A Talk with the Headmaster
Harry didn’t bother putting the cloak back on; it would be useless against the Headmaster. In his younger years he had believed that Dumbledore was able to see through it, though now he knew it was more likely that either the castle’s wards or his magical signature betrayed him rather than the cloak itself.
It might have worked now. By the time Harry had become Master of Death his Dumbledore had been long dead, and the Hallows had worked differently for him after reuniting them. But there was little to be gained by watching the Headmaster in secret and so Harry was fully visible as he approached the private room that he had left him in, feeling the wards he had set tingle against his skin but allowing him – and only him – entry.
Again, Dumbledore could probably break them if he tried. Being Headmaster gave him many privileges within Hogwarts, and unlimited access to anywhere within it was almost certainly one of them. But it didn’t really matter in the end, because Albus Dumbledore was where Harry had left him.
He was sat on the bed, calm blue eyes fixed on the doorway, looking for all the world as if he were behind his desk in his office. Their gazes locked, and behind the twinkle Harry saw something very much like surprise.
He had never been able to read Dumbledore like that before. Indeed, Harry had always been the open book between them; his Headmaster had known some of his thoughts before Harry had fully realised them himself. Yet this Albus Dumbledore didn’t know him at all.
It was distinctly odd to have the roles reversed. Harry waited calmly, patiently, for Albus to speak. He respected the man deeply, but he was not the same naïve Gryffindor that had started Hogwarts and adored the grandfatherly figure of legend. He had at last learned patience, and this version of Albus Dumbledore was very much an unknown. Despite the seemingly shared trait of putting an unhealthy amount of trust in prophecy, his Dumbledore had at the very least never stolen a person from another dimension to deal with his problems.
The silence stretched. One minute. Two. Five. Harry simply contemplated what he had learned since arriving in this world and waited him out.
Eventually, Albus gave a near-imperceptible sigh and said, “Harry Potter.”
There was no doubt in his voice. Harry replied in the same tone, “Albus Dumbledore.”
The shift was subtle, but he felt it. The gentlest of pressures on his mental shields, a featherlight touch almost immediately withdrawn. He would not have noticed if he was not halfway expecting it, but still a sense of disappointment stirred within him. How many times had his own Headmaster resorted to Legilimancy back when Harry had not known to protect his mind?
That was quickly coming to be one of the worst things about arriving in this new world. The way it kept making him re-evaluate both himself and everyone around him. The way he didn’t know how much was the same and how much was different from the world he’d always known.
“My dear boy...”
It was a rare sight. The venerable old Headmaster, seemingly at a loss for words. But this was just another weapon in Albus’s arsenal – he had been confronted with something that he had not expected and so he was trying to gather more information whilst at the same time maintaining his ‘all-knowing’ illusion.
Harry shook his head slightly. He had always hated politics; it was why he doubted, despite what the hat had said, that he would have done well in Slytherin. But the last few years had taught him harsh lessons, and so he was not altogether helpless. “I am not your boy.”
Once that title had given meaning and stability to a vulnerable eleven-year-old. It had comforted him, made him feel like Dumbledore cared. In the light of what had happened in the end, though, it tasted like a lie – all the time, the headmaster had known that he was destined to die.
Oh, Dumbledore had loved him. Harry knew that. Dumbledore had cared – but in the manner that you would care about a beloved pet, and sometimes the same way as an important chess piece. Not as a person, not really. Otherwise, he would never have felt justified doing what he had done to Harry.
He had tried his best, a powerful and knowledgeable but old man with the weight of the whole wizarding world on his shoulders, but along the way he had forgotten that he needed to do more than preserve life. That feelings could be just as if not more important than physical safety.
Trust, honesty, belief. In their relationship it had only ever gone one way.
This Albus had not made the same decisions, the same mistakes; there was no Boy-Who-Lived for him to manipulate in this world. Sharing a face and a name did not mean that he could be blamed for his counterpart’s sins.
Logically, Harry knew that. But the title, the way he had oh-so-subtly tried to intrude upon his mind, that grandfatherly twinkle in his eyes... perhaps this Albus was not the Headmaster he had known, but he had the same quirks, the same tells.
