Mentors

Mentors

Chapter 6: Revelations

* * * * * * *

The bed felt so incredibly comfortable. The feather mattress was supremely soft, but still supported him in just the right places. The blanket was cozy and tucked right under his chin. It had been a very long time since Harry felt this content and satisfied. As calm and well-rested as he felt at that moment, he suspected he had slept completely dreamless last night.

He knew he was almost awake, but didn’t want to fully take in his surroundings yet. He kept his eyes closed and listened lightly to the murmuring around the room. Most of the conversations seemed to be about who had sustained what injuries. Harry realized he must be in the hospital wing. He couldn’t remember how he had gotten there, though. Dobby was the last conscious image in his mind.

As he peeked open his eyelids, Harry saw the comfortable white sheets that covered him. And, peering beyond the end of the bed, saw a man in black sitting in a chair with his feet propped up on a stool looking back at him. He wasn’t sure who it was; he wasn’t wearing his glasses, but thought it looked like Min. Harry reluctantly folded back the warm blanket and reached to the nightstand for his glasses. As he leaned up on his arm, the quiet talking in the room stopped.

His spectacles brought things into focus. He looked sleepily around the infirmary and saw an unusually large number of people. Some were just visiting friends, but many were sitting up in every bed and cot they could squeeze in. It was clear that they had run out of room to house all the patients. Natalie McDonald was across the room visiting Susan Bones and Laura Madley, both of whom had soft bandages wrapped around their arms. A worried Colin Creevey was sitting on a stool next to his brother Dennis, who was curled up on a cot sucking his thumb. And Kevin Entwhistle was covered from head to toe in a full body cast, but he still wore a smile on his face.

“Good morning,” said Min, his feet still propped on the stool. “I hope you slept well.”

“Yes, as a matter of fact I did, thanks.” Suddenly Harry’s heart jumped fearfully. “Why are you here? Did something else happen? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, nothing. Everything is fine. I’m here just to watch over you. Don’t worry. Relax.”

“You’ve been watching me?”

“Yes, to make certain everything is all right with you. I’ve been here all night,” he yawned, “… and morning.”

“What time is it?”

“Almost eleven o’clock,” he answered, stretching.

Ernie Macmillan, who was visiting a heavily bandaged Justin Finch-Fletchley at the next bed, came over and shook Harry’s hand. “I didn’t get a chance to say thanks last night. Ron told me what happened. Nice job, Harry. Really well done.”

Smiles around the room broke into cheers and clapping from the other students. Harry turned pink. Madam Pomfrey rushed out of her office. “SILENCE! This is a hospital, not a Quidditch pitch! Ah, Harry, I see you’re awake.” She strode to his bedside. “How are you feeling?”

“Fine. Well-rested, actually. Is there anything wrong with me? May I leave?”

“You were exhausted, but other than that, there didn’t seem to be anything else wrong with you, at least nothing I could find physically. If you feel up to it, yes you may leave.” She shot a quick look to Min and he nodded.

“I still can’t believe you chose to walk through that veil, and lived to tell about it,” said Ernie. “That was just incredible.”

“Thanks,” said Harry, sitting up on the edge of his bed. “I don’t know why I survived, though,” he confessed.

“Oh, the arch isn’t a veil of death,” Ernie said quickly. “It simply removes evil spirits.”

Harry gave Ernie a strange look and Min put his feet down onto the floor.

“Mr. Macmillan must have been listening to the conversation that took place last night,” said Min, irritably. “I explained what I know of veils to a few of your professors while you were asleep. I suppose you would like to hear it as well.”

“Yes, please.”

“I have encountered veils from time to time in my travels. Veils are ancient magic and come in many different forms. While some were made into portals and others allegedly allowed travel to different time periods, most were used to separate people from ‘evil’ spirits that had inhabited their bodies. The victim would step through the veil and the ‘demonic’ entity would be removed. The victim’s soul and essence would not be harmed. That’s why you survived, Harry. That particular veil dispossesses spirits. Your knowledge, your consciousness, and your soul were allowed to pass through the arch safely. All vestiges of the possessing spirit, however, were stripped away. There is now nothing left of him — of Voldemort — inside you. Even your scar has vanished.”

Harry felt his forehead and then his heart leapt as he immediately thought of the events two years before in the Ministry. “But — but, my godfather, Sirius; he went through the last time. Why didn’t he come out the other side too?”

“Well … if someone who was not possessed by a separate entity were to step through,” Min explained somewhat clinically, “his own soul and consciousness would be the one that was removed. Even the body would not emerge; there is nothing left of the person to salvage, so the veil takes everything. It’s quite efficient, really.”

Harry closed his eyes and sighed; he didn’t want to hear what he was being told, but Min continued.

“Because of these properties veils were sometimes used to execute enemies, often after conviction in some farcical drumhead trial. That is why veils such as that one came to be known as Death Veils. And ‘passing beyond the veil’ became a euphemism for dying.”

“But — but he spoke to me,” Harry insisted, hoping beyond hope that there might be some chance … “I heard Sirius call my name from the veil and — and I walked to him! He was helping me …”

“You heard a voice speaking to you from the veil?” Min asked incredulously. “And it called you?” Harry nodded expectantly, but Min sighed. “Oh, my.” He started to speak but stopped himself twice; he seemed not to want to have to explain this next part. “Your godfather wasn’t calling to you, Harry. What you heard was his last thought as he entered the veil. You must have been the last thing on his mind when he died two years ago. The sounds coming from the veil are a kind of echo; only those who have had near-death experiences can hear them. This after-image of life can linger for some time. The voice wasn’t speaking to you, I’m afraid; it wasn’t giving you instructions. It was simply repeating itself.”

Harry felt like he’d been punched hard in the stomach. His skin went cold. He thought that so much of the pain that he had experienced after his godfather’s death had been put behind him, but it all came rushing back in a torrent of emotions. His anger and, especially, his guilt over Sirius’ death swept through him one more time.

Min looked at Harry tentatively as if he were wondering if he shouldn’t have said anything at all. “I’m sorry, Harry, I probably shouldn’t have …”

“No, no. It’s okay. I — I needed to know,” he said as he took a deep breath and turned away, trying hard not to let his emotions overwhelm him in front of the entire room.

* * *

Seeing that he still had his clothes on from last night, Harry picked up his wand from the nightstand and stuck it in his robes. As he walked out of the infirmary, most of the students between him and the door insisted on shaking his hand.

As they left the hospital wing, Harry decided that he desperately needed a bath. He asked Min to wait for him in the library and then headed for the prefects’ bathroom on the fifth floor. He tried the old password to the bathroom, “pine fresh,” but it no longer worked. He groaned; he would now have to find someone to get the new password, something he wasn’t in the mood to do.

“Oh, come on, please open up,” he complained hopelessly. And to his great surprise, the door unlocked and gently swung open. “Thanks! Thanks a lot,” he said as he stepped happily into the ornate marble-covered room.

