The Penultimate Horcrux and a Powwow
A/N: The first part of this Chapter contains a different view of the Chamber business. The Chamber business, the perceived reluctance of Dumbledore to purchase mature Mandrakes to cure the petrified people, and his failure to stop Harry's ostracism is an oft used trope in Dumbledore-bashing. From a non-basher's point of view, I present the trope herewith. Lucius Malfoy, the child-murderer, wanted the Diary's effects to be unleashed on innocent children. Obviously he had to have taken steps to ensure that he would succeed.
Secondly, the most common tropes for bashing Dumbledore – Dumbledore, in canon, never really spoke either way about killing enemies in battle, nor did he use the phrase "Greater good" that I can remember. It is likely that he doesn't mind the former, so long as it is justified and legally ratified. Rowling never told us.
There are some enjoyable stories with Dumbledore-bashing, no doubt about it, but when all the world's evils are laid at his feet, with Death Eaters like Malfoy or Snape redeemed or worse, forgiven, just because people like the actors who played the characters (can that even be a real reason?), it is just plain stupid.
There are some things that he is culpable of, and he will be called out on that. No bashing is taken to mean that they recognise that there are outstanding issues and will try to resolve them like mature adults and not caricatures.
In memoriam Harmonious Cannons.
Having camped out at Hogwarts as a refugee for some time, Harry had known exactly how strong the castle was. He had till then always scoffed at the idea of Hogwarts being the safest place in the world – his experiences had always been to the contrary. Once they had invoked Hogwarts as a fortress, though, they had found out why it was the safest place.
Voldemort had launched a determined assault on the castle and had laid siege. Armed with the fighters among her residents, the quasi-sentient had then retaliated with the defences the ancients and the Founders had equipped her with.
"I am still astounded by this," Hermione had said.
"Why?" Harry asked with forced levity. "Is it because of the castle's defences, or Ron's willingness to control his gluttony?"
Hermione had not smiled at her husband's attempt at a joke. "You do know that the castle is influencing us, don't you? Ron is not conscious or cognisant of the fact that he is eating less than half what he usually does."
"That's one less thing to worry about." Ron, while otherwise an all-round good person, whined a lot if he went without– anyone who had grown up eating Molly Weasley's food would have. It could have damned the moral in times like these, when otherwise it would be something to laugh about. "Still, it's not the most impressive thing, is it?" They were stood in an alcove that had an arching window which allowed those within to see without and not the other way round. In years past, it would have been a brilliant place for a snog-session. Now it was being used for its real purpose, as a watch-point.
They watched as the Curse Breakers in Voldemort's employ tried to drain the castle's wards of power, only to fail once again. The castle was so old, and so saturated with magic, that it would take more than the troop of twenty that were working. No less than at least ten times that would suffice. The repeated attacks were working against the Death Breakers. When they attempted to drain the wards the first time, they were partially successful – just as an unscrupulous roadside vendor is when he sells his customer nine hundred and ninety five gram of salt instead of a full thousand. The next time, the sentience of the castle had reversed the attack and had drained them of their power instead.
As if that wasn't enough, the castle would replicate a tank and bomb out sections of the siege randomly with massive magical bolts. Somehow someone had updated Hogwarts' sentience with muggle fantasy literature, for every so often, they could swear that they saw an Ent or two cutting through swathes of Death Eaters.
Voldemort had had to accept defeat and pull of the siege after three months.
In pre-war peace time, Hogwarts was not showing her cards, obviously. She was as a stone castle (albeit a magical one) was expected to be. Silent, and abiding by the rules that the Headmaster had set. The truth was that the castle was a power unto herself and she had only accepted Dumbledore's stewardship.
Dumbledore, it seemed, had decided to trust a Marauder and his godson a bit too much. He stayed out of their way, only coming in when they encountered something that they either couldn't understand or needed help dealing with, or when they needed communication with the castle's wards. Instead, he spent time carefully studying the memories Harry had provided. The actions or inaction of international bodies were his concern as the Supreme Mugwump of the ICW. More importantly, he had gone after the ring.
Time, it seemed, had a weird sense of humour. As a teaching aid, Remus had shown Harry his memory of the day when Dumbledore had taken the Marauder along on his sole successful Horcrux-destruction mission. Slytherin, while not a Dark Wizard, was an absolute playboy. He had created a cosy little place just outside Shropshire for one of his various dalliances. It was there that Voldemort had hidden the Ring. It had drained Dumbledore a lot to bring down the traps and wards, when instead the Parsel pass phrase, "The Master demands entry!" would have sufficed. This time around, Harry had directed the Headmaster and Remus to the place. Once they had found it, Remus had just turned on his Marauder's Mirror and Harry had helped them access the place.
