I don't own Harry Potter.
Holly Potter is Dead.
Everyone assumed Ravenclaw students were bookish bookworms, interested only in reading books and getting spells and potions right. But that wasn't quite true; not every Ravenclaw liked reading books and getting perfect grades in classes, some of them were sorted into the House because they were intelligent, and were good at composing music, writing poetry, playing jigsaws, or being instinctively good with magic or had a hobby that required thought. The book thing was just an extra, and it was twisted out of context by stereotypical attitudes passed down over the centuries.
Luna Lovegood sat in the carriage, ignoring the other kids riding along as the Thestrals pulled the carriages to Hogwarts. Ordinarily, Luna would have been reading the latest issue of the Quibbler upside down to pick out the latest codes her father sent out to the Unspeakables, which were buried so deeply in the articles so many people saw as rubbish, but a trained eye would pick them out in moments, humming under her breath out of tune music, which could have come from three different songs by the Beatles, the Weird Sisters, Mozart, and Beethoven, or even Bananarama.
The Lovegoods weren't as sheltered as other families. They had taught their daughter muggle culture, and she had become a fan of many forms of their music, from classical to pop. As she'd listened to them, Luna had begun humming, stringing them all together so they fit; several incompatible pieces of music strung together and played tunelessly for her own amusement.
It wasn't a talent. It was a self-taught skill that Luna had mastered, along with all the other things she had taught herself as a way of getting over the pain she felt about her mother's death; that and the spells she had mastered and the ones she had created herself after her father taught her the basics of spell creation.
Out of the corner of her vision, Luna noticed they stopped to stare at her. She wasn't surprised.
After all, she was Holly Potter's best friend.
Thinking of her best friend, and what happened to her, broke Luna's heart and she had to stop herself from breaking down and crying, especially as she thought of the horrific way Holly had been treated even after she had proven her innocence she had not put her name into that stupid Goblet of Fire, before she had been thrown into the gauntlet, to say nothing of the hell she had gone through in the graveyard which everyone saw…
Luna closed her eyes, remembering the sounds of the screams as the Death Eaters raped her, seen and broadcasted thanks to the projection spell she had cast before Holly killed Voldemort after she managed to get her wand back. But her friend had gotten away, back to the Rookery where Luna's dad looked after her, and when Luna came back, they both tried their best but Holly was badly shaken up by the pain caused by the rape. But when Lily and James Potter were proven alive, Luna's heart broke on Holly's behalf, especially when she caught sight of the older girl's face.
She had never seen Holly look lost when she had heard the news, so heartbroken when they had gone to Gringotts after Holly refused to get in touch with her parents, and discovered that they'd been living their lives happily. And that was when Holly had broken completely, and she was never the same after that.
Luna sighed, closing her eyes tightly to stop herself from crying.
"Hey, Looney, what's wrong?"
"I think her protector has left her! Where is Potter, anyway?" Luna wasn't surprised they had caught up on the uptake, that Holly was not here. But they were wrong.
She didn't need a protector.
Not anymore.
Cho Chang and the other girls of her gang laughed uproariously, but Luna had had more than enough of them. Holly and she had become friends because neither girl truly fit in, and they had found each other. Luna had found that underneath Holly's broken attitude which came from years of pain and abuse, she was a lovely person who just wanted to be loved, but at the same time, Holly had taught Luna to stand up for herself and to stop letting bitches like Cho bloody Chang, who believed Luna didn't deserve to be in Ravenclaw from tormenting her.
Snarling angrily, Luna took out her wand and cast a string of spells none of the other older girls had ever heard of, but they were painful. Cho screamed suddenly when her face contorted and her nose lengthened and elongated into a hook nose, while painful boils and warts spread across her skin.
Marietta and the other girls screamed themselves. Tentacles sprouted out of the redhead's head before a sucker-like beak appeared even as her skin darkened and became a slimy greyish green.
All of the other girls likewise became hideous, and they screamed or gurgled as they took in their appearances.
