Work Text:
Title: Urban Legend
Author: raglek
Date: 09/08/08
Words: 3800
Rating: G
Challenge: none
Warnings: End of the war/Post war AU - Set five years after the events in DH, and canon-compliant up until Bellatrix Lestrange’s death, slash but no sex, lots of OC
Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters, settings, etc. are the property of their respective owners, JK Rowling, Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books, etc. The original characters and plot are the property of me. (Grin) I am (unfortunately) in no way associated with the owners, creators, or producers of any media franchise be it TV, movie or book media. No copyright infringement is intended. (I’m not getting paid for any of this, honest.)
Beta: none
Leon Campground
Leon, WI USA
July 2002
“And when he dropped her off at home, there was a hook hanging from the door.”
A couple of the girls gave theatrical shudders and everyone laughed. The group was an uneven mix, four guys and three girls, and they had all been friends since their second year at the American Institute of Magic. This was the summer of their graduation and they would be separating after this trip, some of them off to college and some off to work. They had all vowed to keep in touch, but they were aware of the possibility that it might not happen. Life has a habit of getting in the way and this could very well be the last time they were all together, so they had decided to make the most of it.
One of the boys, Jeff Anderson, lived in LaCrosse, WI, and his family had a permanent campsite in the campground near Leon, a small town about forty miles away. His parents had agreed to turn the place over to Jeff and his friends for the weekend and the kids were taking full advantage of it. They had gone hiking and swimming earlier in the day. As soon as dusk had fallen they returned to the site for supper, the novelty of cooking over open flames exciting them.
As soon as the meal was finished, Jake had suggested telling ghost stories. There were a few groans, but everyone eventually agreed, Priscilla being the last. She said that she’d agree only if the others agreed it was time for ‘smores. “If I have to listen to ghost stories, I want chocolaty-marshmallow goodness to go with it.” They all laughed at this condition, but agreed that it sounded good.
Now, two hours later, the ‘smores long gone, they had heard the story of the Phantom Hitchhiker, the Choking Doberman, and several of the sillier stories like the one about the beehive hairdo, and the quivering cactus. Then Laura said that one of her uncles once swore that he had seen Elvis. That started a round of ‘my cousin’s girlfriend’s brother had a friend who saw…’ stories. Doug was the only one who hadn’t joined in; he just sat quietly with a strange look on his face.
Priscilla looked at Doug and asked, “Hey are you alright?” She always seemed to be hyperaware of her friends moods and if something was bothering one of them, she was usually the first to know.
Doug shook his head, but replied, “I’m fine. It’s nothing.”
“Bull. What’s wrong?”
The others were listening in now and Doug looked a little sheepish, “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” He kind of laughed, “Hell it happened to me and I can’t hardly believe it.”
“Oh, now you’ve GOT to tell us. You can’t say that and expect us to just leave it alone. Besides, of everyone here, I’d be more inclined to believe you than anyone else,” Jeff encouraged. “Come on man, spill.”
Hesitating for just a minute more, Doug took a deep breath and began. “OK, but don’t say I didn’t warn you. You all know that I work at the Circle K near my house every summer to help with tuition, right?”
Everyone nodded. Doug was one of six children and the only magical person in his family. His parents struggled to make ends meet and the older kids all helped as much as they could by getting jobs. At first his parents had been afraid that they wouldn’t be able to afford to send him to AIM, but with the help of some scholarships and the money he brought in working in the kitchens at school, they’d been able to.
“Just before school started last fall, I was working a late shift, 6 pm to 2 am. Shortly after midnight, this GTO pulled up; Steve you would have been in heaven man, this car was awesome.”
“What year was it?” Steve, the motorhead of the group asked.
“Who cares?” Steve’s twin sister Steph, asked exasperated. If they started talking about cars, they’d never hear the rest of the story. “So this great car pulls up. And then…?”
Doug smiled faintly at the girl, she had no patience for he brother’s obsession with cars. “This blonde guy got out and was pumping gas and his passenger got out and came inside. The blonde guy was really put together, clean-shaven, sharp clothes, expensive jewelry; but this other guy, man, it looked like he got clothes the Salvation Army rejected, he had a beard that just about covered his whole face and it looked like he hadn’t eaten for a year. As I watched him walking toward me, I figured that he must have been a hitchhiker that the blonde had picked up and I was hoping that he wasn’t planning on staying at the ‘K’ for the rest of the night. Sometimes we’ll get people who do that, they’ve got nowhere else to go, so they just sit in one of the tiny booths in the back until someone comes in and agrees to give them another ride. This guy looked the type and he was a little scary looking with that beard and his wild hair. I also figured with the way he looked that he’d be in need of a shower.
