Chapter 8

When you're me, and I don't think that you are, unless I've forgotten writing this and am now reading it for the first time, you don't expect to run into anyone you know. Not because it's a big world, but because you don't know anyone. And haven't been anywhere but maybe two places. And don't get out much, as far as you can remember. I mean, someone would have to come to you. And what are the chances of that?

Someone had jammed a cup of tea into Dumbledore's hand-and-a-half as he sat at the table, shaking his head and mumbling to himself. Hermione was sitting next to him, looking horrified and taking notes. I assumed that in order to preserve the authentic tone of his words she would be using a crayon. Bits of it were intelligible to me, but not so that I could understand them, if that make any sense.

"They should all be gone … destroyed," was a little snippet I heard. "He was thought to be dead, the first one of them gone," was another. "How could it have been wrong all this time?" was yet another.

Hermione said, "What are you saying, Headmaster? They're all gone, we destroyed them all and then Neville killed him, it wasn't wrong!"

"But he was the first one, the one Tom never meant to make…"

"What…what do you mean, he was the first one? Why is this the first I'm hearing of this?" Her voice was increasing in volume and intensity. "Is this another thing you kept from all of us?" She stood up. "We all risked our lives…people died…and you still had to keep your secrets?"

"I…" The old man whispered, then stopped.

"'I'," my father said, loudly. "It's always centered on you, isn't it? Your beliefs, your plan for everyone, your grand gestures, your operatic failures, your bloody drama. Everyone's to be a pawn in your chess game. A foot soldier. Expendable, as long as your agenda is fulfilled."

"How can you say that, James?" Dumbledore said, his words almost slurred. "We have all sacrificed. I lost my hand to this horrible dark magic…"

"You went on your own," Hermione shrilled, "you told no one, you know we could have found a way to nullify the curse but you wanted to do it on your own!"

"Tom was my responsibility, he was my fault…" Dumbledore's voice was lowering, thickening.

"Then why would you presume to be the one best suited to fix it, if it's your fault he did what he did?" Ginny grated. "Why should anyone trust your judgment ever again?"

"You don't know what you're talking about." His voice was darker. The room felt a little warmer than it had a moment before. I didn't like that much. Even though I didn't know what anyone was talking about myself.

"I haven't been proven so wrong before, Headmaster," she returned, and I was fairly sure that if there were any rugs in the room, they'd have joined the one upstairs. "Who are you to tell me what I know? I may not be a famous, powerful wizard, but with my meager skills and only my little friends from school to help, I was able to find three of those ugly things and destroy them." Her viciously red hair. Her lips firm and her brows knitted. She was a lightning bolt, she was iron.

I was wondering why they'd given him such hot tea. His teacup was almost bubbling.

Oh.

"Hey, cut that out," I said.

His gaze flicked on me, like I'd awakened him suddenly. He sighed, closed his eyes for a moment, then absently picked up his cup.

"You are not seeing me at my best," he said in a subdued tone. Before I could warn him, he took a sip and immediately sprayed it on the table.

"You have to watch that," I said.

He gave a weak chuckle as he cleaned up his mess by waving his wand. "Ginevra, you have a point. No one does more damage than the person who believes he can do no wrong."

"It must be nice to feel that way, every once in a while," came a voice from the door. "It sounds very liberating." Most of us turned, and there stood a blonde woman, removing her outer robes.

"Oh, Deasil," Ginny began, "This is Luna Lovegood. Luna, this is…"

"We've met," I said. What are the chances.

"You have not!" Hermione said. She seemed a little irritated.

"Yes, we met in Manhattan at the Portkey office," she said.

Ginny was fresh from being angry, but she still had a smile available. "Got him ready for us, did you," she said wryly.

"Oh, no, he's like that all on his own," she said fondly, and she came up to me and gave me a peck on the cheek, like a hummingbird sipping rainwater. "Are things any more sensible?" she asked me.

"Tolerably," I said. "Did you find what you were after?"