The first thing he did was look in the mirror. Ron and Hermione both said it was gone and, as he lifted the hair off his forehead, Harry saw it was true. The scar that had marked him, even defined him, nearly all his life was no longer there. The skin was smooth and there was no trace of any discoloration. It was almost like looking at a different person. Harry wasn’t sure he liked his new look. Even though it had made him into a curiosity that people always gawked at and even though he knew that, underneath, the scar itself represented something truly evil, it was a part of him that he had grown accustomed to. It was like a badge of honor and now it was gone.

Sighing, he started to remove his robes when a thought hit him. “Myrtle! Myrtle, show yourself!” The ghostly pimpled face of a teenage girl popped through the mirror Harry had been staring into; he jumped back with a start.

“What happened to your scar, Harry?” she asked inquisitively.

“It disappeared when I walked through a Death Veil,” he stated matter-of-factly.

“Oooooo!” she gushed excitedly. “You died? How wonderful! Oh, Harry, now I can show you all around the castle. We can —” Looking Harry over, Myrtle suddenly spotted the obvious. “But you don’t look very dead. How come you’re so … colorful and …” reaching out to touch Harry, who quickly backed away from her cold extended finger, “… solid?”

“Sorry to disappoint you, Myrtle, but I didn’t die. I —”

“Oh!” came the sharp retort. “I see. Playing another trick on me, are you?”

“No, that’s not it at all. You asked what —”

“Fine! Let’s all get Myrtle’s hopes up so we can dash them, shall we? You just came in here to tease me didn’t you?”

“No, Myrtle. I didn’t mean —”

“I even opened the door for you! You’re just like all the others!” she squealed as she floated away, bawling. Harry heard a large splash from the adjacent toilet area. He assumed Myrtle had flung herself down yet another U-bend to mope, and the steady gurgling sound that followed confirmed his suspicion.

Harry sighed. “Well, at least she isn’t going to watch me bathe this time.”

The bath was amazingly refreshing, particularly the purple bubbles. Harry felt better than he had in quite some time.

But just as he was about to leave, he had a curious thought. Harry left the prefects’ bathroom and carefully walked through the corridors and down to the second floor, trying his best to avoid running into anyone on the way. He came to the door of the girls’ second floor bathroom, more commonly known as Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. He entered and walked over to the sink that concealed the entrance to the Chamber of Secrets. Harry wanted to know for certain; he had to prove it to himself. He looked at the snake etched into the side of the tap; it glimmered as he moved his head back and forth. Harry spoke, “Open up.”

Nothing happened. He tried again. “Open up.”

“I command you to open.” He could hear the words coming from his mouth, but they were in English, not the Parseltongue he was trying to speak. Frustrated, he focused as hard as he could. “Open up!” But the sink remained immovable.

So it really is gone

. Whatever Voldemort had left inside of him when he was a boy had, indeed, vanished.

Immediately, Harry felt a wave of panic set in. He drew his wand and looked around frantically. Back and forth he searched for something, anything, that he could perform magic on. He finally found a small loose tile near the corner of the bathroom and shouted, “Accio!” The tile instantly flew into his hand. Harry let out a deep breath and quickly calmed down. “At least I’m still a wizard,” he muttered with great relief.

But Harry still felt somewhat hollow, as if he had truly lost something. His sense of things and people around him was unusually silent. Throughout his life he had felt the stares of people goggling at him behind his back, as if he were a curiosity in a zoo. But he had also sensed specific things, too. Like the time Sirius hid in an alleyway on Magnolia Crescent, Harry had felt his inquisitive stare. And at the Quidditch World Cup he knew Barty Crouch, Jr. was there in the forest, even though he could not see him under the Invisibility Cloak. In the Great Swamp, he sensed that Voldemort was approaching, but it wasn’t his scar that had informed him initially, there was some other sense that had told him. And earlier this year he had seen a distorted vision of Mr. Filch having his heart attack when the castle walls visually convulsed, mimicking Filch’s struggling arteries.

And last night he had felt Dumbledore die from another room, though he didn’t know how at the time. But now something was missing; things were quite quiet. Harry now realized he had shed more than just Voldemort’s skin by stepping through that veil. Some part of himself had died, too. He sighed once more.

* * *

Harry went back up to the library to collect Min and together they went down for lunch. Right at the top of the marble staircase leading into to the entrance hall he met a large group of Gryffindors, including Fred and George, who were all heading toward the Great Hall. “Harry!” He was immediately surrounded. Questions and comments abounded from the group. “How are you?” — “Get a good night’s sleep?” — “Hungry?” — “It’s about time you got up.” — “Did you dream about slaying any more all-powerful evil wizards?” — “Forget the chit-chat, let’s eat!”

As soon as Harry walked into the Great Hall, all the students in the Hall stopped what they were doing and began shouting and cheering, many banging their hands on the tables in applause. Harry turned red.

Ron and Hermione stood up to greet him as he approached their usual benches at the long Gryffindor table. They smiled at each other. “Okay there, Harry?” asked Ron, putting his hand on Harry’s shoulder.

“Yeah, I’m good. And you?”

“We’re fine, thanks to you,” answered Hermione, who then hugged him warmly.

“So it wasn’t just a bad nightmare I had last night, was it?”

“’Fraid not,” replied Ron. “But it’s over with now, so …”

“Come on, Harry, sit down and eat!” said Ginny brightly from the other side of the table.

“Hey, you!” he beamed at her. And she returned his generous smile.

“’Morning. Did you get any sleep last night?” she asked as a plateful of eggs, bacon, and sausages appeared before Harry.

“Excellent! Breakfast, exactly what I wanted!”

“Even though it’s lunchtime, Dobby decided it was more appropriate since so many had missed breakfast,” she explained.

“Yeah, I actually slept better than I have in a long time. And you?” he asked as he dove into his eggs. Harry’s stomach instantly reminded him that he hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday and he hoped that Ginny (or anyone else for that matter) would do any and all talking. All his mouth wanted to do was chew on some delicious food.

“I didn’t get much sleep,” she said lazily, finishing off the last of her bacon. “Mum and Dad kept us up half the night explaining what happened. They wanted to hear every detail over and over and over again. At one point I thought Mum was taking mental notes just so she could punish us later.”

“Yeah,” George chimed in, chewing half a sausage link. “Now we’ve an idea of what the Spanish Inquisition must’ve been like.”

Min, who had been sitting quietly at the table directly across from Harry the entire time, was watching him carefully, which spurred Harry to ask, “Are you going to follow me around wherever I go?”

“Yes, for a bit.” And seeing the pursed look on his face, Min finished with, “You’ll get over it.” Harry frowned.

Hungry as he had been, as Harry neared the end of his meal, his stomach began to revolt. He was really slowing down, and after three platefuls of food it looked as though dessert was out of the question.

Looking around, he noticed that, curiously, some people seemed to be missing. “Er, where are Neville and Seamus?” he asked innocently.

Ginny took in a quick breath and Ron choked on his pumpkin juice. “What?” Harry asked tentatively.

