"All right, come in, come in—take off your shoes, please—thank you—you can take a seat over there—would you like something to drink? Coffee? Tea?"
"Just some water would be lovely, thank you," Tim said, helping Neville into one of the old, velvety armchairs in their living room.
"Tea," Aruna said.
"Neville," his grandmother called from back in their kitchen, "do show them where they can place their bags."
Neville glanced over at Tim and Aruna concernedly. "Uh, Gran, we don't actually have any bags."
There was a frustrated huff that echoed off the kitchen tiles. "Oh, fine. Well then, you can—"
Tim leaned over, straining his ribs again, and placed a hand on Neville's shoulder. "Pardon me, ma'am," he interrupted loudly, clearing his throat in an overexaggerated manner, "but I believe Neville is in need of some medical attention, first and foremost."
"Is he now?" The old woman poked her head around the archway, eyeing the three of them skeptically. Her gaze hovered on Neville's leg before she disappeared again. "I suppose he'll be needing some Wiggenweld?"
"And a Blood-Replenishing Potion if you have one," Tim suggested, mentally digging back into those books he had read over the summer about wizarding medicine. Dittany might have also been a nice addition, but Tim didn't know if it would affect the potency of the Wiggenweld Potion. Magical pharmacology was not his strong suit.
From afar, he heard something that sounded like, "Of course I have one, child, I'm not a dullard…" though it was clearly not intended for his ears.
Meanwhile, Neville was staring at his hands and twiddling his thumbs intently. "Sorry about my gran," he whispered. "I know she's a little…well…" He shrugged, like he didn't really have the words to properly describe her.
Neville's grandmother bustled back into the living room levitating three potions with her wand. "Now, Neville," she started, waving her wand and setting the potions down on a side table next to Neville, "I don't believe you introduced me to your two companions yet."
Neville perked up. "O-oh, right. Gran, this is Tim and Aruna. They're, uh, friends of mine."
"Hm. I've never heard you mention them before."
"Oh, um, I met them both this year. They're Ravenclaws."
"Ah." She held out a shriveled hand to them. "Augusta Longbottom, it's a pleasure."
Aruna shook her hand silently, and then Tim followed with, "The pleasure's all mine, ma'am."
"Flattery will get you everywhere in this house, young man," she replied with a thin smile. She then switched her attention back to her grandson and pointed at the phial beside him that was filled with lime-green liquid. "Take two swigs of the Wiggenweld and then drink the whole bottle of the Blood-Replenishing Potion." Upon seeing Neville hesitate, she rolled her eyes and added, "It's the red one, dear." She picked up the third phial and carefully poured out the purple solution onto a handkerchief that she procured out of nowhere. Tim tensed unconsciously when he saw her reach for Neville's leg, but she merely unwrapped Tim's bandaging and started dabbing her handkerchief onto the wound.
If there was one kind of magic that Tim was continually surprised by, it was healing magic. He and his family had sustained so many injuries throughout their tenure as vigilantes that Tim was always in awe of how others were able to heal serious injuries so quickly and perfectly with magical abilities. Heck, Tim would even go so far as to admit that he got jealous watching other superheroes shrug off injuries without any lasting consequences. It both felt unfair and miraculous. He watched intently as the blood around Neville's injury disappeared and the wound began to heal over. It was like watching a time-lapse of a scab healing.
"You best be taking two swigs as well, Tim," Mrs. Longbottom remarked without looking up from her work.
Tim, who had been hoping to keep his injury on the down-low like he usually did, was more than a little shocked to be called out like this. "O-oh, um…yeah…thanks…"
How did she even—?
"If you think you could hide an injury like that from a war veteran, you'd best be switching Houses," she muttered, loud enough that he could hear it. He was certain this was a purposeful decision. Tim obliged, picking up the phial and tipping back his head to let the potion run down his throat.
