Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter, or any of the Potter-verse. Everything you recognise belongs to the magnificent Ms Rowling. I do, however own any characters you don't recognise.
A/N: My first fanfic! Be nice, I'm still getting the hang of this! I have a few chapters planned out, but I don't really have too much of a plan as to where the story is going, so bare with me. Update's will most likely be sporadic at best, so sorry in advance. Any advice will be taken into consideration and used to help me improve. This first chapter is probably longer than most will be, as it includes a rather lengthy prologue (the writing of which isn't as good as the rest – well to me at least – it was hard!) to provide the background. I will aim for around 2,000 words per chapter.
Now, onto the story!
Fulfilling Prophecies
Prologue
Albus Dumbledore looked across his desk at the boy, young man, he corrected himself. Eighteen-year-old Harry Potter could hardly be called a boy anymore; after all he had faced in his short life – particularly in the last few years. The stress he had faced during the final battles against Voldemort had taken its toll on the Boy-Who-Lived. His bright green eyes had dimmed with the haunting memories of a war he had been forced into by a prescribed fate. Now that the final battle had been fought, ending with Voldemort's soul been encased in a soul-stone, the headmaster felt a sense of relief that the boy would finally be able to live a somewhat normal life.
"How are you Harry?" Dumbledore said in his usual kind voice.
Looking straight at the older man, Harry sighed, holding back the wash of emotions inside him, the anger, despair, grief, but most prominently – relief. "I'm fine, sir. It's just taking a while to accept it all."
Dumbledore nodded, looking over his half-moon spectacles to the tired face in front of him. Once again he thought that Harry had aged too much over the past few years, taking on burdens made for much older shoulders. "I called you here for two reasons today, Harry. The first of which is that the Minister, Madame Bones, wishes to talk to you. The second is the matter of your future." Harry nodded in acknowledgement. He had known both matters would need to be discussed before he left, and had indeed expected them to be the reasons behind the meeting. "But until we are joined by our esteemed Minister, would you like a lemon drop?" The old headmaster's eyes twinkled in amusement as Harry merely smiled and took one of the proffered sweets.
As they were making small talk, there was a knock on the door. It opened to show the Minister for Magic, Madame Bones. The woman had replaced Cornelius Fudge the previous year, and had so far been a great improvement. She came into the room, giving Harry and Dumbledore a small smile and, standing between the two powerful wizards, asked for a moment of their time.
"I'll try to be brief, but what I really need to know – now that you are awake, Mr Potter – is what exactly happened with V-Voldemort at that final battle." Since Voldemort had been defeated, many more people had begun to say his name, though usually not without a stutter or two. "I know you may not want to tell me, or anyone else about everything, but we need to finalise all that happened. Partly so that we can get all the paperwork out of the way, but mostly so we can give everyone some peace of mind at last. They're starting to question what actually happened now that all the celebrating is out of the way." She said with a smile.
Harry shuddered inwardly. He didn't want to relive the battle; it had involved too much death and pain. After he had trapped Voldemort's soul, he had been unconscious for two months, lying in a coma in the hospital wing. Thinking back on it now, he could remember a few times when people had come to visit him. He couldn't recall any specifics about the events, but some of the things spoken around him got through to his unconscious mind. One of the things he did remember rather clearly was a discussion between the Headmaster and Minerva McGonagall. It wasn't a particularly important conversation, but it at least let him know subconsciously that he had done what he had hoped to do. Voldemort had been trapped.
Shifting his gaze downwards, Harry took in a deep breath. "The final battle didn't seem to be progressing very well for either side. We were taking large numbers of Death Eaters, vampires and giants, but large numbers of us were falling too. Albus and I had been planning for over a year how we were going to go about stopping Voldemort; we hadn't found anything that would destroy him so stopping him until we did was our only option. About a month or so before the battle, we finally found the final part of our plan – the soul stone. Do you know much about it, Minister?" Harry looked at Madame Bones, who shook her head in the negative. "Well, it's ancient magic which relies on runic spells to capture and bind an object, person, or in this case only the soul. This type of magic needs a base to bind the target to and only two things were capable of holding the amount of power in Voldemort's soul. One was the staff of Merlin, which we dismissed right away since it is known to have been destroyed; the other is a specific type of stone. The soul stone is very rare and can only be found in the nest of a Death Phoenix. And even if you can somehow find this rare type of Phoenix, they only lay a soul stone every five hundred or so years. Naturally we began a laborious search for such a stone. Once it was finally found, Albus and I began to pour our power into it. We needed it to recognise us and our power for the runic spells to work. Once we were in tune with it, we placed the runic spells – another long and laborious task. The rest of the planning was easy. The next time we came across Voldemort in battle, Albus and I would make our way to him, myself in the lead with Albus hidden close by.
