Dumbledore was uncertain how much longer he would be headmaster. The repercussions of his idleness during Umbridge's reign of terror were still being felt; he was no longer Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot. Minerva lost her position as head of Gryffindor, as had every other Head of House. New wizards and witches were heads of Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Hufflepuff.
After Molly Weasley dueled with Dolores in the Great Hall, the Board of Governors arrived and didn't leave until they'd made many changes in 'his' school.
First, they reminded him that Hogwarts was NOT the personal property of Albus Many-Names Dumbledore! Then they brought in four new persons to be the Head of House for each group of students.
A Slytherin alumnus, fifty-year-old Andrew Carter was the head of the Snakes. He was pureblood and Dumbledore understood the man was putting 'the fear of Merlin' in the rambunctious children. (Carter was extremely young in Dumbledore's mind who forgot he'd once made a twenty-three-year-old Severus Snape head of the same house.)
Melissa Moorhouse, sixty-something, was head of Ravenclaw and rearranged the house to fit her memories of what the Claws had been like when she was a student in the 1940s. Two girls had already been suspended for bullying a fellow mercilessly for four years.
A young witch, Harriet Carter was head of Hufflepuff. She was only twenty-five and had been a student in the house with Pomona as head of the Puffs so many things remained the same though there were changes that Dumbledore didn't see.
And finally, Anthony Hilliard, thirty-three, was the head of Gryffindor. He lived in the common room almost the entire day and night, holding meetings with each student, each year group, and students with common interests. The Lions were better prepared in every class, behaved in the hallways, and were supported by this advocate against Severus Snape. Hilliard's support for Harry Potter included opposing Dumbledore when he wanted to have private meetings with Harry Potter.
Without the duties as Head of House for Gryffindor any longer, Deputy Headmistress and Transfiguration Professor, Minerva McGonagall had time to breathe, and with the help of Filius Flitwick and Pomona Sprout, threw off all the compulsions the headmaster had thrown on her. She stopped doing his reports to the governors and spent her time helping all the professors with their methods of instruction. There were already new stories of her temper exploding at Severus Snape in every potions class she'd monitored. Dumbledore had a new problem – uncontrollable McGonagall might soon dismiss Snape and where would the Potions Master go then?
With a checklist on his desk, Dumbledore spent Halloween dreading the tasks before him – Sybil Trelawney had been dismissed by McGonagall. Dumbledore permitted the seer to remain living in the castle (for now,) but he had to find some small job for her to perform to justify some salary for her. Severus had to be cajoled to properly teach in his potions class or he'd be gone in January. There weren't enough potions needed to justify an instruction and a brewer on staff.
'Could my family home be suitable for his brewing operations?' Dumbledore wondered. 'I never intend to retire…unless they force me out at the end of this year.'
The last name on the list disturbed Dumbledore the most – Harry James Potter.
CHANGE SCENE && A Prophecy, Magical Guardian, and HorcruxesThe boy stood before Dumbledore's desk with Professor Hilliard beside him. Even after a month for things to calm down, Harry still gave Dumbledore only the shortest of glances and his overheard thoughts considered Dumbledore to be no better than his muggle relatives and capable of betrayal.
Albus began by saying, "Now, Harry, there's something of critical importance…"
"Headmaster, as Mr. Potter has mentioned to you in many previous encounters in the hallway and classrooms, he is uncomfortable when you refer to him as 'Harry'," Hilliard said firmly in a calm voice. "His discomfort had become extreme with this liberty you give yourself. There are only a few friends in the school who are welcome to call him by his name. You and I are adults, and we must never act in a familiar with a child in our care."
"Hilliard, I am Harry's magical guardian," Dumbledore reminded the Head of House. "And therefore, it is entirely appropriate for me to use his name."
"Well now, here's the rub, Albus," Hilliard stated. "No one at the ministry – no one in the DMLE or Wizarding Children's Services – has any record or authorization form, or copy of any will, giving you that position. Gringotts certainly doesn't recognize it and just last week they chopped off the heads of two goblins who were helping you loot the Potter family vaults."
"What?" shouted Dumbledore, rising from his seat and drawing his wand. But he lowered the wand when he saw both wizards (and a heretofore invisible McGonagall) with their wands out and aimed at him. Then Fawkes flew onto his desk, turned to face Albus, and began fussing, her song of discord and disappointment forcing him back into his chair.
Hilliard continued, "I am the recognized magical guardian of Harry James Potter here in Hogwarts. I ask you formally; what is your critical information?"
"You can't know this…no one can."