The effect was instantaneous. Not only did Tim feel a great weight lifted off of his chest, but he could see that the cuts and bruises he had sustained from sparring with Ra's al Ghul also disappeared, and any exhaustion he might have been feeling after such a long day was suddenly gone. Tim was almost glad that he didn't know how to brew this potion, or he just might become addicted to it.
The Longbottom house was remarkably tidy for a place occupied by one woman for the majority of the year. Or perhaps that was the reason why it was so tidy in the first place, the woman having nothing but time on her hands after retirement.
Briefly, Tim took a trip to the bathroom ("Down the hall, second door on the right, do not open the first door under any circumstances") and passed through a hallway full of moving pictures. In one, a younger but no less grey-haired Dumbledore was flanked by a round-faced woman with a pixie cut and a lanky man with prominent ears. Neville's parents, no doubt, or at least a man with the same jawline and eyes as Mrs. Longbottom and a woman looking remarkably like a more feminine Neville Longbottom.
Yeah, definitely his parents. In another, the same man and woman sat at a bar alongside Sirius, Remus, Snape, a rotund young man with curly brown hair, a man with messy black hair and wire-framed glasses, and a redhead with a wide grin on her face. Tim wasn't sure about the curly-haired man, but it didn't take a detective to see the similarities between the last two and Harry Potter. James and Lily Potter were always mentioned, however briefly, in all the books Tim had read about Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived—the parents of the boy who defeated Voldemort, tragically murdered in their own house in Godric's Hollow the night of the Dark Lord's demise.
Lily was also in the next picture, she and Neville's mother standing side by side and admiring each other's round stomachs. As Harry and Neville were in the same year at Hogwarts, it was no surprise that their mothers were pregnant around the same time, even in the same trimester, if Tim was observing the pictures correctly.
Surprisingly, there were no pictures of Neville's parents with Neville himself included in the picture, not including the pregnant shots of his mother. Tim wondered if they had died shortly after his birth, or if they had just dropped Neville off on his grandmother's porch and up and vanished. But the pictures of them were hung in a prominent place in the house, so Mrs. Longbottom must have still regarded them positively.
And then he encountered the mirror in the bathroom with little faces carved into its frame who all started commenting at once on Tim's appearance. He hurried out of the bathroom as soon as he had finished, the pictures on the wall all but forgotten.
"Now then," Mrs. Longbottom explained carefully, staring at Neville like she dared him to interrupt her with his questions. "I believe the fastest route back to Hogwarts would be to travel by Floo into Hogsmeade and then hike back up to the castle from there. Now that you're all healed up, it shouldn't be a problem."
After Neville was quite sure she was finished, he asked, "Whose fireplace will we appear in?"
"Aberforth Dumbledore's," Mrs. Longbottom told them. "He's an old friend, just tell him I sent you."
"Is he Dumbledore's son or something?" Neville asked.
Mrs. Longbottom snorted, "They're brothers, child."
Huh. Tim wasn't aware that Dumbledore had any family. He'd never spoken of any, and there were no pictures in his office, so Tim had just assumed that the man was the last of his family, having never married or having lost his spouse at some point. It was weirdly humanizing, knowing that Dumbledore had a brother of his own.
"You first, Tim," she said, grabbing a handful of green powder out of an ashtray on the mantle. "I have a feeling you'll be the one explaining things." She coughed as the fire sputtered up ash, turning green.
Tim nodded, taking a deep breath and stepping into the fireplace before realizing that he had no clue where Aberforth lived.
"The Hog's Head, dear," Mrs. Longbottom told him, and Tim repeated the words back, shutting his eyes so as to avoid any vertigo while hopping between fireplaces.
He stumbled out into the Hog's Head and glanced around at his surroundings while he brushed off the ash from the deel Ra's had made him wear. The pub was empty save for the old man standing behind the bar who had his gnarled wand pointed in Tim's direction.
"Augusta Longbottom sent me here," Tim immediately told the man, and he would have lifted his hands in the air in the universal sign of surrender were he not still carrying his pajamas in his arms. "I'm a student from Hogwarts."
