The Boy Who Lived

Panic

'I can't...' he gasped. 'I can't...' as the noise thundered in his ears, deafening him with memories of roaring, flashing spells and falling rubble collapsing around him.

He replayed in his mind the school, his home for so many years, being destroyed around him and he could do nothing to save it, he could do nothing to save those who were trapped inside.

The world was crumbling; darkness and destruction and chaos reigned.

He'd sent all those students to the dungeons, he had to save them.

'Harry,' Minerva said firmly. 'Look at me and count with me, slowly...' She slowly turned him around so he no longer faced the school. 'We won't go.' She led him back to the house. She noticed, thereafter, he refused look in that direction, even in the cottage he kept his back to the school.

When he came to tell Kingsley, Gawain, and Minerva the full details about the final duel with Voldemort, he had his second panic attack. He still hadn't told anyone about the third killing curse and now it was becoming a blur, like he'd cast it himself. He believed it was by his hand that Riddle had died because he'd forced the spell upon him. He could see, so vividly, the blaze of green light crackling against his counter spell, the ball of white light between them, slowly but surely being pushed back into the Elder Wand, into Voldemort himself. He had made that happen.

Minerva arranged for Harry to go to a Mind Healer called Willow Ulrich. He had, after all, been through a monstrous ordeal and she kicked herself for not organising it straight away. She contacted Molly too, suggesting that both Ron and Hermione go too. Molly agreed. Molly didn't think Ron was coping very well despite his new relationship with Hermione.

'I want to go to Grimmauld Place,' Harry announced a few days later.

Minerva went too and stayed for a few months before splitting her time between there and Scotland. Come September, she was to be the new Headmistress. In the immediate aftermath, the Aurors were crawling all over the school and no one could go close anyway.

They worked together to clear Grimmauld Place and turn it into a light and airy townhouse. Bill Weasley helped too, clearing the house of dark magic and Walburga's portrait. Harry appeared to relax remarkably despite the fact that he kept his house impeccably ordered. Too ordered, Minerva thought. She supposed it helped that his location was a secret and the press couldn't get near him and no one could hound him. But she knew, with great sadness in her heart, it was also because he was away from the school.

The biggest impact on Harry's life was the presence of Teddy. He and Minnie had visited Andromeda after she'd been to the school. He couldn't get enough of seeing his little Godson and was infatuated with the little baby. Harry loved the pure innocence of the little boy and that pureness stood against everything he just faced. Teddy gave him a reason for all he'd been through, especially when he gargled with laughter and grabbed at Harry's glasses or stuck his fingers painfully into Harry's nostrils and pinched his nose with sharp little nails.

Harry and Minnie kept calling on Dromeda. Perhaps it was because little Teddy filled Harry's heart with a bright light after so many years of darkness. Perhaps it was a different gut-instinct, for they noticed that Teddy wasn't perhaps as clean as he could be, or he was hungry, or he wasn't in a good routine. Perhaps it was obvious that Dromeda was not coping. She'd lost her soulmate, daughter, and son-in-law in little over two months. She was grieving and she was clearly hanging on precariously.

She broke at Tonk's funeral.

Harry was holding baby Teddy as he talked quietly with Mione and when he turned around, it was in time to see Dromeda walking away and not looking back. Teddy's nappy-changing bag was left on the grass by the open grave.