The Death and Life of Harry Potter

Chapter One – The Death of Harry Potter

Ministry of Magic/Weasley Residence

Thursday 20th August 2048

As her meeting with the Ministry representative came to a close, Hermione Weasley breathed a sigh of relief that she'd been able to allay all their fears and answer all their questions relating to her latest research. That didn't necessarily imply that they would approve it for public knowledge, nor that they would continue to provide a contribution the the funding that she and her colleagues needed to continue researching, but at the end of an interminable day, she was glad that no new problems had been raised.

After nearly forty years of working for the Ministry of Magic interspersed with stints as a Hogwarts Professor, Hermione knew she was in for a rough ride when she resigned as Minster to set up her research institute in the hope that she could run a more efficient business than the Ministry could. That her findings still had to be approved by a Ministry committee before they could be published irked her, but despite the changes that she had been able tomake during her tenure as Minister there were still many things the Ministry kept a tight grip on.

As she stepped out into the corridor and ran a hand through her still-bushy hair, her name was called out by the receptionist.

"Mrs Weasley? We've had a message from your husband. He's asked that you get straight home as soon as you are able. Says it's urgent."

Hermione frowned. It was unlike Ron to bother her with a request like this at work.

"Thanks very much, Sophia," she replied. "How long ago did the message come in?"

"Just after you resumed this afternoon, Mrs Weasley. You said you were not to be disturbed though..."

"That's fine, Sophia. You've done nothing wrong."

She looked around. Her colleagues and the Ministerial team were making their farewells, so she quickly spoke to her nearest co-worker.

"Please pass on my apologies for not hanging around, Michael. I've an urgent message from home. I can't it see it impacting on work, but I'll let you know if I'm not going to be around tomorrow."

Her colleague nodded, and made an appropriate reassuring comment, allowing Hermione to move swiftly to the Apparation Point.

Arriving home was always a joy to Hermione, even after so many years of living here on the outskirts of Godric's Hollow. Her normal Apparation arrival was in their apple orchard. Obscured from the road, but visible for the house, it normally provided a pleasant stroll to the back door, but the urgency of Ron's message had left Hermoine slightly uneasy, and today she barely noticed the weight of a hefty crop of apples on her trees as she moved towards the house.

Opening the door, she was assaulted by the smell of alcohol. Ron was sat at the kitchen table, looking extrememly miserable, and with a half-empty bottle of Firewhiskey in front of him.

Seeing her enter, Ron struggled to his feet. He'd clearly been sat drinking for quite some time.

"What's wrong, Ron?" Hermione asked.

Ron squinted at her.

"Harry's dead," he blurted out.

"What? How?" Hermione said in a daze of her own. "Was he out on a raid?

She pulled out a chair and sat down, collapsing into the welcome support.

Ron and Harry had been partnered as Aurors on a fairly regular basis over the years, even if that was intermittently interrupted by the Ministry's seemingly regular insistence that Harry take a more high profile role as Head Auror, and later as Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Harry had, quite instinctively, preferred life as an active Auror than the office jobs that were thrust upon him, and had made it clear that he was still a field agent.

Hermione had tried to curtail that during her stint as Minister, but Harry had threatened to resign rather than be forced out of what he considered to be his preferred role. Fortunately they had managed to keep that disagreement private.

"No. He hasn't been on active duty since that nasty bout of Wizard Flu he had early last year," Ron replied.

Hermione snorted. As if not officially being an active field agent would have stopped Harry from leading a raid if he felt it was going to be more fun than waiting for the report to come back from somebody else.

"What happened then?"

"Nobody knows. Ginny found him in his office at home this morning. Apparently he'd come home last night with some urgent work and asked not to be disturbed.

"Mopsy took him dinner in the study at some point and he was fine, but Ginny says he never went to bed and when she asked Mopsy where he was, she said he was still in the study and hadn't moved in several hours."

"Oh Merlin!" Hermione breathed with a sigh. "Poor Ginny. Is anyone with her?"

"Yeah. Mum went over this morning and said she was in shock, and James and Albus both dropped everything when Mum Flooed them to break it."

Ron stood and carefully made his way around the table to his wife. She stood too, and they stood there together in an embrace as they gathered solace from one anther at the loss of their friend.

"Doesn't anyone know what happened to him?"

