CHAPTER FIFTY

Harry


Dinah and Severus walked into Dumbledore's office early the next morning to find that, despite the grim nature of the visit, the headmaster's eyes were twinkling more than ever. It might have had something to do with the boy who was sitting across from him, looking at Dinah and Severus with a curious expression through a pair of glasses, traces of a lightning-shaped scar nearly hidden beneath his brown bangs.

"Dinah, Severus, so glad that you are both here," Dumbledore said with a smile. "As you can see, I've taken the liberty of having another join our meeting today."

"Potter," Severus sneered, his entire body tensing.

"Professor Snape," the look Harry gave her companion, however, was oddly admiring, but he spoke in a casual, somewhat apprehensive tone.

"Harry, this is Professor Dinah Samson, our new Muggle Studies professor whom I have told you about," Dumbledore made the introduction.

"Nice to meet you," Harry stood to shake her hand, "Ginny has told me a bit about you, and Sirius and Lucy have mentioned you, of course."

"Very nice to meet you, too," Dinah nodded, a bit flustered at finally meeting the boy. But he did seem to be a truly nice, down to Earth individual as Lucy had said. Severus, on the other hand, was clearly uncomfortable and not pleased at all.

"I thought the nature of our meeting was such that Harry should be present," Dumbledore said, his attitude finally returning to proper solemnity. "He knows about Voldemort and is a successful Auror."

"Yes... I think that's probably a good idea," Dinah agreed, sitting down in the middle seat. Severus shot her a grateful look before sitting in the third chair, scooting it so that it was rather far away from Harry but, to his credit, turning it so that he could face everyone in the group. Dinah impulsively moved her chair closer to Severus's and turned it as well, eliciting another curious look from the Potter boy.

"Dinah, I have not done this myself because I wanted you to be present," Dumbledore said, "but I am afraid I cannot ask your permission. I must insist that you tell Harry the words of your prophecy."

"Um... okay," she said softly, not wanting to say the words again so soon after she had told them to Severus the first time, but not having much choice. "'When the Dark Lord's destruction is incomplete, The truth long invisible to all but one child; Another will come: One with power discovered late in life; Years will bring difficulty and she will resist her destiny; But all that she avoids she will eventually be forced to face. She will relive the past, facing darkness yet again; And, meeting the last incarnation of the Dark Lord shall return that darkness to light; She will be the first to bring peace.'"

Harry sighed after she had finished. "I see. So then he's not gone," he looked at Dumbledore; "But how is that possible, Professor?"

"Do not be too upset, Harry," Dumbledore said. "I was not sure if this was the case and it does nothing to belittle all that you have done to save our world. I did not tell you of Dinah's prophecy because I myself was unsure how or if it would play out. But recent events suggest that it is starting."

"But how can Voldemort's destruction be incomplete?" Harry demanded, not looking very reassured by he headmaster's words. "I took care of every Horcrux."

"Horcrux?" Dinah asked. "That's a part of his soul, correct?"

"A form of dark magic," Severus said in a low voice. "If a certain incantation is performed when committing a cold-blooded murder, the user can split his soul and hide a piece in an object. If the main body is killed the soul still survives until the Horcrux is also destroyed. The Dark Lord made seven."

"Yes, I recall it from the pensieve..." A sudden thought occurred to her. "Headmaster, do you think Tommy could be a Horcrux?"

"That is impossible," Dumbledore shook his head; "If so then we would have seen something different at King's Cross and Harry would have been incapable of defeating Lord Voldemort."

"King's Cross?"

Harry sighed. "When I thought I was... dead, and I suppose the headmaster thought the same, our souls or minds or... whichever, connected somehow. We were in some form of King's Cross Station and we talked. We saw what would become of Voldemort if he didn't feel remorse. It was... frightening."

"Remorse?"

"The only thing that can return all Horcruxes back to one soul," Dumbledore said, his tone solemn. "The pain and agony of truly appreciating and regretting the things you have done is overwhelming enough to kill a person. I do not know if it has happened or not in history, nor do I know how often Horcruxes were ever actually created by wizards. I do know that Voldemort was incapable of showing remorse, so as far as we know he should currently be occupying the form we saw in King's Cross."

"What form?"

Harry shuddered. "It looked like a child. A child with flushed skin, a flayed baby, moaning and only half human, screaming and writhing in distress and completely incapable of being helped by anyone or anything..."

"It is unfortunate," Dumbledore added softly.

Dinah bit her lip, recalling the fear she had seen in Tommy's eyes, thinking about her young friend. "That's awful. I can't let that happen to Tommy."