Luna fired a noisemaker spell, getting their attention but everyone else's. She knew there was a chance she would get herself landed head first in detention for using magic in the corridors, but she genuinely didn't care. Dumbledore had always cared for punishing those who fought back, uncaring about the pain they caused.
"Why do you do this?" Luna asked. "You've been tormenting me for so long. Why, what's the point? Why are you getting your fun bullying and harassing a girl who's two-three years younger than you? You're so finite, it's pathetic. A bunch of girls who are close to leaving this castle, but all you do is bully kids younger than you? What's wrong, can't find someone your own bloody age?" Luna suddenly screamed, making the girls cower back. "No more. I don't need Holly to look over my shoulders, but she was a victim that you loved bullying just as much as me, but she always fought back didn't she?"
The girls whimpered in pain as their transformations were quite painful.
Footsteps had Luna turning around and she sighed.
"Miss Lovegood, what are you doing here?" McGonagall demanded.
Luna didn't bother replying at once. She had one more thing to do.
"Stay away from me," Luna turned back to the other girls and sighed as she turned back to McGonagall, who'd been joined with Flitwick, who glanced at the girls with an air of foreboding.
"This again?" Flitwick growled as he turned to Cho's gang of idiotic girls. "Even after Miss Potter revealed what you were doing after she beat you, you still seem determined to cause problems."
Holly hadn't wanted to get Flitwick involved at all. It had been more by luck than design. Cho and her gang had been harassing not only Luna and Holly, but a band of younger first years and Holly had used the opportunity to use a number of curses on the gang. One of the onlookers ran off and brought in Flitwick, who had listened to the story of the bullying, and it was there the half-goblin teacher realised just how little he really knew some of his students.
The large majority of the House was shoved into detention for the next six months and the points were depleted so badly that by the end of the year only a few had replaced the ones taken. Many in Ravenclaw had been furious, but Flitwick had made sure everyone understood the depths of their mistake. The half-goblin hated bullying, and he was ashamed he had allowed it all to get out of hand.
The girls whimpered. They remembered Flitwicks' anger.
Flitwick turned to Luna. "Miss Lovegood, I will want to speak to you tomorrow morning. Right now we have the feast to deal with. Get to the hall while I take these girls to the hospital wing."
Luna nodded silently, although she didn't bother adding to her Head of House the hexes would not wear off until morning. She left before anyone could assign a punishment to her. Luna had no intention of sitting in on a punishment out of pure defiance against a system where bullies were given more liberties than they deserved.
But the moment she stepped into the Great Hall, Luna paused when she caught sight of the Head Table. Much of the school was still arriving and sitting down, greeting their friends. But Luna was not one of them. She was too busy staring in horror and outrage at the latest additions to the table.
Lily Potter, James Potter, Sirius Black, and Remus Lupin were sitting at the table. Luna saw the way the elder Potters were both looking desperately at the Ravenclaw table. They were clearly looking for Holly, and even when the final older students filled up the table while leaving enough room for the new first years, they were becoming desperate.
She wondered why they were even bothering. They had abandoned their own child, throwing her thoughtlessly away. Their actions had broken Holly in ways that even Voldemort had never managed to achieve. But what angered her the most was how Dumbledore had the audacity to also look. It had been all his fault, and when she and her father were finished, Luna only hoped the old wizard's reputation was ruined.
Luna saw the way Lupin spotted her and leaned over to tell his friends where she was, knowing that she, Luna, was Holly's friend. But she ignored them and she sat in silence as the sorting went on, and she only clapped politely. When Dumbledore stood up to make his usual announcements, Luna smirked when she saw the owls streaming through carrying rolled-up newspapers.
"It's not time for the Evening prophet, is it?"
"What's going on?"
Newspapers dropped on the House and Head tables. They were free copies of the Quibbler, all of them perfectly timed by Luna and her father prior to the night. There were copies of the edition being sent to everyone in the magical world, except they were paid copies. Luna had wanted everyone in Hogwarts to get a free copy each, but the presence of the Potters had surprised her, but it didn't matter. While everyone in the magical world loved or disdained the Quibbler, the headline was news. Soon the story would be all over the magical world, and since she and her dad had sworn a magically binding oath, nobody could claim they were lying about what the newspaper story contained.
