favor by destroying the Horcrux, for now the Dark Lord was well and truly gone. "I do owe you my gratitude, Sirius," she admitted, stroking his hair even though it was soaked with sweat. "You've left things very tidy for me. I probably ought to kill you, but you know, I don't think I shall. You are Potter's godfather, and you could be a helpful influence in his future. No, I think we'll just tuck you away in Azkaban for the time being."

Patting him on the cheek, she took up her wand to lock down his memories of her little interrogation. "Plus, if I'm lucky," she added, "your mother will die from the shame--now wouldn't that be a bonus?"

With her role in events safely removed from history, all that remained was disposing of the Master's corpse. She rode the motorbike home to keep as a souvenir, then returned to Godric's Hollow in the Ministry auto she'd hidden in her garage. "Mobilicorpus!" she said, levitating James Potter and dumping him unceremoniously into his wife's casket. It wasn't likely that anyone would ever look for the Master in the grave of his last victim!

The air in the trunk was even fouler than Hagrid's cabin; the great Lord Voldemort was already succumbing to decay. Plucking some of the Potters' funerary flowers to make a quick nosegay, she tucked what was left of her Dark Lord into the coffin and paused to bid her final farewell. "Poor dear," she said, arranging his hands as best she could into a dignified pose. "Though you hardly need this anymore, and it would make a fine memento of our years together," she added, plucking the wand from his cold fingers. Might as well have this too, she thought, slipping off the signet ring of Salazar Slytherin, though she ignored the other one, the one he mysteriously called the "Sigil of Khamul." It was obviously an antique, but was otherwise worthless, especially compared to the ring of a founder of Hogwarts.

When Ondossi recovered from their last exploration, her first words were, "If I spend one more minute in her tweaked little brain, I'm going to strangle her from the inside out."

Umbridge was Voldemort's best kept secret: his deepest mole in the Ministry and the one who preserved his wand and ring during the Dark Years, but he didn't trust her any further than he could throw her. All their hours of Legilimency had solved but a few historical mysteries (and confirmed the names of some suspected Death Eaters). They'd learned that the inmates from Azkaban had been sent to the Master's stronghold in Siberia, but Umbridge herself had never been there and did not know the location.

Harry nodded. "Not much point," he agreed. "What to do with her now, you think? We can hardly send her to Azkaban."

"I'd turn her over to the Centaurs," said Tura. "She hates them even more than I do."

"Not up to you two, unfortunately," said Percy Weasley from his armchair across the room, where he had been "officially observing" the interrogations on behalf of the Ministry of Magic. "Father's already made arrangements. When you're finished with her, she'll deported to South America and locked up in their Wizard prison, somewhere in the Amazon rainforest. I've been doing a bit of reading, it's actually quite interesting: The prisoners survive on food they find themselves. There aren't any supplies shipped in. Apparently there are plenty of insects to go around."

If anyone else were speaking, this might have sounded sadistic, but to Percy, it was just another fascinating example of cost-effective management policies. Harry smirked, but Tura looked almost jealous. "I bet they have great fruit all the time, too," she grumbled. "Though having to fight the wildlife for it probably gets old." She glared murderously at Umbridge. "I hope you get malaria."

Harry laughed humorlessly. "You can have her back in Ministry custody Percy. Knock yourself out."

"Focus, Harry!" shouted Ron from the Keeper's post. "Don't leave it to Elias to protect you; we can't afford all the fouls!"

Harry shuddered and tossed his head, trying to center himself. This was his last Quidditch match, after all, Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff. His last opportunity to compete in the comfortable world of sports, where losses only meant a glum return to the common room, not death or despair. But try as he might, Harry couldn't keep his mind on the game.

