'Harry Potter' is owned by JK Rowling.

People were celebrating. Glasses were clinking, food was being distributed, praise being uttered. It was a time to enjoy the success of winning a war. The wizarding threat was over. It was done. Magical creatures had been killed; the schools had been destroyed; and, all but for a single person, the race of magical humans was gone.

After having been discovered in early 2015, there had been a fallout that no pure blood could ever have imagined. In the beginning there occurred three years of strained tensions between governments with barely any attempt at diplomacy, let alone partnership. In Britain particularly, the largest proponent of diplomacy and partnership was one Hermione Granger.

She was the first to go. As a previous target of pure blood supremacists Hermione was prepared for an attack, but sadly the attack came from a source that she had not imagined in her wildest dreams, and so not prepared for. Her own parents. The British government had somehow enlisted Hermione's parents to do the unthinkable, turn her over. She went to visit them and was not seen again.

Six months later it was all out war.

The non-magical humans were terrified of the killing curse, and with good reason. The power of the curse and the hatred needed to use it made it and terrifying but effective weapon, especially considering the amount of hatred the non-magicals generated. But again, it was not enough. The Avada Kedavra alone could only kill one person at a time, and there were not enough magical people to kill enough muggles to make a significant impact. It was relatively simple for a magical being to sneak into high officials' homes or workplaces and kill them. But, like the rats they would come to be referenced as, when one muggle died, another stepped forward to take their place. And the assassinations of the leaders only made the rest of the non magical world angrier. And more afraid.

The killings continued for 6 years until what was considered the end of the magical/non-magical war. The atomic bombing of Durmstrang in Bulgaria, Beauxbatons in France, Salem Witches Institute in Massachusetts, The Lonely Mountain School in Canada, the Walkabout Academy in Sydney Australia, Hitomi School of Magic in Japan, Apokryfos in Greece, Stregoneria Accademia in Italy and Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry in Scotland. Even if anyone had survived, the death of the children, The greatest magical teachers of any nation, and the complete devastation and harsh radiation left in the wake of the bombings would have killed their spirit. The muggles had won.

And now they were celebrating. And they would have continued celebrating were it not for a sudden pain that hit the mind of every single muggle on the planet and the voice that accompanied it.

"The human race makes me sick. It has made me sick tonight not for the first time, but this is the worst it has been for the past six years." Those who could think properly realised that this voice that was causing pain was talking about the start of the war.

"You are celebrating genocide. The fact that the world condemned what happened in Rwanda, how Stalin treated 30 million of his own people, the mass killings of the Jews by Hitler, but that they can celebrate the travesty of what has happened over the last six years is absolutely revolting, and I will not allow it.

"Now, for everyone not in England I would like to inform you that it is 3am in Greenwich Meridian time. Those knowledgeable in magic and perhaps Wicca might realise that 3am is the witching hour. It is also October 31st. The day my people called Samhain, which your people have bastardised into the form of Halloween. Since you non-magical plebeians would have no idea of what I'm referring to, let me inform you that the power of this day at this particular time has meant that I can connect to every single mind on the planet. And what pain I'm causing you now is only the tip of the iceberg. "

Suddenly, however, the ominous voice became amicable, and conversational. "Now I'd like to ask a question. It is a rhetorical question - I do not want you to answer. But, I would like you to think about it. My question is: what is the first thing that comes to mind when you think of immortality?"

The voice stopped for half a second, mockingly, then spoke again.

"Now I'm sure some people - probably those more highly educated, sophisticated, or capable of higher thinking on this miserable planet - would have thought of those people that have made such an impact on the development of the modern world that we still remember them today. Names such as Albert Einstein, Galileo Galilee, Copernicus, Homer, Julius Caesar, Peter the Great, Charles de Gaulle, George Washington.

"Within the magical world, we had similar individuals whose names we revered. These so-called 'immortals' included names such as Merlin Ambrosius, Morgana le Fey, Mordred, Paracelsus, Circe, Cornelius Agrippa, Baba Yaga, Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, Salazar Slytherin, Ptolemy, Albus Dumbledore."