Luna unrolled her copy. She didn't need to, she had helped write the newspaper's latest edition, but she did it anyway to see how the headline looked in the current surroundings. They certainly looked bleak.
"Holly Potter Dead in Suicide!"
Luna closed her eyes in sorrow. She didn't open them when she heard Lily Potter's shriek of horror. A part of the blonde girl was surprised she felt no sympathy for Holly's mother.
X
Escorted by Flitwick to Dumbledore's office - where else? - Luna didn't skip, she just walked. She wasn't in the mood to showcase her usual mannerisms. She had been expecting this meeting from the moment she and her daddy had set the whole plan up. Dumbledore had always had a vested interest in Holly's life, going out of his way to meddle with it; he wasn't likely to ignore something like this, but at the same time Luna had no idea what the old fool was going to do next.
For that matter, Luna had no idea what the Potters would do. But she was relieved she would have Flitwick with her. Holly and she had a bet that all Heads of House sat in with their students, but McGonagall wouldn't.
Flitwick gave the password and they were soon in Dumbledore's office. Luna stepped through the door, her silvery eyes taking in every single instrument and book. Luna knew only too well there were people who saw Dumbledore as the epitome of a light wizard, which only helped with his image, and was one of the most pivotal reasons why the Wizarding World trusted him so much. But she and her parents had never been among that group.
Luna saw something different.
She had seen and heard many accounts describing Dumbledore's past, much of it rumour, but unlike many other young wizards and witches, whose way of thinking was poked and prodded by their peers and families, the Lovegoods had encouraged Luna to use her brain and her intellect rather than be mindlessly gullible while they strengthened her seer powers, which her parents had discovered early and made sure she used them to judge a person, instead of just going along with whatever someone said. Unlike Trelawney, Luna was a true seer although she received impressions rather than prophecies, and it helped her see the shape of things to come. Whenever she looked at a person, Luna was able to tell what they were like, what their personalities were like, and what their true nature would make them do. Another of her talents was being able to read the aura of everyone around her.
And she had always found Dumbledore to be wanting. Looking at the books on the shelves showed a man who wasn't just a scholar in light magic because even the lightest orientated wizard out there sometimes found themselves looking in darker volumes. And while Dumbledore was light in some areas, he was quite dark in his way of thinking. He merely disguised it better than Voldemort and other wizards.
"Ah, Miss Lovegood," Dumbledore tried to put on a cheerful facade, but like the Potters and Black and Lupin and McGonagall, his attempt failed too quickly. "I was hoping we could have a private talk."
Luna raised a brow. If someone else had said that, they would have asked what the Potters were doing here, but in this instance Dumbledore wanted only those within his inner circle to hear what he had to say. Professor Flitwick was not in that circle.
Dumbledore turned to Flitwick. "Thank you, Filius. But I would wish we spoke to Miss Lovegood about the Quibbler article in private."
"No, Miss Lovegood asked me to stay in on this meeting," the half-goblin teacher replied as he conjured a chair customised for his height and build while he conjured another chair for Luna, making it clear he was going to stay. "In any case, I always sit in with my students, and since Miss Potter was my student, I would like to know what you have to say."
"Filius, this is hardly appropriate-," Dumbledore tried to say but Luna sighed and stood up. "Come on, Professor," she said to Flitwick, however one of her silvery eyes narrowed as she gazed at Dumbledore. "He is going to waste time trying to make you leave, and he'll ignore my wishes, just like he ignores everything else."
Flitwick turned to see the expression on Dumbledore's face. "I do believe you're right, Miss Lovegood. He never did know when to quit."
The two Ravenclaws turned to leave, when-
"WAIT!" Lily Potter shouted, turning to glare at Dumbledore. "She's right. This is wasting time. We're here to talk about Holly, and Professor Flitwick might actually be helpful. Please don't go."
