The First Day

Arthur stuck his head inside Percy's office. 'You doing anything for dinner tonight?'

Percy shook his head. 'Tinned soup. I still don't understand how Ron can cook and I can barely heat up soup without it exploding,' he sighed, perplexed by such an oddity.

'Come home with us, then.' Arthur's head tilted toward the corridor, where Harry waited, leaning against the wall.

Percy's eyes dropped to the blotter on his desk. 'I don't think I ought to...' he mumbled.

'Why not?' Arthur sidled into the office and closed the door.

'You can't tell me you haven't heard...' Percy sighed.

'I have,' Arthur acknowledged. 'But I want you to tell me.'

Percy picked up a quill and began to twiddle it between his fingers, carelessly smearing ink over them. 'I'm being investigated for what I did here last year,' he choked. He looked up, his eyes wet behind his glasses. 'Dad, I swear, I didn't believe in what they were doing...'

'I know you didn't,' Arthur soothed, pulling a chair around to Percy's side of the desk, and dropping into it.

'I thought... I thought when he came back, Harry was making things up, that he really was mental, and I was so stupid.' Percy sniffed, rubbing his nose on the back of his hand. 'Then they started throwing around accusations, and you were attacked in the Department of Mysteries... And I never came to see you, or even bothered to ask. I didn't speak to you for nearly three years... How can you just pretend it didn't happen? You and Mum both, you just act like I never tried to separate myself from you...'

Arthur dug a handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to Percy. 'You're my son, Percy,' he said quietly, as if it explained everything. Percy's eyes narrowed over the edge of the snowy cloth in confusion. 'Perce, I may not like the decisions you've made or will make. But I will always love you. Even when you were being a wanker. I've loved you since your mother told me about you.' Arthur pulled Percy closer. 'You're my son. Nothing you can say or do will change that...' He pressed a kiss to Percy's forehead, like he was a small boy, waking up from a nightmare.

'What's going to happen to me...?' Percy asked in a small voice.

'I don't know,' Arthur admitted. 'But nobody can argue with you about last year. You didn't have many options that didn't end in a slow, painful death for yourself. If you have any weaknesses, Perce, it's that you're too hidebound by rules and regulations. Sometimes, you have to break them, because there isn't a precedent for what's happening outside this office.'

Percy swiped his hands over his face. 'I thought that if we did things the "right" way, it would all work out, and that you lot were just undermining Fudge, then Scrimgeour.' He blinked and two fat tears rolled down his face. 'And I just couldn't believe you and Mum would ever think the Ministry wanted me to spy on you...' He blinked a few more times, his eyelids fluttering over his eyes, and more tears spilled down his face. 'I'm going to lose my position, aren't I?'

'I don't know...'

'I'm so sorry, Dad...' Percy wept, covering his face with his hands.

'At the very least, son, they're going to want to make sure you've learned from your mistakes about following someone blindly like you have. They're not going to want sycophants in here any more.' Arthur fished another handkerchief from his pocket and pulled Percy's hands away from his face, and began to gently blot his cheeks. Percy peered at him through his smudged glasses, his dark eyes red and swollen. 'And you could very well lose your place here at the very worst. You could be demoted so far down, that you'll have to take orders from Harry, and he's barely above a trainee. Or you could be sacked.' Arthur tugged Percy's glasses off and began to polish them on the edge of his cloak. 'But could you tell me something, son?'

Percy gulped and nodded. 'All right...'

'Did you ever think about what might happen if the Ministry lost and the Order came out on top?' Arthur asked bluntly.

'I...' Percy inhaled slowly. 'I didn't,' he confessed in a low voice. 'I mean, there weren't that many of you, comparatively speaking, and you had to work so far underground, you might as well have been a clandestine student organization.'

Arthur let that information sink in for a moment before he handed Percy's glasses back to him and stood up. 'No matter what happens, your mum and I will stand behind you...' He replaced the chair and put a hand on the doorknob. 'Now then. Come have a nice dinner. You can't keep eating tinned soup or beans. It's bad enough Charlie does that and likes it.' He opened the door, still chattering about Charlie. 'I thought your mum was going to keel over when she found out he eats cold tinned beans straight from the tin over the sink...' He waited in the corridor for Percy to gather his things and join him and Harry. 'Ready? I think your mum's made a lovely lamb stew for dinner tonight.'

