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Revenge is a Dish Best Served Cold


The sun was shining brightly from the cornflower blue sky and not a single cloud was to be seen anywhere. There was a gentle breeze blowing from the south, keeping the temperature down to a pleasant coolness.

The backyard of the Burrow had been magically enlarged and decorated to the nines. In a corner, a huge buffet had been set up. It seemed like there was enough food present to feed a small country... for a week.

All around, wherever the eye roamed one could see bunches of expensive flowers arranged artistically, enhancing the already beautiful setting and releasing a heady fragrance into the warm air.

The day was a very special one for the Weasleys and no expense had been spared. The youngest Weasley, the only girl born into the family for generations, was getting married today. The excitement in the air was palpable.

The crowd gathered for the wedding was immense. Everybody who was anybody was there. Even the Minister of Magic was present. This was a high profile wedding and nobody wanted to miss it.

Harry Potter stood quietly, watching the proceedings, a small smile gracing his face. Things were all falling into place.

The groom and the bride exchanged their vows, their joy shining on their faces. It was the most special day of their lives and both were exceedingly happy. Minerva McGonagall, the one who had been asked to perform the ceremony cast the final spell around the joined hands of the couple, ensuring that the marriage could never be broken. The two were bound to each other for the rest of their natural lives.

And then the newly wed Ginevra Malfoy kissed her new husband for the first time as his wife.

In the front row Molly Weasley was bawling her eyes out as the rest of the Weasleys clapped enthusiastically, happy grins on their faces.

What happened next shocked the gathered crowd greatly. Harry Potter had walked over and put his hands on Draco's arm, whirling him around to face him.

"What the fuck? Potter?" Draco said with a confused frown on his face.

Harry looked at Draco, a cold look on his face. "Draco Malfoy, I hereby arrest you in my standing as an Auror of the Law Enforcement. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you."

Ron, Bill, Arthur and immediately rushed forward, anxious looks on their faces.

"What are you doing, Harry?" Ron hissed angrily. "Look I know this must be upsetting for you. But you are making a scene, not to mention ruining my little sisters wedding."

Harry totally ignored him and held his right hand out, palm first. "Surrender your wand, Malfoy."

"What are you going on about, Potter? Are you crazy?" Draco said with a disgusted look at the messy haired man before him. "Look, I just got married so I would appreciate it if you could throw your jealous tantrums some other day."

"I won't ask again," Harry said in a deadly whisper.

By this time the Minister, Kingsley and Tonks had hurried over.

"What's going on, Potter?" Scrimgeour asked sternly.

"I'm just arresting a criminal and taking him to Auror Headquarters to lock him up till the date of his trial, sir," Harry said calmly.

"Oh yeah? On what charges?" Draco yelled, his face red with anger.

Harry rattled off the charges, a wintry smile on his face. "Conspiracy to murder, attempted homicide, use of unforgivables, aiding the Dark Lord, helping Death Eaters to break into Hogwarts, and many other minor offences that are more than enough to put you away into Azkaban for life."

"This is bullshit! You know he turned over into a new leaf and regrets his actions. Why are you doing this, Harry?" Ginny said angrily, tears running down her face.

"Turning over a new leaf does not condone his past actions. And I don't believe he changed at all. He just realized that his own pathetic hide was in danger and came crawling back like a coward. You say he's on the side of the light? Well, I didn't see him on the battlefield that day. If he has committed a crime he will pay just like everybody else. There is no reason to give him any special treatment," Harry said in a bored tone. "Malfoy, your wand?"

Arthur, Molly and Bill's faces showed the immense betrayal that they felt. They couldn't believe that Harry Potter was actually doing this today of all days. They were in too much of a shock to do or say anything.

Kingsley bent down and spoke to Harry in a low tone that conveyed all of his anger and disappointment in him. "Harry, you are to go to Auror Headquarters and stay there till I come to deal with you. You have caused enough of a scene as it is."

Harry turned to look at Kingsley and the tall Auror nearly cringed at the contempt and power shining within those eyes.

"Auror Shacklebolt, I have hard evidence of all I have accused Mr. Malfoy of. I even have eyewitnesses. I have full authority to arrest him. If you try and interfere again I will have you up on charges. Are we clear, sir?"

Kingsley looked at Harry for a long moment and then nodded. "Crystal."

Suddenly Ginny move forward and slapped Harry across the face with all the strength in her body. "I hate you. You are nothing but a jealous and petty man and I made the best decision on my life when I left you. Dumbledore would have been so disappointed in you today... and I bet Sirius and your parents must be turning over in their graves."

