Chapter One Hundred Sixty: The End of an Era
Ever afterwards, the next few hours would stick out in Harry's memory. He felt stricken by the expression on Dumbledore's face when Harry suggested that they use fiendfyre to get rid of the inferi and get out of the cave. A look, as if Dumbledore were just seeing Harry for the first time, and had misjudged his very character. That he'd trusted Harry, and Harry had somehow betrayed him.
Harry stared at the creepy crawling darkness of Riddle's curse as it tried to circulate throughout Dumbledore's body, and conceded that the old man might have a point, if he thought that. Harry could have avoided all of this, if he'd just told Dumbledore before they left. (That would have meant breaking his promise to Kreacher.)
He could have told him that he thought he recalled having seen Slytherin's locket at Grimmauld Place. (How to explain it? Dumbledore would have gone off on another wild goose chase.)
He could have told him the truth about himself. (Only a fool trusts so easily.)
He could have used some sort of divination excuse for how he knew the road ahead? (But that hadn't been the problem, now had it?)
He could have taken the route of collapsing the floor of the cave under the basin and then trying to summon the locket as it fell at a staggered rate compared to the basin. (And what if he missed?)
He should have reacted sooner. He should have attacked Dumbledore to ensure that he never try to touch the potion. Then again, who would have expected one of the brightest wizards of this age to act so reckless and stupid? Not that Dumbledore had known that there was an alternative….
What was wrong with fiendfyring the inferi, again? They weren't even living beings. Or maybe, it was the inherent violence in the act, or the darkness inherent in that spell, when Harry was expected to be The Chosen One, perfect and devoid of vice.
But, he'd put his standing in Dumbledore's eyes higher than Dumbledore's life. He'd put the secret of his past life, his past shames, untouchable by a mortal as Dumbledore was, ahead of the man's own life.
A secret to take to the grave.
And, perhaps worst of all—Dumbledore had been made aware of his secret anyway. Not the whole thing, comparatively speaking only a tiny part, but he was now aware that there was something more to Harry….
Dumbledore could never be bound into an oath. He must die. But, not by Harry's own hand.
By Snape's.
And, somehow, they made it out of the cave, through a combination of Dumbledore's incredible versatility and transfigurative skill, Fawkes the phoenix, who of course came bearing horrible news, and Harry's ability to ruthlessly squash any opposition.
He had the Sword of Gryffindor, and incendio, not to speak of a variety of similar spells. He was fine. He threw away some of his caution, and froze the lake solid.
Dumbledore stared at him, as if not quite sure what to think of him.
Harry knew better than to suggest that it was accidental magic. They walked across the frozen lake, instead, until they could get far enough away from it to apparate to Hogsmeade.
Harry had to help Dumbledore across, but Dumbledore was strong enough to stand well enough to apparate away from the cave.
Dumbledore was, perhaps, too proud to ask what Harry had done in the Cave. Perhaps, he preferred to leave it as an assumption that it was accidental magic.
Doubtless, he knew that, as he was shortly to die, there was little he could accomplish at the moment by questioning Harry. He either trusted Harry, or he didn't, and Dumbledore was of the sort who made allies by trusting people. He assumed that, if Harry had any desire to tell Dumbledore, he would. Dumbledore's version of trust did not include the sharing of secrets, anyway.
And, perhaps, he was hoping for Harry to return his trust. His exact intentions, as with so many things, could only be guessed at, for that was the night that Dumbledore died.
It was the fighting that woke Thor up. Unfortunately for him, he had no way of contacting anyone at all via Harry's makeshift communicators. He had to resort to waking everyone up himself. Neville, Seamus, and Dean were easy enough. How he would go about contacting Ginny or Hermione he didn't know.
He took the direct approach of throwing his toy hammer at the girls staircase. It hit with an explosive crash, and a louder crunch, and returned to his hand. Then, remembering what Harry had done last year, he made for McGonagall's subterranean chambers.
"Exspecto patronum," Dean said, pointing at the girls stairs.
Oh. Yes, that option would doubtless have occurred to Harry.
Thor nodded his thanks, and was setting off down the stairs to McGonagall's room as Neville, Seamus, and Dean worked on waking the rest of Gryffindor.
Harry had yet to return from Dumbledore's summons, or he was in the midst of the fighting instead.
As Thor ran down the stairs to wake McGonagall, he closed his eyes to focus on Harry. The spell he'd used several times before was slow to respond, even now. There was a vague sense that Harry was too far away to reach. Still wherever he had gone with Dumbledore. He would not know that he was returning to pitched combat.
Despite that, Thor had a bit of information to go on. The shores of a sea. Somewhere dark and dank and chilly with something deeper than nightfall or winter.
