And here we go...
Intermission: The Light and the Light Lord
It was like nothing he had experienced before.
One moment he stood, as always, in Still-Beetle confinement, unable to tell, from the faint connection that he still felt with Kingsley's mind, if his assassination attempt had succeeded as yet. There was not either the despair that Albus would have expected if Kingsley had failed completely, nor the wild triumph that would have signaled an assassination safely carried out. Nor had Kingsley died yet, as he should have under the wands of enraged Aurors, or at Harry's hands. Albus could not tell what was happening, and it puzzled him completely.
The next moment, a gryphon was in the room with him.
Albus eyed the creature cautiously. He was sure it could not be real—such an animal could not have flown throughout the Ministry without triggering half a hundred wards—but he was equally sure that someone powerful enough to project this illusion through all the spells that surrounded him was an enemy he should have heard of before now.
This was not Tom's illusion, he was almost sure of it. Tom would settle for a more direct approach.
The gryphon was made of some delicate substance, now white in color, now gold. It raised its eagle-head and stared around the small cell, deep in Tullianum, to which they had sent Albus with another Portkey. Its eyes were yellow, unforgiving, cold.
Albus let out a slow breath. Perhaps he had the identity of the gryphon's creator wrong. Perhaps his old friend had made it and sent it to rescue him. Certainly, the creature didn't seem to approve of the conditions in which the Ministry had chosen to keep Albus.
Then the yellow eyes turned on him, and he knew it was not so. The gryphon came from a foe. Its wings snapped up as it looked at him, and a low, long hiss, more suited to a serpent than either an eagle or a lion, came forth from its beak.
Albus felt his magic surge beneath the bounds of the Still-Beetle confinement. So far, he had not managed to break his imprisonment, and he had not really tried, since he wanted, if he managed to recover his reputation, to show the wizarding world that he had obeyed the due process of law and gone tamely to his fate. Yet he knew it was not impossible for him to step free of this; Harry had done it last Christmas when Lily confronted him. If need be, if he could summon the rage, then perhaps he could break free of his bonds and defend himself from the gryphon.
Yet wasn't it Harry's Dark magic that had shattered the Still-Beetle's hold? Albus was sure that he did not want to practice Dark Arts.
He hesitated, and into that hesitation, the gryphon spoke.
"Albus Dumbledore," it said, the hissing forming into words as the voices of snakes must when Harry or Tom spoke to them. "Did you ever think what you were doing, when you took the title of Light Lord upon yourself?"
Albus only regarded the gryphon calmly. This was a trick, he was certain now. Perhaps the Minister had learned something of his involvement with Kingsley. That was one possibility, that Kingsley had neither succeeded nor failed, but been captured and stopped. Well, Albus would wait until they ceased to suspect him—they would think it was only the lingering effects of the widespread compulsion that had driven him to this, not a second spell—and then sent him off again. Sooner or later, he would force Harry into a murder done with Dark Arts. He knew that Harry would turn to that, if Kingsley killed or sufficiently threatened someone he loved. And if Harry killed someone who was not a Death Eater, and not in the heat of battle, then public opinion would begin to swing against him. Albus would stand a much better chance of emerging unscathed from his own trial, particularly if Homer could bring Hestia to him again, or sneak in himself, and he could use a different sort of compulsion.
With the old compulsion itself gone, though, he would need a black reputation for Harry to build the new spell upon, to convince the Light magic that he was fighting a deeply Dark opponent. And Kingsley would achieve that for him sooner or later.
The gryphon hissed again. Albus waited for it to go away. Surely a wizard of enough power to send it here would realize that it was not having the effect he wanted. He would withdraw it in disgust. Albus was not sure why he had sent it in the first place.
"You have not thought," said the gryphon. "I will tell you. I have watched you for a long time, Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore. I sensed the power in you, and I waited, and hoped. You declared yourself a Light Lord after you turned from the vates path, and you promised that you would do good among the people of the wizarding world. You were a compeller, but you promised to do good, and promises can counteract the darkest of inborn intentions. Free will is the most wonderful of gifts, and I trusted you to use your compulsion in the defense of the free will of others.
"You battled the Dark Lord Grindelwald, and so emerged fully into your power. The magic on which you drew was contented. The song of the sun and the moon and the stars in their spheres was not unknown to you. You heard it in your dreams. You might have gone on growing, to become one with the Light in a way that no one has managed since Calypso McGonagall.
"Alas, that you did not do so." The gryphon's voice descended into a whisper. "Alas, that you have become what you are now."
Albus was now sure that this must be a sending of Tom's, or Harry's; they were the only other wizards in Britain now, besides his mentor, powerful enough to have heard the song of the spheres in their dreams, and his mentor would never do something like this to him. He waited for it to be done. Of course, in the Still-Beetle confinement, he could do little else, but he could and did refuse to let the words make an impact on his brain. No illusion would make him doubt his choices. They remained as they had always been—regrettable, some of them, but inevitable.
