Chapter Text
Friday, March 22, 1996
Amelia Bones sat down at her desk and picked up her latest carefully magically protected missive from Albus Dumbledore. He, along with Minerva McGonagall and (dubiously) Severus Snape, had finished their reading of the sixth book describing Harry Potter’s life, and they were hoping to finish the reading entirely over the next week.
Today’s missive was short, but it had several boldface warnings for her to deal with. First, the locket horcrux immersed in a dark potion in a cave filled with Inferi was a fake. Regulus Black, of all people, a Death Eater who had apparently turned on Voldemort, had stolen it years ago, and now Dumbledore didn’t know where it was. He said he was looking into it.
Amelia had the urge to yell at him for that, but she quashed it because it really wasn’t his fault this time.
Probably.
The second warning was a rather alarming time limit of 30 days to finish off Voldemort. Alarming, but she had half-expected to hear something like that soon, or worse, than the timeline was much shorter. Dumbledore’s little gang had been complacent about Voldemort finding out that the books were from the future, but now that they had a clearer picture of his plans in that future, Snape believed that he would try to make a move on Hogwarts when the students returned from Easter holidays.
For her part, Amelia still didn’t understand how Voldemort could possibly be that arrogant, and she told Dumbledore so in her reply, but he apparently believed it.
The details of those future plans, included for reference, involved an overly elaborate (but successful, she grumbled) plot to assassinate Dumbledore, and presumably to take over the Ministry shortly afterwards. That plot was of course entire derailed. (Or if it wasn’t, she’d dig Dumbledore up just to kill him again.)
More practical was useful intelligence on a ward the Death Eaters possessed to exclude everyone without a Dark Mark from an given area, which could potentially be reversed, although that would probably require Snape to be on hand to cast it.
And finally, an updated account of Voldemort’s horcruxes generally:
Myrtle Warren’s diary, looted from her body: destroyed.
The Gaunt Ring, stolen from Morfin Gaunt: buried underneath the Gaunt Shack behind curses of an uncertain, but deadly nature. Requires backup.
Slytherin’s Locket, stolen from Hepzibah Smith, then re-stolen by Regulus Black: location unknown, under investigation.
Hufflepuff’s Cup, also stolen from Smith: location unknown, awaiting further information from the books.
Unknown, speculated to be an artefact of Ravenclaw or less likely Gryffindor: location unknown, awaiting further information from the books.
The snake, Nagini, origin unknown, kept at Voldemort’s side. Must be left for last to avoid tipping the bastard off.
It wasn’t much to go on. Not much for her to do besides having a cursebreaker or two she trusted lined up to retrieve the ring. For the rest, they were forced to bank on the fact that they expected the books to end with Harry Potter winning. Just like Voldemort somehow seemed to be banking on the fact that they would end with Potter losing.
In her response letter, she asked again how Dumbledore could think Voldemort could possibly be that thick. If Voldemort got the drop on them at this point, her fallback was going to be to throw Dumbledore at him and hope they finished each other off in spite of the horcruxes.
Minerva McGonagall’s day was starting off no less aggravating, despite the public book readings finally being over. After the mess Severus had made of yesterday’s reading (both of them, honestly, but mainly the public one), she had called him into her office for a long talk about professional behaviour.
What was so aggravating was that she couldn’t even build up the momentum for a good scolding because Severus was already ahead of her.
“Minerva, I have made no secret that I do not like it here at Hogwarts,” he told her. “My years here as a student, especially after that little ‘incident’ were the worst of my life up to that point, and I do not enjoy being forced to live immersed in reminders of that time.”
“That doesn’t excuse you taking out the bullying you suffered on the next generation,” she cut in. “Especially Potter and Longbottom, but no one misses how you treat the rest of the students, either.”
“Longbottom had no business being in a Potions class from his first day here, and it would behove him to be checked for jinxes on that point,” he said disdainfully. “As for the rest, I play the part of a cruel, biased former Death Eater because it serves Albus’s plans and because it is the part I play most easily.”
“I don’t think being your usual self counts as playing a part.”
“I did not like being a teacher,” he continued, ignoring her remark. “I kept a school full of dunderheads from poisoning themselves in Potions classes because Albus demanded it. I mentored the few who could think for themselves and had anything interesting to say on the subject because it was the one part of the job that wasn’t a complete waste of time. Defence Against the Dark Arts would have been more enjoyable to teach, but I do not pretend I would be better at it.”
“But you aren’t a teacher anymore, Severus. You are the Deputy Headmaster, and you have a certain standard to—”
“I still don’t enjoy living and working here,” he snapped. “Present company being among the few exceptions. While I can do the management tasks and what disciplinary matters come to me, and I bear no ill will toward the House Elves I now supervise, this is not a place I want to stay long-term. And if the Dark Lord is dead before September, I will not be returning. You can consider my resignation tendered the minute the war is over, Minerva.”