"Well, it's curious," she said, and I thought, what she thinks is curious will surely confound everyone else in the room. "I had a bit of a tour through the sewers of New York City, it's a hotbed of cryptomagical life, you know, but a few hours into it I realized that something much more interesting was doubtless happening over here, so I returned immediately. I haven't missed anything, have I?"

"Maybe nothing so engaging as a sewer, but often twice as fragrant," I said. The twins snickered. "Oh, and I love my family, and I think the Weasleys are good folks even though some of them want to poke me with – sorry, that's right, they want to 'hex' me until I make sense of all of this for them, and also Arthur's a man, which is probably not news to you, and this guy –" I gestured to Dumbledore " –is realizing how many mistakes he's made although I don't really understand a word of it, and I really like Ginny."

Ron's head came up abruptly, followed by Charlie's and Bill's. It reminded me of a nature program I'd watched before the (apparently not typical) gorilla movie, with a large number of hole-dwelling creatures that stood on their hind legs when they thought a predator was coming.

Luna said, "I imagine that things will seem like that for a while, coming at you all at once, but almost everyone wants you here. James and Lily become all tender when they look at you. I watched them do it just now. And the boys think you're funny, except Percy, even though they're wondering about you and their sister. I think that even the Headmaster is a little glad to see you, even though he knows now that he's been wrong all this time and all that we fought to destroy is still with us."

Dumbledore winced a little, then went back to cooling his tea down. Ginny was looking back and forth at each of us and grinning. Then she frowned.

"Okay, so – wrong about what?" I said, clapping my hands together.

My mother came over to me. "There's more to tell you about, darling. If you're up to it, we can continue filling you in, but it won't be easy … for any of us," she added with a look around at the Weasleys. "If any of you don't want to revisit this…"

"It's all right by me," Bill said. "He needs to know, and I want to be here." Charlie and the others nodded, all but Percy, who kept his head down.

"Pillock", Ginny said under her breath.

"I heard that," Percy said morosely.

"Do you want to hear a few other things?" she said a bit more loudly.

"Ginny," Ron said, "There'll be time for that later."

I thought about how that wasn't a reprimand. It was more like a promise. They got along. I thought that Ron was probably a good brother.

"Arthur?" My mother asked, turning to look at him.

He fiddled with his shirtsleeve and asked tremulously, "Are you sure he needs to hear about this? The poor dear…"

"I think it is important for Deasil to understand our lives, and all of this. Why he was gone," she said with a subtle emphasis Arthur didn't miss, "and why he's here." He nodded his head and clasped his hands together on the table.

"Okay," my mother said, and she sat down, motioning me to as well. Luna perched on the knee of one of the twins.

She said, "Molly Weasley…that's the children's mother, and Arthur's wife – we were very close. She'd already had Bill, Charlie, Percy and the twins when we met – she was a very loving and strong woman who adored her children and others as well. I hope I learned something from her about how to be a good mother."

Arthur patted her hand unexpectedly. "The children all love you," he said. "You've done so very wonderfully with them."

"Thank you – Arthur," she said, a little flustered. "I love them as well.

"Some years ago an evil wizard, a dark wizard, began to come to power. He was extraordinarily skilled with dark magic, and he also gathered a great deal of support from wizards who agreed with his ideology, which essentially boils down to a warped belief that wizards and witches who had never intermarried with non-magical people were genetically superior. It's ironic, because he himself had a non-magical father, and indeed most of us are intermarried or from non-magical families…but he hated the man, and I suppose it's not surprising that that would carry over into his prejudice."

"So he felt that his followers were superior to him?"

She gave me a bemused look. "Probably not. Though he did have contempt for pretty much all of them. In any event, when things started getting worse, and he began killing people who didn't support his views, a number of people got together and formed a resistance, called the Order of the Phoenix. Together we fought this wizard on many –"

"You can say his name," Ginny interrupted, "You fought him three times and survived, remember?"

"Ginny…"my father said.

"No, she promised me," Ginny said firmly. "If I was possessed by that bastard and I can say his name, you ought to be able to. We had…a deal", she added, in a low voice.

