Towards the end of breakfast Monday morning, Professor McGonagall and each of the other three Heads of Houses made their ways down to their respective House tables to hand out the year's new class schedules.
And while the other three Heads all started with the students closest to the staff table, Professor McGonagall walked all the way down to where FitzSimmons were sitting closest to the doors leading out into the entrance hall. They were the quickest and easiest to determine the new schedules of thanks to their record OWL scores, and she was slightly afraid that there would be a repeat of first year if she made them wait until she had made it all the way through the entire rest of the table to finally get to them sitting in the back. That they would just get up and leave again to go study in the library on their own if they were forced to wait on her for too long and it started getting too close to class time. And especially if the bell rang before she got to them, which had happened in the past depending on how realistic everyone had been about the classes that they had applied for over the summer that she (and the other three Heads for their Houses) was just now looking at on the fly as she handed out the new class schedules. And so she thought it best to start at the end and work back towards the staff table this year.
When she made it down to them, she asked, "I assume you still want to take all ten subjects that you OWL'ed and applied for? That is a heavy class load."
"We've already read through every single class book front to back and back to front, and could probably pass our end of the year exams right now," Simmons answered. "So yes — we're taking everything."
"Very well, then," Professor McGonagall answered, tapping two sheets of parchment with her wand before handing them to FitzSimmons. "You have Ancient Runes up first this morning."
FitzSimmons took their class schedules and immediately headed to the Runes classroom to wait for class to start. To no one in the class's surprise, despite now being NEWT level, the runes were still ancient, FitzSimmons handled the classwork like they were already on a seventh year level while everyone else struggled to keep up, and at the end of the period they all received a lot of homework.
After that, all of the Gryffindors and Slytherins headed down the the DADA classroom together, slightly to FitzSimmons' surprise as they rather doubted based on what they had seen of the practical portion of the OWL exams that everyone had in fact got an E or an O, or even necessarily an A, but not to their surprise as after a basically nonexistent fifth year, it was unlikely that everyone wouldn't be required to take DADA again just to learn the fifth year that they had been denied during their actual fifth year. Arriving at the DADA classroom door, they were met by all of the Gryffindors and Slytherins who weren't taking Ancient Runes, proving FitzSimmons' theory true that everyone was being required to take Defense Against the Dark Arts again that year, regardless of their OWL score.
Once everyone was seated and looking at him in the terrified, deathly silence that his mere presence caused after five years of Potions, Snape began his lecture in his normal soft, menacing tone.
"You have had five teachers in this subject so far, I believe. Naturally, these teachers will all have had their own methods and priorities. It is of little surprise that almost all of you failed to get better than a pathetic 'A' on your OWL, with many of you failing completely, especially on the material normally introduced during fifth year. Which I personally would never accept, as I do not believe that anyone who cannot get an O on their OWL is capable of handling NEWT level material, but in light of last year's teachers and class, the esteemed headmaster has ordered that I take everyone into my class.
"All I can say is, you had better learn faster and study harder than you ever did in Potions, as I will not be babysitting you through what you should have learnt last year, and we will get through everything that you should know by the end of your sixth year, regardless of whether any of it actually gets through you idiots' thick skulls. Class time will be dedicated to sixth year, and you will have both the fifth year spells that you should already know and the sixth year material that you should be learning as homework.
"Therefore, I shall be astounded if any of you dunderheads manage to keep up with the NEWT work, which is more advanced than anything you have done so far in your pathetic careers. Most of you will not be returning next year, as you must pass the sixth year exams at the end of this year in order to return to this class next year, and I see very few of you being capable of doing that. But as I must still try to get something through your thick skulls over the next nine months….
"The Dark Arts are many, varied, ever-changing, and eternal. Fighting them is like fighting a many-headed monster, which, each time a neck is severed, sprouts a head even fiercer and cleverer than before. You are fighting that which is unfixed, mutating, indestructible. Your defenses must therefore be as flexible and inventive as the arts you seek to undo."
'Hydra,' FitzSimmons mouthed at each other.
As Snape motioned around him to the various pictures that he had hung on the walls of the classroom, he continued on, "These pictures give a fair representation of what happens to those who suffer, for instance, the Cruciatus Curse, feel the Dementor's Kiss, or provoke the aggression of the Inferius. Now...you are, I believe — mostly" — here he glared at FitzSimmons for daring to mess up his perfect insult by being too smart — "complete novices in the use of nonverbal spells. What is the advantage of a nonverbal spell?"
FitzSimmons' hands of course immediately went up — and to little surprise, no one else's did. But certainly not for looking on Snape's part, as he spent several long seconds looking everywhere except at the genius pair, hoping against hope that either a Slytherin would know and he could call on them in order to praise them even if their answer was weak or at best partially correct, or else a Gryffindor would raise their hand so that he could insult their answer and belittle them as a student and human being, something that he only acted vaguely akin to.
But finally he had to turn to FitzSimmons, who he knew would have a good answer, and curtly said, "Very well, Miss Granger?"
