Choices and Consequences

The patio doors exploded in a crash of glass as Tonks stood and made her way towards the door to find out what was going on. Two robed and masked figures levered their way through the remains of the large windows and pulled the curtains to one side, only to be met with forceful stunning spells cast almost immediately by Tonks and Harry which forced them to dive out of the way.

"Back into the living room you three," Tonks instructed urgently.

"What about Harry?" argued Ron.

"He's got his wand out and he's busy," Tonks insisted as she cast another stunner as quickly as she could, before the attackers regained their balance. "Get back there."

It was a sign that everybody knew how serious the situation was that none of the teenagers responded to her unintentional double entendre.

Indeed, Harry was very busy. One of the Death Eaters had got up a good shielding spell and had bounced the stunning spells back towards Harry, who was forced to dodge quickly to avoid them. They were quickly followed by another wave of stunners, but by then, Tonks had managed to get her own shield up.

"Damnit!" Harry thought to himself. "I can't even go out for a trip to see my friends without trouble finding me!"

Ginny was a little slow to react to Tonks's order and Harry had to grab her and pull her behind him into a safer spot as he cast a wide-ranging shield spell that gave them a moment to prepare for the expected onslaught. The shield only lasted a few seconds but they were vital ones as it absorbed a pair of powerful blasting curses before disintegrating, but it was time enough for Harry to bundle Ginny behind him and out of harm's way to where Ron and Hermione were climbing over a fallen chair and into the living room.

He swore as one of the masked men closed in on him, his wand out threateningly as he pushed his way forward.

In such close quarters it was difficult to do very much, and the men reached out to grab Harry and throw him down. He hadn't accounted for Harry's nimbleness however, as he slipped underneath the man's grasp and cast a bone-breaking hex at his assailant's ribs from point blank range, forcing the attacker to his knees in pain.

"Get your damn hands off me," Harry muttered as he shoved the man backwards and away from him onto the floor.

Meanwhile, Tonks pulled the table over in front of them, so they at least had a small defensive barrier to work with, and was keeping the other Death Eater busy blocking a wide range of mild, but nonetheless tricky hexes.

"Keep them back, Harry, whatever happens!" she gasped urgently, ducking underneath a nasty red-coloured curse that paased through the spot where her head had been a moment earlier.

As Ron, Hermione and Ginny backed out into the living room, another crash could be heard as more attackers broke through the front door. Tonks cursed as she realised the predicament they were in

"Hold them off as long as you can!" she instructed them tersely, hoping that they wouldn't do anything stupidly heroic.

"Gotcha!" Ron's response came from the living room, as Harry used another variation on the standard shield spell to rebound a cutting hex that had been aimed at Tonks back towards their standing opponent

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Hermione grab one of the comfy armchairs and wedge it into the doorway that led from the hall into the living room, and the three of them settled themselves to defend the doorway, making it difficult for more than one attacker to come at them at once.

Back in the dining room Harry's attention was fully occupied by the Death Eater he had pushed over, and who was now making a concerted effort to break through Harry's defences. He was severely hampered by the broken ribs that Harry had caused, though, and once Harry had worn him down a little he started to struggle to keep him from being overwhelmed himself.

Harry worked on replying with attacks that forced him to move around rapidly, in the hope that his injuries would slow him down and force him into a mistake. Although his compatriot had managed to keep Harry and Tonks occupied for a while so that they couldn't neutralise the wounded man, he had managed to struggle to his feet and although Harry tried to keep him dancing around, he had other ideas.

Falling back from the barricade, the attacker wasted no further time in pulled the big guns out, taking aim as he side-stepped a petrifying jinx from Harry and casting Killing curses at Harry and Tonks in quick succession, but missing the mark badly. He was obviously worn down by his injuries but he was still extremely dangerous, even if his aim was badly affected by the curse Harry had cast.

Blocking a stunning spell from Harry, he steadied himself and cast a blinding curse, but Harry managed to get yet another shield up. The injured Death Eater was unable to move quickly enough to avoid the blocked spell, which ricocheted off Harry's shield and caught him straight between the eyes.

