Lost Epilogue #1

SIX MONTHS LATER

PotterWatch, Episode 17
Exclusive Harry Potter Interview

Hello, this is Lee Jordan and you're listening to PotterWatch. Today we have a most special guest, the Boy Who Lived, the Wizard of the Year, and the man this show is named for ... Harry Potter.

PotterWatch: Harry, we are absolutely honored to have you with us today. I know this is the first public interview you've granted since the Quibbler interview a few years back. So much has happened and changed since then. Where have you been?

Harry Potter: Er, well, I've been hiding out, Lee. I'm very glad its all over, honestly, and I'd like some peace and quiet. I've spent a bit of time abroad with a friend ...

PW: Yes, I understand you've been spending quite a lot of time with Ginny Weasley. What is the nature that relationship ... if you don't mind my asking?

HP: Er, right, we have been spending a lot of time together. Well, we're engaged.

PW: Engaged! Blimey Harry, contragulations! Harry Potter and Ginny Weasley are engaged to be married!

HP: Thank you! We're very happy. I'm happy. I feel like I can live a regular life now.

PW: Harry Potter, a regular life? No offense Harry, but it's a hard thing to imagine. What do you expect you'll get up to next, now that You-Know-Who is out of the picture?

HP: Well, honestly ... I don't know. Lately I've been glad just to spend time with Ginny and my good friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger. I feel like I've got a second life now that Voldemort is gone.

PW: Uh, yes, Voldemmm... Harry, er ... You-Know-Who, he's gone now, is he? Gone for good?

HP: Yes, I believe this time he's gone for good.

PW: How were you able to kill him? Those who were at the Battle of Hogwarts back in June seemed to think you had his number.

HP: Well, I can hardly take credit for all that. Dumbledore had done a lot of research into Tom Riddle's -- Voldemort's -- past, and had found out that he was using very black magic to try to, well, become immortal. It didn't work.

PW: ... Obviously not! ...

HP: Dumbledore had guessed what the dark objects were, that were supposed to keep him immortal, but when he died, Ron and Hermione and I had to track them down and destroy him. In the Hogwarts Battle, he killed Severus Snape, who both Voldemort and I thought was a Death Eater. Ron and Hermione and I found him as he was dying, and it turned out that Snape hadn't been a Death Eater since ... years ago. He was on Dumbledore's side. He never revealed it to anyone but Dumbledore ... Voldemort thought Snape was his man until the very end, when I told him the truth.

PW: Snape! Yes, I've heard that he was on our side. But I also heard that he killed Dumbledore. That's unbelievable! Even coming from you, Harry!

HP: Yes, well, I got a lot of information from Snape about Dumbledore and Voldemort. Snape was Dumbledore's man. And after I'd heard, I thought that I'd have to ... die. I understood that Voldemort would have to kill me before he would be mortal again.

PW: Kill you! Vold... kill you! What made you think that?

HP: Well, he'd marked me, you see, he'd marked me when he tried to kill me when he murdered my parents. He marked me again when he returned to his body, he used my blood -- the blood of his enemy -- to strengthen his new body.

PW: Your blood! He took your blood, Harry? That's positively dreadful!

HP: Yes, well, Voldemort was hardly a man. He had no remorse. His soul is ... wretched ... Well, anyway, we had become, Voldemort and I, connected. And I thought he would have to destroy me so he could be killed. And I would have been glad to die to have him killed, after he killed my parents, my friends, after the things he'd done. So I went to see him. To let him kill me. And he tried.

PW: He tried! How?

HP: The Killing Curse.

PW: Blimey, Harry! The Killing Curse! What happened then? Did he miss?

HP: No, I just stood there. I let him hit me. Right in the chest.

PW: Harry, seriously ... well, I know you survived the Killing Curse before. But again?

HP: Well, we both fell down. And I had ... well, I had a bit of time to think anyway. And I discovered that I wasn't dead. And that I had weakened Voldemort as I'd hoped to do, made him more mortal than he had been before. It turned out that I had also given protection, through sacrifice, I guess, to whoever fought against him at Hogwarts that night.

PW: And this happened in the Forbidden Forest?

HP: Yes.

PW: But Voldemort thought you were dead. He declared that he'd won the Battle. He came back to the Castle with what everyone thought was your dead body. You weren't dead? You were only pretending?

HP: That's right. I should have been dead. Killing curse and all that. So it wasn't hard to pretend. And when Neville -- Neville Longbottom -- came out of the Castle, wanting to keep fighting. Well, Neville was amazing. He killed Voldemort's giant snake with Godric Griffendor's sword right in front of him! And that was when the Battle started back again, with reinforcements from Hogsmeade and the Forest and everywhere. It was incredible. And thanks to Neville, Voldemort was mortal again.

