The very same wizard who had been discussed at Black Manor was in the School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, Hogwarts, sitting in his majestic chair in the headmaster's office, involuntarily tugging at his already rather rumpled beard. Only a blind-deaf-mute person could fail to recognize such a state, known to every human being as "detachment from the vanity of the world," and in common speech simply as "stupor."
Albus Dumbledore was boiling like a little cauldron over a forest campfire — at first quietly and little by little, and then, with every second, faster and faster, threatening to explode from inner dissatisfaction and rage. The Plan was going to hell together with the Greater Good, and the dream was plunging into Tartarus like a blue bird, not intending to return back.
But the headmaster of Hogwarts tried not to give in to panic and continued calculating possible options. A disruption of such all-encompassing scale could have happened only in two cases — either something extraordinary, beyond the all-seeing gaze of the Supreme Warlock of the Wizengamot, had happened literally in the last few days (however, the chance of such an outcome was very unlikely, so it could be thrown far aside for now). Or there, in the distant past, some small, and therefore unnoticed from here, accident had occurred, which he had not foreseen and had not eliminated.
When building far-reaching plans of such a grand scale, one must remember that even tiny obstacles and mistakes, without proper and relentless attention, can, like a little pebble, cause an avalanche, destroying the entire beautiful design.
Thinking over his plan, the old headmaster considered and calculated old options until he arrived at one disappointing conclusion. Yes, there had been, there had been such a little pebble. So small and inconspicuous that Albus's sharp eye had missed it, but it remained and had quietly begun to shake the foundations of his Plan for the Good.
Cursed Amelia and her hypertrophied and utterly unnecessary sense of justice; she should have been eliminated just like her stubborn brother, who had dared to refuse him, the leader of the Order of the Phoenix and his wise headmaster, to give his House into service of the future good. He had taken pity then and had not eliminated little Edgar's daughter either, because Amelia had suspected nothing, finding her dead brother and his wife on the ruins of the Bones estate, above which Voldemort's huge mark blackened. And how had she repaid Albus? She had placed an Unbreakable Vow on him!
Now, sitting in the headmaster's office and tugging his beard, he was coming up with ways to get out of the situation. Unfortunately, he was limited in contacts outside his direct duties as headmaster; without a fresh and timely view of further events, a timely reaction to unravel the whole tangle of troubles was impossible. Losing the initiative in his case was fraught with danger.
He also had to reconsider all the prepared pieces, such as that same Potter. In case of emergency, the reserve plan consisted of transferring him from his Muggle relatives to the red-haired family of slaves. But the plan went down the drain because of the exponentially increasing stupidity of Arthur Weasley's sons.
Albus understood that the Slave Chain, which Septimus Weasley had thrown over his descendants, literally selling them to him, Albus Dumbledore, gave him the ability to fully dispose of the entire family, making them all slaves and Blood Traitors. In exchange, Septimus wanted to arrange a marriage with the unattainable, yet so desired and already betrothed to another, Cedrella Black. The contract was concluded with time restrictions — as long as Albus was alive and fighting Grindelwald.
Blinded at that time by spermotoxicosis to the point of complete stupefaction, Septimus paid little attention to anything except the Black girl. He was ready to accept anything, as long as she forgot about the Code of her House and ran away with him. Without even listening to the text of the contract to the end, it was enough for him that it contained "until the end of Albus Dumbledore's life," he signed it with his Blood, took the vial with the Love Potion, a special development of his now Master, with dragon blood, and rushed to find his beloved, to finally drag her into bed.
It turned out that Septimus paid an excessive and unforgivable price for a simple carnal whim.
Because the termination of the contract for the sale of Septimus's descendants had not been provided for by Albus Dumbledore. He immediately began bringing his grand design of the Universal Good into reality. His own good, of course! First, drawing power from the slaves, supposedly for preparing the battle with Gellert Grindelwald, but after the battle with him, he did not kill the defeated one, but left him alive. Thus, one of the two conditions for terminating the Slave contract was not fulfilled.
From the second condition — the death of Albus himself — he decided to protect himself radically: by using the knowledge of Horcruxes belonging to the student from Slytherin, Thomas Riddle, much later — on that fateful Halloween — he created the same for himself — in Harry Potter's scar. Lily Potter's death should not go to waste!
In its ingenious simplicity, the game with the Horcrux was worth both the effort and the time for preparation.
Setting Harry against Voldemort, he prepared the boy for the idea of a further decisive confrontation. Arranging simple adventures for him along the way, such as saving the Philosopher's Stone — with the help of the youngest of the red-haired slaves, telling and inflating the facts, the headmaster hoped to hammer into the consciousness of wizards the necessary idea of the upbringing of the Hero of the Magical World.
In reality, he had no intention of specially training the Boy-Who-Lived for a confrontation with the Dark Lord. There is no need to prepare a dead man for battle, otherwise the battle might go in the wrong direction.
One way or another, when the decisive battle between Voldemort and Harry Potter thundered forth, between villain and hero, genius and ignoramus, and Tom killed his opponent, closing the Prophecy, Albus's Horcrux would awaken in the dead body of the boy and occupy the vacated body, taking up, so to speak, the baton.