It was funny and ridiculously easy. But after what the time traveller and his accomplices had had to bear in the future, even they were due a bit of good luck every now and then.
This carte blanche meant that the twain found more secret passages to Hogsmeade, Sirius imitated a wine connoisseur when confronted by the criminal behaviour of people who had abandoned Firewhiskey bottles and got pissed in the process, and the two pulled more pranks on each other than Sirius and James had ever pulled through seven years of school.
In the little time that they could spare after these activities during the first week after term end, they cleaned the school a bit. In other words, they cleaned out the Room of Lost things, the room of hidden things, and the room of dark things completely, working at least fourteen hours a day. Harry was employing the skills Moony and Bill had brute-forced into him till just before the latter's death, and also a bit afterwards. Just because they were revelling in Sirius' freedom didn't mean that they had forgotten about Voldemort. It was just Sirius deciding that sleeping was a terrible waste of the remaining ten hours of the day if they were too serious about things.
Thereafter, however, their work picked up pace. There were no hidden rooms within the castle, as Dumbledore, who was consistently communicating with the wards, confirmed. The Chamber was known to at least a few, so it wasn't exactly hidden. The rest of the seventh floor didn't take time at all, and was done in two days. Another week saw them polishing off three more floors without any significant results (Tom Riddle's Shield had been destroyed using Fiendfyre). So finally, Dumbledore gave them a go ahead for the Sacking of the Chamber, as the Marauder named it. This time though, Sirius practically demanded Dumbledore's presence. His wisdom, knowledge and experience had no parallels. Well that was an exaggeration, as there were a few mages of his stature they could call upon, not to mention people like Nicholas Flamel, who was expected to live another three decades at the very least, but with Dumbledore's resources and availability, it was a bit too pointless given the timeframe they wanted things done in.
"Are you ready?" Harry asked his godfather and Headmaster. He was particularly worried about the latter. Fawkes had taken a liking to the mutt and was rather liberal with his weekly supply of tears, so Sirius had made a miraculous recovery. It did nothing for his perception of humour though. It was as much of the doghouse version as it was before.
Dumbledore though, was an aged man. A slide and a broom ride back wasn't exactly his description of an action during his daily routine. "We can make a pulley and seat for you if you want, sir."
Dumbledore took the concern as an insult. "I am old, but not that old."
"I wasn't implying that, sir. I am just worried about your creaky joints."
"You know, you were a nice little kid before," the Headmaster grumbled. "Why did that change?" Harry stifled a grin. Dumbledore saw that, and glared at his student. "Let's see who lasts longer in the chamber, young whippersnapper. The first to drop is a nerf herder." Then without further ado, he jumped through the pipe, whooping with apparent glee.
"Nerf Herder?" asked Harry of nobody in particular – and certainly not of Sirius. "When did he watch Star Wars?" He just shrugged and hissed, "Stairs," and hopped on, with a bewildered Sirius following suit. He then hissed, "Move," and the stairs acted as a rotating escalator.
Dumbledore was standing at the bottom with a scowl. "You pulled a prank on me!"
"Yes!" replied Harry with a grin. "But you enjoyed it!"
Dumbledore just harrumphed as he could hardly gainsay the pronouncement. This was vintage Dumbledore, the man who was a big kid at heart, would happily slide down a tunnel, ate sherbet lemon till even diabetes itself would worry, and who always believed the best of people, sometimes to his own detriment. The powerful persona, and the manipulative one as well, was one he had to don from time to time to stay on top of the game because nobody else opposing Voldemort honestly wanted to raise their hands and claim responsibility – his defeat of Grindelwald had made it his responsibility by default. Now that Harry was willing to take the mantle, if only out of sheer desperation, and was delivering results, Dumbledore could happily go back to being Dumbledore. It was a pitfall of being one of the most powerful magic users of one's time.
A fifteen minute walk later, they had cleared the path to the chamber. They were suitably awed by the skin of course, but none of the three remarked upon it. Harry, though in his thirteen going on fourteen year old body, was an adult.
