Harry stared at the old wizard in the wan light that splashed through the doorway from the outer room. He was suddenly very tired. Had been hoping, in fact, to be able to let go of his control at last and let the events of the last couple days become real to him. But then here was Dumbledore, purple hat slightly crumpled in his hands, keen intelligence shining from his eyes with reflected light, and no doubt looking for answers. Yet if Harry's perception hadn't failed him, the headmaster looked older. More worn down perhaps.
"What would you like to talk about, Headmaster?"
"I remember a boy, not much younger than you are now, who once told me that he wanted everyone to live forever. But now fifty-five people are dead. And there was a phrase this boy used, I notice that I am confused. Well, so it is, I notice that I am confused. What happened to that boy I knew?"
Harry stood there long moments, trying to compose a reasoned response, but all his carefully schooled control was gone, expended earlier. He had not the strength to summon it again. Instead he spoke, barely audible, "What would you have had me do?"
Dumbledore's eyes were hard. Measuring. But his voice was soft. "I confess, commanding a dementor to kill the people who disagree with you did not come to my mind as something that you might do at all, much less feel forced to do."
"They were going to murder her! As surely as if they'd cast the killing curse themselves!"
"For all that she is precious to us, Harry..." the old wizard reached out and put his hand on Harry's forearm. "For all that she is precious to us, she is just one girl."
"No." Harry shook off the hand, his voice going cold. "Do you have any idea how close you came to losing this war in those chambers?"
"Harry!"
"It's the Hermiones who make the fight worthwhile and necessary. Why do you think I'd defend a ministry who would simply slaughter them itself? If that's all that's left to lose, let Voldemort have it!" Harry was near tears, and he threw himself onto the bed, wanting nothing more than to be left alone.
Dumbledore stood, purple hat in his hands. He made no move to comfort. When he spoke, his voice low and sombre.
"I never said you should Harry. I formed the Order of the Phoenix, after all, because the government could not be trusted to fight the war itself. But there are plenty of good and decent people, other Hermiones, out there to fight for."
Harry made no response. He lay there and pressed his face into the pillow, but tears wouldn't come.
"What I fear is that you didn't spare a moment to think through the consequences to those other Hermiones. Have you endangered them more by your actions? When Voldemort comes openly, who will support you and who will oppose you? Before the lines might not have been drawn in black and white, but at least they had shape. Now the whole board is up-ended and the pieces in disarray."
Harry wiped at unshed tears, his eyes red, and forced himself to sit. "Its more than there being nameless good people out there. Hermione – she keeps me good, Headmaster. I need her. Her specifically. Without her... without her I don't know whose side I'd be on, when it came to it. I don't think I'd take Voldemort's side, but then there's more than two sides, isn't there?"
"Many more than two, and yet before they were known. While I might have disapproved of Lord Jugson, as deserving a man as might be found anywhere for the fate you determined, I knew who and what he was. I knew he was Lucius Malfoy's creature, and a Death Eater, and a blood purist. I could contemplate an action and project how he would react, what he might do. In but a few short years, his son will inherit his seat, barely more than a boy at the age of seventeen. His son I do not know. No, not nearly so well as I knew the father. Multiply that by fifty-five and the actions of the Wizengamot become suddenly mysterious."
"Now, the truth of what happened cannot be kept from the Wizengamot. The survivors were of course there. They saw. But the heirs of the dead – those that come after them – they will know the truth of what happened in their time. They will know to blame you, and they will feel the loss of their kin more keenly than the survivors feel the loss of their colleagues. What remains of the Wizengamot can be reasoned with today, but in just a few short years it will be your enemy, if you even have that long. You have made your road harder, that is for certain, but how hard? I cannot say. The full consequences can only be known in time, and time is a precious commodity. You have condemned us to flailing about in the dark while Voldemort draws ever nearer."
"As for Hermione herself, Harry, I don't know if she will ever come back to you. You may have saved her, but you may also have alienated yourself from her forever." Dumbledore met Harry's eyes at the end and held them.