Riding around the stadium on his broomstick had taken on a new meaning since Christmastime. He thought constantly of the way it felt to fly with Tura pressed against his back, her arms tight around his waist. He spotted her in the crowd without meaning to and awkwardly avoided that entire section of the bleachers for the rest of the match. Watching him fly surely stirred up painful memories for her too. And if that weren't enough, he was also stuck with the memory of Dolores Umbridge soaring on Sirius's motorbike and enjoying the wind whipping through her hair, just as it did when he rode his Firebolt. It was enough to put him off flying for life.

Another Bludger whizzed past his head, this one even closer than the last. He veered off toward the periphery of the pitch, hoping it might be a little more peaceful than the central zone. Where's that stupid Snitch? he wondered ruefully. Once Quidditch was played with a live bird, the Golden Snidge, but they'd been replaced with the enchanted ball when the poor birds nearly went extinct. A shame, for if it were a little bird now, Harry would have used Legilimency to locate it, just to get this over with.

Madam Hooch's whistle interrupted his brooding. She was waving a penalty flag and pointing at him. Swooping to midfield on his broomstick, he braced for an argument. "I didn't do anything! What's the foul?"

Madam Hooch stared at him briefly, then laughed. "Get your game on, Potter. Look up, and you'll see your fowl!" Harry soon understood her little joke; a scarlet phoenix was hovering silently about six meters above his head.

"Fawkes!" he cried in exasperation. "Go on! You're not allowed on the pitch!" Naturally, his familiar took that as an invitation to alight on the handle of his Firebolt. "No, no!" Harry admonished, shaking his finger in Fawkes's face. The phoenix promptly poked out his yellow tongue and waggled it insolently as he tightened his grip. Harry grimaced and gazed imploringly at Madam Hooch. "I'll need a time-out," he said sheepishly.

"Rules, lad," she answered sternly. "You've got one minute to see him off, or it'll be a foul for illegal defense." Harry nodded gratefully and zipped off to the boundary of the pitch.

"All right, I'll pay attention!" he told Fawkes, gently trying to push his feathery rump off the broom handle. "Merlin's knickers, you're as bad as Krum. Now give over. If you stay on the field they'll get penalty shots. That'll make the game last even longer, you know."

Fawkes stretched his long neck to nuzzle Harry's cheek with his bill. "Oh, none of that," Harry said, embarassed by the tender gesture in front of the entire stadium. "I promise I'll get my head in the game. Promise! No more near misses! Now go roost! Go!"

With a final glare of reproach, Fawkes shook his tail and flapped off to perch atop a flagpole where he obviously intended to spend the rest of the match. Harry turned to Madam Hooch and pointed his thumb at the new spectator. She looked displeased, but shrugged and nodded; as long as he was off the field, Fawkes, too, was entitled to watch the game. In the meantime, the stands had erupted with comments ranging from affectionate cooing to jeers questioning Harry's masculinity. Fortunately the latter (mostly male students) were soon silenced by the indignant reactions of the former (mostly female). It was always open season to pick on Harry Potter, but Fawkes had won the heart of every girl in the castle.

Harry concentrated in earnest after play resumed, but before long his thoughts strayed again. His final match, his final year at Hogwarts... perhaps his final everything. I've never written a will! he realized with a start. Not that it matters. If he perished in the final battle, all his worldly goods would surely end up in Voldemort's coffers.

Something whooshed past his ear, bringing him back to the present. Thankfully it wasn't Fawkes, just Elias. He smacked away a Bludger making a beeline for Harry from above, then let his broom drop abruptly to fly side-by-side. "Waerkin' me ta the boon today, Harry!" he said cheerfully, then zipped off to hassle a Hufflepuff Chaser.

After the game, Harry lurked in the changing rooms until the rest of the team departed. He'd spotted a large black dog observing the game from Ondossi's sleeping porch, and if Sirius meant to find him, he'd rather be in private than in the common room. A familiar scratching of claws soon announced his godfather's presence.

"A bit off today, eh, lad?" said Sirius after he morphed, locking the door to the changing room.

Harry's shoulders drooped. "I caught the Snitch, didn't I?" he said crossly.

