Title: The Death of the Greatest Wizard that Ever Lived
Author: P.L.S.
Contact:
Rating: G
Genre: General
Paring: None
Summery: It's 2056 and the late Minister of Magic is mourned and Harry wonders if it's a good thing or not.
Word Count: 2227 or 2329 if you include the heading.
Disclaimer: I don't own the Harry Potter series.
Author Notes: This is for the Writer's Duel at The challenge was to write a fic in 2,000 to 4,500 words that must be titled The Death of the Greatest Wizard that Ever Lived. This was very fun to write.
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The Death of the Greatest Wizard that Ever Lived.
by Merle Creevey
Harry James Potter, Order of Merlin First Class, Defeater of Dark Lord Voldemort, Successor to Albus Dumbledore as Head of the Order of the Phoenix, Seeker for the Falmouth Falcons, Seeker for the 2002 World Cup Champion National English Team, Seven Time International Dueling Champion, Former Head of the National Auror League, Former Director of the Magical Law Enforcement Department, Former Minister of International and Interracial Magical Relations, United Kingdom's Former Minister of Magic, died at home while tending to his menagerie of reptiles.
The man was a well known parcelmouth who used this gift to not only care for a multitude of species at his manor in Northumberland, but also forge a number of treaties with naga tribes around the world which only helped in a number of minor incidents with wizards attempting to gain the powers of the Dark Lord. This gift should have helped him, but experts say that accidents happen and that the famous Potter charm ran out at just the wrong time. He was tending his rare male Hydra Giganticus when the beast decided that the greatest wizard that ever lived would make a better meal than a goat.
Harry Potter started life as the son of Lily Evans Potter and James Potter, then after just a year became the last member of the Potter line and the only known survivor of the Killing Curse and his survival facilitated the first fall of Lord Voldemort who was at the height of his power and popularity when his wand was turned upon the Potter family. Potter then lived with his mother's muggle family until his seventeenth year and the start of his truly active and public roll as a protector of all who needed him and member of the now famed Order of the Phoenix. He left school with high marks and with a cover of being the Seeker of the Falmouth Falcons who with Harry's help became the national league champions for five years. Harry also lead the 2002 English National Team to victory while battling Voldemort's Death Eaters around the world and teaching a few select people defense techniques that Harry developed during his years at Hogwarts.
Just three months after the death of his secret keeper and mentor Albus Dumbledore, Harry Potter set out on the most ambitious campaign to rid the world of the Dark Lord title lineage and to destroy Voldemort once and for all. He became the youngest to ever head the Order of the Phoenix, an auror of the highest class, and dropped all facades that he used to hide his power before Dumbledore's death. In just seven years Harry Potter was the National Auror League's head and succeeded in destroying Voldemort and sealing the Dark Lord lineage by means unknown even today.
For seven years after the death of Voldemort, Harry Potter slowly became Director of the MLED as well as the international dueling champion. As the Director, Potter was known for thoughtful choices and an agenda that dealt in streamlining a cluttered department and in ensuring the equal rights of all under the law. As a champion duelist, he was known for being playful and courteous to all. Above all he was always about bringing hope to everyone who felt like the world was nothing but trouble and pain.
After those seven years as Director of the MLED, Potter became the Minister of International and Interracial Magical Relations and then the United Kingdom's Minister of Magic. In both capacities Harry brought new life and revolution to the world which was admittedly stagnate. As Minister of International and Interracial Magical Relations, Harry Potter started the United Magical Nations Association (UMNA) and created a record number of treaties, accords, and alliances with nations both muggle, wizard, and non-human. In his ten year tenure as Minister of International and Interracial Magical Relations, Harry Potter stopped an unknown amount of conflict with his usual grace, knowledge, and intelligent questioning of those involved. Across the world he is mourned and missed for his brilliance in peacemaking and lighting of the progressive fires in the peoples' minds....
He stopped reading at that point. It was exactly the same as all the other papers, save the original. 'The Death of the Greatest Wizard that Ever Lived.' It was the headline in the Quibbler on the 10th of September of 2056, then the headline of every major wizarding or magical media in the world on 11th of September of 2056. It was printed in seventy nine languages, four thousand plus newspapers and magazines, seen by people of all intelligent species, and now people from all of those races were all gathered in Falmouth, Cornwall, England. Tears were being shed by grown men, spoken were memories of a man who rewrote the foreign magical policy if the United Kingdom as well as galvanized the movement that spawned the first formal Equal Rights Laws in the UK for all intelligent beings and creatures. The magical billboards were playing footage from quidditch matches from over fifty years ago, completive duels that a charismatic took with a smile and laugh, and speeches given by a compelling and compassionate man in a muggle suit with a necktie of green and gold lions or red and silver snakes. One thing was sure, the world loved the departed Harry Potter for not only his actions but the spirit of progress and hope that he put into everything he did after the death of his mentor Albus Dumbledore and the last true Dark Lord.
Harry Potter on the other hand was slightly amused and worried at this display.
It seemed like a great idea at the time. Really, it did. It was simple, elegant, and would guarantee a vacation of at least a week for the Minister of Magic. The editor of the Quibbler, Ms. Luna Lovegood, was helpful and discreet, he made sure that no one else knew the truth, and most of all he put everything in order so it would all run smoothly while he was gone.
