A/N: I had intended to post a 4000 and something word chapter last Sunday. I really had (I even timed it and worked on my internship's report for a few days before getting to the chapter). Only, turns out, the chapter ended up becoming a 8000 and something word one... That said, here's a big one!
The morning after the battle dawned grey and rainy like the weather itself was mourning Dumbledore's loss. The headlines of the Daily Prophet, among other publications in the Wizarding World that had even issued special numbers to cover the events of the previous night, announced it in large and bold font: 'HOGWARTS TURNED INTO BATTLEFIELD: ALBUS DUMBLEDORE KILLED IN ACTION'.
The words had been brutal and blunt – nothing less than reality was. When she had first read the headline, around eight, not more than an hour before, Mia had wondered how many people had nearly choked while practicing their daily morning routine of picking up the newspaper while taking breakfast… She had also wondered how many angry parents would be invading Hogwarts that day. Thinking back, Mia recognized that she couldn't really blame them, could she? She was pretty sure she and Sirius would have done the same if they didn't hold teaching positions in the school there that so easily allowed her to keep an eye on Harry and Izzy in a daily basis.
"Mama?" Mia suddenly snapped out of her thoughts as she heard her youngest son's voice calling for her.
She turned her eyes back to Alex, only to find him standing on his bed, staring at her with huge grey eyes. There was an annoyed, yet curious look on his little face as he wondered why his mother had stopped the activity of dressing him seconds before and suddenly become very pensive.
"Sorry, Baby, Mama was lost in thought," Mia told the little boy, trying to give him a smile, which came out rather faint. "Arms up," she instructed him.
Alex did so, allowing her to dress him in a dark blue short-sleeved t-shirt over the white undershirt he was wearing. Mia raked her fingers through his soft dark hair, afterwards, combing it back into place.
"Mama, you sad?" the little boy asked her in a little voice, with just a hint of concern on it – as much concern as a boy that wasn't two years and a half old yet could show.
Boy, he was observant, Mia noted. Sometimes little kids just had a way of seeing right through a person… sense their moods like a thermometer reading the temperature. She brushed her hand tenderly against his cheek and couldn't really deny it. "Just a little, honey," she admitted softly.
He gave her a tiny frown, then. "Why?" That seemed to be his favourite question lately, curious as he was about the world. Why did it rain? Why weren't Izzy and Harry home? Why did little Mary just make baby sounds instead of using words like everyone else?
Mia usually made an effort to explain but that time… that time she just couldn't bring herself to do it. She shook her head at him, then. "Nothing you need to worry about, my little prince," she told him, cupping his chin affectionately. Nothing he could understand at that tender age, thank Merlin, she told herself. Hopefully by the time he'd be able to understand, the world would be back the way it belonged – in peace. People wouldn't be killed left and right by a bunch of maniacs with a pureblood complex.
Alex looked at her with inquisitive eyes for a few moments before lifting his little arms again, though this time Mia knew he was asking to be picked up – he usually did that for such purpose. Mia sighed and smiled with a little more determination that time as she lifted him into her arms, allowing him to wrap his arms around her neck.
"Dun' be sad, Mama," he told her innocently, his head buried against the crook of her neck.
The little boy's words helped more than Mia would have thought. She held on to her son tightly, taking in his warmth and the clean smell of baby soap. It reminded her of another little boy she'd once upon a time held like that. Harry.
It was so easy back then… The only things bothering him all those years ago were occasional nightmares and mild injuries he'd get from playing with Izzy. All it took for her to help him was sitting him on her lap and holding him there until everything was okay again. Now, he was too grown for her to hide behind her skirts, so to speak. She heard herself sighing again. "Why can't you little boys just stay little forever?" she asked her son, not expecting any sort of logical answer.
"Foweva?" Alex asked in return, trying to grasp the notion of the word as he pulled away a little while Mia shifted her position to hold him on her hip.
"So Mama can always keep you away from bad people," she said, brushing his dark hair away from his forehead so she could kiss him there.
His curious eyes examined his mother for another moment. "Betta, Mama?" he asked her.
Mia nodded and gave him another smile even though the improvement in her mood hadn't been that great. "Yes, Mama's better. Thank you, Baby."
He little boy grinned, pleased with himself, and gave his mother's cheek a sloppy kiss that made her chuckle before she placed him back down on the bed to help him with his shoes.
As quickly as one would flip a page of a book, Alex's concern over his mother's mood seemed to have vanished from his toddler-aged mind and, seconds later, he was already asking where his father was as Mia tied his shoelaces. He ran as fast as his little legs could carry him out of the door, pulling his faithful stuffed dog by the tail behind him, just as soon as his feet hit the floor – Mia followed him to the hallway just to make sure he was heading straight to the nursery, where she told him Sirius was dressing Mary, and it didn't take more than the sound of her husband imitating the roar of some sort of wild animal followed by massive giggling from both Alex and Mary for her to know her son had reached his father safely.
