Chapter 5
“He took my blood,” said Harry.
“Precisely!” said Dumbledore. “Lily’s protection inside both of you! He tethered you to life while he lives!”
“I live… while he lives? I thought we both had to die?” Harry frowned. “Where are we, exactly?”
“Where would you say that we are?”
“It looks like King’s Cross Station. I’ve got to go back, haven't I?”
“That is up to you. I think that if you decided not to go back, you would be able to… let’s say… board a train.”
Harry sighed. “Professor, some things have bothered me. Just the last few months. The protection… you’re sure my mother died to save me?”
Dumbledore’s brow furrowed. “It is the only known magic - and barely known, at that - which would explain the events of the last seventeen years.”
“My mother’s grave has no death date on it.” Harry swallowed. “I just thought… maybe… she is still alive. Have you seen her? In the… after?”
“No,” Dumbledore replied quietly. “But that does not mean much, Harry. There are many people I have not seen.” He eyed Harry carefully. “The date of Lily Potter’s death is known by most of the Wizarding World better than their own birthdays. I do not believe that should be of concern to you.”
“It’s not just that.” Harry explained the swirling mess of his thoughts as best he could, and concluded desperately, “Would it not make more sense for Professor Snape to have still loved my mother if she is… alive? He had… there was something he hid from you. Him and Regulus.”
“Professor Snape was a gifted Legilimens, and I have no doubt he hid much from me, but my trust in him remains stronger than ever.” Dumbledore paused, then said gently, “Someone who looked like your mother was dead in her house in Godric’s Hollow the night you survived. And someone who looked like your father, too. I have seen the memories; they have not been tampered with.”
“He left his wand in the living room,” Harry remembered. “He told mum he would hold Voldemort off, and he didn’t even have his wand. Neither of them did.”
The green light filled the cramped hallway, it lit the pram pushed against the wall, it made the bannisters glare like lightning rods, and James Potter fell like a marionette whose strings were cut…
As long as she was sensible she, at least, had nothing to fear… “Stand aside, you silly girl… stand aside, now…”
“Voldemort wasn’t going to kill her. He killed dad without a second thought, but he warned her twice to step away, and he didn’t… he tried to spare her. Why?”
Dumbledore sighed. “For Severus,” he replied simply. “That was the deal, in exchange for the secret of their location. You knew this.”
“I just didn’t expect Voldemort to stand by that deal. It just feels… something feels off about it.”
“They appeared when you turned the Resurrection Stone, did they not?”
Harry sighed and nodded. “So did Regulus Black, and Professor Snape, and Lupin and Sirius. But they felt so real.”
Dumbledore smiled. “The curse of a gift from Death himself. Harry, let me make this plain. If Lily Potter is alive, then you are not her son. Only the love of a blood relative or a magically-bound spouse can produce protective powers as strong as those which, even now, have shielded you from death - especially if those powers were not augmented by your time spent with Petunia Dursley. I believe Lily and James Potter died the night Voldemort marked you as his own, but if I am wrong, then everything you know about yourself is a lie.”
Harry - who had been beginning to hope that the end was near - sighed. “Of course it is,” he said grimly. “About that train,” he added.
“Another time?”
“Another time.”