Phantom Limb

by rbackwards

A young man realizes he's been the victim of a prophecy. He struggles to make sense of his place in an unfamiliar world. Sound familiar? Nothing's familiar to this young man. Nothing except his aunt Arthur. New readers: give this one some time. 9/2021 - believe it or not, a new chapter is forthcoming.

23. Chapter 23

For many years, scientists have been curious about discovering the mass of vanishingly small things — how much is the weight of the proton, invisibly smiling while nuzzling the surface of the doleful neutron? How much for the electron, biding its time in orbit around the clinging ones below, ready to rush away and share what it's learned at a moment's notice? And what of the charmed baryon, its life a flicker of doubt, its being unseeable and unknowable without measuring its death? Maybe in moments like this, some philosophical soul will step forward and ponder in the voice of a famous gravelly-voiced actor about the weight of love and if yesterday you were of one measurable mass having not known her and today you were different, what that difference might be: would you be lighter, imbued by the particle with anti-mass or buoyancy or if love were the absence of something that spun away from you into the outer world — or would you be heavier, drawn down, your feet deeper in the earth with each step and bonded more profoundly to this life? Or some crap like that. Cut to commercial. Honestly, it's like someone's trying to talk us out of understanding anything. And maybe you're heavier because you nervous-ate a box of Sergeant Snackles waiting for her to call you.

So what about magic? Does it have its own particles with their own mercurial behaviors? Their own tiny weights, and tiny lifespans?

From what I have been able to learn from Remus, there are particles involved, though I can't recall how they figured that one out, because they seem to lack mass or position - the particles, I mean. The only thing they have is persistence. Now, how can something not be anywhere, or more precisely not be anywhere more than anywhere else, but make a beam that travels from a wand to its target, and why is it at a speed much slower than light (obviously, if someone can dodge it)? And how long does it take to do things like change something into something else?

Well. Here's what I can tell you. Last one first, because it's me telling this. I've watched Minerva, who is a master of transfiguring things, as she turns a cat into an orange (which is kind of poetic to me), and the change seems to take about a second. However, when she had me do the same it seemed to take far less time, in fact almost negative time, as if it had been that way before I began and I had only just noticed it.

And in fact, I'd been thinking about that at some point, and then said something about it to Hermione, and she hadn't really been paying attention and thought I was talking about what she was thinking about, which is something she does a lot, but as it turns out she had been thinking about some theory about how every time there is a choice to be made or something might go one way or another on some quantum level, that two universes are hovering there, waiting to step out on the dance floor, but when one is chosen the other one doesn't just disappear but actually just goes to a different dance hall where it was chosen and commences to do its thing, and this made me wonder about if every time I did something little or big I just went to the place where that was working out, so if I wanted the teapot to be a purple burrowing frog, which is honestly not much of a leap if you've ever seen one, the frog, I mean, then I just found myself in the universe that already had one there at the table, or where that was likely to happen and did, or something like that, and anyway if that were so, then the Ginny that I had met that night was long gone, and though I had encountered a Ginny many times since then, due to many choices on my part it wasn't that Ginny anymore, and it filled me with this completely mad and overwhelming sense of loss that I couldn't explain further than to say to Hermione, "I'm not deciding anything anymore," which makes no sense at all, and I wandered around trying not to touch anything before eventually, over leftover treacle tart, coming to the realization that really, you just can't think about that kind of thing. You just have to keep moving. And it's probably wrong, anyway. Really. Sometimes I imagine a theoretical physicist has a sort of split personality that has one half that comes up with these theories while looking in the mirror at the other half of itself, thinking, "Oh, here's a nice theory of everything - he'd like it. It matches things he's familiar with already. And it has gerbils. He loves gerbils."

The second question leads to the first, or rather to the second part of the first, and don't roll your eyes because I'm not a professor of this stuff, and I'm lucky I can say this in any order at all. Why is it slower than light? Why can you dodge it? It's a simple answer, really. Because almost all wizards can't imagine anything approaching the speed of light, but they can imagine something moving kind of fast, and because that's how magic works, mostly. A bullet shot out of a gun twenty feet from you will hit you before you can dodge it, but a stunning spell will take a little while. However, when I turned Snape's teeth into feet, there was no getting out of the way of that, because nothing moved. He was just like that, all of a sudden. So whatever magic particles were involved, they were already there when I pointed whatever it is I pointed at him. But if they came from me, they would have been with me instead of over there to start with, so maybe they aren't anywhere, really. Or they're equally here and there. Or everywhere at once. Or maybe it's just universes that move, and you are still. Or something.

I suppose one way to put it about those particles is that if you look for them, they can not be seen, but if you just reach out your hand, they will already be there.

Personally I hate that kind of crap.

•

I couldn't sleep.

There were small sounds, scraping sounds, fingernails on wood. Each sound piercing the dark, my nothing. They hurt. They forced shapes into my nothing. Everything lurching with each transient noise, peeling strips off of my darkness.

I couldn't sleep.

Another abrasive sound. A grinding. A foot on the floor, worrying the same spot. Particles of dirt under a sole. And amidst these tiny sounds skewed large, a swelling balloon of sound, so expansive I couldn't perceive it at first until I realized that it was the backdrop for all of the other sounds, like a little flea (and by little I mean little as fleas go) who is looking at hairs and wrinkles and another, burlier flea nearby and thinking (and by thinking I mean whatever passes for thinking with fleas) "gosh they're all so big," and then realizes he's actually on the belly of a sumo wrestler and that his definition of "big" needs to just get binned straight away. And before I go any further let me say that I'm not in any way trying to imply that sumo wrestlers are flea-infested, but just perhaps this one, past his prime and unable to get the same bouts he used to and out of money for that chalk stuff and the pants (and when I say pants I don't mean pants at all, really, I mean have you seen those things? They're more like something you'd tie up a roast with, but it's a traditional thing and serves some purpose of which I am admittedly ignorant and so probably shouldn't cast aspersions upon) and just maybe generally on the ebb, drinking room-temperature beer in a one-tatami flat somewhere in front of an old television, although by no fault of his own, I must emphasize, but maybe experiencing a bit of a lapse, just a moment where he let himself slide enough not to be aware of two fleas, one smaller than the other and struggling with existential issues of scale.

What was I talking about? The sound that made the others seem tiny. Right. A non-periodic warbling tone, that at first seemed harsh and maybe a little whiny but began to sort of settle, as my hearing came up from the depths into the twilight of consciousness, into a familiar and in many ways pleasant sound.

A voice. Feminine. She. Not her. Hermione.

It was punctuated at the end by another familiar sound. A rasp, a sound as of dry leaves blown across cobblestones. A sigh that I knew. A serious sigh.

Hermione was annoying the crap out of my dogfather.

As the sound of her voice collected into words in my mind, and as my memory was jogged in the way that a one-legged man tied by the wrist to a driverless pickup truck rolling down a hill is out for one, a jog that is, I became gradually aware of the fact that this was the result of a rather large misunderstanding. He was mistaken in believing that he could sit in a room alone with Hermione and not have her ask questions, and she was mistaken in believing that questions were in any way welcome. The funny thing was, she knew very well, on some level much neglected and lower by far than the one on which she generally operated, that she was irritating him, which was why she was a bit timid with him about it - because she felt that she was unable to stop herself, and I was guessing that somewhere along the road she had gotten into the habit of seeing the irritation as an effect she would always have on people and thus not sufficient reason to stop what she was doing.