'Lamb stew's my favorite,' Percy said softly, an unmistakable quiver running through his voice.

Arthur threw a smile over his shoulder. 'I know.' He punched the button for the lift and waited whistling softly, the picture of patience.

Harry took an unobtrusive step closer to Percy, and under the guise of examining the clasp of his bag, muttered, 'They just want to make sure you're not going to undermine Kingsley... A lot of people you worked with and trusted are due to come up for trial after the holidays in January.'

Percy felt his face draw into an expression of frank disapproval. 'Should you tell me that?' he asked tightly.

Harry shrugged. 'Probably not. But otherwise you'll obsess over it for ages... I thought they ought to have done this months ago, but I'm practically a trainee, so what do I know, right?' He adjusted the strap of his bag over his shoulder. 'It might get nasty,' he cautioned.

'Do they know how nasty it could get?' Percy asked, indicating Arthur's back.

One of Harry's brows rose into his fringe. 'It's why I told them.'

'Oh.' Percy glanced at Harry, who wore a smoothly indifferent expression. 'Thanks...'

*****

Percy leaned back in his chair, saying nothing, but listening to the bustle of conversation around him. Bill and Fleur had come to join them for dinner and Bill was talking about how Charlie had gotten a position on a dragon reservation in Wales, while George and Ron discussed what might sell best at Christmas. Fleur was attempting to make overtures toward Molly, who still wasn't quite sure what to make of her daughter-in-law. Percy reckoned it might have more to do with raising all those boys, than any real dislike. As feminine as Molly was, she never really had to deal with anyone quite like Fleur. In fact, Molly could be as boisterous as the twins had been. But she'd never admit it. Fleur was obviously making a concerted effort to not pass judgment on everything around her. Percy wondered what she'd been like before she'd married Bill. Something else I missed, he sighed to himself.

'Oh, Percy!' Molly exclaimed. 'I quite forgot...' She rose from her chair and hurried into the sitting room, returning a moment later with a bundle of wool. 'I thought you could do with a new one...' She dropped a burgundy jumper in his lap.

Percy unfurled it with shaking hands and swallowed hard, remembering the ones he'd sent back in a fit of pique. He lifted it to his nose and inhaled deeply. It smelled like Molly - the comforting scent of baking with the underlying scent of his mother that defined home to him. His fingers convulsed around the wool and he abruptly stood up. 'Excuse me for a moment, will you?' he mumbled, stumbling blindly into the back garden, heading for the relative shelter of the apple tree. He wrapped his arms around it, needing the support it gave him, lest he tumble to the cold, muddy ground. Percy pressed his forehead to the bark, a jagged edge digging into his skin.

'Perce?' George's soft voice carried on the crisp November night, loud in the stillness of the valley around them.

'I can't do it... I can't do it... I can't do it...' Percy moaned.

'Do what?' George asked, coming to stand next to Percy.

'Let them pretend the last three years never happened!'

'Trust me, they're not,' George said shortly. 'But you realized your mistake in the end, didn't you? I don't think it was as easy as Dad says it was for him to forgive you.' George held up a hand to forestall the torrent of words that he could see bubbling to Percy's lips. 'They won't forget. None of us will,' he added, almost as an afterthought. 'But we know you regretted some of the decisions you made and we...' George stopped and took a deep breath. 'We forgave you.'

He scuffed the toe of his trainer into the half-frozen mud. 'Bloody poet was right,' he muttered gruffly.

'What poet?'

'The quality of mercy is not strain'd./It droppeth as the gentle rain from the heaven...' George looked up with a bashful grin. 'I've been reading a lot lately...' George brushed aside the unlikely image of him reading a book that didn't involve explaining how to make something explode. 'We all have to move on at some point, Perce. And you can beat yourself up for the past, if you want. But don't do it in front of Mum and Dad. They went through enough before...' With that he turned and trudged back into the house, his arms wrapped around his body.