Panicking, the man began to fire off dangerous curses almost at random as he tried to figure out where Harry was, but Harry managed to dodge or duck them all and eventually caught him with a stunning spell, allowing him to help Tonks with the remaining attacker.

The other man, facing Tonks, was putting up a good fight, even though he had obviously been expecting little or no resistance. Tonks was bleeding from a number of small cuts along one side of her stomach and grimaced in pain each time she was forced to dodge a curse. The two-on-one odds turned the tide in the defenders' favour rather swiftly, and trying to avoid Harry's stunners and body-binding spells at the same time as dodging hexes from Tonks and trying to mount an attack in return proved to be too much for him.

Having missed with a killing curse of his own, this Death Eater was caught by a banishing curse from Tonks that sent him flying back against the wall of the dining room and into a heap on the floor, as his head struck the wall with some significant impact.

"Damn!" Tonks cursed. "We don't need this."

She cast a quick body bind on the two fallen men to prevent them escaping should they happen to regain consciousness, and she and Harry moved through into the living room to aid the other three.

Finding their way blocked by the furniture and three determined teenagers, it appeared that the two men who had come through the front door had backed away a little and tried to work Ron over with some longer range curses, whilst Ginny tried to keep casting shielding spells each time she saw a curse flying in their direction and Hermione threw curses back at them.

Something of an impasse had been reached in the doorway to the living room, where the Death Eaters looked as though they were unwilling to attack at any closer quarters with the chair obstructing the way, and Harry noticed that they had fallen back to discuss tactics.

While they did so, Harry and Tonks stayed well out of sight, but Tonks signalled Hermione to pull the chair away from the door. As she did so, the two remaining attackers rushed the doorway and forced their way into the living room, where they were surrounded by five armed defenders rather than the three defenceless teenagers they thought they were facing.

"Shit!" one of them exclaimed, casting a spell that illuminated the room with an extremely bright light that forced everyone to look away. Harry and Tonks instinctively cast shielding spells to block whatever curses might follow the ball of light, but no spells followed, and by the time that they realised it and had blinked their eyesight back to normal, the two Death Eaters had apparated away.

"Well that was entertaining, wasn't it?" Tonks asked as the five of them relaxed their guard.

"I don't call having to dodge Killing curses particularly entertaining, no," Harry growled. "What the hell was that about?"

"I've no idea, I'm afraid Harry. All I can say is that I'm glad Dumbledore insisted I come along as security and to set up the alarms. I'm pretty pissed off though - the alarms were supposed to notify Order members at Headquarters to get here on the double, and they're a bit late getting here, if you ask me."

Tonks walked back through to the dining room where the two captured attackers still laid motionless on the floor. She conjured some ropes and tied the two men up securely, removing their wands and finding a safe place out of reach to put them, with a wink to Harry.

"Not going to put them in your pocket, Tonks?"

She didn't deign to answer the question, but pulled the two men into an upright sitting position against the dining room wall.

"So who've we got here then, I wonder?" she asked out loud, as Ron, Hermione and Ginny joined them in the dining room.

She reached out and ripped the masks off the two Death Eaters.

"Aha!" she exclaimed dramatically, "Goyle! And Travers! Moody will be pleased to have picked these two up. I wonder who the other two were, and what their dastardly plan was."

Hermione snickered at Tonks's little performance. "If it hadn't been for us pesky kids, they'd've gotten away with it too," she added to Tonks's amusement, though the others didn't understand the reference.

Other than the broken glass that littered the dining room floor, it didn't look as though any serious damage had been done to the furnishings. Harry went to use a repairing charm on the patio doors, but was stopped by Tonks who told him that the Ministry clear-up squad would want him to leave things as they were.

Similarly in the hallway, there was very little damage. The front door had been blasted completely off it's hinges, but other than that and a large scorch mark down one of the walls where a spell had obviously missed its target, the house had escaped relatively lightly.

The worst hit area was the living room, where the chair that had been used as a barricade was rather worse for a number of spells that it had absorbed. These seemed to have included slashing hexes and at least one 'reductor' curse, judging by the number of places where the fabric had been ripped to shreds and the stuffing poked out along with one large hole in the chair back. There were also a number of holes in one wall of the living room, where curses had missed their targets, and quite a few areas where the wallpaper had been burned off the wall.