Well, this was a bit much for me at the moment. Just trying to resolve the threads that made up Hermione, who as I recalled I liked, and the guy I was calling my dogfather but whose name was currently as insubstantial and remote as those really high wispy clouds, not cumulus or nimbus but what's that other one, I mean it was as if I had been drinking wine, maybe that Australian red stuff, but I couldn't remember his name. It wasn't a joke - in fact it was quite the opposite - but I couldn't think of it.

So I went back down.

But once you've populated nothingness with your own awareness, it's not nothingness anymore. An empty glass isn't empty, just full of things you can't see. So my nothing was potential now, quivering with wishful form, and you should know that when this happens you should be prepared to give it actual form or it will just choose something at random, like for instance something out of your past that you would just as soon have forgotten but can't completely because it means something to you and about you, and so this memory, the images spattering like paint on the walls of my interior void, formed itself around me, wherever I looked, wherever I remembered.

Coats swirling by. Uneven squares of concrete, punctuated by metal grates exuding steam. Eternal, continuous street noise, and the gulping sound of footsteps. Horns, yellow taxis. Smells of food, exhaust, humans. Rumbles and shouts, sirens and laughter. This was New York City. I had just been able to remember its name. So many people to be aware of, to have to read in passing, reflexively, helplessly, drawing them in like leaves into a drain. So strange to be so close to someone without intimacy. To recognize people you don't know.

It was only a very short time after I had begun to remember things a little in random and not particularly useful ways, like the bricks of my old school building or what I'd read in the paper last night or the hair color, maybe, of the person I'd sat next to in the park. Or that the building I lived in had an extra floor. You know how you get into an elevator and look at the buttons and sometimes there's no thirteenth floor? Well, yes there is. The button's there, but you can't notice it unless you know it's there. It's where magic folks live when we live around other folks in the city. What - did you think that non-magicals were so superstitious and irrational that they would actually, in the midst of something as mundane and as, I don't know, responsible and money-driven as building a building, take the time to re-number the floors so that one of them wasn't an unlucky number?

I was walking with and through a crowd of people on an uneven sidewalk that listed toward the street slightly. Maybe that was what made me unsteady on my feet. Maybe it wasn't that I hadn't been anywhere at all a few days ago until I made myself up. Maybe it had nothing to do with the fact that the hirsute and querulous woman who'd been looking after me had been doing so by pulling the self-y bits out of me. Fresh-squeezed Deasil, every morning.

And you know what else was bothering me? The people. Nobody cared about personal space, nobody cared what my stupid problems were - their errands and purposes were all so much more important than one lost idiot with no yesterday. Nobody cared in any way about anything to do with me. Shoulders bumped me, the smells, hands moving me aside, pulling my coat, harsh voices cursing, demanding, begging. Stiff blond hair on a grainy nylon raincoat, a wheezing cough, astringent cologne, abrasive patterns of silk, cloying body-heat, and abruptly a man in several coats and shirts of uncertain color, hands up in a supplicating gesture, nails black with imbedded grime, gaze everywhere except in my eyes but standing before me, pleading with me for something I couldn't understand in what must have been language but was made of molten, shapeless words, and it was just like everything else in the world, incomprehensible and frightening and alien, and what did he want, even, just no. Just get away. Away now.

I was stopped in my spiral of thoughts by his sudden leap away from me, leaving only the bawling, desperate scent of his sickness. The shouts of a few startled people and the lumbering gasp of buses barely reached my ears. Things were receding. Footsteps, weathered boots and webbed tennis shoes, wool coats and plastic jackets, hunched shoulders, the silver breath of strangers. I moved through the crowd, looking for space.

I went up the street a short way, walking a little quickly and not paying attention to my surroundings in the way that if you are trying hard not to think about something you can't think about anything, and so it was a sudden shock that brought me to a stop. I'd walked past a mirrored glass window, and I hadn't seen myself go by in it.

I was actually a little scared to go back and look.

But I kind of had to. It's not every day that you walk by but you don't.

I found myself walking back very carefully past the window. The street couldn't have been quiet, but it felt like all the cars and the people had withdrawn, as I found myself standing in front of the window, seeing nothing in the glass but gray sky, an infinitely horrible moment. Nothing there. Nothing where I should be. Empty space.

A few eternal moments later, I realized that the glass was tilted upward, and I just far enough back that I would not be visible in it, as I stepped closer and saw the top of the building across the street behind me appear. Then windows, then a light pole, and finally, rising up from the bottom of the windowsill like a barren moon, a face, terrified. Almost unrecognizable to me, and I had only seen it, to my memory, that morning.

How could this be? How could I be? I was a grown man, fully dressed, cell phone in my pocket, walking down the street, not lost, money in my wallet, but somehow, I was barely here. Who picked out these clothes, if I had only existed since this morning?

Why did I feel like I had only existed since this morning?

And if I had, it came to me, then only a very few things could be said to have happened to me in my very short life, and each one would be perhaps more important to me than the countless events that have spun past other people in their lives, in the way that your first meeting with someone is important or your first experience with dogs or maybe just which toys you have in your room the first time you're left alone to play, and since (unlike a child) I was fully conscious and able to think such things, I should probably not let the moments go, or let them escape me, because to not be aware of a moment at this early juncture would be like missing half of my existence, and so, even though I was now being introduced to a feeling that I would later know as dread, I was able to take one step, and another, back to the street corner where the man had been.

The way was blocked by more people than before, and by a towering bus, its rattling, phlegmy idle the loudest sound I could remember hearing. I stood at the edge of the crowd for a moment, before an impulse without memory came into my mind, something from my unknowable beforetime - "you just push through" - and so I did.

I can't remember it without seeing it from now, as opposed to then when I had so little in my mind to compare things to, and in that sense those moments from that perspective are completely lost. My memory is informed by what I know now - and the absence of what I didn't know before, and the feeling of that void of experience, is all but gone within me.

What I remember is: the length of the bus, covered with words and the picture of someone's face, a woman's, eyes wide and round and the face crushed into a parody of sadness, and for some reason the thought that came to my mind was, "unhelpful." The stiffness of the people around me, the press. Reaching the front end of the bus, the wet metal at the edge of its body, and then a space in front of it, the emptiness a small shock after the crowd, and then, a short distance away, his body in the street.

I stumbled over the curb and took a few steps on the concrete until I reached his feet, turned inward, toes to the ground. Thought about the roughness of the sidewalk, how that didn't matter to anyone but me now, where it hadn't before, like he had spun off a particle from some infinite distance that had attached itself to me.

The image of him leaping away returned to me, like an adrenal injection to the heart: arms out toward me, the broad, scuffed soles of his shoes facing me under the fluttering of coat upon coat, receding like a squid behind a cloud of ink. His terror awakening his face, white under a matted beard, blue eyes wide and clear over his dirty cheeks. Lines that said he had tried, in his life, that he had known how to smile, that things were not always like this, that things had been his and then just hadn't, and his mind and will had retreated part of the way back towards that better time, and that now, unwhole and lost, William, William, could not find his way back beyond a place where help was never coming.

Into the street, into the sounds of tires and brakes, and a dull impact.

He hadn't leaped.

I made this, the thought came. I don't know how, but this is because of me.

I didn't know him, or anyone. I had just wanted him to go away.

