In Chapter 23 ("High Noon"), I list everyone who is standing with Harry Potter, ready to battle Voldy and his Death Eaters. All exceptions and omissions in that list are deliberate: Mundungus Fletcher, Elphias Doge, Molly Weasley and Remus Lupin (who each were asked by Dumbledore not to attend the Duel, and who obeyed the request); and Percy and Ron Weasley (each for selfish reasons). Every person who skived off the Duel was stuck with a bad reputation afterwards (except for Fletcher, whose reputation could not get any worse). Whatever romantic feelings that Tonks had for Lupin, ended forever when she realised that he was not standing on the Quidditch pitch with Harry.

Chapter 25
Epilogue, Part 2

About twenty years later: 7th August, 2019
Wizarding Britain

In one month in 1996, Harry not only had killed Voldemort and all of his Death Eaters, but then, by claiming many Dark Houses by Right of Conquest, Harry had gutted the power of the Dark families. Heads of House who had been Death Eaters were dead, so could not cast their votes, whilst those votes went to Harry James Potter, the Lightest of Light Wizards. The sons and daughters of Death Eaters had lost their inheritances—and with this, had lost their chance to vote in the Wizengamot in the future.

But not only had Harry defeated the Dark families militarily and politically, but he had put them up to ridicule. Considering how easily Harry Potter, the Muggle-raised half-blood, had defeated Voldemort and the Death Eaters, the entire Blood-Purity doctrine turned laughable. The Blood-Purity doctrine of "Purebloods are superior to half-bloods, who are superior to Muggle-borns" became the Wizarding Britain equivalent of "The Earth is flat."

After 1996, the many prior laws that favoured Purebloods and that discriminated against Muggle-borns all were rewritten. For instance, take the law that said "A child under seventeen cannot practise magic except at Hogwarts." This law was unenforceable when the child lived in a house that was behind a Fidelius charm; so in practise, the law stopped only Muggle-born children. In 1997, this law was changed to read "...except at Hogwarts, or inside his or her house with parental supervision."

For Muggle-borns and even Squibs, life in Wizarding Britain was much nicer in 2019 than it had been in 1996, and all the credit for this went to Harry Potter.

Meanwhile, on August 7, 2019 in Chicago, Illinois, USA

Carl Deorsam and his girlfriend Penelope Farmer were enjoying the last little bit of summer break before they returned to Texas A & M University. Penelope was the only child of two Dallas optometrists, so Chicago was nothing special to her. But Carl came from Gatesville, Texas (population twelve thousand), so Chicago was—both for good and for bad—a place very different from what he knew.

Carl just had snapped Penelope's photo with his smartphone-camera, in front of Dagworth's Drugstore, Dagworth's Apothecary, and Jim Nelson Insurance. When Carl viewed the photo he just had taken, he noticed something odd—

In the photo, behind smiling Penelope, Dagworth's Drugstore and Jim Nelson Insurance shared a common wall; Dagworth's Apothecary had disappeared.

He beckoned Penelope over. "This is weird. Come look at the picture I took."

Seconds later, Penelope was looking at the photo. "My hair is covering up part of my face. Stupid wind."

Carl said, "No, that isn't what I meant." He pointed at the unphotographed business in front of him. "The apothecary store doesn't show up in the picture."

Penelope looked around. "What apothecary store? Honestly, Carl, there is no apothecary store anywhere around."

Is she playing a prank on me? Carl wondered. He jabbed his hand forward to point at the store again. "It's right there, between Dagworth's Drugstore and an insurance agent."

"What are you talking about?" Penelope challenged, now pointing in front of herself. "There's the drugstore, and..."

Penelope's forearm moved from left to right, and her head moved from left to right, but now her movements were unnatural. Robotic. Also, Penelope had quit speaking while her finger was pointing at the apothecary.

After her silence, Penelope finished, "...right next to it is Jim Nelson Insurance. With no gap, I might add. Honestly, Carl."

