Don't Call Me Your Savior
Prologue: The Truth
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter or Supernatural.
Author's Notes: This story came about with a bit of help so a first things first, a million and one thanks to ProngsPotter22 who's plot bunny really jump started this fic to life.
The Department of Mysteries was a scene of carnage. Everyone who'd come was dead whether they were students, Order members, Death Eaters or even the Dark Lord himself. Well, almost everyone.
There was only one person left alive, sitting, staring out at what remained of his friends, and not understanding how he could be alive when no one else was breathing.
"Harry?"
Harry looked up from his contemplation of the weapon in his hand. It was the sword of Gryffindor. He'd taken it from one of the rooms. Somehow it was just there, and not tucked behind spelled glass in the Headmaster's office. Harry wondered vaguely if it had sensed that he needed it. He'd used the sword as a last resort, and somehow he'd killed Voldemort with it.
But only after he'd been hit by a second, mostly ineffective, Killing Curse.
He was so tired. It felt like he hadn't slept in years, and he noted detachedly that his hands were still trembling faintly in his lap.
"Harry, my boy? Can you hear me? Are you alright?"
"Professor, I—there's no one left," Harry muttered, looking back down at the blade, unable to meet Dumbledore's piercing blue gaze.
He recalled vaguely that he'd lost his wand. That it had splintered under the weight of Voldemort's fury and turning his hand over he was less surprised then he might have been to find his palm filled with sharp splinters of wood.
"I got them all killed."
"No my boy," Dumbledore said, his voice echoing hollowly around the Veil Room as he lowered himself to sit beside Harry, "No. The one who is at fault for this tragedy, this sacrifice, is I."
"Pretty sure you didn't lead everyone here chasing false visions."
"No, perhaps not this time," said Dumbledore, "But I confess that I find the timing of the whole thing serendipitous."
"What do you mean by that, sir?"
Dumbledore paused, gathering himself or so it seemed to Harry who watched him out of the corner of his eye.
"I received word just last week that it was possible now to kill Lord Voldemort. That he was as mortal as he was ever likely to be. I had thought that I would have to arrange the confrontation between you both. This was far preferable to any plan that I had as yet conjured."
That penetrated the thick fog of grief, and Harry slanted his professor a sharp-eyed look.
"And just what do you mean by that, sir?" he demanded.
"He means that we've been planning the defeat of Lord Voldemort for seventeen years now and we've finally seen our plans, our sacrifices, meet with success," cut in another voice.
At first Harry thought he was seeing a younger version of Sirius, but closer examination revealed nothing of his godfather in the cold, dead grey of the man's eyes.
"Harry, this is Regulus Black. Sirius' younger brother."
"You're meant to be dead," Harry commented.
"And is only by happy chance that I am not," Regulus admitted, "Seventeen years ago I stole something from the Dark Lord, something precious to him. The only way I could continue to walk the Earth was if I faked my death and did it well. The Headmaster helped some with that."
"What did you steal?" asked Harry, a rising foreboding nausea settling under his ribs.
"A piece of his soul. Trapped in a vessel by magics so twisted that even Dark witches and wizards name them forbidden."
"You are getting ahead of yourself Regulus, please," said Dumbledore, holding up a hand to stop Regulus' story, "I intend to start at the beginning Harry but we haven't much time before the Ministry is alerted to what occurred here tonight, so I am sorry but—"
His wand flicked out and Harry found himself unable to move, rather than just being unwilling. And it was then that Harry knew deep in his gut that something had gone, terribly, horribly wrong.
"I can't have you running off Harry. Not now that your task is done."
"What task?" hissed Harry, struggling but unable to move even an inch.
"Why to kill the Dark Lord of course," grinned Regulus without humour, "It was what you were created for, after all."
"Regulus," Dumbledore snapped a warning, "That is quite enough. Go. I will tell young Harry everything."
"Swear it."
"I hardly think that will be necessary."
"He is my god-nephew and this is me insisting."
"I will tell him everything, Regulus. On my magic I so swear. Now go, before you are seen."
"Fine, fine. As you wish it Headmaster, but I do hope you realize that my task is done with this. You won't see me again, except for when I come for you myself."
