Chapter 25
The Lost Prophecy
Harry and Emma's feet hit solid ground; Harry's knees buckled a little and the golden wizard's head fell with a resounding clunk to the floor. They looked around and saw that they 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. Emma looked through the window. There was a 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, were unbearable to her. If her surroundings could have reflected the feelings inside her, the pictures would have been screaming in pain. She walked towards a door that was facing her.
"Where are you going?" Harry asked quietly and Emma knew that he was feeling as much pain as she was right now.
"I'm going to my room" she replied just as quietly. "I need to think."
Harry seemed to understand and said "You don't mind if I join you?"
"Sure" Emma smiled sadly and Harry followed her through the wooden door. Harry had never been in Emma's room before and was immediately amazed by what he saw.
The top half of the walls was red, orange and yellow and was painted like a sunset. The bottom of it was a light blue and there were dolphins jumping out of the waves. Both the dolphins and waves were moving. Her ceiling was alive with starts winking at him and was moving like they would do in real life. Also on her walls were lots and lots of pictures. Most people were form Hogwarts, who were Harry's friends and he realised with a jolt that their mum, dad, Lupin and Sirius were there, too, smiling and waving at them.
"You have pictures of everyone" Harry gasped in amazement. "Where did you get all these?"
"I have my ways" Emma shrugged."Those people are from our family..." she pointed at the wall in front of Harry "...and those are all our friends..." she pointed at the wall behind him.
The other walls had paintings and sketches on. The sketches were mainly of their family and friends and the paintings were doodles, something Emma had obviously done in her spare time.
"Who decorated?" asked Harry, still gazing around him.
"I did" Emma replied matter of factly, moving over to sit on her king-size-bed that was tucked up in the corner next to a bed-side-table.
"Seriously?" Harry gaped at her and Emma smiled sadly again.
"Always the tone of surprise" she quoted Hermione. She got up and added "Dumbledore's back."
Both she and Harry walked back into Dumbledore's office to see Dumbledore standing next to the fireplace. The wizards and witches on the surrounding walls were now awake and many of them were giving cried of welcome.
"Thanks you" said Dumbledore softly.
He did not look at harry and Emma at first, but walked over to the perch beside the door and withdrew, from an inside pocket of his robes the tiny, featherless Fawkes, whom he places gently on the tray of soft ashes beneath the golden post where the fully-grown Fawkes usually stood.
"Well" said Dumbledore, finally turning away form 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."
Emma let out a sigh of relief. Harry tried to say "Good" but no sound came out. It seemed to him that Dumbledore was reminding him of the amount of damage they had caused, and although Dumbledore was for once looking at them 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 nodded at the carpet, which was growing light 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, Harry and Emma had been, and why there had been injuries. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Emma sitting down on a seat, looking very grave. He wondered why she was looking like that. There can't be bad news, can there?
"I know how you two are feeling" said Dumbledore very quietly.
"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. Emma looked slightly shocked at his actions and Harry had to admit that he was just as surprised and amazed as she was.
"You see, Dumbledore?" said Phineas Nigellus slyly. "Never try to understand the students. They hate it. They would much rather be tragically misunderstood, wallow in self-pity, and stew in their own..."
"That's enough, Phineas" Emma murmured.
"There is no shame in what you are feeling, Harry" said Dumbledore's voice as Harry turned his back on him. "On the contrary... the fact that you feel pain is like this is your greatest strength."
"My greatest strength is it?" said Harry, his voice shaking as he stared out at the Quidditch stadium in front of him, 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 back round, shaking with anger.
"O don't want to talk about how I feel, all right?"
"Harry, suffering like this probes you are still a man! This pain is a part of being human..."
"THEN- I- DON'T- WANT- TO- BE- HUMAN!" Harry roared, and he seized the delicate silver instrument from the spindle-legged 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 Dipper said "Really!"
But Emma shushed them and said 2If you knew what he had been through- what we have been through- then you would understand. But you don't know, so stop it."
Harry guessed he should have been grateful, but he was so full of anger and hate that he had no room for gratitude.
"SHUT UP! JUST SHUP UP! YOU UNDERSTAND NO MORE THAN HE DOES!" he shouted at her. She drew back as if she had been slapped and tears sprang into her eyes, but she blinked them back.
