Disclaimer - I don't own Harry Potter.

This is my finale, and it's also the last chapter of the last Harry Potter story I'm ever going to write.

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The Thief.

"Potter?" Hermione Granger gaped in surprise.

Harry couldn't believe it, he didn't want to believe it. But surprise quickly gave way into fear and anger. Despite all of his best attempts to leave the magical world behind and resume his life in the muggle world, the Order of the Phoenix simply could not leave him the fuck alone! Damn, he thought to himself, I need to think, but do I have time to think while Granger is here? How did she get in any way? I made sure the wards had been strengthened!

But while he was still frozen trying to think up a way of getting this latest crisis resolved, Granger asked,"How can you still be alive?"

Wait, what?

"What did you say?" Harry whispered; if this was an Order trap then it was a damn good one. He knew Granger was part of the Order of the Phoenix, but why was she here seemingly on her own, but why was she asking him how he could still be alive?

And then…. he realised…Granger had been just as surprised to see him as he had of her. What was going on? Didn't she know he was here, otherwise what was she doing in his house?

"How can you still be alive, I saw you die?" Granger whispered.

Harry stared at her for a long moment as he probed her mind. Hermione Granger had never studied the mind-arts, but thanks to her logically ordered intellect, she had relatively decent natural occlumency barriers. Granted they were not strong enough to repel an attack from a trained practitioner of the mind-arts, but then they didn't need to be; Harry didn't plan on driving himself too deeply into her mind, he just wanted to skim the surface thoughts.

Her surprise was genuine. She hadn't expected to see him here, but that was far as he was willing to go; just because Granger hadn't trained herself in the mind-arts, that didn't mean she wasn't aware of them. Besides if he asked her some of the questions which had popped into his mind, she might get suspicious, and the last thing he wanted was Hermione Granger firing so many questions at him at once.

"I faked my death," Harry replied, blandly.

Granger blinked. "Faked your death?" she repeated.

"Yes, faked," he said patiently, "you fucking idiot! That's what I just said. I faked my own death, and in answer to your next question, which probably begins with 'why,' I'll tell you; I was tired of the magical world, and after Luna's death, I wanted nothing more to do with the magical world again," Harry said solemnly. "Unfortunately, with Fudge's ministry, Dumbledore's order, and Voldemort and his followers to deal with, I needed to find a way to get away without anyone eventually tracking me down."

Harry watched Granger process his explanation for a second before he decided to ask his own questions. "But enough of that for now. What are you doing here? You weren't expecting to find me, so why are you here?"

Unseen by Granger, he cast a mild compulsion charm similar to the one he'd cast on Ron Weasley when he'd caught the boy trying to go through his trunk as though it were his. Harry knew from experience the only way Granger could talk was if you argued with her, and he was not in the mood for a fight.

"I didn't know you were here," she began, "I was trying to find a new place to live in London that was close to Diagon Alley, and I have enough money from my parents to look and afford a new home. I didn't want to live in the magical world with so many different objects; I hated the Burrow and Grimmauld Place. Every night and morning, I'd wake up and hear the clattering of ghouls, House-elves, or something else would happen."

Harry nodded, feeling the same way though he had other reasons to dislike the two mentioned houses which were completely inferior to his lovely home. He had not been fond of the Burrow and his godfather's old house, and that was before he had discovered the Horcrux that Regulus Black had stuffed there. But what he had hated the most was living on top of others, especially since the Order of the Phoenix had used the two houses as their own rent-free hotels when they had places of their own. Why, what was the point?

He may live in the middle of London, but he would take the sounds of the traffic and commuters over the weird mutations in his godfather's old house. Some of them had been terrifying thanks to the Horcrux that Regulus Black and Kreacher's little mission had brought back, but the good news was without the Horcrux's influence the mutations had been easy to subside.

"Go on," he said, again casting another mild compulsion charm in case the old one had worn off.

