A/N: So, I've had a bit of a Harry Potter reawakening, I guess you could say. In the past, I've never been entirely pleased with my Harry Potter stories (the exception being the only other Harry Potter story currently posted on my profile). They all felt kind of half-baked, probably because they were intended to be part of larger stories. But after diving into a couple of the movies and parts of the some of the books again, I had an idea for a more adult story.

Those others all had children in them in some way, shape or form. These simply do not. They're not written trying to emulate the style that JK Rowling uses nor am I sticking to the language that she would have chosen for each of these characters.

Basically, this story is going to start a few months after The Battle of Hogwarts and it is very quickly going to dive away from anything that JK Rowling would have written. This is most definitely a non-epilogue complaint AU. Everything through Chapter 36 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows happened exactly as described, with some possible additions from scenes that the movie added that were not expressly spelled out in the book.

Anyway, that's enough chatter for now. This first chapter is going to be relatively short. It's designed to be a set-up, a primer of sorts for this greyer sort of world that is Harry Potter. That being said, this is a first Mature rating so you should probably be expecting that for the start.

Harry Potter: Who Am I?

September 1, 1998

"Harry."

He had heard her voice. But Harry was trying very hard to ignore her.

"Harry! Everyone is looking at you!"

When wasn't everyone looking at him? He was Harry James Potter, after all and in this world, especially on this day, that meant something.

Now, what it meant, Harry wasn't sure at all but everyone else seemed to think it meant something, so Harry went along with it.

Not that he went along with it peacefully, mind you.

"I heard you." Harry said, his words slurring ever so slightly as he rose from his seat on the stage.

Standing before him was a crowd of hundreds, all looking for the wise words of the eighteen year old boy who had saved their lives. It was at that point that Harry noticed the rather pointed look that Professor McGonagall was giving him.

Even when he was a bit drunker than he probably should have been for an event like this, the look that she gave him was just enough to make him want to sober up right then and there.

Too bad he had left all of his Pepper-Up Potions at home.

"Are you drunk?" Hermione asked in shock as she looked at Harry.

"No." Harry said shortly as he turned to the podium. However, just before he got there, he turned back to Hermione. "Well, no more than usual."

The usual amount of drunkenness for Harry Potter these days was exceedingly drunk. You see, when you solve the world's problems at seventeen years of age, you can basically do whatever the hell you want. You can become an Auror without being completely qualified. You can dump your girlfriend through a drunken Howler. You can accidentally blow up a year's supply of Peruvian Instant Darkness Powder from Weasley's Wizarding Wheezes.

And for fuck's sake, if you want to keep the ghosts and the voices away at night, you can be day drunk at your own honor ceremony.

Before Harry was able to speak, Professor McGonagall leaned in closer to his ear.

"Mr. Potter, for your sake and mine, I hope you stick to whatever you have written for today."

All Harry did was turn and give her a lopsided smile.

"Who said I had anything written?" Harry replied, a bit too honestly before turning back to the crowd. "Good afternoon. Thank you all for coming to the official reopening of Hogwarts School for Wizardcraft and Witchery. As you all know, on May 2nd of this year, I fought and killed that bastard, Lord Voldemort, right here in this very castle. The damage the castle took was remarkable but through its own magic, it was able to help us as we worked to restore it for the upcoming school year."

So far, so good, right?

"Of course, then some bureaucrat thought it would be a good idea to put a statue up, commemorating those that lost their lives here. That's the reason we're all here today. Not to celebrate the rebirth of education in Britain because that's not enough for us-"

"That's quite enough, Potter." McGonagall snapped in his ear but Harry pressed forward as if he hadn't heard her. With a wave of his wand, he pulled back the cloth on the statue that stood next to him.

It was a white marble statue, the same white marble from which the tomb of Albus Dumbledore was made. The statue was of a faceless child, wand in the air, ready to fight the air in front of it.

Harry thought it was a remarkably stupid thing. While he had previously lectured others about the thought of fighting the unpredictable, fighting nothing was useless. It was a waste of energy and so was this statue.

So was this whole fucking thing.

"No, we're here to celebrate whoever's idea this fucking this was." Harry growled, the bitterness starting to leave his voice. "Written on the base of this statue is the name of every member of the Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore's Army or Hogwarts in general that died that night. Not that I need the reminder. You see, there's this little known fact about being me: your friends get killed. But it's not a normal death, not at all! Your friends die because of you. Fred Weasley dies under the rubble of half the Entrance Hall, fighting for you. Remus and Nymphadora Lupin die side-by-side, orphaning their only fucking child, so they can fight for your cause. After a lifetime of having people die before your eyes, you get an entire night full of it."

Slowly, Harry realized that the wheels had come off. The mask that Harry had worked hard to keep on in public had broken and, whether it was alcohol induced or not, the entire world now saw him for what he was.

Broken. Defeated. Tired.

Alone.

