Chapter 2: Machinations Unwound
In one of the many slums of London, not too far away from Grimmauld Place, a shadowy figure hurried to the basement door of a well known to those who frequented the under-world, yet hidden well from anyone else.
Quickly, glancing around furtively, he knocked a complicated pattern on the door, one the had taken him a week to learn by heart, and swiftly opened the door closing it a second later behind him.
There was man sitting behind a table, his feet resting on it, a laptop just to the right of them and a cigar lazily dangiling from his mouth. The air was thick with smoke and the place was covered in cartons ranging from every size possible. His voice was rough and harsh.
"Waddya want!" he growled.
"To disappear and never be found." The man replied carefully, "I'm going to need it to be very thorough."
"Wheredya wanna hide?" The man took a moment to think it over before he shrugged, "Here." The man snarled, apparently that was not a good answer.
"Not many people come looking for a change of identity with a full background without leaving the country." The man warned, "If it gets back to me..." The guest paused thinking then replied,
"If your not good enough to cover your tracks maybe I should go to someone else."
"Are you questioning my ability!?" his hand was close to what the guest realised was a concealed weapon, he chose to sidestep the question. Inwardly he shuddered, he was playing a dangerous game.
"However," he said mildly, "The false identity will not be up to harsh scrutiny, I will be certain to stay off the radar if you will for a while."
After a second, the hand moved away and once more rested on the table, the man however was still scowling. "It'll cost ya a pretty penny. Cash."
Without a word the guest pulled out two wads of bills, maybe a hundred bills in each wad, one of twenties and one of fifties. He threw them both on the table.
An hour later, the guest left becoming once more a figure in the shadows before dissapearing completely.
Meanwhile...
Harry's feet hit solid ground; his knees buckled a little and the golden wizard's head fell with a resounding dunk to the floor. He looked around and saw that he had arrived in Dumbledore's office.
Everything seemed to have repaired itself during the Headmaster's absence. The delicate silver instruments stood once more on the spindle-legged tables, puffing and whirring serenely the portraits of the headmasters and headmistresses were snoozing in their frames, heads lolling back in armchairs or against the edge of the picture, he noticed, absently, that knowledge was being dumped into his brain as he looked all the spells being employed around the room. For now, he ingnored it, looking out the window he saw cool line of pale green along the horizon; dawn was approaching.
The silence and the stillness, broken only by the occasional grunt or snuffle of a sleeping portrait, was unbearable to him. If his surroundings could have reflected the feelings inside him, the pictures would have been screaming in pain. He walked around the quiet, beautiful office, breathing quickly, trying not to think. But he had to think…there was no escape…
It was his fault Sirius had died; it was all his fault. If he, Harry, had not been stupid enough to fall for Voldemort's trick, if he had not been so convinced that what he had seen in his dream was real, if he had only opened his mind to the possibility that Voldemort was, as Hermione had said, banking on Harry's love of playing the hero…
It was unbearable, he would not think about it, he could not stand it…there was a terrible hollow inside him he did not want to feel or examine, a dark hole where Sirius had been, where Sirius had vanished; he did not want to have to be alone with that great, silent space, he could not stand it –
A picture behind him gave a particularly loud grunting snore, and a cool voice said, "Ah… Harry Potter…"
Phineas Nigellus gave a long yawn, stretching his arms as he surveyed Harry out of shrewd, narrow eyes.
"And what brings you here in the early hours of the morning?" said Phineas eventually, "This office is supposed to be barred to all but the rightful Headmaster. Or has Dumbledore sent you here? Oh, don't tell me…" He gave another shuddering yawn. "Another message for my worthless great-great-grandson?"
Harry could not speak. Phineas Nigellus did not know that Sirius was dead, but Harry could not tell him. To say it aloud would be to make it final, absolute, irretrievable. Harry decided to ignore him. Looking for something, anything to distract himself with, he saw the Headmaster's Library and quickly, desperately, he grabbed a book and started reading.
He found another phenomenon to his new power. Anything he read, he understood, it took a little more than a glance and he had the theory and how to on everything. Wards constructed with Anceint Runes he had never studied before made sense. It was, to put simply, thrilling and he wondered briefly if this was why Hermione loved books. He himself could quickly learn to love them as well.
A few more of the portraits had stirred now, unnoticed by Harry who was absorbed in his reading.
"I hope this means," said the corpulent, red-nosed wizard who hung on the wall behind the Headmaster's desk, "that Dumbledore will soon be back among us?"
Harry jumped, the wizard was surveying him with great interest and he wondered for a second if he was allowed to read the books before he shrugged it off.
Harry nodded before going back to the book.
"Oh good," said the wizard. "It has been very dull without him, very dull indeed."
He settled himself on the throne-like chair on which he had been painted and smiled benignly upon Harry.
"Dumbledore thinks very highly of you, as I am sure you know," he said comfortably. "Oh yes, holds you in great esteem."
