So sorry this took so long, but between a paper in school, life in general and someone trying to rip off my story, this last week hasn't been the best. Thank you to everyone who notified me about Singeractress and her theft of my story on harrypotterfanfiction.com. I don't frequent that site much, so I wouldn't have caught on except for you guys letting me know. Thankfully, the site was very helpful and Singeractress' account has been deleted. I'd sic Harry on her, but that may be overkill.
Thanks for all of the reviews, everyone. I am very glad to have such dedicated readers, and I really enjoy reading your reviews.
DISCLAMER IN CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 30
Passing
Remus wasn't at all surprised that Harry decided to go with them to Hogwarts, where the meeting was to be held. It seemed like something Harry would do. What he couldn't figure out was why. Harry had forgiven himself and Sirius, but Remus didn't really think that he'd done the same for the headmaster. Harry hadn't mentioned anything, but there was still a small flare of anger in his eyes as he listened to the conversation going on between Sirius and Remus. He obviously still held a grudge against the headmaster. Remus shrugged off his curiosity and continued his argument with his friend. "He's an old man, Sirius, it doesn't have to be a curse or poison, you know."
Sirius shook his head stubbornly, refusing to budge on his idea that it had been some type of foul play that had put Albus Dumbledore in a bad way. "But… Dumbledore?"
Remus sighed. "Dumbledore is human, you know!" Then he turned to see how Harry was reacting to this topic. He was even planning on drawing Harry in to the conversation if at all possible, since that was likely the only way that he was going to get any clues as to what the younger man was thinking. But Harry was gone. That did surprise Remus. It also caused him to realize that trying to either predict or understand Harry Potter was bound to be a lost cause.
Meanwhile, Harry had donned his invisibility cloak, and was heading for the dungeons, where the ever-useful Marauder's Map showed Severus Snape's location to be. Harry needed answers, and although he knew that both Remus and Sirius would tell him everything that they knew, it was obvious from their conversation that it wasn't going to be enough. Harry's curiosity definitely came from his more Slytherin side. His patience was all Gryffindor, though, as in non-existing. Unless he had a good reason to be patient, of course, which was probably Slytherin again.
Sure enough, Snape was visible as soon as Harry rounded the corner of the corridor that led to the dungeons. The potions master looked unusually worried as he strode towards Harry, who was reminded that Snape owed Albus Dumbledore his freedom and his life. Which was very similar to what he owed Harry. Harry cleared his throat, and was amused to see the bane of his Hogwarts years jump in surprise. He removed the cloak. "Sorry about that. I'd actually forgotten that I'd had it on."
Snape took a deep, calming breath, and looked as if he was only just restraining his temper. "Potter. What now?"
Harry fell into step beside him, utterly ignoring the glare that would have struck fear in his heart six years earlier. "What's going on?"
Snape looked surprised. "How did you hear… oh, of course, the slaves were called to the Order meeting."
Harry nodded and then raised an eyebrow. "They're not technically slaves anymore."
Snape sneered. "Will they do anything you tell them to? They're slaves."
Harry shot him a deep, searching glance, eyes unreadable and hard. When he spoke, his voice was very quiet. "And what does that make you, Severus Snape?" Harry mentally grinned. Snape was a good man underneath all of his inherent sarcasm and annoying traits, but he did occasionally need to be reminded that Harry wasn't a student or just a normal wizard anymore. The good thing was that, Snape being Slytherin and capable of picking up on inferences, Harry wouldn't need to come right out and warn Snape about his attitude. This little incident would do fine.
Snape got the message quite clearly. He, too, would obey Harry as long as the orders were not dark, and possibly even if they were, depending on the circumstances, and he knew it. He let out a minuscule sigh of relief as Harry turned his eyes straight ahead again. He wasn't concerned that Harry would hurt him or anything, but he knew that Harry was not someone that it was wise to annoy. He'd gotten used to their rather strange information exchange type of friendship, although he never would have admitted it. "Fine, so they aren't slaves." He hurriedly changed the subject. "Dumbledore has been fading slightly over the last few months. He's also been hiding said fact, which is very annoying but also very Dumbledore."
"Fading? Is he ill?" Harry wasn't a huge fan of the headmaster's but neither did he want him dead. He was just a little harder to forgive than anyone else, but Harry was fully planning on getting to it someday.
"Well, he's not getting any younger, but the biggest problem is the wards." Harry's puzzled look caused Snape to explain further. "We had no idea when the Dark Lord would be attacking, and he had been so quiet even to me, so we knew that he was planning something big."
