A/N: This is only my second HP fanfic, and the first that I plan to be novel-length. I had initially posted this as a much shorter chapter, but after positive reviews I fleshed it out to a decent chapter-length. I hope you enjoy!

Harry lay across the sidewalk of Charing Cross, slowly but surely bleeding out from the bullet-wound in his side, his trouser leg no longer on fire, though it still felt painful beyond all reckoning. Smoke filled the sky, but the noon-day sun still shone cheerfully down on the wreckage that was central London. A group approached from the north, swinging rifles from shoulders and laughing amongst themselves. How had it come to this?

"Harry!"

"Harry's here!"

Smiling, the man in question joined his would-be family outside the Burrow, where Molly and the others had set up a line of picnic tables for the party.

"Good to see you again, Harry," Mr. Weasley smiled and offered his hand.

"Always good to be here, Arthur. Always."

Molly stopped her preparations and made her way over to her eighth child. "Are you sure you should be staying at Grimmauld, Harry? We've plenty of room here, after all. It wouldn't be a bother, and I'd know you were eating well."

Harry wasn't sure he'd ever be able to eat enough to satisfy Molly Weasley. "I'm doing just fine, and I have Kreacher looking after me. You know how devoted he is these days."

Molly knew she wouldn't win, she'd asked him often enough. "Well, grab Ron and have him help you set the tables, will you?"

"Of course," he smiled.

Making his way over to his oldest friend, Harry very conveniently but politely ignored Ginny's longing stare at him. "Come on, you behemoth. We're setting the tables."

Ron stopped talking to Ginny just long enough to pick right back up with Harry where he'd left off with his little sister. "Can you believe it, Harry? The Cannons! I made Backup Keeper for the Chudley Cannons!"

Harry rolled his eyes with fondness. Not only had Harry been strong-armed into joining the Auror force and Hermione being taken on at a local barrister's office, Ron had finally gotten his dream job, hence the party that evening for all three of them. Still, he humored his large friend. "It's great, isn't it, mate? I'm really proud of you. You deserve it."

Ron's face nearly matched his hair at his friend's compliment.

Harry grabbed his elbow and neatly maneuvered him away from Ginny before anything awkward was said.

"You are going to talk to her tonight, right, Harry?"

Harry grumbled to himself before answering, "Yeah, I'm going to talk to her. I'm just putting it off a little longer is all."

It was Ron's turn to roll his eyes. "He can face down the darkest Dark Lord in centuries, but Circe forbid he have to confront a girl." His laughter turned to wheezing as Harry backhanded him in the stomach.

"Prat!"

Fortunately that marked the point when Hermione arrived. She'd just returned from fetching her parents from Australia, and while all was not well in the world of Granger, she put on a brave face.

Even George had come over from the joke shop to celebrate the Golden Trio each receiving career-oriented job offers. Harry wasn't exactly thrilled to continue fighting for a living, but he sucked it up and did what was expected of Britain's Man-Who-Conquered.

After dinner and cake (and treacle tart!), Ginny refused to allow Harry to continue avoiding her. She pulled him towards the apple orchard as the others continued gossiping round the picnic tables. "So, Harry. Don't you have something to ask me?"

Here it was. The dreaded moment. Harry wasn't sure how to handle it, and before he could come up with something sophisticated and gentle, he simply blurted out "Gin-I'm-not-in-love-with-you-anymore."

Her face drained, and she swayed slightly. "What was that, Harry? It sounded like you said you weren't in love with me anymore, which I know is just ridiculous."

Harry was quietly hyperventilating. "I'm sorry, Gin. I'm not the same guy I was a year ago. Too much has happened, I've changed, and I just don't feel the same about you as I did before. As I said, I'm sorry, but at this point I honestly see you as more of a little sister." A little sister that I've groped, but there's no taking that back now.

He expected tears, but not the fist that took him in the nose. "Bugger you, Harry, you stupid sod!" She ran off toward the Burrow before he had fully recovered from her righteous fury.

"Damn it."

"Where the hell is Simpson? He said he'd be here. I want to get started."

"Don't get your pants in a twist, he'll be here."