Minerva stepped closer and said, "Albus, for all of our sakes, stop thinking that you're Merlin!"
"What?" asked the headmaster, the confusion obvious on his face.
"You're not immortal!" she stated forcefully. "You keep secrets like you're going to live forever."
Grumbling, Dumbledore muttered, "Some secrets are too terrible to reveal."
"But there's one that you want to tell Mr. Potter!" she declared. "Otherwise, you wouldn't have called him here."
Glancing at McGonagall and Hilliard, Dumbledore said, "You two must swear to never tell this secret to anyone."
"No," Harry spoke up. "I need their help with lots of things. There can't be a secret you know that I can't get help with. What if you fall off the astronomy tower and die tonight? Who could help me?"
"My boy, I'm not going to fall off the tower."
McGonagall smirked and quipped, "Albus, I can think of thirty people in Hogwarts who might push you off the battlements without feeling any regrets. And the governors still mention dismissing you before Yule."
The headmaster lowered his head for a moment before he took a deep breath and revealed the existence of a prophecy that meant Harry Potter had to fight the Dark Lord Voldemort. Only one of them would survive the fight. There followed another argument between Dumbledore and the two adults in the room while Harry merely stared at the headmaster who would not meet his eyes.
"Who told Snakeface about the prophecy?" Harry demanded to know.
Dumbledore deflected the question as unimportant, but Potter persisted. "You're hiding information like you did with Peter Pettigrew being the secret keeper who revealed my parent's hiding place. That sent Sirius Black to Azkaban for more than ten years. And you still hide the fact that Peter was alive and here in the castle for nine years before going to find Tom Riddle and bringing him back to life."
McGonagall asked, "What are you talking about Potter?"
"Scabbers, Percy and Ron's pet rat, was actually Peter Pettigrew in his Animagus form for all those years."
"That man was sleeping in the dorms with children!" shouted Hilliard and McGonagall. Both adults were incensed and determined to discover how that went undetected for all those years.
"The wards!" Hilliard declared. "They're not up to full power."
"Of course not," McGonagall said. "How else could a Death Eater be working here?"
Harry added, "And that explains how the Dark Lord could bring in a troll my first year? And a cursed diary came in the second year I was here at Hogwarts?"
The adults were silent when Harry scornfully asked, "Think Dumbledore, if you'd done something about Peter at any time during those years, the Dark Lord wouldn't have been able to come back last June."
"Who took Sybil's prophecy to the Dark Lord?" demanded McGonagall, though she had a growing suspicion. Dumbledore would not respond
"Dumbledore, what the blazes goes on around here?" demanded Hilliard. Albus brought out his wand again and tried to cast spells, but Fawkes leapt forward and sank her talons in Dumbledore's arm before vanishing with his wand in a ball of flames.
Staring at Dumbledore with the image of the basilisk in his thoughts, Harry Potter revealed to McGonagall and Hilliard the story of the dark item in Gryffindor three years ago that almost brought back Tom Riddle in the Chamber of Secrets. He talked about the spirit, the basilisk, the battle, and the destruction of the diary. The headmaster glanced at Harry but the image of an enraged basilisk lunging forward drove the old wizard out of Harry's mind instantly.
"Did Ginny Weasley see a mind healer?" demanded Hilliard. McGonagall's anger at the headmaster was only matched by the anger she felt toward herself.
Dumbledore sighed and said, "The love of the Weasleys for each other will eventually heal Ginny's mind."
Shaking his head, Hilliard planned another letter to Arthur and Molly Weasley. Then he asked, "What did the Department of Mysteries do with the Horcrux?"
"What's a Horcrux?" Minerva asked.
Hilliard explained the purpose and dark magic used to create the items. Then he asked, "But how is this fellow still around if Potter destroyed the Horcrux with basilisk venom?"
Harry glanced at Hilliard and McGonagall before he turned to Dumbledore to ask, "Headmaster, how many Horcruxes did Tom Riddle make?"
"What?" asked Hilliard though McGonagall merely turned very pale hearing that word.
"How do you know that word? Who told you that word?" demanded Dumbledore demanded of Hilliard.
"They're usually found in tombs in Egypt and Babylon. The sorcerers in India never used them," Hilliard explained. "Every curse breaker is taught how to detect and deal with them."
Potter patiently again asked, "Have you made any progress studying or finding the other Horcruxes since 1992, Headmaster Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore?"
"I am extremely busy with all the different roles I play in our world."
"So, you haven't done anything, then?" asked Harry while Dumbledore refused to respond. The other adults allowed the young wizard to continue questioning the old wizard.
