- Rating:
- R
- House:
- Schnoogle
- Ships:
- Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Harry Potter/Luna Lovegood
- Characters:
- Draco Malfoy Harry Potter
- Genres:
- Drama Romance
- Era:
- In the nineteen years between the last chapter of
- Spoilers:
- Philosopher's Stone Chamber of Secrets Prizoner of Azkaban Goblet of Fire Order of the Phoenix Half-Blood Prince Deadly Hallows (Through Ch. 36) Epilogue to Deathly Hallows Quidditch Through the Ages Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them
- Stats:
-
Published: 09/22/2007Updated: 06/29/2014Words: 119,234Chapters: 35Hits: 145,994
Not in the Hands of Boys
Fourth Rose
- Story Summary:
- Once the final battle is won, life must go on, although it can be even harder to master than death. Back at Hogwarts for his final year of school, Harry tries to cope with everything he's been through. As the world around him struggles for a way back to normality, he is forced to realise that in the long run, living takes a lot more courage than dying.
Chapter 24 - Part 24
- Posted:
- 04/02/2008
- Hits:
- 3,187
- Author's Note:
- Thanks to cloudlessnights for betaing!
Dumbledore's eyes were twinkling merrily behind his half-moon glasses as he smiled out of the small picture frame that Snape had vacated without Harry noticing it. If he was surprised to see Lucius Malfoy at Hogwarts, he wasn't showing it; he merely gave him a polite nod and asked serenely, "Trying to undo past mistakes, Lucius?"
Lucius rose swiftly from his chair and faced the portrait. "Yes, but not necessarily mine."
"Interesting." Dumbledore chuckled, as if he'd just heard a particularly witty joke. "I couldn't help overhearing what you said about the Battle of Hogwarts... forgive me if my memory fails me, but weren't most of your brethren overpowered before Voldemort fell? It seems to me that they panicked well before their Lord's downfall when they met much fiercer resistance than they'd anticipated..."
Harry perked up at this, hoping that Dumbledore would now contradict Lucius' dismissal of the idea that Harry's willingness to die had protected his side. Yet all that Dumbledore added with another chuckle was, "It's hardly surprising - fighting in the open against a strong opponent wasn't your lot's usual style, was it?"
Lucius' jaw clenched. He looked livid, but he didn't reply; there seemed to be nothing he thought he could say in response. Harry felt his own anger rising, an icy, focussed kind of fury that made him want to draw in on himself like a snake coiling back before it strikes. He was so sick of this, sick of everyone using him for their own ends, of being fed half-truths and veiled lies, of no longer knowing what to believe. Lucius didn't seem to notice; he didn't even look at Harry when he curtly said, "I think we're done here, Mr Potter."
Without waiting for a reply, he walked over to the fireplace and reached for the pot of Floo Powder on the mantelpiece. He was about to toss the powder into the flames when he hesitated and, looking back at Harry over his shoulder, asked, "What, no attempt at a Memory Charm? I admit that I'm a bit surprised."
Only now did Harry spot the drawn wand in Lucius' hand, and he found it strangely satisfying to realise that Lucius had considered it necessary to be on his guard. He felt as if his anger had condensed into a cold, hard knot in the pit of his belly, leaving his head oddly clear. His voice was calm when he replied, "I considered it, but I'd rather enjoy the thought that you know all this and can't do anything with it."
Lucius raised an eyebrow; he seemed to have found his composure again, because he gave Harry a tight-lipped smile. "That's the second time you've managed to surprise me tonight, Mr Potter. Perhaps you might really have done well in Slytherin after all."
The he turned back to the fireplace and, with a sharp "Malfoy Manor!", disappeared in a swirl of green flames.
* * *
Harry stared into the fire until the last trace of green had vanished; he only raised his head when Dumbledore's voice came from the portrait, "Harry, I heard what you were trying to do, but do you really think Lucius Malfoy was the best choice for this?"
"There was no one else," Harry replied tersely. "Do you think I wanted to do this? And why did Snape tell you?"