"I always check the street I'm interested in for any magical activity and if there are any neighbours I can speak to nearby, and I found your house. There were so many wards on it, but I couldn't get past them until tonight. I've been reading up on wards, and I found a way in by repelling them," Granger said before she went into a lecture about repelling, something Harry didn't need to hear about since he knew about repelling but he hadn't applied the necessary defences to prevent it happening on his house, though he would as soon as Granger left, because he had not wanted to take the risk of anyone detecting the spells.

Now he was going to put up every spell he knew to stop someone getting in. He was never going to allow this to happen again. The last thing he wanted was the Ministry of Magic finding out where he was and that he was still alive. They would have him in Azkaban before he could blink.

"And so when you found the wards and couldn't get in, you became curious and had to know about me?" Harry's voice became scathing as he tried to hold back the nervousness he was feeling.

If Granger knew there was a wizard here with such heavy wards, had the stupid bitch told someone…?

Unaware of his fears that the magical world would soon one day take him back and shove him into Azkaban after everything he had done to end the war ever since Lunas' death, Granger nodded.

Harry sighed, cursing whatever genes had made this nosy girl the busybody she was.

"How did you survive, Potter?" Granger asked. "I saw it, you were burnt to death in fire-."

"It was faked," Harry interrupted, sighing under his breath.

"Faked, but how-?" Granger asked, and Harry couldn't help but laugh. "You know, it never fails to amaze me; people call you the brightest witch of her age, and yet you have the imagination of retard! With magic, it's pathetically easy to fake your death and fool others. It's even easier to fool wizards, especially ones of Dumbledore's ilk and calibre. Always believing everything they see, it's a long-standing joke wizards believe everything in front of them even when they know there are ways to disguise the truth. I'll tell you what happened, and after that everything should be clear to you….."

"AVADA KEDAVRA!"

Harry cursed as he leapt out of the path of the latest killing curse fired at him by Voldemort while the Death Eaters tried to corral him into a single spot to let their master kill him with just one curse while everyone in Diagon Alley either hid away in their shops or they tried to escape. It wouldn't help - Harry had placed various kinds of spells and wards to prevent anyone leaving. It was reckless and cruel to condemn the shoppers to their deaths, but it was the only way to keep Voldemort from leaving. He was not going to let the Dark Lord escape. Not again. This ended here, today.

Right now.

But the Death Eaters were not making things any easier for him. They were trying to contain him and make it easier for Voldemort to kill him while they might injure him with their own spells. Unfortunately for them, Harry had his guns and thanks to the experience he'd learnt on the job taking the fight to them, the Death Eaters had problems corralling him. More than once, Harry managed to kill two or three of the Death Eaters, or he critically wounded one.

Voldemort and his followers continued to jeer and taunt him for not behaving like a wizard, and it was true that while Harry could have used his wand he hadn't wanted to use it and become dependent on it when he could have used both of his guns to pick off the Death Eaters faster than any spell, the benefits were obvious, and the ends justified the means.

The biggest problem, however, was the killing curses and the other spells Voldemort threw at him while he had to dodge the mild curses thrown his way by the Death Eaters to push him into a position their master could kill him. He had leapt out of the way just in time, and he had watched the curse impact yet another Death Eater. Ignoring Voldemort's screech of rage, Harry dropped to the ground and he began rolling around on his shoulders, using his legs to move him around so he could take advantage of the loss of the Death Eater and Voldemort's screech to shoot as many of the Death Eaters as he could before the Dark Lord got his act together.

There were only eleven Death Eaters left, and as he rolled around, avoiding the incoming curses that were fired at him once some of the Death Eaters got over their surprise of him dropping to the ground and shooting them, he managed to kill at least seven of them before he managed to jump back to his feet, but he'd needed to roll out of the way of a purple curse. As he got back to his feet, Harry jumped out of the way of a second purple curse - he didn't know what it would do, and he had no desire to find out either - and he fired two more bullets at the Death Eater, who didn't get out of the way in time (you would think they had the intelligence to step out of the way by now, but the problem the Death Eaters had was they didn't understand the dangers of firearms; they could taunt and jeer as much as they liked, but the guns were still able to kill them), and he was killed instantly. Harry didn't spare the corpse a second thought as he paused to replace the clips, jumping out of the way of more curses, once more thankful that he had made the decision on the streets to train his mind in order to survive. He had known he was too weak and frail to throw himself into the fights that occurred on a daily basis, and he used the cunning and the sneakiness he had used to escape the Dursleys.

