Harry Potter One Shots

Breaking Tradition

All rights belong to the author, Mortalus

It was a cold, calm day in February, and a crowd of hundreds of people were congregated outside a small chapel in Hogsmeade. Loudspeakers at the front of the building broadcast the eulogy that was taking place inside – not that anyone could hear above the men, women and children who wailed as if they were mourning a member of their own families who had died young and tragically.

Harry Potter had died neither young nor, surprisingly, tragically. He had slipped away unexpectedly in his sleep a week before, and the country had yet to get over the shock of losing their national hero. The fact that he had, to his dying day, been referred to as The Boy Who Lived may have had something to do with the average person's belief that he was immortal; alternatively, it may have been because he had managed to survive every confection that Hagrid – deceased nine years earlier – had so generously baked for him.

More likely it was because he had fought He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named to the "death" fourteen times and always, always won. You-Know-Who would still come back every few years or so by some means – Gilderoy Lockhart had once tried to get You-Know-Who to tell him about his numerous rebirths so Lockhart could write another book, "Quest for Resurrection", but had been thankfully killed on the spot – but The Boy Who Lived would always catch up with the Dark Lord and set him on fire, throw a spear through his head, send him to an alternate dimension, or whatever else it might take to get him out of everyone's hair for awhile.

Whatever the cause, the delusion that Harry Potter would live on forever had been shattered by the fact that he was quite dead. The coroner had been asked to give a second opinion shortly before the funeral, and had reiterated his previous judgment.

"Now the world must let go of its child hero, and return him to the cradle of our Lord," the speaker said. It was Pamela Weasley, who had shocked her family and friends by becoming a nun. She was the first Weasley to do so since the sixteenth century.

There was a brief, loud noise. Shortly afterwards the chapel erupted in terrorized screams.

The noise had been a portal opening, and out of that portal had stepped You-Know-Who, his robes tattered and his wand raised. Almost immediately, someone had shouted "get Harry Potter!" At that moment the fact that Harry Potter was permanently indisposed was brought to the forefront in everyone's minds, and thus the screaming began. They soon reached the conclusion that they would now have to deal with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named in the same fashion that their great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents had – by running, hiding, fainting, or knocking themselves unconscious with blunt objects.

Within five minutes the chapel was full of unconscious men and women holding expensive candlesticks in their limp hands, and the crowd outside had dispersed to cower in their respective homes, waiting for the apocalypse. Purebloods and Muggleborns alike fled the scene as fast as their legs, broomsticks or Portkeys would carry them, for the Dark Lord had become increasingly less selective with his targets, as his general goal seemed to have boiled down to killing as many people as possible before his next climactic battle.

Yet there was still one man conscious inside the chapel. He leaned against the wall with a disinterested look on his angled face, and it was to him that You-Know-Who turned.

"There's another candlestick over there, if you're interested," he smirked, twirling his wand between his fingers. The man turned to the Dark Lord and chuckled, causing his face to twist into his most vicious glare. "What's the matter, Snape? Why aren't you running? Have you gone daft?"

Snape shrugged. "Not at all. It's just that it takes a little more than that to make me knock myself over the head nowadays. When one has survived nine generations of Weasleys, one finds that no one without red hair is capable of providing true terror." The Potions Master's hair was still jet black after all these years, and greasy as it had ever been. In fact, he looked annoyingly young compared to the Dark Lord's own ever increasing collection of wrinkles.