Dumbledore smiled. "He informed Minerva weeks ago about what you were planning and asked for her permission to help you go through with it. Did you really think Severus Snape would let Lucius Malfoy into the school without the Headmistress' knowledge? He didn't tell me, she did; he only came to fetch me now because he obviously thinks there are things we need to discuss. Lucius Malfoy - "
"I'm neither a child nor an idiot!" Harry snapped, cutting him off. "Do you think I don't know who Malfoy is, and that he can't be trusted? But he was the only one who could tell me what's going on with me, and I made him swear an Unbreakable Vow to help me find out the truth."
"Ah." Dumbledore pondered this for a moment. "Then it's probably safe to assume that he didn't lie to you about anything that directly concerned you, but Harry, keep in mind how he just demonstrated that he's only telling the truth as he wants to see it."
"Don't we all?" Harry asked with a hint of bitterness. "I never thought I'd see the day when I would take Lucius Malfoy's word over yours, but now..."
"Harry," Dumbledore interrupted him gently, "what did Lucius tell you?"
Harry turned his head away; he couldn't have looked at Dumbledore right now. "He's sure that there never was a part of Voldemort's soul inside me."
It was quiet for a while; Harry went back to staring into the fireplace until Dumbledore finally broke the silence with a simple, "I see."
Harry took a deep breath and faced him again. "You're not surprised, are you." He was dimly aware that this was going to be the confrontation he'd tried to avoid for so long, but he felt strangely calm about it. He was tired of running; better face the truth now and learn to live with it than living in fear of it forever. "It's true, then, that I was never a Horcrux."
"It's a possibility that you weren't, yes." The twinkle was gone from Dumbledore's eyes; he looked graver than Harry had ever seen him while he'd been alive. "There was never a way for me to be certain about it. He had touched your mind and soul in so many ways that nobody could have told whether he was actually living inside you or not, and it was a risk I simply could not afford to take."
"So you decided that he needed to kill me in order to make sure." When Dumbledore didn't answer right away, Harry added, "Out of curiosity, when did you make that decision? Right away after my parents had died? When I came to Hogwarts? Or -"
"A few months after your parents' deaths." Dumbledore's voice had hardened, making him sound like a much younger man than he'd been when Harry had first met him. "That's when I began to suspect that he'd been making Horcruxes. I never doubted that he would be back, and I knew that he would never be truly gone until all the pieces of his soul were destroyed."
"Including the one inside me, that you weren't even sure was there." Harry felt very cold all of a sudden, and he had to fight the urge to pull his knees up to his chest. "Did you already know back then that there was a chance I might survive?"
"No." Now Dumbledore didn't sound quite so determined any more, but he didn't hesitate when he continued, "The first small chance I saw of that was when he used your blood to return. Until then, I was convinced that I would inevitably send you to your death one day."
It was strange, Harry mused - he'd suspected this for so long, had avoided Dumbledore's portrait because he'd been afraid of having his suspicions confirmed, but now that he'd actually heard Dumbledore admit it, all he felt was relief. No matter how harsh the truth was, at least the years of being kept in the dark were finally over.
"A small chance? You didn't say that the last time we talked about this." There was no accusation in his tone; he just wanted to know.
Dumbledore sighed. "Harry, the link you and Voldemort shared was unique; I couldn't be certain of anything that might happen. There was no way for me to foresee whether the blood connection would really protect you if he tried to kill you - I hoped with all my heart that it would be so, but I didn't know for sure. I was sure, however, that because of that very same blood connection Voldemort would not survive killing you."
"Because the balance within the connection was tilted in my favour?"
Dumbledore paused, clearly surprised by the interruption. "What makes you think so?"
Harry shrugged. "Malfoy told me, and it seems you agree."
A little smile tugged at the corners of Dumbledore's lips and was quickly gone again. "There are a few things even Lucius Malfoy and I agree on, Harry."
Harry remembered Lucius' words about how Dumbledore had never understood blood magic, but he didn't mention them. "It was a win-win situation for you, then."
Dumbledore's expression darkened. "I would hardly call it that, given that your life was at stake. Either he would end up only killing the part of his soul inside you, and you would live - or he would manage to kill you and destroy himself by doing so."
Harry pondered this for a while. "It makes sense, I suppose," he said at last, "but - if it was all about him killing me, why was it so important that I went to my death willingly? Why didn't you just tell Snape to tie me up and hand me over to him?" The eerie calmness he'd felt earlier was beginning to waver as he remembered the silent horror of his lonely march towards death. "Why the message in Snape's memory, why the charade with the Resurrection Stone and all that just to make me choose death? Until now I thought that it was good for something, that it helped us win the final battle, but after what Malfoy told me -"
Dumbledore sighed again; he suddenly looked once more like the worn old man he'd been during the last years of his life. "Because I had to make sure that you would lose."
