Harry Potter and the Daoimear de Dán

Chapter Twelve- Sweet Victory

"So it's true," Harry whispered when he finally prised his lips away from her.

"What?" she asked, slightly dazed and out of breath. He grinned devilishly.

"Victory is sweet."

"Oh! You're going to become absolutely insufferable now, aren't you?"

"Maybe." The grin stayed firmly in place. Then he began fumbling in the pocket of his ragged dragon hide trousers and pulled out a tiny black box barely the size of her smallest fingertip. He muttered an engorgement charm and suddenly it filled his palm.

"This is for you," he said. She took it with wide eyes and trembling hands. She opened the box to find a ring. An emerald surrounded by diamonds, set in gold. Not big or flashy, but perfectly formed. Hermione's mouth fell open.

"Uh... what, uh... what does this mean?"

Harry smiled charmingly at her. He cleared his throat, having rehearsed this a little.

"It means that I love you. It means that pushing you away was the stupidest thing I ever tried to do. It means that.... It means everything and it means that I want to marry you one day. It doesn't have to be soon, but one day."

She took the ring from the box and slid it onto her finger. Although Harry had made no alterations to his mother's ring, it fit perfectly.

"Does this mean yes?" he asked anxiously. She smiled.

"Do I strike you as the sort of girl who would say no but keep the ring?"

"No."

"Then there you go," she said with a grin. His face lit up like the Hogwarts Christmas tree and the next thing Hermione knew she was swinging around in the air, held securely in his arms.

"Stop it Harry!" she squealed. "You're too tired and you're hurt!"

"No I'm not," he said with an ecstatic laugh before dropping her gracefully onto her feet.

"You're making a spectacle of us, you know," she said, looking down at the crowds of people who had foregone immediate medical attention to watch them.

"I know."

"Anyone would think you haven't just spent the better part of the day battling the forces of evil."

"That's what you did?" he asked, one eyebrow raised. "I was down at the Three Broomsticks all day."

"You're becoming impossible, Potter."

"I know, but you love me anyway."

"I do," she said with a soft smile. "But can we get you to Madam Pomfrey now? I find it hard to believe you came away completely unscathed."

"What gave it away?" he asked as they walked into the castle, his arm tucked firmly around her waist.

"All the blood, chiefly."

"Can't fool you, can I?"

"No. And you'd do well to remember that."

The two arrived at the hospital wing to find it already filled to twice its capacity. Madam Pomfrey looked ready to tear her hair out and Professor McGonagall was helping, despite her leg being in bandages from a tussle with a Death Eater earlier in the day.

"I have to help," said Hermione as soon as she saw the situation. He smiled and nodded.

"I knew you were going to say that." He kissed her briefly and she went straight over to McGonagall.

Rows of chairs had been lined up outside the hospital wing and Harry took the seat at the end of the queue. Madam Pomfrey, on the other hand, had different ideas. She came stalking out of the hospital wing demanding to see him.

"But there's lots of people who were here first," he said, still stuck in Hero Mode.

"Not everyone fought You Know... Voldemort face to face," she said briskly. He noticed that nobody flinched as she said 'Voldemort'. The fear was gone as surely as the Dark Lord himself.

"I can wait my turn. I drank a healing potion in the Forest," he said firmly. Madam Pomfrey just nodded, too busy to spend her time arguing. The eyes which had been turned admiringly on him not became positively reverential.

"I have got to stop being the good guy," he muttered to himself.

"All right, Rex?" he heard a voice call to him. He looked up to see Ron come down the corridor, a grin plastered across his face. Regardless of the blood covering Harry, they hugged happily.

"You did it Harry!"

"We did it," Harry corrected him. "And how come I didn't see you outside?"

"I'm not Hermione." Harry blushed as Ron grinned. "I take it she said yes then?"

"Yes."

"She's in there helping?" Ron asked, pointing to the doors of the hospital wing.

"Yeah."

"You do know you've gone all starry eyed?"

"Yeah."

"You're not listening, are you?"

"Nope," said Harry with a grin. "Where's Maura? She followed me out of the Forest, I know she did-"

"Relax. She's helping a couple of girls up here."

"Oh. Are you all right?"

