Father is everywhere on the Daily Prophet, stamped on the cover, the first five pages dedicated to a long spiel on Percival Dumbledore's life, and another three on his wife, his children, and his hatred for muggles.
This time, when the letters come, Mother frowns and pushes back a lock of graying hair. Kendra Dumbledore stands stoically and says three simple words: We are moving.
"Moving?" Ariana whispers.
"It'll be a new place," Mother tells her, passing over a plate of asparagus. "A new house. A new beginning. It'll be nice, I promise you."
"Then we'll never come back to this house?" Abeforth asks. He looks around the living room, to the blinds that have repaired a thousand times, to the carpet that was only three days ago stained with porridge when Ariana lost control. He looks to the walls, to the ceiling, to the windows. And he understands.
"No," Mother tells him. "But we can visit."
They won't, Albus knows. This house with its wooden furnishing, creme-colored roof and sullen neighborhood holds nothing but bitter memories for all of them.
"You can pack your things," Mother's telling them. "All of it. Your books, your toys, even your mattress if you so wish."
Ariana looks uncertainly betwixt the three of them. "Where will our new house be?"
Somewhere, Mother might say, anywhere but here. "I'll find us one," she says. "It'll be smaller, I think. More cozy."
"Like the cottage we stayed at last year?"
"Yes," Mother says. "Exactly like that cottage."
Godric's Hollow has a queer stillness to it. It is like a tomb filled with coffins in its silence, and the eerie air hangs like morning dew gathered on leaves. Albus… Albus is not quite sure how to feel about this village.
If there ever was a place of mourning, it would be here.
"Will we have to go back to school?" Ariana asks, looking at the front door of the house.
"You'll be home-schooled," Mother tells her gently. She kisses her hair and then leads them into their new home.
That night they eat dinner in this unfamiliar living room, with new metal utensils and pale porcelain plates.
"What do you think of this house?" Mother asks them.
"It's quiet," Ariana says. She looks around appraisingly, seeing no owls and no cruel Howlers. "I like this place."
If Ariana likes the place, then it is more than enough for Aberforth. As for Albus, what does it matter?
The term at Hogwarts will begin in seven weeks, and - and for a moment he wonders if he still wants to attend. The fantasy that was the castle seems a childish folly against everything that has happened. And besides, who would write the owl-orders if he was not here?
"Lost in your thoughts?" Mother says to him.
"I - yes." Albus lowers his head. "The house is very lovely. I love…" He stops. He cannot think of anything. "I love the new plates."
Mother laughs and ruffles hair.
The letter comes as he breaks his fast on porridge and honey, at a table for five with only four people. It is the same table from their old house. This one Mother seems to cling onto, even though she has replaced much of their old furniture.
Aberforth is the first to see, as he springs from his chair and races for the owl.
"It's - it's -"
"My Hogwarts letter," Albus says, queerly calm.
The owl is a beauty: tawny feathers and hazel eyes, her claws the soft orange of ripe autumn pumpkins, a regal grace as she perches on the dining chair. Albus closes his fingers around the letter. It is tied to her claws with a length of twine. The envelope is sealed with a blob of deep purple wax, stamped with the sigil of Hogwarts. He runs a finger over it.
"Open it," Aberforth says excitedly. His breath his hot against Albus' neck, hovering just over his shoulder. "Come on, Albus. Pick it open. Or I can -"
"Abe, let your brother look at it in peace."
For a moment, Albus looks up. Mother is solemn and quiet, a sad smile on pale lips; Ariana on the other hand…
His little sister looks at the letter oddly, as if it is a snake with two heads, a queer oddity that makes her just as reserved as their mother.
At last, he picks open the wax and flattens it upon the dining table. Aberforth hovers just beside him and reads the words out loud for them all. Albus knows them by heart. He has known them since he was five and first heard the great, wondrous words: Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. He could recite the entire letter, even though he has yet to read it. He could tell Mother the titles of all his required books, the standard length of student robes, the exact height of his black pewter cauldron. He could outline the steps in perfect precision: all that remains to be done is to get his wand and owl-order the books and Potions things, then board the Express on September the first.
"Will we go to Diagon Alley?" Aberforth natters, his hands holding the letter high, as if it his child, his love, the greatest thing he has ever set his eyes upon. "Hey, Albus, do you think your wand will be unicorn hair, or phoenix feather or -"
"You shouldn't go," Ariana says, and for a moment she sounds loud and commanding, the ghost of Father's voice speaking through her lips. She is only seven, but fierce. "Magic - magic - Mother, you tell Albus and Abe. It's - it's danger, danger-ous, magic does bad things, Albus you mustn't go or, or, or -"
Mother's hand runs through her hair, elegant fingers grown thin and spindly, stroking Ariana's auburn curls. "It's part of every wizard or witch's education, my sweet," she says. "Albus must go -"
"Will I have to go there too?"
