Some Things Change
Disclaimer: If I'd owned it, the whole "prophecy" thing in the fifth book would never have existed, and so, therefore, I own it not.
Rating: PG to a mild PG-13
Summary: Seven years after the events of the fifth book, in a time of darkness and death, Albus Dumbledore receives a visitor…
Feedback: It's the only reason I even write this stuff. I love it, need it, and I will starve without it.
************************************ShadowElfBard**********************************
There was screaming. Screaming and howling too loud and painful to ignore. The voices were numerous and wide, full of fury, desperation, hate, determination, and encompassing sorrow. And Albus Dumbledore heard it all, seated in his office and gazing out the window as his school and students burned down below. Even as old a man as he was, even with all that he'd seen… the wars and the fighting… the crying still got to him.
Fires streaked across the sky, dazzling displays of color that scorched and lit up the rapidly darkening evening. The flames-- both natural and the magic wrought-- burned and spread over the dry field where the fighting took place. Smoke rose in billows, shrouding parts of the battle and no doubt choking those who fought or lay on the ground, too wounded to move and patiently awaiting their demise.
The wizened wizard watched all of this, his mouth set in a grim line, feeling a familiar pang of regret and sorrow in his heart. He should be down there; he should be fighting alongside his crew to protect his school, his ship. He was the captain, and it was only right that he go down with the doomed vessel. But no, despite all his protests, the fact was that he was too feeble. That last injury he'd sustained didn't even allow him to use his limbs anymore, much less cast a spell. The healers had tried to cure him of his paralysis, the best wizards and witches in the world had worked tirelessly against it, but it was a permanent curse. It was a curse that had been prepared solely for him, made to keep Dumbledore out of the game until the one who'd cast it was ready to finish him off.
And so he was forced to sit here, waiting.
Loosing a silent sigh, he glanced up at the Sorting Hat; his only companion in what he knew would be his last hours on this earth. Not even his most faithful bird Fawkes would be here to comfort him, for the brave phoenix had died only last week, incinerated before his eyes by a stream of magic fire that had left nothing of the courageous creature but ashes. Ashes that, Dumbledore knew, Fawkes would not be coming back from.
The Hat caught his look, and seemed to give a cool nod of acknowledgement. Albus smiled at the familiarity of the gesture. He'd never known what enchantment had given the hat its sentiency or personality, had never known what let it think and live. The hat had been there when he himself was in school, and had always been a part of Dumbledore's life.
"Some things," the old wizard murmured to himself, "never change." Reluctantly he brought his gaze back to the scene outside his window. "And some things do."
There was the sudden sound of alarm outside his door, coming from the wizards that had stubbornly refused to leave and had, despite his protests, stayed to stand guard at the office's entrance. But, as quickly as the sounds had come they disappeared, leaving a deathly stillness.
Albus quietly closed his eyes and prayed for the souls of his volunteer guardians, who were now undoubtedly dead.
He then looked up, and met the stare of the man who'd just entered. His visitor stood in front of him, dressed impressively in fine robes of black, his mad and pale face contrasting starkly against the shadowy color. It was a man that he had not seen in four years.
Dumbledore merely nodded his head. "You've finally come then. Ready, I take it, to finish what you've started."
The man shook his head, slowly bringing forth his wand. "What you started; I didn't start it."
They stared each other down for a moment before the armed wizard continued, a slight smirk on his face.
"I never thought I'd see the day, Dumbledore. Never thought I'd be there when you, the high and mighty Headmaster, finally fell." He barked out a laugh. "You have no idea how pathetic you look right now, unable to move and trapped in your own office. It's almost too easy."
"As easy as it was to kill many of your old professors? As easy as it was to destroy those you once called friends?"
The man nearly burst with rage. "I never had friends," he spat, "and those who came close ended up turning on me in the end, didn't they? Backed you up instead." His mouth scrunched up with pain. "The only one I ever really… really got close to…the only one I ever loved… died."
He took a step forward, his wand held steady in front of him and his eyes full of insanity, and when he spoke next, it was in an anguished whisper. "And whose fault it that?"
Albus held that lunacy wrought gaze, still calm and cool. "Ginny's death was not my fault. Nor was it yours. It was life. And part of life, as you should have learned by now, is death."
"How dare you," he seethed, his fury spreading throughout every vein in his body. "I was there, Dumbledore. I was there when she died, when she went limp in my arms. I watched her eyes glaze over, I heard her last breath and I felt her go cold." He pointed an accusing finger. "You were the one that caused that death. You ripped her away from me."
His eyes filled with sorrow Albus opened his mouth to calm the obviously distraught man, but the one in front of him continued.
"Do you have any idea how hard it was? To come back after doing your dirty work and chasing the Death Eater army from the school, aching, torn and bloody, to find her writhing in pain on the ground?" he let out a harsh laugh that seared the air around them. "And then to have you, of all people, tell me that there was nothing that could be done?"