"Nonverbal spells give you a split-second advantage in a fight, giving you the element of surprise. Your enemies don't know that your spell is coming until you're already casting it, and more importantly, they don't know what spell you are casting at them. Which while a Shield Charm does block most spells, can force them to always throw up a Shield Charm to block your spell, instead of possibly just jumping out of the way or firing their own spell back at you to block yours mid-air, both of which give them a better chance to go on the offensive against you, instead of always having to be on the defensive by throwing up Shield charms. And honestly, while the book doesn't mention this, it's simply intimidating. The unknown is always more unnerving than the known, so there is the mental aspect of throwing a bunch of curses that they don't know what are at them, that can knock them off their game, and cause them to make foolish mistakes that you can then capitalize on."
"It's also very helpful in casting spells at objects around the person that you are fighting," Fitz added as soon as his wife stopped, before Snape could say anything to stop him. "Are you casting Wingardium Leviosa onto the rock to bash the side of their skull in, or are you casting Confringo to make it blow up right next to them? Or is it all a fake-out, and you're turning the rock into a puppy to distract them so that you can nonverbally cast a real curse at them or at something on their other side that they won't have time to defend against? And let's just be honest — a silent wand fight makes a way cooler fight scene for the movie or tv show."
By the time they were done, everyone including Snape was just staring at them in shock. But after several seconds Snape collected himself and somehow managed to answer dismissively, "An answer correct in its essentials, if unnecessarily long — we don't have all day here, Granger, Potter. Those who progress in using magic without shouting incantations gain an element of surprise in their spell-casting. Not all wizards can do this, of course — it is a question of concentration and mind power which most lack. You will now divide into pairs. One partner will attempt to jinx the other without speaking. The other will attempt to repel the jinx in equal silence. Carry on."
Everyone of course knew how to conjure a Shield Charm as Simmons had taught them it all during her brief stint as Dueling Club director during their second year, and everyone knew jinxes from classes, the Dueling Club, and just friends, common room gossip, and seeing spells illegally cast in the hallways between classes every day. But only FitzSimmons had ever cast any spell at all nonverbally before. Therefore, predictably, there was a lot of whispered cheating and students' faces turning blue as they held their breath trying not to speak, and only one pair casually throwing spells back and forth at each other and blocking them, all in perfect silence.
Snape swept around the room glaring at everyone as they practiced, before eventually lingering to watch FitzSimmons. But after a while he just couldn't help himself and sneered, "Giving your partner time to react to harmless spells is hardly impressive. Here — let me show you —"
And he spun on Fitz, clearly intending to take him off guard. But FitzSimmons had been around Snape for five years by that point, so they had more than expected some kind of treachery like this. And even if they hadn't, they were veteran spies for crying out loud, they knew to always be prepared for a surprise attack.
So Fitz had his Shield charm silently up with a lazy flick of his wrist before Snape had even finished turning on him, which Snape's spell proceeded to bounce off of so hard that Snape was knocked off-balance by the ricochet and slammed into the desk behind him. Scowling, Snape righted himself and angrily fixed his robes at not being able to abuse one of his students by cursing them, before turning to glare at the whole class, which had looked around to watch as soon as Snape had spoken to the power couple.
"Well?! — Get back to practicing!" he snapped. "I didn't see any of you casting or blocking anything nonverbally!"
~FS~
Immediately after lunch FitzSimmons had Care of Magical Creatures.
Walking down to Hagrid's hut, they were thankful and not particularly surprised to find Professor Grubbly-Plank waiting for them. They had heard that Professor Trelawney had been reinstated as a professor after the Ministry had left, and they knew that the same might occur for Hagrid, but Hagrid did already have a job at the castle that wasn't teaching, and everyone who had taken Care of Magical Creatures during the past two years preferred Professor Grubbly-Plank over the half-giant gamekeeper, so unless Dumbledore had him as a teacher for some reason that FitzSimmons couldn't see and had nothing to do with the class or teaching, it made a whole lot more sense, and was better for the students, to keep Professor Grubbly-Plank in the position as long as she would take it.
There were only eight other sixth year students besides FitzSimmons who were carrying on with NEWT Care of Magical Creatures, so the class wasn't split by House, or even a double class like Potions had been all five previous years, DADA was again this year (because apparently whoever set the schedules up was incapable of not putting the two Houses that hated each other the most together under the man who was the cruelest, most unfair, and abusive in the castle, especially to the opposite House in that equation), Care of Magical Creatures had been all three years that they had been able to take it, along with various other classes that they had had over their five years there so far. And thankfully Malfoy was not one of those eight, so even if Hagrid had been the teacher, the lesson still would have gone smoothly as the bully wouldn't have been there trying to mess it up.
Following Care of Magical Creatures was Potions. FitzSimmons were happy to see that despite Snape's complete lack of teaching and incessant belittling for all five years that all of them had been in the castle, there were still twenty-two students who had managed to obtain an E or O on their OWL since Snape hadn't been allowed in the Great Hall while they had been taking their OWL exams, written or practical portions. To neither of their surprises, however, nether Neville nor Ron were amongst those present — Neville had just been abused too much for too long to have ever had a fighting chance of passing, and Ron was too lazy. Outside of DADA that everyone had to take, they were curious what Ron even would be taking, as he hadn't gone on with Care of Magical Creatures, and he had never taken Runes or Arithmancy, the other two classes that they'd had that day.
Professor Slughorn started out the lesson by showing them three potions, all of which Simmons easily identified and described, much to Professor Slughorn's delight.