Harry ignored him and continued reading, the half hour was coming to a close he noticed in the back of his mind and he was only half way done with the book. That thought jerked him up. Half way!? He had read half of a book, a very thick Hermione type book, in half an hour? His reading speed seemed to have increased he thought dazedly.
The empty fireplace burst into emerald green flame, making Harry leap up from Dumbledore's chair, staring at the man spinning inside the grate. As Dumbledore's tall form unfolded itself from the fire, the wizards and witches on the surrounding walls jerked awake, many of them giving cries of welcome.
"Thank you," said Dumbledore softly.
He did not look at Harry at first, but walked over to the perch beside the door and withdrew, from an inside pocket of his robes, the tiny, ugly, featherless Fawkes, whom he placed gently on the tray of soft ashes beneath the golden post where the full-grown Fawkes usually stood.
"Well, Harry," said Dumbledore, finally turning away from the baby bird, "you will be pleased to hear that none of your fellow students are going to suffer lasting damage from the night's events."
Harry nodded his head but could not say anything. It seemed to him that Dumbledore was reminding him of the amount of damage he had caused, and although Dumbledore was for once looking at him directly, and although his expression was kindly rather than accusatory, Harry could not bear to meet his eyes.
"Madam Pomfrey is patching everybody up," said Dumbledore. "Nymphadora Tonks may need to spend a little time in St. Mungo's, but it seems she will make a full recovery."
Harry contented himself with nodding at the carpet, which was growing lighter as the sky outside grew paler. He was sure all the portraits around the room were listening closely to every word Dumbledore spoke, wondering where Dumbledore and Harry had been, and why there had been injuries.
"There have only been two casualties, Harry one of which I am more sad than the other." Dumbledore said softly. His eyes, while still not accusatory, where filled with pain.
Harry didn't say anything, but glared hard at the floor. Somehow, he knew Dumbledore was talking about Bellatrix. He was right.
"It pains me to see you use that curse, may I ask where you learned it?"
Harry laughed bitterly.
"When something is used against you often enough, you quickly learn how to use it Dumlbedore."
He got no answer in reply, so he continued.
"Are you telling me," he said, voice shaking in anger and rage, "that you mourn Bellatrix more that you mourn S- S- my godfather!?" he couldn't say his name.
"I know how you're feeling, Harry," said Dumbledore very quietly, ignoring the question for now.
"No, you don't," said Harry, and his voice was suddenly loud and strong; white-hot anger leapt inside him; Dumbledore knew nothing about his feelings.
Harry turned his back on Dumbledore and stared determinedly out of the window. He could see the Quidditch stadium in the distance. Sirius had appeared there once, disguised as the shaggy black dog, so he could watch Harry play…he had probably come to see whether Harry was as good as James had been…Harry had never asked him…
"There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry," said Dumbledore's voice. "On the contrary, the fact that you can feel pain like this is your greatest strength."
Harry felt the white-hot anger lick his insides, blazing in the terrible emptiness, filling him with the desire to hurt Dumbledore for his calmness and his empty words, in his rage his newfound powers and knowledge were forgotten.
"My greatest strength, is it?" said Harry, his voice shaking as he stared out at the Quidditch stadium, no longer seeing it. "You haven't got a clue…you don't know…"
"What don't I know?" asked Dumbledore calmly.
It was too much. Harry turned around, shaking with rage.
"I don't want to talk about how I feel, all right?"
"Harry, suffering like this proves you are still a man! This pain is part of being human"
"THEN – I – DON'T – WANT – TO – BE – HUMAN!" Harry roared his aura flaring out around him, causing many gasps around the room, and he seized the delicate silver instrument from the spindlelegged table beside him and flung it across the room; it shattered into a hundred tiny pieces against the wall.
Several of the pictures let out yells of anger and fright, and the portrait of Armando Dippet said,
"Really!"
"I DON'T CARE!" Harry yelled at them, snatching up a lunascope and throwing it into the fireplace. "I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'VE SEEN ENOUGH, I WANT OUT, I WANT IT TO END, I DON'T CARE ANY MORE"
He seized the table on which the silver instrument had stood and threw that, too. It broke apart on the floor and the legs rolled in different directions.
"You do care," said Dumbledore.
He had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm, almost detached. "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it."
"I – DON'T!" Harry screamed, so loudly that he felt his throat might tear, and for a second he wanted to rush at Dumbledore and break him, too; shatter that calm old face, shake him, hurt him, make him feel some tiny part of the horror inside himself, his magic flared to his bidding and rushed at Dumbledore who stood there emotionless as his own aura flared out to protect him.
"Oh, yes, you do." said Dumbledore, still more calmly, ignoring the magical battle going on between them, "You have now lost your mother, your father, and the closest thing to a parent you have ever known. Of course you care."
