Chapter 44: Aftermath and Hospital Wing
DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN HARRY POTTER. IT BELONGS TO JK ROWLING.
A/N: Read, enjoy, and remember not to take either life or my writing too seriously.
Looking down upon the world, the Goddess of Fate's eyes flew open wide when she realized what had happened. She turned her gaze upon those around her as she muttered. "Whoops!"
"WHOOPS! What do you mean, 'Whoops'?" A very angry older god asked the smaller Fate.
"All of the heavens have been working to put Harry Potter where he is because you predicted he was the one to kill Voldemort! We allowed his mother and father to die and for him to be abused all because of your prediction! We allowed him to be manipulated by the senile old puke because of what you predicted!"
Fate shrunk into herself a little. "Well... uh... how was I supposed to know it was polyjuice potion?" She pointed to her scrying pool. "It only shows pictures. I clearly saw Harry Potter do some kind of magic that totally destroyed Voldemort and his horcruxes."
"Yet now we have an idiot who farted responsible!" The elder god who had many names like 'Zeus', 'Jupiter' and 'The One True God' looked around and quickly made up his mind.
"Damage control people. We'll be the laughing stock of the multi-universes if this gets out." All of the lesser gods quickly came into play. Coincidences were forced, questions put in people's minds and others removed. All major disasters were put on hold as the gods worked through the crisis.
Fate tried a little recovery. "Well, it was that final battle that killed Voldemort… so really, it was Harry in the end, along with his lover." She saw the elder god still wasn't very happy. "And it was love… really was love that killed him. It might not have happened as I saw it, but it still happened."
The elder god sighed as he turned and walked away, shaking his mighty head. 'Some eternities are just not worth getting up for,' he thought.
Back in the graveyard, the Aurors appeared and immediately fell to the ground retching. "Merlin!" Tonks cried through gasping breaths of air. "What is that bloody smell?"
"Don't know," Came an equally gasping but much deeper voice of Shacklebolt. "Bubbleheads on immediately, though. This stuff might be deadly!" Once the protective bubbles of air were in place, he motioned for everyone to spread out and start searching for clues to what had caused the magical disturbance.
Shacklebolt saw a smoking something several hundred feet away and walked over to investigate. What he found was an unconscious Peter Pettigrew. He immediately recognized a man who was supposed to be dead for over thirteen years. Knowing something was wrong; he put magic suppression cuffs on the man and levitated him back to the graveyard.
Tonks had also seen a smoking heap about fifty feet away and quickly found the unconscious body of Harry Potter still tied to some kind of tombstone. She immediately indicated they needed to drop the bubbleheads to talk, after clearing the air, of course. "I've got Harry Potter over here."
"What? Potter? HERE?"
The third Auror of the group was older. He had fought in the previous war and was poking around the cauldron and found the flat-faced, red-eyed, snake-looking infant. Looking around and seeing the other two without bubbleheads he dropped his own and shouted "Guys, I think this is You-Know-Who!"
"WHO?"
"You-Know... well, you know, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named."
"Oh!"
The older Auror noticed a wand lying beside the cauldron. "This is definitely You-Know-Who's wand!" he yelled.
"Who's wand?"
"You-Kn…" The Auror slapped his head in frustration before yelling. "Bad guy's wand!"
"Tonks, go get Dumbledore out here," Shacklebolt said. "We need answers and hopefully he has them. We've got Harry Potter, a man who is supposed to be dead for the last thirteen years and the possible body… er... something of Voldemort."
"Do... do you think Potter killed him again?" Tonks asked, looking at the unconscious boy with raven colored hair and the infamous lightning bolt scar.
"Well, this thing is definitely dead," Shacklebolt said looking at the infant thingy. "If this is him, then yes, it looks like it happened again. But this time, we have a body."
It took a few minutes of refusing lemon drops, and a few questions about hair care and the color of her socks, but Tonks was finally able to convince the ancient headmaster of the need for his services before the trophy was handed out. Fudge, hearing something serious was happening, joined them in the trip back to the graveyard.
Dumbledore, seeing the name on the tombstone confirmed the evil infant thingy was in fact Voldemort, and then he looked at the body of Harry Potter. "Poor soul. He never had a chance for a life," he said miserably.
"Uh… sir… He's not dead," Shacklebolt mentioned, eying the headmaster peculiarly.
"Of course he is," Dumbledore replied. 'They just don't know the prophecy.'
"No, he's not. He's still breathing."
"Well, I'm sure it's just a matter of time, then," Dumbledore replied. He offered a small bag to the large Auror. "Lemon drop?"
Shacklebolt immediately turned to Tonks. "Take Potter to St. Mungo's… wait… Hogwarts' medical wing might be best. I think Pomfrey knows Mister Potter's medical history best."
"Yes sir."
"Please let me know when he finally dies," Dumbledore called after her as she took Ron, who appeared to be Harry, and apparated outside of Hogwarts. She quickly rushed the boy to the hospital wing after a quick disillusionment to keep prying eyes from catching wind of things.
"Order of Merlin first class, obviously," Fudge said to Dumbledore.
"Yes, definitely," Dumbledore replied. "I guess once he dies you can give it to his girlfriend. They have been extremely close. Lemon drop?" He casually offered the Minister the small bag.
