A Tale of Two Dumbledore's
Monday, March 17th, 1997
Draco couldn’t breathe. He knew he was breathing, of course, or he wouldn’t be walking and talking, and panicking, but it still felt as if he was suffocating. Drowning under the weight of the truth. Scrambling for purchase but finding only his friends hollow words as they watched him pace back and forth before them.
It was early morning, hours later than the pitch black a.m. to which he’d been told this dark revelation, and yet it felt like a fresh wound still seared into him, as if the briars were still cutting through his skin.
“Maybe it is just a myth,” Hermione said hopefully, curled in her Magical Maintenance robes and leaned against her boyfriend. Comfy and not at all understanding how Draco felt at the moment, the horror that came with knowing he had the biggest target in his hand (or Harry’s currently. He couldn’t even look at the damned stick right now) and Dumbledore had put it there knowingly.
“No, no, it’s real,” Luna cut in faintly, swaying slightly on her log beside Dean. “Daddy always loved telling me stories of the Deathly Hallows.”
“Luna,” Dean whispered, a soft warning. Merlin bless Dean Thomas, who Draco hardly knew nor appreciated before but now couldn’t thank enough for taking all of these no doubt confusing events of the past twelve hours with stride.
“I thought we wanted the Hallows,” Ron pointed out, frowning slightly. “I thought we wanted Dumbledore to have entrusted us to find them -”
“What we ‘wanted’ was for Riddle to not kill me for that damned thing!” Draco shouted, jabbing a finger at the stick in Harry’s hand, “And for the Elder Wand to help us kill him instead. Now I guess I’m the new ‘Chosen One’, am I? Dumbledore wanted me to do it, probably because Harry’s so special to him and he can’t have him die -”
“Draco,” Harry rose abruptly, a hand outstretched, and he froze because, truly, he didn’t mean to insult his boyfriend, though he knew he understood that. “Dumbledore would never do that. He cared about you too.”
Draco wanted to deny it, he really did, but he couldn’t forget the way the old man had looked at him on the Astronomy Tower in Fourth Year, and again moments before his death. Instead, he clenched his eyes shut, forced back tears, and looked back up at his love with bloodshot eyes.
“I’m sorry I’m just…” he let out a shaky breath. “Scared.”
“The wand should be able to protect you,” all eyes turned to Ollivander. “It has lost, of course, through the centuries, but it has also been rumored to hold great power in its core. Feats of magic the likes of which no other wizard or witch could produce have been seen from it.”
“That explains why you had to put less effort in to get it to do what you wanted,” Harry said, but this only made Draco scowl and turn away, rubbing his arms.
“I don’t want that kind of power. Even if he meant well… I can’t understand why Dumbledore would leave the wand to me…”
For a long period of silence, all eyes simply laid on Draco, which made him feel just fantastic as he stared determinedly ahead at the trees, but he softened instantly when he suddenly felt a hand on his shoulder, and looked around to see Harry giving him a half smile.
“Maybe it’s in the memory he left me?” he pointed out hopefully, holding out his hand to his love’s. “We’d just have to see.”
Draco instantly entwined his hand in his love’s, placing a gentle kiss on his forehead. “Then I guess we really are going back to Hogwarts now, aren’t we?”
-*-*-*-
For the next week, the group apparated from forest to forest by day, always remote locations one of them said they’d visited on holiday and thought was far enough away to not be spotted, and rested by night, giving time for Hermione, Ron, Luna, and Ollivander to recover both physically and mentally, while they discussed heading back to Hogwarts, pointedly avoiding the subject of the Elder Wand.
The only time it had was a quiet moment when Harry knew Draco was fast asleep, and he had approached Ollivander to confirm the wand’s existence one last time. He’d confirmed that all those paths they had traced through book from the Hogwarts library months ago had been seen as fact by believers in the Hallows, even with the occasional gap, such as in present day, when people thought it was lost when it had really been in Dumbledore’s hand the whole time.
“So…” Hermione had said slowly, swirling the tea in her mug. “You don’t think it can be a fairy tale or a myth?”
In any other situation Harry would get mad at her bringing up the old argument, but now that they all were looking for any way to fix things for Draco, he couldn’t bring himself to.
“No,” said Ollivander. “Whether it needs to pass by murder, I do not know. Its history is bloody, but that may be simply due to the fact that it is such a desirable object, and arouses such passions in wizards. Immensely powerful, dangerous in the wrong hands, and an object of incredible fascination to all of us who study the power of wands.”