"She's right," my mother said, "I'm being foolish. His name was Tom Riddle, but he called himself Lord Voldemort."

"And people actually went along with that?" I asked.

"What?" Ten points.

"Some guy who hates himself gets together a gang of followers who by his rules are better than he is, and he says, 'Hey guys, I know my name's Tom, and that's who my mail's addressed to and the phone bill's in that name, but it lacks a certain… pizzazz, I don't know, so can you all just sort of call me 'Lord' for a while? Sort of a boost in the old ego department. Oh, Lord what? Well, let's see, what sounds evil …"

Bill seemed amused. The older people in the room, however, and I include Hermione as she is often old beyond her years, just stared at me like a bat had crawled out of my nose. It got a little quiet.

"What?" I said. Ten points to the other team. "Is there a problem saying this guy's made-up name? Okay, let's call him Tom."

It wasn't getting any better.

"Oh. You said he killed people."

"Yes, he did," my mother said softly. "It's hard for us to be flippant about it when we lost so much."

"We lost so much already, but we didn't lose everything," Bill said. "Whenever his name comes up – or rather doesn't even come up, but sends its bloody representative - everyone goes back to how it was, heads down and fearful, and I hate it. I hate seeing you all like that. Even though he's dead you're still acting like he's right around the corner. All of us, when it was over, we called him every name you can imagine and a few that only Fred and George could come up with. We danced on his grave, you might say. And if he walked in here right now I'd still call him a twisted, manky old bastard. And not the Bastard-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Tom. Tom the bastard. Tom the shit who was knocked tits-up by Neville."

"William Weasley," Arthur said faintly. "Language."

Luna turned and regarded Arthur, her eyes luminous.

"Bill's speaking for a lot of us, " Charlie said, and I felt them aligning, the family strength, and it was something I admired and wanted. "The man was a terrorist, isn't that what they call them, Deasil?" I shrugged, feeling slightly stupid. "Anyway, he used fear at every opportunity to bend people to his will, and he's dead and gone now, and still –"

Dumbledore spoke. "He was dead, but he's not gone."

"What the hell do you mean by that?" Charlie barked.

"He's right," Hermione said, at the edge of tears. "We need to let Lily finish."

My mother took a deep breath. "Thank you, Hermione. Tom had a special hatred for anyone of a purely magical heritage who didn't agree with him – he couldn't imagine it, couldn't accept it. So many people were attacked and killed, or made to do his bidding through torture, blackmail or the use of an illegal spell known as the Imperius Curse, which forces a person to do someone else's bidding. We began to fight back. His followers began wearing black robes and masks and the attacks became more and more horrible. They killed entire families," she said, now almost whispering. "We knew that we and the Weasleys were on the list of targets and we prepared as best we could.

"The first time Tom came with a group of his followers, but we were ready – he was not prepared for resistance. Your father and I, the Weasleys, Remus Lupin and Alice and Frank Longbottom were all waiting. We incapacitated all of the Death Eaters before Tom himself stepped in."

I almost hated asking it. "Did he name them?"

"Deasil, you have to stay with this."

"But why eaters of death, did they want to…live on it?"

"It's a fair question," Dumbledore said. "Tom feared death, as much as he feared anything. I believe that his name for his followers was a way for him to feel like he was conquering death. It was certainly his overriding obsession."

"Sounds like he just made a pack of worse monsters to attack the things he was afraid of," I said.

"To be sure," Dumbledore said. "Lily?"

I loved her name. I was sorry she had to stir all of this up, and was thinking that having no memory was better in some ways than having a head full of bad ones.

"He fought us and lost that day – we were able to fend him off, but barely. He showed us what he believed power to be before he left, though, by killing the Death Eaters who'd failed him, killing them without a second thought. We were to face him twice more. Once the Longbottoms were with us, and the next time – they'd already been – " She stopped.

My father said, "They'd been tortured into insanity by some of his followers."

"That's horrible," I said simply. In this case, "simply" should be read as "stupidly" and perhaps "inadequately". Words are sometimes useless, not as good as silence.

