A few hours later, Harry was becoming quite bored with the first year textbooks. She was quickly realising that she had significantly overestimated her ignorance. And armed with the knowledge of a soon-to-be third year, the first year material seemed extremely simple, and was in fact quite light on magical theory. The focus of first year was more on learning how to handle a wand and use incantations, something that had always come to Harry easily.
Dumbledore's dossier, on the other hand, was much more interesting. A leather-bound notebook, it was written in the headmaster's own hand over the course of many years. Each page was dedicated to a public figure, from politicians to celebrities to business people. Given some of the secrets contained within the book, Harry suspected that it was worth its weight in gold. He turned to the page on Narcissa Malfoy, glancing at the photograph – she was indeed quite beautiful - before reading. The profile contained more than a few surprises.
Malfoy, Narcissa. British. 37 years old. Pureblood. Born Narcissa Black to Cygnus Black and Druella Rosier. Wife to Lucius Malfoy. Mother to Draco Malfoy, wizard, born 1980 and Amara Malfoy, disinherited squib, born 1981. Performed well in OWLs, receiving Os in Charms, Potions, History of Magic, and Muggle Studies. Carried on with Charms, Potions, and History of Magic to NEWT level, receiving Os in all. Narcissa is a known occlumens of moderate skill. Her personal assets are estimated to amount to around G170,000. Through her marriage to Lucius Malfoy she has access to that family's vast assets, amounting to almost ten million galleons. The Malfoy family own most of Wizard Rail, all of Smith and Smith Cursebreakers, and have a 40% stake in The North Africa Trading company, which deals mostly in gold mining and magical creatures. The Malfoys have a residence in the French Alps, in addition to their manor in Wiltshire.
Narcissa Malfoy is the British Ambassador to France. She also sits on St. Mungos Board of Trustees, the Board of the North Africa Trading Company, and the Committee for the Regulation of Experimental Charms. Her husband is a member of the Wizengamot, a member of the Warlock's Council, and sits on the Hogwarts' Board of Governors.
Narcissa is suspected of many criminal activities in connection with her position as a Death Eater sympathiser. She successfully kept her husband out of Azkaban through a combination of bribery, one known use of the imperius curse, and the poisoning of Warlock Alfred Herbert. In addition to these serious crimes, Narcissa is, like most witches, guilty of repeated breaches of the Restriction on Underage Sorcery. If Sirius Black is to be believed, she also has repeatedly breached the long-defunct 1735 ban on sodomy.
An average dueller, but a dangerous woman nonetheless, Narcissa usually avoids magical confrontation, only participating in one combat action during the war. Known to use Severus' slashing curse. Narcissa has a calm temperament, and is rarely moved to anger. She cares greatly for her son Draco.
It was well known that the Malfoys were the richest family in Britain, but Harry had never thought they were quite that rich. The Potters were considered well off, but the Malfoys had more than ten times as much gold as he did. No wonder Draco acted like he owned the place. The fact that Malfoy had a younger sister was also quite the surprise. The book said she was disowned, but Harry wasn't quite sure what that meant. Where was she now? In the Muggle world?
Harry continued to leaf through the book – at one point, coming across a rather short page on himself – as she left Gryffindor tower. She wasn't sure where she was heading, exactly. She just felt like stretching her legs. And one of the plus sides of having two bodies is that you could study with one while you had fun with the other. Dinner wasn't for another hour or two, so she had plenty of time to explore Hogwarts – something that she'd been doing a lot of recently. Harry had been surprised to find that Hogwarts was actually quite boring during the summer. It was still much better than the Dursleys, of course, but with so few people around there wasn't much to do other than reading, practising magic and exploring. She wanted to fly, but was scared of being seen. Harry didn't know how good Ginny had been at flying, but she didn't want to risk people thinking that Ginny flew remarkably like Harry Potter.
And so she explored. Much of it was aimless wandering, but sometimes she found something interesting: secret passages, hidden rooms, and strange events. One time when she'd been out at late, she'd seen two suits of armour begin to duel on the fifth floor landing.
Harry had developed several tactics for discovering these secrets. The moving staircases were key, she'd found. If you watched them for long enough, you could catch them breaking their patterns and going somewhere new. Normally it was a corridor that had fallen out of use, more forgotten than secret, or an empty classroom. But sometimes it was something more interesting. Her best find so far had been a dust-covered room filled with ancient canvasses, each one an intricately embroidered family tree. Many of Britain's most famous families were represented, though the trees were horribly out of date.