Harry moved a finger to his lip and touched it gingerly. When he brought up his finger he saw blood on it. He slowly licked the finger clean and looked back at Ginny. His eyes darkened with rage till they were almost black in colour. His magical aura flared out all around him, making all those around him shiver from the show of raw power. He was noticeably angry but the most frightening thing about him was his smile which was still pasted on his face. It now had a feral quality, like a wolf looking at its prey.

"You have no idea how much you'll regret that, Weasley," he said in a soft, silky voice. "You just drove the last nail into your coffin."

Suddenly Harry felt a wand poking into his back and a furious Bill Weasley angrily ground out. "I hope I did not just hear you threaten my sister, Potter. That's the sort of thing that will get you into St. Mungo's."

They didn't even see Harry move. One second he was turned around, his back to Bill and held at wandpoint and the next he was standing over the prone figure of the red-headed cursebreaker who was nursing his jaw. "Corner," Harry barked, "Take Mr. Weasley here into custody. Next time he'll think twice before attacking an Auror."

Michael Corner, who had attended the wedding as one of the guards of Rufus Scrimgeour hastened to do as he was instructed.

"Harry, have you totally lost it?" Hermione screamed. "What do you think you are doing? What's gotten into you today? Yes, she broke up with you and it's quite natural that you are upset about it. But you're behaving like a lunatic. You think any of its going to change by you doing this? The only thing you are doing is destroying any remaining relationships with people who love you. Can't you see that?"

Harry totally ignored her. "Malfoy, if you don't hand over your wand right now I'm going to charge you with resisting arrest too. You are in enough trouble as it is, aren't you?"

Draco drew his wand from his robes and threw it at Harry. "Take it, Potter. I'll humour you as you prove to everybody just what an idiot you are."

Harry pocketed his wand and then quickly cast a scanning charm on him to ensure he had no Portkeys on his person. He then took out a special Auror portkey and stuck it on Draco's robes. An activation phrase later he was whisked away to the holding cells where he would be held till Harry got to him.

Rufus Scrimgeour looked at Harry with a calculating expression on his face. "I think there is no point in me being here any longer. I expect to see a full report on my desk regarding this case first thing tomorrow morning, Potter. Your case better be airtight or you'll be facing charges yourself."

"Ofcourse, Minister," Harry said politely.

With that the Minister apparated away, followed by his contingent of Aurors who took Bill Weasley along with them.

"All right, Potter," Ron said coldly. "You've done your duty, now get off our property. There is no place for the likes of you here. I can't believe I considered you my friend all these years."

Harry Potter threw his head back and laughed. His laugh had no humor in it. It was the laugh of a madman, of a deranged lunatic. It chilled all of them to the bone.

"Friend, Ron?" Harry asked softly. "When were you ever my friend? All your life you have been jealous of me. Either it was the fame, or the money, or something else. I wonder at times if you were ever really my friend. You want to know what led me to do what I did today? Okay, I'll tell you."

"It was during the hunt for the Horcruxes that I met Severus Snape. We dueled and I won. Before I killed him he gave me a vial of a stored memory. It was his last revenge on me," Harry looked at the gathered Order members and grinned viciously. "You want to know what I found in that memory? It was a memory of a certain Order meeting that took place sometime in the middle of our sixth year at Hogwarts. Does that ring any bells?"

The members of the Order that were present paled at these words. Molly Weasley and McGonagall gasped in horror.

"Yes, I am talking about that Order meeting," Harry said softly, his eyes burning like hot coals.

"So what was this meeting about, then?" Hermione asked impatiently. She was very upset at Harry's behavior and nothing he could say would really condone his actions of today in her opinion.

How wrong she was.

Harry turned to look into her eyes. "Dumbledore told them about the prophecy. In his opinion I would not be able to defeat Voldemort without killing myself in the process. That was what he thought the power he knew not was - love. He thought I loved all of you enough that I would sacrifice every bit of my magic and life-force into killing Voldemort."

Harry ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. "After that meeting I thought a lot. I started to see certain things in a whole new light. I suddenly realized that Dumbledore had known all along how the Dursleys treated me. The wards around Privet Drive were put up by him. I realized that it was highly unlikely that they didn't notify him of all the times they starved me for days on end or when they beat me. He had put Arabella Figg there to keep an eye on me. How was it that she never told him about what was going on? Then there was the fact that my Hogwarts letter was addressed to 'the cupboard under the stairs'. If nothing else that should have notified him. No, he knew. He knew all of it."