Suddenly, the man's temper burst free. He aimed his wand.
"Crucio!"
And Dumbledore couldn't hold back his screams as millions of metaphorical fire ants ate their way through his body.
Once the pain had disappeared, the old wizard slowly lifted his head and stared wearily into the fiery eyes of his tormentor, wishing, not for the first time, that things had gone differently. He remembered the day of Ginny's death, remembered the boy's hollow eyes as he'd left Hogwarts and disappeared from the lives of all he'd known. He remembered the surprise he'd felt when he'd received news of a new dark power rising, a power wielded by that same former student. But it all boiled down to one thing.
He should have known.
He should have known that it had been too much, should have seen the signs that showed his pupil's slow descent into darkness, and should have been there to save him. But, just as he hadn't been able to save that poor girl from the fatal wounds she'd received, he hadn't been able to save the boy. The boy, who was now a man, and who (with his cult of followers) had so far been responsible for the deaths of three thousand people-- muggles and wizards alike.
Well, the past can't be changed. He should have known, and he hadn't, and that was the way it was. He couldn't change it. And though he was also pretty sure that what was coming couldn't be avoided or changed, he still had to try. For the memory of Ginny if nothing else.
"Please," Dumbledore said softly, purposely avoiding using the man's name, "before you do this, before you commit an act that will set you down a destructive and inescapable path, hear me out."
The dark one in front of him, who had in fact been about to send Dumbledore off to his death, paused and considered. Dumbledore was harmless now, could not hurt him, could not even stand. If the old fool wished to tell him something before he died, then he'd humor him.
He nodded his consent.
"You of course remember," Albus began, still struggling not to say the man's name, "that Professor Trelawney is dead."
"Of course," the man in black said, a malevolent grin on his face. "The old bat screeched and moaned so horridly when she died. The offensive noise rang in my ears for nearly a week."
Dumbledore closed his eyes in an effort not to rise to the baiting. "Well, one thing you don't remember, then, is when you left her she had not fully died. Apparently you had more pressing matters to attend to then watch that poor woman's life drain away."
"Is there a point to this, old man, or are you simply stalling for time?" he sneered.
"There is a point. You never could be patient, could you? Even when you were younger, you always had to rush off and do things, could never really sit still and think something through before you acted.
Dumbledore shook his head slowly, before getting back on track. "But, as I'd said, when you left her Trelawney was not fully dead. And, in fact, she gave one last prediction before she died. We found it on the walls of her chambers the next day, though how the message got there is still a mystery. She had channeled her grandmother's spirit one last time, and went out of this world with the powerful words of a prophecy on her lips. A prophecy that spoke of you, young man.
"I will not recount to you the entire thing, but its message was clear and short enough."
Then, Dumbledore's eyes, usually a kind sky-colored blue, hardened and became stony, turning the color of an angry sea.
"If you continue on as you are, murdering innocents and wreaking havoc and war upon this world, you will die."
The man in front of him scoffed at that rather profound statement mockingly, but did not interrupt.
"You see, what goes around-- no matter how small or large --always comes around. And when yours comes around, it will be of a crushing size. You have one last chance to lay down your wand and to call off your dogs before it is too late. It may not be tomorrow, or the day after, but if you do not heed the warning of Trelawney's last prophecy then you will die, and it will not be a hero's death, and your name shall be a curse just as Voldemort's was." He looked upon his former student with warmth and compassion. "Please. I tell you this for the memory of who you once were. I do not wish, nor have I ever wished, to see you killed. Please, stop before it's too late."
For a moment, all was silent. The dark wizard simply stared at him, his face unreadable. Dumbledore kept on a similar mask. He had played his last card; there was nothing more he could say. He'd just have to hope that his words had reached the one before him.
"Dumbledore," the man said, his expression still indecipherable and his tone low and sturdy, "after all these years you still haven't changed. You've still got your dignity, and you've still got your foolish notion that everything that is tarnished can be polished. Everything broken can be mended."
The dark wizard narrowed his eyes, just lightly. " 'Stop before it's too late'? It was too late the moment that I took down the Dark Lord. It was too late the moment that Ginny died."
He raised his wand. "Farewell, Dumbledore."
In his last instant of life, in those final two seconds before a brilliant flash of green stopped his steadily beating heart, Albus Dumbledore of the Order of Merlin and Headmaster of Hogwarts, let a single tear roll down his weathered cheek for the wizard before him-- the man full of darkness.
Goodbye Harry. I'm sorry I couldn't save you.
And then he was gone.
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Though it was undoubtedly one of the darker fictions I've ever written, I hope that you enjoyed it nonetheless. If you did, or even if you didn't, please review and tell me about it. Thanks!
----ShadowElfBard