The look of wonder alight in the old man's eyes reminded Harry painfully of when he'd first met him, and he'd managed to praise but shame Voldemort in the same sentence. He was suddenly very glad Draco was asleep, and maybe even for Luna and Dean lying sound asleep too.
For a moment, Harry stared into the flames in front of him, thinking of wands and…
“Mr. Ollivander, do you know anything about the Deathly Hallows?”
He startled and looked between the trio of Gryffindor's, clearly confused. “The - the what?”
“The Deathly Hallows.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about. Is this still something to do with wands?” Harry, even though he was no legilimens, was certain there was no sign of a lie in the old man's eyes.
“It's nothing,” he said, waving a hand. “I’m sorry for all You-Know-Who put you through. You can rest now.”
He turned to face his friends, and saw his worried expression mirrored in their eyes, as well as Hermione’s doubt. Despite it all, she still didn’t believe in the Hallows, but it was fine, he thought, sinking down onto the grass and his own makeshift pillow of robes, he knew they were real, he could only hope he’d be able to understand all Dunbledore left him before it go too late.
-*-*-*-
Saturday, March 22nd
It happened while the Quartet was out gathering fish.
Dean had learned how to cook salmon properly from Ted Tonks (who they learned had died when the Snatcher’s came to get them, but the group had split sometime before and everyone was confident that Fudge, the Muggle Prime Minister, Tess, and the babies were safe) and thus they’d been surviving off of a diet of seafood all week, which Ron surprisingly didn’t protest, instead praising Dean’s cooking at every chance he got.
Instead, Harry was the one acting grumpy. He woke up angry and went to bed angry, and no emotion in between could be explained by him. And now it seemed that attitude, which he’d tried to keep down and not lash out at his still recovering friends for, had finally reached a breaking point.
Ron and Hermione were arguing again, and maybe it was the fact that Harry had just been helping Draco climb over a log on his still shaky and bandaged knees (he barely recalled taking a fall from a flight of stairs somewhere in the mansion) and seen the way he winced at their display that got on his nerves, but he really believed he’d just reached a breaking point and couldn’t resist spinning around and releasing all that pent up anger.
“Would you SHUT IT?!” He shouted at them, loud enough to cause a couple of birds to scatter from the trees, scared, and to make them freeze, staring at him with wide eyes full of shock.
“Mate, we didn’t -”
“Sh!” Hermione suddenly exclaimed, pressing a finger to her lips. She was about three feet ahead from Ron, and at the head of the group.
“Do not ‘shush’ us -”
“Ron, please!” Hermione whispered, and Harry realized she was shivering too late as she pointed a finger at the sky, and suddenly he was shivering too. “Dementors!” she whispered, and he saw them.
Dark, cloaked, soaring over them and carrying grief in their wake, Dementors were surely above them. Instantly, the Gryffindor’s whipped out their wands and rose them to the sky, Draco cowering to a tree, still not knowing how to produce a Patronus and instead just listening to the trio’s cry of, ‘Expecto Patronum!’
Only instead of three silvery animals soaring up to meet the cloaked figures, only an otter and a terrier attacked the Dementors.
“Expecto Patronum!” Harry repeated, but it was weaker, and suddenly, he was a thirteen year old again, about to faint before the coldness of the Dementor began to sweep down upon him, and he couldn’t sum up a happy memory no matter how hard he tried. Instead, Remus Lupin was stepping before him and shielding him with his own Patronus.
Except it was Ron, now spinning around and looking at him cautiously as he panted hard to try and catch his breath, soaking in the relief that fresh, normal air brought.
“Are you okay?” he asked, as Hermione held a hand up to shield her eyes from the sun as she stared up at the sky, oblivious to them.
“Must be a patrol looking for us,” she said idly, and turned around, nodding at Draco, “We’ll have to apparate as soon as we get back to camp.” Then she saw Harry, shivering slightly against a tree, and frowned.
“Harry, what happened?”
“What’s it to you?” He spat grumpily, not really understanding why, other than the usual explainable grumpiness he'd been filled with lately.
Hermione squinted at him for a moment, then clapped a hand to her forehead, exclaiming, “Of course! Harry, give me the locket!” When he didn’t move, due to being very confused as he watched her, she snapped his fingers in front of his face impatiently. “Come on, the Horcrux, Harry, you’re still wearing it!”