Hermione was surprisingly calm about the damage to the house, though Harry suspected that she was still shocked that Death Eaters would attack her home, and hadn't really processed the fact that some of the family possessions would need replacing or restoring.

Harry privately thought it was a good job that he hadn't thought about using his flamethrowing curse, because if he'd lost control of that in such flammable surroundings, he wasn't sure that there would have been much of the house still standing.

As Tonks assessed the damage, they heard a call from outside.

"Hullo, the house?" Dumbledore's irritatingly calm tones rang out. "Is anyone home?"

Ron and Ginny went to the door to indicate he should come in, and found that he was accompanied by Kingsley Shacklebolt and a tall dark-haired wizard with a pointed chin and wide moustache, dressed in the robes of a Ministry official.

"What the hell took you so long?" Tonks demanded as they entered the living room, surveying the damage. "You were supposed to be here within moments when the alarm went off. What's the point of having the alarms set up if your response times are so damn slow that we've already dealt with the problem? Moody would be tearing your head off at this!"

"Wow, she's really ripping the old man a new one," Ron muttered to Harry as the young metamorphmagus continued her rant at the Headmaster. "Has she been taking lessons from your letter to Fudge?"

Harry declined to comment, more interested in hearing Dumbledore's explanation for the delay to their assistance arriving.

"Yes, well. Alastor was a little distressed now I come to think of it," Dumbledore noted calmly. "I'm glad to see that you coped so admirably with the resources you had at your disposal though, Miss Tonks."

Ron reached out and covered Ginny's ears at the list of expletives that flowed from Tonks's mouth at the Headmaster's bland and evasive reply, but only earned himself an elbow in the ribs for his efforts, followed by a snicker from Hermione.

Tonks finished her rant with a list of 'What ifs?' that covered just about every situation from them all being killed to blowing the whole neighbourhood up, which Dumbledore faced up to stoically, before offering his apologies.

"Unfortunately, our resources were too widely spread to aid you immediately. The attack was co-ordinated to be simultaneous with other attacks, notably on The Burrow and at the Longbottom house," he advised them. "The alarms went off in those two places first, and we had already committed to going there - I couldn't divert anyone away because everyone was fully engaged in battle."

"Is everyone okay?" Ginny asked immediately understandably concerned for her family.

Harry and Ron shared a shocked look at the thought of Death Eaters attacking The Burrow.

"Yes, fortunately everybody survived. Your Mother and Madam Pomfrey are attending to those who sustained minor wounds, but nobody was seriously hurt. As Miss Tonks suggested, the greatest injury was probably to Alastor Moody's disposition. He's been castigating me for the past five minutes about poor planning and security, so this was a most welcome little diversion.

Tonks snorted disbelievingly at Dumbledore's description of the events at the Grangers' as a diversion for him, clearly still not happy that the back-up she'd been promised had failed to materialise. She looked as though she was going to take Dumbledore to task yet further, but whatever she had planned to say was held in abeyance when Dumbledore continued.

"But I digress. I believe you all know Kingsley Shacklebolt, one of the Ministry's senior aurors." The talk bald-headed black wizard nodded to each of the teenagers. "And this is Julius Silverwood, who is one of the Ministry's top forensic experts, utilising both Muggle chemical techniques and magical signature tracking in his work."

The moustached man gave a brief smile at Dumbledore's introduction, then suggested they actually get on and do some work. Harry and Tonks led the two Ministry officials through to the dining room where, spying the two unconscious captives, Kingsley had them immediately transported to Ministry holding cells.

"Excellent work, Tonks," he praised. "I hadn't realised that you'd actually captured two of them as well. That's really good. How about you talk me through what happened here, while Julius gets to work with his 'scene of crime' stuff, and then we'll pull together the threads of the case when he and I get back to the office."

They spent the next fifteen minutes describing their part of the battle, then Ron, Ginny and Hermione filled them all in on what had happened in the living room. As they did so, the forensic expert moved around the house casting spells and making marks on a piece of parchment. From what little Harry could see of it, it seemed to show detailed plans of the house, and the marks that the forensic expert made on it seemed to correspond to magical signatures that he detected as he moved around the room, casting spells and peering closely at various items of furniture to analyse the damage.

