The room was dark – in fact, almost without any light at all – and the room was cold. Cold because it was not heated, and cold because of one of those currently in the room.
Four of the five are living beings, full of life, though one is a child of not twenty months, and the other three are all past their first century. The fifth is the source of the unnatural cold: it is a Dementor, a being without life, a being of pure Oblivion … the deepest cold of all.
The child is one year, four months, and five days old. Far too young for this, if any age is even old enough.
"Is everything ready?" The speaker has the child in his arms, while the child fusses about how he is being held.
"Nearly done, Elphias," says a tall man in robes. "Nearly done."
Elphias rocks the young boy in his arms; the boy is not of his family, but Elphias still wants to show kindness. The toddler's sniffles begin progressing into active whimpers.
"Perhaps you could work a bit faster, Dumbledore," the final living-and-being occupant says in a terse voice. This newest voice is of a timbre that is feminine, and the speaker's figure appears vaguely feminine, but the robes and other clothes they wear make it impossible to see anything that might allow them to be identified. Albus is fairly sure he knows who it is anyhow, not that he requested her presence.
"Soul magic ought not be rushed," says Albus. His long beard is tucked into his belt to keep it out of the liquid pooling at the center of the room. The liquid is dark, dark as the depths of space, and cannot be identified either as water nor as anything else. "As you should know."
"Yes, yes, but do get a move on, the Department needs this chamber in an hour."
Albus hums and pours something into the pool of liquid. It looks even less like water now. The ripples around whatever he's pouring are far too sluggish to be water. "Patience … Does a Dementor's Kiss normally take very long at all?"
"This is no normal Kiss and you know it," the vague figure hisses.
Elphias shifts on his feet, not at all comfortable with what he is hearing even having heard it before. "Albus, this is … a Dementor's Kiss… on a toddler… that is to say… you're quite sure…?" It is not the first time he has asked. Nor the second.
"As sure as I have ever been of anything in my life, old friend," Albus says hoarsely. He peers at the liquid a bit longer through his half-moon spectacles, nods, and rises to peer down at the boy instead. Elphias does the same and so does the third living being, although they do so only grudgingly, with the air of someone trying not to seem curious at all. "Young Mr. Potter has defeated Lord Voldemort through the purity of his soul and his magic … and in doing so, he has fragmented the wizard's soul beyond repair. I must find the shards and destroy them. Starting with the one … that fled here."
He presses one long finger lightly to the toddler's forehead. The boy's quiet, constant movement now ceases, before he suddenly shudders.
"Broken skin … yes, that would allow entrance," the third speaker says in a voice now as dry as a desert. "It would almost be an invitation to come in."
"But soul magics are so little understood," Elphias says mournfully.
The third speaker snorts. "You understand them so little, Doge. The Department has no use for the Ministry's fear-mongering and pettiness."
"Peace," Albus says. "Now is not the time for politics. Which Unspeakables are supposed to be above, in any event."
Elphias Doge obeys instantly. The Unspeakable makes a sarcastic gesture of agreement and steps away again.
"Right," the witch says brusquely. "Dumbledore, the potion looks right, and the runes are set, so can we please get this done?"
"Of course, of course… Elphias, if you could give the boy to me?"
Elphias licks his lips and looks in the direction of the Dementor, shivering again at the room's unnatural chill. The Dementor drifts in a corner, unable to be forgotten: a Patronus needs to be present to keep it at bay, but the silver light can do nothing about the chill nor the foul air that reeks of madness, despair … and Oblivion. "Albus…"
"Trust me, Elphias," Albus says softly. "Please."
With a jerky nod, Elphias deposits the boy into Albus' arms and leaves through a door that did not appear to exist before he needed it and appears to no longer exist once he is gone.
The third speaker snorts as soon as he is gone. "Purity of his soul … what sentimental bilge. Dumbledore, you know perfectly well that Lily Potter did something highly illegal, no doubt fueling it with her life. This was vengeance, not purity or anything like the nonsense you just spoke. The dark one killed himself with his own arrogance. Waltzed right into your trap, I might add."
"We both know you will be keeping all such observations to yourself," says Albus in a tone so delicate it might shatter upon the floor like spun glass. "The fiction will comfort Elphias, and everyone else, and it is not entirely without truth. This world needs hope, my dear. Harry Potter can offer it to them. A beacon of light, driving out the darkness…"
"Hope, ha," the witch says. "I picked the Death Chamber for a reason, Dumbledore."
Albus doesn't look at his companion, only at the child, as he pulls a slender length of wood from his pocket and taps the boy on the forehead.
In an instant, the child is entirely naked, and squalling louder at being suddenly all that much colder.
"You know this is far more likely to kill the child than not, right?"
Albus bends down, holding the child over the liquid like a prayer, or a sacrifice. "That cannot be helped. This must be done. And he would have no chance to live at all if Voldemort were ever allowed to return. I will carry this pain, this guilt … but it will not cause me regret."
"Your burden." Her voice is acidic, but her words are nonetheless correct.