Dumbledore waved him away, dismissively. Like his life hadn't just been threatened.
"What is going on here?" Harry croaked, not sure that he wanted to know the answers.
"As Regulus said, this is the unexpected but not unwelcome conclusion to a scheme that was seventeen long years in the making. A game that not even Voldemort himself, for all his cleverness, was aware of playing."
"What did you do?"
"Patience, my boy. I will explain everything. Now, about oh, twenty years ago now, when a prophecy was spoken, telling of Voldemort's grand successes, and the massive death toll of the war I knew I needed to take steps, Harry, drastic ones the like of which I had not employed since the time of Grindelwald."
"What steps?" shouted Harry, trying to squirm and not budging from his place slumped on the stairs, "What the bloody hell did you do?"
His magic wouldn't come to bear either, not like it did when Vernon or Dudley got a little too close to doing him some serious damage.
"You have to understand, my boy. The seer foretold the end of wizardkind. Our extinction after the long years of war. Too many dead to spawn anything but weak half-bloods and perhaps the occasional exceptionally talented muggleborn, like your own Miss. Granger. And then there would come the war against the muggles. A war that was to take magic from the face of this good Earth forever. I could not let Voldemort's successful campaign come to pass. Not with that future looming over us."
Dumbledore paused, seemingly trying to organise his thoughts, and from the depths of his robes he pulled out a small tin of lemon drops and popped one into his mouth. Sucking thoughtfully.
"I consulted everyone I knew, delved into the study of the most obscure magics, light and dark, ancient and modern—it was when Regulus came to me with the trinket he'd been ordered to hide and had stolen instead that I knew what Tom Riddle had done to ensure his victories. I helped Regulus to fake his death and we set about finding these vessels, these soul-receptacles called horcruxes but it was not enough. I consulted the current Oracle at Delphi, a true daughter of Cassandra's line, and she told me that Voldemort was destined to die only by the Hand of a Sword."
"So why didn't you just stick him with Gryffindor's bloody sword your own damn self!" Harry demanded, his voice rising to echo off the walls of the chamber, "I mean you had the thrice-damned thing in your bloody office! You could have taken it and—"
Harry choked on his angry words, unable to voice them no matter how loudly he screamed. He hadn't even seen the man move his wand.
"If it had been that simple," Dumbledore continued, unperturbed by Harry's struggles and forcibly silent shouting as he moved to select another lemon drop from his tin, "I would have done it ages ago. But 'Hand of a Sword' does not, as you might expect, mean that Voldemort was to die on a blade. Rather instead I was able to divine that it meant an individual of a certain bloodline would have to step forward."
Dumbledore caught Harry's eyes to impress upon him the weight of his next statement.
"It was a bloodline, or rather, a set of bloodlines, that died out in this world long ago. I had to send agents through this very Veil behind us to find an appropriate child with only the sword to guide them. You see Harry that particular sword is the only known relic left from that time. It is ancient, and powerful in its own right. Look here I will remove the illusion I placed upon it."
He took the sword from Harry's hands and raised it up to eye level so that Harry could see it and, all of a sudden, he wasn't seeing the ruby-encrusted sword of Gryffindor but a shining silver blade more like a dagger the length of his forearm rather than what Harry thought of as being a true sword.
"The last person to wield this blade was Arthur Pendragon himself, and it is said that it was gifted to him by an angel and that before his death he gave it to the wizard Merlin to protect. You may know the legends of Excalibur. They speak of this blade, I'm certain of it, for that is how we found your parents. Or rather the parent who would pass this blood-legacy on to you, John Winchester. My agents found him and waited until he was in the company of an appropriate woman, and after that it was a simple matter of alcohol and a few minor compulsions to bring you into being, or so I was told."
Dumbledore set the sword aside and there was a soft chime, like a bell, when it touched the marble.
"Now Harry, you must know that these agents of the Order, that is Lily Evans and Jane Potter, may not have been your birth parents but they did love you. They loved you enough to sacrifice their own lives and magics so that you could wield them as your own. They loved you enough to take the sword and search you out in the world behind the Veil at great personal risk. And I honored their devotion by naming them your true parents in this world. Of course modifying all those memories to portray Jane as a wizard was rather difficult but the dear girl was so brave and true at the end. I could not deny her the legacy."
