What's a man to do? When he's climbed, since birth, a long and treacherous mountain, has laughed and cried, been born and died, in the shadow of it's tapering peaks, only to find, at it's zenith, that he can go no higher? Looking up from it's summit at an endless sky, but without wings with which to fly: that slow death is the sole province of so-called "Great Men".
Imagine: Standing at the summit of your greatest achievement, realizing that no matter what you do after this point, you'll never again equal, in your own eyes and those of society at large, this one moment. You've reached your peak, achieved your destiny, and anything you do after this moment, no matter how much blood, sweat and tears you put into it, will always be a footnote, tacked on at the end of the monolith that is this achievement. Your life is over, that your heart still beats in your chest is irrelevant.
Harry laughs bitterly. There's a reason, after all, that stories end. It's not because all the characters have died, or that they've done nothing with the rest of their lives.
It's because, after that moment of glory, nothing they do matters. The stakes just aren't as high. It's not that they stop moving, stop feeling all together. No, that's ridiculous. Things are just more dull, more… monochromatic. The anger isn't as red. Sadness a shallower blue. Rushing blood grows stagnant in their veins.
The challenge is gone. There exists two options: you can rest on your laurels, coasting on the glory of a moment, or you can scurry through life, vainly trying to become, as you once were, a God.
No, you shout! This man will be happy, knowing he's achieved his goal, and retire to a country house where he will have two children with a nice redheaded girl he met in school, and fulfill himself doing good, upstanding auror work and occasionally signing autographs for tear-ridden fans.
Perhaps, if this were anyone else, such a blissful existence might be possible. But Harry Potter had always been the stubborn type. And though he might shout, through tumultuous adventures and far too many near-death experiences—Or, as happens to be the case, actual death experiences—that he'd rather live a normal life, that was a lie.
Truth is, Harry Potter had never had a normal life, and wouldn't know one if it slapped him 'cross the face. He was an adrenaline junkie in denial, a warrior in a time of desk-jobs and bureaucracy, an explorer in a banal world of things mostly known. If his fans were to finish this analogy, they would call him a shining knight without a dragon to slay or a princess to save.
There weren't any battles left to fight. Or, there were, they simply weren't the kinds of battles that lent themselves to Harry's peculiar sort of problem solving skills.
Those were fights more suited to Hermione's talents, a slow erosion of injustice working from inside the system, using precedence and bureaucracy to their advantage. That would be where she truly came into her own as more than Harry Potter's companion.
And Harry? Well, Harry was slowly coasting towards the Island of Azkaban, standing alone on a rickety canoe he'd charmed to row itself, covered in a cloak of invisibility. Dawn light emerged from behind the ominous shade of the castle, which was obscured by what, from a distance, appeared to be dark clouds, swirling agitatedly before a storm.
The invisible cloaked figure pulled a yew wand from his sleeve, before waving it.
"Expecto Patronum."
A golden vortex swirled at it's tip, before shifting into the form of a stag, tall and proud, its great horns brandished at the horizon. Obeying the man's wordless command, the stagg sprang forward, leaving small ripples as it ran across the North Sea, light as air.
A harbinger of what was to come.
The wizard removed the hood of his cloak, revealing piercing green eyes and wary features. The man watched it go, before looking down at the stone he held in the palm of his hand. So small, yet so powerful. He'd intended, at one point, to leave it in the forbidden forest, letting it sink over the space of millennia into the bowels of the earth. If it couldn't be destroyed by magic, perhaps it was time to give Father Time and Mother Nature a go?
But the stone was insatiable. It called towards it any living thing with enough sentience to mourn the dead, and trapped it in the past, manipulating the mind of its owner until they either killed themselves or just starved to death, enraptured by what could have been. And slowly, victim by victim, it made its way to Harry. The one who got away.
And with it, Harry made his way to Azkaban. The prison where Sirius had been tortured under false pretenses, until he was a shadow of his former self. Harry remembered him: the gaunt, tortured features, haunted eyes underlined with sleepless nights.