"YOU DON'T KNOW HOW I FEEL!" Harry roared. "YOU – STANDING THERE – YOU"
But words were no longer enough, smashing things was no more help; he wanted to run, he wanted to keep running and never look back, his magic stopped the vicious asult on the Headmaster and returned to crackling around his body, he wanted to be somewhere he could not see the clear blue eyes staring at him, that hatefully calm old face. He turned on his heel and ran to the door, seized the doorknob again and wrenched at it.
But the door would not open. Harry turned back to Dumbledore. "Let me out," he said. He wasshaking from head to foot.
"No," said Dumbledore, simply. For a few seconds they stared at each other.
"Let me out," Harry said again.
"No," Dumbledore repeated.
"If you don't – if you keep me in here – if you don 't let me"
"By all means continue destroying my possessions," said Dumbledore serenely. "I daresay I have too many."
He walked around his desk and sat down, behind it, calmly marking the page Harry had been reading before closing the book and watching Harry.
"Let me out," Harry said yet again, in a voice that was cold and almost as calm as Dumbledore's.
"Not until I have had my say," said Dumbledore.
"Do you – do you think I want to – do you think I give a – I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU'VE GOT TO SAY!" Harry roared. "I don't want to hear anything you've got to say!"
"You will," said Dumbledore steadily. "Because you are not nearly as angry with me as you ought to be. If you are to attack me, as I know you are close to doing, I would like to have thoroughly earned it."
"What are you talking –?"
"It is my fault that Sirius died," said Dumbledore clearly.
"Or should I say, almost entirely my fault – I will not be so arrogant as to claim responsibility for the whole. Sirius was a brave, clever and energetic man, and such men are not usually content to sit at home in hiding while they believe others to be in danger. Nevertheless, you should never have believed for an instant that there was any necessity for you to go to the Department of Mysteries tonight.
If I had been open with you, Harry, as I should have been, you would have known a long time ago that Voldemort might try to lure you to the Department of Mysteries, and you would never have been tricked into going there tonight, and Sirius would not have had to come after you. That blame lies with me, and with me alone."
Harry was still standing with his hand on the doorknob but was unaware of it. He was gazing at Dumbledore, hardly breathing, listening yet barely understanding what he was hearing.
"Please sit down," said Dumbledore. It was not an order, it was a request.
Harry hesitated, then walked slowly across the room now littered with silver cogs and fragments of wood, and took the seat facing Dumbledore's desk, his aura flaring a few times and then disappearing causeing a few sighs from the watching portraits.
"Am I to understand," said Phineas Nigellus slowly from Harry's left, "that my great-great-grandson – the last of the Blacks – is dead?"
"Yes, Phineas," said Dumbledore.
"I don't believe it," said Phineas brusquely.
Harry turned his head in time to see Phineas marching out of his portrait and knew that he had gone to visit his other painting in Grimmauld Place. He would walk, perhaps, from portrait to portrait, calling for Sirius through the house…
"Harry, I owe you an explanation," said Dumbledore. "An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failings of
age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young…and I seem to have forgotten, lately…"
The sun was rising properly now; there was a rim of dazzling orange visible over the mountains and the sky above it was colorless and bright. The light fell upon Dumbledore, upon the silver of his eyebrows and beard, upon the lines gouged deeply into his face.
"I guessed, fifteen years ago," said Dumbledore, "when I saw the scar on your forehead, what it might mean. I guessed that it might be the sign of a connection forged between you and Voldemort."
"You've told me this before, Dumbledore," said Harry bluntly. He did not care about being rude. He did not care about anything very much any more, but he was welcoming the distraction and his mind was working on it, "Get to the point. Voldemort and I are connected. Why did he come after me?"
"Yes," said Dumbledore apologetically. "Yes, that is where I was going – and you asked me that very same question exactly four years ago."
"I know," said Harry wearily.
"And I had not wanted to answer this question because I thought your were too young despite having faced your parent's muderer, I in my infinite wisdom decided it was not the right time." There was a noticable sarcastic tinge when Dumbledore spoke the last words, but Harry was getting sick of him taking his time.
"This connection" said Dumbledore, "that you share with Voldemort was a matter for concern, if you could see into his mind, who is to say he cannot see into yours? Or worse, make you see what he wants you to see?"
A chill ran down Harry's back and he felt his anger spark again slightly. If he had been explained this, he would've tried harder to learn Occlumencey. "Snape." Harry snarled.
"Professor Snape, Harry." Dumbledore corrected him quietly. "But did you not wonder why it was not I who explained this to you? Why I did not teach you Occlumency? Why I had not so much as looked at you for months?"
Harry looked up. He could see now that Dumbledore looked sad and tired.
"Yeah," Harry mumbled. "Yeah, I wondered."