For once, Harry had the advantage. He knew Albus Dumbledore – knew how he acted, how he thought, and he also knew some of the skeletons in his closet (how odd that he was now grateful to Rita Skeeter) – but Albus did not know him. His Harry Potter had died. Whilst he could make guesses, in this seemingly more peaceful world Harry doubted he would be twisted enough to make accurate ones.
Albus smiled gently, ever the benevolent old man indulging the whims of the youth. “I suppose not. But you are Harry Potter, then. I must admit, I was not expecting you.”
A concession that was not really a concession, because it was something Harry already knew. His Dumbledore had liked those too. But he wasn’t fifteen anymore and he could keep his temper in check, so he merely tilted his head and said, “People rarely do.”
He doubted that Albus knew how much surprise his single blink betrayed. “This has happened to you before?”
“Being summoned from an alternate dimension? No.” Harry gave an unreadable smile. “But let’s just say that such occurrences are not entirely out of character for me.”
Yes, I can do the dancing-around-the-subject thing too. The lines around Albus’s eyes tightened slightly but he betrayed no other sign of irritation.
“Indeed? I would be fascinated to hear more.”
“I’m sure you would.” Harry’s smile sharpened so much that the Headmaster nearly cut himself. “But as you were the one to invite me here, I’m sure you’ll indulge my curiosity first.”
“Naturally, dear boy,” Albus agreed, completely ignoring Harry’s opinion of the title. He gritted his teeth but let it go; it was just a power play, not important enough to fight him on. And if he underestimated Harry because of his youth, well... it would be irritating, but it would also be a distinct advantage. And not an unfamiliar one either. “I’m sure you have many questions.”
It wasn’t a glowing invitation, but Harry would take what he would get.
Having already considered what he wanted to ask, Harry knew that the personal accusations – like “did you really summon a person from another dimension because you couldn’t sort out your own mess?” – would not only be unlikely to net him many answers but would also give far too much personal information away. Instead, he would ask about events from his own school years, hopefully keeping them broad enough not to give away too much. He needed to know just how much this world differed from his own, and how Voldemort had returned without a Boy-Who-Lived in the equation, before he started spilling secrets. Especially to a man who took such delight in hording them and acting according to his own interpretations, others’ opinions be damned.
“I know about what happened here Halloween night 1981,” Harry started slowly. “I know how the other version of me died.” He probably knew what had happened better than anyone else, actually, having read between the lines. “And I know that He vanished, and that He returned sometime in 1998. How did that happen?”
“Did something similar happen in your world?” Albus questioned. Harry just glared at him.
“I can’t tell you what’s different if I don’t know what happened here,” he said in a carefully calm voice. “But anyone could tell me about your dimension. If you’re not going to give me answers, then I will seek them elsewhere.”
It wasn’t really a threat, even if it sounded like one. Part of the reason things had gone so badly for Harry in his own war was because of Dumbledore’s policy of withholding important information and he refused to play that game again. If this Albus looked like he was going down the same path then it would be far easier for Harry to interrogate someone else.
Hell, he could kidnap a Death Eater and force veritaserum down their throat. It would probably be faster, and he didn’t have the same scruples that he used to. In fact, the longer he thought about it, the more tempting that option began to sound.
The Order of the Phoenix needed him a hell of a lot more than he needed them. They had been next to useless in his old world when it really came down to it. It had been up to three teenagers to hunt down the shattered fragments that Voldemort had called a soul and then it had been predominantly Hogwarts students that fought and paid the price of the Final Battle. After the abomination was gone, so many of them had been dead that the rest (those who hadn’t turned on him) hadn’t been enough to fix the world.
With the amount he had learned after the war and the information his own world had equipped him with, Harry was more than capable of dealing with Voldemort alone. Perhaps it might be easier with the Order, but since when had his life been easy?
He sat back and stared into Albus’s eyes, letting the wily old wizard read all that and more off his face. After a few moments of careful scrutiny, he sagged almost imperceptibly back onto the bed, for half a second looking old and tired. “Very well,” he said, his ‘disappointed’ voice having little effect on Harry. “But you pry into the darkest secrets of our age.”