"One among too many to count," Albus responds, and in this, for the first time, they appear to be in perfect agreement.
The Unspeakable steps back, raising their own wand, and begins tracing obscure patterns in the air while chanting in a language that these days is almost forgotten. Not dead, but barely alive.
In that way, the language is not unlike what they intend to deal with this night.
Albus lowers the boy slowly into the liquid. He is careful to not touch it himself, wanting not so much as a drop on the long sleeves of his robes.
The liquid appears to have pooled in a very shallow depression in the middle of the room, whose floors all gently slope towards its center. It soon becomes clear that its center is much deeper than the visible planes of the floor would suggest. The toddler disappears completely as soon as Albus lets him go, and he does so with barely a ripple in the sluggish liquid. His unhappy infant cries cut off as the liquid closes over his face.
The silver bird fades out of existence at a flick of Albus' wand. The chanting immediately grows faster, more frenzied. Trembles overtake the hands and body of the Unspeakable. In the corner, the Dementor drifts forward, now hunting.
It reaches for Albus, first, but the chanting picks up its pace and the creature stops. It turns instead towards the pool.
There is no sign of Harry Potter, not anymore. Not from outside.
Even under the liquid he is causing very little disruption. His pudgy fists lie still and his feet kick spasmodically only once every few seconds. He is not breathing, but that is a side effect of the potion they've submerged him in; it will need to be forcibly and painfully extracted from him if he survives the coming ordeal.
The boy is young, but the last few weeks have been a burden unlike any borne by anyone in history. That has wrought change.
His magic, still in the process of waking up and taking shape, has been fighting. Magic that fights and survives is magic that learns.
His current state, hanging partway over the precipice of death, is loosening the bonds between his soul and body.
Last and not the least part of the burden, his body indeed has more than just his own soul in it.
The extra fragment of soul is the source of nearly all his problems, and it is why he is here tonight, why any of those who brought him here were here tonight. Because it does not belong, its connection is unstable and weak. No magic can duplicate the music of connection between a body and the native soul.
The fragment itself is an abomination. It is a paradox: souls are never supposed to be fragmented, yet this one has been torn to shreds. Its fragmenting has been both even and uneven, and this fragment had not even been the first sundering. Nor the second, nor the third.
The infant's form jerks aggressively, sending ripples through the liquid. The Dementor pauses, face inches from submersion.
The chanting quickens.
The intruder shrieks and struggles. Its fear is palpable, total – as is its instinct to preserve itself, and it is now aware.
Immediately it understands that its options are few. Either it has to displace the original soul and have that be taken, or it needs to merge with it and somehow take it over from within, appearing to the spell to be native. The parameters of the spell only allow the Dementor to take a soul that does not belong.
Lastly, it could let itself be destroyed, which it would never even consider
Only the first option is acceptable.
Outside the pool of liquid, Albus sighs as the Dementor at last dips its face in.
The intruding soul, full of monstrous arrogance, has not realized its own weakness. The native soul, though young and immature, is able to fight back with full force – tremendous, if immature, force.
As the Dementor nears, the struggle intensifies.
And then, contact.
The clammy mouth covers the child's lips. But calling this process a "Kiss" is an act of cruelty and malice in itself: there is nothing about this process that even faintly belongs in a true kiss. No feelings of warmth or affection or desire exist here. It is not kissing so much as swallowing: the act of something disappearing into the empty hole of Oblivion.
After several long seconds, the Dementor lifts its face out of the liquid and retreats to its corner. It is more docile now. The fragment of soul it has consumed was tiny but rich with dark, aggressive desires and fears. A small meal, but a meal nonetheless.
"Done," the Unspeakable rasps, their voice betraying exhaustion that is almost total.
Albus moves swiftly, parting the potion with a wave of his wand and plucking the toddler from the depths of the center of the room. The boy's lips have tinged blue, and he is neither breathing nor moving.
The Unspeakable curses. "Dumbledore, I can't help, I'm spent…"
"I have this," Albus says, absolutely hearing and understanding her exhaustion. His voice is perhaps not so confident as he might like but he resolutely points his wand at the child and begins murmuring incantations.
The visible residue is the first casualty, vanishing and leaving no sign it was ever there. Other incantations end all the potion's physiological effects, rendering it ineffective even still inside him. This will allow life to resume … if it can. If the boy is strong enough.
After fifty seconds, Albus is close to giving up.
After seventy, young Harry Potter begins to seize and spasm, mouth gaping soundlessly. Albus briskly casts a spell originally used by Healers to stick a patient's tongue to the roof of their mouths to prevent it being swallowed. Noble as that purpose is, the spell is more often used these days as a juvenile prank.
Soon the child's seizures turn into violent but now natural-looking heaves. Albus deftly turns the boy over as he begins to spew a torrent: more of the sickening potion than his body should have been able to contain.
After a full minute, potion has come out of literally every opening his body had, and the child's wails and shrieks are in earnest. The sounds echo around the small stone chamber so intensely that the Unspeakable clamps their hands over her ears. Albus conjures a steady, gentle stream of warm water to cleanse the potion from the child's skin and holds the terrified, agonized toddler under it for ten long minutes.