Mother stops. Her fingers twitch for a moment, but continue to move, as her lips purse and her eyes grow reflective as a silver looking glass. Aberforth has stopped his joyous chatter. The letter lies before him, forgotten in this twisted, twisted dilemma. Albus takes it in his hands and wishes it would all go away.
"You don't have to go if you don't want to," Mother says at last. She smiles a brave smile.
"Good." Ariana nods her little head, and she looks Albus in the eye. "You don't have to go to Hogwarts either, Albus. Magic is, is -"
"It's not your choice to make, Ariana," Mother says softly. She kisses her cheek. "This is Albus' future. It must be his choice."
His little sister has good days and bad days, days were she will trash the room and leave nothing but shattered porcelain and Mother's tired eyes, days where she will wreak her havoc upon the furniture and tear the drapes from their hangings. Today is not one of those days. She looks to him with bright blue eyes ripe with unshed tears, queerly glassy and reflective; a look Mother wears often, but not her daughter.
"You shouldn't go," Ariana tells him, and then flees the room.
Aberforth leaps from his seat and streaks after her. Once, Mother might have followed, but Abe has always been better at comforting Ariana, better than Albus or their mother will ever be.
When they are alone, as they always find themselves, Kendra Dumbledore looks to her son. "You'll go to Hogwarts."
It is not a question.
Of course it is not; Albus has rambled about the school since he was old enough to speak, dreamed a thousand dreams of a towering castle with golden lanterns and tallow candles, of Quidditch games and the four Houses, of the green summer lawn and the smell of sweet pollen, of the Black Lake and the Forbidden Forest beyond. He might have questioned his faith once, but suddenly it seems perfectly clear.
"Yes," Albus says at last. He thinks about the rages that will rip through Ariana when she learns this, of the disaster her broken magic will sow across the house. He thinks of Father in a gray suit, deep in a fortress in the middle of a warring sea. He thinks of Aberforth with his crop of freckles. He thinks of Mother. "Yes, I'll go to Hogwarts."
Mother nods. She pinches her lips like she always does when she is about to cry; when the hand comes, Albus reaches for it across the table and holds her tight. The tears never fall. Instead, a proud smile kisses her features.
Godric's Hollow is silent at four in the morning, when even the sun dare not creep over the horizon. It is at the windowsill that Ariana finds him, a thick book in his lap and a lantern at his feet; sleep has escaped him, and it seems, so has it for his sister.
"You shouldn't be here," Albus tells her, only half-heartedly.
"Neither should you." Ariana grins and clambers onto the windowsill with him. It's a tight fit, but they're both slim as a wand. "What book is that?" She squints and knits her brows together. "Immediate Transfiguration. What kind of title is that?"
"Intermediate Transfiguration."
"Oh. That's still a terrible name." It occurs to Ariana, then. "Is that - is that one of your Hogwarts textbooks?"
Albus shrugs ruefully. "Not for this year."
Her smile is shaky as she presses tight against his shoulder and almost knocks one of Mother's plants to the ground. In the dark of night with the glow of a gold lantern, Ariana fumbles around before she finds a comfortable position. "I don't want you to go."
"I know," Albus tells her.
Ariana looks out the window, to the dark sky and the sliver of a moon. "Mother says it's to be your choice if you go or not. She said - she said that I can't pester you about it." She turns to him, somber and serious. "Albus, am I pestering you?"
"No," he assures her.
"Good." Ariana scrunches her nose, just as she does whenever trying to focus. "I've been thinking about all of this. You read a lot. You must know a lot as well."
"I suppose?"
"Do you think," Ariana begins, and her voice wavers, "do you think it might be - possible for you to cast a spell, or a -" she lowers her voice, "- a charm of some sort, not a powerful one, just a small one. To, for, my magic." She clamps a hand around his elbow. "It doesn't have to be a big spell. It just needs to stop me from, from being bad."
Albus looks at the pages of the book before him. He has considered it. How many times has he considered it? A thousand times, a million, a billion, a trillion. "If I could," he says quietly, "I would give up my magic if I could help. Truly. But -"
Ariana nods. And then looks down to her feet. "I wanted to ask you. Since, since you have a wand now, and since you know everything. I tried asking Mother but she said there was nothing she could do. But Mother, Mother… she…"
"Mother hasn't been herself recently."
"Yes." Ariana picks at her sleeping gown. "Neither have you."
Albus winces. "I suppose none of us have been ourselves." They are silent for a moment, Albus' book forgotten, their thoughts lost in a murky sea of darkness. He says at last, "I miss him."
"I miss him too." Ariana smiles, and swings her feet. "I'll miss you when you go to Hogwarts."
"And I'll miss you. This. All of this." He gestures around the house, to the old dining table and the new cabinets, to Aberforth's bedroom and Mother's study.
"I have a gift for you," Ariana says suddenly. She slips from the windowsill and onto her feet. "Stay here."
As if Albus has anywhere else to be. When his sister comes back, it is with a package in her hands, wrapped in blue paper and tied with a clumsy ribbon. She presses it into his hand.