The rag-tag group of ex-IRA fighters were gathered round a large square table in an abandoned warehouse near the Thames. Even with The Troubles having ended, there were those dissidents who were only in it for the bloodshed that remained, and were ripe for another group to sweep in and co-opt.

This was the plan of muggleborn wizard Liam Simpson, who had left the British Wizarding World when no work opportunities presented themself. With no muggle education beyond his Primary years, he had nothing to fall back on in the muggle world either. He'd stayed on top of the happenings in the wizarding world, though he'd left before the Second Blood War, thank God. But he hated Wizarding Britain for what it was, and he knew just how he was going to get even, and it started with showing these muggles magic. He couldn't work wanded magic in front of them without the Ministry's sensors picking it up, but he could show them things he'd bought in Diagon Alley; an actual flying broomstick, chocolate frogs, spell books, moving pictures. Witchcraft. He'd turn this group into his personal paramilitary, they'd recruit others, and soon he'd have his revenge on Wizarding Britain.

He never expected things to get so out of hand. It seemed he wasn't the only pissed off muggleborn in the world.

As close as the trio had always been, nothing stopped the inexorable march of time and they slowly grew apart. Hermione moved up into management at Barrister Breckenridge's office which consumed all her free time, Ron's touring with the Cannons kept him away from home for multi-week stretches, and Harry maintained a busy schedule with the Aurors. He didn't much like the term 'hermit' but that's effectively what he became, living out of Grimmauld with just a slightly-less-crotchety elf for company.

In February of 2001, Harry received a visit from a part of the Ministry he hadn't given much thought to since his 5th Year and the loss of his Godfather.

"Unspeakable Croaker, what can I do for you?" Harry invited the androgynous male(?) into his small office. He'd not considered it before that moment, but he realized he had no idea who worked for the Department of Mysteries beyond Croaker. Was this even Croaker's real face, or was it a glamour?

"Hello, Potter. You're well?" The niceties must be observed, it would seem.

"I am, and yourself?"

"Fine, just fine. I'll get to the point."

So much for the niceties, but Harry appreciated the forthrightness. "I want you. You've languished in the Auror division long enough, and I'm sure you'd be interested in a more varied existence. I don't know what led you to apply in the first place, but you're wasted here."

Eyebrows raised, Harry answered. "I was sort of strong-armed into it, actually. I'd thought about being an auror while in school, and then with the war, well. I didn't exactly know if I'd live through it, so never made any long-term plans. One day I'm fighting for my life, the next I'm sitting at a desk shuffling paperwork and playing Poster Boy for the Ministry. Kingsley can be quite convincing when he puts his mind to it. More than anything, I was…tired. And it was just easy to go with the flow." He coughed. "Anyway, here we are."

"Yes, here we are," Croaker agreed. "I'd like to propose a transfer into my division. You're too high-profile to just disappear and create a new identity, so we'd list you as a consultant for now and worry about the long-term logistics of it later."

"What exactly did you have in mind? I don't know anything about your department beyond what I saw back in June of '96 during that fiasco we were involved in."

Croaker chuckled. "Yes, that. Well, I have a few thoughts. First, that bloody patronus of yours. I heard it drove off a shite-ton of dementors back in your third year. That true?"

Harry blushed and rubbed the back of his neck, something he had yet to grow out of doing. "Uh, yeah. That's true."

"Well, you could start by experimenting with that. If we could find a way for the common witch or wizard to beef up their patronus, any future dark lords would have a harder time of using them against us. Or perhaps you could find a way to kill them permanently. I know you hate them. Or if you wanted to pursue a Muggle education, we could work with you on that so you'd have some additional skills to bring to the table. If nothing else, having a dark lord killer on the payroll would be handy. And I'm not talking about the Boy-Who-Lived shite, I'm talking about what you, Harry Potter, accomplished not too long ago. Hell, you could study whatever the hell it was your mother did to disembody Voldemort back when you were in nappies. There's no end to what you could do, and I guarantee the least of it would be more fascinating than shuffling paper, waiting for the next bloke to try selling restricted potions or a housewife who is sure she saw an escaped convict in her backyard."

