Chapter 20 – Dumbledore's Admissions

Snape requested a meeting immediately after Dumbledore returned. Upon entering his office, the first thing he noticed was how feeble the man now looked and the spreading decay of his hand. Still, somehow this didn't phase Snape the way he would have otherwise expected it to.

"Ah, Severus, to what do I owe the pleasure?" Dumbledore asked, sitting down and looking exasperated.

"How long did you know?" Snape asked coldly.

"Know what, Severus?" Dumbledore asked.

"Azalea... Albus, what were you trying to accomplish? When you knew she was marked, when they died, what were you trying to accomplish by- ?" He explained.

"By knowingly sending her to a radically religious family who would no doubt mistreat her?" Dumbledore admitted sadly.

"Mistreat? He tried to kill her," Snape retorted. "What did you think she was after the Dark Lord disappeared?"

"I thought she was cursed beyond anything we could repair, I didn't know where to start," he said.

"When did you know what they were really doing? I saw Albus, reports were made, authorities notified, you expect me to believe nobody on our side of the line was notified? She's the blasted 'girl who lived,'" Snape asked incredulously.

Dumbledore was silent. "Just be honest, is that even possible for you?" Snape hissed.

"I knew. A report was made when she was about ten or eleven. She attacked the girl who watched her while under the influence of something. The girl was certain he was abusive, the medical report was telling of… everything. But she couldn't be placed in some shelter home, could she? She couldn't just be fostered. There was no protection from him, she would have died in that dungeon with Quirrell if it hadn't stayed intact. I knew as soon as she reentered this world he would try to return. That protection has kept her alive through all of this! If that had been broken she would be gone," Dumbledore explained defensively.

Snape was jarred beyond belief. "When did you know she was an obscurial?" He asked, shaking his head in disbelief.

"When I met her," Dumbledore admitted.

"How?" Snape asked.

"Because my sister was... I knew the signs, Severus, I knew she couldn't have managed to survive her upbringing without developing one. I hoped having an outlet for magic would mend or stall it. I thought it had. But it wasn't the outlet that stalled it, it was her! She stalled it by separating herself from it. What she saw in the maze was her own creation, a means to survive, I've never seen anything like that. She wouldn't have been able to do it without the curse she took from Voldemort. He was the only one who could free her of it," Dumbledore explained.

"You anticipated her being captured too then?"

"I anticipated she would come into contact with him again, but I deeply regret what she went through to accomplish what was accomplished," Dumbledore said.

Snape nodded slowly. "The Dark Lord wanted a weapon when he learned what she was. You sent her back there year after year knowing what she was, was that your goal as well?"

"I wouldn't wish that affliction on anyone, Severus, but we would never have been able to mend it softly. There was simply no cure... The only reason she was freed of it was because it had always been latched on to a portion of her that Lily's protection didn't sustain. The portion of her that has been animated by him from the moment he lost his powers. When he possessed her as the obscurus recoiled, it confused them. It latched onto him and she was left intact. Of course it can't be transferred, so it died. That would not have happened if not for Lily, despite him taking her blood in that graveyard. Lily's protection would have died YEARS prior if she hadn't grown up in that blood ward. Do you see the dilemma?" Dumbledore explained.

"I hoped, I desperately hoped, that the blood protection would keep him from being able to touch her until she was of age and capable of tackling this head on. I hoped him not being able to touch her would keep him from returning entirely. He needed her to return to full power. If she hadn't grown up in that house, with her only blood relative, she would have been up for slaughter immediately. I hoped that what she endured there would spare her what she has had to endure since... but I was wrong. He found a way, and keeping her alive has been a challenge at severe cost to her," Dumbledore continued.

"What is your brilliant theory now then?" Snape said bitterly.

"That's not an inferious she sees, it's him," Dumbledore said shortly. Snape stopped breathing momentarily at the sentiment.

"You don't hate her because she reminds you of James, Severus. You aren't cruel to her because of a school days bully. You sense Voldemort. Slughorn senses Riddle, I have always sensed Riddle. Her family, awful as they were, were scared senseless by that same presence, it brought out the worst in all of them. Pettigrew, the man manipulated into betraying the only people who were ever kind to him, struggled to look at her or feel for her because the guilt was replaced by disdain for the one who actually made him do it," he continued.

