Tipping the Scales
Harry woke up with a clear head for the first time in a month. He reached over and picked his glasses up off the night stand and put them on.
*POP*
"Harry Potter is being well again!" Winky exclaimed happily.
"I think so," Harry agreed. "What happened?"
"Everyone is getting sick and dying," Winky said sadly. "Harry Potter is only one that is getting better. All rest fall asleep and ..." her voice trailed off.
"I'm the last light wizard, huh? I guess Voldemort has won, damn his eyes," Harry growled.
"Winky is not being clear," Winky said, wringing her hands. "Harry Potter is only one left."
"All the wizards are dead except for me?!" Harry exclaimed in shock.
Winky nodded. "Sir is being last wizard."
"Damn!"
"Elves want to know what they shoulds be doing," Winky said.
"Bury the dead, clean and repair everything," Harry said absently, trying to come to terms with being the last wizard in England.
"We is doing that right away!"
*POP*
Harry remembered opening the snitch and getting the stone. He'd been pretty feverish at the time, but then everyone had been sick to one degree or another, so he'd forced himself onward only to find Voldemort in much the same condition and his Death Eaters even worse.
Harry did his duty, offering himself up as a human sacrifice and hoping Dumbledore knew what the hell he was doing when he made up this stupid plan. Voldemort was apparently seeing triple at that point because he'd cast the killing curse on damn near every tree behind Harry without even getting close to him. In the end, Harry had to help Voldemort hold the wand to his head after he'd accidentally hit his familiar Nagini. Voldemort dropped in unison with Harry as the sickness proved to be too much for him too, and now Harry had woken up to find he was the last wizard in Britain.
Harry went back to sleep. He was too tired and weak to deal with this. Hopefully the French ministry would send someone competent to investigate and he could drop it on their shoulders.
It was another week before Harry had recovered enough to get out of bed and still no French wizards showed up.
"Winky," Harry called out as he left the hospital wing and headed for the Headmaster's office.
*POP*
"Can Winky be doing something for Master Harry?" Winky asked hopefully.
"Yes. Do you know why no one from the French ministry has shown up? Are we under quarantine?"
"Winky told Master Harry. He is last wizard."
Harry stopped dead in his tracks. "I'm the last wizard... in the world?"
Winky nodded.
Harry turned around and went back to bed. It was only three days, however, before boredom and his rapidly improving physical health forced him out of bed again. This time he made it to the Headmaster's office and was surprised to find that the gargoyle had jumped aside for him and the portraits had greeted him as Headmaster Potter.
"I don't suppose any veela or human-anything crossbreeds survived?" Harry asked, hoping their non-human heritage had protected the Delacour sisters.
"I'm afraid the sickness killed everyone that had even one human grandparent," Dumbledore's portrait explained.
"This wasn't part of your plan, was it?" Harry asked just to be sure.
"Good Heavens, no!" the painting replied in shock. "You were to die, come back to life, defeat Voldemort, and then live happily ever after with Ginny."
"You planned out all that?!" Harry asked, shocked.
"Of course I did," Dumbledore replied. "What kind of story would it be if I didn't make sure you got a happy ending?"
"How did you even know I'd like Ginny?"
"Wasserman effect," Dumbledore replied. "Muggles are generally better at psychology than we are, so I trust the team of psychologists I hired who helped me plan all this out, from the fake prophecy to Voldemort's death."
"Fake prophecy?" Harry asked, a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"Yes, I had them design a fake prophecy that would drive Voldemort even more paranoid and make him waste a lot of effort on finding a non-existent hero."
"It sent him after my parents!" Harry exclaimed, staring at Dumbledore in shock.
The portrait shrugged, unconcerned. "I cast a spell on your mother that would slow down fetal development so you wouldn't be born at that time so he wouldn't target you."
"But I was!" he complained.
"And I set up a fidelious so he couldn't find the Potters, letting them select their own secret keeper so they wouldn't have to worry about being betrayed."
"But they were!"
"Yes," Albus said agreeably. "In the end, my made up prophecy turned out to be true, no matter what I did. So I did my best to make sure you had a childhood that sucked eggs and enough major problems in school that you couldn't help but succeed where it counted."
Harry stared at Dumbledore's portrait in shock. "Can you explain that one to me again?"
The portrait sighed. "I stacked the deck in your favor by manipulating karma directly."
"You can do that?"
"You've held liquid luck in your hands and you passed your care of magical creatures with a decent score, so you know how Mackled Malaclaw venom adversely affect's it, so what's surprising about this?"