Harry couldn't think, couldn't even breath for the rage that coursed through him
"You killed them," he gasped out around the failing Silencing Charm, "You—you sacrificed them in cold blood!"
"It was necessary," Dumbledore said sharply, "It was for the greater good! Well I knew that no muggle child could stand against Voldemort. You needed that magic and those dear girls, they agreed to give it to you."
"Yeah? And what did you tell them it was for? Or did you even bother to ask?" snarled Harry, vibrating with rage.
"Of course I told them, they needed to consent for the binding ritual to work," Dumbledore said, shaking his head, "I had thought to include Sirius in their number, since he and Jane were two of my best and strongest fighters, but Sirius was not so willing to do what it took and I was forced to keep him out of the whole matter by, I admit, somewhat crueler means."
"You arranged for him to be sent to Azkaban without trial. Because Wormtail—he never betrayed anyone, did he? You just made him into a scapegoat."
"I just made him period Harry," Dumbledore said gently, patting Harry briefly on his frozen knee, "Before his transfiguration Peter Pettigrew was nothing more than your slightly less than ordinary garden rat. I had Regulus take his appearance when it became necessary to bring Voldemort back to the physical plane so that you could kill him."
"You sonofabitch, you—you orchestrated this whole thing! All of it, everything! You took me away from anyone who'd ever loved me and then you played me like a bloody violin," Harry's voice cracked and he could feel the weak swell of magic under his skin, responding, as always, to his distress, but so much less than it usually was.
Harry pushed for more, using his fury to draw out the very last threads of his magic. No, not his magic, he realized. Lily and Jane's, because if Dumbledore was to be believe he'd never been a wizard at all, just a strange muggle child from some other world who had unintentionally stolen the magic of good witches.
"My whole life has been a lie."
"No Harry," Dumbledore said, his voice a strange mixture of pity and fond pride, "Just the opposite. You were crafted for this life and you have far surpassed my expectations. Ending this conflict before it had even really begun, my boy, you are a wonder. By far my most impressive creation."
"I am going to kill you," Harry said, almost conversationally, fists clenching at his side as he burned through the last of his stolen magic and reached blindly for Excalibur.
His hand found the sword unerringly closing around the cool hilt, as he ducked a wordless binding and threw himself bodily at Dumbledore.
"Expelliarmus!"
Harry was vaguely surprised when the sword didn't go flying but rather hummed in his hands, filled with the same purpose he'd felt when he'd been fighting Voldemort, it was almost like it was echoing his righteous fury. And he could tell that Dumbledore was surprised as well, his blue eyes wide and shocked, he raised he wand again twisting his wrist in the start of a complex transfiguration.
And then Harry was on him. Tackling him to the floor before he could get off another spell and shoving the blade home in his chest. A crackle, like a spark of electricity traveled up Harry's arm through the sword and Dumbledore's chest glowed faintly with some internal light before he was just gone, dropping limp against the marble floor like a puppet with his strings cut rather than a puppet master.
And of course it was that scene, the tableau of Harry dragging the blade out from between the ribs of the most respected Light wizard since the Founders time, that the aurors walked in on.
Harry didn't even have time to process what he'd just done.
The first auror to overcome her shock threw a hex his way, but he was already running and the shot went wide. Some calculating part of his brain that wasn't drenched in grief, betrayal, adrenaline and fury noted that there would be no escaping capture here, no fighting his way free of the Ministry. Not with the blood of Albus Dumbledore on his hands and certainly not with the number of bodies scattered throughout the Department's corridors, not the least of which were two more aurors, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Nymphadora Tonks.
So Harry did the only thing he could think of, bracing himself for impact he ran through the Veil, following the whispering voices into the burning darkness and not particularly caring if he made it out the other side.
AN: A nice long prologue to start us off!
I'm really looking for feedback about my characterizations and writing style in general and of course I love hearing everyone's thoughts on the plot and progress of the story so please feel free to leave a bunch of long-winded reviews =D.
-Alba