Mercado Lopez, Juan. Castillian. 68 years old. Pureblood. Son to Cristian Mercado, deceased, and Isabel Lopez, deceased. No nuclear family. Educated at Beauxbatons Academy of Magic, where he received the French Baccalaureat de Magie with good scores. His wealth is estimated to be around G400,000. The ICW representative from the Kingdom of Castille, Juan is the cousin of the Duke of Castille. He is a very ambitious man, and has tried to assassinate his cousin at least twice. Though his cousin suspects him of these acts, he has held onto his position as ICW representative through his many political allies. Juan's parents were killed by Grindelwald in person, and he is said to hate Germans.
Another trick for discovering rooms was talking to the portraits. It was a bit hit-and-miss, and Harry would often find herself stuck in the most ridiculous conversations (she'd learnt to avoid the portrait of a crazy knight called Sir Cadogan). Still, a portrait of some House elves had told her of the Old Kitchen, and she'd found it exactly as described. It was on the second floor, near what was now the dancing hall. The Old Kitchen had a rather medieval look to it, the centre of the room taken up by a series of rusted spits. The elves told her that many years ago, in the days before the Ministry, the dancing hall was where students ate their meals, and the Great Hall was used only for special occasions. But that was when the school was smaller than it was now. Two hundred years ago the school outgrew what was then called Godric's Hall, and meal times migrated to the Great Hall.
Today, Harry was investigating the seventh floor. There weren't many staircases this high up, so she figured speaking with portraits was the way to go. As usual, the portraits were eager for company: it really wasn't hard at all to get them talking.
"Excuse me," she said, opting for a portrait of a gnarled warlock brewing a potion. She was rather fed up of cheerful ladies having tea parties, and Barnabas was too busy training his trolls.
"Was willst du?" said the warlock. Harry wasn't sure if he sounded angry, or just German. "Kannst du nicht sehen, dass ich beschäftigt bin?"
"Er... do you speak English?" she asked.
"Natürlich kan ich Englisch sprechen, du dumme Schlampe! Verschwinde endlich!"
"Okay... I'll take that as a no, I suppose."
Disappointed, Harry left the portrait behind as it continued to shout German down the hall.
"Nein, warte, komm zurück!" it shouted. Then, "Fine! Ich scheiße auf deine Hurenmutter!"
Unfortunately for Harry, the crazy warlock's raving attracted attention of the worst kind.
"Fair maiden!" a voice cried, and Harry's eyes widened, "a foul warlock approaches! Fear not, for I shall save you!"
It was Sir Cadogan. The bumbling knight was charging towards her, jumping from portrait to portrait, brandishing his sword dramatically as he searched for the warlock. Harry turned back, hoping to avoid the enthusiastic knight, who would no doubt try to follow her all the way back to Gryffindor tower if he could. But she was too slow: Cadogan overtook her.
"Not this way, fire-blessed child!" he said. "The warlock lies ahead! Turn back, I beg you!"
Deciding that indulging Cadogan was the best way to get rid of him, Harry turned once more, intending to head back to her dorm. But suddenly a door appeared to her right, opposite the now-familiar portrait of Barnabas the Barmy.
Harry opened the door and gasped. The door led into an enormous cathedral-like room with a high, vaulted ceiling and giant stone pillars. It was at least twice the size of the Great Hall, and the whole thing was packed with junk. There were piles of books, hills of trunks, mountains of tables and chairs. Bookcases, desks, beds and other furniture could be found spread all over the room, and packed into every spare bit of space were the miscellaneous magical goods: potions vials and cauldrons, Gobstones sets, crystal balls, even brooms and wands.
Harry closed the door behind her. She couldn't understand how this place was a secret – though it was certainly true that she wasn't planning on telling anyone about it. Except Ron and Hermione, of course. They could lose whole days looking through this place. Who knew what it held?
It made the most sense to start with the books, Harry thought. They had titles on them, so you could tell if something was interesting with just a glance. After the tenth copy of The Standard Book of Spells Grade 5, she was about ready to give up. Clearly this was some sort of repository for lost property, not a horde of forbidden knowledge. Still, there might be some more interesting books in the massive pile – she'd have to come back with Harry to have a proper look. In the meantime, she'd have a look at the other stuff.