"I know, Headmaster. Still, she was worth it, even if she won't speak to me again. I need her to remind me why I fight. What to fight for. That she lives is enough."
Harry paused for a moment before continuing. "As for the Wizengamot – I think you overestimate their importance Headmaster. They were impotent before, and likely will be again. Their actions will be beneath notice. And if they are more incompetent about their business than you expected, that can only be to my benefit."
"And you saw no other way to save Hermione than what you did? I would not make enemies needlessly, no matter how inconsequential you feel them to be."
"Headmaster, they had their wands virtually drawn and pointed at her head. I tried to find alternate solutions. I tried to talk them down, to get them to put their wands away. I failed. At the end of the day, wand, head. The only answer to force is force. And I couldn't defend myself upon that instant should they seek to turn their wands on me. My actions needed to be improbable. They needed to be drastic. They needed to be sudden. And they needed to disarm my opponent – the government of magical Britain itself – and make it incapable of resorting to violence again afterwards. Anything less would have failed, quite possibly spectacularly. Just one of the survivors casting a lethal or even incapacitating hex on me would have killed everyone with the dementor loose. That didn't happen only because I was sufficiently improbable, drastic, and sudden to make them hesitate."
"That doesn't mean fifty-five was the precisely right number, but there are limits to just how specific I could be." Harry's voice trailed off, but his thoughts raced on. The people who were kissed got kissed because they expected to be, and everyone else expected them to be. I couldn't say something like 'kiss all the death eaters', because I don't know where the weight of opinion of the chamber would have placed that expectation. But people who voted for sending Hermione to Azkaban were an immediately identifiable group in the aftermath of the vote. But he couldn't say that. Dumbledore wouldn't understand. He didn't have the frame of reference for the concepts involved. And besides, that knowledge was dangerous and exploitable. Far safer to leave it unvoiced.
His train of thought came to a safe place to resume, and he continued aloud. "And their votes had made them culpable in her attempted murder. It made them acceptable targets for retribution."
The headmaster sat beside him on the bed. When he spoke, he spoke facing away into the darkness of the room.
"I am concerned, Harry, that you are unwilling to let others even disagree with you. The Wizengamot thought, after all, that they were dealing with an attempted murderer."
"Should we treat with Voldemort then? Maybe we only have a disagreement." Harry's hands balled into fists.
"Harry!"
"When the Wizengamot does evil things and the good men and women who sit on it don't raise a finger to stop it, its no better than Voldemort himself."
The silence stretched, tense and uncertain. Harry found himself angry that he had to explain this. It should have been obvious.
"Have you no regrets?" Dumbledore finally asked, the kindness in his voice breaking the tension between them.
Harry, eyes wide and watery, held the headmaster's gaze. His anger abated. "I'm here, aren't I. I surrendered. Why would I be here if I didn't have regrets?"
"Harry, you are still an eleven-year-old boy. You can't bottle this up inside you."
"You were a hero once. Whose shoulder did you cry on?"
Albus Dumbledore had no response to that. They sat in silence for quite awhile.
Finally, Harry spoke, words said into the darkness and not to Dumbledore. "Maybe I'm not the hero they wanted. But I think I might be the hero they deserve."
Dumbledore stared at him sadly, but there was nothing more to say. And then there was only Harry and the darkness.
The door of the Headmaster's office flew open with a bang.
"Albus! I've been trying to see you for the last twenty-four hours! What in Merlin's name ha–" Snape sputtered to a stop. The sound of quill on parchment carried in the brief silence. "Minerva?"
"Good morning Severus." Minerva continued to write on the sheet in front of her.
"Where is Headmaster Dumbledore?"
"He's taken a leave of absence." She looked up. "You had news?"
"Voldemort is returned! Over half the Wizengamot dies under mysterious circumstances! And he chooses now to take a leave of absence!?"
"The headmaster was under a lot of strain. You had–"
"Do you have any idea how insane this is?!"
"Severus, I am really quite busy this morning."
He paused. "You're using his desk."
"I really couldn't be bothered to transfigure my own this morning. Now, either you have news that you wish to share, or you will let me get back to work."