"Headmaster, did you ask for help from the DMLE?" asked Harry. "There are powerful Aurors there who fought against the Dark Lord."
Professor Hilliard growled when Dumbledore refused to meet anyone's eyes.
"Dumbledore, did you talk to the Department of Mysteries? They probably have several rituals to destroy Horcruxes," pressed Harry. McGonagall's frown grew darker when Albus still refused to reply.
Finally, Harry asked, "Albus, did you seek the advice of the goblins? Removing dark curses is supposed to be their specialty. Professor Hilliard says that curse breakers deal with them regularly."
The headmaster remained silent, and Harry continued, "So there's a prophecy about me and dark wanker that you've done nothing about. You've sat on your old boney ass for three years since I killed the first Horcrux and done nothing."
Now the headmaster said, "There are many things I have to tell you about…about Tom Riddle. And love is the answer to this problem. Love and forgiveness."
Hilliard was silent for a moment before he said, "Headmaster, you're projecting your own guilt about something onto Mr. Potter and this Riddle fellow. You're dealing with guilt about something from your past – that's why you preach forgiveness threescore and ten times for the Death Eaters. You want to reform them – to save them and their leader."
Minerva McGonagall leaned forward and said, "Tom Riddle was a student when I attended Hogwarts. You always told us to be wary of him, but you never did anything to help him, and you never did anything to stop his education. You were deputy headmaster and could have gotten him help or had him arrested and tried."
"Tom was a child. I wanted him to grow…" Dumbledore tried to explain.
"Idiot! You want to rescue everyone after the house is on fire and be hailed as a hero again, not prevent the fire from ever starting," said Minerva.
With the understanding that Dumbledore would not attempt to summon Harry Potter to his office without the presence of Professor Hilliard and Deputy Headmistress McGonagall, the meeting ended. Harry and his Head of House returned to the Gryffindor tower where the boy sought shelter in his dorm room for a time before venturing back to the common room to work on his class assignments.
CHANGE SCENE && The Following AfternoonThere wasn't quidditch practice or classes on Harry's schedule the next afternoon, so he slipped away underneath his cloak of invisibility (that Hilliard had cleared of all other charms to track it) and made his way to the seventh floor. There before the tapestry of a wizard attempting to teach trolls to dance, the teenager walked back and forth three times, thinking, 'I need a room with information about Tom Riddle's Horcruxes. I need a room with information about Tom Riddle's Horcruxes.'
The door appeared and while he hesitated for a moment, Harry grabbed his Gryffindor courage pulled the door open, and walked inside. The Room of Requirement had created a classroom with chairs, tables, books laid on the tables, and a set of drawings with labels and more information. First was the picture of the diary with the initials T.M.R. on the outside, and the information of who died to make the Horcrux, the date, and the current location of the diary – hidden in Hogwarts by Dobby Elf.
Moving to the next picture, Harry read about the ring buried underneath the floor of the Gaunt family shack in the town of Little Hangleton, York. Riddle killed his father and both grandparents to make the ring into a Horcrux with particularly nasty curses protecting it. Apparently, Riddle never understood that the ring also could summon the dead to speak with the living.
The next two pictures included Hufflepuff's cup, secreted in Bellatrix Lestrange's vault in Gringotts, and the Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw which was hidden inside a different version of the Room of Requirement.
The next picture was labeled as being Salazar Slytherin's locket that was guarded jealously by an insane elf in the home of Sirius Black in London (address hidden by the fidelius charm cast by Albus Dumbledore). The locket was originally hidden in a cave just off the coast but Regulus Black, a young Death Eater, renounced the Dark Lord for some reason and retrieved the locket to prevent the evil wizard from making use of it. He'd died in that same cave but sent his house elf back to Grimmauld Place with the locket, ordering the elf to destroy the soul jar.
Harry thought, 'Crazy elf? That describes Kreacher for certain.'
The next to last Horcrux was a drawing of Harry's own face with red lines drawn around the scar on his forehead. The information read, 'accidental, semi-Horcrux created 31 October 1981. Death of Lily Potter carved off another piece of Riddle's soul.'
Harry paused for a long while, staring at his picture while he imagined slicing Albus Dumbledore into a dozen pieces, stitching him back together, and then slicing him up again with real blades rather than magic.
'I'm a bloody Horcrux! And he knows but still didn't tell me today!'