And so he did.

And here is where what I know now completely takes over. When I think of him, I think of the charmed baryon. How I couldn't know he existed until he didn't, how he couldn't be known, or remembered, until his death. How many people are there like that? And like me?

Stupid, blind, ignorant.

This was the thing I didn't want to remember, and the thing I turned myself inside out to keep from Ginny.

What was I supposed to do?

I had no idea.

But my life was not utterly without answers to its questions. As I moved towards wakefulness, I found myself watching a man at a hotdog stand with giant balloon hands trying to dig relish out of a container with a spoon and his feet kind of floating up in the air until I grabbed his ankles and pulled him down, and then saw his silhouette, large and dark, in a doorway, and then I realized there had been a common element throughout my life that had always been there, when the forgetful spell ran out, before Arthur cast it again every morning. I dreamed. The line that most people draw with days upon days, for me was an oblique code of dashes. I had about as much ownership of it as automatic writing by a somnambulist, but it was what I had. I resolved to think about it. A lot. Later, sometime.

Something was drawing me up into the room. Hermione was still there. But there was a smell there that I didn't associate with her. Something sweet, but not food. Flowers. It meant something really good. It had been stirring me all along. I took a deep breath and then my eyes opened.

Hermione was sitting by my bed looking at me a little nervously, holding a little jar of something in her hand. Behind her a dog sat, his gaze sharper than I might expect a dog's to be unless I knew it weren't a dog.

I spoke first.

"Cirrus. Syrah. Shiraz. Serious. Sirius."

"What?"

Ten.

"Breadcru mbs."

"…er…"

"Go ahead. Say 'what.'"

"What?"

That really ought to count for double. Or maybe I should have one deducted for leading the other player — participant? Victim? Whatever.

The next thing out of my mouth was, "How can house elves be so smart when their heads are so tiny?"

"Wh-" She regarded me for a moment.

I was robbed.

"And this comes to mind why?" she said.

"The same reason anything does."

"No one has ever..." she said. "Ever."

"Go on."

"Ever," she said with emphasis, as though she'd just pulled up the last of a string of fat young squirming pandas hanging at intervals by a rope from a precipice, "asked me that question. Not once. No one from the Department of Magical Creatures, or Human-Elf relations, or the bloody Quibbler. No. One. And apparently that's good, it's a good thing, because I have absolutely no idea why."

"Well, maybe they feel you're unapproachable."

"Not. That." She was squeezing her eyes shut and attempting to breathe deeply through her nose, and I may have at some point said something about what happens when someone switches to nose-breathing and how this may or may not be a sign of some inner stress, but perhaps I haven't, so consider this your warning if someone does it around you, and consider that you may possibly be the source of the stress. "Why their small cranial capacity does not seem to affect their intelligence. I'm beginning to wonder about mine. And yours."

"My head's actually pretty norm -"

"You were easier to talk to when you were in a coma."

"Really? What did we talk about?"

She got quiet while she performed an inventory of the varied things that might be found on the back of her hand, at this point being nothing.

"Or, I guess," I said, "what did you talk about, since I was sort of unconscious?"

"This and that. Nothing really. Various... Ron."

"I thought we'd settled that."

"Well, of course we did, mostly - I'd only been talking to you about some plans that I - but it was only so you would have something to hear, something to ground you and make it easier for you to orient yourself. There's quite a bit in the literature about how useful it is, and I was really only trying to give you some sort of sound to hear - you know, it really isn't important, and I'm sure I don't understand why you keep - you keep - why are you looking at me that way?"

I took a moment, like you do when you are smelling something wonderful you are about to take a big bite out of.

"And they call you an Unspeakable. That's wishful thinking. It's like calling Fred or George an Unprankable."

"Ron's already done that one," she said.

"Crap."

"You couldn't have known," she said.

"So it was, erm, a worthy effort?"

She clasped her hands together. "Well... you haven't been at all well."

Touché.

"Are you feeling...more yourself?" she said.

I thought about what the equivalent of checking for fingers and toes would be, only oriented towards my state of mind, and abandoned that metaphor before saying, "I guess so."

"Do you remember anything more than before?"

I felt that I was frowning so hard that my face must have looked like a seven.

"Why would I?" I said.

"It seems that when you awaken from one of these crises and re-orientate yourself, your mind is able to reach some older memories from before you, er, woke up the first time. I would imagine that in time you will have recovered even more of your past."

I wasn't in the best of moods just then. "What if I don't want to?"

She looked irritated, then horrified, then she did that timid thing that meant that she felt she'd stepped over the line, again, and I have to say with a degree of shame that I was just not willing to shoulder a lot of that. This is ludicrous, goes my paraphrasing of what I was thinking. She's old enough to know people like her for who she is. What the hell? And why do I have to make her feel better?

"Breadcrumbs," she said, sounding desperate.

"Yes?" I said.

"You said 'breadcrumbs' and you meant that was the trail you used to remember Sirius' name."

"Yes."

"Yes," she said. "Well."

"You have that sorted for yourself, then?"

"Quite, yes."

"So…"

"Yes?"

"I get the feeling," I said, "that you are trying not to say too much so that something else that is even more inexplicable will not be induced to spew from my mouth."

"Yes. Perhaps. Yes. Quite. I mean, yes."

"Oh, stop being so flustered. You don't have to understand everything."

"That's…that's what Ron says."

"He's very smart. There's room for two smart people in your corner."

Finally, finally, she smiled a bit. Not a huge cheek-destroyer, but it was worth something to me.

"Quite," she said.

It was kind of a joke. I accepted it as such.

There was, abruptly, a man standing behind her. He had sort of burst up from the dog's area and was speaking a Iittle.

"You've had your turn," he said.

•

"You talk in your sleep," Sirius said.

Hermione had gotten up and left us, giving Sirius what I think she imagined to be surreptitious glances of concerned appraisal right up until he looked her in the eye and shook his head impatiently.

"I killed Peter," I said.

"He killed himself trying to."

As was often the case when talking to Sirius, I felt that at any moment if we stopped talking, the conversation could be finished.

"Kill you," he said.

I watched him gather himself to speak further, which was like watching laundry settle. After a few moments, a sigh emanated from the laundry as though two coarse bits of it had caught upon each other.

"What happened. What you did was."

Wrong. Ugly. Sickening. Horrifying.

"An accident."

I held my breath.

"But it certainly worked out in my favor. In the getting-revenge… area."

I never knew what he was going to say.

"All the… time I spent thinking about revenge. How I thought I needed it. And finally, after several years, years, of thinking in that way, admitting to myself that it was revenge that got me in Azkaban.

"So it's strange that… wanting it was a poison. My doing it would have been a… crime. But hearing about it…well…"

He paused. Something strange was happening to his face.

"Well, since it wasn't anything I did, it feels like I can."

Silence, accompanied by a line, a crease that formed by one of his eyes as he turned his head away a little, but still looking at me.

"Maybe enjoy it a little," he said.

He was sort of smiling, that's what.

Glad I could help.

Here I was, fairly recent to the world, given the same chances anyone else might have, and what have I done? Caused the deaths of three people. Two of them were awful people, but one wasn't. And even if they were awful, why was it for me to be the one?

Because that's what you do. Right place, right time.

Although I didn't feel like he was around, the voice in my head really, really felt like Tom's.

•

I wasn't entirely sure, but I was beginning to strongly suspect I needed to go to a pub again.