James stood up and stood next to his wife. "We want to understand what happened to our daughter, Albus," he said. "Professor Flitwick and Miss Lovegood are our only hope of finding out the truth., and you're driving them away simply because you don't want him to say anything?"
Dumbledore was unhappy and uneasy about having someone who wasn't even a member of the Order involved in this. He had always felt the more secrecy he had in his choices, the better, but in this case, it was needed. Too many of his plans were at stake. "Oh, very well. My apologies, Filius…"
"Just because Minerva is the only one of the Heads who'd walk out and leave their students alone with you, doesn't mean I will. You know that is the rule." Flitwick took his seat again, sending an angry glare at Dumbledore. He had always suspected one of the reasons Dumbledore had gotten into the habit of telling the Heads to leave his office was because of sexual deviancies, but on the other hand at the same time, he had to admit Dumbledore had always liked choosing what rules he preferred to enforce rather than follow them since they were right.
Minerva looked like she had just been slapped, but Flitwick didn't care. He and Pomona had spent a long time - a very long time - trying to make her see she had to stay with her students when they were in this office, but she never listened to them.
"What is it you wanted to see me about?" Luna's voice was short, sharp and to the point. "I have spent the entire day travelling, and I don't want to be here. So what do you want?"
"Miss Lovegood raises a good point, Albus," Flitwick had just seen McGonagall opening her mouth in an automatic retort to tell the younger witch to watch her mouth. "It's late. Classes start in the morning, so why couldn't this have waited?"
Lily answered the question. Personally, she would have felt it was more logical for this conversation to wait for a bit longer, but she had been desperate to the fates that what she'd read in the paper was not true. Holly couldn't be dead, no it couldn't be. "Our daughter can't be dead. She just can't be!"
Luna stared at the older witch with a cold expression. "And you care why?"
Lily gaped at the girl in horror.
This was too much for James. "How dare you!? Holly was our daughter-!"
"And my goddaughter," Black added, glaring at Luna angrily.
"Since when? You abandoned her, not once but so many times," Luna wasn't affected, or at least she wasn't in the minds of the older witches and wizards in the room. However her hand gripped the handle of her wand, and she was already going through the most painful hexes she knew and what she'd even invented. The young Ravenclaw wasn't the only one prepared for a fight; Flitwick had tensed and he had taken his wand out.
"Miss Lovegood, we would like to know what happened to make Holly commit suicide," Dumbledore decided to come to the point, for once.
Suddenly Luna laughed. The sound sounded like a crazed cackle, making everyone look at her as if she lived up to her unfair nickname. But the laugh was so unexpected, and it was the last thing they'd expected the girl to ever do since Holly had supposedly been her best friend.
"Is something funny, Miss Lovegood?" Dumbledore demanded.
"Yes, you. All of you. You all claim or miss or care about Holly, but truthfully you don't," Luna said, barely suppressing the giggles. She wasn't laughing because this was funny, she was laughing because of the sudden care and devotion these idiots were showing, "You get the Potters to abandon their only child, have them fake their own deaths in a battle which was as fake as they are themselves. You lock Holly away in her own little prison with abusive muggles, and you never bother to check on her when anything could have happened beyond your control and you place nobody but a powerless squib in the neighbourhood to keep watch, but of course, she wouldn't be able to do anything. You do all that, and you expect her to be mentally stable?"
"A squib? You had a squib look over our daughter?" James shouted.
"Are you stupid?" Lily followed her husband's reaction while McGonagall gazed at Dumbledore in contempt for his choices. "What good would that have done?"
"Arabella was the only member of the Order who lived in the muggle world after being treated badly by her family," Dumbledore saw no reason to hide the truth now. "She had a floo connection to my office; if Holly was missing or under attack, she would have contacted me."
"Yeah, so long as she had any sense! I remember Arabella, she was always bitter towards those who had magic, and she was insane, and she was your best choice. Why couldn't Remus have been there, he has worked in the muggle world before?" Lily demanded.