The two actual adults though were having thoughts running through their minds on parallel tracks. For Sirius it was underlining the fact that he was not around to protect the pup. For Dumbledore, it was self-recrimination that he had failed to protect a twelve year old from that sort of a horror, not to mention the social ostracism. When Harry opened the door leading into the chamber, the gruesome sight of the dead, but extremely well-preserved, basilisk made them stop in their tracks.
Sirius' hands, one holding the wand, had been in the 'at-the-ready' stance. They dropped comically to his sides. His face was purpling in rage – so very much like Vernon. On the other hand, his expression showed that anger was not the dominant emotion. It was fear. It was probable that the sudden change of his colour was due to his attempts to stifle a scream.
Albus clutched at his heart as he staggered to a wall and slid down it. He looked at his student, his mouth opening and closing like a fish. He certainly had something to say, but the brain and throat were in disagreement, and he couldn't speak a word.
Harry couldn't help it. The moment he saw Albus slide down, he crowed happily, "Professor, you are a nerf herder."
Albus, who regained his speech after a full five minutes, was not even conscious of the fact that he agreed as he croaked, "I am a nerf herder."
Harry raised his arms to the heavens in exultation. He liked getting one over the old man every once in a while. And this one was legitimate since his return to 1994 – it was based on something he had managed to do before he travelled through time. Truly, Hermione had broken his through any tendency to be overly modest about something of this stature.
"PUP!" shouted Sirius when he finally could speak. "YOU FOUGHT THAT?"
"Yes."
"WHAT AGE WERE YOU?"
"I fought this beastie exactly a year back in this timeline. So I was twelve, nearly thirteen."
"DUMBLEDORE!" shouted Sirius again, this time changing targets. "WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU DOING ALLOWING THE SCHOOL TO REMAIN OPEN WITH THAT THING AROUND? HOW THE HELL COULD YOU ALLOW CHILDREN TO BE AT THE SCHOOL, ESPECIALLY MY GODSON? WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING, YOU BUMBLING, SENILE OLD COOT?"
Harry winced at Sirius' volume, though the man's fear for him did warm his heart. Evidently, he did not take very well to Harry being in danger.
Dumbledore was looking at the dead snake woodenly. He turned to Sirius and apologised. "I am sorry. There is nothing I can say in my defence, except the fact that I did my best in the face of opposition from the Board of Governors, at the time led by Malfoy, doing everything to prevent me from closing down the school. As you know, it was Malfoy who slipped the Diary in." Sirius' anger bled away as he comprehended the situation his old Headmaster was in.
Then in a completely uncharacteristic use of obscene language, Dumbledore spat, "The absolute scum-sucker enforced financial audits when he somehow found out that I was diverting funds to acquire mature Mandrake Roots for the reviving potion. Only now that I found out about Severus' true leanings have I realised how he found out. When they removed me, one of the allegations levelled was that I was indulging in corruption."
The two younger men found their respect for the man increasing. He too, after all, was constrained by people he had to answer to, him being a powerful wizard notwithstanding. He had done the best he could within the limits, and for the safety of his students, had also attempted to circumvent the rules and had paid for it. It was hard to not sympathise with his plight, for that was exactly what it was – plight. Just because Dumbledore didn't confide his problems in them, or for that matter in almost anyone, didn't mean they didn't exist. He had tried to protect people, often at quite some cost to himself.
"However, Harry, there was something I should have done. I should have stopped the Heir of Slytherin scandal that surrounded you. I should have revealed who it was. Even if I didn't, I could have helped prove that it wasn't you. You had a horrid year, and I didn't help you enough. For that I am really sorry."
"No. You shouldn't have. In spite of the fact that I was very hurt by the lack of protection, from the memories and understanding of a thirty five year old man who lived the war, I can completely understand and accept your actions."
Dumbledore almost smiled. He knew that the apology had been accepted for what it was worth, but more than that, he was pleased to find that the one he wanted to anoint as his successor was indeed worthy of that. Harry had certainly found an argument in his favour, and more importantly, understood how the situation had panned out. He might not have trusted a teenaged Harry Potter enough, but this man in front of him – the one who had the innocence of the thirteen-year-old, and his resilience, and the experience and wisdom, as well as the memories of the thirty five year-old – this man had his complete trust, and respect as well.
Sirius however couldn't follow either the logic or the thoughts of the two men, for men they were. Moreover, there was the latent parental instinct that chaffed against the injustice meted out to his godson. "How can you say that?"
