I don't own Harry Potter.
Happy Christmas. In response to a review, Harry didn't take advantage of his emancipated status because he knew Dumbledore would likely try to take control, but it gave him the legroom he needed to set some of his plans in order.
Harry Potter: Thinking like a Thief.
When Harry woke up, he was disorientated and he flinched at the strength of the headache that he had. He felt as if someone had been using his head as a bludger before sticking it back on his body. Groaning with pain, he sank back down on the bed with a grimace.
"Fuck," he cursed. "What the hell was I drinking?"
He tried to remember what had been happening, but as he looked around he saw that he was in a fairly empty room lined with mirrors, but he didn't remember it, he was just too shaken to really recognise anything and the pain in his head and the sheer exhaustion he was feeling right now made it almost impossible for him to concentrate. Closing his eyes to focus on his occlumency, at the same time checking to see how his barriers were doing, Harry almost shook his head when he realised just how shaken the occlumency barriers were. In his mind, Harry had cloaked the whole of his mind with a layer of extremely thick fog which hid an invisibility cloak which hid a mental landscape of the castle and he had taken advantage of the numerous passageways and corridors, the maze of secret tunnels and the classrooms while giving the impression the secrets of his mind were somewhere but all they found were the surroundings of the school.
He had hidden his secrets and his personality in the Chamber of Secrets instead including the knowledge his mother had left behind, using his parseltongue abilities to put another layer on the others. Even if someone worked out he was hiding his mind within the invisibility cloak in the fog, they'd have to explore the entire castle to find anything and very few people even now knew anything about the Chamber, so there was some security and he had counted on that ever since.
But after last night…
The tearing of the horcrux had sent out a massive shockwave through his mind - indeed, it was partly due to the horcrux that he had layered his mental defences to keep his mind defended in the first place, and Dumbledore and Snape had both been too interested in finding something to get him into trouble or they wanted to find something to control him with had made it even more vital he find something to defend himself with - and now he was trying to shore up the damage.
Suddenly he began to remember, and he sat up. His memory of how he'd taken the law into his own hands where Voldemort was concerned instead of leaving everything to Dumbledore, who'd likely drop him into the deep end again weighed down with so much lead that it would have been virtually impossible for him to not sink to the bottom while he struggled to get back to the surface, he remembered how he had gone back to the Room of Requirement and looked through the different ways Voldemort had achieved immortality and narrowed it down to what he had observed over the years before seeing horcruxes as the most logical way Voldemort had tried to achieve immortality while he had trying to juggle his life with the school and dealing with Umbridge, discovering that the immortality wouldn't work, finding the soul fragment in his scar and coming up with a plan to steal Voldemort and drop him in the middle of the Ministry of Magic with the aid of his house-elves.
Pulling himself up on the bed, Harry took a deep breath while he performed a few yoga and pilates moved, stretching his body while pushing some life back into his legs and joints which felt both tight and stiff after he had been lying on the bed exhausted - he was just amazed by the miracle that he had even managed to concentrate hard enough to get the bed in the first place - but he was desperate to get out of the room now that he had woken up.
By now Voldemort's appearance in the Ministry would have filtered through the entire magical world, his reappearance and his sudden death rumbling the jungle drums. Harry didn't care if Voldemort was now dead, the Dark Lord had been a threat to his life to say nothing of what Harry had wanted to do with his life, which was to have a successful career as a thief before he found someone to settle down with and have a family.
But as he carried out his yoga stretches which he had become good at with a lot of practice after discovering that book in the charity shop in Little Whinging and he had begun practicing the yoga moves in order to get a much better fitness regimen, Harry reflected on what he had seen during the confrontation between Voldemort and the ICW investigators and aurors who'd come with them. They were far better trained and more professional than the wizards Harry had met in his life. Britain's policy of acting powerful while whining about their problems for somebody else to solve was more problematic than it actually needed to be, but with Snape's death and Fudge's stupid approach of sticking his head in the sand and pretending the real world hadn't thrown Voldemort back into it might make the ICW force more standards onto Hogwarts. He had caught the look of contempt on several of the ICW wizards as they fought the Dark Lord.