When he came in, he came right up to the counter and asked with a slight British accent if he needed a key for the bathroom. He was really polite and once I saw him up close I could tell that he was clean, just sort of run down, you know? And I swear, he had the greenest eyes I’ve ever seen; I don’t think I’ve ever seen another shade of green - anywhere - that even comes close. Anyway, I told him to go ahead, it was unlocked. When he was finished, he went to the cooler where we keep the prewrapped sandwiches and got out a couple of them. The blonde guy had finished pumping gas by this time and come in. He went over to the brunette and I could hear them talking real low. Blondie was pure Brit…”
“I love guys with British accents,” Steph interrupted with a sigh.
Everyone laughed and Doug picked up his story, “Anyway, Blondie asked if two sandwiches would be enough and Brunette said ‘Yes Draco.’ with a sigh, like Blondie had been bugging him all night. Blondie gave him a ‘don’t give me any crap’ look and went to got a couple of sodas.
Brunette was heating the sandwiches in the microwave and Blondie, Draco, went and got another couple out of the cooler. Brunette shot him a dirty look, but he just smirked and handed them over to be heated. ‘I won’t be able to eat all of this.’ Brunette said.
‘Maybe they’re for me’ Blond… Draco answered.
‘Sure they are. And maybe people will start keeping Blast Ended Skrewt’s as pets.’”
“Wait a minute, they were wizards?” Priscilla asked.
“Yeah, it surprised me too. If Brunette was a wizard, why didn’t he look at least a little better? I mean, as worn out as our clothes get, Mom still keeps them looking better than this guy’s. And like I said, he was one of the skinniest people I’d ever seen. Anyway, they bickered back and forth for a while, but they were careful to keep their voices low. Draco told Brunette that he wasn’t eating those sandwiches in the car. Brunette said that was fine, Draco should just leave anyway. Man, did that piss him off, his voice got real fierce and I could feel the anger just rolling off him ‘I’ve been searching for you for five years Harry, five years following even the slightest lead to your whereabouts, don’t even think that I’m letting you go now.’
Harry looked over at me to see if I was paying attention to them, but I was pretending to restock the cigarettes. ‘Keep your voice down’ he said.
Draco shot a quick look at me too, ‘He’s not paying any attention to us. Besides, he’s a Muggle. Why would a wizard be working in a place like this?’
Harry shook his head, ‘It’s nice to see some things haven’t changed. Don’t be such a snob. A lot of witches and wizards here in the States work mundane jobs.’
Now Draco shook his head. ‘You’re not going to distract me that easily. Five years Harry, wondering where you were, if you were ok, and most of all why you left. Do you have any idea what that did to me? I thought I meant more than that.’ Harry started to speak but Draco cut him off. ‘Give me three of the sandwiches and the wrapping of the other. I’ll go pay, you go sit over there.’ So he came up and paid for their sodas and sandwiches and he grabbed a couple of bags of chips, too. Then he went back to the table.
Harry started right away, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. It was just too much. So many dead, so many families ripped apart and all of it was my fault. I couldn’t stay. Better to just let everyone think I was dead. I should have realized that your mother would tell you the truth.’
‘Of course she told me the truth. She knows how we feel about each other. Or at least how I feel about you.’ Draco sounded really bitter when he said that.
Harry stopped eating and stared at Draco and told him ‘I’ve thought about you every single day since I left and I dream about you all the time. You are the only thing I left behind that I truly miss.’ He took Draco’s hand and said, ‘Don’t you see, that’s part of why I had to leave. I bring death to everyone I love. I couldn’t bear it if something happened to you because of me. I decided it was just better that I leave.’
Draco looked like he couldn’t decide whether he wanted to beat the hell out of Harry or kiss him senseless. ‘Stupid bloody git, none of that was your fault. It wasn’t like you had a choice in any of it. A power mad wizard kills your family and marks you for death when you’re an infant; how is that your fault?’”
Everyone around the campfire gasped when they heard those words. Doug knew that they knew where he was going with this and if he stopped and allowed them to question him now, he’d never finish, so he rushed on before anyone else could speak.
“Harry shrugged and said, ‘Maybe that part wasn’t my fault, but later, if I had been smarter or better prepared maybe so many people wouldn’t have had to die.’