He briefly asked them each to cast a spell onto a separate piece of parchment that he was carrying, which he explained was so that he could cross-reference the spells he identified with the wands that had cast them.

Once Kingsley had been updated, Dumbledore shepherded the teenagers upstairs, leaving the Ministry officials with a little more space to get on with their work. They settled down in Hermione's bedroom, which was a little cramped for five people, but not too uncomfortable.

"Just so you're aware, there's no question of you being cited for illegal underage use of magic," he reassured them.

Harry rolled his eyes at the thought of yet another owl from Madam Hopkirk's office finding its way to him. Perhaps this time the Ministry might actually believe that he had only being defending himself.

"I've already spoken to the appropriate department, and they understand the situation," Dumbledore continued. "Once Kingsley and Mister Silverwood are done downstairs, I think it's best if we tidy up a bit and get people home."

"Sir, is this because of my vision?" Harry asked nervously, remembering that Voldemort had been keen to find that that had defied his Death Eaters at the Ministry just a couple of weeks previously.

"The attack?" Dumbledore responded, to a nod from Harry. "Not exactly, Harry. You are not in any way to blame for the attacks this evening. However it probably is because of the six of you thwarted Voldemort's plan to get hold of the Prophecy. If it makes you feel less responsible for any injuries, you might consider that your vision warned us that such attacks might occur."

Harry looked miserable at yet another reminder of the danger that he had placed his friends in, not simply the injuries they had suffered at the Ministry, but also that, having been there to help him they might now face additional risk.

Dumbledore was about to say something further to reduce the burden of guilt that Harry seemed to feel he carried, but was pre-empted by Ginny moving across to Harry's side and putting her arm around him.

"Hey, it's not your fault, you know."

"It is," Harry insisted. "I've put you all in danger, yet again."

"No. Don't forget, we chose to go to the Ministry with you."

"But we needn't have gone in the first place. It was all just a big ruse to get us killed."

"Come on Harry," she wheedled. "This doesn't sound like the guy who fought off a troll to save the life of a girl he found annoying, or the one that risked his own life to rescue a girl he hardly knew from the horrors of the Chamber of Secrets."

Harry snorted at the reminder. It was normally Ginny that preferred not to talk about the events of her first year and here she was using those very memories to try and cheer him up.

"Remember, we've heard the Prophecy." Dumbledore started a little at this, but covered his reaction fairly well. Only Hermione noticed the brief change in the Headmaster's demeanour. "We know what you have to do and we're sticking with you till the end. It doesn't matter if you've got to kill Tom, we'll be there right beside you when you have to do it."

"You don't all think I'm a dangerous nutcase, who's putting all your lives in danger then?" Harry asked, looking round at the faces of his friends.

"No, just a nutcase, mate," Ron joked weakly, but was rewarded with a tight little grin from Harry.

"You can't afford to push us away, Harry," Ginny continued. "If from now until the day you meet Voldemort for this 'final confrontation', or whatever it is, you isolate yourself, you're not going to be in the right frame of mind to beat him, and the one thing that we all want is to beat him. We've already made our stand clear - we fight Voldemort simply for the same reasons that you put in your letter to Fudge, because it's what we have to do."

"Miss Weasley is correct, Harry," Dumbledore told him. "You need the love and support of your friends to help you defeat Voldemort. It's something that he would not be able to understand: that as with Sirius, you would be prepared to risk your own life to try and save another's. The love you held for Sirius was enough to drive Voldemort out of your mind at the Ministry, and the love you have for your friends here, and they for you, provides you with such strength that he would never be able to comprehend it"

He paused for a moment as though weighing up his words carefully. "You once asked me, having emerged from the Chamber of Secrets carrying a young girl who had faced evil incarnate and survived as a result of your love for her, a question about what makes you different from Tom Riddle." Ginny had blushed mightily at Dumbledore's rambling description of what had led Harry to save her.

"I told you that, in part at least, our choices determine what we are, not just our heritage or our circumstances."