Slowly, he lifted the necklace over his head and dropped it in her hand, instantly feeling a rush of joy return to him. Of light, as a weight he hadn’t even known he’d had got lifted off his chest and warmth rushed through his cold body again.
“Better?” Hermione asked, eyeing him with her hand on one hip. He felt the gazes of all of his friends, but instead of being upset, he grinned.
“Yeah, loads better!”
Hermione sat down on a rock beside him, looking concerned. “Harry, you don’t think you’ve been possessed, do you?”
“What? No!” he said defensively. “I remember everything we’ve done while I’ve been wearing it. I wouldn’t know what I’d done if I’d been possessed, would I?”
“That's true,” Ron agreed. “Ginny couldn't remember a thing from Second Year.”
“Your sister was possessed -?”
“Later,” Ron and Harry snapped at him in unison.
“Regardless, maybe we ought not to wear it. We can just keep it in our pockets.” said Hermione.
“We are not leaving that Horcrux lying around,” Harry protested. “If we lose it, if it gets stolen -”
“Oh, all right, all right,” said Hermione, throwing it over her own neck and pulling her tangled hair out from under the chain, then tucking the locket under her shirt. “But we’ll take turns wearing it, so nobody keeps it on for too long.”
“Great,” said Ron irritably, “but I thought we were leaving for Hogwarts?”
“Bilius is right,” said Draco, patting his friend’s shoulder. “Hopefully we won’t have to have any rotations with that thing.”
“Hopefully,” Hermione agreed. “Come one, let’s get back to the others.” They followed where she nodded through the trees, picking up the rucksack they'd left on the grass, stuffed with fungi.
-*-*-*-
That night, they ate salmon off of sticks and for once, Ron looked grumpy about it, no doubt because this was the sixth day in a row they had had it, but he, probably for the sake of not wanting to stir an argument after the locket incident, didn’t complain, even as he had to eat Hermione’s chewy mushrooms. The Quartet had all mostly gotten used to it, though.
Once everyone had licked their twigs clean - not literally, they’d probably get parasites or something - Harry leaned forward with his elbows on his knees, and looked into Ollivander, Luna, and Dean’s eyes in turn seriously.
“We have to leave,” he began, and they all straightened, Dean frowning.
“Well, yeah, we leave every morning -”
“I mean we have to go to Hogwarts.” His three best friends all straightened, eyeing him with wide eyes.
“Harry don’t you think we can -” Ron began but Harry cut him off.
“It’s time. They’re all rested,” He gestured to the three before him, looking at each other, confused. “You two are rested,” he pointed between Ron and Hermione then threw up his hands. “What are we waiting for?”
“Why would we go back to Hogwarts?” Dean cut in, leaning forward as well. “I can’t, remember? Ban on Muggle-borns, and I can’t prove -”
“It doesn’t matter. We won’t be going back to class. We’ll be going to end this war.”
He didn’t need to explain any further, all he needed was for the realization to hit their eyes. And, thankfully, they didn’t need to ask the fabled question ‘Are you the Chosen One?’ because they knew the answer. Deep down. He felt maybe Ollivander had always known, and Dean and Luna were good friends. Very good, maybe, by how brave they were being through all of this.
“We’ll go with you,” Luna said with conviction, nodding her head, and Dean nodded as well.
“Of course,” he said. “I’d love to see Snape’s face when we burst in.”
Even though Harry had no intention of being obvious about breaking into the school, he still couldn’t help but laugh along with the rest of them. As the laughter died down he turned to Ollivander, seriously.
“You don’t have to come,” he told him. “We’ll take you to a safe house.”
“The Tonks’s,” Dean chimed in, smiling reassuringly. “Mr. Tonks mentioned his wife still had her house open.” The others of course already knew this, but didn’t comment on it, especially as Ollivander smiled in a way of thanks.
“You all have been most kind,” he said softly.
“So it’s decided then?” Harry asked them. “Ollivander apparates us into Hogsmeade, then leaves for Andromeda Tonks’s house?”
“Seems like it,” Ron nodded, raising his shoulders.
“Alright. Then we better get a good night’s sleep in, all of us.”