Mikel Edwards. German. 25 years old. Half-blood. Son of James Edwards and Nadia Kruger. Married to Felicie Fuchs. Has one child, a boy, and another on the way. Graduated from Durmstrang Institute with the Durmstrang Diploma, First Class. Wealth not greater than G50,000. Edwards is the Governor of Bavaria, and the second German representative to the ICW. He was born with dual British and German citizenship, but later renounced his British nationality. Considered by many the rising star of German politics, he has risen to the high position of Governor with suspicious ease, especially for someone so young. One to watch.
There was a pattern emerging, Harry thought as she rummaged through some trunks. Every European in the dossier had either been to Hogwarts, Beauxbatons, or Durmstrang, regardless of nationality. She supposed it was as McGonagall had told her that morning: knowledge was in short supply.
Abandoning the trunks – they were mostly full of clothes – Harry was about to leave for dinner when a shimmering caught her eye from across the room. Curious, she advanced with her wand out, before finding the source of the strange light: an invisibility cloak. It was hanging on a hat stand, and looked a bit ratty around the edges, but nevertheless it was still functional. She tried it on. It wasn't as good as the one she already had – the air seemed to blur a bit when you moved – but it would be good enough for night time explorations. Harry grinned: two invisibility cloaks!
Her interest revived by an interesting find, she was about to continue her explorations when her tummy rumbled. Dinner beckoned, but she would be back.
The ICW Gala was the next evening.
"Are you ready, Harry?" Dumbledore asked, his hand poised to open the carriage door.
"As I'll ever be," he replied, straightening his white dress robes – the gala had a Roman theme - and steeling himself for the flash of cameras. Once again, she was listening to himself on the wireless at Hogwarts, though this time she had taken the radio to the Room of Lost Things so that she could carry on her rummaging while she listened.
They stepped out onto the red carpet and posed for a few photographs before they started to move, heading towards the pillared entrance to the vast Palais de Triomphe. Luckily, the party had been in full swing for some time already, and the reporters seemed to have had their fill: they made their way up the steps to the door without too much trouble.
"Bonjour, Messieurs," said an official as they reached the huge wooden doors. He waved his wand and they swung outwards, revealing the glittering hall within.
The French had gone all-out when preparing the gala. The Palace's atrium, outfitted to be reminiscent of a Roman villa, was many times the size of Hogwarts' Great Hall, and was filled with almost two thousand people. An intricate mosaic covered the entire floor, depicting magical creatures and great wizards from history, and ornate pillars lined the path to the dancefloor ahead; over the dance floor the flat ceiling opened up to give a view of the starry sky above. The dance floor itself was a work of art: a large, square pool, enchanted to allow the dancers to walk on water. And dancers there were already, moving to music produced by a magically amplified string sextet.
Away from the central aisle, the pillared room extended outwards. Each set of four columns created a square; at the centre of each square a unique golden fountain sat beneath a glassless skylight. The building's stained glass windows, so striking from the outside, were invisible from the interior: the far walls were enchanted to look out on the city unimpeded by glass.
As they passed inside, their cloaks were taken by a pair of stunning toga-clad Veela, and more Veela waited within, handing out glasses of champagne.
"Wow," Harry said. Coming to the gala was worth it, just to be able to see this.
"I quite agree, Harry," Dumbledore said, passing him a flute of champagne. "And all the more beautiful for its transitory nature. Tomorrow, this room will once again be an atrium." He looked at the dance floor and raised an eyebrow. "The enchantment on the water is quite something. I wonder who performed it..."
"Do you even have to ask, Dumbledore?" a man's voice said, lightly accented. The speaker came into view; Harry recognised him as the stereotypically Aryan Mikel Edwards. If anything, he looked even younger in person, yet he moved around Dumbledore with a supreme confidence. Harry wondered if he had been waiting for their arrival. "We all know the real 'power behind the throne', don't we?"
Harry didn't, but he wasn't willing to ask.
"Herr Edwards, a pleasure to meet you at last," Dumbledore said, shaking the German wizard's hand. "And how is your wife?"
"Oh, she's around somewhere," said Edwards, waving an arm vaguely towards the party before turning to Harry. "And you must be Harry Potter. How're you enjoying the continent, Mr. Potter?"