He shook his head, nearly stumbling on the stairs, and continued down them. Perhaps he should have attempted the use of a patronus, but he was not so skilled with them as to entrust one with a message. They were Harry's specialty, and then Dean and Hermione were decent with them, as well. Nor was Thor so slow of a runner that this would take much more time than a patronus would, anyway.
He banged hard on McGonagall's door, but was careful not to knock it down.
"What is it… Mr. Weasley? What are you doing out of bed at this hour?"
Thor glanced around in muted desperation. "Hogwarts is under attack, professor! I don't know by whom, however—"
She looked sceptical. Thor thought back to last year, when Dad had been attacked by that snake in the Department of Mysteries, and McGonagall hadn't wanted to listen to Harry.
"It is urgent!" he said, straightening up and staring earnestly at her to try to impress the importance of the situation upon her. Even Harry seemed to listen to him when he showed how serious a matter was.
"Very well, then, Mr. Weasley. Lead the way."
"I don't know where," he confessed. "I think the Great Hall—"
Why had they had no forewarning?
Before McGonagall could properly react, Thor was running back up the stairs to see whether or not Ginny and Hermione had come down, yet.
They were both in the common room, but Neville, Dean, Seamus, and most of the rest of Gryffindor Tower had already gone.
"Where's Harry?" Ginny demanded to know, at once. She did not seem to take Thor's hesitation well.
"He is…away," he offered. "He is not at Hogwarts. It is difficult to discern his exact location, however I believe that he is safer than we, for the moment."
Ginny frowned, eyes narrowed, arms crossed, but she accepted this, for want of a better choice.
The three of them came down the steps, through the portrait hole, and began to make for the Great Hall. They did not make it more than a few corridors down before, at a main corridor, they were arrested by the appearance of a ring of orange light.
"What is—?" Ginny snapped.
"Stephen?" asked Hermione, eyes wide. Stephen's intervention was almost never a good sign. Not when it came on the wrong day.
"'Stephen'?" Ginny repeated, clearly at a loss.
Then, Stephen came through the ring of light.
"Shit! I'm late," he commented. He almost sounded casual. "Look, the attack is coming from a vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirement. I'm going to go try and keep any more Death Eaters from coming through. You three go to the Great Hall to help the defenders. When Loki comes, send him to help me. I won't be able to do this on my own."
"Who the hell are you?" Ginny wanted to know.
"Hello, Ginny, Hermione. No time to talk right now. If you need me, you know where I am."
Instead of answering, he went back through the ring of orange light.
"His timing isn't that bad," Hermione protested.
"That was Stephen. A friend of ours from the future," Thor informed Ginny, as Hermione seemed disinclined, or perhaps hadn't even noticed. Her mind seemed bent towards the problem at hand. Adrenaline was all that was keeping her awake. There were crashes and thuds audible from a corridor or so down.
"What do we do, Ron?" Hermione asked. She seemed to be forcibly resisting wringing her hands.
He thought fast. They needed some way to contain the Death Eater who had already come through—trap them in one place. They'd just have to gather as many as they could into the Great Hall, and some people would need to be stationed as lookouts to pick off stragglers.
This reminded him of something. Well, it wasn't as big of an area as New York—
"Red Rook, come in. What is happening at Hogwarts? I leave for an hour, and Hogwarts is attacked?"
It seemed unkind to mention the battle of New York and the Chitauri Invasion right now. Thor was just relieved to hear Harry's voice, it took him a moment to remember the communicator he'd been given. He pulled out the coin, and Hermione and Ginny, after a glance in his direction, followed suit.
"Hogwarts is under attack," he confirmed, "Stephen said that Death Eaters were coming from a vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirement, and to send you there when you arrived—"
"I'm not far away, now. The Dark Mark is in the sky over the castle, and Dumbledore has shut the front gates and set up some sort of anti-ward around the perimeter of the castle.
"Dumbledore is dead. There will be no reinforcements. There is some sort of ward in the spell around the castle—it prevents any from entering or leaving through the front gate. I have sent for Sirius, and he is gathering The Order. Give me a plan for defence to pass on to the rest of the Ministry Six."
"Hermione and Ginny are with me. I suppose we will go to help at the Great Hall. Neville and Luna will be able to provide leadership for the rest of the D.A.."
He tried to lay out the plan he'd been working on, combining it with the knowledge that the Order was on its way, but…Dumbledore would not be coming to save them. He had not realised that he had assumed that Dumbledore would.
He was a warrior-prince. These were only human beings. He needed no protection. But, his friends—
"Got it. I'll pass along your orders. Oh, and…do be careful, you three. I don't have enough energy to try to save all three of you. I will head for the Room of Requirement. Don't be reckless."
The coin seemed to dull, as that connection cut off abruptly. Thor turned to Ginny and Hermione, who had gone past nerves and settled into something like resolve. They'd had some combat practice, at least.