It didn't matter to Harry that most of those now in prison were Death Eater's that he himself had fought. It didn't matter that they were revising all cases that Crouch had presided over, searching for other miscarriages of justice.
None of that mattered. This wasn't about them. This was about Sirius, and killing some fucking dementors. After the Second Wizarding War, dementors haunted the countryside, feasting on wizard and muggle alike. Even with all the other problems, this was one of the new ministry's greatest hurdles. Through what manpower remained and with the help of brave volunteers, they repelled the dementors, who responded to the onslaught by retreating to their home, the Island of Azkaban deep in the North Sea.
And they returned, more or less, to their previous function as wardens of the damned. The Ministry was at a loss for how to get rid of the menaces, who for all intents and purposes appeared immortal to any weapon of man or wizard borne.
So Harry would attack them with the weapon of a God. He'd consulted with Dumbledore's portrait, with Hermione, and experimented with the blasted rock until he was sure it could accomplish its task.
Well, as sure as he could be without trying it on the real deal. But it would work out for the best. Probably.
Hermione was going to be pissed when she realized what happened.
The castle was in plain sight now, and he could feel the chill of the Dementors' presences through his cloak. He stepped off the boat. Phantom hands around his neck restricted his breathing, making his breaths panicked and shallow. Green light flashed before his eyes.
Not Harry! Please, no, not Harry — I'll do anything!
Step aside, girl!
He closed his hands over the stone like a prayer, and called for them.
"Prisoners of Azkaban come and gone, I stand before the creatures that ended you! Will you wake from your slumber to destroy your murderers?"
There was no answer, but Harry heard a dull roaring in his mind. Eyes shining, a fierce, animalistic smile made its way onto Harry's face. Something was coming. The stone shined through his hands, before a veritable river of spectres flowed from it racing like a single beam towards the prison. They separated, and came upon the dementors like a pack of wolves.
A Dementor separated itself from the spirit of a miserable looking one-eyed man to attack him. Well, it was now or never.
He held the stone before him as the Dementor came near, and felt a pressure in his mind through his connection to the stone. He pulled a single string from the ball of pressure, and it unravelled in an instant. The Dementor before him didn't even scream as it turned to mist and was absorbed into the stone.
Reluctant smile. Now he just needed to do that a few hundred times. The dementors, of one mind like a hive of wasps, escaped from the spectres clutches and came for him. They came together, and twisted towards him, a typhoon of shadows with eager hands, as tall as the castle walls.
Well then. Fuck.
Harry held the stone aloft and clenched in a grip like death, teeth gritted so hard they might break, a tear of sweat making its languid way down his brow. Something bubbled its way up his chest, cold and a hateful. Vindictive. The stone and he, of one mind. Blue light shone through his grip like the first rays of sunrise.
Finally he released it, and the stone shot from his grip like a miniature sun, the angry ball of pale blue light growing as it gained speed and collided with the dementors. It tore through them like wet paper, it's painful light dissolving them like ice in water.
Harry collapsed onto his knees, breathing heavily. He glanced back up. The stone sat in the air, still shining and surrounded by a formless black miasma. A beat of imperceivable energy erupted from the stone, extending through the whole island. Then, as if rebounding off an unseen wall, it bounced back, taking the blackness with it into the stone. Gravity remembered itself, and the stone fell back towards the ground.
Bam.
Right onto Harry's head.
It slid off and fell to the floor. Harry sighed. He swore he heard the stone laughing at him. He put the stone back in his pocket, before reluctantly standing up on unsteady feet. He cracked open a chocolate bar as he looked around at the prison of Azkaban, which somehow appeared even more haunted because of the lack of movement the Dementors had so graciously provided.
He could destroy it. Right here, right now, he could light the prison, and all those inside it, with the sinister glow of fiendfyre. Everything would disappear.
He was tempted, but only slightly. No matter the atrocities committed inside it, it was still necessary.
So he turned around wordlessly and walked back towards his boat, without a second glance. The sooner he could leave this place behind, the better. He took another bite of chocolate.
