Chapter 17
Harry watched with a sort of exasperated patience as Death dramatically limped along behind him, a conjured crutch made out of some sort of twisted black wood supporting his 'injured' side as he groaned and made frighteningly-realistic sounds of agony and discontent. Redaxe and the goblin guard accompanying them down the hallway seemed entirely uncertain how to react to this, sending horrified stares at the 'wounded' Death and awe-filled ones at Harry in equal measure.
Harry was rather worried at this point that the goblins would declare him a master warrior of some kind and erect a golden statue in his honor due to his 'defeating' of Death. By kicking him in the shin.
He just wished the entity would quit grasping spasmodically onto his arm for 'balance' every third step or so, his rasping voice rising in 'pain' until it eerily resembled the screams of a young woman being eviscerated. Harry's left eye hadn't stopped twitching since they'd left the main hall, and it didn't look like it was likely to stop anytime soon.
The armed guard following them flinched every time Death wailed, and once it had even made an aborted motion to shove its pike in Death's general direction before Redaxe had barked something at him in Gobbledegook that had the guard paling to an unattractive, milky green and resuming his walk stiffly and emotionlessly.
Harry would have pitied the goblins a bit more if he wasn't finding this so very hilarious.
Redaxe eventually stopped before a large ornate door (large, considering this was the office of a goblin who couldn't be more than three feet tall and yet the door was over ten) with a simple gold plate declaring LIVERCRUSHER in neat, professional font. Redaxe knocked twice before pushing the door open without waiting for any sort of audible response, and then he paused. He seemed rather conflicted over whether to insist Harry (and his leech-like guest) walk in first—as was courteous and proper—and risk Death brushing so very close to him, or walk in first—impolitely—and have Death at his back.
The goblin settled on a strange sort of hover, where he had one hand pressed to the door, but stepped inside the room and held the heavy door open with the tips of his long, spindly fingers. Harry doubted he'd be able to keep the door open like that for long, and quickly hurried inside, dragging Death along with him as the entity was now bracing most of his weight on Harry's shoulder as he moaned in his apparent 'agony.'
The goblin behind the desk was identical to just about every other goblin Harry had ever seen (he tried to be polite and remember names and faces, but he was pretty sure the goblins were all secretly clones of each other and laughed at wizards trying to tell them apart behind their backs), except for a very small, neatly-trimmed triangular beard on his chin that was at odds with the rest of his surly face.
Harry stared at that beard for lack of anything else to do, wondering if the goblin spent time actually trimming it into that perfect of a triangle, or if goblin beards were naturally predisposed to geometric shapes. Death made a sort of rasping chuckle-cough noise at that thought, and Harry elbowed him without looking.
Death wheezed and collapsed to the ground, clutching his middle in exaggerated misery. Harry was tempted to kick the entity while he was down, but he'd already almost given the three goblins heart attacks just by elbowing him. Who knew how they'd react should he actually assault the aggravating immortal.
"Shush," Harry shushed him, giving Death a look. "Could you at least try and act your age?"
Death stopped rolling around on the floor and glanced up through one void-black eye, promptly dissolving into bone-colored dust on the floor. Harry's palm met his face with a satisfying thwack, and the muffled sound of the goblin guard by the door fainting echoed him.
"That is not what I meant…" Harry grumbled, running his hand through his hair and turning his attention back to Livercrusher, pointedly ignoring the pile of dust on the ground by his feet. "Well then," he began briskly, not even blinking when he felt an arm sling itself around his shoulders and the immortal form of Death appeared beside him. He flicked a glance down and saw that, yes, the dust pile was still there, but ignored it. "Redaxe mentioned that you were the Potter Account Manager?"
Livercrusher opened his mouth to reply, but all that emerged was a distinctly mouse-like squeak. Motion paused. All eyes turned to the goblin behind the desk, including the slightly reproving and mortified gaze of Redaxe, as Livercrusher's green skin tinted purple. The goblin cleared his throat a few times meaningfully before he tried again. "Yes, Mr. Potter. The previous Potter Account Manager, Boneclub, was found to have been implicated in several accounts of thievery from your main vault. He was summarily executed and fed to the dragons guarding the Lower Vaults."
"Pity," Death mused, the two conscious goblins stiffening at his voice—the first time they'd heard it without it being disguised by a human throat. "I would have enjoyed showing the thief why stealing from my shell is a monumentally foolish idea." Death heaved a sigh, face stretched into a shark-like grin. "I suppose I shall simply be content to pull his festering soul out of the Beyond to show him such once our business has been concluded."
Harry, with the ease of practice, pretended he had heard nothing, visibly disturbing the goblins in the process. "Thievery?" he prodded, a suspicion forming in his mind as to the culprit, but he'd rather have solid evidence before he worked himself up about it.
Livercrusher recovered admirably, shuffling some papers (actual papers, at that, and not parchments; seemed the goblins kept more up-to-date than the rest of the wizarding world) on his desk as he spoke. "Yes. Chief Mugwump Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore made ten unauthorized transactions from the years 1981 to 1991: a lump sum of fifteen thousand galleons to be withdrawn once per year on seemingly random days. He also removed an artifact from the Potter Vault—one Cloak of Invisibility—" Harry noticed Death's full-body twitch and reminded himself to ask the entity about that later, "along with a small strongbox put there by the late Lord Potter that was to be given to you upon your eleventh birthday." Livercrusher paused as the room briefly grew uncomfortably warm as Harry's anger manifested itself. When the wizard had ahold of himself, the goblin continued. "Further attempts to withdraw the usual fifteen thousand galleons were denied, as the Confirmation of Heirship documents which were sent to you upon your acceptance into Hogwarts were never filled out correctly. They were returned signed, but the magical signature included did not hold up to the standard Consent tests performed on such documents. It was determined that the documents were either forged or signed under the presence of a compulsion charm, which invalidated the document and put your vaults on lockdown. It was, ironically, this lockdown that allowed us to audit your account and find the theft in the first place."
Here the goblin grinned toothily, as if inviting Harry to share in their amusement of the irony. Harry did not reply, too busy trying to hold in his magic from doing something destructive as his anger warred with his common sense. He'd suspected something like this as soon as the goblin mentioned thievery, but having it confirmed aloud made it more real somehow. He was torn between the desire to start breaking things, march straight to Headquarters to punch Dumbledore in the nose, or generally just rage about the injustice of it all. The indecision locked him in place, which likely saved the goblin's office from being forcibly redecorated.
"You will, of course, be returning to my shell the funds which were so appallingly stolen from him," Death said into the silence, voice flat and unusually serious considering how amused he normally sounded.
This was not a question, or even a suggestion, but rather a statement of fact. The goblins would be returning the money, or Death would do so for them in the most destructive and lethal manner he could think of. That this manner would likely include the genocidal eradication of the entire goblin nation went unsaid, but was implicitly understood.
"Y-yes, of course," Livercrusher stammered, shuffling his papers again, this time nervously. "We shall take the funds directly from the Chief Mugwump's vault in recompense."
"With interest, I assume?"
"Oh, oh y-yes," Livercrusher nodded so fast his neck popped, reminding Harry dimly of Dobby. "I-Interest. Of course."