Hermione looked stricken, but still tried to explain. “Well … Neville and his Gran took his parents back to St. Mungo’s. And Seamus, he … he …” She paused, clearly trying to hold in the bombshell. “He’s dead, Harry,” she said morosely, and her eyes started to water.

Harry stared at her open-mouthed. His heart fell into his over-stuffed stomach. “But … but …”

“It happened last night, Harry. When they attacked the school,” Dean Thomas tried to explain gently, but Harry could still hear the bitterness in his voice. “He rushed to try get some of the younger students to safety. And they — they just killed him.”

Ginny looked down at the table and Ron was no longer interested in the apple pie in front of him.

“Nice job, Potter!” a gruff voice suddenly announced from behind. Harry jumped. It was Mad-Eye Moody. “I didn’t get to thank you last evening. Most of the Order didn’t arrive until after you’d already gone to bed.”

Min rolled his eyes. “Impeccable timing,” he muttered.

“Eh?” said Moody.

Harry, temporarily brought out of his shock over Seamus’ death, and now resigned to the fact that everyone seemed to want to shake his hand, got up and held out his hand. But Moody informed him, “Sorry, Potter, but I don’t shake hands. You understand.” And then he smiled a toothy grin. “We’ll be wanting to talk to you after lunch if that’s all right, if you think you’re up to it.”

“Um. Sure,” said Harry blankly, slowly coming out of his stupor. “Yeah, I’m okay. Actually, I’m finished eating if you wanted to go now.”

“Ron, Hermione, Ginny, you should come too,” Moody instructed.

Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Ginny, followed by Min, walked down the length of the Gryffindor table. As they reached the end of the table Ginny came around and purposefully walked over to Harry, gently nudging Ron aside to put her arm around Harry’s waist. He smiled warmly at her, genuinely appreciative of the comforting gesture, and put his arm around her shoulder. Moody collected Professor McGonagall and Hagrid from the Head Table and they all marched off to Albus Dumbledore’s former office.

* * *

The moving spiral staircase took them up to the office entrance and, as Harry stepped through, he saw Aberforth Dumbledore, the barkeep of the Hog’s Head Inn, sitting behind the Headmaster’s desk talking with Mr. and Mrs. Weasley. Harry almost dreaded what was about to happen, but Mrs. Weasley’s leaping up out of her chair and hugging him furiously wasn’t nearly as embarrassing as he had feared. He secretly enjoyed it, but would prefer that she wasn’t so public about it. He thought he’d get away with a handshake with Mr. Weasley, but he was intent on hugging him too. Harry looked at Ron, who grinned knowingly as if to say, “That’s the way it is, mate, get used to it.”

Also present was Amos Diggory. He too leapt out of his chair and hurried over when he spotted Harry. Thankfully he only wanted to shake hands. “I said it last evening, but thank you so much, Harry. As interim Minister of Magic, I’m very pleased to inform you that you have been awarded the Order of Merlin, First Class.”

“Thank you! But where’s Minister Fudge?” Harry asked, confused. Amos Diggory’s face fell.

“Well, Harry, he was killed yesterday afternoon. They … they wanted to make an example of him. To show what happens to anyone who opposes their rule.”

“Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” Harry was kicking himself for not realizing the obvious.

“Please have a seat, Harry,” said Aberforth. The bruises on the old man’s face were still very evident today. “You had quite an evening last night. You’ve done a truly extraordinary thing. Thank you again. But we would like to hear exactly what happened.”

Harry took a deep breath and began his story. He relayed all the factual details as he remembered them. He had been talking to Ludo Bagman and Albus Dumbledore in this very office about his future career. They all went down to the library to get Quidditch Teams of Britain and Ireland from the library; Ludo supposedly wanted to convince him to pursue a career as a Seeker. An eagle owl with a post on Ministry of Magic stationary greeted them when they returned to Dumbledore’s office. Professor Dumbledore read the note, signed it, and gave it back to the owl, which promptly took off.

Harry explained that he was then immediately taken from the Headmaster’s office into the dungeons. He was locked there in a room that seemed unusually sound-proof for something that had hard stone walls; he could barely hear his own yells within the small cell. Harry then told them much of what they already knew from Ron and Hermione: Snape’s death; their being separated at the Ministry; his brief imprisonment there; Dumbledore’s death; and the transfer of Voldemort into him.

During Harry’s exposition, Neville came in and stood behind Min’s chair.

“But how did You-Know-Who end up with the trick wand?” asked Ron.

“It’s obvious that they would have confiscated Albus’ wand as a precaution,” explained Aberforth, “and, given what happened in that graveyard three years ago, Harry’s wand would have been taken as well. I assume Albus left Harry’s real wand on the mantelpiece so it wouldn’t be lost. It was rather unlikely that, after his capture, Harry would have had the opportunity to use his wand, and he would certainly need it afterwards, so it was kept safe.

“Albus had Fred and George make that fake wand over a year ago, after the fight in the Ministry. He thought that it might come in handy, particularly if he was involved when Harry and Voldemort met the next, and likely last, time. But my capture accelerated things. I knew far too much. Albus and I have shared thoughts and ideas on what might transpire ever since Voldemort first attempted to seize power. It was only a matter of time before I told them what I knew. What remained of the Order of the Phoenix was in serious danger. And I knew fully of the prophecy as well as the disposition of much of the Ministry’s forces.”

Aberforth sighed. “My stupidity forced Albus’ hand; I should never have left Hogsmeade. Lucius informed me in my cell that Ludo Bagman had been sent to Hogwarts to inform Albus that I was being held. Albus must have decided then that it was finally time for Harry to face Voldemort. That eagle owl that arrived here yesterday carried a Wizard’s pact between Albus and Voldemort that agreed to an exchange of Harry for myself.”

“… ‘finally time for Harry to face Voldemort’ …” Hermione repeated indignantly. “So, Professor Dumbledore had all this … planned?”

Aberforth laughed out loud. “No, certainly not. He was not a Seer. But he did believe in the prophecy with all his heart, even though he did not know how Harry might fulfill it. And he knew that the part of Voldemort that resided within Harry had to be removed, though as far as I am aware he did not foresee the veil, specifically. There are many rooms in the Ministry that could have been helpful. The Time Room, for example. But he did now know that Voldemort intended to join with Harry; Bagman told him when he went for Harry.”

“But how would Albus have known Bagman wasn’t simply lying to him and intended to kill Harry anyway once he had gotten him away from Hogwarts?” asked Mr. Weasley.

“Albus is skilled in Legilimency and Ludo, frankly, always was a bit of an idiot. He would have known if Ludo was lying about the joining.”

