Chapter Text
The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches,
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.
— — —
“I didn’t know I would be able to go back,” her son says, looking over his shoulder into the vast whiteness as if expecting to see the world he’s left behind there.
Lily smiles softly. “Do you want to?”
“No.”
— — —
Petunia’s had a tiring day at Judith’s garden party, and so even if she doesn’t mean to, she’s a little too harsh on the boy. She’s sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of tea, when Vernon’s car pulls up. Immediately, Dudley comes running in the door towards her, and she smiles down at him.
“Mum, mum, I made you a card!” he shouts, shoving it towards her. She takes the mother’s day card and coos. He’s obviously put a lot of effort into it; it’s covered in thumbprint hearts and a mess of sparkles. Written in his artfully messy handwriting is ‘Hapy Mothers Day, Mum!”
She smiles down at him and ruffles his hair. “Oh, Dudders, it’s lovely. Thank you, pumpkin.”
“I want biscuits!” he replies, cheeks rosy with youthful excitement.
“Yes, one moment, Duddykins,” she says, watching eagle-eyed as the other boy slinks into the room. His hair is infernally messy, as usual, and he’s gotten mud all over the knees of his pants again. She sneers at the sight, and he shrinks back a little like he can feel her annoyance.
“I made you a card,” he murmurs, blinking up at her with his wide eyes. She often wishes herself rid of those eyes, so infernally green.
Petunia wrinkles her nose. “Speak up, boy.”
“I made you a card, Aunt Petunia,” he says, a little braver. He holds it up towards her and she takes it, expression pinched. It’s a simple square of pink card with ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ printed neatly across the middle and a half-dozen hearts cut out of white paper stuck around the edges. It’s neat, perfect, devoid of any passion or creativity, like he copied it from a magazine. It’s offensively bland. She scoffs at the sight and puts it down on the table.
The boy shrinks away a little, but uses the last dregs of his bravery to ask, “Can I have biscuits too, Aunt Petunia?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she sneers, reaching out and taking him by the ear. He winces and pulls away a bit, but she grasps him more tightly and drags him out of the kitchen and down the hall. She fiddles with the cold metal of the latch and wrenches open the cupboard under the stairs before bodily throwing him inside. A toy soldier is jolted from a shelf at the impact. A spider scuttles into the corner of its web. The boy blinks up at her, bottom lip wobbling slightly, eyes glassy with tears. Petunia wrinkles her nose at all of it.
“I’m not your mother,” she snarls, and with that she shuts the cupboard door tight and locks it.
“Mum, biscuits!” Dudley’s voice rises from the kitchen.
“Coming, dear!”
— — —
Hannah is handing out worksheets when she sees the bruise. She nearly drops the stack of paper she’s holding.
“Don’t drop the papers, Miss!” one of the girls calls out cheekily, and laughter thrums through the classroom.
Hannah smiles weakly, eyes still fixed on the bruise, and says something she doesn’t even remember three seconds later. There’s a buzzing in her ears, and a voice repeating over and over in her head that sounds strangely like the headmaster’s speech last month on mandatory reporting. She wishes she paid a bit more attention during that speech.
Harry sits at the back of the class. One of the seats next to him is empty, the other one is taken up by a boy who is busy talking to his friends at the next table over. He is quietly staring down at the work, fiddling with his pencil, and squinting through those oversized glasses that make his eyes look twice as big. The top of his ear is one large bruise, a range of colour from dusty purple to near black. She doesn’t know how she didn’t notice it earlier; probably due to that shaggy mop of black hair that would usually cover his ears.
Oh God, what if he’s had a bruise like that before and Hannah’s just never noticed?
Oh dear God, what is she supposed to do? This isn’t a playground sort of bruise; this is a home-visit, call-NSPCC, ‘we had no idea they were that sort of people’ type of bruise.
Hannah spends the last ten minutes of class before lunchtime sort of hyperventilating to herself. She’s not equipped to handle any of this stuff. Luckily, her students seem content to do their worksheets in peace for a short while, so she keeps staring at the bruise and internally freaking out.