Death's fingers tightened on Harry's shoulder, a sliver of his icy magic reaching out and smothering the fire-anger of Harry's own like a particularly cold blanket. The effect was not unlike having a bucket of ice water dumped over one's head, and Harry shivered as his breath frosted the air in front of him for several heartbeats afterwards. He did feel a great deal calmer now, though; he felt more in control of his magic, rather than it being the other way around.
"And what of the strongbox?" Harry asked once his teeth stopped chattering. He wanted everything that had been stolen back, and he wanted it back immediately. There was no way he was leaving anything that belonged to his father in Dumbledore's greedy hands.
"Ah, that, unfortunately, is something we are unable to recall physically. It seems to be behind a particularly impressive set of Ancient Wards. We suspect the Chief Mugwump has it stored within Hogwarts, as the castle is notorious for being impervious to traditional curse-breaking." Livercrusher grimaced, seeming genuinely apologetic either despite or because of the looming figure of Death with its arm still around Harry's shoulders.
Death scoffed, his gaunt face entirely unimpressed. "Foolish mortal. There is no ward that has ever existed or that shall ever exist capable of stopping Death."
He reached out his free hand and the air around it abruptly bucked, the space above Death's outstretched palm warping and convulsing in an eye-bending example of how the laws of space and time meant nothing to Death. Within moments a gold box about fifteen inches long landed in his hand, the edges smoking and blurring as it tried to reconfigure itself into something capable of existing in this plane of reality after having just been forcibly pulled across the intervening distance through nothing but will alone.
Once the box stopped shuddering and seemed mostly solid, Death turned and dropped it into Harry's hands with a satisfied grin. Harry, ignoring the dumbfounded and terrified goblins, clutched the box to his chest with both arms, hunching over it protectively. This box had belonged to his father. This box had been meant for him; it was an actual gift from his parents, the only one he'd ever gotten that wasn't secondhand. Sure, his cloak had also belonged to his dad, but that had been something Dumbledore had purloined and given to him in the guise of a Christmas present. This was something that his father had explicitly stated was to go to Harry, and that hadn't already been pawed over or looked at by anyone else. He wasn't letting go of this box even if the world were to suddenly erupt into Armageddon.
Death's hand squeezed his shoulder again, before the entity turned sharp, Unforgiveable eyes on the frightened goblin behind the desk. "My shell requires privacy in which to view the contents of his father's strongbox."
"Oh! Oh, y-yes of course; if you'll just follow m—"
"No. This room will suffice. You will vacate the premises and not return until I fetch you."
Livercrusher dithered, torn between arguing that his was his office and therefore he had every right to remain in it, or immediately capitulating since this was Death and Livercrusher very much did not want to die. A bit of his goblin pride pushed through the overwhelming, animal-like terror that had gripped him since the being had first stepped foot in the bank. "My apologies, but this is my office. There are other private rooms I can arrange—"
"Leave."
Livercrusher bolted, tripping over his own feet as he barreled into the petrified form of Redaxe still in the doorway. The two goblins clawed at the ground and at each other as they alternatively dragged and shoved each other out of the room, one of them reaching in with a clawed hand and pulling the unconscious guard out after them by the foot before the door slammed shut and locked itself.
Harry found it in himself to laugh under his breath at how the goblins reacted to his friend, not finding it at all odd that Death had just kicked a goblin out of his own office just so he could look through the contents of a box. He found himself surprisingly eager to see what his father had left for him as he set the strongbox on Livercrusher's desk, searching for a lock or a latch with which to open it. He was startled to find the box was one seamless block of metal, with no apparent way to open it. With a furrowed brow, Harry lifted the box and shook it next to his ear, hearing the unmistakable sound of things rattling around.
So it was definitely hollow, then. Harry recalled the Marauder's Map and wondered if this box functioned similarly, reaching into his pocket for his wand. He pressed the tip of his wand to what he figured was the top of the box (due to the large crest of a stag with lilies in its antlers) and repeated the phrase he'd heard that the Marauders used when they were in Hogwarts.
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good."
The box clicked open incongruously, the seam appearing as if it had always been there despite evidence to the contrary. Eagerly, Harry opened the box and stared. Inside were two folded letters, one written on wizarding parchment and one on lined muggle paper. There were also a dozen or so vials with a strange silvery substance in them, along with a few envelopes that presumably had letters in them—each envelope had a name on them, so Harry figured he had been meant to receive and deliver those back when he was in his first year.
He lifted out one of the vials and stared at it. It didn't look like a potion. It looked more like a piece of silver, liquefied cloth as it twirled around itself endlessly. He wondered what it was, and why there were so many of them.
"Those are memories, my shell," Death murmured in his ear. "They require the use of a pensieve to view properly."
Harry's fingers went numb as he gingerly set the vial—his parents' memory!—back into the box as if it would break should he breathe on it too hard. This was… this was beyond anything he had been expecting. The contents of this box were priceless. He could have had memories of his parents since he was eleven, and yet… and yet Dumbledore had taken this from his vault and never even let on that it existed.
The air grew steadily warmer as his magic reflected his rising ire, and this time Death did not bother extinguishing his anger. Instead, the being stoked it.
"Perhaps the fate I had envisioned for your Headmaster was far too kind," Death spoke beguilingly into the silence; his voice was low and smooth, lacking the traditional rasp. "Tsk. Where does the mortal's deceit end?" The question was obviously rhetorical, for Death had taken to circling Harry's still form, close enough that his robes brushed Harry's arms occasionally. "Would you like me to exact revenge for you, my shell?" Death whispered, voice urgent and gleeful now. "Would you like me to rip out his soul? His magic? I can do that, you know. I can tear his magic from him, piece by piece, and play his screams for you like a serenade. I can rip from him his pride, his arrogance, his foolish greed, and leave him a quivering wreck of blood and flesh." Death came to rest in between Harry and the desk where the open box lay, setting both hands on Harry's shoulders, absinthe eyes wide and eager as a manic, fanged grin cracked his face in half. "Just say the word, my shell. Say the word and I shall show this mortal worm that there shall be no mercy for him in death."
Harry stood quietly, staring into the expectant eyes of Death, and realized something quietly terrifying. This ancient entity, this all-powerful creature, was waiting for orders. Orders from him, Harry Potter, a sixteen-year old wizard. That kind of power could be intoxicating, Harry knew, and he would grow addicted to it if he wasn't careful. Taking a careful breath, Harry tried to shelve his anger and think this through rationally. He bit back the instinctive yes, go teach the bastard a lesson and attempted to puzzle through the consequences of such an action.
He wouldn't feel regret were he to sick Death on Dumbledore, certainly. He might even feel rather good about it. The man had all but made his life a living hell since he was practically an infant, and Harry had a grudge the size of Russia about the whole Dursley situation. Dumbledore was a powerful person politically, but Death didn't care for politics and if Harry brought it up the entity would likely just laugh at the mere idea that 'mortal politics' meant anything at all to him. At this point it was mostly just his morals holding him back.
If he let Death at Dumbledore (hah, let… as if he had the power to stop him), would that make him evil? It would be justice, wouldn't it? Righteous vengeance? Would he leave it at that, though, or turn against others who had wronged him? Would he ever stop? Would he want to? Would he be able to stop, or would he eventually become something worse than Voldemort?
