Title: A Headmaster's Priviledge
Author: Gyptian
Rating: PG-13
Genre: World War II, Character Study
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Sixty-four years before Albus Dumbledore would die, he had already loved and lost much. 1933, all of Europe was still in the grip of the hungry years that had followed the roaring twenties. In Britain, nobody paid much attention to the despair in Germany. Despair that would sway them to vote on a man full of promises and lead an entire continent, the whole world, into war.
Britain in 1933 was still the empire where the sun never set.
Wizarding Britain was different. The Ministry of Magic and the International Confederation of Wizards had their eyes on one very powerful wizard that was engineering the rise of a Muggle dark lord. Grindelwald enjoyed himself immensely, in Germany. He played the Muggles like a chess game and he alone knew the rules. None of the others knew quite what to do with the way he bent and twisted the Statute of Secrecy.
In 1933, Albus Dumbledore saw the only man he ever fell in love with become the power behind a Muggle throne. Dark magic meant every ear listened to Grindelwald and his aura of mystery opened many doors.
He spoke of the superiority of the Germanic race. Nobody suspected he wanted to bring back the old, savage magic from before wand-weaving. Magic of blood and ritual and sacrifice.
Dumbledore was a genius and a junior member of the International Confederation of Wizards. He held an impassioned speech about how Grindelwald should be stopped, now. Wizard and Muggle should be separated.
Dumbledore was also the son of a notorious Muggle-hater who had gone and died in Azkaban. Nobody listened, content to wait for evidence and for the Muggles to solve their own problems.
In 1933, Dumbledore pleaded for death and damnation to be rained down on the only man he had ever loved. In 1933, he realised he was going to have to kill him himself.
In 1935, after he had exhausted the Dumbledore library, he accepted a position as Transfigurations professor at his Alma Mater.
The library in Hogwarts School for Witchcraft and Wizardry has the largest amount of magical space in the castle. A student had once measured the outside confines, which spanned no more than twenty-seven feet, with doors to at least two hallways. On the outside, it was one storey. Inside, a dragon could make comfortable laps above high bookcases that required ladders, illuminated by high, narrow windows in two walls. Comfortable study alcoves hid between bookcases no more than a yard apart when one walked past. The central aisle could be walked in five minutes (Dumbledore should know, he walked it often enough). Yet isle each section held enough books to pave the Great Hall thrice over.
It was 1940 before Dumbledore could say he had a good grasp of everything the library contained. On the continent, the war had well and truly broken out. Even Britain could feel the threat. Most wizards, already forwarned by the Ministry, had fled to the rural north in the past few years.
Dumbledore once again appeared before the International Confederation of Wizards, this time as senior member. He laid out a plan of attack, aimed at the magic arm of the German army. His plan received support from the vast majority.
He led the first attack against the Giants. He could feel the grin of his former lover while he slew one after the other in waves of ice and fire. He killed two while another bit him in the thigh. Four clubs that descended simultaneously took him out. Grindelwald's magically amplified laughter rang in his ears as he lay in the mud in an unfamiliar forest.
It was the first defeat of the Allied Western Wizards. Only the Durmstrang professors arriving late in the field saved them. Dumbledore embraced them with enthusiasm.
He returned home with a limp and a complicated scar over his knee. He passed young Tom Riddle in the hallway, an odd smile on his lips. He paid the dark-lord-to-be little attention, in those years. He was too busy with the dark-lord-that-was.
He took to roaming the castle after his injury, until he could walk normally again. His first major discovery was the Room of Requirement. The second was the Door Without Direction. He stepped through into Kensington Gardens, where he spent a pleasant evening until the air raid siren sounded. He hobbled back to the Door, set in an oak. He stood still for a few minutes, until he was sure he was the only one who could see it.
A quiet night two days after Christmas, the Door brought him directly to Aberforth's doorstep. He knocked until his brother, bleary and drunk, opened the door. He didn't know he was crying until his brother faded into a silver-streaked blur. Aberforth let him in, for the first time since 1899. They toasted to Britain's continued resistance against the invaders. For once, wizards and Muggles were working towards one goal again. It was a heady feeling. Dumbledore decided the handshake his brother gave him at the door was even better.
The third time, the Door deposited him in Ivoorkust, where he found the purple diamond he needed for a containment charm he was working on. The next time they fought the Giants, they captured them. They only killed three before they deposited the rest in the Pyrenees after negotiating a treaty. Dumbledore felt rather smug when he went home. He'd received congratulations from sides.
Two years before the final battle, Dumbledore became the Commander of the Allied Wizard troops. On June 6, 1944 he portkeyed to Normandy and slayed several thousand Inferi with only two hundred wizards and witches before they could reach the troops about to land on the coast. Churchill was present, grinning widely around a cigar, while he was presented the Order of Merlin, First Class.
The last time he used the Door, in 1945, it deposited him into Grindelwald's bedroom. The history books would say it was an epic battle. It never told them that Dumbledore stood over him, broken and bleeding, kneeled down and kissed him on the forehead. He could not find it in his heart to kill him. Grindelwald went to Nurmengard, his own prison, which he'd built to all who would oppose the rise of pure and proper magic.
