Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

It starts with three people waiting outside an interview room at the Hog’s Head. Aberforth, bless him, takes one look at them all, shakes his head, and slides Albus some brandy. Even after all these years of animosity, he still has the capability to pity his older brother.

Albus waves for the first person to enter. Severus Snape steps in. Before he can even open his mouth, Albus says, “No.”

“But I—”

“No.”

“You haven’t even—”

“Get out.”

Severus deflates. “Every year, it’s the same thing. Why won’t you give me a chance?”

“Because if I give it to you, you’ll either be dead or halfway to Azkaban by the time the year is over and, as surprising as this might be, I genuinely like you, Severus.” The young man is also one of two people who keep Hogwarts running when Albus is called away to deal with The Ministry’s Shit. The other is, of course, Minerva, who is the light of Albus’s life and the main reason for Albus’s continued sanity.

“You don’t know that,” Severus protests weakly. It’s more a token protest than anything.

“Just send the next applicant in.”

Severus sulks all the way out.

The next person to walk through the door is famed celebrity Gilderoy Lockhart. He is also a recent applicant for the position, showing up last year as well. The man flashes a smile and says, “It’s wonderful to see you again, Albus!”

Albus wants to bash his head against a wall. Five minutes later, he finally manages to convince the man to leave (“Yes, yes, of course, Gilderoy. We’ll be in touch! Watch your head on the way out!”) and takes a drink directly from the bottle. Merlin, he just wants to sleep. He’s too old for this.

The final person to walk into the room is Quirinus Quirrell, the previous Muggle Studies teacher, who has recently returned from a trip to Albania. He’s twitching and stuttering so severely that Albus can barely make out what he’s saying. At random moments, his sentences break off and he stares into the distance. Sometimes, he mutters to himself, or to someone else who is not there.

Albus considers him critically. “Well,” he says slowly, “your NEWT scores speak for themselves and your recommendations are impeccable, not to mention your new experience in the field.” Quirinus nods to himself, fingers twitching violently.

Albus thinks, Well, if he can write legibly then it doesn’t matter.

Quirinus can, in fact, write legibly. Success. “You’ve got the job.”

Quirinus smiles an ugly smile. Albus just takes another gulp of brandy.

“Why?” Albus demands, incredulous.

Nicolas rolls his eyes. “There is nowhere safer than Hogwarts, Albus, and you know it.”

“Why does the stone need to be safe? Surely a high security vault in Gringotts is enough…”

“Someone’s been trying to steal it,” Nicolas says with a sigh. He takes a deep draw from his cigar, letting the smoke out gently. “Someone powerful. I can’t keep it with myself, Albus, not anymore.” Then, quieter, “I’m thinking of destroying it, you know? Finally getting it over with. Journeying to the Great Beyond and whatnot…the next great adventure.”

“Dying,” Albus says flatly. “You’re planning on dying.” Is this considered suicidal ideation? Is this concern worthy? Albus doesn’t even know—you never can tell with immortals.

“It’s different when you’re my age, Albus. I’m over six hundred years old. Death is an acquaintance that has been waiting to greet me for a very long time. I fear my time may have come…perhaps not just yet. Just a little longer, until everything has settled.” He leans forward, blowing smoke into Albus’s face. “You understand, don’t you, Albus? What do you think?”

I think, thinks Albus, who is very glad that his beard covers his cheeks, that I am way too gay for this.

“Fine,” he relents, because he never could say no to Nicolas, “I’ll hide the damn stone in the castle full of teenagers.”

“Marvelous!”

Albus scowls at him. Then asks, “Do you have anything stronger than a cigar?”

“Oh, Albus, you always were a little rascal!”

He is well and truly high by the time he stumbles back to Hogwarts. Minerva is waiting in his office, radiating disapproval. “And where have you been, Albus?”

“Meeting a friend.”

“A friend?”

“A very pretty friend,” Albus says dreamily. Then, he shakes his head. “I’m guarding something important in this castle! It needs to be kept safe—no lethal methods, though…don’t want any children getting hurt…”

“If it’s that important then it probably shouldn’t be here in the first place.”

“Believe me, I agree, but I can’t do much about it.” He stares at the ceiling as it dances above him. “Just…make sure it’s safe. Once I place it in its container, I’ll let you know.” He leans closer. “But Minnie, listen to me very carefully—it needs to be guarded against students! With like…a really hard chess game, perhaps. Something a random child won’t be able to get through. A bunch of games they’ll never be able to win, or something. Get some other professors to help if you need to.”

“Games,” says Minerva uncertainly.

“You heard me,” says Albus.

Minerva nods. “…Right. Games. Got it.”

The next morning, Albus does not remember the conversation at all. Instead, he says to Minverva, “We discussed protections for the Philosopher’s Stone, correct?”

Minerva mouths Philosopher’s Stone to herself incredulously before taking a deep breath. “Yes, Albus. I heard you loud and clear.”

“Good,” says Albus decisively. That’s one thing out of the way, at least.

There is a troll on a rampage in the school and Severus has run off to do Merlin-knows-what and Albus just really, really wants a drink.

Albus debates whether or not to give Harry Potter the invisibility cloak. On the one hand, it is technically his, since it was his father who had owned it before his death, but on the other hand, giving a child the ability to walk around the castle completely undetected is not a very appealing prospect.

He ends up thinking about it over a bottle of brandy. He eventually decides to send the cloak to the boy as a Christmas present—and an unsigned letter because, you know, plausible deniability and all that.

He regrets his decision almost immediately when the boy stumbles into a corner of the castle that Albus had forgotten existed. Harry is standing in front of the fucking Mirror of Erised and gazing into its depths, which almost gives Albus a heart attack because the last time a student had done something similar, Albus had only found out while collecting the poor boy’s decomposing body.

He approaches the situation with as much tact as he can manage. Harry says that he sees his parents in the mirror, which is tragic but predictable. And then the boy asks Albus what he sees, and Albus lies because he doesn’t know how to explain to the boy that he sees himself with his childhood lover who also happened to be a genocidal Dark Lord.

The mirror, though…it gives him an idea…

“You want me to charm it to only reveal the stone to someone who doesn’t want it?” Filius asks skeptically.

“Exactly,” beams Albus.

“You do realize that most everyone who walks across this mirror will end up with the stone in their pockets, then, right?”

“Don’t worry, I’ll be locking it away—”

“In the room on the third floor?” asks Filius.

Albus vaguely remembers that room—that’s the one Minerva had put the protections in, right? She and Filch had been very adamant that he warn students not to enter. Fair enough. He nods to Filius, who simply sighs and raises his wand.

What a good lad.

“Voldemort,” Albus says flatly. “Harry Potter confronted Voldemort.”

“Yes,” says Severus, teeth grit. “The Granger girl was a blubbering mess when I found her coming out of the room. Explained it all to me. I found him unconscious in a room with the Mirror of Erised.” He leans closer. “I understand that you like to play your little games but if you knew that Quirrell was being possessed, why on earth would you go and guard the Philosopher’s Stone with a bunch of children’s games?”

There is so much to unpack in the sentence and Albus is tempted to just throw out the entire suitcase.

Much later, after several discussions with Minerva, Albus finds out that the Philosopher’s Stone was being guarded by literal children’s games because Minerva had no idea that Albus had made that particular recommendation while being stoned out of his mind.

“The cerberus I can get,” says Albus, “because they’re intimidating enough creatures. But a chess game?”

“You’re the one who recommended it!”

“I was too high to function!”

Perhaps Albus needs to start paying more attention to these things instead of trusting his staff to take care of it themselves.

Also, he needs to screen professors better.

Chapter Text

Turns out he doesn’t need to screen professors better because only two people show up to the next DADA Professor interview. Like always, Albus turns Severus away…but then the only option is Gilderoy Lockhart.

Albus seriously considers just getting rid of the class all together, but then he’d probably be murdered in his sleep by a gaggle of furious Ravenclaws so he simply sighs and hires the man. At least now, he can get him out of the way

Albus squints at The Daily Prophet, staring at the image on the front page. His new DADA professor is smiling back at him and Harry Potter is grimacing from within his hold.

Hm.

They drove a flying car into the Whomping Willow. Severus is all but throwing a tantrum to get them expelled and Albus has half a mind to agree except then he’d never hear the end of it. Instead, he sends Harry and Ron Weasley away with a slap on the wrist.

“You’re insane!” accuses Severus. “How can you just let them walk away?”

“Leave it be, Severus,” mutters Albus. He’s exhausted and just wants a fucking drink.

He really should try to spare some manpower to find that sentient car, though…

“He’s a menace!” cries Minerva. “He released a cage of Cornish pixies onto a Second Year class! And you want to know what spell he tried to use on them? Peskipiksi Pesternomi! That’s not a thing, Albus! Ms. Granger had to take care of the things herself!”

“As long as he’s not being possessed by Voldemort, I don’t care,” says Albus.

“Fifty years and I’m here again,” Albus says mournfully.

Severus, sitting across from him, has his head in his hands. They’re in Albus’s office and two unfortunate house elves are currently scrubbing blood off a wall and desperately trying to figure out what’s wrong with the plumbing.

Severus, face still pressed against his palms, wheezes out, “I know it’s one of those little bastards—I know it! Ten years I’ve spent purposefully turning a blind eye to their schemes, sometimes going so far as to aid them. Ten years of leeway and all I have to show for it is a bunch of blank faces! I even had the kindness to ask them in the common room instead of in front of you!” He looks up, gaze haggard. “I need a raise, Albus. I need a fucking raise!”

“Take it up with Lucius Malfoy,” grumbles Albus. “He hasn’t let me touch school funds since I bought that portrait of Jean Simmons to teach sex ed.”

Severus ignores him, groaning in anguish. “I’m going to get fired,” he wheezes. “I’m going to get fired because one of my students is threatening to murder muggleborns and accessing ancient powers unknown via Salazar Slytherin’s legacy and I can’t do shit about it! You better give me two weeks notice!”

“You’re not going anywhere as long as I have any say about it,” Albus mutters darkly. If he lets Severus go then he’ll have to beg Horace to take up Potions and that would be a complete and utter disaster. He’s not sure his pride could handle it.

“I also want severance pay!”

Albus groans.

Albus rushes to Harry in the middle of the Quidditch field but he’s not fast enough to prevent Gilderoy from turning his arm into rubber what the actual fuck—

Albus stares at the little Gryffindor boy who’s been petrified and says, “I mean, he’s not dead.”

“Albus!” says Minerva.

“No, listen—maybe no one will die! And it’ll take a while to unpetrify him but it’s not harm done in the long run! If we can just keep this under wraps then we won’t have to shut down the school and we won’t have to file all the paperwork. And no one dies! It’s a win-win situation!” Also, they all get to keep their jobs, which would be nice—and also, he won’t have to go hunting for a new DADA professor when Hogwarts starts up again, because with his luck, Gilderoy will be dead well before then.

“We must inform the boy’s parents, at least!”

“It’s not like he’s injured.”

“He quite literally can’t move! And it’s very possible that he can hear you!”

Oh, right. “My apologies, young man,” Albus says tightly to the student. “I’m just a bit stressed”—and drunk—“so I’m not in my right mind. Of course we will alert your parents.”

“Thank you,” Minerva sniffs.

Albus sniffs.

“It’s Potter!” spits Severus. “I know he’s the one who put the firework in Goyle’s cauldron! He was standing there, looking all smug, just like his father!”

“His personality is actually quite different from James,” Albus intervenes.

That was a bad idea. Severus goes even redder. He says, “You just favored him and the rest of the Gryffindors! Potter is exactly like his father! You know what, I bet he’s the one stealing potions out of my pantry, too!”

“Don’t you think that’s a bit far-fetched?” asks Albus.

“Fuck off!” yells Severus.

Fair enough.

“He what?”

“He talked to a snake,” Severus despairs. “Hissing and everything—I swear I nearly kneeled right there. He sounded just like the Dark Lord! I thought I was going to get crucioed if I didn’t swear my undying loyalty!”

“That,” says Albus, “sounds like trauma.”

“Of course it’s trauma! But never mind that—Potter is going to get eaten alive by the rest of the student body. If the Gryffindors don’t vilify him then the Heir of Slytherin is going to fucking sue him for identity theft!” Severus stares off into the distance, face pale and hands shaky, as he envisions the absolute clusterfuck his life would become then.

Albus considers this carefully. Then, he asks, “What if—and hear me out!—what if Harry is the Heir of Slytherin?”

Severus stares at him. “Albus, as much faith as you seem to have in that boy, I can assure you that it is completely unfounded. I bet Potter doesn’t have a single Slytherin bone in his body—I’d wager the Sorting Hat didn’t even consider Slytherin for a second!”

Rather ominously, the aforementioned Sorting Hat begins to laugh uproariously. Severus goes steadily paler but Albus just tosses up a silencio and sighs. “You’re probably right, Severus—I’m being unreasonable.”

“Why was the damned hat laughing, Albus—”

“Don’t mind it, it does that sometimes.”

“Albus—”

What should have been a simple matter of ordering mature mandrakes from elsewhere turns into a whole nightmare. “What do you mean you can’t find any?” he demands.

“There’s been a fungal infection,” explains Pomona. “All the legal dealers can’t get their hands on any. I went to Knockturn to try and find some from less reputable sources but they can’t acquire any, either. I looked to order outside of the UK but Cornelius fucking Fudge decided to place an embargo on Italy which is the only place that doesn’t seem to be affected because of its strict importation laws.”

“What does this mean?” asks Albus.

“It means we have to grow the damn things ourselves. It will take months.”

Fuck.

Albus opens his office doors. He looks inside. He closes his office doors. “Why is Harry Potter in my office?” he asks.

“He was found with Mr. Finch-Fletchley,” Minerva explains.

Right. Hm. He goes inside.

Once he sees Harry panicking over Fawkes, he decides that the poor boy probably didn’t do it. He does his best to calm the boy down and, when Hagrid bursts in, he assures them both that he’s quite certain Harry isn’t the culprit.

Just to cover his bases, though, he asks Harry, “Is there anything you want to tell me?”

Harry says no and that’s that.

“‘This is an emergency, Headmaster! Rubeus Hagrid is obviously at it again, Headmaster!’ As if acromantulas petrify people! Bah, and now I don’t have a groundskeeper and Hagrid is going to get stuck in Azkaban of all places!” rages Albus, waving around the paper notice he’d gotten from the Ministry.

Minerva and Severus, who have the unfortunate honor of sitting through his fit, simply glance at each other.

Severus carefully ventures, “Well, acromantulas are far from the only beasts that man is capable of—”

“Finish that sentence and I’ll also be hunting for a new potions professor next year.”

“Right, sorry.”

“I JUST GOT DISMISSED AS HEADMASTER!”

“Albus, my condolences but—”

“I DON’T EVEN HAVE A HOUSE, SEVERUS! I’M HOMELESS!”

“Well, even if you have been dismissed, there’s nothing stopping Minerva from allowing you to stay in the castle since she is now acting Headmistress.”

Albus slumps in relief. His only other option would be staying at a hostel and then going house hunting and he’s not sure that his pride could take a hit like that. “Good—glad that’s sorted out then.”

At least he hopefully managed to cheer up Harry and Ron who were, for some reason, under the invisibility cloak in the corner, witnessing his humiliation.

Two more students are petrified.

…Well, as he’s no longer Headmaster, it is also no longer his problem.

Albus chugs some more brandy.

Ginny Weasley has been taken by the Heir of Slytherin.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—

Even if it isn’t his problem, he still feels like he needs to do something!

“Huh,” says Albus blearily.

Minerva, who was in the middle of comforting a grieving Molly Weasley, pauses. “What’s wrong?”

“Fawkes has vanished…as has the Sorting Hat…that’s odd.”

“I’m sure they’re just out having some fun,” Minerva says offhandedly, returning to her task.

Albus agrees. It’s probably nothing important.

A while later, Fawkes returns to his office with the Sorting Hat…and Harry Potter and Ron Weasely and Gilderoy Lockhart and the fucking Sword of Gryffindor which is currently covered in blood. Actually, they’re all covered in blood—Harry to an alarming extent, Gilderoy thanks to a gash on his forehead, and Ron because the aforementioned gash apparently…well…splattered.

“You killed a basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets?” Albus demands.

“Right.”

“And you were in the Chamber because…?”

“Professor Lockhart wanted us to lead him to it. He’s a bit…odd…but he’s still a Professor.”

Albus turns to Gilderoy. Gilderoy is animatedly examining a portrait, absolutely convinced that there is actually something behind it. He has also asked Albus to introduce himself three times, and keeps promptly forgetting about it. Albus sighs. To Harry, he says, “I trust that you were not grievously injured, my boy?”

“Well, the basilisk did bite me—”

“What?”

“No, no, it’s fine! Fawkes cried on me!”

Unwilling to think about that any more than necessary, Albus turns his attention to the destroyed book right in front of him. Emblazoned on the cover is ‘Tom M. Riddle’ and Albus really, really wants a drink.

Of course Voldemort made a horcrux. Knowing that little bastard, he probably made more than one! Albus needs to track them down and get rid of them before Voldemort can take advantage of them!

…He ends up giving the diary back to the boy, who had been glaring viciously at Lucius Malfoy, which was unhelpful because Albus was trying to bluff his way into convincing the man of Harry’s innocence. He watches from outside as Harry tricks the man into freeing his house elf, then glares accusingly at the Sorting Hat. “Why would you give him the Sword of Gryffindor?” he asks. “You obviously wanted to put him in Slytherin.”

“This might come as a shock to you, Headmaster,” the Hat rasps, “but people—even children—are capable of emotional nuance.”

Sounds fake, but okay.

Chapter Text

The only person to show up at next year’s interview is Severus Snape. He looks genuinely hopeful. Before he can even step in the door, Albus declares, “I’m going on a trip!”

“Albus—”

“A holiday, if you will.”

“Please, I only ask that you—”

“I’ll be in England for the foreseeable future. We can conduct your interview upon my return!”

“Albus!”

Too late. Albus has already bounded out of the establishment. It’s time to go professor hunting.

He finds Remus Lupin living in a hovel in Yorkshire. His clothes are tattered, his face gaunt, but yet he still has the energy to slam his door in Albus’s face.

“Remus!” Albus calls. “I just want to talk!”

“I thought I made myself clear! I will not be taking on the Defense position, even if you beg me!” Remus yells through the door. “Unless you want to talk about something more pleasant, do leave me alone!”

“It’ll be steady employment—”

“I’ll befall horrible misfortune before the year is over!”

“You’ll be able to teach Harry!”

“The last thing that boy needs in his life is a werewolf who will try to murder him ever month!”

“All things considered, that would be an exceptional improvement when compared to his previous professors.”

“Leave, Headmaster!”

Desperately grasping for something to use as leverage, he suddenly bursts out, “I’ll provide you with a steady supply of the Wolfsbane Potion for as long as you’re a professor at Hogwarts! For free!” Considering the state of Remus’s home, he assumes that the poor man cannot afford to buy the potion himself, and neither does he have the skills to harvest and brew it. Severus, though…yes, Severus can do it easily.

There’s silence on the other side of the door. Then, Remus yanks it open and stares at him intently. Albus knows that the man doesn’t know how to use Legillimecy but he occludes, anyway. Remus eventually croaks out, “Are you willing to put that in a magically binding contract?”

Albus lets out a sigh of relief. “Of course.”

And, just like that, Albus has acquired a new Defense Against the Dark Arts professor…at least for the next year.

Severus stares at him faintly. “So this is not an interview?”

“No—I happened to stumble upon the perfect candidate while on holiday in Yorkshire!”

“Right,” mutters Severus. He sighs. “Well, what do you need from me, then?”

“I need you to brew the Wolfsbane Potion for the new professor for the entirety of the next school year.” He pauses. “Or less, depending on just how shitty our luck is.”

Severus asks, “Albus, did you hire a werewolf to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts?”

“Yep.”

“And who is this werewolf?” Severus asks dangerously.

“I do believe you know him. Does Remus Lupin ring a bell?”

“Albus, did you hire the werewolf that nearly ate me to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts?”

“Um, is that what happened? Surely that’s not what happened—”

“You literally had to talk me out of pressing charges!” Severus fumes. “You bribed me with potion ingredients!”

“Well, you accepted!”

Severus groans. He takes a moment to organize his thoughts, then says, “Let me get this straight—you want me to spend an entire year brewing the Wolfsbane Potion for the werewolf who was not only best friends with my childhood bullies, but who also nearly killed me when I was sixteen…and you expect me to do so perfectly and without malice.”

“I’m sure you could do it with malice,” Albus allows. “Just don’t poison him or anything.”

Severus stares. And stares. And stares. Then, he says, “I am not paying for the ingredients.”

“Of course not—it will come out of the school budget!”

Severus’s eyes narrow. “I thought you said Lucius doesn’t let you touch school funds anymore.”

Right. “Well, I’ll figure something out, anyway.”

He ends up paying for it himself, which is—fine. As long as the fucking Defense post is filled, everything is fine.

“Headmaster,” says Remus through a Floo call, “my evil ex just escaped from prison. My evil ex is going to try to murder my best friend’s son—who just so happens to be my aforementioned evil ex’s godson—the same way he murdered my other best friend and left behind nothing but a finger.”

“Don’t you think you’re being a tad bit dramatic, Remus?”

“Thirteen dead in a single night!” Remus yells. “Fifteen, if you count James and Lily! Sirius goddamn Black has never done anything halfway in his life and he will not stop now! He is going to try to kill Harry!”

“He wouldn’t be the first.”

“Headmaster—”

“Right, right, my apologies! And don’t fret, the Ministry has this handled.”

“I wouldn’t trust the Ministry to handle an egg, much less Harry’s life! What is their grand plan, anyway?”

Albus mutters it out. Remus demands, “What?”

Albus says, “They’re sending dementors to guard the school.”

Silence. Then, Remus shrieks, “Albus!”

Ah, yes, there it is—it seems Remus has finally broken the habit of referring to him respectfully. Every teacher has done it eventually, though Severus held out for the longest, probably because his life and freedom were literally in Albus’s hands. That’s beside the point, though. Immediately, Albus placates, “I’m doing my best to ensure there are strict boundaries on where the dementors can and cannot enter. I’ve already tried to get them to not send those vile creatures at all, but they won’t be swayed. Rest assured, I am doing damage control.”

“You better, you senile old bastard!”

Rude.

“Albus,” says Minerva somewhat shiftily, “I have a request.”

Albus brightens. Minerva has always been so prim and proper and she has never, not once, asked anything of him beyond his usual duties. This finally gives him an opportunity to pay her back. “Of course,” he says cheerfully. “What do you need?”

“Well, I have this student, you see, and she’s coming into her Third Year. She’s brilliant and she would love to take on as many electives as possible—”

“That’s certainly admirable.”

“Yes, well—she wants to take all of them.”

Albus pauses. “All of them?”

“All of them.”

“I’m not entirely sure that’s possible…” It is very, very not possible. “I would be happy to provide her with the materials to self-study if she chooses.”

“No, she is very adamant about taking all the courses at Hogwarts.”

“…I must be honest, I have no idea how to help you.”

“I know how,” declares Minerva. And then she explains her idea, which is just—

“A time turner? Minerva, isn’t this a bit—”

“Please, Albus—when have I ever asked you for anything?”

Godammit.

And so, a dangerous and highly experimental artifact ends up in the hands of a thirteen-year-old.

“Come again?” Albus asks faintly.

A Ministry official shifts nervously in front of him. “Er, Harry Potter has performed underage magic and has been deemed in need of discipline. When Ministry personnel went to collect him from his home, they found that he’d been missing for at least an hour.”

“So you’re telling me,” Albus says, “that Harry Potter is missing while famed mass-murderer Sirius Black—who all but killed his parents!—is on the loose and the Ministry’s answer to this is coming to me for help?”

The Ministry official quakes. “W-What do you want me to do, sir?”

“Get me the fucking Minister!”

As if Albus is going to allow this situation to continue. He’s already dug himself into a hole in regards to the boy so there’s no choice left but to double down.

Luckily, the boy has the sense to take the Knight Bus to the Leaky Cauldron and the Minister has the sense to fix this issue before the public (and Albus) eviscerates him.

“—ON THE FUCKING TRAIN, ALBUS? YOU PROMISED!”

“I’VE ALREADY SENT LITERAL DEATH THREATS TO THE MINISTRY, I DON’T KNOW WHAT MORE YOU WANT FROM ME!”

“TO GET UP OFF YOUR ASS AND DO SOMETHING—”

“The dementors,” Albus announces to the entire student body, “are not allowed onto school grounds.”

“They weren’t allowed on the train, either,” mutters Remus, so quietly that only the teachers’ table hears him, and they all manage to keep a straight face—except Severus, who lets out a shocked snort before immediately covering it up with a cough.

Very smooth.

Albus stares at the weeping boy and then the weeping giant. He makes eye-contact with Poppy, who simply sighs and goes back to treating Draco Malfoy. Albus turns to Hagrid. “You didn’t mean for it to happen,” soothes Albus.

“I should’ve been more careful,” sobs Hagrid. Albus must agree but Hagrid is clearly very upset so he can get admonished later—what he needs right now is emotional support. Unfortunately, Albus is very bad at emotional support. He does his best to calm Hagrid down while desperately searching for someone with a better bedside manner.

The only other person in the room is Severus.

Albus decides to take his chances.

“He’s doing it just to spite me,” mutters Albus. “What’s the point in putting down a hippogriff as if every other hippogriff isn’t the exact same? Lucius just wants to punish me…”

“Maybe this is his way of getting back at you for hiring a werewolf,” Remus offers.

Albus slumps into his seat. “No, no, that can’t be,” he explains, “because Lucius doesn’t know that you’re a werewolf.”

Remus pauses. Stares. Then, he asks, “Are you telling me that you hired me, a werewolf, to teach children and you didn’t think to mention it to the Board of Governors?” Remus comes to a stand and starts pacing. “No, no, I have a question—how did I get this position, anyway? The fact that I’m a werewolf isn’t common knowledge but I’m registered with the Ministry! If Lucius Malfoy looked into it, surely he would find out! Did they hire me anyway?”

“Oh. Well, you see, the thing about the Defense Against the Dark Arts position is that it needs to be refilled regularly and all the members of the Hogwarts Board also have full-time careers so meeting so frequently is simply impossible for them. In an effort to speed things up, I’ve been awarded the ability to appoint professors at my discretion without having to run it by the Board. It’s very convenient for everyone involved. As such, Lucius has no reason to look into your files at the Ministry—I doubt he even knows your first name.”