During the next minute, Carl got into the strangest argument that he had ever argued in his life. He was insisting that there was an apothecary store right the hell in front of both of them, while know-it-all Penelope insisted that no such store existed within a thousand miles.

Then Carl got an idea. He said to Penelope, "You stay here. I'm going to check on something." Then, with his smartphone in hand, Carl walked toward the apothecary.

Carl walked the last ten feet toward the door while looking at Penelope. She was watching him walk away from her; her face looked angry, and her arms were crossed. That is, at first she looked like this—

When Carl was about four feet from the door, Penelope startled, she uncrossed her arms, and she began looking around in almost every direction.

Almost every direction. For an entire minute, Carl stood just outside the door, watching Penelope. In this same minute, Penelope never once looked towards the apothecary store.

Carl, feeling uneasy, pulled the door open and stepped into Dagworth's Apothecary.

Inside Dagworth's Apothecary

The store had no electric lights overhead and no neon signs on the wall; the store was lit only by about a hundred candles. But the candles were floating above Carl's head, in defiance of gravity. But how can—?

Then Carl saw a sign, "Special this week on magic mushrooms," and realization hit.

Carl breathed, "This place is magical."

In response, the only other customer in the store—a blonde in her thirties with a cooking chopstick stuck in her beehive hairdo—smiled at Carl. The blonde's smile looked happy but distracted, as if she were listening to the world's greatest song on headphones.

Carl now went to work with his smartphone-camera, trying to take pictures of the floating candles, the magic-mushroom sign, a sign for "Horned-toad hearts (under stasis)," and everything else that caught his eye.

Alas, his smartphone-camera went on the fritz. When he took the picture of the magic-mushroom sign, he could still make out the words of the sign, but most of the picture was marred by a rainbow of sparkles. When he snapped other photos of the magic-mushroom sign, after stepping back, or moving forward, or moving to the left or right, the rainbow of sparkles changed places in the digital photo, but never went away.

For most photos that Carl tried to take, the rainbow-sparkles problem was so bad that it covered the entire photo. Only for three pictures—the floating candles, which he snapped while standing by the door; the "magic mushrooms" sign; and the "horned-toad hearts" sign with actual horned-toad hearts underneath—were the rainbow sparkles few enough that you could see the subject of the photograph.

Carl noticed that prices were marked not with dollar signs, but with a strange symbol that Carl realized was a 'G' with a slash through it—

"What are you doing?" a woman's voice demanded. The store clerk, who had been standing behind the counter when Carl had walked in, now was standing only three feet away. And the woman looked scared.

Why, Carl wondered, is she pointing a cooking chopstick at me? Then Carl was hit with his second realization, and he thought, Oh, SHIT!

An instant later

Carl was shocked when the blond customer-woman rushed to step between Carl and the store clerk, and when the blonde pushed the clerk's magic wand aside.

The blonde said, "Stephanie Lipton, leave this man alone." The blonde spoke with a British accent. "Carl Deorsam being here is meant to be. Let events unfold."

The store clerk demanded, "How do you know my name?"

Carl was wondering the same thing.

Carl said, "Um, maybe I should leave."

The blond Brit smiled at him. "I will leave with you and say things to you," she said in a dreamy voice.

Stephanie the store clerk gasped. "You can't! The Statute!"

The blonde replied, "I will not inform him about anything more than what he's already realised. I shall not break the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy."

As Carl thought, So wizards are real? And they've even passed laws?, the blonde gently pulled Carl out of the store.

The blonde stopped Carl when they were just outside the door to Dagworth's Apothecary. Penelope, so Carl noticed, now was sitting on a park bench and was looking around—but still never looked at the apothecary.

The blonde smiled a dreamy smile at Carl. "Almost all people have no magic at all. They can't see this shop because of a special spell, even when the nonmagical people are standing in front of the shop."

Carl nodded. "Like my girlfriend over there. Magic is why my camera couldn't see the store until I was in the store, right?" A few seconds later, Carl was showing the blonde his apothecary-less photo of Penelope.

