Chapter Text
“You need to stop doing this,” Harry said.
He plucked the newspaper from Fawkes’s beak with a grimace. The top half was damp and yellowed with rain, its ink blurred and bleeding. Harry dropped the soggy mess on the tabletop without looking. It made a sad, spongious noise when it hit the wood. Fawkes nipped his ear in reproach, hopped down from his shoulder, and nabbed the apple slices from his plate.
“You may want to have a look, Evans,” Phillipa said beside him. She jerked her chin at the Daily Prophet , and rose from the table, gathering bag and cloak . “I think you’ll find the front page enlightening.”
She walked away to her Arithmancy class, throwing a cheery wave over her shoulder. Harry glanced down at the rolled-up paper, a new sense of dread twisting his stomach. Fawkes stretched out and rubbed his head against his cheek. Harry swallowed a mouthful of searing coffee, braced himself, and smoothed out the Prophet one-handed.
His own face stared back at him in black-and-white.
Hogwarts Hero Saves The Day! The title proclaimed in wide, bold lettering.
“Bloody hell,” Harry muttered.
On the front page were two pictures. The first was a close-up of his face he could not remember ever taking, the lightning bolt on his brow visible through his wind-tousled hair. He looked as though he had been flying and just got off his broom. There was a careless, relaxed smile on his mouth.
The second picture was of his arrival in the Infirmary after the fight two days ago: a wash of flames, Fawkes circling overhead, two bodies falling heavily to the ground. Harry’s arms were clamped tight around Albus’s waist, his chest aligned to Albus’s back as he slammed into him, brought them both down to the floor.
Harry set down his mug. He watched, bemused, his past self, panting heavily, brace himself over Albus’s body. He watched his own head bow until his forehead came close to touching Albus’s shoulder. Then he watched himself roll off, detangling his legs from Albus’s and dropping to the floor as though all the strength had gone from him.
Good thing half his face was caked with blood, his clothes charred and singed, otherwise this would have looked –
Harry tore his eyes away.
He scanned the article. It was the Prophet’ s usual drivel; half summary of the Hogsmeade attack, half wild speculations about Harry’s identity. Praising him, wondering about his background. The journalist did not go so far as to brainstorm Harry’s love life, but it was a near thing. It was nothing Harry had not seen a hundred times before, except, well.
Never on this side of the century.
He folded the newspaper. He had a class to teach; The Prophet having taken notice of him was a problem that would have to wait.
He got to his classroom half an hour early. The world outside was a deep, amorphous blue. Vague, murky light shivered inside from the eastern windows. The sun was rising over the iron-dark waters of the lake, smothered under a blanket of thick clouds.
Harry surveyed the neat rows of student desks, the clean tables, the empty chairs. He was waiting for the seventh years who had elected to take Advanced Defense, a small bunch of students from all four Houses. Today, Harry was supposed to teach them how to perform a neat, non-verbal version of the Concealment Charm they would likely need to reproduce for their NEWTs. He was. He should. He had to.
He stared at the blackboard without seeing it.
In Hogsmeade, the fog had been aglow with spellfire. There had been children huddled behind a stack of flimsy crates. Around them, a wizarding village that had not known to help them. They had had to help themselves, and nearly died in the attempt.
Right.
Harry hefted his wand, focused, waved it in a great arc. He took the desks, piled them at the far end of the room. The chairs followed, stacked together and thrown atop the rest. He turned his attention to the walls, the ceiling and the floor. He padded them with a ward he had learned in his time with the Aurors, a fairly powerful bit of magic they had used when training new recruits. It would absorb whatever stray spell hit it, dissipating the energy before it could cause any damage.
He ignored the discomfort crawling up his wandarm, a sensation like fingertips walking over his skin, nails scratching the inseam of his forearm, his elbow, not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to sting .
“Morning, sir!”
Harry did not let himself startle, did not let his breathing hitch. He chanted the last of the words, pinched the ends of the ward together, sealed it tight. The magic settled with a crackle like the tail-end of a lightning storm.
“Hello,” Harry said. He turned toward his classroom door. A handful of curious heads poked through the threshold. Irma, the Slytherin Quidditch Captain who had flown with him on his first day, towered over everyone, her hands on Rufus Abbott’s shoulders for support.