She'd already made it back into the room and started folding her son's pyjamas by the time the room was filled with the sound of knocking on the already open door. Mia turned around to face the doorway and was surprised to find her mother standing there.
"Lulu? How long have you been back?" Mia asked, recalling that both her parents had been impossible to contact, as they'd been spending the weekend somewhere out of town and weren't supposed to make it back until the following morning. She had a feeling their early return meant they already knew about the battle and Dumbledore's demise.
"A few hours – I was in Hogwarts earlier. Just dropped by the apartment to grab a shower afterwards and came here. McGonagall has already started the repairs," she replied as she stepped further into her grandson's room, confirming Mia's suspicion that she'd already heard the news. "Gabe and I got the silent calling about the attack. We came back as quickly as we could but, obviously, that wasn't quick enough." She huffed, frustrated. "Bloody French blokes. Do you have any idea how much time we wasted with their stupid bureaucracy to get a damn last-minute international portkey? I was starting to think it would be faster if we just apparated to the north and swam to all the way through the English channel back to Britain."
"I'm pretty sure last-minute international portkeys take time everywhere, Lu, not just France," Mia pointed out mildly. "Besides, it's not like you being here for the battle would have changed much, Lu. It was trap – Dumbledore didn't stand a chance."
Lulu shook her head. "You don't know that. You know what they say about a tiny thing happening different in the past changing everything from there on." She let out a huffing sound. "I can't believe we missed it. Your father is all broody about it – says he should have known something like this was going to happen."
"What? Is he related to Trelawney now?" Mia asked sceptically, crossing her arms as she sat down on her son's bed.
Lulu shrugged, still standing. "You know how some aurors are. Always think that they should know everything like they're bloody seers. Never mind that Gabe's been retired for years…" She sighed. "Still, he's right in a way. Feels bad to know that the old man is gone and we couldn't do anything to help it."
Mia looked down, understanding the feeling. "If it serves you any consolation, I was there and I couldn't do a thing either."
"Yeah…" her mother mumbled, sighing. "You know, if it wasn't for Dumbledore, I might still be some loser who had never taken her NEWTs. One day, around the time when you were one year and something old, he just showed up in the doorway of the old Davis house – I was sure by that time that happened that he didn't even remember I'd been a student at Hogwarts who'd dropped out."
"You were wrong," Mia concluded easily.
"Plain wrong," Lulu confirmed. "I have no idea how he found out where I was living and I still wonder if he knew I was more than your nanny at that time. Anyway, Dumbledore just looked at me and said: 'Miss Graham, you'll be taking your NEWTs next June'. Just like that – no chance to refuse, which at the time I was tempted to do just because I felt like it. Then, he handed me a list of the contents I was supposed to study, a bunch of books from the school-library, wished me good luck and left. I think I stood there holding all that stuff for about ten minutes, trying to figure out if that had just happened."
Mia couldn't help laughing at the mental image. "That sounds like something Dumbledore would do."
"You can say that again. From that day until June of the next year, all your bedtime stories pretty much only consisted of me reciting out loud the contents of my History of Magic book while I studied – apparently you loved it. Until you were five, you'd cry your lungs out if I even tried to tell you any bed-time story that didn't consist of an authentic lecture on the Troll wars or something – it was a pain softening those up for a little kid to understand, you know? That's probably why you turned out to be such a History freak…"
"Wow, thanks, Lu. That's exactly what a person wants to hear her mother calling her: a history freak," Mia stated dryly.
Lulu rolled her eyes. "Oh, quit it. You know what I mean. No need to say I passed all those exams – though a few only barely." She sighed. "Anyway, Albus Dumbledore was just… something else."
"He really was," Mia had to agree.
"But, moving on," Lulu continued, "McGonagall mentioned you and Sirius were supposed to go to the school today in order to talk to Harry – he still hadn't come down for breakfast by the time I had to leave."
Mia nodded. "Ginny made him choke down a considerable dose of sleeping potion last night. He might still be asleep."
"I figured he might. Anyhow, when are you and Sirius heading to the school?"
"Well, we'd talked of heading there as soon we left the kids with someone. Who, however, we were still trying to figure out," she confessed.
"What am I? Chopped liver?" Lulu asked, trying to sound offended.
"Well, we didn't exactly know you were back," Mia replied dryly.
"You do now," her mother said. "Problem solved. That's what I came here for, anyway. I figured Hogwarts could handle its repairs without me there while you and Sirius probably needed someone to relieve you a little from the massive weight on your backs. Go take care of your big kids, I'll keep an eye on the little ones, as usual."
Mia smiled at her mother – Lulu was always around to give her a hand when she needed. "I can't thank you enough, Lu."