"You think I don't know how this feels" she whispered. "But your wrong. You can't remember the night mum and dad died. I can. And I can't forget it either. I never can and never will' because I'm a vampire. Do you know how that feels like?"
"I DON'T CARE!" Harry yelled, 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 a table on which the silver instrument had stood and three that, too.
"You do care" said Emma, now deadly calm. Harry had learnt that this was never a good thing. But Dumbledore had not flinched or made a single move to stop Harry demolishing his office. His expression was calm. Emma continued. "You care so much you feel as though you will bleed to death with the pain of it. I feel it too and have before."
"I- DON'T" Harry screamed so loudly that he his throat might tear, and for a second he wanted to rush at Dumbledore and Emma and break them too; shatter those calm faces, both young and old, shake them, hurt them, make them feel some tiny part of the horror inside him.
"Oh, yes you do" said Dumbledore, still more calmly. "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- BOTH OF 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; he wanted somewhere he could not see the clear blue and soft caramel eyes staring at him, those hatefully calm faces. 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 round to see Emma standing there with her arm out stretched, fingers spread out, and pointing at the door, muttering an incantation.
"Let me out" he said. He was shaking from head to foot.
"No" said Emma simply, lowering her arm.
For a few seconds they stared at each other.
"Let me out" Harry said again.
"No" Emma repeated.
"If you don't- if you keep me 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, watching Harry. Emma sat on her knees and bowed her head, as if she was praying. A single tear slipped down her cheek that no one but her could see.
"Let me go" said Harry yet again, in a voice that was cold and almost as calm as Dumbledore's.
"No, she won't. Not until I have had my say" said Dumbledore. Emma tensed, as if waiting for an explosion.
"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 hear anything you've got to say!"
"You will" said Dumbledore steadily, and Emma looked up looking confused. "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-?" Emma began but was cut off by Dumbledore.
"It is my fault Sirius died" sad Dumbledore clearly. Emma opened her mouth to protest but Dumbledore left no room in while she could argue. "Or should I say, almost entirely my fault- I will not be as arrogant as to claim responsibility for the whole. Sirius was 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 two 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 know a long time ago that Voldemort might try and lure you to the Department of Mysteries, and you, Emma, of course, should have known that there were was of tricking your visions, and you two would never have been tricked into going there tonight. And Sirius would not have had to come after you. That blame lied with me, and with me alone."
Harry was still standing with his hand on the doorknob but was unaware of it. Both he and Emma were gazing at Dumbledore, hardly breathing, listening yet barely understanding what they were hearing.
"Please sit down" said Dumbledore. It was not an order, it was a request.
Harry hesitated, then followed Emma slowly across the room now littered with silver cogs and fragments of wood, and took one of the seats facing Dumbledore's desk. Emma took the seat next to him, still looking slightly confused. She was probably confused about how her visions had been tricked.
"Am I to understand" said Phineas Nigellus slowly from Harry's left "that my great- great- grandson- the last of the Black's- is dead?"
"Yes, Phineas" said Emma. "I'm so sorry."
"I don't believe it" said Phineas brusquely.
Phineas marched out of his portrait and they both 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.
"So do I" said Emma, finally looking into Harry's eyes. "I haven't been exactly truthful myself."
"What explanation?" Harry asked quietly.
"An explanation of an old man's mistakes" Dumbledore explained. "For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failing 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 colourless 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 and the one on Emma's shoulder, what it might mean. I guessed that it might be the sign of a connection forged between you two and Voldemort."
"You've told me this before, Professor" said Harry bluntly. He did not care about being rude. He did not care about anything very much anymore.
"Yes" said Dumbledore apologetically. "Yes, but you see- it is necessary to start with your scars. For it became apparent, shortly after you rejoined the magical world, that I was correct, and that your scar was giving you two warnings when Voldemort was close to either one of you, or else feeling powerful emotion."
"I know" said Harry wearily.
"And this ability of yours, both of yours, to detect Voldemort's presence, even when he is disguised, and to know what he is feeling when his emotions are roused- has become more and more pronounced since Voldemort returned to his own body and his full powers."