“That sounds incredibly irresponsible,” Remus says skeptically.

“What do you mean? My decision-making is quite sound!”

“Before I began working here I would agree, but now I’m not so sure.”

Fair enough.

“That can’t be healthy,” Remus says, gesturing vaguely.

Albus, who is half asleep and very drunk, slurs, “What?”

“The thing we were talking about! With Mr. Longbottom and the Boggart! How could his largest fear be Severus? Sure he’s a nightmare to be around—don’t tell him I said that—but he’s not scary!”

Albus thinks, then remembers the whole ordeal with the Boggart. “Well,” he says, “children are scared of odd things. And a Boggart isn’t necessarily someone’s largest fear overall—merely their largest fear at the moment. Perhaps dear Neville had a run-in with Severus before attending your class and it made an impression.”

“That’s still alarming!” hisses Remus. “A teacher shouldn’t be any student’s biggest fear!”

“My biggest fear back when I was at Hogwarts was Headmaster Black,” Albus says thoughtfully. “It changed later but…well, I was terrified of that man. Still am, a bit.”

From somewhere on the office walls, a portrait with the croaky voice of Phineas Nigellus Black declares, “As you should be! You were a slimy little brat then and you’re a slimy little brat now!”

“I’m a hundred and twelve!”

Phineas, who had only lived to be seventy-eight, says, “Practically a child!”

“Phineas, please!”

“I have half a mind to make you scrub the trophy room again!”

Albus, having had enough of the portrait, turns back to Remus. “He did that to me once. It was completely uncalled-for, too. I’d done nothing wrong!”

Phineas says, “You were seriously and legitimately planning a political insurrection!”

“Being involved in politics is the mark of any good citizen.”

“You were thirteen!”

Remus squints at the two of them, perplexed, but says nothing, seemingly too befuddled to make sense of the situation. “Anyway,” he mumbles, “I’m going to talk to Severus about proper teaching methods.”

Albus snorts. “Yeah, good luck with that.”

“Why don’t you discipline him?”

Albus scoffs. Discipline Severus Snape? No man on earth has that kind of power…

“You should probably know that Sybill has predicted Mr. Potter’s death,” Minerva announces gravely.

Albus doesn’t even look up from his paperwork. “How awful. How many times is that now?”

“Seventeen, if I kept count correctly.”

“Eighteen,” Severus interrupts, walking into the room. “I caught the woman having a fit in the hallway. Something about old age and being surrounded by children.”

“Well, that’s not so bad.”

“The children were the ones who murdered him.”

“Oh…”

“Halloween,” moans Albus. “Why is it always Halloween? I loved Halloween as a child! And now I can’t go thinking about it without thinking of mass murderers and trolls and death!”

Severus says, “Shut up. My childhood bully has broken into my place of employment to kill one of my students. You’re not special.”

Remus says, “My ex-boyfriend has broken into my place of employment to kill my late best friend’s son—oh, and he also killed my late-best friend. I am special.”

And how is anyone supposed to respond to that?

Albus scowls and silently starts the necessary paperwork to repair the Fat Lady’s portrait.

“It’s Lupin!” spits Severus.

“Why would Lupin help his ex-boyfriend break into the castle?” asks Albus, exasperated. “I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t give any of my exes the time of day.”

Severus stares, suddenly less enraged and more shocked. “You’ve been in relationships?”

“I’m a hundred and twelve, of course I’ve dated people! What, you thought I was some virginal old man who only had eyes for the education of his students?”

Severus stares. Albus is under the impression that the answer is an unequivocal Yes. Albus frowns at Severus, feeling a bit betrayed—that was a direct hit on his ego and he may never recover. He kind of wants to defend himself further but he also doesn’t want to admit to any of his past dalliances.

Albus says, “I think you should leave.”

Severus slowly nods. Then, clearing his throat, he croaks out, “Right. Er—I’m not done talking to you. But I’ll come back…later…” And then he flees, looking vaguely nauseous.

What an asshole.

“Severus is a little bitch,” hisses Remus, slamming a stack of parchment onto Albus’s desk. Albus, who had been dealing with his own stack of parchment, glares up at him.

“What happened?”

“You know how I agreed to let him substitute for me? You remember how I said that it was fine because surely, surely, he wouldn’t do anything untoward? Guess what! He decides it’s up to him to teach my students about werewolves and then assign an essay on how to identify them. What the actual fuck, Albus? Why did you greenlight that lesson plan?”

Albus stares at Remus, then at the papers. He has absolutely no recollection of signing off on an entire class on werewolves. He desperately searches his memories, ravaging his mind palace until—ah. Yes. Severus had simply slipped the lesson plan onto Albus’s desk right next to some forms for ordering extra potion ingredients. Albus had signed without even looking at it, just as he had done for over a decade.

“Er,” says Albus, trying to put this in a way that doesn’t sound incredibly negligent, “you see…”

Remus does not, in fact, see. The only reason he doesn’t punch Albus in the face is that Albus is his boss. Severus, however, has no such protections.

…After the stunt he pulled, that’s his problem, though.

“I THOUGHT YOU SAID THE DEMENTORS WEREN’T ALLOWED ON SCHOOL GROUNDS!”

“THEY AREN’T!”

“THEN WHY THE FUCK IS HARRY IN THE INFIRMARY?”

“APPARENTLY THE SCHOOL GROUNDS HAVE A HEIGHT LIMIT—”

“It’s cursed,” whispers Minerva.

Severus nods. “Definitely cursed.”

Albus and Remus make tired eye-contact. Albus says, “Now, there’s no reason to—”

“Who just randomly gifts insanely expensive brooms to children?” Minerva demands.

At this, Severus whips around to stare at her. “You do!”

“Well, I’m a professor, so it’s fine. I certainly didn’t send Mr. Potter this broom, though.” She turns to Remus. “Did you?”

“Well, no, but—”

“There!” she says. “It must have been sent to Mr. Potter by Sirius Black! Severus agrees with me! We’ll be looking it over for any dark enchantments.”

“Isn’t that Remus’s domain?” asks Albus, amused.

“The broom seems fine to me,” Remus says after a quick glance.

“You didn’t even examine it!” fumes Severus. “I bet you want Potter to run afoul of its magic, just like you want him to get caught by Black when you let him into the castle!”

Albus pales. “Um, Severus—”

Remus takes the opportunity to pounce on Severus and, mere moments later, they’re clawing viciously at each other on the floor. Minerva sniffs, unimpressed, and declares, “I’ll examine the broom myself!” She stalks out of the room with it, hopping over her oblivious colleagues.

Albus puts his face in his hands. How is this his life?

Severus and Remus are refusing to talk to each other. No, they’re refusing to even look at each other. Minerva, meanwhile, is pacing the length of his office, muttering to herself.

“Longbottom,” she murmurs. “I thought he was the good boy. I was so sure after he tried to turn Mr. Potter and his friends in during their First Year…and now!”

“Speak for yourself,” spits Severus. “He nearly killed us all the first day in my class and he’s been doing nothing but melting cauldrons since. Yesterday he managed to burn water. I was almost impressed.”

Albus looks at them all critically and tries to decide which of them would be best to comfort a traumatized Ron Weasely. Severus is obviously out of the running—he’d probably just make the poor boy cry—and Minerva looks ready to rip Neville Longbottom’s head off so Albus hesitates to allow her near children. Remus it is.

When he asks Remus to do it, he throws Albus a vicious glare and storms out of the room, as if this is somehow his fault.

“He’s upset that Black didn’t manage to do it,” Severus says.

Albus brings out a bottle of brandy.

The public is demanding that someone be punished for this serious transgression in security. Mrs. Weasley sends him a Howler demanding to know how he could dare to let her son be left at the mercy of a knife-wielding maniac.

Albus fires the portrait that let Sirius Black in and calls it a day.

Remus corners him after dinner one day. “Er, Headmaster,” he says meekly, “I have something that is probably of great importance…”

Albus freezes. The last time someone on his staff called him ‘Headmaster’ when they weren’t around students was when Hooch had stood by while a student fell off a broom and broke their back. No one calls him ‘Headmaster’ unless they’ve monumentally fucked up and remembered that Albus is, technically, their boss and that he has the power to ruin them.

Albus leads him to his office and sits him down, handing him a sherbet lemon. Remus is so anxious that he actually accepts it.

“What’s the matter, my boy?” asks Albus in the kindest tone he can muster. It’s easier to get people to confess their sins when he’s pretending to be their grandfather.

Remus reaches into his pocket and pulls out a ratty piece of parchment which he lays on the desk. Albus inspects it, confused, but then Remus also pulls out his wand, presses the parchment, and says, “I solemnly swear that I’m up to no good.”

The parchment immediately bursts to life, unfolding itself to show a detailed map of Hogwarts along with an accurate animation of where everyone is. Albus stares at it, caught between wonder and horror. He rasps, “Is this a recent creation of yours?”

“No,” whispers Remus. “My friends and I made it while we were at Hogwarts.”

Albus goes cold. “By friends, you mean…”

“James, Peter…and Sirius Black.”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—

“Is there any way he could recreate this?” Albus demands.

“No, the magic is too complex and none of us were really sure how we managed it in the first place. We each put a little piece in it, you see.”

“Right,” says Albus. “Well, I’m glad that you’ve entrusted it to me. I trust that you’ve had it safely hidden away?”

“Actually…”

Oh Merlin.

It turns out that Filch had confiscated the damn thing and then kept it in his office where the Weasley twins managed to nab it. Then, in their infinite wisdom, they decided not to turn it in and to instead gift it to Harry Potter. In some ways, it makes sense, of course—now Harry will always know whether or not Sirius Black is nearby. On the other hand, if Sirius Black got his hands on this thing…

“Well,” Albus says faintly. “At least we’re certain that Black hasn’t acquired it.”

“There’s more.”

Of course there’s more. Albus smiles weakly. “Do continue.”

“Well, I got it from Harry, you see, but before he left, he told me that he saw someone on the map that should be dead. He told me that he saw Peter Pettigrew apparently walking around the halls of Hogwarts. I got curious so I looked into it and—and I saw him, too! But I could never catch him! And I know he’s not a ghost because ghosts don’t show up on the Map!”

Albus is trying to process the information that Pettigrew isn’t dead. “All right,” he says. “Perhaps he’s disillusioned?”

Now Remus looks manic. “No, no, that’s the other thing I’ve been wanting to tell you ever since I got here—I’ve just been far too scared. Severus noticed how anxious I was and he…he thought I was going to help a murderer, but I would never! You see, I’m quite sure that Peter wasn’t disillusioned because he’s never been too good at illusionary magic of any kind. I think he’s actually a rat!”

“A rat,” Albus repeats skeptically.

“Yes! When we were at Hogwarts, I would go to the Shrieking Shack on full moons, remember? James, Peter, and Sirius—they were such good friends. They didn’t want to leave me to suffer all by myself so they all became animagi! James was a stag, Sirius was a dog, and Peter was a rat! Rats are small enough to scurry along the corridors and remain unnoticed but they still show up with their human names on the Map!” He smiles brightly. “Thus, Peter is still alive and is roaming the castle!”

Albus puts his head in his hands. “You knew that Sirius Black was an animagus,” he says, pained, “and you didn’t tell anyone?” How did they even get the opportunity to become animagi as teenagers? Surely he would have noticed!

“I was scared! I didn’t—”

“Didn’t what? What would have happened? Yes, no one was supposed to be around you while you were transformed, but that was my rule, not a law! You’ve committed no crime! And what could happen to the others? James Potter is dead, Sirius Black is already a criminal, and up until very recently, we were all sure that Peter Pettigrew was dead! What on earth is your justification?”

Remus scowls pettily.

Fucking Mauradars—too damn loyal for their own good.

Albus regroups. “Okay. Peter Pettigrew is alive. How does that change—” He pauses. “If he’s alive…why didn’t he show himself? Black was in Azkaban. There was no reason for him to fear…”

Remus leans closer. “Exactly. Why didn’t he come to light? That’s suspicious! Perhaps—perhaps everything isn’t as it seems. Perhaps something else happened that night.”

“What else could it be? Sirius Black was the Secret Keeper, we all know it. He had to give the secret to Voldemort. Pettigrew found out and chased him down. Sirius Black definitely killed all those muggles and believed that he killed Pettigrew—he confessed to it! Whatever Pettigrew’s reasons were, nothing changes the facts.” He leans over and puts a hand over Remus, comforting. “I understand that you care about Sirius dearly…but you must accept what’s happened.”

“No!” insists Remus. “Something isn’t right! Something went horribly wrong that night, differently than we were led to believe! I know it!” He sounds like a conspiracy theorist.

Albus sighs. “You can know it all you want, but that changes nothing. I will, of course, be confiscating this map and spreading the word about Sirius Black’s animagus form. Please get some rest, Remus. You look like you need it.”

Remus leaves his office looking close to tears.

Goddammit.

Albus does not go to sleep. Instead, he pulls out the map and closely inspects every nook and cranny of it until he finally comes across Peter Pettigrew’s name.

Nodding to himself, Albus immediately races down the corridors—silent as he can manage in order to not alert Pettigrew to his approach. Then, when he comes upon the name, he inspects the corners of the hallway until—success!

He reaches down and snatches up the rat.

It is, he realizes, Ron Weasley’s rat, the one with the missing finger that Minerva has been complaining about. Apparently the poor boy is convinced that Hermione Granger’s cat has eaten it.

He takes a squealing Pettigrew back to his office and promptly performs the Homorphus Charm and then he has a grown man sitting in his chair, smelling as if he hasn’t taken a bath in a decade. Perhaps he hasn’t if he’s been cozying up with the Weasleys.

The first thing that comes out of Albus’s mouth is, “Why were you pretending to be the pet of a thirteen-year-old?” Because honestly, what the fuck?

What he gets in response is desperate simpering and pleas for help to the point that he feels nauseous. With every new word, the more Albus is concerned that Remus was right and that something odd is going on. Finally, after running out of patience, Albus uses Legilimency on him. Pettigrew’s Occlumency is…strong, actually, but not strong enough to withstand Albus’s intrusion.

And then everything comes to light.

What the actual fuck?

When Remus walks into the office, it’s teaming with Aurors. Peter Pettigrew is tied up on the floor. Albus beckons him forward. “I must offer you an apology, my boy,” he murmurs. “You were right. Pettigrew here was the Secret Keeper for the Potters, not Sirius. Once Sirius had found out that Pettigrew betrayed them, he chased down Pettigrew, who ended up staging his own death, killing twelve muggles in the process. He’s been in hiding ever since, afraid to face the wrath of his fellow Death Eaters.”

Remus sits down heavily. He demands, “What happens now?”

“Pettigrew will be taken into Auror custody. Sirius Black’s case will be re-examined and there is a good chance that he will be cleared of all charges. There does remain the small snag that he confessed to the crimes…however, as there is evidence that he was under the effects of excessive Cheering Charms during the arrest, it can be thrown out. I will see it through personally if I have to.”

“Thank you,” he says. “Thank you.”

Severus remains skeptical. “Are you sure Black is innocent?” he demands.

“He is certainly innocent of the crimes he was imprisoned for, at least,” says Albus.

Severus brightens. “So he still might be guilty of other crimes?”

“…Possibly.”

Severus practically skips out of his office. Albus wonders if he’s just made a terrible mistake.

…Meh, that’s later him’s problem.

They catch Sirius Black sneaking out of the Shrieking Shack—or, rather, Remus catches him, but that’s beside the point. Thankfully, Sirius cooperates once he learns that he’s been cleared of all charges (it had taken a while to push it through the Wizengamot but Albus isn’t Chief Warlock for nothing).

He does seem very glum, though. “It’s the rat,” he says morosely to Albus, who did not ask and, quite frankly, couldn't care less. “You know, when I chased after Peter Pettigrew, I did it because I wanted to murder him. Or at least slightly maim him. And now I’m glad that my name was cleared and that he’s finally been caught, but…Merlin, I just wish I could get my hands on him…” He sincerely means it, too.

Albus makes a mental note to not let Sirius within five feet of Pettigrew’s prison cell, lest he earn a one-way ticket there, as well. Murdering prisoners is still murder.

Sirius and Harry seem to be getting along swimmingly. While Harry was, at first, understandably skeptical of Sirius, the moment Remus put in a good word, everything worked out. In fact, everything worked out so well that the rest of the staff was too busy observing the godfather and godson duo with affection (most everyone) or disdain (Severus) to remember something important.

Now, Albus is sweating. Standing across from him is a morose Ron Weasley. “I know it’s not important,” says Ron, shuffling his feet, “but Scabbers was a big part of my family, you know? We all loved him dearly—even Percy, and he’s Percy. Hermione’s adamant that Crookshanks didn’t eat him but I still think he did but Hermione told me that I should at least ask a teacher before officially blaming the little beast so…well. Can you help me find Scabbers, sir?”

Oh dear. This won’t be fun.

Buckbeak is scheduled to die. Hagrid is absolutely inconsolable so Albus, who seems to be the only one capable of comforting the man, offers to buy him a drink at Hogsmeade. By the time the Ministry officials show up, they’re both well and truly smashed. Lucius Malfoy and Cornelius Fudge both scrunch their noses but, well, fuck them.

They all struggle to hold a conversation—Albus and Hagrid because they’re staggeringly drunk, Lucius and Cornelius because they have never been in a hut before and are not enjoying the experience, and the executioner because his humor is a bit…well, dead—and Albus eventually gives up and stares off into the distance.

“What are you looking at?” slurs Hagrid.

“That is a very pretty mountain,” says Albus. “Don’t you love living in the Highlands?”

“Sir, yes, sir!”

Teeth grit, Lucius spits, “If we could get back to discussing the terms of the—”

“Look at the mountains, Lucius!”

“This is why professors aren’t supposed to be drunk on the job!”

“It’s the weekend.”

Fudge breaks in. “Perhaps we should just go and get it over with. We can go over the paperwork later, when you’re both…of sounder mind.” Coward.

Albus and Hagrid both rise, gripping each other so that they don’t fall. The effect is that they both nearly walk into the doorframe and spend a good three minutes attempting to shove themselves out of the doorway. Once they’re out, Albus gets a better look at the landscape and cries, “That is a very pretty mountain! Don’t you love living in the Highlands?”

Hagrid slurs, “Sir, yes, sir!”

Lucius finally screams, “You have had this exact same conversation six times! Can we please just—where’s the hippogriff?”

Albus turns, squinting. Ah. The hippogriff is not there.

“Well,” he says faintly, “that’s something. Do I still need to fill out the paperwork?”

Cornelius sighs, looking exhausted. “Let’s…let’s just go, Mr. Malfoy.”

The executioner, meanwhile, enraged at the lack of murder, decides to hack up the nearest vegetables.

In the forest, Albus sees a flash of movement from an intriguingly familiar figure.

…Hm.

He stumbles upon Harry, Ron, and Hermione Granger on his way back to the castle. They seem incredibly upset about something.

Hermione explains, “They’ve killed Buckbeak!”

“A true tragedy,” slurs Albus.

Ron squints. “Are you all right, Professor?”

Harry, meanwhile, seems to recognize exactly what’s going on and is glaring up at him fiercely. Whatever—that’s Harry’s problem. Albus is on holiday, for all intents and purposes. They can’t say shit about it.

Albus says to Ron, “I’m very all right, Mr. Weasley. In fact, I’m so all right that I’ve been waxing philosophical. How short time is, how taxing. If only there was a way for us to go back and change the things we ought to change, save the ones we ought to save…” He throws a significant look at Hermione.

Hermione’s eyes widen. “Oh! Yes, of course, Professor!”

Albus smiles and breezes (stumbles) past them because, you know, plausible deniability, and all that.

As he’s heading up, he hears Harry say, “Are you sure we should be listening to him? He’s not really all there, is he?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks Ron.

“Didn’t you smell him?”

“I did,” says Hermione. “It was quite nice. My dad wears that cologne too, sometimes.”

Harry’s silence is at once incredulous and pitying. Albus decides to leave them to it.

“I want to live with Sirius,” Harry says, arms crossed and a firm look on his face.

Albus stares. “How did you get into my office?”

“I kept guessing sweets until I found the password. The gargoyles found it very amusing.”

Drat. Perhaps he ought to update his security measures. He says to Harry, “Well, I understand that you care for your godfather very much but you musn’t let it overcome your better sense. Think of this from your godfather’s perspective—”

“He already said yes.”

“Does he even have a house?”

“Yes, his childhood home in London.”

“That place hasn’t been inhabited for years!”

“We’ll fix it up together. Professor Lupin is moving in with us. They don’t want to tell me why but I walked in on them making out so I think it’s fairly obvious.”

Albus decides to definitely not think about that. Instead, he says, “That’s all well and good but what would your family think if you decided to stop living with them?” Harry has always had a good sense of empathy so surely this would work.

Harry snorts. “They couldn’t care less about me, Headmaster. Did you really think they would? I mean, after the whole cupboard thing and the letter debacle…”

Albus has no idea what he’s talking about. “Cupboard thing?” he questions.

Harry stares. “The cupboard,” he says slowly. “The one I’d been forced to sleep in for eleven years. Professor McGonagall addressed the letter to the cupboard under the stairs! There is no way you didn’t notice!”

“Harry,” Albus says slowly, “the letters aren’t handwritten by me or Professor McGonagall. They’re magically generated by an enchanted quill. I did not know that you lived in a…a cupboard for most of your life.” And honestly, what the fuck? “Please sit down, I suspect we have more to talk about. First of all, what is the letter debacle?”

Harry looks at him blankly, as if he’s still trying to decide how to feel. He sits. He says, “My aunt and uncle wouldn’t let me read my letter. They ripped up the first one and burned the next few. Then a bunch more started flying into the house—I’m talking hundreds—and they locked me in the cupboard twenty-four-seven instead of just for the night. And then they dragged us to some random town in the midlands but when the letters came there, too, they took me to a tower in the middle of a lake. That’s where Hagrid met me. Surely he told you about the tower and the way my aunt and uncle were acting and talking about me?”

Ah—so that’s why Hogwarts had a paper shortage in July 1991.

“Hagrid,” says Albus, pained, “lives in a hut. A tower probably seemed normal to him. As for how your aunt and uncle acted—his own upbringing left much to be desired. He may not have seen it as concern-worthy when, to him, it was simply business as usual.”

In a small, quiet voice, Harry whispers, “Oh.”

Albus smiles kindly. “Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

For a moment, Harry is silent. Then, in a vicious rage, he says, “They would lock me inside at night—I told you that, but I’m telling you again. I couldn’t go to the bathroom until morning. I didn’t have new clothes until I went shopping for robes—all of my muggle clothes are my cousin's hand-me-downs, even though they can afford to buy my cousin as many new, expensive games as he wants. They make me do most of the cooking and cleaning at home. They told all the neighbors that I was a delinquent so none of the neighborhood kids want to be friends with me. I didn’t have a single friend until I met Ron. My cousin and his friends have this thing called ‘Harry Hunting’ where they chase me down and beat me up and my aunt and uncle encourage it. When I accidentally use magic, they act like I did it on purpose and punish me. When I blew up my aunt last year, it was because she called me a runt and called my mother a bitch and they just laughed. And you know what they’ve been telling everyone? What their excuse was that I wasn’t going to the same school as my cousin? They told everyone they met that I was going to St. Brutus’s Secure Centre for Incurably Criminal Boys! And everyone believed them!”

Albus stares in horror. “Okay,” he croaks, “I think we need to have a discussion…”

“I’m going to live with Sirius whether you want me to or not!” Harry fumes. “And anyway, what right do you have to stop me? You’re just a teacher, not my guardian!”

Albus says placatingly, “I’m not going to make you do anything. I do ask that you hear me out, though. There are certain pros and cons that you have no way of knowing. I will lay them out for you so that you can make an informed decision.”

“But I can still make the decision?”

“Of course.” As if he’d begrudge the boy that much.

“Fine.”

“So, you know as well as I that Voldemort will likely be making a come-back. When he does, you will undoubtedly be his first target. The thing about living with your aunt is that, as long as you live with her—or your cousin, I suppose—the sacrifice your mother made will protect you. The blood protections are ancient and more powerful than anyone would ever be able to erect. They will guarantee your safety from Voldemort and his followers as long as you reside there. If you live with your godfather and Professor Lupin, I know that they will do their best to protect you but they will never be able to set up wards powerful enough to rival the ones your mother’s sacrifice provide. More than that, the Black family’s ancestral home is well known in the pureblood community. Sirius’s own brother was a Death Eater. It makes you much more vulnerable.”

Harry seems to take this seriously. He considers his options for several minutes, during which time Albus silently places a bowl of sweets between them for Harry to munch on.

Finally, Harry says, “I understand that living with my aunt would provide me absolute protection…but I can’t go back there. It’s awful. I’m surrounded by people who don’t care about me in a place that gives me nothing but bad memories. I’m treated like trash by the people I call my family. I can’t do it again.”

And Albus says, “Okay.”

He needs to contact Sirius about #12 Grimmauld Place—perhaps there will never be protections as absolute as a mother’s sacrifice, but Albus will sure as fuck do his best to meet them.

Remus quits on the last day of term.

“Why?” asks Albus, flabbergasted. “You’re in one piece. Your reputation is pristine. You have committed no crime and you certainly aren’t being possessed by Voldemort.” He grabs the man by the shoulders. “Please stay. You are quite literally the best Defense teacher Hogwarts has had in a decade.”

“That says less about me and more about the quality of Defense teachers,” mutters Remus. “And besides, I didn’t want to be a professor in the first place. Now that Sirius is free…I would like to spend more time with him. Much more time.”

“You’re moving in with him! Isn’t that enough?”

“I’m not keeping a job that will leave me a country away for the majority of the year. That’s no way to be a family.”

What the fuck.

“So that’s it, then?” demands Albus. “You’re abandoning me?”

“Seems like it.”

“What about the Wolfsbane? If you renew your contract, you’ll have another year of free potions.”

Remus laughs. “Haven’t you heard? My boyfriend is Sirius Black. Between the reparations the Ministry paid him and the fortune already sitting in the Black family vaults, there’s enough money for me to buy Wolfsbane for the next three lifetimes.” He smiles and cheerfully bids him adieu before prancing off.