He had learnt how to take in his surroundings so he could use them to his advantage. An alcove could hide him. A car could provide cover, and he was thin enough to fit underneath one with no problem. Knowledge of the street layout with the back streets and the back alleys, with the backs of houses and shops, could provide him with means of getting in and out.

By the time he had become a burglar, it had been simplicity in itself to use his new skills to learn new mental tricks like only needing to mentally select what he was going to take and work on it from there. When he had begun his occlumency training, he had only strengthened his mind and allowed it to become better with those skills. He only needed to mentally keep count of each shot he took with each gun, and compare the number of shots to the number of bullets in each clip. It was possible for him to do so without the benefit of the mind-arts, but they made it much easier and less of a hassle.

The mind-arts also gave him the means of being nearly aware of what was going on around him while he took a chance to kill one or more of the Death Eaters with his guns.

Only three were left now, he thought to himself as the body of the Death Eater who'd thrown those purple coloured curses at him died on the street.

The Death Eaters tried desperately to bottle him up despite there being only three of them left, but with so much room Harry didn't find it difficult to deal with them. One of the Death Eaters was Bellatrix LeStrange. The mad hag had her mask off, revealing a face that was recovering from a decade in Azkaban prison. She was laughing and cackling insanely as she sent as many dark curses towards him, the intensity alone driving him backwards.

Growling irritably as the rapid spell-fire he was getting, Harry tried to work out what he was going to do to get out of this one. LeStrange was throwing too many spells at him for him to fire back, and the other two Death Eaters were trying to box him in. Jumping out of the way of another spell, Harry got an idea… He put one of his guns back in its holster and he drew out his wand.

LeStrange noticed and she laughed. "Finally decided to fight like a wizard, Potter instead of using muggle toys?!"

A slow smile crossed Harry's face for a second, unseen by either LeStrange or Voldemort. Just you wait, he thought to himself as he pointed his wand…. at one of the Death Eaters, who yelped in shock as Harry summoned him towards him.

"What new trickery is this, Potter?" Voldemort yelled even as LeStrange took that as her cue to fire a few more curses, including her trademark cruciatus curse.

Harry ignored them as he deftly manoeuvred the summoned Death Eater into the path of the curses while using his gun to destroy the hand holding the wand -extreme, but then the Death Eater was going to die anyway, why let him defend himself and ruin the chance to eat death? - and he held him up before the curses impacted his body.

The cruciatus made the wizard scream in pain, but Harry winced as the bright lights of the curses impacted the Death Eater's body, making him gasp in agony before letting out a gurgle, and his body became limp. He was either dead or dying, but Harry didn't care. Using the Death Eater's body as a human shield, Harry had no shame when he stepped out and fired a few rounds at Bellatrix.

The mad witch went down instantly when she couldn't use her wand to stop the bullets from impacting her body. It was so odd, Harry thought to himself, Voldemort knew about guns and bullets because he was muggle raised and yet he hadn't seemed to have bothered with teaching any of his followers to conjure blocks of rock or sheets of strong steel to block them. Harry didn't know if Voldemort had exorcised the basic knowledge of the muggle world from his brain or if he had decided to just forget it by relying on his wand.

It didn't matter - the wicked witch of the east was dead. Harry snorted at the nickname, it was a bit childish, but it was an appropriate name, though he was sure Bellatrix would not have liked it. Bellatrix LeStrange had only one living sister and a niece. Andromeda Tonks and her daughter Nymphadora, the stupid Auror who tripped up over herself under the invisibility cloak at Privet Drive. Harry didn't know how Andromeda was going to react to the loss of her sisters who had both been willing Death Eaters, and how Narcissa had been sick and cruel enough to torture two little boys by castrating them, but he didn't care.

Pushing that thought out of his mind, Harry focused on the scene before him and took stock of the situation. Only one more Death Eater was left with Voldemort, and whoever was underneath that mask and hood was clearly frightened by him.