Ginny had appeared behind Sirius and sort of elbowed her way around him to get a good look at me. First with her searching healer eyes, and then, when nothing appeared to be missing, with her softer eyes that made me feel like I was being inhaled. I was aware of Sirius' posture shifting like the beams of a broken-down cabin, and of his receding into the background, but I honestly wanted nothing more than for her to fill my field of view. Her hand was on my face, slightly rough, maybe from brooms or potions or something, but it was tender enough for ever.

"You know me," she said.

"I recognize you," I said.

She took that in, thought about it, then nodded her head.

"How do you feel?"

"Like I have slept on my feet for a week."

"Did you dream?"

No reflection in the window. Coats and buses.

"Yeah," I said.

"Oh," she said. Looking a little sorry for me, which I felt a little sad about.

After a pause, she thought of something.

"Are you certain they're your dreams?"

My first thought was, how ridiculous, of course they were mine, they were in my head. My second thought was, crap.

"So, uh," I said as I sat up and began to try to get out of my bed, "what would I do if I thought they might not be?" Or, I thought, if I wanted to hide them from anyone who might go looking for them, since that was apparently a thing that people could do.

"Well," she said, looking at the floor as if it had done something irritating, "unfortunately the big expert on mind magics is not one of your favorite people, and the bloke he likes for it is also... not." Her gaze shifted. "Why can't I complete a decent sentence anymore?"

"Are you nervous?"

"Terrible. I mean, no."

"Have you in fact slept for any of the time that I have?

"Yes. Right. That was it."

"Yes meaning no?"

"Yes. No. No," she said. "I mean, yes I didn't. Much."

"Were you here?"

"Sometimes, a lot."

"Then you know how this thing works," I said.

"What thing?"

"A bed."

"I think," she said. "I'll just fake it until I catch on, shall I." She listed towards it. I moved so as to allow her to land on it bonelessly, which after a moment is what she did.

"Just like falling on a bed," I said. And I thought for a moment about how what I wanted to do was curl up next to her, and have her hair in my face, and hear her breathing, forever.

I left her sleeping and went out to clean up and find food and my little brother.

•

It was mid-afternoon by the time we'd gotten on our way. Ginny had needed a few hours' sleep before bounding up out of bed and telling me that if we were going to go talk to some bastards willingly, that we might first go meet someone nice. She had in her mind that we might want to stop by the house of Hagrid, the gamekeeper, and see his big brother. I was game. And she seemed so animated by the thought of seeing this big brother of Hagrid's that I was pretty content to go along with that.

So Ginny, Hermione, Ron and I arrived at the school (which I could remember, so I was able to apparate there) and then wandered away from the castle and down a steep path of stones that wound to the bottom of the hill the castle was perched on. A squat wooden cottage, round and faced with unfinished planks, was set into the moist earth in the valley like a dark brown mushroom. Beside it sat a garden filled with unidentifiable yellowish vegetables of enormous size. A wisp of smoke trailed from the small chimney. Ginny announced that Hagrid wasn't about but that his brother was always nearby these days, and led us through dark evergreens that spread over and around us with luminous green tips that at first I thought were magical but, on asking, discovered that was just how they looked. Which was somehow a delightful thought, that one didn't require magic to feel wonder. For a change.

After a few minutes' walk, I realized that I had misheard Ginny.

"Oh," I said. "You called him Hagrid's giant brother."

"I did," Ginny said.

"And you weren't being metaphorical, were you."

"Do I strike you as the sort of person who is you?"

"You've spoken in a flowery way from time to time," I said as we approached what appeared to be a slightly surly teenager, somewhat thick of limb, maybe a touch hairier than one might expect, and twenty-five or so feet at the shoulder with a really quite powerful body odor lurching violently around the inside of my nose. He was leaning against a tree, looking a bit like he didn't trust us. His feet were broad and brown, with toes around the length of my forearm but rough-skinned, elephantine. He wore a black loincloth of sorts, which he self-consciously touched periodically, and his broad but not unpleasant face bore the expression of a hunter.

"Although more and more," she said, walking right up to the fellow, "I find myself tossing out some garbled nonsense that brings you to mind. Like that last question I asked you."

"I actually kind of liked -"

"I'm sure you did. Hallo, there, Grawp."

It was a voice that seemed impossibly deep, made of grinding wood from immense trees and the lowest and airiest sound, like a flute if it had been made from an entire one of those trees.

"Ha Geenee," he said, losing a little of the wary look as he bent towards her. An arm that looked something like that of a baby but massive, and hairy, came down to her level and his hand opened and turned palm up. Ginny placed her own on his longest finger and smiled at him expectantly.

He lowered his head, a little quickly at first, but then slowed down as if remembering to do so, before closing his large black eyes and pressing his lips together. Very gently, he entirely covered her hand with his mouth, took a deep breath through his nose that made me hear the entirety of his sinuses, and then opened his eyes and looked at her carefully.

She curtsied, and the smile she gave him made me feel that he and I must have had the same size heart.

"Grawp, you remember Hermione and Ron?"

He looked up slowly from her to the others, inhaling slowly as his gaze passed over them, then nodded. "Ha Hermy. Ha Rah." He then looked at me as if he wanted to be able to say he knew me, but he couldn't, and so he furrowed his brow in a way that made me think of farming as he looked back to Ginny for assistance, but said nothing.

"This is my friend D. I wanted him to meet you," she said.

He looked at me, taking my measure as I saw that the furrow remained in place and that, had I been of a mind and he possessed of unusual patience, I could have sown a row of corn down it. It was striking how still a big guy like him could be. I was considering saying something like I might ordinarily and thinking of how futile that would be when, abruptly, he snorted. Then he began to laugh, a rumbling, slow laugh that sounded like a tree falling.

"Deeeeee," he said, broad shoulders shaking still.

I looked at Ginny, and she shrugged it back into my court.

"That's my name," I said.

He continued the tree-felling laughter for a moment, before looking slightly embarrassed and ducking his giant head.

"Sorry," he said.

"It's all right with me," I said.

He shook his head and his expression became a little sorrowful.

"Sorry Harreeee," he said.

None of us knew what to say.

After a moment Ginny spoke. "How do you know his other name?"

Grawp shrugged, in a casual motion that would have upended a milk truck. "That Harreeee," he said. "Harreeee fit."

"I fit?" I said.

He looked down at me, again wearing his hunter's face. He held up one hand and then abruptly smacked it into the other with the sound of a failed rhino acrobat.

"Harreeee fit," he said.

After a pause, he shrugged again.

"Sorry Harreeee."