When he got to the third one, Amortentia — the most powerful 'love' potion in the world — he continued on from Simmons' simple identification of it, "Amortentia doesn't really create love, of course. It is impossible to manufacture or imitate love. No, this will simply cause a powerful infatuation or obsession. It is probably the most dangerous and powerful potion in this room."
At Malfoy and his friend Nott's skeptical smirking, Professor Slughorn nodded gravely, saying, "Oh yes — when you have seen as much of life as I have, you will not underestimate the power of obsessive love…."
"Oh, Aida…" Fitz sighed reminiscently from the table that he and Simmons had taken closest to the front of the classroom.
"Pardon?" Professor Slughorn asked in confusion.
Fitz's eyes widened slightly as he realized that he had said that out loud and not just into his wife's ear, a wife who was smirking at him and trying to hold in her laugh.
"Uh — female muggle I knew once," he sputtered out. "Very obsessive, long story, you wouldn't understand — sorry for interrupting."
"Not at all, my boy, not at all!" Professor Slughorn replied jovially, not about to reprimand his star pupil for understanding the point that he was trying to make, even if he himself didn't know the story behind it. And quite frankly, he didn't want to have to know the story behind any obsessive love, as he knew how bad it could be, which was his point exactly. "And now, it is time for us to start working."
But at that moment one of the other students asked about the golden potion that Professor Slughorn hadn't mentioned yet, and after Simmons had identified it as well, he explained how a twelve hour vial of the liquid luck was going to be the prize for the best Draught of Living Death produced that class period.
"I know it is more complex than anything you have attempted before, and I do not expect a perfect potion from anybody. The person who does best, however, will win little Felix here. Off you go!"
But through the mad scramble that everyone was making for their books and cauldrons, Simmons raised her hand and said loudly, "Excuse me, Professor Slughorn."
Everyone froze and turned to stare at her.
"Remember what we talked about at the beginning of the summer, Professor? Are you sure that these are the best instructions?"
Professor Slughorn opened his own copy of Advanced Potion Making by Libatious Borage, and read through the instructions. After several seconds he looked back up at Simmons with a look of surprise on his face.
"Well, I'll be — Hermione is right. How did I never see this before? And how then did—? How could your mother, Harry, and Severus too, make such good potions, unless...? Well, you two caught it... But —"
He paused for a second, clearly thinking hard, before asking Simmons, "You wouldn't by any chance remember how you made the Deflating Draught last year, would you?"
"Only because that is one of the potions that we found a better way to make over the summer," Simmons answered as she stood up and walked to the blackboard at the front of the classroom, where she quickly wrote down the book instructions and the best instructions that she had come up with over the summer, each labeled appropriately.
"Book and what Snape flicked up onto the board — the best that I could brew over the summer," she said when she was done, pointing in turn at the two sets of instructions.
"And I assume in class last year no one was able to achieve the light pink it was supposed to be?" Professor Slughorn asked her.
"Harry and I only got to the electric blue stage of step twelve, which was more of a deep sky blue," Simmons answered. "At the time I just thought that wizards didn't actually know what electric blue looked like because they know nothing about electricity, so that color description had to come along in the past few decades and very easily could have been incorrect. And as Snape never belittled and ridiculed us for it not being perfection, and graded us an A which is the highest that he ever gave us all year despite getting O's on our OWLs, I had no reason at the time to think that it wouldn't have turned out correctly given enough time to finish brewing it. So it wasn't until this past summer that I discovered that his, and the book that he took his instructions from, were wrong."
"I really must have a chat with Severus — I distinctly remember him making that potion perfectly, as I made sure that there was enough time in the class period I did it in to finish if one brewed it perfectly. Though now that I think back, only Severus and Lily did get it correct in my last several years. Surely Severus couldn't have forgotten how he made it himself by the time he became a professor? Well, never mind, that is for me to ask him later. For now, I guess we will be going over a few Potions basics instead of brewing the Draught of Living Death, and I will look through the rest of this book before next class to see what other lesser instructions it has. Though by the end of the year, I will be expecting all of you to be able to look at these instructions, and like Hermione here, know what they should be instead and brew that. And before you worry, Felix Felicis will still be up for grabs in tomorrow's class for this potion.
"But for now, let us look at instruction number 6 first. Your books say to cut up your sopophorous bean and add it to your stewing potion. The real purpose of this, however, is not the bean itself, but rather the juice inside the bean. And if you remember from your Herbology lessons, sopophorous beans are a marshland plant. Well, in general, marshland plants are very difficult to cut, and do not release as much of their contained juices as if you crush them. Additionally, with magical plants, using a silver instrument always helps release more juices than using any other material. So the ideal way to get the most juices with the least amount of effort is — can you tell the class, Hermione?"
"Crush the bean with the side of a silver knife or dagger," Simmons answered promptly.
"Precisely!" Professor Slughorn boomed. "Ten more points for Gryffindor! And then if you will look at the next, and final instruction, it says to stir counterclockwise until the potion turns perfectly clear. Harry, can you tell the class what it is better to do? I assume that you and Hermione worked on these potions together, from the small time I have spent around you two."
"She knows the theory behind Potions and its muggle equivalent much better than I do, but you need to add a clockwise stir after every seven stirs widdershins," Fitz answered.