"I wanted to give it to you when you left for Hogwarts, but -" She smiles sheepishly. "Do you like the bow, Albus? Mother spent an hour teaching me."
"The bow is lovely," he tells her sincerely, and is extra careful to not rip the packaging. Inside is… inside is a stuffed teddy bear with a bow over his neck and a plush heart between his felt hands.
"Do you like it?" Ariana asks. Her smile is as brilliant as the rising sun. "Mother said you sleep-over in Hogwarts, and I thought you'd be a little lonely, so I got you a matching teddy to mine. You see?" She hefts her own, a smaller bear with a scarf on his neck and a crimson heart held in cotton hands. "Mister Ted keeps me com-pany whenever I'm scared. Yours is also Mister Ted, but a little older, since you're older than me. That way you won't be scared at Hogwarts."
"I - thank you," he says, and a laugh escapes his lips. "Mister Ted is lovely."
Ariana nods. "You'll want to keep him on your pillow when you aren't sleeping - Mister Ted gets angry at me if I stuff him under the covers."
Albus wonders what sort of taunts he'll hear from the boys in his year. Surprisingly, he finds that he cannot bring himself to care. "I will," he promises her.
"Good. And," Ariana continues, "whenever you sleep, you have to kiss his nose goodnight. We can do it at the same time, that way we'll be together."
Albus laughs and promises to do so.
Ariana throws her arms around him, her head reaching just barely past his shoulder. "You should name Mister Ted something. It wouldn't be very good if we got our teddies confused with each other."
"What about Mister Teddy?"
"Mister Teddy?" Ariana wrinkles her nose. "That not very, very pro-fess-ion-al."
"I'm sure Mister Teddy wouldn't mind."
"If you're certain," Ariana says uncertainly. "But if he doesn't like his name, promise me you'll change it."
"I promise."
"Good." She yawns and hugs Mister Ted to her chest. "How can you stay awake at this hour Albus? 'M so sleepy already."
"I am older. And of course, I know everything." Albus leads her up the stairs and sees her to her bed, before descending down the stairs and taking up his perch on the windowsill. His book waits for him. And this time, he has a new friend.
Platform Nine and Three-Quarters is alive with noises and whistles and sounds: to his right comes a messy family of seven, with three elder brothers, two daughters and a mother and father wonderfully in love; beyond is the croak of a toad and the twitter of an owl, the sound of a child as she babbles on and on about Hogwarts.
Aberforth is here, grudgingly. He did not want to leave Ariana alone, but in this world of magic and sharp sounds, their sister has no place here, and ultimately, it had been her who'd pushed him to go.
"You must write to me once a week," Ariana insists, tugging on his sleeve. "And you brought Mister Teddy, right? Right?"
"Of course."
"Good." She nods and then squeezes his hand. "I hope you like Hogwarts, truly."
Albus wishes his sister were here.
"Do you think you'll be able to try Butterbeer in your first year?" Aberforth prattles, awed despite his vows to not be. "You'll have to go to Hogsmeade, but if you make friends in the upper years…" He sighs and twirls. "I've heard it's like - like a dream. When I go to Hogwarts, you'll be in your fourth year, so you'll bring me back a sip, right?"
"I'll bring you back a whole case."
"Excellent," Aberforth says, "and we'll also send some back home, so Mother can have some, and Ariana." His good cheer falters and trips.
The train appears before them, already being loaded with bags. It is a bright bold crimson, the words Hogwarts Express stenciled in fine gold, impossibly sleek and impossibly beautiful.
"Abe," their mother says, "would you go buy some Chocolate Frogs for your sister? She'll want a treat back at home."
Aberforth has a determined look on his face, already reaching for the bronze knuts in his pocket. "I'll get some Cauldron Cakes, too. Do you think she'll also like some Pumpkin Pasties, or -?"
"Some snacks, no more. There'll still be dinner tonight, young man. Don't think I'll forget."
Aberforth nods distantly, wandering off to the witch with the trolley.
Alone, Mother smiles, tired and happy and somber. "When you go to Hogwarts, there will be people, fellow students, maybe, who'll try and say mean things."
"About Father."
"About Father," she agrees.
"And," Albus guesses, "you want me to walk away. To ignore them."
She purses her lips. "I don't -"
"You want me to choose passivity over violence, as Father failed to do." Albus nods. "I can do that."
Mother smiles and brushes back an invisible strand of his hair. "He would be proud, you know."
"I always wanted him to be here." Albus glances around, looking for Ariana and Aberforth and Father. "There's nothing to be proud of… but. I'll make you proud, you and Father," he promises. "At Hogwarts. I'll be top of my class, and you'll hear no complaint from my teachers. Will you, you will tell Father?"
"The next time I see him," Mother says, and she touches his cheek, just a flicker away from his mouth. "You can even tell him yourself."
