My final concluding chapter for I, who am about to die. I want to thank everyone who has been a fan of this story, and I hope you enjoy other stories I write and deliver.
In the meantime, enjoy and Happy new year. Please let me know what you think.
I, who am about to die.
Four years later…
Harry smiled in relief as he left the MACUSA and into the muggle world - or No-Maj world, as the Americans termed it; he had to admit, he preferred the American way of saying, non-magical people. There was just something about the word 'muggle' he found too insulting (there were dozens of people in the muggle world he believed were the exception; the Dursleys were at the top of the list, as were the neighbours, the teachers, and the kids, who'd unwittingly helped the Dursleys abuse him), but because of his mother's memory, Harry found the name and the slights against muggle-borns more personally than most.
No-Maj was more neutral.
Harry took a deep breath, wrinkling his nose at the stench of the air while he gazed at the expanse of New York. He had no idea beyond a few visible and well-known landmarks about where Brooklyn was, although he knew the island in the middle was Manhattan island. But he didn't care; he had the whole world and years to explore the city, and he was looking forward to it.
Shortly after Voldemort was killed, Harry had wandered away from the site of the graveyard and he had ventured into the muggle village of Little Hangleton. On his way down, he had done his best to repair his clothes and heal whatever injuries he'd sustained from Voldemort's resurrection before he took a few minutes to relax, and think about what he had just done in the village pub. The muggles didn't bother him that much, and he had enjoyed half an hours worth of peace and quiet despite the noise in the pub before the DMLE was sent to find him.
And when he thought about that, Harry pitied the DMLE of his fucked-up country.
These people were meant to be the last bastion of defence against whatever Dark Lord.
And yet… they had come after him as if he were public enemy number one.
Not one of them had said so much as a thank you for ridding the world of Voldemort and his scumbags for good.
No, instead they had blundered into the pub in Little Hangleton, dressed as wizards, come over to him, announced his name and their intentions to take him in for questioning, in full view of the muggles in the pub. It wasn't until he had actually pointed out their mistake, the Aurors worked on erasing the memories of what happened from the minds of the muggles, and then he was taken straight to the Ministry with magical restraining cuffs on his wrists, and the order was countermanded by a very annoyed Madam Bones. Harry learnt from her Fudge and a woman called Umbridge, a particularly unpleasant toad-faced bitch with more delusions of grandeur than Harry would like ordered the Aurors to go to the village, and they were Aurors loyal to Fudge for some bizarre reason.
Harry hadn't bothered to discover the thought process behind Fudge's choice to send Aurors who just blundered their way into a muggle village without even caring about the Statute of Secrecy. It was a miracle Madam Bones was cut from a different cloth, and she had treated him quite well even if he hadn't trusted her out of experience of putting too much hope out a witch or wizard would use their common sense. Bones had told him there was to be a hearing about the death of Voldemort, and his accusations towards Dumbledore.
Harry spent two months preparing for the hearing before he was taken to France, since the ICW had judged the situation in Magical Britain too fraught with trouble, and a neutral magical country was the better place to set something so delicate. In any case, Harry had the impression the ICW were tired of Fudge and his habits of both burying things which made him look like an idiot and ignoring things which he didn't like to admit the possibility of, and he guessed Fudge would definitely try to bury the accusations against Dumbledore. How he expected that to work after he'd broadcasted it around the world, Harry did not want to even imagine, especially since Fudge wasn't exactly gifted with genius-level intelligence.
Harry had to spend three whole days in Magical France, showing memories and telling the truth of the events in Hogwarts. He had told them everything. He had told them how he had learnt Dumbledore had heard a prophecy involving a child whose parents would have fought Voldemort off three times, and Snape had overheard but was press-ganged into working for Dumbledore. He told them how his parents, instead of leaving the country and hiding from the Dark Lord, had hidden themselves using the wrong person knowing where they lived, and they were betrayed as a result. Harry was questioned under truth potion of his own volition to show the magical world he was taking this incredibly seriously, and he did not want to be accused of exaggeration.