*****

Ginny dashed into the seventh year girls' dormitory and began to shed her soaked clothing, shivering violently. She rushed for the bathroom, pausing long enough to snatch a clean towel then continued her headlong dash into the bathroom. She headed for the closest shower cubicle and twisted the hot water tap, dancing in impatience waiting for the water gushing from the shower to heat up. 'Cold, cold, cold, cold...' she chanted. It had started to rain during the practice. Conditions had rapidly deteriorated from that point. The rain swiftly changed to freezing rain, that coated their broom handles with a slick layer of ice. Even now, Ginny could hear the ice in her hair crackling as it melted. After that, the rain became sleet that stung as it hit their exposed skin. Ginny knew they could use the weather training, but they didn't need it that badly. She wasn't going to risk anyone sustaining an injury. She ducked under the scalding spray, sighing in relief.

It was going to be a long night. Her Defense class had to make up some of last year's missed lessons, and despite the solid foundation the DA had given them; there were still large gaps in their Defensive magic education. Professor Carter had no choice but to double up the amount of work he set upon them. She still had a large pile of Potions homework that she'd been neglecting all week and her Astronomy class was meeting at eleven on top of the Astronomy tower for two hours. And Professor Trentham was just as exacting her in expectations of them as McGonagall had been.

However, if Ginny thought she was going to have a late night ahead of her, Hermione's was bound to be even longer. Hermione had passed the exams McGonagall had given her when she came back to school, but to Hermione's dismay, her marks had mostly been mere "Exceeds Expectations", not the "Outstandings" she had imagined. So in true Hermione fashion, she spent every free hour in the library studying. Some of it wasn't her overachieving nature, but the amount of additional assignments she had to complete, in order to catch up with the rest of them. Not that she needed the extra work, but the teachers seemed to want to have something besides that one test grade to evaluate her progress from her sixth year.

Ginny stood under the hot water, waiting for the numbness in her hands and feet to dissipate, chewing her lip. Grades weren't that important to Ginny. She could take or leave them. Nobody on a Quidditch team cared about her N.E.W.T.s. She only took any amount of interest in her upcoming tests in June because Molly cared about them so much. Something else was bothering Hermione, but she wouldn't talk about it. Ginny knew she and Ron had had a spat of some sort before Hermione had come back to school, but she'd heard about it from Harry's letters, so she didn't know all the details. Harry didn't even know the details. Although Ginny didn't see why it would bother Hermione. She and Ron bickered about everything from the color of the sky to whether or not Ron ought to put on a jacket when it was cold outside.

Regretfully, Ginny turned off the taps and grabbed the towel, hastily drying herself. If she hurried, she could take a few minutes to add more to her ongoing letter to Harry. She wrapped the towel around her body and walked into the dormitory. Hermione was sitting cross-legged on her bed, books and parchment spread around her. 'Hi,' Ginny said brightly.

Hermione jumped and slammed a book shut. 'Hi...' she said, stuffing the small book into her bag.

'Don't stop on my account,' Ginny quipped, digging through her trunk for a clean uniform.

'I'm not,' Hermione mumbled. 'Do you have your Arithmancy notes from September? I've borrowed Luna's, but she seems to take notes in a code only she knows...'

Ginny perched on the edge of her bed to work the thick, black tights up over her feet. 'Yeah. That's why I've never borrowed notes from her.' Ginny stood up to wriggle the tights past her knees, then slipped the dark grey pleated skirt over them. 'They're in the notebook on the night table...' she said, buttoning the skirt, then adjusting the waistband. She slipped her arms through the sleeves of a shirt and thoughtfully regarded Hermione while she buttoned it. 'You can take a night off, you know.'

Hermione shook her head. 'Can't.'

'Yes, you can.' Ginny threaded the scarlet-and-gold striped tie through the collar and began to knot it. 'You know... When Harry and Ron were here, you at least took some time off.'

'Only because I had to go with them to keep an eye on their shenanigans,' Hermione snorted. 'Someone had to clean up after them.'

'But you still did it,' Ginny persisted.

'Maybe after the holidays,' Hermione said reluctantly.

Ginny pulled a jumper over her head and brushed her hair. 'Will you at least take a break Saturday morning...? It's the first Gryffindor match... Harry and Ron are coming, and I think George is, as well.'

'I'll try...'

'No, you're going to do it!' Ginny snapped. 'You can't just keep yourself busy with books and studies. At some point you'll have to join the rest of us.' She slid her feet into her shoes. 'And in the end, it's not about how many Outstanding marks you receive on your N.E.W.T.s, it's about how much you enjoyed getting there...' Ginny picked up her scarf and cloak and threw them over her arm, then slung her bag over a shoulder. 'I'll be in the library...'