"Get over there and fight, you fool!" Voldemort hissed angrily.

The Death Eater looked between the Dark Lord and the young wizard, clearly trying to decide which of the two evils was the less daunting. but Harry didn't give the Death Eater any thought. With just one shot, the Death Eater fell to the ground, blasted down by a bullet to the chest.

With his last follower dead, Voldemort raised his wand and fired three killing curses at quick succession. Harry ducked again as each curse was thrown at him, before flicking his wand and banishing two of the Death Eater corpses towards the Dark Lord.

Voldemort was surprised by that move even as he stumbled back. "Not exactly Gryffindor tactics, Potter," he commented lightly as though the pair of them were on an outing to a park. "Oh, I know you are a Ravenclaw. But I would have thought those tactics beneath you-."

As he'd been speaking, Voldemort had been banishing the first two corpses, only to find Harry had levitated a few more and had sent them towards him. With a sneer, Voldemort vanished them away, but Harry fired his guns.

With a surprised shriek, Voldemort dropped to the ground as the bullets virtually destroyed his leg bones to his feet. Another gunshot took care of his wand hand, and another bullet went right through his shoulder. Lying weakly on the ground with blood oozing from the wounds, Voldemort watched as Harry walked over to him.

Looking down at his wounded and frankly pathetic enemy, the same enemy who had been spent years hunting him down, Harry thought it was anticlimactic; for years Voldemort had tried to kill him off because of hurt pride. Harry would never know, and frankly didn't really care anymore, about what his mother had done on that Halloween night, but Voldemort should have tried to move on instead of pushing someone unafraid to push back. All the idiot had done was push and push, so was he truly surprised his target had lashed out?

Mentally he shrugged, it didn't matter anymore.

It was too late now. Today it ended.

Weakly Voldemort spat. "I never….. imagined you would use….guns," he commented. "Why? Don't you have any magical pride?"

"Like you do, murdering innocent children simply because their parents have opinions different from you, you stunted runt? It's got less to do with pride and more with practicality," Harry replied, knowing it was slightly foolish to not take advantage of this turn of events and just end the Dark Lord's life here and now, but truthfully it was rare for Voldemort to want to talk, and besides it wasn't every day he had a literal captive audience.

"How so?" Voldemort asked quizzically, pain mixing with curiosity as he looked up at him.

"Someone from the Ministry put a spell on my wand. They were trying to find me ever since Luna's funeral, where I assaulted Dumbledore, and when they had the chance one of them planted a spell on my wand when I was disarmed during a fight with your Death Eaters. The Ministry began showing up and getting in the way whenever I was attacking your followers. It didn't take long for me to get rid of the spell, but it made me realise that if they could do it once, they might try it again. They aren't imaginative enough to change their tactics," Harry explained, "so I decided to change mine. I got my hands on a pair of muggle guns, and I began using them since the types of spells the Ministry uses to track down witches and wizards need to be planted on wands. They don't work on muggle weapons."

Voldemort chuckled but it quickly turned into a nasty cough which took him a while to get over. "Very well done," he complimented hoarsely. "No, I mean it; you recognised a problem and you adapted. True, most would have done something to their wands, but they would have still used magic."

"I had considered that but truthfully I was tired of relying on just one method of dealing with your followers," Harry replied. "Even if you use some kind of spell to block a magical signature, it may leave traces the Aurors can track. The best way around that is not to use magic at all."

At that moment the two wizards heard the sounds of popping and they turned as the Order of the Phoenix appeared, with Dumbledore appearing last wearing those gaudy trademark robes of his.

"Harry, what are you doing?!" Dumbledore asked aghast as he took in the scene. Harry looked around himself though he kept a close watch on the Order of the Phoenix.

Diagon Alley was a shambles. Many of the shopfronts had been destroyed either by fire spells or they were smashed to pieces, wood timber, brick and mortar, and shards of glass littered the cobbled street. Lying in some of the doorways were the bodies of some of the patrons and customers. Dumbledore's heart went out to the sight of a little boy crying for the loss of a woman lying face down in the street, but then his eyes noted the Death Eaters who were just as dead.