"Yes! Ten more points!" Professor Slughorn replied. "And the reason is, any time you are trying to make a potion get lighter in color, it is advisable to add a stir in the opposite direction after every magical number. The more complex one wants to get with this the better the potion will turn out — for instance two stirs after the forty-ninth collective stir in the primary direction since you have the magical number twice, seven stirs of seven stirs, and there are other magical numbers besides just seven that can come into play — but not many potions will reach enough stirs for that to be relevant, and it only adds a small benefit compared the main principle of one opposite stir for every seven regular stirs.
"Write this down, write this down — it will help you greatly in your future potion-making, both in this class and in your own potions after you have graduated!"
Professor Slughorn continued on like this for the rest of the lesson, looking through the next four potions in their book and teaching the theory behind the less than ideal instructions that the book had in it, asking FitzSimmons for the correct instructions each time before teaching everyone the reason behind the difference — what Snape should have been doing from their very first year, both as the Potions instructor whose job it was not to teach them how to follow instructions but why the instructions were such as they were, and on a much more disturbing level, because he knew the correct instructions as he had rewritten this particular book and all of the others that he had used as a student while he was still in school taking Potions, and yet had maliciously kept from all of the students that he had taught in his decade and a half career as tyrant of the dungeon, preferring to belittle, ridicule, and abuse rather than help students learn how to do correctly the subject that he was literally being paid to teach them.
When the bell rang and everyone began packing up, Professor Slughorn said to them all, "In tomorrow's class we will make the Draught of Living Death for the vile of Felix Felicis, so come prepared for that — thanks to Hermione and Harry, you now all have an advantage over anyone just using the book!"
~FS~
When the next day's lesson soon arrived, Professor Slughorn immediately set them all to making the potion, informing them that since they had an entire lesson to make it, it was possible to get it completely clear before he called time and picked out the winner.
Everyone scrambled to start, all of them wanting a day's worth of luck. But just like the past five years when everyone had been operating from exactly the same directions that Snape had slapped up on the board with no theory behind why or tips on how to do things better than the posted instructions, now increased by the fact that FitzSimmons had brewed this and every other potion in Advanced Potion Making multiple times over during the summer to test out different methods, FitzSimmons were quicker and better than anyone else in the class.
When Professor Slughorn called time as class neared its end, Fitz thought that his potion still had just the faintest hint of pink color compared to Simmons' perfectly clear liquid, but Simmons insisted that he was just imagining it because he considered her the better chemist since that was part of her specialty and not his, and Professor Slughorn seemed to agree with her. For while he complimented and praised over half of the class as he looked over all of the twenty-two potions, he gasped in joy when he got to both of theirs, having saved them for last expecting them to win, and declared their potions a tie, too perfect to judge between. Something that he had apparently been expecting, as he immediately pulled out two tiny glass vials instead of just the one that he had shown them the day before, and handed them each twelve hours of luck, expounding to the mostly sullen class on how perfect the couple's potions were, that he had never seen finer work in his half a century of teaching.
Saturday evening at the end of the first week, FitzSimmons had their first meeting with Dumbledore.
"So, Harry and Hermione," Dumbledore said once they were all seated in his office. "You have been wondering, I am sure, what I have planned for you during these — for want of a better word — lessons?"
"We were curious," Simmons answered politely.
"Well, I have decided that it is time you learn what prompted Lord Voldemort to try and kill you fifteen years ago, Harry, and then for you to be given certain information relevant to that," Dumbledore said. "And to be completely honest with you, I should have done the first part — tell you why Lord Voldemort wants you dead — many years ago, perhaps even as soon as you returned to the magical world starting your education here at Hogwarts. But with the foolishness of an old man, I did not for two reasons. The most prominent being, that I cared about you too much. I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life than the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love to act. I wanted to save you more pain than you had already suffered growing up. What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy?
"And secondly, you have never encountered Lord Voldemort in the five years you have been here, and therefore we have never had a reason to discuss him, or for what I am about to finally tell you to ever come up on its own. There were multiple times over the years when it could have happened, most prominent being the TriWizard Cup being altered to send the winner, who was clearly supposed to be you, to wherever Lord Voldemort was hiding, but none of those times ever actually occurred, and you have made it to your sixth year as every other student in the castle.
"But the time has come at long last that I must tell you everything, burden though it will be, to prepare you for what lies ahead. Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts honestly more happy, well-nourished, and mature than I had been afraid you might be after leaving you on your aunt and uncle's doorstep for your protection from Lord Voldemort and his Death Eaters. And I knew that at some point I would have to tell you this story, but I thought that eleven was much too young to know. I had never intended to tell you when you were eleven — the knowledge would be too much at such a young age. Then, each year after that, as Lord Voldemort seemed no closer to returning, and you asked me no questions about why he tried to kill you when you were a baby, it was still easy to convince myself that you were still too young, despite showing knowledge beyond your years in all of your classes, and life here at the school in general, though I did begin to get twinges of guilt. Then the tragedy with the TriWizard maze occurred two years ago...and I still did not tell you, though I knew, now that Voldemort had returned, I must do it soon. Now, however, I know you have long been ready for the knowledge I have kept from you for so long.