Harry did not bother to nod. He knew all of this already. It was also clear that Emma had to because she had a dazed look as she stared out into the field behind Dumbledore.
"More recently" said Dumbledore "I became concerned that Voldemort might realise that this connection between you tow and him exists. Sure enough, there came a time when you entered so far into his mind and thoughts that he sensed your presence. I am speaking, of course, of the night when you both witnessed the attack on Mr Weasley."
"Yeah, Snape told me" Harry muttered.
"But I thought that was a vision" Emma said suddenly. "It felt like a vision and it felt so real."
"Professor Snape, Harry" Dumbledore corrected Harry quietly. "And, yes, it was sort of a vision. But you're not supposed to have visions unless you know that person personally. You are neither a friend nor family of Voldemort's." He then turned to Harry and said "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 two for months?"
Harry looked up. He could see now that Dumbledore looked sad and tired.
"Yeah" Harry mumbled. "Yeah, we wondered."
"You see" Dumbledore continued. "I believed it could not be long before Voldemort attempted to force his way into your minds, to manipulate and misdirect your thoughts and visions, and I was not eager to give him more incentives to do so. I was sure that if he realised that our relationships was- or had ever been- closer than that of headmaster and pupils, he would seize his chance to use you both as a means to spy on me. I feared the uses to which he would put you both, the possibility that he might try and possess you one at a time. Harry, I believe I was right to think that Voldemort would have made use of Emma or you in such a way. On these rare occasions when we had close contact, I thought I saw a shadow of him stir behind both of your eyes..."
Emma remembered the feeling that a dormant snake had risen in her, and immediately jumped away from that memory. That was a box she was going to keep firmly closed.
"Voldemort's aim in possessing you, as he demonstrated tonight, would not have been my destruction. It would have been yours, Emma."
"I know" Emma whispered. "I know about the connection between me and Harry."
"What connection?" Harry asked, rounding on Emma.
"There's this connection between you and me" Emma explained. "Whenever you feel pain, I feel pain, whenever you are hurt, I know, if you die, I could die with you."
"He hoped, when he possessed you briefly a short while ago" Dumbledore continued "that I would sacrifice you in the hope of killing him. So you see, I have been trying, in distancing myself from you both, to protect you and Emma. 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 lose of Sirius; none of it mattered...
"Sirius told me you felt Voldemort awake inside you, Harry, the very night that you two had the vision of Arthur Weasley's attack, and that he was sure Emma had felt it to, though she was very good at hiding it. I knew at once that my worst fears were correct: Voldemort had realised he could use you both. In an attempt to arm you against Voldemort's assaults on your minds, I arranged Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape."
He paused. Emma 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. She could tell that the portraits all around them were awake and listening to Dumbledore's explanation. Phineas Nigellus had still not returned. It was funny. She almost wanted him to come back and say that Sirius was alive and well and that they must have been mistaken...
"Professor Snape discovered" Dumbledore resumed "that you had both been dreaming or having visions about the door to the Department of Mysteries for months. Voldemort, of course, had been obsessed with the possibility of hearing the prophecy over since he regained his body, and as he dwelled on the door, so did you, Harry, though you did not know what it meant.
"And then you saw Rookwood, 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, or risk revealing himself at last- or else one of 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" muttered Harry. "I didn't practise, I didn't bother. I could've stopped myself having those dreams, I lied to Emma by saying I was practising, Hermione kept telling me to do it, if I had he'd never have been able to show em where to go, and- Sirius wouldn't- Sirius wouldn't..."
"I tried to check he'd taken Sirius" said Emma, saving Harry from saying the one word he didn't want to say. "I went to Umbridge's office. I spoke to Kreacher in the fire in Umbridge's office and he said Sirius wasn't there, he said he'd gone! Kreacher adores me, so much that he's made George jealous of him, and I can't find any reason for him to lie to me!"
"You are not his mistress" said Dumbledore calmly. "He could lie to you without even needing to punish himself. He only lied to you because he hates Sirius. Kreacher intended you two to go to the Ministry of Magic."
"He- he sent us there on purpose?" Emma asked in disbelief.
"Oh yes. Kreacher, I am afraid, has been serving more than one master for months."