"Yes, I have news." Snape composed himself. "Lucius sent no owls after... whatever... happened. No owls two nights ago. No owls last night. He had no visitors. He made no visits by floo or otherwise yesterday, except to the ministry. And aside from whatever ministry business he had during the day, he spent all his time in his study – alone or with Draco."
"And from this you conclude?"
"I don't know what to conclude. His political network was effectively destroyed in one day and he has done nothing."
McGonagall looked off for a moment before returning her attention to the potions professor. "Thank you Severus."
"This doesn't worry you at all?"
"I have to review the budget for the month, there's a meeting with the board of governors this evening that I must attend, disciplinary reports for several students from yesterday that I was unable to get to then which need reviewing, a detained defense professor that I will need to retrieve from the ministry, and sometime today I need to find time to grade thirty-five third year transmutation essays. And that's not even counting students who might need to see me today. I don't have time to be worried. Now, if that was all...?"
Severus stood there for a moment, pursing his lips. "The Headmaster's pet disaster, what role did he really play in all this?"
"Goodbye Severus."
Snape turned to go with a snarl of frustration.
"Oh, and Severus, while I'm acting Headmistress, I trust we will have the same arrangement you and Albus had?"
The potion master didn't answer as he strode from the room, the door closing behind him on its own.
Hermione hated keeping secrets. They gnawed at you, begging to escape into the open air. She especially hated secrets which forced her to lie to people. Which hadn't stopped her from acquiring several, although thankfully only one of them was one that anyone was likely to ask about. Of course, everyone wanted to ask, a fate she was saved from only because Professor McGonagall had, upon returning her to Ravenclaw Tower last night, been rather clear that anyone pestering Hermione about the last couple days would find themselves in an appointment with the Headmaster.
McGonagall hadn't actually said much to her last night. But she'd been abundantly clear that if anyone did ask, Hermione would tell them that the dementor had escaped and gone on a rampage. She would not mention Harry's involvement. She would absolutely not mention Azkaban. She would not under any circumstances explain the riddle of the dementors to her classmates. And if anyone asked about the phoenix on her shoulder, she would tell them that was between her and the Headmaster.
There were only two other things that McGonagall had said to her last night. She'd of course asked if Hermione was alright, because that's the kind of person Professor McGonagall was. And McGonagall had requested she go to the Headmaster's office after breakfast.
Inevitably this meant that breakfast was an uncomfortable affair surrounded by inquisitive Ravenclaws who desperately wanted to ask but sat silent because they didn't want to end up in the Headmaster's office. Hermione almost wished they would ask, it would have been better than the uncomfortable silence. Maybe. She'd still have to lie.
And those were only her peers who were willing to sit close enough to her that they could have asked. Reactions to her arrest by aurors were apparently complicated, not that anyone was actually talking to her – as much as some of them apparently wanted to be – to even broach the subject. But in addition to the silence of unasked questions around her there were the dirty stares from farther down the table. And from the other tables, excepting only Gryffindor. They'd given her a standing ovation when she walked into breakfast, and she really wasn't sure how she should feel about that.
Hermione glanced up at the head table. McGonagall was absent, which wasn't terribly surprising given Dumbledore's parting words. Snape was also, thankfully, absent, as was Quirrel. Flitwick's attention was sternly on his house's table, although he did spare a smile for her when he noticed her looking. Sprout had a concerned expression on her face, her eyes flitting around the hall, frowning as she looked from table to table. And Trelawney was oblivious, as usual.
She was glad that Fawkes had been willing to stay in her room, at least she thought he'd stay in her room. If anything, the silence and the stares would have been that much weirder with a phoenix on her shoulder.
Her eyes wandered to the Slytherin table. Draco was not there. Hadn't been there when she came to breakfast. Draco, who was always there just when food arrived. Maybe he hadn't gotten back yet? She looked away; the half of Slytherin that wasn't staring daggers at her was studiously pretending she didn't exist. He was alright, wasn't he? She wasn't sure she'd be okay if he wasn't alright, even if she did choose to believe Harry that she hadn't done anything. No, that way lay madness. She had to believe Harry that she hadn't actually done it.
