AN: On this grim day, have a new chapter at least. I wish it was more cheerful, but I guess we can tell ourselves we're still doing better than Alduin?
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Alduin did, indeed, go to the Department of Mysteries on Monday.
"You do have your guardianship of Harry formalized and everything?" Croaker assured himself as he led him through the time section to the Hall of Prophecies.
"Yes, of course," Alduin replied.
"Good. Then this should be quite straightforward..."
Croaker led them through the long rows of shelves with pale, glimmering orbs on them to row ninety-seven, where he stopped in front of one sphere looking exactly like the others. The label on the shelf underneath said: S.P.T. to A.P.W.B.D., Dark Lord and (?)Harry Potter.
So it was Trelawney to Dumbledore after all. It was satisfying to have this confirmation, and Alexandra would be even happier to know, given that it was speculation in her circles that led to this conclusion.
"So...what do I do?" Alduin asked.
"Just take the orb," Croaker said. "If the formalities are in order, it'll recognize you as Harry."
"Does this work until the children are seventeen, or just fourteen?" Alduin asked curiously as he reached for the prophecy.
"Fourteen. After that, you'd need Harry's solemn agreement to listen to it." Alduin nodded, the orb now in hand, and Croaker added: "There are soundproofed booths in the back to listen to it in privacy. Just tap it with your hand three times and say play."
Obediently, Alduin headed in that direction, a little nervous but glad there was at leats a place where he could listen to the prophecy in peace.
Once he heard it, however, there was little enough peace left for him.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."
Okay, Alduin told himself. Okay.
But then, this was the prophecy Riddle knew? Fuck.
There really was no other word appropriate for the situation, and so Alduin just kept repeating it in his head over and over, trying to somehow stop his shaking.
You knew he was The Boy Who Lived when you took him in, he told himself.You should have expected this.
Yet somehow, he hadn't.
Or perhaps he had, and he had just not expected to feel the way he felt after finding out.
Like a giant punched him in the gut.
Okay, he told himself again, sitting in that booth and trying to breathe deeply. Calm down. Think about this rationally.
It took him several tries.
He will have power the Dark Lord knows not. That, at least, sounded optimistic, he tried to tell himself. Prophecies were notoriously fickle and traitorous in this respect, of course, but still, it was something. Harry had it in him to defeat Riddle, it seemed.
It sounded hard to believe, imagining his eleven year old ward now, but Dumbledore clearly acted in accordance with it. While simply throwing Harry at Riddle and hoping the prophecy would work its magic was a strategy with many problems, looking at it rationally, Alduin couldn't entirely fault the old man. The prophecy was extremely unclear about the power in question, so it was, in many ways, a fair attempt. Experimenting on children was always reprehensible, of course, but...but.
The older Harry got, the more formally trained he would be, and it was possible – not certain, just possible – that that would impair that power of his.
Rationally, there wasn't really that much to blame Dumbledore for.
But this was Harry.
This was his ward.
He wasn't going to allow this, he just wasn't. The boy's life had been messed up enough already by this war, he didn't need to die for it as well! Not when he was eleven!
Alduin took another deep breath.
It wouldn't do to let his upset get the better of him. He needed to think about this, think very carefully.
He was not willing to leave Harry untrained, push him into danger and simply hope for the best. This required consideration. It was likely he'd have to visit Dumbledore.
He left the Ministry as if in a daze, not really even remembering saying goodbye to Croaker. Alexandra was entertaining Patritia Ollivander and her infant son when he got home, and Alduin waited in another parlour, pacing impatiently. Perhaps he shouldn't tell her? He didn't know her that well, after all, and while he trusted her in general, this was extremely sensitive information. One wrong word to anyone…
But she was his wife, and Harry lived in her house, too. She had the right to know.
And he trusted himself to be able to stay rational or collected, at least a little, when he talked to her. It would do him good, he decided. Talking to someone would help him collect his thoughts, and talking to her in particular would help him do so efficiently. If he tried to talk to Abdullah...he wasn't sure what would happen, but it wouldn't be pretty. This was no time for mental breakdowns.
Finally Alexandra bid her friend farewell, and he burst into the receiving room as soon as Patritia disappeared in the flames on one of its fireplaces. "I need to speak to you," he said quickly.
Alexandra raised her eyebrows, but they returned to the morning parlour and she sat down on the sofa, giving him an expectant look.
As he recounted the prophecy, however, some of her poise disappeared. When he finished, she was silent for a long while before she took a deep breath and said: "Very well. I'll research past prophecies and try to see if they can shed any light on what we have here." She frowned. "Mark him as his equal? What does that mean?"
"Gods only know," Alduin said honestly, before remembering his determination to stay collected and rational and adding: "My main dilemma now is: should I train him or not?"