Under the truth potion, Harry had revealed what the Dursleys had done to him. He told them everything; how the Dursleys had mentally and physically abused him, how he hadn't even known his own name until his first day in school which resulted in a horrible day of humiliation which the Dursleys had planned in order to convince everyone he was mentally deficient. But he also threw Dumbledore's pathetic guard under the bus as well, revealing Arabella Figg's presence, and spun it in a way which made it sound like she and the Order of the Phoenix were deliberately trying to ensure a magical child grew up in a way which made pureblood parents baulk.
Harry then told them about his time at Hogwarts. The Philosopher's Stone. The Basilisk and the attacks in second year (he had been surprised when the Irish and Asian delegation were furious over how parseltongue was regarded as dark and evil, and the Irish wizards were infuriated against the slights made against their patron saint who'd persuaded all of the snakes in Ireland to leave the country, which made parseltongue revered to a level even Voldemort's use of the language could never destroy), the absolute disaster caused by the Fudge administration into sending the Dementors to Hogwarts to catch and kiss Sirius Black although the revelation of Peter Pettigrew had done a vast amount of damage to the Minister's already crappy reputation by that point.
Dumbledore and Hogwarts's reputations had both suffered because of what the school had gone through under the old Headmaster's tenure. Harry's testimony was bad enough, but the facts remained Dumbledore and the staff had caused tremendous damage to the school. Dark Lords and other dark wizards waltzing through the school, basilisks roaming the corridors, imposter teachers, students being petrified and, most damning of all in that instance, why the school hadn't bothered to source a different source of mandrakes to create the potion needed to revive them, dementors swarming over the grounds and endangering students.
Harry's testimony was bad enough because of his status as the winner of the Triwizard Tournament, and now the Man Who Conquered He Who Must Not Be Named, but surprisingly he had help from the last person he'd expected, but in hindsight had a huge number of reasons for hating Dumbledore.
Abertforth Dumbledore, Albus' brother.
Aberforth hated Dumbledore far more than Harry would have expected, and while many of his reasons were fairly petty, he had more than made up for it by providing them with a large amount of hard-won evidence which gave Albus more black marks than anything Harry could have provided although the majority of them were enormously serious.
After the trial, Harry was let off especially when it was discovered Harry and Voldemort were linked together in a prophecy. Harry, who had long since disdained divination and prophecies, thanks to that insect Trelawney, was surprised Dumbledore would put so much stock into the idea of a prophecy when he knew how flimsy the things were.
Dumbledore had admitted as much in Harry's third year; they were imprecise and they didn't give straight answers to straight questions. But the fact a wizard of Dumbledore's calibre was so desperate to rely on the word of a fraud to decide the strategy of a war was beyond criminal. But Harry had to concede the ends justified the means especially since someone was needed to put an end to Voldemort. He wasn't selfish or arrogant enough to moan and mope about it being him, even if he didn't like the fact Dumbledore had basically done the reverse of what Merlin did with King Arthur, and guided him.
Instead, Dumbledore had opted to drop him in the deep end more times than he should, and while it had helped Harry's growth significantly, at the same time it would have helped if Dumbledore had taken the time to teach him magic, or at least given him some help. He had also manipulated his mind as a child, turned a blind eye to the abuse he'd taken at the Dursleys - while Harry had come to see the logic of the expression if something doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger, and the ends justified the means since it had made him strong and untrusting, rather than obedient. If he had then Harry wouldn't have rebelled.
It was irrelevant now.