“That still seems like an extraordinary gamble, Aberforth,” Mr. Weasley insisted. “We have been struggling all these years to keep Harry safe and then Albus delivers him right to —”

“We struggled to keep Harry from being killed, true. But we couldn’t protect him from danger forever. The takeover of the Ministry and my capture forced Albus to decide if this was the time to allow Harry to fulfill the prophecy. If, instead, he had chosen to flee with Harry and everyone who would follow, it would have been only weeks before the new Ministry under Lucius Malfoy would have caught up with most of you. And if Harry did somehow manage to live through the bloody purges that would follow, Voldemort could simply choose to wait and see if he could be caught. Voldemort had finally found his immortality; time was most certainly on his side.

“And it stands to reason that if they had found a way for Voldemort to join with Harry the reverse might also be possible, perhaps by even using the same magic. The idea must have sparked a flood of possibilities in Albus’ thoughts; it certainly did in mine. Part of the prophecy states, ‘AND EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES.’ The last part doesn’t seem to make much sense. How can one prevent the other from living simply by existing? The passage is almost illogical … unless the two are joined together as one! Then the meaning becomes crystal clear and absolutely true. If both are parts of the same being, then neither can truly live while the other still survives.

“So Albus had to choose. One path led to a prolonged existence on the run that would have led to the eventual downfall of any resistance. While the other path was, in the short-term, much more dangerous, but could resolve everything almost instantly. It was a hell of a choice to be presented with: one extraordinary roll of the dice to win or lose everything, or slowly, but surely, bleed to death.

“Albus knew that the prophecy had been uncannily accurate at every stage up until then and that Harry had, time and again, far exceeded his expectations. Albus was confident he would find the answer; he believed in Harry. So Albus chose the greater peril. And Harry did indeed have power the Dark Lord knew not.”

“What power?” asked Min, struggling out of a sleepy stupor.

“Harry?” Aberforth asked to Harry, seeming to expect him to be able to provide an obvious answer to the question.

Harry’s eyes went wide as he was suddenly put on the spot. “I — I don’t know,” he stammered.

“Well there had to be something, Harry,” Aberforth insisted. “Your body had been possessed by one of the most powerful wizards in the world. He was trying his best to control you and yet you still kept your senses. Something made you want to keep fighting him. By any realistic measure you should have just given up, but you didn’t. Why?”

There was a paused silence in the room and then Professor McGonagall stepped forward to offer a possible explanation. “Perhaps — perhaps because Harry had had a bit of Voldemort inside of him for so long, he was able to resist. With his scar, being able to speak Parseltongue, and the Legilimency connection between the two, Harry was used to living with part of him. Perhaps he had become comfortable enough that —”

“Actually …” Harry began quietly. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Actually, I think it might be simpler than that.” He hesitated. “I think it was because of them,” he said as he nodded toward Ron and Hermione. Harry noticed that Aberforth was smiling at him, apparently in agreement. “I had … There was … erm …” Harry felt strangely embarrassed.

“After I had been caught again, I knew it was all over. I was captured; the Ministry was theirs; Min was gone. No one from Hogwarts was going to come for me, and Professor Dumbledore … well, he was the one who turned me over to them. There wasn’t anyone left that I could count on. So I just … gave up. It was over; there was nothing left to do except wait to see what they were going to do to me.”

Aberforth gazed consolingly at him. And Harry’s leg began bouncing up and down furiously, though he wasn’t aware of it.

“They chained me to that table and Peter Pettigrew came over to explain what was about to happen. I was going to become a ‘host’ for Voldemort. It was sickening, and I almost wished they’d just kill me instead. But then — then they did the dumbest thing they could have possibly done. They brought the two of them,” nodding again toward Ron and Hermione, “into the room with me. I thought that they had already been killed. In fact, I just knew they had. After we left Hogwarts, they separated us. I watched as they marched the two of them down the hall and around the corner, and that — that was it.” Harry paused as his chest tightened. “I was never … I would never …”

His eyes began to water and his breathing became stilted, but Harry was still able to croak out, “You have no idea how happy I was to see you two.”

Ron shifted uncomfortably in his chair, trying not to look at Harry for fear his eyes would start to water too. Hermione couldn’t contain her tears; they streamed down her cheeks. Harry sat there, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his legs, trying to concentrate on a spot on the floor while his leg continued to bounce.

“But after I saw you and knew what they were going to do to you. … They were going to do to you the same damned thing they were to me. I was so … I was … PISSED OFF! My sadness was gone and so was the fear. All of a sudden, I had a purpose. My mind had cleared; it was easier to think. And I —” and Harry smiled at this, “— I actually managed to convince Peter Pettigrew to help you escape. I had spared his life in the Shrieking Shack, and now he was going to repay me. He was going to set you free. And it almost worked too; he almost did it, but Lucius and Voldemort came in at just the wrong moment.”

Both Ron and Hermione were staring open-mouthed at him in utter disbelief.

“From that moment on, my mind stayed clear. I was furious that my plan didn’t work, but I wasn’t afraid anymore. I think that’s why Voldemort couldn’t control me; he couldn’t put out the fire that you two created. I had found a reason to want to live, to want to keep fighting: you gave it to me. And then I heard Sirius’ voice coming from the veil, and that pretty much sealed the deal. Voldemort wasn’t taking me anywhere. I was taking Him.”

Harry smiled broadly at his two best friends and told them, “Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Ron, his mouth still agape.

“So the prophecy is fulfilled and history, as it is wont to do, repeats itself,” Aberforth happily pronounced to the room.

“How, exactly, did history repeat itself?” asked Mrs. Weasley, quizzically.

“Just as Harry’s mother Lily sacrificed herself, Harry has now done the same, nearly sixteen years later. Both destroyed the Dark Lord, and this time it is forever.”

“So there’s no chance of him comin’ back?” asked Hagrid.

“No, Hagrid. Every part of Voldemort has now been destroyed. Harry and Ginny eliminated that part of him that had been left within his old diary in the Chamber of Secrets. And when he transferred himself into Harry, he joined the last remaining bit that existed outside of his body. Whatever he had given to Harry when he tried to kill him as a baby became a part of the Dark Lord once more and disappeared into the veil along with the rest of him.”

“Do you know exactly why that part of him was inside me?” Harry asked curiously.

“The only possibility Albus and I could ever come up with is what you likely already know: he transferred a part of himself when he used the Killing Curse on you. But how exactly it happened, we never fully understood.”

Min cleared his throat and spoke up. “I believe I can answer that. Every time you use Avada Kedavra to kill, you lose a bit of yourself; a part of you dies along with that of your victim. That part of Voldemort is what was transferred into you, Harry; and it stayed and lived only because you survived. But how did you survive the curse itself?”

Harry shrugged. “My mother protected me somehow.”

“Her love for Harry is what saved him,” said Aberforth.

“Really?” Min responded skeptically.

“Yes. She died while protecting him. She stood between Voldemort and Harry and gave her own life for her son, which created a powerful counter-charm to Voldemort’s Killing Curse,” Aberforth explained. “And then that curse which was intended for Harry somehow reflected back to Voldemort, nearly destroying him.”

“So your mother was protecting you, purposefully trying to shield you when she died?” Min asked, probingly. Harry could see he was carefully considering something. “Voldemort then tried to kill you, but his spell backfired?”