The voice paused, "Zeus, Poseidon, Hades; Bastet, Ra, Thoth; Amaterasu-ōmikami, Tsukuyomi-no-Mikoto, Takehaya Susanoo-no-Mikoto; Danu, Brighid, The Morríghan; Odin, Thor, Loki; Gabriel, Michael, Raphael."

The voice paused again, "Lord Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield. Her Imperial Highness, the Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia. Her Royal Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the First of England. William Shakespeare, Poet, called the 'Bard of Avon'. Nikola Tesla, inventor, engineer, physicist. Michelangelo, sculptor, painter, architect, poet, engineer, awarded the epithet 'divine' for his achievements. Genghis Khan, Khagan of the Mongol Empire. Marcus Aurelius, 16th Emperor of the Roman Empire. William the Conqueror, King of England. King Alexander the third of Macedon, called 'Alexander The Great'. Siddhārtha Gautama, the sage known as 'Buddha'. Jesus Christ Of Nazareth, called 'The Messiah, The Son of God' ."

The muggles gasped in shock, the final revelation of the voice more than they could handle. The voice laughed - so loudly it reverberated in their minds with an angry scorn. "What? Did you seriously think that a man vaunted as doing such miracles could be anything but magical? That there was an omnipotent, omni-benevolent, omniscient man in the sky that allowed him to do such things? Almost all of the 'gods' your backward peoples have ever worshipped have been magical humans or beings that have tried to help humanity! The only entity worth real worship is Mother Magic herself!

"Now, back to my question. The majority of the rest of you would have thought immortality as never dying. There are some creatures in my world that do come close to such an ideal. Vampires come to mind for one. They can live for thousands of years. But they can still be killed. They can still be destroyed. It is possible, however hard."

Suddenly there was a sharp pain in everyone's head all over again. It went on and on and on. To those who were aware of it, the Cruciatus curse came to mind. The voice seemed to be amusing itself now, as the pain faded again and it spoke.

"Now let me tell you a story. Around about a 1000 years ago there were three brothers: Antioch, Cadmus, and Ignotus. They were descended from the bastard son of William the Conqueror and were gifted with the surname Peverell. All three brothers were talented and powerful and they became the most potent and formidable necromancers since Hades himself. Individually, and without any input from either of their other brothers, all three of them embarked on a project, to create a powerful artefact, that was not necessarily necromantic in nature, but that would help them accomplish their own necromantic tasks.

"The eldest brother Antioch created a wand. He created it from the branch of an Elder tree and the heartstring of a thestral soaked in the blood of an ancient vampire. While this may not seem particularly interesting, one must note that the heartstring came from the oldest, most powerful thestral Antioch had ever come across. What makes it even more amazing is that the thestral, on the verge of death, allowed Antioch to take his heartstring. And so came the creation of the most powerful wand in existence. Known also as the death stick, and the wand of destiny, it is most correctly referred to as its first name, the Elder Wand."

The voice paused, then sighed.

"He never did get to use it to its full potential however. Being a proud man, he boasted of his achievement; a terrible mistake. He was killed and the wand was taken.

"The second brother, Cadmus, had just lost his wife to witchhunters. His grief was so great that he sought to create a way to see his wife again. His research led him into the study of the soul and he found that the being with the highest affinity for soul magic was the dementor. After years of painstaking research he managed to capture one of the foul creatures and spent another several years studying it. The result was a piece of crystallised dementor heart. He enchanted it thoroughly, and when turned three times with the will to call the soul of the dead, it brought back a shade of his wife.

"Their daughter, afraid of her father's achievement and ashamed of his obsession with the sad pale shade of her mother, left without looking back. With nothing else to live for, Cadmus killed himself so as to be with his wife truly.