Death wouldn't care either way. Harry could ask him to enslave the Earth and Harry figured Death would do so without batting an eyelash. Death didn't care for anyone else in the world other than Harry. In fact, Harry was rather sure Death held the entire human population in complete disdain.
Somehow, the idea that Death wouldn't ever leave him no matter his choices was vastly comforting. With Ron and Hermione, there was always this underlying understanding that if he ever 'went Dark' they would likely not stand with him. Their views were so radically black and white that they would never be able to really understand if he did something they didn't see as 'Light.' He just knew that neither of them would understand his need for revenge against Dumbledore or the Dursleys.
Hermione knew the basics about his life at Privet Drive, but even then she always simply suggested he go to Dumbledore or tell some other adult about it and let them handle it. Harry didn't really trust adults, and thus trusted this advice even less. Ron knew more about the Dursleys than Hermione, having seen the bars on his window in his second year, but as a sixth son with a loving family he couldn't really grasp the concept of abuse with any sort of accuracy.
Harry desperately wanted to remain friends with Ron and Hermione, but he also desperately wanted Dumbledore to pay out the nose for what he'd done to him over the years. Maybe these didn't have to be mutually exclusive? Maybe he could get his revenge, and just not let his friends know about it? Surely, surelyDeath could do something discreet enough that no one would trace it back to Harry himself? Harry would know the truth, and he'd be sure Dumbledore knew it before he died, but did anyone else really have to be aware?
"Death," Harry spoke before he lost his nerve, feeling the sharpening of the entity's attention as it sensed/heard/felt his decision, "how good are you at being subtle?"
"I am Death, my shell. I am intangible, invisible, inevitable. I am the biting chill of The Final Winter, the Shadow you thought you saw, and the End of All Things. I am the very definition of subtlety."
Harry smiled, grimly satisfied. "Then maybe it's time that someone showed Dumbledore that he is not entitled to play God."
Death's grin cracked a few centimeters wider.
AN: I hope you all had a pleasant Thanksgiving. I, for one, drove ten hours to awkwardly visit family, and then drove ten hours back. I'm pretty sure most of my brain melted from the sheer repetitiveness, and the dregs left behind squeezed out this chapter before collapsing in exhaustion. I am now officially brainless.
...does this make me a zombie? I shall now proceed to devour someone's brains to test this theory. Brb.
Chapter 18
Death loomed over the slumbering form of Albus Dumbledore, standing motionless as absinthe eyes contemplated the old mortal currently oblivious to his presence. His fingers twitched with the need to attackmaimdestroy, but he held himself back with the sort of iron will that had seen him through countless eons of existence. His shell had requested he do something discreet to the human, and despite how manic and spontaneous he generally appeared, he could be subtle when he wanted to.
It wasn't as if he could have led the squibs into revolution that one time when he was bored if he'd done it through showy examples of sheer power. He'd fixed everything afterwards, of course—leaving the Origin timeline so skewed would have been Very Bad Indeed. Knowing his luck, he could have accidentally written himself out of existence by preventing himself from being born or from gathering his Hallows.
Messing with the past had been fun for a while, but he always made sure that events leading up to his Ascension to Death were returned to Origin standards to avoid mistakes. Anything afterwards was free game, though. He couldn't care less what happened to the 'future,' and had amused himself for millennia by experimenting with what he could get away with before the world devolved into a dystopia of epic proportions.
No, if there was one thing Death knew how to do, it was clean up after himself.
Regardless, there were many things he wanted to do to this upstart mortal before him, but very few of them could be accurately described as 'subtle.' Death pondered his options for a nanosecond, ideas and plans being formed and discarded at beyond the speed of thought as he weighed the potential of several schemes against one another, searching for the one that would please his shell and simultaneously offer the most agony to this… this wizard.
Death glanced back at the mortal, idly pressing a miniscule fraction of his magic onto the man to keep him asleep, and slipped through his feeble mental barriers while he was at it. He shuffled through the human's memories, his dreams, his deepest fears, his every regret, and Death felt the hollow void that passed as his soul stirring with dawning glee.
This, Death knew, would be delicious.
He would have to handle this delicately; preying on this particular mortal's fears required the sort of masterful subtlety that he hadn't personally bothered exercising in over ten thousand years. He couldn't simply crush the mortal under his heel and grind him into dust. He had to utterly destroy him, and the only way to do that was to tear down everything he believed in, everything he had fought and bled for, and expose him to the world for what he really was.
A coward. A weak, desperate shell of a man so warped from his sister's death that he'd become someone the Albus Dumbledore of his childhood would have been disgusted by. Death grinned, running his tongue over his teeth as he reached out a pale hand and hovered it over the mortal's head, gathering insidious magic at his fingertips.
He had learned this spell in Ancient Egypt from the Avatar of Ma'at, and had rarely had a reason to put it to good use. What good was forcing his enemies to tell the truth when he could simply rip the knowledge from their very souls? But now, it would serve him perfectly.
The spell sank into the mortal's magical core, wrapping around it like the parasite it was, locking away the ability to lie, even to oneself. Death's grin widened. An Albus Dumbledore incapable of telling anything but the whole, unadulterated truth… Death bit back the urge to laugh hysterically. The best part as far as Death was concerned was the compulsion in the spell to ignore the fact that he was telling the truth in the first place. It would be no fun at all if his victim realized what was happening and simply stopped speaking aloud, after all.
He calmed himself quickly, stepping away from the bed as he turned his attention to the room around him, eyes peering past wards and masking magic as if they weren't even there, searching for anything incriminating. It wasn't enough to simply force him to tell the truth, after all; Death had much more to do before he could return to his shell and claim that vengeance had been met to his satisfaction.
His eyes alighted on a pensieve 'hidden' behind a false wall, and his grin returned. He stepped towards it, only to pause as a ball of fire materialized between him and his target, screeching in anger. Death did not react to the sound, despite knowing how agonizing anyone else would find it. The song of a phoenix—be it uplifting or terrifying—targets souls, and Death had no soul to target. He reached out lightning-quick and snatched the phoenix out of the air, listening as it squawked and burst into flames as soon as his fingers closed around its neck.
The pile of ashes in his hand lifted to reveal a tiny, bald head, before the baby phoenix cried out as it ignited again, being forced into another burning day seconds after it had been reborn. Death watched with a crooked smile as the phoenix was forced into rebirth over and over and over again, its cries growing more broken and jagged after each rebirth.
He remembered the first time he'd discovered what his Touch did to phoenixes. As True Immortals, phoenixes had enough of a grasp on the living plane to not have their souls removed through simple touch. Death could remove the soul of a phoenix, but he had to actively want to. Otherwise, the death magic in his fingers was enough to repeatedly force the phoenix through simultaneous burning days. The one he'd experimented with had lasted approximately forty burnings before its mind had broken under the pain, and it had not risen from the ashes afterwards.
At burning number twenty-four, Death tipped his hand forward and let the phoenix and its ashes fall to the ground, stepping over it as it whimpered and cried beneath him. That would teach the bird to not interfere with him again.