“So, Severus won’t be returning if we finish the war as quickly as you hope,” she told Albus when they conferred later over tea. “And if it doesn’t, I expect staffing will be the least of our problems.”
“I apologise, Minerva,” Albus said. “I should have anticipated that, myself. Of course, Severus would have no interest in remaining here once his task in the war is finished. It was I who hired him as part of his service in the first war, and once Voldemort is dead, he will owe no further debt to me or to Hogwarts.”
Minerva sighed; “I know it’s for the best, but I do consider him a friend, if a prickly and…deeply flawed one. Ideally, he would have some professional pride to try to improve himself, but under the circumstances, his leaving Hogwarts is probably the best thing for everyone involved…I won’t start making inquiries until after we’re through with You-Know-Who, though. I won’t count my owls before they’re delivered.”
“Entirely reasonable,” Albus agreed. “But on a lighter note, I have retrieved the locket horcrux.”
“You what?!” Minerva sat up straight so fast that she spilled some of her tea. “Where on earth did you find it?”
“To be precise, Sirius found it. And before him, the Order found it while they were cleaning Number Twelve Grimmauld Place last summer, though they did not notice its significance. Sirius assumed it had belonged to his family. We are very lucky that Kreacher stole it from the rubbish heap before they threw it away.”
“Kreacher had it,” she said in amazement.
“Sirius called me back this morning because Kreacher was in inconsolable distress for reasons he could not ascertain. Between the two of use, we were able to determine that Kreacher went to the sea cave with Regulus to retrieve the locket all those years ago. Regulus’s plan failed when the Inferi attacked him, and he ordered Kreacher to take the locket away to ensure it was destroyed. And he also ordered him not to tell anyone else in the family, which is why Sirius was not able to get anything useful out of him.”
“But then…Regulus…Well, he said he wasn’t expecting to survive, but to do that…”
“It was a thrilling and tragic tale, which I suspect the seventh book will recount in more detail, given the likely course of events,” Albus said. “In any case, we now have our second horcrux.”
He held up Slytherin’s locket for her to see, but Minerva immediately recoiled, leaning back in her seat. “Not cursed, I assume?” she said stiffly.
“Several Order members held it and even attempted to open it, including Harry himself. It is possible that a curse will deploy if it is opened, but none of them were able to determine how. As it sits now, it is curse-free to the best of my knowledge. And we now have the opportunity to destroy another piece of Voldemort’s soul.”
Minerva flinched, just a little, at the pronouncement, but then she caught herself, and her surprise turned to determination. She raised an eyebrow at Albus and then snatched the locket from his hand by the chain and clacked it down sharply on her desk, covering it with her hand. “Or we can place it in a carefully-warded container until after we find out if there are any hidden surprises about it described in the book.”
Albus stared at her in shock for a few seconds, but then he smiled and began to chuckle to himself. “Once again, Minerva, you are a valued voice of reason. You are correct; there is no reason to move so urgently, as long as the locket can be kept hidden here at Hogwarts. We will set this aside until we learn if the book has any more to say.”
“Much better,” she sniffed.
“Now, I believe you had questions for me about the Room of Requirement. I will answer what I can, though I warn you that I know little more than the books have revealed.”
“I did have a question, Albus, more specifically about what the Room may produce. You see, on Wednesday, after Severus burnt some of the pages of the third book, I was able to retrieve a new copy of them from the Room.”
“I gathered as much,” Albus said. “And may I say, a most ingenious use of the Room. After all, what the Room could produce once it could certainly produce again.”
Minerva shook her head: “As much as I would like to accept the praise, that was not the reason I went to the Room.”
“It wasn’t?”
“No, you see, Potter inspired me to take a closer look at the front and end matter in the books. We didn’t look that closely aside from the first one. And I noticed this line here.” She opened up her copy of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (Albus hadn’t allowed them to make copies of the seventh book yet) and pointed to the very last line printed on the dust jacket:
“J. K. Rowling has also written two other companion books, Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, in aid of Comic Relief.”
“Merlin’s beard. There are two more books?” Albus said softly. Then he looked up at Minerva. “And I take you went to the Room of Requirement to see if it would produce those two books?”
“It produced three,” she said firmly. “The missing pages were only a lucky happenstance.” She handed over the first two of the three pamphlet-like volumes, which were indeed Quidditch Through the Ages and Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. “These were the first two. Note the back cover.”
“My signature,” said Albus, sounding more surprised by that than any of the other happenings.
“Yes. Either you, or this Joanne Rowling posing as you, wrote your own front and end matter for these books. Ordinarily, I would suspect the latter, given that they’re dated after…” She still struggled to say it. “…after your death in the series.”