Harry got off the bed and he walked to the door, mentally asking the Room to shift the entrance closer to the Gryffindor common room entrance, knowing the Room was more than capable of opening up portals anywhere in the castle to make it easy for someone to move around, and when he walked out of the portal he grinned when he found himself on the stairway nearest to the Gryffindor common room.
"Oi, how did you get there?" A portrait demanded, but Harry turned to the picture. He knew that Dumbledore would likely be told about his appearance through the portal, but he didn't care; if he could steer the conversation between himself and the idiot away from that then Dumbledore would probably forget it.
Harry smirked. "This is a magic school," he said to the portraits on the wall, who were staring at him, and he walked off like that explained it all. In a way, it did.
After speaking the password to the Fat Lady, Harry got back into the Gryffindor Common Room and he walked up the stairs to the dormitory. The other boys were gone, which gave him the perfect opportunity to get out of his clothes and change his school robes for the day. He also looked through his bag and pulled out his timetable to remind himself of what he had. Showered and dried and dressed in a smart new uniform, Harry left the common room.
"Where were you last night, Harry?" The Fat Lady called from behind, making Harry pause and look back at her.
"I fell asleep in a disused classroom after I practiced some spells for the OWL tests," Harry told her, knowing that in a way he was telling her not the whole truth but a truth. "Why?"
"Haven't you head?" The Fat Lady had dozens of friends in the portraits of the castle, but she rarely had the time to spread much gossip around. She had been too distracted when Harry had got back into the common room to really talk to him, given she had been in the middle of a conversation with a friend. "You-Know-Who is dead!"
"Is he?" Harry wondered if he was going slightly overboard with his reaction, but he decided it made no real difference one way or another. "What happened? Who finally killed the bastard?"
"Language, young man!" One of the portraits nearest to the Fat Lady chided.
"Leave it, Natalie," the Fat Lady defended him, "he's got every right to call him that. I would too if my own parents were murdered by him." She turned back to Harry. "Nobody knows; the Daily Prophet's here, and everyone's speculating about it."
Harry snorted. "I doubt that. For the last few months, people have been saying I was lying. They'll probably say Merlin's come back or something insane like that. Anyway thanks for the news, I'll see you later."
With that, Harry walked off and down the stairs to the Great Hall. A quick check of his watch told him that breakfast would soon be over, but if he grabbed a couple of slices of toast, warmed them up and ate them as quick as he could without getting hiccups, then he could easily live on it until lunch. In the meantime, his mind went back to what the Fat Lady had been saying to him. There was little doubt in his mind people would be making assumptions and spreading them around the school while they genuinely didn't have a clue about what was going on, but as long as everyone believed he wasn't there, then it would suit him just fine. Harry wasn't interested in accolades and fame, he'd had enough of that to last for a lifetime. He just wanted to be left alone.
The Great Hall was full of chatter when Harry walked in through the door, but he noticed with a sigh of exasperation that his presence was noticed by everyone, and everyone went silent. Harry sighed again and he walked to the end of the Gryffindor table, trying hard to appear like nothing was wrong. Inwardly he was sighing in relief that Voldemort's death and reveal had brought awareness of how close the threat was. Harry sat down and grabbed some cereal and he slowly ate his fill while he grabbed a free edition of the newspaper.
He ignored the predictable headline, the Daily Prophet's need to show off its so-called wit had never amused him, and he got down to reading the article. Essentially it just described from the Ministry's point of view how the Dark Lord had appeared out of nowhere; to Harry's surprise the article had been written by someone who had done their research and they had done enough digging to discover from one of the ICW aurors that Voldemort had actually seemed surprised despite the Dark Lord just appearing in the Ministry of Magic and starting a battle.
The reporter, being a British wizard, hadn't bothered to include how the British witches and wizards just dove out of the way when they could have fought. In fact, the way the idiot reporter wrote the story, you would think if the ICW investigators and the aurors assigned to their protection had been the ones to hide. For Harry, this was yet another strike against the British magical world.