"Mia, I'd much rather be here babysitting your kids than being bossed around by that old bat, Mad-Eye, at Hogwarts. At the rate he's going, I think you've just spared my foot from kicking the living hell out of his ugly arse," Lulu said unceremoniously.
Because she was so thankful, Mia restrained herself from pointing out that maybe the problem in that matter was more Lulu's temper than Mad-Eye's bossiness.
Ten minutes later, with Alex entertained doing some draws in the living room and Mary dozing in her portable bassinet, both under Lulu's watchful eye, Sirius and Mia were free to head to the kitchen's fireplace in order to catch the floo to Hogwarts. Yet not everything went according to planned when the latter stepped into the fireplace.
"Hogwarts," Mia shouted, releasing the handful of floo powder she'd been holding and waiting for the wave of non-hot fire to transport her to the destination she'd invoked. Nothing happened, though. She raised an eyebrow and saw her husband doing the same as he stood opposite her. "Did I do it wrong?" she asked.
"Not that I noticed," Sirius told her, equally confused. "Maybe you should just try it again."
She did so but the results were the same – for some annoying reason, the floo wasn't working.
"What the hell?" Sirius mumbled, approaching the fireplace too.
Confused, Mia stepped out of the structure and reached for the pot of powder to fumble with it a little. The colour was right, the texture was right… it looked like floo powder. "Kreacher," she said, turning to look at the house-elf, whose attention already seemed to be on the fireplace instead of the dishes that were washing themselves in the sink, "did you change this floo powder? Or did the Alex somehow get his hands on it?"
"It be powder masters use all week," Kreacher responded, apparently also surprised. "And Kreacher always keep powder away from young master Alex. Mistress's mother use floo only minutes ago."
"Weird," Sirius mumbled. If the floo was working one way for Lulu, it had to be working the other too, right?
"Perfect," Mia said sarcastically. "The floo just had to be broken today of all days when we need to get to Hogwarts…"
"It would be worse it if had been broken yesterday." After all, they wouldn't have been able to get into the school as fast as they had without it. "Guess we'll have to apparate to Hogsmeade instead like everyone else does."
Mia huffed in frustration and nodded. "Hopefully someone will be there to open the gates for us." She turned to Kreacher. "Try to find out what's wrong, would you?"
The house-elf nodded. "Kreacher find out and fix it for Mistress."
She thanked the house-elf and turned to her husband as both reached for their wands. "Right in front of the gates," Sirius said, indicating their meeting point just in case they ended up landing farther from each other than planned.
Mia nodded and braced herself for the uncomfortable sensation that followed: it was like being pulled very fast by some sort of invisible rope to her destination. By the time she landed, she felt rather dizzy and kept herself from opening her eyes at first until the feeling vanished, a few seconds later. When she felt something touching her arm, Mia looked up and found Sirius was already by her side.
It was only a fraction of second later that their brains registered how noisy and crowded the area was. It took them yet another fraction to note that, in fact, the noisy crowd seemed to be constituted of students' parents and was blocking the way to the gates and into the castle.
"Oh my…" Mia mumbled.
"Someone's got to be kidding me!" Sirius said out loud. "What is this? A riot? Is today 'let's get in Sirius and Mia's way' day?" Could it be some sort of new side-effect to the Felix Felicis he'd ingested in the previous day? A really annoying wave of bad luck?
"How are we getting through…" Mia pointed at the mob, a clueless expression on her face "…that?"
That was a good question. "I guess we'll have to push through the crowd," he said, as unpleasant as the thought sounded.
And as unpleasant as it sounded, it was even worse when done. People pushed and yelled, kicked and cursed, bumped and complained even when they explained they were teachers at the school as they passed. Later, Sirius would wonder if, out of all parents, only the coarsest and dumbest ones had landed in that wretched mob. All he knew was that, by the time he reached the front of the crowd and saw himself in facing the closed gates, he simply had no patience to put up with any more of that. So, when the little bald man on the other side – some ministry official accompanying the aurors stationed the gates, none of which he or Mia were acquainted with – lifted difficulties for them to get into the school, showing himself sceptic when they told him they were teachers, Sirius felt tempted to punch him through the gates, if that was possible.
"Oi, Smith! Quit bein' an idiot an' let 'em in," Hagrid's loud and gruff voice came from several yards away as he approached the gates. "Those're Harry Potter's godparents! An' they work here!"
Embarrassed, the short man asked an auror to open the gates just enough for the couple to pass and stiffly wished them a nice day, to which Sirius replied with a not-so-flattering comment. Outside, several people protested, asking why they weren't allowed to go in when Sirius and Mia just had. A nearby auror proceeded to inform the mob that the school wards were being resettled and that only authorized people could get in until that task was finished for security purposes, so they'd have to wait a little longer.
Relieved for finally being within Hogwarts's territory, Sirius and Mia walked together towards Hagrid, who was blowing his nose on a table-cloth sized handkerchief. "Tha' little plunker Smith. 's berk-y as they come."