Albus puts his face in his hands and screams.

Chapter Text

Seeing as Harry is no longer under the protection of the wards on Privet Drive, Albus is left with two new courses of actions: invoking protective magic so ancient that even his great-grandfather never dared whisper its name…and hunting and murdering Voldemort. Surprisingly, the second task is much less frustrating than the first. At least with the Horcruxes, he has a lead. With Grimmauld Place, however…

Remus finds him hexing the front door with rage. Remus stares. He says, “All right, why don’t we go inside and have a nice cup of tea?”

“There is nothing ‘nice’ about this blasted neighborhood,” Albus seethes, though he follows Remus inside. The entryway has been cleared out—it was the second thing that Remus, Sirius, and Harry had cleaned up after dealing with the bedroom situation—but the decor is still shit. Sirius seems to have taken on the philosophy of “chuck out everything I don’t like” to heart and, of course, Remus is too nice to tell him otherwise and Harry is too young to care. Where does that leave Albus? In a poorly-decorated London townhouse, sipping tea while trying not to incinerate the entire neighborhood from the intensity of his ire.

Remus says, “You know, there’s nothing wrong with asking for help.”

Albus stares at him blankly. “I understand that you have the best intentions but there are probably less than a handful of people who can actually help me and they’re either dead, evil, or my ex-boyfriend—or a mix of all three. I am not contacting any of them.”

“Right,” mutters Remus. “You know, I sometimes forget how insanely powerful you are.”

“It’s not that I’m powerful,” says Albus, “it’s just that I’m old and I had nothing better to do…”

“Oh—so what you’re saying is that you have no social life.”

Damn brat has gotten too cheeky ever since Albus stopped being his boss.

Sirius Black is sitting across from him. Albus does not like Sirius Black—not for any particular reason, just because Sirius’s personality type is not the one Albus prefers to interact with.

He’d probably tolerate him a lot more if he’d stop interrupting him. Albus is currently in Grimmauld Place’s sitting room, pouring a list of the possible hiding places Voldemort could have placed a Horcrux. It is not going well. Sirius bounds into the room and immediately gets way too close for Albus’s preference.

Albus grits his teeth, ready to order him out as kindly as possible, when Sirius declares, “Harry’s had a nightmare!”

Albus raises his eyebrows. “A nightmare,” he repeats. Why the fuck is that Albus’s problem?

Sirius looks wild-eyed. “It was a nightmare about Voldemort!”

“Considering the boy’s parents were murdered by Voldemort in front of him and Voldemort has actively tried to kill him twice within the last three years, I’m not surprised.”

“That’s not what I—ugh!” He throws himself onto the sofa. The sofa dips tremendously under his wait. There is a reason Albus is sitting on the floor of the sitting room. He eyes the sofa, wondering if it will finally fall, but it holds up remarkably well. Sirius is unconcerned. “I’m very bad at explaining things.”

“I haven’t noticed,” Albus says dryly.

Sirius scowls and then tries again. “He had a dream about Voldemort killing some old dude, but the dream was from the perspective of Voldemort!”

“Yeah,” says a new voice, “but it was more than that.”

Harry is standing in the doorway, arms crossed, looking supremely unimpressed. This seems to be a constant theme with Harry when he’s interacting with adults other than Remus, Minerva, or Severus—and even Severus is on thin ice.

Albus finally stops, deciding that the Wool’s Orphanage’s outhouse is probably not hiding a Horcrux, and gives Harry his full attention. “Explain.”

“The dream wasn’t just from Voldemort’s point of view…it was like I was Voldemort. I was sitting in a chair talking to some weird, disheveled man, and ordering the old man to get murdered by the Killing Curse.”

Albus says, “That certainly sounds alarming. Is this a repeating dream?”

“No, no, it just happened this once.”

“Right,” says Albus. Then, delicately, “Harry…perhaps you’d benefit from a Dreamless Sleep potion.”

Harry stares. He says, “You think it was just a dream.”

Albus says, “Listen—dream-sharing is very real but it also takes a great deal of power to accomplish. It’s not the kind of thing that can happen by accident and it’s certainly not something Voldemort could do while as weak as he is. In all likelihood, this is nothing bizarre or magical.” He pauses. Then, “Also…how open are you to…counseling?”

“Counseling?”

“Yes. It’s just that you’ve been through quite a bit and Remus and I think—”

“Remus?” demands Sirius, cutting in. “He didn’t talk to me about this!”

“It was an off-handed remark that he made. Neither of us thought much of it at the time but now I am beginning to see the potential benefits…”

“You want to send me to a shrink,” Harry says slowly, “because I’m dreaming of being Voldemort.”

“Well, that’s far from the only reason but I admit this is a catalyst.”

Harry purses his lips. “I want to be upset but I also can’t think of a reason to disagree. Let me think about it.”

“Of course.”

When Harry leaves, Sirius mutters, “‘Let me think about it,’ he says. Since when are fourteen-year-olds so mature?”

“Fourteen-year-olds have always been mature,” Albus says dismissively and picking his list back up, scowling at the crossed off entry for ‘outhouse’. “I was fourteen when I lobbied my first piece of legislation through the Wizengamot.”

“Was this before or after you attempted to incite an insurrection?”

“After,” says Albus. “The insurrection was just the wild fantasies of a young boy…”

“Right,” says Sirius. “You know, you’re really hard to talk to.”

“Likewise.”

“I have officially taken the hint. I am leaving. Good day.”

Thank Merlin.

Apparently, Wool’s Orphanage has been burned down. Built on its foundations is Sunshine Children’s Daycare and Albus stares at it for a very long time before a suspicious old lady shoos him off.

He eventually gets some coffee from a cafe a few blocks down and sits on a metal bench outside, pondering the existential irony that is opening a daycare on the decaying corpse of an orphanage. His mood brightens slightly when a young waitress compliments his outfit—a bright green and purple muggle suit, because he means business—and he eventually pulls out his list and begins crossing off the entire section dedicated to the orphanage.

The next item on the list is Hogwarts itself, but Albus will have all the time in the world to search Hogwarts during the school year. The summer is when he’s free to travel around a bit more so he skips Hogwarts for the moment.

Perhaps Little Hangleton? Albus is reasonably sure that Voldemort is somehow related to Morfin Gaunt, who is currently rotting in Azkaban for the murders of an entire family—the Riddle family, no less. In fact, one of the members had been named Tom Riddle and Morfin’s father was named Marvolo.

Incidentally, Marvolo Gaunt had also been carted off to Azkaban for heinous crimes against muggles.

What a charming family this is.

With this in mind, Albus decides to call it a day—he’s had enough revelations for one afternoon.

“I want to go to the Quidditch World Cup,” Harry announces at his bi-weekly dinner at Hogwarts.

Albus, who had been trying to enjoy his (spiked) orange juice, freezes. “What?” he demands.

Severus, who had also been trying to enjoy his drink (straight up wine because he refuses to keep up appearances like Albus), hisses, “Absolutely not!”

Harry scowls. “Listen, I asked Sirius, and he said to ask Remus, and he said to ask you two. Here’s the thing, though—I’m not asking. I am going to the World Cup. Ron and his family invited me. I have been cooped up in a house with a bunch of idiotic adults and petty house-elves and half-animate portraits and I refuse to spend my entire summer like this. I have nearly made it two months here and I have not complained once. I am going to the World Cup.”

“Have you forgotten that you’re literally on the hit list of a genocidal dark lord?” Severus demands. “Albus, say something!”

“That sounds like a very bad idea,” Albus agrees.

Harry glares at him. “It’s the World Cup! The Minister for Magic will be there! And several other state sovereigns! You’ve been messing around with your weird ancient magic all summer and you still haven’t succeeded—I bet that stadium will be better-protected than Grimmauld Place!”

Severus says, “That ‘weird ancient magic’ is not the only protection meant for Grimmauld Place! Albus has layered several other wards, more powerful than you could possibly imagine!”

“Are you going to the World Cup?” demands Harry, gaze zeroing in on him.

“N-No!” sputters Severus. “And that’s beside the point, Potter!”

“I bet the only reason you’re not going is because you can’t afford tickets,” Harry says offhandedly. “You’re just as much of a Quidditch fiend as I am and everyone knows it. I see the look in your eyes during games. You’re not half as subtle as you think you are.”

“I literally deceived the Dark Lord!”

“Small potatoes.”

“This is insane,” Severus says to Albus. He turns back to Harry. “You’re insane.”

“Like you’re any better. Come on—I bet Dumbledore got invited. He could chaperone me.”

“I have better things to be doing than chaperoning a child at a Quidditch match,” says Albus.

Harry raises an eyebrow, waiting. Albus stares him back down. Nothing is said between them for a good while. Finally, Albus says, “All right, I don’t have other plans—but I could!”

“Not if we solidify this one. Come on, we’ll have a great time! You can make nice with the Minister.”

“I hate the Minister.”

“I know! It’ll be good fun!”

Albus does not want to go to the World Cup. In fact, he does not much like Quidditch at all, an opinion he keeps to himself because every time he voices it someone stares at him as if he’d murdered a small child. Severus, meanwhile, is clenching his fork tightly in his hand, jaw tense.

Severus says, “Albus, are you really allowing this?”

“I think I am,” says Albus, a bit dazed.

Severus’s knuckles go white. “Then you have tickets to the World Cup?”

“Of course. Cornelius Fudge sent them to me for free.”

Severus is silent for several beats. Then, meekly, “Do you happen to have an extra?”

Oh.

Oh.

“I’ll mail it to you at the soonest opportunity.”

For the first time in forever, something close to joy flits over Severus’s face. It’s quite nice. Perhaps Albus should be kinder to him.

…Nah.

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—

There are Death Eaters marching on the campgrounds around the stadium. Luckily Severus left the moment the final was over, unwilling to play nice with various politicians or the assorted Weasleys, so he’s not subjected to the supremely awkward position of standing against his apparent-allies.

Albus, meanwhile, storms out of his meeting with Terracotta Boot and glares down at the terrorists setting fire to tents.

The terrorists notice. There are a few moments of silence before they all apparate away.

Ah, the luxuries of being widely feared.

“I knew this would happen!” Severus rages. “I knew it! But would you listen to me? No! You just let Potter march to his doom!”

“It was hardly his doom,” Albus says dryly. “There was only a thousand galleons worth of property damage.”

“And fear-mongering! They could have been planning to do anything until you showed up!”

“But I did show up,” Albus reminds him.

Severus scowls fiercely. “You’re completely incompetent! I’ll keep Potter safe myself if I have to!”

“Have fun with that,” Albus says.

Cornelius Fudge sends him a letter. Albus nearly burns it on sight but decides to play nice since the man had given him free tickets to a highly sought-after event. He opens it.

After he finishes reading it, he immediately sets it on fire.

This is the kind of thing you have to tell the Headmaster of Hogwarts before negotiating to enter a school into a death tournament under an irrevocable contract—

Albus pays a visit to Little Hangleton four days before the school year starts. He decides to approach the Riddle house first and he asks a local for directions. The local in question is a strapping young man at the local pub.

The young man—John Johnson, poor boy—says, “Oh, that place.”

Albus asks, “What’s wrong with it? Any strange occurrences?”

John Johnson says, “Well, the entire Riddle family got murdered there, so I’d say so.”

Right. Fair enough. “Anything else?”

“Well, no one goes around there much other than the rowdy neighborhood children—you know how they are. They usually get chased off by the groundskeeper…or used to get chased off, anyway. Poor man died a week or two ago…of natural causes, as far as anyone can tell. Not a single health issue, it’s like he was alive one moment and dead the next. I suppose that’s what it’s always like, though.”

That’s concerning. Albus says, “Could you point me in the direction of this place? I’m a writer, you see, and I enjoy such intrigues as this.”

And John Johnson says, “Sure, but don’t go inside—the building is abandoned but still owned by some rich folks for tax reasons.”

Hm.

Albus comes upon the Riddle house and immediately recognizes the anti-muggle wards. The Riddles were a thoroughly muggle family, though, so the wards are very suspect. Albus trudges onward, now a bit more weary. His wand is clutched tight in his hand.

The front door is locked. No number of Alohamoras will make it open. When he lets his senses feel out the house, he feels someone inside. Ah, so it’s inhabited. Albus gets the hell out of dodge, knowing there will be no Horcrux discovery when someone is guarding it.

Scowling, Albus heads back to the pub. John Johnson is still there. Albus says, “Do you know where the Gaunt house is?”

John Johnson blinks. “Gaunt? As in the man who killed the Riddles? Sure I do. It’s just I wouldn’t call it a ‘house’ so much as a ‘hovel’. Very off-putting, it is. Literally falling apart. I think the murderer’s father died there a while ago…over fifty years, at least. No one’s lived there since.” And then he dutifully gives directions.

The Gaunt hovel is not protected by wards and is, blissfully, unoccupied. It takes him a while to dig through the debris but eventually he comes across something that makes his breath stutter.

It’s a ring. It has a mark on it. The mark is of the fucking Deathly Hallows.

For Albus, who had always associated the mark with Gellert Grindelwald, it’s only natural to assume that it’s the Horcrux. He grasps it delicately and holds it up, inspecting it. The closer he gets, the more sure he is that the gem is, in fact, the Resurrection Stone.

Albus wonders why the fuck Voldemort just left the Resurrection Stone lying around his mother’s old house. Surely he knows of its importance…right?

Either way, Albus stares at it in awe.

Then, the ring says, Hello.

Albus, who does not fuck around with talking magical objects, immediately shoves it into his pocket and escapes that awful town. Finally—success.

“It’s cursed,” Severus says heavily.

“Even I could have told you that,” Sirius grumbles. “The thing reeks of dark magic. Did you touch it? You touched it. You definitely shouldn’t have done that. It should be fine, though—our cabinet is more cursed than this thing.” He proceeds to nearly reach out and touch it, only for Severus to swat his hand away.

Severus says to Albus, “Why did this one have to stay awake? At least Lupin is tolerable and Potter seems to like Black enough to be read a bedtime story by him.”

Albus responds, “It had to be Remus because Sirius is, in Harry’s own words, ‘a little bitch’ and gives in too easily to all of Harry’s demands. If he were getting Harry to sleep, the boy would have already charmed his way out of bedtime and would be listening in from the stairway.”

Sirius grumbles but doesn’t disagree.

Severus, for his part, nearly smiles at the “little bitch” comment. Perhaps Severus and Harry will finally bond over the one thing they have in common—relentlessly making jokes at Sirius Black’s expense. Albus must say, he enjoys it quite a bit.

Sirius ignores them and continues, “I must say, it definitely isn’t talking to me, though. What about you, Snivelly?”

Severus aims a hex in his direction and Sirius yelps. He doesn’t take his eyes off of Albus as he says, “I do not hear it speaking, either.”

“Well,” says Albus, “that’s concerning.”

It’s nothing, says the ring to Albus.

“Shut up,” says Albus to the ring.

Severus and Sirius exchange a mildly concerned look. Severus says, “Albus, I understand that you’ve been under a considerable amount of stress for a while now…”

“I’m fine,” insists Albus.

The ring says, No, really, you do seem very tense. Perhaps some chamomile?

“Absolutely not!”

“Ookay,” says Sirius, using a handkerchief to swipe the ring up, “I am taking this into custody for the time being. Feel free to come back to it once you’re ready to destroy it.”

No! screeches the ring. Please! I have a wife and children!

“You’re a ring, you can’t have a wife or children!”

I would be dearly missed if I was gone!

“I’m sure you would be but that is not my problem.”

Just then, there’s a pitter-patter of footsteps walking down the stairway. Harry says, “Remus finally fell asleep. I guess even he thinks a muggle textbook on sediments is boring. Anyway, why are we threatening someone with a wife and children?”

Oh fuck, says the ring, there’s another one! Where do you all keep coming from?

Harry stares. “That,” he says faintly, “is a talking ring.”

Albus slouches into his seat. “Oh thank Merlin you hear it, too.”

I don’t want to die!

“Do shut up.”

It’s not until two days before the school year starts that Severus corners him. Harry has just left his bi-weekly Hogwarts lunch and Albus is reasonably sure that he can destroy the Horcrux with some basilisk venom—which shouldn’t be too hard to access considering there is currently a basilisk corpse in Hogwarts and Albus has a Parselmouth on hand—but his ruminations are rudely interrupted by Severus asking, “So, who’s the new Defense professor?”

Albus stares. “What?”

“The Defense professor,” Severus says slowly. “I’m assuming that you have one lined up since you haven’t even held interviews this year.”

Albus stares at him in horror. Severus says, “You do have a Defense professor lined up, right?”

“Oh no,” whispers Albus.

Why is this his life?

After once again fighting off Severus’s attempts to become the Defense professor (over Albus’s dead body!), Albus does the only thing he can think of: he begins to ask literally everyone he knows who would qualify. Remus turns him down soundly and all but kicks him out of Grimmauld Place—which is rude, by the way—and none of the other previous professors are the kind of people Albus wants back in his school.

When he exhausts the list of people with masteries in Defense, he goes to the next best thing: Aurors, professional Dark Arts fighters.

Kingsley Shacklebolt laughs in his face. Nymphadora Tonks rolls her eyes and says she’s not stepping a single foot back into Hogwarts unless she has to. Gawain Robards just gives him a haggard, exhausted look before downing an entire cup of coffee in a single gulp. That last one sufficiently intimidates him away from contacting any other active Aurors.

And then he finds Alastor Moody. Alastor is limping along Diagon Alley, eyes flitting around wildly, when Albus grasps his arm and drags him into the nearest cafe. “Alastor!” he says brightly. “How wonderful to see you again!”

Alastor just stares at him.

Albus, undeterred, continues, “I was just wondering—how would you like to be the Defense professor at Hogwarts this year? Think about it: guaranteed wage stability and year-long board. An opportunity to shape the youth. Hogwarts meals for free. It’s quite a deal, you know.”

Alastor says, “I am going to end the year half-dead.”

Albus winces. “If there’s anyone I’m sure won’t end up half-dead, it’s you,” he offers.

Alastor snorts. “Flattery will get you nowhere. Anyway, isn’t it a bit late to still be searching for a professor?”

“It slipped my mind.”

Alastor considers him, then his gaze goes distant. He says, “Fine.”

Albus perks up. “Really?”

“I’m a man of my word. Besides, at least I’ll be able to instill something of use in the next generation before I die in agony.”

“The last professor didn’t die in agony,” Albus points out.

“And, correct me if I’m wrong, the one from two years ago did. And the one from last year is a permanent resident of St. Mungos.”

Albus sighs. “Let me just get you the contract.”

“Yes, you do that.”

Remus stares at the ring. The ring stares back at him. Remus says to Albus, “Get that thing out of my house.”

“Now, Remus—”

“I can smell the death and decay on it. Either get it out of my house or ward it so thoroughly that a werewolf won’t be able to pick up its scent.” And then he leaves the room.

Albus glares down at the right. “You couldn’t stop smelling for a single moment?”

It’s not like I can use deodorant or something, the ring responds petulantly.

Albus sighs and slips it into his coat pocket.

“Do you have all your books?” asks Severus.

“Of course he has his books,” says Sirius. “What, you think we’d send him unprepared?”

“Sirius, Severus…” Remus says warningly. Too late—Sirius and Severus are already frothing with rage and yelling insults across the entryway. Remus sighs and stares off into the middle distance.

Harry, meanwhile, is ignoring all this and instead going through his materials list, doing one last check of all his supplies, just as he had done yesterday. “You know,” he tells Albus while Sirius and Severus engage in a fist-fight and Remus leaves the room altogether, “the Defense textbook this year seems a bit…interesting.”

“I admit it’s more intense than usual,” says Albus, “but the Defense professor is also more intense than usual. It’s more his style.”

“Well, as long as we’re learning something useful, I guess,” says Harry. He looks back over at the other adults in the room. “Where’d Remus go? I need someone to take me to King’s Cross.”

“I could,” offers Albus.

Harry scoffs. “I would not trust you within touching distance of me.” He pauses. “Please take two steps back.”

Albus obediently does so and is rewarded with a cheeky grin. What a brat.

Alastor is late. The other professors keep shooting looks to the empty seat at the High Table and then looking questioningly at Albus. Severus just looks accusing—he probably still thinks that Albus hasn’t hired a new Defense professor. Albus would defend himself but the Great Hall is filled with students and he refuses to show weakness in front of literal teenagers.

When the Sorting is over, he rises to a stand and makes his announcements, ready to feel the vicious glares of everyone in the room.

First: there will be no Quidditch. Immediate screeching. Fuck them. The emotion throws off the weather charm and Alastor finally arrives in time to spell it back to normal. Brilliant.

Second: the new Defense professor is Alastor Moody, former Auror, current paranoid bastard. No one seems to know what to make of him except Severus, who had been on the wrong side of his wand during the end of the war and thus glares fiercely at Albus’s back. Fuck him—Albus did the best he could.

Third: “It is my very great pleasure”—lies lies lies—“to inform you that the Triwizard Tournament will be taking place at Hogwarts this year.” Only because Albus could not figure out how to get it moved without accidentally leveling the school with the magical repercussions.

The students burst into whispers. The professors all stare at him accusingly. Albus keeps smiling.

Everything is fine.

Albus squints at the Goblet. He looks at Cornelius. “And you’re absolutely sure that no underage children can put their names in this? That no one of age can place an underage child’s name in it? Or that no underage child can use an aging potion to get their way?”

“Of course,” says Cornelius imperiously. “And besides, the Goblet chooses the most fit candidate for the Tournament, so there’s no reason an underage wizard should be picked at all.”

Albus says, “I’m sure you’d understand if I asked to double-check—”

“It’s been checked over by the very best charms experts in Wizarding Britain,” sniffs Cornelius.

Albus debates whether or not to push on it. The Goblet glows menacingly, reminding him once again that the continued structural safety of his school is at the mercy of the magical contract associated with it. He eventually says, “Of course, Cornelius. My apologies.”

If Cornelius is wrong then Albus will personally track him down and murder him. He makes sure his stare communicates that. From the way Cornelius pales, it does.

Wonderful.

“He turned a student into a ferret!” Minerva screeches.

Severus yells, “Either you fire him or I tell Lucius Malfoy. Do you want Lucius Malfoy to sue you? Because he will and he will sue you into the ground.”

Albus, face in his hands, says, “I literally have no other applicants for the position—other than Severus, who will not be getting it. His contract states that I cannot fire him unless he does something heinously illegal. Oddly enough, non consensual human transfiguration is not even mildly illegal. I have no grounds to fire him on.” He wants to, though. He really, really wants to.

Severus says, “Then Lucius will hear about this!”

Thank fuck—maybe Lucius Malfoy can force his hand. That counts as extenuating circumstances enough to get Alastor fired.

This was such an awful idea—maybe he should have gone back and begged Kingsley. Kingsley wouldn’t do this to him.

“He’s not pressing charges,” Severus says blankly.

Albus pauses, glancing upward. “What?”

“Lucius Malfoy isn’t pressing charges against the man who transfigured his son into a ferret.”

“Why?” Albus asks in horror.

“I don’t know,” Severus moans. “He wouldn’t explain himself! He looked mad about it but said he wouldn’t do a thing!”

“If he doesn’t press charges then I can’t fire Alastor!” Albus comes to a stand and begins pacing the room. “We need to think of something. Lucius Malfoy is the only one with enough power to invoke the extenuating circumstances clause of the teaching contract.”

“Why can’t you just throw him out? Is adhering to the contract necessary?”

“The magical contract that I created specifically to ensure we would have a Defense professor for the longest amount of time possible?” Albus demands. “Yes, we must adhere to it if we want functioning organs!”

“You’re insane!” Severus accuses. “This is insane!”

Albus ignores him. He needs to figure out how to back Lucius into a corner.

Harry barges into his office with a scowl. “Reese’s Pieces,” he says. “Muggle brand. They’re not even produced in the UK. I was standing out there guessing candies like an idiot for half an hour. Reese’s Pieces!”

“I thought you’d give up,” Albus offers by way of explanation.

“I don’t give up on things,” Harry sniffs. He pauses. Sniffs again. “Are you drinking brandy on a school day?”

“You know, I’m concerned by the fact that you’re familiar enough with it to know it by smell.”

Harry rolls his eyes. “You’re an awful Headmaster.”

“Thanks, I try. Now, why are you here?”

Harry glares at him before walking over and dropping into the seat across from him. “Something’s wrong with Malfoy,” he explains.

“Well, he did get turned into a ferret and I suspect that was traumatizing.”

“No, no, there was something wrong with him even before that. He’s been acting shifty ever since the beginning of the year. He hated Professor Moody even before the ferret incident. Something’s off.”

Albus sighs. “Harry, while I trust you, there is also the matter that this is highly subjective. And even if his behavior has changed, it’s not like I can do anything about it. None of it is necessarily alarming.”

“All right then,” Harry says lightly. “I’ll come back every now and then to give you updates, though. When everything falls apart and Malfoy ends up either evil or dead, I’ll say I told you so.”

“You seem very sure about this.”

“I’m very sure about everything I do. I don’t make decisions lightly.”

What a light-hearted young man.

“Anyway,” says Harry, “second order of business—what is going on with Professor Moody?”

Albus mutters, “What isn’t going on with him…”

“No, no—you don’t get to say that when you signed off on him demonstrating the Unforgivables to a class of children.”

Albus pauses. Stares. “What?”

So. Alastor Moody has been using Unforgivables on spiders and terrorizing the children of war veterans. He got Albus’s permission because Albus had been lulled into a sense of security by Remus last year and ever since has not been properly reading through the lesson plans before signing off on them.

Astoundingly enough, Unforgivables are forgivable as long as you don’t use them on humans. In other words: Albus still can’t fire him.

What the absolute fuck—

The ring is burning a hole in his robe pocket—a metaphorical one, sure, but a hole nonetheless. Sirius had campaigned that he keep it safe, disturbed by the knowledge that it’s talking to both Albus and Harry, and even Severus—in a rare show of comradery with the other man—agreed. Remus staunchly refused to allow it to remain in Grimmauld Place longer than necessary, however, claiming that he could simply tell it did not belong on this plane of existence at all.

In the end, it was Harry who made the decision of who it went to. “I mean,” said Harry, “what if it starts talking to someone at Grimmauld Place? Dumbledore is a super powerful wizard and I am not an idiot. If one of you got caught up with it, though, we’d all be screwed.”