At Harry's uncomprehending stare, he added, "You're far more powerful than you realise, Harry, and I couldn't take the risk that you would beat him. I never doubted that, if you didn't go to meet your death by your own free will, you would do everything you could to fight him - and there was a good chance that you would win."
"How would that have been bad?" The knot of cold fury was back in Harry's belly now, and he barely kept his voice from getting louder. "Why didn't you let me face him in a fight instead of - of making me offer myself for slaughter?"
"Harry, listen to what I'm saying! If you had been a Horcrux, and you had killed him in a duel, the piece of his soul inside you would have survived!" Dumbledore sounded very urgent, as if it were utterly important that Harry understood. "He had already touched you, influenced you, tainted you, to the point where I couldn't tell any longer where your mind ended and his began - if you had destroyed him and then lived on with the last surviving part of him inside you, it would sooner or later have taken hold within your own soul."
"And turned me into something like him in the long run, you mean." Had it really just been a few hours since Harry had feared the same thing himself? It seemed much longer somehow. "So you decided to have me put down to be on the safe side."
Dumbledore's shoulders slumped. He took a deep breath, which seemed strangely out of place for a portrait, and nodded slowly. "I was, however, eternally grateful when it turned out that it hadn't been necessary."
"And then," Harry continued haltingly, feeling like a blind man who tried to make his way through an unfamiliar room, "when you - came to talk to me in that place afterwards, you tried to make it sound as if you'd known from the beginning that I would survive."
Dumbledore lowered his gaze; when he spoke, his voice was tinged with regret. "Even in death, you are my weakness, Harry. I could do what I had to do, no matter how much pain and sorrow it caused me, but when the impossible had happened and you had lived through it all, I couldn't bear the thought that you would hate me for it."
Harry gave a curt, humourless laugh. "So you convinced me instead that I was some sort of worthy saviour of the world, master of death and all that stuff you told me! And I believed you, and would still believe it if I hadn't had Lucius Malfoy laugh at me because of it!"
Dumbledore shook his head. "You are one of the bravest persons I've ever known, Harry, I didn't lie about that. But I could see how the hardships you'd been through had taken their toll on you, and how much you craved peace and rest - yet I knew that you needed to go back to finish him. I didn't have the power to send you back, so I had to give you faith that you would win. If you had chosen the peace of death then, your death would have accomplished nothing. Your death would only have destroyed Voldemort via the blood connection if he himself killed you; had you chosen to let go of life voluntarily instead, he would have lived on and might have triumphed after all."
Harry suddenly felt deathly tired, his anger collapsing in on itself like the charred beams of a burned-out house. "So even the bit about me having a choice wasn't true."
Dumbledore sounded very gentle when he replied, "It depends on whether you consider abandoning everyone who counted on you and letting him win a choice."
"And you knew I'd never do that."
"Yes," Dumbledore said simply. "And that's what the likes of Lucius Malfoy will never understand."
And yet, a small voice that somehow reminded him of Luna spoke up at the back of Harry's mind, nothing you just heard contradicts anything Lucius told you before.
"Has it never occurred to you that you might be wrong about me?" he asked at last. "You're telling me that Voldemort 'tainted' me, that the darkness inside me is all his fault, but what if it was there from the very beginning?"
"We all have our fair share of darkness inside us, Harry," Dumbledore replied in a tone that spoke of sorrow and regret. "The closer we get to it, the more familiar it becomes, and the more dangerous too because of that. You took a glimpse into the blackness of his mind, you saw through his eyes, felt his hate and greed, lived his crimes with him through the link you shared - why do you think did I want you to learn Occlumency? I always had faith that you would be appalled, not tempted, by what you witnessed, but I still feared it might get you used to things you'd never even have considered on your own accord."
Harry thought back to the glorious rush of power, the flash of green light and the pure bliss that came with the feeling of an enemy's life fading into nothingness. For a fleeting moment, he wondered how it would have felt if he'd actually killed Voldemort instead of just throwing his own Killing Curse back at him.