"Can't disagree with that," Sirius commented dryly, shooting a glare to the bloke at the gates. Truth was, he was more annoyed at their apparent lack of luck that morning than at the guy himself.
"Do you know what's wrong with our floo connection?" Mia asked. "It wasn't working."
Hagrid nodded. "Mad-Eye's been messin' with the wards and mornin'. Probably turned it off fer the time bein'. 't's been a mess ever since the Prophet came out. Parents owlin' like mad; campin' outside the gates… Reporters. Can' let 'em in until Mad-Eye's done with the wards. Security measures, he says."
"Outside of this, everything's calm, right?" Mia asked.
"Think so. McGonagall would've said somethin' if it wasn'," Hagrid told them.
"And Harry?" Sirius asked.
"Ran into him when I was comin' down. Was with Ginny, Ron, Hermione an' yer girl. Said they were headed to the kitchens fer breakfast. Too crowded in the Great Hall, it seemed," the half-giant informed them. "The lad looked good, considerin'. Tough one, tha' kid. Takes after his parents. Gonna meet him now, aren' yeh?"
"That's the plan," Sirius stated.
"Good. Grand fer the lad to have yeh two around. And Ginny. The girl's good fer him - spitfire like her brothers, she is. No nonsense with her," he stated. "Well, I should get goin'. McGonagall asked me to find a nice place in the grounds... to put Dumbledore."
"He's… They're burying here in the school?" Mia asked, surprised.
"Tomorrow. Man like tha' belongs in this school. It was his home. Taught here fer over ninety years," Hagrid declared, grief on his own voice.
Sirius was taken aback for a moment. "Ninety… just how old was he?"
That had Hagrid reaching for his enormous handkerchief again. "Would've been 116 next month. I'd already bought a bottle o' mead fer him an' everthin'." He was sobbing by the time he finished.
Sympathetic, Mia rested her hand on the half-giant's arm, which made hers look incredibly small in comparison, and gave it a supportive tug. "There, there, Hagrid. Dumbledore… he had a long and full life."
Hagrid nodded but kept on sobbing even as he walked away from them, muttering something about what a great man the former headmaster had been under his breath.
Mia looked helplessly at her husband as their friend walked away, feeling the grief starting to come back to her again. Sirius shook his head and surrounded her with his arm. "It's okay, love," he mumbled.
"Poor Hagrid," she whispered. "He's taking this so hard…"
"He is," Sirius agreed. "But you can't take this that hard too – at least not now right before we talk to Harry. You don't want him to see you like that."
She nodded and took a breath, firmly ordering herself to let go of it. Deep, slow breaths. Don't think of it now, Mia told herself as she walked with Sirius towards the castle's doors. "Yeah," she finally said by the time they were reaching the doors, "you're right. Harry shouldn't see me like this."
He nodded and kissed her forehead softly. "Come on," he said, guiding her to the door located behind the grand staircase that led to the kitchen's corridor. As they walked through the entrance hall, they glimpsed the interior of the Great hall and noted Hagrid was right – it was very crowded with students indeed.
They quickly made their way to the kitchens, walking along the dark hallway behind the stairs and through the large portrait of the bowl of fruit that conceded them passage after Sirius tickled the pear.
Inside, Harry was easy to spot, sitting at the only occupied table of the kitchen, along with Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Izzy, and certainly the only one with hair that messy. All five seemed to be talking in rather hushed tones, Harry absently poking his eggs with a fork as he did so. He looked much better than the previous night – it seemed the night of rest had indeed done its job as he didn't looked as tired or disoriented as before, though a haunted look still shadowed his eyes.
As they approached the table, Mia couldn't help noticing Ginny shoving her elbow into Harry's ribs and nodding at his plate, apparently urging him to eat its contents, which he didn't look so keen to do, choosing to nibble on a piece of bland toast instead. It was only when his godparents were less than four or five yards away that registered their presence, putting the toast down.
"Good morning," Mia greeted the group, who promptly replied with a series of mumbled 'good mornings' before she turned to Harry. "How are you feeling?" she asked him.
He shrugged. "Fine."
Mia didn't quite buy it but nodded. "Is it a good time for us to talk?"
Before he even could answer, the rest of the group, except Ron who was too worried about finishing the pile of bacon on his plate, was already standing up from their places at the table and getting ready to leave. It seemed to be a mutual agreement between all three girls, and probably Ron too, that Harry needed to talk to them.
"Well, I've got to… hum, return a book to the library," Hermione said, making herself an excuse to leave as she shot Ron a series of warning looks. "You should come with, Ron," she suggested, "it's a heavy book. I could use a hand with it…"
"But I'm still finishing…" he nodded down at his plate.