•

So after that disquieting interlude with the shy prince of the Forbidden Forest, which incidentally is a great place to not build a school right next to, we wandered up to the castle with the inexplicably awful name and went in search of the Headmaster and his sneering companion. We ran into Minerva, who pointed us with some distaste to his office, also opining that everyone but me should have no problem remembering where it was, which I found curious. I mean she was sort of trying to needle the others about how much trouble they had gotten into there like it was all youthful mischief and not all related to the advent of a murderous dark lord or anything. Stomping up staircase after staircase that moved around quite a bit, I also wondered (this time aloud), if magic had been around so long, then why nobody ever conjured any carpet for this drafty old meat locker, or at least trained some magic silk worms to magically weave some. Nobody answered because everybody knew me pretty well by now. But the tromp through the castle was tedious, and I'm not going to describe it in detail. I don't tell you everything. Now there's nothing sinister about that - it would be a mortal waste of time to tell you everything that happens in a day, and really in most stories you won't hear each detail of each minute. I haven't mentioned that I brush my teeth, but that doesn't mean I don't do it. That would be awful. And I do, let's be clear. And imagine if I wrote how many times some people use the toilet in a day, I mean that would certainly add color, but maybe it would be the kind of thing where if you were to meet the person later you'd always be thinking, "I'm always wondering when she's going to just up and disappear on me, she must have a microscopic bladder, is she spending half the day making a fist somewhere I can't see" or something instead of paying attention and seeing what a fabulous person she really is and that there's more to a person than just — you know, I'm really glad she won't ever be able to read this. Not that I was talking about anyone in particular.

Any…way.

So, things I haven't talked about. The aforementioned, which I'm absolutely not talking about anymore. Luna taught me a word, "mithering", which I love and apparently engage in. My owl, Widdershins, who I had taken to calling something that sounded like "Widgins" because it's jaunty, casual and something that's easy to mumble at three in the morning when the bloody bird wants out, and Ginny's bird, Hedwig, had developed an interesting relationship that involved very long games of "chase", long because my owl would try to chase hers and in doing so would engage in long slow arcs as the bird couldn't fly straight if she were being reeled in. Even the other bird thought it was ridiculous. Naturally, it caused an immense affinity to grow in me. Beautiful feathers, eyes so big she looked like she could see the backside of something I was only thinking about, and yet she went leftways whenever she flew anywhere. That was me done. Also, I learned how to change a diaper using magic, even though the floating feather thing still eluded me in terms of doing it and the usefulness of doing it, which is probably why I learned the diaper thing, and I learned how to put my brother to sleep, which was by holding him and talking to him about Ginny until he drifted off. At least it seemed to work when I talked to him about her, or maybe I just never talked to him about anything else. Also, Ginny was there when — you know, I do ramble a bit. Perhaps I should return to the present moment that I was in previously — and if you've ever been in doubt that I could ruin language to describe some simple thing, there's more proof. Let's just cut to where there was a gargoyle at the entrance to Dumbledore's office, and it waved us in like it couldn't believe it had to, and we went up there, and there he was, in all his eye-shirring purple glory, with my other favorite school employee lurking off to his right looking like an evil coat rack.

After we had all gotten as comfortable as possible in some chairs that had not previously existed but somehow looked old and in need of replacement (and if something that you imagine into existence that could literally have looked like anything somehow looks beat up and sorry, well, that ought to say something about you, if you happen to be the cackle-headed bumwhistle who made them for us), things got marginally less comfortable with his first pronouncement.

"I feel that at this point, your need to protect yourself from mental assault is paramount. Which is why I have taken the liberty of asking Professor Snape to assist you with your Occlumency."

I took a few moments to sun myself in the brilliance of this man.

"I've got a better idea," I said. "Why don't I just stab myself with a pitchfork?"

"Harry, Professor Snape is the leading -"

"Hold it. Just stop right there. One, he's not my professor. Two, he despises me completely. And three, where did you learn your Occlumency skills? Who was it that opened the door to that passenger of yours that liked sniffing the inside of your hat? Honestly, your hubris knows no bounds. Snape can't hide his thoughts from me — he was just mentally fitting Hermione for a leather harness, and it's apparently not the first time." The bat looked furious, and if he'd had any blood in his veins he'd have blushed. Or maybe it was the glamour he wore to make his skin look smooth. Hermione's wand was out, and Ron's fist was out, and Ginny looked plain disgusted. There was a moment of silence and tension, and I felt I had to break it.

A long, thin squeal was emanating from somewhere in the depths of Snape's robes, wavering a little at first but then rising in pitch sharply at the end before it stopped. His eyes briefly looked as though they were different sizes in his anger.

"Gesundheit," I said softly.

"Always wondered what made his robes billow," my lovely redhead said.

"That's going to leave a mark," Ron said.

We all looked at Hermione, even Dumbledore.

After a moment, she said, "Well, at least he spoke his mind."

While the laughter lasted, I looked at the bat and thought, "It was laughter or hexes, and I honestly think Ron would have gotten the drop on you."

"Never," I heard, but as I showed him an example of Ron's prowess I'd witnessed recently I felt a clear sense of doubt in him. Which was good.

Ron and Hermione got up to leave. Ron took a moment to walk over to the sneering bat and said, "You may be thinking that a man can't be punished for his thoughts alone."

He waited.

Snape had just opened his mouth to speak when Ron said, "You'd be wrong about that."

Ron's demeanor was smooth and level. I guessed that he'd learned something about Snape from years of his abuse, which was that Snape looked for weakness and exploited it, compulsively and kind of pathologically, and so when he spoke to his former professor, there was none.

"Threatening a teacher at Hogwarts," Snape said, making his attempt.

"A teacher? That's debatable," Hermione said. "But harassing an Unspeakable and an Auror? There are cells in just your size for that. And nothing in your impotent imagination can possibly do me harm, Death Eater."

I thought two things. One was, wow, she has iron when she wants to. The other was highly unworthy, but honestly, once you've seen something you can't unsee it.

The couple left.

Ginny remained in her seat. "Do you need me here?"

I thought about it for a moment, warmed by her regard.

"No, they'll be all right," I said, meeting her gaze. A smile appeared on her face in the way that sugar is stirred from the bottom of a cup of coffee.

"I'll be at home, then," she said. Her hand touched my shoulder for a moment as she rose, and I saw that the look she gave Dumbledore and Snape as she walked out the door was mildly pitying.

"It seems that you feel you are in no need of protection from mental attack," Dumbledore said after the door closed. His condescending tone was, I felt, a little unwarranted, given the size of the stepladder he'd need to look down on anyone.

"Maybe I do - I don't know," I said, "but I can't imagine what you two have to offer me in that regard."

Snape expelled his breath and rose from his seat like a rake that you'd accidentally stepped on. "This is a waste of time. This arrogance, Potter -"

"Leather, was it?" I asked.

He was furiously silent. It was kind of a shrill silence. That was a gift. Maybe he could teach me that so I could spend long nights at home annoying myself.

"So, um…" I said, looking first back at the door Ginny had left through, then back to Snape, then back to Dumbledore. Not getting any better. "What the hell is a Death Eater doing on your staff?"

•

Well, time passed, in the same way that a kidney stone might. Dumbledore had tried to make me believe that Snape was somehow crucial to Tom's downfall and that he had Dumbledore's full confidence, which meant nothing to me at all. In the first place he wouldn't say why, and in the second place he kept doing this cheesy eye-twinkle thing. It was really annoying. The effect was like if after he said anything he thought was particularly eloquent some short guy would pop up and rattle a little bell before disappearing back under the desk. "It's magic, see?" is what the general gist was. At a certain point he went on from saying Snape had his endorsement, like that was worth anything to me but I guessed that he was used to it holding some water, to admonishing me about the prophecy, and wanting me to pay very close attention to its wording, and that my destiny was the destiny of the light side — thus, a lot more crap of a slightly different odor. There was something about the logic to all of this that was bothering me, but I couldn't quite nail it down, so I cast about, as I was wont to do, hoping I'd dislodge something. There was plenty to be dissatisfied with.