Harry hesitated, he wasn’t sure of the details; he was too young to really remember everything. “I … I think so. Whenever I came near a dementor I used to hear my Mum pleading with Voldemort not to kill me. She begged him to — to kill her instead.”

“I see. Well, then, that makes sense,” Min muttered to himself. “Yes, that must be it exactly.”

Min looked purposefully at Harry and explained how Lily’s sacrifice must have saved him. “Because she surrendered her life for you, when your mother died her essence was transferred into your body. You see, the Killing Curse works by freeing the entirety of one’s essence: intelligence, experience, consciousness, the soul, everything. But if she did indeed give her life for you freely and willingly, and if you were close enough to her when she died, then the curse could have unintentionally transferred her life force into you. Since she literally gave her life to you, her spirit sought you out, found your still living body nearby, and imposed itself over you. It was a temporary joining to be sure, but for one brief moment, Harry, you held your mother within you.”

Harry was absolutely stunned; his mouth was frozen open in astonishment. Everything from his breathing to the beating of his heart simply paused. He felt himself begin to slide down off the chair he was sitting in, but managed to catch himself just before he fell onto the floor.

Aberforth looked just as flabbergasted. “He did? But how would that then protect Harry from a fatal curse?”

“Because his body now effectively housed two people, the Killing Curse that Voldemort used on him bounced back to its originator, unable to kill the pair of beings within Harry’s body. Understand that the Unforgivable Curses are directed at one person and one person only. They’re not just generic spells that release their magic into whatever they hit; they must be meant to control, torture, or kill that one being specifically. You have to feel the hatred and truly mean to use the magic against that one particular person for it to work. Harry lived because his mother shielded him once more, but the second time she didn’t use her physical body to protect him.” Min paused so that everyone in the room could catch their breath. “Her essence, however, would have lost its tenuous hold when the curse hit Harry. She was released once more and her life force then dissipated into the ether, leaving this plane of existence behind.”

A long silence followed as Min’s words fully sunk in to everyone’s thoughts. Harry’s insides burned. Thinking about his mother and how she died brought back all his feelings from the night before, especially his fears about losing Ron and Hermione. The chirping of a Song Thrush outside could be heard in the room.

Hermione was the one to finally break through the silence. “But if the curse is specific to one person, why did it nearly destroy Voldemort? Voldemort didn’t intend to kill himself, after all; it was aimed at Harry.”

“The Killing Curse bounced directly back to Voldemort because there is an inherent connection between the author of a Killing Spell and his intended victim. The two will be forever linked and affected by this most personal of spells. And that eternal connection is sealed by the transfer of some part of the conjuror into his victim, which is what had resided within Harry for so long. Casting the Avada Kedavra curse is not only difficult to do, but it can also be quite dangerous to the one who created it, particularly if the curse can somehow be directed back to its creator. Were it not a weakened reflection, the curse most certainly would have killed the Dark Lord. But the reflected curse was not powerful enough and, even though his essence became disembodied, Voldemort still remained a cohesive whole.”

“You seem to know a great deal about death, sir,” Amos Diggory observed in a very accusatory tone of voice.

Min glared at Diggory. “Quite,” he responded coldly.

The room sat for a few moments in thoughtful silence once more until Harry finally asked a question that had been gnawing at his insides. “Professor Dumbledore,” he started before realizing that Aberforth held no such title, and reminding everyone that Albus was no longer sitting behind his desk.

“Sorry. Mr. Dumbledore, why did the small bit of Voldemort in me need to be removed? I mean, I could speak Parseltongue because of it and I know the connection between us wasn’t pleasant, but wouldn’t that have been broken once he died? Why was it so important that every last bit of him be destroyed?”

Aberforth sighed noticeably; he had apparently been dreading this question. “Because it was growing, Harry,” he stated darkly. Harry’s eyes popped wide open. “When you came back to school at the beginning of your sixth year, Albus noticed something different about you, but couldn’t quite put his finger on it. It could have just been the natural rebellious fire of adolescence, but he wasn’t sure. And with all that was going on, we each had enough to worry about, so Albus put aside his uneasy feelings to concentrate on the real problems at hand. By the beginning of spring term, however, whatever it was had become prominent enough that it could no longer be dismissed as just an oddity.

“You remember how the memory contained in Tom Riddle’s diary grew down in the Chamber of Secrets by drawing life from Ginny?” he asked, motioning toward her. Harry nodded apprehensively. “Well, that was apparently happening again, but this time — this time it was happening inside of you. The small part of Voldemort that had been transferred to you so many years ago, the part that allowed you to speak Parseltongue, had apparently been awakened. It very likely occurred when Voldemort briefly possessed your body at the Ministry two years ago. And it’s entirely possible that Voldemort sensed this part of himself within you, which is why he was so intent on joining with you last evening. He could rejoin that bit of himself he had lost so many years ago.”

Mrs. Weasley, sitting off to the side, was now crying audibly. “Oh my God,” she sobbed. Mr. Weasley was doing his best to calm her.

And Harry was forcibly reminded of the surprising lurch he felt in the cellblock at the Ministry when Voldemort approached him with the fake wand. He now understood that the sudden urge to embrace Voldemort he experienced wasn’t his own, but instead was a part of the Dark Lord desperately yearning to return to its body.

Aberforth continued his disturbing revelation. “Albus knew he now had one more thing to add to your already immense burden. And even though he was hesitant to do it, particularly since we had no idea how to solve this new problem, he fully intended to tell you. Unfortunately, the dementor attack that took Remus Lupin in Knockturn Alley got in the way of that.” Harry winced at the painful memory. He stared down at the floor and sighed grimly. “After Lupin’s — erm — passing, Albus decided that this new revelation could wait until the end of the school year. The constant stream of Death Eater attacks, which you quite unfairly felt responsible for, and your upcoming examinations were more than enough weight on your shoulders.”

Harry just stared at the floor, part angry for not being told and part relieved that he wasn’t. “So … so if I had killed Voldemort before we joined, it wouldn’t have been enough?” he asked.

“No. So long as some of him remained he would grow once more, perhaps into something even more terrible. And apparently you needed him to protect you from the veil; you couldn’t have stepped through and survived, otherwise. Albus, of course, had the chance to destroy Voldemort fully in the Ministry when the Dark Lord had entered your body, but he would not kill you in order to destroy Voldemort. He would not sacrifice you even for that. He —”

“WHY?” Harry asked loudly. His eyes flashed; he was instantly angry. The sudden realization that this entire struggle could have been over years ago enraged him. “Why couldn’t he? Why am I so important? Look at how many have died because of this, because of me! He could have saved so many lives. All he had to do was kill me!”

“HARRY!” Ginny bellowed reprovingly.

