Patterns
Summary: Patterns echo through history, no matter how much their components try to evade it. Various POVs from 1899 to 1998. Oneshot.
Date written: February 22, 2009 (crossposted from LiveJournal)
Genre: Angst/Tragedy
Word Count: 4,222
Author's Note: This is not labeled AU, precisely, but it contains several pieces of unusual fanon that would require some work to fit into canon, and the speculation in the final section may or may not be AU, depending on its truth within the world of the story. In short – not quite AU, but just barely.
(Apologies for any formatting errors. Fanfictionnet ate several spaces, and I haven't managed to add them all back in yet.)
Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns the Harry Potterseries and all related characters, settings, and plots.
1899
All is not well.
They're arguing downstairs, and I know-
Coward, I'm a coward, terrible coward, I'm so scared -
Don't they see? Three and one, three and one. I can count. Three, and one freak. So it is. So it always shall be. Odd one out, odd one out must -
Who's the odd one out, though? Not knowing scares me worst. Count. One, two, three, Gelly. Family and the outsider. One, two, three, me. Freak is as freak does. But I've been told -
One, two, three, Abby. The three going on the trip, and the one staying behind. Why can't he come? Alby insists he stays behind. He's not happy. Gelly finds him annoying. Gelly... Gelly is strange, he has a temper, and I see it in his eyes, I see, it will happen I know and I'm such a terrible, pathetic coward-
And perhaps... one, two, three, Alby, the one I can'tfigure out as the odd one out, and perhaps that's the way it goes...
If I just concentrate on my book, keep reading, pretend nothing's going on downstairs, the bad thing will go away, it isn't there, it isn't really there, Abby says - but now things have changed. Abby doesn't understand politics and The Greater Good, they say, and this is all about politics and The Greater Good, isn't it? Concentrate, concentrate, concentrate and pray, it will go away.
The nervousness builds beneath my skin, and I memorize the lines, and tell myself it will be all right, since the argument's calmed for a moment -
Godawful SCREAMING, screams such as I never hope to hear in my life again, and it's ABBY, it's ABBY, isn't it, and Gelly - Coward, coward, coward, freak, you could have STOPPED HIM if you had stayed in the room, you -
Book on the floor, spine broken, doesn't matter, door open, have to get down stairs, please, no -
Can't think through the lights and bangs, can't think through the magic, all I know is that my chest hurts as it rears and I-
"...Don't like... Want to stop..."
1991
Three.
I steeple my fingers and close my eyes, letting memories long held in the Pensieve swirl in my mind.
One. She was so quiet when she was whole, so unobstrusive... I, unknowing, an arrogant child, shoved her away when she bothered me, shrugged when she informed Mother and Father she was going to play outside. She often played outside. If I had only smiled at her, let her read my book, been a proper brother, would...
Two. I never knew him whole. When we met, he was broken; when we met, he was wary, strange and dangerous, displaying his sharp-edged shards for all with knowledge to see. But, of course, who had knowledge but I and two others who would not tell? Yes, he was broken when we met, but when I offered him sympathy, affection, and help behind closed doors, calmed him down, I saw the boy he might have been: quiet, as she had been, charming, wanting only to improve himself, desperate to make up for his wrongs, brilliant, and adoring...
Three. Perhaps he is still whole. I do not know, yet. I last saw him as a babe, innocent, sleeping, perfect and unblemished... save for the mark upon his brow. Did the corruption transfer? Was he mad from that day on? Or is he still only a child, a hurt child, a sad child, but one who is sane and still has a hope of normalcy - or would, were there not that spiritual festering sore that all revere him for?
One. When she died... God forgive me. I mourned her dearly, I grieved as I could not have imagined, but some part of me was glad that I would never again walk into a room and see a mad gleam in dark eyes, never again sight a tint of red, never glimpse a deranged grin upon a perfectly-formed child's face...
Two. And what should I see, in 1938, but that gleam again, trembling limbs, fevered face? This, then, was a cruel God's punishment for my sickening relief: that it should come to nothing. That no matter how far I ran, how much I hid, how quietly I lived my life, it should happen again, that all my past be dredged up again, like an Inferius, twisted, not what it once was, but there all the same...