Death pulled the pensieve free of its cabinet and scanned the vials of memories lining the shelves. He ran his magic through them and studied their contents, pleased to find Dumbledore had stored a great deal of his more 'traumatic' memories here in an effort to blunt their effect on his conscious mind. This was the risk to using pensieves: you could store your memories in them to numb the emotions and sensations associated with them, but if you left them out of your mind long enough you eventually forgot them altogether. Judging by the stale magic surrounding a few of them, Death figured the mortal hadn't bothered replacing these memories in decades. Whether this was because he'd genuinely forgotten—he cackled at his own wit—about that little aspect of pensieves, or because the mortal thought himself above such mundane side effects, Death didn't care. There were a great deal of his interactions with Grindelwald, along with a few of the more 'shady' actions he'd taken along the road to his Greater Good.
Death could only grin at the thought of Dumbledore forgetting all of this. His holier-than-thou attitude would make much more sense if he legitimately didn't know about everything shifty he'd done in the name of the 'Light.' Not that Death pitied him. Or cared. Or was particularly compassionate about the mistake. It was the mortal's own fault, and Death had no tolerance for idiots.
With a flick of thought, Death banished all the vials and the pensieve to the Void where he could collect them later. His shell had needed a pensieve after all, and it wasn't as if Dumbledore needed this one now that he'd taken all the memories stored with it. In fact, Death was doing the mortal a favor by taking it with him. It wasn't healthy to use a pensieve like this, after all. The mortal should be thanking him, in all honesty. Maybe he could get the human to thank him publicly? It wouldn't be difficult to override the man's conscious mind and magic and simply take over for a while—he could make a grand spectacle out of it for his own entertainment.
That was what mortals were useful for: being entertaining. When they stopped entertaining him, he tended to lose interest. And when he lost interest in a mortal, he generally silenced them in some sort of permanent manner so that they didn't go around blabbing about how "He possessed me!" or "He made me slaughter an entire town using only my teeth!" Tattletales annoyed him. Things that annoyed him didn't tend to live very long lives.
A small, shivering trill drew his attention down to the little bald bird sitting in a pile of ashes. Death's face slowly stretched into a wide, fanged smile. He'd almost forgotten about the little chick that had foolishly tried to stand in his way. It wasn't as if the bird didn't know who—what—he was. Death was doing nothing to hide his magic or his presence; the bird would have had to be extremely ignorant to have not known what it was getting into. The phoenix on the ground choked out a sound somewhere between a protest and a plea, and Death crouched before it, grinning wide as he clucked his tongue at the shivering bird.
"Silly little bird," Death cooed, leaning closer and watching as the phoenix fell backwards with an alarmed squeak as he drew near. The bird was nervous, but not terrified. It seemed the chick had been so secure in its own invincibility that it had utterly ignored what its magic was telling it. How adorable. "Your vaunted immortality is nothing in the face of Death." He watched as the bird grew very still, tiny eyes widening as it realized what it had attacked in defense of its master. He reached out one long finger and prodded the bird on the head, watching as it burst into pained flames again and was reborn. "Your master has made an enemy of me, little firebird. Will you stand betwixt us and sacrifice your soul for such a meaningless insect?"
The little phoenix trembled as it stared at him, obviously weighing its options, before it lowered its head and closed its eyes in defeat. Death bared his teeth in a grin, straightening from his crouch and dusting his hands against each other to rid himself of the leftover ashes. He'd thought not. Phoenixes were very attached to their immortality, and he'd yet to meet one that was willing to accept True Death in defense of another. For such noble, Light creatures, phoenixes were just as inherently selfish as everything else in the face of death.
"I thought not…" Death murmured, eying the depressed little bird with a smirk. The chick was fortunate that Death had things to do and places to be, else he might have stuck around and played with it for a while longer. He was positive he could take the bird to rebirth forty-one before it broke, and it would have been interesting to see if he could somehow mutate the phoenix's magic away from its Light alignment—doing so would have set the bird's Dark magic and Light soul into conflict, which was always amusing to watch. The bird would have torn itself apart trying to fix itself, and watching a creature ignite its own magical core against its will provided a spectacular lightshow that would have entertained him for some time.
Making a mental note to come back for the phoenix at a later time—I wonder if my shell would be interested in my experiments?—Death took a step forward in the Headmaster's quarters at Hogwarts, and emerged inside his shell's room at Grimmauld Place with the sleeping form of his alternate self. Death smiled almost fondly at the boy, before grinning as he retrieved the pensieve he'd appropriated and set it against the wall. He'd be sure and draw his shell's attention to it when the boy woke; his shell had never used a pensieve before, and Death would be sure and explain all the upsides and downsides to using one. No point in letting his precious shell turn into an idiot.
Death turned on his heel and fell back into the ornate black chair that materialized in time to catch him, propping one ankle up on his opposite knee as he watched his shell sleep. He wasn't surprised that his shell was so tired; he had been given quite a shock at the bank earlier, and mortals didn't handle surprises very well. Death would admit to being rather curious about the memories his shell's father had left him—not his father, never his—and wondered if such a thing had existed in his own reality.
He supposed it didn't matter. He didn't really care either way, but it would have been interesting to know. If it had, that meant his Dumbledore had been successful in keeping it from him, which was irritating but not enough to really make him upset. It had been countless, countless eons since he'd last cared or thought about his human parents. But his shell was still young and was likely to care a great deal more about the whole ordeal than Death would have. He would have sent his magic through the memories like he had those of Dumbledore's, but Death rather thought he'd like to be surprised for once. He'd view them alongside his shell of course, and it would be more interesting to watch them for the first time then. It would be intriguing to not already know something ahead of time.
As he studied the unconscious form of his shell, Death ran the bare bones—he would get the mortals to appreciate his jokes eventually—of his plan through his mind. He supposed he could do everything all at once, expose all the secrets and all the lies simultaneously and maybe get a stroke or a heart attack out of it, but it would be more satisfying to spread it out. Plus, people would accept everything easier if it were spaced out in a believable fashion. Death had become old hand at manipulating the minds of weak little mortals, and he wasn't above nudging a few people into the right mindset if they weren't conforming to his desires. The die-hard Dumbledore fans, for one, were likely to take everything with a grain of salt.
This was unacceptable.
Death wanted the mortal universally loathed. He would not rest until every man woman and child equated the name Albus Dumbledore with the scum of the earth. Death wanted Dumbledore spat upon in the streets, kicked out of every storefront, snarled at by every dog, and hissed at by every cat. Death would hound the man until he either tried to take back his power by force, or he tried to kill himself out of sheer grief.
He wouldn't let him succeed in either of those, of course, but it would be amusing to watch him try.
The truth spell had been the first step. Death would not allow Dumbledore to die a martyr, not this time. He would use Magical Britain's fickle-mindedness to its fullest potential, turning Dumbledore's greatest strength into his biggest weakness. For a man who relied on the adoration and loyalty of the sheep of Britain, the sudden scorn and disgust would be crippling.
But Death did not aim to merely cripple the man. No, Death would not stop until the mortal's mind broke beneath the weight of his own deceptions. And once the man was helpless, defeated, isolated from everything and everyone… Death would stop being subtle.