"They were good friends, and they were faithful to us until the end," he said.

"So…they tortured them because why?"

"The Longbottoms had information they wanted."

I was beginning to feel like everyone was skirting around things, and wondering why.

"Mum…Dad… I want you to assume that I'll keep asking questions until you finally tell me what's going on. I want you to maybe imagine you have already told me everything, and that I have asked you for a recap. Can you just…say whatever it is and get on with it?"

"I'm sorry, Deasil," my father said. "This is hard for us, but we reckon it'll be hardest on you."

"Compared to what?"

He gave me a look of what I think was sympathy, mixed with resignation. The sympathy was the worst part. He knew this was going to hurt but he had to do it. That was a little scary to me at that moment. "Right. The Longbottoms knew where we were, and consequently where you were."

"What does it matter where I was?"

"It has to do with a prophecy that was made before you were born. The prophecy said that a child would be born who had the power to vanquish Tom, and identified the child as one of two possible people – you or Neville Longbottom. Tom decided it was you and made it his mission to find you – and kill you."

"Uh…uh…oh, what the hell, go on," I said, trying to sound game.

"We don't know why he chose you," my mother said, "but we know that he was wrong. As it turned out, it was Neville that would kill him, not you."

Arthur's head was in his hands.

"But Tom believed it, and we'd found out about his intent from a spy we had in his midst, so we invoked a charm, the Fidelius charm, to hide you from him. Essentially that's like telling a friend a secret, that then makes it impossible for anyone else to know the secret. Our secret was our house in Godric's Hollow, where we were hiding with you. The only people who knew where it was after we cast the charm were us, Arthur and Molly Weasley, and our friends Peter Pettigrew and … Sirius Black. Oh, Merlin, James." My mother looked horrified.

"In good time, Lil," my father said tensely, glancing at Dumbledore.

She sighed and I took her hand, feeling very sorry for her at the moment. I looked her right in the eye and tried to appear solid, unwavering and ready. Okay, I was new to acting. Maybe it didn't work, but the thought was there.

She returned my gaze for a few seconds, then squeezed my hand. "Arthur, was he always this sweet?"

"Always," Arthur said.

I didn't have any room in my head for that, and spoke to my mother. "So I was hiding with you…"

"Yes, up until one night, October thirty-first, when we were – were drawn away from the house – Peter said he had to tell us something about Sirius, and so we left you with Molly…" Her eyes were filling up and I knew what it was this time. "Tom…he came into the house like there was nothing guarding it, and went upstairs to find you in your crib, and Molly standing between you and him." The room was full of the sound of jagged breaths, with Ginny loudest in my ear. "He went to cast a killing curse at you, and she threw herself in front of it. It struck her head, and she must have fallen to the floor right there."

No one spoke for a moment.

"Then…"she spoke again. "He turned his wand on you. None of us knows what happened next, but somehow the spell didn't … it backfired on him. You survived, but he was killed instantly. We found … remnants of his body near Molly's, and you were holding the edge of your crib and screaming. You had a wound on your forehead, and that's what gave you your scar."

I had to have a moment to think, a moment to let all of this sink in, a moment to feel the weight of what they'd told me and find my place in all of it.

I didn't take that moment. "Neville Longbottom's parents... are insane now, because they were trying to protect me. The Weasley family... are without their mother, because she was trying to protect me. Arthur abducted me and kept me hidden for fourteen years because he was trying to protect me. And now you're saying…that this is all because someone misinterpreted a fortuneteller."

Ginny's face was white. I couldn't stand to look at her. Maybe it wasn't my fault, but it was because of me. Now here was a distinction I could wallow in to distraction. I was wondering why I'd been brought back into this life, just so I could take responsibility for everyone's pain and suffering.

But wait a minute. There was something worse about all this than my being the reason behind some of this. It was that it was all a mistake. This homicidal bigot had decided that the world revolved around a fortune cookie and then misread it. This was all pointless. It felt like I'd maybe had a destiny, once, but it had been cancelled. Everyone showed up bright and early, took their places and waited around for the show to start, but it didn't happen because we were in the wrong theater entirely. The world wilted around me, the things I wanted, my parents, this beautiful woman whose life always tilted towards loss and hurt because of some stupid mistake that stuck to me, cloyingly, like a dank scent that I could not wash off.