“This is…concerning,” Albus said as he examined the front matter of Quidditch Through the Ages. Minerva let him read for a minute, watching him turn the pages as he reached the foreword that was purportedly written by himself. Then, she allowed herself a small smile when he suddenly froze, very carefully set the book down on the desk, and waved his wand over it, only relaxing when he found no enchantments in evidence.
“I do not,” she said sternly, “appreciate a warning of a non-existent Thief’s Curse being placed so far into the book.”
“No, indeed. And I find it hard to believe I would write such a falsehood of my own accord, though the style is certainly mine in other respects.”
“For the record, these books are not a Statute of Secrecy violation. They are real excerpts from our real books, but at the end of that foreword, you will find that they are still marketed as fiction, with any statements to the contrary being taken as just part of the act.”
Albus quickly picked up the book again, flipping back to the foreword, but his eyes widened a couple paragraphs later, and he said, “Well, that does change the calculation.”
“What does?” Minerva said worriedly, wondering if she’d missed something.
“This paragraph here.” He turned the book around and pointed to the page. “I did doodle absentmindedly on a copy of Theories of Transubstantial Transfiguration and found myself running afoul of Madam Pince’s jinx. But that was two years ago, now.” He hummed to himself as he flipped back to the copyright page to check the date. “Two thousand and one…Do you recall what the dates on the middle books of the series were?”
Minerva sighed and pulled the previously-finished books from her desk drawer. She had only paid close attention to the first and last books, herself, but she opened the covers of each one to check. “Sixth book…2005…fifth book…2003…” She said. “Fourth book…2000.”
“Then that would place this book in sequence with the publication dates of the main book series, but not the actual dates they occurred,” Albus concluded. “Very curious…A foreword that I assuredly did not write at the time the book was—or will be—published, unmistakably in my style and knowing things that only I would know, but also using several contrivances that I would not normally employ.”
That was quite a large problem, Minerva agreed. Except then, she thought perhaps not. “Unless…it is as Miss Granger suggested,” she offered hesitantly. “Potter, perhaps working through Joanne Rowling, will in the future publish these books on a timetable according to the listed copyright dates. We already have the texts. There is no need to worry about where it came from…Well, to worry about it for that purpose, anyway.”
Albus smiled: “Of course. A far more elegant solution, Minerva.”
“Simple for us, though I still don’t like the philosophical question,” she mused. “For the Room of Requirement to produce these books is bad enough. For it to produce here something that you not only did not write, but would not write strains belief. And if the books somehow sprang fully formed from whatever magic caused the time travel…” She shuddered at the implications.
“Alas, I fear we are now venturing into territory where even the Unspeakables hesitate to tread,” he replied, “but now, what of the third book you mentioned.”
Minerva handed over the third book, still very slim, but bound in hardcover and illustrated in a very different style.
“The Tales of Beedle the Bard?” he asked.
“Ostensibly translated by Miss Granger and annotated by you, Albus. It’s dated to 2008, which as I recall is later than even the seventh book of the main series.”
Albus nodded absently, as he had already opened the book and raised his eyebrows at the table of contents. He quickly flipped through the introduction and said, “Ah, the introduction is attributed to Joanne—or J. K.—Rowling. I had wondered…” And he then flipped to the back of the book, to the commentary on the fifth tale. “Fascinating…Did you read this book?” he asked her.
“No, I’d filled my quota of weirdness for the day by that point and decided to leave it for you to deal with.”
“I see. But on closer inspection, this is considerably less ‘weird’ than any of the other books. You see, I did write this one. In fact, I just finished my commentary on Beedle’s Tales over the Christmas Holidays, and so far as I can tell, it is preserved in identical form here, aside from the footnotes for muggle readers, of course.”
Minerva laughed to herself: “Of course that one was the normal one. I should have known.”
“But I do find it interesting that this tale was published in the small selection presented here, given the title of the final book in the series: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”
She suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. “Should I know what that means, Albus?”
“No, they are not widely known by that name, nor did I use that name at any point in my commentary. But the name ‘Deathly Hallows’ relates to Beedle’s ‘Tale of the Three Brothers.’”
“The Three Brothers? The Wand of Destiny, the Stone of the Veil, and the Cloak of Death?”
“The very same, though the names vary. The name ‘Deathly Hallows’ is little-known by those who do not believe in certain alternate versions of the legend…” He turned the pages back, nodded to himself, then turned the book around to show Minerva. “And even less often are they known by this symbol.”
“Isn’t that Grindelwald’s Mark?” she said in surprise.
“No…and yet yes. Grindelwald appropriated the symbol and used it as a way for his followers to recognise one another. But even then, it was not a symbol of his ideology, ‘For the Greater Good,’ but a symbol of his belief in the Deathly Hallows and that they would be the key to his victory.”
Minerva’s eye twitched as the pieces fell into place. “Albus Dumbledore!” she snapped. “Are you trying to tell me that these children’s story fantasies are real?”