Hermione caught herself pushing food around her plate instead of eating. She put her fork down. No reason to delay this any longer. She felt eyes track her as she stood up from the table, turned, and walked towards the door.
Just before she reached the sanctuary of the doorway, however, there was Draco. Uncharacteristically late for breakfast, but there all the same. Her eyes went wide and she inhaled sharply. She thought she saw Draco flinch away from her, afraid, but then he schooled his expression, turning his nose up at her.
"Miss Granger," he sneered. Dismissive. Crabbe and Goyle glared at her over Draco's shoulders.
Hermione couldn't answer, not there in front of the other students. She closed her eyes and turned her head away, towards the wall. She felt the air shift as they walked past her.
"I'm sorry," she whispered into the wall, but there was no one still near enough to hear.
Hermione found herself before the solid oak door to the headmaster's office. The gargoyle had been waiting for her and stepped aside without any prompting. The spiral stairs hadn't taken nearly long enough. So here she was, standing on the threshold with some trepidation, and sorely tempted to go back down without entering. Maybe just tempted. Its not like Dumbledore was going to be there. It would probably be Professor McGonagall, which meant no crazy old wizard playing mind games with her, even if the crazy was only for pretend.
She realized this was the first time she'd come to this office by herself.
Hermione raised her hand to knock, but before she could lay knuckles to wood it swung open, leaving her caught with her hand raised and her mouth open in surprise.
"Do come in Miss Granger."
"How did..."
"Magic." McGonagall smiled.
"But that doesn't... That's not an answer!"
"I am glad to see you're feeling better."
Hermione supposed flustered was better than feeling guilty and weird and stared at. A chair was positioned before the desk, so she sat in it.
"So is there anything you want to talk about, Miss Granger?"
"I... you..." Wait, hadn't McGonagall insisted she come?
"Miss Granger, I understand it was a rough weekend, but you are only twelve. I thought you might want to talk about what happened."
Hermione chewed her lip, trying to put words to something. Anything. She must have been frowning because Professor – no, Headmistress – McGonagall was looking at her with slightly more concern. "I'm not sure how I'm supposed to feel about everything. I mean, there's the awful memories of me actually doing that to Draco, and whether they're real or fabrications like Harry insists, I still have them. And then there's the awful... of listening to Harry... his willing to do just about anything... give away his fortune... risk his life... and listening to that with a dementor right behind me. And then there's the horror of the dementor loose and killing people. And..."
"Miss Granger – Hermione – a twelve-year-old girl shouldn't have to live with such things. I can take those memories from you, if only for a time."
"No!" Her vehemence surprised her. "I mean, there was awful and horror, but there was also a shining moment of light in Azkaban, and I don't think the one makes sense without the other. And how can I make up for what I did or think I did if I can't remember?"
"But you didn't do anything."
"I did! I went to breakfast as if nothing had happened, and I knew! Good girls shouldn't do that! Heroes shouldn't do that."
"Hermione, in my experience, no one is that good."
"Well they should be! And how can I apologize to Draco if I can't remember what I did wrong?"
"... Apologize?"
"I suspected him of plotting against me and he wasn't. He was helping me, or thought he was, in his own mysterious Slytherin way. I heard his testimony read out just like you did." Hermione paused for a moment. McGonagall had also witnessed the dementor's attack. "Headmistress... how are you doing... after..."
Was the usually unflappable Headmistress taken aback?
"I... no one has thought to ask me that. Thank you. I'm... well, mostly I'm disappointed in Mister Potter."
"Oh." She was chewing on her lip again and made herself stop. "Is Dumbledore ever coming back?"
"I don't think I can give you a good answer to that."
"He seemed so sad when we spoke yesterday. Worn out."
"I didn't realize he had been in to see you."
"Headmistress McGonagall, what's going to happen to Harry?"
"Mister Potter will not be coming back to Hogwarts, I'm afraid. He's agreed to be incarcerated, admittedly under rather generous circumstances, for awhile. I could arrange for you to visit if you'd like."
