AVERAGE DISCALIMER: Yadda-yadda-yadda ...

My name is Albus Percival Brian Wulfric Dumbledore, and I have been accused of having too many titles as well as too many names.

The name is not my fault, as my paternal grandmother was a Catholic Spaniard and introduced into the Dumbledore family the custom of invoking as many saints and ancestors as one can for a child's baptism. I must admit it gives a certain dignity to one's signature.

Of all the titles I ever earned or was awarded, though, there are three I have never publicly claimed and never wanted. Three titles that haunt me ...

I am the Last Living Human on Earth.

I am the Destroyer of Worlds.

And I am the Guardian of the Fourth Unforgivable Curse.

It began in 1881. The world was much different then.

The Wizarding World was much larger. Under the benevolent reign to the Wizard-Kings of the Merovingian Dynasty, the Magicals of Europe kept the depredations of muggle war from totally consuming the non-magical world (alas only in Europe, the muggle kingdoms made up for it with the brutality of their colonial wars ... but I digress).

At the time I was living in the Bourough of Merinswode in London, the largest Wizarding community in the world, with a hundred thousand witches and wizards enjoying the fruits of being at the dual metropoles of the greatest muggle and magical kingdoms in the world. I already had made a name for myself as a leading Transfigurationist and I was frequently consulted by the Department of Mysteries as well as private concerns.

The muggles noticed eruptions on the surface of Mars, and evidenced much curiosity about it. It was a minor curiosity among the magicals; we wizards had long known that there was life on Mars, and possibly a civilization, but it just wasn't a significant datum in our daily lives.

Then the first cylinders from Mars landed.

The muggles wondered and were amazed, but the Wizarding World was terrified. Every single Martian cylinder landed on a wizarding village or Unplottable territory, even if the resulting craters were larger than the territory. The small Wizarding hamlet outside Woking was destroyed to every building and the last child, and their muggle neighbors never even realized it, even though they marveled at the crater.

The Martian War-Machines came out soon afterwards, unleashing their Heat-Rays and Black Smoke.

Worst of all were the Sirens, whose sound caused spells to fail and magical devices to forever cease function. Yes, the Martians knew of magic and had weapons to combat it.

By Royal Decree, the Statutes of Secrecy were abolished, as both communities fought together for survival against the alien enemy. I assisted an artillery unit at the Battle of Knightsbridge, transfiguring rocks to artillery shells and casting cooling and repair charms to allow their weapons to fire faster and longer than they thought possible. I remember one brave lad giving me a confident smile before a Heat-Ray turned him to ash ...

After three weeks of total war, humanity was losing cohesion, governments were collapsing. The Red Weed that accompanied them had anti-magical properties, and where it grew magical things weakened. Muggle factories had been destroyed, and the stockpiles of war materiel was being used up or destroyed faster than they had expected.

We had evacuated everyone we could to Merinswode, as that Unplottable borough seemed immune to the Martian depredations. instead, when over a million magicals and muggles were gathered into that one place, they attacked from the skies with their Black Smoke, and slaughtered over a million men, women, cand children in one stroke. It had been a trap.

The Martians were winning.

So His Mystic Majesty authorized the use of the Exterminatus.

The Curse of Exterminatus was the key to the fifteen-century reign of the Wizard-Kings. By use of thirteen drops of blood, an entire bloodline could be targeted to any degree specified, one generation related or one hundred, and everyone in that degree of consanguinity would sicken and die. Thus had the Children of Merovee wiped out all resistance to their reign. Their muggle kinsmen fared less well, though, lacking such an enforcement mechanism.

As one of the most powerful Wizards of the day, I was summoned before the Throne of the Wizard-King. I was one of the seven witches and wizards that formed the coven assigned to cast the Exterminatus against the Martians.

A Martian was captured, costing the lives of four warlocks. We hastily assembled the ritual circle as the Martian Tripods converged on us. The Martians could communicate mind-to-mind and our captive had summoned aid. I still do not know if they knew what we were doing.

Our invoker, Hadrian Jellicoe, was slain by our captive's tentacles as he raised his hands to begin the chant. So I began it, calling on magic Itself to slay everyone related within a hundred generations to the blood spilled in the circle. And a minute later the Martian machines began to stagger and fall. Within a day, the Martians were all dead.

Then we discovered our terrible error.

The Martians were sanguivores ... eaters of blood. They captured humans to harvest them of their blood, much as they had other human-like creatures on their birth-world.

The blood we took from the alien captive had components of the blood of a number of humans in it's veins.

After the Martians died, humans - muggle and wizard - began to fall. As the caster of the spell, I was immune to it's effects. A week after the last Martian fell, I was the only living human beneath the sun.

The ghost-haunted ruins drove me half-mad with grief and guilt. I made my way to Hogwarts and stood atop the Astronomy Tower, ready to hand myself to Eternity for judgement for my crime.

