Summary:

Hermione is adjusting to having a big sister that's her. Harry is following

Hermione's lead, as usual. And they both are meeting Dumbledore!

Hermione hadn't paid attention to all of the bodies stored in the dark hallway. She thought this one, however, looked familiar. "Harry's Chocolate Frog card! I know this person, hang on ..." Then Cymbeline, whom they'd agreed she'd think of as her older sister, gasped. "Dumbledore! How on Earth ..."

She mentally kicked herself. Seeing him here in plain white cloth garments, pale and thin, she hadn't recognized her own Headmaster. But he really was changed. Oddly, a little bump in his nose seemed to have been straightened. But that was a stupid thought. If he was here, he was as good as dead. How could a Minister's Special have gotten him? Did he have anyone they'd need to intimidate so badly they'd take on the strongest wizard in Britain to do it?

She then pondered why the Lovegoods would have him there. Were they planning to send someone out in his body? That seemed creepy, and decidedly unethical. She looked over at her sister. Do I have that calculating look on my face, I wonder? she thought.

"Whatever you two are thinking, said Selene suddenly from behind them, "it's probably not right. It's not the Headmaster, and he hasn't been Kissed."

Shockingly, she took the tall, slender, frail-looking old man by the arms and propped his body against the wall. She reached into the pocket of the robe Cymbeline had conjured for her and produced a vial filled with a black potion that gave off green sparks. From the minty, yet disgusting aroma, Hermione recognized Wiggenwald potion, and by implication, that the man had been dosed with the Draught of Living Death. Selene tilted his head back, pried open his mouth, and massaged his throat until the potion was all gone.

Selene then took a wand out of the same robe, pointed it at the old man, and said Ennervate. As his old eyelids slowly eased open, she produced another vial. Hermione recognised the smell of powdered bicorn horn from making Polyjuice, but guessed this was a simple Pepper-Up. It smelled spicier. So, one mystery was solved.

"So, this isn't Dumbledore?" she heard Cymbeline ask.

"I didn't say that," was the enigmatic reply.

"Indeed," said an elderly voice, followed by a fit of coughing. "I am indeed Dumbledore. You, I have seen at the Hog's Head, Selene Trelawney, though I didn't look to see you ever again. Xenophilius and I are old friends. From the look of him, the boy over there is James Potter's son, but I don't know the other three."

He paused. "But where are my manners? I am pleased to meet any friend of the Lovegoods or Trelawneys, and the Potters have always been a great family. So I am pleased to meet the rest of you, I am sure. I am Aberforth Dumbledore, at your service. I keep the Hog's Head Inn on Nigrarum Ovium Way in Hogsmeade. Two streets down from High Street, you can't miss it."

Harry and Hermione bowed their heads and said they were glad to meet him. Henri and Cymbeline followed suit.

"Much more importantly, he is the Keeper of the Past. In fact," they heard Xenophilius say with some hesitation, "the changes are so extensive he is probably the only Keeper of the Past left alive on Earth."

"As such," Selene added. "He would have probably perished if he had to be yanked back and forth through overlapping eras. We had to keep him in stasis in the most protected part of the Rookery."

"I sense family magic between the two boys, and between the two girls. Am I correct in assuming you are a pair of siblings?"

"Yes ... we are," said Cymbeline. Not entirely with conviction. "But we all have different last names because of the unique circumstances."

"Well," said Dumbledore, "I am the keeper of the past because I remember in my body and my spirit and my mind the world before my brother began changing the future Cassandra Trelawney could See."

The two older young people stiffened.

"In that era, he was misguided, but sound. It's a pity none of you can get to know the young Albus. Especially before that old idiot Bathilda Bagshot got him involved with her little sneak of a great-nephew, Gellert. He got Albus resenting the time he spent with us younger siblings and his mother. I suspected Gellert of taunting Ariana - he had a theory if he could make her a full Obscurial he could somehow channel all that power and misuse it. He was clinical like that - what the Muggles called a sociopath. Could never prove it, but I wouldn't let him near our house except when he came with Albus, and after a time, not even then. When he finally was allowed back ... well, you know what happened, I reckon?"