Suddenly he became aware of footsteps striding towards him, and he turned and he found Dumbledore walking hurriedly towards his part of the house table. Harry inwardly cursed the old wizard for his lack of discretion; he could see already the number of people who were watching this and the Headmaster walking towards him already chatting.
"Mr Potter, please come with me," Dumbledore strode past him without looking at him once, clearly expecting Harry to drop what he was doing. For a long moment, Harry was tempted not to do what the old wizard said, and he just went off with him.
When the two wizards were in Dumbledore's office, the Headmaster sat down behind his desk and gestured for Harry to sit opposite. "How have you been, Harry?" The old wizard asked, averting his eyes from the young wizard.
Harry raised an eyebrow at the question and the way Dumbledore asked it, but he wasn't going to pull Dumbledore up on his lack of proper manners. "I've been alright, Headmaster. I'm just studying for my exams," Harry replied.
"Good, good," Dumbledore answered.
If the old wizard thought this game was going to work then Harry was willing to play it all day. Dumbledore was fishing for answers, but if he thought this was the way to do it, so be it.
"I was surprised when you sent off those photographs and everything else to the ICW about Dolores Umbridge. That took quite a bit of patience and cunning," Dumbledore went on.
Harry inwardly sighed at the way Dumbledore said the word cunning; it sounded like a casually given word, but Harry knew the man well enough to know the word had extra meaning. Too bad he wasn't going to bite. "Hardly, the woman was so insufferably stupid she didn't bother covering her tracks. Professor, I have a long day ahead of me so please get to the point; why am I here?"
Dumbledore dropped the act. Suddenly he leaned forward and he gave Harry all of his attention. "Lord Voldemort is not dead, Harry. So don't get too comfortable. I have no idea what's happened to him in the Ministry, but he is not dead."
For a moment Harry stared at Dumbledore, shocked by what the old wizard had just said. While he had few doubts the other wizard had personal agents within the Ministry of Magic, Harry was surprised Dumbledore had even reached this conclusion at all. Surely he knew the Death Eaters still at liberty had likely died or fallen gravely ill as their magic leaked out of their bodies like a sinking raft? Hadn't he noticed anything wrong with Snape by now?
My god, he really has flipped, Harry thought to himself. He took a really close look at Dumbledore's face, and he shuddered at the certainty of it all. Dumbledore genuinely believed every single thing that was coming out of his mouth. "Where's your proof of Voldemort still being alive?"
"Lord Voldemort drove harder and further than any other into the darker realms of magical knowledge, my boy. That's all the assurance I think you need," Dumbledore explained.
Oh right, that's your best reply, is it? I guess that it's also going to do for everyone else, right? Voldemort can't be dead because he went further looking for immortality than anybody else in magical history, that is the end-all, be-all, isn't it? But what surprised him the most was the arrogant way Dumbledore had just said that. His only hope now was that Dumbledore received news on the Death Eaters who were losing their magic. It shouldn't take that long.
But back to the question he'd asked Dumbledore and the reply he'd gotten in return, Harry was not satisfied by it. This old fool had just stood back and let Umbridge run amok without any kind of control.
"That's not good enough," Harry snapped, not even bothering to hide his disdain for the ancient wizard. He scanned Dumbledore's surprised if angry face, but somehow he had the feeling that Dumbledore was angrier he was being questioned and doubted rather than being snapped at by a nearly 16-year-old wizard. Harry's heart bled for him. "I only have your word he's alive, but how do you know he's not dead."
"Harry, Lord Voldemort was ripped out of his body the night he attacked you, and he was forced to wander the world as a wraith," Dumbledore replied evenly, but Harry could tell that he was trying to control his temper.
"I am aware of that factor, Professor. I was there when Voldemort tried to steal the stone. I watched his resurrection. But did you actually bother to question anybody who you could trust to see the memory of Voldemort's 'death,'" he used the quotey fingers to appear to appease Dumbledore, despite knowing the truth, "before you dragged me up here? Do you have any idea what the rest of the school will begin to believe after seeing that? I think you're missing the most important questions, Headmaster. What was Voldemort doing in the Ministry? Why did he go alone? Where were the Death Eaters? What was he attempting to do in the first place?"