His expression darkened with horror and anger as he saw the gun in Potter's hand, but before he could say or do anything the boy spoke.

"Ending this once and for all," he said.

"But did you have to kill-?" Dumbledore tried to ask but Potter interrupted him.

"Yes, I did," Harry's eyes were chips of ice as he gazed at the naive old fool, unable to comprehend how he could be so foolish. "If left untouched, the Death Eaters will regroup and they will continue to cause problems for everyone on a political and public level for years to come. This should have been done a long time ago. But instead, you and the Ministry allowed them to go about their business as though nothing happened. You allowed them to bribe their way into positions of power and influence. If we went along with your way of thinking, they'd be given a slap on the wrist and allowed to continue to spread their poison. By killing them off, I'm making sure the Death Eaters and their master never darken the magical world again," Harry snapped in a scathing tone, tired of Dumbledore's constant pacifism.

"But they could have been rehabilitated!" Dumbledore argued angrily.

Harry raised an eyebrow and he pointed to the small child crying over the body of the woman lying face down in the street. "See that kid there? His mother was trying to protect him when a Death Eater murdered her. In cold blood. Can you rehabilitate someone like that, someone who will pretend to be repentant but will never hesitate to do it again? You are even more stupid than I thought, no actually I already knew you were stupid. The Death Eaters are not disobedient children, they can't just be given a mere detention. They are terrorists, murderers. The only way to end it is to kill them, there is no other way."

Completely ignoring the old wizard now, Harry walked over to Voldemort's wounded body, his hand going into his pocket and taking out a silver necklace. He held it over Voldemort's face so the Dark Lord could get a good long look at the piece of jewellery.

"See this?" Harry asked the Dark Lord rhetorically. "This was one of the last gifts from Luna Lovegood before your followers murdered her. Did it never occur to you that you were making a fatal mistake?"

Without waiting for a reply, Harry jabbed his fingers into one of the open wounds, making Voldemort cry out in pain. Harry shoved the necklace into the Dark Lord's mouth. "That's it, open wide. I've waited a long time for this."

Harry then spent the next few moments choking Voldemort and shoving the 'necklace' down Voldemort's throat. "Swallow, or I'll snap your neck in two!"

"Harry, no-!"

Harry ignored Dumbledore's order as he tried to concentrate on the floundering and choking Voldemort as he struggled to try to get the 'necklace' out of his mouth, but with a growl and a savage twist there was a crack and Voldemort's body went limp. Harry had just broken the Dark Lord's neck, and he let go and let the head droop loosely to the ground at an unnatural angle.

Harry stood up and looked at Dumbledore. "It's over. He's dead. I've done what you've wanted. Now, it's over for me and him."

Dumbledore had his wand in his hand, but he had been so taken aback by the violence that he had been virtually frozen. The sound of Voldemort's neck snapping had jolted him into action, but it was Harry's last statement that made him pause. "What do you mean, it's over for you and for him?"

Flicking his own wand Harry levitated and summoned the corpses of the Death Eaters.

"What are you doing?" Dumbledore asked but Harry ignored him as he levitated the bodies and set them down around him, piling them in so he couldn't get out of the wall of corpses.

"I've had enough of life," Harry explained as he worked, though he didn't take his eyes off of Dumbledore in case he tried something to stop him, "Luna's death was the last straw. That's why I killed the Death Eaters, using muggle means to finally wipe out the disease. I want to die. I don't want to live like this; alone, a prisoner forced to do the dirty work of others without being able to have a life."

Dumbledore stepped forwards in a panic while he tried to work out why Harry was walling himself in like that with the corpses of the Death Eaters. "Harry, there is no reason for you to commit suicide," he said, certain that the young wizard planned for that. "We can work this out-."

"No thanks. I've had enough. How soon will it be before I'm sent to Azkaban for what I've done? I just want it to end," Harry replied and with that, he closed his eyes and concentrated as he held his wand upwards.