Albus nods. Father will live until Christmas, he tells himself. He must, so I can show him what a good student I am, how good I'll be at Hogwarts.
When Aberforth comes back with an armful of snacks, he plops a few pasties onto Albus' trunk, and through a mouthful of chocolate says, "Eugh ca' have those, Alb's."
Mother is so caught up in the moment that she doesn't reprimand his poor manners. "The train will leave soon. You should go find yourself a spot. Somewhere close to a window, so you can wave goodbye."
Albus doesn't want to go. He likes it - not here, in this loud and busy train station, but he likes it here with Mother and Aberforth and Ariana. Godric's Hollow is quiet, but it was nice.
He pulls himself away at last. A spot, yes. In an empty room if possible, but so long as the other person is quiet, he supposes he has no reason to complain. Rolling his trolley, Albus boards the Hogwarts Express.
The last he sees of Aberforth and Mother is as the train pulls away, smoke billowing into the air and the farewells of distant parents and an exuberant brother. Albus finds himself staring out the window long after the Express leaves King's Cross.
The door is nudged open only five minutes into the ride, as his trunk sways and rumbles to the rhythm of the track. A head pops in, and a voice comes through.
"Can I, might I take a seat?"
Albus tears his eyes from his text on seventeenth century philosophy and looks up. He does not know what to say: the person before him is as timid as Ariana, skin a pale green and covered in pock-marks.
"Come," he says at once, thinking of Ariana. "Sit." And then, since his brother had bought ten too many of them, Albus reaches for a packet of Chocolate Frogs. "Would you like one?"
The boy edges in carefully, head bowed and shoulders slumped, his cheeks flushed a bright pink. "No, thank you."
He sits on the opposite side facing Albus, hands clasped tight in his lap, looking firmly to his feet. Albus considers him, and wonders if he wants to make a friend. Yes, yes he does want a friend. More importantly, the boy before him looks like he could use one.
"My name is Albus," he says into the silence. "Albus Dumbledore. What's yours?"
Too late. At the words Dumbledore, the boy looks up with large eyes and seems to regret ever stepping foot into their cart. He purses his lips, but to his credit, he meets Albus' eyes and offers a hand. "I'm Elphias. Elphias Doge. My skin condition -"
"You are recovering from a bought to Dragon Pox," Albus guesses. He has read of the symptoms in a book long ago.
"It's not contagious," Elphias continues quickly, "so I swear if you sit with me you won't get sick -"
"Dragon Pox is non-lethal in children," Albus tells him, and shrugs. He shakes his hand. "It is good to meet you. And I -"
"Am more than my father."
Albus smiles, but he does not know if it is with joy, to know that someone is willing to look beyond the surname, or sadness, with the words, "More in some ways, and less than others."
Elphias considers what he means. "You speak very, very -"
"Excessively," Albus supplies. "My teachers in primary school often agreed that I would use ten words when only five would have sufficed." Emboldened, Albus rumishes through his pile of treats. "If not a Chocolate Frog, would you care for a Pumpkin Pastry? My brother knows no limits when it comes to things such as these, and I can hardly finish all of this without having my teeth rot out…"
Elphias laughs, and together they rip open two packages of Chocolate Frogs. They settle into a content silence for the rest of the four hours, napping and reading and trading quiet words as the countryside whizzes by.
Hogwarts towers over them in its black finery, eternal beauty garbed in purple-blue mist. Dusk lingers in the horizon, painting the cobblestones golden-red, seeping into the walls and the parapets of the towers, dancing over the lay of Hogsmeade station. Albus thinks, as he gets off the Express, that yes, yes he can be happy here.
And when he gets into a boat, Elphias Doge lost in the thick of the crowds, he runs his hand into the cold waters and feels his lips split into a grin so wide it threatens to snap his face in half.
It takes exactly eighteen minutes fifty-three seconds for the Sorting Hat to come to decision. All the while, Albus sits immobile on the stool, hands clasped in prim silence, knowing that everyone in the Great Hall has stilled at the word Dumbledore. It is his father that precedes him, in this and in everything else.
"You would be good in Ravenclaw," the Sorting Hat says, sifting through his memories with fingers that gloss over his childhood. "Not too dull, which is certainly nice, and a love for reading, yes, yes, very well… though Hufflepuff would not be terrible either. I see that; compassion is always a virtue, and your heart is not too bad -
"Maybe Hufflepuff. Or Slytherin. Yes, that would be good. Dangerous ambitions and powerful people… do you like snakes, Albus Dumbledore?"
No, he thinks, and wonders what snakes have to do with ambition and cunning.
"A passing thought. You inspire many thoughts in me. Your mind is truly a horrendously wonderful place. So many possibilities, so many futures, so many pasts. I could mold you with my bare hands and sculpt from you both a monster and an angel."
You have no hands.
"Well, well, no need to be rude, or I might just lump you in with Gryffindor, that rowdy lot."
You are not required to be impartial?
"Impartial! With children?"