Ginny was the one who solved the problem, reaching for her wand and pointing it at the plate and banishing the bacon away. "Not anymore," she said as Ron gaped at her in horror.
"Well, come along!" Hermione urged him, pulling Ron by the arm and making him stand up, all but dragging him out of the kitchens behind her afterwards.
Ginny cleared her throat, then. "Well, I guess we should go find Luna," she suggested, motioning to walk away. "Haven't seen her since the battle last night."
Izzy nodded. "We probably should," she agreed, giving each of her parents a hug as she walked away. "I'll see you later?"
Sirius nodded. "We'll find you, Izzybel," he told her.
"You'd better eat those eggs," Ginny warned her boyfriend, eyes narrowed, one last time.
Exasperated, Harry grabbed a forkful of them and shoved them into his mouth even though he didn't really feel like eating them. "There," he said after swallowing them.
The redhead shot him a smile. "Good boy. Now keep doing that," she said before walking away with Izzy.
Seeing themselves alone with Harry, leaving out all the house-elves who seemed to be too occupied to listen to them, Sirius and Mia sat down on the seats previously occupied by Harry's friends, settling themselves face to face with him.
"That one takes over her mother in what comes to trying to shove food down your throat," Sirius commented.
Harry's face shifted to something close to a smile. "She gets protective when she's worried," he replied. "I wish she wouldn't have to."
"Even couples without the baggage you two have worry about each other, Harry," Mia told him. "It's part of loving someone."
He nodded wordlessly, not entirely convinced and absently took another bite of his eggs as if his girlfriend's voice demanded him to in his mind. "I heard about what happened to Wormtail," Harry mumbled, turning to Sirius. "He threw himself out of a window?"
His godfather nodded evenly, still feeling slightly bitter about the matter. "He did."
"Hum," Harry mumbled, detached. He'd imagined he's feel some sort of victorious feeling knowing the man who'd betrayed his parents to Voldemort was gone but instead he didn't. Wormtail was just dead and he didn't really feel sorry or glad – if anything, he just felt like he was one less bastard for him to worry about. After the previous day, Wormtail had been bumped down several places in his list of 'most hated', compared to Snape, who was right up there with Voldemort. "I never pictured him ending his own life," he heard himself saying. He'd always found Peter Pettigrew too much of a cowards to even consider he might choose to end his life not knowing what would happen to him beyond death.
"I don't think anybody did," Sirius told him. "He only did it because the other option sounded even worse to him, honestly. He was a selfish coward right up until the end."
Mia cleared her throat, then, calling their attention. "So, Harry… do you think you can walk us by what happened yesterday?" she asked her godson. "It's okay if you need more time," she was quick to assure him.
He shook his head. "No. I think I can do it now," he said, eating yet another bit of his food before pushing the plate away. "Ginny and I… we've already talked about it earlier this morning. Before McGonagall came by my dorm, that is."
"You've already talked to McGonagall?" Mia asked, surprised.
He nodded. "It was only for a few minutes. I left out everything related to the Horcruxes, if you're wondering," he told them. "If Dumbledore didn't tell her himself, it didn't seem right for me to do it unless I really had to… I mostly told her what Malfoy had said up in the Astronomy Tower."
"What he said?" Sirius asked.
Harry nodded again. "He couldn't help gloating to Dumbledore about what he'd done all year. According to what he said, Malfoy had kept Madam Rosmerta imperiused since September. She was the one who gave Katie Bell the cursed necklace and who spiked the mead that poisoned Ginny."
Mia gasped. "Oh my…"
"He also said how he got the Death eaters into the school last night: apparently, there's some sort of travelling cabinet in the Room of Requirement that was connected to another one in Borgin & Burke's. The one in the school was broken, so he spent all year trying to fix it until he got it right yesterday." Harry paused, then, taking a breath. "He was supposed to have been the one killing Dumbledore. That was the mission Voldemort gave him but he couldn't do it… so, Snape did."
His words were followed by several seconds of silence between all three of them – the only sound heard was the one of the house elves messing around with the cutlery at a distance. He could see the whole scene in his head in detail. Sometimes, he felt like he was watching something out of a Muggle telly.
At some point, Sirius cleared his throat. "Why don't you tell us the whole thing from the beginning, Harry?" he suggested.
His godson nodded. "Okay give me just…" He took a few seconds to put the thoughts together in his mind and decide where to start. "You know I had this detention with… with Snape but before I got there, Dumbledore sent a message asking for me to meet him in his office after it."
"For another one of your meetings," Mia said.
"That's what I thought," Harry told her before he proceeded to tell her about the scene he'd witnessed after the detention, during which Trelawney had been unceremoniously kicked out of the Room of Requirement by a celebrating individual that he'd immediately assumed to be Draco Malfoy, making him reach the conclusion that something bad could be on the way. "Trelawney was all freaked out… rambling. She said some things that didn't make sense at the time but now…"
"What things?" Mia asked him, concerned.
