The End

Chapter 17: Keep Right On

The configuration of the hotel room had caused some difficulties for Harry, Hermione, and Sydney when it came time to divide up sleeping arrangements, as they were short one bed. When Sydney was reserving the room, there hadn't been one with two large beds available, so she'd gotten one with two one person beds. Harry, acting the gentlemen, had offered to sleep on the floor, a proposition Hermione and Sydney accepted on the condition that they would alternate who had to suffer that discomfort should they remain at the hotel for more than one night.

That decided, they turned in, Sydney and Hermione passing Harry whatever bedding they could, until he had created a nest of sorts in the narrow space between the wall and Hermione's bed. The nest looked deceptively comfortable from the outside, which became readily apparent as soon as the lights were extinguished, for the two women were frequently disturbed by the rustlings of a Wizard, searching for an apparently nonexistent position of sufficient comfort to fall asleep in.

Hermione had just started considering silencing her offending neighbor with a stunning spell when the source of her annoyance finally stopped, replaced by the slow breathing of one asleep. A few minutes later, Hermione nodded off as well.

Harry had never been one to sleep on his stomach, but for some reason (he was quick to blame the nest) that was how he awoke the next morning. This was, in fact, an extremely lucky occurrence, for it wasn't any crick in his neck that woke him, nor an alarm clock. Instead, he jerked awake when Hermione, groggy and disoriented in an unfamiliar place, got off her bed in the wrong direction and stood up with one foot on his back and the other pinning down his arm near the elbow. It was a mark of her exhaustion that she didn't realize what had happened until Harry's back gave a loud crack from underneath her foot, coupled with a groan from the Wizard himself. With a stifled yelp, Hermione sat back on her bed then carefully helped Harry up to join her, simultaneously inquiring into his health and apologizing profusely without allowing him time to answer.

When Hermione finally paused long enough to let Harry speak, he managed to convey the idea that he was fine. In fact, he was rather enjoying the effects of Hermione's impromptu foray into the world of chiropractors, although he wouldn't have minded a little warning. Ironically, it seemed the greater damage was to his elbow. She must have stepped on his funny bone, for after a brief period of numbness, his forearm was subjected to a nasty fight with a set of pins and needles. Hermione, however, was not satisfied, but when she attempted to turn to Sydney for advice, she discovered that the Muggle had been absent the entire time.

A prickle of fear coursed through them and they jumped to their feet, Hermione's concern for Harry either forgotten or satiated by his sudden display of mobility. After a brief and fruitless search of the adjoining bathroom, they got dressed, grabbed their wands, and darted out of the hallway and to the parking lot.

"The car's gone," Hermione observed.

"So either she went somewhere," Harry started.

"...or someone took her and the car," Hermione finished pessimistically.

"This is Sydney we're talking about," Harry reminded her, "she would have put up a fight."

"Maybe they grabbed her while we were all asleep," Hermione sighed. "Otherwise she would have left us a note."

"Maybe she did," Harry pointed out. "I wasn't looking for a note. Were you looking for signs of a fight?"

Hermione shrugged her response and moved back to the outside door, clearly intending to head back to the room and check their theories, but her heart sank when she reached the door and plummeted when she jiggled the handle and nothing happened. She and Harry checked their pockets for the key but came up empty. They didn't have a problem, of course: they had learned how to unlock doors such as these in their first year at Hogwarts, but they'd both been hoping to go at least an hour without using magic, especially considering their vicinity to Muggles. Nevertheless, their situation was dire, and after an unspoken agreement, Harry pulled out his wand and aimed it at the doorknob while Hermione stood watch.

However, before Harry had a chance to complete the spell there was a sudden eruption of sound and light around them in the form of the hotel's fire alarm. No sooner had the startled Harry pocketed his wand than Muggles began spilling through the door, most still in their nightclothes and dragging half closed suitcases. Sighing, Harry and Hermione moved away from the building with the rest of the crowd, cursing the bad luck which seemed to haven taken a special interest in them that morning.

"Maybe someone just pulled the alarm by accident," Harry suggested hopefully.

"I doubt it," Hermione muttered, pointing upward.

Harry followed her gaze to a pillar of black smoke emanating from the upper story of a nearby wing of the hotel.

Hermione cut off his string of swear words by whispering, "We need to get our things."

