The Houses Competition
House: Gryffindor
Class: History of Magic
Category: Standard
Prompt: Object: Resurrection Stone
Prompt: Quote: "Touch comes before sight, before speech. It is the first language and the last, and it always tells the truth."- Margaret Atwood
Word Count: 1018
Betas: Many thanks to Gryffindor Team.
Having sent all the portraits away under the guise of the Fat Lady going missing again–having in fact sent the Lady herself to one of the castle's most remote corridors–Albus Dumbledore sat in the Headmaster's darkened office one April evening during Harry Potter's sixth year. His intention was to complete a task that he'd been putting off for weeks.
He had handled the Resurrection Stone before tonight. The first time was while retrieving the black-crowned ring from the abandoned Gaunt shack. Godric Gryffindor's legendary sword was ready to hand as he laid the Horcrux out in front of the ash-strewn hearth; before he could reach for it, however, his eyes fell on the Deathly Hallows symbol engraved crudely in the head of the ring. In a moment of weakness, Albus wrote out the closing chapter of the story of his life, inviting for himself a fate that Severus would fight at first but eventually be compelled to impose.
The curse within the ring tore into the Headmaster's body before the Stone was activated with the fabled three turns. Pain, regret, and fear all swirled within him in an uncontrollable maelstrom, almost overpowering the tremendous intellect that even then realized—with some admiration for the magic—that the Stone could be pulled away from the rest of the Horcrux. Even with that knowledge, part of him still wanted to run the Founder's sword through both pieces. Was it better or worse, he wondered, to destroy an ancient powerful artifact that had driven many mad in pursuit of its power?
He had handled it a second time, months later, to make sure that it worked. Bertha Jorkins—as insatiably curious in the afterlife as she had been in life—wanted to know everything about what had happened to the scared green-eyed boy she'd last seen being Portkeyed away from a graveyard. Professor Binns—having been unceremoniously pulled from a lecture on flobberworm domestication which interested him even if no one else had the slightest inclination to study the subject—blustered an excuse and quickly took his leave. As the image faded in Albus' mind, he still wasn't sure that the Stone worked on ghosts.
Tonight would be the final time. He had written his will and prepared the Golden Snitch he had kept safe for years. With Fawkes chirruping quietly in a pile of ashes behind him, Albus now set his eyes on the Stone without reaching for it, feeling something rise within himself. Aberforth. Ariana. What he wanted, so fiercely it felt like he couldn't breathe with the weight of it, was not, actually, to look upon them. Not even to apologize, not even to explain.
He wanted to touch them—to put his hands on their skin, without wands and without curses. He wanted to feel Ariana's forever child-like softness and Aberforth's hard, solid lines. How he used to rub circles on her back when she struggled, how he brushed his brother's wild hair when they were both young and their parents couldn't. Touch, he'd read somewhere, comes before speech and sight—the most elemental language and the one that never lies. He wanted the truth of their physical connection, and if he couldn't have that, he'd take nothing at all. It was only minutes later that he realized his folly. It wouldn't work on Aberforth anyway: his brother wasn't dead.
I open at the close. The Headmaster played out the words he'd magically engraved, clenching and releasing his calloused fingers around the Snitch as the small golden ball became warm in his hand. He flashed back to the complicated mix of emotions that had suffused him at the beginning of young Harry's first year, as he watched James' and Lily's boy—too slight and too wary but still clearly, at heart, a lion like his parents—hiding himself like a treasure and a shame. He remembered observing with increasing relief as the boy gradually relaxed a bit more into the magical environment, his voice slowly changing from quavering to steady—Harry opening, himself, at the new beginning he'd been offered. The day of the first Quidditch match between Gryffindor and Slytherin, Albus' heart tripped on a beat as the boy bucked and whirled on his rogue broomstick, and merriment lit his eyes when he saw the Snitch arc from Harry's mouth to the grass. He realized this particular flesh memory would slow Harry down: just as anyone who learned of it would expect him to do, the boy would palm it first to no avail.
Eventually, Harry would figure it out. Eventually, he had to believe, the boy would be able to cast exactly the needed enchantment—not a word, but a mindset, a willingness to die. Would he be summoned then? Albus couldn't be sure.
The Headmaster then pinched the Stone with his withered fingers, careful not to turn it but feeling its weight. It was grounding, somehow, in its small but solid physicality—death and its mastery as things that one can touch. He imagined Harry approaching his demise with the Stone in his own hand, and hoped that it would ground him as well. The inadequacy of the gift appalled Albus when he thought of the magnitude of his yet-unspoken ask. Not his ask alone, he corrected himself. What the situation requires. He hoped Harry wouldn't summon him back from the grave. He hoped the boy, in his last moments, would at least have the comfort of someone who hadn't failed him.
The Stone was easily positioned over the hollow of the sphere, and the Headmaster considered his many shortcomings as he fought his urges one last time before dropping it resolutely into the small void. Harry, he knew, was the far better wizard. The better man. The one who could hold the Stone and not fall for its false promises, who would follow his loved ones and not pull them from their peace.
Harry's innocent and living voice reached him through the door as the boy pronounced the password. The gargoyle scowled and yielded, and Albus put the Snitch away. It sat in his drawer, waiting patiently with its secret hidden until the moment would come.
