15 – The Best Laid Plans

Harry watched his mother and Snape enter Boggarts Cave, the light from their wands quickly swallowed by the cave's darkness. He was dying to see Snape's boggart and didn't believe for a moment that Snape was fearless. He had to fear something, so what would his boggart be? Harry promised to follow the memory into the cave as far as it would take him, but before he could continue, there was something else he needed to do.

He felt his head spin as he stepped back from the pensieve, returning to the Headmaster's Office. The portraits on the wall were all sleeping, except for Phineas Nigellus Black, who looked at Harry as if he was just the person he wanted to see. "Potter!" Black shouted, unconcerned about making a ruckus at such a late hour. "So good of you to join us."

"Er—I guess so," said Harry. "Aren't you tired, or something?"

"Not at all, and I hear you are quite the man… or boy. Whatever."

"Um—"

"The party's still going, and the Twisted Sisters are singing another song about you. It's called, 'Potter's Magic Moves and Grooves.'"

Harry was embarrassed, but before he could say anything, Black began singing the words in a mocking voice:

Potter's love is like a hot pepper

He moves, he grooves

Making all the witches holler

Potter's bedroom is like

"Enough!" shouted Harry. That was all he needed to hear. Phineas Nigellus Black cackled and closed his eyes.

Harry walked over to the portrait of Dumbledore, still sound asleep, and tapped the picture frame. "Dumbledore? You there? Come on, wake up!"

Dumbledore didn't stir. Harry continued tapping the picture and even began to rattle it, awakening some of the other portraits who looked at him with disdain. When Dumbledore refused to budge, he stepped back and shouted, "Did you use Snape?"

The blue eyes behind the half-moon spectacles finally revealed themselves. "I can tell you don't like everything you see in Snape's memory."

"You never told me that you used Snape. You let Voldemort get to him, and you knew—"

"Harry?" Dumbledore's voice was calm and immediately placated the room. "I assure you, I never used Severus. He was always under my close watch, and if I had tried to advise him all those years ago, he wouldn't have listened."

"You could have stopped him from going to Voldemort."

Dumbledore smiled a sad smile. "In the end, that's exactly what I did. Unfortunately, I had to watch him veer to the Dark Lord first in order for him to come back."

"But you said those things to Slughorn. You didn't want to warn Snape about Voldemort—you made him believe he was bait!"

"Harry, remember, you are seeing Snape's last memory, not mine. I was a powerful wizard, but I couldn't know everything going on in his mind. And sometimes our best laid plans don't go right, and our best intentions hurt people in ways we can't imagine."

Harry sighed and looked around the room; he hadn't expected Snape's memory to feel like walking on a tightrope. It was difficult to walk in his shoes, tread in the gray area between good and evil, any moment risking the fall into something much darker. "I can accept that," he said, "but why didn't you tell me about the Fourth Curse, the Dark Tourist?"

"Some magic should die when their inventors pass on. The Dark Tourist is such a case, and it was a choice I made a long time ago to keep it to myself. The Dark Tourist is better off dead, left as a rumor in Dark Arts cult literature."

"Did you know how to do it?"

"Yes. I did."

"If you thought the Dark Tourist was better off dead, then why did you write that note in The Unchartered Forbidden Forest?"

Dumbledore's eyes grew big. "You saw that book? Where?"

"My mom got it in the Restricted Section of the library. She showed it to Snape."

"Merlin's Beard! I lost that book years ago and never found it!" Dumbledore muttered a few things that Harry couldn't make out; it appeared that the headmaster was working through an equation in his head, to see if both sides added up. "I'm not sure what that means yet, but we might know the answer once you go further into his memory."

Harry made his way back to the pensieve and was ready to feel the cold rush when something else occurred to him. "Dumbledore?"

"Yes, Harry?"

"When we looked for the horcruxes together, you mentioned that Tom Riddle applied for a teaching position at Hogwarts."

"Yes. He applied for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post."

"I thought that was one of the last times you ever saw Riddle? You know, before he went completely bad. But he judged the Christmas Challenge with Slughorn, didn't he? Didn't you see him then?"

For the second time, Dumbledore smiled that sad smile of his, miles of memories forming the lines that cut deep into his face. "I think you need to see the rest of Snape's last thoughts. Perhaps things will become clearer for both of us."

"Harry's love is like a hot pepper!" shouted Phineas Nigellus Black, snickering. His voice startled Harry, Dumbledore, and other portraits in the room.

"Phineas! Enough!" said Dumbledore with a force that immediately quieted the other headmaster. "Harry?"

"Yes?"

"One more thing. I believe that things will only get worse in this memory before they get better."

And with that, Harry couldn't even imagine what he'd see in Boggarts Cave. He dipped his head into the pensieve and was back in Snape's memory where he'd left off, just as the wands headed into the cave's darkness.