A nurtured secret

The death of a saviour


“Dudley…I think the end has come for Harry Potter.”

***

The sip of beer Dudley had just taken flew from his mouth as he stuttered and coughed and gasped for air.

“You, you…pardon me, what?”

“It’s time to kill off Harry Potter.” Harry said matter of factly.

This time his cousin’s eyes went round as saucers and his mouth fell open in shock.

“You want to, to KILL yourself?!” He squeaked, setting down his can of beer before the shaking in his hands upset it.

“What’s all the commotion about?” Bennie asked popping his head round the sliding doors, a soapy washing up brush dripping suds slowly onto the floor.

“Harry wants to commit SUICIDE!” Dudley’s voice was rising with every word and Harry tried in vain to disillusion them but they were beyond listening to him.

“You want to WHAT?! You think I spent all that time treating you for you to look good in a COFFIN?! Why would you want to kill yourself, your Harry Potter, why would you want to-“Bennie was cut off rather abruptly as Harry stood up and slammed his hand down on the table palm up.

“LISTEN to me you crazy fools!” He shouted, mouth set in a grim line. Not surprisingly his companions had been quiet since he’d smacked the table so it was quite feasible for him to carry on his explanation.

“Perhaps I didn’t phrase the statement properly; I never meant that I wanted to kill off MYSELF! Just Harry Potter, think about it, I now look more like a girl than a boy, it would be so simple to just go about under a new name and become somebody else entirely.”

Bennie came forward slowly and sat himself down on the other chair at the table. “Hal, why would you want to convince the world your dead? You’re their saviour, our saviour…everyone loves you!”

Harry closed his eyes and sighed, before sinking slowly back into his chair. “I am no saviour.” He said quietly.

“Bullshit!” Bennie laughed, “’Course you are! You killed ‘he who must not be named’! You saved us all from the darkest age this world ever faced!”

“Exactly, I killed him, murdered him and destroyed him and in doing so I destroyed countless others and their families.” Here Harry leaned forward and clasped his hands, his eyes already veiled with the birth of new tears.

“Imagine, if you will, hundreds of auror’s and death eaters battling and dying together, all around you. Their faces, freezing into the blank masks only the dead wear, their body’s limp and their blood spilt, littering the ground around you. Then imagine that you yourself have to kill people, death eaters you barely know or recognize…and it’s not so bad when their masks are on because you can’t see their faces. But when they slip off and you see who you’ve killed…they become innocent…oh so innocent, because you’ve killed them, you are now the evil one, and they can no longer think or feel or speak for themselves because they’re dead, they’re gone…finished.”

Tears spilled freely down his cheeks now and he unsteadily removed his glasses to wipe them away, attempting to hide his grief from them.

“And…and when people come up to you in the street afterwards, and thank you for the murders, thank you for the many auror’s and good men with families and loved ones that are now dead because of the prophecy that made you the one to cause all that destruction…you feel like screaming at them, ‘I killed your husband or your son or your daughter, I killed the love in your heart and left you empty, I MURDERED, every dead man on the battlefield that day, so if anything hate me and despise me, for I did NOTHING, nothing…that deserves your thanks.’”

His companion’s remained silent for awhile, seconds and then minutes ticked by as they absorbed the new outlook of the wizarding world’s wonder boy until…

“But Hal, it was the-“

Harry held up a hand, “No please, don’t try to convince me it wasn’t my fault or anything like that, I’ve been through it over and very again with countless people. All I ask is that you help me, I know no I will never rid myself of the memories but at least I can stop people reminding me by thanking me all the time. I know it’s selfish but please…I should surely go mad if I did not-“

Here Bennie interrupted him swiftly.

“Gees Hal, if that’s how you really feel then lets do it.”

***

“Right, we’ve got a hell of a lot of planning to do and not very many people to do it, however we have agreed that this must stay between us at all times. Therefore it shall be noted in ‘The book’,” ‘The book’ being an old power rangers notebook Dudley had dug up for them to put ideas into. “Along with the aside that as the only person currently legally able to use magic, I shall cast a silencing spell upon every meeting from now on.”