Harry interrupted. "Oh, and it was, too." The smile that crossed his face wasn't anything less than a smirk, and a rather evil looking one at that.
Snape looked highly curious, but restrained himself. He had already annoyed Harry once this evening and he didn't care to do it again. "Hogwarts was a very desirable target for Voldemort. We, the Order, that is, needed it as a fallback, a place of last defense, if it came to that. It had to be safe. Dumbledore, with the help of the Order, added new wards, both outside and interwoven with the normal Hogwarts defenses." Snape shook his head, amazed. "A lot of new wards, even for a wizard of his power. And he anchored them in his own magical core. A highly dangerous, if effective measure and never intended to be a long-term solution. Since if there were an attack, Dumbledore would be at Hogwarts behind the wards anyway, he was the obvious anchor. Then, when you so kindly ridded the world of that evil git, the extra wards were no longer necessary. I thought that he'd removed them, but from what Pomfrey says, he's still being drained. And now, he's too weak go through the process to release them."
Harry winced. "He needs to get better before he can get rid of them, and he needs to get rid of them before he can get better. Wonderful."
Snape nodded and continued. "Yes. According to Pomfrey, he'd be fine if it wasn't for the extra drainage. Well, not exactly fine, but alive, if well overdue for retirement from such a stressful and draining job. But, with the problem we have here, well…" Snape looked uncharacteristically worried. "He could die. And if he dies while the wards are still anchored to him, it is possible, unlikely, but possible, that he could take Hogwarts defenses down entirely. While Voldemort isn't a threat any longer, neither can we afford to be unprotected for the months, possibly even years, that it would take to get even half of the wards back up again. Some of them date from the time of the Founders."
Harry blinked. "So, what's the plan?" He was beginning to seriously hope that there was a plan. He didn't know much about wards beyond what he had picked up from his books and studying his own home's wards. Still, he knew enough to know that Snape was probably under emphasizing the problems that would be caused if Hogwarts' wards fell.
Snape shrugged as they entered the corridor that led to Dumbledore's office, where Harry gathered that the meeting was being held. "We'll have to figure out some way to help him. Maybe a power-sharing spell, or a linkage to remove the weight of the spells. I don't know." Snape paused at the gargoyle. "Will you be joining us? I assure you that you would be welcome. In all fairness, you should have been a member years ago."
Harry shook his head. "No." He left it at that. Snape nodded, probably assuming that Harry didn't want to deal with the Order, and he wasn't all that wrong. Harry watched as Snape muttered a typically sweet password and headed up the staircase. Loud conversation could already be heard. The gargoyle slid closed with a thud, effectively cutting off the sound. Harry turned and walked away again.
It was late enough that the students were asleep, or should have been. The map revealed that the two trouble makers that Harry had fostered along were slouching through their own common room, likely with some mischief in mind, but Harry didn't think that they would get anywhere near the headmaster's office. Not on purpose, anyway. He didn't have to worry about them.
Harry knew the way to the infirmary quite well, even if it had been years since his last visit. The most familiar part of it was the smell, the starchy clean scent with the faintest hint of whatever potions Snape had most recently delivered. As he entered and noticed its obvious emptiness, Harry wondered if he'd assumed wrong, and that Dumbledore was somewhere else. Then he heard a faint movement from a door at the end of the long room. Madam Pomfrey suddenly emerged from a small room and headed into her office, not seeing Harry. Harry donned his invisibility cloak as soon as she was out of sight, and carefully edged into the open doorway.
Albus Dumbledore lay on the bed, looking weaker and more tired than Harry had ever seen him. He had lost weight, as was evidenced by the thinness of his wrists and the slightly sunken nature of his cheeks. Fawkes was perched on the back of a chair near his head, and the beautiful bird was crooning an encouraging melody. However ill Dumbledore may have looked, Harry soon had proof that his mental processes were still fully intact. "Hello, Harry. Come in, if you like."
Harry shrugged out of the cloak, remembering that he'd always suspected that the headmaster wasn't fooled by it. "Headmaster." He moved into the room, standing at the foot of the bed, and suddenly entertaining thoughts along the lines of 'what am I doing here?'. "How are you?"
Dumbledore's smile was strained as he spoke softly. "Not very well, I'm afraid." He paused for a moment and Harry could feel some magical energy shift slightly and then be forced back into place. Fawkes' song intensified for a moment, as if to help the aged man through his struggle to control the magical energies tied to him. He took a deep breath before speaking again. "Still, I'm glad to see you again, Harry. I had wondered if you might join the Order meeting."