Harry gulped. "She mentioned something about seeing a lightening-struck tower in her future readings. That it was connected to some sort of disaster approaching. I think she meant…"
"The astronomy tower," Sirius finished for him. "What happened to Dumbledore up there."
His godson nodded sombrely. "And that wasn't all she said," he stated, feeling himself tensing. "At some point, she started talking about her first meeting with Dumbledore – her job interview. That was the night when she made the prophecy."
Mia's face went pale for a moment. "She told you more about the prophecy?"
Harry shook his head this time, his expression hardened. "No. But she told me who'd eavesdropped it and told Voldemort about it." He bit his lower lip for a moment, looking at his godparents' faces. They looked expectant, yet fearful at the same time as they waited for him to tell them. "It was Snape. It's always him, isn't it?"
The expectant looks became shocked ones. Severus Snape didn't cease to surprise them lately with his actions.
"That son of a bitch," Sirius hissed under his breath, covering his mouth with one hand as Mia remained speechless. He didn't even know what to think. How to feel. Snape had never been his friend. He'd never owed him everything unlike Wormtail had. There was no betrayal that time, just a world-class bastard screwing them over further than he already had… But one they had in common: their actions, Wormtail's and Snape's, had been what had sent Voldemort after Lily and James. Snape and his big mouth had been the ones to start it all: to make Voldemort constantly torment Harry until, as the prophecy said, one of them ceased to exist. Nothing could change that fact just as he couldn't think of anything that would take his blame away.
"I went to Dumbledore, then," Harry continued, his tone raising as he spoke. "He was there when the prophecy was made so he had to know! He had to know it was Snape, so I asked him how on Earth he could have trusted him to teach here after he'd sent Voldemort after my parents!"
"Wha… what did he say?" Mia managed to ask through her shock. The same question echoed in her mind. How could it be? How could Dumbledore have trusted Snape so blindly knowing what he knew?
"He said Snape had made a mistake. That sending Voldemort after me and my parents was the biggest regret he had in life – as if it makes things any better. As if he'd even regret it!"
"Harry…" Mia started. He wasn't seeing the whole picture and maybe that was her fault. There were things she'd never told him about, not because she'd wanted to keep it for hi but because they had never seemed… relevant after all that had happened.
"… he hated my Dad. Everyone knew it…" he continued.
"Harry!" Mia repeated.
"… must've been a really good liar and an even better occlumens to fool Dumbledore like tha…"
"He used to be your mother's friend," Mia told him bluntly – there was no other way, was there?
The young boy stopped speaking and stared at her in shock. "What?" he asked, turning to Sirius, then, expecting him to say it wasn't true.
"It was a long time ago," Sirius mumbled in a detached tone, confirming the truth. "Way before Snape evolved from a creepy little bastard to a creepy little bastard who wore a Dark Mark on his left forearm."
"My mother was friends with him. Why haven't I heard this before?" Harry asked, disbelieving.
"Because not many people know about it," Mia told him. "It was over long before you were born, Harry, and for a long time, Lily didn't even want us to mention it around her. She chose to leave it in the past and we respected that. It broke her heart when he became what he became even though by then their friendship was over. They met before Hogwarts – their families lived near each other – and were good friends for the first years at Hogwarts. They became more distant from third year on, when he started mingling with the wrong Slytherin crowds, and then in out fifth year…"
"He called her a mudblood," Sirius finished for her, his tone filled with disgust.
All three remained quiet for a long moment, then. There was so many questions in Harry's mind. He could only voice one of them, probably far from the most relevant. "Why would he call her a mudblood if she was his friend?" The simple notion confused him – he just couldn't picture himself doing that to someone like Hermione for instance.
Sirius shook his head. "We can't tell you about the 'why' – that only him knows. The best we can tell you is the 'how'." He took a deep breath, then. "Look, you already know that your father and I… we liked to 'mess' with Snape. Well, that was what we were doing one day and Lily stepped in to defend him – apparently, he didn't like her fighting his battle, so he told her to go mind her own business with the not-so-pleasant term thrown in the middle. Maybe part of it was out fault. Probably. But that's just not something you call a friend, even you're messed up."
"And… she put an end to their friendship when he called her that," Harry concluded, trying to put the pieces together. He was still struggling with the notion of his mother being friends with Snape – for all he knew, they couldn't have been more different.
Mia nodded. "Him calling her a mudblood was the final straw for her after a long list of dark stuff he'd been doing with his new friends. Lily could never forgive him for that." She sighed and reached with her hand across the table for his own. "I'm not telling you this so you think more highly of Snape or feel sympathetic for him. I'm not saying that he was being sincere over regretting having told Voldemort about the prophecy. But, if anything, this may have been the reason why Dumbledore believed he regretted what he did and why he trusted him. Dumbledore was no fool but he always tried to see the best in people." That had been his Achilles heel, she thought, pulling her hand back… "Maybe he thought your mother's death had changed him."