Then he, the Supreme Warlock, would announce to everyone present that the Avada had rebounded from the Boy-Who-Lived for the second time and would come to help his supposedly beloved student defeat Voldemort. Two Albuses — the old one and the one who would be reborn in young Harry — would certainly destroy the Dark Lord, while the old, decrepit body, born more than a century ago, would have to die, and the whole soul of the mage would reunite in the body of the Potter heir. After victory, the twice-hero would receive everything he had ever dreamed of: power, recognition, money, and most importantly — a new body.
And the Greater Good would come! Only the Contract with the slaves would not end according to the second point either.
The Weasleys would serve him forever and ever. He would slowly and with pleasure absorb their magic, their Gifts, their feelings and experiences. It would be amusing to watch how they, with their own hands, would increase the circle of his faithful servants. Oh, many would pay for linking their lives with Blood Traitors.
However, the stupidity of Arthur's offspring only annoyed him for now! How, in Merlin's name, had they managed to lose such a valuable thing as the Deluminator? Albus had tried searching for it himself and accompanied by the Hogwarts elves, but all in vain — the artifact was not Dumbledore family property, but belonged to the Potters.
The headmaster, snorting in annoyance, bit his beard and began unconsciously chewing it. In his time, losing one member of his Order after another, every single one of them enchanted with the same slave bindings, feeling that he was thereby losing nourishment for his magical power, he had pushed young Molly Weasley, enchanted to Arthur like her mother-in-law before her, to give birth and give birth, to fill the gaps in the flock of sheep. The numerous little red-haired children gave their Master such thrilling energy that he sometimes allowed himself to suck out more than permitted, to fully enjoy its power to his heart's content.
One way or another, he would have to slightly loosen the leash and allow them to recover, drawing from careless, trusting wizards and witches who happened to be nearby. He, Albus, did not care what would happen next to the victims of the energy vampirism of the Blood Traitors. Predators do not think about food. They devour it.
Albus rose from his seat and approached a distant corner of his office, where there was a secret door to his personal chambers. He allowed no one there, not even the elves of Hogwarts, because there was his holy of holies, the ritual room.
Having entered it, the old sorcerer looked around and froze in shock at what he saw. All the reserves of light emotions and preserved power in the Schwartz apparatus were absent.
Adjusting the half-moon glasses on his nose in order to look at the energy flows, Albus established with horror that through the umbilical cord, instead of flowing to the offspring of James Potter and his Muggle relatives, the filth collected in Azkaban from the Dementors was flowing to him. The old sorcerer rushed to the full pentagram drawn on the floor, intending to get rid as quickly as possible of the deadly sucker attached to the second apparatus, assembled ten years ago on Privet Drive, but suddenly he slapped himself on the forehead, because for this Potter was needed — the main supplier of magical power.
Panic flooded the headmaster. There was a whole month before the beginning of the new school year, and tomorrow he had to appear before the full composition of the Wizengamot and answer questions of a very unpleasant nature. Would he be able to wriggle out of it, at least until the first of September? What should he do then, activate a similar apparatus, which he had built in the house of one shaggy-haired swot?
Dumbledore opened the doors of a secret cabinet in the wall behind the carpet, took out two glass containers, in one of which a dark, greasy-looking substance was sloshing, and made a pass over them with his wand. Through the lids emerged two thin smoky tubes, which lengthened and sank into the wall.
Tired from what he had done, the old wizard shuffled to his bed and collapsed onto it, exhausted.
For Amelia Bones, time suddenly began spinning like a mad carousel, and she started acting automatically.
First, immediately after Sirius's funeral in the old house of his parents, she arranged for her silent niece, Sue, to live for a few days with Lady Augusta Longbottom, who herself had offered her services, fiercely flashing dark eyes toward the already tired head of the DMLE.
Then she Apparated to her home to take that little glass vial with the last memories of her brother, Edgar, after the attack on his family.
Back then, after receiving news of the attack, she had immediately rushed to her family home to help the people closest to her. Above the ruins of the building hung the grinning mark of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and among the rubble she found her brother's family in a bloodied heap. On top lay Edgar, his back torn open, probably by a Bombarda, miraculously alive and barely breathing. Beneath him, covering little one-year-old Sue with her body, lay his dead wife Margo — a cheerful laugher, always greeting both her husband and his strict sister with a smile. When Amelia turned over the still-warm body of her sister-in-law, entrails began spilling from the huge hole in her abdomen, and at the sight Amelia's vision went black, she felt sick and almost lost consciousness.
But under the dead mother, living little Sue moved her hands, and her shocked aunt hurried to seize the blood-covered child in her arms and desperately press her to her chest.
A quiet sigh broke from Edgar's mouth, and Amelia, ignoring the fact that the child was too sluggish and silent, brought her ear closer to her brother's face.
"Gather ... memo ... Amy ... protect Sue ..."
In her haste, not finding a vial in which she could collect memories, Amelia poured the milk out of Sue's bottle and collected into it the blue strings of memory flowing from her brother's head about the last minutes of the Bones family.