"You have to," she replied immediately. "You can't just leave him to his fate, whatever else happens. He's your ward, it's your responsibility to make sure he's as safe as possible."
Alduin felt relieved to be hearing this from someone else, someone less biased than he was. "You're right," he said.
"That also mean you will have to tell him the contents of the prophecy," she added.
"Eventually, yes, but-"
"No, not eventually," Alexandra interrupted him, "as soon as you start training him. He needs to understand what's happening."
"In the summer, then? He'll be twelve!" Alduin tried to push back the edge of desperation in his voice.
She nodded. "I agree, it's brutal, but then we don't know when he will need to set the prophecy off. It might be when he's thirteen! He's already met Riddle once, for gods' sake."
Alduin closed his eyes for a moment. I was doing my best to forget that particular fact, he thought. Aloud, he said: "Good point. Yes, you're right. It's just...when I took him from the Dursleys, I hoped to give him a better life, and now..."
Alexandra shrugged. "I venture he will still be happier with that hanging over his head than he would have been with his Muggle relatives. Leaving aside the fact that the prophecy would still have been valid."
That was a good point too, and encouraged by this, Alduin continued: "There's another thing, too. I need to speak to Dumbledore."
She considered this. "Yes," she agreed, "but wait. Give yourself time to think about this carefully. You need to be clear-headed for it."
He nodded, and pressed her hands. "Thank you."
She smiled. "It's my job."
She left, and Alduin departed for his study with some urgency. His whiskey awaited him. He had really hoped he wouldn't have another opportunity to make use of it so soon after his last overindulgence, but there were some situations that simply called for it.
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Harry was enjoying Hogwarts without any kind of danger, apart from losing some points or making Filch angry. Even Snape actually improved. Clearly, his talk with Miss Brigit had been effective, because he now ignored Harry and Neville as much as he could, and whenever he couldn't, his politeness was so frosty that Harry half-expected to find his potion freezing over. He began to grade their homework to an even more insane standard, but Harry would take it over the bullying of Neville in class any day.
He had had hopes there'd be enough snow after the holiday to have some fun with it in the afternoons, but unfortunately, the temperature had gone up and it had mostly melted even in Scotland. Outside was still rather undesirable, in fact, so apart from his Quidditch practices, Harry tended to stay in the castle, huddled in his robes with warming spells on them. On occasion, he lend his similarly equipped cloak to some of his friends when they were outside the Gryffindor common room. Especially in the corridors, the wind sometimes appeared to get inside the castle and dance around them, chasing them with vicious glee.
The common room, on the other hand, had never before been so attractive, and Harry was very grateful for the two-way mirror that enabled him to talk to Draco without leaving its comfort. "You have a fireplace?" Draco was asking now. "How is that fair?"
"Ha, which is the best house now?"
"I doubt you have such magnificent view of the lake as we do," Draco returned, "but yeah, okay, that's a definite bonus point in winter, I have to concede that."
"They have a fireplace?" Harry heard Daphne's muffled voice from the other side. "That's it, I'm changing houses. The family tradition and all that, you know."
"You'd betray your own house for a bit of warmth?" Draco asked, mock-offended.
"I'd betray anyone for a bit of warmth, right now," was Daphne's retort.
"Then I'm sure you're in the right house," Harry quipped, and smiled apologetically at Draco's offended look. "I take it Daphne isn't taking the weather well?" He asked.
"No. I swear, the girl should have been born in France at least."
"Well, liking the sun is in the bets tradition of your house, isn't it? I mean, snakes always bake on the rocks..."
"So, what, we should confiscate your common room with the argument that it rightfully belongs to us?"
"No, you should cut Daphne some slack and borrow her a warming-charmed cloak of yours."
Draco rolled his eyes. "She has her own. Millicent says she's just too thin to ever be properly warm."
"Does that matter? Because it would explain why I was cold all the time!"
"You're cold all the time because you keep giving your cloak to other people," Draco replied drily. "It's simple, really."
"I just think it's irritating the school list doesn't even have a recommendation for this...I mean, even the people who-" he lowered his voice, "even the people who can afford it, if they had never gone to Hogwarts, they don't know it's needed!"
Draco grimaced, and asked: "Yeah, but can such people afford it?"
"You're joking, right?" Harry stared. "Talk about this to Justin from Hufflepuff. He was complaining about cold one day on the way from Herbology and Hannah told him about clothing with these charms on it and then about owl order service and like a week later, he got his entire Hogwarts wardrobe new, with the charms on it, sent by his parents. So I'd say it's safe to estimate that yeah, they can afford it."
"And his parents are completely Muggle?" Draco asked doubtfully.