‘Listen to me closely Harry. It’s not your fault. None of it, not even a little bit of blame rests on you. You did everything you could to save us. And you did save us, because if you had failed, more than just a few people would have died. Can you imagine what it would have been like if he had won? No, Harry, you did nothing wrong.’ Harry looked like he was going to argue some more and again Draco said, ‘It is Not. Your. Fault. Quit shaking your head, you may as well accept that you aren’t to blame, because you know that you will never win an argument with me. Now, I want to talk about what happens next.’
Harry gave Draco a funny look and said, ‘What do you mean. I already told you that I’m not going back. As far as most people know, I died that night and I have no intention of correcting their beliefs.’
Draco said, ‘Fine. Don’t come back to the wizarding world. Just come back to me. You can come and live in the manor with me.’ Harry was shaking his head but Draco kept talking. ‘No one needs to know that you’re there. You’d never have to leave the manor if you don’t want to. My Mother and Father very rarely come there anymore, so for the most part it would just be the house elf and us. Please Harry, I miss you so much. Please come back with me; come back to me.’
Harry sighed, but I could tell that he wanted to say yes. ‘Just you, me and the house elf?’
‘I swear. I won’t tell anyone that you’re back. I need you Harry, please.’
Harry nodded but said, ‘If anyone finds out, I’ll disappear again; I swear I will. I just can’t go back to who I was, to what I was. Agreed?’
Draco stood up and pulled Harry into a hug and said, ‘Agreed. But you should know if you run again, I’d just hunt you down again. Now let’s go love, let’s go home.’ Draco put his arm around Harry and kind of shepherded him to the door.”
Everyone around the campfire was deathly quiet, and then Jeff started to laugh. “You’re shitting me. You’re seriously claiming that you saw Harry Potter? Doug, Harry Potter is dead. He died it the Battle of Hogwarts. And even if he hadn’t, everyone knows that he and Draco Malfoy hated each other. And you’re saying that they were what, a couple? I mean sure, the Malfoys ended up on the right side, but still, there’s no way that Harry and Malfoy would have been lovers. Harry was dating Jenny Weasley”
Doug got defensive, “First, all I’m telling you is what I heard these guys saying and what I actually saw with my own eyes. And second, it was Ginny Weasley, and they were just friends. I looked it up. Ah hell, just forget it. I told you it was crazy.”
“Shut up, Jeff! Doug wouldn’t lie,” Laura hotly defended her boyfriend. “What happened to “I’d be more inclined to believe you than anyone else? Hmmm?”
“I didn’t say that he was lying, maybe just that he was seeing things. Or maybe those guys were pulling some kind of elaborate stunt. Harry Potter is dead. Everyone knows it. Hell, my Mom still has the newspaper clippings from his funeral. We all saw the funeral remember? There was that big assembly and they let us watch the televised event.”
Priscilla asked, “ What did you mean when you said you looked it up?”
Doug glared at Jeff and said, “Look, I’m not stupid, ok. I know it seems crazy, believe me. I was there and half the time I don’t believe it myself. But it got me curious. So I started reading a bunch of the books about Harry Potter’s life and the newspaper articles about the battles and his death. I cruised around the internet looking for anything that would rationally explain what I saw.”
“So, what did you find out?” Jake asked.
“OK, so you all know the story right? I mean in history we studied about how Harry Potter went into the woods that last night and was killed and then Voldemort came out with his Death Eaters and attacked Hogwarts. And we’ve read about the huge battle that followed, and how Molly Weasley killed Bellatrix Lestrange. When Voldemort saw what had happened to her and how the Hogwarts fighters were winning, he abandoned the remaining Death Eaters and decided to get the hell out of Dodge. But as he was running away, the strangest thing happened. When he got to Dumbledore’s tomb he suddenly stopped and started shouting ‘No! You’re dead! I killed you!’ and just generally freaking out. He pointed his wand at seemingly nothing and cast Avada Kedavra and it seemed to bounce against an invisible wall, rebounding on him and killing him on the spot. Everyone with me so far?” Doug asked.
“Yeah, Merlin knows that we studied the Battle of Hogwarts to death, so we know all that. And as you just said, Harry Potter was killed.” Jeff said, more that just a bit smug. “So whoever was in the Circle K that night was obviously playing a joke.”
‘Why don’t you just be quiet and let the guy finish?” Steve snapped.
With a nod of thanks, Doug continued. “Ok, so the next week was filled with the funerals of the fallen heroes; Harry Potter’s being the last. Again, something that we not only studied; but saw on TV.
