Epilogue

"Potter, Harry," tiny professor Flitwick said, and the hall burst into whispers. A scrawny black haired boy went up and put the Sorting Hat on his head.

'Interesting,' a voice whispered in his ear, 'that's interesting. Well, you are not hard to place, which is strange. I thought I'd be in for a tough one with you, but you are a true GRYFFINDOR. Good luck.'

Harry jumped off the stool and went to sit at the table cheering for him. Up at the staff table a strict blond lady smiled at him.

"Who's that?" Harry asked a prefect, Percy Weasley, who was next to him.

"Must be the new Transfiguration teacher, I think her name is Professor Vender."

Something in the back of Harry's mind started at that name. He looked puzzled at the professor, then something caught his eye. Professor Dumbledore was staring at the new professor too, but his eyes held none of the puzzlement Harry's did. Something about the way he looked at Professor Vender told Harry that he knew something Harry didn't, and that he was very amused by it.

At the end of Harry's first year there arose the question of where Harry would stay. Not to anyone's surprise, Professor Vender, with whom Harry had formed a very strong friendship, asked that he stay at Hogwarts. Dumbledore agreed, much to professor Snape's displeasure, for he had come to hate 'the Potter boy', as he called Harry.

To no one's surprise, Harry came in second in his class, right after Hermione Granger, one of his best friends.

In the years to come, Harry proved over and over that he was indeed a true Gryffindor. In his second year he battled the monster of Slytherin. In his third year, he come to know his godfather, who had spent a couple years in Azkaban but had been proved innocent when Peter Pettigrew was found alive, many years ago. Harry come to love his godfather and was formally adopted by him that year. Professor Vender was the one who suggested it.

In his fourth year Harry played in the Triwizard tournament and Voldemort arose. It was the death of his godfather in his fifth year that truly changed Harry.

Many people say this was the end of his childhood, but Harry would have disagreed. He never did know why, but for some reason, ever since his first day at Hogwarts, Harry never dated. He said he wasn't interested, but that never seemed right. It was almost as if he was mourning the death of someone.

The thing was that, whenever anyone would ask Harry why he was determined to kill Voldemort, he would say simply that Voldemort had killed the people he loved. Though most people thought he meant his parents, in the back of his mind he knew that was a lie. For the name Emily was always on the tip of his tongue.

Then came the day when Harry disappeared as suddenly and mysteriously as the day his parents were killed. No one ever did find out what happened to Harry Potter, the-boy-who-lived.

But the very day he disappeared a man by the name of Derek Vender and his Grandma Sara Vender were hired as a teachers in a little town in England. In a few short years they had become immersed in the community and no one could remember life with out them. Till his dying day, Derek would always say he had found the one thing he had always wanted in that little town, a place where he belonged.