Dimly he is aware that whispers have broken out. How long has it been since he sat under the hat?
"Ten minutes already," the Hat tells him, whispering from right ear to the left. "You'll be a Hatstall; I knew that the moment I was flopped onto your head. Now where to put you… I don't you suppose you have a preference?"
Anywhere. Albus shrugs. Every House is as good as the last.
"A lie, my, my. I ought to get over with it and dump you in Ravenclaw, but that would be boring." A pause. "You know what, perhaps I will do that after all. I do like you, Albus Dumbledore. Try not to burn down the castle." And then a shout: "GRYFFINDOR!"
He doesn't have many friends.
He has never been good at keeping in touch with others, even before it all, and now, with the wealth of the world around him, Albus Dumbledore sometimes forgets to take his meals. In his classes his hand is the first to go up, inexorably, and he has a record for being the first to finish and the first in marks.
I will be Albus here, not Dumbledore.
For the first two weeks he is subject to taunts and offers and scoffs, until Albus snaps and tells them off for being shallow weak-minded creatures with nothing but glory on their minds. He cringes at his words, but after that no one bothers him about his loyalties, no one approaches him about the Old Ways or the New Ways. No one bothers to ask him where he stands.
It is a pity, Albus thinks, for it is not the queries that gall him, but rather their staunch convictions.
There are Ravenclaws who ask to study him, Slytherins who ask for study tips, Hufflepuffs who try to invite him to a game of Gobstones. Albus indulges them all.
They cluster around him.
"So you use this studying method - what's the name -?"
"The Oxford method," Albus says, and points to the parchment, partitioned into five sections.
"The Oxford method. The, the university?"
"The university," Albus agrees.
The Ravenclaw's name is Mellara Galus. "The muggle university?"
"Wizards have no university," Albus tells her, trying not to smile. "And you are muggle-born, yes? You would be well-placed to know of its prestige."
Mellara taps the table, once, twice, studies the careful way in which he takes notes, and says at last, "Where did you learn this?"
"Books."
She hesitates. "You've read muggle books?"
"I've found muggles have the best kinds of books. There is a certain, I don't know, wonder that muggles have, not knowing of the concreteness of magic. Wizards are blessed with the knowledge of mysticism, but to muggles, who have no notion of the laws and rules which bind the impossible, have the gift of ignorance, and thus the gift of greater imagination."
"Like Alice in Wonderland?"
"You know of it?" Albus laughs. "Well, that one's a bit of a more extreme example -"
"It's a wonderful book -"
"Careful now, before Madame Fronche bans us from the Library for a week. I do love the dust here that clogs your nose." Albus pats her arm, the action coming naturally in the euphoria of the moment. "It's an interesting book. I never said it was terrible."
"You never said it was good."
He spreads his hands. "I am not a liar."
Albus does not think he has ever seen someone so offended in his life.
How they escape the library without expulsion is a wonder, but he does not think he remembers anything beyond that; Mellara has a taste for books as ripe as he, and she splays it before him: Adventures of a Pincushion and The Princess and the Goblin, Christmas Tree Land and Mary's Meadow.
Half of them Albus has never even heard of before.
"Tom Brown at Oxford," he repeats. "Well, it seems everyone loves Oxford these days."
"And who wouldn't? What parent doesn't dream of their child attending something so prestigious, so great -"
"May I ask a personal query?"
Mellara stops. "By all means."
"Why Hogwarts?"
"Hogwarts is the only Wizarding school in Great Britain -"
"There are other schools outside of Britain," Albus says. "Durmstrang or Beauxbatons would be the nearest. No, I meant why go here? This world. You seem intelligent, well-read, passionate in literature. You are fond of higher education. The Wizarding World has little demand for scholarly careers and there are no universities, much less any with the reputation of Oxford. You have two parents, muggles, who will forever be shunned by this world. If you have siblings, they too will know of this world but be incapable of understanding it. You had a life at home, and you gave it up to attend a magical castle far, far away. Why?"
Mellara stops in her steps. "When you put it like that, it does seem rather foolish, doesn't it? A bit like tumbling down a hole or crawling through a mirror."
Albus stays silent.
"I think," Mellara say slowly, "the thing I liked about all those books was the wonder of it all. Why not go sailing through the Pacific? Why shouldn't I climb through that painting or dare to wish on a star? If there's a magical castle lying on a hill, why shouldn't I go?"
Albus cannot fault that logic.
Elphias Doge finds them hours later, trying to find a copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland in the library.
"I thought you said they didn't have it -?" he says.
"Madame Fronche might have lied," Mellara tell him, fingers flaked with dust.
They get kicked out half an hour later, with a sharp reminder about school curfew. Even Elphias is giggling as they leave.
When the first flakes of winter fall from a gray sky, Albus spends more and more hours on the tops of towers, in lone rooms with a lantern and a book, Mister Teddy stuffed in a pocket. He has almost forgotten, queerly enough.