The bell goes off with a clanging sound; it’s like a thunderclap in the quiet classroom.
“Alright, everyone, worksheets in your bags please; we’ll finish them after lunch!” she shouts over the rapidly rising din of scraping chairs and chattering. “Stay on your side of the courtyard!”
Various students shout their goodbyes to her, cheery and loud. She waves back at all of them as they go, but her eyes are continually drawn to the boy in the corner. Harry is one of the last to stand. He grabs his little backpack and lingers by his chair for a minute while the other children hurry out, shouting and cheering for lunch. He’s fidgeting with the straps of his backpack, staring down with furrowed brows. As he makes his way over to the door, Hannah clears her throat.
“Harry?” she asks, and the boy stills. His shoulders are halfway to his ears, his fidgeting immediately stopping like he’s holding himself taut. In her mind’s eye, she sees the image of a prey animal — something small and nimble, like a mouse — tensing up as it senses the presence of a predator. Is he imagining claws above him, ready to pin him down, or is he already trapped beneath the claws waiting for teeth at his throat?
He turns. The light streaming in from the corridor makes his skin look almost translucent and the bruise look even more vivid. The last of the other children filter out around him, leaving him alone in the doorway. The light makes the shadows under his eyes look like bruises too.
“Yes, Miss?” he prompts, voice steady.
“Harry, could you come here please?” asks Hannah, beckoning him towards her desk. As he walks closer, she rolls her seat away a bit and leans down to look him in the eye. Here she is, exposing her metaphorical underbelly; see, she’s a friend! He can tell her anything! She tries to exude a comforting warmth as he comes to a stop at the side of the desk.
“Harry, I have to ask you a question,” she says very softly.
He shakes his head very quickly, not in disagreement, but as if he’s adjusting his hair. A lock of hair falls and covers the bruise in its near-entirety, and Hannah has to stop herself from brushing it away. “Okay, Miss.”
“Harry, how did you get that bruise on your ear?”
The boy looks up at her, lip beginning to tremble, and Hannah curses very rudely in her mind. She opens her arms, and as he folds into them, she wonders just how many other bruises he has.
— — —
Albus shakes his head to rid himself of the blurry dizziness of apparition, and smoothes down his suit with one hand. It’s not often that he has to wear Muggle clothing, but there are laws about using unnecessary magic in Muggle spaces, and so he can’t just transfigure his robes like he normally does.
The alley around him is dark and smells faintly of sewage, so Albus steps quite hurriedly out of it. He smoothes down his suit one more time, taking a deep breath, and begins his walk down to the Little Whinging Police Station.
The bell tinkles sweetly above him as he pushes open the door and enters a small waiting room. Unwieldy plastic chairs line the sides of the room, and posters cry out various law-abiding messages about littering and being a good citizen. On the opposite side of the room, a receptionist looks up from her desk with a friendly smile.
“Hello, sir!” she says warmly, “Would you like any help?”
Albus smiles back at her, drawing on the old bumbling grandfatherly persona that made so many of his students look up to him. He sneaks a look down at her nametag. “Good morning, Louise. My name is Albus Dumbledore. I’m here because of my grandson, Harry Potter; I was informed by the authorities that he’d been removed from his current place of residence due to some… allegations of mistreatment?.”
“Do you have any proof of identity, Mr. Dumbledore?” the receptionist queried, all business, “Or perhaps guardianship paperwork, if that’s what you’re seeking?”
“Of course,” Albus says. From his trouser pocket — which it should not be able to fit in — he pulls a small stack of papers, neatly folded in half. They are the only guardianship documents Albus could get on short notice, and they’re sure to be out of date and / or filled out wrong. It won’t matter in a moment.
“I’ll just run this through the system, then,” Louise says, one hand out to receive the paperwork and the other on her keyboard as she navigates through the computer systems.
As she reaches for the paperwork, Albus’ hand snakes down to his pocket and grasps the handle of his wand firmly. In a flash, he pulls it out and he casts, in quick succession, three spells: a notice-me-not to prevent anyone from looking at his wand, a compulsion on the receptionist to make her a bit more suggestible, and a rather useless Lumos charm that only serves to make the computers on the desk between them glitch and freeze for a few seconds.