"I do not know what the connection to him might be," Dumbledore said. "You need to tell us now, I think, everything you know about the mysterious Tommy. Severus only gave us the bare minimum of details in his letter."

"Of course." She briefly went over her experiences with Tommy, from when she'd first met him to her thoughts about him as some kind of 'ghost', to what happened on Saturday night.

"That story matches Tom Riddle's, without a doubt," Dumbledore said with a sigh. "Now what we must do is discover what the nature of this specific form of him is."

"And the voices? The darkness that has been surrounding Hogwarts? The 'bad things'?"

"Those as well," the headmaster sighed again. "Two immediate possibilities come to mind. Perhaps the form we saw was not what became of Voldemort. Perhaps after his death he reverted to this unusual ghost-like creature, but that is doubtful."

Dinah shook her head. "Tommy says he's been there since he was a first year. And Myrtle has seen him since she died."

"That may be only what he thinks. Myrtle may also be being deceived. Which leads me to the next possibility, although it is not one that I can explain. Perhaps the evil of Voldemort was so strong that even with Harry's destruction he did not completely disappear from our world. He may even have chosen to become a ghost, but as you've said Tommy is not quite ghost-like. Perhaps he is instead that powerful darkness you mention, and Tommy is something that darkness created to trick you into helping him somehow. That is what Severus believed and what he wrote in the letter."

Dinah sighed and looked at Severus, "That's all you wrote? You're making Tommy seem evil again?"

"It is the only reasonable possibility and the only one I'm willing to entertain. The Dark Lord is not good and not innocent. How can I make you see that? Even the headmaster has said that from the first time he met Tom Riddle he was a dark boy who didn't want friends."

"That was a lie," Dinah whispered. "He did want friends, he just hid it."

"No," Severus shook his head, looking at her with concern in his gaze. "Don't you see? That's what he wants you to believe. I'm not letting you get hurt or distracted from your prophecy by this elaborate deception. That's why I'm involved in this and probably why I was reborn. To keep you from going about this the wrong way and to help you finish this. I won't let your life become what mine was, bound to the Dark Lord without escape."

"Severus..." she couldn't help but be touched by his words and placed a hand on his arm, eliciting a gasp from Harry.

"Wait, wait, wait, wait just one moment here!" the boy exclaimed, as Dumbledore's eyes began to twinkle again, a momentary break from the solemnity of the meeting. "You're Professor Snape's girlfriend?"

Dinah flushed and Severus looked embarrassed, but he didn't remove his arm and instead slid his fingers into hers, probably figuring it didn't matter since Harry had come to the correct conclusion. "Well... sort of," she admitted.

"But you love my mother," Harry protested, and Dinah couldn't tell if he wanted Severus to love his mother or if it was just more of a generic statement explaining his disbelief at the fact that they were together.

"I love your mother," Severus growled, and then gestured to Dinah. "She and I are simply... involved."

Dinah wanted to point out that when the word 'involved' was used and didn't imply love it normally implied sex, but held her tongue.

"Well... okay, then," Harry still seemed awkward about it, but let it go.

"Dinah," Dumbledore said, "I think before we go any further you should take us down to this bathroom of yours where you have been seeing Tommy. Perhaps we will find something useful."

"Yes," she agreed, letting go of Severus's hand and standing from her chair. "That will probably helpful. " She was glad to be going down there with a group this time and not by herself. Actually Severus alone would probably have been enough, except that he was always being hostile towards Tommy, which she didn't like.

She led the group in an odd procession down towards the area of the school where her classroom and rooms were, but the student population in the area dwindled as she approached the hall leading to the boys' lavatory. "That's odd," she said, slowing down and peering into the hallway, which was darker than usual. "It looks different. And there are usually very few students in the area when I come here." She smiled a little. "That's how I managed not to look awkward going in the boys' lavatory, I guess."

Her three companions, however, did not look so amused. Harry and Severus looked confused and Dumbledore looked very serious and surprised.

"Dinah," the headmaster began, slowly, pointing one finger down the dark hallway; "Is this the hallway where your boys' lavatory is located?"

"Um... yes. Why?"

He lowered his hand, his expression solemn. "Show it to us."

"Of course," she hurried down the hall toward the room, but it got darker and darker as she continued, and she was unable to shake the feeling that something wasn't right. When she came to an abrupt halt a moment later she knew why.

Instead of the usual door in the wall she found a plethora of stones and wooden rubble piled up against the wall, beyond which she could barely make out the lines of a door that had once been in use and a faded sign with the word "boys" painted on it. Additional wooden boors criss-crossed what little doorframe she could still see, making it inaccessible. She felt her fingers reaching for the half-broken knob and twisted, pushing in. The door didn't budge. "But this is impossible! I could get in! There was a real lavatory here!"

