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Chapter Twenty-One—Adult Discussions

"So you don't have any idea who this mysterious figure was?"

"If I did, I would have told you."

Harry's voice was mild, but Mariana had to fight back a flinch. They were sitting on the floor of the living room with the enormous tree looming over them, garlanded with silver and green, and a shining glass star charged with a Neverending Lumos Charm on top. The fire flickered warmly behind them, and Severus's snores bubbled in their ears.

But Harry's eyes still cut through her like the winter wind.

"I'm sorry," Mariana whispered, and pulled her grandson into her lap. They were having their Christmas without Seneca—a necessity, as he certainly wouldn't have put up with it. But it was easy to manipulate his mind now, and the house-elves guarded the room with their magic. Mariana couldn't regret it. Severus had looked as if all his dreams had come true when he'd walked into the drawing room and seen the pile of presents.

Harry sighed a second later. "Not your fault. But yes, I would have told you. I don't have the slightest guess, except that it's someone who knows that I'm a time traveler and likes who they were in the other dimension better."

"And he could have been lying."

"He might not have been a he." Harry folded his arms behind his head and lay back on the carpet, staring up at the star. It still startled Mariana sometimes, how casual he could be even though he looked like such a pureblood Potter. "I made the best guesses I could, but that cloak and the enchantments on his face and voice kept me from being sure about anything."

Mariana nodded. "But he probably was the one who manipulated my husband's mind."

"Yes. I think that was a rather weak strike, but then again, I don't know the first thing about what he wants."

Mariana licked her lips and concentrated for a second on the warmth of sleeping Severus in her lap, his red flushed face and the way that his hands clutched at her robes. He looked so young. But he was here, and not defenseless.

"Did you tell Black?" she asked, when the sound of the breathing had soothed some of her fears.

"Black?" Harry laughed hard enough that Severus stirred in his sleep. Mariana put a hand on Severus's back, and frowned at Harry. Harry exhaled and rolled his eyes. "Of course not. He would probably decide that he should kill the man and bring me his head as a tribute or something. I want nothing to do with Black."

"This figure could be a danger to his sons."

All of Harry's muscles tensed. "I didn't think of that."

"Because you were trying so hard to think of nothing but Sirius and Regulus when you were over there?" Mariana made her voice dry, and Harry's glance darted over to touch her like leaping frogs, then away again.

"Something like that."

Mariana paused, and tried to feel out the words she wanted to say. This wasn't the kind of contest she was accustomed to entering. After she had married Seneca, there had been long years where she barely saw anyone outside the family, and then she had lapsed into what she thought of now as her cowardly time, when she was afraid to say or do anything lest Seneca find out about it. The fact that she hadn't been able to prevent Eileen from running away and marrying a Muggle had been a huge part of that.

But while Harry wasn't her child, he was her friend, which gave her some sort of a right to do this.

"Do you think you'll ever want to date or marry him?"

"Sirius? I think he's a little young for me."

Mariana laughed in spite of herself, which made Severus stir on her lap again. She gathered him still closer, and he shifted his warm weight, but stayed asleep. "I suppose that you really are thinking of the sons and not the father. I meant Orion, of course."

Harry wrinkled his nose and shook his head. "No."

"Because of how overbearing he is? Or some other reason?"

"Overbearing, arrogant, thinking he can somehow make me into an honorary pure-blood." Harry counted off the reasons on his fingers as if he had had the list waiting inside his head, then leaned back with a sigh of exhaustion. "That's a large part of it."

"But not the whole." Mariana was sure of that suddenly, and she stared at Harry, silently willing him to trust her and tell her.

Harry made a chuckling, chuffing noise and shifted his shoulders. "You'll tell me I'm being an idiot if I tell you the whole."

"Would you please trust me with this? I promise not to say that."

"Or think that?"

Mariana shook her head. "I can't promise that for sure until I hear what it is."

Harry rolled onto his back and stared at the Lumos Charm on the tree again. "I still think that I committed a great crime in breaking the timeline. Oh, some people are happier." He glanced at her and Severus, and his face softened with an affection that Mariana thought was real. "But how can I know for sure that I made the Blacks happier? I can't. I can't even know for sure that my attempts to make up for it are going to work." He sighed. "So I want to help Sirius and Regulus, but getting more deeply involved in their lives isn't a good idea."

"And Orion?"

"I wouldn't make him happy, either."

"Are you so sure of that?"

"Yes. I can't be what he wants, the perfect, powerful pure-blood spouse." Harry rolled onto his side and regarded her with an earnestness that made Mariana at least sure that he believed his words, and it wasn't some excuse. "He thought of me in the nature of an ally at first. I wish he would go back to thinking of me that way."