"No. Ginny called me straightaway and when I saw him he was just... there... leant back in his office chair with his eyes closed. No mark on him, no sign of violence. Nothing."

"Do I need to go over and check on Ginny?"

"No, not tonight. Mum had someone from St Mungo's come and give her calming potions, I think. The place was swarming with Aurors for about an hour, trying to find something that would prove it was murder, and that Ginny had done him in. I told them where to shove that notion, and they couldn't find anything of interest anyway, it seems.

"We can see her tomorrow, if you like?"

Hermione let out a deep breath. "Sounds like a plan. Now, can I get you a sobering potion, and we can try and figure out what was wrong with him?

"You think he was ill?" Ron asked.

"I don't know. As you say, he had Wizard Flu last year, and got a nasty dose of it, too. Maybe he never really got better from it. He was a bit quiet when he and Ginny hosted their joint birthday party on the First, as well, so maybe there were complications. Hopefully St Mungo's will find something when they autopsy him."

Ron grimaced at the thought.

"After all he's been through, for him just to... expire... like that seems really odd," he said. "You know, if he had died in the Chamber of Secrets, killed by Slytherin's monster, or if You-Know-Who had offed him at some point, I wouldn't have thought it strange. Horrible, yes, but not necessarily odd. But this?"

"It does seem like a bit of an anti-climax, Ron. He was only sixty-eight – he might have had another hundred years or more before he died of old age. But it could just have been natural. He's been put through a lot over the years, after all."

"Yeah, but he's never shown any sign of it affecting him. Not until last year, anyway."

"Well, I'll see what I can find out, Ron, but I doubt there's going to be much we can do – St Mungo's will find out if something was wrong with him. Now, how about that sobering potion?"

DOHP DOHP DOHP DOHPDOHP DOHP

D. Spatches & Son Solicitors, Diagon Alley/Weasley Residence

Wednesday 2nd September 2048

Ron had grumbled to Hermione about the location for the reading of Harry's will frequently in the preceding days.

"I don't know why he doesn't just use Gringotts like most wizards do for their wills," he complained.

"You know he doesn't trust the goblins anymore," she reminded him once again as they crossed Diagon Alley from The Leaky Cauldron to the solicitors' office. "Not after Griphook."

"More like he was worried they still wanted to kill us all after stealing a dragon from out under their noses," Ron said with a chuckle.

"Probably that, too," Hermione agreed, "and he doesn't think they would have played fair with him."

Getting Gringotts off their backs after the war had proven to be a pretty big job. The goblins had demanded that the three of them be handed over for a trial for their crimes against the Goblin Nation, and the Ministry had been forced into a lot of appeasing. Fortunately, their stock with the Minister of the time, Kingsley Shacklebolt, had been very high in the post-war years.

Part of the deal that had been struck had involved the Ministry taking all responsibility for their actions for the following twenty years, and had made it almost impossible for all three of them to refuse Ministry jobs, given the debt that they owed Kingsley for taking their side during the dispute.

Nonetheless, Hermione and Ron had seemed to have been treated with no less respect than other customers on their returns to the bank for more conventional business. Harry, on the other hand, could apparently see sharpened knives and other threats at every turn when he had to visit Gringotts, and made sure that he did so as little as possible, entrusting withdrawals primarily to Ginny and their House Elf Mopsy.

It was no surprise to Hermione that Harry had withdrawn a significant part of his wealth from goblin control at an early date.

The will reading itself was fairly mundane. Ginny was still very subdued, and Molly had accompanied her for emotional support, whilst Harry and Ginny's three children – now all in their forties and with spouses of their own – were barely more communicative, looking perhaps to get the deed over with.

James had brought his three grown-up children as well, Arthur (23), Penelope (21) and Oscar (20), whilst Albus had no offspring as yet, having married quite late (and some Wizards thought it scandalous). Lily's two daughters had departed for Hogwarts the previous day, but Harry's godson Teddy Lupin was there with his wife Victoire, Ginny's (and Ron's) niece.

Mr Spatches conducted the normal preliminaries, and then read out the bequests. After a few small personal gifts to Teddy and Ron, Harry had split his money equally between his three children, and arranged a stipend for Ginny along with title to the house in Godric's Hollow. The only surprise was that he also left to James title to a house in the town of Stevenage, which left everyone slightly bewildered.