Harry immediately saw her point. That room contained all their necessary possessions, and even more importantly, all the information they had on Malfoy and the Death Eaters. There was also the fact that both Harry and Hermione still had some artifacts unique to the magical world in their packs, and Sydney had some CIA issue equipment, all of which was sure to cause suspicion if found among the rubble. Actually retrieving their belongings would be difficult, however, not because of the locked door or the fire, but because of the nervous crowd of Muggles milling about. On the other hand, judging by the smoke, the fire seemed to be spreading rapidly. Apparently, they had no choice but to risk the crowd and modify any memories they needed to afterward.

Harry and Hermione started moving discretely toward the outside door. A few people half heartedly tried to remind them of the danger of going into a burning building, but the rest didn't seem to notice or care and they reached the door without incident. Hermione carefully pulled out her wand and unlocked the door, allowing them to slip inside.

Two things became immediately obvious. The first was that the hotel's sprinkler system had been activated: they were drenched immediately. Secondly, despite that, the interior of the hotel was noticeably warmer than it had been when they left. With no time to lose, Hermione opened the door to their room and they gathered up their belongings and Sydney's, stuffing it all into whatever bag was closest. It was the work of a moment, not only had they not brought much, but most of it was still packed, although they both performed a second sweep of the room to make sure that Sydney hadn't concealed any of her equipment.

The pair was just about to leave when they heard a moan and a loud thump from somewhere above them and their already adrenaline laced bloodstreams became saturated.

"That sounded like a person," Harry said.

"I suppose," Hermione replied, a bit more cautiously.

"Well, we've got to do something," Harry pointed out. "Together we could put out this entire fire."

"But we can't," Hermione reminded him.

"Why not, we've got the power," Harry demanded, already raising his wand.

"Because of the statue of Wizard Secrecy," Hermione pointed out. "Do you know how many Muggles we'd have to Obliviate if we put out this fire?"

"Damn the statue!" Harry exclaimed. "I'm not going to stand by and let an innocent person die!"

"I'm not entirely convinced that was a person!" Hermione retorted.

"You heard it!" Harry cried. "Now you're telling me that you've changed your mind?"

"You can't tell me there isn't anything odd about this!" Hermione exclaimed. "We wake up and Sydney's gone, just as we go outside a fire starts. There must be sprinklers like these all over the hotel but it's still getting hotter by the minute, and just as we're about to leave there's a sudden reason for us to stay! The alarm went off five minutes ago and I still haven't heard a fire truck. I'd be surprised if the Death Eaters weren't involved in this."

"You think the Death Eaters found out we're here and did this on purpose?" Harry demanded.

"I dare you to find a reason why that couldn't explain all this," Hermione replied.

"Alright," Harry said, moving to the table near the door. "Look, Sydney did leave us a note." However, he discovered that the water had completely erased the message and not even a revealing charm could resurrect it.

"This could have been a ransom note for all we know!" Hermione pointed out. "Harry, we can't risk it!"

"We don't have time to debate this right now," Harry replied. "If you're not going to help me put out this fire then I'm going upstairs to find that person, I'll meet you back outside afterwards."

"It's tragic, yes," Hermione said, cutting him off, "but there are bigger things at stake here. We need you."

"I served my purpose by killing Voldemort and you know it," Harry said, brushing past her, heading in the direction of the bathroom.

"We need you because Ron is killed or captured somewhere," Hermione yelled. She paused for a moment, seething, then added, "and it's your fault!"

Harry hesitated. He hadn't expected her to say that, and knew that any attempt to deny her accusation would be a lie, so instead he turned around, muttered a sorrowful, "Exactly," then continued on his way.

If Hermione attempted a response to this, Harry didn't hear it, for he cast the bubble-head charm on himself then set about cutting a careful hole in the ceiling near the sink. Hermione must have left sometime while he was working, because by the time Harry had completed the hole she had disappeared, along with the bags by the door. Not paying her much thought, Harry climbed onto the sink then up into the floor above.

The room he entered was almost identical to the one he'd just left, except that it lacked the pool of water that he and Hermione had been fording, or any water at all, and the air from the ceiling to his knees was obscured with black smoke. Aware that the only spell he knew that would solve this visual impairment by displacing all the smoke around him would be too noticeable to the Muggles outside, Harry instead dropped to his hands and knees, and after a brief search of the room, he moved to the hallway, where he got his first actual glimpse of the fire that was ripping apart the hotel, about twenty meters away and approaching rapidly.

Harry hadn't associated a direction with the sound he'd heard, so he was at a loss as to where to search next. Ignoring his better judgment in favor of common sense, Harry decided to search the rooms closest to the fire first, knowing that he would lose access to them quickly. The first two rooms were empty and the fire was working much faster than he was, so Harry pushed his search to a frantic pace.