Mellara is right in many ways; the magic of childhood, of a castle on a hill with a black lake and a dark forest - it is fantasy beyond reason, and much as in Wonderland, Albus has forgotten of things back home.
He will be back in Godric's Hollow in four weeks' time. He does not know what will scare him more: Aberforth's begrudging stoicism, Mother's watery smile, or Father's emaciated figure.
When the sign-up sheets are passed around for Winter Break, Albus clutches the quill and stares at the parchment. There are names written: two boys in his year, and some of the older students, whose faces he knows but the names are foreign. He is tempted, then, to have Christmas to himself.
Elphias is looking at him strangely. "Albus?"
"Yes, sorry." He blinks, thinks of Mister Teddy in his room and Mother and Father arguing in the dark of night. He gives an apologetic smile to his Head of House. "No, nevermind. I'll go home this Christmas."
Father dies before then.
He passes on the twelfth of December, a week before the start of Winter Break, ten days before Albus was supposed to see Mother and Ariana and Aberforth again. Headmaster Phineas Nigellus Black sees him to his office and shuts the door.
"You will wish to go home," he says simply.
Albus nods. His neck has become iron and his heart steel. He should feel something, he thinks. It is interesting. Just yesterday he learned that the Astronomy Tower was deserted during most of the weekends; he had intended to wake early on Saturday and watch the sun rise as he tried to write a letter back home.
His mind is stuck on that future-to-never-be. He hardly hears the Headmaster.
"My studies can wait."
"Then all is set." Phineas Nigellus Black has a reputation for blunt words and a withering sarcasm; it seems in the face of grief he will temper it down in pity. The Headmaster nods. "Goodday, Albus Dumbledore."
Albus takes a pinch of Floo Powder, and holds his breath, waiting to be taken back home.
They will not even let them see the body.
They hold an empty-casket funeral in the backyard of their small house at Godric's Hollow, ankle-deep in snow, a thick cloak clasped at his throat. Albus doesn't think he remembers much.
He spends hours pressed at the window, knees tucked under his chest. Sometimes Mother comes by with a steaming cup of cocoa, or Ariana will clamber beside him as she did once, clasping Mister Ted tight to her chest. Aberforth asks him about Hogwarts, and there is a wistfulness in his voice, a wistfulness Albus knows all too well.
When Christmas morning comes, Albus has been awake for hours already, watching snow settle on Father's pale coffin.
Aberforth is the second downstairs, in a thick woolen jumper. "Did you even sleep?"
"For an hour or so."
They sit in silence for a long while, Aberforth on a chair, both watching the dark sky.
"It's strange," his brother says. "The world isn't any different than what it was two weeks ago."
"A thousand people die every day, and another million are birthed. Father is a statistic and an anomaly. Do you think he minds that we do not grieve?"
"Do you think," Aberforth dares to ask, "do you think when we're gone and dead, and when our children are sitting as we are now - do you think they'll feel the same about our deaths?"
"I can't imagine having children, to tell you the truth."
"Neither can I."
"This is truly a pathetic Christmas."
"It is." Aberforth picks at a stray piece of lint. "But I'm glad you're here. It was worse without you. There's a neighbor next-door, Bathilda Bagshot, she came with a tray full of Pumpkin Pasties, and Mother looked horrified when she tried to invite herself in." He looks up. "I miss having someone to talk to. Ariana is wonderful, of course, but it's - it's not the same as you."
"I'm sorry I left."
"No you're not." Aberforth doesn't look mad.
"No." Albus watches as an owl settles itself onto the fence. "No I suppose not."
On his first day back home, Elphias and Mellara had written a joint letter, their words contrasting like ash on bone. Albus keeps the parchment in his room, the violet seal unbroken.
He should write something. He should say something, too. During the funeral, Mother had been waiting for him to say something about Father - a memory or a time or a quality. All that had come out of his lips was silence.
"Are you mad at me?" he asks Mother one day, alone in the kitchen with her.
"Mad?"
"Mad that I didn't say anything."
"Oh, Albus," she says, and comes around the counter to drape her arm over his shoulder. "Everyone deals with grief differently. I shouldn't have put you up on the spot like that -"
"I've been thinking," Albus tells her, quietly. "About Father. What he might look like. What he might have said."
Mother cups his chin and kisses his forehead. "He would have been proud of you, so young and handsome, going to Hogwarts."
"Do you think he would have any regrets?"
"Everyone has regrets. Strange as it sounds, we live for regrets. It is the fear of regret that greets us in the morning, and fear of regret that pushes us to seek the impossible."
"What are your regrets?"
Mother laughs. "Now that, young man, is not for you to hear."
She teases him with a homemade cookie, but Albus does not forget. He thinks about her words all night and for the rest of the week. He wonders if she regrets having a daughter, or letting Ariana play on her own, or if she regrets ever accepting that letter to Hogwarts, to that castle on a hill far, far away.
He passes his first-year with full marks, having won every award that any first-year can: which is to say, only one.