Then Carl asked the question that would change his life: "How do I get my camera to see what you and I see? How do I prove I'm not crazy?"

"You revise electrics, don't you?" the blonde said mysteriously. "At your uni, you revise electrics—"

"Yes," Carl said, "I'm majoring in electrical engineering at Texas A & M." He did not bother to ask how the blonde had known this. "But what does that have to do with anything?"

The blonde smiled mysteriously. "Whatever you figure out on your own, or discover on your own, can't violate the Statute. I've told you all I may, but you're a smart bloke, Carl Deorsam."

With those words, the blonde walked away.

A half-hour later, the words popped into Carl's head: Faraday cage.

He asked the hotel front-desk clerks where he could find a nearby hardware store.

At the hardware store, Carl bought a few square feet of wire-mesh flyscreen made of copper, four feet of copper wire, wire cutters, and needle-nose pliers. He spent money that, as a college student, he really could not afford to spend, but Carl was a young man on a mission.

It was after sundown when Carl had constructed a tiny little copper box that enclosed his smartphone completely, except for tiny little holes in the copper walls that allowed Carl's fingers to pass through.

That night in the hotel room, Carl could not sleep. Penelope, on the other hand, slept just fine—on the far side of the bed.

Early the next morning, Carl and his Faraday-caged smartphone were in front of Dagworth's Apothecary.

The digital photograph turned out poorly—as anyone would expect when he or she would put a flyscreen close to a camera lens. But now the words "Dagworth's Apothecary" clearly were visible in the photo.

Carl rushed back to his hotel room. A half-hour later, Carl had posted a new blog post that was titled, "Magic Is Real!"

What really convinced readers were the six digital photographs that Carl had uploaded to accompany his blog entry. (The sixth photograph to be posted was created when Carl held his Faraday-caged smartphone in front of a mirror, and the smartphone took a selfie of itself.)

The internet's reaction to Carl's blog post was not a welcoming Magic is real? This is delightful to know.

No, the most common reaction to Carl's blog post was Why has this truth been kept from us? We smell a conspiracy!

August 13th, 2019

The Chicago Tribune wrote about Carl Deorsam's blog post, which had been up for almost a week and had become a sensation on the internet.

The Tribune reported that they had sent four sketch artists to sketch the storefront of Dagworth's Apothecary; but just as with Carl's girlfriend, the four sketch artists saw no sign of the magical store.

The day after the Tribune printed this, someone visited the Tribune's offices in person, dropping off a sketch that showed Dagworth's Apothecary clearly. The artist refused to give his name, stating "I'll get in big trouble if you print my name." This fueled the conspiracy theories anew.

What also fueled the conspiracy theories: A young man in New York City had posted photos that he had taken of a magical storefront, by using Deorsam's trick of the Faraday-caged camera; two days later, a girl in Stuttgart had done the same. But then both sets of pictures had been removed from the internet—and when friends had emailed to ask, "Why did you take those pictures down?", the reply in both cases had been "What pictures? I didn't post any pictures."

The internet conspiracies now became "They" are brain-wiping people who tell the rest of us about "them"!

By late August 2019, the belief among many Netizens was "Evil warlocks and witches are secretly plotting to invisibly sneak into our houses, then steal our children and make us forget they ever existed."

Some people who had little or no magic themselves, did not buy into the conspiracy theories—because these people already knew the secret about magic.

In the United States, all former presidents knew the secret; however, outgoing president Barack Obama had judged Donald Trump to be a poor security risk, so had not shared the secret.

In Great Britain, Queen Elizabeth and Prime Minister Boris Johnson knew the secret, as did all living former prime ministers. Besides those people, the Muggle or Squib relatives of Muggle-borns knew the secret.