"The fault, dear Brutus, lies not in our stars but in ourselves, that we are underlings," Hermione jumped in to quote, then quickly clapped her hand across her mouth when she realised that she was interrupting the Headmaster.

"Quite!" Dumbledore acknowledged with a chuckle, "Though of course Lord Voldemort would interpret Shakespeare's words to mean something entirely different to what you suggest fits the context here.

"In any case, Harry," he said, returning to his explanation, "you 'did what you had to do' to save that girl, just as you had done the previous year with the troll, and as you would do again and again if you had to - it is part of your character. It is also part of what provides you with the 'power the Dark Lord knows not' that the Prophecy refers to - the courage to do what is required to save a loved one, to keep the world safe, to fight an injustice.

"That is what Lord Voldemort cannot comprehend. That you would be willing to sacrifice your own life to achieve those ends; that you care enough about doing what is right, rather than what is personally advantageous, or as I put it to Minister Fudge, what is easy."

Ginny had maintained her arm around Harry while Dumbledore told them this, and they were all surprised when, rather than shrugging it off, he turned to her and gave her a big hug.

"Thanks Ginny, I appreciate your support," he told her. "All of you. I can't imagine what it would be like if I had to go through another year like last year, and I didn't have you all to rely on."

"Well I'm hoping that we don't have quite such an eventful year," Dumbledore suggested, the twinkle returning to his eye.

"Professor, what am I going to do about the house?" Hermione asked, her practicality coming forward once again as she started to consider the more mundane implications of the evening's events. "I mean, I can't exactly leave the house like this - what on earth would I tell my parents?"

Dumbledore chuckled. "Once the Ministry are finished with their investigations, which should be very shortly I think, I shall endeavour to restore the house to its original state, though you may wish to check that I've interpreted that state correctly before your parents return."

Hermione looked considerably relieved at the news that the damaged fittings and furnishings could be repaired, though Harry suspected that she could probably have managed to restore them herself, given her extensive repertoire of spells.

"I think also, it would best if Mister and Miss Weasley return to The Burrow, since I'm sure that they will want to reassure themselves that their family are okay."

Ron and Ginny both nodded at this. "I'm sorry to break up the party Hermione," Ginny added, "but I think Professor Dumbledore's right. Ron and I ought to go home. I'm surprised that Mum hasn't apparated over here herself to check up on us."

"It's okay Ginny, I understand. I'd want to do the same."

Ron looked a little put out as though he really wanted to stay but didn't think it would be appropriate to say so, and he just nodded mutely.

"I have to admit that I neglected to mention to Arthur and Molly that there had also been attacks here," Dumbledore admitted, "which has no doubt contributed to the fact that they haven't already arrived demanding you return home. You might want to play down your involvement in this evening's excitement for their benefit," he suggested to Ron and Ginny.

"Harry might as well stay here," he continued with a glance up to Hermione to check that it was okay. "There's nothing that requires his urgent attention at Privet Drive, so if the two of you want to enjoy what remains of your weekend here, there's no bar to that," Dumbledore suggested. "Miss Tonks will also be around overnight for security purposes."

Harry shrugged and nodded to Hermione, who agreed that he should stay as well. There was a calculating look in her eye as well, which Harry wasn't sure about, but no doubt she would explain what she was thinking once the others had left.

Dumbledore created a Portkey for Ron and Ginny, and they said their goodbyes to Harry and Hermione. At about the same time, Kingsley called up the stairs to let the Headmaster know they were finished with the forensic work and that he was returning to the Ministry to question the two Death Eaters they had caught.

Dumbledore, Harry and Hermione trooped back downstairs to see Kingsley and Julius Silverwood off, and to fill in Tonks on what they had all decided to do. She agreed to stay the night on guard duty, and led them back into the dining room, where Dumbledore started working on returning the house to it's original condition.

Half an hour later Hermione was satisfied that everything had been properly restored, and Harry had to admit that he'd never have know that they had been involved in a pitched battle there less than an hour and a half earlier. Hermione expressed her profuse thanks to Dumbledore, who left them with the instruction for Tonks to contact him immediately should they encounter any further problems that evening, although he thought that the drama was over for one night, particularly given the lack of success the Death Eaters attacks had achieved.