Nodding a bit reluctantly, Sirius gave him a warm hug. "Indeed, that's what matters. Only I usually see you smiling out there."

"Yeah," said Harry. "That's getting harder and harder of late."

Sirius relaxed on the bench in the center of the room. Siberia clearly agreed with him; he looked cheerful and fit, undoubtedly the result of having a useful task within the Order and getting plenty of fresh air. But his gray eyes were filled with concern. "I reckon it is," he said somberly, then a brief silence fell.

"How's the hunt?" Harry asked.

"Slow," Sirius said. "There's three of us at it--all Animagi, you know. Reem figured the wards were probably tuned to humans, what with all the wildlife out there. Voldemort would quickly get tired of the drain on his magic every time a herd of reindeer sauntered over the perimeter."

"Makes sense," Harry said, recalling the pristine wilderness in Draco's memory. "Did you hear I found your motorbike?"

Sirius's eyes lit up briefly and he laughed. "No joke? Well, well, well. The last time I rode it wasn't exactly pleasant, but I have missed it now and then. Where was it?"

"Umbridge's garden shed."

The smile on his godfather's face transformed to a scowl. "Great Mother of Merlin!" he spat. "That bike was a bloody brilliant piece of machinery! That just..." Sirius lapsed into an incoherent growl at the thought of his chopper trapped among a traitor's old flowerpots and fake flamingos.

"There it is, then," said Harry matter-of-factly. "Once your name's been cleared, you'll have to restore it to its rightful glory and take it out for a victory lap."

That put a broad smile on his face. "Funny you should mention that. You'll want to take a good look at tomorrow's Prophet." Harry broke into a surprised grin of his own. "S'truth! Arthur needs something to distract from the disappearance of our Ms. Umbridge, and this fits the bill nicely. Sensational and all that."

Harry whooped, leaping to his feet to hug his godfather, then sat back, shaking his head. "It's eerie, thinking of Mr. Weasley working the press."

"Eh, can't let the bad guys have all the fun!" Sirius said with a smirk. "And this is such the perfect story. After it starts to fade, he can ramp it up again by revealing not only am I not guilty, I'm also not dead! Old Arthur couldn't invent better gossip than this."

Harry's eyes welled up, and he clasped his godfather's shoulders once more.

The controversy was certainly everything Mr. Weasley could have hoped for, judging by the reactions in the Great Hall. Ron and Ginny were constantly interrupted from their toast and jam to either defend Percy's integrity, or to accept congratulations on his behalf. Harry, too, received his share of odd looks, for Percy had revealed all the evidence he'd collected, including the fact that Harry was Black's godson.

"But third year! Look what he did to the Fat Lady's portrait!" said Dean Thomas as they all walked to Charms.

"He wasn't after me, though!" said Harry. "He was trying to kill that rat Pettigrew. If you'd just spent twelve years in Azkaban while the real murderer was right behind her portrait, you might lose your temper, too, what?"

Dean looked skeptical. "I seem to remember you were as scared of him as the rest of us."

"Yeah, that's right," Harry said, carefully keeping his anger in check. "But then I learned the truth." He gave Dean a stern look, wondering if he was going to have to individually convince every person he knew that Sirius was trustworthy.

Fortunately Mr. Weasley (or more correctly, Fleur Delacour Weasley) understood that one round of news wasn't enough to convince many people of Sirius's innocence. The Daily Prophet began featuring regular interviews with members of the Order of the Phoenix, all of whom mentioned Sirius at least once in the article. By the middle of May, Sirius Black had gone from demon to angel, murderer to martyr.

Harry, in the meantime, was beginning to realize that there just might be a chance that he'd have to take his N.E.W.T.s. He had already become the only seventh-year who didn't spend every waking hour with his nose in a book. Even Ron was taking his studies seriously. "Not like you need to worry," he chided Harry in the common room one evening as he flipped through his favorite DADA manual while the others pored over Theories of Transfiguration. "How can they even give you exams anymore, I'd like to know? All you have to do is look up from your parchment and the answers appear over everyone's heads, don't they?"