And so, Albus acquired the ring. It whispers to him sometimes, promising him power—the power to save others, the power to fix the world. Once, Albus nearly slipped it onto his finger, entranced.

Then, the voice in his head—which sounds remarkably like Aberforth—screeched, “Don’t you dare, you fucking moron!”

So, Albus’s finger remains ringless and everyone is all the better for it.

He takes Harry down to the Chamber of Secrets, eventually. It’s very creepy and, quite frankly, cringe-inducing—honestly, Salazar Slytherin had no eye for decor whatsoever—but Harry barges through the space without a care in the world. Fair enough.

The basilisk’s corpse is…not looking great. Since it’s so large, its body takes longer to decay, so the entire chamber reeks of rotting flesh. Its bones are practically pristine compared to the rest of the creature and so Albus harvests several basilisk fangs with minimal hassle.

“I can help,” Harry offers.

Albus scoffs. “I am not letting you touch a basilisk fang.”

“But I’ve done it before! It was fine!”

“The basilisk bit you and the only reason you survived is because Fawkes cried on you!”

Harry rolls his eyes but gives in. Albus ends up having to spell a few hundred balloons to fly them out of the damn Chamber but, all in all, it was a rather successful trip.

When they arrive back at his office, though, both Albus and Harry are apprehensive to actually go through with the deed. The sound of the ring begging for mercy and tearfully exclaiming that it doesn’t want to die is…scarring.

“Let’s try it later,” Harry says haltingly. “Like…on a long weekend or something. In case something goes wrong and we need to recuperate.”

“Right,” replies Albus, relieved to have an excuse to put it off. “Let’s do that.”

Thank god—he really doesn’t want to hear about how much the ring’s wife and children will miss it again.

Cornelius is not attending the unveiling of the Goblet of Fire because he is a little bitch. That’s fine—Albus can find him in whatever corner he’s run off to hide in.

It’s Halloween. Albus has no idea who decided that the names will be announced on Halloween but he already knows that shit is going to go sideways. It starts simple enough—Viktor Krum gets chosen for Durmstrang. Large, burly, man—professional Quidditch player. He’ll do well. Then there’s Fleur Delacour from Beauxbatons—small but well-built, undeniably athletic. She’ll go far. From Hogwarts, Cedric Diggory—agile, intelligent, charming. The charisma of a champion, if Albus does say so himself.

This is fine. He almost thinks that everything is going all right until the Goblet of Fire flares for a fourth time which should be physically impossible—

He snatches the piece of paper. Stares at the words. He only vaguely hears his voice as he announces, “Harry Potter.” His head snaps up. “Harry Potter!”

Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck—

Olympe Maxime and Igor Karkaroff have the audacity to claim that Albus is attempting to cheat. In a death tournament. That he didn’t want to participate in in the first place.

“How dare you,” seethes Albus, composure cracking.

Olympe, absolute wretch that she is, declares, “I will not allow this injustice to—”

Albus cuts her off, not interested in whatever she has to say. He turns to Harry and demands, “Did you put your name in the Goblet of Fire?”

“No!” yells Harry.

“And you didn’t get someone else to do it?”

“No!”

“And you—”

“If I said I didn’t do it then I didn’t do it!” Harry snarls.

Albus deflates and puts his arms up placatingly. “My apologies,” Albus says. “It’s simply that putting your name in the Goblet of Fire while underage is exactly the kind of thing I would do at your age.”

“I’m nothing like you!”

“Yes, yes, I know—you haven’t even deposed your first Minister yet.” He then thinks of Cornelius, who will soon be very deposed and very dead. “We’ll get to the bottom of this, anyway.”

“It could be a murder attempt,” offers Alastor.

Albus shoots Alastor a glare. His paranoia is not appreciated and, anyway, Alastor casting-Avadas-in-Hogwarts Moody does not get to talk about murder attempts. He is promptly ignored.

Bartemius Crouch Sr. steps in to make his—quite frankly useless—opinion known. He says, “We must follow the rules, and the rules state clearly that those people whose names come out of the Goblet of Fire are bound to compete in the tournament.”

“Okay, but how tight are those rules?” asks Harry. “Like…are there no loopholes whatsoever?”

“Of course not! You must compete in the tournament—that’s just how it is!”

“No,” says Albus. “No…the First Task will not happen for a while yet. I’ll think of something.” He looks at Harry fiercely. “We’ll figure something out.”

“You better,” Harry threatens, looking generally incensed at this entire situation.

Albus takes a deep breath. “Now, either the Goblet was flawed or tampered with. If it was flawed, that’s one thing…but if it was tampered with and the person who tampered with it is in this room…” He glares at the room at large. “If that person is here, I want you to know that your petty drama nearly blew up the school. You’re luckier than you could ever hope to appreciate…we all are. It’s a miracle anyone in the castle is still alive. Fuck you.”

He promptly grabs Harry’s arm and drags him out of the room.

He needs to fix this, and he needs to fix this now.

Turns out, the contract is very immune to loopholes.

Albus, Harry, and Remus (Harry’s sole pseudo-father-figure who can sit still for long enough to read through legal contracts) are all collapsed at a table that Albus has erected in his office. Remus has his head in his hands. Harry is staring at the ceiling. Albus is clutching a copy of the contract to his chest.

He says, “Harry…”

“Yes?” murmurs Harry.

“How attached are you to your lungs?”

“Very!”

“What about your brain stem?”

“I can’t live without it!”

“Perhaps your liver?”

“Dumbledore!”

Albus sighs. “Fine,” he murmurs. “I can’t think of anything else.”

“What if we got a lawyer?” asks Harry. “Wizards have lawyers, right?”

Albus frowns. “Harry, I am a lawyer. I’ve been awarded the greatest defense and greatest prosecutor awards by the Ministry every year for the last two decades.” Except for 1977, when Annalise Bubbles received both before promptly fucking off to the United States. Good riddance.

Harry squints at him. “Hold on—you’re a Headmaster, a lawyer, a magical researcher, an expert duellist, and head of the Wizengamot and ICW.” He then very conspicuously examines Albus’s robes. He’s very proud of today’s selection—bright pink, to reflect how serious the occasion is. Harry’s eyes widen. “Oh my god,” he whispers, “you’re Barbie.”

“Who is Barbie?” asks Albus, bewildered.

“She wears pink and has like a hundred different jobs,” Harry explains.

“Oh,” says Albus. “Good for her.”

“Please shut up,” Remus moans, speaking his first words in a solid hour.

Harry, who actually listens to Remus for reasons Albus does not comprehend, obediently quiets down. Remus sighs and says, “I’m sorry, that was harsh. But is there really nothing we can do?” He sounds absolutely heartbroken, looking straight at Harry with undisclosed sorrow.

Albus says, “I’ve tried. I’ll keep trying. For now, though…all we can do is go with the flow.”

Perhaps he can devise a spell to regenerate lost organs…

“Harry wrote,” Sirius says dangerously.

Albus stares at the man. “How did you get into my office?”

“I Flooed.”

“The Floo is warded.”

Sirius scoffs. Albus is suddenly reminded that, as idiotic as the man acts, Sirius Black is quite possibly one of the most brilliant students to ever grace the halls of Hogwarts. Albus groans and says, “All right, fine—you’ve made your point. Now why are you here?”

“Harry wrote,” Sirius repeats, “and he had some interesting things to say.”

Oh dear. “Such as?”

“Well, he talked about Alastor Moody’s little classes.”

Hm—in between all the drama of the Triwizard Tournament, Albus had completely forgotten about the man. He needs to get back on that. On that note: “I currently do not have the means to fire him.”

“What do you mean, you don’t have the means?”

“The contract is…very thorough. As he has yet to do anything illegal, we’re stuck with him.” And even if he does fire him, Albus doesn’t exactly have a replacement lined up.

“Not illegal?” demands Sirius. “You call casting the Imperius on students not illegal?”

“He’s been what?”

“The Imperius curse! On students! On Harry! How do you not know this?”

Albus has been locked up in his office desperately trying to figure out how to create human organs that can safely be placed into Harry’s body without causing massive bodily harm. Turns out, it’s very hard—Transfiguration is out of the question because the organ would eventually turn back into its original form, and no one has yet discovered how to truly create life with magic. Albus is getting thwarted at every turn and it’s so fucking infuriating—

Imperius. On students. On Harry. What the fuck is going on?

“He wasn’t like this before,” Albus moans, putting his face in his hands. “Sure, he was paranoid, but he was reasonable! He seemed like such a nice man when I offered the position.”

Sirius says, “I have to admit, I was confused, too. Moody never really struck me as the type to mess around with Unforgivables.”

“On the bright side,” Albus says dully, “this might be enough to allow me to fire him…” He pauses. “Say, how would you like to take over the Defense Against the Darks Arts post?”

Sirius snorts. “Yeah, no. That’s a you problem, I’m afraid.”

Ugh.

“So, yeah, I’m having a bit of a shit time,” Harry says, finishing his painfully detailed account of everything that has gone wrong in his life.

“I just asked how your day was going,” Albus mutters.

“It’s shit,” Harry offers.

“I figured. Anything else you want to update me on?” Albus asks sarcastically.

“Yes, actually—you know the badges? The Potter Stinks ones?”

“The what?”

“Oh, um, here.” Harry begins to rummage through his pockets, muttering wildly to himself, before yelling ‘A-ha!’ and presenting a badge to Albus. “This thing! It usually says something about supporting Cedric Diggory or—more regularly, as far as I can tell—about how I stink, but whenever I try to disable them, they just keep making worse and worse insults. I’d be offended but it’s kind of brilliant. Do you know how to enchant one of these?”

Albus, who is just trying to fill out the paperwork to fire Alastor in peace, says, “I feel like this question would be more suited for Professor Flitwick.”

“Yes, well, I did go to him initially but he just stared at me so sadly and kept apologizing and vowing to figure out who did it, which is all well and good but not what I asked for. Then I went to Hermione and she seemed very sad at first but then she actually started looking into it and…well, she’s barricaded herself in the library and hasn’t come out yet. I figured my next best option would be you.”

“Give it here,” says Albus.

Harry hands the badge over and Albus begins to examine the charms on it. They’re pretty clever, actually—far from unbreakable but certainly enough to have even a Fifth Year scratching their heads. Of course Hermione is spending so long on it.

Albus explains all of this, and then explains the enchantments. Harry listens in rapt attention as Albus finishes, “Very complex, indeed. Though I don’t think I’d ever befriend the individual that made these, I would love to have a purely intellectual conversation…perhaps provide a bit of extra material. This kind of creativity must be cultivated, you see.”

“Well,” says Harry dryly, “whoever they are, they sure seem to be cultivating it, all right.”

It’s right at that moment that Severus walks into the office. He says, “Albus, Lucius is—oh, are those Draco’s badges?”

“Draco’s badges?” Albus asks.

“Yes,” says Severus. “Quite clever and witty, if you ask me. He stayed up all night making them, if I remember correctly.”

“Of course it’s Malfoy,” Harry mutters. “It’s always Malfoy—or Voldemort, I guess, but I don’t think this is his style…”

Albus says, “Don’t you think this is a bit mean-spirited, Severus?”

Severus snorts. “Please, it’s hilarious. Not Draco’s fault that Potter can’t take a joke.”

“Wow,” says Harry, displaying a badge that says ‘RIP HARRY POTTER, 1980–1994’, “so funny.”

“I know, right?” says Severus, delighted.

Harry sighs and puts the badge back down.

Albus shakes his head. “This is beside the point. Severus, you were saying something about Lucius?”

Severus nods. “Yes. He’s outside.”

Albus pauses. “What do you mean?”

“He’s waiting outside your office. Urgently needs to speak with you, from what I understand. Flooed right into my private chambers screaming bloody murder—something about babies and the Dark Lord and Barty Crouch?”

Albus says, “Well, this sounds important.”

Lucius Malfoy walks into his office looking haggard and weary and in desperate need of some coffee. He sits across from Albus heavily, staring into the middle distance. Albus waits for him to say something. Lucius does not, seemingly too lost in thought. Albus clears his throat. Lucius startles, looking very similar to a frightened mouse. “Oh,” he says.

“Oh,” says Albus, mocking.

Lucius doesn’t even pick up on it. Instead, he runs his hand through his hair and says, “You can’t fire Alastor Moody.”

Albus raises an eyebrow. “Why not?” There is also the question of how Lucius managed to find out about Albus’s plans but that’s a question for another time.

Lucius, for his part, insists, “You can’t.”

Albus gestures to the paperwork in front of him. “I assure you, I can.”

“You signed off on it,” says Lucius. “The—the Imperius was in the lesson plans. You signed off on the lesson plans. The Headmaster of Hogwarts is afforded a certain amount of leeway as far as the law is concerned. As long as Alastor Moody has solely been performing the Imperius during class time for educational purposes, you have no grounds to fire him.”

Albus stares. “That can’t possibly be true,” he says. “The Imperius is an Unforgivable.”

“This is Hogwarts,” is all Lucius says in response.

Albus frowns at him. “I will be double-checking this.”

“By all means,” says Lucius. His voice sounds painfully hoarse.

Against his better judgment, Albus asks, “Are you all right, Mr. Malfoy?”

“Perfectly all right!” Lucius declares. “Absolutely A-okay!”

“That’s a muggle phrase.”

“Oh,” says Lucius. He stares down at his hands. “Oh no.”

“Mr. Malfoy…”

“I must be taking my leave, Headmaster.”

Albus leans closer. “Now, now, Mr. Malfoy—our dear Severus mentioned something about babies and the Dark Lord and Barty Crouch?”

Lucius’s gaze goes far away again. Then his eyes sharpen, a sudden determination filling them. “Barty Crouch,” he says slowly, “has always been a man with a large personality.” He turns away from Albus then, drawling, “Right, Severus?”

Severus, who finally gives up the pretense that he is not eavesdropping from the other room, appears in the doorway and says, “I wouldn’t know—my singular encounter with him was decidedly unpleasant. Though I suppose that any politician that has managed to become the head of his department must be in possession of a certain amount of personality.”

Lucius stares at Severus, silent. As the seconds tick by, the silence becomes awkward and Severus becomes visibly uncomfortable, shifting his weight on his feet. Lucius finally declares, “Well, I must be off—places to be, people to please, you know how it is.” And then he all but bolts out of the room.

Hmm.

“That was odd,” says Albus.

Severus, still staring in the vague direction Lucius had run off, says, “He looked like he was about to keel over.”

“Perhaps I should have offered him a lemon sherbet…”

Turns out, Lucius was right about the legality of using the Imperius on students.

Albus manages to consume an entire bottle of brandy and regrets nothing.

Cornelius sends Albus a secure message, reminding him to have all the champions’ wands checked. Albus, with a snarl on his face, does his best to track down wherever that son of a bitch is hiding. Unfortunately, Cornelius Fudge is a rich man and Albus cannot find him—he also has a school to run, so he can’t dedicate much more time to the ordeal.

Soon, Albus promises to himself. The minute the school year is over, Cornelius Fudge is a dead man.

The Prophet asks to interview the Champions. She has been approved. Albus also receives this note from Cornelius Fudge. He amends his timeline a bit.

The minute Christmas Holiday starts, Cornelius Fudge is a dead man.

“Dragons,” screeches Harry. “Why dragons? Do you want us to die?”

“I tried to campaign for Hippogriffs but the others thought it would be boring,” says Albus glumly.

“I’ll show them boring!” says Harry. “I’ll forfeit at the beginning of my match!”

Albus says, “No, no, the magic would notice, and then losing a kidney would be the least of your problems.”

Harry groans, then asks, “Have you not figured anything out yet? The First Task is in two weeks!”

“I’m trying!” says Albus. “I’ve been in contact with St. Mungos and several master charms experts! Apparently creating a functioning long-term organ is much harder than I thought it would be. Three people laughed in my face and told me it’s impossible. I won’t stop trying but it will take a while.”

Harry groans.

Apparently, Harry tells Cedric Diggory what the First Task will be. Albus thinks that is very kind of him. Then Harry says that Alastor tried to drag him to a secluded corner and congratulate him—Harry refused, of course. Albus is just a tiny bit miffed. If Alastor had actually succeeded in doing something legally questionable, after all, Albus could fire him.

But no, the man is toeing the line but still very firmly on the legal side of it. Bastard.

The day before the task, Harry barges into Albus’s office and declares, “Let’s destroy the Horcrux!”

Albus pauses. “Why now?” he asks cautiously.

“If I get injured during this then they can’t possibly make me participate in the Tournament tomorrow,” explains Harry. “That would be rather rude of them, I think. Is there a policy for these kinds of things?”

“Yes. The task would be postponed until you recovered.”

“Which would give you more time to figure out how to get me out of it,” Harry agrees. “It’s brilliant, really.”

Albus frowns. “There’s no reason to believe that you would get injured, though.”

“Leave that to me,” Harry says darkly.

Albus considers him, then slowly nods. Some light maiming never hurt anyone, after all, and it would be better in the long run. “I reserve the right to save you if things get too awful, though.”

“Of course.”

And just like that, the two of them are standing in front of the ring, which is sitting on a desk. Please! the ring cries. Please, I have a family!

“You’re a ring,” says Harry.

Just because I’m not made of carbon doesn’t mean I’m incapable of love!

“I never said you were incapable of love, just that you can’t possibly have a family.”

Of course I can have a family! You don’t need to be a human to get married and adoption exists! The ring continues wailing.

Harry stares. Albus stares. Harry says, “I remember why we didn’t want to do this in the first place. Those cries are…very realistic.” He shudders.

Albus says, “We just need to get through its defenses. I can do it if you want…”

“No,” says Harry. “If I do it myself then I’ll be more likely to get injured.” He raises the basilisk fang. It’s dull in his hands, rotting now that it’s been severed from the corpse. If they don’t manage to find the other Horcruxes soon, they will need to find another reliable method to get rid of them.

The ring goes eerily silent. Then, as Harry’s hand begins to descend, it jumps off the desk and onto the floor.

Harry stares. Tries again. This time the ring jumps up and smacks him in the face.

“Okay,” says Harry, “you’re on!”

The third time goes much worse than the other two, mainly because the ring sends a wave of putrid black magic Harry’s way, which he ducks away from on instinct. “Fuck!”

“No cussing!”

“I nearly died! Again!” Harry screams back. He leaps behind Albus’s desk to take cover but the ring leaps in his direction too, at which point Albus attempts to make a grab for the thing. Its awful voice laughs as it suddenly swerves out of the way. This is when Severus enters the room.

Severus takes one look at the horrified Albus, the terrified Harry, and the flying ring before bursting into action. The ring sends a wave of magic at Harry again but Harry escapes and the black decay begins going toward Albus’s bookcase…the one the Sorting Hat is currently resting on. If he allows a priceless artifact created by Godric Gryffindor to be destroyed, Minerva will skin him alive. Severus snatches it up before anything too bad can happen.

The Hat blearily asks, “What’s going on?”

“Albus has fucked up yet again!” Severus yells.

Harry screeches in kind. Albus moves to grab the boy and drag him to safety but he’s too slow. He tries to cast a spell but for some ungodly reason, his wand is not responding to him. He watches as the ring launches one final attack at Harry, too close for Harry to dodge…

And then Severus is there, standing between Harry and the ring, and there’s a blinding glint of metal before the ring has fallen to the floor, the band broken to pieces. The phantom of Voldemort rises from it, screaming in agony, before vanishing into oblivion.

There is a moment of silence. Then:

“That is the Sword of Gryffindor,” Harry says blankly.

Severus stares at Harry, then at the Sword in his hands, and then realizes what, exactly, is going on. “Absolutely not!” he screeches, dropping it as if he’s been burned. “Absolutely fucking not!”

“Why does it even work?” demands Harry. “I thought that Horcruxes could only be destroyed by basilisk venom or Fiendfyre or something like that.”

“Well,” Albus points out, slightly shaken, “the Sword of Gryffindor is infused with basilisk venom, isn’t it? You literally shoved it into the basilisk’s mouth if the Sorting Hat was telling the truth—”

“I was!” the Sorting Hat cries.

Albus ignores it. “It makes sense that the Sword would be able to defeat a Horcrux in that case.”

“Huh,” says Harry. “Does that mean it’s also deadly to everything else, too? Like…if Professor Snape handled it wrong and accidentally gave himself a little nick, he would die in agony from the venom?”

“I believe so, yes,” Albus murmurs.

“This is all a moot point because I will not be handling it again,” Severus seethes. “It was obviously dispensed to me through an error because I am most certainly not a ‘true Gryffindor’—or a Gryffindor at all!”

“The condition of needing to be a ‘true Gryffindor’ is very vague,” the Sorting Hat points out. “Not to mention that definition was simply the interpretation of our dear Headmaster. The true condition of acquisition is performing an act of valor during a time of need. That was certainly enough to be considered worthy in Godric’s eyes.” It then looks at Severus. “You have completed an act of valor during a time of need. I was nearby to witness it and thus dispensed the Sword to provide aid. Congratulations, you’re an honorary Gryffindor.”

Severus stares in mute horror.

Harry bursts out laughing.

This is going to be interesting.

The first order of business after the debacle is convincing Severus to keep the Sword of Gryffindor on him.

“Why?” demands Severus, incensed.

“The Sword is one of our few ways to destroy a Horcrux,” Albus says evenly, “and the basilisk fangs are decaying too quickly to be useful. Since you drew the Sword, only you can wield it, and it would be much more convenient if you could summon it on demand rather than having to do an act of valor. If you simply keep it drawn and on you at all times, that mitigates all of these concerns.”

“You want me to carry around the Sword of Gryffindor,” Severus mutters. “You do realize that I am actively a spy, correct? Karkaroff has already been sniffing around me! He even tried to corner me about the Dark Mark!”

“You can say that you stole it.”

“It’s a bit conspicuous—I think they’ll realize that you’ve noticed.”

“Not if you’ve bound it to yourself.”

“Why would I bind the Sword of Gryffindor to myself?” Severus demanded.

“That’s for you to figure out.”

Severus lets out a frustrated noise. He demands, “Can’t we just disillusion it?”

“It has wards protecting it from any charms. Dismantling the wards will likely damage the artifact. I do not want to die by Minerva’s wand, and I assume you don’t, as well. It will be easier to carry it around your waist in a sheath. You will, of course, have to learn swordsmanship.”

“No,” says Severus. “No no no no no, I am a spy, Albus! My trade is poisons and secrets, not swords! I will accept a dagger at most!”

“Too bad,” says Harry, delighted. “You’re a sword-wielding, honorary Gryffindor now!”

Severus says, “Fifty points from Gryffindor for disrespect to a teacher!”

Albus says, “Sixty points to Gryffindor for astonishing wit.”

Severus groans. “Fine,” he says, “I’ll carry the damn sword like an errant knight.”

“A knight,” says Harry. “I like the sound of that. Dumbledore and I ought to teach you all about honor and righteousness and chivalry.”

“As if I’d go to the two Gryffindors the Hat tried to put in Slytherin to teach me your House’s values.”

Harry pauses, then turns to Albus. “The Hat wanted to put you in Slytherin, too?”

Albus sniffs. “Yes,” he says. “It said that I didn’t have enough wisdom to be a Ravenclaw or honesty to be a Huffelpuff, and then it said that I had the courage to be a Gryffindor but that my cunning overshadowed it.”

“Why did you choose Gryffindor over Slytherin?”

Cautiously, Albus says, “Personal reasons.”

Harry smiles cheekily. “Same.”

And that’s that.

Since Harry is very much not injured—thank you, Severus—he has to participate in the first task. Albus watches from the stands as Harry walks up to the dragon and…begins speaking in Parseltongue. The dragon pauses for a few moments before responding in kind and, suddenly, she’s nudging the golden egg out from her nest and offering it up to Harry.

Harry takes it, a serene smile on his face.

…Well, if it works, it works. He gives Harry full points for it and glares down the others when they don’t.

Harry just laughs.

“On the bright side,” says Albus, holding up the now marginally more normal gemstone, “it’s not talking anymore.”

Harry is silent. Then, “You can’t hear it?”

Albus frowns. “What?”

“It’s still talking.”

“No, it’s not—”

“No, it is,” Harry stresses. “I didn’t notice at first because it’s quieter and the tone is different and it’s not sobbing about its family anymore but…it’s definitely still talking.” He pauses, leaning closer to the gem, and then he snorts. He looks back at Albus, his smile turning dismayed. “Did you really not hear that?”

“Perhaps you’re just insane,” Severus offers lightly from the side.

Albus cuts a glare in Severus’s direction before turning back to Harry. “What’s it talking about, then?”

“It’s just…joking around a lot. It’s very bored. Excited that someone can hear it. Kinda annoying—no, I will not use you to attain ultimate satisfaction!” That last part is aimed at the ring. Seeing it from the outside, Albus must say that Sirius’s concern for his sanity was well-founded.

“Perhaps it’s an enchantment,” Albus mutters. He pulls out his wand to analyze it—the wand is working for him again, no longer lying inert as it had in the battle against the Horcrux—but then Harry goes rigid. “What is it?” Albus demands.

Harry looks pained. He says, “Your wand is talking, too.” A pause. “It says hi.”

Albus stares at the wand, then at the ring, and then tries to think of a connection between them. Only one shows up: the Deathly Hallows. “I don’t know enough about this,” he mutters to himself. “I studied them the summer after I graduated but…but that was nothing. I barely scratched the surface. I cannot possibly…I need to find someone else…”

There is only one obvious answer. He feels himself go steadily paler.

Harry leans over to Severus and whispers, “What’s wrong with him?”

Severus responds, “He’s thought of someone who can help, I think, but he doesn’t like the idea of who it is.”

Albus sets his wand—the Elder Wand—down on the desk and says, voice strained, “Let’s go. Not you, Severus—just Harry.”

Severus looks relieved. He’s still not used to lugging the Sword of Gryffindor around and it shows in his awkward gait. Several students have laughed at him—those students have detention for a month. Several other students have been shocked into silence by the mere sight of Severus Snape wielding the Sword of Gryffindor—those students have fueled his ego. Either way, Severus does not want to leave the castle.

Harry, on the other hand, immediately rises to a stand, asking, “Where are we going?”

“Austria.”

“Who are we meeting?”

Albus smiles a nasty smile. “My evil ex-boyfriend.”