"You see," Dumbledore continued, "I believed it could not be long before Voldemort attempted to force his way into your mind, to manipulate and misdirect your thoughts, and I was not eager to give him more incentives to do so. I was sure that if he realized that our relationship was – or had ever been – closer than that of headmaster and pupil, he would seize his chance to use you as a means to spy on me.
I feared the uses to which he would put you, the possibility that he might try and possess you. Harry, I believe I was right to think that Voldemort would have made use of you in such a way, for on those rare occasions when we had close contact, I thought I saw a shadow of him stir behind your eyes…"
Harry remembered the feeling that a dormant snake had risen in him, ready to strike, in those moments when he and Dumbledore had made eye-contact.
"Voldemort's aim in possessing you, as he demonstrated tonight, would not have been for my destruction. It would have been for yours. He hoped, when he possessed you briefly a short while ago, that I would sacrifice you in the hope of killing him. So you see, I have been trying, in distancing myself from you, to protect you, Harry. An old man's mistake…"
He sighed deeply. Harry was letting the words wash over him. He would have been so interested to know all this a few months ago, but now it was meaningless compared to the gaping chasm inside him that was the loss of Sirius; none of it mattered…
"Sirius told me you felt Voldemort awake inside you the very night that you had the vision of Arthur Weasley's attack. I knew at once that my worst fears were correct; Voldemort had realized he could use you. In an attempt to arm you against Voldemort's assaults on your mind, I arranged Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape."
He paused. Harry watched the sunlight, which was sliding slowly across the polished surface of Dumbledore's desk, illuminate a silver ink pot and a handsome scarlet quill. Harry could tell that the portraits all around them were awake and listening raptly to Dumbledore's explanation; he could hear the occasional rustle of robes, the slight clearing of a throat. Phineas Nigellus had still not returned…
"Professor Snape discovered," Dumbledore resumed, "that you had been dreaming about the door to the Department of Mysteries for months. Voldemort, of course, had been obsessed with the possibility of hearing the prophecy ever since he regained his body; and as he dwelled on the door, so did you, though you did not know what it meant.
"And then you saw Rockwood, who worked in the Department of Mysteries before his arrest, telling Voldemort what we had known all along – that the prophecies held in the Ministry of Magic are heavily protected. Only the people to whom they refer can lift them from the shelves without suffering madness; in this case, either Voldemort himself would have to enter the Ministry of Magic, and risk revealing himself at last – or else you would have to take it for him. It became a matter of even greater urgency that you should master Occlumency"
"But I didn't see the need to," snarled Harry angrily. "Your pet potions master never thought to tell my why I should learn it!"
Then reality sunk in, "I couldn't be bothered." He said softly, guiltily, "It was my fault."
He said it aloud to try and ease the dead weight of guilt inside him; a confession must surely relieve some of the terrible pressure squeezing his heart.
"I didn't practice, I didn't bother, I could've stopped myself having those dreams, Hermione kept telling me to do it, if I had he'd never have been able to show me where to go, and – Sirius wouldn't – Sirius wouldn't"
Something was erupting inside Harry's head: a need to justify himself, to explain –
"I tried to check he'd really taken Sirius, I went to Umbridge's office, I spoke to Kreacher in the fire and he said Sirius wasn't there, he said he'd gone!"
"Kreacher lied," said Dumbledore calmly. "You are not his master, he could lie to you without even needing to punish himself. Kreacher intended you to go to the Ministry of Magic."
"He – he sent me on purpose?"
"Oh yes. Kreacher, I am afraid, has been serving more than one master for months."
"How?" said Harry blankly. "He hasn't been out of Grimmauld Place for years."
"Kreacher seized his opportunity shortly before Christmas," said Dumbledore, "when Sirius, apparently, shouted at him to 'get out'. He took Sirius at his word, and interpreted this as an order to leave the house. He went to the only Black family member for whom he had any respect left…Sirius's cousin Narcissa, sister of Bellatrix and wife of Lucius Malfoy"
"How do you know all this?" Harry said. His heart was beating very fast. He felt sick. He remembered worrying about Kreacher's odd absence over Christmas, remembered him turning up again in the attic…
"Kreacher told me last night," said Dumbledore. "You see, when you gave Professor Snape that cryptic warning, he realized that you had had a vision of Sirius trapped in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries. He, like you, attempted to contact Sirius at once. I shouldn't need to explain that members of the Order of the Phoenix have more reliable methods of communicating than the fire in Dolores Umbridge's office. Professor Snape found that Sirius was alive and safe in Grimmauld Place.
"When, however, you did not return from your trip into the Forest with Dolores Umbridge, Professor Snape grew worried that you still believed Sirius to be a captive of Lord Voldemort's. He alerted certain Order members at once."
Dumbledore heaved a great sigh and continued, "Alastor Moody, Nymphadora Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt and Remus Lupin were at Headquarters when he made contact. All agreed to go to your aid at once. Professor Snape requested that Sirius remain behind, as he needed somebody to remain at Headquarters to tell me what had happened, for I was due there at any moment. In the meantime he, Professor Snape, intended to search the Forest for you.