"You are missing a vital piece of information, Sirius. The Professor had verified the truth already. He had called me into his office soon after the first attack. I suppose he used Legillimency – I doubt I would have reacted well to an accusation on his part or even a question from him, especially after Fawkes had just had a burning day with only me present. I remember that during the meeting, he had said that he knew that it wasn't me."
"And how does that justify the treatment you received?"
"It doesn't justify the treatment, Sirius. Even he isn't trying to justify the treatment. He used it? Yes. He never justified it. Let me construct the situation for you, ignoring the retrospective information about Madam Bones or any information about the Horcruxes."
"Please do so, for I can't understand how you can be blasé about it."
Harry obliged with a nod. "Imagine you are in his position. Now you know who the last Heir of Slytherin was. You know that said person is not dead. You know that the previous confrontation had this un-dead wraith possessing another human. There were so many ways in which Voldemort could have achieved immortality, and you don't know for sure which way has been employed. I myself know of ten which he could have used and remained in the form he was when he possessed Quirrel."
Sirius was seeing the picture in his mind's eye, constructing Dumbledore's position as it was explained to him. He had followed everything up to this point. He nodded to relay that.
"Now there are messages to warn the enemies of the Heir. So your suspicion as to who is confirmed. But how is this person operating? You start to check your students and staff, none of whom you have contact with on a constant, daily basis. This can only be done during random walks through the castle, or during meal times. This confirms that no student is possessed in the same manner as the previous year, nor is any staff member. The only new staff member was Lockhart." Here he turned a glare at Dumbledore.
"I didn't have either of you last year. As a twelve-year-old you would have made a better teacher. Alas, as it was, only he was the person who even bothered to apply. Not that he remembers it anymore. Had I forwarded a request to the Ministry, I am sure..."
All people present gave involuntary shudders. The Ministry had wanted a foothold inside Hogwarts for years. Dumbledore's presence had denied them that. Politically, the school was to be a neutral ground. Lucius controlling the Minister as it were meant that there was a major possibility of propaganda situations. And then again, they also had the situation with Umbridge which Harry had lived through.
"Anyway, possession is active and passive as we know. It can also be insidiously inconspicuous as Ginny experienced. Tom didn't need a prolonged period of possession to cause the attacks. So any time when Ginny was visible – or rather, was allowed to be visible, Tom was dormant to the point of being indistinguishable, and when she wasn't, well I am sure you can understand."
Dumbledore really smiled. Harry really had understood. He remained quiet as he let his protégé, for that was what he would always consider Harry to be, explain the situation to his godfather. It was a pity that pensieves didn't capture the thought process, only the memories. Harry had grown into a wise wizard, and that wisdom would very soon be necessary. Dumbledore knew that his time would end soon. In Harry, he could see a wizard who was magically and cerebrally capable of being the leader he had been thought to be for so long. And Harry had the added power of an inherited seat on the Wizengamot. It filled Dumbledore with both pride and relief.
"So now," continued Harry, "you narrow the suspicion down to a dark artefact. We saw how many dark artefacts were in Hogwarts over the past few weeks. What was one more? Your first instinct is to close down the castle and protect the other students. Dark Detectors have been always used by Gringotts, and even by Hogwarts, during Voldemort's first attempt for absolute power. They could be employed again as the students exited the castle.
"But you are overruled. Since you have shown your hand that way, you can't even declare what the threat to the school exactly is. If you do so, the parents will rebel, and remove their children en masse. The Board will remove you. For those that cannot be withdrawn for whatsoever reason, and there are always some of those, there is no protection. It takes you no closer to stopping the attacks. You can call on the support of your teachers, but as the Mandrake situation showed, there is a mole within the ranks. It doesn't help that the Minister of Magic is in the pockets of your chief opponent, a known supporter of the perpetrator.
"Now you are faced with a conundrum – do you check the personal belongings of every person in the castle, and risk the perpetuator being tipped off or do you draw the person out? The first option has the pitfall of the person lying low indefinitely, and then starting over at a later date. Or even worse, you risk pissing the person or persons off, inviting more attacks."
Sirius could see how Dumbledore had been caught between the devil and the deep sea. He really had no 'good' option. He still couldn't relate it to Prongslet's ostracism. "You are still not explaining how that relates to you!"
"Have patience, Sirius. Can you put yourself in Dumbledore's place and imagine yourself taking the actions that I just enumerated?"
"I can."
"Now you see suspicion being laid squarely on one student, a student who has displayed the very abilities that would mark him as a suspect. And yet, this is the student that you are sure is not the perpetrator. This person becomes a lightning rod for the problems, drawing the general public's attention from the real troublemaker, leaving you to concentrate on him or her, depending on who or what the instrument was."
