A/N: Anything you recognize is from the book itself! I paraphrased as best I could. Enjoy!


June 21st, 1996

We landed in Dumbledore's office hard. Harry, still shaking, fell to the ground. Sirius helped him up with a steady hand, pushing him back in to one of the armchairs in front of Dumbledore's desk. I pushed myself off the floor with my good arm; my other arm was throbbing, now that the adrenaline had worn off. My chest was on fire again, and I started breathing shallowly, trying to calm some of the pain. I fell in to the other armchair, and Sirius came to stand behind me, his hands on the back of the chair.

He noticed that I was breathing oddly, and he bent his head down low to check on me. "Are you okay?" He asked me, laying one of his hands on my shoulder gently. I hissed in pain; he had chosen my injured shoulder. "Shit, sorry," he grimaced.

"What happened, Addie?" Harry asked, looking over at my hiss. "Last thing I saw it looked like you were inches from that veil…thing? I'm not really sure what it is, exactly, but Remus told me you were gone and I don't…"

"Death veil – separates the living world from the afterworld," Sirius explained. "One of the more interesting things they study in the Depart–"

"I'm fine, Harry," I interrupted him, grimacing through the pain that was radiating through arm. "Sirius pulled my back at the last moment. Dislocated my shoulder, though, and broke my wrist I think."

"Shit, kitten, I'm sorry," Sirius winced, examining my wrist which had swollen to the size of a tennis ball.

"Saved my life, didn't you?" I shrugged. "What's a broken wrist?"

"You scared the shit out of me," Sirius admitted. "You shouldn't have jumped in front of Bellatrix's spell!" He said, more angrily. "What were you playing at?"

"Saving your life!" I snapped back, getting heated myself.

"Well, that's stupid!" Sirius shrieked, getting louder. I glanced at Harry, who was looking at us with wide eyes as we shouted at each other. I took a deep breath.

"We'll talk about this later," I said, more calmly. Sirius and I had had this conversation so many times throughout the years – that I shouldn't put myself in danger to protect him. He was never going to understand that just as much as he needed to protect me, I needed to protect him. He would get over it soon enough, and there was no reason to shout in front of Harry, not when he was looking so white already.

Sirius opened his mouth, still looking angry, but with a pointed look at Harry, he deflated. "Sorry, Harry. We're not angry with each other, I promise."

"I know," Harry said, an odd expression on his face. "It's just weird watching you two fight…almost like real parents." I smiled sadly at Harry, and brought my good hand up to hold Sirius's, which was still resting on my shoulder.

We didn't respond – we didn't have to. A couple of minutes passed in silence, but that silence was broken by Dumbledore appearing in front of us suddenly, falling from the sky in a flourish of midnight blue robes. He examined us over the top of his half-moon spectacles. "Good evening," he said calmly, striding around the desk to sit in his chair. He examined us for another couple of moments, before clearing his throat. "I think, Harry, that it is finally time for me to tell you everything."

"What do you mean?" I asked, before I could stop myself.

"Sirius," Dumbledore said grandly. "I think it is best that you sit down."

"Why?" Sirius snapped. "Why do I need to sit?"

"I am about to tell you all why Lord Voldemort attacked Harry fourteen years ago." The silence following this statement was resounding, but nonetheless, Sirius fell back in to the chair that Dumbledore summoned.

"I have failed you, Harry. And you as well, Addie, Sirius. I owe you all an explanation for an old man's mistakes. I have made many, so many with you, Harry, and it is time that I explain myself," Dumbledore said in a grave voice.

"I think we'd all like an explanation," I said, somewhat snarky. Dumbledore just smiled at me and nodded.

"You know, already, about the protection that your mother provided you the night she died. You know why you have had to endure your Aunt and Uncle's company every year. I however, have been worried about your scar, about the connection that exists between you and Voldemort."

"You already told me this before," Harry said, not in a rude way. "I already know that there is a connection between Him and me."

"Yes, yes I have. But it wasn't until recently that I believe Voldemort knew about this connection. The night that you saw Arthur Weasley attacked, you ventured further in to Voldemort's mind than you ever had before. Sirius told me that that very night, you felt Voldemort awake inside of you – and I knew at once that my worst fears were correct. He now knew about the connection, and I feared that he would use it to use you. I arranged occlumency with Professor Snape to help you close your mind against his attempts to manipulate you."

"Fat lot of good that did him," Sirius grumbled. "The prat stopped teaching him."

