It was yet another dark, hot night. The summer of 1996 was just a regular summer, but for Harry Potter, it was hell.
He couldn't sleep. Even if his relatives would feed him, he couldn't eat. He hadn't heard from his friends in weeks.
He'd never hear from his godfather again.
He didn't really care about it much anymore. He knew he was to blame, but did it really matter? The end result was that he was alone, and he was coming to understand that he would always be alone. No one really knew him; no one really cared. They might want the Boy Who Lived, but Harry was worthless.
And now, all the papers saying he was "chosen" or whatever. They were going to expect him to save them. Like he could save anything. He almost got all his friends killed every year at school. He did get Cedric and Sirius killed.
Really, he was just so tired. Tired and numb. He wasn't even miserable anymore. He was just done. Done.
Done.
He tied the bedsheets in a hangman's noose. He went to the closet, knowing that the hatch for the attic was there. He got on a chair, and, checking the length, tied the other end of the sheet to a bar.
When he stepped off the chair, everything went black.
(this is a line break)
He hadn't left a note. He hadn't said a word. Of course, Hermione was almost livid enough to be angry with her headmaster for disallowing contact with Harry. She was sure he had his reasons, but now Harry, without anyone to help him, was dead. By his own hand. At first, she was full of anguish and felt that being around their friends would help her, but as the school year went on and the war worsened, Hermione realized that Hogwarts wasn't worth staying in Britain for. She talked her parents into sneaking her out of Britain, found herself another school in another country, and never really looked back.
Ron was unforgiving. Harry had a duty and he backed out. If Harry lived through the hanging, Ron would have punched him and then ignored him. As it was, he refused to hear Harry's name in his presence. Between that boycott and the escalation of war, Harry went to the back of Ron's mind.
Neville was sad, so very sad. He felt he should have tried to help Harry more. But he had a life to live of his own, and though he sometimes would think of Harry, it was infrequent.
The same could be said of most of the folks that actually knew Harry. Unless they actively hated Harry, of course.
Draco Malfoy, for one, raised a purloined glass of elf wine in toast to the dead Scarhead when he heard the news. The next day, it was old news to him. He moved on.
In general, people might talk of the tragedy of the Boy Who Killed Himself (usually, they were quite angry with said boy in these discussions), but after the initial shock, no one really ever mourned Harry Potter.
Harry hadn't left a will, so Gringotts locked down his vaults. If, in 250 years, no one claimed them, they would return to the horde.
The Dursleys, after having the police take away their unwanted nephew's body, searched his room and trunk for any valuables then burned the rest. The Firebolt – of Harry's few possessions - was the only thing spared from the conflagration as it sat moldering in the basement of Hogwarts castle. It would be discovered by a new caretaker in a few decades, but it was never associated with Harry Potter.
Dumbledore, the chess master who had arranged many of the elements of Harry's life and had merely sat back and let many other situations befall his would-be protégé, became a bit more careful. He no longer had a backup plan. Harry Potter would not do his dirty work. When he went for the ring, he took Moody with him. He wasn't even really tempted by the resurrection stone: he was too afraid that Harry, who might just see all would visit him. As the war intensified, Dumbledore finally began to realize that not all life is equally sacred.
Eventually, Dumblodre advocated that aurors should fight with lethal force. That was the impetus needed to both increase the auror force and the level of spells said aurors could use in both defense and offense. Death Eaters in Azkaban were thrown through the veil. Working with his Order, Dumbledore tracked down the rest of the horcruxes and destroyed them with fiendfyre. Eventually, Dumbledore killed Voldemort in battle with the help of several of his Order.
Some people were lost in the war. Some people triumphed.
Life went on.
And Harry saw none of this. Harry was dead.
A/N Depressing, yes? I wrote this one when I read yet another fic that was poorly concealed suicide ideation. Death, so far as we know, is the end. Anyone who romanticizes it (including Ms. JKR, in some ways) is just nuts. Teaching high school, I see some of my kids on the border of making this decision. I see in many works of fiction that someone's influence is even more accentuated in his death. But that's generally not true. If you take yourself out of the equation, your impact on others is minimized. They will move on, many will even forget you. If you're thinking of suicide, get help. Don't end it. Just don't. Please.