"But Sirius did not wish to remain behind while the others went to search for you. He delegated to Kreacher the task of telling me what had happened. And so it was that when I arrived in Grimmauld Place shortly after they had all left for the Ministry, it was the elf who told me – laughing fit to burst – where Sirius had gone."
"He was laughing?" said Harry in a hollow voice.
"Oh, yes," said Dumbledore. "You see, Kreacher was not able to betray us totally. He is not the Secret Keeper for the Order, he could not give the Malfoys our whereabouts, or tell them any of the Order's confidential plans that he had been forbidden to reveal. He was bound by the enchantments of his kind, which is to say that he could not disobey a direct order from his master, Sirius. But he gave Narcissa information of the sort that is very valuable to Voldemort, yet must have seemed much too trivial for Sirius to think of banning him from repeating it."
"Like what?" said Harry.
"Like the fact that the person Sirius cared most about in the world was you," said Dumbledore quietly. "Like the fact that you were coming to regard Sirius as a mixture of father and brother. Voldemort knew already, of course, that Sirius was in the Order, and that you knew where he was – but Kreacher's information made him realize that the one person for whom you would go to any lengths to rescue was Sirius Black."
Harry's lips were cold and numb.
"So…when I asked Kreacher if Sirius was there last night…"
"The Malfoys – undoubtedly on Voldemort's instructions – had told him he must find a way of keeping Sirius out of the way once you had seen the vision of Sirius being tortured. Then, if you decided to check whether Sirius was at home or not, Kreacher would be able to pretend he was not. Kreacher injured Buckbeak the Hippogriff yesterday, and, at the moment when you made your appearance in the fire, Sirius was upstairs tending to him."
There seemed to be very little air in Harry's lungs; his breathing was quick and shallow.
"And Kreacher told you all this…and laughed?" he croaked.
"He did not wish to tell me," said Dumbledore. "But I am a sufficiently accomplished Legilimens myself to know when I am being lied to and I – persuaded him – to tell me the full story, before I left for the Department of Mysteries."
"And," whispered Harry, his hands curled in cold fists on his knees, "and Hermione kept telling us to be nice to him."
"She was quite right, Harry," said Dumbledore. "I warned Sirius when we adopted number twelve Grimmauld Place as our Headquarters that Kreacher must be treated with kindness and respect. I also told him that Kreacher could be dangerous to us. I do not think Sinus took me very seriously, or that he ever saw Kreacher as a being with feelings as acute as a human's"
"Don't you blame – don't you – talk – about Sirius like –" Harry's breath was constricted, he could not get the words out properly; but the rage that had subsided briefly flared in him again: he would not let Dumbledore criticize Sirius. "Kreacher's a lying – foul – he deserved –"
"Kreacher is what he has been made by wizards, Harry" said Dumbledore. "Yes, he is to be pitied. His existence has been as miserable as your friend Dobby's. He was forced to do Sirius's bidding, because Sirius was the last of the family to which he was enslaved, but he felt no true loyalty to him. And whatever Kreacher's faults, it must be admitted that Sirius did nothing to make Kreacher's lot easier."
"DON'T TALK ABOUT SIRIUS LIKE THAT!" Harry yelled.
He was on his feet again, magic once more flaring, furious, ready to fly at Dumbledore, who had plainly not understood Sirius at all, how brave he was, how much he had suffered…
"What about Snape?" Harry spat. "You're not talking about him, are you? When I told him Voldemort had Sirius he just sneered at me as usual –"
"Harry, you know Professor Snape had no choice but to pretend not to take you seriously in front of Dolores Umbridge," said Dumbledore steadily, "but as I have explained, he informed the Order as soon as possible about what you had said. It was he who deduced where you had gone when you did not return from the Forest. It was he, too, who gave Professor Umbridge fake Veritaserum when she was attempting to force you to tell her Sirius's whereabouts."
Harry disregarded this; he felt a savage pleasure in blaming Snape, it seemed to be easing his own sense of dreadful guilt, and he wanted to hear Dumbledore agree with him.
"Snape – Snape g – goaded Sirius about staying in the house – he made out Sirius was a coward"
"Sirius was much too old and clever to have allowed such feeble taunts to hurt him," said Dumbledore.
"Snape stopped giving me Occlumency lessons!" Harry snarled. "He threw me out of his office!"
"I am aware of it," said Dumbledore heavily "I have already said that it was a mistake for me not to teach you myself, though I was sure, at the time, that nothing could have been more dangerous than to open your mind even further to Voldemort while in my presence –"
"Snape made it worse, my scar always hurt like hell after lessons with him" Harry remembered Ron's thoughts on the subject and plunged on "– how do you know he wasn't trying to soften me up for Voldemort, make it easier for him to get inside my-"
"I trust Severus Snape," said Dumbledore simply "But I forgot – another old man's mistake – that some wounds run too deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father – I was wrong."