"You see, Voldemort tried to kill you when you were a child because of a prophecy made shortly before your birth. He knew the prophecy had been made, though he did not know its full contents. He set out to kill you when you were still a baby, believing he was fulfilling the terms of the prophecy. He discovered, to his cost, that he was mistaken, when the curse intended to kill you backfired. And so, upon his return to his body, he became determined to hear that prophecy in its entirety. A weapon he spent all of last year assiduously seeking: the knowledge of how to destroy you. And sadly, I must say that he did succeed at the end of last year, though if there is a silver lining it is that the theft of said prophecy from the Ministry helped convince Cornelius that it was in fact possible, if not even probable, that Lord Voldemort really was back, and thus the Ministry's change in official position. But despite the record being stolen from the Ministry, I can still tell you the prophecy, as I was the one it was made to on a cold, wet night sixteen years ago, in a room above the bar at the Hog's Head Inn. And now, it is time for you to hear it, and understand why Voldemort wants to kill you."
Dumbledore stood up and crossed over to the black cabinet next to where Fawkes was sitting on his perch (not nailed there to keep him from vooming away), and took out a shallow stone basin with odd carvings around the edge. Setting it down on his desk in front of them, Dumbledore put the tip of his wand to his temple, and pulled out a string of glowing silvery gossamer-fine threads that stuck to the tip of his wand, which he then placed in the basin. Once inside the basin, FitzSimmons could see that it filled the bowl as an impossible substance between a liquid and a gas, bright silver in color and in constant motion, though perfectly smooth on top like glass or a lake on a perfectly calm morning. When Dumbledore prodded the substance with the tip of his wand, the ghost-like figure of Professor Trelawney rose out of it, revolving slowly with her ghost feet still in the basin, before beginning to speak in a harsh, hoarse tone completely unlike her real voice.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies...and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not...and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives...the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…"
Then she vanished back into the bowl, and Dumbledore sat back down again across from FitzSimmons. But what Simmons asked after a few seconds was not what the headmaster had expected their reaction to this life-altering information to be.
"What is that stone basin, and how does it work? I assume from what you told us about it being your memory, and then pulling them out of your temple, that the silvery strings were your memory, which would make the basin something for storing or viewing your memories once you've removed them, but — what is it exactly? Also, do you lose the memory in your head when you pull it out? Like, if you removed a memory, didn't watch it to create a new version of the memory, and someone magically destroyed the memory in the basin — assuming that can be done — would your memory be gone forever?"
After looking at her and Fitz in surprise for a second at not commenting first on the prophecy that Harry had to kill Lord Voldemort, Dumbledore answered, "It is called a pensieve. One can siphon the excess thoughts from one's mind, pour them into the basin, and examine them at one's leisure. I sometimes find, and I am sure you know the feeling, that I simply have too many thoughts and memories crammed into my mind. It becomes easier to spot patterns and links, you understand, when they are in this form."
"That's actually pretty cool," Simmons replied. "And without the risks of a Framework computer trapping you inside altered memories if you tried to use it to view specific memories, if Harry could figure out a way to even do that, as it wasn't our goal when building it, and now we prefer never touching it again after everything that happened — but I digress. What about losing memories permanently, though?"
"Removing a memory, as I did with the prophecy, does not actually remove it," Dumbledore answered. "It's more like the Doubling Charm, that it creates a perfect replica of your memory that you can view separate from the rest of your memories swirling around inside of your mind. And as you shall see next lesson, you can actually go into longer memories and see them from an outside perspective, or see other people's memories in the same way, as opposed to just hearing Professor Trelawney like in this memory."
"Okay, that's a lot safer," Fitz said.
Then Simmons said the second thing that Dumbledore never would have expected upon showing them the prophecy, though it was at least prophecy related this time.
"What does the prophecy even mean? It doesn't make any sense. Or is it poetic license that we don't get because we aren't from this world, and because it's poetic license? 'Neither can live while the other survives'? There's fifteen years that says that's completely wrong. And there only being one person who's capable of killing someone? — that's just completely ludicrous. Unless it's just a really poetic way of saying that the person who does end up killing Voldemort was born at the end of July, and in reality anyone could kill Voldemort, it'll just happen to be someone born then who Voldemort happened to mark at some point. But it mostly just seems like a really good excuse for people who could kill him not to even bother trying, because some stupid prophecy says that it'll be someone else, so they don't have to risk their life and safety doing the right thing. It's an excuse for cowardice."
As Dumbledore stared at her in shock, Fitz lobbed the headmaster an easier question so that the man wouldn't have to try to answer Simmons' questions, as the answer to those probably weren't particularly relevant in the end anyway.
"How did Voldemort know that I was the person referenced in this prophecy?" he asked. "Or am I even? All you said was that this was the reason Voldemort tried to kill me, not that I actually am this mythical hero — I just kind of made that assumption given all of the context."
"That is the odd thing, Harry — it may not have meant you at all," Dumbledore answered, knowing this one well, having expected it at some point. "Sybill's prophecy could have applied to two wizard boys, both born at the end of July that year, both of whom had parents in the Order of the Phoenix, both sets of parents having narrowly escaped Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other was Neville Longbottom. I am afraid, though, that there is no doubt that it is you. Because Voldemort chose to mark you as his equal, not Neville, giving you your scar. And notice this: he chose not the pure-blood — which, according to his creed, is the only kind of wizard worth being or knowing — but the half-blood, like he actually is. He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you."