"It wouldn't have fitted in with his plans," Luna answered for him, just wanting to get this over and done with. "And that's what you wanted, wasn't it, Headmaster? You wanted to control Holly, and so you went out of your way to manipulate her life. You try to set her up with people whom you have relegated as friends. You tried to make her go into Gryffindor, but she instead went into Ravenclaw. You played games with her education, telling her what she could study and what she couldn't. You had your own pet Gryffindorks spy on her. You tried setting her up with Ronald Weasley. You routinely forced her to play your dangerous games before patting her on the head while making sure her own godfather and his pet werewolf are your pawns and won't help her or think for themselves. And, for the cherry on the cake, you forced her into the Triwizard Tournament and she kept quiet on the deduction she was being targeted in the hopes of turning her into a piece of bait but she foiled that with a magical oath she didn't enter the stupid thing.
"When she was captured, what did you do when you saw for yourself how she was being raped and tortured? You did nothing, Headmaster," Luna's voice was low, quiet and the aura surrounding her was dark and crackling with rage. It was a terrifying image. "You just delayed the Aurors and anyone else with any ounce of compassion while some of the students looked on in glee like it was a funny theatre. The only reaction from you was when Holly was able to get her wand back and use that spell on Voldemort that destroyed his soul fragments. She told him as he and the Death Eaters were drained of their magic that she had discovered their existence later in the year when she trained; those visions he was sending her drove her mad, and she wanted that psychotic bastard dead. But when she left, she didn't want to go to Hogwarts so she went to my father."
"Why would he go to your father who's around the twist?" Black demanded, ignoring the reactions from his friends.
Luna's eyes flashed. "My father is a better wizard than you will ever be!" She hissed. "At least he never abandoned me, or only escaped Azkaban just because he saw a photograph in a newspaper that was a hundred to one chance of being there! What was your excuse, Mr Black?"
"Professor Black, Miss Lovegood," Dumbledore corrected.
Luna ignored the Headmaster, and she even ignored Sirius. "My father took care of Holly because he was one of the only adults she truly trusted. If she had come back to the school, you would have harassed her. She was in a terrible state."
Mrs Potter looked like she was only just holding in the urge to not burst out crying at this news, but Luna had only just gotten started.
"Do you know how Holly felt when we went into Gringotts to check on her accounts, only to discover you two were alive?" Luna's voice was mild, almost like she had only met the Potters for a chat over tea and cake, but her eyes were narrowed, spitting which ruined the effect. "Holly lost her faith in the magical world, what little she had left. You see, she had always assumed the pair of you both loved her enough to die for her even if she felt you were stupid for not running away, to protect her which was a contrast to the sick lies her relatives told her."
"What?" Lily stiffened, shooting Dumbledore with a glare. But when Dumbledore said nothing, Lily's temper snapped. "What did Petunia tell Holly? Answer me, you bastard!"
Dumbledore flinched, but he didn't reply.
"Your muggle sister told Holly you and your husband had died in a car crash, and that you were both criminals; an unemployed drunk and a whore, respectfully. What Holly had learnt in the past made her desperate to leave the Dursleys, but the lie Hagrid told her made her happy her parents had loved her, but the truth the goblins told her made her see love was impossible for her," Luna answered solemnly.
Lily turned to Dumbledore, her expression horrified. For himself, Dumbledore appeared calm but Luna had a feeling that the old wizard was becoming angrier and uneasier that so many secrets were being revealed. "You allowed Petunia to lie to her like that?"
Luna, who was still determined to get this meeting over and done with, spoke before Dumbledore could. "You must have known where he was putting her, so why are you surprised the muggles lied to her? I mean, are you so dense? You spent years watching your own sister slowly hate you, all because your family and neighbours put you on a lofty pedestal you did not deserve, and you had the gall to ask why Petunia was being so hateful. It was all a part of his plans. You see, Tom Marvolo Riddle, also known as Lord Voldemort, grew up in a similar environment, and Dumbledore allowed it. He wanted to see if Holly would respond in the same way."
"You mean you wanted our child to become a Dark Witch?" James yelled, making Luna wince.
Dumbledore shook his head. "No," he tried to say but he refused to give any more details.