“Come on in.”
Rose elbowed her way inside before the others, took a narrow-eyed look around, and fired a stunner at the ceiling. Her classmates cried in surprise when Harry’s ward glowed, then dimmed again.
“Mm,” the girl said.
“And that’ll be five points to Ravenclaw,” Harry said. “Well done.”
“How much can it take?” Rose asked, green eyes fixed on the ceiling where some runes still glowed as though seared into the wood. She produced quill and parchment, seemingly from thin air, and jotted down a few notes. No wonder the girl was the first Avery in generations to get Sorted into Ravenclaw.
“More than you can give,” Harry said.
“Love what you’ve done with the decor, sir,” Septimus said, grinning. The boy was nearly as tall as Irma, a thin stick of a boy, lanky in that way of teenagers going through growth spurts, all elbows and knees. He ran a hand through his hair, making it look as if his head had caught fire.
Ron had the same hair, brightly orange and fine as dandelion fluff.
“Very minimalistic,” Rose said.
“Today,” Harry said. “I’m pairing you off to fight. Two months I’ve been teaching you. It’s past time I saw what you’re worth in a duel.”
“That’s off program,” Rose said. She swatted at Septimus when the boy made to slap a hand over her mouth. “I am not complaining, you dolt . I’m just saying.”
“Wonder what brought this on, eh,” Irma said. She shot the boy beside her a pointed look. “Poll? Was there anything you meant to say to the professor?”
Pollux gave her a thin smile that stopped well short of his pale eyes. He turned toward Harry with a stiff bow, creasing the crisp, perfect lines of his school uniform, dark hair falling in thick curls to hide his face.
“I’m to give you my family’s thanks, sir,” he said. “Callidora is my cousin. She tells us you saved her life. I understand the girl’s parents are writing you a letter.”
It seemed to Harry as if half of Slytherin was made up of House Black.
“There’s no need for that,” Harry said. “It’s my duty to keep you safe.”
“Nevertheless.”
Perhaps, Harry mused, he should reconsider his decision to come to Hogwarts. Perhaps he should exile himself somewhere in the mountains instead, become a hermit.
(Callidora, huddled against a wall, her skin grey, her arm red. Her clenched jaws when Harry took her wrist. She would have died in that alley, had Harry not been there. She would have gone into shock, and bled out. There would be one less child alive in the world today, and nothing in Harry could make him regret having saved her.)
“All right.” Harry clapped his hands. “Evelyn, Rufus. Draw your wands, you’re first. The rest of you, up on the stairs. You’ll be safe behind the ward.”
Evelyn and Rufus were in Gryffindor and Hufflepuff respectively. Evelyn could rattle off more defensive spells than Harry had seen in all his years as an Auror, and Rufus once caught an Expelliarmus with his bare hands by accident.
“Here are the rules,” Harry said. “No Unforgivables. No spell fired with lethal intent. No serious injury insofar as you can manage. If someone falls, you’re done. If I say you’re done, you’re done. Deviate even a little from these rules, and I’ll make your last year here a living hell. I’ll stay with you to arbitrate. Clear?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Very good. Bow to each other. On my mark. Set. Fight.”
Evelyn and Rufus circled each other. Evelyn flicked quick glances down at Rufus’s legs – either because she thought it was going to tell her his next move, or because she was distracted by the boy’s trousers, which were one size too small and showed the dark skin of his ankles every time he took a step. Rufus, for his part, twitched every time Evelyn dared breathe. There were gaps in their guards so wide Harry could have marched an army through them; Rufus’s belly, Evelyn’s head, both their left arms.
At least they had both had the sense to raise their wands.
Evelyn’s arm came down in a great arc. She fired a stunner, red-blood and wheezing. Rufus squeaked, jumped out of the way, replied with an Expelliarmus which crashed somewhere on Harry’s floors. They both took a moment to breathe and regain their footing.
“All right,” Harry said. “Thank you, I’ve seen enough. Septimus and, er. Chester. Take their place, please.”
Evelyn and Rufus exchanged awkward smiles. They bowed to each other, wands held away from their bodies, and made their way to the stairs, where the rest of Harry’s class had broken out in excited mutterings. Harry grabbed a stick of charcoal while Septimus Weasley and Chester Fawley took their positions. He jotted down a few notes – too wide, don’t know how to move, too slow – before turning his attention to the boys.