"And Albus had already assured you that he knew that it wasn't you."
"Exactly!" exclaimed Harry. "In a way, it was a certificate of his trust, though he was wrong to forget that I was only twelve, just a kid. He trusted me to be resilient, and to get through the matter unscathed emotionally and morally. I am not saying that I wasn't hurt, or that it was the best way out. I could have been taken into confidence. As a twelve year old, I resented the fact that none of the teachers bothered to even stand for me. They could have stopped the really nasty abusers – and it was always verbal or passive aggressive tactics – by stepping in. Had he taken me into confidence, it is likely that I would have treated it as a mission and been more vigilant. This he could have done. But with what he told us about the situation, the one going on in the Boardroom, I can understand how it could have slipped his mind. He is human after all. Would I have done it the same way? I am not sure. But it would always be one of the options. When my torment ended, they had already removed Professor Dumbledore. It was far worse to see Hermione petrified."
Dumbledore walked towards Harry and gave him a genuine pat on the back and said with a suspiciously thick voice, "I have been having situation after situation where I have been proud that you are my student. This is the most important of them all yet. I am sure that when eventually you have to handle the Wizengamot, you will prove yourself quite up to the task. And you will not make the mistake of disregarding the people who help you, even inadvertently. You proved today that you can think from the other side as well."
Harry accepted that with a nod. He still did not revere Dumbledore, but he respected the man a lot.
The moment was soon broken when Albus cleared his throat and clapped his hands. "Now as to this specimen, I think we should render it down. To the victor go the spoils."
"Who can render it?"
"Hagrid is a Beast Master in all but legal notarisation, my boy. One of the prerequisites is being able to render beasts. I am sure that he will be miserable that the snake died, though. He and his ubiquitous umbrella can work the required magic." He sighed. "Now that Cornelius no longer dances to Lucius' tunes, we can get him to sign an exoneration notice for Hagrid as well. "We need to be seen doing something", indeed," he mocked bitterly.
Hagrid was to be brought in later. At the moment, they had a more important thing to deal with. So between the three, they managed to conjure a cart-table, the sort of which the Lilliputians built for Gulliver, directly under the carcass. The elves from the castle were called in to assist them in pushing the cart to the far side, once every area that would be blocked was checked thoroughly. Soon they had almost every loose object in the main Chamber checked. There really wasn't much. Most of the loose things were the debris left from the intense battle between the boy and the snake.
A thing about the Horcruxes was that the smaller the object, the easier it was to bind the soul piece to it. Splitting the soul cost a tremendous drain on the magic, for it was only done through a ritual. Enchanting a large object in such a state would be absolutely impossible even for an overpowered idiot of Voldemort's class.
"Harry, I think it is time to open the face," Sirius called from where he was working, confirming that he had not found anything.
"Wait!" cautioned Dumbledore. "We don't know what surprises may lurk inside." He summoned an elf and asked for three roosters and three vials of a potion. He quickly doused them in the potion which turned them phosphorescent. At his companions' questioning glances he explained, "They will provide light, will provide protection from surprises like these (he pointed to the basilisk), and won't trigger any traps activated by active magic."
The light was unnecessary, for it seemed Slytherin liked to have light around him. There were surprises a-plenty, though. Tom had a long-running fixation with muggle explosives. He had smuggled in bombs from the World War II.
There, in one of the rooms, sat the Sheath of the Sword of Gryffindor. For anyone who wasn't expecting a trap, that was what they would see – no trap. But that was a trap by itself. Sirius, Albus and Harry were checking for traps and sure enough they found them. There was a disillusionment charm, spread all over something in the room. Beneath it were just two more charms, tied into each other – a stasis charm and a temporal suspension charm.
"I can get a read on them, but this is nothing I have ever encountered before," Sirius declared as he looked up from the rough calculations he was making. "The charms are the same, even though they have an amplified effect, but there is something wrong. The activation factors are roots of a cubic equation instead of a quadratic. You see the trigger factor? It should not be equal to the solutions of the dispelling charms' equations. The actual dispelling trigger makes no sense to me at all."
He may not have taken arithmancy, but Harry had been given a fair introduction to the subject by his wife. "You are saying that the normal dispelling charm will not work, aren't you?"
"Yes. In fact, it is one of the three triggers!"