"Yes. Come on, Draco, surely you didn't imagine there were no rich Muggles?"
"I dunno. I just sort of always imagined them poor and not too educated, which I guess most of them are..."
Harry looked around nervously, to make sure no one was listening in. Neville was, but he only rolled his eyes at this. "About as much as the witches and wizards, I guess," Harry said. "Listen, I have to go, there's a Potions homework to finish, but trust me, there are plenty of Muggles who are super rich. Maybe my cousin can take you with us when we next go sightseeing somewhere."
Draco didn't seem interested in the idea of Muggle sightseeing, and Harry put the mirror away, not in the mood to argue. "Sometimes," he complained to Neville, "it's exhausting."
"But I think you're doing a good job," Neville replied. "Imagine that, he clearly knew nothing about rich Muggles!" Neville blushed a little. "I mean, I don't really know much about them either, but, you know, even I knew they existed."
Harry thought this was rather too much like talking about some near-extinct animals, and was glad neither Dean nor Sophie were there at the moment.
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Abdullah, Alduin decided, really knew him too well.
They were dining with the Yaxleys that night, but almost as soon as he walked into the room, Abdullah came to him and asked in a low voice: "What's going on?"
Alduin sighed. He'd been keeping mostly to himself the last two weeks, waiting for his immediate reaction to the prophecy to pass, assessing the situation and evaluating options.
And drinking. Drinking a lot.
He tried to keep it controlled enough that Alexandra wouldn't have more reason to give him one of her disappointed and disapproving looks, but he wasn't quite succeeding. Every morning at breakfast, they were growing more and more pronounced. They were edging towards disgusted, in fact. Alduin hated it, but he needed a way to cope, damn it! It had worked quite well in the war, so he didn't see why it shouldn't work now.
He had not called on Abdullah in the meantime, precisely because he knew his friend could read him so well. That, too, had worked perfectly well in the war.
"A potential disaster," he replied as lightly as he could, "but it's a long-term kind of thing – I hope! - and definitely not something to be discussed in a Yaxley drawing room."
Abdullah nodded minutely to indicate his understanding and, without batting an eyelash, asked: "So how's Alexandra doing? How long do you have left until Wynn is born?"
"Not even a month to go," Alduin replied, "and she says she can't wait to be able to walk free again." He grimaced. "Makes me feel bad for putting her through it, really." In reality, he chiefly felt bad for getting wasted every night while his pregnant wife lay a floor above him, but well. A way to cope.
Abdullah shrugged. "She knew what she was signing up for, didn't she?"
Alduin almost laughed out loud at how fitting that question was for his real problem. No, I really don't think she did. "In theory, yeah, but I don't think pregnancy is something you can fully understand without experiencing it."
"Is she considering stopping at one child, then?"
Alduin frowned. The thought was alarming, and made him actually consider trying to find a different coping mechanism. What if Alexandra told him she didn't intend to have another child with a drunk? But, well, the thought of the nightmares that have resurfaced since he heard the prophecy made him forget such ideas pretty quickly. Whiskey kept nightmares at bay, and it certainly tasted better than Dreamless Sleep. And it was less addictive. Probably. "You know she wouldn't do that," he said aloud, trying to convince himself. "No, she doesn't blame me or anything either, it's me who feels bad." That was almost true. He didn't think Alexandra blamed him, exactly. She was just...well, disappointed. Like she had expected better of him. It was rather disconcerting how much this was reminiscent of his grandmother.
"Don't you always?" His friend asked conversationally. "Come on, let's rejoin the others before I'm tempted to ask you personal questions."
They came across Mrs. Leartes, and the conversation topic presented itself naturally. "Harry's doing great," she said. "And I mean truly great. He seems to be a natural at Defence."
Good. Gods know he will need it. Still, Alduin was a little surprised. "Hm, interesting. It wasn't either of his parents' forte, if I recall correctly, even though James was certainly decent at it." Even Lily probably was, by the end. It's not like they had a choice. "And what is the experience like for you?"
"Exhausting," she admitted freely. "I'll ask Dorian or Titus Davies to take over next term, but I'm thinking I'll have to keep it secret how exhausting it actually is."
"If you can convince one of them, then by all means, use all methods at your disposal," Alduin said with a laugh. "You shouldn't feel any guilt about it. It's supposed to be Dumbledore's job to find people for this, anyway – or try and break the curse, really."
Mrs. Leartes gave him an amused look. "Yes, well, that might be easier said than done."
He shrugged. "Granted, but it's been on the job for about thirty years. Don't tell me he couldn't have done something in all that time."
"Honestly, after having this kind of close experience with him, I understand him even less than before, so I really can't give you any answers."
Yes, Alduin thought, I can relate to that very easily.