Chapter 42

PROPHECY

Before Harry had time to begin moping again, he heard a loud hiccough near the door. The Fat Lady in the portrait stumbled tipsily to her feet and tottered around to face the hall.

"Password? Oh! It's you!" Immediately, the picture swung back and Professor Dumbledore poked his head into the room.

Harry jammed the Djinn ball and instruction sheet into the Lockit Pocket attached to his jeans. That done, he sprang to his feet. "Welcome!"

The headmaster bent his head as he stepped over the threshold, just managing to clear his tall, battered hat. He paused a moment to survey the common room's dusty bookcases, lumpy couches, and deeply scored oak desks. "As homey as I remember it."

He strolled past three overstuffed chairs to the rattiest one in the room—threadbare mustard brocade with cotton wadding showing in the armrests. Sighing nostalgically, he sank into its saggy depths.

After a meditative pause, he raised his head. "Perhaps I could trouble you for some of that hot chocolate?"

Harry frowned. Chocolate? Following Dumbledore's pointing finger, he caught sight of a tea trolley set up with two marshmallow-topped mugs and a tray of iced butter cookies.

Shaking his head in renewed wonder at the house elves' ability to come and go unseen, he retrieved the goodies. A minute later, he was settled in a striped wingback chair across from the headmaster, blowing on his own cup of piping hot cocoa.

"Sorry to be late, but I was visiting Argus. Poppy removed the ticks, but he still needs several days of rest. Awakening from an Imperius Curse to discover one has lost nearly four months of one's life can be disquieting."

"Ticks." Harry shuddered. "Sort of a really gross remote control magic."

"Remote control? Ah, yes. Muggle battery-operated toys. And using that remote control, someone managed to wield some rather intimidating magic through the Hogwarts resident we'd suspect least."

Someone? He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, Harry thought, shaking his head. "If I'd been sharper, I'd have caught on sooner. Moaning Myrtle gave me a hint nearly a month ago: Not by four and never by two. Tom Riddle taught her that rune, didn't he? When she told me she hadn't known Thomas Riddle the prefect, she giggled. I should have realized that didn't mean she hadn't known him as something else—Teach, her beloved tutor."

"Poor Myrtle." Dumbledore took a bite of a star-shaped butter cookie. "Cherished, childish illusions chain spirits to earthly chambers. Once she admits to herself that her girlhood crush was also her murderer, she'll finally be free."

And the castle's toilets will never be the same. Harry wondered how long it would be before the rest of them were free from the threat of Tom Riddle as he was today. "If Voldemort can command insects, there's nowhere he can't penetrate. How can Hogwarts be made safe?"

"Well, Voldemort is the Lord of the Flies—and of the ants, termites, fleas, and cockroaches. Any insects that swarm. But luckily there are other small creatures that aren't so obliging—spiders. Two years ago, Hagrid introduced me to his good friend Aragog. I visited her again this evening, just before supper. Her children are eager to retaliate against the man who struck their mother so many years ago—not to mention feast on all the insects they can eat."

"Uh, Aragog." Harry grimaced at the memory of the elephant-sized spider. "Ron and I met her once, too."

Dumbledore licked cookie crumbs from his fingers. Then he trained his gaze on Harry. "Insects are not the topic I expected to discuss when we made our appointment this morning. Something else is troubling you. It's been nearly a week since our last talk. Since then, you've learned a lot more about our Potions master than even I'd planned to tell you."

Slowly, Harry set his mug back on the tray. "Sirius and Remus didn't mean to spill it, but—"

"Evidently, the time had come when the truth could no longer be hidden. Never mind. I found myself in similar straits the evening I revealed the truth to Severus." Dumbledore steepled his fingers in front of his long, bumpy nose. "His life was in a crisis—another story that I believe you've already heard."

When the headmaster peered at him over the tops of his half-moon spectacles, Harry nodded.

"His father was missing, presumed dead. His mother was off in Brazil, comforting herself. His entire rich, privileged life had been turned upside down. That night, I meant only to discuss his situation at Hogwarts and offer him the post of Potions master's assistant so he could complete his schooling. Instead, I found myself telling him that he did, after all, have someone to whom he could turn—a sister."

Nearly twenty-four hours had passed since Harry had first heard that truth, yet still it sounded outlandish. "Had he known he was adopted?"

"Yes. I'm afraid the Snapes had not been the doting parents I'd hoped they'd be. His whole life, they'd insisted he show them 'proper' gratitude, and he resented them for it." Dumbledore smiled faintly. "When he learned he had a sister, he didn't expect much love from that relationship, either."

Harry could imagine Snape's snide response. "How did my mother take it?"

"As warmly and charmingly as I'd expected. I called her to my office the same night to share the news. From that moment, she made it her mission to win Severus over. It took her from Hallowe'en 'til nearly Christmas. But once he accepted her as his sister, she couldn't have hoped for a more devoted brother."

A mixed blessing, Harry thought, considering his efforts to warn off her sweetheart. "Once they both knew, why was it still kept secret?"

Dumbledore picked up his hot chocolate and stared at the melted marshmallows bobbing on its surface. Harry had seen such delaying tactics before. He forced himself to wait. At last, the headmaster murmured, "Because of a promise I'd made to their mother—the night the two were born." The quiet words held a trace of melancholy rarely displayed by the serene master wizard. "A pledge to a dying woman must be honored."