"The people who love her don't sense it because they neither know him or have any inherent animosity toward her. Lizzie has a heart, mind, and spirit most like her mother, regardless of the parallels people draw with James. Those similarities are just more obvious on the surface..."

"She has been fighting the presence of Voldemort her entire life. He lives in her head, in her skin, and at that the most insidious form of him..."

"When someone kills someone with malice, the soul splits. That split is comprised of the most evil characteristics of the one who committed the act. It stalks them, it manipulates them, it seeks to destroy them so that it can become them. Unless there is payment. One could kill the form it takes and suffer their own partial, or sometimes full demise. One could let it take them over, or they can contain it by offering it the body of their victim. From here they can control it, conceal it, use it," he explained.

"His soul split when he tried to kill her, and because Lily's protection shielded her, it rebounded on him. He had no body for it to seek out, so it took that of his victim... her...animating the portion of her that Lily's sacrifice didn't protect. This became more insidious when the magic she already carried compounded with what was absorbed and was subsequently suppressed all those years. He freed her of that, and can free her of himself as well. For every affliction he's created, only he can cure it, and she cannot kill him until he does, but neither can he," he concluded.

"There's no road home then, is there?" Snape asked.

"No... there isn't, not for Lizzie," Dumbledore said shamefully.

"It was all for nothing?" Snape asked with contempt for the man.

"Not nothing... I'm certain he will fall," Dumbledore said reassuringly.

"What about protecting her? We were protecting her!" Snape roared.

"The only person ever truly obligated to protect her was Sirius, nobody else. He couldn't all those years, and that is my fault too! I have tried to choose the lesser of the evils, the plight to the greater good for our world and for her, and the stick she draws is always the shortest one. You're mistaken if you think my heart isn't broken over that," Dumbledore argued.

"She killed her uncle, Albus. Did she tell you that? She poisoned him. She killed that doctor he married her to, ran his car off the road where it wrapped around a tree. She stabbed Pettigrew in the throat..."Snape pointed out.

Dumbledore interjected, "...She also stopped the chaplain's heart and I do believe she hung the little girl and had something to do with those other deaths. That memories are rewritten so even she believes the revised course of events. She didn't tell me about Vernon, but when it was announced he died, I assumed. I did not know that doctor died as well though."

"You're saying that's all him?" Snape asked.

"No, it's not all him. It's him manipulating her. If I had to guess, or make a bet, and this I do hope gets revealed more clearly... The chaplain abused both girls. Lizzie, manipulated by Riddle, convinced her friend to do what she did to escape it. Lizzie blamed the chaplain for the outcome, and Riddle manipulated that anger, willing him to die. She felt guilty and wanted to be with her only friend... but Riddle didn't allow it, he didn't let the train hit her, she was his vessel," he explained.

"Pettigrew's death, however, was at Lizzie's hands. She blamed him for her what happened to her parents and Cedric, as well as her upbringing not having been raised by Sirius. Yet she couldn't do the same to Bellatrix... Vernon's death was also at Lizzie's hands because he nothing short of tortured her for her entire life. However, I am willing to bet she did not consciously intend to kill that doctor. She let him go when she had the chance before, and he never returned... That was likely a split in her own soul she created when she killed her uncle," Dumbledore explained.

"If you remember what happened to Ginny Weasley? a more sinister course has been happening to Lizzie for fourteen years," Dumbledore added. "She has fought it remarkably considering..."

"She's getting weak," Snape said grimly.

"She's not the slightest bit weak, Severus," Dumbledore said. "My hope for Lizzie is freedom from this, whether that be with everyone she's lost and longs for, or the opportunity to build a life and family of her own no longer afflicted by any of this. But she won't be leaving anyone she cares about behind unprotected, or this unfinished, that I am absolutely certain of," he explained gravely. "There is so much I regret that I don't think she should ever forgive me for. That is not something I will ever expect of her...I have completely failed her."

Snape sat with his head in his hands. "You're feeling guilty but don't, my decisions were not your responsibility. I will never make it up to her, but intend to do absolutely everything I can to help her," Dumbledore said, noticing the shifted demeanor. Snape hardly recognized the man staring back at him but it was making his other obligations much easier to grapple with.