Septimus rocked on his heels, shifted his feet, adjusted the grip on his wand. He shot Chester a wide grin, which the boy answered with a subdued smile. Chester was Hector Fawley’s son – the current Minister of Magic. Harry would never have known it if he had not seen the boy’s name beside his father’s on the Prophet’s front page last summer.
The boys gave their bows – Chester’s picture perfect – and waited for Harry’s signal.
Their match went about as well as Evelyn and Rufus’s.
Harry watched with a growing sense of dread as each of his students walked down the stairs to fight. In less than a year, these kids would be thrown out into the world. About half of them would try for the Auror corps. In a year and a half, they could find themselves on the ground, facing down Grindelwald’s men. They had no duelling instincts, none of the reflexes any good fighter needed.
They would be dead before shouting their first spell.
The bell sounding the end of the period came as a relief.
“Homework for next time,” Harry said. The students had been gathering their bags, minds already on their next class, but they stopped and looked at him when he raised his voice over the hubbub. “I want you to practise Protego until you’re sick of it.”
“Protego?” Rose said. “Sir, that’s the most basic shielding we know. We’ve all been doing it since second year.”
“I’m aware,” Harry said. “And I want you to practise it, and nothing else. Cast it until even thinking the word makes you roll your eyes, then cast it again. Every spare moment you have. If I see you in the corridors at three in the morning, drunk off your arses, I want you to give me the brightest, bluest Protego I’ve ever seen.”
“Why?” Rose said.
“Because you can all make perfectly good shields,” Harry said. “But none of you could call one fast enough to save your lives. By next week, I want you to understand Protego so well you cast it without thinking.”
He demonstrated, shifting his feet and flicking his wand. The shield sprang to life in front of him, brightly blue. Harry killed it with a slash of his wrist, and cast it again within the next breath.
“That’s all for today. Thank you.”
Harry watched as the last of them disappeared through the door. He put the classroom back in order, pulling the desks closer in a great ruckus, spreading them haphazardly to the four corners of the room, unstacking the chairs with a vague wave of his hand. He ended up with two desks floating in mid-air and a chair stuck in the rafters.
He wondered, how do you prepare children for war?
You put a weapon in their hands, deadly words on their lips, and you usher them out the door. You look them in the eyes and you say, go on. It’s awful out there, there’s blood and bombs and corpses, but there’s mistakes need fixing, and you’re the ones to do it. And they say, but why? And you lie. And you say, Don’t worry, it’ll be all right. We’ll be here to pick up the pieces afterwards.
Harry breathed out a shaky breath.
He brought the two floating desks back down to the floor. It took him a few tries to wriggle the chair free of the rafters, and it broke a leg landing too hard. He fixed the chair. He unspooled his ward, pulling loose one string of enchantment after the other until the whole thing collapsed on itself in a shower of silver sparks.
All right.
He needed to talk to Dippet. Then there was a Basilisk he had to kill.
…
Harry crossed the castle, pushing through throngs of students hurrying between classes. They called out to him by the dozens, shouts of his name, of congratulations. Well done, Professor. Good show, sir. Thank you. Thank you.
Harry bore it with all the ill grace and uneasiness of his Hogwarts years.
He cut through the castle quickly, ducking into hidden passageways whenever he could, trying to remember the shortest route to the Headmaster’s office. He had given the Marauder’s map to Teddy when the boy turned eleven. It had never occurred to him to make a copy beforehand.
He avoided the grand staircase as long as he could – the thick of the crowd would be there, rushing between classroom and common room – and managed to step foot on the moving stairs only from the fourth floor up. He navigated the stairs with the ease of six years worth of being late for class, jumping the vanishing step halfway up the fifth floor just as the narrow, rough-hewn stairs under him shuddered awake and started a slow, grinding path between two landings.
Harry gripped the railing, stumbled to a stop before he could go walking into empty air. He rocked back on his heels, listening to the student chatter echoing through the staircase, ghostly and vague, to the low rumble of stone on stone as the stairs danced their familiar dance, and it –
It stopped.