Some magicals in Great Britain had enough internet savvy that they knew about Carl Deorsam and his discovery, and knew about what the internet was saying afterwards. These magicals were frustrated, because the conspiracy theories that were being shouted online had no truth in them. But because of the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy, these magicals were banned from coming forwards and setting Muggles straight.

The most frustrated of Great Britain's magicals, because she was the most internet-savvy, was Hermione Potter. She had a website up, "Hermione's site," that seemed to be for cat lovers. If you wanted to become a member of the site, you had to give an email address (which "Hermione's Site" confirmed), and you had to touch your fingertip to a little white box on the member-joinup screen that was inside a grey frame on the screen.

For 99-plus percent of members, what happened next was that they became Red Members. Red Members were allowed to surf pages in which only Red Members could post pictures of their cats, could write funny cat anecdotes, and could share tips on cat care.

But the grey frame on the member-joinup screen had runes embedded in it that were a tiny bit lighter in colour, but the human eye could not see these runes; the runes were Grey-129 against a background of Grey-128. These runes sensed if the new member was magical or Squib, or was Muggle. Magicals and Squibs who joined the site became Yellow Members—

And for them, "Hermione's Site" offered the only place in cyberspace where magicals could gather.

In the second half of August of 2019, every discussion in the Forum section of the website was about Muggles misunderstanding the magical world that they just had discovered. The magical members of "Hermione's Site" were frightened.

In mid-August, 2019

Harry Potter held in-depth discussions with his wives Hermione and Daphne; his relatives Narcissa, Ted, Andromeda and Nymphadora; Cyrus and Opal Greengrass; Harry's friend Neville, and Neville's wife Hannah; and Susan Bones. Afterwards, on 20th August, Harry wrote a letter, using pen and paper, and posted the letter to London.

At the same time that Harry posted a letter to London, he owled a letter to Justin Finch-Fletchley and his wife Luna. This letter was a conditional invitation.

1st September 2019, 23 years after the Duel
Twenty-five days after Carl Deorsam discovered magic
Platform 9-3/4, King's Cross Station, London

Harry Potter had arrived at the platform early (before 10 a.m.), and was determined to stay till the train left at eleven.

Along with both his wives, Harry brought with him his Black-named children (Vega, Altair and Spica), his Potter-named children (James Daniel "Danny" Potter, Hoskuld Jorund Potter, Emma Lily Potter and Daphne Luna Potter) and Harry's and Daphne's son William Cyrus Greengrass; as well as Harry's cousin once removed, "V.V." (Vincent Vernon Dursley, a fifth-year Hufflepuff).

Harry's eight children ran the gamut of Houses: three Gryffindors, two Slytherins, two Ravenclaws and one Hufflepuff. None of the children complained of having been mis-Sorted.

As Harry was exchanging friendly waves with his pink-haired cousin, Senior Auror Ennis, Harry heard a woman say, "You behave yourself at Hogwarts, Harry." She was not addressing the son of James and Lily Potter. Thirty-nine-year-old Harry grinned at Don't-Call-Me-Nymphadora Ennis and shrugged a What can I do? shrug.

Harry had never heard of a real-life person named Hermione before he had met Miss Granger on the firstie train; now there were three Hermiones enrolled at Hogwarts (and maybe one more amongst this year's firsties). Daphne had become a popular name for daughters amongst wizarding families. Amongst Muggle-born fathers or mothers, the preferred choice for what to name their sons had become Harry. Harry Potter did not want to guess how many Harrys would step off the red train this evening.

(Oddly, nobody nowadays named their son Draco or Ronald. Perhaps the reasons had something to do with the fact that Draco had been killed with the Dark Mark on his forearm, and Ron Weasley now spent his evenings getting drunk at the Leaky Cauldron.)

When Harry and Daphne saw Blaise and Astoria Zabini approaching the Hogwarts Express with their two children, Harry and Daphne rushed over. Daphne gave her sister a fierce hug, which startled Astoria. (Remember, Purebloods don't hug.) The reason that Daphne acted so emotionally near her sister was because Daphne knew something that Astoria did not: Five months ago in the original timeline, Astoria Malfoy had died from her blood curse.