"Useless," was all that I could manage.

"That depends," came the voice I'd least expected to hear.

Turning my head took everything I had. Where I might have expected a wand or a fist approaching my face, there was something far more piercing.

Her eyes.

You think I hate you, that I hold you responsible. Maybe a part of me wants to, but it's not the best part. I'm trying to see my mother's intent, her love, when I see you. Her sacrifice, her will. And everything else I see when I look at you. And this is your life. You decide if it's useless or not. No one can tell you. Now don't fight me, you git.

How one can go from being unable to look at someone to being unable to stop, and so rapidly, was beyond me. A torrent of words and wishes roiled up within me, how do I thank you, can I have another hug, can we get rid of these people now and get back to us because I know we can make sense of this together.

"Git?" I asked.

"Foolish person," she said.

That surely seemed a little weird to everyone else in the room.

Ron said, "If you two are done calling each other names…"

We both laughed. It seemed wrong, but there was nothing we could have done to stop it. A strange sound in this somber room, kind of like when you're at a dinner party and it's quiet and you're wondering why it's so quiet and formal-seeming when no one said anything about it being like that before you came and so you're wondering if someone died and you're a little unnerved by the lack of conversation and are trying to be quiet too and then your fork rakes across the plate and it's this bright flash of color in the dimness and everyone looks at you like, "How could you," and it was just a scrape, not like you had a fit of Tourette's and shouted an obscenity about the hostess or anything, but clearly my mother was taken aback.

I'm not sure why, but I didn't want to explain it.

"But it wasn't useless!" Thanks, Arthur, for changing the subject. "I did what I was supposed to do, and he was safe!" He rose and left the room suddenly. We were left with the sound of him banging around in the kitchen.

Dumbledore spoke. "Arthur had his very good reasons for doing what he did. Unfortunately, he too was inclined to find his own meaning in things, even if it was apparently not in his power to avoid doing so. Jeff was very reluctant to part with this, but when I assured him there would be no repercussions for his involvement, he changed his mind." He had drawn from his robes a small vial full of a silvery substance. "This may explain some of Arthur's actions of fourteen years ago – though it cannot account for all of it."

"Will it hurt?" I asked. This seemed to be a sensible question to ask of strange men holding vials and saying they'll solve your problems.

"No," he said.

"Well then, bottoms up."

"Ah…no, we don't drink it."

"Is it topical?"

He looked as if he wanted to make a joke, but was controlling the urge. "No. This is a memory. We can all view it together, if all are willing."

A murmur of agreement came from everyone except Percy. Dumbledore waved his wand and a large ornate bowl appeared on the table. He said, "Rather than enter the memory, I thought we might view it projected from the Pensieve itself."

"I imagine that's best," Lily said. "Oh, just a moment, let me see to the baby." He'd apparently been asleep in a bassinet in the corner and had awakened, a little fussy. She announced that he was hungry and that she'd be back in a moment, and that we should go on without her.

My father caught my eye and whispered to me, "She may have had enough for right now."

I nodded and turned back to the bowl. Dumbledore said, "As closely as I can determine, this memory is from the same night that Tom gave H – Deasil his scar."

"It's silent," my father muttered to my amusement as Dumbledore dimmed the lights with a wave (I noticed he didn't seem to ever say anything, like abracadabra, to make anything happen. Not that I did either) and poured the little vial's contents into the center of the bowl. It began to swirl and foam, and a silvery mist rose up from it, rising to about the height of a child. Looking at the mist made me think of seeing the clouds overhead on the way to the Potter house - how if you look at something long enough all kinds of things appear in it, and in this case it was kind of intense, I could almost make out a figure moving, several figures, that one looked like a man standing, and then I realized I was really seeing this, a room, a bar, and several men around a table, and a man at the bar, wiping a glass with his apron. The mist cleared mostly – and the figures were three-dimensional, faintly colored and very lifelike, and what the hell, this was real, it had happened, it was a memory.