"But that's okay, is it?" yelled Harry, ignoring the scandalized faces and disapproving mutterings of the portraits on the walls. "It's okay for Snape to hate my dad, but it's not okay for Sirius to hate Kreacher?"
"Sirius did not hate Kreacher," said Dumbledore. "He regarded him as a servant unworthy of much interest or notice. Indifference and neglect often do much more damage than outright dislike…the
fountain we destroyed tonight told a lie. We wizards have mistreated and abused our fellows for too long, and we are now reaping our reward."
"SO SIRIUS DESERVED WHAT HE GOT, DID HE?" Harry yelled.
"I did not say that, nor will you ever hear me say it." Dumbledore replied quietly. "Sirius was not a cruel man, he was kind to house-elves in general. He had no love for Kreacher, because Kreacher was a living reminder of the home Sirius had hated."
"Yeah, he did hate it!" said Harry, his voice cracking, turning his back on Dumbledore and walking away. The sun was bright inside the room now and the eyes of all the portraits followed him as he walked, without realizing what he was doing, without seeing the office at all. "You made him stay shut up in that house and he hated it, that's why he wanted to get out last night."
"I was trying to keep Sirius alive," said Dumbledore quietly
"People don't like being locked up!" Harry said furiously, rounding on him. "You did it to me all last summer!"
Dumbledore closed his eyes and buried his face in his longfingered hands. Harry watched him, but this uncharacteristic sign of exhaustion, or sadness, or whatever it was from Dumbledore, did not soften him. On the contrary, he felt even angrier that Dumbledore was showing signs of weakness. He had no business being weak when Harry wanted to rage and storm at him.
Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses.
"It is time," he said, "for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything. I ask only a little patience. You will have your chance to rage at me – to do whatever you like – when I have finished. I will not stop you."
Harry glared at him for a moment, then flung himself back into the chair opposite Dumbledore and waited.
Dumbledore stared for a moment at the sunlit grounds outside the window, then looked back at Harry and said, "Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harry, safe and whole, as I had planned and intended. Well – not quite whole. You had suffered as I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle's doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years."
He paused. Harry said nothing.
"You might ask – and with good reason – why it had to be so. Why could some wizarding family not have taken you in? Many would have done so, more than gladly, would have been honored and delighted to raise you as a son.
"My answer is that my priority was to keep you alive. You were in more danger than perhaps anyone but I realized. Voldemort had been vanquished hours before, but his supporters – and many of them are almost as terrible as he – were still at large, angry, desperate and violent. And I had to make my decision, too, with regard to the years ahead. Did I believe that Voldemort was gone for ever? No. I knew not whether it would be ten, twenty or fifty years before he returned, but I was sure he would do so, and I was sure, too, knowing him as I have done, that he would not rest until he killed you.
"I knew that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is perhaps more extensive than any wizard alive. I knew that even my most complex and powerful protective spells and charms were unlikely to be invincible if he ever returned to full power.
"But I knew, too, where Voldemort was weak. And so I made my decision. You would be protected by an ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated – to his cost. I am speaking, of course, of the fact that your mother died to save you. She gave you a lingering protection he never expected, a protection that flows in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother's blood. I delivered you to her sister, her only remaining relative."
"She doesn't love me," said Harry at once. "She doesn't give a damn –"
"But she took you," Dumbledore cut across him. "She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you. Your mother's sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you."
"I still don't understand." But he did. Terribly so. Dumbledore had left him to a family that he knew would abuse Harry, he admited it straight just now, more than once. He knew that they hated him and yet, so long as he was safe from Voldemort it was ok. He was getting pissed again.
"While you can still call home the place where your mother's blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, while you are there he cannot hurt you. Your aunt knows this. I explained what I had done in the letter I left, with you, on her doorstep. She knows that allowing you houseroom may well have kept you alive for the past fifteen years."
"Wait," said Harry. "Wait a moment."
He sat up straighter in his chair, staring at Dumbledore.
"You sent that Howler. You told her to remember – it was your voice –"
"I thought," said Dumbledore, inclining his head slightly, "that she might need reminding of the pact she had sealed by taking you. I suspected the Dementor attack might have awoken her to the dangers of having you as a surrogate son."
"It did," said Harry quietly. "Well – my uncle more than her. He wanted to chuck me out, but after the Howler came she – she said I had to stay. The pact..."
"The pact was very simple. She was to let you live until your seventeenth birthday in her house together with her family, thereby protecting you from Voldemort. I knew from this pact that no matter how bad it got, you would be alive because the pact, even if she didn't know it, prevented her and her family from killing you or even letting you die, whether directly or indirectly."
He stared at the floor for a moment, then said, "But what's this got to do with –"
He could not say Sirius's name.