Then the ghost of Headmaster Scaramander stood in front of me and blocked my path. And the told me The Greatest Secret of Hogwarts.

Long ago, the grandfather and common ancestor of the Hogwarts Four had discovered in the lands of Babylon an artifact famed in myth and legend ... The Lamp.

Even Muggles have heard of the Lamp and the Three Wishes it bestowed. With The Lamp, feats impossible to the mightiest Sorcerers became child's play.

But that ancient wizard realized the dangers of absolute power, even as limited as it was. And he foresaw the day when the power in The Lamp would be needed. So he sealed it away in Hogwarts and used The Lamp's own power to keep it safe.

The Lamp was in a cupboard just off the Great Hall. It was invisible and intangible, utterly undetectable and inaccessible. The lamp would only become tangible and visible under one circumstance ... when every living human in the world was in that cupboard.

I made my way to the cupboard, and there it hung in mid-air. I took it in my hands and with all I was I Wished that the Martian Invasion had never happened.

And with a twist of the universe, the empty castle was filled with students and life.

In my joy and horror I realized that the Martians were still out there on their home planet, so I Wished again, and ended the Martian threat forever. It would be almost a century later that the Americans would send their automaton cameras to Mars and show me what I had done.

I looked in the cupboard and saw that The Lamp was still there, visible to me alone. It had never been taken from it's hiding place, the identical Lamp that I held in my hand bespeaking of the fundamental madness that lay at the foundation of the Cosmos.

I made my way to my brother's tavern, overjoyed to see his surly face, and I got obscenely drunk. I awoke three days later in Copenhagan in the bed of a Danish acrobat. I wish I could remember the fun I must have had.

Overlooking Copenhagan Harbor, sitting on a stone that would one day boast a beautiful statue of a mermaid, I contemplated the Third Wish. I literally had the power to do anything. My mother, my father, my sister, all taken before their time ... with a single sentence I could bring them back.

I had the blood of two entire races on my hands - humanity and the Martians. Who was I to deserve such power?

So I refrained. I held the Last Wish in reserve.

It was fortunate that I did. I think.

It was October of 1889 that I was summoned before the Throne of the Wizard-King, along with other notable sorcerers of the day. His Mystic majesty had a dire announcement for us.

The Secret of the Exterminatus had been stolen. A young Georgian wizard of great ambition and reprehensible morals named Grigori Rasputin had acquired it. The gathered sorcerers commenced scrying, hoping that our combined might could overcome whatever defenses he was using.

We were too late.

Rasputin sought to conquer the Wizarding World, then the muggle world. So he unleashed the Exterminatus on what he saw as his chief obstacle ... the Throne of the Wizard-King. He cast the curse to eliminate anyone with the least possible claim to the Throne.

Humans are a lusty breed - of all the Magical Beings, we are the only ones who do not mate for life. Casual bastardy is far in excess of what people commonly believe it to be. For a Royal Line of fifteen centuries standing, the connections through cadet lines and unofficial lineages were uncountable.

As nearly as anyone can estimate, ninety-five out of a hundred witches and wizards died in a month. The survivors would call it the Dying, and then only in hushed whispers.

The muggles called it the Russian Flu. It took four months to circle the Earth. I understand the death toll was in the millions.

So there I stood amid the corpse of an empire. A madman had absolute power ... and I had the Last Wish.

I could Wish everyone alive, but Rasputin would still be out there. I could Wish this never happened, but if the Exterminatus could be stolen once, it could be stolen again.

So I Wished the Exterminatus to be forgotten.

The Dark Lord Rasputin remained a threat for another generation. He would conquer the magicals of the Russian Empire and put the Czar under the Imperius Curse. But his excesses led to a hideous backlash, and Josef Stalin killed all the magicals of Russia and imposed on the Slavic peoples a hideous materialism that would last for generations.

The Lamp was used twice more - as a former Wisher I could remember when the past was changed. It was used during the Rogue Planet Crisis of 1935, and in the aftermath of the Atomic War of 1962. May the gods pity the poor souls who used it then, whomever they may be.

The Wizarding World limped along as the Ministry of Magic, formerly the bureaucracy of the Wizard-King's Throne, took on executive powers. The Empire broke up into a few magical nations and a large number of wild territories. What was once a vast borough shrunk down to Daigon Alley, and what was once the quaint and sleepy hamlet of Hogsmeade became the largest magical community in Britain. The landscape is littered with Unplottable abandoned buildings and communities, known to none but their ghosts.

The muggle empires began destabilizing almost immediately, and a generation after the Wizard-Kings died, the Great War to End All Wars slaughtered more people than anyone had believed possible. And the war after that killed even more.

And all of it is on my head.

Again and again I and I alone have borne the burden of life and death for all. Again and again I alone have had to choose the Lesser Evil and the Greater Good.

I and I alone remember how to cast the Exterminatus. And I know where The Lamp is to be found.

If all else fails, I and I alone can do what needs to be done.