Here he turned to Dudley, “One, we need a murderer, two we need a body, three we need a suitably convincing disguise and alias for Harry and four, we need to get him re-enrolled into Hogwarts before the summer ends.”

Here he stopped to light a cigarette and the others quickly followed suit.

“Now Harry, I need you to really think about what you are doing here, you are throwing your life away to don anew, meaning you will no longer have the memories of your past, you will no longer have your current career aspirations or hopes for the future, but most importantly, you will no longer have your friends.”

Harry nodded, “In Diagon Alley, as I waited outside the owlry for you when you were buying owl pellets for you sister, Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, my friends you see, walked past me and stopped a little way away. Obviously they didn’t recognise me; I looked a little different as you know so they were talking freely. Not only it seems, have they been lovers for some time without telling me, but they are thinking of asking Dumbledore to set up psychiatric appointments at St Mungo’s for me!”

Here he shivered and looked down, “They know how much I hate those people, and it feels like a betrayal.”

“I see, well with your knew alias you’ll be able to make knew friends won’t you, and as for your other friends you know what they’re like so I’m sure you’ll be able to make friends with them again.” Bennie said consolingly.

“I hope so, I’d hate to lose Hagrid, and I don’t know if I’ll ever even see Lupin again.”

“Well let’s not dwell on it now,” Dudley said swiftly changing the subject, “How on earth are we going to go about getting a murderer and a body? Couldn’t we just fake a car crash or something?”

Benni turned to him in amazement, “Do you HONESTLY believe that the wizarding world will believe that HARRY POTTER died in a MUGGLE CAR CRASH?! No, no it has to be a magical death, and besides isn’t that the excuse your Aunt and Uncle used to explain your scar and parents death to you when you were little?” He said turning to Harry.

Harry nodded, “Yes but how on earth do you know that?” He asked in surprise.

“I read it in one of your biographies,” Bennie said ignoring Harry’s look at the discovery that he not only had a biography but more than one!

“So that’s definitely out, no it has to be a magical death, now the body and means of death is simple, we kill an animal…say a goat or something, we can get one of those off my muggle uncles farm, and we can polyjuice it to look like Harry, however obviously once the body has been taken we cant re-administer it every hour so we’ll have to find a far more long lasting and complex version of it.”

“But how do we kill it? Do you suggest Avada Kedavra?” Harry asked.

“Yes it will have to be, I know no one else could kill you while Voldemort was alive but that doesn’t necessarily stand now that he’s dead.”

“But I’m the only one of us that can cast that spell, it would be a little strange if my own wand was the murder weapon wouldn’t it?”

“Ahah, well that’s where the ingenious part comes in my friend, on the day of the death, you go in to Olivanders disguised as someone completely different, perhaps polyjuiced as a muggle criminal, and buy a new wand. THAT will be the wand that kills Harry Potter.”

Dudley looked up from his feverish scribbling and frowned, “But when the investigation takes place and this Oli person gives a description of the person who brought the wand, wont they be able to find out that it’s a muggle criminal who killed him…and if so, I thought muggles couldn’t do magic?”

Bennie clapped his hands in glee, “Exactly my dear Dudley exactly! Once they discover it was a muggle they’ll be completely stumped, and even if they do figure it out it was a wizard polyjuiced they have no clue or evidence as to who it was, they’ll have to give up! It’s brilliant!”

After a few minutes silence Dudley said, “You know you’re too clever for your own good! And your starting to sound like Sherlock Holmes!”

Bennie looked puzzled, “who?”

Harry butted in here however, “But I’m sure Dumbledore won’t let them drop it, they’ll see it through to the very end!”

“But don’t you see Harry? Even if they do eventually figure it out it will take them years, and when they do they’ll discover that it was YOU who murdered Harry Potter, and you can’t very well be arrested for murdering yourself when you haven’t really now can you? The only crime committed will have been to trick the wizarding world and we can all wriggle out of that one easily, besides how can they even begin to arrest you if they DON’T KNOW WHO YOU ARE?”

“Hell Bennie, that’s bloody marvellous!” whistled Dudley.

***

Harry stared at the wand in his palm as Bennie went over the details of the plan one last time.