“Oh, that is widely believed among those who study Beedle’s Tales closely,” he said with far too much aplomb. “‘The Three Brothers’ has a particular ring to it and historical connections that the others—”
“No. This is a bridge too far,” she interrupted. “Look, the Wand of Destiny or something like it has a long historical tradition; I’ll grant you that. And an indestructible invisibility cloak, maybe I could buy it from a strong enough enchanter. But a stone that can communicate with the dead? Impossible.”
“If,” Albus said with a smile, “the Stone works as described and not in a manner similar to the Mirror of Erised. I do not believe that the Hallows were created by Death itself, but merely by three very skilled and very dangerous enchanters, as you say. And yet, I think there is precedent. The Prioro Incantatem effect that Harry encountered when he faced Voldemort last year called up the spirits of his parents and of Cedric Diggory. And other stories of mediums calling up the spirits of the dead are very old indeed.”
Minerva narrowed her eyes, thinking past the ingrained reactions of someone who had spent most of her life in the magical world and back to her childhood. Her father had been a minister, after all, and even the Bible, a book that had not been exclusively muggle for most of its history, contained stories of mediums and spirits of the dead. But then, she completed the thought: “If those magics worked as described and not in a manner similar to magical portraits. And if that were the case, how could we truly know?”
“Alas, you are correct. There is no way to be certain that I know of to confirm that any magic that purports to turn back death works as we believe it does. And if there is, then we are delving even deeper into the Mystery of Death than we did into the Mystery of Time, and it is best to leave that to the professionals.”
That sentiment Minerva wholeheartedly agreed with.
But she still had a bad feeling about it.
“With our luck, the seventh book will lay it out in explicit detail,” she said.
Minerva wasn’t the only one having a stressful day, although in Harry’s case, the stress came that evening when Sirius called him on his mirror.
“My brozzer! My stupid idjit brozzer!” he moaned.
“Sirius?” Harry said in alarm. “What’s wrong?”
“Reg’l’s…Regulush,” he moaned. “Shtupid kid, went out an’ went againsht Vol…Vol’mor on his own. An’ y’know what he does? Kid goes an’ gets himself killed by a horde of Inferi!”
Harry had no idea what an “Inferi” was, but that was not the most important thing on his mind right now. “Sirius, are you drunk?” he demanded.
“Jus’ a little somethin’ t’ease the pain,” he brushed it off. “Thought he panicked, y’know? Got in over ‘is head. He was only eigh…eighteen, y’know? Then Dumbledore comes lookin’ for this locket. And Kreaker—Kreacher completely flips out. Come t’find out Regulus didn’t panic. Or maybe he did. I dunno. Stupid idjit kid! Thought he’d take down Voldemort on his own. An’ look where he ended up! Bottom of a lake! Filled with Inferi!”
“Sirius, should you be telling me this?” Harry asked.
Sirius waved him off again. “Dumbledore’s lookin’ into it. Anyway, Kreacher flipped out. Had t’get Dumbledore to fig’r out why ‘cause turns out Reg’lush ordered ‘im not to tell me. Can you b’lieve it?”
“Sirius, you can’t be doing this. You’re supposed to interview at the Ministry tomorrow.”
“I’ll worry ‘bout that in the mornin’. He coulda come to me, y’know? He knew I was fightin’ Voldemort. Didn’t know about the Order, but he knew I was fightin’.”
“Is Remus there? Can I talk to him?”
“Remus…Remus? Out on Order business. Probly be ticked when he gets back, but I’ll worry ‘bout that la’er.”
“I’m gonna get McGonagall,” Harry said. He got up and started to headed down to the Common Room.
“Harry!” he said, aghast. “You’re gonna tattle on me to a teacher? You can’t do that! ‘Sagainst Marader—Marauder Code!”
“I’m more worried about you cocking up your trial, Sirius,” he said. But he stopped on the stairs and turned around. At this hour, he realised he had no idea where McGonagall would be. He dug the Marauder’s Map out of his trunk and opened it.
“Sacrilege!” Sirius exclaimed, in what would probably have been a joking tone had he been sober, but sounded uncomfortably sincere now. “Usin’ the Marder’s—Marauder’s Map to find a teacher? Shoulda put a rule about that in the Map when we had a shance. Dunno what the world’s comin’ to…”
Sirius was still grumbling to himself a few minutes later when Harry found himself giving the password to the stone gargoyle, which he had belatedly remembered he didn’t need the Marauder’s Map for because McGonagall now lived above the Headmistress’s Office. Whatever magic was on the office must have alerted her because she was waiting for him when he reached the door.
“Potter?” she said. “It’s nearly curfew. What’s wrong.”
“It’s Sirius, Professor,” he said. “Maybe you can sort him out.”