It comes in the form of a letter from Headmaster Black, a plaque engraven with gold, congratulating Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore on achieving a perfect score on all his final examinations.
"Where should I put this?" Mother asks, holding it up. "I think by the living room would be nice, or -"
"Anywhere is good." Albus should be proud. He is, he thinks. In some way. He has scattered memories of studying for the final examination, listening to Elphias prattle about the difficulties of Potions, keeping Mellara company as she tries to practice the wand-waving for Transfiguration. His friends are kind and respectful. They do not mention the week after Winter Break, when Albus disappeared as soon as their classes were over, or the letters he left untouched over Christmas. In return, he is all-too ready to proof-read their essays and humor their short tempers.
Sometimes Albus wishes they would corner him on the Astronomy Tower or demand answers as he hides in the Library. But Elphias and Mellara are far too polite for that.
He considers it, once, during his second-year.
The Astronomy Tower in the deep of autumn is deserted on Friday evenings, for any professor who would be so foolish as to insist on lessons right before the weekend would find themselves with a handful of riotous mutiny. Albus takes a seat by the railing, thick cloak swirling behind him, auburn hair caught in the wind - and he is hit by the sudden notion.
An idea.
He could jump. How far it is to the grass down below, Albus does not know. Enough to result in instantaneous death, if he dives head-first.
"Albus?" Elphias is panting. "I knew I'd find you here - oh -"
He is standing, he realizes suddenly, leaning precariously close to the edge, his hand stretched before the void.
"I, I don't think you should be doing that," Elphias Doge is saying, "Albus -"
"There is a name for this feeling," he tells his friend.
"Perhaps you should, I think, I mean, step away from there -?"
"L'appel du vide." Albus looks at Doge, puts down his arm. "The call of the void. Named by muggles, apt, isn't it?"
"I - yes?"
"I won't jump. Not yet, anyway." He looks down, down to the grass, a million miles below. "I like it here."
"I like it when you're a little further from the barrier."
Albus humors him.
A year later Aberforth joins him at Hogwarts, and the beauty of a world far from home brings them together.
"It's, it's hard," his brother tells him once. They sit in the Great Hall, with a fire in the hearth and a goblet of pumpkin juice between them. "Everyone here, everyone -"
His legacy. It stretches wide and deep despite the meager two-and-a-half years Albus has been at Hogwarts. It is filled with accolades and lauding teachers. There are trophies in a room on the second floor, and three have his name carved in ivory.
Albus Dumbledore, and his younger brother has been nothing but a disappointment.
"How are you so - so good?" Aberforth asks. "Professor Garrall kept on talking about how good you were at Transfiguration, and then, and then Professor Reese mentioned how he'd never seen someone with such a depth of understanding of magic, and how can I possibly live up to, to, to - I wish I could be as good as you," Aberforth whispers.
"You will -"
"Don't. I hate you sometimes." Aberforth won't look at him. "I hate you. Not really, but when all my teachers are looking at me, they're demanding that I do, that I be better. I don't know how. I spend all this time in the library, but all I get from it are headaches and cramped fingers."
"If there's anything I can do -"
"There isn't." Aberforth looks him in the eye. "I just, I don't know."
His mother is trapped.
The thought comes to him suddenly as he watches her scourgify apple sauce from the walls in his fourteenth year. His sister had shattered the plates without so much as a second thought, and the cold of her rages still lingers despite the summer sun that peeks through curtains, bright and radiant and entirely unlike Kendra Dumbledore's complexion.
When they are alone, Albus asks her tentatively, "Is it always this bad?"
"Sometimes."
"It doesn't -" He stops. "I don't - I, I -"
Mother smiles, knowing the words that will inevitably come out. This conversation is long due. "Take your time."
"One day," Albus tells her, solemn and true, "one day I'll make lots of and lots of money and Ariana will have a house-elf to see to her needs so that you can live your life unbound."
She kisses his brow and runs her fingers through his hair. "My life is already full, Albus. It is filled with sweet memories of my children and the happiness they have brought."
He thinks about her words. "But what of your passions and your joys?"
"My greatest joys are my children."
"Other people?"
"Other people."
Quietly, he says, "I love you."
"I love you too, Albus."
"There's a monster inside of me," Ariana says. She is ten. Her hands are steady as she slices the apple. "Everyone thinks I don't remember what happened, but I do." She looks up. "You know what happened, don't you? Aberforth doesn't. He was too young. But you were ten. The same age as me." She pauses. "I can still feel it, sometimes. The fear. The rage. And the pain. Always the pain."
Albus moves to lay a hand on her shoulder, but Ariana flinches. "Sorry," she mumbles.
"No - it was my doing. I shouldn't have, have done that."
Ariana closes her eyes. Looks down at the apple going yellow. "I hardly know you," she says. "You're my brother. You must be, because we have the same red hair and the same blue eyes. But I never see you. You feel like a stranger sometimes. More so than Aberforth because - I don't know. You're distant. You're - you're a wizard, and you're very smart and well-dressed and popular. Did we really come from the same parents?"