The man, Aberforth, presumably, spoke up, wand still pointed at Tim. "You're a little far from the castle, eh?" His eyes flickered to the fireplace, where Aruna stepped out, coughing a little.
"How many of you are coming?" he grumbled, switching his target to Aruna, who blinked at him disinterestedly.
"Just one more," Tim told him. "Neville Longbottom, Augusta's grandson." And, just as he'd promised, Neville stumbled out of the fireplace, tripping into Tim.
"Sorry," he muttered, steadying himself. Upon seeing Neville, Aberforth finally lowered his wand. Whether that was due to him recognizing the family resemblance between Neville and Mrs. Longbottom or if that was just him accepting that they weren't an apparent threat, Tim wasn't sure.
"Interesting get-up you got goin' on there," Aberforth commented, nodding at the three of them. "You take a trip across the world?"
"Something like that," Tim said dismissively. "Anyways, is there a chance you could maybe not tell our teachers about us coming in like this?"
Aberforth rolled his eyes. "If they were dumb enough to let you out of their sights, they deserve to be in the dark." He looked the three of them over again. "Say, you were all here that day that Harry Potter was here, weren't you?"
Tim nodded. "You have a good memory."
"Remember every person who's walked through those doors," Aberforth bragged, pointing to the rotting wooden entrance. "But that's besides the point. You lot best be off before you get into too much trouble, eh?"
Tim wasn't exactly keen on walking right up to the castle in his current attire, knowing the kind of confusion it would cause, so he took Aruna and Neville along the edge of the Forbidden Forest, staying just close enough to the edge of the wood that Tim could navigate through the trees without losing his way. For a forbidden area, the place seemed unusually tame, housing none of the horrible creatures students seemed to think roamed the place.
"What's our cover story?" Aruna asked plainly. Tim opened his mouth to try and come up with something, but Neville beat him to it.
The boy's face brightened. "Oh, I know! Sometimes, Luna comes out to the forest to see the thestrals, so maybe…I dunno…maybe Aruna invited you and me to come and visit them with her because she knows I can see them…?" He seemed to become more confident in this story as he went along, so that, by the end, he was nodding along to his own tale, like he believed it to be true.
Tim, meanwhile, was mentally filing away the fact that, a) there were thestrals at Hogwarts, and b) Neville was able to see them. Since Tim hadn't enrolled in Care of Magical Creatures, he'd bought Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them and made sure to inform himself on the listed creatures for future reference. The thestral was one that Tim had taken particular note of on his first read-through, since the only brief mention of it in the book provided the contradictory descriptions of 'black' and 'invisible,' which Tim found more than a little odd. It made more sense now that there might be some people able to see them among their peers, but Tim wasn't sure what that distinction was, only that Neville (and possibly Luna) could apparently see them, but Aruna could not. Oh well, he could research magical creatures later. They were getting closer to Hagrid's hut, so they had to get their story straight now.
"Okay, okay…" Tim nodded along, adding, "and we went before everyone woke up because…we're not technically allowed in the forest."
"Seems about right," said Aruna, and the three of them began to make their way back to the castle entrance like they had never left.
While Tim knew Neville and Aruna were probably going to get asked where they were, Tim had made enough of a name for himself as a free spirit that he was fairly certain any Ravenclaws would assume he had spent the morning with Harry, Ron, and Hermione, and, likewise, those three would assume he had been hanging around the Ravenclaws, meaning that Tim could get straight to business—namely, confronting Dumbledore with the new information he had come across over the past several hours.
He took a very roundabout route to get to Ravenclaw Tower, taking said detour only to assure Alfred that he was okay if the cat was even in his dorm, retrieve his wand, and get changed out of the ridiculous get-up Ra's had so graciously gifted him. Then it was all the way back down the stairs, stopping by the Great Hall to snag a loaf of bread because he hadn't eaten in nearly twelve hours and his stomach was very vocal in its complaints. He munched on his temporary lunch as he headed back up to the second floor and towards the stone gargoyle.