"Very much," he replied. "Maybe I'll get to see Bavaria one day too."
Edwards quirked an eyebrow, looking amused.
"Dumbledore's had you doing your reading, has he? What delicious gossip you must be able to share! I'll tell you what, Harry: let me show you around. Maybe I could teach you something Dumbledore hasn't, eh? One young man to another?"
"I think not," Dumbledore intervened, his tone final. Edwards' smile froze, and in that brief moment it was clear that it had never reached his eyes. A moment later the mask was back on.
"Have it your way. When you tire of old men and their manipulations, Harry, come and find me." He raised his glass in a mock toast, and said "Dumbledore," then left.
"That was not subtle, Harry," Dumbledore chided after he was out of earshot. "In future, I advise keeping your cards closer to your chest, as it were. Knowledge is of the greatest use when others are unaware you even possess it."
Harry nodded. Politics was more than raised eyebrows and smirks over whisky glasses, it seemed.
"So who's the 'power behind the throne'?" Harry asked as they progressed deeper into the hall, leaving the central aisle and heading for a fountain of a rather scantily clad Siren.
"Ah, yes. Herr Edwards spoke of Jean-Francois Flammel, heir to the late Nicolas and Pernelle. A rather talented wizard and, for reasons I'm sure you will appreciate, the richest man in the world."
It had never occurred to Harry that the Flammels would have descendants, but in retrospect there was no reason to think that they wouldn't. But that meant -
"When the stone was destroyed... it wasn't just Nicolas and Pernelle who died, was it?" he asked, his heart sinking.
"Ah, Harry," Dumbledore said, his tone regretful, "I wish that I could ease you of these burdens. An old man's folly. You are growing up, and I shall not hide the truth from you: five generations of Flammels relied upon the Elixir for life, and a sixth is now approaching old age."
Harry swallowed. While he was not so arrogant as to blame himself for their deaths, it could not be denied that he had some part in them. It was he who retrieved the stone from the Mirror of Erised, not Voldemort. If he had not interfered, would the stone still be locked inside that ancient artefact?
"I know what you're thinking," Dumbledore said quietly. "Remember what I told you two years ago, Harry. Do not dwell on dreams, for who knows what might have been? Perhaps Voldemort would have defeated my enchantments and returned, more terrible than ever. Or perhaps I might have confronted him and managed to trap and contain him. No one can know, Harry."
"I understand," Harry replied, and he did. Dumbledore was a realist at heart. You had to play the hand you were dealt. "But still, I wish-"
He stopped, frowning. Something had caught her attention in the Room of Lost Things. Something strange. It tugged on her very being, like a buzzing fly at the edge of her awareness. It was the kind of thing she wouldn't have noticed before, but since "the accident" her sense of the mental had increased dramatically. She looked up from the pile of dark detectors and turned the wireless off.
Harry Potter...
There! A sibilant voice, speaking not through the air but directly into her mind.
She was not alone.
"Harry, are you quite alright?" asked Dumbledore. He looked worried. "Is it your scar?"
He was about to deny it, but Dumbledore was right. Harry's scar was tingling - on both his bodies. She moved her hand to touch her forehead, tracing the outline of an invisible scar.
She raised her wand, and began to search the room, seeking out the presence.
It was Voldemort. Voldemort was at Hogwarts. She was sure of it.
In that moment he almost told Dumbledore everything. There was no way she could deal with Voldemort, if Voldemort it was. The Headmaster needed to know. But once again circumstance denied him.
"Albus!"
A pair of wizards interrupted them. One was Senator Hannity, looking jovial as ever. He was young wizard of around forty, powerfully built with tidy brown hair. He looked quite strange in his Roman robes, so different to his Victorian suit. The other man was unfamiliar. He shook their hands distractedly, concentrating on his other body.
"Senator Hannity," Dumbledore greeted him, "and Monsieur Delacour. I had hoped to find you here. We have much to discuss."
"We do at that, Albus," said Hannity, and he leaned in closer. "Something is rotten at the heart of Europe. You must have sensed it."
"I have neglected Europe for too long," Dumbledore said, still keeping an eye on Harry. "You are right. Something is amiss. I fear the Dark Lord stirs himself once more."
"I, too, 'ave noticed zis," said Delacour. Now that Harry knew his name, he remembered who he was: he was in charge of the French Ministry of Justice. "Zis Mikel Edwards is just the start. And now 'Ans Schiller appears again, after fifty years of silence."