“BUT IT’S TRUE!” he shouted desperately. “I had to sacrifice myself anyway, or at least I thought I did when I went through the veil. It was just a fluke that I survived. It would have taken just one more death and he could have saved himself and all the others.” Harry paused as a great burning sensation rose in his chest. “Professor Dumbledore didn’t have to die. Tonks didn’t have to die. Seamus didn’t have to die. And Lupin …” Harry stopped again. “Nobody else did. Just me. It would have been so easy. Why didn’t he just do it? I don’t understand. I’m not more important than all those people. Why —”

“How could he, Harry?” Aberforth asked earnestly. “How could he consciously kill you? The prophecy was clear. You would vanquish Voldemort or he would kill you or, perhaps, both of you would perish. Albus believed in the prophecy. And he believed in you. And you were the key to it all. But even apart from the prophecy, how could he possibly kill you, Harry? How? He loved you. And you had already been through so much.”

Harry’s eyes were watering heavily, forcing him to blink quite a lot, and he was sniffling loudly, but he obstinately managed to hold it in. He rested his elbows on his knees and pressed his forehead down onto his palms. If anything was going to gush out of him, he wasn’t going to make it so obvious.

“You had been through so much agony and still, you not only survived, but thrived. Despite losing your parents and living with an uncaring family, you weren’t eaten up by bitterness. You still lived life and looked to the future. You didn’t give up. You’d formed great friendships and grown into a genuinely good person. You deserved a chance at a real life, a normal existence, and Albus knew that. No one is allowed to simply use you up and then throw you away because it’s convenient. He could never make that choice. He loved you, son. He could never have harmed you. Never.”

Harry sniffled for a few moments more, but once he stopped, he had a very large lump in his throat that didn’t seem to want to move. It was quiet in the room once again as everyone stared at him. Harry noticed that Ginny had placed her hand on his shoulder. He reached up and put his hand over hers.

Harry punctured the almost minute-long silence when he sarcastically asked, “Could there be any more people in here?” He sniffled loudly among a smattering of chuckles from the others in the room.

Having listened to Aberforth discuss the encounter in the Atrium, Harry suddenly realized something. “Wait a moment. Voldemort couldn’t possess me before so why could he do it now?”

“Ahhh. But that lesson has already been learned, Harry,” Aberforth wisely insisted. “In your first year at Hogwarts, you encountered Voldemort in the form of Professor Quirrell. He could not touch you because of the imprint that your mother’s love left behind when she protected you as a baby. But three years later, Voldemort had overcome that obstacle when he took your blood and blended it into himself in the graveyard. And again when he tried to possess you two years ago in the Atrium, he was an outsider, a foreign entity within your body, and the love for Sirius contained within your heart burned him. But when the both of you were joined fully, he was you and you were he. The inherent fiber of your being could not fight against him. He blended with you and so your love could no longer burn him.

“And that is the starkest distinction between you and Tom Riddle. You can allow yourself to love and be loved; he never could. He never got past the bitterness of how he grew up. He came to despise affection, especially the unconditional love between a parent and a child. He had not experienced it for himself, and so grew to hate it.”

Seeing the interest on everyone’s faces, Aberforth delved in to the story of Tom Riddle.

“Tom was raised in an orphanage where he was fed and kept alive, certainly, but no one was interested in him. No one paid him any attention. He was like a baby standing in a crib with its arms outstretched, begging to be picked up and held. But, figuratively and literally, no one ever did. He watched adults walk by again and again, indifferently ignoring him over the many years of his childhood.

“He was extremely angry at the cards life had dealt him. He allowed his anger to grow and it quickly turned into a hatred for his Muggle-born father who had abandoned him. He eventually murdered his father and his paternal grandparents. He looked at what he thought was a wasted life: one full of knowledge, but little else. He allowed his resentment over this to utterly consume him, so much so that he needed to change his name so he could finally kill off the person that he was and leave it behind for a new identity.

“You, on the other hand, did not grow up bitter. You also lost your parents, though under different circumstances. You grew up in a household where no one took much notice of you, except on occasion to yell at you. You had just as much right to grow up angry and resentful. And I believe even you cannot say that you have never experienced those feelings from time to time, even toward your parents. But in the end you chose not to be that person. You chose a different path. Tom could have made that choice as well, but did not.

“Tom Riddle was rather artistic, did you know? Yes, he could draw quite well. It is often those who experience pain and loneliness in childhood who can express that later in life through art. You see, Harry, Tom Riddle could have chosen a very different course from the one he walked down, but he could not get past his hatred, and in the end it destroyed him.

“Unconditional love is the love that Tom Riddle knew of and despised most since he had never known it for himself. It allowed Lily to selflessly give herself for you, and it saved you … twice. Ten years later your own selflessness allowed you to remove the Philosopher’s Stone from the Mirror of Erised. And then once more your selflessness led you to the path that would fully destroy the Dark Lord when you surrendered your own life for the sake of your friends by stepping through the veil. You may look like your father, Harry, but your actions reflect those of your mother.”

Aberforth smiled warmly at him. Harry’s mind was reeling from all of this information. And he was blushing.

* * *

“Well, now that that has been answered, I have a couple of questions myself. Hermione, when you spotted Harry down in the veil room how did you know it was him and not Voldemort? He had taken Harry’s body; how were you so sure that you ran down and nearly tackled him?”

She thought about that for a second, opened her mouth to say something, but then closed it again. Finally she said that, “It was the way he smiled at me. It just didn’t seem like something Voldemort would do. I suppose, logically speaking, of course, it was foolish. I couldn’t be certain it was him. I can’t really explain it. It was just … It was Harry.” She shrugged. “It couldn’t be anyone else.”

“Ahhh. I see …” said Aberforth in a tone that suggested he wasn’t sure whether Hermione’s perception was extremely keen or just lucky. “Well, I suppose you know him better than I. Very well then. And Neville, what prompted you to send that owl post to Professor McGonagall and then fly all the way back to Hogwarts?”

“We came back because all the Floos were blocked,” Neville explained. “Well, I came back. Master Min didn’t want to.”

“Whatever may have been wrong wasn’t my concern,” said Min. “I had what I wanted, but my apprentice insisted on leaving; I didn’t seem to have much choice in the matter.”

“We had spent almost a week at the hospital. I wanted to visit my parents and Gran again before leaving to begin my apprenticeship, but the night we arrived at St. Mungo’s a healer brought up a potion that she said was supposed to help my parents’ memories.” Harry saw that Neville had now balled his fists and was turning beet red. “But it wasn’t a healing potion. It — it —” Neville was now so angry he could barely speak.

“It was a Befuddlement Draught disguised as a brain strengthening potion,” said Min. “I could tell because the odor was wrong; it smelled of almonds, similar to cyanide poisoning. It was clear to me that the nurse delivering the medicine had no idea; I could sense she wasn’t hiding anything. So I went down to the laboratory and poked around. Of the three workers down there only one seemed closed off to me; I could sense very little from him. After the others left for the evening, we had a little chat. Well, he was quite talkative after I broke through his defenses. He had had some training with Occlumency, but not enough. It turns out it was Lucius Malfoy who had been paying him to do it. Apparently Lucius thought the Longbottoms knew something, and wanted it kept quiet.