“What else is new?” Harry muttered under his breath, though he refused to elaborate further.
“Everything was quiet for many, many years,” Albus started. “You are quite right – Voldemort disappeared on Halloween night, 1981, and many believed him to be dead.”
“You were not among them.” His Dumbledore hadn’t been either, and Harry had always been a little curious about that. Now more so than ever, as it appeared that he hadn’t known about the Horcruxes back then.
“No,” Albus said thoughtfully, drinking in Harry’s reaction (or rather non-reaction) to the name. “As much as I wanted to believe it, I could never quite bring myself to. It was too sudden, too easy. And his body was gone from Godric’s Hollow. I knew that Tom had dabbled in the very darkest of magics in the pursuit of immortality, and I assumed that he had at least partially managed. He had not been able to prevent the destruction of his body, but I took readings of the scene and found that some trace of him had fled. I knew that he was still present, in some form, but I confess that I allowed myself to hope that he would never regain his former power.”
Harry snorted. That was a naïve hope – Voldemort would never stop looking for power, and with magic if you threw enough effort at something it was almost always possible. It didn’t matter if it took one year or a thousand; Voldemort had achieved relative immortality and he would always have found a way to return.
The Headmaster studied him again, those blue eyes deeply unnerving. Harry knew that his reactions – or lack of them – were probably giving quite a few of his secrets away (he didn’t flinch at Voldemort and he recognised the mention of Tom just as a start), but he didn’t care enough to pretend. He wouldn’t give them specifics, but he knew a lot about Voldemort and saw no use downplaying his knowledge. Not when he was going to have to tell them about the Horcruxes.
“Alas, it was not to be,” Albus continued eventually. “It took many years, and he took great care to avoid me entirely. I tried a few times to entice him to the school, thinking to study how he still lived, but he was patient and he waited me out. Then, when I had lowered my guard, he acted.”
He was being frustratingly vague (not that that was anything new), but Harry was more than capable of reading between the lines, especially when he had a secret advantage. Extrapolating from the knowledge of his own world, he could be reasonably sure that the ‘enticement’ he was talking about was the Philosopher’s stone, used as dark wizard bait in his own first year. He had suspected that there was something fishy about that for years now; if Dumbledore had been serious about keeping it safe then he would have just put it under fidelius somewhere.
This Headmaster was still talking. “It was, as you say, in 1998. Have you heard of the Triwizard tournament?”
Harry gave a single, jerky nod. This was sounding oddly familiar, but it was the wrong year, and he was dead in this world, so... then he put the pieces together. Early 1998. Had he been normal, he would have been in seventh year, along with the other potential candidate for the prophecy: Neville Longbottom.
Neville, who happened to be in the Order and who had a knife-scar on his left arm in this world.
Harry nearly swore, but Albus continued unaware.
“The champion for Hogwarts that year was chosen to be a seventh year Gryffindor called Neville Longbottom. The Longbottom’s are strident supporters of the Order of the Phoenix and set themselves fully against Voldemort, a feud that Mr Longbottom inherited from both his parents. That was enough to fulfil the requirements of an esoteric ritual that Tom used to regain his body.”
Memories flickered through Harry’s mind. Bone of the father, flesh of the servant, blood of the enemy. He shoved up another Occlumency wall and ignored them.
“Young Mr Longbottom was kidnapped from the final task and his blood was stolen to use in the resurrection. He managed to escape using an emergency portkey that his parents insisted he keep on him at all times, but not before bearing witnessing to the ritual.”
Harry nodded. That much made sense, though it was curious that the Triwizard tournament had been involved both times. Then again, Voldemort had always had a flair for melodramatic, overly convoluted plans, so maybe it wasn’t such a coincidence after all.
“And since then?” he questioned.
“Tom is cunning,” Albus said, looking grave. “He knew how desperately the world wanted to believe he was gone forever, and so he laid low, recovering his strength and recruiting new allies. He did not reveal himself until a few months ago, and I am afraid that no one listened to my warnings before then. I reformed the Order of the Phoenix, who now form the core of resistance against Lord Voldemort. I fear that the Ministry may have been deeply infiltrated in the year that Tom remained hidden and so it is just us few who stand between him and his ultimate goals.”