Harry bit his lip further, looking down. It made sense what Mia said about Dumbledore – he'd always tried to see the best in anyone. His last talk with Malfoy, during which he'd offered the blond boy sanctuary only proved that. But if he even had any inclination to wonder whether Snape's regret was genuine or not, it vanished with the memory of him using the killing curse on the defenceless headmaster without a blink of an eye. He'd tricked everyone, his mother and Dumbledore included. "It doesn't change what he did," Harry said. "He started this whole thing when he told Voldemort about the prophecy. And now he's killed Dumbledore too and we're all doomed!"
"Harry! Don't say something like that!" Mia told him, horrified.
"It's the truth, isn't it?" Harry replied. "Dumbledore died before he could reach the point when he told me how a Horcrux was destroyed! If I don't know how to destroy them, what do I do?"
"Kid, just because he didn't teach you how to destroy them, doesn't mean we can't find out on our own," Sirius told him.
"How?"
"I dunno. We'll figure it out. Research, trial and error… I mean, we can start testing right now. Didn't you get a Horcrux last night when you and Dumbledore left?" his godfather asked him.
Harry stunned then both by shaking his head in denial. "It was a fake. The Horcrux was supposed to have been a locket that had belonged to Salazar Slytherin himself but someone switched it by another. We went through all that stuff for nothing. Dumbledore had to die for nothing."
"Harry…" Mia started.
"We went to a cave," he started before she could finish what she was going to say – he figure he ought to tell them the rest before they could start convincing him that he hadn't been at fault. "Voldemort had been there when he was a kid and Dumbledore thought that was where he'd keep one of his Horcruxes. Inside it, there were barriers that required… sacrifices."
Even though she cringed at the expression, Mia forced herself to remain quiet as Harry spoke, gripping her husband's hand instead. Sirius looked down at her and she could see he didn't look all that calm either.
"The first was blood," Harry continued. "One of us would have to give some blood for a barrier that was blocking the way to open. I offered to give mine but Dumbledore refused – he said my blood was more precious than his, so he gave his own. And then we were in this big chamber inside the cave. There was a dark lake with some sort of island in the middle – that was where the Horcrux was supposed to be – and a boat to take us there. When we got to the island, we saw a stone basin on a pedestal: it was filled with some sort of potion and we were pretty sure the locket would be at the bottom of it. The problem was that we couldn't get through the potion – some sort of force, kept us from touching it, let alone reach the locket. Dumbledore concluded it had to be drank so we could reach the bottom of the basin."
"So, that was the potion that you said had weakened Dumbledore," Sirius concluded, recalling Harry's ramblings from the previous night.
Harry nodded. "That was the potion. Dumbledore started to drink by his own hand. He managed three or four goblets of it before he started faltering. It made him see things. Bad things. Sometimes he sounded like a little kid – a terrified kid – other times he'd apologize to someone over and over again. He'd made me promise I'd make him drink the rest if something like that happened, so I made him…" he paused, closing his eyes and sighing. "Maybe if I'd drank the rest myself…"
"You would have both been weakened and defenceless," Mia told him – she could never repay Dumbledore for making the sacrifice for Harry. Maybe in another life… "You did what you were told and it was the right thing, Harry."
"You don't know, that! If we'd split the potion, he wouldn't have been as bad… I'm younger than him. Maybe I'd have taken it better than he did. He would have been able to be faster and defend himself in the astronomy tower."
"Kid, use your brains," Sirius intevened. "Voldemort had to know anyone would be too weak to drink the potion until the end. He had to know that if someone wanted to get their hands on the Horcrux, there would have to be a second person to make the first drink the potion. You actually think he didn't have any trick up his sleeve like the basin filling itself all over again with the full dose or something like that if the two decided to share a drink? You wouldn't be able to cheat him so easily, Harry."
Harry sighed, silently recognizing that was something that Voldemort was very capable of.
"So, what happened from there?" Mia asked him.
"I got the locket from the bottom," Harry told her. "I barely had time to see it before a few dozens of Inferi started to emerge from the lake." He couldn't help noticing the look that Mia gave him then, which clearly said something along the lines of 'you actually think you should have drank half that potion with an army of Inferi right around the corner?'. He resumed narrating it, looking away from her – alright, maybe he hadn't thought that through.
Ahead, he told them about how Dumbledore, likely in a rush of adrenaline, had managed to set the Inferi on fire despite his weakened state and how Harry himself had all but dragged the headmaster out of the cave so he could apparate them both to Hogsmeade. How they had used Madam Rosmerta's broomsticks to reach Hogwarts as fast as they could when they'd spotted the Dark Mark hovering over the castle and, finally, how Dumbledore had pleaded for Harry to get Snape for him, only to petrify Harry under his invisibility cloak for his own protection before he could do so. In the end, it all culminated to the appearance of Malfoy, then the Carrows, who'd urged the younger Death eater to follow his mission and, finally, Snape.
