The nature of the enemy

The Pensieve ejected Harry with a vengance, and he found himself staggering on his feet while his balance was shot to hell: seeing a young Riddle didn't help his sense of up and down any. Besides the Tom of the diary, which had been devious and murderous on his own right, Potter knew Voldemort as the noseless terror that had arisen anew from a cauldron, the one that offered Bellatrix on a silver platter only because she had disappointed him.

Breathing deeply, he opened his eyes after squeezing them shut and took in the actual environment, only to close them when everything assaulted his eyes at once.

The Headmaster's office was as over the top as always: the countless portraits kept up a constant murmuring and chattering among them, while several instruments huffed and puffed where they stood, adding a small layer of cacophony that well matched the garish colors of Dumbledore's garments: he wore a bright orange robe that warred against the royal blue of his gloves, coupled with a deep red scarf that hung over his shoulders like a ribbon of freshly spilled blood, or a tongue of quiescent flame.

The window that let Harry look over the school's grounds was open, and coupled with Fawkes absence from his perch, it was enough to make him believe that the firebird was off for a bit of flying.

"He already knew he was a wizard, didn't he?" Harry found himself chuckling as he sat in the free chair in front of the Headmaster's desk: "He only needed the word for it."

"He was ecstatic to receive confirmation of his being 'special', as it were." Dumbledore agreed as he walked by the open window, his long beard moving a bit in the cool breeze, "Of course, I resolved to keep an eye on him when at Hogwarts: his tendencies to use his power only for himself, taking from the powerless, were extremely worrying, especially when coupled with his streak of independence and thirst for power over all those that he perceived as 'lesser'. Did you notice how he immediately jumped at the opportunity of going on his own at Diagon? And his little habit of collecting trophies?"

Harry frowned as he focused on the minor details pointed out by the ancient wizard: frankly, it was far more interesting to know that even before Hogwarts he could control animals that weren't snakes, he could move stuff... just how powerful could he be? "How difficult would it be to do magic without a wand, like he did as a child?"

Frowning at the question, Dumbledore turned and sat behind his desk, taking a lemon drop and sucking thoughtfully on in: "It is a rather niche skill, not one that has any use besides a few parlor tricks." he pointed at a quill resting on one side of the table, and it immediately zoomed towards the gloved hand of the headmaster, "It takes years to learn... Harry, I must insist: Did you notice how he immediately jumped at the opportunity of going on his own at Diagon? And his little habit of collecting trophies?"

The Chosen One rather thought that those details were by far the less meaningful ones: he had expected some actual lessons in magic from Dumbledore, something to get him started on the road to bridge the gap between himself and Voldemort, this literal stroll down memory lane was perplexing, especially if the headmaster wanted to focus on apparently meaningless details.

Then again, Harry still had to see the ancient wizard to act without a plan, so, thinking about what he had just seen, he answered: "I guess that after years of hating and being hated by the muggles he grew up with, he learnt to do stuff on his own, and didn't want to depend on a stranger to confirm his being 'special'... as for the trophies, I've no idea: did the orphanage allow him toys? Or was he forced to fight the other children to have them?"

The headmaster crossed his hands over his white beard: "You can't be thinking of defending him, Harry."

The reproachful tone made Potter snort derisively while he hunched forward: "Not a chance, professor: you told me to focus on those details, and I thought that this 'lesson' was about getting to know Voldemort as a kid, so I merely speculated, I know better than most how cruel can children be... why exactly is this useful, or more necessary than me studying defensive magic?"

"Because it's fundamental to understand that there is no difference whatsoever between young Tom's character and Voldemort's." Dumbledore answered without missing a beat, his blue eyes twinkling approvingly just above the rim of his half-moon glasses: "He never needed, or wanted, a friend. The only thing he craved from those he surrounded himself with was subservience, and the absolute freedom of doing as he pleased with the lives of others."

"Months of preparation, months of effort, and my Death Eaters allowed you to smash my prophecy..." the serpentine traits of Voldemort turned into a mockery of a smile: "My reasons are my own, but seeing Dumbledore's little pet kill in cold blood... oh, how will that impact my enemies?" The memory of the night at the Ministry flashed once more in front of Harry's eyes, and he swallowed hollowly while he instinctively resorted to Occlumency to distance himself from the feelings that accompanied those images.

After a pause, the Chosen One nodded: "I can see that... but you could have told me about how Voldemort was in five minutes, instead of spending who knows how long into the Pensieve: he has the personality of a child throwing a tantrum, and he likes feeling important, so he keeps mementos? Something like that."

"Would you have given the same weight to this information without witnessing it yourself?"