Fighting his urge to roll his eyes, Harry just nodded again. Behind all the grand language, there was little in that speech that he could not have guessed for himself.
To fill in the rest of the blanks, he muttered, “And then you had a little tete-a-tete in Diagon Alley, realised that you’ve gotten rusty since stabbing Grindelwald in the back and decided to haul in a little help from another dimension to take care of all your problems for you.”
Albus actually looked taken aback, reminding Harry that it was only after his Dumbledore had died that his true secrets had come out and people had started talking about him less than reverently. Even if this Albus had been denounced as a liar for the year Voldemort laid low, now that he was revealed to be back, no doubt the Wizarding world had come crawling right back. When had the Headmaster last been spoken to candidly? (Okay, disrespectfully, but still. That was what he had done and Harry wasn’t going to pretend he approved or act pleased about it.)
“My dear boy, I can assure you that was not my intention,” the man said when he had recovered his composure, completely ignoring the reference to his dubious past. “All the information on the ritual concurred on the fact that the one it sought would not only be just as suited to this dimension as their own but also that they would be given a choice as to whether or not they would cross over. I will admit that it was a risk, but surely you must understand that the lives at stake...”
Harry snorted. He was far too jaded for that routine to work. “There are several thousand magicals in Wizarding Britain alone, and at most there can only be a couple of hundred Death Eaters, most of which are essentially cowards. If they stood up to him for once in their lives, there would be no problem. Yet you’re expecting someone who isn’t even from this world to do so for them?”
Oh, he had every intention of helping. But it was fun to rant, to get out all his anger at his own stupid version of Wizarding Britain. It was a brilliant stress reliever and a bad habit that he had got into on the run, when there was no one else around to overhear and either berate him or call him crazy.
The statement made Albus blink. “Surely you would not condemn innocents who are merely afraid and lack the skills required to duel Death Eaters?”
“Whoever said they needed to duel?” Harry argued right back. There had been no one left in his world that he could debate with – most people looked either terrified of him or like he was insane, and Ron and Hermione, who whilst they didn’t understand him still tried their best to, had disappeared off to Australia and left the craziness behind.
That hadn’t been an option for Harry. Wizarding Britain would have hunted him to the ends of the earth.
Their earth. They could not reach him here.
“How else would one stand up to Voldemort?”
“By saying his bloody name for one,” Harry grumbled. It had become a sore subject after he had realised that the Taboo – which had killed so many good people – would never have worked if everyone was comfortable with the name. There would be too many mentions to keep track of. “By standing together with their neighbours rather than shunning people because of their parents. By setting traps with magic that they are good at so that his followers can't just waltz around whenever they want. By demanding a Ministry that’s actually fair rather than a highly corrupt political body tailored to pureblood families and pretty much no one else.” He had to force himself to stop there; he had so many grievances with the Wizarding world.
Pinning him with a steely stare, Albus said sternly, “And yet I have yet to hear you say the name, Harry. It would be wise not to condemn a people you do not understand.”
“That’s hilarious, coming from you,” Harry muttered darkly, thinking of how Slytherin had always been vilified – enough so that he himself had begged the hat to put him somewhere else – and how even the Great Albus Dumbledore had never done anything about that. In fact, he had endorsed favouritism even in the Marauder’s days (the werewolf incident came to mind). “And I’ve never been afraid to say the name. I won’t now for personal reasons. Better reasons than mindless fear.”
“Do enlighten me,” Albus prompted, but Harry ignored him. Whilst he wasn’t exactly being cooperative, he was sharing more freely than Harry had honestly expected and he wanted to make the most of it. He suspected it wouldn’t last.
“I know about everyone involved in bringing me here, since I had to scrape them off the floor, but who else is in the Order of the Phoenix?”
Blue eyes hardened as invisible shields went up. “I’m afraid that information is highly sensitive.”