"How?" said Emma blankly. "He hasn't been out of Grimmauld Place for years."
"Kreacher seized his opportunity shortly before Christmas" explained Dumbledore "when Sirius, apparently, shouted at him to 'get out'. He took Sirius at his word, and interpreted his as an order to leave the house, He went to the only Black family member for whom he had any respect left... Black's cousin Narcissa, sister of Bellatrix and wife of Lucius Malfoy."
"How do you know all this?" Emma said. She felt sick. She remembered worrying about Kreacher's odd absence over Christmas and remembered talking to George about it, remembered Kreacher turning up again in the attic...
"Kreacher told me last night" said Dumbledore. "You see, when you, Emma, gave Professor Snape that cryptic warning, he realised that both of you had seen Sirius trapped in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries. He, like you, attempted to contact Sirius at once. I should explain that members of the Order of the Phoenix have more reliable methods of communicating than the fire in Dolores Umbridge's office." Emma rolled her eyes. "Professor Snape found that Sirius was alive and safe in Grimmauld Place.
"When, however, you did not return after you gave Dolores Umbridge the slip, 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 had 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 want 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 when I arrived in Grimmauld Place, it was the elf who told me- laughing fit to burst- where Sirius had gone."
"He was laughing?" said Harry and Emma together in the same hollow voice.
"Oh yes" said Dumbledore. "You see, Kreacher was not able to betray us totally. He is not Secret Keeper for the Order; he could not five the Malfoys our where abouts, 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 sort that is very valuable to Voldemort, yet must have seemed much too minor for Sirius to think of banning from repeating it."
"Like what?" said Harry.
"Like the fact that the person Sirius cared most about in the world was you two" said Dumbledore quietly.
"Sirius cares about me as much as he cares about Harry?" Emma asked, shocked.
"Yes" Dumbledore nodded. "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 either of 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 his lips had gone dumb.
"And Kreacher told you all this... and laughed?" he croaked. Angry tears sprang into Emma's eyes.
"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, before I left for the Department of Mysteries."
"And" whispered Harry, his hands curled in cold fists on his knees "and Hermione and Emma kept telling us to be nice to him..."
"They were quite right, Harry" said Dumbledore. Emma hated the fact that they were talking about her as if she wasn't there. "I warned Sirius when we adopted 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 Sirius 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 his again: he would not let Dumbledore criticise Sirius. "Kreacher's a lying- foul- he deserved..."
"Kreacher is what he has been made by wizards and witches, 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 biding, because Sirius was the last of the family to which he was enslaved, but he felt no true loyalty to him like he does to you, Emma, And whatever Kreacher's faults, it must be admitted that Sirius did nothing to make Kreacher's life a lot easier..."
"DON'T TALKE ABOUT SIRIUS LIKE THAT!" Harry yelled.
He was on his feet again, 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 and Emma gasped. "He's as bad as Sirius. And Emma told me that when she told him Voldemort had Sirius he just sneered at her as usual..."
"Harry, you know Professor Snape had no choice but to pretend not to take me seriously in front of Dolores Umbridge" said Emma as calmly as she could.
"Emma's right, Harry" said Dumbledore. "And as I have explained, he informed the Order as soon as possible about what she 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 Veritaserm when she was attempting to force you two to tell her Sirius's where-abouts."
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 and Emma 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 us Occlumency lessons!" Harry snarled. "He threw us out of his office!"
"I am aware if it" said Dumbledore heavily. "I have already said that it was a mistake for me not to teach you both myself, though I was sure, at the time, that nothing could have been more dangerous than to open your minds even further to Voldemort while in my presence..."
"Snape made it worse; my scar always hurt worse 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 scandalised faces and disapproving muttering of the portraits on the walls which Emma shushed, once again, for his sake. "It's okay for Snape to hate our dad, but it's not okay for Sirius to hate Kreacher?"
"Sirius did not hate Kreacher" said Emma softly. "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 Emma and walking away. The sun was bright inside the room now and the eyes of all the portraits followed him as he walked, without realising 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 Emma for fifteen years! You did it to me all last summer..."
Dumbledore closed his eyes and buried his face in his long-fingered hands.