"Fizzing Whizbee," he announced after swallowing a bite, and, luckily enough, it seemed that the password hadn't changed, because the large piece of avian architecture stepped aside, revealing the staircase behind it. As Tim rode up the steps, he stuffed the rest of his bread into his bookbag and straightened up, preparing what he was going to say when he got to the top. Of course, there was the chance that Dumbledore wasn't actually in his own office, but Tim was banking on the opposite to be true, or else he was facing an undetermined amount of time with Fawkes (which, now that he thought about it, wasn't actually a bad way to spend his afternoon).
However, when Tim reached the top, it immediately became clear that not only was Dumbledore present, but that he was not alone. A tall, broad-shouldered man in a set of expensive robes turned around the moment Tim took his first step off the staircase, his mouth slightly agape.
"I…was not aware that you were expecting other visitors, Dumbledore," the man said slowly, his voice deep and inexplicably calming, like a classical radio station host. Dumbledore looked past the man and at Tim, bright eyes peeking out over half-moon spectacles.
"Neither was I," he murmured, "though this presents an opportunity for introductions. Timothy, feel free to come in." Tim, who had been waiting next to the stairs, nodded, walking over opposite Dumbledore's visitor and awaiting further introductions.
"Timothy, this is Kingsley Shacklebolt, an Auror for the Ministry of Magic," Dumbledore explained with a nod in the man's direction. Tim smiled to cover up his confusion at being introduced to an employee of the wizard government, who he was pretty sure was at odds with the Order of the Phoenix.
"And Kingsley," he continued calmly, "this is Timothy Drake-Wayne, the young man I was telling you about earlier."
Kingsley's eyes widened considerably, and he made no effort to conceal the way he looked Tim up and down. Then, he held out a hand with a smile, as though Tim hadn't just watched the man look him over like he was a criminal. Nonetheless, Tim accepted the handshake out of courtesy.
"It is a pleasure to make you acquaintance," Kingsley said smoothly. "I admit, I was hesitant when I was told that a representative of the Justice League of America was attending Hogwarts as a student, but I look forward to working alongside you."
Oh. Oh. No wonder Dumbledore had been talking to Kingsley about him. He worked for the government, but he was also a member of the Order. Someone who had a foot in each circle. That kind of involvement was critical. Like how Bruce was both a superhero and a celebrity with political power, or how Barry and Dick both did police work alongside their superhero work. Kingsley was another one of their people on the inside, like Tonks.
"Likewise," Tim replied.
"Now then, Timothy," Dumbledore continued, "what business did you have with me today?" Tim glanced over at Kingsley from the corner of his eye, hesitating for a moment. But he quickly got over that sentiment. If Kingsley was a member of the Order, he was privy to whatever exchange of information Tim wanted to have with Dumbledore.
"I needed to clear some things up, Professor," Tim explained. "Firstly, you've been teaching here at Hogwarts since the beginning of the century, correct?"
Dumbledore nodded, seemingly unsurprised by Tim's sudden question. "Yes, since 1906."
"And you taught Transfiguration from 1939 to 1957, right?"
"That is also correct."
"So, I assume you at some point taught Transfiguration to a student named Tom Riddle?" It wasn't an assumption. Tim had done the math on the way here. Dumbledore was teaching Transfiguration during the time frame when Voldemort would have been going to school here, which he must have, given how Ra's al Ghul had automatically jumped to the conclusion that Tim was at Hogwarts to investigate Voldemort. And since Transfiguration was a required course for five years, that meant that it was impossible for him to have not been in one of Dumbledore's classes.
To Dumbledore's credit, he didn't react as surprised as Tim had anticipated, only nodded, folding his hands on his desk. "I did indeed teach Tom Riddle when he attended Hogwarts."
"Tom Riddle?" Kingsley repeated, his eyebrows furrowing. "Isn't that the name of—"
"But it's not common knowledge that he grew up to become Voldemort," Tim continued. "Why is that?"