“Oh, perhaps it’s better to just clear the paperwork in person?” Albus suggests innocently, and the receptionist nods faintly, eyes glazed. “It shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.”
Louise rises to her feet, shoulders stiff, and Albus waits until she’s disappeared into the back room to cast another charm: a simple tracking spell that points him towards Harry. It points directly left, and he crosses the room towards the door it’s leading him towards.
He peers through the glass pane in the door. There, in the adjacent corridor, he sees Harry Potter.
The corridor is long, lined on both sides by plastic chairs like those in the waiting room out front and doors leading to clearly labelled offices. Harry is the only one in the corridor, sitting on one of the chairs and gazing off into space. He isn’t quite tall enough to reach the ground, so his legs are swinging back and forth through the air. His ratty schoolbag is sitting on the chair next to him, nearly as big as he is.
Albus opens the door slowly and the boy’s head shoots up at the creaking noise. He doesn’t say anything, just looks at Albus with wide eyes and stops swinging his legs.
“Harry,” he greets politely. The boy nods tentatively. “May I come in?”
“‘s a public corridor,” Harry mumbles, but he removes his schoolbag from the chair and sets it on the ground so that Albus can sit down next to him.
“It’s nice to meet you, my boy,” Albus says warmly, “Would you like a sweet?”
Harry looks at him distrustfully, but nods anyway. From a pocket of his suit, Albus pulls a sherbet lemon, still wrapped up in its crinkly cellophane. He drops it into the boy’s hand, and he closes his hand around it. The wrapper crinkles; it’s the only sound in the corridor.
“Who are you?” Harry asks, staring down at the sweet in his hand. He makes no move to open it.
“My name is Albus Dumbledore,” replies Albus, “And I’d like you to live with me.”
Harry’s face closes off. “Why?”
“I taught your mother and father, and when they graduated, they were my good friends,” he explains. “I would take you in to preserve their memory–”
“–that doesn’t answer my question,” the boy snaps, then immediately hunches his shoulders like he expects to be reprimanded for it. Albus doesn’t reprimand him, but just looks at him over the top of his glasses until Harry straightens back up, red dusting his cheeks in embarrassment. “Surely you’ve got lots of dead students with kids you could adopt, right? Why me?”
Harry is right, Albus ruminates; the war had left many an orphan. None of those orphans are quite as important to him, though, as Harry Potter.
“I want to protect you because you have a gift, Harry,” Albus whispers, and Harry looks up at him with wonder in his eyes, twinkling like stars, shiny like gemstones. “What do you know of magic?”
He has only another minute or two until the receptionist returns to her desk. If he chooses to, he could return and remove the compulsions, showing her that his paperwork is indeed faulty and not filled in correctly. She’d give him the correct forms and tell him to come back in a few hours, and he would then obliviate her completely and tamper with the computer system to have the report about the Dursleys wiped. Harry would go back to his Muggle family, and this dreadful business could be put behind them entirely.
On the other hand, if he stays, the receptionist will clear the paperwork and he’ll be declared the official legal guardian of one Harry James Potter. She’ll remember letting him through the door to talk to his ‘grandson’ as she finished with his papers, and she’ll watch them go with a smile on her face, satisfied that the sweet little boy swinging his legs on the chair in the hallway will have such a nice grandfather to take care of him. The choice is in his hands.
Harry opens his fist, and the sherbet lemon begins to float. Higher and higher it goes, wobbling slightly, as both of them watch. It twists, and with a sharp crinkling noise the wrapper is removed from the sweet. The sherbet lemon drops directly back down into Harry’s palm. For another few seconds, Albus observes as the wrapper slowly floats down into Harry’s lap. They both stare at it, silent.
“Magic isn’t real,” Harry whispers, as if the past minute hadn’t just happened.
“I disagree, my boy,” replies Albus. Harry looks at him like he’s never seen anything quite like him before. The air between them is charged, heavy with their shared secret.