"But you can't be sure."
"No, of course not," Dumbledore agreed gravely. "I still have faith, though."
Harry looked straight into the portrait's eyes and saw something there that he couldn't remember from Dumbledore's living days: fear. It was strange to realise that Dumbledore was afraid, but even stranger to think that he would never know whether Dumbledore was afraid of him, of what he'd become by fulfilling his destiny, or afraid for him, afraid that Harry wouldn't be able to live with the burden he'd left him with.
Perhaps that was how you could tell that you had left your childhood behind for good: there was no one left who held all the answers to your questions, no one who always knew what was right and what was wrong. All you were left with was yourself, and you had to find your own way through life even though you had no idea where it would take you.
Harry looked at Dumbledore and, for the first time, thought that he saw him for what he was: a man who had sent his followers to their deaths, endangered children in his care, lied and blackmailed and manipulated - and had saved the world through all of it.
At last, Harry broke the deep silence with the first thing that came to his mind. "I don't hate you."
Dumbledore pondered this for a moment; then he smiled. "That's good to know, Harry."
"This isn't about you, Professor," Harry continued, barely noticing that Dumbledore had spoken. "I understand that I could never be your first priority, I really do. But now" - he paused, trying to find words for a thought he felt forming at the back of his brain - "I finally want something to... to be about me."
When had he realised that he wouldn't get the answers he was looking for, no matter how long he listened to Dumbledore, Lucius Malfoy, or anyone else who thought he alone held the key to the truth in his hands? Ever since the night that Voldemort had failed to kill him, others had made his decisions for him, had mapped the course of his life without ever wondering whether it was the path he would have chosen for himself. He'd done his part, had fulfilled a destiny that had been forced upon him, but now it was time to put an end to it.
He had no idea how he'd go about it, but it would be up to him to find out.
"Funny how everyone goes on about the Boy Who Lived, isn't it?" Harry felt strangely light-headed all of a sudden, as if he'd had one Firewhisky too many. "It seems to me it's time I actually started living, because I don't think I've ever done it before."
Without waiting for a reply, he got up from his chair, extinguished the flames in the fireplace with a wave of his wand and walked out of Snape's quarters without looking back. The heavy oak door fell shut behind him with a bang that echoed from the stone walls of the dungeons.
* * *
The heady, almost elated feeling quickly evaporated in the cold, clammy silence of the dark corridors. By the time Harry reached the stairway that led out of the dungeons, he was shaking. His head was swimming, and his knees seemed to be made of rubber; he couldn't have said whether he'd spent an hour or five in Snape's quarters, but now he felt tired enough to collapse on the spot. Still, he didn't even want to think of returning to his bed and leaving his mind wide open to the dreams that would surely follow an evening like this. He made it up the stairs, but then paused; instead of continuing his way to the Gryffindor dormitories, he turned and began walking along the corridor that led towards the Ravenclaw Tower.
It was quite a long walk until he reached the narrow door opposite the entrance to the Ravenclaw common room. He'd stayed away from it for weeks, but now he just couldn't spend the rest of the night alone in his bed.
The door wasn't locked, as if Luna had known that he was going to turn up on her doorstep tonight. The room inside was pitch-dark, but Harry knew his way well enough by now. The familiar sound of Luna's even breathing told him she was fast asleep, and he didn't want to disturb her. He quickly stripped to his underpants, dropping his clothes were he stood, and felt his way towards the bed.
Luna made a small sound when he slipped under the covers next to her; Harry had hoped that he wouldn't wake her, but when he pulled the blanket over his shoulders, she lifted her head and asked groggily, "Harry, 's that you?"
"Yes," Harry answered, his heart in his throat; it suddenly seemed preposterous to sneak into her bed like that after avoiding it for so long without any explanation. "I - can I stay with you tonight?"
"Of course," Luna replied immediately, her voice still heavy with sleepiness. "Come here -"
She held her arm out towards him, and Harry turned into her embrace, more grateful than he'd ever been before for the warm comfort of her touch and her simple, unquestioning friendship. She snuggled up to him and was asleep again a few seconds later. Harry nestled his head into the crook of her shoulder, listened to the sound of her slow, even breathing and welcomed the blissful oblivion that settled over him as he drifted off to sleep.