Dumbledore shook his head slowly. "Truthfully, no one seems to care who Voldemort was before he was Voldemort. Though it is no secret, I would not say that it is information that I actively give to others." He tilted his head slightly. "Might I ask as to how you came across this information?"
Tim took a deep breath. He wanted to be open with Dumbledore, but he wasn't ready to out himself as a Bat. Either way, this was going to be a long conversation. "Well, a man named Ra's al Ghul told me."
It was this that made Dumbledore stand up out of his seat, not hastily, but still with enough force that Kingsley took a step back.
"You know Ra's al Ghul?" he asked, a slight frown forming on his face. Fawkes chirped from his perch across the office.
Tim nodded. "As do you, it seems."
Dumbledore stared at Tim for a moment. "I do. He keeps a low profile, but I am aware of his existence. A friend of mine, Nicolas Flamel, once made contact with him."
"The original creator of the Philosopher's Stone," Tim said. And one of Zatanna's ancestors, a homo magus. And a wizard, apparently. "That would make sense. They share a common interest, one that Voldemort seems to also have."
"Immortality," Dumbledore said. He and Tim seemed to be on the same wavelength right now. "Can I assume Tom has also contacted Ra's al Ghul?"
Tim nodded. "Twice, apparently. But by the second time, he seemed to have already discovered the secret to immortality. Do you know if Voldemort ever contacted Nicolas Flamel?"
"If he did, he left empty-handed. Nicolas had been in possession of his Philosopher's Stone since the fourteenth century, and he maintained possession of it up until very recently, when it was destroyed before Tom could get his hands on it."
"But there are other Philosopher's Stones, so we can't rule out the possibility that Voldemort had another one. But that doesn't matter because he doesn't have one now, or, if he does, it's not working correctly, because he's been hunting down Lazarus Pits left and right."
"Lazarus Pits?" Dumbledore repeated, his eyes widening. "The fabled waters of immortality and insanity?"
"Yeah. Ra's sort of has a monopoly on them right now. So far, Voldemort hasn't managed to use any of them, though. But he's still looking."
Kingsley was watching this back-and-forth like a tennis spectator, expressing the appropriate emotions after each revelation.
"He has lost his secret to immortality," Dumbledore muttered.
"Or he's lost faith in his immortality," Tim countered, echoing what Ra's had told him before. "Which is weird because he was clearly immortal enough to not die the first time. But not immortal enough to come back to life for a good fourteen or so years. He was in some kind of limbo." Tim really needed to contact Constantine. Immortality and 'limbos' and whatnot were really his area of expertise.
"Was he only immortal enough to die once?" Tim murmured to himself, now just thinking aloud. "Did he possess some kind of magic that could only bring him back to life once? Or is it immortality with a price? He's definitely weak right now, or else he would be on the attack, and the fact that he's looking into Lazarus Pits of all things to get stronger means he's really out of options…"
"Your knowledge on Lazarus Pits is vast," Dumbledore interrupted. "Where did you attain such a comprehensive knowledge?"
"Ra's al Ghul and I have a history," Tim replied simply. He should have known that bringing them up would raise suspicions, but it had to be done if this investigation was going to move forward. Dumbledore was clearly not satisfied with this answer, but he didn't press the question, to Tim's relief. They spent half a minute in silence, both seemingly caught up in their own thoughts, before Kingsley finally spoke up.
"Was that all you came here to discuss?" he asked.
"Yeah." Tim let out a sigh, hefting his bookbag up on his shoulder. "That's all. Sorry for interrupting the both of you."
Dumbledore settled back down into his seat. "Nonsense. This was an incredibly enlightening discussion, Timothy. Thank you for bringing this information to me. If anything else happens to catch your attention, feel free to bring it to mine." It was important to note that Dumbledore did not extend this openness in the other direction. Tim would have to be aware of that in the future.
"Anything to help," Tim nodded, and with that, he left to go stuff his face with croissants and sleep through the rest of the day. He'd earned it.
Tim: could you maybe not tell the teachers about this?
Aberforth:
Aberforth: yeah whatever, fuck my older brother