Inspired by the Broadway Musical Hamilton
Harry Potter is brilliant, skilled with magic but more importantly blessed with passion and a keen mind, he sees the world and works to build a new one. The war is different, he convinces Dumbledore to take a less divisive road after Voldemort's return and the ministry prepares for a lesser threat than what is coming, but prepares all the same. Harry inspires, and the war is more even. Voldemort reaches out to foreign aid, and Harry does too. Of age and a rising star, Harry acts as the ambassador to France to enlist their help. There he runs into an old acquaintance, Fleur Delacour.
They were once rivals, now they match each other perfectly.
They work together, and despite Voldemort's best efforts they lay the foundations of a better world.
The war nears its end and they lay a trap in Diagon Alley, the dark lord falls, but he he does not fall alone.
The sound of laughter and crowds rang out around her, and Fleur looked up at the statue in the center of Potter Square in Diagon Alley, her heart marked heavy by the desperate ache of pride.
“I understand you were close?”
She dipped her head, one hand covering her mouth, all but unable to halt the laughter that threatened to bubble up within her. She raised her head and looked languidly over at the newly appointed French ambassador as he strode up beside her, one delicate eyebrow raised.
“Yes, I was close to him. In fact, I loved him.”
Ambassador Laurent’s expression cracked, caught on the word his eyes widened. He let out one awkward cough into his fist, “My apologies.”
Fleur shook her head, a gentle smile gracing her lips. “It is alright, great men are often caught up in their own stories, it is no small miracle that so much of the truth is known.”
Recovered now from his faux pas, the ambassador displayed the quick mind that had earned him his position, “Due to your efforts I presume?”
“Of course, I could do no less.”
The tone of her voice grabbed his attention, but he sensed that it was not the time to inquire. The moment stretched on and Fleur was content to let it linger.
Recovering, Ambassador Laurent spoke, “It is an incredible likeness,” he gestured to the statue before them, “on both their counts.”
This time Fleur could not contain her mirth, and the wry chuckle startled the ambassador out of his appreciative observation. “It is no mere statue my dear ambassador,” Fleur said, “This is the spot where it happened,” Fleur’s smile slipped from her face, “and there they stand still.”
The ambassador followed her gaze to the statue, Lord Voldemort stood atop a mound of debris, one hand crushed around the throat of Harry Potter, the other buried savagely in his chest, holding him aloft with inhuman strength, desperate terror and denial written across the dark lord’s face as he desperately shrunk back from the fate he had not been able to escape. Held aloft by his throat and sternum, Harry Potter stood tall. Straight backed and proud, regal and calm, not resigned but mirthful as he was held aloft, left arm gripping Voldemort’s shoulder as if in solidarity, the other taught, frozen in motion as the two wands clutched in his right hand seemed to bring the madman’s world down around him. It was his face most of all that struck her, and she felt her throat catch as she looked up at him.
He was not looking at Voldemort, his eyes gazed off toward an indeterminate spot between two buildings, right where she had stood. He had never been so calm before, always filled with passion, his words aflame and his mind bursting with ideas, but never a moment at peace. He was happy, content, and above all proud. His face adorned with a roguish grin, the smile he had always worn when he knew he was about to do something she would dress him down for later, but his eyes held only joy.
“When you say they stand there still…”
Fleur turned back to face the ambassador, “I mean those are no mere statues.”
Laurent’s eyes widened, “How?”
“Harry was brilliant, and the duel had not been going the dark lord’s way.”
Even ten years past she remembered it as if it were yesterday, Voldemort had been winning, Harry had not been concerned. The order and the ministry’s forces lay broken around him, and Harry only smiled at the dark lord and spoke with calm amusement, accusing him of being shortsighted. The dark lord had scowled, infuriated, and demanded what he meant, and Harry had flourished his wand and produced a ribbon from his sleeve like a muggle magician. The dark lord’s followers had watched in confusion as the ribbon fell, blue, white, and red.
Voldemort had realized first, his head snapped up in shock and disbelief as Harry spoke five words.
“You forgot about the French.”
They had burst from the shops of the alley, cowering civilians became seasoned aurors in an instant as the death eaters had been pinned between the French forces and their erstwhile victims. Voldemort engaged Harry in a furious duel, but he was off balance and Harry was buoyed by the confidence of victory. Harry had been winning, pressing closer until they were less than five paces apart, and Voldemort had, in his desperation, unleashed wild fiendfyre on the city. She remembered the way the battle froze, watching as Harry’s eyes widened and he rushed forward without hesitation.
He had plunged through the flames, had parted them like water, and grappled the dark lord with his bare hands, magic for a moment forgotten. He had grabbed his shoulder in his left hand, and his wand in his right. He’d stepped forward in the moment of the dark lord’s surprise and slammed his forehead into the madman’s face. The dark lord staggered, the pair’s wands jerking upward and directing the hellish flames into the air and away from the crowd, Voldemort’s wand slipped from his pale fingers and Harry raised them both in the air, triumphant. For a moment they had won, and Fleur’s heart had started again.
The sound of Harry’s throat crushing pierced the bedlam like a bolt of lightning, the face of the dark lord twisted with fury as he picked Harry up in one inhuman hand, the other flashing forward to plunge into her Harry’s heart. The world froze again, and Harry smiled. With his left hand he clasped Tom Riddle’s shoulder bracingly, two wands still held in the air with his right hand. She remembered, inexplicably, that he’d winked at the dark lord, right before he looked at her.
The wands fell, Harry slashed the twin pair down and the roiling sun of flame above descended.
As the flames fell they had changed, no longer the devouring fiendfyre they shifted from bloody black and crimson to a gleaming white and gold. She had seen it in his face, Harry had no heart of destruction in him then, and thought only of all they worked so hard to create. And as she looked him in the eye, all she saw was joy, and pride for the world they had laboured to build. An eternity had passed in a moment, the flames had engulfed him, and when they faded there they stood, gleaming marble, purest white stone tinted with gold.
A sharp intake of breath brought Fleur back to the present, the ambassador looked round in shock, and blanched at the emotion he saw written in her eyes.
“How, I- How?”
“How did he do it?”
“No, how did you?”
Fleur looked down then, gentle tears slipping down her cheeks, a heartbreaking smile on her lips.
“It was hard,” she turned to face him, “every day he should have been there beside me when I woke, every day he was not.” she looked back up at Harry’s face, tears flowing freely, “But then I walk out of our door, I see him in the faces of the men and women living in peace, in the smiles of the children growing up in a better nation, I hear it in the air and feel it in the wind, the world he died to make.”
She looked Ambassador Laurent in the eye, “My Harry is not gone Ambassador, he lives on in the world I lived to build.”
The idea behind this prompt is to tell a story that goes on after the hero falls, and to demonstrate the power of the legacy they leave behind.