"You changed," said the gryphon. "You began to make sacrifices. That would not have sufficed to change your good intentions to twisted ones, if they had been sacrifices that you made yourself. But you asked them of others. You bent their wills with tactics that any Light Lord should have scorned. A true Lord of Light has no need of compulsion to enforce his will, nor deceptions and subterfuge and glamours to make others believe that which is not true."
Albus was sure now that this apparition had come from Harry. The words about free will proclaimed it—they were not words that Tom would have used—and so did the thick disdain for his use of compulsion. He felt a surge of sadness. Harry, this is why I must be free, and why you must surrender to my will or be slain. I still wish you alive, and that is why I have refrained as long as I have. I am almost glad that Kingsley did not assassinate you, now. But if you continue to trouble me, I shall have no choice. We will find someone else to take your place in the prophecy. There are those who love your brother, or can be persuaded to.
"And even now you doubt me," said the gryphon. "Even now you think this is a falsehood. You have fallen so far into yourself that you have lost the ability to distinguish between truth and lies. Only a short time ago, you were desperate. Do you remember that? You were convinced that you needed to destroy the vates. And now, you think that you are glad that you did not succeed, because you believe you can still control him. Your thoughts run and flow like water, molding themselves around you, so that you can think anything rather than think that you are wrong."
A frisson of unease slid down Albus's spine, hurting a bit, as his frozen muscles could not shiver. Then he told himself this was nonsense, because the creature must be guessing; Harry could not truly know what was in his head.
"I have come because I think now that there is no chance you will ever change," said the gryphon. It moved forward, its feathers rippling like light on water. "I waited on opportunity after opportunity for redemption, and you have never taken any of them. The Dark does not care what its Lords do in its name. I care for mine. You have lost the right to call yourself a Light Lord. Even cornered, you do not admit the cornering. Even presented with proof of your wrong, you do not admit the wrong. And that is not what a Light Lord should do. A Light Lord must see."
The gryphon loomed over him. Albus could no longer observe its eyes clearly. That was all right. This was magic, very strange magic, of course, but ultimately the product of a frustrated boy's mind.
The gryphon bowed its head, clenched its beak on what seemed a corner of the air, and ripped his ability to practice Light magic away.
Albus felt the comfort, the center of his life, the warmth that beamed in the center of his chest and which he always reached for instead of Dark Arts, blaze and then fade. Frantically, he groped for it, a purely internal movement, like the race of his thoughts. He could still do magic, there was no doubt of that; his power was still there. But he found that he could not remember the incantations for Light spells. He could not remember the words that would have framed them, nor the will that would have driven them in the proper direction. He was like someone deaf for years, who could not remember what voices sounded like, though he knew that voices had once existed for him.
Nothing could have taken the ability to perform Light magic from him—
But the Light itself.
And there was the truth, after all. Confronted with his lost ability, Albus screamed silently, and stared at the gryphon, the manifestation of a magic he had ceased to hear in his dreams years ago, and had never more than half believed in for itself.
"It is done," said the gryphon. "I cannot touch the Dark Arts; they are yours. But you are not a Light Lord any longer. I do not accept you. I turn my back on you."
It faded, and Albus was left, spinning above a gulf of blankness, to confront his new reality.
On and on it went, long moments of reaching for certainties and having them fall out from under him, of clutching at cherished dreams and feeling them tatter. Then he found the one that did not unravel, and clung to it.
It was his love for his world, the world he had tried and striven so hard to protect, made so many sacrifices for, demanded so many sacrifices for. It could not tear, because all his being was bound up in it. Albus clung close and fast to it, and wished that he could close his eyes.
Our world is in more danger than ever before. I do not know if I can even command the spell on Kingsley any more, or the Order of the Phoenix, and I cannot call out to my mentor.
And then he paused, because he felt his magic still squirming in him, and there were all the Dark Arts incantations in his head, spells he had used before with only the greatest reluctance.
But needs must when a vates is in the world.
There were ways. Yes, there were ways. Albus felt his frantic heartbeat—which, under the Still-Beetle confinement, he was probably imagining—slowing. Hadn't he thought this would happen someday? Hadn't one of his dreams for years been that he lay in the mud of a battlefield, looking up at Tom, and heard the voice of their young savior behind him even as Tom incanted the Killing Curse? He had died content in those dreams, knowing that another was taking up the burden of saving their world, soothing it, settling it and protecting it from violent change.
Now he knew that neither Connor nor Harry was going to do that, at least not willingly, and he didn't possess the ability to gently make them do it, either. Even if he passed his own trial unscathed, other would find out what he was now the moment he began using Dark magic.
But there was another who could take up the burden.
Albus had known his mentor did not want to be disturbed. He had walked long and far, into strange pathways, and had not claimed the Light Lord title that he could, by right, because of the seclusion he lived in. But he had bestirred himself to advise Albus about Harry several months ago, and if there were absolutely no other choice, then he would come forth, and take over Albus's burden.
Albus needed a way of sending a message to him, though.
And since he had only Dark Arts now, and no way of knowing when Homer or Hestia might be able to come for him, it would take much more maneuvering than it would have before.
Carefully, wrapped in love and bounded by Dark, he began to plan.