The door opens, and with that the choice is taken out of his hands. Louise pops her head in, smiling, and beckons to Albus.
“Mr Dumbledore!” she greets happily, and they are torn from the strange, charged atmosphere they’ve found themselves in. “I’m glad to see you two are hitting it off. Your paperwork went through! We’ll arrange a home visit now, if you’d like, or you could call in later.”
Albus looks down at Harry, tipping his head towards the door, and Harry obediently jumps down from his chair and grabs his school bag tightly. Albus sets his hand on Harry’s shoulder, and carefully steers him past Louise out into the waiting room.
“No need,” Albus says smoothly, waving his wand, “We’ve already had our home visit. Have a lovely day, Louise.”
Louise laughs. “My mistake! Have a good afternoon, Mr Dumbledore.”
Her ringing laugh melds with the tinkle of the bell on the door as they leave, Harry trailing a few steps behind Albus. Out on the steps of the police station, in the cool autumn breeze, Dumbledore looks down at Harry and offers him his hand. Harry, trepidation obvious, takes it.
“Hold your breath,” he warns, and Harry’s cheeks puff up like a chipmunk’s. Albus spares a second to smile at the sight before he apparates them both away.
— — —
Harry is adjusting well to the cottage, Albus thinks. He’s a polite boy; not rambunctious like many a boy of his age would be, and good at keeping out of the way and letting Albus go about his work as usual. The school year will start soon, and so Albus spends much of his time in his home office or away at Hogwarts, leaving Harry with a house elf if he thinks it necessary. It’s alright. He’s mature enough to keep himself out of trouble. There’s just one problem: he won’t stop hiding in his wardrobe.
Try as he might, Albus is unable to coax him out. Whenever Harry does anything wrong — and to the boy, most of what he does is wrong — he secretes himself away inside the wardrobe and doesn’t come out for hours. He’ll just sit there in the dark, making no noise, apparently content to just pretend he doesn’t exist.
Now, Albus may not have been a grandfather for very long, but he’s been a schoolteacher for over half a century now, and so he can tell that this isn’t exactly normal. He tries his best to impress that upon Harry, but the boy seems happy to obey every instruction except for this.
And well, who could blame Albus for letting it slide? Harry is a perfect child in every other way, and Albus is a busy man. If Harry wants to stay in the cupboard, Albus doesn’t have time to coax him out. Once his grandson goes to Hogwarts, perhaps the other children will be able to teach him instead.
— — —
It is winter. The frosted ground crackles and crunches beneath their feet as Albus and Harry walk through the graveyard. Snowflakes tickle their faces; Albus shows Harry how to catch snowflakes on his tongue, and the boy giggles, holding his tongue out as they walk. Albus casts a gentle warming charm on both of them; their winter robes might not be quite enough. Wind whistles through the gravestones, like the shrill cry of a songbird.
They stop at the foot of two graves.
“This is them?” Harry asks, looking up at Albus, who nods. Harry looks back down at the grave, swallowing thickly.
“Hi, Mum,” whispers Harry, crouching down to trail a finger across the arch of his mother’s headstone. “Hi, Dad.”
Albus stares down at the graves, tears pricking at his eyes. He doesn’t come here very often; he tells himself it’s because he’s busy. He tries his best to ignore Harry, who is still whispering to the headstones. He’s sitting back on his haunches, getting the knees of his pants wet with melting frost. The wind continues to whistle past, stealing his quiet words and blowing them away with the snowflakes.
“Grandad!” Harry calls loudly, like it’s not the first time he’s said it.
Albus blinks his tears away and looks down at the boy. “Yes?”
“You said they were killed by You-Know-Who–”
“Call him by his name, Harry,” Albus reprimands gently. “Don’t fear his name, or you will fear the man himself.”
“All the books call him ‘You-Know-Who’,” Harry retorts.
“All the books fear him. You should not.”
Harry nods hesitantly, like he doesn’t really get it but recognises it’s something he should agree with. He ducks his head. “Why did he kill them in particular?”
Albus smiles. “Lily and James were some of the greatest fighters we had,” he reminisces. “Oh, they dealt a great many blows to Voldemort’s forces."