"This lavatory was destroyed in Tom Riddle's first year here as a student," Dumbledore said.

Dinah drew in a breath, her heartbeat quickening, and stared at the headmaster. Severus took a few protective steps closer to her and Harry turned an incredulous look on Dumbledore.

Dumbledore nodded. "It was his first dangerous act while here at Hogwarts. He followed some boys in here one day. They were taunting him, as far as I know. He caused a tremendous explosion and the room collapsed. We were lucky that we managed to save the two boys. Their injuries were severe. I probably should have given Tom a stronger punishment, but he insisted it had been an accident. The toilet has been closed and inaccessible ever since."

"That's what Tommy said," Dinah said quietly; "He said he was in here and gave up once and for all on making friends, did something bad, and that's when he became a... whatever he is."

"You suggest that this part of Voldemort split off at that time? I have never heard of such magic. The only thing he could have done was make a Horcrux, and since the boys were injured but not killed, that is not a possibility. Your Tommy may think that's the last thing that happened to him, but odds are at best he is simply not remembering the rest."

"Perhaps," she agreed, but she didn't quite believe her words.

"And at worst and most likely he is trying to manipulate you," Severus had to add. Dinah opened her mouth to retort something, but found she couldn't think of anything to say.

"From that point on he became more manipulative than ever," Dumbledore continued. "It was then that he transformed from an antisocial boy who apparently didn't want friends to a charismatic, powerful boy who got his fellow students to worship him. He was an ideal student. Even I couldn't see how dark and evil he truly was he was after that. Any further acts he committed he disguised well. He researched the Chamber of Secrets and used the basilisk to commit his first real murder of Myrtle and make his first Horcrux years later. But unfortunately, at the time those actions were attributed to Hagrid and his pet Acromantula."

"But I just don't understand," Dinah whispered; "I've been in here. Every time I've talked to Tommy it's been here."

"There is an odd magic at work if you were able to enter here and see it as a normal lavatory," Dumbledore said slowly.

"You believe me, don't you?" she asked, watching as Dumbledore and Harry exchanged a furtive, uncertain glance.

"I believe that you believe you have been in there, through some form of magic we cannot yet explain," Dumbledore said.

"I have actually been in here!" she exclaimed. "I don't know if its form has changed or there is some strange magic at work or not, but when I come here alone it's a normal lavatory. When I tried to open the door now and it didn't budge, that's the same that it felt like on the days when the door seemed locked and I couldn't reach Tommy. Come to think of it, I've ... only come down here on my own when I heard the crying or when it was dark or stormy out. This place is re-forming itself to its old image for me, somehow. But when I come here with other people it looks like this."

"But can you find us Tommy?" Harry asked. "Because we Aurors can't do anything to help unless we can find the source of the dark magic. From what I see here, there is nothing going on."

"It never stays," she murmured, "I'll see him and then he'll disappear for weeks before I see him again. Every time I think I'm about to figure something out things go back to normal before I can obtain the answers that I'm looking for. That's still happening now."

"I understand your frustration, Dinah," Dumbledore said. "But there is currently nothing that we can do."

"Then we're back to square one? Keeping an eye out for more mysterious happenings and not being proactive in any way?" She couldn't hide the strain in her voice.

"I don't know," Harry said. "You've at least got some idea of what's going on, and now the Aurors are aware of the situation. We can all keep an eye out for things."

"Thank you, but that's not that reassuring. Unless..." an idea occurred to her, "I can ask Myrtle! After all, if she's seen Tommy then she must have been to this lavatory too, right? He says this is the only place where he can be."

"Harry?" Dumbledore turned a teasing gaze to the young Auror. "Would you like to interview Moaning Myrtle for us?"

"No, thank you," Harry's response was instantaneous. He almost looked embarrassed. "I don't think Ginny would like it much."

"Ah," Dinah smiled. "Myrtle's incessant flirting strikes again, does it?"

"Unfortunately," Harry adjusted his glasses and turned back to Dumbledore. "Is that all, then? Do you need to have an Auror stationed at Hogwarts, because that can be requested, as you know."

"No, I think that Dinah and Severus will be able to handle things for now," the headmaster smiled. "But I will inform you if you are needed."

"All right," he agreed, and the group started walking out of the hallway again, Dinah taking a couple of nervous glances backward until Severus grabbed her arm to stop her.

"Enough," he hissed. "It will do you no good. We've already seen what it is. It will only change back to the other form if that boy tries to summon you to him again."

Dinah stared into his eyes, feeling very good for the first time today. "You mean you believe-"

"Harry!" a surprised voice exclaimed, and Severus immediately dropped Dinah's arm as they all turned to see its source.