"Another of my mistakes. I should have taught Harry myself, but I feared that getting too close to you this year would allow Voldemort the chance to spy – that he would use the connection more if he knew that Harry and I were closer, closer than the average headmaster and pupil."

"Professor Snape realized that you had been dreaming about the door leading to the Department of Mysteries," Dumbledore continued. "Although you did not know what it meant, we knew for sure now that he was focusing on the prophecy. And then you saw Rookwood, telling Voldemort what we already knew – that the prophecies were heavily guarded and only those whom the prophecy was made about were able to remove it. It became more urgent that you learn occlumency, lest Voldemort try to use your connection to lure you to the Department of Mysteries. Which he did, by convincing you that Sirius had been taken."

"I tried to check if Sirius was home! I used Umbridge's fire and fire called Grimmauld Place. Kreacher told me that nobody was home, that Sirius had gone!" Harry said defensively.

"Kreacher lied," Dumbledore said simply. "When I arrived at Grimmauld Place, Molly told me what had happened. I questioned Kreacher – he has been serving two masters for the last several months."

"What do you mean? Sirius asked harshly.

"The dungbomb," I said quietly. "It wasn't Ginny's. It was Kreacher. To get us out of the kitchen."

Dumbledore nodded. "Sirius, you, at some point, must have yelled at him to get out. He took you at his word and went to the only Black family member for whom he still respected – Narcissa Black."

"Lucius Malfoy's wife," I growled darkly, anger reigniting for the man who willingly attacked his own son's schoolmates. Sirius grabbed my uninjured hand reassuringly, rubbing circles on my knuckles. It did little to satiate my anger, but it did stop me from zoning out of the conversation.

"Precisely. Kreacher was not able to tell them much, but we seem to have forgotten to forbid him to speak of the growing relationship between you – Harry – and Sirius – how you have come to view him as a father, Harry. Malfoy relayed this to his master, who realized it was the perfect way to draw you to the Ministry. He realized that the one person in this world that you would risk everything for…is Sirius."

"He was right," Harry said quietly. "Sirius is the closest thing to a father I've ever had. And – and Addie! Addie is the closest thing to a mother I've ever had."

I felt emotion fill my chest, making my chest tight. "You never have to worry about saving me, son," Sirius said, putting a hand on Harry's shoulder. "It's our job to protect you."

"I know that!" Harry protested. "But, I thought you had really gone, and Snape didn't believe me, and I couldn't let you die. I couldn't!"

"Professor Snape, Harry," Dumbledore reminded him gently. "And Severus did believe you. He got in touch with Addie, he made sure Sirius was still alive – the Order has more reliable methods of communication that Dolores Umbridge's fire. When you did not return from the forest, he guessed that you had really believed that Sirius was in danger, and he sent word to the Order that you had left. He asked for Sirius to stay behind –"

" – As if I would!" Sirius interrupted angrily.

"And once again, Voldemort underestimated the powerful magic of love," Dumbledore continued. "He guessed correctly, and used the fact that you loved Sirius against you. But I doubt he realized that Sirius would risk his life to rescue you, or that Addie would risk her life to save Sirius. And he, once again, failed to recognize the power of love, when he tried to possess you tonight."

"Possess him?" I snapped, looking between Sirius and Dumbledore. "Nobody told me anything about a possession."

"You were, unfortunately, passed out at the time that it happened. There was a vicious fight between Dumbledore and Voldemort and then Voldemort tried to possess Harry," Sirius explained. "It was bloody brilliant, though – the battle, not the possession."

"He hoped, I think, that I would sacrifice you in order to defeat him. And this brings us back, Harry, to perhaps the biggest mistake I have ever made," Dumbledore sighed. "It is time I tell you everything – everything I should have told you five years ago. You know, already, that I placed you with your Aunt and Uncle to invoke an ancient magical protection – a protection that ran through your mother's blood, through your Aunt's blood. I knew, when I put you there, that I was condemning you to ten dark and lonely years. However, my main priority was to keep you alive – I knew that Voldemort would one day return; I didn't know when, or how, but I knew that he was not gone forever, and I knew that as soon as he returned, he would not rest until he killed you. So, I left you at your Aunt and Uncle's, who took you, albeit grudgingly."

"Great plan," Sirius scoffed, but I slapped him gently on the arm, and shushed him. I had a feeling Dumbledore was about to drop an even bigger bomb on us, and I didn't want to get distracted with petty arguments over something we had already argued about.