Mm. Almonds.
Harry Potter popped into the Ministry of Magic at 15:35, on a friday. This was especially significant, since it's a commonly held fact that most important things happen on friday. The Battle of Hogwarts started on a friday. John F Kennedy got assasinated on a friday. Abraham Lincoln got assasinated on a saturday, but that's just because Americans are lazy. Austro Hungarian wizard Georg Semantik once wrote a treatise on the magical and arithmetic significance of friday in the Gregorian calendar, but common sense declares that most important things happen on friday simply because people choose to get the excitement out of the way and take the weekend to relax.
Well, that was Harry's professional opinion, anyway.
He got his wand checked by a nervous Ministry worker. She was probably new—Harry visited often enough to know most of them by name.
"Hello. Harry Potter." He introduced himself, even though she clearly recognized him.
She stared at him for a minute, before realizing she should probably say something.
"Oh—uh, I know." He raised an eyebrow. "I mean, uh, hello, my name is, I mean, that is to say." She took a deep breath. "I'm Marlene. I'm new here."
"Fresh out of Hogwarts?" He asked like he wasn't graduating age himself. But he'd graduated a year ago, after Voldemort. Honorary N.E.W.T.s in DADA, Potions, Transfiguration, Charms and Care for Magical Creatures—a perk of killing a dark lord, and which, none too coincidentally, allowed him to become an Auror early to assist with reconstruction and hunting down remaining Death Eaters. Most of those who'd fought at the Battle of Hogwarts had gotten perks like that.
What can you do? Blood pays.
Marlene finished checking his wand, standard procedure. "Is there anything else I can help you with?" She fidgeted.
He smiled at her. She was kind of cute. "Yes, please page Kingsley's secretary, Anne, and tell her I'll be wanting a meeting. Urgently. It's important."
It took her a second to realize that by Kingsley, he was talking about the Minister of Magic.
"Um, yes, of course." She jotted down a quick message before tapping the paper with her wand. It expertly folded itself into a paper plane and flew, presumably, to Anne.
He thanked her before heading to the lift, examining the atrium as he did. It was a hive of activity, the hustle and bustle of hundreds of people too busy to deal with your problems backdropped by the pitter-patter rhythm of thousands of feet. This was the junction, the crossways where everything holding together the wizarding world met and mixed together in an unholy batter of urgency, authority, incompetence and good intentions.
Still, it felt empty. While they'd gotten rid of the statue declaring Magic Is Might that Death Eaters had instaured in their brief reign relatively quickly, they hadn't yet found or commissioned a replacement for the gaudy golden fountain it had replaced.
It was deemed non-essential, most likely. Kingsley was great like that: focussed on efficiency more than appearance, and with a total lack of pompousness that would make Malfoy cringe.
The thought brought a smile to his face.
Bing. That was his floor. The Minister's Office. He pushed himself through ministry workers crowding the elevator, greeted Anne as he walked past and opened Kingsley's office door before his knock was acknowledged.
He looked up from his desk. "Ah, Harry. I got your note, but I have a meeting with the head of Goblin Liaison Office in 15 minutes. You said it was urgent, so I can delay, of course, but Hemburg is almost as temperamental as the creatures he works with, and I'll never hear the end of it."
He'd changed his look slightly since becoming Minister. The gold earing was gone, as were his somewhat more colorful robes. They were darker now, more serious, mourning, almost, those lost in the war, even a year later. He'd also grown a goatee. Beards were often signs of power in the wizarding world.
Harry resisted sadly caressing his still baby smooth face. Your time will come, he whispered to it.
Whispering to his would-beard. Harry crossed sanity off his long list of accomplishments.
"No, 15 minutes should be enough."
"Perfect, please take a seat." He did. "May I offer you a lemon drop? Say what you want about Dumbledore, and the man had many flaws, but his taste in sweets was not among them."
Harry took one, making to eat it before carefully putting it back.
"Calming draught, Kingsley?"
"Astute as always, Harry. What gave it away?"
"It's light, but the smell of Camomile is still detectable under the lemon."