"Perhaps, gentleman, this is a conversation best had in private," Dumbledore said, and they all glanced at Harry. "How is your daughter, Albert?"
The non-sequitur confused Harry, but Delacour seemed to know where Dumbledore was going. He signaled to a group of people chatting nearby, and a girl several years Harry's senior walked towards them.
She was beautiful. Not the ordinary beauty of someone like Jemma Winters, the 7th year Harry's dorm drooled over, but not the unreal beauty of the Veela either. She occupied some perfect space in between the two, somehow combining otherworldliness with reality. Her toga was just on the right side of acceptable, revealing a healthy amount of smooth leg and shoulder. She had a lithe figure, but with enough curves to fill Harry with an odd mixture of desire and jealousy. Her hair was up in a complex arrangement that Harry would never be able to recreate, and her face had delicate, feminine features, with full lips and large blue eyes.
"May I present my daughter, Fleur," Albert Delacour said, placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Monsieur Dumbledore," she greeted, and held out her hand to be kissed. She did the same with Hannity, and then it was Harry's turn.
"'Arry Potter, a pleasure," she said, and Harry blushed as he kissed the back of her hand.
Dumbledore looked pointedly at Harry, and then at the dance floor, before quirking an eyebrow. Harry got the hint. There was a reason Dumbledore had spent an afternoon teaching him to dance - he just hoped he would be able to perform adequately while continuing to search the Room.
"Miss. Delacour," he said, blushing furiously. "Would you do me the honour of a dance?"
She looked to her father, and he gave her a nod. She smiled, and Harry thought it might have been genuine. She grabbed his hand and dragged him to towards the dance floor.
"I 'ave been waiting all evening for someone to ask me," she said, grinning, "but you are ze first. I 'ope you like dancing."
And then they were moving. She placed one of Harry's hands on her delightfully supple hip, took the other in her own, and Harry stepped forward, trying not to move his lips as he counted furiously in his head to keep his steps in time with the music. Fleur closed the space between them, so that they were almost touching, before moving away to twirl. He hadn't practiced that with Dumbledore, but Harry thought he improvised pretty well. Really, the male part was quite easy - he didn't have to do anything fancy like spins. He just had to act as a platform for Fleur to show off from, and show off she did.
"Harry Potter... the Boy Who Lived..." the voice said again, and it was louder this time. She was getting closer.
"You are a good dancer, 'Arry," Fleur said as they came together again. She was almost glowing.
"Er, thank you," Harry said. She was very close, and her robes were quite thin. He could feel the heat of her skin underneath his hand. To his horror, he felt himself begin to harden, but if Fleur noticed she was good enough to say nothing.
It was coming from a lone bookcase, leaning against a mountain of tables and chairs. Harry raised his wand and approached slowly. The bookcase was empty but for some kind of tiara sitting on the top.
The dance ended.
"Anozer?" asked Fleur, who was now looking quite flushed herself.
"You surely don't intend to keep him all for yourself, do you?" asked Narcissa Malfoy, appearing out of nowhere. She was like a taller, older, less pretty version of Fleur, Harry thought. Before he could object, she had taken his hand and had pulled him into a dance, waltzing away from Fleur. The French girl took the theft of her partner well: she had but to bat her eyelashes, and she had a replacement.
"Well, Mr. Potter," Narcissa said pleasantly while guiding Harry somewhat forcefully through the steps. Apparently Mrs. Malfoy liked to play the part of the man. "It looks like I have you alone at last."
"Hardly alone," Harry said, remembering Dumbledore's words. Stay in sight of as many people as possible.
Narcissa's lip curled in disdain.
"These people? Look around you, Harry. This is my world. These are my people, not yours." She lifted Harry's arm and spun him around.
Harry used her wand to knock the tiara off the bookcase, not wanting to touch it. You couldn't be too careful with this sort of thing. It fell to the ground with a clang, appearing to be nothing more than a tiara.
"Hogwarts is a long way away, boy, and honour is even further. I could curse you right now and they'd do nothing, if they saw the gold in it."
Harry believed her. He remembered well how she had bribed, coerced and murdered her husband's way out of jail.
"What do you want?" he said. There had to be a reason why she wanted to dance with him.