"It was all for nothing in the end," Harry said. "The Horcrux was a fake."
"Harry, are you really sure?" Mia asked him. "I mean, can't you be confusing things? Maybe you remember the one in the pensieve memories differently…"
Harry shook his head. "It's a fake. There was a note inside it. Someone saying he or she had realized what the Horcrux really was and stolen it to have it destroyed so Voldemort would be mortal again. I… it said more but I can't remember the rest."
"Do you have any idea who may have written it?" Sirius asked him. Who would have been brave or suicidal enough to steal a Horcrux from Lord Snake-face?
Harry shook his head. "None. All I know was that it was signed with some initials. R.A.D or R.I.P. No, not R.I.P. – I'm sure it started with an R, though. Maybe R.A.B.?" In normal circumstances, he would have known each letter by heart. He wouldn't have rested until he knew which each of them meant. None of that was the case, though. He didn't care so much about the contents of the note since the fact that the Horcrux was a fake had pretty much taken over his mind when he'd landed eyes on it – the note had carelessly been thrown into his trunk along with the locket, yet the feeling of failure remained loose in his head. It had been a pointless adventure… that search for the Horcrux. A pointless sacrifice of Dumbledore's strength and a pointless end to the headmaster's life… He knew that, sooner or later, he'd have to put some effort into studying the note to track down the fate its writer had given to the real Horcrux and destroy it if the person in question hadn't already. But, honestly, he was in too much of a funk at the moment to care – too many dilemmas in his mind, some harder than others. Too many things to give him grief… Too much. Merlin, he just wished he could just… take a break. "I'm sorry," he apologized to his godparents. "I just…"
Mia stood up slightly, pulling the chair she'd been occupying closer to Harry's and sitting back. "It's okay, Harry," she told him softly, pulling him into a hug. She couldn't bring herself to push him any further than they'd already gone. She couldn't make it any harder on him. "You've been through a lot yesterday. You're bound to feel confused. Just take your time. You've said enough today."
He nodded against her shoulder and sighed, relieved. "Thank you." He thanked Merlin or whoever higher power that was listening too for letting his godmother understand what he needed. Didn't she always? he wondered.
When she pulled away, Mia rested her hand on his shoulder. "You know that nothing that happened was your fault. It isn't."
Harry didn't respond to her – he knew she wouldn't like what he had to say if he spoke.
"She's right kid," Sirius added as the boy's gaze turned to him. "You'll probably take a while to realize that – that's okay. But nothing you did could have changed what happened. Things happen the way they happen, no matter what guilt tells you. Believe – I know quite a few things about it."
"I… hum… okay," Harry mumbled awkwardly. Maybe part of him wanted to believe his words but the other refused to let go of the guilt…
"Well, what are you planning to do for the rest of the day?" Mia asked, not-so-subtly changing the subject.
He shrugged. "I don't know. Ginny and I had thought of helping with the repairs – I think Ron, Hermione and Izzy wanted too… to keep ourselves occupied with something useful. But then I heard McGonagall didn't want the students on the most damaged floors to avoid accidents…"
"Tell you what," Sirius said, "how about you go fetch the others and your godmother and I will talk McGonagall into giving you something not accident-prone to do?"
Harry took a moment to think and then nodded in agreement. "Sounds good, I guess."
"Great. We'll meet here in twenty minutes?"
Their godson checked his watch and agreed with the meeting time as he stood up from his chair, motioning towards the portrait-covered doorway.
Sirius waited until he was sure the boy was gone from the room before turning to his wife, looking at her inquisitively. "So, what did you think of him?"
Mia sighed, thoughtfully. "I think he's trying very hard to remain strong about everything that's happened; he really is," she said softly. "And he's managing, most of the time."
Sirius nodded. "Yeah. I could see that too. That's bound to be a difficult thing to pull off when his world's been shaken to its very foundations… he never had to consider fighting without Dumbledore to back him up before."
"Yes, that's hard on him. But we're still here. He'll manage," Mia said, more to convince herself than to anything else. "He has to. He always does."
"He will," Sirius assured her, covering her hand with his. He knew the kid would put himself back together soon enough. But he also knew that, by the time he did, things were about to change.
Though he didn't say it out loud, Sirius felt almost certain that, with Dumbledore out of the way, it was only a matter of time before Voldemort made a major move. And he feared that, from then on, nothing would ever be the same.
A/N2: As I said, big one... quite a ride to write - thank God today was a national holiday here or I'd never have had time to edit it. I hope you liked the chapter - for those wondering, yes, R.A.B. will be covered later by the time Harry had put his thought back together. Worry not. Feedback is welcome! Review!