-*-*-*-
Sunday, March 23rd
In the morning, they all got straight to preparing, knowing they might be facing a patrol of Death Eater’s the moment they landed in Hogsmeade (the closest Ollivander could apparate them). The Quartet all changed into plain black traveling cloaks over their Muggle clothes, Dean and Luna taking two of the Magical Maintenance cloaks and tearing off the sigils. Then they split their wands.
Harry and Ron still had their own, of course, and after a lot of hesitation Harry watched Draco pick up the Elder Wand and slip it into his jeans pocket. Hermione reached for his old one then, but he snatched it back.
“Sorry,” Draco said quickly, “But I just… I don’t feel -”
“I get it,” She said, comfortingly squeezing his shoulder, and picking up Wormtail’s instead. “I’ll use this.”
Dean had his own back and Luna took Bellatrix’s. That left Ollivander wandless, but he reassured them that, as a wandmaker, he’d be able to make one when he reached the Tonks’ house, surely.
Now that just left the seven of them standing in a circle, the rucksack over Hermione’s shoulder, couples hand in hand, tense and maybe even scared.
“Are we ready?” Ollivander asked, jovial anyway, and Luna beamed, Dean grinned, Ron nodded, Hermione weakly did so, tucking her head into the crook of his neck, and Harry and Draco locked eyes with each other. With a tight squeeze of his boyfriend’s hand, Harry turned back and nodded to Ollivander sternly.
“Ready.”
Ollivander took Dean’s hand, and, spinning on the spot, he, Dean, and Luna disappeared with a loud crack. A second later Ollivander reappeared with a second crack and Harry placed a hand on his shoulder, Ron doing the same on the other. The three of them disappeared as well.
When the usual blur of colors and voices disappeared Harry slammed onto solid ground and couldn’t even process the sights of Hogsmeade, before his ears were suddenly exploded by an onslaught of screams. Doubling over, he clasped his hands to his ears, and squinted around him, glimpsing Dean and Luna raising their wands towards the Three Broomsticks. A second later another crack sounded over the screams and Draco and Hermione were at his sides.
In time for a dozen Death Eaters to start firing spells at them all, many exclaiming, their shouts overlapped with spell cries, “It’s Harry Potter!”
They were facing double as many wands, but as Ollivander apparated away, Dean and Luna showed no signs of backing down from a fight, and even seemed to catch on and make sure to aim at the Death Eater’s actively trying to unroll their sleeves and call their Dark Lord.
“Expelliarmus!” was being used to great effect here, though Harry couldn’t keep track of how useful it was, even in the gray early morning light, too busy dodging bursts of light coming his way.
Eventually a Death Eater raised his wand to stop the screams, stilting some of the chaos, but still the six of them were being backed into a corner. Their numbers were even now, six matching Death Eater’s stunned on the ground, but it was still getting difficult. Dean had fully tackled a Death Eater to the floor now to stop him from grabbing his arm. Hermione had cast ropes to wrap around several Death Eater’s wrists and make it more difficult to tear back their sleeves.
Within minutes, Harry had shouted “Stupefy!” at the final Death Eater and he flopped to the pavement.
They didn’t waste a second catching their breaths, Ron jogging into the center of the street and looking everywhere for signs of life as Hermione said, “We’ll have to wipe their memories.”
She began going to all twelve and casting memory charms on each as Ron jogged back and said quietly, “It’s still early. People may be sleeping.”
An understanding being reached, Harry gestured them over and they huddled behind barrels and crates stacked in a dark alley beside a pub he didn’t bother identifying, speaking as quietly as possible.
“They must have been waiting for us,” he whispered. “They set up that spell to tell them we’d come. I reckon they’ve done something to keep us here, trap us, and call You-Know-Who.”
“What are we gonna do?” Luna whispered, protuberant eyes widening.
But before Harry could get the words out of his open mouth, a gruff voice suddenly spoke up above him, seemingly out of nowhere.
“How about you start by not squatting under my window and waking the whole town with your ruckus.” The six of them spun around sharply, each widening their eyes a reasonable amount as they saw Albus Dumbledore’s older brother, Aberforth, frowning down at them, his ratty towel for wiping down bars slung over his shoulder.
“Well come in then,” He barked at their stunned faces, lifting the window and stepping aside. One after the other, the kids carefully climbed inside, shivering in the cool air of the Hog’s Head, as Aberforth walked behind the bar and opened the door, picking up a handheld oil lamp. He turned and frowned at them standing awkwardly at the window, gesturing them forwards.