"Something for the research department to work on, then."
"You have R&D working on sweets for your office?"
Kingsley smiled slightly. "Being Minister has certain… advantages." Then his back straightened, all business. "Let's get the niceties out of the way. What is so urgent, Auror Potter, that you needed to meet with me almost unannounced?"
Harry met his eyes. "I'm leaving."
The Ministers eyebrows scrunched. "Leaving what, precisely?"
"Everything. The Aurors. Magical England. I'm leaving."
"If all you need is some time off, Auror Potter, that can be arranged—"
"No. I don't know how long I'll be gone. I don't even know where I'm going yet, really. But I can't leave any responsibilites behind."
Kingsley continued to look at him with his calm, strong gaze, but under the surface Harry could see the tension building. He'd discovered, through working with him for almost a year, that Kingsley's anger was a volcano: mostly dormant for long periods of time, but building tension underneath, ready to blow at just the right moment.
"Mr Potter, the Ministry is in a very precarious position right now. Everything is still recovering from a civil war, and the Ministry doesn't have the public's trust. Without Harry Potter backing the new reform," and it pained him to say this, it really did, "without Harry Potter giving the ministry legitimacy, these new changes will stop in their tracks. We need more time before we can reestablish our authority!"
"You're wrong, minister. Yes, things are still recovering. Yes, there are definitely things that can be improved upon. But it's been a year. The Ministry is as strong as it's ever been, and under your guidance it will only get stronger. But if these new reforms can only pass because Harry Potter is behind them, these victories will be meaningless. The injustice will start coming back the second a new minister comes into office, and everything we've worked towards will have been for nothing."
He stood up and leaned forward, both hands on the desk.
"It's time the Ministry stopped using the image of Harry Potter as a crutch, and stands on its own two feet."
Kingsley continued to stare at him harshly. Harry sweat slightly under the gaze of a man he deeply respected, until Kingsley sighed, deflating like a balloon, the wind out of his sails.
He put his head in his hands. "You realize you just made my job a whole lot harder, don't you?" He gazed back up sourly. "You're not wrong. That was completely out of line, and if you weren't already quitting I'd consider firing you." Another sigh. "But you're not wrong."
Kingsley stood up from his chair and went for a cabinet, and Harry could almost see the weight on his shoulders. He tapped it with his wand and whispered, "nefandus aquarium," before pulling out a bottle of firewhiskey from what appeared to be a regular filing cabinet. The drink was apparently special enough to deserved an introduction, "This here is Blishen's Firewhisky, premium Highland Scotch firewhisky aged thirty-nine years. They call it the 'King of Whiskies'".
Kingsley's eyes sparkled just a bit as he admired it. Being Minister has certain advantages.
He grabbed two glasses and put them on the desk, none too gently, and collapsed into his chair. "Drink with me." It wasn't a question, so Harry didn't answer. He simply waited to be poured, and they drank in companionable silence.
Kingsley broke it. "As your minister, and as your friend, I have to ask you. What are you thinking, Harry? Why now?"
Harry paused. Kingsley and him had fought together against Voldemort, and worked together to make England a safer place for wizard and muggle alike for the last year. They'd gotten closer, and their respect for each other had only grown as they worked together. But this was the first time he'd acknowledged their relationship as anything beyond professional.
That wasn't nothing, especially coming from a goal-oriented person like Kingsley.
Harry swirled the firewhiskey in his glass, and took a swig. It burned a trail down his throat, leaving a warm glow in his stomach, like sitting by a fire. The warmth spread through his limbs, relaxing his muscles and loosening his tongue.
"I used to have… a purpose. I didn't realize it at the time, but from the first time I heard his name—Voldemort," even to this day, Voldemort's legacy was such that many would have flinched at his mere epithet. Kingsley was not 'many'. "Even before that, when I just knew him as You-Know-Who, the murderer of my parents, I had a direction. When I stopped him from getting the philosopher's stone that first year, when I found out the rotten bastard was more than dead, I had a purpose. A destiny, though I didn't realize how literally that was until later.
