Earth
To my dearest Harry,
If you are reading this, then we have failed you, and you are alone.
The last of wizard-kind.
He crumpled, a sob wrenching from his throat as his lingering fear was mercilessly proven true. He barely felt a hand on his shoulder - Michael? David's voice was a blur in his ears. The rest of the letter illegible through his tears.
It was over. His life, stolen from him. All for nothing. Not even selfish wizards to be used by.
He was alone.
The letter crackled warningly as he fisted it, the parchment old and close to brittle. Most of the magic in it had been used to protect it from prying eyes and with the seal broken, it would soon fail entirely. When that happened, the letter would most likely crumble to dust.
He opened his eyes and blinked sharply to clear the moisture away, struggling to focus on the letter before it was too late. He didn't notice Michael moving until the large man had already picked him up, his movements swift and impersonal as he carried him back upstairs to the couch - probably on David's direction.
Too distraught to be embarrassed, Harry just slid onto the couch and hunched away from them both, curling around the letter.
To my dearest Harry.
If you are reading this, then we have failed you, and you are alone.
The last of wizard-kind.
Oh Harry, I am so sorry to have to lay this upon you. There are days when I hope that you will never wake, just so you need never read this letter or feel the pain I know you will feel.
It is April of the year 2025. I am 45 years old and I will die soon, just as all witches and wizards will die. First our eldest, then our youngest, then those of us in our prime. The general public doesn't believe it - won't believe it. You know what they're like. But we of the Unspeakables know, and there is nothing we can do to stop it. It's already too late.
Yes, I joined the Unspeakables. As soon as I graduated Hogwarts, I sought entry to their ranks with a mind to use their resources to search for you. It was only after years that they saw fit to inform me that it was they who had taken you, and why.
Oh Harry, I knew then the rage that you have told me about. The righteous fury. With wand in hand, I rampaged through the department, casting every spell the war had ever exposed me to.
I didn't find you before they put me down. And Harry, I swear to you that I searched. For over a decade, I worked to gain their trust. To reason, to coerce, to beg them to let you free.
And then, I confess, I lost heart. I looked at the world around us - the festering wound that was Wizarding society, beginning to hate muggles once more for the changes starting to occur in the world. Their inability to self-discipline. The propaganda masquerading as truth, the children raised to be insular and ignorant.
How, even if I had the ability, could I return you to them? Even if I could convince you to run to another country... with your friends and family in England - three of whom named their first sons for you - would you be able to stay away? Would I free you from slumber only to enslave you to an impossible society?
When my department first became aware of the fate before us - wizards and muggles alike - they came very close to activating the protocol that would wake you. It was I, forgive me, who argued against it. You were not a god, I said, but a wizard whose greatest strength was a noble soul. The reason they had taken you - the reason for your victory against Voldemort - was powerless now.
For the reason our death approaches us, is simply that the power you can harness is dying. Any part of it you would take to do whatever it was we could think of would only hasten the world's demise. That is why we wizards will die before the muggles - the energy of the world flows through us more strongly than in any non-magical being or object. Like a body shutting down high-consumption organs in a last-ditch attempt to survive, so too will our species - all magical species - be shut down before any other.
Following us will be the most defenceless -the endangered life, followed by the undomesticated life, until only our world's most clever creations - the muggles - are left.
We can only pray that they who triggered our fate can also fix it.
If they cannot, then life will continue to be drained from the world. One day, Harry, you will wake, with or without the spells needed. I don't know what the world will be like then. All the greatest seers work for the Unspeakables, but how can they see when their medium - magic - is gone from the future?
To that end, we have left you what small things we can to help you. Precious stones and metals have been added to your tomb. Concise books of history and magic have been locked within your trunk, though I warn you that the wizard way of magic will drain the world and should not be used save in absolute emergencies.
To that end, I urge you to look instead to the ability for which you were sealed away. It is, we believe, the reason why you will survive long beyond the spells placed over you. It is, perhaps, the last hope of our world, even if all other life on it must first perish.
I beg you not to blame it, for the evil done to you in its name. Wizard kind is foolish and selfish - you I have never known to be so.
I love you, Harry, and I miss you terribly.
Although there are some days that I hope you will never wake, there are others when I am glad that when you do, it will be to a world without wizards.
We did not deserve you.
All my love and support,
Hermione Granger.
Hunching into himself even further, Harry wrapped his arms around his legs, buried his head and just shut out the world for awhile. His mind spun between the mental image of Hermione visiting his sleeping body - and leaving - and the mental image of everything and everyone he knew, dying. Just dropping to the ground, or maybe getting sick and passing away in their beds. Ron and his family, a group of fire-haired and fire-tempered people just fading away as the world died and tried to self-correct.
Hogwarts, a school with a thousand years of history, of children growing up and learning and laughing - just gone. Empty and hollow, the magic leaving the paintings just like they were leaving the parchment in his hand. The stone staircases silent and unmoving forever. The fires in torches and hearths, gutted and cold. The house-elves, gone. The mer-people, gone. The centaurs, the giants, the veela - even the phoenixes. All gone.
