Harry knocked on the door, heart pounding in his chest, his blood aflame.
This was it. After all his discussions and plans with Ron and Hermione, he was actually going to do it.
It was time.
"Come in."
Harry took a deep breath and entered the office.
It looked much as it had the previous times he'd been there. Fawkes still sat on his perch, the paintings still watched down and whispered to one another, the silver instruments still ticked and whirred. Dumbledore, too, looked as he always had; calm and kind, exuding wisdom and peace, with only the withered blackness of his hand marring his perfect grandfatherly image.
The pensieve sat on the desk, the silver memories therein swimming around and casting flickers onto the bowl beside it, the one holding Voldemort's ring.
No, everything here was as it had been the last time Harry was there.
It was Harry who had changed.
"Please, have a seat, Harry," Dumbledore said, with a small nod toward the empty chair opposite him.
Harry did so, the motion awkward as he kept his pocket from being pushed too hard against the chair or his body.
He breathed an internal sigh of relief. He'd managed.
"While I am, of course, glad to see you," Dumbledore said cheerfully, "I would like to know what prompted your request for this meeting."
Harry didn't look him directly in the eye, instead keeping his own eyes unfocused and slightly to the left of the old man's head. The sun was setting, bleeding into night.
"Harry? Is something the matter?"
The portraits' whispering grew louder. Harry ignored them, focusing instead on the torrent of emotions within him.
His hands tightened around the chair's arms, and he asked the burning question.
"I'm a Horcrux, aren't I?"
Dumbledore was silent, his expression barely changing.
There was an answer in that silence, though. An answer Harry had known, an answer Hermione had figured out weeks earlier. An answer that had changed everything.
It was curious what the confirmation did to Harry.
The boulder of uncertainty he'd been carrying vanished, a horrific pent-up rage coursing through him in its wake.
"And you've known I am," he said, his voice shaking with fury, "maybe all the way since everything with the Chamber of Secrets, when you found out he had Horcruxes and that I'm a Parselmouth. You even told me I have a connection with him. You told me that. God. You never told me more than that."
"Was it not the truth?" Dumbledore asked, his tone as light as when he'd asked Harry to sit.
Harry goggled at him.
"That's—it wasn't all of it! You knew, and—You let me believe there was no more to it than that!"
Dumbledore said nothing, still watching Harry with that same expression. In fact, he'd begun twiddling his thumbs.
"Well? Don't you have something to say about it?!"
"I am quite sure that you have more to say than just that," Dumbledore said, "I will explain myself in full once you have had your say. Please, go on. Try not to destroy my office this time, if you will. Some of these instruments were very difficult to repair, even for me."
Harry spluttered, off-center.
This was not according to plan at all.
"Please," Dumbledore said, "take as much time as you need. I assure you, you have my full and undivided attention."
"You—you knew I was a Horcrux all along," Harry said, finding his mental footing, "and you never said anything. But that's not all, is it? I've never been anything to you but a tool. I look back now, and I can see what you've done, how you—how you raised me to become your perfect pawn. You've meddled with my whole life."
He risked a quick glance at Dumbledore's eyes. They were as joyful and full of life as ever.
Quickly, he turned his gaze back to the window, where the last red rays of the dying day peeked through.
"You put me with the Dursleys, even though you knew what they were. You even admitted it. Condemning me to ten dark and difficult years, you said. And then—then you had Hagrid rescue me, Hagrid who respects you more than anyone else. You had to know he would mention how great you are."
Still no reaction from Dumbledore. Pulse racing, Harry went on.
"And then, everything that year with the Philosopher's Stone. You had it here, in that whole setup that Voldemort definitely would get past—I managed to get past it, and you basically said you'd wanted me to. If you'd really wanted it secret, you'd have hidden it somewhere he couldn't have found it."
Harry's voice was speeding up, fury coursing through him the more he spoke.
"If you wanted it secret, you'd never have told Hagrid about it. Hell, you had Hagrid pick it up when he took me to Diagon Alley."
A reaction, finally, if not one that Harry would have expected. Dumbledore nodded, a slight smile tugging at his lips.
"The next year," he continued, voice rising, "everything with the Chamber of Secrets. You never thought to ask Myrtle? You never pieced together that it was a basilisk?"
If Dumbledore didn't acknowledge him or the truth he was saying, he would scream. The man's calm demeanor was getting to him. Harry's fists curled even tighter.
"There's nothing else that petrifies like that," he growled, "and with Hagrid's roosters getting killed…you left the whole school in danger, and left me to deal with it, because you wanted me to learn to feel like I had to be a hero!"