“The Potions Master told me that the regular payments stopped after Lucius was arrested, but he was worried that his actions would be revealed if Alice ever became more coherent. And he was also terrified of what an investigation would turn up if something suspicious were to happen to the Longbottoms, so he kept administering the poison on his own. After our conversation I Stunned him, placed a Memory Charm on him, and stuffed him into a ventilation shaft.”

“That was you?” interrupted Hermione. Min smiled coyly back at her.

“Neville wasn’t happy, to say the least. He had trusted the hospital staff.”

Neville had, by now, unclenched his fists, but was clearly still fuming.

“Wouldn’t it have been easier simply to turn him over to the Ministry rather than stuffing him into an air duct?” asked Professor McGonagall, rather indignantly.

“Easier, yes. But I was afraid that Lucius Malfoy and his compatriots might come after Frank and Alice if they felt threatened by what the Longbottoms might know. I didn’t relish having a running fight with a dozen Death Eaters through the corridors of the hospital wing.”

Professor McGonagall shook her head and huffed a disapproving note, but said nothing more.

“At any rate,” Min continued, “after the ruckus of the investigation into his brief disappearance died down, I was able to work with a very nice older Potions maker. She was more than happy to receive some suggestions on various Restorative Draughts I had learned from home. She has never traveled farther east than the Carpathians, you see. We spent the next two days experimenting with different Strengthening Potions for the mind that allow one to focus more clearly and recover memories. Dragon’s blood (my own) and Stinksap from Neville’s Mimbulus Mimbletonia plant were important ingredients in what we did. But I still had to work diligently with Alice to get her to concentrate. And that is what took the longest time — the Legilimency to help strengthen and focus her mind. By Thursday evening she was exceptionally coherent. She regressed some during the night, of course, but by the next afternoon she was relaying some rather startling information about Albus and Aberforth Dumbledore.

“The sessions with her went more smoothly than those with Neville’s father. It seems Alice has been much more aware of her surroundings for some time, but couldn’t communicate it with anyone because of the poisoning.”

“That’s why she kept giving me bubblegum wrappers,” Neville explained sadly. “She was trying to let me know she recognized me. But she couldn’t do any more than that and I … I didn’t understand.” Neville’s shortness of breath gave away his emotions and he stopped speaking, but this time it wasn’t anger that was holding his words back.

“The good thing is,” Min began again, “that I believe that with help and some time, his mother will be able to recover most of who she was. His father will take some work, but I think he can get there eventually too. I’ve sent for an old friend in Egypt who specializes in exploring the mind. She should be arriving next week.”

Harry smiled at Neville. “That’s excellent news, Neville!”

Hermione strode over and gave him a hug. “Oh, that’s wonderful, Neville! I hope things turn out well,” she said earnestly.

“Yeah, me too,” Ron added.

“Thanks, guys.”

“Oh, yes, back to the original question,” said Min. “Neville wanted to know what exactly was going on at the school and he wasn’t satisfied with just sending an owl; particularly since the Floo tunnels were all shut down, a very strange thing for the late afternoon. So we flew back.”

Harry glanced over and saw that Mad-Eye Moody now had a distinct scowl fixed on his face and was glowering intensely at Aberforth, who didn’t seem to notice.

Min continued his explanation. “The hospital staff nearly had a collective heart attack when Neville insisted on taking his parents with us. He’s still a bit leery of the people there. So I changed into a dragon and the three of them flew on brooms all the way back to Hogwarts. Neville and his mother helped to steady his father.”

Professor McGonagall’s mouth hung open. “In their state, Frank and Alice must have been mortified!”

“Actually, they seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed themselves. I don’t think they get out very often.”

“Why did you fly back to Hogwarts as a dragon?” Hermione inquired. “Wouldn’t a broom have been faster?”

“Er … because …” hesitated Min. “Because I never learned how to fly on one,” he said quite quickly.

Harry was shocked and he saw that Neville was grinning, but Min glared back at his apprentice, instantly wiping the amused smile off his face. Harry stifled a chuckle wondering how someone so powerful didn’t even know how to ride a broom.

But the mood in the room instantly changed as the barely-contained fury sitting in the corner waiting not-so-patiently finally boiled over. “And speaking of Alice’s letter, Aberforth,” began Mad-Eye Moody, speaking for the first time since the meeting started, “just what in the BLOODY HELL were you doing keeping contact with a bunch of damned Death Eaters?”

“Alastor!” Mrs. Weasley chided.

“It’s all right, Molly,” said Aberforth. “We were trying to collect information on Voldemort’s whereabouts and any activity of his followers. While Voldemort himself was quite elusive, Albus and I felt that if we could keep tabs on his followers, they might eventually lead us to him, or at least give an indication of what he might be up to.”

“That’s not what Alice’s letter said, Aberforth,” spat Moody, rising quickly from his chair. “Minerva informed me that the letter stated you were allegedly helping to recruit more Death Eaters, which I find completely inconceivable given the fact that you have been a member of the Order since the beginning. Nevertheless Rosier’s business partner still set up the meeting. And you actually met with that blood-thirsty, murderous Son of a —”

“Alastor!” Mrs. Weasley shouted.

“Evan Rosier! He and Bellatrix were the worst of the lot! Incredible!”

“Alastor, we —” Aberforth began.

“Simply OUTRAGEOUS!” he roared.

“Alastor —”

“You thought you knew better than all of us? You didn’t even consult anyone else.”

“But Rosier died the year before Vol-, before You-Know-Who disappeared,” Mrs. Weasley interjected.

“You’re damned right he did; I was the one who killed him,” said Moody, shaking. “Why him, Aberforth? He would never have turned Voldemort over to you. Why him?”

“Alastor —” Aberforth said again, still trying to break through Moody’s tirade.

“We had no idea what you were doing,” Moody continued immediately, not letting him answer. “And Frank found out about your meetings with Nott and Avery also; you told them you might help them out of a tight spot.

“And look what happened to Frank and Alice!” Aberforth looked furtively at Neville as Moody continued to rant. “They suspected you had contact with Rosier, didn’t they? After Voldemort vanished, Frank found Rosier’s old business partner and pumped him for information. That’s why Bellatrix went after the Longbottoms, isn’t it? They thought that Frank and Alice knew where Voldemort might be. All because you had made surreptitious contact with Rosier before he died. That’s why they were captured and tortured, wasn’t it, Aberforth? WASN’T IT?”

Aberforth swallowed hard. Harry was surprised by how nervous he appeared. Neville looked simply horrified.

“Please, please. Let me explain,” Aberforth begged to the room, but particularly to Neville. “Please. We were doing everything we could to find the Dark Lord, making every contact and inquiry that we could think of, even considering deals with some of his most loyal followers. Albus suggested he might even have to vouch for Rosier once things had settled down again. And yes, putting Rosier in contact with sympathetic students at the school was the cover story that was used for our meeting.