"I think so," Albus says slowly.
"Then where did the monster come from?"
"Ariana -"
"Mother gave me potions in the beginning," she says. Her voice is toneless. "I think the proper term would be draughts. Syrups and soups to keep me sedated. To stop me from screaming after the monster. I miss the potions, sometimes." Ariana straightens and washes the knife. "It's easier telling you this."
"Because I'm a stranger."
"Because you're a stranger," she agrees.
"Do you prefer me as a stranger or a brother?"
She thinks. "A brother would scream and rage at what happened. A brother would feel too much and think too little."
"A brother would be like a father."
"Like a father," Ariana agrees.
"A stranger it is, then," Albus says lightly.
They look at each other for a long while.
In his Fifth Year, he's made prefect. Mellara is made one alongside him, and Elphias waxes many a sorrowful tale about his pathetic loneliness.
That year, on a trip to Hogsmeade from which Doge is suspiciously absent, Mellara takes him to a fanciful shop with chocolates and roses, and offers him feelings and confessions.
"I like you," she says, wandering through the streets of Hogsmeade. In her hand is a bouquet of golden-blue roses, enchanted to be brilliant.
"I like you too," Albus says slowly.
"But not in that way."
He thinks about it for a long time. Mellara is charming, beautiful, adventurous. She is like him in many ways, and different in a thousand others. Albus would be impossibly lucky to know a friend as great as her; impossibly fortunate to know her as something more.
He tries to imagine kissing her, as he has seen so many of his year-mates kiss a girl, and feels nothing.
"I wish I did," Albus says. They are alone on the street, far from the noises of the village, the scent of lavender ripe in the air. "I wish I was that person you want me to be."
Mellara looks away. Blinks. Slowly, she takes the bouquet and picks out a rose, pale like ice and threaded with twines of gold. Her hands are steady.
"Do you know long I've had this infatuation?"
Albus considers her. "A year."
"Five." Mellara looks him in the eye. "Ever since you sat me down in the library and told me about how you took your notes. The Oxford method. The great Albus Dumbledore, radiant despite the shadow of his father. An excellent student and a whimsical soul. I wished I hated you. You even had the gall to be humble about it all, making time for everyone no matter how shrewish their needs. You were untouchable then. You still are now."
She smiles, and it is at once bitter and glad.
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be." Mellara kisses his cheek, as she has done so many times before. "You're an excellent friend, Mister Dumbledore. I'll get over it."
She gives him the rose.
"So," Elphias says, when he sees that Albus came back alone. "Do you, do you want to talk about it, or -?"
"Do you have a jar?"
"Er - I suppose so?"
In his Sixth Year, Albus writes a paper on trans-species Transfiguration that pleases Professor Garrall so greatly that he pulls a few strings and Albus' work ends up in Transfiguration Today.
"You're famous," Elphias croons, holding up a letter addressed to Albus Dumbledore. "Oh, let me see, it's from, it's from -" He squints. "What in Merlin's name, how can you read this handwriting -?"
"Bathilda Bagshot," Albus tells him over a bowl of porridge.
"A fascinating name."
Bathilda Bagshot, a rising name in Magical History, and next-door neighbor to the Dumbledores.
By the time he finishes his Sixth Year many a thing has changed.
He has been named as Youth Representative to the Wizengamot. Every fourth Friday of every month, he attends a session and represents the youth's voices of the Wizarding Community, on topics from education to school systems to magical creatures. Most of the time he keeps silent, but sometimes he dares to raise voice.
"That was a passionate speech you gave, Mister Dumbledore," the representative from France says. She speaks with a light accent, and is all the more refined for it. "The fear of the unknown is as terrible as it is universal. They are strong sentiments for such a young man."
Albus bows his head politely. "Muggles have no explanation for the wonders a wizard can do. When faced with such impossibility, what else can be expected?"
"Human nature is universal. And, it would seem, your infamy." She smiles. "France welcomes you. Should you ever grow tired of the British, we are more than happy to work with a mind like yours."
He thinks he blushes. "Thank you, madame, you are far too kind."
This is not the first offer, nor is it the last. He writes a dozen letters to Bathilda Baghost that year, each spanning long hours and weeks of research. He has never known a greater impulse to impress more than now, composing his arguments and his speeches for the ICW, writing to one of the greatest minds in Wizarding scholarship.
By the time he graduates with a neat row of O's, he has hundreds of job offers pending acceptance, letters from all across Europe eager to snatch his radiance and make it their own.
He takes none of the offers. Instead, he will go with Elphias Doge and take a grand tour of the Mediterranean. Mellara would join them, but her apprenticeship at St. Mungo's starts in July.
With their final farewells to the castle on the hill, Albus looks eastward to the dawn of his future.
The world has never been so great.
It has also never been more inevitable.
End of Part 1.2