Hurriedly, they followed the old man up a shaky staircase and into a sitting room, big enough to fit only a carpet nicer than everything else in the building, a couple armchairs, a small fireplace, and a single oil painting of a blonde girl hanging on the wall above it. She smiled at them all as they entered, small and young, but giving off an era of sweetness and love.
“You bloody fools,” Aberforth grumbled, going from window to window and drawing the moth-eaten curtains on each. “What were you thinking, coming here?”
“We need to get into Hogwarts.” There was no point in delaying the truth.
“Don’t be stupid -”
“We have to. Mr. Dumbledore -”
“What you have to do,” he turned from lighting lamps around the room and sat down in a chair beside a small table, leaning towards them, “is to get as far from here as you can. Now, if you wait an hour I’m sure you can sneak off up into the mountains. Hagrid’s up there. Been hiding in a cave with Grawp ever since they tried to arrest him.”
“They’re all welcome to leave,” Harry said, “Always are, but I’ve got to do this. Now, there isn’t much time, but I - we - whoever needs to get into the castle - Dumbledore - your brother - wanted us -”
“My brother Albus wanted a lot of things,” said Aberforth, “and people had a habit of getting hurt while he was carrying out his grand plans. You get away from this school, Potter, and out of the country if you can. Forget my brother and his clever schemes. He’s gone where none of this can hurt him, and you don’t owe him anything.”
“Mr. Dumbledore, you don’t understand -” Draco tried, stepping forward, but it hadn’t worked under Felix, why would it now?
“Oh, don’t I? You don’t think I understood my own brother? Think you know Albus better than I did?”
“We didn’t mean that,” said Harry, gently placing a hand on Draco’s arm and nodding reassuringly before turning back to Aberforth. “It’s… he left me a job.”
“Did he now?” Aberforth asked, eyebrows raised, wryly smirking. “Nice job, I hope? Pleasant? Easy? Sort of thing you’d expect an unqualified wizard kid to be able to do without over-stretching themselves?”
Ron gave a grim laugh, Hermione frowned, looking strained, and Dean and Luna both looked away awkwardly. Draco stared at the floor, images of that night on the tower repeated fast before his eyes, so that no amount of comfort from Harry could help.
“It is imperative that Harry sees them. If you wish to give up after three, two, maybe even one that is fine but Harry must go on. Like many things, the poor boy has no choice.”
“I - it’s not easy, no. But I’ve got to -”
“‘Got to’? Why ‘got to’? He’s dead, isn’t he? Let it go, boy, before you follow him! Save yourself!”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“The poor boy has no choice.”
“You heard me months ago, Mr. Dumbledore,” interrupted Draco, stepping forward and meeting Aberforth’s gaze with determination. “Harry is the Chosen One. He lost any amount of choice when You-Know-Who came and murdered his parents. He never had one, and he may never again so the best we can all do is try to end this war before anyone else gets hurt.”
He expected Harry to tell him he took it too far but when he looked back at his boyfriend he saw only relief. He’d spoken all the words he didn’t know how to say. Slowly, Harry turned and met Aberforth’s gaze, so like his brother’s, piercing and blue.
“It’s got to be me. No one else can do it.”
The old man merely shook his head. “You-Know-Who’s already won, it’s over, and anyone who’s pretending different’s kidding themselves. There is no ‘Chosen One’ and there sure as hell ain’t no ‘greater good.’ You’re just a boy, Potter, and he’s a maniac. Go abroad, go into hiding, save yourself. And take your friends with you.” He jerked a thumb as all his loyal mates. “They lost a chance at a normal life the moment they joined your little mini-Order of the Phoenix.”
“I can’t leave,” said Harry. “I’ve got a job -”
“Give it to someone else!”
“I can’t. It’s gotta be me, your brother told Draco -”
“Oh, so you weren’t even there that night? Didn’t see him fall? Probably because he didn’t tell you everything, did he? Instead, a scrawny little Death Eater spawn gets dragged kicking and screaming into this war with no choice, once again, and forced down this path with you.”
Draco was so shocked by those words he took a step back. “I - I didn’t -”
“You talk about Potter here having his life stripped from him the moment You-Know-Who showed up on his doorstep, but you lost any choice when Albus made you part of this. So tell me, boys,” he tilted his head, as if taunting them in their belief in Albus Dumbledore. “What makes my brother and You-Know-Who so different?”