Hermione waited until Ginny's footfalls faded, then pulled the small book from her bag, fingering the cover of the book. She had to pick a translation project for Ancient Runes for the next term. The others were using the recommended books by Professor Babbling, but Hermione had thought about translating the copy of -Tales of Beedle the Bard Dumbledore had left her. The problem was, it brought up all sorts of unpleasant memories from the previous year.

Sighing, Hermione replaced the book, and slid off her bed to find Ginny's notes.

*****

Harry tapped a quill on his desk, before pulling a piece of parchment toward him.

18 November 1998

Gary Durbin

Headmaster

Salem Institute

Salem, Massachusetts

Dear Mr. Durbin,

I have become aware that one of your former teachers is now the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Given the somewhat sketchy character of some of the recent witches and wizards who have held that position, I'm sure you can understand my concern about someone who is virtually an unknown quantity taking it over.

If at all possible, I'd like to see his employment records from the Salem Institute.

Sincerely,

Harry J. Potter, Auror

Ministry of Magic

London, England

Harry sealed the letter and tucked it into his pocket. He craned his head around the warren of cubicles until he found Peter Wilson, his immediate supervisor, muttering over a list of dates. 'Hey, Peter, I need to go take something to the post office...'

Peter glanced up, a small grin on his face. 'Letter for your girl?'

'Not exactly.' Harry tucked his hands into the pockets of his coat. 'Something for work,' he allowed.

'Yeah, go on. Just be back by two.'

'Why two?'

Peter tucked a quill behind his ear. 'They want to talk to you about Severus Snape.'

Harry felt his heart drop to his feet. 'W-w-why...?'

Peter's hands laced together and he rested them on top of his head, elbows jutting out to the side. 'They haven't decided whether or not to try him yet. Apparently, you know some information that could completely exonerate him.' Peter eyed Harry narrowly. 'Do you?'

'Yeah...' Harry gently banged the toe of his boot against the edge of the cubicle's wall. 'What purpose would it serve?' he asked. 'To try him. He's dead, isn't he? Let him be dead...'

'Because it makes other people feel better,' Peter grumbled. 'Go do your errand, then, and just be in the Minister's office before two, all right?'

'Yeah, fine.' Harry trudged toward the lifts. He made his way to Diagon Alley and stepped into the post office, silently pushing the sealed letter across the counter.

'How quickly do you want it in the States?' the bored witch behind the counter asked.

'What's the fastest owl you have?' Harry replied quietly.

The witched looked up at the owls perched over her head. 'Hmmm. Got one that'll get to - Massachusetts, is it? - in two days. Ten Galleons.'

'Brilliant,' Harry muttered under his breath, pulling a moneybag from his coat pocket and counting out ten gold coins.

'Will you want a receipt for that?'

Harry shook his head. 'No, thank you.'

The witch beckoned to a huge grey owl and tied Harry's letter firmly to its leg. 'Go on then,' she told it. It nipped her hair and spread its wide wings and launched itself upwards and through the large circular window near the ceiling.

'How does it get there so fast?' Harry asked curiously.

'The ones that are meant for long-distance deliveries are charmed. Especially the ones meant to deliver in a couple of days.' The sound of someone clearing their throat made Harry turn around.

'Are you done here?' the witch behind him asked irritably.

'Erm... Yeah...' Harry stepped away from the counter and started to walk out of the post office. 'Thanks,' he called to the witch behind the counter. He glanced at his watch as he walked out of the door and wondered if it was too early to get Ron and George to stop for lunch. Molly had taken to packing a basket for them in the mornings, since neither of them bothered to stop for lunch if they had to fetch it from somewhere else. Business was starting to pick up again for the Christmas holidays and the shop was bustling with harried-looking witches, trying to find something appropriate for their children. Pygmy Puffs seemed to be popular with girls and for small children. A pale blue one currently snuggled against a tiny boy, making soft chirping sounds. Puffskeins and Pygmy Puffs loved small children. There were always bits of something clinging to their clothing and for some reason, if they were allowed to sleep with the child, the Puffskein or Pygmy Puff would unobtrusively snake their long, velvety tongue into the child's nose and eat his or her bogies. Arnold, Ginny's Pygmy Puff, had a thing for earwax.