Seeing Harry and Hermione looking confused, Cymbeline said, quietly. "They had a fight, Ariana lost control of her magic, and she started screaming, and either Albus Dumbledore or Gellert Grindlewald, or ... or, um, probably both, hit Ariana with spells and she died."

"Yes," said Dumbledore, "she died. As had our mother. And that I lay at the feet of Grindlewald, tormenting Ariana before I could forbid him the house."

"Why did he not confront Grindlewald for decades, then?" Henri asked. It was the first time anyone had heard him speak.

"He was, for lack of a better word, ashamed. Ashamed of planning grandiose schemes with Gellert. Ashamed he'd had a lover - for that's what they were - who was such a rotter. A real aversion to killing. In fact, people that tried to enlist his help against the Knights of Walpurgis, who allied with Grindlewald like those Muggles - those Nazis - did, soon regretted it. "Don't resist violence with violence. There are few enough magicals without us killing each other. Grindlewald will fall on his own, eventually." He was clearly imitating the Headmaster.

"And what was he, then?" He asked, looking at them all owlishly. "The Transfiguration Professor at Hogwarts. And that's it. He craved to teach Alchemy, but even he couldn't have challenged Nicholas Flamel, who'd condescended to teach until he had a worthwhile protege. By the time Horace Slughorn arrived, of course, Alchemy had faded to a special elective for the truly gifted. And Albus had had his glorious confrontation with Grindlewald. And it was heroic, you cannot gainsay that. Albus, just a schoolteacher, up against a Dark Lord out of the sagas. Grindlewald had a strange - a very strange - wand that somehow moved faster than he could. And so powerful. I met that wand and I didn't look forward to the next meeting. And it was well-known I was a far better duelist than Albus."

Dumbledore had a strange expression then. "I took advantage of his absence to talk to those fighting the Knights of Walpurgis. While Albus made his epic journey to meet his Gellert, we killed as many of the Knights as we could find. We killed their retainers. We burned out their homes and emptied their vaults. Even if Albus had lost, which was likely, we would have driven Grindlewald entirely into the Muggle world."

Dumbledore coughed again, and Selene gave him another Pepper-up. "He was completely changed when he returned. In big things and little things. He'd half-adopted Grindlewald's viewpoint. And even the little things changed. Beforehand, he despised sweets, especially lemon drops, which were Gellert's addiction. Afterwards, he made a point of always having them. Worse, he adopted a habit of visiting Grindlewald in Nurmengard castle every month. As far as I know, he's done so, faithfully, up until now. He'd been so happy to be the future Headmaster of Hogwarts; afterwards, he didn't seem to care at all. 'Let be what will be,' became his motto. Politicking in the Wizengamot and the International Confederation of Wizards became an obsession. I decided he was trying to prove to Grindlewald that the path to influence was to avoid violence and confrontation. He hired that goblin-hating pureblood bigot idiot Cuthbert Binns to teach history. Bathilda Bagshot went to Hogwarts to protest, but for some reason, she never returned and refused to talk about it. I heard tales that even when the bastard died, he was kept on, and Albus kept his salary."

"That was when we estimate he enslaved our ancestor, Cassandra," Selene said. Dumbledore just looked sad.

"Yes," he said. "That's when I sense the past began to unravel. I ask as few questions as possible. My time isn't many more years, but my role is irreplaceable. Even Bathilda has lost too many memories to replace me."

Xenophilius had conjured a table, chairs, and tea things. "The tea is stored somewhere else. The spell that brings it here heats it and steeps it at the same time."

Dumbledore was an entertaining and enlightening companion for tea, and when he said he needed real sleep (back in his alcove), Harry and Hermione and their older selves all felt spiritually refreshed.

"That," said Selene kindly, "is the effect a Keeper of the Past has when the timeline is filling with lies."