“But there must’ve been lots of good fighters. Why my parents in particular?” Harry repeats. He’s always so inquisitive. Albus always tries to answer his questions to the best of his abilities; children don’t like to be talked down to, and so it is the better choice to speak to Harry as if he is an equal. He is, after all, the Dark Lord’s equal.
Albus weighs the options in his mind. He is not an all-knowing man, no; he is a tired, overworked old man with a grandson to look after. Albus does not think himself worthy of deciding the fate of others. However, his positions afford him a certain amount of power to bend fate in the right direction, whatever that direction may be. He can not change Harry’s fate — not when a prophecy has already been issued — but he can change the path Harry will take towards it.
Either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.
Harry must die, he thinks, and is it better for him to know that?
He looks down at this child of his. Harry is so small, Albus thinks. His eyes are so big behind his glasses, his wrists thin like sticks; he barely comes up to Albus’ waist. How could fate be so cruel as to ensure his death? Why did he let himself get so attached to the boy, when he has known all along that he would have to die?
Albus makes a choice. He will always wonder if it was the right choice to make.
“Harry, my dear boy,” Albus says, reaching out to grasp Harry’s hand, “You were not targeted because of some terrible unluckiness, but instead due to fate. There is… a prophecy.”
Harry furrows his brow, looking up at Albus with trust shining out of his eyes like sunbeams. “A prophecy?”
Albus swallows around the lump in his throat and bends down next to Harry. He stares at the graves in front of him. He hopes Lily and James forgive him for what he is about to tell their son.
— — —
Albus is awoken in the night by a cold hand on his shoulder. Fingers tap at his flesh; once, twice, hesitant.
His bedroom is pitch black. He conjures a small orb of light in his hand. Out of the darkness, like a ghost, appears the face of Harry Potter.
A whisper reaches his ears. “Grandad, can I have a hug?”
Albus yawns, sitting up. Harry stares at him in trepidation, and Albus pats the bed next to him. Harry scrambles up to sit next to him and grips his nightshirt tight. He buries his face in Albus’ shoulder, little shoulders shaking.
“Are you alright, Harry?” he asks tenderly. Harry nods, face still pressed into Albus’ shoulder. Albus sighs in sympathy. “Oh, my dear boy, did you have a nightmare?”
Harry nods once more, and Albus gently strokes his back, trying to calm him down. “Would you like to sleep here tonight?”
“I’m not a baby,” his grandson says petulantly, but he snuggles a little closer anyways. Yawning, Albus fumbles around on his nightstand for his wand and summons a book. He can hear the doors open and close as the book wooshes up through the house. After half a minute, the book falls gently into Albus’ outstretched hand.
The pages are dog-eared and yellowing with age. Albus remembers his own father reading him and his siblings stories out of this very book.
He opens it to the right page and frowns. He’d forgotten that he drew the symbol of the Deathly Hallows there. It’s crude and faded; he hadn’t been able to afford high quality ink back then, so he smudged the drawing right after making it.
Harry burrows a little closer to him, and Albus takes a deep breath, ridding himself of these thoughts. His grandson is here, and he wants a bedtime story, and that’s all he needs to focus on.
Albus clears his throat. “There were once three brothers who were travelling along a lonely, winding road at dusk–”
— — —
Albus has been leaning against the doorframe for nearly ten minutes before Harry looks up and notices him. He swears quite brilliantly and jumps, falling backwards off the ladder he’s using to extract more books from the library shelves; Albus casts a wandless cushioning charm so that Harry won’t break a bone when he hits the floor.
Harry rubs at his elbow, scowling, and scrambles to his feet. Albus pushes himself off the doorframe and crosses over to him.
“I don’t know any ten year olds who swear like that,” he says lightly, “Where did you learn that word?”
Harry looks down at the floor and mumbles something.
“What was that?”
“When Hagrid came over last month, he tried to make tea and accidentally knocked over the kettle,” Harry explains, a smile tugging at his lips. Albus finds himself smiling too. “I learned about ten new words from him.”