'Hiya, Harry!' Ron called over the ruckus.

'Hi. Too early to eat?'

'Nah. I was about to take a break.' Ron knelt in front of the tiny boy. 'Once you get him home, you won't have to keep him in the cage, but until then, let's put him in it. He'll be all right.'

The little boy looked at Ron doubtfully. 'Are you sure?'

'Positive. My own sister has one.' The boy seemed to think about it, then allowed Ron to transfer the small, fluffy creature into a small, square cage with a small handle on the top so the child could carry it. Ron herded the boy up to the counter where his mother waited patiently to pay for it. As soon as the mother and little boy left, Ron and Harry slipped into the back. 'Mum's packed some sandwiches, I think,' Ron muttered, poking through a basket. 'And maybe some soup or leftover stew from the other night...'

'Snape's today,' Harry said suddenly.

Ron's hand froze, hovering over the basket. 'What?'

Harry took a deep breath. 'They're doing his hearing today.'

'That doesn't make sense,' Ron blurted. 'I mean, he's dead, isn't he?'

Harry barked in bitter laughter. 'Yeah, but I don't think the Wizengamot cares. They're going to excoriate everyone they can.' His mouth twisted suddenly as he fought back surprising tears. 'What are they going to do? Dig him up so they can flog him?'

Ron slowly set a sandwich down on the table. 'Harry... Is there something you're not telling me, mate?'

Harry dropped down on the tall stool next to the table. 'They don't have a reason to. Dumbledore was right about him. He was always on our side.'

Ron unwrapped a sandwich and pushed it across the table. 'D'you have any proof, then?'

'Just his memories,' Harry sighed. 'And there's no bloody way I'm going to allow them to see them,' he said fiercely.

'What if you have to?' Ron asked tentatively.

Harry prodded the sandwich. 'No. I'll figure something out, even if I have to take the entire damn Wizengamot to Hogwarts to talk to Dumbledore's portrait.'

'You think it'll come to that?'

'Knowing the Wizengamot, it might.' Harry pushed the sandwich away. 'I'm not very hungry,' he apologized. 'I think I'm just going to go back and figure out what I'm going to say.'

Ron nodded. 'Harry, if you want to... You know... talk later...'

The corner of Harry's mouth tipped up slightly. 'I know where to find you.' He slid off the stool and took a step away from the table. 'After dinner?'

'There's a pub down in the village,' Ron said. 'It's kind of quiet, if you don't want to be in the house...'

'Yeah... That would be good.' Harry slipped through the curtain and left the shop.

*****

At least it's not Courtroom Ten, Harry thought sourly. Several members of the Wizengamot sat clustered around a large, heavy, rectangular table, that seemed to fill the room. Harry sat at one end, with Shacklebolt next to him, nervously rolling the hem of his jumper between his thumb and forefinger. To his enormous surprise, McGonagall strode through the door and took a seat on Harry's other side.

'Potter,' she said, by way of greeting.

'Professor...' he murmured, his tongue sticking to the roof of his mouth.

Casting a gimlet eye at the gathered Wizengamot, McGonagall turned to Harry. 'What is this charade all about?' she asked archly, not bothering to lower her voice.

'To see if they can add Professor Snape to the list of people to try in January,' Harry told her, his voice quiet, but he could see a few Wizengamot members shift uneasily.

'But he's dead,' McGonagall snorted.

'Tell me something I don't know,' Harry muttered.

McGonagall leaned over Harry. 'I cannot believe you're allowing this disgusting display of law-enforcement continue, Kingsley,' she told the Minister sharply. 'I thought you had better scruples than that.'

'Yes, I am.' Shacklebolt shifted so he could face McGonagall. 'If Severus was truly innocent, he deserves to have his name cleared once and for all, and if this is how I can achieve it, then so be it.'

McGonagall's lips thinned in a manner Harry knew very well, and settled stiffly into the hard chair once more. 'Let's get on with it, then, shall we?'