"We should step out of here for a while." They followed him to the main chamber, where he grabbed a piece of debris and disillusioned it in Parseltongue. Then he removed the disillusionment using Parseltongue again. He then handed his wand to Dumbledore, who performed the Priori Incantato spell. Sirius, understanding what had transpired, used the values now generated and verified the results.
"Parsel it is," he confirmed. They quickly replicated the results for the spell isolation, and for the dispelling charms for the other two charms, with positive results. They were now confident enough to tackle the problem, or so they felt.
When Harry removed the disillusionment charm, they were treated to the sight of several toads sitting on chicken eggs which were just about to crack. The whole system was frozen in time. Even worse, there was a live basilisk, albeit a young one, which was being caged by a structure which would collapse if the sheath was moved in any way. It was thankfully hibernating. Again the spell to ensure that was tied to the pressure spell.
"What a bloody fiendish bastard!" Sirius hissed, as the three automatically averted their eyes.
Wasting not a moment more, Dumbledore cast powerful confounding charms on the roosters and made them crow to an imaginary sunrise before grasping the younger men's shoulders and rushing out. Taking the hint, Sirius escaped taking Harry with him. They stood at charm-casting distance from where Harry dispelled the charms and Dumbledore kept up the confounding. One rooster's crow was fatal to a full grown basilisk, so the live one and hatchlings were quickly taken care of.
Thankfully, Tom's arrogance had come into play. Assuming that there would never be another Parselmouth until he sired an Heir, he had placed no more traps. Dumbledore summoned Fawkes (and the wizards slapped their heads at missing the rather obvious solution of having Fawkes flash the object to them instead of disabling the traps, irrespective of the pressure trap – though there would have been too many basilisks left in the Chamber) with the Sword once they were sure of the identity and the contained Dark magic, and that was that. Tom Riddle was one more Horcrux down. With the destruction of Voldemort's wand and his Diary, Gryffindor's War Helmet, Hufflepuff's Quill, Slytherin's Locket and Ring, and the Sheath of Gryffindor's Sword, Tom was more than three quarters of his way to hell. Only Ravenclaw's Shield remained.
"Now we have to find a way to get within Death Eater Vaults in Gringotts," sighed Harry.
"Why there?"
"When I was first introduced to the magical world, Hagrid said that Gringotts was the safest place in the world, besides Hogwarts. I don't know whether Tom had any vaults to call his own, but his Death Eaters certainly did. I can easily imagine the Death Eaters providing their master the best available protection."
Dumbledore's eyes widened. A moment later, his Phoenix Patronus left to find Amelia Bones.
It was then time to leave. This time, however, Harry did not open the door – he just conjured a stiff backed chair and sat on it, his eyes more chiselled jade than glowing emerald. "You know, I forgave, understood, and even accepted a lot of the decisions taken unilaterally in my case. There is one thing that I still can't get my head around, Chief Warlock."
Sirius and Dumbledore stopped in their tracks, the former in confusion and slight anger, and the latter in resigned supplication.
"I know."
"And what does one make of you knowing?"
"At the time I honestly believed..."
"Honestly believed? You bloody circumvented the fucking law!"
"The evidence..."
"It was non-existent! He had no trial!"
"I did try for one though I was unsympathetic to his case," Dumbledore weakly defended. "Minister Bagnold was the acting Chief Witch at the time, probably to ensure that the majority of the pureblood faction went scot free. It was not my position."
"Yet Snape got you standing for him in spite of him being a marked Death Eater. Your testimony that Sirius was the Secret Keeper was perjury!" Dumbledore's resistance crumbled at that. "I can move past anything against me, but an innocent man was rotting in hell!"
With a heavy sigh, Dumbledore turned to Sirius. "AS Chief Warlock Incumbent since 1982, I could have called for a trial. I did not. I offer you my unconditional apology, for what it is worth."
Sirius was not feeling quite forgiving, but knowing that for all his mistakes, Dumbledore was still an ally and human, he just nodded ambivalently. There was no particular need to drudge that up at a time when thee certainly were more pressing concerns. He had his bit to add however. "Harry may have forgiven you far too easily, on his account, but one day you and I are going to have a discussion about his life for the decade after 1981."
Looking every bit his hundred and sixty five years, Dumbledore nodded resignedly. His mistakes, commensurately larger given the positions he assumed, had a bad habit of coming home to roost at the most inopportune times. Not exposing Bagnold and the Death Eaters entrenched within her administration was one of them. Everything snowballed from there.