"You heard him. Let's go," Ginny said, after a moment, and began running for the Great Hall. Thor followed her.
It was a disaster. If the tables and benches of the four houses hadn't been affixed to the floor with something stronger than Permanent Sticking Charm, he was sure they would have used them as makeshift ramparts.
As it was, they made for impromptu cover, or a way to gain height when that was advantageous. (Always also a risk, however; this seemed to be a tactic favoured by gryffindors.) Neville, Seamus, Dean, Luna, Ernie Macmillan, Hannah Abbott, Justin Finch-Fletchey, and Zacharias Smith were patrolling the corridors, mostly because they were among the last to come towards the Great Hall.
Except for Thor, Ginny, and Hermione, but they were part of the other phase of this strategy. The trick was to break the Death Eater line, and force them into a retreat, then drive them towards the Room of Requirement.
But then, McGonagall appeared on the scene, and the plan changed. She'd stopped to contact the Order of the Phoenix, only to find that it was already mobilising. Sirius would not tell her why, and there was no time to press. She'd left her fireplace open, and determined to capture as many Death Eaters as possible, until the Ministry could arrive.
She'd had a bit of a harder time of her journey. Malfoy was leading the vanguard of the Death Eater army, and he knew his way around Hogwarts, which most of the Death Eaters had forgotten since they'd left.
He was not a masterful strategist, but he was a slytherin, as were most of the Death Eaters. They knew how to fight indirectly, with ambushes and traps. McGonagall was unused to guerrilla warfare.
She took charge as soon as she arrived, revoking Thor's command without knowing it. The Ministry Six were uncertain whom to obey. Drive the Death Eaters back to the Room of Requirement, or keep them in the Great Hall?
The majority of the school overruled them. There was no choice. Remus Lupin arrived soon thereafter, and he'd received no orders from Harry or Thor. Even had he, he might have found it difficult to exercise self-restraint against Fenrir Greyback.
As with the Dueling Club in second year, every Order member seemed to pair up with a Death Eater. Remus versus Greyback. McGonagall versus Bellatrix Lestrange. Sirius versus Lucius Malfoy. Tonks versus Macnair.
Thor was not entirely sure. He thought that was who each of them were. Only Malfoy and Bellatrix Lestrange could be readily identified.
There were more Death Eaters than just these, however. But, Thor betook himself to capture Draco Malfoy. Ginny joined him, her eyes narrowed into a fierce glare. Hermione had decided to go consult with the house-elves at some point.
The air was full of spells, of which Thor was superficially unaware. He ensured that none of them came near him or his sister, and focused on Malfoy. With Ginny as his second, to ensure that no one else interfere.
Even fighting with a wand, Thor was not an opponent to underestimate.
Malfoy, however, was desperate. He had, Thor would later learn, recently failed Riddle spectacularly, and thus had everything to gain and nothing to lose.
Despite this, he didn't use the Unforgivable Curses, most likely due to a lack of practice—they would be too weak to hold Thor back. Or, perhaps, he remembered the end of last year.
"Petrificus Totalus!" Malfoy screamed, now. "Furnunculus! Tarantallegra! Reducto!"
He was throwing spells out wildly, but it ensured that both Thor and Ginny stayed on the defensive. This on top of trying to ensure that no one else snuck up on them.
"Aguamenti!" Thor cried, instead, pointing at the floor beneath Malfoy, who slipped and fell.
"Incarcerous!" Ginny finished, as if they'd planned this.
"Finite incantatem!" cried an unfamiliar voice. It was Crabbe. Or maybe Goyle?
Malfoy Junior closed his eyes, and managed to stretch out an arm enough for the other not-twin slytherin crony to cast a reductor curse on it. Thor decided that this entire duel was boring and pointless.
He gathered lightning, albeit a small amount, and sent it at the water on the floor, thinking of tasers and stun-guns.
This time, Malfoy went down and did not get up.
Ginny gave him a half-reproachful look, as if he'd overstepped his boundaries, somewhere. Crabbe and Goyle went wary, although they'd been there in Umbridge's Office, too.
Ginny nodded, and turned to the one on the right. That left the one on the left for Thor. But, before Thor could cast a single spell, there was a bright flash, followed by an earthquake.
Smoke and mirrors, he had to think. Harry had arrived.
Everything seemed to run much more smoothly after that. Harry's arrival galvanised the D.A., and Harry was not a bad fighter, himself. Perhaps more important, the Order of the Phoenix had sent reinforcements, as well.
They ended up rounding up the Death Eaters and restraining them for the aurors to deliver to Azkaban, although many fled when they realised that they were outmatched, for the moment, even without Dumbledore present.