Bizarrely, that comment actually made Harry relax. The only reason that that information would be ‘highly sensitive’ was if there was a spy in Voldemort’s ranks, which gave him hope for Snape.
“Fine.” He’d find out, eventually; his uncanny knack for discovering secrets that had only improved as he’d gotten older. Since he knew that Albus was far too stubborn to give in on this, he abandoned the line of questioning for something seemingly unrelated. “Have there been any petrifications in this school in the past two decades?”
From what the Headmaster had implied Voldemort had never gone after the Philosopher’s stone in this world, meaning first year was irrelevant. And Sirius had never been to Azkaban – that was still a wonder to Harry – so there would have been no break out in third year. Fourth year had been the Triwizard tournament, which might have still gone ahead but the rebirth disaster had occurred in seventh year instead. Those changes meant that the events of fifth and sixth year would have lost their relevance as well. All that he needed to know now was if the Chamber of Secrets had ever been reopened, and thus whether or not Lucius Malfoy might still be in possession of the diary.
“Petrifications?” Albus seemed genuinely surprised. “Why on earth would there be petrifications in a school? That’s seventh year magic at the very least – and not something on the curriculum, I might add.”
That answered that, then. The Chamber hadn’t been reopened, which meant… “And you have no idea how Vol- ugh, Tom, is still alive?”
“No.” Albus’s brow furrowed slightly. “I have to admit that in matters of the Dark Arts Tom’s knowledge is far superior to my own.” He didn’t sound perturbed by that at all, and Harry wanted to growl. Such a holier-than-thou attitude was all well and good, but you couldn’t defeat an enemy you did not understand.
Though he had hated learning about Horcruxes – vile, sick things, a knowledge he wished he could Obliviate from himself – he had never regretted doing so. It had made it far easier to find them, to understand them, and eventually to claw one out of himself. And knowing what they did to an object and to the soul had helped him to recover afterwards. To know what parts of himself were truly Harry Potter and to learn how to live when no one, not even Albus Dumbledore, had really expected him to survive. Hoped, perhaps, but not expected.
He was still blown away by the fact that in this world, no one seemed to know how Voldemort had stayed alive. By Albus’s attitude, it didn’t even seem to be a priority. It should have been – if you didn’t deal with the horcruxes then even if by some miracle you got a good shot at the Dark Lord he’d just come back, sooner rather than later now he had time and experience as a disembodied spirit and would have put backup plans in place sooner rather than later.
Reluctant as he was to admit it, they did need him here, if only for his knowledge. Despite the Horcrux in his scar being destroyed, enough traces of it lingered that Harry knew that he would still function as a walking Dark detector, and he was more familiar with Voldemort’s magic, motives and history than any other wizard alive.
He was even more reluctant to admit that it felt almost good to be needed again. For such a long time, his whole life had revolved around fighting Voldemort. Regaining that old goal… it should have been a step backwards, but Harry found the prospect almost exciting.
Hermione would probably tell him that that indicated deep psychological issues, and she would probably be right. But hey, Harry had spent the majority of his formative years in a cupboard, and his remaining ‘childhood’ with an insane mass-murderer gunning for his head. Harry considered his quirks a small price to pay when by all rights he should probably have become a Dark Lord himself.
Shaking himself out of deep contemplation, he nodded at the white-bearded wizard across from him. “Right, okay. I still have questions, but I think I have the basics now.”
“You will help us, then?” The old wizard enquired, his voice as mild as if there had never been any doubt as his eyes twinkled gently. Harry rolled his eyes.
“Yes, I’ll help. That is what you asked for, isn’t it?”
“And what can you do?” he probed, probably what he thought was gently.
Harry crossed his arms and gave a decidedly Slytherin smirk. “For one thing, I know how V-Tom achieved immortality, and how to counter it.”
Immediately Albus sat up straighter, a hungry look in his eyes. “Do tell.”
Harry’s smirk widened. “Nuh-uh. I’m afraid that information is highly sensitive.”
Irritation flickered across the headmaster’s face. He hid it quickly, but not quickly enough to stop himself from snapping, “This isn’t a game, Mr Potter.”