"Then what did you want?"
"All this fighting is getting us nowhere, James," Lupin said.
"True, but I'd like to know why he didn't do anything more," Black added.
Lily turned desperately to Luna. She didn't know the girl well, but she was Holly's best friend. "Please," she begged, "tell me it's not true, that my daughter is dead!"
Luna stared at her with sad contempt. "Holly is dead, Mrs Potter," she said softly but she couldn't help but say it bitterly. "When she realised you were both alive, and happy, she realised she couldn't go on anymore. Coupled with the fact she found out you'd just left her, that she'd been raped, can you blame her?"
Lily burst out crying.
James wrapped his arms tightly around Lily. "Do you know where our daughter is buried?"
"No. Holly didn't want her final resting place to be desecrated or turned into a monument," Luna replied, although she didn't bother to say Holly didn't want her so-called parents to come and cry.
Lily sniffled even more.
"Why are you crying?" Luna demanded callously, sick of the show since the woman didn't deserve sympathy. "Did you really think Holly was going to just forgive you for what you'd done? You abandoned your own child, and magic has seen fit to punish you by ensuring you never have another child."
"What do you mean?" Flitwick asked, suddenly intrigued by this worrying conversation.
"I have a greater perception of people, Professor," Luna replied without giving too much away. "I can tell that the Potters were fortunate and blessed to have a powerful daughter, but when they abandoned her, magic judged them as unworthy, all because they obeyed an old man with delusions of grandeur, who told them as if he were a god, to give up their child. And since then they haven't been able to conceive another child, because they don't deserve one."
Dumbledore glowered at her.
Flitwick turned to the Potters. "Is that true, you can't have any more children?"
Lily bowed her head. The whole conversation and the realisation they'd abandoned their daughter and destroyed her life for good until it drove her to commit suicide and the reminder of how she couldn't conceive, had shattered her resolve to keep a normally private topic to herself. "Yes."
"Then that's it," Flitwick nodded judgementally. "Magic has judged you as being unworthy of having children. Magic is more than a tool; everyone being that can create magic has bound the world together since time began and as a result, it's a collective mind of each person, plant, animal and being, complete with intellect. And its judged you for your evil decision. You are sickening."
Lily sniffled, while James wrapped his arms around her shoulder while everyone else was surprised and even concerned that magic could actually be more intelligent than they imagined, and it worried them and even scared them that some of their actions were judged.
"As I said, she was heartbroken when she learnt you two were alive, and living a life where you were happy without her around," Luna looked down as she remembered Holly's reaction. "That the pair of you had faked your deaths. She came up with the desire to commit suicide there and then, so she had my father and the goblins arrange it for her. She would kill herself while she supplied us with memories. She wanted the myth of the Girl Who Lived to be broken, and for good."
"What do you mean, Miss Lovegood?" Dumbledore sat up suddenly.
It wasn't unnoticed by the two Ravenclaws in the office, or the former Ravenclaw-educated and housed Heads on the walls who were listening to this conversation, even if they mostly pretended to be sleeping out of pure boredom, Dumbledore seemed to care more about this factor than anything else.
"Holly gave my father and the goblins memories of her life," Luna said simply. "Everything that happened in her childhood will be revealed and your role in them. And yours, too," Luna added when she glanced at the Potters. "She wanted the magical world to finally wake up, and realise the pain caused by this stupid Girl Who Lived myth, which she saw was nothing but a cruel hoax, a plan you cooked up."
"No, she can't do this!" Dumbledore reacted.
"I find it ironic that you care more for your reputation than you do the truth, Headmaster," Luna commented.
Dumbledore glared at her. "That will be 200 points from Ravenclaw, Miss Lovegood, and a detention with a professor I deem proper."
"Oh, no you won't, Albus! From what I've understood you decided to use one of your plans as an excuse to destroy an entire family, and from what I can comprehend you put an innocent girl after making her stupid parents give her to you, where she was then put into an event where she would have died, and then you placed her with abusive muggles who lied and mistreated her, all under the pretext of keeping her safe while you worked on some foolish plan for Riddle!" Flitwick quickly rose to the defence of his student.