Madam Pomfrey was near the Quidditch field where she had set up a medical tent expecting injuries from the champions, and one in particular. Both glad her service weren't needed, and frustrated at the stupidity of the event itself, she was busy packing up all the potions and other medical instruments she thought she was going to need.
When Tonks couldn't find her in the medical wing, she placed Ron (still looking like Harry) in one of the beds. As she looked kindly at the young hero, she gently removed his glasses and placed them on the table that was between his and another bed. After another warm gaze at the raven-haired young man the world owed so much to, she left to find Madam Pomfrey.
Shortly after Tonks left the hospital wing, the Polyjuice potion wore off, leaving Ron lying in the bed. A few moments later, Hermione entered, levitating Harry into the hospital. When she couldn't find Madam Pomfrey either, she carefully put the love of her life in a bed. As she turned to go find the school nurse, she noticed who occupied the joining bed. 'Wonder what happened to him?' Briefly crossed her mind, but Harry was much more important.
Tonks was the first to find Pomfrey and, soon, she was telling her about finding the young man in the graveyard and finding the dead body of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named nearby as they rushed back to the medical wing.
When she got to the young man's side, she noticed the scar was ripped open and some kind of black ooze was pouring out of it. Several potions later, and Harry was fully recovered.
He even found his glasses lying on the table next to his bed. That was how Hermione found him. She had searched the grounds for the nurse and, unable to find her, had returned to the hospital wing only to find she had returned in Hermione's absence and healed her boyfriend.
Molly finally found her son in the hospital wing as well. Nobody knew how he got there. Nothing Madam Pomfrey tried would bring him around until four days later. Pomfrey assured the Weasley Matriarch and the rest of the Weasley clan that she could find no permanent harm in the young man except a very unusual and horrible smell and the discovery that he had urinated on himself.
She promised she would keep trying to awaken the young man and let them know when she was successful. While he was unconscious, the school year ended with final testing and the contract he had signed many months earlier expired.
Wormtail bargained for a lifetime in Azkaban instead of the dementor's kiss by fully confessing. He admitted that he had betrayed the Potters and Sirius was innocent, he admitted he was trying to bring Voldemort back and he told the tale of the graveyard, even supplying the memories of it.
Everyone saw what appeared to be Harry Potter performing the most amazing wandless magic that caused the entire area to explode in flames. The Daily Prophet ran articles proclaiming the end of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named at the hands of Harry Potter for good. They even had pictures of the Evil Villain baby body.
Wormtail himself was put in the cell next to Bellatrix shortly after Draco Malfoy had left to live at the Burrow. She still had no clothes on and he was forced to see her every day like that for the next sixty years. He was quite sure he got the worst end of the bargain and begged to be kissed. Though every time he cried out to the guards that he wanted to be kissed, Bellatrix offered her own lips.
Shortly after the event, Harry described his own battle for his soul with Dumbledore. Leaving out the parts of having sex at the time, he described Voldemort's saying he was the last Horcrux and how he fought for his soul and won.
'The last Horcrux?' Dumbledore thought. 'So sad Harry will now die.' He turned to his student. "Well, when you're dead, Harry, I'll make sure the world knows of your great sacrifice," he said serenely.
"Dead?"
"Yes. There was a prophecy concerning you," Dumbledore replied in his grandfatherly tone as he plucked another lemon drop from the candy dish.
"And what did the prophecy say?"
"Oh, you're much too young to know that, Harry. I just want you to have a normal life."
"But... but... you're saying it's already done, right?" Harry asked, bewildered by the new information.
"Yes."
"Then why can't I know what it said?" Harry asked.
"Because you're much too young to know, and I just want you to have a normal life," Dumbledore repeated as he lifted the candy dish and offered it to Harry, "Lemon drop?"
"Uh, no sir," Harry replied, beginning to wonder about the sanity of the person he was speaking to.
"That's too bad. They're quite delicious. Now we have to discuss you going back to your relative this summer. I'm sure it will only be a short time since you'll be dead soon enough."
"But I heard Wormtail confessed and Sirius is free," Harry said. "He'll want me to come live with him."
"Yes, but you're safer with your aunt. That is until you die."
"But Voldemort's dead."
"There are all kinds of dangers, Harry. Just this morning, I tripped on a step and opened a cut on my knee," Dumbledore started to lift his robes to show the knee in question.
Harry gave one last look at the Headmaster and bolted from his office.
Harry and Hermione of course denied the whole story of Harry being anywhere near a graveyard, but when they were unwilling to say what they had been doing at that time, or provide memories, everyone proclaimed it was Potter's usual unselfishness and self-sacrifice.
Rita Skeeter ran her article of being saved from acromantulas by Harry at Christmas time. Since Harry never told her how many he actually had to kill to save her, she presumed it was at least four of them and wrote the story as such.
She interviewed Daphne Greengrass and Tracey Davis who both swore that they had seen Harry Potter perform wandless magic before. That lead to even more credence to what happened in the graveyard. Story after story piled up in the Prophet. The more Harry denied the events ever occurred, the more praise was heaped upon him for his nobleness.
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