Harry felt his eyebrows climb on his forehead with that: "If you had told me how important it was? I would have." How could it be that a man like Dumbledore didn't realize it? They were on a timetable, the Chosen One wasn't a match even for the Death Eaters, how was he meant to kill Riddle if he wasn't given the time to properly prepare?

Then, with the clarity born from Occlumency, and the words about mementos in his head, he felt himself pale: "As a child, he kept trophies, but while spectacular with magic, he could hardly know how to use it..."

Feeling somewhat the kind of epiphany that his pupil was going through, Dumbledore limited himself to smile: how refreshing it was to see a student excel. This wasn't a classical subject, of course, yet it appeared that Harry was jumping ahead on the curriculum.

"How would his trophies turn out once he had a few years to study magic?" he asked himself, his mind running a mile a minute, making jumps that left common logic far behind, relying on the instinct that had been shaped through constant life-threatening situations. The instinct that had, in hindsight, been wrong just as much as it had been right: he had guessed correctly when Snape would go for the Stone in his first year, but it was Quirrel instead. He had figured out how to access the Chamber of Secrets, but Lockhart was a fraud, a dangerous one. He had been able to go where and when he was needed in his third year, and only the certainty given to him by the nature of the paradox allowed him to cast the Patronus.

"Isn't a diary a memento by definition?" he asked with a whisper, his eyes looking dead as he stared in utter dread at the headmaster's face: his expression was positively exploding with pride.

"It is." Albus answered simply, and those words fell with the weight of the entire sky over Harry's shoulders. He suddenly was feeling as bone-tired as he had the night at the Ministry, as defeated as he had been when his first wand was vaporized.

The headmaster however, kept talking: "You asked me more than once why I didn't try to kill him, and now that you've so spectacularly deduced what I would have needed months to explain, no doubt thanks to the clarity of thought that Occlumency can occasionally deliver, you see my conundrum."

Harry cradled his head into his hands, and he found himself pressing the heel of his palms into his eyes after pushing aside his glasses: he had managed to not think about the basilisk or 16-years-old Riddle for years, and now it was as if he was once more in the Chamber of Secrets. Instead of a well-defined monster however, there were now shadowy objects through which Voldemort could come back to life: "How do we know that another diary hasn't succeeded where the one I destroyed failed?"

"Oh, you know as well as me that Voldemort would never sink so low as to surrender his name and position: if one of his other trophies managed what the diary attempted, we would have known...but I think that it's enough for one evening." Albus changed the topic with the jarring rhythm that had managed to earn him the title of 'King of the Barmy': "I was saddened to hear that you dropped Potions, my boy: didn't we speak of how sacrificing your education would only serve you ill on the long run? Professor McGonagall was quite worried, as I am, by your grim countenance."

Harry, still coming to terms with what he had been led to figuring out by the conversation planned by the headmaster, found himself snorting derisively: "Neither can live while the other survives: my first aim is to achieve the possibility of having 'a long run', professor, potions won't help me fighting, it will only take time that I could spend studying more practical things."

"Harry..." Albus sighed, sadness radiating from him like heat from a fire.

"With all due respect, professor." the Chosen One interrupted him with the same determination he had shown several times before, and finally released his head from the cradle of his hands, his green eyes dully meeting the blue ones of the ancient wizard: "I spent five years being belittled during the lessons of a subject that is as idiotic as it looks: I understand nothing of it, and I still managed an Exceed Expectations on my O.W.L. if that isn't a sign that I don't need the lessons, I don't know what it is."

After taking a deep breath, Harry let out another of the cheerless chuckles that he was growing accustomed to: "And of course this year Snape would be teaching Defence... I just can't get a break from him, can I?"

"Professor Snape, Harry." Dumbledore reprimanded the much younger wizard, only receiving a derisive snort in turn.

"Well, at least he's teaching, I'll give you that: it'd be an improvement, if I didn't have to see his face."

"Harry!" there was a note of censure now in the headmaster's voice, "That is quite enough, don't you think? We were talking about potions."

The Chosen One barely held back on the urge of rolling his eyes, deciding to simply lean back in his chair. Copying the ancient wizard, he chose to change topic: "This... history lessons, how are they meant to help us win the war?"

"Harry..."

"I hardly think I'll be able to foretell his every move only because you showed me his past, professor." Harry speculated while glancing at the tall ceiling, "So 'know your enemy' is out. If you knew where the other diaries were, you'd have taken care of them already..." the eyes of the two wizards met once more, accusing green and aloof blue: "You knew of the other diaries since the end of my second year... had any luck?"