"So why do seers always speak in vague terms, so it could mean anything?" I said. "And why does anybody put up with it?"

"Probability," Dumbledore said, smiling in a way that seemed to imply that he wanted to be infuriating. It didn't really work the way he wanted — I was just irritated at him for being an ass.

"Err…"

Snape sighed in a showy way while Dumbledore went on.

"If the seer is too specific the probability bubble collapses and prediction is no longer possible. It's why we keep them in spheres."

"Well," I said, "that's just ridiculous."

"The world," he said, winding himself up, "is full of things that seem-"

"Don't start all that," I said. "I said it was ridiculous, not untrue."

He looked disappointed.

"It's just — couldn't someone with a working knowledge of human nature and history figure out something general to say and call it a prophecy and then, you know, sit back while people run around in circles?"

"It would require the most cynical mind to imagine such a thing." Oh. Insult me, why don't you. "Fortunately there are ways to determine if a seer is genuine or not."

"I can only imagine," I said. "What do they do, talk in a really deep voice or something?"

Dumbledore stared at me.

"Yeah," I said, getting into it, "like a really deep raspy voice, and they take kind of spooky gaspy breaths, and then at the end they collapse a little and then act like they don't remember a thing?"

Reluctantly he spoke. "It… can appear in that way, yes. May I ask how you are aware of this?"

"Really? Wow. Wow. I just totally made that up."

The man was resilient. "Perhaps you, yourself possess a gift -"

"Un… likely." Saying that at the same time, and with the same cadence, as oily bat-boy made me want to wash my life out with soap.

"It is the sort of thing that happens around you, Harry. You imagine something you have not ever seen, just by…luck?"

He glanced at Snape. I wasn't sure why, but I didn't like that very much.

"What does he know about it?" I said, indicating Snape by a small movement of my head.

"Professor Snape," he said, clearly trying to cut the man off before he spoke, "is an extremely knowledgeable wizard. We think it is very important that your most unusual magic be understood. So that you may reach your full potential, of course."

It was the expression on Snape's face, that he was not entirely able to hide, and that he clearly was unconcerned with Dumbledore seeing, that got my attention. It was malice.

"It's surely a waste of our efforts, Headmaster," he said, stretching the syllables like dropping pebbles slowly through one's fingers. "This… boy is merely the personification of dumb… luck."

"Severus," he said, chiding without really looking. He actually looked a little amused.

"Accidental magic, brought on by years of memory loss that prevented his magic from developing, that is what... happens… around him, nothing more. In a few months he will be reduced to the same sort of mediocre wizard as his -"

"Severus," Dumbledore said again, still looking mildly amused. That was not helping my mood any. I could have looked into that greasy ass to see which of my parents he was preparing to insult, but to be honest I didn't like it much in there.

"Do you keep him around for the laughs," I asked, "or is it the halitosis that draws you in?"

Snape dropped his wand again. It's barely worth mentioning. Without a word he picked it up and left.

"I must say, I have some doubts about your ability to judge character," I said to Dumbledore.

"I think well of you," he said.

"So? Luck surrounds me," I said. "You got a little on you. So this guy hates kids, and you have him teach for you. He was a Death Eater, and you consult him on how to figure out his boss's greatest enemy. Why don't you just lie down and wait for Tom to come kill everyone? That might speed things along a bit."

He had lowered his head slightly during my mini-rant, and when he raised it again, his eyes were in shadow. It was the appearance of a man of power, brought against his will to great anger. The room got colder, and dark seemed to seep up the walls like mold. I got the impression of clouds above me, a turbulent energy, ions in the air.

"Excuse me," I said, getting up and going to the window. I shoved it open and a fat shaft of light landed squarely on his desk, bathing him in what surely at one time had been intended to be a heavenly glow.

You may notice that it's harder for someone to appear threatening when the sun's in his face. What I was noticing was how dusty the office was. Not much air moving in there, and what I have come to realize is that whatever freshening charms do, they aren't the same as opening a window. You can artfully curtain a place, put moody candles around to create an atmosphere, you know, all of that, but you can't hide dust in sunlight.

And it doesn't do pasty skin any favors, either. The deep lines on his face brought out by shadow became creases and folds, and whatever it was that made his eyes look menacing came out looking, before it faded in a clearly hurried way, like eyeshadow.

"That's better," I said. "Everyone needs their dose of vitamin D."

"One's health is always important," he said, with what sounded like resignation.

"Do you do this with people who actually care about what you have to say?"

"Harry." He tried to make it sound like a reprimand.

"Really. I mean, what about all of these people in your -" I looked in his eyes for a moment. "Your Order of the Phoenix? When they ask you questions about what they're supposed to do, do you just hit them with this five-cent theater?"

He tried to hide his apparent dismay at being read by saying, "Are you making light of their commitment to a better world?"

"Sure. Yeah. That's what I'm doing."

"I hardly think your parents, who have spent their lives in support of -"

"Don't start all that," I said. I began to look around the room. There was actually, as I became aware of it, a staggering amount of weird bric-a-brac in this room. I briefly tried to figure out if these were things someone gave him, and if they were, then what the festive occasion might have been that screamed, "say it with a bear statuette that emits smoke from betwixt its furry haunches", or if they were things he'd been captivated by in a curio shop and which had been pressed upon him by a breathless and slightly sweaty man with a little bit of a speech impediment, or, you know, like that. "My parents think for themselves, and they don't exist to be your finger puppets to use against me. As a matter of fact, they'd probably be a little mad that you'd tried that on me."

"They are faithful guardians of the light, Harry. You are very… new here -"

"I'm new everywhere."

"- And perhaps lack the perspective to see how important it is that we are all united on the right path." The condescending old fellow paused to consider a bowl of candy on his desk. "I have known the Order members all of their lives. Each one has passed through this school under my tutelage, and each one will do as they must."

"Do you really think you can keep everyone united under your thumb? Do you think you know these people enough to say what they will and won't do? I mean," I said, casting about, "can you speak for Remus Lupin?"

"Remus will do what must be done, in the end. He is no more capable of turning away from this than he is able to prevent the wolf from returning."

Nice. I'm sure you've done your best to help him with that, douche.

He steepled his fingers and closed his eyes in thought before continuing. "Nymphadora will follow Remus, if only to protect him. The Weasleys will stand up for a battle they view as honorable, excepting the twins, of course, who are happy to be involved in any enterprise that promises great mischief. Minerva and Filius are long-time supporters of mine, as is Mister Longbottom. And your parents, of course, have always stood for the light-"

"Is that what you're doing? I mean, weren't you standing for the dark week before last?"

A brief pause was my reward for that one, while he thought of something to say to it.

"As someone who has himself been possessed by Tom, I would imagine you to have some understanding of that circumstance. I did not cease being who I am: he merely took over my actions temporarily."

"Uh…" I said. "He rode you for months. He was in my head for about a minute before I pushed him out, and he didn't make me do any tricks while he was there."

"I assure you," Dumbledore said, "if he left it was because he was ready, and because he had gotten what he came for."

Two thoughts, in rapid succession — one was on a par with "says you", and the other was one without words, but rather an ugly feeling of vertigo, like what I'd felt when Tom had departed.

I certainly hoped he had left entirely, but now I wasn't feeling sure about it.

As my attention wandered, I noticed a mirror-like device behind him, with indistinct shapes moving on its surface. I half-stood to get a better look at it and for a moment saw my own face in it, though not like a reflection, before he moved between me and it.