"Where are you!" he called desperately, knowing it was useless. He'd watched that fight, seen that fall. There was no way Lupin was in any fit state to respond. Ron and Hermione were following behind him, their attempts to remind him that his responsibility was to finding Voldemort thwarted by their own desires to find and help their old professor.

At last, Harry turned a corner and nearly stumbled over Lupin's prone form. The former professor groaned as Harry's wayward foot accidentally jostled him into consciousness. Lupin was lying in a pool of his own blood, which was being continually augmented by the blood leaking out of his nose, mouth, ears, and neck. His legs were lying at very strange angles, but he didn't seem at all equal to rearranging them. Harry's knowledge of healing spells were limited and he was afraid to try any of them, and Ron and Hermione seemed to be of a similar mind, but they weren't about to leave, either.

"Professor? Professor Lupin?" Harry asked gently as Ron came up alongside him. Hermione seemed unable to come closer and instead hovered a short distance away, apparently prepared to defend the scene against all comers.

"Harry?" Lupin coughed weakly, spitting out a bit of blood, "you shouldn't be here. You have to go. Everyone's counting on you."

"Everyone can wait," Harry replied firmly. He couldn't let the closest person he had to a true uncle die alone, even if it put the mission in danger, and he knew the folly of this line of thought just as much as he knew it was the only way things could be.

Lupin seemed to realize this as well and changed the subject, saying, "Your father would be proud of you."

Whether Lupin had intended it or not, his statement robbed Harry of words. It was all the young Wizard could do to mutter an embarrassed, "Thanks."

"I can't count the number of times I have been amazed by the ingenuity of all three of you," Lupin continued. "Together, there is nothing that can stop you."

Suddenly, Lupin grabbed Harry by the shoulder and Ron by the forearm and groaned, "Help her!" then he relaxed and his arms dropped to the floor.

"Wait!" Harry cried, carefully shaking Lupin's shoulder. "Come back! Help who?"

Suddenly, Hermione made her presence known behind them, saying, "There's a group of Death Eaters coming."

Desperately, Harry turned back to their deceased professor, shaking him more vigorously and demanding an answer to his dying riddle, until Ron pulled him off, crying "It's no use, mate, he's gone. We've got to go."

"We can't just leave him here," Harry sobbed.

"We don't have a choice," Hermione pointed out as the sound of approaching Death Eaters took a sudden crescendo.

As a knot of intertwined arms and support, the group managed to disappear mere seconds before Lupin's body was discovered by the Death Eaters, and just before Harry would have had to give up his search, he found his quarry, a middle aged woman, half draped over her bed.

The situation now growing desperate, Harry pulled her down, cast a bubble head charm on her as well, and crawled off as quickly as he could with his burden draped over his back.

Harry had long since lost track of exactly which room contained the hole leading back to the ground floor and had no time to spare for searching, so he made instead for the nearest stairwell.

His progress was slow and the fire's fast, so before he was even halfway to the staircase, he was facing the very real risk of being overtaken. With nothing else for it, he stood up, dragging his ward along by the arms and extinguishing sections of the fire whenever they became too threatening. He was blinded by the smoke and thus reduced to feeling his way with his feet, but his speed was nevertheless increased. Several times he judged that he must have reached his destination and risked exposing himself to the Muggles and increasing the fire's wrath by blowing air out of his wand and clearing the immediate area of smoke, only to discover that he still had some distance to travel.

Harry felt like he'd been going on this way for much longer than he should have, and it occurred to him that he might have, in fact, passed his destination accidentally, causing a wave of panic to well up within him. Finally, he resorted to trying doorknobs randomly, knowing that if he didn't find the staircase it would likely take too long to cut another hole in the floor. On the third door he tried he finally found what he had been searching for. Heaving an echoed sigh of relief within his bubble-head charm and, lifting the increasingly heavy woman higher on his back, Harry started down the stairs.

Unfortunately, when Harry was only a few steps down, the woman's feet slipped unexpectedly off the top step and all her weight fell on him. Harry staggered and tried to recover, but he lost his footing on the stairs and fell, hitting his head on the banister and rolling down to the platform. He heard the spells, they came from all around him, and in the split second it took for magic to travel from attacker to victim, Harry determined that he'd been led into a trap. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, cover was nowhere to be found. Then they struck.

The ground seemed very far away.

The woman landed on top of him, forcing the air from his lungs. The bubble-head charm flickered and died around him, leaving him exposed to the toxic atmosphere.

He could feel the energy being drained from his body. Every second was a battle to stay conscious, and every battle drained the energy he no longer had.

The floor was warm...

...and cold...