The rumbling and the dance. Harry’s staircase froze in place, halted so abruptly Harry braced himself before being thrown off his feet. One end of the stairs hung suspended in mid-air, opening onto nothing. A buzzing noise filled the air, staticky and strange, just on the edges of Harry’s hearing.
Then the staircase shuddered.
Harry caught himself on the railing and hung for dear life. His head rang with the deep rumble of shaken earth. His sight blurred and swam. He thought, earthquake , but nothing else seemed to be moving, not the portraits on the walls, not the dust in the ceiling –
A great boom rent the air.
The stairs stopped shaking.
Harry's head lurched with the phantom sensation of the floor bucking under his feet. He squeezed his eyes shut. Opened them again. He took a step, stumbled, caught himself. He bent himself over the staircase railing, heart thundering in his ears. Someone could have been hurt, someone could have fallen –
A cloud of stone dust rose in thick puffs from the ground floor.
Harry threw himself down the stairs, jumping the steps two at a time. There was a gap between the third and second floors, two staircases grinding away from each other at a sedate pace. Harry cleared the landing without slowing, stomach swooping unpleasantly at the sight of the sheer drop yawning under him. He touched down with a grunt, wincing when his ankles and knees took his weight. He gathered himself, looked around for the quickest route –
On his right was a stairwell missing half its steps. It had been cut down in the middle, its bottom half ending with ugly protrusions of sharp, cracked stone. If anyone had been under it when it fell. If anyone had been on it.
Harry ran.
By the time he made it to the ground floor, a crowd had started to form. Students alerted by the noise massed at the bottom of the marble staircase, stood on tiptoes to peer over each other's shoulders, muttered in each other's ears. They pointed at the broken staircase hovering sadly in mid-air, the jagged edges of its missing steps seesawing like chipped teeth.
"Call a teacher!" someone shouted. "The way's blocked off."
"Can you see anything?"
"There's people under there!"
"Let me through," Harry said.
The students jumped out of the way. The ones closest to Harry grabbed the others and shoved them aside. Harry pushed through to the front of the crowd.
Pieces of broken stone littered the ground, cracked and tightly piled. The dust was clearing, downy and soft as lamb's wool. On the floor between a boulder cleaved in two, covered in a layer of the thick white chalk, was Albus.
Harry went calm and clear and cold.
He waved his wand. The stone blocking his way skidded off the path and met the opposite wall with a satisfying thunk. Albus was limp and unmoving. The red, red blood oozing from his scalp made an awful contrast with his grey skin. He had the corpse-like pallor of something dead. Harry could not tell whether he was breathing.
"Liliam," he said, softly, to the first-year girl who knelt beside Albus, both her hands knotted in his robes, her eyes wide with fright. "It's all right now. Get out of the way."
The girl sprung to her feet as if Harry had shouted or kicked her.
Harry picked his way around the debris, gravel crunching under his boots.
He fell to his knees. He laid two fingers on Albus's throat.
For one moment that stretched into eternity, he found nothing. The air turned to ice in his lungs. A bright, lancing pain pierced his belly. He examined the slack, supine spread of Albus's body. The careless bend of his arms. The delicate bow of his neck. Harry could not feel his hands. His tongue sat slow and stupid in his mouth, and then.
A soft, sluggish thumping.
The world came rushing back.
Harry slid a hand to the back of Albus's neck.
"Albus," he said, calmly. His fingers tingled with the rush of magic, the pins-and-needles of static electricity. "Wake up."
Albus sucked a sharp, shuddering breath. His shoulders heaved. He strained against Harry's hold. Harry kept him pinned to the ground, kept his neck in a white-knuckled grip as Albus struggled his way to consciousness.
His eyes opened, a soft, startling blue, glazed over and vague.
"Easy," Harry said. "Easy. I think you're concussed."
"Liliam –"
"She's fine. She's okay. You took the worst of it. Do you know where you are?"
Albus's mouth curled in a small, lopsided smile, all warmth and effortless charm. He said, "In your arms, I should think."
Harry looked away from the too-blue eyes, from the easy, smiling mouth. He could feel the indent of Albus's skull pressed into his palm, the weight of Albus's head in his hand, pulling sweetly at his forearm muscles. He cleared his throat.