Harry shrugged slightly. "I came with Sirius and Remus, for lack of anything better to do, not to join the Order."
Dumbledore sent Harry a searching stare that wasn't at all weakened by the fact that he was ill and in bed. "Sirius and Remus? Not Black and Lupin?"
Harry nodded, but didn't elaborate. Dumbledore looked momentarily pleased, but was suddenly forced to wrestle with the wards again. This time Harry watched on the magical level, noticing that Dumbledore was connected to Hogwarts on several levels. The problem came from the wards, which, in his weakened state, were just too much for him to keep in place. Harry was impressed with the pure scope of the protections, Dumbledore had been as ready for an attack as one could possibly be. As soon as Dumbledore had things under control, Harry spoke. "I'm sorry to have disturbed you, I'll leave." It was increasingly difficult to stay angry with a potentially dying man, and the last thing that Harry wanted to do was to distract the man and cause him to lose his already fragile control.
But before he could turn to go, Dumbledore spoke up. "No, please, Harry, stay. It helps to get my mind off of things. If you don't mind, that is?"
Harry almost left anyway, but somehow the faintly hopeful look in Dumbledore's eyes won him over. Inwardly swearing at his own softness, he moved to the chair and took a seat. "Why on earth didn't you let go of those wards once Tom was dead?"
Dumbledore winced slightly and spoke, his voice rough and weak. "I was busy, and thought I had time. It's not a good excuse, especially in hindsight, but one never really expects something like this to happen." He sighed. "I did take down some of them, enough so that I thought that I could handle the remainder for a while, as it take a rather complicated procedure to release the ones still up." Another long pause. "Between keeping the Ministry from bungling up things, and the trials of the death eaters, and the Hogwarts term starting, taking the wards down didn't seem to be that urgent."
Harry shook his head. "Mistake, that." Harry was surprised when Fawkes suddenly decided that Harry's lap would be a better perch than the chair back. "Uh, hello to you too, Fawkes." The bird trilled a greeting and twisted his neck to place his head under Harry's hand.
Dumbledore looked amused. "He likes you, but he'd like you better if you scratched his head a bit." Harry complied, and was rewarded with a purr-like hum that automatically brought a smile to both men's lips. Then, returning to their previous conversation, the headmaster nodded grimly. "Well, it isn't the first, or the worst, mistake I've made. Have you forgiven Remus and Sirius, or have you just broken the bond?"
Harry inwardly smiled at Dumbledore's sudden change of topic. The older man was quite good at getting what he wanted out of a conversation. A talent that Harry just happened to share. Harry pointedly didn't answer the question. "Oh, so you saw the linkages too?"
Dumbledore's eyes shot over to Harry. "Too? You can sense magical auras?"
Harry shrugged. "Only had a fourth year formal education, Headmaster. I know a lot of things, but not necessarily the right name for them. What do you mean?"
Dumbledore looked mildly excited, which, Harry presumed, would have translated into extremely excited, had he been in better health. "Were you ever able to ever see the energy between you and your godfather? Can you see the magical core inside yourself? Judge the strength of spells and such?"
Harry blinked, somewhat surprised by the headmaster's reaction to something that he'd assumed was a normal part of being magical. He spoke cautiously. "Yes."
Dumbledore paused to have another brief but draining bout with the wards. However, he didn't let the distraction deter him from the topic. "Well, that certainly explains some things." No additional information was offered, and Harry didn't want to ask.
Harry was silent for a moment, then decided to answer Dumbledore's prior question. "I forgave them."
The words just sat there for a moment. Harry watched as a relieved smile slid over the older man's face. "I'm glad, Harry, that my mistakes didn't lose you anymore of your life than they already have."
Harry sighed and looked at the wall. He opened his mouth to speak, but cut himself off as Dumbledore seized up again. Harry watched in horror a look of pain swept over the headmaster's face. This one was worse than the last. Fawkes flew to the headboard of the bed and sang louder. Harry leaned forward and grabbed Dumbledore's hand, surprised at the strength of the pain-fueled grip. "I'll call Madam Pomfrey."
"She can't help." For a split second, Dumbledore had relief, and then it began again. He simply didn't have the power left to fuel the shields, and Harry had the feeling that they drained him not only of magic, but also of his very life.
"Merlin, Albus, give them to me." Harry couldn't stand to see anyone hurt like that, and instinctively knew that he could handle the wards.
"C-can't. Won't work. Tried with Sev-uhnnn."