Everyone on Platform 9-3/4 knew that the Muggles now knew something about the magical world, but what the Muggles thought they knew, was wrong. Everyone on Platform 9-3/4 knew that Harry, Hermione and Daphne had predicted, twenty years ago, this very thing. Thus everyone on Platform 9-3/4—wizard fathers, witch mothers, Muggle parents, older students and younger students—wanted to share their thoughts with Harry, Daphne and/or Hermione.

The wizarding-raised people wanted to block the Muggles from finding out any more than they already had discovered, and wondered if the thousands of Muggles who already knew something could be made to forget everything they knew.

The Muggle-raised, whether magical offspring or nonmagical family members, wanted the secrets about magic to come out fully. So far as these people were concerned, the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy should be nuked from high orbit, because the Statute complicated their lives so much but they had no recourse to the Statute's restrictions.

11:01 a.m.

Harry and his wives watched the red train leave. Harry deliberately had given his children no hint of what he had scheduled for later today.

Harry and his wives, and Neville and Hannah, walked over to Justin Finch-Fletchley and his wife Luna, who were waiting for Harry and his group.

Harry asked Luna, "Are you nervous?"

"I am," Justin said, "and I won't be on camera."

Luna said in a dreamy voice, "I'm not nervous and I'm not excited. This press conference is destined, and I'm destined to be a part of it."

Daphne said, "I'm nervous, and I know it'll be Harry and Hermione who'll do most of the talking."

"I'm not nervous," declared Hermione. "I've been preparing for this day since 1998 or 1999."

"Well then, people," Harry said, "shall we get dressed to meet the queen again?"

Daphne, Luna, Neville and Hannah transfigured their casual robes into dress robes; Harry transfigured his casual Muggle clothes into a sharp suit (Justin already was dressed-up posh), and Hermione transfigured her clothes so as to not embarrass herself when she stood near the queen.

Twenty minutes later, the seven late-thirties magicals were riding in a limousine that just had entered a secure garage in Buckingham Palace.

A half-hour later
In a posh room in Buckingham Palace

Harry had no idea whether this room was regularly used for press conferences, but this was the room's function today.

In the front of the room was a lectern on a dais, which faced many reporters and some television cameramen—and which faced one man in wizard robes, who had a roll of parchment and an inert quill pen on the floor by his chair. (Harry noted several Muggle reporters pointing to the parchment and quill, and murmuring to each other.)

Also on the dais and near the lectern, an empty chair faced the reporters.

Several feet behind the lectern stood the queen, Elizabeth II; the British prime minister, Boris Johnson; and the minister for magic, Cyrus Greengrass. Harry and his wives and friends stood off to one side; Hermione's hold on a copy of The Muggles WILL Find Out was a death grip, Harry noticed.

A liveried servant showed the queen his wristwatch; Queen Elizabeth walked to the lectern. The room silenced. The Daily Prophet reporter pulled out his wand and cast a spell at the quill pen, which then rotated almost straight up, ready to write.

(This startled every other reporter in the room, Harry saw.)

The queen said, with calm and aristocratic tones, "Magic is real, though I do not know this except by observation. I myself have no magical power." The Muggle reporters looked stunned.

The queen continued, "Until today, the existence of magic has been a secret, but it is a secret that nonmagical people have discovered in the past weeks, through the internet. We are concerned about the many untruths that We have read, some of which are hateful and inflammatory. We do not wish for Our nonmagical subjects to harm Our magical subjects because of mistruths. We do not wish for mistruths to cause violent conflict to break out between Our nonmagical subjects and Our magical subjects. We have decided to tell you, Our subjects, the truth about the wizarding world, and about Wizarding Britain in particular."

