A/N & DISCLAIMER: It's a world that belongs to JKR. Everything and everyone in it also belongs to her. This fanfic is nothing but a fan's mad wish of how the story should have gone. If you want canon acts, flawless writing and her version of the story and its characters and premises, please do feel free to go read the actual books written by JKR. Oh! ...And do feel free to comment, review and just drop in for gossip as long as we are all being nice, kind and respectful.
Chapter 0: Is this the Beginning or The End?
War was finally done. Harry's use as a hero was done and over with too. He was tired of the blood and gore and death and betrayals and loss that never seemed to end. All the tired young man wanted was to fade into obscurity and attempt to heal. To sleep at least one night without being besieged with nightmares of death, blood and faces of loved ones no longer around. He didn't want the accolades or the fame or being hounded by strangers and the media. All he wanted was to be left alone in peace. To heal. It was hardly much, but it was what he yearned for. When the Weasleys wished to parade him as a flag of things and ideals he never really understood or agreed with, he finally snapped and walked out of the burrow. That was the beginning of his end. Or so he thought till he died.
Ignoring Molly's shrill scolding and Ginny's ultimatums and Ron's rants and Hermione's shrewish, judgemental condescension, Harry gathered his meager belongings and apparated to Gringotts to settle his debts and clear the air with the Bankers of Britannia. A fee tense hours and more relevations of betrayal being uncovered later, a fatigued Harry requested Kreacher to ask Neville if Harry could hide with them for a few days and just sleep. Kreacher brought back a warm welcoming invite and Harry quickly popped away after instructing the goblins to lock all his remaining wealth and properties fully out of reach of anyone except him or Neville on his behalf. As a parting gift, Harry had paid the fines for Hermione and Ron for their part in the raid of Gringotts and the loss of their dragon and damages to property and their reputation.
He just wanted to wind down and sleep for once without feeling threatened or mired in nightmares. The Longbottom manor was still impenetrable and a safe heaven and Neville and gran had assured him that his presence in their home would be a strongly guarded secret for as long as he wished to stay. That was when Neville told him that he and Harry were god brothers by ritual and there could never be anything like gratitude or favours amongst family. The war had numbed Harry's reactions so he didn't cry, but his eyes glistened and he hugged Neville with all the feeble energy he could summon. Luna was also present and hiding from the mad celebrations, grieving for her father who had been killed in battle too. They were all wounded and sought comfort and rest in obscurity rather than the limelight like Granger and the Weasleys.
Days rolled into weeks and slowly the nightmares faded into just disturbed dreams. Harry was beginning to hope once again. His body had healed faster than his soul. And that's when everyone went mad. That was the only explanation Harry could grasp when Dumbledore came back from dead calling for Harry's head on a pike.
British community had slowly slipped back to its bigotry, bias, corruption and ignorance. The "imperiused" deatheaters, dark regime suporters and the light extremists had oddly enough teamed up behind Dumbledore, back alive, and claiming all credit for the Defeat of Voldemort, the demented half-blood as they were now calling him. Harry had been feeling the agitation and spikes of unreasonable fear that even his cloak and wand had seemed to resonate at odd times but assumed that was his PTSD and not Dumbledore's many failed attempts to recall the wand or the stone.
Harry had won the fight against Voldemort as the master of the Deathly Hallows. He had truly and completely claimed them. The now captured hallows had already merged with Harry's cloak and given him the power of wandless and wordless magics soul magics and a visible hike in power. Dumbledore had not anticipated that when he came out of hiding and decided to recall the Wand and Stone. Even the Sorcerer's Stone and the Elixir he had brewed hadn't granted him that power. To Dumbledore, that was unacceptable. None could be allowed to have that power. Only he was wise enough to handle it without really succumbing to it's dark powers. Hallows were meant to be his. That the Hallows were not his but Harry's birthright and legacy meant little to the now furious old man.
Dumbledore came out of hiding and called a press conference, the Weasleys and Granger, and MacGonagall and Hagrid and many others including now the Malfoys by his side, weaving a fantastic tale of the dark lord possessing Harry's body and taking over completely and staging a big showdown only to pretend to kill a fake Golem. He declared that he had suspected for 3 years, ever since the resurrection after triwizard fiasco that Harry has been going dark. He confessed that he'd been worried over the possibility even as far as Harry's second year at Hogwarts because of the basilisk incident, with the soul shard in his scar and now this sham of winning the war and attacking even Gringotts only proved his suspicions. He declared that Harry needs to be kissed by dementors pronto. He prodded at it daily for two months while Harry and his friends had been quietly recovering at the Longbottoms residence. He had whipped the crowds into a mad frenzy, Percy Weasley in the lead, guiding the press to ensure the public was now baying for his blood.
Nowhere was now safe. Harry's illusions had shattered thoroughly and he knew he was endangering the Longbottoms by hiding with them especially now that Neville was taking an active role in voicing his protest and rejecting Dumbledore and his new decrees. Harry had already understood, however, that this was a war they would only lose. He was proven right, unfortunately when a group of aurors, lead by Dumbledore, Percy, Draco, Granger and the four elder Weasleys, Kingsley and Hagrid broke the wards of Longbottom Manor and arrested them all, killing Augusta in the process. A people's court captured, gloated, judged and sentenced harry to death; the irony wasn't lost to Harry as he stood quiet and defeated, in heavy, rusted chains, in the heart of the Wizengamot chamber, only Flitwick, Sprout, Neville, Susan and Luna loudly protesting the farce.
Weasleys and Granger, even Andy Tonks, Hagrid and McGonagall and other teachers and order members were in the chamber, clamouring for his head on a pike. It broke his heart and his will to fight anymore. Harry and his supporters were tried in what was nothing less than a kangaroo court and sentenced to the veil or a dementor's kiss. They were still arguing amongst themselves when Harry unfocused and sat quietly, wondering how the future generations would learn of this turn to the second blood war. He could imagine kids sleeping while Binns droned on, and no one ever would realise the truth. For now, neither Hermione nor Ron would meet his eyes. He wondered if they had ever been his friends.
Harry closed his eyes for the last time, his vision blurred by the last sight of his friends being hogtied and simply tossed over the veil. He was reserved for the Dementor's kiss and his body, they had decided to display in the ministry atrium preserved as a warning for all the future malcontents and dissenters. Tears rained down his eyes as he remained silent, and the last sight was the frozen visage of rotting mouth under the despicable hood and the last sound was their death rattles. His world swirled madly and recklessly in utter darkness and then spun in a mad, dizzying speed before he blacked out.
His last passing thought was gladness that the Hallows would forever be out of their reach. He had slipped them into Neville's pockets with a silent switching spell and they had gone with him into the veil and forever out of Dumbledore's reach.