"A bit battered and bruised, but nothing too bad. Hermione sorted it out. Here, you should've seen Lucius Malfoy's face when he came face to face with a great big tiger."

"What happened to him?"

"Oh... Draco turned up. He... Harry, you should've seen him! He took over and overpowered his dad. Pretty much beat him up."

"Revenge is sweet?"

"Yeah. Funny thing was, it wasn't so much for himself but his mum. Draco Malfoy might be an odious creep, but he loves his mum."

"I got that. How about Ginny and the others?" asked Harry. Ron shook his head.

"Don't know yet. It's a madhouse round here."

"Did you think to check the list of injured people on the door?" asked Harry. Ron shook his head and bounded over. He read it quickly before bounding back.

"Fred broke his arm. The others aren't on the list. But they're not on the dead... on the other list either."

"That's good."

"It was touch and go for a while out on the field though," said Ron. "I wasn't so sure that we'd win."

"What?" Harry looked alarmed, suddenly thinking that he'd had the easy part.

"But Flame... Blimey, that film song thing didn't half rally the troops. You should've seen everyone Harry! When they heard it, they just fought harder."

Harry beamed with pride and relief. It was finally over.

***

It took the hospital wing until the early hours of the morning to deal with everyone. Dumbledore's poisoning was finally cured when Snape was able to get some hair of river fox sent from London. In the end, only a fraction of either side's army were killed, and most injuries were easily dealt with.

The trials of the Death Eaters involved began almost immediately. The dementors were removed from Azkaban and replaced with strong isolation charms which were unbreakable unless a committee of forty-one Ministry officials worked in unison to do so. Lucius Malfoy and several other senior Death Eaters refused to remain in Azkaban. On attempting to escape, however, they discovered that the isolation charms were designed to incinerate prisoners who repeatedly tried to escape. Six senior Death Eaters committed suicide in this fashion.

Sirius Black was exonerated of all charges against him in one of the most high-profile wizard trials of the century. Peter Pettigrew had been found lurking in the Forest during the battles, too cowardly to join in. He was one of the Azkaban Six.

In the light of the bravery of Remus Lupin and several other werewolves during the battle, a new law was passed, the Werewolf Humanity Act of 1998, in which werewolves were accorded all rights of other humans and, if they desired it, the sanctuary and protection of the Ministry during full moons.

Narcissa Richards Malfoy returned to Malfoy Manor and had an interior designer named Laurence Llewellyn-Bowen come in and redecorate. The dreary gothic house was transformed into a 1920s Moroccan palace.

A picture of Harry Potter walking out of the Forest with the sword slung over his shoulder made the front page of nearly every wizarding newspaper, journal and magazine in the world (Only Wizard Summer Gardening remained uninterested in him). He was immediately voted Witch Weekly's Heartthrob of the Year, received thirty two marriage proposals, forty three offers of no-strings-attached sex, two hundred and forty declarations of undying love (roughly half of them delivered by Hogwarts owls) and was unanimously awarded the Order of Merlin First Class. The other three points of the diamond also received the Order of Merlin First Class and together the four made the cover of magical America's leading glossy magazine Wizarding Fair.

***

Hogwarts School of Witchcraft & Wizardry. June 1998.

It was the moment that Harry had dreaded since arriving at Hogwarts: leaving Hogwarts. The school was the only true home that he had ever known, and he was terrified at the prospect of leaving it. At least, he thought, he would not be returning to the Dursley household. Sirius had been given a large house in Cheshire by the Ministry by way of compensation for making sixteen or so years of his life a misery, and Harry would be living there with him, at least for a while.

Hermione was returning home with her parents, who had so far chosen not to pass comment on the sparkling emerald on her finger. She intended to spend the summer studying at a Muggle university before embarking on a career most likely pertaining to philosophical studies best suited to her druidic nature. She rather liked the idea of becoming a writer and intended one day to write a biography of Kitty MacLennon, her great-grandmother.

On the advice of Professor Dumbledore and Maura's Guardians, Ron had decided to go to an academy dedicated to those gifted in divination and other shaman arts. It would last six years and then he would decide whether to go into a career in those fields or not.