...and hard...

it felt like he was being crushed...no

it felt like he was being crushed

Where's Hermione?

he couldn't breathe

there was no air

he couldn't move

he couldn't stay awake

Where's Hermione?

there was no way in

there was no way out

he couldn't stay awake

he was going...to...

"Harry!"

The voice came from above somewhere, but he couldn't recognize it. It sounded as though whoever was trying to speak with him was on the other side of a door and surrounded by thick fog.

"Harry, come on, wake up!"

Breathing was easier than the last time he remembered trying it, although he wasn't sure why. There were other sounds than the person speaking to him, loud, frightening sounds, at least they would have been if he was awake enough to realize it.

"Ennervate! Come on, stay awake! I can't carry you both!"

Things suddenly became much clearer, and with that clarity came a pounding headache, but even more troublesome was the fact that someone was shaking him.

"Stop, what's wrong?" Harry slurred.

"Harry! You're alright!" his assailant cried.

This was news to him. The last time he'd checked, things hadn't been looking good at all, although he was having some difficulty remembering whether the threat was in the form of a spell or a fire.

"We've got to go, the fire!"

So, fire then, but where had all the spells come from? On a slightly less confusing note, Harry had come to the conclusion that Hermione was his rescuer. Even though his vision was still blurry, she was the only person he knew capable of ordering people around like that.

Hermione pulled him to his feet, but as she released him to see to the woman he'd rescued, his legs nearly gave out from under him. He grabbed onto the banister for support, but he didn't expect to remain standing for long, his arms weren't in much better shape than his legs. Changing strategies, Hermione cast a levitation spell on their unconscious charge then threw Harry's arm over her own shoulder and they scrambled down the rest of the stairs. As they approached the exit, Hermione forced Harry back under his own power and took the weight of the rescued woman onto her back instead, then removed the bubble-head charms from all three of them. A second later they had delivered themselves into the arms of the newly arrived firemen.

Thoroughly surprised at finding those who had needed rescuing able to get themselves out of a fire such as this, the firemen guided them, singed and dirty, to a group of medics.

Harry was being helped onto a gurney when suddenly Hermione came out of apparently nowhere and pulled him into a hug, crying, "Oh, Harry, I'm so glad you're okay!"

His senses befuddled by smoke inhalation, it took Harry some time to realize that her sporadic show of affection had in fact been an elaborate scheme, allowing her to take his wand without anyone else noticing.

His mind and eyesight growing slowly sharper as he breathed pure oxygen through a mask, Harry took a moment to marvel at Hermione's intuitiveness. There was no doubt that in his present state he was in no condition to ensure the secrecy of the Wizarding race, but as long as she had his wand, anything detrimental he might say could be written off as the effects of oxygen deprivation. As the most lucid among the three of them, Hermione was being questioned by the fire chief about several abnormalities in their conditions, any of which could have exposed them as Wizards, but which she answered as though she'd been expecting them.

"Why isn't there any soot on your faces?"

"Maybe we sweated it all off."

"Why isn't anyone burned?"

"Luck, I suppose."

Harry glanced into the watching crowd and saw that Sydney had returned. She was hovering in the background, a bag of food in hand. She was doing a fair job of blending into the crowd, but she was too concerned about Harry and Hermione to put on an entirely convincing performance for someone who knew her.

Suddenly, a man dropped a bag of groceries, rushed out of the crowd and to the side of the woman Harry had rescued, who was just beginning to stir. He started asking a million questions of the medics and not allowing them time to answer. They tried to reassure him that the situation was under control and his presence was only hindering their work, but he seemed reluctant to listen. He was finally convinced to back off after the woman whispered a few words to him, and he took to pacing around the gurneys, alternating between running his hands through his hair and fiddling with the ring on his left hand.

Finally, he walked over to Harry and asked, "Are you the kid who saved my wife?"

Even though it made his head swim, Harry pulled the mask away from his face so he could answer unobstructed, then said, "Yes."

The man seemed satisfied for a moment, then turned back to Harry and pressed, "Did you happen to see a dog while you were in there?" He seemed close to tears, but was valiantly trying to hold them back.

"No," Harry replied warily.

"A golden retriever, full grown," the man continued, "he might have been wearing a harness."

"No," Harry said again. He could feel the situation growing more precarious by the second.

The man nodded and turned back toward his wife, but a second later Harry was on the ground. The man had flipped over his gurney then started pounding him into the pavement, yelling, "You let him die! That dog was like my son, and he was her eyes. Megan said he tried to rescue her. You could have saved him too, but you let him die! She's known him longer than she's known me. How am I supposed to tell her that her life long companion is dead?"