"No. No, I don't think I want that..."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Her feelings about Harry were... complicated. Yes, that was definitely the right word. How could she even begin to make sense of them?
"He's just so terrifying, and meddling, and unpredictable, and I can't believe he did that for me..." She couldn't believe she was actually vocalizing this, but she couldn't stop now. It just exploded out of her mouth. "I mean... the things he offered for my freedom... I don't know how to feel about that. How he was willing to give away all his money and possibly sacrifice his life for me. How is a person supposed to feel about that? And then he killed people. For me. Can you do that and still be good? Because there was so much light inside him in Azkaban. But he didn't ask. He never asks. And–"
"Hermione."
"And there was a thing he said, awhile ago, about how he could try to keep me safe and protected, but he knew how that part of his life would go and he was skipping it, and I honestly have no idea what part of his life that would have been, but I'm finding that sentiment deeply worrying..."
"Miss Granger."
"I mean – he's not my boyfriend!"
"Miss Granger!"
Hermione managed to stop her mouth from working, although her brain hadn't managed the same. It kept running at sixty kilometers a second inside her head. Wait. Did McGonagall look... uncomfortable. The sight of the frown on McGonagall's face while she searched for something to say finally brought Hermione's brain to a halt in a train wreck of unvoiced sentiment.
"Boys... boys are complicated." The Headmistress sighed. "No, not just boys, people are complicated. But it's alright if you have feelings for him and think he did wrong."
"But its not about feelings. Well, not about those kinds of feelings." Hermione managed a frown. "I'm not convinced he was wrong."
"Hermione! He killed fifty-five people! He blackmailed the entire government!" She paused briefly before continuing, almost under her breath. "And I fear he broke the Headmaster."
"He's the only person who went in there with me as his highest priority. The only person. No one else was willing to be responsible for me!"
"I'm not sure responsible is–"
"Everyone had some other agenda, even Dumbledore. Only Harry was willing to do whatever it took to save me. Which is extremely worrying and I really don't know how to feel about that. But I'm here and not being eaten by dementors, now, solely because of Harry."
"I'm really not sure considering Mister Potter responsible is a good idea..."
"No, of course not. Harry... I'm not sure he's good enough for the kind of responsibility he sees himself as having."
"I'm glad we agree."
"Which is why I need to hurry up and learn as much as I can because someone has to be responsible for saving magical Britain from Harry." That really wasn't what she'd been intending to say.
"Miss Granger!"
"I don't think anyone else can do it," she finished. "Harry won't listen to anyone else. Not really. Not like he'd listen to me. Its the only way I can keep everyone else safe."
"No one person should have to feel responsible for so much. Miss Granger, you're only twelve!"
Later, Hermione wouldn't be able to say why she said it. She could see how shocked McGonagall was afterwards. Had grimaced as she stood up and mumbled an apology before she fled the room. But she'd said it all the same, the last words Godric Gryffindor had penned in his biography, in roughly accented latin.
"Non est salvatori salvator, neque defensori dominus, nec pater nec mater, nihil supernum."
After that, well, there really wasn't anything left to add to the conversation. And as it was she was going to be late to Herbology.
"Daphne, you should come down for lunch."
"Go away Tracey."
Daphne lay sprawled on her bed, her face buried in a pillow.
"You already missed class this morning. And breakfast."
"I don't care!" A sob escaped the girl, and she started crying again.
"Daphne, you have to come down sometime. Maybe you want to talk about it?"
Tracey dodged the flying pillow which suddenly launched itself from the bed at the end of Daphne's arm. The scion of the most ancient and noble house of Greengrass sat glaring at her, eyes red, tears running down her face, and hair in disarray.
"My mother is dead. Go away and leave me be." And with that Daphne turned and buried her head in another pillow, muffled sobs escaping into the room.
This just wouldn't do at all. Her friend was hurting. There had to be something Tracey could do to fix this. Or at least make it better.
"Might as well leave her to mope," Pansy Parkinson said as Tracey walked back into the common room. "She clearly doesn't care."