But this was an easy question. Harry had known it all his life, it seemed. He’d been learning it from Dumbledore from the moment he met him, and learning how much Voldemort lacked this power all year. Through cold, stilted memories, carrying with them a solid truth.
“Because Albus Dumbledore loved,” proclaimed Harry, raising his chin proudly. “He loved deeply, and You-Know-Who can’t even comprehend it.”
Unfortunately, this was the exact wrong thing to say to Aberforth, and they really should have expected this, as his face instantly hardened and turned down beneath his wiry beard, and he glared at them.
“Did he now? Oh, I’m sure. He loved that Gellert Grindelwald, didn’t he? Loved him more than his own family? Loved him enough to -”
“Mr. Dumbledore?” Hermione interrupted timidly, giving a small gesture to the painting. “Is that your sister? Ariana?”
“Yes,” Aberforth spat, turning his glare onto her. “Been reading Rita Skeeter, have you, missy?”
Hermione flushed.
Draco stepped forward, “He did love others,” he said, “Healthily. And I bet you and your sister were two of the people he loved very much. And Harry,” he gestured behind him to Harry, staring straight ahead at the opposite wall, trying to ignore the doubts and grievances which had plagued him for months now on all the things Dumbledore had still left uncertain for him. “His last words to me were to tell Harry he cared about him very much.”
Harry met Aberforth’s gaze again strongly at the reminder of just how much faith Dumbledore had put into him, and how he’d always been taught to do the same, from being alone in a dark chamber with Ginny, a basilisk, and a memory of Tom Riddle as his only company, to having to protect his school from a tyrannical toad.
“Whether he loved or not, it’s funny how that always turned out for him. Have you noticed that the people my brother cared about very much ended up in a worse state than if he’d left ’em well alone.”
“What do you mean?” asked Hermione.
“Never you mind,” said Aberforth.
“But that’s a really serious thing to say!” said Hermione, and even as Draco whispered her name to warn her to stop she threaded on, “Are you - are you talking about your sister?”
For a moment Aberforth glared at her, his lips moving soundlessly. Trying to form words to express the rage they all could clearly see beneath his square spectacles. And then, suddenly, he burst into a speech.
“When my sister was six years old, she was attacked, by three Muggle boys. They’d seen her doing magic, spying through the back garden hedge: She was a kid, she couldn’t control it, no witch or wizard can at that age. What they saw… scared them, I expect. They forced their way through the hedge, and when she couldn’t show them the trick, they got a bit carried away trying to stop the little freak doing it.”
Aberforth rose, tall and powerful, just like his brother. The teens stared up at him, all equally horrified. Not at him, but of what he spoke of, and what it could mean… None of them could know for sure. But they listened, intently, hanging on to his every word.
Hermione sank into an armchair when he told of his father getting locked up for attacking the Muggle boys, and soon the others followed, leaning against window sills when all the chairs were up. Only Harry remained frozen and staring as Aberforth went on.
As he pictured Dumbledore up in his room, ignoring his little sister’s pain, answering letters and signing them with his big loopy signature. For a moment, he even thought of Lockhart, before firmly shaking away the thought.
Once he reached his mother’s death, a horrible accident, he felt sick to his stomach and had to lean on Hermione’s chair for support, Draco turning in his to grab his hand. He wanted to tell him to stop, but something in Aberforth’s eyes… He knew he had to let this all out.
So they listened in baited breath to him complain about Dumbeldore taking over as head of house, waiting for the other shoe to drop. The German, blonde, very handsome, and equally brilliant, shoe.
“Grindelwald.” The old man growled with utter contempt, as if he was worse than Voldemort, which was a very unpopular opinion these days. “And at last, my brother had an equal to talk to. Someone just as bright and talented he was. And looking after Ariana took a backseat then, while they were hatching all their plans for a new Wizarding order and looking for Hallows, and whatever else it was they were so interested in. Grand plans for the benefit of all Wizardkind, and if one young girl neglected, what did that matter, when Albus was working for the greater good?”
Harry couldn’t help but shiver. Draco squeezed tighter.