Chapter Text

Nurmengard Castle is tucked into the Austrian Alps, remote enough that, back in its hay-day, no one dared come close enough to it to threaten its lord. Now, the aforementioned lord is locked at the top of its highest tower, wallowing in misery.

Albus takes particular delight in it.

Harry seems appropriately wary of the Castle, though. “Who are we visiting, again?” he asks. “Because this place looks kind of familiar. What is it?”

“Nurmengard Castle,” says Albus, stalking forward.

Harry pauses. He says, “Dumbledore, please tell me that your ex-boyfriend who’s supposedly knowledgeable about the Deathly Hallows is a guard here and not the sole prisoner.”

“Don’t be silly,” says Albus, “there are no guards at Nurmengard.”

“Why not?” demands Harry, sounding horrified.

“Well, the last time Gellert was imprisoned—”

“You call him by his first name?!”

“—was in the States back in the…twenties, I think. He had his mouth sealed shut so that he could not speak and yet he still managed to sweet-talk one of the guards into helping him escape. So now, no guards.”

“Then who’s going to make sure he doesn’t escape or something?”

Albus rolls his eyes. “I personally warded his cell. I suppose that if anyone were able to escape it would be Gellert…but he’s remained here so far. I would immediately be notified if he were to begin tampering with the wards.” Of course, there is the possibility that Gellert has been slowly tampering with the wards over the last fifty years, making such miniscule edits that Albus would never notice…hm. Maybe he should have checked in on him more.

“Is he really the only person we can go to?”

“I cannot think of a single other person more knowledgeable—or even half as knowledgeable—about the Hallows,” says Albus. “He’s spent most of his life studying them and he’s certainly done rather well for himself, all things considered—he managed to steal the Elder Wand from the wandmaker Gregorovitch.”

“Is that a legitimate way to gain ownership of the wand?” asks Harry. “Just…stealing it? From that weird story you read me on the way here, I thought you’d have to kill someone to get control of the wand…”

“Well, if murder was the only way to gain ownership, I couldn’t have it, could I? I won it off of Gellert and he is still very much alive.”

“About that—why didn’t you kill him?”

Albus frowns and says, “No more talking. We’re almost to the cell. Remember, stay quiet unless I allow you to talk. Gellert Grindelwald’s best weapon has always been an open conversation.”

And then they climb the stairs to Gellert’s cell.

Gellert is looking surprisingly good for spending fifty years in captivity. Albus viciously shreds that thought the moment it enters his head. He is not going to think about how hot his evil, half-dead ex-boyfriend is. He has standards.

Gellert takes one look at him and his face immediately blooms into a grin. “Albus!” he says. “It’s been ages! I’m glad that I’ve finally warranted a visit. I was beginning to think that you’d forgotten about me…”

As if. The thing about dark lords is that they are notoriously hard to forget about. Still, he refuses to give Gellert the satisfaction of that knowledge and says, “No, I’m afraid that you’d completely slipped my mind until very recently.”

Gellert laughs. “Always were quite a joker, Albus.”

Ugh. Albus suppresses the urge to roll his eyes, instead saying, “We’re here on important business. How much do you know about the Hallows?”

This sobers Gellert immediately. “I know more than you ever will,” he says simply.

This time Albus does roll his eyes—Gellert was always a dramatic one. “In that case, you can help us. You see, we’ve been having a bit of a problem with them—”

“Them,” repeats Gellert, cutting him off. “Plural? As in, multiple Hallows?”

“I said what I said.”

Gellert stares at him then, eyes wide and unblinking, before his gaze moves to Harry, who has all but tucked himself behind Albus’s robes. They’re certainly large enough to hide a fourteen-year-old boy but their eye-wateringly green color is probably not very good at diverting attention to something else. Rookie mistake. Gellert, meanwhile, looks at Harry with so much intensity that Albus wants to end this whole disaster right here and now.

And then Gellert shrieks, “IT’S HIM?”

“Um,” says Harry.

Gellert continues, “It’s always the British, isn’t it? Death gave the Hallows to the Brits and now they’ve reconverged on a little British boy!” He points at Harry accusingly. “I don’t know what they’re feeding you on that island of yours but whatever it is, it’s insane. Honestly…I scoured the whole world. Went to every corner of the Earth. I spent three months in Istanbul, back when it was still Constantinople!”

“Oh,” says Harry. “You’re old.”

“Say that to my face you little—”

“Gellert,” Albus says quickly, breaking in. “Please explain yourself.”

“What is there to explain?” Gellert asks mournfully. “Congratulations, the fourteen-year-old boy currently hiding behind you is the owner of all three Hallows. Now get out and leave me in peace.”

“What?” asks Albus. “The Elder Wand is still in my possession and the Stone is…a bit nebulous at the moment—but they’re all talking to him…”

“They talk to you?” he asks, looking at Harry.

Harry nods numbly. “The Elder Wand says hi,” he mutters.

“The Elder Wand says—okay, regroup. Albus, you hear how insane that sounds, right? The Hallows talking to him? This just sounds like he needs a one-way trip to the…ah, how do you English say it? Yes, the loony bin.”

“That’s a bit insensitive,” Albus sniffs. “Nowadays we have things like therapists.”

“Well I wouldn’t know, would I, seeing as how I’ve been locked in a cell for half a century!”

“I think the correct term is ‘tower’, actually—”

“Get out.”

Albus sighs. “I’m sorry, we got a bit off-track. Some more important information is that I heard the talking, too. Well, I used to hear the Stone speaking back when it was also a Horcrux—”

“A Horcrux? Which miserable bastard made a Horcrux and decided to use the Resurrection Stone?”

“It was Voldemort and I’m not sure he knew it was the Resurrection Stone…or that he knows what it is in the first place.”

“Who is this ‘Voldemort’ character? Since when are you allowing the French to come to that exclusive school of yours?”

“He doesn’t know who Voldemort is,” Harry mutters numbly. “Dumbledore, he doesn’t know—”

“Yes, I heard him perfectly well.”

“Does he even know who I am?” asks Harry.

Gellert asks, “Should I?”

Right. You don’t get newspapers in solitary confinement.

Harry stares at Gellert blankly for a few moments before, slowly, a grin spreads across his face. “You’re a dark lord,” he says, “and you don’t know who I am. Do you want to kill me?”

“Not particularly—and it’s retired dark lord, thank you very much.”

“Brilliant,” Harry breathes. “Well, I’m Harry James Potter, a Fourth Year at Hogwarts, and I like Quidditch and hate Potions.”

“Hello, Mr. Potter,” Gellert says. “I’m Gellert Grindelwald, prisoner of Numengard Castle. If you met me fifty years ago, I would say that I like murder and hate democracy. Nowadays, I like watching the sunset and hate the British.”

“Why do you hate the British?”

“What’s not to hate?”

“Fair enough.”

Albus sighs. “To bring us back on track—the Hallows? Why do you think they’re talking to Harry?”

“That is quite the question. I won’t be able to make a prognosis without actually examining the Hallows, though.”

“Absolutely not,” says Albus. Albus Dumbledore is many things but stupid isn’t one of them. Handing Gellert the Hallows would be like handing Voldemort Harry’s head on a silver platter.

Gellert simply shrugs. “If I can’t examine them then I can’t help you. It seems you’ll just have to go find some other, equally accomplished scholar of the Deathly Hallows.” His face looks downright angelic.

Albus glares. Harry says to him, “He’s got a point…”

“What he’s got is an agenda,” says Albus. “And what did I tell you about not speaking unless you have my permission? He’s already got you doubting me. Now keep quiet.”

Harry stares. “I will,” he says, “but only because you’re being unusually harsh to me and it’s kind of unnerving. I don’t know how you manage to look scary in radioactive robes…”

“Straight out of Chernobyl,” Gellert agrees.

“Quiet!” Albus snaps. “I need to think! Outside. Away from you.” He promptly grabs Harry and high-tails it out of there. The more distance between him and Gellert Grindelwald, the better. And he needs to dissuade Harry of any incorrect notions that he’s managed to get planted in his head. Perhaps he shouldn’t have brought him to meet one of the most dangerous men of the century…

When Albus bursts back into the room, he declares, “Fine!”

“Fine?” demands Harry, confused, which makes sense, considering how the entire time they’d been outside the room, Albus had simply stared silently into the distance.

“Fine?” repeats Gellert, who actually looks quite surprised.

“I’ll let you examine one of the Hallows, but we won’t do it here. We’ll do it in my office in Hogwarts.”

“Hogwarts,” Harry wheezes. “Jesus Christ, Dumbledore—”

“Albus, are you really going to—”

Albus ignores them both. This is the best course of action. Quite frankly, he doesn’t trust Gellert to have not tampered with the wards of his prison so giving him access to a Hallow here, of all places, seems like a wholly Not Great idea. Albus’s office, however—it’s heavily warded and Albus can guarantee that those wards are still perfectly functional. The next best option would be Grimmauld Place but Remus would physically maul him before allowing Gellert Grindelwald to take a single step into it.

So—Hogwarts.

“There are students there!” Harry hisses.

“We won’t take him through the grounds,” Albus says calmly. “I’ll take him directly to my office. And besides, I will have him so heavily restrained he’ll barely be able to lift a finger.”

“This is still a bad idea,” Harry says. “I mean, he’s a dark lord—sorry, retired dark lord. Something is going to go horribly wrong.”

“Probably, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. The bottom line is that we need his help and this is the best way to get it—unless you’re all right with just not knowing why the Elder Wand is trying to chat you up.”

Harry stares at him sullenly before relenting. Albus, vindicated, turns back to Gellert. “Time to go.”

Gellert says, “Have you cleared this with someone? Anyone at all?”

“No.”

“So…you’re breaking me out of prison.”

Albus rolls his eyes. “I’m going to put you back so it’s not a problem.”

“Right…”

And so it begins.

It’s much easier than any of them expected. Before long, the three of them land just outside of Hogsmeade, where Albus begins to layer glamors over Gellert’s features so that he won’t be detected. It isn't too hard—fifty years stuck in a tower have done him no favors and he barely looks like the man who had tried to take over the world—and, once he’s finished, Gellert seems delighted with his new look.

“I’m a ginger!” he exclaims. “Like you, Albus! Did you do this on purpose?” Albus doesn’t respond but Gellert doesn’t seem to care. “Oh dear, did you make me look like a Brit, too? I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you if you did…”

“Say,” says Harry, “where are you from, anyway? Your name and accent sound German but I didn’t want to assume.”

“I, Mr. Potter, am from Carinthia!” Gellert says as they begin their journey up toward the castle. “I know your geography skills tend to be a bit shoddy up here, though. Let’s see—my hometown is in northern Slovenia, if I remember correctly. Back when I was born, it was still Austria-Hungary, of course. Didn’t split until I was, what, thirty-five?”

“Thirty-six,” Albus corrects, then curses himself for doing so.

Gellert shrugs. “Right. Well, that’s where I’m from. What about you?”

“Er, I don’t know where either of my parents were from, exactly, but I was raised in Surrey.” At Gellert’s blank look, Harry elaborates, “It’s in Southeast England.”

“But how do you not know where your parents are from?”

“They died when I was little.”

“I’m sorry,” says Gellert softly. “That must have been hard.”

Harry shrugs. “I guess? I mean, I miss them, but I never really knew them, you know?”

“Harry,” Albus snaps, “he’s manipulating you. Be quiet.”

Gellert rolls his eyes. “Why do you always have to be so negative, Albus? Is it really so hard to believe that maybe I’ve changed? Maybe I just saw a boy who experienced an indescribable tragedy and I saw fit to comfort him? Honestly, how despicable do you—wait, what’s that?” He raises his hand and points at one of the Hogsmeade shops.

Harry, immediately forgetting Albus’s order, says, “Honeydukes. It’s a sweets shop.”

Gellert’s eyes light up. “Albus, can I get some sweets?”

“No.”

“Please?”

“No.”

“Please!”

“No.”

“Albus, I’ve literally been eating nothing but lukewarm gruel for fifty years, surely I deserve some—”

Albus grabs hold of Gellert’s elbow and Harry’s shoulder and drags them to a secluded tree a few meters away from the Hog’s Head. He proceeds to knock on it three times and the three of them promptly fall into a hidden tunnel beneath the ground. Albus is the only one to land on his feet.

“You couldn’t have warned us?” Harry groans. “What is this, anyway?”

“Secret tunnel,” says Albus. “Leads straight to my office.”

Harry stares. “Brilliant.”

“Sure.” The process of actually making this tunnel had been decidedly less than brilliant. Aberforth had initially elected to help him—which is why it’s so close to the Hog’s Head—but had backed out at the last second due to “back problems” or some rubbish like that. Thus, Albus was left to construct the secret passage himself. Not a single soul knew about it until today.

The tunnel eventually spits them inside of his office through Phineas Nigellus Black’s portrait and they have to endure the seven foot drop. Harry and Gellert groan again and Albus suppresses his smile. Serves them right.

“So,” Gellert mutters, rubbing his elbow, “the Hallows?”

“The singular Hallow that you will be allowed to access,” Albus corrects. He promptly shoves the Resurrection Stone into Gellert’s hand.

Gellert stares down at it. Swallows. He says, “Well, I certainly don’t hear anything.”

“I do,” says Harry. “The Stone says hi, and also that you need a shower.”

“You could be saying that on your own,” Gellert accuses. “Make the Stone tell you something that only it would know!”

Harry looks at the stone. There is about thirty seconds of silence before Harry turns back to him and says, “On August 22nd, 1929, you and Vinda Rosier—”

“Stop,” says Gellert, pained. “Just—no. Matjaž, that’s creepy. I believe you.”

“No, go on,” says Albus. “What’s this about Vinda Rosier?”

“Oh, you can’t possibly still be upset about that.”

“I’m not upset about anything! It’s just, when we met a few months earlier, you were all, ‘Oh, Albus, I love you’ and—”

“That was you, not me!”

“—and then at the fight at the Eyrie you were all like ‘Who will love you now?’ and thus tried to convince me that you were still—”

“Are we really doing this now? Here?”

“Please don’t,” says Phineas’s portrait. “I’m literally begging you to not.”

Harry, meanwhile, looks absolutely fascinated. He says to Albus, “I’m with you on this one—that was a pretty awful move, Mr. Retired-Dark-Lord Grindelwald. I mean, I’m sure you’ve made worse, but the thing with Vinda Rosier? Vile.”

“It’s not like Albus and I were still together at that point!”

“And I would agree except for your little remark on the Eyrie—”

“Oh, will you shut up about the Eyrie!”

Albus and Gellert glare at each other. Harry says, “The Stone is offering you the chance to revive Vinda Rosier so that you three can actually settle this.”

“Nope,” says Albus, sighing. “Not important right now. My apologies. Gellert, you believe Harry now. What can you tell us about what this means?”

Gellert stares at him for several moments before all but slumping into himself, observing the Resurrection Stone. “Well,” he says carefully, “from what you’ve said, the both of you could hear the Stone speaking back when it was still a Horcrux and now only Mr. Potter hears the Stone, but he can also suddenly hear the Elder Wand—and, I presume, the Invisibility Cloak, which you have not mentioned but which I’m reasonably sure that the Potter line had possession of.”

“If you were so sure, why didn’t you try to get it?”

Gellert rolls his eyes. “As if you’d let me step a single foot onto this island of yours. No, I needed to gather the other two before trying to pursue the third. I just…did not expect the Resurrection Stone to also remain in Britain.” He closes his fist, continuing, “And with two of the three Hallows in this room and the third firmly in Mr. Potter’s possession, I’m assuming that he’s had a great deal of contact with them all?”

“The Cloak and the Stone definitely,” says Harry, “but not so much the Wand.”

Gellert frowns. “I…I’ll be honest, I have some ideas but none of them are exactly concrete. I need to do some research.”

“And how, exactly, do you expect to do that?” Albus asks flatly.

Gellert snorts. “I’m in Hogwarts, the wizarding school of Great Britain. I’m sure you’ve managed to smuggle texts from all over the world into your library, whether the countries you’ve sourced them from agreed to it or not. I’m sure there’s been enough literature written about at least the Elder Wand to be able to give us something.”

“I am not giving you access to Hogwarts’s library.”

“You don’t need to. Simply bring me all the texts you have about the Hallows and I’ll study them here, right where you want me.”

Harry is nodding like it makes total sense. Albus puts his face in his hands. What the fuck is going on with his life?

Irma nearly strangles him when she sees how many texts he’s taking out of her library, but he’s the Headmaster, so that’s a her-problem.

“You’ve employed Dobby!” Harry declares, storming into Albus’s office two days later. Albus is at his desk, staring warily at the corner of the room where Gellert is still buried under a mountain of ancient tomes.

Albus turns to him, bleary-eyed and sleep-drived. “Huh?”

“Dobby! The house-elf I freed from Malfoy’s family!”

It takes a second for it to click. “Oh! Yes, him. Quite an odd little fellow, certainly the first house-elf to ask me for a salary, so of course I paid him. I’ve been debating paying the other house-elves employed by Hogwarts but whenever I bring it up they all stare at me menacingly with kitchen knives…” It’s very disconcerting, actually. Nowadays, Albus does his best to avoid the kitchens entirely.

“It’s brilliant,” Harry gushes. “He’s so happy. So is Hermione, actually—you know she’s working for house-elf liberation? Started a whole organization called SPEW—Society for the Promotion of Elfish Welfare!” He thrusts something at Albus from across the desk. “We’ve made buttons.”

Obediently, Albus takes a button.

From within the mound of tomes, Gellert’s voice pipes up, “That’s the silliest thing I’ve ever heard. Paying house-elves…what’s next, voting rights for werewolves?”

Harry frowns at the stack of texts, then looks back at Albus. “I keep thinking that he’s pretty all right but then he says something to remind me how awful of a person he is.”

Albus sighs. “Believe me, I understand exactly what you mean.”

Harry shakes his head. “Whatever. I didn’t only come here to talk about Dobby, anyway. Can you tell me anything about the Egg?”

Once again, Albus is too sleep-deprived to make sense of what Harry is saying. “The Egg?”

Harry promptly pulls out the golden egg that he’d politely asked the dragon to give him during the First Task. Albus squints at it. “Oh, that Egg. Sorry, no-can-do. Under strict orders to not aid the Champions.”

“Well, it’s a nightmare,” Harry says grimly. “Screeches nonsense every time I try to open it.” Albus, who knows exactly what the “nonsense” is, shrugs. Harry says, “Oh, you think it’s funny. You think it’s amusing to get my eardrums shattered with every attempt to not die?”

“That’s not what—”

“How about you try listening to it?” Harry says, opening the Egg.

Ungodly screeching fills the air for all of a few moments before Gellert leaps out of his book fort and slams it closed. “I always hated Mermish,” he grumbles. “Go open it underwater and leave my innocent ears alone.”

Harry stares at him, a grin slowly spreading across his face. “Brilliant,” he says, immediately taking off. Albus is left behind, a SPEW badge in his hand and Gellert muttering murderous nothings to himself as he retreats back into his hole.

He hates everything.

The next day, the Yule Ball is announced to the students. Albus takes sick delight in watching the hormonal teenagers desperately scrabble around, trying to acquire dates for the event. It’s especially hilarious to watch a series of increasingly hapless young men ask out Fleur Delacour, speaking to her as if she is some dainty maiden and not one of the strongest students currently at Hogwarts. Even Ron Weasely falls victim to it.

It keeps his mind off of his ex-boyfriend, who is now a semi-permanent resident of Albus’s office, at least.

Everything is going great, until Minerva comes banging on his door. Albus hastily throws a concealment charm over Gellert as Minerva walks in, face white with stress. “Potter has yet to find a date!” she despairs.

Albus says, “Oh.”

“The Champions all need dates, Albus! The First Dance won’t work otherwise!”

“Perhaps you could set him up with someone?” Albus offers.

“Perhaps I should! I suspect Ms. Patil doesn’t have a date yet…oh, he could also take one of the younger years. Ms. Lovegood? Odd girl but certainly a good one…”

She leaves then, off in her own world. Albus assures himself that it will be fine—there’s got to be at least one young witch willing to go to the Yule Ball with Harry—when the boy himself enters Albus’s office. There’s a peculiar look on his face and Albus is already dreading whatever’s about to happen.

Albus says, “Harry?”

Harry responds, “I asked Ron to go to the Yule Ball with me.”

“So you have a date?” Albus asks with relief. “Good, good—Professor McGonagall was about to set you up with someone…” Knowing her, if she was desperate enough, she would even frame it as an extra credit assignment for some poor girl.

Harry frowns. “Did you not hear what I said? I asked Ron to go to the Yule Ball with me!”

“…And? I’m sorry but I’m not seeing the issue. Did he not accept?”

“He accepted,” Harry bites out. “Said that I was just brilliant and that he should have thought of that and there’s nothing wrong with going to the Ball with your best mate.”

“…And?”

Harry stares at him and looks unbelievably frustrated but Albus doesn’t know how to help. This only gets more alarming when Harry begins to cry, letting out hitching sobs, burying his face in his hands. Albus, eyes wide, reaches over and settles a hand on his shoulder. “Harry? Harry, please, I need you to talk to me! I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong!”

Harry blubbers nonsensically.

Gellert pops out once again. “I know the boy’s an orphan but doesn’t he have adoptive parents or something? This seems like a good time to call them.”

Albus’s eyes light up. Sometimes, Gellert really is brilliant. He throws another concealment charm over Gellert—who lets out a muffled screech—and hurls some Floor powder into his fireplace, declaring, “Number Twelve Grimmauld Place!”

Remus answers immediately. “What happened?” he demands. “Did you figure out a loophole for the Tournament?”

Albus briefly feels guilty because, in all honesty, he hasn’t been looking for a loophole ever since he brought Gellert to Hogwarts—most of his time has been eaten away by the anxiety of being so close to his evil ex-boyfriend. Then Harry heaves another sob and Albus refocuses on his goal. He says, “No, I’m afraid not. It’s just…Harry seems to be in some emotional distress and I figured that it would be best if you could personally comfort him.”

And Remus steps through with zero hesitation. He says, “Sirius will come through in a few minutes—he has to turn the kitchen appliances off.”

Harry, whose sobs have lessened slightly now that Remus is in his field of vision, stutters, “You let Sirius in the kitchen?”

“He has to learn how to cook at some point,” Remus says soothingly, rushing over and enveloping Harry in a hug. Sirius, who all but falls out of the Floo, ends up doing the same.

Albus not-so-discreetly exits the room. His office has been entirely taken over and he’s grumpy but he’d rather marinate in his misery than kick them out. Even Albus Dumbledore doesn’t have the guts for that confrontation.

Harry seems much more relaxed when he comes to fetch him an hour later. Nice.

Finally, the Wednesday morning after the First Task, while all of Hogwarts is eating breakfast, it happens: the Daily Prophet is delivered. Well, that’s not the “it” in question—instead, Albus is referring to the headline: DARK LORD GRINDELWALD ESCAPES PRISON, CURRENT LOCATION UNKNOWN.

Took them long enough.

Albus looks up from his copy and makes eye-contact with Harry, who looks horrified. He decides to deal with him later and instead look at the rest of the Hall. Everyone is looking at him. Well, considering he’d been the one who originally threw Grindelwald in prison…fair enough.

Albus looks back down at his copy of the Prophet. He says cheerfully, “Well, that’s unfortunate.” He proceeds to continue eating breakfast, like nothing is wrong. He can feel everyone’s brains shut down in confusion and he delights in it—and he has to delight in it because otherwise, the only thing that would coursing through him is stress, and if he feels any more stressed than he already is, he’s going to explode.

He shoves a tomato into his mouth and chews like his life depends on it.

“I’m famous!” says Gellert in delight, waving the Prophet around. “I’m famous I’m famous I’m famous I’m—”

“Famous, yes, I heard,” Albus says dryly. “So, how close are you to finding an answer to the whole Hallows situation? Because I’ll be honest, my original plan was to put you back in prison before anyone noticed, but now that ship has sailed. I just need a rough timeline here.”

“Give me some leeway,” says Gellert. “This has literally never happened before, as far as I can tell. I’m knee-deep in theoretical formulas. Arithmancy is much harder than I remember. Did you know the sound waves of voices only heard by select individuals have unique magical properties? And I could write a whole doctoral thesis on the environmental ethics of yodeling—”

Albus, who had written a doctoral thesis on the environmental ethics of yodeling, cuts him off. “Please get to the point.”

“I’ll need more time,” Gellert finishes. “Several weeks of it.”

Obviously, this is a ploy to stay out of Numengard for longer—Albus has been aware of that from the very beginning. The thing is, Gellert is simply more useful out of prison than inside it. There is no way to know what is going on between Harry and the Hallows and Albus, as brilliant as he is, had forced himself to not learn any more about them after that awful summer in 1899. He still stands by what he’d said to Harry: Gellert Grindelwald is the foremost expert on the Deathly Hallows in the world, and likely their only hope.

Enterprising readers might wonder why Albus is allowing Gellert so much free time to do whatever he may want to. The answer is very simple: Albus has placed the most powerful binding spell in existence on him. Gellert’s movements are so restricted that, sometimes, he has to ask permission to even use the restroom, and if Albus refused, his body simply would not allow him to.

Of course, the thing about strong bindings is that they need to have some weakness, and this spell has the largest, most obvious one of all—but Gellert is simply incapable of using it. Albus has crafted the perfect cage.

If only he was this effective at dealing with Cornelius fucking Fudge, who still has managed to evade him. Albus will find his hiding spot one day, and it will be Fudge’s last day on this godforsaken Earth—

Right, back to the point.

With Gellert on such a short leash, Albus doesn’t have to worry too much about what he’s doing in his free time, but the fact that Gellert is currently in Hogwarts with the blessings of the Headmaster of Hogwarts is bound to be found out by someone eventually and Albus would rather that not happen, which means Gellert needs to hurry up.

Time to bluff his way to victory.

“I can give you two weeks at most,” Albus says gravely. “After that, protocol would dictate a thorough search of the castle and its surrounding grounds and I’m not confident that I’d be able to successfully hide you through that. If you’re found, you’ll be stuck in a much worse cell than the tower I put you in. Not everyone is as compassionate as I am.”

Gellert stares at him. Then, “Compassionate, hm? You were never compassionate, Albus. Even back then, you were full of yourself, always thinking you were superior to everyone else. You glared at me like I was shit beneath your shoe the first time we met and you only treated me like I was worth something after our debate over the merits of Latin- versus Hebrew-based spell-casting. You can act like you’ve changed all you want, but I know you. Don’t make me laugh.”