The queen then called Prime Minister Boris Johnson to the lectern. The prime minister did not speak long; all he said was to inform the reporters that governing Britain's secret society of wizards and witches was a secret branch of the British government, the Ministry of Magic; and that the head of this ministry, Minister for Magic Cyrus Greengrass, would speak next. Boris Johnson and Cyrus Greengrass then traded places.

At the lectern, Minister Greengrass announced, "A half-hour ago, the International Confederation of Wizards repealed the International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy. Magic no longer is secret under threat of arrest."

The Muggle reporters in the room looked either puzzled or bored by this announcement. Hermione gasped audibly. The Daily Prophet reporter merely nodded, as though he already knew this.

Harry and Daphne also nodded, having expected this.

Minister Greengrass surrendered the lectern back to the queen.

Queen Elizabeth said, "Just as magic has been secret until now, and the magical society of Britain has been secret until now, so too have two wars within Wizarding Britain, in the 1970s and the 1990s, been hidden from Our nonmagical subjects. Tom Riddle, who gave himself the false name and false title of 'Lord Voldemort,' was an evil wizard who attacked innocent nonmagicals, the magical children of nonmagicals and those who upheld magical law. Imagine Adolph Hitler, home-grown on British soil, wielding a magic wand. Riddle was devastating to magical Britain, and he was unstoppable—until he was stopped by a fifteen-year-old magical boy, Harry James Black-Potter. Harry Potter killed Tom Riddle and all of Tom Riddle's wizard minions, then Harry Potter destroyed the political power of Riddle's sympathisers. Harry Black-Potter at fifteen was a true hero; and Sir Harry Black-Potter will address you quite soon."

Blushing Harry waved at the reporters, as Hermione, Daphne, Neville and Luna all grinned at him. Justin slapped Harry's shoulder.

The queen resumed: "Finally, We wish to note that the current 'crisis,' of nonmagical people with computers discovering the magical world, Sir Harry Black-Potter predicted twenty years ago."

Hermione, grinning, held up her copy of The Muggles WILL Find Out.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the press, We give you Sir Harry Black-Potter," the queen said, then she stepped away from the lectern.

Harry walked to the lectern. But rather than starting to windbag, Harry invited Hermione and Daphne to the lectern with him, and introduced them as his co-authors for twenty-four books. Harry spelled Hermione's name for the reporters.

Then Harry said, "My parents were both magical, but for reasons that don't matter here, I was raised in the nonmagical world till I was eleven years old. Daphne Black"—Harry gestured towards her—"was raised in the magical world, so she can answer questions about the magical world that I can't. Hermione Potter"—Harry gestured towards the bushy-haired brunette—"is magical, but her parents and family aren't; the first time Hermione met a magical person was on her eleventh birthday."

Harry took a breath and said, "Let me give you the view of one wizard and two witches about Carl Deorsam's blog entry. There are three levels of magical people: nonmagicals—which people in Wizarding Britain call Muggles"—Harry spelled the word—"even though Hermione and I think Muggles is a rude word, so we prefer Mundanes. The other two levels are magicals and Squibs." Harry spelled this last word. "Certain magical spells affect magicals and Mundanes differently, and whilst Squibs cannot themselves cast spells, they react to spells as wizards and witches do, not as Mundanes do. From what Carl Deorsam wrote on his blog, the three of us are sure he's a Squib."

Harry said, "In a moment, I will surrender the microphones to Hermione Potter, who is the best spellcaster amongst the three of us. But before I do, let me tell you that concentrated magic makes electronics go pear-shaped—this is why Carl Deorsam's smartphone-camera took bad pictures in the apothecary shop. Finally, please look at the empty chair next to me. Take a hard look at it."

The Muggle reporters glanced at the chair, then looked sceptically at Harry. It's a chair. We've seen chairs before. What trickery is this? On the other hand, the Daily Prophet reporter gave the chair a long, searching look.

Hermione, once she took the microphones, said, "We three believe that Dagworth's Apothecary was charmed with a Merchant's Fidelius charm"—Hermione spelled-out the new word—"which is a variation on the Fidelius charm."