Finally, he announced that Hermione had been named executor, and requested that she wait behind after everyone had departed.

"Mrs Weasley," he began, once all but she and Ron had left the room. "Mr Potter's instructions to me were fairly brief, but I thought you ought to know that this will was only written a month ago. Mr Potter was in something of a confused and angry state when he came to see me, and I suspect that there is more to his death than has become evident."

Hermione tensed up, wondering what this was going to lead to. St Mungo's had found nothing out of the ordinary when they had examined Harry, and his death had been written off as simple heart failure.

"Mr Potter left me a letter to give to you personally after his death, which was to be kept private from the other parties in order to prevent their distress." He handed a sealed envelope to her. "I recommend you read that at home and take whatever action you feel appropriate.

"I also have keys for you for the bequeathed proporties to look over, should you wish to do so."

"What was wrong with-"

"I know no details, Mrs Weasley, as Mr Potter did not confide in me to that extent, only to say that he trusted you above all others to do the right thing, and that he had been intrigued with some of your research."

Hermione looked questioningly at the solicitor, but he merely shrugged his shoulders.

"It is as much a mystery to me as it is to you," he said.

Less than half an hour later, Hermione and Ron were once again sat at their kitchen table pondering the death of Harry Potter.

"So open the letter, Hermione," said Ron. "Let's see what all the mystery is about."

"I have a feeling this is going to be more complicated than we might want, Ron," she replied with a deep sigh, and slid her finger under the opening, breaking the seal.

She read it through once silently, before reading it aloud to her husband.

Dear Hermione,

I'm sorry to dump this on you, but Mr Spatches suggested that if I needed to put something in writing then it had to be entrusted only to the person I felt would make the right decisions.

In short: my whole life has been a lie.

I believe that from the beginning I have been set up by the Wizarding World – but mostly by Albus Dumbledore – to be a hero and a martyr, as suited their purpose.

I've been moulded to be the perfect candidate for either public adulation or utter disdain at each stage.

I've had suspicions for many years, but have been unable to get evidence to prove – even to myself – that this was the case. Perhaps also I have been in self-denial of some obvious truths.

Rather than set out what I have found here, in writing, I'm asking you to retrace my footsteps over the last twelve months (say, since I returned to the Minstry following my bout of Wizard Flu) and come to your own conclusions when you find out what I have discovered or confirmed of late.

I trust you to take whatever action is necessary once you have followed my path and confirmed your opinion. Some of your more private research may come in handy – if things have come to a head I will have used what I have learned from you to take my next step (which may well cost me my life).

My final step was to get confirmation from Dumbledore's portrait of what he had done to me. You might ask Headmistress McGonagall to use the power of that office to force the portait into telling the truth.

I would also suggest that you don't tell any of my family, as I suspect it will cause them, especially Ginny, more anguish than they already feel at my passing.

With my love to you and Ron one final time.

Harry.

There was a moment's silence.

"Well that's a flippin' bombshell!" Ron announced. "It's like... I dunno... almost like a suicide note."

"I think you're right," Hermione replied sadly. "I mean, I think we all realised that things were a bit too... I don't know... obvious... but I'm not sure how much of a conspiracy it's all been. Do we really think that Dumbledore went to the trouble of setting Harry up as the fall guy when things went wrong?"

"I dunno," Ron replied. "But I know one thing – that's that we always trusted Harry's instincts. If he thought something was wrong, or there was some sort of plot, there usually was. From the Philosopher's Stone all the way through to the last time he and I went out on a raid together."

"So what do I do?"

"Do what he asked, of course – find out what he found out."

"Where do I start, to try and find out whether there was a conspiracy?" she asked with a sad laugh.

Ron paused in thought for a moment.

"He suggests taking it up from the time he came back to work after the Wizard Flu. First day back, he had a long meeting with Director Hammer. We all thought it was about whether he was going to pick up again as Head of DMLE or not, but maybe it was something else.

"And... it may just be with my Auror head on, but something about this house in Stevenage doesn't seem right. I know he had a planned safe house that he used when he had to operate in the Muggle world, but I'm not sure this was it, and I don't recall him ever mentioning the town before."

He shrugged.

"Maybe it's nothing, but it's a hunch and we learn to trust them."