Death stood from his chair and stepped up to his shell's bedside, absently running a hand through the boy's hair, unable to deny himself the urge to be in almost constant contact with the one human he could actually touch. He was still rather in awe of the fact that his shell allowed him to touch him in the first place. Death knew he was unnatural, knew he was frightening to look at and to be around, but his shell still permitted him this contact without judging him for it.
His shell doubted his ability to be discreet. Death knew and understood this. Running his tongue over his teeth, Death smiled; he couldn't wait to prove the boy wrong.
AN: A quick answer to a few various reviewers: The similarities between Death and Alucard were not done purposefully, but now that I look at it I can't unsee them. *sigh* Oh well.
Also, exam week. Joy. It's a pity my brain melted over Thanksgiving break, as now my test-taking abilities have devolved into mindless gaping and drooling.
Chapter 19: Albus Dumbledore Interlude
NOTE: Some people have mentioned in the reviews that they've been unable to open this chapter for some reason. I'm not entirely sure why that is, as I can access it just fine, and there are other reviewers who didn't seem to have any problems. I'll keep an eye on the problem and see if I can figure out what's going on, but as far as I can tell everything's working correctly. I now return you to your originally scheduled program.
Albus Dumbledore was having a very good day.
He'd had another vaguely blurry dream about himself as a lad and some other boy with blond hair whose name he couldn't entirely recall, and the emotions accompanying it had been agreeably joyous and pleasant. He planned to start his day with a nice cup of tea before he tracked down little Harry and convinced him that it would be in his best interest to remain in Grimmauld Place where it was safe, rather than go gallivanting off to Gringotts—he'd bribed one of the goblins there to keep track of the poor boy's visits, and to ensure that the lad never found out about his Lordships and the bothersome things his parents had left to him in their will (which he'd sealed, as was his right as Chief Warlock)—where anyone could have simply snatched him off the street. He only had a fifth-year Hogwarts education, after all, and wouldn't last very long in any sort of legitimate battle with Death Eaters.
Albus did not believe that his summoned hero had actually managed to kill Tom; at least not permanently. He knew that Tom had made at least six horcruxes, and there was truly no way for his summoned hero to have known about those if he truly had tracked down the Dark Lord and defeated him (he preferred to use words like defeated and vanquished to promote the idea that Voldemort was not really human, and thus words like killed and murdered were inappropriate). Albus also did not believe that his summoned hero was actually Death, despite how the man had chosen to introduce himself. Why, he'd known a wizard back in the '20s who'd gone by War, but his real name had actually been Steven. 'Death' was likely a title he'd given himself due to his experiences in his old dimension, rather than a job description.
He wasn't worried about his new hero, though. The ritual he'd used had been very specific in its description, and he knew he wouldn't have summoned anything that would pose any sort of real threat to him. One of his conditions had been that whomever he summoned could not be unforgivably evil—he had not specified that his hero be Light, however, as he knew better than most that the best way to fight fire was with fire, despite the impression he tended to give his Order members—and as Albus considered himself a paragon of goodness, his hero couldn't conceivably bring harm to him without being deemed 'evil' by the parameters of the ritual. It was all rather clever of him, he thought; he'd had this theory proven several times over the past few days when his hero had passed up several opportunities to harm him in favor of following dear Harry around instead.
Albus was not entirely sure what to think about the odd bond growing between his two chosen heroes. It was most definitely a good thing that the man he'd summoned had formed an attachment to one of them—he would be less likely to betray them or go against Albus' wishes if he'd formed a positive rapport with someone in the Order—but he was worried that the hero whom he'd called (who was, unfortunately, quite Dark in both manner and bearing) would corrupt little Harry. If Harry were to ever grow out of the conditioning Albus had carefully put the lad through over the years, he might stumble upon some things that Albus would much rather keep hidden.
The boy had to willingly sacrifice himself, after all, and he would not be quite so eager to do that if he realized he didn't actually have to live with his relatives and had a considerable sum of gold waiting for him in Gringotts. Harry had to believe that his life was worth less than that of everyone else's, else Albus's entire plan would be worthless. The boy had already proven to be immune to the Imperius, and Albus had theorized that the basilisk venom and phoenix tears in the boy's blood would render him remarkably resistant to any sort of mind-altering potions. There was also no guarantee that should anyone other than Tom actually kill the boy that the horcrux would be truly destroyed. Knowing the Potter Luck as he did, it was equally as likely that the boy's soul would be the one destroyed, leaving the horcrux in charge of its own magically-gifted body for the first time.
That was the absolute last thing Albus needed: a second Tom Riddle running around wearing the face of the Boy-Who-Lived.
Albus was certain that the horcrux still existed in the boy, despite his claims otherwise. The lad hadn't really tried to give a convincing argument in the first place; honestly, having a horcrux removed from a living vessel via touch? No. Albus was sure the horcrux was still intact, and the lad had merely convinced himself that it was gone to prevent unnecessary trauma.
Albus heaved himself out of bed and studied the golden cup that his hero had left in the Order's meeting room (which doubled as the kitchen) the other day. It looked remarkably familiar, but more and more things had started becoming rather blurry in his memories recently. As much as he hated to admit it, he knew he was getting on in years. Memory loss was not entirely unprecedented for a man of his age, wizard or no, and he was sure that whatever thought was connected to this innocuous little cup was not that important. If it had been, he would have stored it in his pensieve for safe-keeping, and according to his research storing memories in a pensieve locked them in place, preventing one from forgetting them in the first place. It was why he put so many of his more important recollections there, such as the time he… the time he…
Well, it wasn't important. It was far too early to be trying to recall such heavy thoughts, anyway. Smiling good-naturedly to himself, Albus stepped away from the bed and stumbled as a fretful squawk sounded by his feet. He looked down and saw Fawkes resting in a scattered pile of ashes a few yards from his bed, looking the worst Albus had ever seen him. Albus tutted as he reached for his original wand—which was not nearly as powerful as the Elder Wand which he still needed to get back from his hero—and levitated the phoenix and its ashes back to its perch. He was an old man, now. He couldn't be bending down every time his familiar decided to be reborn somewhere inconvenient.
Albus would have thought by now the phoenix would be able to tell when its burning days were, and would know to land somewhere appropriate in time for it to happen. He supposed he wasn't the only one who was forgetting things nowadays, Albus chortled to himself, ignoring the odd looks Fawkes was sending him.
By the time Albus had made it to his office—he'd spent ten minutes picking out his robes for the day; the brighter the color, the more people tended to underestimate him and think him utterly barmy, which was ideal for his image—a rather irate Minerva McGonagall was waiting for him.
Ah, Minerva. Albus still remembered when she was a student; she had been one of his favorites, a true Transfiguration prodigy. It was a shame that he could never bring himself to tell her that her old schoolgirl crush Tom Riddle had gone on to become the Dark Lord that would kill her parents and eventually kill her husband. It wasn't all that important, he figured; it was best to let such ugly truths remain secret from those who did not truly need to know.
"Finally, Albus!" Minerva snapped. Oh dear, Albus thought amusedly. She's already growling at me and it's not even noon! "I need those reports on the school budget I sent you. Do you have them ready? I really need to get them to the Governors before they start poking their overlarge noses into Hogwarts business."