Dumbledore just stared back at Harry, and the young wizard could see the surprise in the old man's face. Clearly, Dumbledore had been thinking through some of those questions himself, but he'd obviously deemed himself too intelligent to really believe anyone else could come up with them. "Those questions I cannot answer, Harry," Dumbledore eventually replied when he saw these were the types of questions that you had to answer. "But I do believe Voldemort planned to reveal himself."
"Then why does the Daily Prophet article say he was surprised to be there?" Harry interrupted sharply with a pointedly raised brow. Inwardly he was enjoying himself a lot for pointing out the flaw in the headmaster's logic.
Dumbledore looked surprised and astonished by the question and he opened his mouth several times as if he wanted to say something, anything, but nothing would come out of his mouth. "I am surprised you saw that obscure section of the article, Harry," Dumbledore replied at last.
Harry raised a brow, wondering for a moment if the old wizard was insulting his deductive abilities.
"But that not important. I have something to tell you, Harry. You asked me once why Voldemort had attacked you and your family in 1981. Well, I have told you that the reason is complex and I wanted you to become older, so you could enjoy your childhood. It concerns the reason why Voldemort attacked you, and why he keeps going for you," Dumbledore said changing the subject.
Harry just stared at Dumbledore for a moment before he replied, he was trying to make sense of why the old wizard was going over the same old ground, why he was so…obsessed, no actually that was the best way of describing what the old man was doing at this exact moment. "You said you had something to tell me, Professor, can you please enlighten me?"
Dumbledore frowned. This was not going the way he had expected, he had expected Harry to accept what was happening outside and to accept the fact Voldemort was still alive, and that he would accept training from him soon. But instead, he got a version of the boy who was calmer and controlled than he should have been. "There is a prophecy connecting you and Voldemort, Harry," he began. For the next 5 minutes, he explained the details of the prophecy before tapping his pensieve with his wand, and a miniaturised hologram of Trelawney appeared in the centre uttering the prophecy.
When Dumbledore was finished he tapped the side of the pensieve again, and he sat back and waited smugly fully expecting Harry to beg and plead to be trained by him, Albus Dumbledore, the greatest wizard in the world.
But the boy surprised him by sitting in his chair calmly and coldly.
"So that's what all this is about? A prophecy. I thought you and Lord Voldemort were cleverer and sharper than this. Clearly, you're not if you believe that charlatan insect's poems!" Harry snapped, his glare and the way he kept his voice so low even stopped the smallest possibility of an argument.
Dumbledore reared back in shock, but truly he didn't know why he was so surprised given how Harry, so frustrated by Sybil's ridiculous 'prophecies' of him meeting his end in his third year, had smashed half of her classroom and left, swearing never to step foot in a room with her again. He had also insulted Sybil's intelligence, calling her a joke, an insult and a disgrace to magic in general. While Dumbledore and Minerva had to accept that there were aspects of Divination they found….questionable, Sybil was still a Hogwarts teacher and they had assigned Harry a detention to clean up the mess.
Harry had refused.
He had made it abundantly clear to them he had come to Hogwarts to learn about magic and to discover more about his parents because of the lies the Dursleys (Dumbledore still cringed at how the boy had called his relatives "disgusting muggle animals" which made him wonder if the Boy Who Lived harboured some more of Voldemort's personality than he'd first imagined) told him about his family, not to be told he was going to die because of a charlatan's 'prophecies.'
It had earned the boy another detention, but Professor Lupin had stepped in. An hour later, Remus had told him and Minerva that Harry had signed up for Ancient Runes, not Divination. But the damage was done when Harry raised all out hell to get out of Divination and into a subject he was truly interested in. He had made it clear he wanted to learn magic, and that prophecies did not exist because you made the future by your own actions. In a way, Dumbledore agreed, but he was still annoyed by what Harry had done.
The boy wasn't interested in reading prophecies through tea leaves, and by the end of it, Dumbledore was forced to let Harry do what he wanted.
"Harry, this prophecy is genuine-."