Harry looked back on the last few years and smiled. "I'm in."

Hermione was on break and enjoying a scoop from Fortescue's when the Alley exploded around her. There was no time to shield or run, her body incinerating in moments. The first strike of the new war had destroyed the center of commerce for Wizarding Britain. Not even Gringott's vaunted wards held out the blast, and the precision detonation obliterated the Alley, leaving the adjacent muggle buildings standing mostly unharmed, though the sudden appearance of a previously-invisible section of London was startling to the common Briton.

Diagon Alley Destroyed by Muggles!

Hundreds Dead, including War Hero Hermione Granger!

Goblin Nation Wiped Out!

The Daily Prophet couldn't report the situation because their offices no longer existed, but The Quibbler heralded the news across the country. Magical Britain was in an uproar, but for a house in Ottery St. Catchpole and Grimmauld Place, whose occupants were numb with grief.

Harry floo'd to the Burrow upon seeing the paper and wrapped a tear-stained Molly in his arms. "I had to come home."

The Wizarding World was blind-sided when the muggles at large discovered them. This really shouldn't have come as a surprise, considering how often wizards looked down on muggles and their 'technology'. In the span of months it was world-wide chaos and destruction: muggle vs. wizard. No one saw the signs because no one was looking for them. The heads of every magical government across the globe had predominantly been Purebloods who wouldn't allocate a knut to research on mere muggles. And this is what they had to show for their hubris; mass genocide of the world's magicals.

And as Harry lay along Charing Cross, his magic completely expended, and a militia group approaching, he couldn't decide if he was grateful or not that he'd stayed unattached all these years; on one hand, he didn't have to watch as his would-be family was killed by the muggles, but it had also been a lonely life. Wizards lived much longer lives than their magic-less brethren, yet here he was, at a mere 40 years of age, taking his final breaths.

One of the group approached and noticed his scar. "It's Potter, alright. Not so mighty and powerful, are you now?"

A bullet between his eyes stopped any response he might have made to his pursuers.

"Hello, Harry."

Harry jumped, opening his eyes, and leaned back in his seat. Standing a few steps below him was a beautiful blonde woman. 'Galadriel?'

She softly snorted and smirked. "No, Harry, I'm not an elf, but I do thank you for the compliment." She ran her hand through the left side of her hair to show Harry that she, indeed, had human ears and not the pointed variety. "As for who I am, well, you should know. You've been carrying around my Hallows for the last 20 years."

The breath left Harry's body as he leaned back into the chair he was sitting in. No, not chair. Throne. "Death? You're actually Death?"

"Don't be so surprised, you did just find yourself on the wrong end of a muggle bullet. Nasty business, that, but it did allow us to finally meet, so I suppose it's all for the best."

"How is my dying for the best?"

"Hmm, perhaps that was ill said. I do that sometimes, forgetting the emotions you humans experience. I suppose dying, for you, would be a rather traumatic event."

"…yeah. Kinda."

"Be that as it may," she continued as she walked across the dais at the base of the throne, through the smoke twirling around the floor, "you're here now and that's what matters. We have much to discuss, Harry, and while technically we have all the time in the world, I do hate to repeat myself, so please try to keep up."

"Yes, err, Ma'am."

She smirked and her glacier-blue eyes softly glowed. "Good. Now, have you ever asked yourself just why the Hallows were created? Why three such powerful artifacts would be gifted to wizard-kind by Death?" At his silent head-shake, she continued. "I created and put those tools into the world for one specific reason. Ignore whatever your legends say about them, it's a load of tosh, and I never even met the Peverell brothers. No, I placed those items among wizard-kind for the sole purpose of finding a worthy heir of Magic, someone with the right constitution, connection to Magic, and utter determination to unite the disparate magical groups under a single banner. You didn't just happen upon the Hallows by chance. They each chose you, Harry. I know after the Final Battle that you considered destroying the Wand, but you wouldn't have succeeded. You couldn't have lost them or gotten rid of them if you tried. That is why the Stone that you left in the Forbidden Forest returned to you. That is why you felt the need to keep the wand, even if you hid it and told everyone you'd destroyed it."

