Five Degrees – and other short stories
Disclaimer: All characters, passages, descriptions, intricacies, denouements, forewords, dedications, reservations, declinations, inclines, slopes, plains, hopes, dreams, and assorted detritus that can affirmatively be shown to be the intellectual property of Miss Rowling are assuredly such. No claim of ownership is offered at this time – merely an apology for putting them back on their stands with a few extra fingerprints and a little askew to how they were before.
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Five Degrees
OR
A Positive Altitude
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Yellowed pages gasped a short puff of dust as the bindings of the ancient tome creaked. Their promise of knowledge long forgotten sang out to the sharp blue eyes and sharper mind of the sagely warlock that perused them carefully, coaxing their secrets from them as persistently as a much younger (and much different) man might wheedle the concealing garments off his favorite girl.
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore had never been a man much consumed with the passions of the flesh. Oh, how he had loved the bright summer days he held his greatest failure close, the sorrow and tragedy of later years refusing to dim his joy the same as his eyes refused to dim at the horrors they had seen.
Yet like a gentleman caller, Albus would not be dissuaded from laying naked the secrets he longed to uncover. And when he had the knowledge he sought…
Well, let it not be said that Albus Dumbledore was a man without passions.
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The war was going poorly.
That was no open secret – everyone on every side of the conflict tearing through the British Isles knew that the Dark Lord would win, just as surely as they all knew that he would be opposed every step of the way.
Thirteen Years, thirteen wonderful, relieving years had been bought for them with the blood of their heroes – of Lily the Purified, for her sacrifice that destroyed the Dark Lord's body at the cost of her life, of Harry the Unsullied, who had been stricken with some dark curse that never seemed to twist him like it did all others bound by such wretched magic.
The public knew the names of their heroes, because James Potter – no epithet, no title, "just James" – made sure that everyone he met walked away knowing the price of their freedom.
"My wife died for us. She did something that night, some old magic that thrilled me to the bones as I lay broken," He'd tell anyone that asked, "I'm a fair hand with a wand, but Voldemort threw me through the walls of my home like a Griffon plays with a rat, and I was forced to listen as he made her beg for our lives – for Harry's life."
For anyone that had the fortitude to keep listening, he'd continue, "She told him, 'my life for his – oh just leave Harry alone!' That monster… he hissed the Killing Curse like the snake he is. And then he did it again – at my son. And with a bang, I lost half my house, half my life, and the Dark Lord lost half his head."
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In other worlds, on other planes, with both James and Lily dead, all the world would assume that a toddler had vanquished the Dark One. Even here, there were many that believed it was Young Harry's magic that had defeated Voldemort, but there were just as many that recognized the Bargain that Lily had struck – that somehow, unlike every other tear-filled mother that wept for their children about to die, Lily Potter nee Mud-blood had made Magic hear her.
And so she became Lily the Purified – the woman that had overcome the baseness of her birth to show the Purity of her magic – and, of course, her blood.
Needless to say, neither James nor Harry, when he was old enough, were much impressed with that explanation.
Needless also to say, that James had his son checked by qualified medi-wizards as soon as possible, not trusting his old Headmaster's insistence to keep everything within the Order of the Phoenix. James's trust in Dumbledore had taken a beating nearly as severe as he had when on waking in the rubble of his home, he nearly came to blows with his friend Hagrid on just where little Harry needed to be. It was only the timely arrival of Sirius – deliriously loyal Sirius – Black that convinced the Half-giant to return to "Good man" Dumbledore with the terrible news.
What the medically-inclined experts found astounded them. It terrified them, and twisted what they thought curses could do to a person into fractured knots.
They told the flagging father that his son near radiated the darkest magic they had every felt, and yet he was capable of an innocent smile and laughter pure and free.
There is an old saying, "as man, so magic. As magic, so the man." Despite being typically droll, it illustrated a truth that every magician; male, female, old, powerful, wise, foolish, sane or not was bound to – their magic was as they were, and as they wielded their magic, so they became.
It was more than megalomania that lead to generations of wizards like Dumbledore to decry the evils of using "dark" magic, more than chance that Evil seemed to dog the footsteps of certain family lines, and Good others.