Dumbledore remained still for a few seconds, his exceptional mind working through what he had been told before nodding to himself. With deliberate motions, he opened a drawer of his desk, grasped something, and placed it on the desk in front of Harry, who blinked in confusion.

It wasn't a diary: a chipped black stone was embedded in a golden ring, scratched by age.

His green eyes jumped towards the headmaster, who looked tired all of a sudden: "Without understanding, there can be no victory, and we're forced to repeat the mistakes of the past..."

Ignoring the pointless obfuscation, Harry stood from his seat and hovered above the broken artifact on the desk. Without touching it, the Chosen One framed what he was seeing with the revelations of the evening.: "They don't even have to be diares, have they? They could be anything, he could have made twenty as well as a thousand... how... just how are we meant to find them?"

"You had also asked me why I needed you to accompany me to meet my old colleague." Dumbledore seemed to deflate further as he let his pupil push forward and tke the conversation where the lessons were meant to end, months later.

"He knows?" a cold light seemed to shine from the green orbs of the Chosen One: "How? And why was I needed when you hired him?"

"I told you before." Albus spoke deliberately as he studied the young, inquisitive wizard in front of him, the man that was undoubtedly tired, but that had found new energy now that a problem that looked like it could be solved appeared in his reach: "You're famous and powerful, he already asked you to join him and his first selection of students during the train ride to Hogwarts, did he not?"

"What does this have to do with..."

"Given how this lesson completely derailed my plans," the headmaster smiled softly to take any bite out of his words, "I guess we need to see one last memory, no, do not worry, it is a brief one, but something that will make clear, just what we are dealing with."

The ancient wizard rose tiredly from his seat and walked towards the cabinet where he had been storing all he could about Voldemort: his gloved fingers skittered over the vials until he chose one, and after taking out the memory of Wool's Orphanage, storing it in its proper place, he dumped his last choice into the Pensieve: "This memory belongs to Professor Slughorn, and it took me a while to cajole him into surrendering it: it is by far the most important of this collection, and it is also a fake."

"He gave you a fake?" Harry asked for clarifications, the familiar rage that he had been growing since Sirius' death simmering awake in his gut and making the air around him flutter as if too close of a source of heat. His eyes shone coldly, as if reflecting the deadly light of the green curse that he had used on Bellatrix: "He's protecting Voldemort?"

"Oh, nothing like that, I assure you." Dumbledore's attempt at levity fell short: "He modified his own memory, because I think he is ashamed of the true sequence of events..."

"And you had to cajole him into giving you this fake?" Harry wasn't going to be forgiving of a man that stood on his path to Voldemort, no matter the reason: "Couldn't you read his mind, or use Veritaserum?"

"Professor Slughorn is an extremely capable wizard." the blue eyes of the headmaster didn't twinkle as he took notice of the fury that so readily burned in his young charge: "He is well prepared against both those lines of attack: and magic dealing with memory can be finicky in the best of circumstances, an Occlumens of his caliber... he must willingly give up the real memory, and this is why I hoped you'd be willing to follow his lessons."

The ancient wizard limited himself to shaking his head when Harry made to object: "This memory talks about a 'Horcrux'. After you, my boy."

Still seething with rage, the Chosen One put his head on the Pensieve.

AN

I had to think real hard to find a way not to go over the Pensieve-meetings throughout the rest of the year: one option was to go over the different reactions of Hermione and Ron, but it'd still be marching over elements that we all already know. So I simply had Harry do one of his 'it's Malfoy's fault, I can feel it' in an actually meaningful situation: Occlumency and his changed personality are enough, in my opinion, to justify this development.

Frankly, the first time I read the Half-Blood Prince, I was stumped after the first Pensieve-meeting between Harry and Dumbledore. The whole chapter reaches a climax when the headmaster points out the two characteristics of child-Riddle, underlining how he is the same now that he is an adult, and then... stops.

The two characteristics are the disinterest in friendships (framed as the evil trait of a man that only wants to rule over others), and his keeping of trophies: canonically Harry goes to the point of comparing the harmonica of Child-Riddle to the Ring. And Dumbledore closes the meeting by saying that the harmonica had always been only a harmonica.

The whole sixth book is an exercise in exasperation: Dumbledore could have crammed every memory in the first week. He was dying, and he didn't tell Harry that he needed to take a memory from Slughorn until after Christmas... what the hell? Then again, in canon Harry is perfectly happy to let Horace 'collect him' when the headmaster tells him to, despite his proudly stating that 'he doesn't want to be used' to the Minister when he more or less ambushes him at the Burrow.

So, I hope that nobody feels like this chapter was too much of a stretch, and that the conversation itself flowed smoothly despite the changing topics.

Opinions? Let me know!