“No, it’s not,” Harry said, his voice suddenly deadly serious. “But you don’t trust me, and I don’t trust you. Back in my world, you didn’t make very good decisions with that information. You sat on it for years, and then when you acted you went about it in all the wrong ways, and you hid the information from those you should not have. It was a disaster. In fact, it killed you. Twice over, even. So forgive me if I’m not going to hand it over to the first person I see just because you have become far too accustomed to having all the power and never being questioned.”
“Killed…” Harry could almost see the Headmaster wrestling himself back under control, the blatant allusion to his own death clearly rattling him despite his best efforts to remain aloof. After a half-second pause that Harry only caught because he was paying the same kind of attention he normally devoted to duels, the wizard mastered himself and said instead, “You must remember that I am not your version of Albus Dumbledore.”
The younger man gave him a bitter smile. “Trust me, sir, I could never forget that. I loved my Albus Dumbledore, in a way, and I trusted him completely. But trusting got me in a lot of trouble, so I don’t do that anymore. And quite frankly, I see a lot of his worse habits in you, and not a lot of the endearing qualities. I am from a world whose war got quite a lot more advanced than the skirmishes you seem to be having here, so you’ll forgive me if I don’t take well to being patronised. I know a lot more than you about how damaging this information is, and I think I’ll sit on it for a while longer.”
By the time he had finished, there was no longer a twinkle in Albus’s eyes. They had gone cold and hard as a frozen sea – the face of the Defeater of Grindelwald. And when his words finally echoed away into silence, a monumental force slammed into Harry’s Occlumency barriers.
This was nothing like the light probe he had started with, meant to covertly test his strength and to quietly gather what information it could. This was a full-frontal assault, with the Headmaster throwing all of his force into getting that information no matter what.
No normal nineteen-year-old could have endured such an assault. Even muted by the lack of a wand, Albus Dumbledore’s sheer power was awe-inspiring, a thing of legends. He had accumulated so much magical strength and knowledge that most shields would be swept away within seconds. Though it wasn’t a power the Leader of the Light liked to advertise his Legilimancy was almost as strong as Voldemort’s; powerful enough to lobotomise the unwary.
Never let it be said that Harry was normal, however. The Boy-Who-Was-Too-Irritating-To-Die merely closed his eyes and enshrouded himself in his magic, like an invisibility cloak. Drawing the mantle of power close around him, he felt his aura swell until it was almost tangible, and the painful battering disappeared behind thicker and thicker walls. Albus could continue to attack, but he would get nothing from Harry.
Opening his eyes again, the green deepened to an Unforgiveable shade. “Just because you don’t like what you hear,” he hissed, nearly dropping into parseltongue out of pure rage, “Does not give you the right to rip into my mind.”
Then, without even reaching for one of his wands, he gathered up Albus’s mental probes and shoved the headmaster back into his own mind. The man gasped in sudden pain, as if Harry had attacked him in return, and tears welled in his eyes.
There were perhaps three people who could manage such a feat. Voldemort, whose skill in the mind arts was infamous; Severus Snape, who fooled even the Dark Lord with his occlumency skills; and Albus himself. Now there was a fourth: Harry Potter. And the headmaster felt he had just done something very, very foolish in pissing him off.
Danger practically radiated from Harry as his magic swirled. For a rare few individuals, their magic was strong enough to permeate the very air around them in what was known as an aura. It was part of what had drawn people to Voldemort and to Albus himself – their Dark and Light auras respectively.
Harry’s was not like theirs. It was not black, but nor was it white. It was simply power and will, a manifestation of raw talent, neither wholly Light nor wholly Dark. It spoke of experience well beyond any normal twenty-year-old. It was intoxicating, and it was daunting. Magic did not lie, and it told Albus that the boy – the man – before him was capable of practically anything if pushed to it.
Then it was gone, before he even had time to blink. Somehow, Harry had wrestled control of it, and hidden it away – all that potential, all the warning signs. It was fascinating, and more than a little terrifying.
For the first time since the green-eyed, wild-haired boy had come through that door, Albus saw the man he had reached across dimensions for. A man who could defeat Voldemort himself.
And he wondered, What have I done?