"I would ask what made Voldemort not wait a while before trying to kill Harry, or just kill both boys to be safe, King Herod/Baby Jesus style, but we are talking about someone stupid enough to bank their entire life on this prophecy actually meaning what he thought it meant," Simmons said. "We've had experience with fortune tellers before, and it's never what you think it is based on what they show or tell you. And even that depends on whether you change the future or not, which is possible if usually not pleasant, at least in the world we come from — the rules could be different in this magical world, though the ability to change the future will still doubtlessly remain, however it must be done and however difficult it is."
"That might, indeed, have been the more practical course, except that Voldemort's information about the prophecy was incomplete," Dumbledore replied. "The eavesdropper who told Lord Voldemort the prophecy all those years ago was detected only a short way into the prophecy and thrown from the building. He heard only the beginning, the part foretelling the birth of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort. Consequently, he could not warn his master that to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you, and marking you as his equal. So Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you, that it might be wise to wait, to learn more. He did not know that you would have power the Dark Lord knows not.
"Now, speaking of power that Lord Voldemort doesn't know you have — tell me, Harry. Your scar...has it ever hurt you, especially since starting Hogwarts? First year, or fourth year, or last year especially?"
"No — it never has," Fitz answered, figuring that there was no reason to mention that from their point of view he had no scar to hurt.
"And I know I asked you about this second year when you discovered the serpent carved into the tap of Moaning Myrtle's bathroom, but have you ever seen a snake, or picture or carving or drawing of a snake, that has almost looked alive to you? Felt that you could almost even talk to the snake if you tried hard enough? Not with your mind, but through an actual language?"
"No, Sir," Fitz answered. "And Hermione looked all of that up after you told us that it's possible for some wizards to talk to snakes — I've never had any incident that would lead me to believe that I'm a parselmouth."
"And last question, Harry, I believe — have you ever had any dreams about Lord Voldemort, or visions of any kind? Seen things that you later heard came true? Got strange feelings that weren't your own, and heard a story a few days later that something had happened to Lord Voldemort that corresponded with that feeling?"
"No — definitely not," Fitz answered, shaking is head. "All my dreams are from my own long and messed up lives, and we leave the visions to Robin and her dad — they're the fortune tellers we mentioned earlier. And my feelings are definitely all my own, and no hallucinations of the evil version of myself in a nice suit and better hair, either."
Dumbledore seemed to be thinking too hard to notice the oddness of this last part, and simply muttered mostly to himself, "Huh — I really thought he transferred a part of himself to you when he gave you that scar."
"You did look back in second year like you had expected Harry to be a parselmouth, and were surprised that he hadn't felt like he could talk to the snake carving," Simmons said.
Dumbledore didn't reply, clearly still thinking to himself, before finally musing out loud, "This does change things significantly though if it is true."
He was then silent again for a while before looking back up at them and saying, "I must admit, though, that I expected the news that you are the only one who can kill Lord Voldemort to cause more of a reaction from you both. He is possibly the most magically advanced wizard who has ever lived, and I have no doubt that it will be a perilous, dangerous journey ahead of you."
"Saving the world's kind of our job," Simmons answered. "This is nothing new to us — don't ask, we're not explaining. My point is, this is more of an 'oh boy, this again' situation than you would expect out of a couple sixteen year olds. Believe me — we don't underestimate how hard it will be to kill Voldemort. We're just very, very used to having to do the impossible in life and death situations, against all odds."
"Well, I certainly hope that is true, as many would say this task is in fact impossible, and they don't even understand the full extent of how hard this will truly be," Dumbledore began, before Simmons loudly cut him off.
"But more importantly, like I said earlier — this prophecy just sounds like an excuse for people like you not to even try to kill him. Let's say this prophecy is an actual view of the real future — you now know it. So break the prophecy — change the future. It can be done. It's usually hard, and can be painful — sacrifices have to be made — but the future can be changed if you know what it is, we've done it before. And all prophecy is, is a limited glimpse of the future from the present instead of going to the future and seeing it live, and then returning to the present. But whether you go to the future and see what happens for yourself, or you get a glimpse of the future through a prophecy, it's all still the future, and it can be broken."
Dumbledore stared at her in shock, clearly not thinking alone the same lines as her. But he apparently didn't want to have a fight, or else didn't want to have to defend his position that Harry Potter had to be the one to kill Voldemort, as after several seconds he simply said, "It is late, and I would hate for you two to get caught out of bounds after curfew because of me — that, I imagine, will happen enough times this year without adding tonight to it when we needn't. Next lesson, however, which I would like to be next Saturday, we will get into the real reason that I am having these lessons with you. I simply needed to inform you about the prophecy for you to understand the importance of what I have to tell you. So until then — goodnight."
~FS~
The following Saturday evening FitzSimmons were walking across the entrance hall to the Great Hall for supper when they were stopped by Professor Slughorn.
"Harry, Hermione, just the wizards I was hoping to see! I was hoping to catch you before dinner! What do you say to a spot of supper tonight in my rooms instead? We're having a little party, just a few rising stars. I've got McLaggen coming and Zabini, along with the charming Melinda Bobbin — I don't know whether you know her? Her family owns a large chain of apothecaries."