Three. Whatever he has become, whatever comes to Hogwarts, I pray it will be enough to put Tom down. Some deep, disturbed part of me whispers that my angriest shouts and most hateful desires were right all along: that for their kind, it's better for all of us for someone to sneak into their room as they sleep, hold a pillow over their face, and wait for the struggling to stop...
One. I couldn't. She nearly killed me when I tried.
Two. I literally was unable. I waited too long, and when I finally met him in battle, no spell would end him, not even a Killing Curse
Three. Will I be able to? Years from now, when I must, will I be able to look into wide, innocent green eyes, hear his confused query of "Sir? What are you doing?", and -
Coward, coward that I am, I fear I will not be able to. I did not put Tom down when he unleashed the basilisk; I stood back, and let him frame Hagrid. Such a good boy, I think bitterly. He even covered up his own murders, instead of relying on family to do it for him. No, that's not quite true, is it? He framed his uncle for his own patricide. But still, he did it himself - improvement. Will Harry even need to try? Will, instead, the fates themselves conspire to explain the corpses another way, assure all that he did no wrong?
Perhaps I worry too much. Third time's the charm, they say; perhaps he will still be safe and sane and whole. Perhaps it was only a matter of one and her image through a glass darkly, perhaps this boy will not be another Tom at all.
She always insisted it was four, three and one, three and a freak. This time, I know there is no fourth.
I do not know. If Harry is safe and sane, I will be happy.
If not, I will tell lies, as I always have done, hide the blood on my hands. She was frail and ill, too frail and ill to go out in public. He was a cruel and friendless boy from the beginning, he never knew love. For Harry, they are already forming my lies for me. Could any but a great Dark wizard have fended off the Dark Lord himself as a mere tot? Did, perhaps, a monster greater than Lord Voldemort himself lurk within a child's body? From what knowledge I have, I can form yet more - the Dark Lord marked the boy as an equal, and equal he became. Foul, demented, endlessly screeching and grasping for power. You must understand, though, there was a prophecy. I had to let him live until he had vanquished Voldemort, ended the threat for good, and then, of course, I had to end him, For the Greater Good-
Of course, the lies are but truths, with crucial details omitted: She was frail and ill, too frail and ill to go out in public. Tom was cruel - at times - and friendless, and he never did know love, did he? If he had truly been loved, he who loved him would not have neglected him and abandoned him when the last of the echoes of a time much-regretted came roaring back with a force all the greater for how long it had been gone, he who loved him would not have let him take the final, irrevocable steps into madness, because he who loved him would have been paying attentionand not lost in his own regret, cowardice, and self-hatred... Harry, what I will say about Harry will be the truth, in a way. He will truly have become Tom's equal. He must live until the end to fulfill the prophecy. Then, the next Dark Lord will be ended before he can ever rise...
I worry too much. Surely, Harry will be different? His mother's love...
(She died rather than harm her)
(She struggled through a snowstorm to bear him safely)
...Will somehow, miraculously, save him when it did nothing for them.
One.
Two.
Three.
Who links them together?
Me.
One.
Two.
Three.
Me.
A madwoman's superstition, but I have grown old, and my past will never leave me alone... Hagrid will soon arrive at the current residence of the third... three Muggles, one magical child, and a good-hearted but fiercely protective wizard...
The time for regrets and reminiscences is past; all I can do is pray that third time's the charm is stronger than three and one, that there is no pattern, that I simply worry too much. I should not obsess over childhood memories and mad rituals... I am a grown man, and have left behind childish things..
What, then, are the Deathly Hallows, but a children's tale that is true? Three brothers and Death... But no, Ignotus escaped Death until he had lived out a happy, full life, and departed as its equal. The youngest and the wisest..
("He always lived under that cloak, though. He was always hiding. He wasn't happy - he was always scared! He only took off the cloak when he was so miserable he wanted to die...")
She always had a true gift for missing the point.
...I hope.