"Throughout the years you have struggled in ways no one could have anticipated," Dumbledore continued. "You came to Hogwarts five years ago, a bit battered and bruised, but alive and as normal a boy as one could have expected. Thus far, my plan was working. You came face to face with Voldemort that year, at the young age of eleven, much sooner than I had anticipated. You fought him off, delayed him from returning to power…you fought a man's fight. I was prouder of you that day than I could even say." I waited with baited breath, not entirely sure what Dumbledore was building up to.

"Yet, there was a flaw in this wonderful plan of mine, an obvious flaw that I knew, even then, might be the undoing of it all. And yet, knowing how important it was that my plan should succeed, I told myself that I would not permit this flaw to ruin it – that I could control it. You may remember, asking me that day why Voldemort had chosen to attack you as a baby – and I chose not to answer. Ought I not to have told you then? Eleven, I told myself, was much too young to know. The knowledge would be too much." Dumbledore paused, as though waiting for us to yell that we had understood, that we had understood what he had done that was so terrible. None of us spoke, watching Dumbledore with furrowed brows, waiting for him to continue.

"I should have recognized the danger signs then. I should have asked myself why I did not feel more disturbed that you had already asked me the question to which I knew, one day, I must give a terrible answer. I should have recognized that I was too happy to think I did not have to do it on that particular day. Throughout the years you have struggled and overcome – you have faced Voldemort twice more, and come away unscathed. But still, I chose not to tell you because I valued your peace of mind more than you knowing the truth. Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan, now, Harry? I had fallen into the trap that I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."

"I don't…" Harry said hesitantly.

"I cared about you too much," Dumbledore said simply. "I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act."

"I don't understand, sir," Harry asked, his brow furrowed. "What does this have to do with why Voldemort couldn't possess me? What does it have to do with why Voldemort attacked me as a baby?"

"Voldemort tried to kill you as a baby because of a prophecy that was made before your birth," Dumbledore answered.

"But nobody knows what the prophecy said," Harry said. "It smashed…in the Department…Neville kicked it and it smashed in to a thousand pieces."

"Luckily, that was only a copy," Dumbledore said. "But that prophecy was made to someone who happens to have a way to recall it perfectly."

"Who was it made to?" I asked suspiciously, sure I wasn't going to like where this was going.

"Me," Dumbledore said simply.

"But you never told us that!" Sirius snapped. "When you told us, and Lily and James, you never told us that you were the one to receive the prophecy."

"You knew?" Harry said, in a rather accusatory tone, looking over at the two of us.

"We knew that there was a prophecy made, and that Lily and James had to hide – that Voldemort was coming for you. We never knew what the prophecy said."

"Well, what does it say?" Harry asked anxiously.

Dumbledore pulled out his pensieve, which had been sitting in a cabinet next to his desk. He tapped it once, and the image of a batty looking woman appeared. She spoke in a ghastly voice, which echoed throughout the room.

"THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES…BORN TO THOSE WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM, BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES…AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL, BUT HE WILL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT…AND EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES…THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD WILL BE BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES…"

The woman faded back in to the pensieve, and we all started at the stone basin in shock.

"But, what does it mean?" Harry asked in a small voice, the first of us to gain back the use of his voice.

"It means that the one who has the power to vanquish the dark lord was born nearly sixteen years ago at the end of July, to parents who had thrice defied Lord Voldemort," Dumbledore answered.

"It means… me?" He asked, leaning back in his seat.

"The odd thing is, Harry," Dumbledore said pensively, cradling his chin with his fingers. "It may not have meant you at all."

"Neville," I said breathlessly. "Harry, that's why Alice and Frank Longbottom were also in hiding. Dumbledore told us that the prophecy could also refer to Neville – Alice and your mom had you both just hours apart."

"But then why is it my name on the prophecy, and not Neville's?" Harry asked sharply.

"The next part of the prophecy," Sirius whispered. "The dark lord marked you as his equal, Harry, not Neville."

"Well, why didn't he wait then? Why didn't he wait to see who would grow to be the more powerful wizard?"