"Do you feel nauseous?" he asked. "Any disorientation?"
"No more than usual," Albus said. "Harry. I'm fine."
"You're bleeding," Harry said, blankly. "From the head. A staircase fell on you."
"Unlucky for the staircase."
Harry bit his tongue hard enough to wince. The taste of copper filled his mouth. "All right," he said. "Stand up for me."
He rocked back on his heels and heaved himself to his feet. Albus laid prostrate beside him. He remained pale as spilled milk, but a faint flush had crept over his cheeks, driving some life over his earlier corpse-like look. Harry looked at his fluttering eyelids, counted the breaths sliding through his parted mouth. He did not think about the last time he had stood over Albus Dumbledore's insensate body. The blood bubbling on the old man's lips. The awful, broken bend of his arms, and legs, and back.
Albus sat up, groaning. He stayed put for a few breaths, swaying faintly on the spot, his chin tucked against his chest. Harry could see the hard knob of his first vertebrae, the unruly licks of hair plastered to the top of his neck with sweat. He swallowed, his throat suddenly dry. His heart beat fast and disjointed in the empty cavern of his chest. He wanted to put himself to Albus's back. He wanted –
With an air of grim determination, Albus pushed to his feet, and launched himself upright. He stood teetering for a few moments then, looking politely betrayed, tipped over and fell face-first.
Harry caught him before he met the floor.
"Easy," Harry said, Albus's chest braced against his shoulder, his arms fastened together in the soft curve of Albu's spine. He could feel the hard ridges of Albus's ribs, the press of his thighs between his own. Harry realised, distantly, disinterestedly, that his fingers were shaking. He clung to Albus with the febrile strength of a drowning man to an oxygen mask. "Take it slow. We've got time."
"Hardly," Albus said. "I have a class in half an hour."
"Not anymore, you don't."
Harry shifted his feet. He gripped Albus's wrist, pulled his arm across his shoulders. He kept his hold around Albus's waist, one palm splayed wide across his side, and turned them around as gently as he could manage.
He startled. Arrayed around them in a tight semi-circled was a mass of students, peering at them with open curiosity. Harry had – forgotten. That they were there.
He cocked an eyebrow. He did not step forward and hide Albus from sight. "You're all late for class," he said. "There's a tunnel behind the Entrance Hall mirror. It's a shortcut to the third floor. Take it if you need to get upstairs. Liliam, take the day off. One friend may stay with you. One . The rest of you, scram."
The students began to disperse with all the reluctance of paying spectators deprived of a good show.
"We will have to fix that," Albus mumbled in Harry's ear. His eyes were narrowed on the halved staircase hovering forlornly in place. He slanted a glance at Harry. "You're worried."
"Have you ever heard of the Hogwarts stairs trying to kill someone before?"
Albus went still against him. "I think kill might be something of an overstatement.”
"So they worked perfectly for a thousand years, then decided to quit for no apparent reason." Harry sighed wearily. "It's not paranoia if it's true, Albus. Come on. I'm taking you to the Hospital Wing.
"I assure you, I am –"
"Say you're fine and I swear to gods –”
Albus’s mouth clicked shut. They took one slow step together, Harry steadying the bulk of Albus's weight when he listed forward, swaying dangerously. He looked faintly green at the gills. A muscle played at the turn of his jaw; his lips were pinched tight. Harry found himself murmuring quiet, nonsensical encouragements. They lurched forward another step, then a third.
"I might need your help about something," Harry said, partly because it was true, mostly to distract himself from the little, cut-off breaths Albus was huffing against his neck.
"And how," Albus said. "May I be of service?"
"I want to start a Duelling Club," Harry said. "Was going to see Dippet about it but, well – "
"Our Headmaster is absent today. He went to the Ministry to account for Saturday's attack. I understand the Board has some questions, and wishes to congratulate him on driving off Grindelwald's men."
"Should've sent you. He wasn't there."
"Neither was I," Albus said, mildly. "You saw the whole of my contribution, Harry. I think we can both agree I was not the most useful. By all rights, he should have sent you."
"I'd rather have my wand-hand chopped off, but thanks.”