What kind of Slytherin would she be if she couldn't come up with something, some clever plot to help fix this. A smile broke across her face, a sharp unfriendly smile she directed at Pansy. She'd had an idea. Oh yes, she'd show them. She'd show them all.
A/Ns: First, Professor Quirrel's captivity, questioning, and release happens exactly as it does in HPMoR. Nothing in this fic will have altered that.
Second, time to address some comments. Keep in mind that HPMoR (up to chapter 82 and including the Quirrel scenes thereafter) is canon.
Simply speaking the truth about patronuses wouldn't cause them to pop. They'd have to believe him.
-No, simply speaking is actually quite sufficient. This is canon in HPMoR. Its explicitly laid out in chapter 82 (iirc) of HPMoR and implied in the last Humanism chapter. Remember, the patronus charm works by thinking about happy thoughts *instead of* death. One of the reasons he doesn't tell Dumbledore is because it would ruin Dumbledore's ability to use his patronus even if he doesn't believe Harry. Belief is not necessary.
-Lets imagine a hypothetical charm that works by thinking about happy instead of elephants. While you're doing this, I tell you not to think of an elephant. You don't have to believe me that there is or isn't an elephant, but you're definitely thinking about them. Which explicitly causes the charm to fail. Just mentioning elephants in a context related to the charm is sufficient. Same deal, except replace elephants with death.
Harry is a transhumanist, wouldn't kill people
-This is the premise of the fic, that Harry goes with his plan of last resort from the trial, the one he explicitly thinks about in HPMoR. Think of the fic as a "What if Harry was forced to go with this other idea he had." Implausibility is no barrier to a what if? scenario. Not that it could be all that implausible if he actually and seriously thought about doing it. (Which he did...).
-Also remember that Harry is ultimately a consequentialist. (Which is why I personally hate Chapter 85, because its about as anti-rationalist as you can get - do note that in 85 he's not trying to justify limited killing, he's trying to justify not killing at all instead of limited killing). That means that whatever actions result in the best consequences are the ones he should take.
-Now, the biggest problem with consequentialism is, while it is a basis for moral reasoning between two options given known preferences in outcomes, it doesn't provide a way to adjudicate which outcome is better in itself. So while Harry is going to be weighing the ultimate consequences to the best of his ability to predict, which consequences he cares more about will be more or less rational based on how rational his heirarchy of values is. And as is established canon in HPMoR, Hermione causes him to behave in ways that appear irrational to others. In short, she's really high up in his heirarchy of values whether you think she should be or not. To bring the point home, consider someone who actively prefers nuclear war breaking out to its absence. He'll be prefering rather different consequences than most people. While extreme, it does highlight the limitations of consequentialism.
-Now, Harry has elucidated some other consequences he thinks will be better or at least no worse following his actions in my fic as well. Just like his 'owl hand grenades to Death Eaters' off-the-cuff proposal, there is a brutal elegance to this solution. There are also obvious problems. I think Harry has a reasonable case to be made, especially since he was seriously outgunned and working on an excessively limited time frame. Which isn't to say he's right, but he isn't obviously wrong either.
Actually, that's the most important thing you should get out of that rather lengthy answer: Harry isn't necessarily right. No attempt has been made, not by EY and certainly not by myself, to hammer out an objective scheme of morality. And while HPMoR is an author tract in which Harry often speaks with EY's voice, that is not the case here. Harry is fallible, even if reasonably rational and of genius level intelligence. But he isn't going to be obviously wrong either. If you think he was obviously in error, check your moral assumptions and see where Harry might disagree with you. (And if you think you can elucidate an objective system of morality, please, do so and get your PhD in philosophy already). What he should be is consistent, and his willingness to go to frankly insane lengths for Hermione and his tendency to escalate until he wins should not be ignored when considering exactly how far he'd go. (As HPMoR chapter 85 does not happen in my fic, it is not canon here and Harry has not had those thoughts).
Long author note is long. Feel free to disagree with me, but don't expect me to change the story concept just because you do.