"That's…fascinating, I guess, but what does any of this have to do with me beyond the fact that I have the Hallows?"

"Well, as I said, they served a purpose. I actually created them long, long ago, millennia ago, but the most recent incarnation is what your legends speak of. There were even older myths of items that came before, but they've been lost to time. The truth is that it was I who gave Magic to the world; it was my gift. I and the Night have always existed. Other beings came after, and also gifted things to humanity: language, art, fire, things of that nature. These entities can't die, but they've…gone to sleep, you could say. They're no longer needed, but Death is always necessary."

"As I was saying, I gifted Magic. I gave it to the entire human race, but because of rabid inbreeding and abuse, Magic slowly but surely bred itself out of most of humanity. Now there are billions of muggles and only several million witches and wizards. That's why I needed to find an heir for Magic to work through, someone strong enough to fix this problem, as well as the one you've already discovered: the mass eradication of all things magical by the muggles. And here we are."

It was only at this point that Harry comprehended the significance of his place on the black, shadow-enveloped throne. "No. NO. You can't do this to me! I've already fought two bloody wars, died in both of them, by the way, and had to deal with being the stupid Boy-Who-Lived for my entire life, I'm not doing this!"

"It's too late," she smirked. "This pact was sealed the moment you picked up the Wand after the battle. I had to let you live out your natural life first, but in that moment you became the King to my Queen. You are the King of the Night Throne, Harry. And before you get any more upset, please let me continue."

He nodded, pale.

"Good. You might ask why Death needs a King? For the same reason Magic needs you, to be my hand among the remaining magicals on Earth. That throne has existed as long as I have, but no one has ever been worthy enough to sit on it, until now. Thousands, millions of years of death and destruction of magic-kind, just to get us to this point, just to get your arse on that throne. And I agree, you've been through much, but would you really turn down the opportunity to fix what has happened to the world?"

"What do you mean, 'fix'? The world has already gone to hell!" He stopped and looked around nervously. "That's…that's not where we're at, right? Hell?"

Her laughter tinkled out merrily. "No, we are merely in the In-Between, a place where souls wait to be ferried on to the Afterlife."

"Ah, well, good then."

She smiled. "As to 'fixing' the future, it's too late for that. But the past? Now that is a possibility."

"Time travel? Are you talking about sending me back in time?"

"Indeed. We can select a time you think best to send your soul and magic back to, and you can work to fix the problems the Wizarding World faces. Granted, you'll have to deal with What's-His-Face again, but you've already beat him once, so what's another time?"

Harry huffed. "Easy for you to say."

"There are perks, my King. You'll have domain over the dead and demons (including your hated dementors,) and even power over those in-between life and death. Think of it: a magical world united for once, working toward a common purpose, and you at its head. And yes, I know how you hate attention, but that makes you all the more perfect for the job. You won't get caught up in the pageantry and greed most would, you'll do what you always do: bear down and get the job done.

Harry's mind jumps to his parents, to Sirius, to Cedric. "Are there any other powers that come with this position? Can I see my parents?"

"You can call their shades to you at any time, but it is painful for them to remain among the Living while not of the flesh. Once you establish your domain on Earth, there might be a more permanent solution we could discuss, but for now, you must decide on when you will return to. Now, there is a caveat to this plan. The twisting of time is not a power to be used lightly. Were you to use it now, you would be unable to do so again until all you love have passed into the afterlife. If you have children, and grandchildren, and so on, and continue to love them as the years pass, you may never be able to use the power again. There must be a price for a change of this magnitude, a cost for such a boon."

Harry leaned back, giving the plan serious thought. "I don't exactly have a choice in this, do I?"

"Not really," Death smirked. "Not if you want to right the wrong done your people, done your family. Not if you wish an era of peace for your world."

"Well, alright then."

"You've chosen when you will return to?"

"I have. How do we do this?

She leaned forward and kissed his cheek. "You already have."

Blackness.

Huge props to Asha47110 for creating the awesome MoD cover image.

Also, I know nothing about the IRA/The Troubles beyond what I gleaned from Wikipedia, so ignore any discrepancies. I just needed a British/Irish terrorist group.