A middle-aged witch Harry vaguely remembered from his hearing before his fifth year tapped the table with a small gavel. 'The Wizengamot calls this hearing to order on the eighteenth of November, nineteen ninety-eight, at two in the afternoon. We are here to determine whether or not one Severus Tobias Snape should be tried for crimes committed against wizarding Britain from the twenty-third of June, nineteen ninety-seven through the second of May, nineteen ninety-eight. The charges are as follows: the murder of Albus Dumbledore; an accomplice to the murder of Charity Burbage; accomplice to the torture of students at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry...'

As her voice droned on and on, Harry could feel his face stiffening into a rictus of suppressed rage. 'Enough!' he blurted. 'He was a double agent. Do you think he'd have been alive at the very end if he'd allowed the slightest bit of what he was really after to leak through? Don't you think Voldemort would have killed him outright? He couldn't let his true feelings show any more than Narcissa Malfoy could have. And I don't seem to see her on any trial lists...'

The witch leading the proceedings glared at Harry over the rims of her glasses. 'Mr. Potter, such outbursts are unacceptable in these proceedings. Mrs. Malfoy is not the issue here, Professor Snape is.'

A wizard in plum velvet robes leaned forward. 'How do you know all this, Mr. Potter? Were you in contact with Professor Snape at all while you were gallivanting around Britain last year?'

'I wasn't gallivanting,' Harry said tightly. 'We - Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, and I - were trying to find the only way possible to defeat Voldemort. When we weren't freezing, we were hungry, tired, or terrified,' he added.

'And what precisely was that method?' another witch asked.

Harry sighed. 'Ever heard of a Horcrux?' he mumbled.

'Those are mythical,' the witch dismissed.

'They're real,' Harry countered. 'It's just you have to murder someone to complete the transaction. Voldemort was using Horcruxes to stay alive. He couldn't be stopped until all of them had been destroyed.' Unconsciously, Harry began to rub his fingers over the scar on his forehead, tracing the ridge that symbolized so much about himself he hated. 'And there's only two ways to destroy them - stab it with something that's been infused with basilisk venom, if not an actual basilisk fang, or Fiendfyre.' Harry inhaled deeply. 'But we're talking about Snape here, not Voldemort.'

'I have written testimony from Neville Longbottom, saying that Snape tried to protect the students as much as possible.' Shacklebolt Banished a sheet of parchment toward the officiating witch. 'From when Luna Lovegood, Ginny Weasley, and he broke into Snape's office.' He waited while the witch scanned the document, then passed it to the person next to her. 'Mr. Longbottom asserts that when the Carrows demanded the three of them be turned over to them for... punishment...' Shacklebolt paused. 'Severus refused and merely gave them detentions. Detentions, Mr. Longbottom adds, that were hardly punishments at all. He confined them to the Defense classroom for the evening for three weeks. They were allowed to complete their homework and studies for their other classes.' He pulled another sheet of parchment from the folder on the table. 'I also have a statement from Mr. Seamus Finnegan that states while Severus did not actively stop the activities of the Carrows, he made efforts to shield the students as much as possible, revoking their detentions, and reassigning the students to other professors for the detention. He also states the injuries he sustained during the school year were inflicted on him by other students.'

'That was as much as the rest of us could do,' McGonagall said suddenly.

'I also have a statement from the previous Headmaster, Albus Dumbledore, recorded by a Dictation Quill on the first of November, that verifies everything Harry and Minerva have told you.' Shacklebolt Banished the parchment to the officiating witch.

'I don't know that we can accept this as proper evidence,' she murmured, examining the document.

'Why?' retorted McGonagall. 'Because Albus is dead? That doesn't seem to be stopping you for Severus.'

'The difference is Snape was a cold-blooded murderer,' grumbled an elderly wizard.

'Professor Dumbledore was dying anyway,' Harry said. 'Professor Snape was only hastening the inevitable. By Dumbledore's request.'

'It's in the statement,' Shacklebolt added.

The officiating witch beckoned to three other members of the Wizengamot. The four of them huddled together, whispering. The hissing sounds reminded Harry uncomfortably of Parseltongue. At length, with much gesticulating, the four of them seemed to come to a decision. The officiating witch picked up the small gavel and rapped the table sharply with it. 'We shall recess to examine this new evidence and one of us will journey to Hogwarts to question Albus Dumbledore directly. This committee and the witnesses will reconvene in two weeks' time.' She rapped the table once more and the assembled members of the Wizengamot filed from the room.

Harry slumped in his chair, wishing heartily the whole process was over.