Hermione, Ginny, and Luna had been walking down the hall, either to or from breakfast, and all three looked surprised to see him there, Ginny quite happily so.

"Ginny," Harry smiled. "Hermione, Luna."

"What are you doing here?" Ginny asked.

"I asked him to come," Dumbledore said with a knowing smile at both members of the couple. "There were some events at Hogwarts which the four of us needed to discuss, and we had an early meeting. But I am happy to say we are finished now and I am going to return to my office for a late breakfast. Since you are here, Harry, I presume you shall be making the best of things?" he winked.

"Uh, I'll try to, Sir," Harry replied, flustered, and Dumbledore left them all to return to his office after requesting that Dinah report anything useful from Myrtle to him if she discovered it.

"So..." Ginny began. "I don't have class right away this morning. Take a walk?"

Harry walked up to her and took her arm, smiling. "A walk. And there's always the Room of Requirement."

She smiled back; "Sounds like a plan to me."

Hermione and Luna giggled before continuing on to breakfast, and Severus rolled his eyes before turning Dinah around and guiding them away from the young lovebirds.

"Where are we going?" she asked.

"As far away from Potter as possible," he responded. "Actually, back to your rooms. You have pets to feed and classes start in nearly a half hour. And I need to talk to you alone."

"Okay," they ended up back at her rooms and she let them both in, closing the door behind them so that they were out of view of the students wandering by.

"You're right. Something is trying to prevent you from discovering the truth, because you only receive bits and pieces of information at a time," Severus said. "I don't like this at all."

"But you actually believe me?" she asked softly. "About what's happening with the lavatory? You don't think it's all an elaborate illusion or my imagination?"

"I believe you."

"Severus..."

He reached up to lightly touch her cheek, his gaze softened. "Don't worry too much about what Potter and the headmaster think on that issue. If this is your prophecy then it will be put into motion. That's why you must be extremely careful, especially if there are any more dark and stormy days and you hear that boy again. If you do, tell me right away."

"I will," she felt her cheeks turn pink, closing her eyes and enjoying the feel of his fingers against her skin. "Thank you."

She felt warmth on her face and opened her eyes just in time to see him leaning toward her, as if in slow motion. She held her breath and said nothing, not wanting to ruin this or drive it away. His lips landed on hers and he kissed her for the second time. She made a soft noise and moved closer to him, slipping her arms around his waist, but not wanting to close her eyes, too enthralled she was in looking at his face as he kissed her. His own eyes were closed and he held it for a few moments, their lips lingering together. She wanted to let her lips part and add intimacy to the kiss but thought better of it, not wanting to scare him away. This was enough for now, she thought, as she let him finish.

Although it lingered a bit more, and was much longer than their first kiss, still it was over too soon. He drew gently away from her face, opening his eyes and meeting her gaze. "You have to eat and go to class. I need to set up my class."

"You should eat, too." Oh, yes, way to go, Dinah. What a stupid irrelevant comment to make after he just kissed you for the second time. Brilliant.

He chuckled, and with her arms still around him she felt the warm rumbling throughout his body. It made her want to crawl back into bed and cuddle in his arms, not eat and go to class. "I can survive without food for longer than you can," he replied.

"Er...yes," she still didn't want to let go of him.

"I really do need to go."

"I'm sorry!" she flushed and dropped her hands, taking a giant step back. Actually, she probably overdid it a bit, because he laughed at her again.

"Feed your cat before it attacks me," he gestured to Godric, who was creeping up to Severus with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. "I have assignments to collect today so there will be quite a bit of grading tonight, but perhaps we can research more on Tuesday. Or if you really want to you can attempt to beat me at wizard's chess again."

She chuckled, "'Attempt' is probably the right word. But that sounds lovely." She paused. "Thank you so much, Severus. Really. For... everything."

"I will see you at lunch," he replied, but gave her a small smile before leaving the room.

Dinah had to laugh again, as if her cat had been running just a tiny bit faster he would have crashed comically headfirst into the shutting door like in some Muggle cartoon. She leaned over and scratched his head before lifting him up and collapsing onto a chair, burying her face in his fur to hide a squeal of excitement she must have been holding in. "He kissed me again, Godric. I feel almost like a lovestruck teenager." At her words the questions that had started poking at the back of her mind returned, and she sighed, her previous zest tempered. She stroked the cat's head absently for a few moments. "It's strange..." she said, to him and also to herself. "I wonder, Godric. Do you think that I... love him?"

The question refused to be answered, though, and so she went into the kitchen to prepare herself a quick breakfast with the wondering, lingering thoughts still plaguing her mind.