Harry didn't even attempt to defend himself against the onslaught, in fact, he much preferred the physical pain of the thrashing he was receiving to facing his own emotions undistracted.

He didn't make any attempt to move when the man was pulled off of him nor when he was lifted back onto his righted gurney, causing the medics some concern. He voiced no objections as they checked him for broken bones or unusual bruises and bandaged his cuts. In fact, it wasn't until they pronounced him fit to leave that he could help himself no longer and he sat up and buried his head in his knees, hoping to hide his tears.

Harry couldn't believe he hadn't checked the room more thoroughly. He would have throttled the person who allowed Hedwig to remain trapped in a fire. What's more, it seemed that dog was more of a hero than he had ever been; he had shown absolute loyalty. A similar situation that had called upon Harry to act the hero had ended quite differently.

When Harry finally decided that his emotional state was no longer such a threat to his dignity, he stood up, cleaned his glasses, and began walking toward Hermione. However, his path took him very close to the husband of the woman he'd saved, who was being held in check by a nearby police officer.

As Harry walked by he muttered, "I'm sorry," to him, then after a glance at his assailant he added, "My parents died in a fire when I was one." It wasn't the reason for his current state, it wasn't even really the truth, but the man deserved some explanation.

It was nearly noon by the time Harry and Hermione managed to retreat to the car to sit in silence while Sydney saw to a refund for the hotel room. They took turns closing their eyes and changing out of their sooty pajamas. When they were both dressed, Hermione pulled a granola bar out of Sydney's grocery bag and attempted to nibble at it, but after only a few bites she gagged and only narrowly managed to swallow. After that she decided not to risk it anymore. Harry didn't even bother trying. He felt ready to throw up already.

Eventually, Sydney returned and they set off, neither Witch nor Wizard inquiring into their destination. Every once in a while Hermione or Sydney tried to strike up a conversation, but it always died out within a minute. Harry, on the other hand, remained utterly silent, except the occasional request that the volume of the radio be increased, hoping that he wouldn't be able to hear his own thoughts if the music was loud enough, but it seemed useless.

He couldn't stop being angry with himself for not thinking to check the rest of the room. No person unfettered by a disability should have taken that long to evacuate a burning building. It shouldn't have been hard to guess that she might have been blind and required the aid of a seeing-eye dog. How many other people died because he stopped the search after finding one person? He should have kept going. How could he have been so stupid?

Then there was the matter of Professor Lupin. Harry couldn't explain why Lupin had occurred to him while he was searching for the woman, but he could scarcely stop thinking about him now either.

Lupin, the last of the Marauders. One of the closest things Harry had to a family member after Sirius died. It was inevitable that he and Pettigrew would butt heads one last time, and just as inevitable that Pettigrew would come out on top. Lupin had suspected this, ever since Harry mentioned that Pettigrew had been given a silver hand. Silver kills werewolves. Hermione knew it too, but she didn't say anything. It took Harry a long time to forgive her for that, longer than it should have. She'd had their best interests at heart, after all, even if the application was misguided.

Among the greatest agonies of it all was the fact that Lupin hadn't died when Harry, Ron, and Hermione thought he had, not by a long shot. Instead, selfless to the end, Lupin had pretended to die prematurely, knowing it was the only way to convince the group to move on with their mission. He had died alone after almost five hours of suffering, something that the group had only found out when the Healer's predicted the time of his death to be much later than when the trio had encountered him after his fateful fight with Wormtail. Harry had yet to forgive himself for not checking for a pulse.

After Lupin died, Harry knew that Ron would be next in an attempt to bring down Pettigrew. That was inevitable as well. Without Lupin's inherent weakness against the man, and a working knowledge of everything that broke Pettigrew down, it was quite possible that Ron would succeed. But he didn't, or, more accurately, he hadn't gotten the chance. Harry and Ron had been running down a hallway. They knew they were close to Voldemort, and in their anticipation they let their guard drop, and were taken down. Everything fell apart. Ron was bound and gagged and left in a closet, the Death Eaters didn't seem concerned about him. After all, in a few minutes, the whole resistance would no longer be a problem, because in a few minutes Harry would be lying unconscious on the floor at Voldemort's feet, and then Voldemort would kill him, once and for all. Then he would be unstoppable.

"All right, what's really wrong?" Sydney demanded suddenly.

"What?" Harry asked blearily after he concluded that she was, in fact, talking to him.

"Don't give me that," Sydney replied. "It's obvious that something's bothering you."

Harry swore under his breath. He'd known playing dumb wouldn't last long, but that was ridiculous. "It's complicated," he tried.