All of the potion must be purged.
The Unspeakable sighs with relief when Albus ends the spray of water and casts a charm to gently make the child fall asleep. "Circe's tits, Dumbledore, that was awful."
"Haven't you seen things you regard even worse?"
"Not with a kid involved. I'm quite possibly the least maternal witch ever but that doesn't mean I like seeing one tortured."
"That was not torture," Albus says. "That was necessity."
"Right. I'm pretty sure cancer patients undergoing chemical therapy wouldn't call that torture either." The sarcasm is thick enough for a knife to cut. "Just 'cause it's justified, which I happen to agree this was, doesn't make it any less torture."
Albus frowns.
"But if that's the fiction you need to keep your conscience clean, I won't dirty it with truth." The Unspeakable gathers herself up off the floor with obvious effort. "You'd not have survived working for the Department, Dumbledore. We don't have much use for the moral types."
"I'd imagine not," Albus says, not knowing what else he could say to that.
"What now?", asks the Unspeakable.
Albus looks down at the boy in his arms. "Now… I tuck Mr. Potter away somewhere safe and far away from all this fame and nonsense, where he can grow up a normal little boy, while I make sure the monster who tried to kill him will never return."
"Death Chamber, Dumbledore, remember that. And I've done my share in Time, and in Numbers. A 'normal little boy' you say?" The Unspeakable snorts. "That will never happen. Look here." She taps the lightning bolt scar on the sleeping child's forehead with her finger, not with a wand. "Saewelo. The Sun. Power … victory. That is what Lily Potter invoked. Given her very life as the fuel? This boy will never be normal, no matter how badly you want it."
Albus stills. "Numbers … you have worked in Numbers?" There is something very like fear now present in his voice.
The Unspeakable smiles, though Albus cannot see it. "Yes, Dumbledore. And in fact, I was lucky enough to be the one administering his test."
Albus' laugh rings hollow in the small room. "You have done your research, haven't you?"
"Never liked you in school, Albus, nor ever since, and I know quite well the feeling is mutual so don't bother denying it. Of bloody course I did my research. My oaths bind me but … sometimes trying to dodge Fate just brings about the very thing you fear."
"I shall savor your warning, my dear," Albus says at length. He pulls the child away from that curious finger, closer to his own chest. "You can handle the Dementor, I take it?"
"Certainly." The Unspeakable casts a Patronus with a flick of their wand but no incantation, eliciting a nod of appreciation from Albus – that spell is difficult to cast when not fatigued, and without aiming for silence; achieving it in silence and with such fatigue deserves respect. A silvery pine marten appears, dancing through the air and corralling the Dementor back into its corner. "Go find Elphias and console him before he cries a river."
"You should not mock Elphias," Albus chides the figure gently, knowing it could also be labeled 'uselessly'.
"He's my little brother, I can mock him all I want, thanks."
Albus sighs and leaves. The knowledge he was right about which particular Unspeakable this was is bitter to his palate. As is the woman's having used his first name … she had not addressed him with it in at least ninety years.
Elspeth Doge is perhaps the closest thing Albus Dumbledore has to a rival, the most formidable witch he knows … someone who he can dislike and disagree with, yet not an enemy or anything like one.
More enemies, he does not need.
He pauses in the corridor, glancing once more down at the bundle in his arms.
For all their differences, which are many and varied and long-standing, Albus Dumbledore and Elspeth Doge have a similar direction of thought as they take their separate paths from the ritual chamber. They are both considering how unexpectedly well the experiment had gone. The child survived and the intruder was destroyed and the Dementor only made one perfunctory attempt at slipping its leash.
Alas, not all is as wonderful as it seems. There is something they do not know.
It is true that the intruding fragment of soul was destroyed. Nothing that could be named "power" passed to the boy's native soul. Nothing that could be named "knowledge" passed to the boy's native soul. Nothing that could be named "memories" passed to the boy's native soul.
Nothing that they could detect or even anticipate passed to the boy's native soul.
But the very pressure of the intrusion caused the boy's native soul to change in a way they cannot understand. What was done in that way can never be undone.
Fate is not so easily denied.
=/0\=
Over the next months, over the next years, Albus hunts for the pieces of Tom Riddle just as he said he would do. He does, eventually, track all of them down, and Tom Riddle eventually lives no more.
At the same time, the Aurors, emboldened by the fall of Lord Voldemort and the story of Harry Potter that circulated after that fall, track down the Death Eaters.
Many are captured. Some die resisting capture. Some end up wishing they had died resisting capture.
But in these hunts, the Aurors discover Death Eater safe-houses. With spouses living in them. And children.
The existence of these children comes as a shock to most magicals of Britain.
Eventually there are enough children who lost both parents that the "winning side" put together an orphanage.
But other children lost only one parent, or had a guardian they could go to, for better or worse.
The children survive. They grow up. And they remember.
Fate is not so easily denied.
=/0\=
Post-script: Original end notes removed.