Harry had left Hogwarts when he had completed his OWLs and his NEWTs, earning even greater notoriety for getting excellent scores, even in subjects he had never applied for his electives - another controlling aspect he hated about Dumbledore, especially since he had been interested in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy when he had done research quietly into the subjects in his second year at school, but instead, he'd been landed with Divination and Care of Magical Creatures as his only electives. But he had gained mastery in different magical subjects in the last few years; the first being Defence and the Dark Arts (he had been surprised to discover the Dark Arts was offered up as a mastery elective in some countries and was seen as a respectful mastery as long as the one mastering it did not become consumed in the magic), Healing which had been at the top of his list of things to study ever since he had been rendered helpless by moments where he had been injured at school - the time where Dobby's badly thought out plan to use a bludger during that Quidditch match to send him home had been one of the worst examples; it wasn't helped when the incompetent fop Lockhart removed all the bones in his arm by accident (when he had studied the spell Lockhart had used, Harry had been terrified when he had realised that, due to Lockhart's ineptitude with magic in general despite his high opinion of himself, the spell could have removed much more from his body. Even now he still had no idea why nobody had thought to stop Lockhart before he had reached that point).
Harry did not like feeling helpless, and so he had gone out of his way to learn Healing at every opportunity while leaving the worst injuries to trained Healers to mitigate.
So, Runes, Arithmancy, Duelling, Dark Arts, Healing, Warding, Transfiguration, Charms…they were his biggest masteries, but Harry was taking a break for now, and as he went through New York to a decent hotel, he had time to reflect on some of the things he was going to do in this country. He had already visited Brazil, where he'd spent three wonderful months exploring the cities and the Amazon rainforest (he'd secretly placed a subtle curse on the forest, so muggles trying to strip mine the place would go away with terrible nightmares; he had to wonder if the Brazilian magical authorities would take it down, but he doubted it since there were quite a few warded places in the rainforest, and he knew the Brazilian wizards were using several methods of their own to stop the muggles tearing down the rainforest), Australia, where he'd met several of the magical natives, and he had picked up on a few skills along the way.
Harry hadn't had any contact with his old Hogwarts schoolmates, nor had he even tried to initiate it; he had cast a ward around himself to deflect any mail they tried to send back to them. He might be perceived as childish for not wanting anything to do with them, but it just made life easier for him if they just weren't there. Ron, Hermione, Sirius and Remus had all tried to send him mail, but he had thrown Hermione's letter away when he had seen, once more, the girl not just valued authority figures over those she called friends which proved once again she had been insincere when she had claimed in their first year at Hogwarts, during that mess with the Philosopher's Stone, books and cleverness weren't more important than friendship and bravery. He had known she was lying, of course, or she was nowhere mentally near that point where she'd accept what she'd said as truth.
Hermione had shown moments where she was genuinely growing, but her bull in a china shop approach to life stopped her from truly growing and what really annoyed him was how hypocritical she was since she kept on idolising the teachers, yet she defied them regularly with how she kept on writing essays which were longer than they should have been, and how she told others to do the same only to throw a temper tantrum if one got a grade higher than her, but there were signs of growth.
But in the first and only letter, Harry had bothered to read… Harry had realised Hermione had no intention of growing. What made it so sad was she hadn't learnt you were more likely to get what you wanted if you provided honey instead of vinegar. The letter was so biting, criticising everything about what he had been doing since he had walked away from the magical world as if she were his fucking mother. It had never occurred to Hermione, especially when she wrote the rudely demanding sentence he come straight back to Britain, regardless of whether or not he was doing something important or not. At the time Harry had been visiting Greece and enjoying the history of the country, and he hadn't wanted to return to a witch who just refused to grow beyond reading books and spewing the contents out verbatim.
He had sent back a nasty curse to her in return, not because of the contents of the letter, not because out of petty spite. It was because she had told him his parents would be ashamed of him. For Harry it was the last straw, and he had sent a curse back to her, along with a message charmed in a similar manner to a Howler - he might not have liked the things but they were effective, and he had poured five minutes of poison into it, telling her what he truly felt for her, and a threat if she ever harassed him as she had with the letter again, he would murder her, and a plea for her to just grow up and let others make their own decisions instead of nagging them when she honestly had no idea what she was doing.
He had added pointedly he had known she and Weasley were spies, and he was through with them.
As he walked into the hotel to check himself in, Harry wondered what new adventures he would have in America. Now he could choose them on his own, rather than have them dictated to by other people, Harry felt surer about himself than ever before.