In the months after The Battle of Hogwarts, Harry had tried to pretend that everything was okay. But it wasn't. It wasn't even remotely close to okay. His relationship with Ginny became more stressful each and every day as she asked him to move on. Like the rest of the Weasleys, she had given herself time to grieve for the loss of her brother, just like he had. Fred was like a brother to him in every way other than genetics. Of course he grieved for the loss of half of the Weasley twins.

Of course he did.

The issue that Ginny never saw was that, unlike her, Fred wasn't the only one he was grieving for. He was grieving for Remus and Tonks, for Colin Creevey who wasn't even fucking supposed to be there anymore.

He still grieved for Dumbledore, the mentor he misunderstood and mistrusted.

He mourned the loss of his godfather. He mourned for the senseless murder of Cedric Diggory.

After all these years, he still wept for the murder of his parents. In order to save the free world from the tyranny of an oppressive madman, Harry was forced to give up his youth, his family and those he held dear and go forth into battle.

He still had friends, of course. Ron and Hermione had tried to make a relationship work but anything that starts between the two of them had always and would always end in a fight. They had realized a few weeks earlier that things simply weren't working and broken it off.

Harry and Ginny had broken up a month earlier, just a few days before his eighteenth birthday.

They were all trying to make it seem like things were fine.

But they weren't. For almost four months, Harry had hidden behind a fake smile, a useless scar and a pair of glasses, trying to trick the world into thinking that he was okay.

Well, he wasn't okay and he was tired of pretending.

Who gave a fuck if the world thought he was okay.

Realizing all of this, Harry simply stopped mid-speech and walked off the podium. Instantly, the crowd, which was largely made up of reporters, followed. For several minutes, Harry marched silently towards the Hogwarts gates as he tried to ignore the cameras flashing and the voices ringing in his ears.

But like usual, this wasn't just the voices of the reporters and the journalists.

No, this was his voice, speaking high and bright. For everyone else, Lord Voldemort was dead. For someone who had literally housed a piece of him inside him for seventeen years, death had yet to come.

"Harry, is it true that you beat Ginny Weasley during your brief relationship?"

For whatever reason, that question stuck out, causing Harry to stop. Phase one of the unmasking of Harry Potter was already complete. The world would no longer believe Harry Potter to be a happy, well-adjusted war hero.

Phase two was to apparently make them realize just how terrifying he could be in his own right.

Turning on his heel, Harry came face-to-face with the reporter who had asked the question, instantly get to within inches of his face so that when Harry spoke, the man's face was covered with saliva.

"Why the fuck would that be any of your business? Where are you getting your information? Did she tell you this? Did I tell you this? Because I know I didn't and I'm pretty fucking sure that she didn't either. So tell me, sir, where the fuck are you getting your information."

"S-s-s-sources." the man stuttered.

"Sources!?" Harry scoffed. "Tell your sources to fuck off. Tell your sources that they don't have the right to talk about me. Not even for a second. Did they watch all of their friends die, sacrificing themselves for you? NO! Did they live their lives with a family of the most fucked up Muggles on the planet "for their own safety?" NO! I saved you. I saved all of you! Without me, you would either be Voldemort's slaves or you'd have had your bodies thrown into the air and tortured until death. I gave up everything to get rid of that bastard and how do you repay me? You ask me this fucking question? Get the fuck out of my face."

In an instant, Harry turned, marching back towards the gate when he heard the man's voice again.

"Mr. P-p-potter, no answer is as-s-s good as a yesss in this case."

Quicker than anyone could have imagined possible considering Harry's level of intoxication, Harry drew his wand and stunned him silently, throwing him back nearly twenty feet.

"Write that in your fucking papers."

And with a turn, Harry Potter Apparated.

From within the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

For the next few months, the sightings of Harry Potter were limited and rare. Harry Apparated to his office inside the Ministry each morning and back home each night, never leaving his office and talking to no one. He never left his office because (after a brief suspension for his behavior at Hogwarts), Harry was never placed on a field mission.

Apparently, Harry's fame made him a liability. If it was ever discovered that Harry Potter was killed in action, the Auror Office would lose all credibility. To prevent this, Harry Potter was given desk duty. For the entirety of his time at the Auror Office, Harry filed briefs, was an expert witness on a few small cases and took notes for interrogations.

Never once did he leave the building in the name of his job.

Finally, on Christmas, he had enough. Setting the contents of his office ablaze, Harry marched to the main lobby of the Ministry and Apparated away. There were rumors that Harry had disappeared permanently, gone to follow in the footsteps of Lord Voldemort and become the next Dark Lord. There were rumors that he was dying and wanted to get away.

The truth was that Harry Apparated back to his home at 12 Grimmauld Place, opened up a bottle of Ogden's Firewhiskey and crawled inside. For months, the savior of the Wizarding World hid inside his London home, his friends occasionally stopping by to talk.

But to the world at large, it was as if Harry Potter had simply disappeared, never to be heard from again.