Prelude
The funeral service was amazing. The number of people who attended shocked even the most jaded witch and wizard, few of whom were not in attendance. What really shocked people though was the fact that many of them truly felt for the young man lying in the coffin.
It wasn't that he had been their last hope against the evil that even now surged afresh in the world, rather that they honestly began to understand as person after person took the stand and made their eulogy what it was to have been Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived.
It was easy, the wizard had thought as he slipped into the Great Hall in Hogwarts. Far too easy to take the hair from the muggle barber shop. The potion had been carefully brewed in the utmost secret weeks before, and nowhere he stood a man in his middle thirties who looked shocked as so many took the stand to talk about their experience in the last seven years with Harry Potter. Yet there was one woman who didn't speak, and that saddened him greatly, and he knew why.
Month before he had rationalized with himself that he had to keep her safe because of who she was, but the truth had to be known to him, and it had reared it's head sharply on Valentine's Day.
She had received a card that disturbed him, a secret admirer had written to her and had made plans with her. She had gone to Hogsmead with this boy, and kissed him. Weeks later they broke up and he found out why.
He really hadn't meant to listen in on her private conversation with Hermione, but then again it's hard to rationalize that fact when he had snuck out of the dorm at midnight under his invisibility cloak and taken secret passages shown only to him and scant few others to reach the girls dorms undetected.
In the end it was really all the same, he now knew, and he knew he could not act on this until she was safe. And that lead him to here, and a plan that was almost insane in its brilliance.
Harry Potter continued to watch as his funeral drug out, his eyes barely ever leaving the sobbing form of Ginny Weasley, the woman who held the key to his heart. Occasionally, he'd take a sip of the potion from the hip flask, and the witch beside him gave him a knowing, sad look, and patted his hand.
He almost laughed at this. Instead he gave her a knowing sad smile in return, and stood up to leave as Snape took the stand.
"I have been asked" the cool voice said "to say a few parting words about Mr. Potter." Harry paused and turned to look at the older man on the podium, whose dark eyes seemed to find his and lock on to his. "To be honest, words fail me at this time. Mr. Potter was an outstanding student, whose merits have already been discussed in great detail already. Suffice to say that the world is a lesser place without Mr. Potter, and that with his passing we must look elsewhere for the shining example of hope he gave to us all."
Harry was riveted, who in the hell is this and what did they do with Snape? He thought.
"My hope remains that we will find out in several months time that this is an elaborate charade of Mr. Potter's and that he'll walk back into the school and the wizarding world explaining that it was one last prank to be played, this time to trick He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named into coming out into the open." Snape stood there, eyes locked with Harry's. He then looked down at the podium and Harry caught a sound he had never heard before, a soft sob escaped from Snape. "And I dearly hope this is the case."
Harry placed his hand on the doorknob and left.