“Through all those terrible years we were trying to do what we thought was best. Unfortunately we didn’t know that, soon after Voldemort vanished, Frank Longbottom had found one of Evan Rosier’s former business partners, who apparently told Frank about the contacts we had previously made. Rosier’s old friend then undoubtedly went to Bellatrix Lestrange with the same information.

“At that time the Death Eaters were fully convinced that Peter Pettigrew, a former member of the Order of the Phoenix, had double-crossed them when he sent Voldemort to the Potters’ house to kill Harry. Sirius Black, another member of the Order, then apparently disposed of Pettigrew the next day when he blew him up in the street (and the first rule of assassination is: always kill the assassin afterwards). Sirius was then thrown in prison without giving any information about what had happened, which wasn’t all that unusual for the time, but might have appeared to a conspiratorial mind to be part of a larger cover-up. And shortly thereafter, two of the more renowned Aurors, who were also members of the Order, were actively seeking out Rosier’s old acquaintances. The Longbottoms had discovered that Evan Rosier had made secret contact with myself, another member of the Order. Frank had even owled me saying he wanted to discuss something important, though he didn’t say what. The meeting never took place, of course. … They were captured that night,” he said bitterly. “All those coincidences must have been simply too much for Bellatrix to ignore. She obviously concluded that Frank might truly be onto Voldemort’s trail, something the Longbottoms suffered tremendously for.”

“So …” said Moody in a calm, but chillingly accusatory voice, “Bellatrix added two and two together and came up with five, did she? Except she thought it was really four. She would have instantly realized that you had been playing Rosier, who didn’t know you were a member of the Order of the Phoenix (much less Albus’ brother), as that slimy rat Pettigrew hadn’t gone over to their side yet.

“And when she saw an Auror sticking his very adept and highly experienced nose into places it didn’t belong, she came to the mistaken conclusion that someone might know something of the whereabouts of her former Master. And since she couldn’t touch you in Hogsmeade so close to Albus Dumbledore, she took the next best thing in Frank and Alice!”

The scars and valleys in Moody’s face were now so vividly contorted from rage that Harry just knew Aberforth was about to be attacked at any second. And Harry was also aware of the stilted, heavy breathing behind him. Neville was gripping the back of Min’s chair so tightly that his knuckles were white.

“Neville, please understand that we never meant for that to happen to your parents,” Aberforth pleaded to him. “Albus was not aware of what had taken place until after your parents had been admitted to the hospital. He has always blamed himself for their suffering. I’m so sorry, Neville.”

“So you didn’t set up Frank and Alice to be captured the night Frank sent you that letter?” Min asked evenly.

“No. What? NO! Absolutely not! We never —”

“Unfortunately Alice is convinced that’s exactly what you did. She believes you turned them over to the Lestranges.”

Aberforth gasped and put his handover his mouth. He looked at Neville and his mouth moved, but nothing came out; he was at a complete loss for words. Another deafening silence filled the room.

Harry had an idea how Neville must be feeling right now. He had felt the same way after Professor Dumbledore explained to him why he had not told him about the prophecy — an act that could have saved Sirius’ life while at the same time making Harry’s much more complicated. Harry knew Dumbledore had the best of intentions when he tried to protect him from the information, but the revelation shook him badly. And now Harry knew that Neville faced the same realization. Dumbledore wasn’t all-knowing; he made mistakes like any man and had regrets over the choices he had made in his life. Harry learned that it is always easier to see others as infallible, especially those mentors who we look up to, but things are never so one-dimensional. Harry resolved to talk to Neville that evening about Sirius and Dumbledore and himself. Maybe it would help him cope with it.

“Albus would have vouched for someone he knew to have committed murder?” asked Mrs. Weasley, obviously believing she had heard that wrongly.

After a long pause Aberforth conceded, “Yes. If Rosier could deliver Voldemort to us, Albus felt that it would have been enough contrition to save him from a life sentence in Azkaban.” Moody raised his cane, about to shout once more, but Aberforth cut him off. “Albus thought that any possible avenues, however unlikely, should be explored, and I agreed. But, of course, we did not know at the time that Voldemort had ensured his continued survival by leaving a part of himself in his diary; nor did we fully realize what lived within Harry when I made contact with Nott and Avery. It is obvious now that had we succeeded in finding Voldemort then that it, ironically, might have been the worst possible outcome.

“We did all of it with the best of intentions. Had either of us known the consequences of our decision, we would never have pursued Rosier or Avery or Nott in that way. I’m so terribly sorry, Neville.”

Neville’s eyes were very wet and he was trembling. Thankfully it seemed to be the end of the conversation.

“We’ve been at this for over two hours now,” said Min, obviously trying to wrap up any remaining conversation. “I think we could all use a break. But I do have one more question to ask first. How did Voldemort know they,” motioning toward Harry, Ron, Hermione, and Neville, “would be in the swamp the night that we first ran into each other?”

“Albus believed it was Draco Malfoy who let his father know,” Aberforth stated. “Young Mr. Malfoy had been sending regular owls out, but to whom we didn’t know. Once that blue Ford Anglia got into the news again, it seemed likely that the trio would go out to find it. And, of course, this time Neville went with them. Draco was likely waiting and watching.”

“Draco watched Snape die in the entrance hall,” Harry said suddenly. “I heard Lucius laughing as the dogs … er … ripped him apart. Draco witnessed the whole thing. He was white as a ghost after that. Snape was something of a mentor to him, I think. Did he leave with his father?”

“I don’t think so,” said Min. “Lucius Malfoy called to him when they were leaving the Department of Mysteries, but he couldn’t find him.”

“He has been in his dormitory since he got back,” said Professor McGonagall. “Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle left the Ministry with their fathers. Theodore Nott hasn’t been speaking to Draco from what I understand. I think he blames him for his father’s arrest, even though we were the ones who captured him here in the school. Anyway, Min is correct. I think we’ve all had enough for now.”

They descended the stairs in small groups, but Aberforth stopped Harry before he reached the door. “I believe this,” holding up Harry’s father’s Invisibility Cloak, “belongs to you.”

“Thanks,” said Harry. “I’m sorry about your brother. I wish things could have turned out differently.”

“As do I, Harry. As do I. Please do take care of yourself. And thank you once more.”

As he stepped off the bottom tread and into the hallway, Harry spotted the rest of the Weasley clan a ways down the hall. Fred and George were standing near their parents. And so was Percy, who was still wearing bandages from his hospital stay. He and Mr. Weasley were having a rather subdued conversation. Not wanting to intrude on a private family moment, Harry started to walk the other way and Ron turned to follow, but Hermione put her hand on Ron’s shoulder and stopped him. She forcibly wheeled Ron around and pushed him in the direction of his siblings, telling him, “We’ll see you later.” Ginny followed behind her brother. Harry was indecisive; he wanted to go with Ron and Ginny, but Hermione grabbed him by the collar of his robe and dragged him away — literally.

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