"Fine," Sydney exclaimed. "You have some skeletons in your closet, everyone does."

"But mine are in the form of my parents and Cedric and Sirius and Dumbledore and Snape and Lupin, and they've still got skin and muscle and gore that's peeling off the bone and wide blank eyes that stare me down, and they always make a racket and keep me up at night," Harry replied, surprised to find himself slightly out of breath after his tirade.

"Then I suggest you either learn to live with them or get them out," Sydney said.

"I don't know how," Harry admitted.

"You might want to start with a trash can, then maybe a broom," Sydney explained.

"What?" Harry asked, supposing he'd missed when the conversation suddenly switched from the metaphorical to the literal.

"The way I hear it, you saved the Wizarding race, maybe even the entire world," Sydney said.

"That's not all there is to it," Harry muttered.

"Then what else happened?" Sydney demanded. "You're supposed to be a hero, Harry."

"I'm no better than anybody else," Harry replied.

"Maybe not," Sydney admitted, although she seemed to think the point was arguable, "but you're no worse either.

"I wouldn't be so sure about that," Harry muttered. "If I'm a hero, then why do I feel so terrible about it?"

"Why don't you just take one second and bask in your accomplishments?" Sydney asked vehemently.

"Hermione, how much do you know about the CIA?" Harry said, banking on the fact that she'd probably done all the research she could after learning the origin of their colleagues.

"Not a lot," she admitted.

"Tell me everything you know about its secrecy," Harry demanded before the Witch could elaborate on just how much she didn't know.

"Alright," Hermione started. "The actual existence of the Central Intelligence Agency is well known, but the specific nature of its work is considered top secret, as is the identity of its agents-"

"Stop!" Harry commanded, eying Sydney. "Is that what this is about? You can't take credit for your work so you're trying to get it vicariously through me?"

"That's not it at all!" Sydney yelled.

But Harry was through listening. "You think its easy being a hero? Why don't you just try it! I never wanted this kind of life- I don't even remember the first time I faced Voldemort. Every time someone looks at my scar I wish I could just dig a hole in the ground and live there, but I can't because the bad guys keep coming back and everyone expects me to stop them, and this is never going to stop!"

Sydney took advantage of the fact that Harry was slightly out of breath from his rant and said, "You think I don't know what its like? I never wanted this kind of life either!"

"Oh, somebody make a prophecy about you too?" Harry asked sarcastically.

"Yes, actually," Sydney replied sharply. "And even more important than that, I was conditioned to be a spy when I was a kid!"

"Voldemort killed my parents!"

"SD-6 killed my fiancé!"

"Stop it!" Hermione screamed. "We're all in this together, and we all have the same goal, to bring down the Death Eaters and free Ron and Michael. Every moment we spend arguing makes it more likely that the Death Eaters will find some advantage over us, and then we won't stand a chance. Agreed?"

They both reluctantly nodded their assent.

"Harry?" Sydney asked after a pause. "I think I owe you an explanation."

He had half a mind to start yelling at her again, but the other half, which happened to agree with Hermione, won out, and he waited for her to continue.

"I don't envy you for your fame," Sydney began. "I don't like my line of work any more than you like yours. I envy the fact that your friends are right there with you, because that's the hardest part of my job, having to lie to my friends."

For a second Harry thought he saw a hint of concern behind Sydney's eyes, but then he blinked and it was gone. "What about Michael?" he asked.

"That's true, I can talk to him, but I do have a life outside the CIA, although not much of one," Sydney admitted. "What I was trying to get at was the way you never seem to talk about anything that happened. After all the time I've known you I haven't learned anything about when you killed Voldemort except what was in your file."

"Now that isn't a very pleasant topic," Harry said euphemistically.

"So you'd rather focus on pleasantries rather than reality?" Sydney asked.

"Wasn't that the point of the game last night?" Harry asked.

"That was to help you see the bright side of every situation, not ignore the bad parts completely, especially when you have time to deal with it," Sydney clarified.

"I have dealt with it," Harry replied, knowing it wasn't true. It would have been more accurate if he'd said he thought he'd dealt with it, but the evidence against that assessment was mounting.

"Prove it," Sydney said.

That was the very thing he'd been hoping she wouldn't say. "I've been waiting for Hermione to bring it up," Harry improvised, knowing that too was a lie, and hoping Hermione would be willing to pick up some slack for him. Contrary to what he'd expected, he heard a sharp gasp from Hermione's direction.

"Why don't you just talk about it now, then," Sydney suggested, pulling into a parking lot near a playground. "There's obviously something going on here that I don't know about."