"I don't care" Emma shouted, standing up "because I knew. I was the one who begged Dumbledore to keep me in his office most of the time. I knew that I was too dangerous to be around humans for a long period of time. I'm surprised that I haven't killed anyone yet!"
Dumbledore surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses.
"It is time" he said "for me and Emma 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 we have finished. I will not stop you, and neither will Emma."
Harry glared at them for a moment, then flung himself back into the chair next to Emma 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. 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 honoured 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 up I realised. 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 he gone forever? 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 both of you.
I knew that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is perhaps more extensive than any wizards alive. I knew that even my most complex and powerful protective spells and charms were unlikely to be invincible it e 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 both. She gave you two 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" Emma 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 Professor Dumbledore placed upon us. Our mother's sacrifice made the bong of blood the strongest shield he could give us."
"I still don't..."
"While you can still call home the place where your mother's blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort" Dumbledore said. "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, whilst you are there he cannot hurt either of you. Your Aunt knows this, though she does not know of Emma. 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 both 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..."
"Howler?" Dumbledore asked, looking, and sounding, confused. "What Howler?"
"Ah" Emma murmured. "That was me. I thought 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. I copied Dumbledore's voice and sent it on the fastest owl I could find.
"It did" said Harry quietly. "Well- my uncle more than her. He wanted to chuck me out, but after the Howler had come she- she said I had to stay."
He stared at the floor for a moment, and then said "But what has 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. Of course, you were little curios about Emma because no one knew about her and you thought you knew her, you just didn't remember her. That was okay; it was only natural.
"And then... well, you will remember the events of your first year at Hogwarts quite as clearly as I and Emma 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, with a little help of course. 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."
"And I was scared to death" Emma admitted, smiling sadly. "Just seeing your body like that on those stone steps was terrifying. You almost gave me a heart attack that wasn't possible!"
"Yet there was a flaw in this wonderful plan of mine" Dumbledore continued. "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 Professor Dumbledore, as you lay in the hospital wing, why Voldemort had tried to kill you when you were a body?" Emma said, looking up at Harry.
Harry nodded.
"Ought I to have told you then?" Dumbledore said.
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. Elven, I told myself, was 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."
"And I gave him hell afterwards" Emma nodded, pursing her lips. "I didn't see why he couldn't tell you seen as he had told me all this when I was five years old. So Professor Dumbledore sat me down, just like we are now, and explained that, because I was a vampire, the knowledge wasn't too much for me."
"And so we entered your second year at Hogwarts" Dumbledore said. "And once again you met challenges even grown wizards and witches 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."
"This time" Emma added "I didn't give him hell. Instead I agreed with him. After what I had seen, it seemed a little too young to me. I told Dumbledore that he was going to have to tell you in your third year. To me, that seemed the right time."
"Do you see, Harry? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I and Emma had foreseen, that I told myself I could avoid, that must avoid."
"I don't..."
"I cared about you too much" said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness than you 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 us fools who love act.
"We entered your third year. I watched from a far as you struggled to repel the Dementors, as you found Sirius, learned what he was to you 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 excused were running out."
"I couldn't understand why he didn't tell you. And I was really angry" Emma said rather matter of factly. "I shouted myself horse for six hours straight."
"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."
"That night Dumbledore had to lock me up in my bedroom so I couldn't go and tell you myself" Emma cut in. "I'm just glad I have a whole library of books in there to keep me entertained while I calmed myself down."
"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 defence is this: I have watched you struggle under more burdens than any student who has ever passed through this school and I could not bring myself to be the one who added another- the greatest one of all."
Harry waited, but neither Dumbledore nor Emma spoke.
"I still don't understand."
"Voldemort tried to kill us when were children because of a prophecy made shortly before we were born" Emma explained, turning in her chair so she was facing Harry. "He knew the prophecy had been made, though he did not know its full contents. He set out to kill us when were still babies, believing he was fulfilling the terms of the prophecy. He discovered, to his cost, that he was mistaken, when the curses that were intended to kill us backfired. And so, since his return to his body, and particularly since our different escapes from him over the past few years, he has been determined to hear that prophecy in its full form. This is a weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since his return: the knowledge of how to destroy us."