PW: Wow, because of Neville? That's brilliant!

HP: That's right. Neville was brilliant. And I was pretending to be dead, so I hid right away, so Voldemort and the Death Eaters wouldn't see I was alive.

PW: As I heard it, you absolutely disappeared. Rumor has it you've got rather nice Invisibility Cloak.

HP: Well, while I was hidden, I saw the battle rage and tried to fight as best I could. And then when Voldemort was alone -- when Bellatrix Lestrange had been killled --

PW: Yes, killed by Molly Weasley! You're best friend's mum. How did that strike you?

HP: It was brilliant! Nobody messes with Mrs. Weasley. She was downright formidable.

PW: And that's when you came out from ... hiding, eh?

HP: Yes. It was like coming back from the dead. Startled Voldemort ... and then I started to talk. I guess I wasn't even scared, since I felt like I had already been dead. It seemed like it wasn't that bad. Well, Voldemort thought death was miserable, and now we'd made him mortal again, Dumbledore and Ron and Hermione and Neville and everyone. And, as you said, I had his number. Thanks to Dumbledore and everyone, I knew things about Tom Riddle -- Voldemort -- that even he didn't know. Or thought nobody knew.

PW: As I heard it, you said a lot of things to him ... things no one really understood much. The things you said you were destroying ... were they ... Horcruxes?

HP: Well, yes. They were. Voldemort had created a number of them.

PW: A number of them? For himself? I thought ... I thought creating just one would ... destroy a person.

HP: Yes, it would ... and he'd created many. He was barely a person. His soul was ... well, I can't imagine a soul's ever been that damaged.

PW: And then, after a while, he tried to kill you. And he was killed! Harry, I'm surprised anyone would touch you after that. Back from the dead, backfiring killing curses on You-Know-Who with a simple Disarming Spell! They say that you can't be killed.

HP: No, that's not true. Fortunately for me -- for all of us -- Voldemort didn't really get wands. He thought he'd won this wand that could finally kill me -- because wands had made me hard to kill before -- but really, he only thought it was his wand. The wand had actually become mine by happy mistake.

PW: Happy mistake! Amazing. And Harry, that reminds me -- one of the few things I've heard about your recent activities. Rumor has it you've been seen hanging about Ollivander's wand shop more than once.

HP: Oh, well, yes. I'm a bit interested in wand-lore, now that I've seen how inexplicable things have happened to me -- and, er, not happened to me -- because of wands. And I accumulated a small collection of them during the war. They use ancient magic, and we use them every day, yet we know so little about them and how they really work. They're mysterious, and I'm very curious to find out more about them.

PW: Well, it's been suggested that a joint paper by Potter and Ollivander may be hitting the presses, expounding on your recent work in that field.

HP: Oh, well, maybe. I'm just working from some of the things that Dumbledore had theorized. And Ollivander is really knows his stuff.

PW: And also ... well, I've heard rumors that Minister Shacklebolt -- former PotterWatch contributor! -- has had a lot of meetings with your friend Hermione Granger, that she might have a new job in the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures.

HP: Well, you'll have to ask her about that. Although if I know her ... she might want to do something a bit more, um, daring.

PW: Daring? Well, I guess we'll see. She's spending quite a bit of time in Diagon Alley around your best mate, Ron Weasley, isn't she?

HP: Um, yeah, they're ... a bit close. But Ron's been spending a lot of time helping his brother George out ... with the shop, I mean.

PW: Right. I imagine so. Well, we've all lost friends and loved ones ... including former PotterWatch correspondents Fred Weasley and Remus Lupin. But not many of us have, er, lost more than you, Harry. Still, you look all right ... you're in good spirits.

HP: I am? Well, I guess I've been missing the dead my whole life. Now, I only miss the dead more, I miss so many people ... but I feel like they're with me, with everyone. The ones who've moved on are with us ... they aren't gone. Dumbledore wasn't gone when he died, or my parents, or their friends, they helped me fight, and live, and finally kill Voldemort.

PW: Well, that's touching. We are all missing someone. But thanks to you --

HP: Thanks to a lot of people, the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore's Army, all my friends, and ... the friends I didn't even know I had.

PW: Yes. Many thanks, much gratitude -- to all those friends and supporters who joined the cause. And Harry, thank you. You have done more for all of us than any one of us could ever hope to do. And that concludes our interview! Thank you, Harry Potter, very much, for being on PotterWatch!

HP: Cheers, Lee, all the best ... and I, er, hope you can find a better name for the show after a while ...

PW: Really, Harry, we wouldn't dream of it. G'night!