Dumbledore returned home with tears. He sat in his study with a half-full glass of scotch, rubbing the scar above his knee. He fancied he could still hear laughter. It started as the carefree bellow of a teenaged Gellert, playing with two sheepdogs, as Dumbledore had first seen him from behind a hedge. It descended into the scorn of Grindelwald, who laughed at his pain.
He finally stood, walked over to a bookcase where silver instruments tinkled away quietly to themselves. Gellert had animated the first of them, to show him how. The tinkling resolved into Gellert again, eyes bright with the plans he had and his mouth stretched wide. Dumbledore raised his glass and downed the last swallow. For the first time since 1933, he felt truly happy.
~/~
The last year of his life, Headmaster Snape was a dead man walking. Too many lusted after his blood for him to survive much longer. He would live for however long they could use him. He served as shield against the Carrows for the moment, and occasional jack-in-the-box for Potter, ungrateful bastard that he was.
On a particular fine evening of slammed doors, raised voices and keeping his own mind tightly, tightly shut, he found himself leaning back in Albus' armchair. He shifted around uncomfortably when something prodded his leg insistently. He groped until he found an unwrapped lemon drop that glued his forefinger to his thumb. When he pulled on it, it stretched like taffy. He tried with two hands, until he had a rough square of sticky lemon drop that flexed unnaturally between his fingers. He could pull his hands no further, now. Suddenly, yellow sparks appeared and his hands flew free.
An envelope fell into his lap. "Severus," it said.
He sat back, rubbing his hands on his thighs. The looping handwriting on the envelope made a big lump in his throat appear. He swallowed thickly. "Oh, Albus," he sighed, almost against his will. Did the man have to torture him even more? What impossible task would this letter bring? More yet for Potter?
A careful finger insinuated itself beneath the envelope's flap and carressed the two glued sides apart. Three trembling digits retrieved the sheet of parchmend folded inside.
"Dear friend," it began.
"If you are reading this, you have taken it upon yourself to protect Hogwarts as well as you can, in the capacity of headmaster. You will find yourself in the Inner Circle, after our plan has come to fruition. I can imagine you will choose Hogwarts as your reward. It was, after all, dear to your heart.
"I thank you, my friend, because I know it will be more of a burden than a reward."
Snape choked and hung his head. It took five minutes for him to clear his eyes enough to read on.
"Over the past centuries, it has always been Hogwarts's task to stand as an example of all the best the Wizarding World has to offer. As headmasters and headmistresses it has always been our priviledge to make the school such and to protect it against all who would destroy it. Lately, that has meant being a figurehead in the fight against the latest Dark Lord.
"I am sorry, my friend, that you, like me, have sacrificed both life and love in that fight. I met my Dark Lord right after I left school, like you did. I loved him, until the moment he murdered a girl that was very precious to me."
A whimper escaped between the fingers Snape had clenched around his mouth. It sounded suspiciously like "Lily".
"For me, it was my sister Ariana.
"I did not rest again until I had defeated him. Only then did I go free and became Headmaster during the reign of the next Dark Lord. This one is a bit more persnickety."
He did it again, made Snape smile while he went through hell. Only Dumbledore. The black-haired man stroked the words with his thumb.
"Nevertheless, Hogwarts and its headmaster will prevail.
"In my time of greatest need, I came across something which gave me the final means to defeat Grindelwald. It was a door, a door to anywhere. Anywhere I needed to be, that is. I wanted you to have the use of it.
"Go down to the fourth dungeon level, my friend, look for the painting of Locutus the Laxe and walk threehundred feet north. You will find the door there, if you need it.
"Keep safe, you and Hogwarts both."
The sheet clutched tightly in his hand, hidden beneath his cloak, Snape hurried down to the dungeons. He took a circuitous route, stopping in the storeroom to the lab that had been his for two decades to grab some random ingredients.
He found the door after two hours of anxious searching.
When he finally came to a stop in front of it, he put a hand on its wood. He hesitated, unsure if he should step through. What if it was a test, like so much had been lately? What if Dumbledore once again misled him for the greater good, trapped him in an even hotter circle of hell? He found he did not care. It was his only friend's last message.
He came out in a field. The darkness made it hard to identify, until he took his first lungful of air. Heather filled his nose and his mouth and his heart and his mind. For just a second, he became a boy visiting his mysterious Great-aunt Letitia, who served awful cake and had a wonderful garden gone wild. He had explored in that garden and beyond, until he found himself in the rolling fields of heather atop the hills. It was the one summer he had been free of his father's abuse.
Knees hit the ground. He tucked his face into the plants and sniffed them, like a dog. He ran the stems unseen over his face and smiled when he felt a small spider on his cheek. Here he had lived, away from everybody and everything. Not a wizard, not a muggle, not even human. He'd been just a wild thing in a wild landscape.
The last year of his life Snape was man dancing with death for the sake of Hogwarts and the Wizarding World. That night he knew a moment's peace.