Albus trembles with his effort at being silent, but he only manages for a few moments before he bursts out into laughter. “All right,” he says, “that was a good one.”

And Gellert is grinning again. “I know. I’ll make two weeks work, I suppose. Wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of your ‘compassion’ and all that.”

Albus is still chuckling. How he’d missed their little games of rage.

Severus confronts him very quickly. “Please tell me you don’t have Gellert Grindelwald hidden in your office,” he says.

Albus says, “What?”

“I’m not stupid! You haven’t had more than, what, four meetings in there since the news broke out? And your complete lack of response to the news about Grindelwald—even Minerva nearly fainted, and she’s Minerva. Alastor all but screeched in terror. You just ate a tomato! I know you’re eccentric but you’re not that eccentric. Why did you bring a dark lord into Hogwarts? I’m already having enough trouble with one of them!”

Albus says, “I do not have Gellert Grindelwald tied up in my office.”

“No, he’s probably out and about, enjoying tea!” says Severus, hysterical. “He seems like a chamomile kind of man!”

Astonishingly enough, when Albus had last seen him, Gellert had in fact been drinking chamomile tea. Severus truly is brilliant sometimes. Deciding that he would be better off telling the truth now rather than dealing with Severus making the discovery himself later, Albus drags him to a secluded corner and says, “I can explain.”

“You better!” Severus snarls. “Just—Gellert Grindelwald? My mother used to tell me horror stories about him! He was literally my childhood boogeyman! Did you know that he wiped out the entire Dutch branch of the Prince family? I admit that was only six people, but still—”

“We need him,” Albus says patiently. “We want to figure out what’s going on with Harry and he’s the only person who can.”

“But do we really need to?” demands Severus. “I mean, it’s not like hearing the Stone and the Wand is a bad thing. Have they been causing Potter distress? Not from what I can tell. It’s not exactly a pressing issue, is it?”

“But it could very well become one,” Albus insists. “The Hallows are an unknown variable of monumental power. If something were to go wrong, anything at all, Gellert Grindelwald is our only way to combat it.” He leans closer. “Are you truly all right with leaving Harry that vulnerable? It could be catastrophic.”

Severus, who pledged his life to protect Harry Potter, scowls fiercely but gives in. “Fine!” he snarls. “But I’m not covering for you if someone finds the dark lord in your office!” He begins speaking under his breath then, muttering to himself about Austria and evil ex-boyfriends and how he really should have known. His fist is curled tight over the hilt of the Sword of Gryffindor, which has yet to see any kind of use apart from threatening random students and staff. Albus feels very threatened. Perhaps he shouldn’t have made Severus take sword fighting lessons.

“If that’s all…” Albus says, angling to get out of Severus’s general vicinity.

Severus says, “No…no, wait, there’s something else. Karkaroff is getting antsy. He tackled me into my own potions store to interrogate me about the Dark Mark. He’s getting jumpy. Also—have we given up on Alastor? Because he has not given up on making me miserable. Bastard keeps jumping out of random corners and threatening me with Azkaban, as if I hadn’t already been pardoned…”

Ugh. Work keeps piling up. “I’ll work on it,” he mutters.

“Also,” says Severus, “Lucius keeps sending me sloppily-written letters raging about how vile he finds Barty Crouch and I know he and the man didn’t have the best relationship ever since the end of the war but this is just…bizarre. In the last one, he underlined ‘Barty Crouch’ and ‘insane’ three times each. I have no idea what’s going on with him.”

Hm. There’s an intriguing new thread…

Draco Malfoy stares at him dully, clutching a single Sherbet Lemon to his chest. Albus’s office is unusually silent. Gellert is fast asleep in the corner, once again under a concealment charm. Perhaps he didn’t need to cast one, though, because Draco looks so tired that he probably wouldn’t have noticed the retired dark lord in the corner, anyway. It kind of reminds him of the way Lucius looked when he’d visited near the beginning of the year.

Albus says, “Mr. Malfoy…I hope you are well?”

Draco continues to stare.

Albus nods to himself. “Well,” he says, “I couldn’t help but notice that your general disposition seems to be somewhat…lacking.” Harry has barely complained about Draco at all, in fact, and his largest scheme so far has been the Potter Stinks badges, which are certainly impressive, but he has no other vile deeds to show for himself. It’s almost as if he’s simply stopped.

Draco finally speaks, voice rough and cracking. “That’s a bit rude, isn’t it, Headmaster?”

“…Yes, of course, my apologies.” He offers another Sherbet Lemon, which Draco once again accepts but doesn’t do anything with. He is now clutching two Sherbet Lemons to his chest. Hm. Albus says, “I know your family is active in politics—”

“Of course,” says Draco, and there is a sudden spark of pride in his eyes, though it dies quickly. “We are Malfoys.”

“Yes, well, I was hoping that you could shed some light on something your father has told me.”

Draco curls in on himself. “What do you mean?”

“It’s just…he seems unusually concerned with Mr. Crouch. Now, I am well-aware that your father has ample reason to be upset with the man, but his recent attitude has been a touch more intense than usual. Do you have any idea why that is?”

Draco opens his mouth and closes it again, inhaling deeply. “My father told you that?” he asks, pained.

“Indeed he did.” To emphasize his point, he pulls out the latest note Lucius had written Severus.

“This was meant for Professor Snape,” says Draco, “not you.”

“On the contrary, as you said, this was written to Professor Snape, not Severus Snape as your father usually writes. It’s implicit permission for this to be shared with me—but you knew that.”

Draco purses his lips and takes the letter, reading it over in its entirety. It’s short and messy. Draco’s eyes widen, struck with sudden realization, and he groans, “I’m going to be sick…”

Albus frowns. “Mr. Malfoy—”

Draco promptly turns away and evacuates the contents of his stomach all over the office floor. Albus slips his eyes shut. All right then.

Draco is sent to the hospital wing. His parents are notified. His mother comes to visit. She promptly pulls him out of Hogwarts until the Spring term, telling Poppy, “Yule Ball be damned! We’ll throw a better one!”

And yes, they probably will, but that’s only because they won’t have to deal with a castle full of hormonal teenagers.

In any case: Albus can no longer ask Draco what the fuck is going on with Lucius Malfoy.

Looks like it’s on the back burner again.

“No,” Severus says immediately.

“You’ll be fine,” Albus soothes. “It’s really nothing! Just make sure he’s fed and watered and stuff. Keep an eye on his general well-being. Don’t let him out of my office. It’s nothing.”

“I refuse to let you leave me alone with Gellert Grindelwald!” Severus hisses. “That—that’s almost as bad as leaving me with the Dark Lord!” A pause. “Also, he’s a dark lord!”

“Retired,” Albus corrects. “You should get that right now because he will correct you otherwise.”

“Retired? You don’t just retire from murdering and raping and pillaging—”

“There was a great deal of murdering and pillaging but I assure you that he was not one for raping.”

“Oh, that makes everything better,” Severus says sarcastically.

Albus sighs, letting the smile drop off of his face. “Listen,” he says lowly, “I understand that you’re…upset. I know Gellert is probably near the bottom of the list of people you want to spend any amount of time with. However, my options are limited. I need someone to watch him while I run some errands for a few days and the only two people who know that he is here are you and Harry. Do you want Harry to watch over him?”

Severus stares at him, lips pursed. For a few bizarre moments, he looks close to bursting into tears, but then he takes a deep breath before gritting out, “Fine! I’ll watch Grindelwald! But one wrong move and I run him through with the Sword of Gryffindor!” He gestures angrily at the aforementioned sword.

Albus smiles weakly. “Just make sure the blood doesn’t get on the books—otherwise Irma will run me through with a letter opener…”

The next three days are spent tracking down Cornelius Fudge. What starts as a standard paper trail leading from London to Blackpool to Dublin ends up becoming a wild goose chase through the Continent, moving eastward into Kazakhstan and Mongolia before eventually ending in Japan. Albus has no doubt that, if given the chance, Cornelius would take the earliest opportunity to take a boat all the way to Hawaii. Unluckily for Cornelius, Albus has managed to catch up with him.

He confronts Cornelius at the Tokyo Portkey Office.

“A-Albus!” Cornelius says with a strained smile. “How are you?”

“Good,” says Albus off-handedly. “Could be better.”

“Oh…”

“But seeing you has made my entire day!” Albus converges on him, wrapping him in a hug and squeezing just a bit too tightly.

Cornelius whimpers.

Albus says, “You truly must join me for dinner, my friend! Let me introduce you to some old friends…”

The friends are the yakuza.

Albus has a great deal of fun in Tokyo.

When he gets back to Hogwarts, he finds Severus, Gellert, and Harry playing poker in his office. Gellert has a black eye and his neck is wrapped in bandages. Severus’s hair has been chopped to a haphazard length, going diagonally from the top of his left ear, reaching down to his right shoulder. Harry has dried tear tracks trailing down his face.

He walks in on them while they reveal their hands. Gellert has a full house. Harry has a straight flush. Severus has a royal flush.

“You!” Harry shrieks, throwing his cards at the man. Gellert is similarly glaring daggers.

Severus smirks. “Once again, Slytherin wins.”

“Come here you slimy snake-faced bastard!” Harry snarls, launching himself in Severus’s direction, only to be stalled as Severus lazily places his hand on the Sword of Gryffindor. Harry deflates. “I never should have suggested sword fighting lessons…”

Severus shrugs. “Want to go another round?”

“No!” Harry and Gellert sync.

Albus decides to step in. “As amusing as it is to watch Severus win against you two,” Albus says, “perhaps it’s time to get back to work.” He observes Gellert. “Or maybe get to the infirmary…”

“He’s fine,” Severus says dismissively.

“The blood is soaking through the bandages,” Albus points out. “I personally need him to be alive and well.”

“Cast a healing charm, then,” Severus sniffs.

“I tried,” Harry pipes up. “Didn’t take. Honestly, I’m surprised that he’s not dead yet, considering the fact that the Sword is imbued with basilisk venom.”

“Ha!” says Gellert. “Silly British boy, I messed around with creatures much darker than a mere basilisk! I am immune to basilisk venom and nandu venom and—”

“We get the idea,” Severus says, sounding petulant.

Albus, meanwhile, is appalled. “You cut him with the Sword of Gryffindor?” Albus demands.

“He deserved it!”

“I did not!” Gellert declares. Harry, meanwhile, shrugs, as if he simply can’t be bothered with all the drama. He should be bothered considering he nearly lost his best bet on figuring out what the ever-loving fuck is going on with the Hallows.

Albus says, “What happened?”

Severus, scowling, responds, “He tried to attack Potter.”

“I tried to give him a hug, you madman!”

Albus sighs. “Severus, you need to be more careful with a sword imbued with deadly venom. Harry, stop bonding with Gellert, he’s manipulating you. Gellert, stop hugging children, it’s weird.”

“You’re weird,” Gellert mutters.

Albus rolls his eyes. “All right. Let me see your neck—I’m assuming that even though you’re immune to basilisk venom, it’s still interfering with conventional healing practices?”

“Of course.”

“I have just the thing!”

Turns out, he does not have just the thing because Fawkes resolutely refuses to cry on him, no matter how much Albus begs. And he does beg, even getting on his knees and shedding some tears. Fawkes responds by nearly pecking his nose off, the avian bastard. Gellert eventually says, “All right, all right, stop. It was amusing at first but now this is just sad. Just…heal me the muggle way or something.”

“The muggle way is to disinfect it, wrap it, and hope for the best,” Harry says. “Which we already did. Considering it’s still bleeding…maybe stitches?”

“What are stitches?” Gellert asks, perplexed. Albus is similarly confused.

Severus grins evilly. “I know how to put in stitches,” he says. “I’ll fix you right up…”

An hour later, Gellert has passed out from the pain, Albus feels light-headed and shaky, Harry seems weirdly intrigued, and Severus looks calm and centered. “There,” he says, patting Gellert’s lolling head like he’s an unruly child, “now you’re fine.”

“Not fine,” Albus wheezes. “He is not fine. I thought that was only for fabric!”

“Skin can be fabric, too,” Harry reasons. “That’s why tattoos count as art, right?”

Albus puts his face in his hands and decides to obliviate himself at the soonest opportunity.

With Gellert out of commission for the foreseeable future—otherwise he may rip his stitches and be in grave danger yet again—Albus finds himself unbearably bored in the lead-up to the Yule Ball. He takes the opportunity to invite Alastor over for tea and, perhaps, figure out why he’s so insane.

Alastor shifts around nervously, which is a gesture so unlike him that Albus wonders if he knows just how deeply he has fucked up. He asks, “How have you been?”

“I’ve been,” says Alastor, before proceeding to not elaborate at all.

Albus sips his tea. “I see that you’ve taken to a rather odd style of teaching.”

Alastor shrugs. “The students must be prepared for the real world.”

“Be that as it may,” Albus says slowly, “they are still children. Don’t you think that you should take it a bit easier? Perhaps…not perform Unforgivables in their general vicinity?”

Alastor frowns. “But it’s in the lesson plan.”

“I understand but—”

“It’s in the lesson plan.” Ignoring his tea entirely, Alastor takes a swig from his flask.

Albus decides to pick his battles. He continues, “Lucius Malfoy seems to be rooting for you, for some reason.”

Alastor’s face darkens. “Lucius Malfoy is an awful wriggling worm!”

“Um.”

“Should have rotted in Azkaban! Like some others! Should have been wasting away…”

Albus sighs. Deciding that Alastor is a lost cause—at least for the foreseeable future—he uses the crutch of polite conversation to continue talking and, eventually, to kick Alastor out of his office entirely. Scowling, he pulls out a sheet of paper, a pen, and begins to lay out every confounding part of the situation.

Alastor is acting like a madman. Lucius Malfoy is in his corner. Speaking of Lucius Malfoy—he’s been acting strange, sending Severus nonsensical letters about how much he despises the Head of the DIMC. On a marginally related note, when young Draco Malfoy was made aware of these letters, he proceeded to have a meltdown before the entire situation alerted Narcissa Malfoy who, presumably, put a stop to it. Albus, for reasons he cannot explain, feels that he must not let Alastor know about Lucius’s letters.

He feels like he’s so close to an epiphany but nothing is sticking. If he could just think for a moment…

Gellert lets out a groan of pain. “Albus,” he moans, “I’m thirsty.”

“You’re always thirsty.”

“Because that demon of a professor sewed me shut like a barbarian!”

“Like a muggle,” Albus corrects.

“That’s what I said!”

Albus sighs and places the sheet of paper away. He’ll come back to it later, after he’s finished playing nursemaid for his evil ex-boyfriend.

The actual Yule Ball goes pretty well—suspiciously well, in fact. Viktor Krum takes Hermione Granger, Fleur Delacour takes Roger Davies, Cedric Diggory takes Cho Chang, and Harry Potter takes Ronald Weasley. All eight of them are glowing with happiness and Albus is so glad that Remus and Sirius were able to fix whatever distress Harry had been feeling around this momentous occasion.

There is, however, one thing that prompts his notice—Barty Crouch is not in attendance. Apparently he has taken ill and has sent Percy Weasley in his stead. It seems like an odd choice but, then again, Percy has always been a very well-organized young man.

Albus approaches him. “Mr. Weasley!” he says.

Percy smiles politely. “Headmaster Dumbledore,” he greets. “It’s good to see you again.”

“And you as well!” Albus says cheerfully.

“I must thank you once again for writing me that letter of recommendation—”

“Don’t worry about it,” Albus dismisses. “I was quite flattered, in fact. Did you know that you were the first student to ask me to write them a letter of recommendation since James Potter? Most don’t even consider it an option.”

“Huh,” says Percy faintly. “Surely you don’t mean the James Potter.”

“The one and only,” Albus says. “I admit that he did it mostly as a joke but I wrote him one, anyway.” Not that the poor man ever had the opportunity to use it.

For some reason, a myriad of emotions flow through Percy’s face. Then, almost dazed, he says, “James Potter.”

“Yes,” Albus says cautiously.

Percy nods to himself before promptly turning around and fleeing with nary a farewell. Albus stares after him, puzzled by the uncharacteristic show of impoliteness, but eventually just shrugs and carries on with his business.

The Ball itself is mildly entertaining, the meal top notch…but the real fun happens when the formalities are over and the Weird Sisters arrive. Albus had booked them, what, two weeks ago? Very short notice but Myron Wagtail owes him several favors. The way all the students immediately lose their minds is enough to make up for the headache of accidentally walking in on Myron and some nameless witch in certain compromising positions.

Everything seems to be going fine, until he finds Harry slumped in a seat in one of Hogwarts’s outer corridors.

“Um,” says Albus. “Are you all right?”

Harry shrugs, morose. “Ron and Hermione are fighting.”

“Oh,” says Albus. “I’m sorry about that.”

“I think Ron is being a jerk,” says Harry. “I mean, he did treat Hermione like a last resort. It’s awful to be treated like a last resort, right? Especially someone like Hermione who is smart and pretty and organized and…oh my god, she’d be so good for him.” He stares blankly down at his hands. “And Ron fucked it up. Why’s he like this? Completely insensitive…”

“Harry,” Albus says carefully, “I admit that I don’t know Mr. Weasley that well but he strikes me as the kind of boy who may say things without thinking, and those things may be hurtful, but they are not what he means. I think he is, in fact, very kind.” He walks over and sits next to Harry. “However, just because he is kind doesn’t mean you need to ignore the harsh things he says if they hurt you. Actions speak louder than intentions.”

“Isn’t it ‘actions speak louder than words’?” Harry asks, dubious.

“Well, yes,” says Albus, “but I feel like my version fits better in this situation.”

Harry shakes his head. “Whatever,” he mutters. “It’s not like Ron was mean to me, anyway—just Hermione. Hermione deserves better.”

“If he was being mean to Ms. Granger, why are you so upset?”

Harry purses his lips. “That,” he says, “is not something we’re going to talk about. I need to get back to the Common Room, anyway—I saw Snape skulking around somewhere nearby and I think he’d try to give me detention even if I was talking to you.”

“Probably,” Albus reluctantly agrees. “Run along, now.”

“Yes, sir,” says Harry before scampering off.

Albus sighs. He’s not entirely sure what’s going on between Harry and his friends but he hopes it won’t cause another crying fit in his office…

Gellert is lounging on his cot in the corner of Albus’s office when Albus walks in. He observes in silence for a bit, watching as Gellert stares blankly at the ceiling, before saying, “I’m back.”

Gellert perks up. “Albus!” he says. “How were the robes? Did you get compliments?”

“Only a few,” Albus says morosely. He, in a rare fit of desperation, had commandeered Gellert’s attention and demanded that he help him put together an outfit for the Yule Ball. Gellert had always adored his fashion sense so, together, they decided that Albus should wear sky blue robes with enchanted snow drifting lazily across it. And, get this, if one were to look close enough, they’d find that the snowflakes are in the shape of Hogwarts! Brilliant, really!

And yet the only people to compliment them were Minerva, Pomona, and Fleur Delacour.

“Well,” says Gellert, “I think you look lovely.”

“Thank you,” says Albus.

Gellert waves him away. “Now, tell me about the silly British boy.”

“You mean Harry?”

“Yes, him. He was crying over the Weasel-boy and his fathers had to convince him it was perfectly natural to have a…what did they call it? Yes, a crush.”

Albus stares. He wheezes, “Harry has a crush on Ronald Weasley?”

Gellert looks at him oddly. “Wasn’t it obvious?”

Albus puts his face in his hands. In hindsight, yes, it was very obvious.

…Well, it could be worse. Harry could have a crush on Draco Malfoy. Now that would be a disaster…

The days following Christmas and before the start of the Spring term are a haze of cheer and joy. When the Spring term starts, however, something unfortunate is brought to Albus’s attention: the Second Task requires a sacrifice.

“Okay,” says Albus, “we need to make sure we only take adults.”

“Why?” Ludo Bagman asks.

Percy stares at him. “We’re not putting children in a position where they could potentially drown in the Lake.”

Albus, who is glad that someone involved in planning this damned thing is finally on his side, says, “Exactly! Besides, I’m sure the Champions like the adults in their lives plenty…”

“How about we change the Task so that they won’t have to rescue their friends or family at all?” Percy offers. “Maybe we could just…take an object that is precious to them and that won’t be in danger of dying a watery death.”

“But where’s the fun in that?” Ludo demands. “The enjoyment of the game is directly proportional to the stakes at hand!”

“No,” says Percy. “That’s not…that’s not how it works.”

“Maybe we’ll stick to adults,” Ludo compromises, “but people are a must!”

They argue well into the night but eventually it’s decided: adults will be placed at the bottom of the Lake, along with a myriad of charms to ensure that they don’t die. Albus decides that, for Harry, he should approach Sirius instead of Remus, because Sirius would probably agree while Remus would demand to know why Albus hasn’t gotten Harry out of the Tournament yet.

On that note: Albus has successfully managed to regrow an organ from scratch! Unfortunately, it is very, very cursed. Just looking at it feels like taking a razor to his eyes.

Back to the drawing board.

Draco Malfoy returns to Hogwarts looking pale, silent, and not entirely…sane.

Harry says to Albus, “I told you so.”

Albus sighs. “Yes, I suppose you did.”

“Whatever it is, it has to do with Moody. I mean, Malfoy won’t even look him in the eye and the one time Moody tried to ask him a question, he ran out of the classroom screaming.”

“I admit,” says Albus, “I’ve noticed that young Mr. Malfoy’s father has been acting similarly for no discernable reason. I don’t know exactly what’s going on but it seems Crouch is also involved…”

“Crouch?” Harry asks, brows knitted.

“Ah—Bartemius Crouch Senior, current Head of the Department of International Magical Co-operation. I believe you noticed Mr. Percy Weasely take his place during the Yule Ball. Mr. Crouch has been ill as of late, apparently…”

“That’s suspicious,” says Harry. “You understand how that’s suspicious, right?”

“Of course I do. I just don’t know what to do about it!” cries Albus. “I mean, Barty Crouch Sr. used to be the Head of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement and he was involved in putting former Death Eaters behind bars. He also was professionally close to Alastor Moody, who was an Auror at the time. And yet! Alastor seems to have Lucius Malfoy, a former Death Eaters, in his corner! This doesn’t make any sense!”

Gellert, who had been listening silently, suddenly asks, “Bartemius Crouch Senior? That implies the existence of a Junior, does it not? And correct me if I’m wrong, Albus, but the letters Lucius Malfoy wrote that madman of yours never specified which Barty Crouch was being referred to.”

Albus stares. He says, “But…Barty Crouch Jr. is dead. He died in Azkaban in 1982!”

“Azkaban,” Gellert says slowly. “If he was in Azkaban, can it be assumed that he was a Death Eater?”

“He was one! He, along with the Lestrangers, tortured Frank and Alice Longbottom to insanity!”

Pale, Harry asks, “Do—do you mean Neville’s parents?”

Albus ignores him, too many things on his mind. “It cannot be him—”

“Suppose it is,” says Gellert. “Suppose that not only did Barty Crouch Jr. fake his death but that he also escaped Azkaban and that he is now out and about. Using this assumption, what conclusions can be drawn?”

Albus lets his eyes slip shut. If Barty Crouch Jr. is now walking free, he would naturally be drawn to his peers, such as Lucius Malfoy. For unknown reasons, Lucius Malfoy is unhappy about this. For unknown reasons, he came to Albus and began dropping not-so-subtle hints about Barty Crouch’s “vibrant personality”. And he did this during a conversation about Alastor Moody, who has been acting very unlike himself since the beginning of the school year…

“No,” says Albus. “No, no, absolutely not.”

“Dumbledore?” stutters Harry, looking frightened.

“Stay here,” he rasps. “I need to find Severus.”

And then he bolts.

He somewhat calms down by the time he arrives at Severus’s private quarters. That immediately flies out the window when he finds a pale Severus standing across from a nearly unconscious Lucius Malfoy.

“What’s going on here?” Albus demands.

Lucius, looking too exhausted to stand, slurs out, “It’s…Barty Crouch…not Moody…”

Severus, pained, says, “I think we need to talk…”

Chapter Text

Lucius Malfoy has been confined to the Hospital Wing, pale and unconscious in his bed, looking not unlike Draco, who’d been in a similar position during the beginning of the Christmas Holiday. Albus stares down at him with a critical eye. “And he said nothing else?’ he asks Severus.

“No,” says Severus, “just that Alastor Moody is actually Barty Crouch—which is absurd, of course, because I’ve seen the two of them in the same room…though, I admit, this would explain where my potions ingredients have been disappearing to. In hindsight, the kinds of ingredients that were disappearing ought to have been alarming.”

Albus sighs. “No, I suspect that Alastor Moody is, in fact, Barty Crouch—Junior.”

Severus stares at him blankly, then rasps, “Barty? I thought he was dead!”

“So did I but, well, this makes the most sense. Think of all those letters Lucius has been sending you.”

Severus takes a moment to do just that and proceeds to groan in annoyance. “Of course! I should have known. Lucius has never been one for subtlety outside the Wizengamot… Well, what should we do now?”

Albus purses his lips. “I don’t think we should contact Mrs. Malfoy just yet,” he finally says. “She has a much more controlled personality than her husband and she may attempt to do damage control. We do not want any sort of damage control to occur. Perhaps we ought to allow Mr. Malfoy to awaken naturally? Question him then…”

“Lucius will be well-rested,” Severus contradicts. “He’ll have his wits about him again, even if he’s still blinking off his drowsiness. We need something to truly catch him off-guard.”

Albus thinks. “What if we summon young Mr. Malfoy?”

“Draco?” Severus asks. “Yes, yes, maybe… Honestly, perhaps we should question him, anyway. Lucius has all but thrown his lot in with us and if Draco finds out then he’ll likely follow his father’s lead and give us the information we need.”

And so they summon Draco Malfoy, who’s eyes immediately zero in on Lucius’s prone form before shrieking, “Father!”

“He’s all right,” Severus soothes. “He was ill when he came to me but we’re taking good care of him, I promise.” When Draco still looks antsy, Severus continues, “He’s one of my oldest friends. I will make sure he’s fine.”

Draco slumps in a vague approximation of relief, though his shoulders are still tight. “Thank you, Professor,” he mutters.