"Five years ago, then," continued Dumbledore, as though he had not paused in his story, "you arrived at Hogwarts, neither as happy nor as well-nourished as I would have liked, perhaps, yet alive and healthy. You were not a pampered little prince, but as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances. Thus far, my plan was working well, for it was my plan for you not to grow up with a big head."
Harry nodded, he had succeeded in that at least.
"And then…well, you will remember the events of your first year at Hogwarts quite as clearly as I do. You rose magnificently to the challenge that faced you and sooner – much sooner – than I had anticipated, you found yourself face to face with Voldemort. You survived again. You did more. You delayed his return to full power and strength. You fought a man's fight. I was…prouder of you than I can say.
"Yet there was a flaw in this wonderful plan of mine," said Dumbledore. "An obvious flaw that I knew, even then, might be the undoing of it all. And yet, knowing how important it was that my plan should succeed, I told myself that I would not permit this flaw to ruin it. I alone could prevent this, so I alone must be strong. And here was my first test, as you lay in the hospital wing, weak from your struggle with Voldemort."
"I don't understand what you're saying," said Harry.
"Don't you remember asking me, as you lay in the hospital wing, why Voldemort had tried to kill you when you were a baby?"
Harry nodded.
"Ought I to have told you then?"
Harry stared into the blue eyes and said nothing, but his heart was racing again.
"You do not see the flaw in the plan yet? No…perhaps not. Well, as you know, I decided not to answer you. Eleven, I told myself, was much too young to know. I had never intended to tell you when you were eleven. The knowledge would be too much at such a young age.
"I should have recognized the danger signs then. I should have asked myself why I did not feel more disturbed that you had already asked me the question to which I knew, one day, I must give a terrible
answer. I should have recognized that I was too happy to think that I did not have to do it on that particular day…you were too young, much too young.
"And so we entered your second year at Hogwarts. And once again you met challenges even grown wizards have never faced; once again you acquitted yourself beyond my wildest dreams. You did not ask me again, however, why Voldemort had left that mark on you. We discussed your scar, oh yes…we came very, very close to the subject. Why did I not tell you everything?
"Well, it seemed to me that twelve was, after all, hardly better than eleven to receive such information. I allowed you to leave my presence, bloodstained, exhausted but exhilarated, and if I felt a twinge of unease that I ought, perhaps, to have told you then, it was swiftly silenced. You were still so young, you see, and I could not find it in myself to spoil that night of triumph…
"Do you see, Harry? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."
"I don't –"
"I cared about you too much," said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act.
Is there a Defense? I defy anyone who has watched you as I have – and I have watched you more closely than you can have imagined – not to want to save you more pain than you had already suffered. What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands.
We entered your third year. I watched from afar as you struggled to repel Dementors, as you found Sirius, learned what he was and rescued him. Was I to tell you then, at the moment when you had triumphantly snatched your godfather from the jaws of the Ministry? But now, at the age of thirteen, my excuses were running out. Young you might be, but you had proved you were exceptional. My conscience was uneasy, Harry. I knew the time must come soon…
But you came out of the maze last year, having watched Cedric Diggory die, having escaped death so narrowly yourself…and I did not tell you, though I knew, now Voldemort had returned, I must do it soon. And now, tonight, I know you have long been ready for the knowledge I have kept from you for so long, because you have proved that I should have placed the burden upon you before this. My only Defense is this; I have watched you struggling under more burdens than any student who as ever passed through this school and I could not bring myself to add another – the greatest one of all."
Harry waited, but Dumbledore did not speak.
"I still don't understand."
"Voldemort tried to kill you when you were a child because of a prophecy made shortly before your birth. He knew the prophecy had been made, though he did not know its full contents. He set out to kill you when you were still a baby, believing he was fulfilling the terms of the prophecy.
He discovered, to his cost, that he was mistaken, when the curse intended to kill you backfired. And so, since his return to his body, and particularly since your extraordinary escape from him last year, he has been determined to hear that prophecy in its entirety. This is the weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since his return; the knowledge of how to destroy you."
The sun had risen fully now: Dumbledore's office was bathed in it. The glass case in which the sword of Godric Gryffindor resided gleamed white and opaque, the fragments of the instruments Harry had thrown to the floor glistened like raindrops, and behind him, the baby Fawkes made soft chirruping noises in his nest of ashes.
"The prophecy's smashed," Harry said blankly. "I was pulling Neville up those benches in the – the room where the archway was, and I ripped his robes and it fell…"
"The thing that smashed was merely the record of the prophecy kept by the Department of Mysteries. But the prophecy was made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it perfectly"
"Who heard it?" asked Harry, though he thought he knew the answer already
"I did," said Dumbledore. "On a cold, wet night sixteen years ago, in a room above the bar at the Hog's Head inn. I had gone there to see an applicant for the post of Divination teacher, though it was against my inclination to allow the subject of Divination to continue at all. The applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very gifted Seer and I thought it common politeness to meet her. I was disappointed. It seemed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself. I told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for the post. I turned to leave."