1980
There had been four, closer than brothers. Or, rather, three. Three and one traitor. And now, because of that one traitor, there were three of them living, and one dead.
One of them went after the bastard who did it, and then, there were three free and one who went to Azkaban, though it was thirteen years before he told why he did it, one for each Muggle the traitor killed to cover his own flight.
And one left alone; one who had been alone before he met them, and, in the bleakest parts of his heart, was unsurprised to be left alone again. After all, he had always been a freak. Three who chose to change into animals... and one who had no choice.
If we choose to go even further back, the pattern resonates even a millenium ago, at the beginning of the English Wizarding World as anyone knows it.
Three, and one who left the school. Three, and one with an ability that they could never mimic. Three, and one who never showed them the trick to open his Chamber.
If you believe the myth, three, and one who was drowned in the lake, whose head was held below water until he no longer struggled, whose body was left to rot where it sank.
It's a myth, of course, but an illustrative one.
Midsummer's Day, 1995
It is more than a pattern, this day; it is near unto prophecy.
I see, though I comment to none. They would not understand, and no one can actually intervene in this. So it is. I can only observe from afar, knowing how events will play out, but absurdly hoping it could be twisted another way.
Look: there are the three. The champions. There is another. He is the freak, the champion who should not be there, the survivor of the Killing Curse, speaker of Parseltongue - tell us how you did it! they all clamor. Show us the trick, show us the trick! And when he cannot -
Again and again, they have turned on him, told him what he is, tried to make him stop doing it. He's survived until now, and I am impressed. He is a special boy, that Harry Potter. Very strong. But I watch, and worry, and realize he has never stood alone against the others. Even this year, the odd one out and worst yet, his friend, that Hermione Granger, has stood by him, even when that Ron Weasley refused to.
It's a terrible thing, when the ambitious, studious one stands by him, come what may, but the good-hearted, trustworthy one does not. But, really, some part of me thinks, it's a sign things may be different, that this is a warped reflection, that he may come through all right after all.
He is fourteen, both his parents dead, those as close to siblings as he has praying for his well-being, and summer approaching. See, that is another thing. Summer is soon to begin and the school year to end, not the other way around. Surely, that is a sign that things may be well for Harry Potter?
He does not go home over the holidays; he prefers the company of his friends at Hogwarts. Perhaps, whoever awaits for him at home, he does not care for them, and Hogwarts is his home and his friends his family, the end of the summer the beginning of his time amongst them, the beginning its end. And so, even the differences are but more parallels, meeting here, at the point at infinity, the end of it all.
If I warned anyone of what is to come, they would not believe me. The champions are kind sorts, the best their schools had to offer. Even Durmstrang's best lacks arrogance and would not harm anyone. Isn't that right?
Even if they listened, they would misinterpret. The blonde girl is a diversion, her Veela blood not genuinely a thing that could bring her to harm. She is supposed to be here, see! She's as old as the rest. She is one of the three, the champions; mustn't be confused. Harry Potter is the freak, Harry Potter is in mortal danger. It doesn't quite matter about the little things, it's the great things that determine how it will go, it's the great things that may crush him. But they would only think about the superficial similarities and miss the true core; they'd look for the small details, because they don't believe in greater patterns, they're too narrow-minded for that. Coincidence, coincidence, coincidence and lucky guesses, they say. They say seeing things in a pattern, instead of entirely random jumbled pieces, is a sign you're mad.
And they'll still say that when things happen, in a way, as I see. You can't expect patterns to predict precisely; the bigger and truer the pattern, the more general it is. I might get the details wrong. I hope I have the details wrong; I don't want Harry Potter to get hurt. I don't know him, but I've watched him, and he seems nice. Maybe I should meet him someday.
But here, today, the pattern is converging even as I watch, though I pretended it wasn't there before this - now that I see the nature of the Third Task, I can't, I can't. They will enter the hole in the hedges. It is a very long and convoluted hole, but that is what it is, to give it its proper name. That's what hedge maze means, really. Obstacles are placed, but those are minor details; look at it, it's a hole giving passage through the hedges, to where awaits the final Task, the one that shall break the odd one out.