"It's only genuine because you forced it through, stupid!" Harry snapped, uncaring about the consequences of calling the Headmaster stupid, "'Born to those who have thrice defied him….,"' he quoted a verse from the poem (Dumbledore was surprised by how good the boy's memory was), "Y'know, it all makes sense now; mum always wondered why you were forcing her, dad, and Alice and Frank Longbottom into fights with that thing, and you never told them. Why, so you could create the ultimate weapon against that fucked up son of a bitch!?"
Dumbledore was so astonished by what Harry was saying he practically ignored the swearing. That was nothing compared to the revelations he was getting. "What do you mean, your mother wondered….?" Dumbledore couldn't complete his question; the implications of what he was hearing made him wonder just how much the boy actually knew.
"My mother kept diaries," Harry said simply, his body tense and furious, his eyes never once leaving Dumbledore; the old headmaster was shuddering at the sheer amount of loathing and power bleeding through the boy's emerald glare. "She was afraid that I would grow up knowing nothing about her and dad, so she wrote diaries. She noted down every event, adding pictures to the pages. In some of the diaries, on the run-up to my birth and long before Voldemort's attack, mum found it odd that she and dad and the Longbottoms were forced into confrontations that led to Voldemort. The confrontations frightened mum because she began to wonder if you were pushing them into those meetings. Well, she was right."
Dumbledore felt panic grip his chest. His first impulse was to demand Harry give up those diaries, to deny their truth, but the more he thought about it the more Dumbledore became convinced such an action was futile. Harry knew the details already, what was the point of taking them? But he didn't like the fact the boy had information and knowledge about his family without it being vetted by him.
"Harry-," Dumbledore said, hoping to find some way of salvaging this mess. Things were spiralling out of control but he didn't know what he could say to make Harry see that he needed to accept the reality.
"You set them us up, didn't you?!" Harry yelled, deciding to let his temper burst through his occlumency just for a moment; it was a risk but Dumbledore would be suspicious if this life-altering news was taken calmly. "You spineless…"
"Now that it enough, Harry," Dumbledore interrupted firmly, refusing to let Harry take his insulting manner any further. He knew the boy was angry, but he was certain he'd accept it for the greater good. "You are destined to kill Lord Voldemort, and I will train you to do it."
"You'll train me?" Harry stared at the old wizard in surprise, wondering how he could be so dense. "You've had a decade to train me. On top of that, you could have stopped Voldemort from rising to power in the first place! But no, you decided to stick your head in the sand and let him slaughter whole masses of people while you barely did anything constructive."
"It is your destiny, Harry."
"Don't tell me what my destiny is. This isn't destiny. It's just a destiny you chose for me," Harry pointed out, not even hiding his disgust for Dumbledore anymore. "Sometimes I wonder why I bother with this miserable community in the first place. Lord Voldemort is a psychopathic maniac that should never have been educated in this school in the first place. I saw the memory in that diary of Tom Riddle, and you pretty much proved you didn't trust him, but you didn't do anything to stop him. You could have framed him. You could have accused him of something like murder and you could have gotten him questioned with truth serum until he was telling everyone of his dirty secrets, but you let him grow to the point he and that sick cult of his were murdering everyone, and instead of doing anything about it, you decided to leave it to the next generation. This community sickens me with your never-ending posturing, but when something horrible happens, you beg, whine, and stick your heads in the sand and hoping somebody else cleans up the mess."
Dumbledore and the portraits were rendered speechless by the diatribe.
But what frightened the old wizard the most was that Harry meant every word he said. Dumbledore was unsure of what he should do next; part of him was tempted to go for his wand and rewrite the boy's personality to make him more suggestible but he decided against it; he knew Harry had mastered so mental control, and judging from how he tensed up every single time he moved, he knew he wouldn't get there.
In the end, there was one option.
Dumbledore lifted his wand and flicked it, and the door opened. "You may go, Harry."
"Gladly," Harry snapped, and he stood up from the chair, but he never turned his back on Dumbledore once, and he walked back to the door. The boy's paranoia worried and amused Dumbledore, but until the boy was gone did he react. Dumbledore buried his face in his hands, wondering how his plans could be salvaged now.