"Of course not, Minerva," Albus replied with a twinkle, ignoring the odd look on his Deputy's face. She was likely still cranky from being made to wait. "I have far more important things to do than worry about the school budget. If it gets tight I'll simply dip into the Founders' vaults again to cover it like I usually do."
Minerva had the strangest look on her face. Albus wondered if she were well; it would not do for his Deputy to become ill, especially not now that he was so busy with the war and couldn't handle his regular duties. Minerva was such a dear to pick up the slack now and then.
"Albus, what are you talking about?" Minerva asked him, looking oddly concerned.
He simply smiled at her and pushed more magic into the spell he used to make his eyes twinkle—such a useful spell, that: it helped disguise the signs of passive legilimency, not that he could use it against Minerva since she was an accomplished Occlumens and would likely notice.
"Fear not, Minerva," he soothed her, "I'll attend to the budget as soon as I convince dear Harry to stay at Headquarters where I can keep a close eye on him."
Another of those odd looks was aimed his way as Minerva slowly nodded. "…very well, Albus. I'll be… in my office if you need anything."
He nodded with a benevolent smile as Minerva slowly backed out of the room, still eyeing him strangely. He would have to floo Poppy and convince her to pay Minerva a visit—she was clearly unwell.
With that out of the way, Albus hummed cheerfully to himself as he headed for the fireplace. The passive wards he'd woven around Headquarters had informed him that Harry had returned last night, and now would be an ideal time to confront the lad about his outing. He was positive he could guilt the boy into staying in the house from now on, and if he timed it right he might even be able to do so without his newest pawn being present. It would not do for his new chosen hero to overhear anything that might make him suspicious of Albus' motives.
As he emerged from the fireplace into Grimmauld Place, Albus twirled his old wand and silently banished the ash clinging to his clothing. It was always good to keep in practice with silent casting, especially if there was a chance someone could catch you doing it and be impressed. He sent a silent pulse through the wards to locate the boy he was here to confront, and found him still in his room.
Tsking at the propensity to oversleep inherent in teenagers these days, Albus headed for the stairs. Why, when he was a lad he was up with the dawn every morning. He could hardly fathom why the boy needed so much sleep, especially since school was not even in session. If this was a sign of laziness, Albus would have to find a way to fix that. The Chosen One—even if Albus did not intend for the boy to live long enough to revel in his fame—could not be lazy, after all.
There were locking and silencing wards on Harry's door, but Albus ignored those and dismantled them. The boy had probably just put those up to keep out the other children—young Ronald was arriving today and bringing his delightful little sister with him; Albus knew that Harry was uncomfortable around the youngest Weasley, and it made him chuckle every time he saw them together. It was like James and Lily in reverse!
Albus had just put his hand on the door when it was pulled open from the other side, and he found himself staring into the wide, fanged grin of the hero he had summoned. An unsettling chill ran down his spine, and Albus inwardly frowned at this odd reaction. He would have to cast a few warming charms around the place if it were cold enough to make him shiver like this with the slightest draft.
He had been hoping to avoid confronting this man until he'd dealt with Harry's little rebellion, but perhaps this was an ideal time to get his wand back. The deathstick's power made up a great deal of the magic behind most of his spells—he wasn't getting any younger—and he truly could not leave it in the hands of someone who was so obviously Dark.
"Ah, my boy—" Albus faltered as something in the man's face subtly shifted, and the wide grin was suddenly neither friendly nor particularly reassuring, "I had hoped that I might speak with young Harry about his unapproved outing the other day, but since you're here I'm afraid I must insist that you return my wand to me immediately. It is simply too powerful to be left in the hands of someone who does not follow or obey me."
The man's impossible grin widened further. Albus wondered what sort of glamour the man was using to achieve this effect, as Albus was quite capable of seeing through most illusions and yet couldn't quite pierce this one. Perhaps he had cast it using the Elder Wand? That would certainly account for its seeming solidity.
"The wand does not belong to you, mortal," the man told him in that horribly hoarse voice of his. "I will not be returning it." The man paused, and his lips closed over his teeth in a strangely polite, accomplished sort of smile that Albus had yet to see from the man. "I do so appreciate your honesty in this matter, Dumbledore. I am pleased to know just where I stand in regards to yourself."
Albus smiled back genially, a bit confused but eventually figuring that the man had realized that he had been summoned by Albus, and thus should follow his orders like he was meant to, rather than this odd sort of bizarre independence he had previously exercised. "Of course, dear boy," Albus studiously ignored the way the man's sharp-fanged snarl made his magic shudder and recoil into his core, "I shall simply demand the return of my wand at a later time. I have too many things to do to spend much of it arguing the matter, you understand." He twinkled reassuringly at the man, earning a strange sort of vaguely threatening grin in return, before the door was closed—rather abruptly—in his face.
Well, that could have gone better, but at least the man was coming around to Albus' way of thinking. Humming to himself and reaching into his pocket for a lemon drop, Albus headed back down the stairs so he could floo back to his office and deal with the budget poor Minerva had been so worked up over. He dearly hoped she was not coming down with anything; that would be most unfortunate considering how he had planned to push much of his paperwork onto her in the coming days while he dealt with tracking down Tom's horcruxes.
Sometimes it just didn't pay to get up in the mornings.
A/N: So I had an enjoyable Christmas. I got to spend most of it with my precious baby boy (a cat named Spider who belongs to my aunt, unfortunately) in my lap, ignoring the chaos around me. I considered smuggling Spider out of the house and into my car so I could abscond with him, but figured I might not be welcomed to future family gatherings were I to catnap the darling.
Also, happy New Year! I intend to spend New Year's Day (and the rest of tonight) doing absolutely nothing but rotting my brain playing video games on the computer. I'm looking forward to it.
Chapter 20: James' Memories
"James, are you ready to go?"
James whirled around, a panicked look on his face as he—rather belatedly—recalled that he was supposed to be taking Lily-flower out for dinner tonight. It was some sort of anniversary for something—their first date? Their first kiss? James honestly couldn't recall, nor did he understand how his wife expected him to keep all these things straight when he could barely remember where he left his wand in the morning—and when Lily had suggested (read: ordered) him to take her someplace nice, he'd absently agreed.
He'd been in the middle of a staring contest with Padfoot! Of course he'd not been paying attention.
Merlin, James thought, horrified, as he began tearing through the closet to find something 'publically appropriate' to wear. This meant he couldn't wear his favorite Gryffindor-themed robes, since apparently bright red and gold were not 'colors suited for the real world, James.' I sure hope Moony knows the countercurse to the castration charm.
He winced remembering that particularly creative threat. And, knowing Lily, if a castration charm didn't already exist, it likely would by the time she needed it. He crossed his legs reflexively as he pulled out a set of sedate blue robes that he was pretty sure Lily had approved of on a previous outing. He was also pretty sure he hadn't worn them in a while, so she probably wouldn't call him out on his 'lack of creativity.'
Honestly! Him! Uncreative! He was a Marauder! Creativity was in his blood, damn it!
"James Charlus Potter, get down here this instant!"
Uh-oh. She'd upgraded to his full name. That was never a good sign, no matter what female was using it. He could hear her marching up the stairs, and briefly his mind blanked with terror as he imagined having to explain to the love of his life that he'd forgotten whatever anniversary he was meant to be celebrating today.