She was correct, as usual, but neither Harry nor Hermione made any attempt to confirm her suspicion.

"You never talk about it at all?" Sydney demanded. "I can understand if you don't want to talk in front of me. I wasn't there, but you both were. I don't know what happened and I'm not going to bother guessing, but whatever it is, it's eating you up inside, and the fact that you won't even talk about it does not help. Trust me, I know. You need to face it and move on, because you can't stay where you are."

"You want to hear what happened?" Harry yelled. "I've been fighting Voldemort for almost my entire life because I was the only person in the world who could stop him. Everyone keeps telling me that over the past seven years I've witnessed more horrors and atrocities than anyone should have to in a lifetime, but no one cares to tell me what I'm supposed to do now that it's over. In the final battle, Snape, Lupin, and almost all of the Aurors in the Ministry died to make sure I could get to Voldemort, and I failed them. If it hadn't been for Ron..." He trailed off.

"What about Ron? What did he do?" Sydney demanded. Hermione looked equally interested, but Harry had finished talking.

"You really don't know what happened?" Sydney observed, turning to Hermione.

"I told you, I wasn't there, Ron doesn't remember and Harry won't talk about it," Hermione replied, as Harry, hoping to escape, got out of the car and started walking towards the park.

"Haven't you ever asked him about it?" Sydney asked, watching Harry leave.

"Well, no," Hermione admitted. "He'll tell us when he wants to. You've got to understand, he's been fighting Voldemort longer than any of us. He has his own way of dealing with things and it works for him as long as we leave him alone."

"Oh, no, I don't think so," Sydney said, jumping out of the car to chase down Harry and dragging Hermione along with her. When they caught up, Sydney exclaimed, "Alright, whatever happened, it's driving you insane. Now, you've both got to pull yourselves together and finish this job. If you're not going to talk about it, that's none of my business, but the way things are going now, we're never going to stop history from repeating itself."

Sydney hadn't intended for her words to be especially biting, merely eye-opening, so it was with some surprise that she observed poorly masked flashes of fear, anger, pain, and misery behind Harry's eyes. At this point, she would have welcomed any sort of outburst of emotion from the Wizard, so it was much to her annoyance that Harry simply shrugged away from them once again, muttering some lame excuse about having "stuff to do."

When he'd said that, Harry had been using rather broad definitions off the words "stuff" and "do." In fact, he hadn't meant much by it at all except as a means to secure some solitude. He wandered aimlessly around the playground for a minute, only realizing that such solitude would probably exist in the men's restroom after he'd already passed it, so he located another suitable refuge, a chain link fence encircling the playground, and sat down against it.

Without intending to, he found himself watching the children at play and marveling at their innocence. They knew nothing of the terror Harry had so narrowly averted a few months previous, and, in all likelihood, little more about the problems in their own Muggle world. Their main concern consisted of wondering who would be tagged "it" next, or whether or not anyone else had discovered their super secret hiding spot. Harry had been robbed of that innocence and simplicity so early in his life that he could scarcely imagine what it was like to live with it. His earliest memories were of avoiding or receiving Dudley's numerous poundings, unless the infantile memory of his parents' murders was to be counted.

Attempting to rid his mind of this line of thought, Harry hit his head against the fence behind him, quite forgetting that the spot he'd chosen also sported a hard metal pole. Thus, the act had achieved the desired effect, something he considered a worthy exchange for the throbbing pain he now felt. Absently, he stretched out an arm to the ground below and grabbed up a handful of dirt, then watched as it sifted through his fingers and into the grave below.

Slowly, Harry straightened up and stepped back to where Ron and Hermione were standing. Ron was hugging Hermione around the shoulders with his left arm while she held him around the middle, carefully avoiding his heavily bandaged right arm, which hung limply at his side. Tears made their way slowly down Hermione's face and Ron's eyes were red and blotchy. Harry's glasses kept fogging up, and he had long since given up trying to keep them clear. Around them were other Hogwarts students and staff along with a few members of the Ministry and Wizarding community, all dressed in black and in similar states of grief.

"It was a beautiful eulogy, Harry," Hermione said, her voice taking on a pitiful quiver.

"Lupin deserved better than that," Harry sighed. "They should've picked someone else, waited to find Tonks, or somebody. Nothing I could have said would ever do him justice."

"Nothing anyone could have said would do that," Ron replied. "They picked the right person."

"I hope so," Harry said.

"What do we do now?" Hermione asked.

"I don't know," Harry shrugged, "help rebuild, I guess."

"I meant about the three of us," Hermione clarified, carefully. "How do we just move on from something like this? We've been fighting this war for seven years, and now its over."

