Harry Potter and the Year After

Chapter Two: The Burrow

Chapter 2: The Burrow

Three weeks later, by mid-July, Harry had attended the funerals for Fred, Lupin, Tonks, Lavender Brown, Colin Creevey, and a few others for people he didn't know very well but that Mrs. Weasley told him he should go to anyway.

"You'd best go," she said, "Better to go than have people be offended."

He also had to stand trial against fourteen different surviving Death Eaters over the course of those weeks. During that time, he single-handedly absolved the Malfoys in one afternoon. He also formally pardoned Xenophilius Lovegood for trying to turn him over to Death Eaters even though no charges had been made against him.

Harry was spending so much time with Kingsley Shacklebolt that he felt like they were becoming like sort of friends in a way. Kingsley had offered for him to skip taking N.E.W.T.s and go straight into Auror training. Harry hadn't told anyone this yet.

During this time, soon after Fred's funeral, Hermione went to Australia to find her parents. Ron had practically begged her to let him come with her but she said that he should stay with his grieving mother. But after Ron kept threatening to follow her with his Deluminator, just so he could secretly check on her, she gave in and let him come along with her after all.

It'd taken Ron and Hermione a week to get them to come back to the United Kingdom and even then their memories were spotty. They were generally distrustful of their daughter now.

"She mentioned that she thought about just leaving them there after she'd been there for a couple of days. Since they seemed so happy and all," Ron told Harry one night after they came back. Hermione was now living with her parents. She felt it was her responsibility to watch over them and try to get them re-acclimated even though Ron tried to get her to stay at the Burrow with them.

Harry and Ron were lying awake in Ron's attic bedroom, Harry on his cot and Ron in his bed. "She'd probably never forgive herself if she couldn't bring them back."

"Yeah," Harry said.

"I still can't believe you got them to pardon Lucius Malfoy."

"Well, Narcissa—," Harry began. He was getting tired of rehashing this argument with Ron. It seemed as though a lot of people agreed with Ron, but Ron was the only one willing to actually speak his mind on the matter.

"I know, Narcissa saved your life in the forest, but what did Lucius do?"

"Well, Narcissa did the right thing. She can have her loser husband if she wants. Lucius Malfoy just goes where he thinks the power is. He's not any real harm to anyone."

"Anyone who can be so easily swayed is harmful."

"Maybe. But it's already done. He's already been tried."

Harry shut his eyes and thought about Ginny's hair and the way it swayed in the wind today. He'd watched her punt garden gnomes in the yard while he'd pretended to read the Daily Prophet. They still hadn't spoken much, though she caught him staring at her probably as much as he caught her staring at him.

He realized he was more afraid to accidentally say the wrong thing to Ginny at this point than he even was when he'd been flying away from Fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement. With the constant reminder from the nearly daily funerals, Harry felt guilty that he was alive and her brother was not. Not that anyone at the Burrow thought that way. George spoke at Fred's funeral and said how his twin had died laughing. Bill had spoken about how Fred had died for the worthiest cause. But still, Harry had not died for that worthy cause... at least, he hadn't stayed dead.