Still no significant reaction from Dumbledore. Harry couldn't take it anymore.
Harry jumped to his feet, shaking with wrath. He slammed a fist into the table, denting the wood slightly and knocking the bowl with Voldemort's ring in it to the carpeted floor.
Some of the portraits shouted and Fawkes gave a shrill cry, but Harry cared not. He had eyes only for Dumbledore, the old fool who was still sitting with such infuriating calmness and watching him, not reacting in the slightest.
"Sirius," he spat, the name burning his throat like acid, "you never got him a trial. You were head of the Wizengamot then, you could have done it. But you never did. Because if he was proven innocent I wouldn't have lived with the Dursleys, so starved for affection that I'd kneel at your feet. And when he escaped—when everything happened, with Snape and the Dementors, you made me save him. Because I always have to be the hero."
Harry's breathing was ragged, his fists so tight he could feel his nails cutting into his palms.
It was full dark outside.
"The Triwizard Tournament," he said. "All that bunk about a magically binding contract. You could have gotten me out of it. You could even have announced that I'd been entered against my will. But you didn't. It worked for you, that I was alone, with most of the school turned against me. And even after he came back, you put the attention back on me, eo that everyone would look at me like a hero. And then YOU LEFT ME AT THE DURSLEYS FOR MONTHS WITH NO CONTACT!"
Harry lashed out, smashing at the shelf, and for the second time destroyed Dumbledore's collection of magical instruments.
It still wasn't enough to break the man's composure. Harry wanted to scream, to shriek with impotent rage, to seize him by the throat and squeeze until the life had left those fucking eyes.
He couldn't. That would ruin everything.
As it was, he felt a moment of terrible fear that the items in his pocket had been damaged.
Sanity reasserted itself.
Breathing heavily, he dropped back into the chair.
"And everything, everything last year. You waited till you couldn't anymore, and then you had Snape teach me Occlumency, even though you knew he'd be the worst person for the job. You ignored me for months, and couldn't be bothered to have anyone tell me that Voldemort would try and lure me to the Department of Mysteries. No, you waited till it was too late, till Sirius was dead, and then—and then you promised to tell me everything and you fucking lied, like always! But even that helped you, didn't it? Because I was alone again, with no adult figure to look to. No-one but you."
Fawkes started to sing, a haunting, solemn tune.
Dumbledore was staring at Harry, his expression finally different. He looked as if he were considering the truth of Harry's words. He looked, in fact, a tiny bit sorrowful.
Emboldened, Harry continued, words tumbling out of him in a torrent.
"And this year. You ignore everything I have to say, my suspicions about Malfoy, because that's not what I'm there for, is it? All these lessons, when we could have just done the memories in one go and moved on, when you could have been teaching me how to fight and survive. But you don't want me to survive. You want me to figure out I'm a Horcrux and then follow the way you've trained me, to go to die like a lamb to the slaughter. You've never cared for me at all. You've just wanted me to do what you want."
Harry finally leaned back, spent.
A heavy silence settled on the pair.
"Well? Say something, damnit!"
"Ah. My sincerest apologies, I wasn't sure whether you were finished or not. Everything you have said is indeed true. Mea culpa, Harry. I have planned for your death and arranged circumstances so that you would greet it appropriately."
Harry sat bolt upright, a shock of triumph rippling through him.
Fawkes leaped from his perch, song morphing into something full of hatred, and came to rest on Harry's shoulder.
"Even Fawkes knows how wrong what you've done is," Harry said, "see, he-"
"You know," Dumbledore interrupted, "in many ways, Fawkes has been my greatest boon. Everyone knows that a phoenix is only attracted to one of sound morals and noble spirit. Yet few stop to wonder if a phoenix would share the same morals as they do."
Harry frowned.
"What-"
"Is this the part where you make your demands? Because, and I'm ashamed to rain on your parade here, as it were, I have no intention in meeting any of them."
Harry laughed. Finally, his planning had proven useful.
"I don't think you understand. If you don't -"
"I am afraid," Dumbledore said very patiently, "that it is you who do not understand. You have made a grave error, Harry. You thought you could plot against me in my school. You thought you could march into my office and browbeat me with your histrionics. I've known about your little conspiracy since Miss Granger first realized the nature of your connection with Voldemort."
Harry's blood turned to ice, fear replacing fury in an instant.
One of the portraits, that of a portly wizard with an eyepatch returned, not that Harry had noticed him leaving.
"They've bought it," he said. "Exactly like you planned."