Mariana wondered for a moment whether she ought to say it, and then decided she would lose nothing by it, and neither would Harry. "Have you thought at all that his attraction to you might be sincere, and for your non-pure-blood qualities?"

Harry stared at her with slightly parted lips, which was his equivalent of a dropped jaw around them. Mariana had become aware long ago of how strictly Harry controlled the expression of his emotions around her and Severus, and it saddened her even as she understood. She often thought that he must have been scolded by someone for expressing himself. "No."

"But consider it—"

"Consider what? He's always going to think my blood's inferior, and that's no basis for a relationship."

"You're giving, Harry. You're good with children. You're magically powerful. You have such a sincere consideration for the members of the Black family that you won't accept what Orion is offering in case you do them harm. Do you think those are qualities he found in his last spouse? Or even looked for?"

"Of course not. Which means that he won't value them now."

Mariana sighed. It seemed she wouldn't make any headway. "At least think about it," she said, as a last sop to her own conscience. It wasn't that she thought Black would make the best partner possible for Harry, but he was there, he was offering, and he could bring Harry the protection and peace that Mariana thought he needed. And she did think that he didn't consider Harry's half-blood status an obstacle anymore. Not with the way he looked at him.

But then again, if that was true, Black hardly needed her help. Sooner or later, his sincerity would make itself obvious, and Harry would notice.

Maybe.

Surely, Mariana thought, a little uneasy, and then asked for more information about the man whom Harry thought had played with Seneca's mind. It was just as well to keep a multi-directional watch for the approach of their enemy.

"What are you doing, Gellert?"

"Why do you care, Albus?"

Albus sighed and shook his head. "You know that I had no choice but to speak to the Wizengamot about what you were doing," he murmured as he sat down on the couch that faced his husband's hunched back. Izzy appeared briefly, glanced between them, and then disappeared again.

"I thought you shared more of my goals."

"You thought I shared your goal of dominating the wizarding world? You know as well as I do that the last time I thought seriously about that, we were both seventeen."

Anger had bled into Albus's voice despite himself, and from the way he turned around and smiled at him, Gellert was happy to hear it. But he said with unwonted gentleness, "Not that. I thought you wanted us to have a happy marriage."

Albus stared at him. "Within the confines of the law."

"What does law mean when you bend it so that a time traveler can remain free of the Ministry?" Gellert laughed like a crow. "At least I didn't endanger the whole of reality when I was conducting my war."

"We already know he changed things," Albus said, keeping his voice soft and as slow as he could. Whenever they argued with true anger, Gellert won. He was more learned in the ways of rage. "I saw no reason to alter those arrangements when we didn't even know if he was done altering things. And I believe that he would have broken out if we had imprisoned him in a cell."

Gellert snorted and came over to sit down next to Albus. Then, and only then, he made a rude gesture. "Don't give me that, Albie. It wasn't considerations of cold practicality or your distrust of how secure Azkaban is that guided you. It was purely compassion and the kind of sentimentality that I thought you got over years ago."

"I would never wish to get over such."

"Why not? You certainly did in regards to me."

Albus snorted back and said nothing. Izzy appeared again, stared hard at them both, and then snapped her fingers and whirled plates into being next to them. Albus eyed his sourly. There was a sandwich with lots of cheese and tomatoes, and he had learned that Izzy made those when she thought he should be refraining from meat, which supposedly made him "angry."

"Look." Gellert held up his sandwich. "Meat on mine."

"Because Izzy knows that you'll be angry anyway, so she might as well give you that," Albus retorted, and had the pleasure of seeing Gellert's look turn sour before he picked up his sandwich and left the room.

Albus went to the table, although Izzy wouldn't give him a stern look for staying on the couch when she had brought the plate there in the first place, and ate while staring at the wall. His mind roamed through the moment when he had taken custody of Gellert from the Wizengamot. Could he have done something else? Was there some other vow he should have made?

Yet, no matter how much he went over it in his mind, there was nothing that stood out to him as more he could have done.

"And you accept the burden that this lays on you, Minister Dumbledore?"

Albus nodded. He was sitting in a cramped chair made of iron in front of half the Wizengamot, the half that traditionally handled the security of Azkaban, the sentencing of prisoners, and the revising of evidence if any new pieces were presented after a trial. "For me, it is a burden that I should have assumed long since."

"Care to explain that?" said Arcturus Black, his narrow face alight as he leaned forwards.

Albus looked calmly at him. "You know my past with Gellert, Mr. Black. I should have taken care of him long since, and turned him from the path of evil he has proceeded down. This is only fulfilling a duty I laid down when it was not mine to lay down."