"I don't know," Harry repeated. "I don't have all the answers. I never did."

If anything, Hermione looked even more downcast than before.

"Harry?" someone called. "Harry!"

Harry found himself back on the ground against the fence, staring up into Hermione's concerned face.

"Are you alright?" she asked. "You haven't even moved for almost half an hour."

"Yes, I'm fine," Harry replied curtly. "Thanks."

"You sure?" Hermione pressed, eyeing him warily.

"Yes, really," Harry said, allowing a hint of annoyance into his voice.

"Sydney says we should get going," Hermione said. "She got a map while you were over here. She thinks she found a good place to stay the night."

"Alright," Harry said as he got to his feet.

While he and Hermione caught up with Sydney and they all started walking, but the two women turned away from the parking lot and down the sidewalk.

"What about the car?" Harry asked.

"I called the CIA office in London, they're going to take care of it," Sydney replied. "I thought it was best if we change transportation for awhile."

Harry nodded and marveled at the Muggle's efficiency. She seemed to have things covered remarkably well, better than he did at the very least. This revelation came with a sharp pang. After all, until very recently, it had been him who was most on top of any plan and most willing to go into battle. However, it seemed that he could no longer deny the fact that he was rapidly losing touch with his friends and allies, the pace of which was only matched by the rate at which he was losing control of his own mind. There was no other explanation for it, after all. Why else would it persist in forcing him to relive some of the most terrible memories of his life, created during a single battle he wished had never happened. He wasn't entirely sure what to call them, flashbacks, living memories, maybe, or the bane of his existence, but there was no denying them anymore.

He'd been able to write them off easily enough at first- the nightmares which had plagued his summer were no different from those which had haunted most of his life, and, aside from being disturbing and sleep depriving, they didn't cause him any trouble. Even when they had started invading his waking hours, he hadn't let them bother him. After all, who was to say he hadn't simply nodded off all those times; falling asleep at random intervals was a trademark of narcolepsy, not insanity.

However, that particular theory was quickly losing credibility as well. He hadn't fallen asleep in that burning hotel, not while having the flashback about Lupin. Even when he was knocked out on the stairs, that flashback had started making a nuisance of itself a few seconds before then. He supposed that he might have been more or less catatonic when Hermione had come and fetched him a few minutes earlier, but he hadn't started out that way. He distinctly remembered sifting dirt through his hand when the thing started. It was almost as though these memories had personalities of their own, and all were jockeying for possession of his conscious mind.

It was a vastly annoying predicament. He was having enough trouble with their current war against the Death Eaters without being forcibly reminded of the last one.

This train of thought had carried Harry all the way through the taxi ride to another rental car lot, a fact he also found annoying, since he hadn't managed to discover exactly why he was having these flashbacks, nor had he found a way to make them stop. It seemed he had managed to waste a large amount of time he could have used to ponder a way to rescue Ron and Michael and put an end to the Death Eaters. Harry was even more furious with himself after he slid absently into the back seat of a new rental car. He had apparently spent the time between reaching the lot and getting the car thinking about how angry he already was with himself, and he vowed to at least spend the car ride working out a plan, although he was coming to doubt his own ability to think about anything besides his own mental problems for more than a few minutes.

As it transpired, however, his prowess in that regard didn't take much of a test- less than a quarter of an hour later they discovered Sydney's idea of a good place to stay the night was a forested campground.

The Muggle got out and looked around, apparently satisfied, but she persisted in casting nervous looks in Harry and Hermione's direction. The reason for this was immediately obvious; if they were going to be camping, then they were missing a critical piece of equipment. Sydney seemed to have been banking on Harry and Hermione's ability to conjure a tent. Fortunately, the two of them were up to the task and were, in fact, quite grateful that their skill at erecting a tent by hand wasn't about to be tested. Working together, they soon had a decent structure standing before them. It looked as though a storm of any level would destroy it, but quite up to an occasional gust of wind, which was all the weather had been throwing at them recently anyway. However, like most Wizard creations, it was much more impressive inside than out, containing three cots with sleeping bags, a table and chairs, and a small stove. They brought their belongings inside, but instead of immediately calling it a night as exhaustion from the day's activities might have directed, they sat down around the table.

As it worked out, Hermione and Sydney already had fully formed plans, but they were both a bit more suicidal than any of them would have liked. They settled in around the table, fully expecting to spend most of the night sipping conjured cups of coffee and consolidating the two plans in such a way that they at least stood some chance of getting out alive. No one had any complaints, however, at least now they were making some progress.