McGonagall and Flitwick were in their element. Snape was nowhere to be found, although Harry didn't seem troubled or surprised by this. He seemed somewhat distracted, but not to the point that it hindered his ability to fight.
Harry waited until the aurors had taken away the Death Eaters who had been left behind by their fellows (which included Crabbe and Goyle, who were only co-conspirators, not full-fledged Death Eaters; Malfoy had somehow vanished) before he explained any of what he had been doing, or what was troubling him.
He told Thor and Hermione, in a sort of detached way that meant that he was thinking about something else, of how he and Dumbledore had gone to the cave in which Regulus had died. There was a sort of poisoned basin at the end guarding the fake-locket that Regulus had left behind. Dumbledore had poisoned himself.
It was this delusional, delirious Dumbledore who had returned to Hogwarts. It was avoidable, Harry conceded, and he'd let on rather more than he ought to of his own special abilities.
Harry skimmed over most of the rest of the night. He and Dumbledore had been ambushed by Malfoy shortly after Dumbledore had erected the defensive wards of Hogwarts. Malfoy had disarmed Dumbledore, but Snape had killed him.
"It was at Dumbledore's behest," he insisted. "Snape is on our side."
"Then, Malfoy has Dumbledore's wand?" asked Hermione. She seemed to make more of this than Thor could see any reason to.
Harry paused. "I don't rightly know whom the wand would consider to be its rightful master, Hermione. That is what you're asking, is it not?"
He seemed tired and rather more worn out than any of the three of them who remained to hear what he had been doing tonight before the attack. Make that four. Stephen was somewhere invisible, nearby.
Hermione frowned. "Not really. I just—I heard Professor Flitwick saying something about how Dumbledore had arranged to have it buried with him. It makes it a bit difficult to fulfil that request if Malfoy still has it?"
Perhaps it was his fatigue, but Harry didn't seem to see why that would be the case.
"There was something strange about the wand," Harry said. "I think that might be why Dumbledore made that arrangement. And—and why he perhaps changed his mind. I think he meant it to go to Snape, if you think of it. I mean, he'd planned to have Snape kill him—"
"Are you sure he's on the Order's side?" Hermione demanded, eyes narrowed.
Harry gave a weary, beleaguered slump of his shoulder. "Yes," he said.
And, he continued on in his tale. There was not that much more of it to tell than that, at least not as Harry told it. He'd contacted them shortly thereafter, and had one straight to the Room of Requirement to seal the Cabinet.
Something nagged at the back of Thor's mind. A problem, perhaps an irrelevant suspicion, that Harry had left something out. He could not for the life of him begin to guess what.
There was something different about Harry—something that Thor could not quite name. Perhaps it was grief over the death of someone Harry was not sure himself whether or not he trusted.
He knew better than to ask. That would only make Harry hide.
Harry had decided to stay at Hogwarts over the summer break. He had never before been willing to risk it, which meant that he had something else that he thought might be worth even the risk of losing contact with Mother. The question of what that might be kept him from considering the tale Harry had told them of Dumbledore's final night in more detail.
Hermione was not thinking about Harry or the war at all. She sat by the window in the Gryffindor Common room with a letter from her parents in her hand, rereading it over and over.
"I think I will stay for the summer, too," she said. It was not supposed to be something that Hogwarts ever did, allowing students to stay over the summer holidays, but these were extenuating circumstances, with a war on outside, and muggleborns in particular danger. McGonagall had inaugurated her tenure as Headmistress by offering up this idea, a safe haven against Riddle's forces in these trying times. Still, it was also possible for any student to leave for the holidays and still return after. Hermione had always preferred to return to her family, before: what had happened?
"It's nothing," she said, with tears in her eyes suggesting that that could not quite be true. Thor waited. "Well, actually…" Hermione trailed off. "I just received some surprising news, is all. I can't believe they'd send something like this in a letter!"
He knew by now that she would now say what was bothering her if he didn't interrupt. Sure enough, she swallowed, hard, and said,
"I've a sister that I never knew about. My parents don't talk about her. They told me it's too hard to think about her—she was killed in a car crash when she was just four years old. Isn't that horrible? I was just a baby, so I have no memory of her at all. I wonder—I wonder if she would have been a witch."
She was beginning to sniffle and shake, but she managed to sob, "I can't go face them right now. I can't! And, there's a war on…Harry will need help. He's determined to stay here and research—whatever he's researching. Sirius and Remus are lurking in the library too—it must be something important. I think I'm more useful here."
This was sort of the exact opposite of the secret that had destroyed Thor's own family. It gave him little notion of how to respond. He sat beside her and put an arm around her, and she buried her face in his shoulder and sobbed. He could be there for her, help her through this. It was all he could do. It was more than he could do for Harry. It would have to be enough.
{end What's in a Name?}