But here’s where it starts to get strange, the part that you don’t really hear about, and I know that they never mentioned this in class, it that when the battle was over and the people were gathering the dead nobody could find Harry Potter’s body. They had all seen it, the half-giant, Hagrid; he had carried it out of the Forbidden Forrest. But during the fight, the body had mysteriously vanished. They searched all over the school grounds, but it was gone. Some people thought that maybe one of the giants had eaten him or carried him away when they ran off. And a few others believe that a stray spell had hit him and somehow disintegrated his body. But whatever it was that happened, the result was the same, no body. So the tomb on the Hogwarts grounds that’s supposed to be Harry Potter’s is actually empty.”
“This is actually documented?” Steve asked.
“Yep. And not just on conspiracy theory web sites or in the National Enquirer-type papers. There’s a book called “The True Story of the Battle of Hogwarts” by Dennis Creevy, his brother Colin was killed that night. The book tells all about it, the missing body, the frantic search and the empty tomb. There was a lot of pressure on him to stop publishing; he was even threatened by the Ministry of Magic. For some reason, they didn’t want anyone to know about what really happened.”
“Ok, so assuming that Creevy isn’t making this up and the tomb really is empty, that doesn’t mean that Harry’s still alive,” Jeff argued.
“You’re right, it doesn’t. But that’s not all. Did you know that Harry Potter had an invisibility cloak? And not one of those cheap ones you can buy on the market today, but an old family heirloom, a real one.” Doug stressed.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Steph asked.
“I don’t know, maybe nothing. But it’s just another weird thing. Nobody ever found that cloak. It wasn’t in any of his belongings.” Doug looked at Jeff, “As for the Draco Malfoy thing, well we know that his father was a Death Eater, and his mother was involved that last night as well. Draco’s parents were in over their heads and wanted out, but Voldemort was using harm to Draco as a threat to keep them under his thumb. In Creevy’s book, he told the story that he got from Hagrid. Apparently after Voldemort “killed” Harry, he collapsed. He was unconscious for several minutes. After he came to, he had Narcissa Malfoy check to see if Harry was still alive. The mother of Harry’s lover was responsible for telling Voldemort if he was alive or not.”
“See, now there you lost me again. Harry Potter was gay? How come that never came out?” Jeff asked.
“Well, I imagine that he was careful about it, I mean the poor guy couldn’t take a leak without it being major news. That must have been hell. You guys should read some of the articles that were written about him when he was in the Tri-Wizard Tournament. That reporter, Rita Skeeter, just ripped him to shreds. I would imagine after that, he was extremely careful about what he did publicly. And in the book, Creevy talks about how Harry and Ginny were just friends. Another girl that was in Gryffindor House with them, Romilda Vane, was in love with Harry and was pissed that he wouldn’t go out with her. She hated Ginny because her and Harry were so close. She’s the one that made everyone think that they were dating.
And then there’s the prophecy, ‘And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives’, saying that one of them would kill the other one; and Voldemort’s last rant, ‘You’re dead! I killed you!’ he said.”
Jake spoke up, “Yeah, he said that, right by Dumbledore’s tomb. It’s believed that Dumbledore somehow was responsible for his death. That his spirit somehow came back, one final act of good to perform before final resting peacefully.”
“But here’s the thing that nobody seems to remember or want to talk about when it comes to this part, Voldemort didn’t kill Dumbledore, Snape did.” Doug clarified for the group.
They all got quiet as they thought about that. The crackling of the fire and the crickets singing were the only sounds in the night. Then Priscilla asked, “So what do you think happened Doug. I can tell that you have some kind of idea.”
Doug shrugged and said, “I don’t really know, but maybe when Narcissa checked to see if Harry was alive or not, she lied, knowing that if she told Voldemort the truth that he would just try again. Her son was in love with Harry and I think that she wanted him to be happy, so she just lied. They gathered up his body, whether he was unconscious or awake and just lying there limp, I don’t know; but they gathered the body and marched on Hogwarts. Harry was placed on the ground and the battle began. Sometime during the melee, Harry woke or just got up and put on his invisibility cloak and when Voldemort ran, Harry followed, catching him near Dumbledore’s tomb. They fought and Voldemort died and Harry just disappeared into the night.’
Wanting to make up for his earlier attitude, Jeff said, “Ok, that sounds plausible, it could have happened. But do you really believe that the guy you saw was Harry Potter?”
Doug shifted a bit uncomfortably, “Yeah, I really do believe, and here’s why. You never let me finish my story, there’s one last bit. As Harry and Draco were walking out of the Circle K that night, I looked up and saw Harry running his hand through his hair, moving it enough so that I could see it. The scar. I actually saw the lightning bolt scar. It really was him. I saw Harry Potter.”