sorry to be late, internet issues.

Chapter 14 Round up and Epilogue

It might be said that a lot of things in Dumbledore's office got broken in his rage over Harry's letter.

Now he must decide whether to fight back or do damage limitations.

He took a trip to the DOM and discovered that the prophecy had indeed gone dark. Tom Marvolo Riddle was no more, and Harry had defeated him.

So, he must decide what to do before that horrid little letter was published.

Accordingly he wrote to the governors and to the Prophet, refusing to acknowledge Xeno Lovegood's publication.

To whom it may concern.

I would like to share with the people of the United Kingdom that I have decided I should resign my position as headmaster at Hogwarts School of Wizardry and Witches. Though pressed over the years to take more honours and titles, I am a simple man, and I am contented to simply go on as the man who brought education to the hearts and minds of the nation. I have made enemies – what man does not, when he strives for the best? And mistakes – as all men must. Alas, as with the mistake I made in not warning the world earlier about Tom Marvolo Riddle, who went on to become known as Lord Voldemort, so I made mistakes with the Boy Who Lived, slayer of Voldemort, in permitting him to have access to the darkness of the Black family. I hope that the wizarding world will not regret my desire for him to have a quiet upbringing untouched by fame, or the vanity of his relatives, causing him to rebel.

Have I said to much? There's nothing more I can think of to say to you. But all you have to do is look at me to know that every word is true.

Albus Percival Brian Dumbledore.[1]

"Well, I did demand his resignation," said Harry. "Manipulative old bastard; he's essentially just said that I am the next dark lord, bump off at will."

"Well, if you take him down, it will make him look as if his fears were justified," said Sirius, with a frown. He was holding Nagini's hand. She was still a parselmouth, and he found lovemaking with a parseltongue element irresistible.

"I thought I'd have Colin Creevey do a Harry Potter Photo Special," said Harry. "Pay him to photograph 'Mione and me on roller coasters, eating popcorn, paddling in the sea, doing some scuba diving. Pay him and his family to have the holiday of a lifetime on our island, and in Disneyland or similar, and sell the glossy, thick, photo-rich magazines at cost, or even below cost, so that everyone can see me being a perfectly normal teenage boy with his girlfriend. Playing quidditch too; I'm sure I could get Ollie Wood to let me play a scratch match with his team for old time's sake. Operation Cute Overkill.

"Operation Harry Puchu," corrected Hermione. She then had to explain about cartoon aliens who made everyone, especially teenage girls, fall in love with unbelievable cuteness. "I hate the thought of other teenage girls drooling over you, Harry, but better that than their parents deciding to kill you before you get dangerous enough to kill them."

"This was my thinking," sighed Harry. "So much for my anonymity. Still, if I pay Colin royally, he'll do a good job, he had said he worried how his parents were going to put their little sister through school; and I could offer that as a sweetener as well."

"And make a firm offer to him as official photographer and assistant press secretary when he leaves school," said Hermione. "Actually, offer Colin, Dennis, and Margery places at our school as well."

"Yes, good idea," said Harry. "Assistant press secretary?"

"Luna is our press secretary," said Hermione.

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Rita Skeeter tried to cosy up to Harry's arch rival, Draco Malfoy, with the question, 'Is Harry Potter going dark?'

"You're out of your mind, beetle," said Draco. "And remember, you'd better quote me accurately. Lord Potter offered my father the chance to repent having been fool enough in his youth to associate with some of the idiots who followed the Dark Lord, and to work with Lord Potter towards Riddle's downfall, which Lord Potter did not have to do, as his godfather and my father are political rivals. And as for Black family magic being dark, well, it's ritual based as is most old family magic. And it's that ritual which cured the girl I hope to marry, who was under a blood curse, and it also cured the Longbottoms. Dark, as you should well know, is not evil, whatever our senile former headmaster says. You have to be sorry for him; he's a half-blood whose father went to Azkaban for muggle baiting, and he grew up confused about the realities of familial magic, being of a minor family to start off with, and then raised by a muggleborn mother, who did not understand her responsibilities towards magic. The move Lord Potter made to have newbloods taught our ways has helped the harmony of the school no end; and I endorse Lady Longbottom's teaching, and her willingness to give us all a proper solstice, even if it was spoilt by being interrupted by the headmaster. Poor old man, he's completely lost it."

"I must do something nice for Draco," said Harry, reading that offhand hammering of a nail into Dumbledore's political coffin.

"You did, and he's repaying it," said Hermione.

"I'll keep him close to me, anyway," said Harry. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer; but he's easier on the eye at mealtimes than Ronald, and not actually as bigoted, which is scary."