Dumbledore got to his feet and walked past Harry to the black cabinet that stood beside Fawkes's perch. He bent down, slid back a catch and took from inside it the shallow stone basin, carved with runes around the edges, in which Harry had seen his father tormenting Snape. Dumbledore walked back to the desk, placed the Pensieve upon it, and raised his wand to his own temple. From it, he withdrew silvery, gossamer-fine strands of thought clinging to the wand and deposited them into the basin. He sat back down behind his desk and watched his thoughts swirl and drift inside the Pensieve for a moment. Then, with a sigh, he raised his wand and prodded the silvery substance with its tip.
A figure rose out of it, draped in shawls, her eyes magnified to enormous size behind her glasses, and she revolved slowly; her feet in the basin. But when Sibyll Trelawney spoke, it was not in her usual ethereal, mystic voice, but in the harsh, hoarse tones Harry had heard her use once before:
"The one with the power to vanquish the – Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while
the other survives…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…"
The slowly revolving Professor Trelawney sank back into the silver mass below and vanished. The silence within the office was absolute. Neither Dumbledore nor Harry nor any of the portraits made a sound. Even Fawkes had fallen silent.
Harry was quiet for a moment before throwing his head back and laughing. Dumbledore was shocked.
"This is not a laughing matter Harry, I hope you realise that."
"You're mad." Harry's response was not one he expected, but then what had he expected. "You're abso-bloody-lutely senile if you think that I am the only one who can kill Voldemort."
"Harry-
"First of all," Harry cut him off loudly, "while the prophecy clearly states that I have some sort of power that can defeat the Dark Lord, no where does it say that I am the only one. Not only that, Dumbledore, but we both know that prophecies are extremely vauge and that if I went to Voldemort right now and offered a truce, he would probably accept thus making the prophecy completly null and void as it is.
Second of all," Harry continued getting louder and louder, "what the hell is up with you! For the first ten years of my life, you care about me being kept alive and could give a damn about my happiness! Suddenly I show up to Hogwarts and you start caring about how I feel rather than how alive I am. Next thing I know I'm back at the Dursleys, and oops we're back to making sure I'm alive despite how miserable I am.
Comes along second year, and once more you show that my happiness is your main concern until summer shows up where I'm shipped back to the Dursleys, and the pattern repeats itself! What the bloody fuck is up with that?!"
He stopped suddenly as he noticed Dumbledore had stopped listening and was now banging his head into his desk hard again, and again, and again.
After a minute of thumps coming from the Headmaster Harry grew worried that maybe he had gone completely around the bend now.
"Err, Professor?"
Dumbledore stopped, shocked at the now respectful voice being used for him, slowly he lifted his head and looked at the boy he though of as his grandson, Harry could distincly see the smattering of bruises across Dumbledore's head and frowned slightly as he noticed the tightness around his eyes signifying the amount of pain he was in. He may no longer trust the old man but he still loved him...for now at least.
"I apologize, Mr. Potter." Dumbledore said, "It seems you are correct, this summer you will not have to return to the Dursleys if you don't want to."
Harry mumbled something under his breath that the Professor didn't catch and he raised an eyebrow, "What was that Mr. Potter?"
"You can call me Harry you know." He said again this time louder. Dumbledore sighed, his eyes filled with pain that was clearly not physical, "I think I have lost that place, don't you?"
Suddenly, Harry felt weary, he felt so tired. His emotions drained as he realized that as hard as it had been on him, it probably was the same if not more on Dumbledore. Tears prickling at his eyes, Harry furiously shook his head no, and before he could think about what he was going to do, he was around the desk and clinging to Dumbledore for dear life. Hugging him as if he would slip away.
After a second of shock, Dumbledore slowly brought his arms around and returned the hug, his heart soaring and his eyes re-gaining a small twinkle that they had lost. He tightened the hug at Harry's next words.
"I love you, Professor."
"I love you too Harry, and call me Albus in private please."
Harry repeated the statement, somehow doing the impossible and tightening the hug, "I love you, Albus."
The portraits, who had turned away to give them this private moment, as well as shedding some tears, missed the fire flaming green, as did the two behind the desk wrapped up in each others hug. So when a familiar voice spoke, it scared the hell out of two of them.
"Well," drawled the voice, "isn't this lovely?"
Two heads cracked around while screaming the same thing, "SIRIUS!"
A/N: HA HA! Cliffie! Okay, I know I said I was going to do some explaining but things took a /bit/ too long so next part will be in the next chapter! I know I said this will be both Good and Evil Dumbles, and it will be, just not necessarily in this Dimension. Harry does become a Dimension traveller! Happy Reading, and NOTIFY ME OF ANY MISTAKES!