"Ah, I see you have noticed my foe glass," he said, lifting it and looking into it idly.

"Does it do what I think it might?"

"It is a useful tool," he said, examining it at length. "It's quite valuable to know if your enemies are near."

Hmm. "Does it only work for you?"

"As far as I know, it has never been owned by anyone else," he said.

That didn't answer my question. I let it go.

"What exactly do you think he came for?"

He paused, and I noticed him almost begin to smile, but stop it. "I do not claim to know what motivates him," he said. "I'm merely stating what has become obvious over the years - he does nothing without purpose, and is far too tenacious to be thrown out of one's mind without at least partially achieving his goal."

"Then what was his goal with you?"

"To dominate the school," he said. "To undermine my authority here, and to influence the way children are taught. To pull secrets from my mind that would help him."

"And did he?"

"I am..." He paused. I wasn't sure if it were for drama or because he was looking for words that tilted the world favorably in his direction. "...not unskilled in the mental arts. I was able to lock certain... details away in places that he could not reach."

"Well," I said. "That's a neat trick. And he didn't just tell you to tell yourself not to hide things anymore?"

"That would not have been possible."

"Okay." I thought there was something odd about that, but I couldn't put my finger on it, and I really knew nothing about mind magic or whatever it would be called, so I let that go, too.

"So what happened when he let you go?"

"Actually, to be accurate, I forced him out when the opportunity presented itself."

"What was so special about that moment as opposed to the moment when I was stuck in the wall in the Chamber of Secrets?"

"He was unable to hide the difference between the two of us from me. In order for possession to be effective, the victim must believe that he is acting of his own free will, even though his actions may run contrary to what he might normally do. This enables the attacker to assume control at intervals, and then relinquish it as if nothing had happened."

"So..." I thought. "They convince you that you've just changed your mind."

"A fair approximation," he said, bringing his hands together.

"Well?" I said.

He watched me over his spectacles.

Little things floated by in the air.

It was becoming apparent that I wasn't going to get any points off of him.

"What did he convince you that you'd changed your mind about?" I said.

"The idea," he said, "that blacking out periodically was something to worry about."

"...and how long did that take?"

"I beg your pardon?"

Rats.

"How long did it take him to convince you of that? Wouldn't blackouts be a cause for alarm to a guy who bosses around the government?"

"It did not appear to be cause for concern at the time. He is most subtle -"

"Wait. You're saying that you might have maybe felt a little uncomfortable about it, but when that little voice spoke up and said, 'nah, don't worry about it', you were fine with that?"

"Really, Harry, there's no need to cast things in such a -"

"Look, that's just - just really poor, okay? It's not like you had the sniffles and didn't feel like going to the doctor. You were blacking out and waking up with phoenix guts all over you."

There was a choked-sounding squawk from somewhere behind me.

"Sorry I brought it up," I said.

"I submit," he said, "that the more...important, as you say, a person may be seen to be, the more...unusual -" I was getting a little tired of the pauses, like the twinkling. "- the situations he might find himself in. And though I may not have handled this in a way that you find acceptable, I assure you that I did what was possible, as I do in every situation."

"I'm not certain how I would have done," I said. He looked a little startled, and began to form his face into something I probably wouldn't have liked much, until I said, "But I hope I wouldn't have made such a giant mess," which tamed it to acceptable levels. "I mean, I don't know who else everybody has standing up for them, but it seems like you missed a lot of stuff."

"To someone far removed from the circumstances, things might appear that way."

"Uh, yeah, and that's a really, really stupid thing to say to me. What about that, anyway? Why didn't you notice anything funny about Arthur?"

"Arthur?"

"Yeah, nice guy, redhead, used to wear a dress, he and his wife are almost inseparable?"

"I admit," he said, "to having noticed a curious…duality to his aura for some time before he abducted you. He appeared not to be entirely…himself."

"Oh, he was more than himself. He was a couple. Wait, did you happen to mention this? To anyone at all? Because maybe if you had, and I'm sure you didn't because everybody was, you know, surprised and devastated and deprived of their son and like that, maybe things would have turned out a tiny bit different?"

"The man had lost his wife."

"Right, he did, and so that meant that his aura or whatever could look as weird as it wanted and you'd let that slide? Is anyone else in his family capable of seeing these auras or is it just something you can do?"

"It is a singular gift," he said. "But I believe I can see your drift -"

"Good, then you know I was going to say something about why on earth didn't you tell his family instead of deciding for them that this was need-to-know information, so they couldn't try to stop him from doing something wacky, like, you know, abducting the child of a family friend."

He twisted his face in a way that made me think of squeezing a lemon wedge but which was probably intended to show sorrow. Remorse. Crocodile tears. "I feel that I have done you great injustices and brought you to useless suffering, and to very poor effect. I have done little to merit your trust. Truly…I am at a loss as to what you may want from me now."

To very poor effect. That miserable bastard.

"Let's see. It's probably too much to ask that you stop meddling with my life or trying to manipulate everyone around you and certainly too much to ask that you grow a self-awareness gland." I stood and looked down at him, looking at his lying posture, how his fake slump of defeat was only so low, because of his pride - how even when trying to appear vulnerable he still had to try to show who he thought was boss.

"I'd settle for this," I said. "Just your knowing that you're not running things. That after your glory time ended, that you tried to make that great feeling last beyond the time when you actually did anything to deserve it. That when the moment ended you wanted it back so much you became a manipulator instead of a leader."

"You speak in the same manner that Grindelwald did," he said, "high-handed and always convinced that he was right. And of course, he went on to become the darkest wizard the world has ever known. History will tell what my role in the wars has been - and what yours will be." He looked like he thought he'd won something.

I looked him in the eye. And before he looked to the side, things cleared up for me a little. It was shoulders, broad and bare. A long braid that trailed down a man's back. A sound of words, and a stirring when he heard them. So many wishes. So much promise.

I couldn't believe it.

The sound of my chair scraping was very loud. "You would know all about Grindelwald, you stood with him all those years," I said, and his face became increasingly brittle-looking, "and you still remember what you want because it's easier to imagine there was good in him than to admit that you were just plain wrong about him. And if all you care about is what history will say, then maybe you might want to quit making up stories to tell the people who write it and actually do something worth remembering. Otherwise, who knows? You may get your chapter after all, but it might end up all lies. Or worse for you, the complete truth. But it's up to you. I'm just telling you, stop trying to get your fingers into your friends."

I paused. Did I just say that? Nice. The great orator. Recover, please. "So save all that light-and-dark crap for your enemies. Maybe they'll all keel over from that weak logic you're spraying around."

"You are talking about things of which you have no understanding," he said. "You are ignorant of the world, ignorant of magic, and ignorant of the reality of prophecy!"

That thing that was bothering me finally came up for air. Really, it takes me a while. You know something's wrong because some part of you sees it but you can't seem to focus on it, and then all of a sudden, there it is, like a monkey in your pudding.

"The reality of prophecy. Tell me something, Al. If the prophecy is so ironclad, then why are you breaking your ass trying to manipulate everyone? If it's going to happen, like destiny and all that, then why do you even have to get involved?"

It was a happy silence, for me anyway because he wasn't rattling his jowls at me.

"You see, I have a theory," I said. "I think it's history, and it's giant, and you can't stand the idea of not having another chapter in it."