"Ah," Dumbledore said. "That, Harry, would be because his information was incomplete. He did not hear the full prophecy – the spy who overheard was discovered and kicked out after hearing just the first part. Voldemort had no idea that to attack you would transfer power to you – he had no idea that there was any danger in attacking you. He simply chose the wizard whom he believed to be the bigger threat – and notice, Harry, that he did not choose the pureblood, but the half-blood like himself. He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you, and in marking you with that scar, he did not kill you, as he intended, but gave you powers, and a future, which have fitted you to escape him not once, but four times so far – something that neither your parents, nor Neville's parents, ever achieved."

"But Trelawny could have been wrong, right? She could have been wrong!" Harry asked desperately. "I don't have any powers that Voldemort hasn't got. I can't possess people, or hurt people – I can't even conquer occlumency!"

"Love," I said, finally understanding what Dumbledore was trying to get at.

"Yes?" Sirius asked, thinking I was calling him.

"No," I said dismissively, shaking my head. "Dumbledore is trying to say that love is the power Harry has."

"Exactly," Dumbledore nodded slowly.

"Love?" Harry repeated dubiously.

"Yes, Harry, love. Love is what saved you tonight – Voldemort could not handle the amount of love he felt within your heart, and that is why he could not possess you. Love is what saved you as a first year, what made Quirrell not able to touch you. Love is what saved you as a baby – your mother's love cast a powerful magical protection on you. Love is what sets you apart from Voldemort. It is what drove you to save Sirius tonight, and it is the reason he could not possess you."

"They study love," Sirius added, "in the Department of Mysteries."

"It is kept in a room that is locked at all times – love is a force at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you," Dumbledore said.

"But," Harry sputtered. "The end of the prophecy…neither can live…"

"…while the other survives," Dumbledore finished.

"Does that mean…that one of us has got to kill the other….in the end?" Harry asked.

"Yes."

"No!" Sirius shouted. "Absolutely not! No fucking prophecy is going to determine that!"

"Sirius," Harry said, resolutely, his brilliant green eyes squinted in steely resolve. "It's okay."

"No, it's not okay!" Sirius yelled, panic evident in his voice.

"I am sorry, Harry – Sirius, Addie – that I must be the one to tell you this. It is for this precise reason that I held off for as long as I did. You have all suffered enough, lost enough. I, mistakenly, believed that by holding this burden off of you, it would eventually become easier to hear. I was wrong – and for that, I apologize," Dumbledore apologized, seeming, for once, earnest.

"But!" Sirius continued, but I squeezed his hand, which I was still holding. Sirius sputtered for a moment before falling quiet. We sat in silence as the weight of the revelation hit us. The weight of the revelation of something we had always known, I think, deep down. From the moment I laid eyes on Harry, I knew he was different. Somewhere deep down, I think I knew that we had always been heading towards this moment.

"I'm afraid I owe you another explanation, Harry," Dumbledore said, breaking the silence. "You may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you as a prefect? I must confess…that I rather thought…you had enough responsibility to be going on with." I looked at Dumbledore to see that for the first time in my memory – he was crying.


Many hours later, Sirius and I stumbled back in to the dark kitchen of #12 Grimmauld Place, feeling as though it had been weeks since we had left for the Ministry of Magic. We stood awkwardly apart from each other in the kitchen, the dying embers of the fire crackling behind us. I turned to Sirius, intent to say something, anything to make the burden of the knowledge we had just learned easier, but before I could speak, he had grabbed a bowl of fruit off of the table and thrown it across the room with a snarl of fury.

"THIS," he screamed, picking up a chair and throwing it against the wall. "CANNOT" he picked up a pot which was sitting on the stove and threw that against the wall as well. "BE FUCKING HAPPENING!" He punctuated the end of his sentence by kicking a small table, sending the whole thing toppling over and the glass vase that sat on top into the fireplace, where it shattered in to a million pieces. He continued raging around the room, flinging anything and everything that wasn't nailed down against the floor or the walls.

His sudden volume frightened me, although I knew his anger wasn't directed at me. It wasn't directed at Dumbledore either – although he had kept this from us for so many years, I actually understood why he had done it – out of sight, out of mind, after all. He had saved us of the burden of knowing that Harry was…destined to fight Voldemort for nearly sixteen years. He had been right – we'd all suffered enough in the last sixteen years, and he had saved us the additional constant worry. It didn't make tonight any less painful – it didn't make us any less angry at the situation. It didn't make me wish any less that Lily and James were here right now, sitting at the kitchen table like we had so many years ago in the Hogwarts library, trying to come up with a plan to fight in this war – although this time we would be coming up with a plan to save Harry.