"STOP, NO!" Dumbledore screamed in horror as he realised what he was doing. He raised his wand to stop Harry from whatever foolish attempt at committing suicide he had in mind... only to cry out in pain, clutching his shoulder as the bullet from the gun that was suddenly in Harry's hand. Quickly Harry summoned the wands from the rest of the Order of the Phoenix who got over their surprise at their leader's injury. With them helpless, they could not interfere.

"I couldn't take the risk," Harry's voice was quiet even as he gazed at the injured old wizard before he took a deep breath and carried on. When Harry's wand tip started generating a fireball that blew up like a balloon. The fiendfrye spell grew out of proportion as Harry spun around in a circle and set the other bodies on fire while the boy bent down until he was out of sight like he planned to die sitting down, the Death Eaters who had followed their master to their last battle before the fireball spread outwards and it became a mini inferno until it became mountain of bodies.

There was a muffled scream from the only living person in that inferno. Harry Potter.

"I wasn't in the heap. I had apparated out of the alley, but I'd left behind a recording crystal that recorded my screams to make it seem like I had still been there while the fiendfrye did its work. With the number of Death Eater corpses around me, it was easy to mix my 'ashes' with theirs," Harry finished his tale though there was a lot more to go, though he didn't really plan on letting Granger know that. She knew too much already.

"No, surely some of your 'remains' would have been found-," Granger tried to find some reason that his escape attempt had been poorly executed, though Harry could not work out how.

"Have you never heard of cremation?"

Granger was dumbstruck as though she had never considered the possibility, and Harry mentally rolled his eyes wondering how anybody could have considered this girl intelligent when she was incapable of remembering such a simple detail as that.

"Did you know that a lesser version of fiendfrye is used by the magical world for cremation?" Harry interrupted. "The fire magic of the spell is so powerful it can reduce a human being to dust. Fiendfryre was considered too dangerous because it required magical power and a focused mind. Sure, ordinary fire spells can do the same job, but fiendfrye was perfect because it was so quick only it was far too powerful to be used by improperly trained witches and wizards."

"And you've been in the muggle world all this time?" Granger asked.

"Yes," Harry replied, mentally preparing himself for what he had to do, and he gripped his wand handle in anticipation, but before he did he had to know something. It had just entered his mind though he had never really paid much attention to it over the last few years. "Granger, at the funeral and at the Burrow, you constantly tried to push me and Ginny Weasley together. Why?"

The question took the witch by surprise, but remembering his reactions in the past she answered easily. "Professor Dumbledore believed you and Ginny would have been a great match, and he believed that Luna was not right for you."

"And you believed him? It did not occur to you to let me make up my own mind as to who I love?"

"Are we really going to do this now?" Granger asked awkwardly, but Harry couldn't care less. He had often wondered if Granger had been led around on a leash by Dumbledore when she'd been at Luna's funeral, but he hadn't expected her to be this easily manipulated because he had always limited the contact he'd had with the bitch at Hogwarts.

"Yeah, we are. You practically tried to push me towards her when I was grieving for the woman I loved," Harry said.

"Ginny would have looked after you-"

"How? She could barely look after herself," Harry argued back before he sighed. "Anyway, it's over. It's academic. But you are still here."

Granger shivered at the sudden sinister tone in Harry's voice, and she realised that Harry was still there and he was a very, very dangerous wizard. She had seen the results of his work first hand.

"What are you going to do now?" Granger asked worriedly as she suddenly seemed to remember that she was in the presence of someone powerful. "Are you going to kill me too?"

"No. You're not worth it, and besides I am done with killing," Harry replied.

He was telling the truth. He had felt physically ill just taking his gun out of the townhouse for the first time in years since he had left the magical world. The thought of killing Granger even if she had barged her way into his home in her curiosity sickened him, but he did need to deal with her. But there was a way around it.

Granger looked relieved but she suddenly looked terrified as she realised that she was still in danger. "What are you going to do?" she whispered.

"This," Harry said and suddenly Hermione found herself looking down the length of Harry's wand. She didn't have time to move or scream as the bright light blinded her….