"Gods, what a hectic day!" Hermione sighed as Dumbledore departed and Tonks took another turn around the house to ensure that the alarms had been properly reinstated. "I can't believe that at lunchtime I was worried that we wouldn't have enough to do this evening."

"What? You mean you didn't have hours of gossip to discuss with Ginny as soon as Ron and I had been turfed off to our room to sleep?" Harry asked mischievously.

"No, of course not. I was sure we could get the gossip in while you and Ron were yakking about Quidditch or something."

"Oh, I see! Now are you going to tell me what that look in your eye was about when Dumbledore suggested I stay anyway?"

"Look? What look?"

"The calculating one that said 'Hmmm, I have a cunning plan'. A bit like when you started up S.P.E.W., or when you railroaded me into teaching Defence last year," Harry pointed out.

"I did not railroad you into teaching the DA," she retorted defensively, "I just suggested we should do something about Umbridge!"

Harry raised an eyebrow. "I still think that Ron's idea of poison would have been better. Dumbledore's going to make sure she gets her comeuppance if they ever dig her out of the hole she'd crawled into. He was asking me to provide testimony against her."

"Good! She deserves to be put away after what she did last year."

"So, back to my question," Harry said, determined not to be dragged away from the subject. "What have you got planned?"

Hermione looked at him appraisingly and decided that if she didn't ask, she'd be left waiting.

"Can I see some more of your memories?" she asked.

"What did you have in mind?" Harry was curious, even though he knew he would agree to whatever memories within reason that Hermione wanted to see.

"Well, you said earlier that you though we might want to see what happened in the Chamber of Secrets, and I really do want to know, but, I think, what I really want to see is what happened in the third task of the Tri-wizard Tournament."

Harry eyed Hermione critically. "Are you sure?" he questioned. "I'm not sure I really want to re-live it myself, even though I know it has a relatively happy ending this time. It's not pretty," he warned her.

"I just have to know, Harry," she insisted. "I believed you when there was so little evidence, because I had faith in you. When the Prophet started running all those cynical articles making you out to be delusional, it would have been so easy to believe them. I just want to know what you went through that they were belittling; what they were taking away from you."

Harry could see the passion and fire in her eyes to know exactly what had happened in the graveyard at Little Hangleton, and wondered whether the same sparkle would be in those eyes once she'd witnessed the events of the previous June. He shrugged his shoulders.

"If you want to see it so badly, then I guess I can provide that memory for you. You're not going alone though."

"Harry, if it's that bad, you don't have to come too."

"Yes, I do," Harry insisted. "You'll need someone there to support you, even though it's only a memory."

Hermione made them a pot of tea and they sat down at the newly restored dining room table. Harry's Pensieve, which he had left on the table earlier in the evening, hadn't come to any harm during the fight and Tonks had retrieved it from the floor while Dumbledore was redecorating and refurbishing.

"Well, okay, if you're sure..." Harry checked one last time that Hermione wanted to go ahead with this, and she nodded in affirmation and drained her teacup.

He concentrated on the appropriate memory, and drew it out, placing the strands carefully in the Pensieve. They touched their wands to it and stared into the depths, finding themselves at the centre of the maze that had been constructed for the third task.

Harry and Cedric Diggory were stood over the Tri-wizard Cup, Cedric supporting Harry, whose injured leg looked unlikely to keep Harry upright on his own.

"On three, right?" said Harry. "One - two - three -", and the two students grasped a handle of the cup.

The point of view shimmered and changed, and Harry and Hermione stood in the centre of the graveyard as Cedric pulled the Harry in the memory to his feet. It was exceptionally dark and eerie as they pulled their wands at the sound of someone approaching.

The someone, carrying what appeared to be a bundle of robes approached, and Harry and Hermione saw Cedric fall as the green light of the Killing curse provided the counterpoint to a high cold voice instructing: "kill the spare".

Hermione turned to the Harry alongside her, open mouthed and aghast at the scene, but there was no time for her to process her reaction to the cold-blooded murder, as the unknown man stunned Harry and conjured ropes with which he tied him to a nearby headstone.