And to him, it had only been a matter of days. Hours, really, if you only counted the time he'd spent conscious. Hours, for an entire civilisation, a species, to crumble.
When at length he came back to himself, the sky outside was a blanket of colour, the smog lending itself to beauty as the sun streaked through it in rich oranges and pinks, purples and blues.
The mood in the room was quietly respectful, as Michael leaned against a wall once more and David sat on the other couch and watched the telly with the sound off.
It wasn't until Harry shifted, moving his feet to the floor and scrubbing his face with his sleeves, that either looked over.
"Would you like something to eat?" David asked quietly, when Harry made eye contact. Harry shook his head, refolding the parchment but unwilling to let it go. Unable to speak, he simply stood and trekked back downstairs to the store room.
The sacks were stiff and almost petrified, held together more by the accumulation of clay-like muck than the protective magic once cast on them. The strings holding them closed frayed and snapped as he tugged them open, revealing glittering rubies in one and gold in another. He passed the rest of the sacks and opened the trunk - or tried to. He felt the magic within it tingle with recognition at his touch - stone kept magic better than cloth or paper - but lifting the lid was another thing. It was still stone and stone was heavy.
"May I?"
Harry turned. It was Michael, who'd followed him automatically but stood back awaiting permission to approach.
Harry nodded.
Strong arms joined his and heaved, the top of the trunk sliding away once lifted from within.
His firebolt rested on top, diagonal to fit in the trunk. His invisibility cloak was folded and rested on top of a box which had Potions carved into the wood. The left side of the trunk was filled with books, the top one of which was his photo album.
He picked it up, opened it and almost started crying again when the pictures inside failed to stir. He leafed through it, but every still, faded photograph was like a kick in the guts, reminding him of what he had lost. When he got towards the end, where newer photos depicted the lives of those who had grown up and passed away without him, he closed it.
"Is everything there?"
David was obviously trying to be respectful, but Merlin... Harry just wanted to punch him in the nose. Or, failing that, hex him stupid.
"I, uh. I just need to know. For the record." Why couldn't the man just shut up?
"I don't know." Harry said coldly. "I wasn't involved in packing it and it doesn't seem to have come with a list."
David cleared his throat uncomfortably.
"Sorry. I didn't mean to... Sorry." As Harry didn't reply, he continued. "Look, why don't you get settled in tonight? Michael can help you with anything you might need and I'll pop by tomorrow, say, lunch time? There are still a few things we need to discuss, a couple of meetings to go to. That sort of thing."
Harry grunted, which was taken as assent and David made a hasty exit. For a while, Harry simply worked in silence. After the second book that tore too easily in his hands, however, he made a noise of irritation that was close to anguish.
Michael cleared his throat and suggested scanning everything that could be scanned, so Harry could still have the content even if he lost the originals.
It was a good idea, though Harry knew he's grieve the loss of the books themselves more than the information in them. Still, with his bodyguard's help, he moved all the books to what he had decided to call 'the study' and painstakingly helped the computer copy them. This mostly consisted of turning the pages for it, as the scanner was capable of making identical copies of what it could see in only seconds, and capable of recognising new content and only scanning when the content was legible. Many of the books were ruined by the end of it. Chunks of pages breaking off or coming away on his fingertips like dust. Some, like the photo album, had more magic inside them and fared a little better, though even the album's leather was cracked and brittle.
Michael showed him how to work the computer, as quiet and calm about it as he was everything else. He even showed Harry how to encrypt the file, to give himself some basic privacy in case someone ever went snooping on his computer.
Harry wasn't ignorant enough to believe it truly secure, though. Even in his time, computers had been far from unhackable and if his computer could access the internet, then he knew that other computers there could access his.
The thing was... he was just this close to not giving a shit.
It wasn't like he'd be facing time in Azkaban for breaking the statute of secrecy, after all. In a way, this was the only revenge he could have against the people who'd denied him his life.
By the time it was all done, it was well past midnight. The room was awash in the unceasing glare of the city's rainbow lights - even more powerful without the dim sun to compete with. Harry shut the computer down and replaced the remains of the books in the stone trunk in the store room, intending to never open it again. The potions box was in his bedroom, along with his firebolt and cloak.
He'd offered his bodyguard first pick of the bedrooms, since both creeped him out in equal measure. Michael just gave him a long, considering look and chose the one facing the city. Whether he picked it for his own sake, or for Harry's, was unclear.
Still, it meant that when he went to bed, he didn't have to order the hub to dim the window. The artificial garden was experiencing artificial night. Artificial stars sparkled above it all and artificial (or at least, heavily filtered) air gently coursed through his room via a hidden vent.
If he burrowed under the covers, he could pretend he wasn't the last magical being on the face of the planet. That he wasn't alone. Somewhere out there, there had to be survivors.
And some day, he'd find them.
Earth