The sun had risen fully now: Dumbledore's office was bathed in it. The glass 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 Emma and Harry, the baby Fawkes made soft chirruping noises in the nest of ashes.
"The prophecy is smashed" said Harry blankly.
"The thing that smashed" said Dumbledore "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 though he knew the answer already.
"I did" said Dumbledore.
Emma got up and walked towards a black cabernet behind Fawkes. She came back holding the Pensieve. She places it on to the desk and sat back down in her seat. Dumbledore raised his wand to his own temple and from which he drew a memory. He pulled it with his want all the way into the Pensieve.
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 Sybill Trelawney spoke, it was not in her usual mystical voice, but in the harsh, hoarse tones Harry and Emma had heard her use before:
Two children with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches...
Both born to those who have thrice defied him,
Both born as the seventh month dies...
And the Dark Lord will mark them as his equal,
But they 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...
One of the two will protect the other like an angel from above...
The slowly revolving Professor Trelawney sank back into the silver mass below and vanished.
The silence within the office was absolute. Neither Dumbledore or Harry or Emma or any of the portraits made a sound. Even Fawkes had fallen silent.
"Professor Dumbledore?" Harry said very quietly, for Dumbledore, still staring at the Pensieve, seemed completely lost in thought. "It... did that mean... what did that mean?"
"It meant" said Dumbledore "that the two people who have the only chance of conquering Lord Voldemort for good were both born at the end of July, nearly sixteen years ago. This boy and girl would e born to parents who had already defied Voldemort three times. One of them would protect the other."
Harry felt as though something was closing in on him. His breathing seemed to have become difficult again.
"It means me and Emma?"
Dumbledore surveyed him for a moment over the top of his half-moon spectacles.
"The odd thing is" he said softly "is that it may not have meant you, Harry, at all. It defiantly meant Emma, but Sybill's prophecy could have applied to two wizard boys, both born at the end of July that year, both of whom had parents in the Order of Phoenix, both sets of parents having escaped Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other was Neville Longbottom."
"But then... but then, why was it mine and Emma's name on the prophecy and not Neville and Emma's?"
"The official records were re-labelled after Voldemort's attack on you two as children" said Dumbledore. "It seemed plain to the keeper of the Hall of Prophecy that Voldemort could only have tried to kill you two because he knew that you were the people Sybill was referring."
"Then it might not be me?" said Harry. Emma really wished it wasn't him. But, then again, she wouldn't want it to be Neville either. She wouldn't wish this burden on anyone.
"I am afraid" said Dumbledore slowly, looking as though every word cost him a great effort and was causing him pain "that there is now no doubt that it is you."
"But you said- Neville was born on the end of July, too- and..."
"You are forgetting the next part of the prophecy" Emma said, cutting him of. "You forgot the final indentifying feature of the boy who could vanquish Voldemort... Voldemort himself would mark them as his equal. And so he did. He chose you, not Neville. He gave you the scar, like me, that has proved both a blessing and curse."
"But I don't have any powers he hasn't got!" said Harry in a strangled voice. "I couldn't fight the way he did tonight. I can't possess people or- or kill them..."
"When Voldemort posed you, Harry" Emma said "Voldemort could not bear to reside in your body because it was so full of the forces he hates so much. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you. Now, I don't know what you were thinking about, but it saved your life, and many people around you."
Harry closed his eyes. If they had not gone to save Sirius, Sirius would not have died... More to stave off the moment when he would have to think about Sirius again, Harry asked, without caring much about the answer "The end of the prophecy... it was something about... neither can live..."
"...while the other survives" said Emma quietly.
"So" said Harry, dredging up the words from what felt like a deep well of despair inside him "so does that mean that... that one of us has got to kill the other one... in the end?"
"Yes" said Dumbledore.
There was a couple of moments of silence before Dumbledore broke it by saying to Harry "I feel I owe you another explanation. You may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you as a prefect. I must confess... that I rather thought... you had enough responsibility to be going on with."
Harry and Emma looked up at him- almost the perfect mirrors of their mother and father when they got told their news just over fifteen years ago- and saw a tear trickling down Dumbledore's face into his long silver beard.