"The third brother Ignotus, being both the most intelligent and most discreet of his family, had realised the attention that his brothers talents and powers had brought along with their heritage. He sought way to protect his family. He, with great skill for such a difficult task, captured and skinned a lethifold and used its pelt to create the perfect invisibility cloak. Perfect in that when a person was underneath it the cloak would allow no harm to come to them. The killing curse could not touch them while underneath the cloak, it could not be summoned away, and damage could not be done to it - a person under the cloak that did not wish it could never be seen.

"But still, the threat of the Peverell family enemies - those afraid of their powers, covetous of their artefacts, and even those who sought to use his family for their own gain - drove Ignotus to take further steps to protect them. Having previously lived in one of the hundred manors his ancestor William Peverell had received as reward from his father William the Conqueror, collectively called the Honour of Peverell, he secreted them away from Derbyshire to a small town in Wales called Godric's Hollow. Ignotus handed the cloak down to his son when it was his time to die, having lived safely and anonymously with his family under the surname of Potter."

Several of the higher ranking world officials - who had been listening to the voice wondering why it would tell them something so seemingly irrelevant - suddenly stood up straighter.

The voice, while aware of their leap of logic, continued on as if nothing of significance had been revealed. And indeed, no leaps of logic made any difference to the voice and what it was saying.

"There was a little known legend in the European wizarding communities, that the person who collected the three artefacts would be able to conquer death; become its master. Of course, mastering death as an entity is impossible, but my possession of the wand, cloak and stone did have another effect.

"I have in fact died one hundred times over since this war began. I was in Hogwarts when it was hit with the nuclear bomb. I was in the Veela community of Bulgaria when everyone was massacred, the Veela raped and tortured. I was in the western forests of Tasmania when they were burned to the ground to draw out the last of the magical thylacine, centaurs and faerie. I have died and come back to life. I am, for all intents and purposes, immortal. I'm sure something will be able to end my miserable life eventually, but I doubt it will be anything less than the end of this world.

"The combination of the lethifold skin, the dementor heart, the thestral heartstring, vampire blood; my own close shaves with death - basilisk venom, dark rituals, possession, inferi, and being hit with the killing curse, twice - and the blood connection with the makers of the artefacts has left me with the strongest connection to the phenomenal power of death that that ever has been or ever will be. I suspect that should I have chosen the path of necromancy like my ancestor Ignotus Peverell, I would have matched and surpassed his talent and power. But nonetheless, what I have been given is more than enough."

The muggles shuddered. The person, or being perhaps, that was speaking to them had more than enough reason to seek revenge and, it seemed, more than enough power to do so. The fear that had been steadily creeping up rose like a tsunami to capsize the jovial mood of the previous celebrations.

"Tonight is Samhain. The veil between worlds of the dead and the living is at its weakest, and oh the power…

"Nothing that you, your parents, your children, your children's children, or any other person can ever do will ever get me to stop and right now I am the one who will decide your fate.

"And history repeats. That humanity has lived as humanity has lived - with a distinct in-humanity - for millennia, is no license for the cruelty you have visited countless times across the world. The genocide of my people is simply the last straw. All are now judged. And all are found wanting. "

The silence was deafening, for those that tried to scream found themselves incapable.

"Say your prayers on this, the last night on earth. Not that the false gods that you worship would have listened, they were magical after all. It is only fair. Genocide for genocide."

And death came for them.

The greed and fear of the human race had caused their own destruction. They ceased to exist - wiped from the face of the earth except for one more-than-man. He would wander the earth, in awe of the majesty of nature, until the death of the sun and the end of the world.

The inspiration for the story comes from various places, not the least 'Death's Son' by Little Miss Xanda. Some of the school names I made up, but some come from 'Arcane Academy' by ame3565. The idea of the Peverells being descended from William the Conqueror, and Ignotus Peverell changing his name to Potter came from 'Give It Your Best Shot' by Zenathea. (I didn't ask them so I hope they don't mind.) The Honour of Peverell is a real thing, if you want to Wikipedia it.

The quote, 'That you have lived as you have lived for centuries is no license for this cruelty. All here are now judged, and all are found wanting.' is from the book 'Magician' by Raymond E. Feist.