A Life after the End. From the end of Battle of Hogwarts to new beginnings and A Happily Ever After for the one Destined to be a Hero
A/N : this was written in one go in one sleepless night, less as a story and more like a summarised plot map. I'll be thrilled to have someone adopt this little baby, flesh it out decently and add whatever trims, frills and things it needs like dialogue, interaction and such, and share... please note, it's not a story; it's only a plot map up for adoption. anyone interested can PM me and I'll share the whole text, coz I know does not allow copy paste. No TC attached... just call for genuinely interested folks to lemme know they want this baby of mine... a few other works of mine are up for adoption too, coz I'm finding that I don't have enough time to grab sufficient sleep, let alone indulge in my favourite hobby of writing FFN fluff and the lot.
CHAPTER 1.
The war was finally over. Harry saw the surprise, shock and fear in the cloudy red eyes of the noseless baldy every time he closed his eyes even for a wink, since then. It had been an hour since the dark wanker burst into shreds and scattered like ashes in the wind. Everywhere he turned, he saw damage and destruction. It had been hard to take in, and like the end of the fourth year, all over again. He had survived, lived to tell the tale. And yet, it seemed like a hollow echo that pretended to be a victory. He had killed the bastard by throwing his killing curse right back at him. But had he won? What had he won? He pointedly avoided looking at the broken bodies scattered around, the maimed, bruised and broken survivors huddling close to each other; what had they won? Was the war even finished? Would it ever be?
There were no answers to be found in the broken bridge ahead or the swirling waters beneath. Harry turned to his two best friends who had stood with him through it all, but there was no respite there either. Ron's eyes kept flicking back to the Elder wand in his hand. It made the hairs on the nape of his neck stand up in alarm. Try as he might, he could not ignore the storm brewing in the far horizons. Harry decided to destroy the elder wand and not go searching for the cursed resurrection stone. Hermione agreed wholeheartedly. But Harry did not fail to notice the strange look on Ron's face when he heard Harry's plan to simply forget about mastering the Deathly Hallows. Nothing about that look of avarice and malice boded any good for their world.
As if waking from a dream, Harry remembered all the times Ron had turned on him at the drop of a spell. All the times Ron had hurt him and revelled in his pain; even Hermione had not been spared from the volatile redhead's frequent bouts of lashing out in the cruellest of ways possible. He remembered the inherent greed, jealousy and insecurities of the one who had befriended him in the first-ever ride on the Hogwarts Express, even at an age when children should have been naive and innocent and simple.
Ron had been a greedy schemer and a bully even then. For someone like him, the Elder Wand of Destiny was a temptation that could induce him into burning the world and wreaking havoc. They had barely survived a war with wounds that would perhaps never heal. This world could not afford to tempt Ronald Bilius Weasley into challenging him or tricking the Elder wand out of him; Harry knew that only too well, unfortunately. It needed to be permanently out of his reach and soon. Thinking fast, desperately, and furiously, Harry's mind began to form a plan
Ron, Hermione and Harry began to walk back from the bridge back to the castle, his Holly and Phoenix wand neatly tucked into the Holster and the Elder wand put away in his sleeve. Ron kept looking at the wand in his hand furtively but it was not the newly repaired Holly and Phoenix wand tucked into the Hebridean leather holster that seemed to hold the redhead's interest, clearly. Harry felt the anxiety of the Elder wand all the way to his thrumming core. He had to handle this fast, and carefully.
He was relieved to see Hermione, not one whit interested in either Hallow but from the sappy look in her eyes when she snuck her hands into Ron's bigger ones and snuggled into him, Harry was glad she was getting what she had wanted since their fourth year. He only hoped Ron would treat her well, but was beginning to realise that he would have to step away from them soon. Thoughts about Ginny or their stalled relationship did not even cross his mind at this point. All his focus was on preventing Ron from Claiming the Death Stick.