She laughed.
"Want, Harry? There is nothing you have I desire. No. I merely wanted to see you now, at the height of innocence. I wanted to see you happy. This way, I can know how low I have brought you, when all you love is lost."
Harry stopped dancing.
"Is that a threat?" he said. It might have had more effect were he taller and his voice deeper. "Your husband thought he could threaten me once. It didn't end too well for him."
Narcissa grabbed him by his robe and pulled him close.
"Do you seriously think that a boy of twelve can stand against the Dark Lord?" Narcissa whispered.
"You will be mine, Harry Potter," said Voldemort, and the tiara erupted with a black smoke, surrounding Harry in darkness. A presence was in her mind, violent and familiar, more potent than Tom Riddle; it clawed through her thoughts, seeking to bend them and turn them to its will. Her scar was burning, and she screamed.
Harry tried to rally against it, using all the tricks she could think of. She tried splitting her thoughts in two, she tried hiding them, she tried fighting against the presence, but it was too late. Voldemort was already in her mind, pervading her every thought.
Images flashed through her thoughts: Hogwarts in flames, Ron and Hermione dead, and above it all a resurrected Voldemort, victorious and mighty.
"You will lose everything you love... only then will you die."
A cold fury filled Harry, and he could feel his magic bubbling to the surface.
"I WILL DESTROY YOU!" Harry shouted as he went to his knees. His magic thrummed with power and a wave of pressure erupted from around him, smashing every glass within five metres. Narcissa was pushed back, and the fragment of Voldemort screeched in pain, pulling back from Harry's mind.
The palace went silent. The dancing stopped. All turned to stare at Harry, kneeling on the floor before Narcissa. And then Dumbledore was there, the crowd parting before him. His face was terrible to behold; his eyes burning with fury. His wand was in his hand, and the air stirred around him with an unnatural breeze.
This was the man Voldemort feared.
"Dumbledore-" Narcissa began, but she got no further: without warning Dumbledore flicked his wand, launching her through the air as if pulled by an invisible bungee cord. She went right through one of the invisible windows, filling the hall with the almighty racket of glass smashing. The onlookers gasped.
Dumbledore ignored them all. He walked up to Harry, grasped his arm, and they disapparated with a resounding crack, smashing through every enchantment designed to prevent it.
A moment later they were in their house. Harry gaped at Dumbledore, and passed out.
Harry woke with a start, sitting up with both bodies at once. Dumbledore had put him to bed, but at Hogwarts she had fallen unconscious in the Room of Hidden Things. The tiara was still lying innocently on the floor next to her, giving no sign of the malice which lay within. Tentatively, Harry wrapped it in the invisibility cloak - not wanting to touch it with her skin - and began the long walk back to Gryffindor tower.
Meanwhile, he got out of bed and used the bathroom before putting on a casual robe for breakfast. He paused on the landing when he heard the sound of talking, but it was too quiet to make out. Clearly Dumbledore had company - no doubt concerning the events of the previous night.
He readied himself for an awkward conversation and stepped downstairs.
He found them sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea. There were five of them, as well as Dumbledore, all of them men. Of them, Harry only recognised one: Mikel Edwards. Harry frowned, wondering why he was there. It was clear from the night before that he and Dumbledore did not see eye to eye. The others were unknown to him, but Edwards was by far the youngest. The next youngest, a man of around forty, was a handsome aristocratic looking man with black hair. The other three were all grey haired, and the oldest could surely rival Dumbledore in years.
They stopped talking when Harry entered.
"This is the boy then?" asked the old man. He seemed to be examining Harry, his eyes piercing and intelligent. "Will he be trouble?"
Dumbledore turned to look at Harry, and that was when Harry realised that something was wrong. He had never seen Dumbledore look so anguished. He was angry - furiously so - but when he met Harry's eyes the anger gave way to great sorrow. He had never looked so old.
"Good morning, Harry," he said. Whatever he was feeling, he covered it well - ever the master of his own mind. "I hope you are well rested. I wonder if you could do me a favour?"
Harry looked around, bewildered.
"Okay," he said, slowly. "What?"
"We have run out of milk," Dumbledore said casually. Whatever Harry had been expecting, it wasn't that. He looked at the table. A large jug of milk was sitting next to Dumbledore's hand. "I wonder if you could pop to the shop around the corner for me. Don't worry - I have some Muggle money. Come here, my boy."