The final Horcrux, made last June by killing the groundskeeper at the old Riddle family home, was the Maledictus, Nagini. The information noted that the Maledictus was a reluctant familiar for the Dark Lord and she would welcome the end of her life to escape the pain the Horcrux inflicted on her continually – Riddle never allowed her to leave his side. However, the Dark Lord would send the Maledictus into the Department of Mysteries at Christmas (19 December 1995) to retrieve the prophecy sphere concerning Harry Potter and Tom Riddle.
'That's a bloody blatant hint,' Harry decided before he went and sat in one of the school chairs. The Room of Requirement converted the hard chair into a comfortable seat and Dobby popped into the room with a hot chocolate and two cut sandwiches for his favorite wizard to consume.
After ten minutes of resting, Harry's mind began questioning everything again. He looked about the comfortable room and noticed the pair of books on the table beside his chair. The first book was Dealing with the Horcrux Curse. Inside the book, Harry found the translators explaining that the original book had been written by Cleopatra, Queen of Egypt, one of the last witch-queens of that land. The book had been written during Cleopatra's reign about 30 BCE. It had been translated by a list of names beginning in 457ACE from Hellenic Greek to a later version of Greek. Then it was translated to Latin in 985 ACE, to French in 1434 ACE, and finally into English around 1800 ACE by a Lady Dalrymple living in Hampshire.
The second book is titled Potente Protections of the Minde by Godric Gryffindor without a publication date. The handwritten book is really a long scroll that had been cut into sheets of parchment and then sewn into a rough cover.
'Madam Pence would string someone up for doing this to a scroll written by a founder.'
Harry thought about gloves for his hands like Madam Pence wore when she handled the most ancient books and scrolls in the library before a box appeared with several sets of white gloves.
'I need to get some plastic gloves for Madam Pence to try,' Harry thought. But in a flash of light, a short article appeared in a library journal (muggle) about how cotton gloves remained superior to the plastic ones for handling old books, manuscripts, and scrolls.
"Thanks, Hogwarts! I didn't know about cotton gloves." Harry glanced at both books and asked, "Can I come back another day to read? I'm worn out after today."
There was another flash of light and modern copies of the two books appeared in Harry's hands. He grinned when he saw the cover of Cleopatra's book had changed to be Muggle Road Systems, a title no wizard or witch would find interesting. And the second book was titled, Puberty and Boys, a title that would keep Hermione from investigating the contents.
"You're brilliant Hogwarts! Thanks!" Harry said sincerely as he packed the two books into his book bag. He walked along the row of pictures once again, memorizing the information, before he exited the room and headed for dinner in the Great Hall with his friends.
Change SCENE && Reading Cleopatra's ClaptrapAfter reading the book about the Horcrux Curse, Harry Potter questioned his own observations closely. First, the witch-queen wrote that Horcruxes don't work after five cycles; (the various translators weren't certain if Cleopatra meant months, years, decades, or centuries by 'cycle.')
The different translators did agree that the wizard or witch would go insane and lose their magical power when they were resurrected. Next, the sorcerer will be reduced to a fellahin as time ran out. (The translators agreed the term fellahin meant squib/without magic).
There was a notion in the French translation from Latin by N. Flamel and P. Flamel that the spread of the Black Plague (Black Death) in the 1400s occurred because of the messy death of Marc Antony by Caesar in the early years of that century.
'How is that related to the Horcrux? Did they just want to scare the reader?' Harry wondered.
According to Cleopatra, to make more than one Horcrux cut the time allotted to survive in half. Worse, when the wizard attempted a resurrection, they returned as a golem (homunculus / creation) rather than as a human.
Harry grew skeptical about the information in the book and wrote his ideas down.
'1940 first one – fifty years later still kicking. Insane yes and still powerful. With seven, how did he come back at all? Half time cut in half six more times. He wrote out the numbers Born 1927 - 67 years – 32 – 16 – 8 – 4 – 2 – 1 year. June 1995 to June 1996.'
He smirked, 'According to Cleopatra, old Voldie-pants will fall apart next June.'
There was one line that stood out in Harry's mind, and he added it to his notes.
'Purest God's Water can dispel the magic of a Horcrux. Dash the device/artifact in a pure god's water thrice to disperse the evil curse.'
Thinking of his friend, Hermione Granger, and how she believed everything written in a book, he wondered, 'If Hermione saw this book written by Queen Cleopatra, she'd take every word as gospel – like something written by Merlin. She'd believe everything and expect Tommy to fall apart next August without any intervention by me – by the authorities – not me.'
Resolved to keep his eyes open, Harry kept his notes inside Cleopatra's book with a parseltongue locking spell on the cover. Too keyed up to sleep, he pulled out the other book and read about protecting his mind.
End SCENE