Silence stretched between them, syrupy and thick. They had not had time to talk, the two of them, since Fawkes dumped them both on the Infirmary floor in a wash of golden flames. They had both been carted off to two different Auror teams; tight-faced, aggravated-looking men who had spent the better part of Saturday afternoon, and a good chunk of Sunday after that, cross-examining every word out of their mouths. Harry, who had been on the other side of the table more times than he cared to remember, had given exactly as much information as he needed to, and not one word more.
Now the weight of Saturday's events settled over them like a lead casting. Harry thought about Albus, stood in front of him with the perfect stillness of a man who had a knife slicing open his stomach. Waiting for the pain to hit. The sad smile on Grindelwald's lips, stopping short of his eyes.
"Hello, Albus. It's good to see you.”
"You know each other," Harry said, and he looked at the flagstones in front of him, focused on the balancing of Albus's weight against his side. "You and him."
He felt Albus draw a sharp, stuttering breath. He winced.
"Sorry. I didn't mean –"
"You're right," Albus said, the words like stones through the still waters of a pond. "We do. Though it's more a matter of public record at this point. I'm surprised you haven't heard the rumours before now."
" – I haven't, but that explains some of the rather pointed questions the Aurors were asking yesterday."
They walked under the courtyard arches. Bursts of cold, damp wind shivered through their clothes, dug shaky fingers past their cuffs and collars. Harry's fingers wanted to flex; his shoulders to shift uncomfortably. Tension stretched between him and Albus like an elastic band reaching its tearing point.
"Gellert and I – " Albus said, then stopped. He huffed a soft, humourless laugh. "At times I marvel at the – marks. We leave each other. At how deep they reach."
Harry hummed. "My wife and I divorced nearly a decade ago," he said. "I still wake at night expecting to feel her face squashed against my back. Some mornings, I reach for a second mug without thinking, and I still drink coffee the way she used to make it for me." Harry shrugged. "Sometimes I laugh with my Godfather's laugh, even though he died when I was fifteen. I'll enter random libraries and buy books I think my best friend will like, knowing I can't send them to her anymore." He watched red and gold Autumn leaves go clattering along the corridor, carried on the restive wind. "I think we're all a bit haunted by the people we love," he said. "In some cases, it just hurts more than it should.”
"Yes," Albus said, heavily. "It does."
He fell silent for a few more steps. Harry waited. He had grown used to Albus's arm around his shoulders, to his arm around Albus's waist. They walked more easily now, Albus having found his footing; Harry having learned how to steady him. Voices echoed down the hallway, distant laughter.
"Gellert and I met each other as young men," Albus said. “It was the summer after I had graduated Hogwarts. A personal tragedy had struck my family, and I was terribly lonely, in those days. I was a querulous, angry thing. Full of self-pity. He had been expelled from Durmstrang, and was thoroughly unconcerned about the fact. He was – careless, and charming, and brilliant.” Albus smiled, wistfully. Harry's heart did a weird somersault in his chest. “We were two arrogant little shits, and we caught each other like fire on gasoline. I often wonder how the time we were together made him who he is today. It's a question that keeps me awake at night.”
“You were young, and you were alone,” Harry said. “Do not. Blame yourself for having made a friend.”
“A friend,” Albus said, weary, and amused, and somewhat pained. “Harry, he was my lover.”
Everything in Harry went quietly, studiously still.
Albus pulled his arm off his shoulder. He took one staggering step away.
“With this information, you could ruin me,” Albus said, in a mild, matter-of-fact sort of voice that should have been saying, I think it might rain later. “If you went to the Ministry today, I would be out of a job by the end of the week. It would be the end of my career. No sane person would hire me again. Our world does not take well to those of us who stray from its norms. We have that in common with the Muggles.”
Harry wetted his dry lips. He could feel the heavy throb of his heart in his throat, on his tongue. There was a confused roaring in his ears. He heard himself say, from a distance away, “Then why – why tell me?”
“Because Gellert is after you for reasons I haven't yet fathomed,” Albus said. “Because your life may one day depend on how well you understand him. Because I owe you a debt I haven't begun to repay.” Albus watched Harry's face, and whatever he saw written on it had his mouth curve in something too wry to be called a smile. He said, “Be careful who you let haunt you, Harry.”
He turned on his heels, and Harry let him walk away.