Severus gently guides him to Lucius’s bedside, allowing him to perch at the only seat there. Albus and Severus exchange a look, silently arguing about whether they want to go ahead or not. Albus’s conscience, for example, is already guilting him for putting such an obviously terrified boy under any further stress. Severus glares back at him, saying something along the lines of ‘He can handle it!’ Whether he’s driven by desperation or tough love, Albus isn’t sure, but it does manage to change his mind.

Severus says, “Draco…before he fell ill, your father told me something.”

And then Draco tenses. “What do you mean?” he asks warily.

“He was talking about Barty Crouch…and Professor Moody. Rather, that Professor Moody is Barty Crouch Jr. Could you tell me anything about that?”

Draco looks desperately to his father for guidance but Lucius remains stubbornly unconscious. “He told you?” Draco demands once it becomes clear that his father is going to save him. “On his own?”

“Yes,” Severus says. “You know you can tell me anything, Draco. Your father knew it, too.”

Seeing as Draco is a Legacy Slytherin, on a normal day, he would have seen right through Severus’s attempts at manipulation and reacted accordingly. In his distressed state, however, he still recognizes the attempts at manipulation but he doesn’t seem to particularly care. Draco slumps and says, “He was living at the Manor before the school year,” Draco mutters.

Severus shoots Albus a smirk, which Albus mirrors. Success.

Albus says, “Mr. Malfoy, can you fill us in on how, exactly, Mr. Crouch came to impersonate Professor Moody?”

“Attacked him,” Draco murmurs, “at night. He was going to do it sooner but you didn’t choose a Defense Professor until right before the school year.”

“I didn’t hear about an attack,” Albus says skeptically.

Draco shrugs. “He’s good at what he does.”

Albus leans closer. “All right, then. May I ask why Mr. Crouch has come to live with you?” It must not have been a happy cohabitation, either, based on both Lucius and Draco’s evident hatred of the man.

And now Draco looks hesitant. He says, “He needed somewhere to go…somewhere he could hide. He’d nearly been found wherever he was before—I don’t know where it was, mind you.”

Albus can’t help but feel that Draco is hiding something. Something big. He says, “Why did he choose your family, of all of them? Your father was an open supporter of Voldemort”—Draco flinches—“and most people know that, even if he claimed to be under the Imperius Curse.”

“He was under the Imperius Curse,” Draco says stubbornly.

Albus suppresses a snort but Draco seems to know it anyway, his jaw set. Severus intervenes, saying, “Please, Draco—we just want to help you and your father.”

Draco nearly looks like he gives in but then Lucius shifts lightly in his bed and Draco clams up once again. “Ask my father,” he says tonelessly. “When he’s recovered, that is.” The ‘And he better recover’ went unspoken.

Finally deciding not to push their luck, Albus and Severus leave Draco to his misery.

“No!” Harry seethes. “This is obviously important and I want in!”

“No, you don’t,” Severus mutters. “Trust me, you really don’t.”

“Dumbledore looked terrified!” Harry denies. “When Dumbledore looks upset then it usually becomes my problem, anyway, so you might as well tell me now!”

And, well, Harry does have a point. Albus has a silent conversation with Severus, a ping-pong match that Harry follows with startling accuracy considering the fact that no one has actually said anything. What finally does prompt them into a decision is Gellert, who says, “It was Mr. Potter and his peers who suffered the most due to the situation—don’t you think that the rest of them deserve an explanation?”

Albus hates it when Gellert makes sense.

With a sigh, he explains the situation to Harry, who looks more and more horrified. “What the fuck?” he mutters. “You—you mean Malfoy’s dad betrayed Voldemort?”

“Is that really the thing you’re hung up on?” Severus mutters.

“I mean, considering the conversation you and Mr. Retired-Dark Lord Grindelwald had, I figured that there was something going on with this Barty Crouch Jr. character but I’d never even heard about all this Lucius Malfoy business. Now I feel vindicated—I was the first one to mention how weird Malfoy was being…er, Malfoy the younger, I mean.”

“And you were right,” Albus says soothingly. “I should have trusted you from the start.”

Harry nods sharply, and that’s that.

By the time everything has settled and a plan has been created, it’s late at night. There is an initial debate on whether or not to ambush Barty Crouch Jr. right now, when he’ll be caught off, or to wait until morning, when they’re well-rested enough to not accidentally curse themselves in the foot.

They decide to wait until tomorrow, so Albus sleeps—fitfully, sure, but he sleeps.

The next morning, everything is going fine right up until the Daily Prophet drops in front of him. The front page article is not about Gellert—thank Merlin because that was all it had been for a good while, nothing but speculation about where the man could have disappeared off to—but rather Hagrid. Hagrid, whose half-giant heritage has been revealed and used to ridicule him. Albus frowns at the paper. It’s not as if Hagrid’s heritage had been a secret—everyone knew about it rather intuitively. Now that it was printed in the paper, though…well, now it would become a problem.

And it does become a problem, with Hagrid coming to Albus’s office in tears. The article itself is rather sparse, with little evidence besides quotes from more predominant Slytherin students—and a singular Ravenclaw who is evidently frustrated by the lack of structure Hagrid has—and the Draco Malfoy Incident is brought up regularly. Interestingly enough, Draco himself doesn't seem to have provided a comment. Either way, it doesn’t particularly matter—Hagrid is still hurt. Albus brings out some whiskey for them to share with each other, feeling very nostalgic for last year when they’d been in nearly the exact same position when Buckbeak had been threatened with execution.

(Albus hadn’t given the Hippogriff another thought after it had escaped—he’d assumed that it had flown off into the forest to flock with some others. Instead, he’d stumbled into the damn thing in one of the bedrooms of Grimmauld Place. It had been chewing on the curtains. Albus did not have fun that day.)

Nevertheless, both he and Hagrid end up too drunk to get anything done. Albus allows Hagrid to take a few days off, sending Wilhelmina Grubbly-Plank to teach Care of Magical Creatures, instead.

Eventually, Hagrid stumbles out of his office, cheerfully waving goodbye, which Albus mirrors with ease.

Gellert promptly bursts out of his hiding place. “Albus!” he yells. “You’re drunk! You can’t subdue an errant Death Eater when you’re drunk!”

“Why not?” Albus asks petulantly. “I’ve done it before.”

Gellert groans. “If you die, I will never forgive you.”

“That’s actually very sweet,” Albus slurs. “Too bad you have the emotional range of a teaspoon.”

“Oh, please, you loved my range.” He wiggles his fingers with a smirk.

Albus frowns. “That’s vile. I’m too old for such vulgarity, unlike you!”

“I’m a year younger than you!”

They continue to bicker amongst themselves, right up until something catches Albus’s notice. He snatches up Gellert’s arm, observing his wrist where Albus had placed the binding runes. They’ve been altered slightly, not enough to actually break them but obviously enough to show that there had been attempts to do so.

Gellert says, “Surely you didn’t expect me to be complacent…”

“No, of course not.” Albus smiles up at him. “You’ll never break these, though.”

“I’m Gellert Grindelwald,” Gellert says haughtily. “I can break out of any prison!”

Albus laughs. “You’ll never guess the code!” he says in delight.

“I will!”

“Sure.”

Gellert huffs and returns to his workspace. “Be careful,” he says gruffly. “I’ll have a word with that madman of yours when he comes so that he watches your back but…well.” He looks down at his book. “You’re probably the better caster between the two of them no matter how drunk you are.”

Ah, Gellert.

Severus is less than impressed. He’s quite enraged, actually. “Drunk!” he screeches. “Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, did you get drunk on the day we’re supposed to capture a dangerous dark wizard?”

“…Maybe.”

“Albus!”

They decide to go ahead with it, anyway.

Capturing Barty Crouch is actually easier than they assumed it would be. He’s play-acting a paranoid ex-Auror but he’s not actually a paranoid ex-Auror, once you get a good look at him, so he leaves many openings in his stance and schedule. They are taken advantage of immediately and, soon, Albus and Severus have hauled him off to a private room, where they tie him to a chair and confiscate his wand.

Now all that’s left to do is wait until the Polyjuice wears off.

Barty Crouch puts up an admirable verbal fight in the meantime. “Albus!” he shrieks. “What the bloody hell are you doing?”

“Where is Alastor?” Albus demands—or, rather, slurs.

“You’re drunk,” Barty Crouch snarls. “You’re not thinking straight!”

Albus giggles. “I’m never thinking straight.”

“All right,” says Severus, “you’re going to be quiet, now.” Severus turns to Barty Crouch, lowering himself until they’re face-to-face. “You are going to sit here for the next twelve hours. If you do not change then we will untie you and you will go about your business.” He smirks. “Surely you can give us this much. We’re just covering all our bases—constant vigilance and all that.”

Sometimes, Severus scares Albus.

Barty Crouch lets out a groan of misery.

Severus volunteers to take watch of Barty Crouch for the next twelve hours, largely because Albus probably shouldn’t be trusted with such a high-stakes task in his current state. That leaves Albus wandering around the castle on his lonesome. It’s a Hogsmeade weekend so most of the older students are gone. Albus takes the opportunity to meet up with Hagrid again—and potentially get even more drunk. In all honesty, he hasn’t had so much alcohol in a long time and last night had re-awakened something in him. (Some would call it addiction. Albus prefers to call it “personality!”)

Albus ends up consoling Hagrid again, and slowly trying to convince him to come back to his job in a few days like originally intended. Unfortunately, Hagrid seems absolutely adamant to take at least a few months off until everything blows over—possibly even the rest of the year. Now, Albus has it on record that Wilhelma is an…objectively better teacher than Hagrid, but she only signed the contract for a few days—a few weeks at most!

Hagrid staunchly refuses to change his opinion. He seems absolutely sure that Wilhelma would love to continue teaching in his stead because who wouldn’t want to spend all day imparting respect for magical creatures onto students?

Albus groans. “Please!” he says. “Hagrid, you simply cannot do this to me!”

“It’s better this way,” Hagrid says mournfully, all but cuddling with Fang. “Just…just until everything calms down…”

Just then, there’s a loud banging on the door. “Hagrid?” a familiar voice calls.

Brows knit, Albus stands and opens the door, only to find himself confronted with Harry, Hermione, and Ron. He says, “Look, it’s your friends, Hagrid!”

Hagrid perks up. “Huh?”

Albus quickly ushers the three flustered students inside. He declares, “These three obviously want you to come back to teaching at Hogwarts, right?” He throws a piercing stare down at them and they begin nodding vigorously—all except Harry, who’s watching him with narrowed eyes.

“You…” says Harry, walking closer, “are you drinking again?”

“Harry!” Hermione says. “You can’t just accuse a teacher of that!”

“Why not?” Harry asks. “I’m sorry, do you like his cologne too much to point out his faults?”

Hermione goes red. “Oh, Harry, will you leave me alone about that? I had no way of knowing what the smell actually was…”

“It doesn’t even smell that good,” Ron grumbles suddenly. “Why’d you call it cologne at all? Is that what all your dad’s colognes smell like?”

“Yes,” Hermione says defensively.

There is another round of overwhelming silence where they all stare at her with blank or pitying looks. Harry says, voice strangled, “Hermione…”

“Nope,” declares Ron. “We’re doing this later!” He turns back to Hagrid, determination burning in his gaze. “You have to come back! We…we miss you, Hagrid!”

“But everyone hates me now,” Hagrid says mournfully. “All those awful things the paper said about me…”

“Not everyone is a slave to the Prophet,” Albus says, seeing his chance. “I’ve gotten several pieces of mail in the last day alone in regards to you. People remember you from their time at Hogwarts—they remember how kind of a soul you have. There is an overwhelming sense of support for you, Hagrid.”

“Yeah,” Hermione says. “Like Ron said: we miss you, please come back!”

Hagrid looks overwhelmed with emotion, going so far as to burst into tears. “You guys,” he sobs. “All right, all right—I’ll come back to teaching after Professor Grubbly-Plank’s contract is over…”

“How long?”

Albus answers this one. “About two weeks.”

“Brilliant,” says Ron.

As the conversation develops from there, Albus nearly leaves, but then Harry corners him and drags him outside for what is presumably a private conversation.

“Yes?” asks Albus warily.

“First of all,” Harry says, “how is the whole Barty Crouch Jr. situation going?”

“He’s been captured and is currently on watch under Professor Snape’s keen eye.”

“Good,” Harry says. “Now, onto more pressing matters…”

“I’m not an alcoholic!” Albus says, curb-stomping that particular conversation before Harry even has the opportunity to bring it up.

Harry huffs. “Oh, you definitely are an alcoholic, but that’s beside the point. What I was actually gonna ask you about is Mr. Bagman.”

“Ludo Bagman?” asks Albus.

“Is there another one?”

“Yes!” Albus says cheerfully. “An entire family of them, in fact! Why, I knew Ludo’s father.” His gaze goes unfocused and he stares off into the distance. “He was certainly a…talented man…”

“I am preemptively halting that conversational thread for my own sanity,” Harry says, looking slightly nauseous. Albus sniffs but allows him to continue. Harry says, “Anyway, Bagman tried to corner me in the Three Broomsticks and help me cheat. I said no, of course.”

“Because that’s wrong,” Albus agrees sagely.

Harry snorts. “I tried to get you to help me with the Second Task, didn’t I? I’m not too concerned about right from wrong in a tournament that I never wanted to be in at all. No, I turned him down because he’s got some kind of disagreement or debt with the goblins and I do not want to be caught up with that.” He straightens his back. “On that note—I think something is up with Bagman! And you can’t dismiss me now like you did with Malfoy earlier this year because I have been vindicated!”

“Come back to me when I’m sober and I’ll take you very seriously,” Albus offers.

Harry huffs. “Sure. Also, can you do something about Rita Skeeter? Because if you don’t kill her then Hermione will but I don’t think Hermione has the willpower to not brag about it afterward and I don’t want her to end up in Azkaban…”

“I’ll see what I can do,” says Albus. Maybe he can contact his friends in the yakuza again.

“One last thing,” Harry says. “Honestly, just one!”

“Continue,” Albus says magnanimously.

“What does it mean if I keep having dreams where I am engulfed in a very realistic sense of complete and utter agony?”

Albus considers him. “It means,” he says slowly, “that you should get a prescription from Madam Pomfrey for Dreamless Sleep. Also, perhaps we should revisit the concept of therapy…”

Eventually, the twelve hours elapse, Albus is no longer drunk, and “Alastor Moody” is definitively revealed to be Barty Crouch Jr. Albus says, “Brilliant!”

“What, exactly, is brilliant about this?” Severus demands. Barty Crouch is thrashing in his restraints, his words silent due to Severus’s rage-fueled Silencio. “Barty has kidnapped—possibly killed—an Auror and been allowed access to Hogwarts students to cast Unforgivables on them.”

“Sure,” says Albus, “but that means that I can officially get rid of him!” And Sirius and Remus will no longer be breathing down his neck.

“And who will you get to replace him?” Severus asks dangerously.

“Um,” says Albus, who hadn’t really thought that far ahead.

Severus sighs irritably. He waves his hand and the Silencio lifts itself. Barty Crouch, now once again the owner of functioning vocal cords, declares, “You’re a traitor! A nasty, awful, traitor, Severus Snape! After everything the Dark Lord did for you!”

Severus, having had enough of his antics, draws the Sword of Gryffindor and points it at him, which effectively shuts him up. Severus says, “Listen to be very closely, Barty. You will tell us where Alastor Moody is and you will tell us now.”

Barty Crouch licks his lips. “Aw, Sev,” he croons, “did you think that I left him alive?”

Severus snarls, “You need fresh DNA samples to brew the Polyjuice Potion. Where are you keeping him?” The Sword presses closer to him. Barty Crouch’s lips remain stubbornly closed. Severus says, “Did you know—this sword is imbued with basilisk venom. A single nick and…” He trails off.

Barty Crouch goes steadily paler. “T-There are no more basilisks.”

“What exactly do you think the monster in the Chamber of Secrets was?”

Barty Crouch gives in very easily after that.

They find Alastor in a box. He is immediately carted to the hospital wing—unfortunately for everyone, the only available bed is right next to Lucius Malfoy, who is still stubbornly unconscious. Poppy had said something about his body shutting down now that it’s finally in a “safe” and “stress-free” environment, which Albus has taken to mean that Lucius finally has the weight of the secret off his shoulders and his body has given in.

Alastor, who hasn’t spoken a word since he’d been found, finally opens his mouth upon laying eyes on Lucius. “What is he doing here?” he rasps.

“He,” says Albus, “is the reason that we found you. He told us that you were being impersonated by Barty Crouch Jr.”

“He’s up to something!” Alastor declares.

Of course he’s up to something—he’s a Slytherin and it’s simply in his blood. However, there’s a difference between actively being up to something and passively being up to something, and Lucius isn’t actively doing anything right now, and he says as much to Alastor.

Alastor snorts. “Sure,” he says, “but any plotting is bad plotting.”

“Get some rest, Alastor,” Albus just says. Alastor grumbles to himself but does so, settling back into the hospital bed with a firm frown. Albus is about to leave but then pauses, something occurring to him. He says, “Also, don’t bother Mr. Malfoy.”

Alastor nearly throws a vase of flowers at him.

Rude.

“Albus!” Gellert declares the moment Albus walks into the room.

“Yes?” asks Albus, perplexed.

Gellert says, “Grab the silly British boy!”

“He is currently in Hogsmeade,” Albus says slowly. “Is it urgent?”

“It’s possibly groundbreaking!” Gellert declares. “I think I know why the Elder Wand responds to him!”

“Oh,” says Albus, eyes wide. “I’ll go get him, then…”

Gellert grins madly.

When Albus does find Harry, the boy is in Hogsmeade, staring down with narrowed eyes at some cockroach clusters. Albus asks, “What are you doing?”

Harry asks, “Do you think Mr. Grin—er, Mr. Grinning would like these? I remember him asking for some sweets when we first came and I’m not sure what kind of meals he’s been getting these days…”

Porridge. Albus has instructed the house elves to serve him nothing but plain porridge, something Aberforth used to cook for them both during the summer of 1899. Gellert had choked it down with a fake smile, claiming that he was raised with manners and surely Aberforth didn’t know how bad the porridge was—but Aberforth knew all too well how bad it was, seeing as he would always serve Ariana better. In hindsight, Albus is sure that Gellert was simply too scared of Aberforth to say anything—as he should be.

Albus puts a hand on Harry’s shoulder and says, “I assure you, his needs are being well taken care of.”

Harry’s eyes narrow. “Sure…”

Albus waves him away. “Anyway, I just came to grab you. Mr. Grinning has apparently had a revelation and requires your presence.”

Harry nods, snatching up some cockroach clusters. “Give me a minute—I’ll buy him some.”

Brilliant.

When they finally make it back to Albus’s office, Gellert is rapidly rummaging through various papers. There’s a wild look in his eyes, a mad glint that was almost frightening. It is also insanely hot. Albus shuts that thought down the moment he has it, dropping it into the abyss at the bottom of his consciousness. It doesn’t work. Fuck.

Gellert, oblivious to Albus’s internal dilemma, immediately runs over and grabs Harry. “You hear the Elder Wand, correct?”

“Yeah,” Harry says.

“If you ask it a question, will it answer you?”

“Um, I think so.”

“Good!” He turns to Albus. “Put the Elder Wand somewhere Mr. Potter will be able to hear it clearly!”

Albus obediently brings the Elder Wand out, still clutching its handle but otherwise leaving it open. Gellert says, “Ask the Wand who its previous owner was.”

Harry repeats the question before pausing for a moment. A frown of confusion overtakes his face. “It said that its previous owner was Millicent Bulstrode?”

“What?” asks Albus.

Gellert ignores him and instead instructs Harry to ask the owner before Ms. Bulstrode.

“It was Ron!” Harry gasps.

More and more children end up in the lineup, until it goes from Terry Boot to Clarity Booth, young Mr. Booth’s mother. And then it goes from Clarity Booth to Amaryllis Johnson and on and on in a ceaseless and increasingly unhinged list of names. Albus notices that he is nowhere on the list, and neither is Gellert.

“Please stop,” Albus breaks in after Harry says Myron Wagtail. “Just…stop. Gellert, explain yourself.”

“Well, I was thinking why Mr. Potter would have ownership of the Elder Wand if he never disarmed you. Then I began thinking about my own time with the Wand and I realized…well, I never actually disarmed Gregorovitch. I certainly maimed him—which I regret! I should not have maimed him!—but I did not go through the procedures to get proper ownership of the Wand. And then I wondered whether Gregorovitch even got proper ownership at all! He was never much of a duelist…either way, I realized I probably never had ownership of the Elder Wand in the first place, and if I never did then you certainly didn’t.”

“So some random person disarmed the true owner and everything has been spiraling out of control ever since,” Albus mutters in horror. “And…Harry, when and why did you disarm Ms. Bulstrode?”

Harry says, “We had a class on different disarming techniques in Defense Against the Dark Arts.”

“Merlin,” says Albus. “This is…”

“Brilliant!” cries Gellert, enthused. “Though I am a bit miffed that the ownership has remained in the Isles—it would have been quite fun if it had run off to Russia or the Far East.”

“Um,” says Harry, “Mr. Retired-Dark Lord Grindelwald, I think Dumbledore needs to sit down…”

Albus does need to sit down. He also needs a nap.

What the fuck is going on with his life?

“Okay,” says Albus after a sufficient rest, “so Harry owns the Elder Wand. Sure. But why did it work so well for the two of us, Gellert? We never even suspected that we weren’t the owners!”

Before Gellert can say anything, Harry pipes up: “The Wand says that it stuck around because it found you both amusing and that watching you was like, and I quote, witnessing a car wreck in slow motion.”

“How does it even know what a car is?” Albus asks bitterly.

“Er,” says Gellert, “that’s probably my fault. In my defense, I thought they were very interesting.”

“I thought you said that muggles didn’t add anything of value to society?”

“Yes, yes, the cognitive dissonance was alarming even back then. But I’ve seen the error of my ways! I acknowledge that muggles are not vermin and that they are worth more than just their value as slaves.”

“Am I supposed to congratulate you on exhibiting basic empathy?” Albus demands.

“Hey,” says Harry, “he needs positive reinforcement.” Then, to Gellert, “Good job. I’m proud of you.”

“Thank you. It’s nice to know that at least you appreciate me.”

Ugh. “Moving on,” says Albus, “none of this explains why Harry would be the owner of the Stone.”

“Theoretically, who should the owner actually be?” asks Gellert.

Albus thinks, then murmurs, “Tom Riddle.”

“Voldemort?” Harry demands.

“Yes. It was passed down from parent to child in Tom’s maternal family. Seeing as there is no living person left bearing the Gaunt name, it naturally passes to Tom.”

“And yet Mr. Potter is the owner,” murmurs Gellert. “Say, Albus, can you grab the Stone? I want Mr. Potter to ask it the same question as he did with the Wand. We need to clarify the line of ownership.”

The previous owner of the Stone turns out to simply be Morfin Gaunt, and the one before that was Marvolo Gaunt, and on and on the line of succession went, with Gaunt after Gaunt. Gellert asks him to stop, and then has Harry confirm that Harry is, in fact, the current owner. Harry says, “Yes. I asked the Stone and I am definitely its current owner.”

“There must be something else at play here,” says Gellert. “Tom Riddle is not anywhere on the line of succession. Somehow, the Stone has skipped over him completely. Mr. Potter, have you ever had any contact with Morfin Gaunt?”

“Uh, I don’t think so.”

“He shouldn’t have,” says Albus. “Morfin has been in Azkaban for most of Harry’s life, not to mention he died two years ago.”

“Curious,” says Gellert. “I’ll need to conduct some more research.”

Albus considers making up another fake time limit to give Gellert a sense of urgency but seeing as how the last one didn’t exactly stick, he decides to give up entirely. Besides, he’s gotten used to Gellert’s constant presence in his office. So, all he does is nod and leave him to his work.

Harry, meanwhile, asks Albus, “If I really do own all three Deathly Hallows, what does that mean? Do I get any nifty superpowers? Am I a superhero now? ‘The Boy Who Lived’ is a bit long-winded of an alter-ego. How about ‘The Hallow Keeper’? Or maybe ‘Death Keeper’? Oh, oh! How about ‘Master of Death’?”

“Still a mouthful,” Albus dismisses. “And you may be the Master of Death but don’t go flaunting it around.”

“What do you mean? I’m already the Master of Death?”

Albus stops and stares. “Yes,” he says slowly. “By definition, the one who owns all three Deathly Hallows is the Master of Death. You don’t really get any ‘superpowers’, though.”

“Really? Come on, couldn’t I at least be immortal? Like the third brother?”

“The third brother died,” Albus points out dryly.

“Yeah, but only when he wanted to!” Harry shakes his head. “That would get rid of so much anxiety for me. Do you have any idea how fragile the human body is? It’s really quite frightening…”

Albus leaves Harry to his pondering and takes the opportunity to leave and process all this new information. And also maybe break something. He’ll see.

The Aurors that come to pick up Barty Crouch Jr. are very confused and frightened but they’re still competent enough that the arrest happens without incident. Barty Crouch glares holes into anyone he can see on the way out but, other than that, it’s a fairly peaceful affair.

What is decidedly not peaceful is when Narcissa Malfoy bursts through Severus’s fireplace—Albus really needs to seal that thing off—and points her wand at Albus, demanding, “Where is my husband?”

Albus, who is just trying to eat a celebratory cookie, freezes. “Um,” he says, “he’s…receiving medical treatment.”

“What?” demands Narcissa, alarmed. “Why? What happened? Why is he here instead of St. Mungo’s? How dare you keep him from receiving proper medical attention!”

“Mrs. Malfoy, Madam Pomfrey was good enough to treat you when you were a student and she is certainly good enough to treat your husband right now,” Albus says firmly.

Severus promptly breaks in. “His body just needs some rest,” he soothes. “Nothing major.”

“And why didn’t you tell me?” Narcissa demands. “My husband becomes ill under your care and you decide not to inform his wife? What kind of establishment are you running here? I demand to speak to him at once!”

“He’s unconscious.”

“Then I will see him at the very least!”

Albus and Severus make eye-contact. This is a true dilemma—while Lucius had (astoundingly) placed himself in Albus’s camp, Narcissa’s allegiance is questionable at best. By now she undoubtedly knows that Lucius has been dropping hints—if nothing else, Draco would have told her—but she has yet to act on it and has actively assumed that Albus has…what, imprisoned him? And yes, maybe Albus has been intentionally keeping Lucius away from Narcissa, but in his defense, he really thought the man would have woken up by now.