“But after a few weeks of it, I’d had enough, I had. It was nearly time for me to go back to Hogwarts, so I told ’em, both of ’em, face-to-face, like I am to you, now,” Harry could easily picture teenaged Aberforth confronting his brother by the expression contorting his wiry face, “I told him, you’d better give it up now. You can’t move her, she’s in no fit state, you can’t take her with you, wherever it is you’re planning to go, when you’re making your clever speeches, trying to whip yourselves up a following. He didn’t like that… Grindelwald didn’t like that at all. He got angry. He told me what a stupid little boy I was, trying to stand in the way of him and my brilliant brother… Didn’t I understand, my poor sister wouldn’t have to be hidden once they’d changed the world, and led the wizards out of hiding, and taught the Muggles their place?”
Aberforth sighed, shaking his head, and staring at the floor. Harry noticed he’d tightened his fists and knew what was to come was the worst of it.
“I admit, I pulled my wand out first, but I beat him by only seconds. What started as an argument turned duel, and then I was on the floor. I had the Cruciatus Curse used on me by my brother’s best friend - and Albus was trying to stop him, and then all three of us were dueling, and the flashing lights and the bangs set her off, she couldn’t stand it -”
Harry could tell they had reached that worst part. Draco rose from his seat again so he could lay his head on his shoulder.
“- and I think she wanted to help, but she didn’t really know what she was doing, and I don’t know which of us did it, it could have been any of us - and she was dead.”
With that his voice broke, and he collapsed into the chair behind him. Hermione was crying, Ron and Dean had gone pale, Luna and Draco pitiful, and Harry could only feel repulsed, wishing he was like those Death Eater’s in the street, memory vanished beyond repair.
“I’m so… I’m so sorry,” Hermione whispered.
“Gone,” Aberforth croaked. “Gone forever.”
“’Course, Grindelwald scarpered. He had a bit of a track record already, back in his own country, and he didn’t want Ariana set to his account too. And Albus was free, wasn’t he? Free of the burden of his sister, free to become the greatest wizard of the century, ended up the most evil, that’s certain.”
Aberforth straightened, and looked Harry head on again. “So, Potter, what makes you so certain that my brother can love, and it would do more good than harm?” he chuckled wryly. “Sounds a lot like that ‘greater good’ rubbish, doesn’t it?”
“Then maybe the greater good is needed here!” Harry found himself shouting, not truly knowing where it was coming from, even though it felt true and natural, as if he’d finally reached an answer, or touched it at least, after all these months. “Sometimes you’ve got to think about more than your own safety! This is war!”
“You’re sixteen, boy!”
“And I thought we’d established I’ve been in this fight since I was born!”
“I got this when I was fifteen,” said Draco softly beside him, rolling up his left sleeve.
“We aren’t giving up,” Harry said firmly.
“Who says I’ve given up?”
“‘The Order of the Phoenix is finished,’” Harry scoffed as he quoted him, “‘You-Know-Who’s won, it’s over, and anyone who’s pretending different’s kidding themselves.’”
“I don’t say I like it, but it’s the truth!”
“No, it isn’t,” said Harry. “Your brother knew how to finish You-Know-Who and he passed the knowledge on to me. I’m going to keep going until I succeed - or I die. Don’t think I don’t know how this might end. I’ve known it for years. Deep down.”
Aberforth stood again slowly.
“We need to get into Hogwarts,” Harry repeated. “If you can’t help us, we’ll wait till daybreak, leave you in peace, and try to find a way in ourselves. If you can help us -.well, now would be a great time to mention it.”
Aberforth had walked straight up to the portrait of Ariana.
“You know what to do,” he said.
She smiled and turned to walk away, but instead of out the side of her frame she walked further down a long tunnel painted behind her, getting smaller and smaller before disappearing entirely.
“Er -what -?” Ron startled.
“There’s only one way in now,” Aberforth explained, turning to face them. “You must know they’ve got all the old secret passageways covered at both ends, dementors all around the boundary walls, regular patrols inside the school from what my sources tell me. The place has never been so heavily guarded. How you expect to do anything once you get inside it, with Snape in charge and the Carrows as his deputies… well, that’s your lookout, isn’t it? You say you’re prepared to die.”
“But what…?” Hermione began but trailed off as they all glimpsed a tiny white dot reappearing. Dean and Luna both moved forwards from the windows, squinting with the rest of them, no doubt realizing that a second figure, taller than Ariana, was returning.
They were limping, but moving fast as if excited. And though his hair had grown slightly longer, and his clothes torn, and his face was cut and bruised, it was still surely Neville Longbottom clambering out of the portrait and beaming at them all.
With a roar of delight he exclaimed, “I knew you’d come! I knew it, Harry!”