Dumbledore reached into his robe pocket and the men stiffened in their seats. But he withdrew only a handful of coins and they relaxed. When Harry moved to take the money Dumbledore grasped his hand tightly. There were more than coins in his fist: though Harry could see nothing, he could feel some kind of invisible vial. Now completely confused, Harry shoved it into his pocket with the money and moved to leave, but Dumbledore kept hold of him. Harry looked into his sparkling blue eyes.
A single tear fell, and Harry felt an intrusion in his mind.
Drink it, a voice said, and it was Dumbledore's.
"Off you pop, Harry," Dumbledore said, his voice still cheerful.
"But-" Harry began, but Dumbledore interrupted.
"Remember what you promised me, Harry. And what I promised you."
Harry swallowed, and nodded. He left the house in silence.
Dumbledore asked him to get milk, so he would get milk. As he walked, he took the invisible vial out of his pocket. He still couldn't see it, but he could feel where the stopper was at the top.
Drink it, Dumbledore had said. No time like the present, Harry thought. Something very strange was going on.
As soon as he drank the contents, the streets of France blurred like a smudged painting. Back at Hogwarts, Harry stopped walking in surprise, and focused on her other self. When the world refocused, he was no longer in Paris. He was at Hogwarts, standing inside the clock tower with Dumbledore and Snape, looking over at the lake. Three children were sitting by the lake's edge: himself, Hermione, and Ron.
"Professor, what's going on?" Harry asked, but he was ignored.
"You have become attached to the boy," Snape said. There was no sneer on his face, nor biting malice in his voice.
Dumbledore sighed.
"I have, Severus. He is a remarkable young man. So much pain lies in his future, yet he will face it, and face it by choice."
"You are certain that he must...?" Snape said, leaving the question hanging.
Must what? Harry thought.
"Die, Severus?"
Harry's breath caught. What was Dumbledore talking about?
"Yes," Snape spat, pain in his voice.
Dumbledore sighed again.
"He is a horcrux. So long as Harry lives, Voldemort will endure."
Harry's legs gave out underneath him. Why was the world spinning?
"There must be some other-"
"Do you not think that I have explored every possible option?" Dumbledore said, his voice hard. "I, who have watched him since he was but a babe? Did you know that in the last ten years, there have been more than five attempts on the boy's life?"
"Then why, Dumbledore? Why have you protected him? Why have you let him live?"
Harry wanted to know that, too. Dumbledore fell silent. Then, at last:
"It is as you say, Severus. I have grown attached to the boy. Let him have a childhood first. Let him experience love. Let him know joy and magic and see the world. And then, once the pieces are in place, right at the bitter end, he will die."
Snape's mouth opened and shut several times.
"It is a pity," he said after some time. "The boy shows promise."
"That he does, Severus. That he does."
The world blurred again, and Harry found himself transported once more. This time he was in a dingy little room, a ratty bed in one corner, and a table to one side. The room was dark, lit only by candles. Dumbledore sat on one side of the table, and a woman with huge glasses sat opposite him.
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches..." the woman said, her voice rasping, "born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies... and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not... and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives... the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies..."
The room blurred, and then Harry was back in Paris. He was sitting on the ground, attracting strange looks from people across the street. He ignored them.
Why had Dumbledore shown him those memories? For memories they surely were. Dumbledore had always kept his secrets. Why give them out now? Knowledge is of the greatest use when others are unaware you even possess it.
There could only be one reason, Harry thought, and he could feel the grip of panic begin to take hold. No... He got up, and ran back to the house.
"There you are, Miss. Weasley!"
It was McGonagall, calling down the corridor to her as she ran for Gryffindor tower.
He slammed open the door to the house, and rushed inside. The kitchen was empty.
"Professor!" Harry cried, "we need to get to-"
"No time for that, Miss Weasley!" McGonagall said, "The castle is being evacuated! Come, we must get you to the Burrow!"
He rushed upstairs to Dumbledore's room.
"What?" she said, surprised. "Why?"
"The castle is no longer safe, Miss. Weasley. Sirius Black has escaped from Azkaban. Now, come!"
Dumbledore was lying on his bed. His hands were clasped across his chest, and his face was peaceful. Harry moved over to him, took hold of his hand, and began to cry.
He was dead.