Harry opened his mouth, but a suspicious shimmer in the headmaster's pale blue eyes stifled his questions in his throat. Anxious to change the subject, he blurted out, "Snape—Professor Snape. If he's my uncle, why does he hate me?"

Startled, Dumbledore blinked. "Hate? That's rather a strong word—"

"And my father—why did he hate him? Why was he so keen for my mother to cut him off? And don't tell me house rivalry—not only, anyway. Nor Quidditch. Nor my father's friends and admirers. I won't be put off. You have to tell me—"

Before Harry could push out another word, Dumbledore held up a hand. "Enough. I am much too old to have to do anything."

Harry sank back in his chair. He hoped the dancing fire didn't reveal the flush on his cheeks.

"But I will tell you what I think fit—so long as you promise to trust my judgment and make no more demands."

Harry hung his head, his unruly black hair falling like a curtain over his glasses. "No more demands."

Dumbledore crooked a finger. A footstool slid closer. With much rustling, he propped up his feet. "Red and black—they shared a room but not a house."

Harry glanced up sharply. He'd heard those words before—the night Professor Trelawney had ventured down from her tower. This time, when he turned her cryptic message over in his mind, its meaning came clear. "Red and Black. That means my red-haired mother and her black-haired brother, doesn't it?"

Dumbledore nodded.

"Before they were born, they shared a room—" or a womb, Harry said to himself "—but at Hogwarts, they were sorted into different houses."

"The afternoon I interviewed Sybil for the position of Divination master, she chanted those words in a trance—sitting right where Lily and Severus had sat the week before when I'd revealed their kinship. You can imagine how impressed I was."

"So, that was the first time she was right?"

"The first of three that I know of. Not a sterling record for a clairvoyant, but not too shabby when you consider the significance of her forewarnings."

Harry leaned forward. "Wasn't she just revealing a secret? How was that a warning? And how did Snape—Professor Snape—hear about it? And why did it make him hate—"

Dumbledore held up a cautionary finger, and Harry bit back his next words. Not until he'd contritely folded his hands in his lap did the headmaster continue. "Sybil's description of what had passed gave credence to her description of what was to come. Severus heard the entire prophecy when Sybil repeated it in a reverie on New Year's Eve. As to why it set him against James . . . ."

Dumbledore's voice trailed off. Harry caught his quick, appraising glance.

"Well, Sybil's precise words aren't important. Suffice it to say, she foretold the highpoints of your mother's life—including her death."

Hastily, Harry removed his glasses to polish them on his sleeve. He prayed the headmaster wouldn't notice the tears that had suddenly pricked his eyes.

Dumbledore looked aside. "When Severus claimed your mother as his sister, he made her his rock—the foundation on which to rebuild the shambles of his life. With Sybil's prediction, chaos threatened him anew. He convinced himself that if he could misdirect just one step in the prophecy, he'd take control of your mother's future. And so he resolved to prevent her forecast marriage to your father."

Harry blew out his breath slowly. "But he couldn't. Not for long, anyway." Lupin's murmured If he hadn't cried wolf floated into his mind. Had that been part of Trelawney's prophecy as well?

Dumbledore stroked his long, white beard. "He did manage to throw up a few roadblocks, but he couldn't halt destiny. By that time, Lily's love for James was so great that the inevitability of their marriage was as immutable as the fact that she'd been born."

Harry looked sidelong at the headmaster. He could guess another highpoint in Lily's life that Snape had been determined to prevent, the part of Trelawney's prophecy that Dumbledore was too delicate to mention: his birth. "I'm taking Temporal Transfiguration this year. We spent a good part of last semester studying alternate universes and how, uh, chronological intercepts can create divergent sequences in the, uh, horological web. About how the infinity of possible choices makes possible an infinity of outcomes."

"Ah, so you've read Dr. Chronosticon?"

"Well, er, not exactly. But I've heard her discussed. It seems to me that if one found the right intercept, one could set up a divergent sequence. I mean, there is such a thing as a turning point—a choice that sets a course."

"But finding thatintercept—that's the trick. And recognizing that one has set up a divergent sequence can be even harder. Once an event occurs, how does one know that what one thinks has been changed wasn't the original true course, after all?"

Harry rubbed the bridge of his nose where his glasses usually sat. At least, he knew the welter of possibilities had also baffled Snape.

"No," continued Dumbledore, reaching again for his steaming mug, which had mysteriously refilled with frothy hot chocolate. "Better to accept fate. Sometimes the very act of trying to counter the predestined is what sets in motion the events that will secure its fulfillment."

Before Harry could unravel that conundrum, the headmaster held up a finger as if listening. Harry replaced his glasses and looked to the door. The Fat Lady burped and drunkenly waggled her head, sending her holly headdress askew.

"Your fellow students are coming back from the party. Any minute now, your holiday roommates will be returning through the fireplace upstairs. Let us go greet them. I have business with them tonight, as well."

As the Fat Lady turned her broad backside so she could ask the students in the hall to recite the password (Brandy Custard), Harry picked up his mug and followed Dumbledore up the winding stairs to his dormitory.

More to come...