"Excellent. Thank you, Norris."
"Even if you knew my plans-"
"Enough."
Dumbledore's wand flashed, moving faster than Harry could see, and Harry was pressed against the armchair in a body-bind, his wand and the contents of his pocket flying toward Dumbledore.
"This was actually quite intelligent," Dumbledore said, "these preparations. Shrinking a Self-Writing Quill and parchment, a Protean Charm on the parchment linked to multiple other pieces…oh, and of course, the threat that you would send them to Rita, the Quibbler, and the Ministry. Well done, Harry. Miss Granger deserves credit for her impeccable spellcasting, and you and Mister Weasley for your strategising. Utterly useless, being that I knew what you planned and could prepare for it, but brilliant nonetheless."
Harry's mind worked furiously. There had to be something he could do, some way of escape.
All that fucking wordless magic Snape had been on about would be useful now.
If he could cast it without a wand.
Still, he tried, incanting expelliarmus in his mind over and over again, to no avail.
"Mister Weasley and Miss Granger are currently reading an exceptionally brilliant response to each of your points. A very touching one, if I may say so myself. As Norris confirmed, they believe it. And when you return and confirm it as well, they will believe it even more so."
No. It can't be. We planned for Obliviation, it won't work.
"I could Obliviate you, you know," Dumbledore said. "Even with your preparations. But, I think, a better option presents itself. Cutting the Gordian knot, as it were."
The pensieve skittered across the desk, coming to rest directly before Harry.
"Do you know the best way to make people follow you, Harry? To have them trust you utterly? I think you do. You listed it among my wrongdoings, after all."
The portraits watched with interest, silent as Dumbledore leaned forward and adopted a lecturing tone.
Harry continued casting silently, trying with all his might to do something, anything. He ran through his entire repertoire of spells, ignoring the rational part of his brain which had already accepted defeat and was whimpering in terror.
"You rescue them from a threat. When you are their saviour, and when you continue to guide them well, people will merrily give you complete power over them. Of course, there is a risk. You must save them from a credible threat. Therein lies the problem."
"A wise man," Dumbledore tapped himself on the chest, "will not prop up a threat, as a truly credible threat will act unpredictably. Instead, he should pursue other avenues of amassing power, and should wait for the threats to present themself, as they inevitably will."
A rueful smile touched Dumbledore's lips, and he paused for a moment, clearly lost in thought.
"Of course," he continued, "he may have the chance to end those threats before they are significant. Each case should be evaluated on its own merits. I allowed Gellert and Tom the time they needed to raise their banners, but there were several others whose heads I quashed before they yet grew fangs."
Dumbledore shrugged, remorseless gaze locking with Harry's.
"I tell you this to make you aware, as I feel you deserve something more than you shall receive. In the end, once Voldemort is dust, my power will be cemented in ways you cannot comprehend. It will be a very short time, comparatively, until I will achieve my original, ultimate goal. I will save the world, Harry. And you will help me on my path to victory, albeit not in the way I originally intended."
A hand of steel gripped the back of Harry's head like a vise and shoved it toward the pensieve.
It was implacable. Harry tried to fight, screaming wordlessly in his mind, but there was nothing he could do.
"Please, Harry," Dumbledore said, as Harry's head was thrust into the pensieve. "Just allow the process to take place. You've already lost enough of my respect with your pathetic display."
Something began to happen. An overwhelming draining sensation blanketed Harry, something so crushing and heavy that everything lost all meaning. Thought and consciousness escaped him as time skipped him by without touching.
Slowly, the world swam back into focus.
Harry was sitting upright again, facing Dumbledore. He felt curiously light, as if he could simply float away.
"Well done. I'm glad to see you did that, at least, successfully."
"What-" speaking was difficult, like his tongue had turned to mush. But he could speak. The body-bind was still in effect, but somehow he could speak.
"What did you do?"
"I took your memories, dear boy. All of them. You still have…memories of the memories, if you will, shadows of them, but the memories themselves are mine now. A necessary evil. As is what I am about to do next."
Dread seeped through Harry, setting his nerves ablaze, his stomach writhing.
"What are you going to do? Why are you doing all this? Why? What are you doing this for?"
He was weeping, he realized. Weeping and confused.
"Well," Dumbledore frowned, "you'll shortly see what I am about to do. As for my long-term goals…I'm afraid I see no reason for you to be made aware of them. I am not Voldemort, to babble about my history and goals. If it were not for other preparations taking their time, I would not have endured this mind-numbing conversation as long as I already have."
