Two Wrongs Make a Right?

I do not own the rights to anything in the Harry Potter universe. I do not make any money from this.

Prolog After the Fall

Harry Potter sat at the bar in a noisy club, quietly watched the clock counting down to the hour of his birth. Physically he was stunning. Ebony black hair that wouldn’t stay put, emerald green eyes, a tanned and toned body. Emotionally he was a mess. He was within seconds of turning 24 years old, he was drunk, unattached, and if he were completely honest with himself, a bit suicidal. Harry was actually ridiculously sick of his own self pity. He knew that he wasn’t the only one who had lost people in the war. In fact it was safe to say that anyone that participated in it, and survived, lost someone. In his more lucid moments, Harry knew that part of the problem was his warped childhood. His relatives had provided neither love nor tolerance. When he first entered the wizarding world and found acceptance and even love, he focused all of his hopes and dreams on being with his friends and new found family. Now they were all gone, dead or estranged. He knew how to contact Hermione, but he wouldn’t inflict himself on her. She had hidden herself in the muggle world after Ron died. Most of the Weasley family was dead. Charlie and Ginny were all that were left. Charlie never left Romania now, and Ginny was in St. Mungo’s fourth floor ward 49 with Frank and Alice Longbottom and Gilderoy Lockhart. Most members of the order were killed, hardly surprising, given that they were the first into battle. As far as Harry knew the only surviving members of the group were Charlie Weasley, Severus Snape, Arabella Figg, and of course Albus Dumbledore. So many lives lost or destroyed.

When he looked at the world that he helped to create, he felt despair and defeat. He was now the ‘great’ hero who rid the wizarding world of the evil that was Lord Voldemort, only to find himself the pawn of a different dictator. The current government was not evil, but Harry was beginning to suspect that it was just as misguided in its actions as Tom Riddle had been. There was a secret and deeply frightened part of Harry that suspected that madmen like Tom served a very important purpose, and Harry hadn’t allowed things to run the necessary course. In his more hateful moments he wondered if it was a bad karmic joke that had brought him to this point. Harry had watched helpless as the families of death-eaters and suspected death-eaters were stripped of all of their material goods, children taken from their parents only to be thrown into orphanages that were unlikely to find homes for death-eater spawn. He had tried to use his public ‘hero’ status to speak reason, but the public was too injured and angry. They wanted revenge and they didn’t care that they were being as hurtful to innocent children as Voldemort had been. Harry suspected that the next Dark Lord was gestating even now, an unwanted unloved child in an orphanage.

There was some part of Harry that wondered when Dumbledore started manipulating his life. He knew that he had been the guiding force behind him living with his relatives, but how much deeper might it have gone. In his weaker moments, Harry, thought that is might have gone at least as far back as leaking ‘the prophesy’. He hoped that he was wrong, because, if he wasn’t….he didn’t even attempt to finish that thought. He no longer communicated with the old Wizard. Harry could not let go of his anger at all of the lies and half truths that the man had used to mold him into the weapon that he became. Harry was without question powerful. He would have been, a powerful wizard in his own right, but having drained some of Voldemort’s power when he was a baby, and more when he killed him, he was now the most powerful wizard in the world. He was also the richest, as fudge had decreed that a portion of all of the confiscated death-eater assets were to go to the surviving members of the order. Given that he already had inherited the Potter and Black fortunes, he would never need to worry about a job. Harry was under no illusions as to why Fudge would choose to do this. After all he had done to antagonize the young boy hero, and considering the many death-eaters that were employed in the ministry prior to the battle, Fudge was not looking too pretty. It was public bribery.

Harry winked at the bartender and asked for another shot with a beer chaser. The clock on the wall struck Midnight and Harry let out a deep sigh. He was now 24 years old. The petite scantily clad bartender sidled up to the attractive brunette with emerald eyes and told him that the drinks were on the house in honor of his birthday. Harry wondered briefly what is would feel like to wrap his arms around her slender waist. He knew that he could have his way with her if he wanted to, and Harry was not above taking advantage occasionally. Tonight he would not partake. He was in an introspective mood and he knew that using his image to ‘score’ would only depress him later. He looked around the club and saw many attractive people that would, on a different night, catch his eye. There was a beautiful pale blond on the dance floor that looked a lot like Draco Malfoy. Harry always noticed the platinum blonds. He wondered not for the first time what had happened to his ex-rival. Draco had disappeared right after school was out seventh year. The ministry tried to take the Malfoy money just like they had all the others, only to find that their vaults had been cleaned out before the war and all that was left was the famous manor. It was a death-eater museum now. With a special exhibit in the dungeons of torture devises. Harry downed the drinks that he ordered, and left the bar without a backwards glance. Tonight, in spite of his best intensions, he would leave alone and lonely.

TBC