My whole life has been one disaster after the other, and I've just been running damage control. And it all leads back to him. Everything I've done up until now, every accomplishment, every hardship I've faced, has been because of one man. Everything converged perfectly so that we'd fight, if there was the slightest possibility, it was a certainty. And I fucking hate him so much."
Another gulp. A sigh of satisfaction.
"Just last year I finally got control of my destiny. I brought the fight to him, I was one step ahead. Seven steps ahead. I was decisive, not reactive. I had a purpose, and I was ready to do anything to end him. I did—I sacrificed myself so we would be able to kill him. And now he's dead, but I'm alive."
He looked into his empty glass like it could give him answers. He wasn't talking to Kingsley anymore, he was somewhere else. Somewhere Kingsley couldn't follow him.
"I died. I should be dead. I came back, but there's nothing left for me here. I realize now I'd never imagined—never allowed myself to imagine—a world without him hanging over my neck. And now I've done it. I killed Voldemort." He repeated it, louder this time. Rawer. "I killed Voldemort! This is all I've wanted, since that day in the graveyard. And he's dead!
He's dead, and—and, it changes nothing. My parents are still dead. Sirius is still dead. Dumbledore's dead, Rumus' and Tonk's are dead, and I'm Teddy's godfather. I'm supposed to somehow fill the hole they left, but I'm just a gaping hole myself. I never had parents. The closest I ever got was Sirius," a short, choked laugh, "but he was even more screwed up than me, and I was busy just trying to fill the hole my parents left in him."
Harry smirked into his alcohol as something occurred to him.
"I killed the Dementors today."
Kingsley was fine being a wall if Harry just needed to have someone there to watch him break down, but he was still the Minister of Magic.
"You what?"
"I killed the Dementors. Every last one of 'em. I used the stone—I guess it's useful for something, eh?" Then, as if he'd just thought of it, "you should probably put some more guards up there. They've probably got there hands full without those nightmare machines on your payroll."
That sounds pretty important, Kingsley thought. I should probably get on that.
He took another swig of firewhiskey.
They'd be fine until sunrise. Probably.
"You've still got Hermione. And Ron." He was about to say the Weasley's, but Fred's death was still a fresh scar. "And myself as well. Everyone from the Order. Haven't you made friends in the Aurors?"
Harry scoffed. "Those aren't friends. A year ago they thought I was crazy. Now they're just a bunch of fangirls. Refill me."
Kingsley split the rest between Potter's glass and his. He looked at scotch, slightly sorrowful. This was an expensive breakdown.
"So, what? You're taking a vacation?"
"It's not a vacation, I just—I just need some distance. From everything." He paused. "I guess it is a vacation, huh."
They ruminated over their drinks.
"When are you leaving?"
"Soon. As soon as possible. Tomorrow, probably."
"Goodbye, Harry."
"Goodbye, Kingsley. I leave the fate of Magical England in your capable hands. Don't screw it up while I'm gone. "
"Potter, shut the hell up."
Later that night, Harry stepped outside the ministry of magic. Time for a drunk midnight stroll. The night air was biting, but with firewhiskey in his veins he barely felt it. The stone burned a cold pit on his pocket.
"You lied to him." The spectre of Tom Riddle said from behind him.
"I didn't lie. I just left some things out." The shadow smirked.
"Lying by omission, Harry? You're becoming more like me every day." Harry gritted his teeth.
"Who am I speaking to? Voldemort or the stone?" The spectre tisked, miming disappointment.
"Harry, Harry, Harry. So close-minded! Why couldn't it be both?"
Harry kept walking as if nothing had been said. Then, "I will kill you. I've killed immortals before, and you are no different. You'll never kill someone ever again." He said it, and looked sideways at the ghost. The tone was matter-of-fact, almost detached, but his eyes were a fervent, intense shade of green.
And something, something in that voice, in that stare, gave the immortal pause. An uncomfortable tingling filled it. Was this fear?
The spectre stopped smiling. "You're not the first to try."