The men around the table were drunk, and one of them seemed to be holding court. I leaned in to hear him but couldn't make anything out. Abruptly his voice jumped out at me and we all started.

"Sorry, it was turned down," Dumbledore said.

"It was the real thing," the man was saying, "I swear, they were as close to me as you. Her voice went all funny and she started banging on about one with the power…"

"Why's it always you that finds these things out then, eh?" One of his companions was skeptical, but in a joking manner. "Some barmy seer gets bitten by the scrying bug and you just happen to be there to take it all in?"

"These things are out there for them's … for those who listen to…hear 'em. D'you know what I mean?"

"I know someone was there on half-price pint night," another man chuckled, garnering a round of laughter from the table.

"You … you lot know, that of all of us, I … hold my liquor best out of all of you." This last emphasized by a gesture with his glass, which slopped on the table, to the great amusement of his audience. No one seemed to notice the door to the pub opening behind them, revealing a man I thought I recognized, but wasn't sure. He had red hair and a vacant look on his face, but I would almost swear…

It was Arthur.

I'd never seen him this way, undisguised. He was of medium height, round-shouldered, with a countenance that, had it not been looking a bit empty, might have been kind. It was very strange seeing him with short red hair and manly arms, and he looked a little weather-beaten. His hair was a little messy, and he appeared to have a faint burn mark on his head. He wandered into the room, stumbled into a chair and sat down, looking bewildered.

Apparently he'd been quiet enough that the others hadn't noticed him.

"'f you'd seen her, you'd know. She stiffened up, and her eyes – " he gesticulated to illustrate "-rolled all up in her head, you see, and her voice were all deep and raspy, and she out and said it, plain as could be, so anyone could hear it."

"So why didn't anyone else hear it, then?" one of them said.

"Ah, but that's the point, innit?" he said, his voice dropping as close to a conspiratorial tone as he could drunkenly manage. "Someone did. It was Dumbledore."

Why was it that right at the center of all of the mess of my life … I just met this man, and here I found he'd had his fingers in it from the beginning.

"The Dumbledore?"

"The same. He was sitting with her, right, when she said the whole thing. Even he looked surprised, and that…is saying something."

The memory Arthur was sitting perfectly still, a curious look on his face. He would periodically look at his arms and hands with puzzlement, then seem to sort of forget about it and go back to a vacant expression. In fact, this went on all the time that this fellow was talking. This was the conspiracy? This was the secret society, the think tank that spawned history. I felt a mild headache coming on.

"Well, let's hear it, then," one of them said.

"Right then. 'The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches... Errr… Born to those who have thrice defiled him, born in the, err, seventh month and that ... And the Dark Lord marks him as his equal, right, but he will have some power the Dark Lord doesn't ... And, and err, one must die at the hand of the other because either one can live or... Or no one survives ... Err, the one with the power to, you know, vanish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."

The men around the table had become aware of Arthur standing up unsteadily during the recitation, and had become fascinated as he recited the last line of the prophecy, with a few differences, along with the man who was standing.

The standing man lurched around and took Arthur in. He clearly thought he'd found an ally to lend some credibility to his tale. "Yeah, mate, you know, you know it's true, yeah?"

"True," Arthur said, and I heard his natural voice clearly for the first time, though it was dull, like a bad copy of the standing man's. "A boy … I know this boy."

The man spun back around to face his audience, perhaps a little too fast because he lost his balance for a moment. "See? I… I bloody told you didn't I? What? Come again?" he said, spinning back to Arthur. "Did you say you know the boy?"

"I know the boy?" Arthur replied. He was not quite focused on the man in front of him. "The son of … friends of ours…"

"Well!" the man said loudly. Then "Well." He clearly was not expecting this level of corroboration.

"Have to help him." Arthur's voice was just at the edge of clear.

This went over like a lead balloon. In my relatively brief life that I can remember, I've managed to figure out that most people are all talk.