Black sat back in his chair with what was close to a pout. Then again, Albus thought, Blacks and Princes and other pure-bloods who thought themselves superior had been trying to catch him out for all the years he had been Minister.

Albus sometimes felt amusement when he considered that his best defense was simply that he never lied. And then the weariness would come pouring in like a blizzard.

"Explain to us why he would be safer in your custody than in Azkaban," said Seneca Prince, his arms crossing his chest. There was a man who could have been more dangerous than Gellert if he'd had more comparable levels of power, Albus thought. Prince was cold enough to care for nothing save the glory of his family, cold enough to cast out his daughter forever for marrying a Muggle. "Why should we endanger the wizarding world for the sake of your old flame, Minister Dumbledore?"

Albus ignored the tone. "I believe that it would be safer for the wizarding world because Gellert might ultimately break out of Azkaban."

"No one has done it so far," said Isabella Shafiq. She was as silent and contained as Prince, but far less cold and far more watchful. There were times that Albus considered her the most dangerous member of the Wizengamot.

"Horatio Prewett," Albus said.

Annoyance and embarrassment marred most of the faces around him. Albus simply watched. They had agreed to keep the news of that escape from most people in Britain, for the sake of preventing public panic, but certainly everyone here knew of it.

"Prewett was a mistake," Shafiq snapped.

"If you mean that it was a mistake to put him in Azkaban, I certainly agree."

"No, I mean that he could—no one would ever be able to repeat what he did with the Dementors," said Shafiq, but her voice trailed off towards the end, by itself, and she sat back with a thoughtful look on her face.

"I'm afraid that Gellert would be able to," Albus said. "He isn't like any other prisoner that we've put in Azkaban in historic times, except Horatio Prewett. They both know Dark magic, they both have a genius for getting people and creatures to follow them, and they both rage in a way that affects their magic."

There was silence for a long time around them. Then Prince shook his head and said, "One would think that a former lover is someone able to easily arouse rage." His voice lingered on the word, and he watched Albus with a cruel, knowing amusement. "Why should we place Grindelwald in your custody?"

"Do you think anyone else will be able to control him, when Azkaban is not an option?"

Silence. Albus watched the glances flickered among them, and knew what they were all thinking. Some of them were people who might have followed Gellert, if he had looked nearer to winning. And others were people who had had the opportunity to face Gellert before Albus did—or face him when Albus did—and had shied away from the opportunity.

"I am the closest match to him in power," Albus said quietly. "And I am willing to have safeguards placed on my mind, on my very thoughts, to alert the Wizengamot if I am ever swayed towards following him."

"Those spells are experimental." Black sounded concerned, but Albus suspected it was only because he didn't want one of his political rivals to become Minister.

Albus shrugged. "I also know and practice Occlumency. You know that one reason the Unspeakables haven't found someone to test the spells on is because they require a strong wizard who knows Occlumency as well as Legilimency, and there are few of those around." He carefully didn't look at Prince, whom he suspected of using Legilimency to hammer into more than one mind and leave more than one drooling patient in St. Mungo's.

But needs must. The thought echoed wearily in his head, joining all the other echoes of that phrase since he had become Minister.

"True enough," Black muttered, sounding resentful now. "And you are willing to take on this burden?"

"For the duty I should have followed, for the duty I follow now, to prevent the danger that might come from placing Gellert in Azkaban…" Albus drew back his shoulders. "Yes, I am."

Albus sighed as he finished his sandwich and stood up to seek his bed. His bed, tonight, probably; Gellert would sleep on the couch or find some other way of expressing his displeasure which would make Albus feel completely alone.

He made his way to the bathroom, and saw through the door of the library that Gellert was indeed on the couch, although sitting up and reading instead of curled up ready for slumber. He stiffened his shoulders and turned his head away when he heard Albus, and Albus shut the door of the bathroom without saying anything.

You have no compassion for me, Gellert's voice echoed in his head.

Albus shook his head wearily as he stripped off his robes. If Gellert had been there the day Albus argued with half the Wizengamot against putting him in Azkaban, then he would have understood better.

There was a chance that Gellert might have influenced the Dementors and been able to escape. But not, in Albus's view, a large one. Gellert had so many awful memories that he might have succumbed to the Dementors' influence in the way that Horatio Prewett, far more a trickster than a Dark Lord, never had.

No, Albus had done it because he hadn't wanted Gellert to suffer. And he had made the sacrifice of spells binding his brain to bring the Wizengamot around when they wouldn't have been convinced otherwise.

Not that he would want to hear that from me right now, Albus thought, and lay down, and tried to put all notions of time travel and Dark Lords out of his head.

He fell asleep, and dreamed of both.