Hermione explained about the Fidelius charm, then she said, "But I'm sure you want a demonstration. I've made myself the Secret Keeper for this next part." Hermione said formally, "The portrait of Harry Potter's parents is resting on the chair by the lectern."

The Muggle reporters all gasped, and the Daily Prophet reporter startled, when a framed portrait seemingly appeared from nowhere. The Muggle reporters were shocked when Portrait-James and Portrait-Lily waved at them, and when Portrait-Lily said, "Hello, nonmagical people. I spent my first eleven years in the nonmagical world, just like dear Hermione did; and Hermione was known at her magical school as 'the brightest witch of her age.' So ask Hermione lots of questions, because I'm sure she knows the answers!"

Hermione, Harry saw, was blushing furiously as she said, "Anyway, the three of us believe that Dagworth's Apothecary had a Merchant's Fidelius on it when Carl Deorsam saw it. The way a Merchant's Fidelius charm works is that it's as if every magical person already was told the Secret, without anyone actually needing to be told a Secret. So the British blonde, being magical, and Carl Deorsam, being magical enough, were able to see through the Merchant's Fidelius to see the apothecary shop, which Carl's girlfriend Penelope could not see, because she was Mundane. Harry?"

Harry returned to the microphones, as Hermione backed away. Harry said, "I'd like to call up here, Mrs Luna Finch-Fletchley." Harry spelled her name. "She is the blonde with the British accent whom Carl Deorsam met in Chicago, in Dagworth's Apothecary."

As beehive-hairdo'd Luna walked to the lectern, the Muggle reporters were murmuring, or were looking stunned, or both.

Luna began her time at the microphones by explaining to Muggles about the just-repealed International Statute of Wizarding Secrecy. The Statute being in effect during the Dagworth's Apothecary incident was the reason that Stephanie the shop clerk drew her wand and almost attacked Carl Deorsam, and was why Luna had not publicly spoken about the incident till now, even though she edited a magical newspaper.

Later in the press-conference room

Luna stepped away from the microphones, glancing at Harry as she did so. Harry returned to the microphones and said, "The four of us have no more prepared remarks. Now we'll take questions from you lot."

Harry pointed to a bottle-blonde whose clothing was too bright for Buckingham Palace. The blonde said, "Betty Chatter, The Sun. Sir Harry, I'm curious why your two female co-authors have the same names as you. Are they your sisters? Your cousins?"

As Luna laughed in delight, Hermione sighed. "Honestly, Harry, couldn't you have picked someone from the Cambridge Varsity or the Oxford Telegraph first?"

After the press conference
Potter Manor library

Harry, Hermione and Daphne, Neville and Hannah, and Luna and Justin were discussing their Buckingham Palace adventure with Portrait-James and with Portrait-Lily.

Both Hermione and Daphne had their arms entwined with one of Harry's arms, and both witches were giving smoky looks to Harry.

Neville said, "Harry, for the past twenty-three years, you've been the most famous wizard or witch in Wizarding Britain, and one of the most famous in the entire magical world. Now you've made yourself famous to the Muggles too. Today your fame goes far beyond what Dumbledore could only dream of."

Hermione smirked. "So much for your wish for everyone to treat you as 'just Harry,' Harry."

He shrugged. "Not being 'just Harry' is fine, I've decided."

Hermione's jaw dropped. "It is? For as long as I've known you, 'just Harry' has been your number-one wish."

Harry smiled at Daphne. "Back before the Duel, Daphne wrote me a letter that convinced me that if I kept trying to act like 'just Harry,' the Death Eaters would come back—"

Daphne blinked. "You remember that?" Then Daphne purred, "Ooh, you are getting so lucky tomorrow. Felix felicis lucky tomorrow."

Harry smiled at the other people in the library, including his portrait-parents. "The main reason I can feel contented about never becoming 'just Harry'? Right now, I have the two most wonderful witches in the world as my wives. All is well."

The End