Harry turned to McGonagall and looked at her for a long moment. "Let's just examine my first year at Hogwarts, shall we? Dumbledore hid the Philosopher's stone in a school full of children. The protections the staff put up were outwitted by a bunch of first years. And what were the barriers? A Giant Chess set - Ron's specialty. A room full of flying keys - my specialty. And the one set by Snape that Hermione would have had no trouble crossing. Is it coincidence that the barriers you set up were ones that the three of us would have no trouble breaching? Is it coincidence that Dumbledore returned my Invisibility cloak after I had left it up in the Astronomy tower? Is it coincidence that I found the mirror of Erised and Dumbledore was conveniently there to explain what it did? Was it coincidence that Hagrid gave me a flute that year for Christmas? Unfortunately, I do not believe in coincidences."

McGonagall looked away at this point, confirming Harry's suspicions.

"I realized that I had been played by a true master. Nearly every thing in my life had been carefully planned and controlled. All those times when I sat before him thinking those blue eyes of him could see right through me, read every thought of mine. If I had only known that it was exactly what he was doing. He was the best Leglimens in the world, better than even Voldemort. That's why he had Snape teach me Occlumency, because he couldn't afford to have me learn and have my mind closed off to him. Sometimes I wonder whether he planned even Sirius' death. I suspect it, though I will never really have any way of truly knowing."

Harry looked at the members of the Order standing around, his eyes holding utter contempt for them. "I wonder how many of you guessed what Dumbledore was doing and how many of you actually helped him. It does not matter. I saw all of you, the great Order of the Phoenix sitting there in that room that day, agreeing that my death was a small price to pay for getting rid of Voldemort. It was for the greater good after all."

None of the Order members could meet Harry's eyes now. Most of them had deeply ashamed looks on their faces.

"At that point I wanted nothing more than to leave you all to rot and leave the wizarding world. But I stayed. I stayed because of you lot," he said pointing to Ron, Hermione and Ginny. "I stayed because I owed it to my parents and Sirius. You still think they would be rolling over in their graves Weasley?"

Ginny's face reddened and she wished with everything she had that she could take back her words and her actions.

"And then I found out that you guys don't give a shit about me either."

Hermione opened her mouth to deny this statement but she was cut off when Harry silenced her with a wave of his hand.

"You know when exactly I figured that out? I'll tell you. I went to the prefect's bathroom after my rounds only to catch my fiancé shagging Draco Malfoy inside. And then I find out that she's been doing it for months. You have no idea what a prize fool I felt like. I remembered all those times when I stopped things from getting too far between us, because I respected her enough to not want to take advantage of her. Because I thought it was worth waiting for, she was worth waiting for. I understand that she didn't love me, believe me I do. What I didn't understand was why she led me around. Why pretend to be with me and play with my feelings when you were never going to be with me. It was all a big joke to you wasn't it, Ginny? Harry Potter is a fool. He will forgive me. He's a goody-goody Gryffindor, the golden boy. Did you and Malfoy laugh about it when you were screwing each other?"

Harry shook his head and laughed bitterly. "Everything was over for me that day. The world stopped moving. I felt that everything I had ever believed in was false. And you know what shocked me more? None of my so called friends or loved ones did anything. That day I truly realized that I'm alone. That all of you were traitors. If my parents, Sirius or Remus were alive they would have got angry on my behalf. Heck even Neville or Luna would have done something. But what do my best friends Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger do? Nothing. It's like I didn't even matter."

Harry turned to Hermione, a look of deep disgust on his face. "Hermione Granger, my so called best friend. If I remember correctly you congratulated Ginny the very next day, didn't you? Something on the lines of you being happy that she found the one she was supposed to be with?"

Hermione looked back at him, a stricken expression on her face.

"Yes, I heard it. I was there," Harry answered her unasked question.

"That day I realized that everything around me was a sham. Voldemort was evil, but if you people are the so called light then perhaps he wasn't so bad. He tried to kill me since I was a one year old, but I expected that from him. He was my enemy. You, who proclaimed to be my friends, to love me, you are the real evil. I realized that all of you want something from me. That's the only reason you bothered with me. I realized that you would use me till I was destroyed, if I let you. It all ended that day. I loved you with everything I had. There was nothing I didn't do for you. I was ready to die for you even after I learnt of your betrayal. You have seen how much I can love you. Now you will see how well I hate."

Harry turned to Ginny. "You think Draco will get off? He won't. He's going down to Azkaban for life. I promise you that. And now you are married to him for life, with no chance for a divorce. Enjoy the rest of your pathetic life."

He lifted his wand getting ready to apparate out. "I am more powerful than Dumbledore and Voldemort ever were and I am one of the richest and most influential wizards in the world. I promise you I won't make the same mistakes they did. Now all of you watch as I destroy your world. By the time I'm done Voldemort will look like a choir boy."

And he disappeared with a small pop, leaving behind a terrified group of people who wondered what they had unleashed.



~~~*~