"Oh, honestly James. I know you love looking at yourself, but we're going to be late!"
James blinked back into reality, finding himself standing in front of the mirror inside his closet, dressed in his robes and with everything in place. A cocky grin fixed itself on his face as he performed an internal victory dance. Ha! His subconscious was so awesome that it managed to dress him entirely on its own!
Hm. Maybe he should worry about that, but he was far more interested in how lovely Lily looked in that dress. Those muggleborns who thought robes looked like dresses had obviously never seen a real woman wearing a dress, as far as James was concerned. Those stuck-up purebloods didn't know what they were missing. Wizarding dress robes had nothing on muggle dresses.
"You look gorgeous, Lily-flower," James grinned, raking fingers through his hair.
Lily smirked slightly back at him, obviously unimpressed with his stalling. "I know. That's why you asked me to marry you, James."
James frowned sternly at her. He had actually married her because she was brilliant and funny and amazing and the single most generous soul he'd ever met. Anyone who could put up with Snivellus for that many years without throwing up had to be a saint. "Don't be ridiculous. I didn't marry you for your looks!" Grinning wide, James leered at her as he made measuring motions around his chest. "I married you for your great—"
Lily interrupted him by whacking him upside the head with her muggle handbag, pursing her lips as she tried not to laugh. "Oh James. What am I ever going to do with you…?"
"JAMES CHARLUS POTTER, IF YOU EVER TOUCH ME AGAIN I'LL GELD YOU LIKE A HORSE!"
James flinched, ignoring Padfoot howling with laughter beside him. The utter bastard. Sirius wasn't the one who'd had his wedding tackle threatened, so of course the man was able to laugh. James couldn't remember what laughter even felt like anymore, not since Lily had been screaming and cursing his name.
Was it supposed to take this long? He didn't know if he could take the stress if he had to listen to this for much longer. Would Lily be offended if he asked the mediwitch to put up a silencing ward?
From the look of disapproval on Moony's face, he figured the answer was probably yes.
"She'll be fine, James," Moony soothed. Good 'ol Moony. At least James had one supportive friend here today. "This is perfectly normal, and once she's feeling better she'll stop threatening to castrate you."
"Did she ever make that charm, Prongs?" Padfoot grinned, still sniggering.
James winced. "Yes. She demonstrated it on a target dummy. I've never felt so bad for a piece of wood before."
Padfoot abruptly stopped laughing. "Wait, you're serious?"
"No, you're Sirius," James replied automatically. They'd been friends for so long he barely even acknowledged that joke anymore, even when he was the one making it. "There was definitely a hole in that target that hadn't been there before. And it was in a very unfortunate place."
Padfoot shifted in place and folded his legs, looking decidedly uncomfortable. "Oh."
James smirked. "Yes, oh. Why do you think I'm taking Lily-flower's threats so seriously?"
"Siriusly?" Padfoot half-joked, still looking rather spooked with the knowledge that the wife of his best mate knew a curse to castrate someone. There definitely hadn't been anything like that in the Hogwarts library. Hell, the Black library didn't even have anything like that in it, at least not in the books Sirius had read.
"Where's Peter?" James asked an amused Moony in a blatant attempt to change the subject. "I haven't seen him around lately, but I was sure he'd be here at least."
Moony frowned. "His grandmother is sick again, I think. He mentioned something about it at the last Order meeting. You know, the one you spent hexing Sirius under the table instead of paying attention?"
James opened his mouth to deny such horrendous accusations laid upon him by his dear werewolf friend, when another scream sounded from the hospital room he'd been kicked out of about half an hour ago after Lily broke his hand.
The scream was followed by a beat of silence, and then the wailing of a newborn drowned out everything else. James could not have stayed out of that room if Voldemort himself had cursed him there. He barely even noticed the wards set to keep him out—his own magic simply tore through them as he burst through the door and caught a glimpse of the pale, sweaty face of his wife.
She was holding a little pink thing swathed in blankets against her chest, and she had never been so beautiful.
"Is that…?" James asked, almost breathless. Was this his son? His child? His little Prongslett?
"Come and meet your son, James," Lily smiled tiredly at him, looking radiant and perfect despite the exhaustion permeating her very being.
James staggered over to the chair he'd been using before being unceremoniously tossed out on his ear, collapsing into it as if it had been him giving birth minutes ago and not Lily. He reached over with trembling hands and brought the bundle to his chest, looking down into a screwed-up little face as it wiggled unhappily in his arms.
The little baby—his son! His child! His!—opened up its eyes and newborn-blue met astonished hazel. Immediately and irrevocably, James fell in love. This was beyond the love he felt for Lily, for his parents, for magic itself.
"Hello Harry," James whispered, smiling as the baby stopped fussing and stared at him in fuzzy fascination. "I'm your daddy."
I'm his daddy, James thought dizzily. He was a father. He could hardly believe he wasn't dreaming.
"Don't hog him all to yourself, Prongs!" Padfoot's voice broke through, and James only heard him as if from a great distance. He did notice when Padfoot attempted to take Harry from him, only for James to clutch him tighter as if afraid the baby would vanish into thin air should he leave his hold. "Prongs?"
James blushed slightly, smiling apologetically as he let Sirius take hold of his godson for the first time. Moony was hovering in the doorway, smiling at them but not getting too close. James was disappointed, but he understood. He was always afraid to hold fragile things because he still underestimated his own strength sometimes, even after all these years. James would have trusted the werewolf to hold his son, but Moony wouldn't have trusted himself to do likewise.
"You made a handsome kid, Prongs," Padfoot grinned, offering the baby back to an exasperated Lily who had been looking a bit put-out that her son was being passed around without her input.
James leaned over and wrapped an arm around his tired wife, looking down at their son in her arms. "Yeah," he smiled, pressing a kiss to Lily's hair even as Padfoot and Moony snuck out of the room. "We sure did."
"Your son is floating, James," Lily's idle voice commented from beside him on the sofa.
James looked up to see that, indeed, his son was floating. Right out of his crib, in fact. Leaping to his feet, James snatched the giggling boy out of the air and sat back down with him clutched to his chest. He glanced over to see Lily smirking into the book she'd been reading.
"Why is he always my son whenever his accidental magic kicks in?" James whined.
It was rather impressive, actually. Most children didn't display any magic until they were at least two or three, and little Harry had been animating his toys since he was nine months old. James had wanted to brag to everyone he knew that his son was such a little prodigy, but Lily had put her foot down. The last thing they wanted was to bring attention to Harry's powerful magic, especially in the middle of a war. James had been ashamed of himself once reason had kicked in, but Lily had assured him that that was what wives were for. That she'd said this with a smirk had had James sulking for a full week.
Lily had indulgently allowed James to tell Sirius about Harry's accidental magic, but only after he swore an oath of secrecy about it. Lily took the protection of her son very seriously, and James almost pitied the first person who tried anything while she was around. He wanted to tell Moony and Peter, but Wormtail had been absent so often that he never really had the chance, and the Order kept insisting that Moony was likely a spy for Voldemort due to his status as a dark creature. James thought this was absolutely ridiculous. Moony was the last person likely to be a spy, right behind Sirius and James himself. Not only did he hate his werewolf side with a vengeance, but he was a naturally gentle and caring person who wouldn't have hurt a fly if it landed in his tea.