“What are you reading?” Albus asks, changing the subject smoothly. Harry looks down at the book in his hands like he forgot it was there.
“Just… some stuff on duelling,” he murmurs. “‘s interesting.”
“I have several recommendations, if you want to learn more,” Albus offers.
“I don’t know…” Harry sighs, closing the book. Albus takes it from him, inspecting the title. Langley’s Aim for the Throat; an excellent offensive duelling textbook. “This stuff is a bit…”
He raises an eyebrow. “You’ll need to know ‘this stuff’ when you fight Voldemort.”
“If he’s just going to kill me, why should I learn to fight?” Harry scowls, throwing his hands up. Just like every other time Harry has said it, the statement takes the breath right out of Albus’ lungs. Not the first time, he wonders if he made the right decision telling Harry about the prophecy.
“Because he will want to fight you, and if you fail he will not kill you quickly, he will just torture you until you wish that you were dead,” Albus says simply. Harry’s hands fall down to his sides. “You know that, Harry.”
He summons a dozen books from the shelves around them. They float, swirling like a tornado, down into a stack in his hands. He gives them to Harry, who takes them silently.
— — —
It’s as the thirtieth person stops their shopping to come up to Harry and thank him that Albus admits to himself that perhaps glamorous would have been a good idea. Nevermind seeing Albus Dumbledore out and about in Diagon Alley — that would garner enough attention as it is — but seeing him leading a small boy about Harry Potter’s age around while carrying a large basket of first year goods? That’s enough to make any sufficiently nosy wizard come up to them and try to meet the famous Harry Potter. His grandson, who begged to bring his invisibility cloak before they left, keeps a hand fisted into the side of Albus’ robes.
Albus is just leading Harry out of Flourish and Blotts when they bump into an older witch. Harry’s books go flying, and both him and the woman end up on the ground. Harry scrambles to help her as she blusters about idiot children not watching where they’re going. As Harry stands, his fringe shifts a little and his scar is exposed to the light.
The woman does a double take, eyes darting between Albus and Harry. Her face changes from irritation to awe in about a second flat, and that second is all the time Albus has to mourn the rest of his peace.
“Blimey, you’re Harry Potter!” the witch exclaims. It’s like half of the Alley simultaneously sucks in a breath. Albus sighs. Well, if anyone didn’t know they were here before, they certainly do now.
Nearly instantly, people are hurrying towards them. Someone grabs Harry’s hand; someone else grabs the end of his cloak. Voices overlap with each other, melting into an unintelligible mess of speech. Harry looks terrified. Albus waves his wand, levitating Harry’s book up and using them to form a wall around the two of them. Hands are still grasping for them, but at least the Standard Book of Spells Grade 1 is sturdy enough to stop them from getting through.
“That’s enough!” Albus orders, and people begin to quiet down. “Everyone, take several steps back. My grandson and I will be leaving, and none of you should follow. This is disgraceful conduct that I would not expect from the good witches and wizards of Britain!”
Most of them look chastised at his admonishment, though some are still grasping for Harry. Letting the books spiral back down into his basket, Albus steers Harry through the crowd and into a small potions supply shop. The shopkeeper, evidently having witnessed the scene outside, doesn’t greet them with anything past a nod, and allows them to head a bit further into the shop.
Harry is shaking, Albus realises. He sets down his basket of school supplies and crouches down, making eye contact with the trembling boy. He smoothes Harry’s fringe back down over his scar, noting the slight sheen of nervous sweat on his brow. “Don’t be afraid, Harry.”
“They can’t just mob me like that!” Harry cries. He folds himself into Albus’ waiting arms.
Albus shakes his head. “I know, but that fervour, that hero worship; that is a spark, Harry. Fanning that flame will make them love you, and who is more powerful than someone who loves?”
“So when I die–” Albus can’t breathe, he can’t breathe –“they’ll be mad enough to fight for me?”
“If, my boy,” Albus makes sure to say.
Harry pulls back out of Albus’ embrace and looks down at the ground. His expression is blank, like he’s siphoning all of his emotion away. “If. Right.”