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Operation Puchu, otherwise known as The Harry Potter Photo Spectacular, went like a dream. Harry petting rescued hippogryphs at a wild magical beast sanctuary, falling over as he learned to skate and laughing as he did so, catching a snitch three inches above the grass, screaming in joy on a rollercoaster, together with photos of the rollercoaster, and views from the carts, swimming with gillyweed around coral reefs, paddling in the January seas off Great Yarmouth when at the funfair there, rather than featuring foreign funfairs, seeing the Blackpool lights, a serious one visiting his parents' graves, eating ice cream at Fortescue's, and judging Best Kneazle in the Show competitions were just a part of the slick portrayal of a fun-loving teenager and his pretty girlfriend.

Two hours after it went on sale, Harry received an owl from Dumbledore, and the message, "I give you best. But I will be watching you."

Harry sent him a photograph of himself mooning and setting light to his farts and the missive 'Have fun.'

After all, having fun was what he intended to do until Sirius made him settle down and take politics seriously.

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Regulus announced his survival, citing the loyalty of his friend and valet, Cor, and the power of Harry Potter to heal his wounds, gained when fighting under cover against Voldemort.

He gave an exclusive interview to the Quibbler, and put in his own thoughts on Dumbledore.

"What everyone forgets is that Dumbledore did nothing. I'm told that when Harry Potter was fifteen months old, he somehow defeated the Dark Lord. What was Dumbledore doing in the fifteen months between Harry Potter's birth and the Dark Lord's defeat? Nothing. Then later, when Harry Potter was a teenager, the Dark Lord came back, on the sly. Apparently Dumbledore knew about this, but what did he do about it? Nothing. But now this same Dumbledore wants for the stupid people amongst you to believe that Harry Potter is a Dark Lord, so that some idiot will kill Harry Potter and Dumbledore will be the only hero alive. But notice, people: Harry Potter has used his magic to cure a blood curse in a prominent family, and to cure me from near death in stasis—do these sound like the actions of a Dark Lord to you? Meanwhile, how has Albus Dumbledore used his magical power? To enchant his flashy robes. Harry Potter fought Tom Riddle; Dumbledore hired Tom Riddle to teach DADA."

Regulus's words to the Quibbler were reprinted by the Prophet. After this, in all of Wizarding Britain, even Molly Weasley had no good words to say about Albus Dumbledore, since the therapy she had gone through, paid for by Harry, had cured her of her near worship of the twinkling twazzock. She now saw him as responsible for driving her sons away from her, turning Ronald into a most unpleasant character, and for traumatising and nearly getting Ginny killed, since he had to be aware that it was she who was being used, as he had the portraits and ghosts to tell him. She also regretted having lost the chance to know Harry, as her combined PTSD over the loss of her brothers, indirectly through Dumbledore's policies of stunning only, and the direct interference to her mind by Dumbledore had emphasised the most negative aspect of her personality.

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The Flamels, who had not given a real philosophers' stone to Dumbledore, agreed to step in as joint headteachers of Hogwarts and do their best to undo all the damage to the school Dark Lord Dumbledore had done, and it was the private school's one regret that they had missed the chance to learn alchemy. However, Nicholas Flamel agreed to let them visit as external students once a week, and discovered thereby the true story of the stone he had let Dumbledore have.

He sought out the former headmaster to verbally excoriate him in sixteen different languages, some of them not dead.

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Epilogue

Regulus felt closer in age to Harry and his friends, having been in stasis for nearly twenty years, and joined in many of their lessons. He started dating Daphne Greengrass and married her when she left school, but did not have to change his name as Cyrus and Apollonia, freed of the curse, managed to provide Daphne and Astoria with a brother, named Hamilcar for his benefactor.

Astoria married Draco, and they named their firstborn 'Orion', and their next child, 'Cassiopeia.' Narcissa Malfoy meanwhile had given birth to Astyanax and Hector, twins, and Lyra. Lucius Malfoy became a kinder father and more empathic with the loss of the dark mark, an effect which also affected Severus Snape, who set up, but refused to have anything to do with the children in, the Lily Potter Orphan Asylum for Magical children, which was also a safe place for children of mixed marriages or of muggle parents who did not want to know about magic, who could appeal for sanctuary there. There was no uniform and they wore nice clothes, and learned to fit in with muggles and magicals alike.

Neville and Luna married, and went looking for extinct plants and animals together.

Sirius married Nagini, and had two parselmouth daughters named Andromeda and Venus. Harry was still, however, his heir. It was just as well that Hermione was ready for a large family, as well as prepared to adopt orphans found by Severus who were descended from their own families. They adopted Sally, Joe, and Marysieńka in addition to their own Sirius, Salazar, Lily, James and Miranda.

Finis

With thanks to Tom H. Richardson who wrote Regulus' piece for the Quibbler and to trickste 32 for suggesting the Flamels

[1] Housepoints to anyone who knows whence I cribbed a lot of that.