0000000000000000

Harry looked down at Hermione Granger's body, wondering what was going to happen now. She was unconscious courtesy of the stunning spell he'd used on her which had gone hand in hand with the memory charm he had used to wipe her memory which had removed the memory of their meeting but more importantly coming to this street, so hopefully, this would be the end of it.

He was just…frightened that after all he'd lost others from the magical world would find him only unlike Granger they wouldn't make the same mistakes….

There was nothing he could do. He had no intention of leaving the townhouse and simply moving to greener pastures. There were simply too many magical influences in and around the townhouse, and if he moved he might leave something behind for a family of muggles to find by accident.

Besides, while he tried to say to himself this was just a fluke that could have happened at any point, Harry had to admit it had been a close call, and he would now need time to think about what he could do to make sure it never happened again.

But as he looked down at Hermione Granger's body he wondered if this was just a preview of things to come. The good news was Granger had not told anyone about finding a townhouse on one of the streets she was trying to find a new home, but that was either because she had forgotten or she'd simply thought it didn't matter.

Either way, he was grateful.

Sighing, he bent down and picked her up (who knew the girl would be so heavy…?) and he calmly apparated out of the townhouse and took her to the place she was renting at the moment which he had picked up upon in his home. Settling her down in a chair, Harry stood up and raised his wand. For the next two minutes, he carefully conditioned her mind to look elsewhere for a new home after making sure she looked at the house prices around that part of the city and find somewhere else.

When he was finished, Harry simply left the flat and returned to his home. Exhausted he walked into his living room and dropped down on one of his chairs and closed his eyes with a sigh. Re-opening them with a slight effort, he reached under his shirt and pulled out the necklace Luna had given him. The same necklace he had "shoved" down Voldemort's throat. Granger was really thick. The Order of the Phoenix was stupid. Did they really think for one moment he would shove one of the last things he had of Luna? The piece of jewellery had been too good to shove down Voldemort's throat. He had used a transfigured sickle, the silver coin had enough silver content to be transfigured into a duplicate necklace, and that had ended up in Voldemort's throat. When he had planned to kill Voldemort, Harry had wanted to ensure that there was something symbolic to the death, and so he had hit upon shoving something down Voldemort's throat. But he'd had no intention of shoving the real necklace down the Dark Lord's throat since the piece of jewellery, the real piece of jewellery, was too good. So he had duplicated it and used that instead. It wasn't the real one, but a representation. That had been good enough for the purpose.

Putting the necklace back, Harry tried to relax. Dealing with Granger had exhausted him and he only hoped he never had another run-in with her ever again.

He fell asleep in that same chair.

0000000000000000

"Are you sure you want to do this, make everyone think you're dead?" Croaker asked bluntly.

Harry nodded. It had been two days after the final death of Lord Voldemort and his apparent suicide, and he had spent the past 48 hours finalising his arrangements with the goblins to sell the gold from the Potter family fortune as bullion for him to sell in the muggle world in return the goblins would get a nice chunk of the profits while keeping his secret.

The magical world would think he had, in fact, liquidated his assets because why else would he have a fortune from all the investments and businesses his family had set up over the years that had disappeared?

"It's the only way, then I can be forgotten," he replied solemnly. "I am too big in the magical world, Croaker. Too noisy. I had to use muggle weapons to fight Voldemort once I found out the Ministry were tracking me down using my own wand. I could have used any of the techniques to prevent that, sure, but it would have allowed something to fall through the cracks."

Croaker nodded, his expression giving nothing away, but Harry could tell the older wizard didn't like him using muggle means to end the war though he was more neutral about it. He was old enough to understand that not everything needed to obey the rules, though he was still a wizard. He was just relieved when Croaker didn't say anything.

Croaker meanwhile was relieved Potter had still used his wand. "Do you think you can be forgotten?" he asked rhetorically.

"Probably not, but I can try to have a life not involving Death Eaters, Dark Lords and Light Lords and Ministers with delusions of grandeur," Harry replied. "I will still be a part-timer here."

"I know. Don't expect to have a magic-free life."