There are only supposed to be three Tasks, I know. But the freak, the one that doesn't belong, awaits within the hedges. The Other Task, the one that isn't one of the three, shall be known, and three and one will be there for it, and Harry Potter is going to be one of them. He'll be the odd one out, as he always is, as he must be by his very nature, and he will be the victim.
Of one version of the pattern, anyway. The pattern can switch targets, and another can take the brunt of it. I can hope, I can hope that -
Look, they're entering; they're beginning the Task. Compared to the Other Task, this will be only play, the last time Harry Potter will be innocent, the last time he'll think that he can be who he is and still be normal. Today will take that from him. I wish it wouldn't, but I know that can't be avoided.
Something is wrong with Durmstrang's best; look at him, he is not himself. I cannot intervene, no one can intervene, those are the rules of the Tournament. And so, when Cedric Diggory - I've thought about it, it's him - begins screaming, screams such as nobody shall wish to hear in his or her life again, I really won't be able to help. No one will, except, perhaps, for Harry Potter. So these things are.
And they are friendly and curious before they realize he's a freak, of course. He will be shouted at, and insulted, and hurt badly when they know what he is, when he will not give in because he cannot give in, because there's no way for him to give in. If he survives the Other Task, he will be called mad, though all he did was see and learn, understand the pattern, have the truth etched into his mind, his only mistake to think that he can stop being the freak and the odd one out, that these things don't hurt you all the worse when you won't accept them...
Today is when things go wrong, and the world will never be right again; today, the pattern arrives with full force, calling to the freak, the extra, the odd one out. I watch, helpless, my only hope lying in the chance that it might be turned, that Harry Potter will not be broken beyond repair.
In some Muggle religions, they use strings of beads in their prayers; I think they're supposed to be special objects, and that counting the beads as you run your fingers over them lends the prayers added power. Is that how it works?
I prepared something like that for today, in case I saw something that made me know things were going to go wrong - Well, I didn't have beads on hand, unfortunately, so I had to make do. On the bright side, I know why I was collecting Butterbeer corks, now.
One; let him be all right; two; let him be all right; three; let him be all right; skip; I hope the best for him; five; let him be all right...
1997-1998
Three and one, again and again. Once an odd one out is destroyed, the pattern turns to the next.
Harry, Tom within Harry, and Voldemort. There are only these three; the prophecy binds them together. Each additional fragment in its turn is the odd one out, and so it is destroyed.
Then comes Tom's time, and he goes gently into that good night.
Then, it is Harry, Voldemort, and Neville, still bound together by prophecy, and Nagini, the snake amongst the three wizards, is ended.
But, here, you say, patterns must run out; there are only three now, after all, aren't there?
True... The pattern runs out.
There are other patterns, you see.
Look back upon Godric's Hollow, Halloween 1981; see the way the magic, when love prevents it from taking the life of the only other living being in the room, turns upon its master.
Do you not see yet?
Then let us turn to another home in Godric's Hollow, in 1899; hear the cries, see the way the magic, when love prevents it from taking the lives of the three others in the room, turns upon its master.
Do you see?
The Elder Wand loves power. Do not underestimate it, do not think it is so easily influenced by who seizes it from whom. Poweris what it seeks, not one's skill at Disarming. The wand chooses the wizard.
The flare of golden flames marks where the spells meet in midair.
Who has more power?
One is of age, come into his power; recall the golden flames above the Tonks house. The Horcrux, the last restraint, is gone. He claims the Horcrux was the source of so much; Ariana was ill and Kendra died of a backfiring charm, the Dumbledore boys say; we were always wary of each other, we were never fond of each other, Voldemort and Dumbledore chorus. Trust not he who avoided Slytherin solely because of his choice.
One is old, and only a shred of what he once was; the boy who was Tom Riddle, the core of all he was, has passed beyond the veil. All that is left is his shell, though it moves and shrieks and has power in its own right.