To use one's magic to hurt someone is to make a part of you into something hurtful. To use it to torture, to fracture or break, and ultimately to kill, is to embody all these things. One that does not Hate cannot use the Torture Curse – their magic simply doesn't know how to perform the requested act.
In many ways the muggles were blessed to never know magic. For them, to kill might be as simple as the press of a button.
And thus Harry Potter became a living Miracle. Wherever the public laid credit for You-Know-Who's defeat, there was no magical person in the country that did not know that Harry Potter's magic had been twisted by the Dark Lord, and he remained pure.
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For all his missteps, Albus adored young Harry Potter. He saw in him his own salvation, the proof that all that was good and bright could shine from darkness. He could never be the grandfather to the boy he wanted, he knew that he had soured that possibility when he did not go himself to Godric's Hollow that night.
And yet.
He could still teach the boy what he knew of the world, and hope that his light was brighter than the phantom of Tom Riddle that Albus knew would return.
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Thirteen years had passed. The body of a fourteen year old Harry Potter was returned to a waiting Triwizard audience on Midsummer's eve, just days before the students would return home, under a colossal Dark Mark that loomed over the old castle with the promise of conquest.
Worse for his friends that found him was the jagged Dark Mark that had been carved in his chest, and the enchanted image of a snake rising from it that loudly proclaimed, "The Dark Lord has returned. Kneel, or die."
In the heart of Dumbledore, great echo chambers of sorrow belled deep tones. And his hope for the final defeat of Tom died.
After assuring his trusted professors, after maintaining composure for his beleaguered and grieving students, after silencing the glee of his misguided children (far too many of them wore green), he at last retreated to his office, only to deal with the next and greater wave of callers, Ministers, Aurors, old friends and new.
And then the visit he dreaded. The one he knew he might not survive – and as honest with himself as he forced himself to be, one that part of him did not want to survive.
James Potter blazed into his office with the incandescent fury that would smother families, schools, civilizations in war until nothing was left. He shouted. He screamed. He wept – oh why did he weep, when Albus himself could not be allowed?
And finally, he left. He left, saying, "I would trade you for my son in a heartbeat."
And Albus wondered.
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The pages grew more yellowed, the tomes older, until at last the warlock found the scroll he needed. Great care he took in unfolding it, yet even so corners flaked off in brittle age.
"The Rites of Replacement" was an encouraging name, once he had deciphered the tongue the scroll had been written in. "To restore to life is a power jealously guarded by the Gods," he translated, "and so it is to the Chosen to wind the treacherous paths and blinding trails as ever they have done."
On and on the scroll went, decrying true resurrection as Death's domain, and yet that one might, if they were clever enough, pry open the gates of… well, the closest fit the old man could find was "the grand borders", and pull from them a doppelganger, a near twin of the one they had lost.
And of course, the hefty scroll detailed just how one might go about such cleverness. With potion and offerings of possessions of the departed, one could call out to those similar, to pull them through the borders into this world, to live out their days on this plane.
It was possibly the Darkest thing that Albus had ever read. It violated every possible right of the person he could imagine. It twisted so many laws that even the most generous and forgiving soul would recoil in horror at what it portended.
Albus knew in his bones that he was going to perform the Rite of Replacement. And he knew that James would stand by his side at last to accomplish this dread task.
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"I can bring him back," was all it took for James to look at him. "It won't be him, but someone so close that they could be brothers," shattered James. It broke him, the man that had been breaking ever since the night he lost his wife.
"What do you need," damned both men to Hell, and they knew it. Knew it, and did not care, because above and beyond needing the One with the Power He Knew Not, they needed Harry's light back in their lives more than they needed their souls.
James had railed against the prophecy from the moment he learned of it, and while Albus had gained the wisdom necessary to heed it, had not warmed to it at all. Both agreed that the Memory Orb that the Ministry stored the Prophecy in would be their chosen sacrifice to bring a Harry that had survived it's dread portents to their arms.
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Choosing the sacrifice turned out to be the easy part. Far harder was the potion required. It was the singularly most frustrating recipe that either man had ever tried to decipher – and Albus Dumbledore was perhaps the most accomplished Alchemist alive that had not passed the Bicentennial mark.
Molten Gryphon claws, frozen Manticore tears, natural grown holly vines in the shape of several runes… on and on the requirements went, and on and on the search and fortunes of James Potter went until at last they had gathered what was needed.