Harry had to assume that his mind had recreated the scenes between the stunning spell hitting him and waking up tied to the headstone, since there was no other explanation. On objective review, he noted that the background to those few moments was even more indistinct than the rest of the memory, as though his mind had filtered out the important facts and ignored the background as utterly unimportant.

"You!" gasped the restrained Harry, but that was all he got to say, as his attacker gagged him and scurried away. A huge snake slithered across the grass, passing within inches of where Harry and Hermione stood and watched, and circled the headstone where Harry was tied, and the attacker returned hefting a huge stone cauldron, large enough to contain a human body.

He lit a fire under the cauldron, and the snake slid away into the darkness. The bubbling cauldron shot out fiery sparks and a thick steam, which made it difficult to see much at all.

Suddenly the view changed again, and instead of watching from a distance, the two observers now appeared to be looking directly over Harry's shoulder. Hermione could now see the man fairly clearly, and wasn't surprised to recognise Peter Pettigrew, Wormtail.

Wormtail opened up the robes that lay on the ground in front of them, and Hermione screamed in revulsion, just as the Harry tied to the headstone yelled into his gag. The child-form of Voldemort, a dark, raw, reddish black hairless and scaly creature lay before them, with gleaming red eyes and a thin face.

Harry couldn't help but think that he hadn't got any better looking on reviewing this memory, and part of him wished he'd checked the memory before allowing others to see it so clearly. Even though elements of that night would remain entrenched in his conscious memory forever, there were parts that he'd forgotten, and gladly so. Hermione looked faint and more than a little nauseous, and Harry didn't blame her.

Wormtail placed the feeble and disgusting body in the cauldron then used a spell to remove something from the grave under Harry's feet, which also went into the cauldron provoking sparks to emit from it and the water inside to turn a vivid blue. He pulled out a long sharp knife that glistened in the pale light, reflecting the sparks from the cauldron and glinting with menace and, sobbing with fright, slashed down hard through his own arm, severing the limb entirely and screaming as the blood pumped out of the end. Whimpering in pain, he swallowed convulsively and bent to pick the limb up, adding it to the cauldron as well.

Once again, Harry could not bring himself to watch, but apparently his memory had furnished the event with sufficient implied detail that Hermione could see Wormtail's self-mutilation, and she turned to Harry rather than continue to watch.

"Enough, Harry, enough!" she cried, her voice quavering with the emotion running through it, and faint with her attempts to control her stomach. "Please! End it!" she begged, and buried her face in Harry's T-shirt.

Harry put an arm around her, and concentrated on ending the memory, bringing them back to the Grangers' dining room with a change in surroundings that seemed almost surreal.

Hermione immediately pulled her chair back away from the table and moved into the living room to sit on the comfortable sofa there, burying her face in her hands. From what Harry could see, she was almost certainly crying, and he moved over to the sofa and sat down next to her, pulling her into a close hug.

"It's okay," he said stroking her back in comfort. "It's over now."

Hermione looked up at him with tear-streaked cheeks. "How do you cope?" she asked him between sobs. "You must re-live that memory all the time. It's so horrible."

Harry didn't really have an answer to that, but he shuffled along the sofa into a reclining position and let Hermione rest her head on his chest, as she cried harder yet.

"I just ... don't think about it," he said truthfully. "I've had enough nightmares about it that, mostly, I tend to think of it being nightmare, not real."

"But how can anyone possibly disbelieve you, after all you've been through?" she asked incredulously. "I mean, I thought I had some idea of the suffering you'd faced, and how much pain you've had to deal with, but it doesn't come even remotely close to what I just saw."

"That's the thing, Hermione," he explained, feeling remarkably calm bearing in mind he'd probably just re-visited the worst experience of his life. "People haven't seen that, so they don't know what I've been through. You said it best earlier - those who made fun of me in the press last summer didn't have the faintest clue what they were belittling.

"If I could make everyone see what you've just seen, then I'm sure they would be sickened, too. I'm just glad that there were people out there, like yourself and the Weasleys, and Sirius and Remus, and Dumbledore, who did believe me, otherwise I'm sure they would have locked me up in a mental institution," he told her as he rubbed her shoulders soothingly.