Which spell overwhelms the other? It was clear, if any had understood, in the graveyard in 1995, when a boy not yet of age defeated the Dark Lord in a contest of strength. Or in the Ministry of Magic in 1996, when the Dark Lord who had, as a child, been a savant of Legilimency and compulsion, could not maintain control over that same boy for even a minute.
If one wants to look back even further, the first sign was that very first encounter, all the way back in 1992, which culminated in the Dark Lord fleeing Hogwarts as his servant died of his burns.
(But he will have power the Dark Lord knows not)
One need not debate whether the prophecy meant power beyond the Dark Lord's, or a power wholly alien to the Dark Lord. Here, as the pattern comes crashing down upon him, they are one and the same.
The Elder Wand loves Harry Potter, and that love prevents the magic from taking the boy's life.
("It makes it all a closed system, Daddy," Luna explains days later, as they work on the definitive account of the magical theory behind Harry Potter's encounters with He-Who-Now-Can-Be-Named.)
The secret of the Unforgivables is that
("The 'curses' are still part of the caster's magic, you see - the appearance otherwise is a failure of our perceptions," Xenophilius explains to Ginny Weasley, who is wondering if accepting Luna's invitation to her house was the best idea. "Thus, prolonged use of the Irreperables permanently affects the user's magic, and with it, his or her personality-")
and so, when the magic is blocked from going outward, it turns inward, against its master, and -
(where her presence and cries would not stop them, her great, rattling gasp does)
Voldemort is dead, and Harry Potter, holding a wand in each hand, stands over his enemy's shell.
And what next? The answer depends on what you think of Harry. And that can be encapsulated into one question:
What happened atop the Astronomy Tower one June night in 1997?
It's very clear, from Harry's account. Snape killed Dumbledore. Simple. Neat. There's only one niggling little detail:
Harry claims the Killing Curse blasted Dumbledore off the Tower.
If you brush that aside, why, yes, there's no reason to believe Harry shouldn't go onto a happy, almost ordinary life, that he truly has had enough trouble for a lifetime. And nineteen years later, at King's Cross, he'll bid his secondborn son farewell, telling him that he is free to choose his House, and think that all is well.
Or perhaps that scene at King's Cross is but a flash of a future that was possible at the beginning of it all, before a piece of Voldemort's soul embedded itself in Harry's forehead, before he began his stay at the Dursleys, before the disastrous events of the day of the Third Task.
And as for futures that were possible at the beginning of it all, well -
At Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, a girl might have been saying to her parents, "Thank you for your concern, but I think my coming to any serious harm at Hogwarts is about as likely as having witch-hunters jump out of the shrubbery back home, which is to say, not much -"
A boy might have been kissed goodbye by his adoring mother, his handsome father smiling at them with the vacant love that the boy had seen for all his life, before she released him and watched him run to the space between Platforms Nine and Ten-
Two wizards might have snogged each other passionately at their bonding, and if most wedding rings contain diamonds or sapphires rather than the Resurrection Stone, and most couples certainly do not use the Elder Wand to bond, or use the Cloak of Invisibility for the cover of their marital bed, well, they always were special -
A sallow-skinned, greasy-haired wizard might have put an arm around his wife's shoulder and smiled down at their green-eyed infant son -
- one should not take possible futures as granted.
And perhaps, as Harry Potter turns the Elder Wand over and over in his hands, almost hearing it sing to him of power, and what he can do with it, and the glorious future that awaits him -
All is not well.
Author's Note: Two final clarifications: first, the Killing Curse does not have a blasting effect anywhere in canon other than when it killed Dumbledore (and, in fact, this was a big part of the Dumbledore-is-not-dead theory before Deathly Hallows came out, with the theory's supporters speculating that Snape had used some other spell nonverbally while saying "Avada Kedavra", since the real Killing Curse would not have flung Dumbledore into the air). Second, the once-possible futures were Ariana departing for Hogwarts, Tom Riddle being kissed goodbye by Merope Gaunt with Riddle Senior, still under the influence of the love-potion, looking on and smiling, Albus Dumbledore and Gellert Grindelwald's bonding, and the Evans-Snape family basking in happiness.