Harry switched over to see the wards again. They were fluctuating wildly. The headmaster wasn't going to be able to hold them much longer. "I'm not Severus. Give them to me." Dumbledore looked at Harry for a long moment. Harry squeezed his hand. "Just let go. Trust me."
Harry was unaware of the fact that his eyes were glazed over with power, or that he was actually feeding magical power into Dumbledore through their gripped hands. It wasn't much in the grand scheme of things, but since it was theoretically impossible to do even that without a long and involved spell, it was enough to cause Dumbledore to do exactly what Harry asked of him. He trusted the younger man and let go.
Harry took the wards in as soon as they detached from the headmaster's magical core. A brief ripple of magic permeated the surrounding area, but Harry didn't notice. It was hard to anchor them to himself, but once it was done, the power drain settled to a steady pace. Harry began to sort them through, organizing the defenses in his mind so that he was prepared and ready just on the off chance that some stupid megalomaniac would decide to attack Hogwarts. Then Harry's eyes flew open. "Headmaster! You gave…"
Dumbledore's eyes had regained that slight sparkle that managed to shine through his utter exhaustion. "A little unorthodox, but it worked quite well. And I'm not Headmaster anymore, now am I?" Before Harry could sputter out an answer to that, Dumbledore's eyes closed and he went still.
For one heart stopping moment, Harry thought that Dumbledore had died in front of his eyes. Fortunately for both Dumbledore and Harry's peace of mind, since he probably would have panicked, a closer look revealed that the aged wizard had merely fallen into a deep sleep. Harry sat back in his chair and stared blankly at the sleeping form on the bed.
Dumbledore hadn't just given him the extra wards, he'd given him Hogwarts herself. Harry was connected to the castle in ways that he had never even dreamed that the headmaster had been. If he tried, he could feel the state of the wards, could tell that the various dangerous objects scattered throughout the castle were not being disturbed, and that there was a boggart hiding in the third dungeon on the right, three floors below. He had the ability to see passwords, communicate instantaneously with any staff member, and contact the house elves.
Dumbledore had essentially made him Headmaster.
Voices caused Harry to stand and turn to face the door. Snape could be heard arguing with someone whose voice Harry recognized, but that he couldn't place. Harry grinned slightly as he picked up the thread of the conversation. The unrecognized voice seemed to be arguing with Snape over something. "But if it wasn't a ward, or heaven forbid, all of the wards falling, then what was it?" The voice, male and increasingly familiar as it got closer, must have been talking about the slight, but noticeable magical surge that had occurred as Harry had taken the wards.
Snape sounded annoyed, but frankly, that wasn't very unusual for the former spy. "I tell you, if the wards had fallen, it would have been much worse than that. They'd have been feeling it a hundred miles away." Snape ground to a halt as he and the owner of the voice, now recognizable as Professor Flitwick, noticed Harry and the sleeping Dumbledore. Snape's eyes widened. "He's not…?"
Harry shook his head hurriedly. "He just fell asleep. And before you ask, that surge was me. Well, us, technically. I have the wards now, so the urgency isn't quite so… urgent."
Both men just blinked in surprise. Flitwick sputtered. "You have them? But… how?"
Harry didn't really know how to explain what he had done, so he just sent the small professor a knowing look and didn't comment. By doing that, he managed to look knowledgeable but secretive, and not stupid. Flitwick didn't press the issue. Very useful, that knowing look. He'd have to remember that one.
Snape sighed. "Harry, you're going to need to talk to the Order." He didn't sound as if he really was expecting Harry to comply, but that he had to say it. Harry was a loose cannon, blatantly powerful when there seemed to be no possible explanation for those powers. The Order had concerns about him already, and those concerns would only be growing as soon as they heard that Harry had the wards of their stronghold in his hands.
Harry, however, just nodded his agreement. Some explanations were in order, and doing them now had some definite good sides to it. Everyone concerned, with the exception of Dumbledore, was all in one place, and Dumbledore could hear of it later from a pensive or word of mouth. Harry really only wanted to say all of this once.
It was going to be hard enough to get through as it was. They were not exceptionally happy memories.
COMING SOON: Explanations, the Order, and information
OK, well this next chapter should be up by the end of the month, but no promises, school is rather rough this semester, and that's my main priority… The good news is, it looks like it may be the longest chapter yet, since I think that it would be way to mean to break up the chapter in the middle of the long awaited explanations! Hope everyone has a nice week! - krtshadow
As a side note, I am winding up this story, so if you have any burning questions, now is the time to ask them so I get them answered in either the explanation chapter or my author's notes. There will be some things left unexplored, but hopefully we can keep it to a minimum…