He just didn't count on Luna giving the assignment to a wonderful young man who had a looser definition of the truth than the infamous Rita Skeeter ever had. Nor did he count on Luna forgetting that he was really alive. The article waxed lyrical about his past and about his gruesome death at the claws of the Minister's own pet hydra, Jimmy. How it happened, Minister Potter wasn't even sure of, after all the hydra gigantus didn't have limbs let alone claws. Thank goodness the other papers omitted that part. Besides Jimmy was a philosopher and spent too much time contemplating allegories and trigonometry to even think about harming another. But here he was with a shrunken Jimmy on his shoulder watching his own funeral, waiting for the last of the bloody windbags to step down from the stage so he could go up there and tell the world that Harry Potter wasn't dead, just resting.
Of course, that could go one of two ways. The best way would be a few yells of disbelief then some testing to see if he was undead in some way, then Minister Potter getting back to the job of running the country smoothly. The worst way would be the most likely way, assumptions that he was a Dark wizard and an impostor who would need to be put to death by the three hundred zealous aurors and other magical law enforcement personnel who were gathered in the Falcons' Quidditch Pitch with the two thousand others in honor of the dearly departed well known former seeker and Falcons fan. Harry sighed. Did he really want to have to prove his worth against the best of the best?
He'd win the fight, of that he had no doubt. He had the combined power of the Gifted Powers of Dumbledore, the stolen Dark Lord Powers from Voldemort, the Black Inheritance Line, the Slytherin Inheritance Line, and the Potter/Evans Inheritance Line. All an Inheritance Line did was ensure that the next head of the line was a wizard of some power and with a few of the family gifts, but having three strong lines with gift and titled powers meant that Harry was a first and unless he had children or adopted using a blood spell, the last wizard who would ever hold that much power. With that power he could fight up to fifty of the aurors; he was powerful enough to cast some kind of immobilizing hex over the all the crowd and use that to make his point. Was it worth fighting those who he worked with or taught? Did he really want to live in the eyes of the world that badly? Harry whispered his thoughts to Jimmy.
I don't understand your problem, Atlas. I see many young Hercules ready to take up the sky and do so happily. You left a will?
Harry nodded. The many headed water serpent laughed as much as it could. Harry really did love having the hydra as a close friend. It was as old as Harry was, even if they didn't meet until Harry went on a diplomatic trip to Crete and visited the magical creature preserve there with the governor of the island. Harry couldn't imagine the last ten years without Jimmy.
We always talked of speaking to others of our tongue and recording their cultures as you did for mine and the nagas of the fens. Besides I need a scribe if my thoughts are to be recorded for all time to marvel at.
Harry laughed, garnering a few looks from others around him. Jimmy was no Socrates. The snake was full of himself and knew that he was clever. Harry supposed that it was a bi-product of having six brains that worked as one. If he had that many brain cells, Harry hoped that he had an IQ to match. But Jimmy did have a point. He and Jimmy had spent ages talking about going and doing an anthropological study on serpent people cultures but as Minister, Harry was always too busy trying to keep the world from collapsing.
Minister Potter is dead. Right?
Harry wasn't sure how to answer the question. Was he willing to give up the life he lead for seventy four years? Was he ready to become someone new?
Harry? You haven't been happy for a long time. You've been bored and you know it's time for new blood to lead the people. Your successor has been seeped in your values and your ways. This isn't so much of a question of if the next generation can deal with the world you are leaving them as it is of your faith in your skills as a teacher. Do you trust your students in the final exam? Do you remember your complaint of Dumbledore and Voldemort?
Harry nodded. He recalled his frustration at the way both old men just couldn't hand over the reins to those who were younger until death. Neither bothered to have set successors excepting Harry who was primed for both rolls, but finally Harry carved his own path. He was no light wizard nor was he a dark wizard. He was a wizard who did the impossible and united the two sides of the civil war and then proceeded to unite all the magical peoples of the United Kingdom. Now the country was solid, the political system was open and free, the people were thriving, the muggle-wizard integration plans were on schedule.
The world was well on its way to being a place that he would be totally proud to call home. It was selfish, for him to of plotted the reconstruction with the idea that he wanted to set the world up into something that he wouldn't mind showing off to hypothetical space aliens if they ever decided to visit. Harry never the less did so, and apparently he did something right because it seemed that everything he started would continue or be improved upon even more. Did he trust in what he would leave behind?
Entirely and with all his being he trusted in the systems, plans, and the lessons he taught to those he knew. He told Jimmy this and the hydra hissed his approval.
Good. Let us get going. I am hungry, you don't need to hear more of this drivel about how great Minister Harry Potter was, and it tastes like rain. Besides, I'm tired of being the small one. You only shrank me to get even with me for all those midget jokes. It's not my fault you have such a small sense of humor.
Harry rolled his eyes and started to shoulder his way out of the crowd and to a portkey point. From there he would go to his private cottage and start to make plans. For the first time in his life he didn't need to worry about anything but keeping an arrogant hydra happy, eating, sleeping, and figuring out where he wanted to go first on a nice long trip around the world.
Just remember, you need to be my scribe. I don't care what else you want to do. You will preserve my work for the future philosophers of the world.