The outside world had not waited, and with neither the Chief Warlock nor the Head Auror putting their full attentions to the fight, Voldemort won victory after victory. Oh, he lost followers in near every battle, the common wizard choosing to fight back in ways they were petrified to consider in his last bid for control, but every day his foes grew less numerous.
On the Winter Solstice, the darkest day of the year, James Potter raised his feverish eyes to grimly meet the no-less-bright eyes of Albus Dumbledore.
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James started the fire beneath the cauldron. The potion required that everything be kept exactly at the point the water came to boil – "not a whisker less nor a hair more" as the infuriating scroll had said.
First came the Yellow Slug slime, to lay a temporary trail for his Harry to follow. Then the Gryphon claws to form a border and a "honor guard, to keep from prying teeth" – and what those teeth belonged to James never wanted to consider for too long.
Frozen Manticore tears, for the poisonous grief of those that would attempt such a ritual as this. Holly vines in the shape of the runes for Life, Health, Hearth, and Home, to twine death with the mockery of life.
And when all had come to a simmer, finally the offering of the one who was dead.
"There is no going back," Albus said, his voice both empty of life and full of hope.
"Nothing to go back to," replied James, sorrow swallowed in anticipation.
"Together, then."
James grasped the dimly glowing orb, its milky clouds parting for an instant to show the hated Seer's face as Albus placed his hand opposite, and together they lifted the glass over the seething cauldron and dropped it in.
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Tom Riddle was never able to fully bury his curiosity over the disappearance of Albus Dumbledore.
Oh, he was grateful; as soon as it came out that nobody could reach the muggle-loving fool, even by summoning him with the Office of Chief Warlock (not just a pretty title, that), resistance to his rule near evaporated overnight. He finally nailed his slippery friend Lucius by making him Minister, and himself became Chief Warlock in Dumbledore's place.
As the years and decades passed, Tom Marvelo Riddle, the most successful Dark Lord in history found many new challenges and rivals to take the place of an old man, and the father of the stupid and untrained boy he had killed.
Eventually, their memory faded to dust.
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A curious fact that many wizards never knew, and that a large number of what we would call normal, everyday folk learn and then forget, is that there are precious few true constants in the world. Why, even the temperature at which water boils can change based on any number of factors, but to this tale the most important is atmospheric pressure.
The higher above Sea Level you go, the less dense the air around us becomes, and the less energy, or heat, is needed to excite water molecules enough to break bonds and aerosolize into vapor – or boil.
Oh, it's not by much, less than one degree Fahrenheit for every 500 feet above Sea Level you ascend.
But it does change.
And so, for a potion recipe that had been written by a people that had never left the coasts of the Nile, boiling was always 212° F. For a pair of grief-stricken souls in the Scottish Highlands in high winter, Two thousand seven hundred and eighteen feet translated to a difference of five degrees.
207° F seemed such a small thing to account for, and yet, the moment the Prophecy Orb was submerged in the botched potion, a maelstrom of twisting energy twined it's tendrils through the cauldron, capturing the arms shoulders eyes teeth souls of Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore and James Charlus Potter, spiraled their bodies into grotesque forms, and consumed them in a flash of colors mortal eyes were not meant to perceive.
A moment later, and the potion was gone, snuffing the steady fire in the process.
A day later, and Minerva McGonagall assigned a detention to the Weasley Twins for stealing a cauldron and hiding it in a dusty, unused room.
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A/N
First Posted: 7/Apr/2018
Edited:
I don't think I've every actually read a "Harry summoned to fix everyone's problems" story that actually played straight - Harry accepting this new reality and doing everything he could for his new home. Almost every variant on this I've read is him rebelling against his summoners and either trying to go to his home dimension or begrudgingly carving out a new niche for himself.
I thought, "what kind of people would be driven to do such a thing?" and then "how fiendishly precise must such a process be, to target something so specific as 'Harry Potter, Savior'?"
An even more curious fact is that so many authors here use ficlet anthologies like this to test and begin their ideas, and share the parts they feel they cannot twist into full stories. Here's hoping something here will inspire someone!
Recommendation: "Odd Ideas", by Rorschach's Blot. If you haven't read this yet, what are you doing here? Their ideas are so much more interesting than anything I'm likely to add to the body of Fanfiction!