James grinned at little Harry who smiled back, waving around his little hands and blinking those huge green eyes up at him. James was glad that Harry had gotten Lily's eyes, even if the rest of him was pretty much himself in miniature. He hoped he inherited her eyesight as well; James had hated his glasses as a child, and didn't want his own son to suffer wearing them.
James frowned when Harry's face shifted to a rather intense one that he didn't recognize, and had just started getting worried when Harry sneezed in James' face.
James paused, even as Lily snorted and clapped a hand to her face to stifle the sudden, inexplicable laughter. He turned and pouted at her, which only made her double over as she laughed into the book pressed to her face. Harry, hearing his mum laughing, started giggling along.
It would take James an hour to realize he now sported an impressive pair of antlers and the ears to go with them.
"What's this about Albus?" James asked impatiently, wanting to return home to Lily and Harry and cuddle a bit. He felt like his manliness went down every time he admitted to himself that he liked cuddling his son, but it was so worth it. He wondered what Frank was doing there, though; he had a son of his own about Harry's age, and there was no way Dumbledore had called them here for a mission if they both had babies at home.
Right?
Albus' face was grave. "It is time, James."
James paled, and saw Frank reacting similarly to his left. Albus had told them about the prophecy surrounding their boys, and insisted that they go under the Fidelius in case Voldemort hunted them. James had protested, insisting that the wards on Potter Manor were more than sufficient to keep out a Dark Lord and his followers. Longbottom Manor was likewise warded, and neither Frank nor James had felt inclined to take the old man up on his 'offer.'
But if Albus was bringing it up again, that meant Voldemort was either getting far too close to their location for comfort, or something else horrible had happened that the man wasn't likely to tell them about until 'the time was right.' James trusted Albus, sure, but the Headmaster was terribly annoying when he withheld information from them.
"There have been Death Eaters sighted in the area near the Manor, James. It is time to move."
"Can't we just put the Fidelius up on Potter Manor?" James asked desperately. He didn't want to abandon the Manor he'd grown up in. He had hoped his son could grow up there like all the Potters had done before him, but if the look on Albus' face was any indication, that wasn't about to happen.
"There is not enough space on the wardstone to hold such a powerful ward in addition to the others, James," Albus insisted kindly. "It would best if you moved to a different property and allowed me to put it under Fidelius as soon as possible." He turned to Frank briefly. "There have yet to be sightings near Longbottom Manor, but I thought I should offer the same just in case."
Some color returned to Frank's face, and he frowned briefly as he shook his head. "No thank you Albus. Alice and I will trust in the wards on the manor to keep us safe."
"Very well," Albus conceded easily enough. James thought that was odd, but was quickly distracted as the old man went on. "James, I'd like to suggest the property in Godric's Hollow. Those who know of the wealth of Potter Manor would not expect you to relocate to such a humble building."
James grimaced. Well that was certainly true. James had become rather accustomed to the wealth and comfort of the manor, and downgrading to the little house on Godric's Hollow would certainly be an effective diversion tactic, if nothing else. "All right. I'll talk to Lily about getting ready to move."
"Have you chosen who should act as Secret Keeper? It would be best to keep them informed as well," Albus reminded him.
"Yeah," James grinned, proud of his plan. "We'll be using Peter, but Sirius is going to act as decoy since he's the one everyone will expect us to use."
Albus' eyes began to twinkle. "Very clever, my boy. I shall prepare the ritual to ward the property once you're ready."
"Thanks Albus," James said, relieved. He would feel much better once his family was under such an unbreakable ward. And he trusted Peter with his life. Now that both Albus and Frank were in on the plan, even if—Merlin forbid—Peter were captured and tortured into giving up the location, Sirius wouldn't have any heat fall on him in retribution.
"Of course, dear boy. I'm always happy to be of assistance."
James glanced over his shoulder, double-checking that Lily was still asleep and prodding at the ward around Harry's crib that would alert him should his son wake up. He quietly closed the door to the washroom and silenced the room, turning to stare into the mirror and took a steadying breath.
He'd been collecting memories to put in Harry's trust vault for a while now, wanting to be sure that his son could grow up knowing him even if the worst should happen. He was not a naïve little boy anymore. James was an auror, and he knew perfectly well that casualties were inevitable in war, whether he was on active duty or not.
Hopefully, Harry would never need to watch any of these because he would live to a ripe old age and could impart his manly wisdom on his son firsthand. Tonight he'd be making the last memory to go in The Box, which he'd willed to Harry, of course. Lily had her own memories that she'd decided to put into The Box, none of which she'd allowed James to watch. In a bit of sulking retribution, he'd made sure not to show her his memories either, and was even making this one specifically on his own without her knowing.
He couldn't let Lily corrupt his precious son against him! Knowing her, all her memories would be of him making a fool of himself at Hogwarts, which was an unacceptable way to introduce himself to his son!
Turning back to the mirror, James cleared his throat self-consciously and attempted to tame his wilder-than-usual hair. It was always worse after he rolled out of bed, which he'd just done to sneak in here in the middle of the night. Frowning at his reflection, James flicked his wand and transfigured his slacks into a more respectable set of red and gold robes. There. That was better.
Grinning at himself, he shoved his hands in his pockets and wondered where to begin.
"Hey there, Prongslett. It's, uh, me. James. Your dad. Of course you knew that, but, well," he coughed uncomfortably. Maybe he should have rehearsed this or something. "Anyway! If all goes well you'll never have to watch this and see how bad your dad is at talking about his feelings, so I guess it doesn't matter much how awkward this comes out. This should be the last time I'll have to pull out a memory—thank Merlin—and I wanted to make it a little more personal than the others. Not that seeing your mother being beautiful or me being my handsome self is boring or anything, but you understand." James ran his fingers through his hair as he frowned. "This is very strange. I hope you appreciate this, Prongslett, because talking to myself in the bathroom mirror is something I'd expect out of Padfoot. He's your godfather, by the way. Merlin only knows what I'd been thinking when I decided that. I must have been drunk. Yes, that's probably it." Nodding firmly to himself, James grinned. "Tomorrow's Halloween, you know. Your mother has you dressing up as a lion, with ears and everything! I will never let you live this down, Prongslett. Never." He smirked to himself before sighing. "You know I love you, right Harry? I've loved you since the first time your mother put you in my hands. Since before that, even!" James cleared his throat, feeling the ward around Harry's crib twinging and decided to wrap this up and go cuddle his son where Lily couldn't catch him and hog him all for herself. "No matter what happens, I'll always love you Prongslett. Even if you…" James swallowed heavily, grimacing. "Even if you married Snape." He shuddered, trying to shake off the very thought. "Don't, though. Really. You can do much better than Snape." The ward started humming, letting him know that Harry had just woken up and was feeling grumpy. "I gotta run, Prongslett. It's time to go cuddle you a bit—and doesn't that thought just boggle the mind?—before your baby-hogging mother hides you somewhere all for herself."
Grinning at the mirror, James snuck back out the bathroom and headed for his son's nursery. He couldn't wait to see Harry in that lion outfit. He would be taking a lot of blackmail photos for when he was older. James was looking forward to it.