Having examined them much later than she had expected then, the young woman did not believe her eyes. The people operating in the Bones house were not dressed in black robes and Death Eater masks.
But for many years after that black day for her, the memories stood in a dirty bottle, forgotten and unclaimed.
Coming then to her apartment, Amelia noticed her niece's sickly appearance, her pallor, lethargy, and immobility. Gathering her will into a fist, she took the little one to St. Mungo's, and as it turned out, someone, probably some madman, had cast the Cruciatus on one-year-old Sue. Her niece barely survived the torture, began walking and talking late, wet herself at night until the age of five, and no healers, no mixtures, charms, or jinxes helped her. Only after reaching the age of seven, when little wizards manifested their first accidental magic outbursts, did Susan begin to recover, thanks to her magic, which began to heal and correct the injuries of the girl's body, magical core, and mind. Her first outburst happened — and it could not even be called an outburst — after the forgotten milk bottle was found, in which her father's memories of the people guilty of her parents' deaths were sloshing.
Having reviewed in the Pensieve the completely forgotten minutes of that terrible day, without thinking that those vague figures would seem familiar to the girl despite her one-year-old age then, Amelia fell into deep thought, wondering whether she herself had forgotten something important, said in passing.
Her niece, pointing a finger at a small blue ball, which she threw to her fluffy kitten while playing with it, began to make it spin furiously with magic, and then, with her other hand, raised a piece of wood by the fireplace and began rhythmically knocking it against the floor. At the same time, Susan took on some detached expression, changing the rhythm of the tapping until it reached the frequency of a human step. Realization struck Amelia with the force of a hammer, and, widening her unblinking eyes, she whispered:
"Sue, darling, what do you want to say by this? ..."
"A man with such an eye was there ... and there was such knock-knock when he walked around," the girl answered after hesitating a little. "And there were also identical faces ... and long red hair, and they laughed when Mama screamed ..."
"Oh, my little one! Don't cry, don't cry, I beg you," Amelia said, lulling her niece, not feeling the tears on her own cheeks. "I will find out who those people were and avenge them."
That night, staring at the ceiling and not closing her eyes until morning, she listed all the wizards she knew who could have had the features that her girl had suddenly remembered. Again and again she reviewed the memories in the Pensieve, but in them only silhouettes could be seen, screams and curses could be heard, yet she could recognize neither the man with the mad eye — Alastor Moody, nor those two identical-faced red-haired men — the Prewett brothers, as she thought.
Only toward morning, when fatigue overcame her inflamed consciousness, did she drift into a doze and see in a dream what, as it seemed to her, she had forgotten.
Forgotten memory of Amelia Bones
"Amy, he came again and insisted on his own," her brother held his head with both hands and pulled at his curly hair in despair.
"What does he want?" she asked and placed her hand over Edgar's clenched hands.
"He wants me to give him part of my and my family's magical power. He says he needs it to equalize his strength with what You-Know-Who sucks out of the Death Eaters through the mark. Otherwise, he says, it will be impossible for him to cope with him."
"In what way does he want you to share your strength with him?" she suspected something was wrong.
"Through a Slave binding," Edgar moans and does not raise his eyes to his sister. He is ashamed that he can neither agree to the wish of his headmaster nor refuse him directly.
Suddenly, his sister takes upon herself the right to decide:
"Edgar, I am older than you, and here is what I will tell you. If you agree to throw a Slave binding on your family, I will renounce you, because you will become a Blood Traitor like those same Weasleys. Probably he offered them the same thing too. Renounce the Order of the Phoenix, close the estate with a Fidelius, and the three of you sit at home until one of the two — Dumbledore or You-Know-Who — wins. Agreed? You are already the father of little Sue, you will have more children, do you want them to be Albus Dumbledore's slaves?"
"All right, Amy, I will do that."
End of memory
Edgar was too late then; he had been forestalled by the henchmen of the leader of the Order and, at the same time, headmaster of Hogwarts.
When Harry James Potter had recently approached her, bringing with him a folder of incriminating documentation together with a dozen vials of memories, she had released the tension together with a restrained sigh and furiously got down to business.
It was time to pay the bills. The plan had long been ready; it was only necessary to press the lever.
First, she prepared for herself an outline of tomorrow's session. To expect that it would be a one-day process, like Peter Pettigrew's, would mean being a half-mad and cracked optimist. From Albus Dumbledore she expected two possible scenarios of his behavior. Either he would put on the role of an offended kind grandfather, accepting the accusations against him with incomprehension, or he would crush the composition of the Wizengamot with his furious radiance of spotless infallibility. Regardless of how he covered his true essence — with the image of an old teacher or a powerful mage, victor over Dark Lords — Amelia was certain that he would be hanging noodles on the listeners' ears in both cases.
But Amelia already knew the whole truth about this, in his essence, true Dark Lord. It was only necessary to remove the false sparkling tinsel from the image of Albus, so that everyone would see his true, monstrous, and bloodthirsty face.
This was her task. She had to finish it or die trying to do it.
Amelia had no intention of dying, i.e., she had to, like death's bloodhound, run after the prey to the end.
His end.
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