"Punishing me won't change the fact Holly is dead, Headmaster," Luna added. "And the fact your plans have come crashing down. Nor the fact you have doomed the Potter family to extinction, another family you've endangered and destroyed over the years with your plans for Personal recognition. And as for the Potters, they'll have to live with the fact they threw the most precious gift parents could receive away without a backwards glance, and that Holly would have never forgiven them and died to get away from their pathetic excuses about why they did what they did."
Mrs Potter looked even more horrified when she realised after a few minutes of denial that her only child had died hating her and her husband. She barely noticed it when James, who was also crying, held her.
McGonagall glared at Dumbledore and the Potters. "I'm hearing a lot of things I don't like. Who are you to interfere in a child's life? And not checking up on her, and setting her up?"
Dumbledore stared askance at her. "Minerva, please. We were losing the war. We had to think of something. I did what I had to do to save us all."
"Dragon shit! You're a lousy leader, and I can see it now!" McGonagall snapped. "Your ridiculous stun-only policy caused more harm than good. Children should not be used as weapons, but that's nothing to you is it? Common decency. And as for you two," she turned to glare at the Potters. "I don't know either of you, not anymore."
Luna turned to Dumbledore and gave a parting shot each word carefully calculated to inflict grief and agony. "Contrary to what you might like to think, Headmaster, you are not the only wizard in the world. It's only the arrogance that makes you think you are."
X
Over the next month, the Quibbler began printing out story after story about Holly's life, and every single dark moment in her life was analysed with terrifying detail as Xeno Lovegood proved he wasn't a demented fool, but a truly cunning and intelligent man who wasn't hesitating to rip Dumbledore's reputation to pieces with the Potters being a bonus.
Each story brought about a fresh outcry. The ICW moved in and they captured the Dursleys and subjected them to interrogation. It was not helped by the arrogant assumptions of Vernon Dursley about the laws of the land, laws the magical world didn't care about. The magical world was more than happy to prove him wrong and the Dursleys were soon sent to the Dementors to be kissed.
Dumbledore raised protests, but the investigation into his actions prevented him, and the Potters from being interrogated for their actions. Dumbledore's crimes went back decades, and he soon found himself relieved of his position and placed in a maximum security cell in Azkaban. Fawkes the Phoenix abandoned him and there was a reshuffling in Hogwarts to prevent the rise of another Dark Lord.
The Potters themselves were ostracised for their actions in throwing away the gift of a child.
X
Six Years Later.
Under a notice-me-not charm, Luna stood outside the primary school in the muggle world, waiting. According to her watch, the school would be out in a few minutes. When the students finally emerged, chatting and giggling happily, racing to their parents. Only one girl caught Luna's attention.
A girl with long straight blonde hair and blue eyes. She giggled as she said goodbye to her friends and she raced to the woman who adopted her.
Luna smiled, tears dripping down her face as she watched her old friend.
Holly had wanted to die, but only as Holly Potter. She wanted the myth to die, and she wanted everything about Lily and James to die, so she'd arranged with Xeno and the goblins to remove her magic and make her into a muggle because the whole magical world filled her with horror, and she wanted to leave it for good, and change her appearance and turn her into a baby again and wiping her memories. Some would say it was revenge, but it wasn't. All Holly had wanted was to get away before some new secret came and destroyed what little she had left.
While her wishes had been fulfilled and Luna could understand why Holly had wanted things to be taken to such an extent, it broke the witch's heart that Dumbledore and the Potters would push Holly to take this kind of step. But she would keep Holly's secret for good even if Dumbledore had died in his sleep a year ago.
All Holly had ever wanted was a family, and now she had it even though it broke Luna's heart the Holly she knew had felt the need to die to get away.
X
Author's Note - One of my favourite tropes in Harry Potter is where Harry's parents turn out to be scum, weaklings who go along with everything Dumbledore says without looking at the consequences. My favourite story in this category is The Fall of House Potter by Bobmin356.