Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy, and all these other people are characters belonging to J.K. Rowling. I claim no rights to them, their surroundings, or their situations. Much to my sorrow.

--- 2 Harry: And Then a Hero Comes Along

"HARRY!" Ron and Hermione were upon him almost the instant he and Professor McGonagall (and Malfoy) appeared at the safe-house. Mrs. Weasley was no more than a step behind them, pushing them both gently out of the way to engulf him in a large motherly hug. Embarrassed as always, Harry was nonetheless glad of an excuse to let someone take Malfoy off his hands. McGonagall and one of Madame Pomfrey's assistants led the dazed Slytherin off to have his injuries treated.

"Harry, what happened? We were dreadfully worried," Hermione said scoldingly as Mrs. Weasley released him, looking him over carefully for signs of damage. Apart from speaking a bit huskily and smelling rather strongly of smoke, he was quite intact.

"Yeah, and what's with the Ferret?" Ron tilted his head scornfully in Malfoy's direction. "You manage to catch him with his back turned? Why'd you bother bringing him back--?"

"Ronald Weasley! What a thing to say!" His mother scowled at him. "As though Harry would stoop to cursing someone from behind, and with so much more important things going on!"

"Sorry, mum--"

Harry, who in point of fact was not entirely sure he wouldn't stoop to blasting Malfoy in the back if he got the chance, sighed and explained, "No, it wasn't me, he just had a spot of very bad luck. Or wasn't paying attention, more likely. One of the twins' fireworks went off right underneath him and knocked him clean off his broom."

"I knew those things weren't safe--" Mrs. Weasley began, glaring at Fred, who happened by at that moment and looked quite bewildered at the sudden assault; but Hermione interrupted (with an apologetic look,) "Well then, not to put too fine a point on it, but what's he doing still alive? The fireworks launched from right in the heart of the school, he must have been directly over the worst of the fire."

"Well, the git got lucky on that count." Harry removed his glasses and began trying to wipe the smoke from them on his t-shirt. "I was right overhead, saw it happen. I managed to get under him fast enough to catch him."

"Wicked!" Ron looked mightily impressed. "Wish I'd have seen that, it must have been some fancy trick flying--and you nabbed his broom too? Brilliant!"

Harry made a face. "Not exactly. Malfoy's a lot heavier than a Snitch, and he was dead weight. Knocked cold for a few minutes. We almost both came down right in the fire. If I hadn't managed to get a hand on his broom and hold onto my own with my legs, I'd have had to let him drop." He shook his head, shuddering slightly at the memory of dangling there, stretched between the two brooms, holding Malfoy suspended over the flames by the back of his robes and feeling his arms were about to be pulled from their sockets. "Take my advice, never try to steer two brooms at once, especially when one of them belongs to someone who hates you." He put the two broomsticks in a corner, grimaced, and stretched gingerly, aching all over.

"Oh, dear lad," Molly Weasley said, quite overcome. She hugged him again, somewhat to his discomfiture. "Come and have a drink, now, and let Poppy look you over...you've all done wonderfully, simply splendid. It's a shame, a terrible, terrible thing to have had to do," she added more quietly, one arm around Harry and the other around Ron as she led them to a table, "but it's done and over, now."

"So what do we do now?" Ron pulled up a chair and collapsed in it, the thought of what they had just done only beginning to sink in.

"Professor Dumbledore has it all worked out, dear, not to worry...he'll explain it all when the time comes. Oh, Poppy! If you've a moment--"

Harry sank wearily into a chair and sighed. His scar had begun to prickle within moments of arriving, and now it was burning him viciously; Voldemort must already have learned what they had done. "Yeah, all worked out," he muttered, the thought he'd been trying to repress for months now coming irrepressibly to the fore.

At one time, he'd believed wholeheartedly in the mythic qualities of Albus Dumbledore. With all the naivete of youth, he had looked up to the man as a hero unparalleled, trusting without question that the kindly old wizard would always come through triumphant in the end.

Despite growing evidence to the contrary, he'd remained secure in that wonderful illusion for four years, right up until Sirius had been lost. His eyes had been opened that day to Dumbledore's all-too-human shortcomings, among other, equally shocking realities.

No sooner had Sirius' name come to mind than he heard his own name called, and Sirius himself appeared as though conjured--singed a bit around the edges and looking even more disreputable than usual, but no matter. He was here. For the thousandth time, Harry thanked whatever benign powers watched over him and his friends that last year's expedition through the Veil had found his godfather alive.

Traumatised, to be sure; nearly broken, and more haunted than ever, but alive.

"Thank Merlin you're all right," Sirius said as they embraced briefly, clapping Harry on the back and then holding him out at arm's length to inspect him anxiously. "When you didn't come back with the rest of the Gryffindors, I was afraid--"

"I'm fine." Harry smiled. "I just had to rescue my arch-enemy from certain death. No worries."

Sirius stared at him in stunned bewilderment for a moment; then he belatedly caught the meaning, and chuckled a bit uneasily. "Draco. You must mean Draco..."

Harry reddened slightly. "Er, yes, rather. Not the other arch-enemy. Him, I wouldn't bother with."

"Quite right, my lad. Bad luck that you've got more than one, but...there it is." Sirius regarded him with mingled pride and sympathy, then gestured him back toward his chair. "Well, don't keep me in suspense. I want to hear all about it. Especially the look on Malfoy's face--I expect he was utterly humiliated?" He grinned hopefully.

"Well, not really. You see, I was just circling back from the tower when I saw the first rocket go off..."

As he described the harrowing mid-air rescue, Harry caught sight of Professor McGonagall and Madame Pomfrey closing in on Professor Snape, who wasn't looking especially well. It seemed there was about to be a confrontation. He went on with his story, but kept an eye on that situation, hoping it might give him the opening he'd been watching for since returning to Hogwarts that Autumn.

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