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After the battles had ended there was only one thing Harry asked for. He had gone to Dumbledore and the aging wizard had merely nodded sombrely. If he was surprised by the request, he hadn’t shown it.
Harry asked for 12 Grimmauld Place.
There had been talk by some bureaucrats at the now newly formed Ministry of setting it up as some sort of museum but no one had argued when Dumbledore had told them that Harry wished to have the building, and as Sirius had left it to the Order, and the Head of the Order had given it to Harry, there was nothing they could do about it.
And so it was a cold day in February when Harry finally took possession of the house. He didn’t go inside or have final look around, he just sat on the kerb on the other side of the now deserted street and looked at it, the charms having now been taken off the house. New ones had been cast but none that stopped the building from being seen. These new charms had another purpose all together - to contain something other than hate and pain and memory.
He finally stood up, took his wand out of his sleeve and took a deep breath, but before he could raise his wand a hand settled on his shoulder and gave it a small squeeze. Harry turned around to see Remus standing just behind him; his eyes as fixed on the building as Harry’s had been previously.
The war hadn’t been kind on any of them but while Remus had functioned almost superhumanly as a member of the Order, to Harry he seemed to have never really recovered from what happened over two and a half years before. Harry didn’t really like to think about it but he was quickly coming to the conclusion that this was perhaps the last time he would see Remus. A certain room at the Department of Mysteries had been calling to him and now he had no excuse not to answer it.
Remus gave Harry the smallest of smiles and then came to stand beside him. ‘I considered you might want to be alone to do this, but…’
‘You have as much right to be here as I do, Remus.’
‘Thank you.’ He paused and then indicated at the building with his now drawn wand, ‘Shall we?’
‘Yeah. He would have wanted this, wouldn’t he?’
Remus gave a small chuckle, but it wasn’t a particularly happy sound, ‘He talked about doing it himself, all the time when we were at school, and then again, before....’ He left the end of the sentence hanging; both of them didn’t need it to be filled. ‘In fact,’ his eyes drifted slightly upward, ‘I’m sure he’s telling us to get the hell on with it right now.’
Harry’s lips turned up slightly before eyeing the house with new determination, ‘Good.’
The two men pointed their wands at the house of horrors, the building that had been frequently termed a mausoleum by more than one of its former inhabitants, that had caused so much pain to a man they had both loved, and said as one, ‘Incendio.’
--
Said, I’m going buy this place and start a fire
Stand here until I fill all your heart’s desires.
Cos, I’m going to buy this place and see it burn
And do back the things it did to you in return.
‘A Rush of Blood to the Head' – Coldplay