S&Sverse, the discovery that Harry, not Jules, is the Boy Who Lived (bonus points for Dumbledore realising just how colossal his fuck up was)
They fight, he and Tom. Curses thrown. Power heaves around the Atrium. Stone cracks, metal bends.
Behind him—Jules.
Below him, in the bowls of the building—
James Potter, dead.
Albus conjures water and fire, stone and oil and starlings. Magic beautiful and terrible erupts from him to do battle with that Tom calls to his command.
"You are a fool," Tom hisses.
Well, Albus knows that.
"Try harder, Tom," he says, taunts really—
If he can just buy enough time, if he can bring the Ministry here to see—
But Tom laughs and evaporates and Albus knows that's it. Time up.
"You picked," says Tom, no more than a breath on the wind, "the wrong one."
Albus doesn't understand.
Not at first.
Not until maybe, probably, almost too late.
He takes Jules with him to the cave. Jules, who he as prepared as well as he can: with Alastor's training of his body, but with the memories too, taking Jules through Voldemort's life piece by piece so that Jules can not just know but understand. So that Jules can draw his own conclusions. Testing. Questioning. In the end it will be Jules's judgment—in the end it can only be Jules's judgment.
Albus won't be here to see it. Albus cannot make the choices for him. Albus can only prepare him, and hope.
Tonight they claim a crucial piece of Tom's past and, Albus prays, of his death too.
They will retrieve it. Study it. Find—Albus hopes—a way to destroy the horcrux but save its vessel.
They find—
Poison. Misery, death: Albus drinks, he is an old man and a dying one, he knows his demons too well to find any new horrors here; he is, compared to Jules, expendable. He drinks and all his ghosts come back to haunt him. All his old mistakes.
And Jules pulls gold from the basin.
And Albus stretches out one shaking hand. Touches it—
This proof that Tom can die—
And recoils.
"Sir? Headmaster!"
Jules's voice comes from far away. Albus reels back. His hands, claws now, clutch at Jules's robes.
He knows that feeling: miasma of creeping, unsettling wrong. Faintest grate the wrong way on his mind. With the ring, no—attraction curse too strong—and then the pain—but now—
He knows that feeling, and not from Jules.
From Harry.
Jules, he wants to say. It comes out a croak. They are moving. Jules piloting the boat across water Albus wants desperately to drink. Jules holding his arm—apparating them away—
"Save," says Albus.
"What? Sir—oh no."
Albus sees it too. The Dark Mark looming large over Hogwarts.
"Jules," he says. Coughing. Weakening. Dying. "Save—"
"I will, sir—I'll get us back—"
No.
"Save him."
But Jules isn't listening. Or doesn't understand.
Albus gathers strength—breathes, thinks—
Tower.
Trap.
"Severus," he says. Reaching out between their minds. Save him—
Save Harry Black—
Who has always felt other, dangerous, wrong to Albus not because of secret Dark Arts use—
But because he is a Horcrux.
He is a Horcrux and he is unprepared and if Voldemort discovers what he is—
Albus can only hope Severus understands.
"Avada," says Severus—
Severus, please
"Kedavra."
Comments