Hermione's sobs were quietening down now, as she came to terms with what Harry had gone through that night just over a year ago. As her breathing evened out, Harry realised that she had actually fallen asleep.

Typically, Tonks chose this moment to wander in from the kitchen. She caught sight of Harry and Hermione lying together on the sofa and caught Harry's eye, raising an eyebrow.

"Someone's a quick worker," she noted quietly, so as not to wake Hermione. "I don't think that's what Dumbledore had in mind when he suggested that you stay the night, Harry."

Harry stuck his tongue out at her. He knew it was really childish, but right then he didn't care. He spent a couple of minutes explaining the memory that they had been viewing, and why Hermione had been in such a state, and Tonks looked at him with respect.

"Stay there and hold onto her for a bit longer, Harry," Tonks advised. "Do you mind if I have a look at that memory, too?"

"Go ahead. It's still in the Pensieve on the dining room table," he offered.

An hour later, Harry had almost drifted off to sleep as well. He'd been up a long time, and it was well after three in the morning. Unlike Hermione, re-living the horrors of Voldemort's rebirth hadn't exhausted him emotionally, but it had reminded him of the nightmares that he'd had the previous summer, and he wasn't sure that he really wanted to fall asleep right then.

Tonks returned from the dining room looking ashen, but also with a troubled expression that Harry had an odd feeling didn't come solely from what she had seen in the Pensieve.

"Can you get yourself out from under Hermione without disturbing her?" she asked quietly.

"I think so." Harry gently raised his shoulders off the sofa, and gradually tipped Hermione from his chest and into the position where he'd lain a few moments before, disengaging her hands from around his neck as he did.

"Come into the kitchen, Harry."

He followed Tonks into the kitchen, where she made fresh cups of tea and sat down.

"Before I go and rip another piece out of Dumbledore's hide today, can I ask a few questions about that memory?"

"Of course."

"Am I right in thinking that was the end of the third task of the Tri-wizard Tournament, last June?"

Harry nodded.

"And you spent one night in the Hospital Wing? Under a Dreamless Sleep potion?"

Again, Harry nodded. He hadn't realised that he'd made the memory that lengthy - he thought he'd meant to end it when he returned back to Hogwarts, clutching the Tri-wizard Cup and Cedric's lifeless body.

"And one week later, you were packed off back to your relatives' so-called care?"

"Yeah, it was about a week." Harry wasn't quite sure where Tonks was going with this. He'd expected questions about the actual events in the graveyard, not what had happened once he had escaped.

Tonks face hardened at Harry's answers, and he had a suspicion that he was missing a trick here.

"Were you given any counselling? Or any help with dealing with the nightmares," she asked softly.

Harry shook his head. "Counselling? Isn't that for marital problems and stuff?"

"Yes, it is, but it's also for helping people, especially kids, deal with traumatic situations in their lives, whether it's the death of a loved one, parents divorcing, or coping with serious injury.

"The way that you reacted last year, all the anger you had stored up and the frustrations that you felt, it had all the signs of someone suffering from the aftermath of a really bad experience," Tonks explained. "Muggle doctors call it 'Post-traumatic stress disorder', but basically what they mean is that your brain has experienced something that it couldn't cope with in the normal scheme of things, and often shuts down some of the traits that make us more civilised: anger control, rational thought processes, interpersonal skills, respect for authority.

"Looking at your memory of his return," she continued, "I would classify that as highly traumatic. You were abducted, witnessed a murder in cold blood, were stunned, tied up, forced to witness someone mutilate themselves, had blood forcibly removed to act as an agent in a dark spell that re-birthed one of the most evil wizards ever, subjected to a torture curse and the Imperius curse, forced into a duel with said evil wizard and then finally escape."

She shifted uneasily in her seat and looked Harry over very carefully.

"Pretty much any one of those could have resulted in severe psychological problems. To have suffered through them all, and then be expected to reintegrate back into your normal routine without any help at all was expecting the impossible. I'm going to have some serious words with Dumbledore, but not until tomorrow."

She yawned and stretched as she said the last, adding that Moody was here now to act as security, and that Harry ought to get some sleep too, otherwise he'd be in no fit state to do anything the next day.