Which left Harry. He had no idea. He was a warrior. He knew how to fight, but there wasn't anyone left to fight. He didn't really want to be an Auror, because he finally had some peace and wanted it to stay that way. He remembered once wanting quite passionately to be a professional Quidditch player, but despite offers from half the teams in Europe, he wanted to be out of the limelight, at least for a while. Which left...? He wasn't quite sure. He was rich enough to never really work, but he already knew that the lifestyle of a playboy millionaire wasn't for him.

***

"Ready to go?" Hermione asked. Harry was staring out of the window in the top dorm in Gryffindor- his room for seven years.

"Just about," he replied, half-heartedly grabbing his bag. She went over and tugged his arm.

"Come on, love. There's a whole world out there waiting for you."

"I know that. I just don't know what I'm meant to do when I get there."

"You don't need to know. Go out and work it out for yourself," she said with a grin. After a long moment, he nodded. He moved away from the window and grabbed his trunk.

"Pass your Apparation test?" he asked her. She nodded.

"Of course I did! Who do you think I am? Did you?"

"Of course I did. Who do you think I am?"

"Do you want the answer to that?"

***

A large number of reporters and other people had turned out to see Harry Potter leave school. The results of the NEWTs had been published, and Harry had managed to come second in the year. Second, of course, to Hermione. There had been no House Cup that year, but everyone agreed that Gryffindor would have won on the strength of Harry's performance during the battle. Only Harry and the rest of the Diamond bothered trying to point out that all four houses had come together to fight the Death Eaters.

"Harry! Over here!" Ron shouted over the din. Flashbulbs were going off all around them as everyone tried to secure themselves a piece of history. Harry and Hermione managed to fight their way over to him. He was waiting with Ginny, both of them ready to get a carriage down to the train station.

"All right, Ron?" he asked, trying very much to look like he didn't want to cry. Ron just nodded, perhaps afraid that if he spoke, he might cry. On seeing them, Ginny tried very hard not to laugh.

"Oi! Boy Wonder!" a voice yelled above the din.

"I only know one girl with a voice that loud," said Ron. They smiled and turned to see Maura standing in the doorway, her bag and shield slung over her shoulder, the Sword of Ulster safely secured at her waist. Her daughter slept peacefully in her arms.

"Came to see you off," she said. "I'm leaving in a minute, too."

"You are? Where are you going?" Ron asked curiously.

"Narcissa wants a lodger, so I'm off to Malfoy Manor. She wants to get to know Deirdre, an' all. Then... who knows? No doubt the Guardians will find some other sure-fire scheme to get Maura Richards killed."

"Maura Richards?" asked Hermione. Maura smiled, more at peace than any of them had seen her before. She nodded.

"Yes. No point in staying narked because George had to be a hero. Wasn't his fault. Not all heroes die, do they Harry?"

"No. Some of us live," he said with a warm smile.

"It's just the way the cookie bounces," she said, once again twisting a well-known phrase into something completely different. "Well, if you ever need me, I'll be around."

"Good," said Hermione with a sweet, happy smile.

"Invite me to the wedding, right?" she said with a wink.

"Look after yourself," Harry replied.

"I will. Probably won't have any fighting to do and I'll end up staying at home with Deirdre. I expect to be bored by next Tuesday," she said in a dry tone that they all knew was false. "Well, I'll be seeing you."

"You will," Ron promised. Maura grinned again, rather too stoic to hug, then walked down the steps to a carriage waiting for her. Inside sat Narcissa and Draco Malfoy waiting for her. With a final wave from Maura and Narcissa, the carriage started off down towards Hogsmeade.

"Narcissa, Draco and Maura," mused Harry. "Can anyone think of a weirder combination?"

"I've got ten galleons that say Draco and Maura end up in a fight to the death. And another ten that say Maura wins," joked Ron.

"Oh be quiet, Ron! They're family, you know," said Hermione.

"That doesn't make it any less weird."

The three of them got into the carriage Ginny was waiting in. As it began its journey down to Hogsmeade and away from Hogwarts, three faces looked out at the Castle. Home no longer.

"Still, I can't imagine that the next bit will be too bad," said Ron. "I mean, we've done the hard bit."

"What? Defeating Voldemort and a whole host of Death Eaters and dark creatures?" asked Hermione.

"No, NEWTs."

"Ron!" shouted three voices.

And there we must leave them. But don't worry, it's the end of the tale, not of the story.

THE END...