Harry sighed. "I still find those two things hard to believe."
"They are still none-the-less true."
"How am I going to have a happy life with everyone I care about dead?" Harry demanded.
"No idea," the portrait said cheerfully. "Magic will find a way and it should be fun to watch."
"I'm going back to bed," Harry decided.
Dumbledore's portrait rolled its eyes. "Throw himself on a broom and fly at hundreds of miles per hour dozens of feet in the air, sure. Trust spells manipulating unseen forces and he gets pissy."
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
"Harry Potter sirs?" Dobby asked.
"Yes, Dobby?" Harry replied.
"Sinny-Tors are wanting permission to move out of forbidden forest and into open fields," the house elf explained.
"Oh," Harry said as he realized that as the sole remaining wizard, he pretty much owned the magic world. "Open fields are fine, just no destroying the homes of the dead. I"d like them preserved."
"And roads and fences in way?" Dobby asked.
Harry shrugged. "Do what you like with them. I'd rather use a broom than walk when I have to go somewhere."
Dobby nodded and popped out.
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
"Wizards cannot be trusted," Bane called out to the surrounding herd. "We must rise up and fight for what's ours!"
*POP*
"Harry Potter is saying take fields as want, but leave dead peoples' houses alone," Dobby announced.
"What about the fences?" one of the centaurs asked.
"Dobby is being given permission to take care of fences and roads, so call Dobby if need a fence or road gone."
*POP*
Bane frowned as they had just been given everything they'd ever wanted and he no longer had anything to complain about.
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
*POP*
"Harry Potter Sirs?"
"Yes, Dobby?"
"Goblins are wanting more room underground and to be putting shops aboveground."
"As long as they respect the houses and property of the dead, that's fine. In fact, if they'd care to help you guys by putting up whatever wards you need to help preserve things, they can use any houses and stores that were empty when all this happened."
*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*0*
Harry potter rode his carpet above downtown London, marveling at how clean and neat everything was. The elves had outdone themselves in the last couple of years, fixing and repairing muggle cities and making them gleam as if they were new.
Every continent had a couple of major metropolitan areas that were kept pristine and functioning, while all the smaller towns had been moth balled. Well... not all of them. Harry had allowed some of the still existing races a town or two they had asked for, which were generally small towns in out of the way areas.
Why was it all up to Harry? Simple, the magically enforced treaties between all of the myriad non-human races and wizard kind had defaulted to him and their power had taken a leap upwards by an order of magnitude now that all of wizardkind were in complete agreement.
So Harry found himself the ruler of a world vacant of all humans except himself.
*RING RING*
Harry pulled out the goblin made spell phone. "Harry, here."
"Hello, Mr. Potter. I thought you might like to know we have found something that should spark your interest and help with the panda conservation program," Griphook said.
"Really?" Harry asked. Years without another human around weighing sharply on him, like a goose who'd joined a flock of ducks and driving him to preserve what species he could.
"Come to the ministry of magic and prepare to be amazed!" he promised.
Harry nodded even though Griphook wouldn't be able to see it. "Will do."
A few vehicles were on the road as the elves liked to drive and thought cities weren't complete without public transportation.
Harry matched speeds with a double decker bus before apparating inside and taking a seat near the front. "Ministry of Magic, please."
Dobby nodded, cranking the wheel hard enough to lift the bus onto two wheels before he floored it. "We's be getting there quickly, Harry Potter Sirs!"
Harry laughed and enjoyed the ride. Dobby was always driving a double decker bus below him when he needed to go somewhere and was tired of flying. He wasn't sure how Dobby pulled it off and had eventually just chalked it up to house elf magic.
"We is making a mess in five," Dobby announced as he aimed the bus for a grocery store.
Harry counted down with him, both of them vanishing from the bus at one and landing in the street as the bus rammed the grocery store and exploded in a ball of flames.
"Elves have lots to clean and repair now," Dobby said cheerfully.
"Yes, they do," Harry agreed as they turned and walked away from the flaming wreckage.
A few months into Harry's new life as the last human, Dobby had told Harry the elves wanted him to make bigger messes so they'd all get a chance to clean up after the last master, and Harry had sarcastically suggested driving a double decker bus into a mall.
Dobby had agreed whole heartedly and the two had found it rather cathartic.
Typing by: Ordieth!
AN: Just an idea for a HP story I hadn't seen before. I was planning on the Goblins discovering that The Veil of Death could be used to bridge the gap into other worlds to allow Harry a chance to bring in other people.