He glanced to the right, where sat, Harry saw, an instrument that had not been destroyed in his rage. Its shape was—odd, belying description, curving in and through itself, its pipes and pivots making strange angles that hurt Harry's eyes.
It was whirring madly, gaining speed and emitting a high-pitched whistle.
"Almost ready," Dumbledore said cheerfully. "you know, Harry, if you had not discovered your nature, none of this would have been necessary. I had many potential plans, with this being but one of them. The vast majority of the others saw you alive, blissfully unaware of—Ah. Ready, Fawkes, ready…"
The instrument came to a sudden stop.
"Now."
A sharp, searing pain in the back of Harry's neck, right above his spinal cord. His collar grew damp in seconds as blood torrented down.
With a squeal, Fawkes was on the other side of the desk, his beak digging into Dumbledore's nape.
It happened too quickly for Harry to even register his shock and pain.
Dumbledore seized Harry's hand, a silver knife gleaming as he slashed his and Harry's palms and pressed them together.
Fawkes alighted on their joined hands, and Dumbledore raised his wand.
"No!"
Dumbledore ignored Harry's scream. He roared out a sibilant, entirely foreign incantation, and Fawkes burst into fire, golden flames which spread across both of their arms and bodies.
Harry knew no more.
Albus walked through Hogwarts' halls unhurriedly, beneath Harry's invisibility cloak, enjoying his new body.
He had forgotten what it was like to be young. So much energy, so few aches and pains.
By all that was holy, there was so much more he'd be able to do with this newfound liveliness.
Youth truly was wasted on the young.
There were some uncomfortable matters to be dealt with, to be sure. The boy's relationship with Miss Weasley, for one. Albus would have to continue it, lest anyone suspect something was amiss, much as he would rather feed himself to one of Hagrid's creations than do so.
Gellert was going to be utterly insufferable, when the time came for Albus to tell him.
The switch had gone perfectly, of course. Harry's mind and soul, along with Voldemort's broken shard, now resided in the body of Albus Dumbledore. Harry had lost the protection Lily had given him, and Albus had gained it.
Albus had also gained all of Harry's memories. He would have to sort through them, and soon. A sleepless night lay ahead.
It would not do well for him not to know something Harry should have.
There was nothing Harry could do, of that Albus was certain. After the transfer, he'd Obliviated the boy so thoroughly that nary a trace of his old self remained, and proceeded to Confund him and place him under an extremely overpowered Imperius.
None of the boy's fabled strength at resisting the Imperius had been in evidence.
Still, Albus would not underestimate him, hence the numerous charms and enchantments monitoring the boy, not to mention Fawkes and the portraits.
He saw no-one on his journey. The students—the other students—were either safely asleep or carefully avoiding the staff patrolling the school.
None of them knew how important this night had been. None of them ever would.
To be sure, he would have preferred to avoid this.
There were other methods of healing his hand and dealing with the Horcrux in Harry, and it would have served him well to have Harry, his protege, emerge victorious over Voldemort.
Victorious and entirely under Albus' control.
Alas, matters had been pressed. When the time was right, many years after Voldemort had been dealt with, Albus would ensure that Miss Granger and Mister Weasley received their just desserts for forcing this action on him.
Ron and Hermione. I must even think of them as Ron and Hermione, lest I accidentally say the wrong thing.
That day would have to wait, however. For now, he would ensure that Draco and Severus did not act too soon, and that he, along with Ron and Hermione, were more publicly seen entering the headmaster's office.
Then, when the time was right, he would allow Severus to proceed. Harry would die, along with Voldemort's Horcrux, and the world would see Albus fall and Harry Potter step up to take the reins.
Oh, it would be glorious indeed.
Fawkes would switch allegiance to 'Harry', and 'Albus'' will would leave no doubts as to who he viewed as his successor. All that remained would be for 'Harry' to step into his role, destroy Voldemort, and the world would be his.
It would be several more years from then until the Ministry would be his entirely, Albus estimated. By then, he should have been able to at least have begun re-establishing his…credentials, with those in the International Confederation who thought they were his allies.
And then…
It wouldn't be long after that, two or three decades at most, until the world would be in his grasp. He'd laid the groundwork well, and could now take the next step.
Less than half a century left, and his ultimate goal awaited.
He would save them all.
The Resurrection Stone sat heavy in his pocket, the Elder Wand–charmed to appear no different to Harry's Holly–in his hand, and the Cloak over his shoulders.
Albus Dumbledore, Master of Death, would finally step into his destiny.