"When the final battle came, we were caught slightly off guard. It was a bit stupid of us really – we had been preparing for a while, yet when it came we took far too long to get our defences in place. I'm getting sidetracked, however. I'm assuming you know all about the rest of the battle? Probably more than I know at any rate." Harry hadn't had much time to get the whole idea of what had happened, and in a way he didn't really want to know – his part was done, he just wanted to leave it alone. "The battle had been going on for a while, and as I said before, neither side was progressing – which was bad news for us as we didn't have large forces to waste as Voldemort did. Albus signalled to me that we should put our plan into action, and so I lead the way. I managed to have a brief 'discussion' with Voldemort first – he tried once again to convince me to join him, while I simply called him Tom and got him angry. That was rather amusing. We began duelling, with our wands first – not our brother wands as that would have been a stupid mistake for either of us – eventually progressing to a sword and magic fight, using wandless magic to channel our powers through the swords, Gryffindor's sword in my case. I have no idea how long we fought for, only that the sky was beginning to lighten as we finished. Once I had disarmed and mortally wounded Voldemort, Albus came from his hiding place and we began the binding spells. I don't know who was watching our backs, but somebody must have been, I remember hearing some sounds of fighting beyond our chanting, and we weren't attacked, so they must have done a good job. The spells took a full quarter of an hour of chanting before they were done and his soul was bound to the stone. By that time we were both exhausted, and the remaining Death Eaters were beginning to realise their master had fallen. A few ran, but most tried to avenge their Lord. Luckily it wasn't until after we had finished that the spells got through to Albus and me. I'm not sure what spell I was hit with, but as soon as I lost consciousness, my portkey activated and I was taken to the hospital wing – where I awoke three months later." Looking at Albus and Madame Bones, Harry felt a little surprised at how easily it had been to talk about once he got started. Speaking directly to the headmaster, Harry asked "is there anything I missed?"
The old man's eyes just twinkled (irritating twinkle, thought Harry) as he shook his head. The minister seemed to be happy with what she had learned, and after bidding them a good day, left to whatever business she had. "Well, Harry. It seems you have done all you need to do, shall we move onto matters of a more current nature? I understand, Harry, that you wish to go to a muggle university?" Said the headmaster, getting straight to the point, a habit he'd gotten into after acknowledging his problem with avoiding issues – like the prophecy. He saw the young man nod and began to explain what he would need to do before he could start.
The two powerful wizards discussed everything from finances, residences, preparation courses right through to what would be done in wizarding or muggle emergency situations. Because Harry wanted to avoid any contact with the wizarding world, he was making sure he knew what he would have to do, without going to ask for help.
After several hours planning, they had arranged for Harry to be enrolled in several wizarding courses designed to prepare him for the muggle world. It wouldn't be too difficult for him since he had grown up as a muggle. However, he still had to learn to do things which most muggles took for granted, which he had never had a chance to learn. These courses would end a few months before the university year began, so he would have enough time once they were finished to get him set up in a muggle life.
Chapter One
Looking up at the solid stonework of the old buildings, a twenty-year-old Harry Potter, or Harry Evans as he was now known, couldn't help but compare it with his old school, Hogwarts. The buildings of the university didn't even come close to the magnificence of the castle, but he had to admit they were still impressive. The towering spires and perching gargoyles overlooked courtyards and busy students, giving an air of protection which Harry could feel existed beyond the normal. In his research Harry had found that a few times in the past there had been witches and wizards in high positions at the university, and they had all added their own spells of protection to the university, keeping the students safe from some of the more magical dangers they weren't even aware of. Harry was thankful that there were no witches or wizards at the university at present, Dumbledore had told him that there weren't even very many students here who were part of the wizarding world. When he had started studying Psychology here last year he had added his own protection spells to the existing ones – his were much more powerful.
After his defeat of Tom Riddle, or, as he liked to call himself, Lord Voldemort, Harry had been exhausted by everything. What had consumed so much of his life was now gone, and all his other dreams and worries had seemed insignificant in its wake. He had anticipated the constant harassment by most of the wizarding world, and so Harry left what little he had left to live in the Muggle world. He wasn't missing anything, he had lost everything that was truly important to him to Riddle – his parents, his godfather, so many friends and acquaintances, including two of his closest friends. The loss of his friends had hit him hard, but what had been even harder to cope with was the rejection of his best friend. Ron had wanted nothing to do with Harry in the last few months of the war with Voldemort, and that had left Harry with an almost complete despair that had begun with the death of his girlfriend, Ron's sister, Ginny in the final battle during his first year out of school.
Caught in thoughts of his past, Harry didn't notice someone walk up behind him until they snaked their arms around his waist, chuckling softly when he jumped in surprise. "You must be very distracted; I've never been able to sneak up on you before!" Harry could hear her smile even though he couldn't see her face. He knew who it was – his roommate and good friend.
"Morning, Allie." He tried to turn his head so he could see her and greet her properly, but she was keeping herself buried into his back. "Are you quite comfortable there?" Her head nodded against him, and he shook his head with a smile. "Well, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to let me go. I can't walk go to my lecture with a person attached to my back, can I?"
"Fine, I'll let go. On one condition, you tell me what you were thinking about. You were looking troubled, and I don't want you to be troubled."
Sighing, Harry didn't wait for Allie to let go herself, he detached her and turned to face the short, blonde girl who had been such a comfort to him when he had first been getting used to his new life. "I can't tell you Allie. It's not something that I can talk about to anyone, however much I want to. You know that." They had had this discussion before, whenever she wanted to talk about his past. In the beginning Harry had managed to dodge the subject, but Allie had become more persistent and he had had to refuse her outright. It had become a sore point between them; she just couldn't understand how anyone could refuse to talk about something which was obviously troubling.
Allie spoke in a cooler voice, which still displayed concern and friendship, "I'm sorry you feel you can't talk about it, but it isn't healthy to keep things too yourself."
Harry snorted despite the seriousness of the situation. "Sorry," he said hurriedly at Allie's suddenly angry look, "it's just that I've heard that a lot in my life, and I know better than most the consequences of keeping things bottled up. But I also know the consequences of talking about these things." Like interference from the ministry for breaking the secret of wizards to a muggle, thought Harry. "I swear that if I could tell you, I would. Unfortunately there is not a lot I can do about it."
"You really are a mystery Harry Evans. One I'm going to have to give up on for the moment if we want to get to our lecture on time." Fixing him with an examining gaze, Allie shook her head and, grabbing his hand, led him through the halls.