He was trying to collect himself. Trying to be the great man. For about three seconds I wondered why I had to antagonize him so much, but then I dropped it. Why ask.

"When one has power, and one is able, there is an obligation to the good of the world to use it," he said. Hypocrite, I thought, not when it's Arthur and Molly. "Had I remained outside of the struggle, even though the prophecy would eventually be fulfilled, many people would have lost their lives, and many children would have gone unprotected. We all have our part to play in this - my tasks are not inconsiderable, and my contributions, though you may discount them, have been many. As an example," he said, gesturing to a rack of silvery bottles that I now knew to contain memories and not sparkly lotion of some kind, "I have undertaken to learn as much as I can about Tom and his background so that we may more effectively fight him. I have studied every memory I could find about him, from his regrettable childhood through to his ascent to power. It would be safe to say that I know more about Tom Marvolo Riddle than anyone else."

"Did you know his name was an anagram for 'I am Lord Voldemort'? Or the other way around."

He stared at me.

"I wonder if it says 'Tom' or 'Thomas' on his birth certificate," I said. "In which case it's 'I am has Lord Voldemort'."

Kept staring.

"Or 'I, Voldemort, a sham lord'."

"Harry."

"That kind of sounds like it would be a palindrome. Nobody says 'sham' unless they're trying to make something like a palindrome work."

"Harry…"

"Though 'sham' backwards is 'mahs'. Not very useful. Maybe it's just one of those words."

"Har-"

He paused, as if waiting to see if I were going to continue. I took that opportunity to look him in the eye again. He was thinking about a young Tom. Pale, drawn and delicate features. Soft hair. Oh. I see, I thought.

"You're way too sentimental," I said.

"In what way?" he said, trying to unclench his shoulders, or maybe wiggle his ears unsuccessfully, from the look of it.

"When you look at those memories of him as a young man, you're looking at what you wish he could have been instead of what he was. You're just trying to control everything again, aren't you? He was a sociopath then, and he's a sociopath now. Maybe you don't believe in mental disorders, and you think he's just a boy who went bad but could have been saved somehow, maybe with some loving guidance and a puppy or something. But there's no saving him. And he'd just have killed the puppy. He'll try to destroy everything around us for as long as he is able. All that we can do is make him permanently harmless."

He sat silent for a while. Things that you notice creaking when the room you're in is quiet went about their business.

"And what do you suggest we do?" he said.

"Kill him," I said.

He actually looked surprised. This was fairly alarming to me.

"Hey, wait a minute," I said. "You're the one who believes in prophecy here. You told me one of us has to kill the other. And now you're having doubts about his being killed? Where's that supposed to leave me?" I looked at that cheap glint in his eyes. Then I knew. I stood up. In the rear of my awareness I noted every drape rolling up, every piece of parchment on the desk crumpling itself into as small a ball as possible, and two chairs huddling together with a staggeringly ugly lamp in a corner for safety, in a manner that clearly said, destroy the lamp first. "It means you're currently considering my death so that you can continue to believe that he can be changed. It means you would rather see me die than this crazy murdering asshole that you ignored when he was young and now feel responsible for. Maybe I get zapped with the death spell so you can go catch him up on all the hugs he's been missing all these years. Unbelievable," I said. "You know he can't change, you know he is who he wants to be, but you still want to try to patch him up."

He didn't say anything, which was a good move on his part. For one thing, I was mad, and for another thing, I wasn't done.

"See, here's the thing about you," I said. "You have power of some kind, and you think that makes you better than other people, and because you think that of yourself you think it of other people who have power as well. Even if they torture and kill, you can't bring yourself to put them on the same level as weaker folks, because then you'd have to do that with yourself. And we both know you can't accept that. That's why you wound up with Gellert, and that's why Gellert ended up in prison instead of dead, even though he killed thousands of people. Because you still think he was worth more than them."

"There are things you do not understand about the world, Harry."

"Like what, the idea that you can't expect to be able to drive history unless you are able to do so without questioning yourself or having a fucking conscience?"

His hand slapped down on the desk, but he said nothing.

At this moment, I had an odd, sort of disorienting feeling. I'd been about to say something to him, but it just vanished from my thoughts. Easy come, easy go.

He let out a sigh.

"Harry, I find myself at a loss as to what I should make of you."

"You don't get to make anything of me," I said. "That's kind of what we're talking about here. I don't do magic like you do and I don't value the same things you do, you don't understand it, so you believe that I'm inferior to you, right? Not that impressive. I don't want to take over the world, I don't want to control everything or change everyone, so that makes me a little dull. Now Tom, on the other hand, wow, right?" I took a few steps, gesturing broadly. I was on a roll. Sue me. "Killing people, Unforgivable curses, Muggles should be enslaved, Purebloods should rule everything - pretty sexy, huh? Gets the old blood going, just thinking about all of that power in motion. It would be a shame to just put an end to that — it would be like a crime against nature. The rules don't apply to him. Do you know," I said, something occurring to me, "what Lucius Malfoy said to me about doing whatever he wanted? He said it was his right as part of the order that is to be, and actually followed that with, what was it, something like 'ever the way of men of power.' It wasn't his right, but he was spot on about the power part. And here you are, in the same line as he was."

My wandering had brought me around the desk. There was nothing between the two of us now. Just an old man and a young man, one seated and one standing.

"I'm digressing," I said. "So let me get to the point. I'm going to tell you what I know. I know that Lucius gave Ginny the horcrux diary when she was eleven. I know he killed a lot of people, including several in your order. I know that he wanted to capture me and bring me to Tom to be killed, and that he was looking forward to torturing Ginny to death. I know this because he told me so. And you know it too, but somehow he was still walking around, even though you were the head of the Wizengamot and the most influential wizard in England. This means you thought he deserved to be walking around. But he didn't. He didn't. And he's dead now." Words hurtful in my mouth, abrasive, couldn't stop. "And now you're trying to get out of doing the only thing that will end this, so you can keep deluding yourself about being in control and being worth more than anyone else. You are willing to let more people die so that you can fool yourself a little longer. Well, fuck you, Albus. There's no prophecy that says you have to live, is there."

That got his attention.

"The other thing I know is that you have no problem with watching me die. That means we're done. You might decide that what Tom really needs is therapy, and stick a knife in my back. So I would avoid me, if I were you."

Not a strong finish, but it would have to do. His face was withered and dry-looking, and I imagined it splitting at his cheeks like a desert fruit, revealing something painful and red beneath. I wanted very much not to imagine that, or anything else, regarding him. I wanted to imagine him far away, and I wanted to imagine my face pressed into the warmth of Ginny's neck more than anything. I turned away from that pile of crusty underwear that was the headmaster and began to think of my room at my parents' house, wondering, if I imagined Ginny in there waiting for me, what the likelihood would be that she'd actually be there, because that was the room I wanted to appear in. One with her in it.

Just before I vanished, I heard him say behind my back, "Obli-"

What an unbelievable douchebag, I thought.

•

You may be under the impression that I don't like Albus Dumbledore.

I don't. He's a dick. That's the right impression. I was just checking.

•

A/N: Thanks to Sovran for being able to step back in and know my characters after all this time. This wouldn't be here without his help. And thanks to J for laughing, which encouraged me to continue.

To the readers who have wondered - it's always been in here, waiting for a moment when I had the resources to continue. I hope you enjoy it. It's not done yet.