Sirius had just about exhausted himself when the kitchen door was flung open to reveal Remus, panting, a wild look in his eye.

"What the devil is going on in here?" He asked wildly, his wand flung out in front of him. Sirius didn't answer, but simply slid down to the floor, his back against the wall. I walked over to him, and lowered myself to the ground hesitantly, trying to avoid the layer of broken glass that littered the floor.

I shook my head at Remus – I had no idea where to even begin. Sirius glared blankly at the ground in front of him, looking as though he had no inclination to begin speaking.

"Eliana?" I asked first, before launching in to my story.

"Asleep upstairs. Molly's with her still. They took Tonks to the hospital…obviously I'm not allowed in St. Mungo's so I came here to let Molly and Arthur know that their kids are alright," Remus answered.

I felt, somewhere deep down, anger ignite at the fact that Remus was barred from entering St. Mungo's – barred from being next to the woman he clearly loved while she was injured – but with everything else that was running through my mind, I had to bury that anger deep down, to be reevaluated another day.

I summoned three bottles of firewhiskey, not even bothering with glasses and opting to give each of us our own personal bottle. Once we had each opened our bottles, Remus having sat down on the lone chair that Sirius had not destroyed, I began to relay everything that Dumbledore had told us tonight.


"But the thing that I don't understand," Remus began, hiccupping, "is why it has to be Harry?"

Sirius had calmed down; the drink having helped significantly. At his insistence, we had moved to the drawing room – once he had realized I hadn't had my arm looked at, he insisted that we at least go somewhere comfortable to talk. Molly had come downstairs from Eliana's room when she'd heard us on the stairway – she'd hugged Sirius and I upon confirming that we were fine, her eyes full of tears. After fixing my arm the best she could – having Fred and George as children has made her rather proficient in healing charms of all kinds – she had left to meet Arthur at The Burrow, from where they would depart to Hogwarts to check on Ron and Ginny.

"Dumbledore seems to think that because the prophecy says so, he must be the one to face off with Voldemort at the end," Sirius said. "Load of horseshit, in my opinion."

"Mary was the only one of us who held any stock in that. You know what Lily would say if she were here…" I said, reminiscing.

"Divination is the least precise branch of magic – if you can even call looking at moldy blobs of tea leaves to be magic. Nothing at all like Arithmancy, at least there you can make predictions based off of equations and more precise magical calculations…" Sirius said, in a perfect imitation of Lily. "Give me an hour, let me run some numbers!"

I chuckled. It really was exactly what Lily would have said. She'd taken Dumbledore seriously back when we had first heard about the prophecy, but only because we knew for a fact – thanks to Severus – that Voldemort was coming after Harry. Had we not had that information from Snape, she never would have believed that Harry was in danger – not off of a prophecy alone.

"There must be something else though…something that he's not telling us…don't you think?" Remus pressed, ignoring Sirius and I's antics – we were only laughing because we were exhausted. We were so exhausted, that even in as serious a situation as this, we needed to let off some steam. Remus was always better at keeping focused than the two of us were – he would be able to continue thinking through the situation, even after the emotionally and physically exhausting day we had just had.

I sobered up quicker than Sirius – literally. I'd stopped drinking a while ago, while Sirius had continued. I didn't begrudge him his indulgence, however, not tonight. If it provided him any comfort, I wanted him to have it – I however, had realized that one of us should be sober enough to take care of Eliana should she need our attention. So far, we hadn't heard a peep out of her. "I think that with Dumbledore, there is always going to be something he isn't telling us. I don't know that we'll ever get the full story, not really," I answered Remus.

"Prat," Sirius spat. Around ¾ of the way through his bottle of firewhiskey, his anger had switched away from the situation at hand and back towards Dumbledore directly. I'd found that I was too tired to be angry – too tired of fighting, too tired of being let down, too tired of being disappointed. All we could do now is continue to fight for the people that we loved.

"Once again, Harry is in danger," Remus said sadly after a couple of minutes of silence following Sirius's remark.

"And once again, we need to do everything we can to protect him," Sirius said fiercely, mimicking himself from the night Harry was born. He stuck his bottle of firewhiskey in the air. "Agreed?"

"Agreed," Remus said, clinking his own bottle to Sirius's.

"Agreed," I said solemnly, noting how much everything had changed since the last time we had vowed to protect Harry Potter – but I knew that we, the three of us, would always be there, fighting to protect Lily and James's son.

**END PART THREE**