"Sorry Professor Slughorn, we'd love to, but we have a meeting with Dumbledore tonight, so we can't make it," Fitz answered.
"Oh dear!" Professor Slughorn exclaimed, his face falling comically. "Dear, dear, I was counting on you two! Well, of course the headmaster is more important. I guess I will have to let you off this time, but you really must make the next one! Yes, yes, well, I'll see you both later!"
And with that he bustled out of the entrance hall, leaving FitzSimmons alone again to head into the Great Hall to get supper before their second meeting with Dumbledore.
A meeting that Dumbledore started out by saying to them, "Like I said last lesson, I have decided that it is time, now that you know what prompted Lord Voldemort to try and kill you fifteen years ago, for you to be given certain information. I must warn you, however, that from this point forth, we shall be leaving the firm foundation of fact and journeying together through the murky marshes of memory into thickets of wildest guesswork. From here on in, I may be as woefully wrong as Humphrey Belcher, who believed the time was ripe for a cheese cauldron."
"I'd take a cheese cauldron," Fitz muttered to himself. "Although is the cauldron made of cheese, or do you make cheese in the cauldron? Or both? Is it a cheese cheese cauldron?"
"Harry!" Simmons hissed at her husband, even if a cauldron for making cheese in sounded decent to her as well.
Dumbledore however carried on as if neither of them had spoken, saying, "Naturally I believe that I am correct, but I make mistakes just like the next man. In fact, being — forgive me — rather cleverer than most men, my mistakes tend to be correspondingly huger."
'Framework,' FitzSimmons both thought at the same time.
Dumbledore meanwhile, completely unaware of their thoughts or what the Framework, or even the Matrix were to begin with, walked over to his cabinet and pulled out the pensieve, placing it on his desk in front of them, before pouring a memory out of a crystal bottle into it.
"Now, we are about to go for a trip down Bob Ogden's memory lane. He was employed by the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. He died some time ago, but not before I had tracked him down and persuaded him to confide these recollections to me. We are about to accompany him on a visit he made in the course of his duties. Throughout this memory you will hear several of the people speaking in a hissing language, which is of course parseltongue. I will translate for you, unless hearing it yourself makes you understand it, Harry, in which case you can take over translating for Hermione. If you will stand…."
The three of them entered the memory, and watched Ogden's visit to the Gaunt residence and everything that had gone down there.
Once they returned from the memory, Dumbledore said, "Ogden apparated back to the Ministry and returned with reinforcements within fifteen minutes. Morfin and his father attempted to fight, but both were overpowered, removed from the cottage, and subsequently convicted by the Wizengamot. Morfin, who already had a record of Muggle attacks, was sentenced to three years in Azkaban. Marvolo, who had injured several Ministry employees in addition to Ogden, received six months. Now, as these names have long been forgotten by most of the wizarding world, you will probably not have recognized the significance of this family. Merope Gaunt was Voldemort's mother, and the muggle on the horse was Tom Riddle senior, eventual father of Tom Marvolo Riddle junior, better known today as Lord Voldemort."
"So Merope got her love after all, despite her father and brother's vehement disapproval — good for her," Simmons said. "And I'm kind of assuming from Senior never mentioning her specifically, only Marvolo and Morfin, that he had yet to meet her for the first time when this took place?"
"It does seem probable that he had yet to meet her," Dumbledore nodded. "However, Merope and Tom Riddle senior were not quite the love story that I believe you are imagining them to be. What we know for sure is that within a few months of the scene we have just witnessed, the village of Little Hangleton enjoyed a tremendous scandal. You can imagine the gossip it caused when the squire's son ran off with the tramp's daughter, Merope. But only a few months after their runaway marriage, Tom Riddle reappeared at the manor house in Little Hangleton without his wife. The rumor flew around the neighborhood that he was talking of being 'hoodwinked' and 'taken in.' When they heard what he was saying, the villagers guessed that Merope had lied to Tom Riddle, pretending that she was going to have his baby, and that he had married her for this reason.
"What he really meant, though, I am sure, is that he had been under an enchantment that had now lifted, though I daresay he did not dare use those precise words for fear of being thought insane. And here we must do a certain amount of guessing as to what exactly happened, although I do not think it difficult to deduce. While there are a variety of ways as a witch that she could have done it, personally I am inclined to think that she used a love potion to make Tom Riddle forget his Muggle companion and fall in love with her instead. I am sure it would have seemed more romantic to her, and I do not think it would have been very difficult, some hot day, when Riddle was riding alone, to persuade him to take a drink of water."
"So Riddle's mum was abused by her father and brother, and then went on to rape Riddle's father — sad, but not particularly surprising," Simmons sighed. "Normal cycle of abuse that you see all the time. Did she also abuse Voldemort, a cycle he continued on by abusing — well, the entire British wizarding population? And so much for me thinking that she got her love in the end."
"And did the villagers opinion of the whole thing change when they found out that she had in fact raped a baby from Tom?" Fitz asked.