Though Ron hadn't meant it as an insult, it rubbed Harry the wrong way. "Well, sort of, yeah," he sulked. "But I'm not a cheater, you know--it's not like I'd do it on purpose."

Hermione, who had worked herself up into a tense frenzy rivalled only by the weeks before their O.W.L.s, glared up from her textbook and snapped, "Then why aren't you studying, Harry?"

He knew she was just venting a little stress, so he kept his voice soft when he replied, "Because I remember what the Sorting Hat said. Even if I manage to sit the N.E.W.T.s, I'll be too broken or too dead to get the scores back."

Hermione's hand flew to cover her mouth and she looked up at him in horror. "It's okay, Hermione," he said gently.

"Harry, I'm so sorry I--"

"Shh. I mean it, really, it's all right. You always come unglued before exams," he tried to joke, but it didn't take. Harry lowered his head briefly; it was hard to see her guilt and grief. "Honestly, it's what I'm here for. I should've died sixteen years ago--everything since then, all this, has been a bonus."

Far from comforting his friends, there suddenly wasn't a dry eye around the table. Great, now I've just upset them further, he mused, but an idea began to expand in his mind as he took in the situation. They were virtually done with Hogwarts--the rest of the term would be spent reviewing and preparing for N.E.W.T.s. He'd played his last Quidditch match. There were still certain things he couldn't do with Legilimency, but he understood his magic enough to know that there was nothing he could do to rush those last few skills. They'd come to him or not in the time he had left; he could learn no more from Ondossi.

It was time, Harry Potter realized as he gazed around the table at the pained faces of his friends, to leave Hogwarts.

He did it that night, packing his trunk as the others studied downstairs in the common room. Harry sat one more time on the bed that had been his for seven years, and looked around the room that was his first real home. Fawkes had flown out the window a few minutes earlier and returned with Hedwig. She flapped over to Harry's lap to alight on his leg with no sassing whatsoever and nudged him with her head. "Going to meet me at Grimmauld Place?" he asked shakily, rubbing the tiny feathers on her chin. "Don't need to mail something to myself this time?" Hedwig hooted sadly, then hopped to the windowsill and disappeared into the twilight.

"I'm not really up for a round of goodbyes," Harry confessed to his familiar. "Shall we just go?" An image of Professor McGonagall, her face red as a beet, popped unbidden into his mind, and Harry nodded. "All right, Fawkes," he grumbled quietly. "I'll leave a note."

Harry took out a parchment and quill, and after several false starts that ended in scribbling and then Vanishing the ink, finally composed a message:

To all of you,

I saw tonight that it's time for me to move on. You all have exams to study for, and at this point all I can do is distract you. This is where I should pause dramatically, then say, "I shall be tested in other ways." Ha Ha.

Fawkes and I are going straight to Headquarters, so don't worry about me. Especially Viktor--I'll square things up with Remus first thing. I want you to stay here and see to Hermione until exams are over. But don't tell her I said that. Of course, she's probably the one reading this aloud to everyone, so chances are, I'm already in the doghouse.

Please don't be upset that I didn't come down to say goodbye. It was just too hard. Besides, I'm only leaving Hogwarts--you all are still my friends. You know where to come and find me when it's your time to leave as well.

Harry

He folded the parchment in half and left it on Ron's pillow, but he stopped in mid-turn and picked it back up to add a final thought:

P.S. If I don't make it, remember I love you all.

Harry stared at the parchment for a long time before setting his jaw and Vanishing the last line.

Fawkes warbled mournfully at him, but Harry put the note back down and picked up his trunk. "They need to be thinking about their exams right now, not fretting about whether they'll see me alive again," he told his familiar. "Their N.E.W.T.s are important--they have to prepare for their future." Harry scoffed. "Not like me."