"Well, we…we all…want to help, don't we."

"Course we do," one of the others said to Arthur, not sounding at all sincere. "But, err…maybe since you know him, maybe you should be the one to, err …"

"Save him," the standing man said. Arthur's eyes seemed to focus for a moment.

"Save him," Arthur repeated. I was beginning to wonder how drunk these men were, that they couldn't see something was wrong with Arthur.

"Yeah, you know," the insincere one said, beginning to warm to an idea in his head, apparently happy to be involved in something even if he didn't understand what it was. "Maybe he needs to go into hiding or summat. Somewhere far away, you know."

"Hey, how about New York? I've always fancied a trip to New York."

I hated this.

"Right then, New York it is, and you take him there, and then… then what?"

"Have to change his name, don't you."

"Hard to hide otherwise," Insincere said. The man to his left drunkenly swayed against him, and he shoved him away, saying, "Keep clear, you bastard."

"And a bit of a disguise, yeah?"

"I'll… I'll take him to New York," Arthur said, his voice mimicking their tone, though stiffly, as if he didn't understand how inflection worked.

I really hated this.

"We'll all go, right?" Insincere said. "Sag off work, right?"

"Well, I mean…" The third man, who'd been quiet up until now but for laughing, had his turn at Arthur. "We'll, we'll be along, but we'll be invisible, right, we'll be right there all the time, though you won't see us or anything, we'll be like, just over the shoulder…" A fresh round of snickering from Insincere.

"Over the shoulder, yes," Arthur said.

"And what else, oh, he would need to –"

"Oi mate," the standing man said, trying to regain the floor, "d'you know only yesterday –"

"Forget bloody yesterday," Insincere cut in – they were on a roll.

"I wouldn't mind forgetting what happened last night, that would be all right," said the third man, almost but not quite drowning out Arthur's voice.

"Forget yesterday," he said.

There went my life.

Ginny gasped next to me, and her hand landed on my shoulder and squeezed, very hard.

"Right," Insincere said, "but what if, you know, what if he isn't, you know, the one, and it's some… some other bloke?"

"Well then," the standing man said, trying to at least attain the spirit of the gathering, "at least he'd be safe, and could come back when the … the time is right."

"All right, you lot," Jeff said disgustedly from across the bar - it was late in the evening and last call. "You and your master plans to save the world; d'you think you might wait around maybe a few more bloody years before making a move? Honestly. Like watching grass grow. Orders!"

"Orders," Arthur said, and it made my skin prickle. Now there was a horrible clarity in his voice.

"Here, you've had enough – you got enough wherever you came from, didn't you," Jeff said to him briskly.

"We…we did," Arthur said, getting to his feet.

"Go on then, doesn't some one need you somewhere?"

"Yes, he does." The expression on Arthur's face took me by surprise, but told me everything.

He was crying.

He didn't want this any more than we did.

The figures became blurry, then dissipated. I closed my eyes and focused on the hand on my shoulder. A solid hand, the contact undeniable, real. No one could say it wasn't true or that it had happened for the wrong reason or that she was only balancing so she could pull her shoe on. Whatever had happened before this, however maddening and pointless and accidental, was past, and I wanted it to stay there, dead and done. I wanted to feel that her hand on my shoulder proved that I was not useless. Maybe I should have wanted to go pound on a few local drunks just to make me feel better, but maybe not. Maybe all I wanted was this hand on my shoulder.

What I got was Albus Dumbledore, master of magic, eternity and the obvious. "You see, it was all an accident," he said.

When his beard began smoking a moment later, it was no accident.

A/N: I know there are a few unanswered questions. What was wrong with Arthur may be the big one, why Tom is coming back, and so forth. One of these may be obvious; the other may be less so. Oh, and I don't dislike Dumbledore as a character completely. He'll have a chance to redeem himself later. Please review, and if there's anything you're wondering about…good. I mean, ask away.

Also, I went against canon perhaps by having the Longbottoms be tortured before Voldemort's death. I have my reasons.