“Right so Dudley, you tell the auror’s that the murderer…?”

“Appeared and disappeared again, they’ll assume by that he was using a portkey.” Dudley said.

“Yes to avoid the hassle of magical signatures, it’s a good thing your aloud to do defensive magic out of school Harry, when they are notified that you performed the spell they’ll think it was in defence.”

Harry nodded, already having discussed this and having set his wand in the appropriate place so that it would be lying next to the body when it fell, seeing as the last spell he had cast HAD been the killing curse there were no problems there.

“and you’ll give the goat the extenderpoly juice in…?” Bennie asked, questioning Dudley again.

“A bottle of milk and once its changed Harry will kill it quickly before it dies of a heart attack due to it being in a different body, then he’ll have approximately one minute to get under the decking and erect the fake grass bank we made to cover him, yes, yes we know it all Bennie just go!”

Bennie however was not satisfied until he was certain the plan would go without a hitch and then eventually he left to visit his aunts, affording him the perfect alibi if and when the auror’s questioned him. Promising to be back by six as he was certain the auror’s would have left by then, he sped away in his car, calling out last minute instructions as he did so.

Both cousins stood for a moment after he left, uncertain now that the main constructor of their master plan had gone.

Finally Dudley turned to Harry and said with an uncertain smile, “Let’s do it.”

Traipsing through the house both felt beads of sweat begin to collect on their palms, once they were outside both also noticed sheens of sweat on the other’s faces, and both knew that this sudden show of moisture was not due to the heat.

Fetching the bottle from where it stood on the table, Dudley slowly edged towards the goat tied to Aunt Petunia’s pristinely painted fence. Wary of its horns he stuck to the side of it…and stretching out his hand, gently stuck the teat of the baby’s bottle between its teeth.

The goat drank greedily, and Harry had a moment of random thought centring around the fact that goats should not really like to drink milk, it went against the natural order of things really.

The moment was gone soon enough however as with a sharp bleat of pain, the goat began to change, it’s skin bubbled like boiling oil, and with several sharp cracks it’s bones began to lengthen and shorten and become just a little thicker.

Before his eyes Harry saw himself emerge from the goats previous form, and it was only when an agonised bleat came from his counterparts lips, and it eyes began to roll, did he kill it swiftly and with all the hate he felt for Voldemort in his heart.

His body flew backwards, hitting the fence, his old glasses being knocked askew from his face. Harry found it eerily scary to see himself like that, unmoving and dead, like so many others he’d killed before.

Thankfully Harry had found some of his older hairs stuck to his comb so the goat resembled the boy he’d been when he’d left Hogwarts, not the person he was now.

“Quick Harry!” Dudley whispered pointing to the decking, and with that quick prod Harry was spurred into action, diving under the decking and pulling the bank of grass up behind him, peeking through the blades of greenery as much as he dared.

Despite his obscured view, Harry watched as Dudley quickly removed the rope from around his body’s neck, being careful not to touch the body and then gathered up the bottle.

Swiftly he ran into the house and Harry could hear him disposing of them in the bottomless shoebox Bennie had already created for them and then shoving it under the stairs.

He barely had time to run out to the body and kneel beside it before with a great ground trembling crash, twenty auror’s appeared in the Dursley’s back yard.

***

Lucius Malfoy took a delicate sip of tea and picked up the day’s daily prophet, shaking it out and taking in the day’s headlines.

Moments later, a crash was heard as the cup smashed unceremoniously on the ground as Lucius read again the bold front line.

‘Harry Potter MURDERED!” It said, screaming out at him as if the paper itself were talking to him. The picture accompanying it was off a mass of auror’s swarming round a body that looked to be in a muggle garden. Of course the body was obscured, but there was no mistaking that figure…

He sat heavily back down on his chair from where he had sharply arisen when he had read the news.

To think he was only sparring with the boy the other day in the ‘Leaky Cauldron’. Oh it was a pity, such a pity, that boy had been destined for great things…and he had been so beautiful too…

***

Hehe not a cliff hanger! Sorry it was a little shorter than usual but I felt it was a lot of information for you wonderful reviewers to take in at once. Next chapter will be longer and hopefully less complicated.