With that, Harry Potter turned and walked off to enter a new phase of his life. He knew he was never going to be truly free of Croaker and the DOM but he was okay with that for now. He was okay with his part-time status.

0000000000000000000

3 months later.

Harry chuckled to himself as he looked at the piles of US dollars littering his living room. He'd had a rather busy month in the United States of America after carrying out a slew of work for Croaker (3 jobs laid on top of one another - he'd never have expected a better boss than Croaker, and the best thing was Croaker wouldn't bat an eyelid at what he'd done), and he had taken the opportunity to plunder some of the banks and jewellery shops in the states.

Las Vegas. Ah, for muggle thieves the place was like a watered down version of Fort Knox but for a qualified young wizard like himself (he still smiled as he remembered getting his masteries in DADA, Ancient Runes, Transfiguration, and Charms), the vaults in every single casino run by crooks in a city famously built by crooks were easy to crack; he'd only had to cast a disillusionment charm over himself along with a few silencing spells to make sure no-one heard him walk with the muggles who took the cash down to the vaults. Once he had them in his memory, it was easy for him to select a night where he could simply portkey himself to them and plunder all the real cash and leave the muggles scratching their heads with the stupid counterfeit muck still there.

It was dangerous, of course - not because of the muggles, he could easily deal with them with no problem though they would give him a few headaches. No, it was from the MACUSA he had to worry about. Like all other witches and wizards around the world, the MACUSA believed he was dead, but because he had used a portkey to move around the vaults of Las Vegas to steal from them and used a number of other spells he'd been worried the localisation of so many spells the MACUSA may actually find him.

The MACUSA was probably still the most isolationist country in the International magical community; sure, the Rappaport doctrine may have been re-addressed over the decades, but they were still extremely intolerant towards those who practised magic anywhere near muggles. As a result, their sensors were top-notch. Their laws were many times stricter as well. If they had caught him then they would probably punish him in a far worse manner than in Britain for that, if they caught him when they knew what he had done to the Death Eaters, Azkaban would have been beyond his fears. No, the American version would have been worse.

It was a strange contradiction, Harry thought to himself as he thought once more of America and its magical equivalent; one side had been famous for its open door policies, and yet the magical version enforced a doctrine where the magical world would be permanently cut off from the muggles. Still, he couldn't blame them. He had read the history of what had happened to make that doctrine reality, and he could not help but pity the MACUSA for the massive monumental mess caused by Dorcas Twelvetrees's breach of the statute of secrecy.

Even now, many Americans refused to have anything to do with muggles, so it had still been a tremendous risk for him to use magic anywhere near a muggle city.

He'd solved that problem by going out of the city limits and create the portkeys he'd needed miles away from the city itself and then use them in the same way.

Fortunately, America's massive size meant that the people there made his precautions were unnecessary but the worry was there. It was more of a dare in itself when he used the same technique to plunder the banks in New York, L.A, Detroit, and Chicago.

Okay, so he couldn't spend or use this money anytime soon, but he planned to carefully and quietly move it into the bank accounts he had around the world which he had set up with the help of the goblins and were used to sell his gold bullion. For the time being, he could keep the cash in his house unless there was a major economic mess which rendered it useless.

Grabbing a few of the bags he'd used to pack it all, Harry walked them up to the walk-in attic and dropped them in a corner. The attic contained a number of items he'd stolen over the years, keeping them either out of some desire to keep some of his more memorable heists even if he wasn't the most nostalgic person since he had never really found the time, or because he still had time before he could finally get rid of them. With no visitors and many wards around the townhouse (he had spent a fortnight carefully adding those wards to prevent other witches and wizards getting in, and he had also added a nifty little charm which would pick up any witch or wizard scanning the area for magic like Granger had done and simply turn the wards off until the caster had left), and no irritating neighbours to prod and poke in his business, no-one would visit. The money would have a nice home here.

In a few times, he would be able to flog it, in another few years.

All in all, it was grand being a thief, though he wished he was sharing his life with Luna.

Well, that's it. This is my last chapter of the last Harry Potter story I'll ever write. But please feel free to read any of my other stories.