Harry cleared his throat, made a vague motion and then ducked away, pretending to go to the privy for a bit. Ron looked put out but nodded, saying he would wait; Hermione agreed, saying she wanted to witness personally and ensure that the wand that nearly destroyed their world would be truly destroyed. She most definitely did not like that thing at all. Harry had to smile at the inherent naïveté and straight and narrow outlook of that girl, even after surviving a war; as he slipped into Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, he wondered if her ideals would survive a life with Ron Weasley.
Myrtle was nowhere to be seen in her primary haunt. Locked safely behind a cubicle, he swiftly silenced the area, and pulled out the two wands and laid them side by side. He then picked up the Elder wand and used it to transfigure a twig to look like the elder wand. That done, he poured his will and intent to transfigure the Elder wand into an ordinary 7-inch honey brown wand. Then closing his eyes, he summoned the resurrection stone from the forest; when he opened his palm, the cracked stone lay unwinking and innocent, and cleverly innocuous. How he despised the harbingers of doom!
Harry shook his head clear and called for Kreacher. He then gave the two weird Hallows for safekeeping to Kreacher and asked him to never speak of it ever again to anyone else, or within anyone else's hearing, especially not any Weasley. Harry was determined that he would find a safe place to hide the thing and then sort it out later but for now, he wanted Ron to believe that the wand was utterly destroyed and the stone still lay somewhere in the forest.
When Harry stepped back out from the privy and joined the others, Ron's eye was still on the twig he believed to be the Elder Wand. Talking of their plans for the immediate future, the trio walked over to the bridge and the canoodling couple stopped when Harry did, halfway through the bridge, where the lake rushed out to join the sea. Harry grimaced as he pulled the transfigured twig and broke it over his knee and then threw the fragments into the water over Ron's protests. It was as though the clouds had cleared and the sun shone once again.
A weight he hadn't realized released from his core and Ron looked pensive when Harry spoke that thought aloud. It was Hermione who broke the silence and reminded them that the Weasleys would be expecting Ron home, for Fred's funeral and Wake. Harry asked them to tell the Weasleys that he would be there but hidden; he didn't want Fred to be disrespected with a mobbing of rabid fans.
Then Ron asked for the resurrection stone to get Fred back, but Harry gently reminded him that he lost it in the forest when he allowed the dark wanker Voldemort to kill him. Furious now, Ron stalked away, dragging poor, bewildered Hermione with him. Harry was sad to see them go, but he did not call them back or chase after them. He suddenly felt the months of starvation, sleeplessness, fatigue and weariness crash into him. And he well knew that the death of this friendship was only for the best, or Ron would turn into Pettigrew or something much worse and force Hermione to become a Mooney, lost, bereaved and wasted to the world. Here was one more thing this wretched war had snatched from him. He felt utterly alone and sighed in defeat. Had he really won?
Harry thought of what would happen if he wanted Ron back like in the fourth year. The world would burn and new dark lords would emerge if Ron ever got his hands on the Elder wand or any hallow for that matter. Harry felt his heart break all over again because this meant that he could never get back with Ginny ever again.
If this was heartbreak, it wasn't all that bad; Harry Potter most certainly remembered pain much worse than this dull ache in his heart. If not for the promise of a family that the Weasleys represented, did he even want to get back with Ginny again? She had been eager to send him off to war, declaring that she "knew" he had to hunt Voldemort and put him down. Really? What a sorry couple they would make; he with his delusions of family, and she with her delusions of the Boy-Who-Lived...
The irony of it wasn't lost on him; closing his eyes, Harry imagined that connection as a string and mentally snipped it off. There, done! The door to the Weasleys was now closed to him forever. As was a career as Auror. The risk of the Wand and its mastery accidentally passing on to someone else in his line of work was too risky to take chances with. He had killed Voldie, won the war and yet lost everything he had fought for.
A/N: Please Review and gently...br /span/span/span/div