"Merope did not give birth to Voldemort until a year after they were married — Tom Riddle left her while she was still pregnant," Dumbledore answered. "So it is fairly unlikely that they ever knew that she had in fact become pregnant. Because — and again, this is guesswork — but I believe that Merope, who was deeply in love with her husband, could not bear to continue enslaving him by magical means. I believe that she made the choice to stop giving him the potion. Perhaps, besotted as she was, she had convinced herself that he would by now have fallen in love with her in return. Perhaps she thought he would stay for the baby's sake. If so, she was wrong on both counts. He left her, never saw her again, and never troubled to discover what became of his son."
"Or maybe she realized the horror and pure evil of her actions, and stopped doing them," Fitz said coolly. "She finally realized that she was raping and imprisoning him, and her conscience got the best of her and she changed her ways. And also, she couldn't have possibly loved him if she kidnapped him, held him hostage, and raped him for at least three months — that is not love. Sociopathy, lust, psychopathy, something like those, sure, but the one thing that it absolutely was not is love."
"And I'm not saying it's a good thing, but can you blame Senior?" Simmons added. "The boy's mother raped him to create their child. Yes, obviously it would have been better if he had been in his son's life, best if he had been able to take him away from Merope and send her to jail for rape and kidnapping, though how he would do that to a witch of a famous family, it probably wouldn't have been possible — but it is not surprising that he wanted nothing to do with the boy. Also, you said that he returned a few months after the marriage, she didn't give birth until a year after the marriage, and the villagers never knew that she was pregnant — it's completely possible, if she didn't tell him, that he never knew that she was pregnant either, and he was just staying as far away as possible from the woman who had raped him and held him hostage for three plus months. Senior may not be at all to blame for not being in the life of a child he never had a clue had been created against his will and without his knowledge. If he had known, and took the child away from her by whatever means necessary, even if that meant killing his rapist and kidnapper, then maybe Voldemort never would have come about, and Tom Riddle junior would be teaching Care of Magical Creatures class or running a joke shop in Diagon Alley right now. But Senior is not in the least bit to blame for anything that happened, regardless of what he did or did not know — he is the victim in this tragedy, Merope is the cruel, evil villain who deserved to be locked away in Azkaban for the rest of her life or given the death penalty."
Dumbledore stared at the pair of them in shock for several long, deathly quiet seconds, clearly never having thought about Riddle's conception from a moral perspective before. But eventually, he collected himself and said, "Well, I thought about just doing this one memory tonight, but we covered everything that I think there is to learn from it at the moment fairly quickly, and the next memory is fairly short as well. Or really two memories, though one is just a short memory like the prophecy that we won't actually go into."
And with that he proceeded to show them the memories of Burke talking about something of Salazar Slytherin's that he had bought from Merope for only ten galleons when she was in the late stages of her pregnancy that proved that she was in London at the time, and then Dumbledore's own first meeting of Riddle at age eleven in the orphanage that the boy had been born in and was still living in.
As soon as they returned to Dumbledore's office, Simmons sighed, " 'I can make bad things happen to people who annoy me. I can make them hurt if I want to' — so he was always a psychopath, from childhood."
"I was certainly intrigued by him," Dumbledore replied. "Did I know that I had just met the most dangerous Dark wizard of all time? No, I had no idea that he was to grow up to be what he is. However, I returned to Hogwarts intending to keep an eye upon him, something I should have done in any case, given that he was alone and friendless, but which, already, I felt I ought to do for others' sake as much as his own.
"His powers, as you heard, were surprisingly well-developed for such a young wizard and — most interestingly and ominously of all — he had already discovered that he had some measure of control over them, and begun to use them consciously. And as you saw, they were not the random experiments typical of young wizards — he was already using magic against other people, to frighten, to punish, to control. The little stories of the strangled rabbit and the young boy and girl he lured into a cave were most suggestive…like you said — 'I can make them hurt if I want to…'.
"But as it is getting late now, and I would hate for you to get in trouble with Filch on my account, I want to draw your attention to certain features of the scene we have just witnessed, for they have a great bearing on the matters we shall be discussing in future meetings. Firstly, I hope you noticed Riddle's reaction when I mentioned that another shared his first name, 'Tom'?"
"He wanted to be unique, like his ability to talk to snakes," Simmons answered. "I assume that is at least in part why he changed from Tom Riddle to Voldemort?"
"Indeed," Dumbledore answered. "There he showed his contempt for anything that tied him to other people, anything that made him ordinary. Even then, he wished to be different, separate, notorious. Like you said, he shed his name within a few short years of that conversation and created the mask of 'Lord Voldemort' behind which he has been hidden for so long.
"I trust that you also noticed that Tom Riddle was already highly self-sufficient, secretive, and, apparently, friendless? He did not want help or companionship on his trip to Diagon Alley. He preferred to operate alone. The adult Voldemort is the same. You will hear many of his Death Eaters claiming that they are in his confidence, that they alone are close to him, even understand him. They are deluded. Lord Voldemort has never had a friend, nor do I believe that he has ever wanted one.
"And lastly, the young Tom Riddle liked to collect trophies. You saw the box of stolen articles he had hidden in his room. These were taken from victims of his bullying behavior, souvenirs, if you will, of particularly unpleasant bits of magic. Bear in mind this magpie-like tendency, for this, particularly, will be important later.
"And now, it really is time for bed."