“Of course,” Albus says eventually. “Please come with us.”

Lucius is, indeed, still in a coma. Narcissa sits at his bedside, staring at him with pursed lips. She asks, “How is he?”

“Stable,” Poppy replies promptly. “He was suffering from severe exhaustion, though. This is his body finally taking some rest. He should wake up, right as rain.”

“When?”

“Sometime within the next few days.”

And Narcissa stares down at Lucius. Albus wonders if she’s going to demand he be taken to St. Mungo’s again but she doesn’t. Instead, she just keeps her lips pursed as she keeps staring at him and there are probably a million thoughts flowing through her head but since she won’t look at Albus, he can’t make eye-contact and figure out what they are.

Not that he would use legilimency without asking, of course. That would be morally reprehensible.

(But surely just a little bit couldn’t hurt—)

“If you’re going to question him when he wakes up,” Narcissa says, “then he will need a lawyer present.”

“Your husband has not been accused of any crimes, Mrs. Malfoy, and I am certainly no prosecutor. He is here of his own free will.”

“Then he can say so when he wakes up,” Narcissa bites out, voice clipped.

Albus shrugs. Fine. Lucius Malfoy can have a lawyer. Albus is a lawyer, too, and he can out-argue anyone in Britain, thank you very much.

He leaves Narcissa to her musing. He’s got better things to do.

Alastor is not going to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. Oh, the man certainly offers, but Poppy all but threatens Albus with a wand and he’s forced to concede that, perhaps, Alastor is in no fit condition to teach.

Gellert says, “I mean, there’s always the portrait of Jean Simmons hanging in the back of your office. She seems pretty knowledgeable.”

“Leave Jean Simmons out of this!” says Albus. Then, suspicious, “What did she tell you?”

“A lot about cursed mirrors and cloning enchantments. I burned hours of time discussing them with her while my stitches were healing. Also, she is oddly preoccupied with sex.”

“I’m taking her down,” Albus declares.

“To the Defense room,” Gellert agrees.

Albus considers it, just because he knows it will get the damned woman out of Gellert’s general vicinity. Then he realizes what he’s doing, wonders why he’s so invested, and decides to leave it be. “I can’t have a portrait teach a class,” he mutters.

“What are your other options?” Gellert asks.

“Maybe Sirius Black,” Albus says at last. “Or…hm. I have to write a few letters.”

The idea feels nonsensical but it might just work…

Before anything can come of his DADA gamble, another flashing headline steals Hogwarts’s attention: DARK LORD GRINDELWALD SIGHTED IN THE ENGLISH COUNTRYSIDE!

Albus, who is very sure that Gellert hasn’t taken a single step outside of Hogwarts, let alone Scotland, suppresses a snort. Unfortunately for him, Minerva hears it. “You think this is funny, Albus?” she hisses. “A dark lord is on the loose and you’re laughing! I thought that you’d do something the moment you’d found out that he broke out of Nurmengard!”

“I’m afraid my days of battling Gellert are long gone,” Albus says serenely. “I’ll leave all that nonsense to the young.”

“The young!” rasps Minerva. “You know as well as I that none of the so-called ‘young’ are even half as powerful as that man! You cannot simply leave this be! You’re the one who put him in prison in the first place!”

“Yes, I was,” says Albus, “so I have done my part. Now I’m done. Someone else can deal with my evil ex-boyfriend.”

This sends Minerva into a coughing fit. “Ex-boyfriend?” she demands. “You dated that man?”

“He was hot,” Albus defends.

“He’s evil!”

“And that’s hot!”

Minerva throws her hands up in rage and stalks out of the room. Sucks to suck.

Elphias Doge stalks back into his life with rage burning in his gaze. Albus barely has the time to greet him (and ask how the man had gotten into his office) before his old friend hurled Albus’s letter at him. “What the bloody hell is this, Albus?” he demands, incensed.

“Er,” says Albus, “you see, I’m in need of some aid…”

Elphias bites out, “Yes, I noticed.” He begins to pace around Albus’s office. “Do you have any idea how happy I was when I found a letter from you? We haven’t spoken in years! I admit that was just as much my fault as yours but I truly thought that this was you extending an olive branch! Instead, you bombard me with the least desirable position in Great Britain!”

“Surely it’s not the least desirable—”

“That’s beside the point! You only came to me because literally no one else is willing to take over! Though I bet you aren’t even putting in the proper work. You’re too busy simply avoiding Gellert Grindelwald, aren’t you?”

Albus is suddenly very aware of the fact that Gellert is hidden in the corner of the room. He blusters, “I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

“Oh?” asks Elphias. “So you’re not trying to distract yourself from the fact that your hot ex-boyfriend is currently on the run? You aren’t even going after him. People are going to start talking, you know—they’ll say nasty things.”

“I’ve had plenty of nasty things said about me before—and besides, I’m not hiding! I just don’t see the need to deal with Gellert a second time—”

“You still call him by his first name? Merlin, Albus, you need to get over him! It’s been nearly a century! And there’s a decent chance he killed your sister!”

Albus’s already soured emotions immediately curdle. “Don’t bring Ariana into this—”

“Every second of thought you waste on Grindelwald will inevitably bring her into this!” Elphias comes up to him, softening. “Albus, I know that we’ve drifted apart but I still care for you deeply. Grindelwald wrecked you. Don’t let him wreck you again.”

Albus stares at the man who had, once upon a time, been his closest confidante and dearest friend. There is something raw and pleading in Elphias’s face. Albus looks back at him and then says, “If you care for me deeply, will you take up the Defense post?”

Elphias immediately backs away, muttering wildly to himself. “You’re a scoundrel, Albus Dumbledore!”

“Is that a yes?”

“I’m not qualified!”

“Nonsense—you’re a member of the Wizengamot. You ought to be well-learned about threats to magical society.”

“There were too many layers in that joke, Albus!” He points a finger at him, accusing. “You’re just making fun of me!”

“I would never,” Albus immediately disagrees. “I always honor and respect my precious employees.”

Somewhere in the distance, Severus has a sneezing fit.

Albus, meanwhile, has learned to lie with such startling ease that he doesn’t even flinch as those words leave his lips. Elphias stares at him with a narrowed gaze. For a few moments, they’re bathed in nothing but silence. Then Elphias slumps and asks, “Will this really help you?”

“I literally don’t know who else to go to.”

“Fine,” says Elphias. “Fine. I’ll become the Defense professor—but only until the end of the school year! You’re on your own after that!” He promptly stalks out of the office, only pausing to call back, “And for Merlin’s sake, Albus, send me a letter about something other than a paycheck!”

After Elphias has finally left, Gellert reveals himself, waving away the enchantment that had been in the corner of the office. He says, “I swear I really didn’t mean to kill your sister.”

“How do you know it was you?” Albus asks morosely. “It could have been me!” Or Aberforth, really, considering how hectic the whole affair had been, but neither of them wanted to admit that. Instead, Albus just sits behind his desk.

“You wouldn’t kill your sister,” says Gellert.

“Not on purpose, of course!”

Gellert doesn’t seem to know how to respond to that, leaving Albus to stew in his misery. Then Gellert suddenly asks, “So…you’re still not over me, huh?”

“As if,” Albus snorts. “I do have a life outside of you, you know. Elphias just thought that because we haven’t talked in a while. And besides, you have to admit this entire situation seems insane from the outside. If you were in Elphias’s place, you’d be thinking the same thing.” Albus stubbornly does not look Gellert in the eyes, feeling oddly embarrassed—which is utter hogwash! Because Albus has uttered no lies! He’d had many serious relationships after his time with Gellert and he cherished them all dearly and he still does to this day.

Gellert, self-centered brat that he is, smirks. “Sure,” he says.

Albus groans.

The rest of the week is…rather dull, actually. Elphias proves to be a competent Defense instructor, if a bit dry in his lectures, and Albus is relieved to learn that his (former?) best friend is not one to cast Unforgivables on students. This is fine. Everything is fine.

Then Remus bursts into his office—too many people have been bursting into too many places, Albus really ought to do something about that—and snarls, “What is wrong with you?”

There are several ways Albus could have answered that question, all of which would have been correct in one way or another, but he settles on, “What?”

Remus waves a letter in front of Albus’s face. It’s addressed to Sirius and it has the official stamp of the Ministry on it. Oh. It’s the letter about the Second Task. Apparently letters of notification had been sent out without Albus’s approval—he’d been planning on approaching Sirius in person, armed with a myriad of reasons why he shouldn’t cause a fuss. Instead, Remus is here and he is infuriated.

Albus smiles weakly. “Well, you see, the thing is—”

“I am not allowing this. You’re making Harry compete in that awful tournament—”

“I am not making him do anything,” Albus protests, though he feels a bit bad considering how he hasn’t really been putting much effort in getting Harry out of the tournament lately. In his defense, though, he’s been otherwise preoccupied.

Remus, still shaking with rage, continues, “Well, he’s being forced into it, at any rate, and I will not allow Sirius to fall into the trap, too!”

“There will be several precautions in place,” Albus soothes. “Nothing will go wrong. I will personally ensure his continued safety.”

“Well, forgive me if I don’t trust your word!”

“Rude,” Albus mutters.

Remus just puts his foot down. “Think of something else.”

“I can’t think of something else,” Albus says morosely. “Listen, Percy Weasley and I had to argue Ludo Bagman down from taking children hostage at the bottom of the Lake. We tried to make it inanimate objects rather than people but that was apparently where Mr. Bagman drew the line. If you want to convince him, please go right ahead. Tell me how it goes.”

Remus stares at him, jaw clenched. “How about,” he says slowly, “you use life-sized, animated dolls instead? Just as much drama but you don’t have to actually take anyone hostage.”

Albus considers this. “Maybe it’ll work,” he says slowly. “I will discuss it with Percy Weasley and then the two of us will figure out a strategy to approach Mr. Bagman.” Ugh, now he needs to actually write another letter…

Percy saves him from this awful fate by stumbling through the office door, heaving by the time he’s in the room. Albus stares at him blankly. “How did you get in?” he demands.

“Harry…guessed…the password!” Percy manages to say between gulping breaths. “What…the hell…is falooda?”

“Heaven,” Albus promptly replies, nearly going crosse-eyed from the blissful memory of when he’d first had some. “But that’s not the point. Why are you here, Mr. Weasley?”

And Percy goes red and pale and red again, as if suddenly remembering something of vital importance. “Mr…Crouch!” he exclaims.

“Junior or Senior?” Albus asks warily.

Percy blinks. “Isn’t…the Junior…dead?”

“Well—”

“No…not important! Mr Crouch…Senior…was held hostage!”

Albus stares at him. “Where is he now?”

“Saint…Mungo’s!” Percy now looks about ready to pass out, even if he’s been standing still for over a minute.

Remus immediately walks over and helps Percy to a seat, conjuring him a glass of water which Percy gulps down greedily. Albus, meanwhile, is trying to figure out what’s going on. Both Alastor and Barty Crouch Sr. have been held hostage? Barty Crouch Sr. hasn’t been seen in person for several months…if Albus had to make a guess, he’d assume that the incidents are related. He says to Remus, “Please help Mr. Weasley calm down. I will have to speak with Mr. Crouch…”

Remus nods grimly. Albus immediately takes off, heading right for St. Mungo’s to figure out what the hell has happened.

Barty Crouch Sr. is babbling worse than Lucius had been in his letters. “He’s here!” he gasps, clutching onto Albus’s arm the moment he’s within arm’s length. “I couldn’t…it’s all my fault…my son, my son!”

“We found your son,” Albus soothes.

“Where is he?” Barty Crouch Sr. demands. Albus is wary of explaining to the man that he’s being sent back to Azkaban but before he can say anything, the man continues, “Wherever he is…he can’t come out! Can’t walk free! Can’t, can’t, can’t…”

“He’s been taken back to Azkaban,” Albus responds. This causes Barty Crouch Sr.’s face to twist up in something like pain but it’s overshadowed by a visage of pure relief.

“Good,” he says. But then his grip on Albus’s arm tightens. “But that’s not all! Dumbledore…Dumbledore, he was back!”

“Who was back, Mr. Crouch?” Albus asks as kindly as he can manage, taking note of

“Him!” cries Barty Crouch Sr. “I cannot say his name! He made it so I can’t! I…I couldn’t say no. That awful, awful spell…” He begins to cry, which is more than a little alarming. Albus has always been…er, in touch with his emotional side, but men like Barty Crouch Sr. never are. And yet, here he is, sobbing his heart out. “I’m so sorry! It’s all my fault!”

“You’re fine,” Albus soothes. “Everything is fine.”

But Barty Crouch Sr. will not stop crying, building up into hysterics. A nurse eventually kicks Albus out of the room altogether, saying very firmly that Barty Crouch Sr. is in serious need of rest and that he can’t handle stress in his current state. With nothing else to do, Albus returns to his office, where Remus and Percy are still sitting.

“He knew about his son,” Albus says.

Remus nods grimly while Percy simply looks on in confusion. Albus is left to explain the situation to the poor man, who looks more and more ashen as the explanation continues. “Oh,” he says eventually. “That’s…”

“Not the worst Defense teacher you’ve had,” Albus points out. “I mean, one of them was literally being possessed by Voldemort—”

“What?”

Albus sighs. He’d forgotten that isn’t common knowledge…

Barty Crouch Sr. dies within a week. It was some slow-acting, incredibly corrosive curse. When Albus hears the news, he demands, “Why wasn’t I made aware of this? Maybe I could have broken it!”

The nurse shrugs. “You’re not in the chain of command.”

“I’m the Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot!”

“St. Mungo’s is a private institution that is not beholden to government intervention beyond certain legal levels.”

Albus’s face darkens. “I’ll show you legal!”

The nurse just shrugs again and leaves. Albus scowls at his ceiling. Phineas Nigellus Black, from the comfort of his portrait, says, “Blackmail would probably solve a lot of problems for you.”

“I’m a member of the government!”

“Exactly.”

Fair enough.

Despite the awful amalgamation of people who have become part of his everyday social life, it’s the meeting of Harry Potter and Elphias Doge that causes Albus the most problems. Well—Elphias actually met the boy a while ago on account of, you know, teaching him, but he never mentions it until he walks in on Albus and Harry chatting over tea.

The “chatting” is actually Albus outlining the various essential and non-essential organs of the body. Despite this very informative lesson, Harry remains stubbornly unwilling to give any of them up, even if it would get him out of the Tournament. Elphias observes them both for a moment, during which Albus finally notices him and waves at him with a smile.

Elphias says, “Merlin, I was right!”

“What?” asks Albus.

“He’s the spitting image of Henry!”

“Who?” asks Harry.

Elphias sputters, “Who? Henry Potter was your great-grandfather! You have his jawline, and his hair, and—well, your eyes are a bit more vibrant but his were also green!”

“You knew my great-grandfather?” Harry asks, eyes widening.

Albus, meanwhile, feels a pit of dread opening up in his stomach. To confirm his awful feeling, Elphias says, “Yes, he was dormmates with me and Albus when we were at Hogwarts. I’d say Albus knew him more than I ever did, though, seeing as the two of them dated for a bit.”

Harry whirls around and stares at Albus, horror in his eyes. “No,” he gasps. “You—you dated my great-grandfather?”

“It was hardly dating,” Albus says weakly. “We just…” How to explain this without scarring Harry? He can’t think of anything and ends up just gesturing vaguely with his hands. Harry’s face goes green.

Elphias, meanwhile, just snorts. “Please—you went to Hogsmeade together for three years. You were absolutely dating.”

“Three years,” Harry wheezes. “I don’t know if I should be mad at you for not telling me or be grateful that you haven’t told me more.”

“I can tell you more,” Elphias offers.

“No offense, Professor Doge, but I think you’ve ruined my day. And week.” He pauses. “And life. I’m leaving now.” And then Harry bolts.

Elphias cackles as he takes a seat across from Albus. “I just adore embarrassing you,” he says. Albus glares at him sullenly. Gellert, who is still in the room, is probably frothing with rage—Albus had never mentioned any of his paramours before the two of them met…actually, he’d heavily implied that he hadn’t been romantically involved with anyone before. And that wasn’t necessarily wrong—whatever Albus and Henry had with each other was certainly not romantic—but it would still upset Gellert.

Well, that sounds like a later problem. For now, he centers his attention on Elphias and says, “If anything, you embarrassed poor Harry.”

Elphias shrugs. He says, “Isn’t that why you’re so close to the boy, though? He and Henry look so similar—and isn’t Harry diminutive? Is his real name Henry, too? That would certainly be something. No wonder he’s your favorite.”

“No,” says Albus, aghast. “I haven’t thought about Henry in years!”

Elphias shrugs. “I’m just saying, you and Henry were good for each other. You lived close to each other, too. It would have been perfect.”

“Except for the part where he was engaged to Elizabeth Bulstrode,” Albus points out. “And they were happy with each other and I was happy for them.”

“I noticed. You were the best man at the wedding.”

“And what a wedding it was!”

Elphias rolls his eyes. “All right, then,” he says. “Who do you want to talk about next?”

“No one!”

“How about Nicolas Flamel?”

“That was never reciprocated.”

“Newt Scamander?”

“He’s twenty years my junior!” Albus exclaims. Elphias just stares at him until Albus admits, “It was only once!”

“Babajide Akingbade?”

“I am his boss! That would be extremely unethical!” Albus stands and turns to his bookshelf in a huff. “I will have you know that, despite whatever is going through your head, I’m not easy!”

“I never said you were,” Elphias soothes.

“What is this, anyway?” Albus grumbles. “Why are you so invested in my love life?”

“Because Gellert Grindelwald still has a chokehold on you and I think that the only way you’ll be able to take your mind off of him is finding something else to distract you.”

“Oh, believe me, I am plenty distracted,” Albus says morosely. He has too many things on his plate and the majority of them can’t be attended to if Lucius Malfoy doesn’t wake up soon!

(And just thinking of Lucius Malfoy is enough to send him into a rage. Poppy keeps extending her timeline for when he should wake up, Narcissa keeps hanging around the infirmary looking increasingly sorrowful, and Draco has been all but mute, barely speaking and looking a few bad days away from a trip to the infirmary himself. And Lucius won’t wake up. Albus has half a mind to just snatch up Narcissa and Draco and shake them until they provide answers but Severus is unusually fond of them so he just does his best to wait it out. It’s not going well.)

Elphias says, “I mean a distraction that doesn’t completely stress you out. How open are you to a blind date?”

The corner where Gellert has been hiding suddenly rumbles, the bookshelf next to it toppling to the floor. Elphias yelps as he jumps away, demanding, “What was that?”

Albus stares, and stares, and stares. Then he says, “The wind.”

“The wind?”

“The wind.”

“We’re in your office.”

“I left the window open.”

“None of the windows here can open.”

Albus pastes a smile on his face and says, “Apologies, my old friend, but I have some pressing matters to attend to—feel free to come by for tea tomorrow!” He then proceeds to bodily shove Elphias out of the room, ignoring the man’s squawk of protest.

The moment the door closes, Gellert comes into view, face red with rage. “Tea!” he spits. “Don’t let him back in here, speaking of all that nonsense!”

“What nonsense?”

“That—that blind date stuff! There is no such thing as a ‘blind date’ where I’m from. You just meet the person your parents tell you to, and then there’s a wedding, and then you have children, and then you die!”

“The ‘meeting’ part is kind of a blind date,” Albus offers. “And besides, times have changed. I’m quite sure that blind dating is a thing, even in Slovenia.”

Gellert somehow manages to go even redder. “It shouldn’t be. It’s—it’s larifari, whatever that Elphias Doge character was going on about. All blind dating and salamanders…”

“Scamander,” Albus says tightly. “He mentioned Newt Scamander, the world famous magizoologist who thwarted your schemes several times, most notably in New York.”

Gellert squints at him. “Was…was he a ginger?”

“Oh Merlin,” says Albus. “I’m not having this conversation with you. Whether or not I go on a blind date is none of your business—”

“You shouldn’t, you’re much too old!”

“Well that’s just rude,” Albus sniffs. “Anyone can find love! Perhaps I will accept Elphias’s offer.”

“You wouldn’t dare!”

“Try me!” Albus snarls.

Gellert glares at him viciously before thundering back to his corner, disappearing behind a mountain of books. Albus smirks. Tomorrow, when Elphias comes over for tea, Albus will accept the offer for a blind date.

What could go wrong?

Valentine's Day descends on the castle with a vice-like grip. Severus spent the previous week on love potions, which is unusually seasonal for him, and now will begin the next three weeks on how to identify and neutralize them—and a serious talk about consent for the upper years. When Albus asked him about it once, many years ago, Severus smirked and said, “I love watching those little hormonal bastards realize that whatever fantasies they cooked up were, in fact, rather monstrous.”

Albus, meanwhile, takes the opportunity to not think about Gellert and instead smell the proverbial roses. It’s great. Everything is going wonderfully. He and Percy have managed to negotiate with Ludo Bagman until he agreed to allow lifelike dolls to be used in the place of actual people in the Second Task—though he’d demanded that the dolls had to be of other students—and Albus had shared a celebratory drink with Percy, during which time he heard all about Percy’s maybe-girlfriend and taxes and Dolores Umbridge, who is certainly not someone Albus wants to think about during Valentine’s Day.

He forcefully wipes his mind clean. As lunch carries on, he does not even think about the debacle of 1993, when Gilderoy had enabled students to send each other valentines via fake cupids. This year, Albus is merely subject to awful, embarrassing proposals—and the occasional good one—and it’s just as entertaining as ever.

And then Severus comes up to him, face pale. “He woke up,” he says.

Albus goes rigid before nodding sharply. The two of them flee the Great Hall and make a bee-line toward the infirmary, where Lucius Malfoy is wide awake and sitting up in his bed.

Narcissa is talking with him furiously under her breath while Draco has his head laid down on Lucius’s bed, fast asleep. Lucius’s hand rests on the back of Draco’s head. It would be endearing if Lucius was not actively arguing with his wife. It takes a while for the two of them to even realize that Albus and Severus had arrived.

Narcissa immediately says, “He’s awake and has been given a clean bill of health. We will be taking our leave now.”

“No,” says Lucius. “I need to have a conversation with—”

“Not without a lawyer!” Narcissa barks. “Your mind is still addled with sleep! Come, just get some rest at home and then we can—”

“We can do nothing!”

“You’re being unreasonable,” Narcissa hisses. “Just come home.”

“Surely even you know why that wouldn’t be—”

“What I know is that you’re an impulsive, hot-headed, unrepentant—”

“Unrepentant! For what should I repent?”

“Lucius Abraxas Malfoy, how dare you—”

“What’s done is done! Do you really wish to fight about it in front of Severus? In front of Albus Dumbledore?”

“It’s your fault we’re arguing in the first place!”

“I did what was best!”

“You were sleep-deprived and malnourished and desperate! None of those things motivate good decision-making!”

“Perhaps I was in the heat of the moment but even with the benefit of hindsight, I can’t see myself making a different decision, and you need to respect that, Narcissa!”

“Oh Merlin, he speaks of respect! You listen here, you—”

“Father!”

Ah. Draco has woken up.

The boy looks up at Lucius with wide, hopeful eyes. “You’re awake!” he says. “It’s been weeks!”

“I know,” Lucius soothes. “I’m awake now.” Then he frowns, observing Draco closer. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine,” Draco says.

“He’s been worried out of his mind,” Narcissa says, “and for good reason! Honestly, Lucius, let’s just go home and talk about this—”

“Home?” demands Draco, looking frazzled. “No, we can’t!”

“You’ll stay here.”

“I’m not leaving Father!”

“You need to focus on your studies!”

“And I will,” Draco says fiercely. “When Father is here, too!”

Lucius says, “I really do need to talk—”

“At home! With me!” Narcissa snarls.

The arguing continues and Albus throws a helpless look to Severus, who takes it as his cue to step in. He gently gets between Narcissa and Lucius and says, “I know that you’re both tense but Lucius shouldn’t be subject to this kind of stress right now.” Draco simply clings tighter to Lucius’s arm as Narcissa slumps.

“You’re right,” she says. “But—he can get more rest at home.”

“No, I can’t,” Lucius says firmly. “You know I can’t.”

“You could.”

“Narcissa…”

Narcissa simply turns away, leaving the infirmary altogether. Lucius watches on with a pained expression. He says to Severus, “She’s just stressed.”

“She has every right to be,” says Severus.

Lucius turns to Draco. “Go check on her, all right? Your mother needs you.”

“But…”

“I’m not going anywhere. Go to your mother.”

Draco frowns but does as he’s told, flitting off in the direction Narcissa had fled. Lucius watches him go for a bit before ignoring Severus entirely, focusing his gaze on Albus.

Albus says, “I think you have something to tell me.”

“I do,” agrees Lucius. And then: “I killed the Dark Lord.”

…What the FUCK—

Chapter Text

Albus manages to convince Poppy to let him drag Lucius to his office. He does so in a daze, still blank in the face of his shock. On autopilot, he offers the man a sherbet lemon. He accepts. Albus sits himself down on the other side of his desk, Severus lurking in the corner of the room, and rasps, “Explain.”

Lucius says, “Er…”

The problem with being the Lucius Malfoy is that news reaches him almost instantaneously—of course, this is largely because he hires people to ensure that news reaches him instantly, but that’s beside the point. No, the point is that Lucius is interrupted from his bath by harsh banging on the bathroom door.

“Lucius!” Narcissa calls. “Lucius, come out this instant!”

Lucius, who’s in the middle of exfoliating, calls, “Can it wait ten minutes?”

“Absolutely not! Come out right now!”

Lucius grumbles but leaves his legs half-exfoliated, getting in one final rinse before donning his bath robes and opening the door. He expects to see Narcissa in her night robes standing on the other side, shoulders crossed and face contorted into a pretty pout. What he does not expect to find is Narcissa in her house robes…and Terracotta Boot standing right next to her. In their master bedroom.

Lucius squeaks in alarm and slams the bathroom door shut. Clears his throat. “Mr. Boot,” he says in the deepest voice he can manage, “it’s a pleasure to meet you. Narcissa, darling, could please lead our guest to the parlor?”

“No,” cries Narcissa. “This needs to be discussed now!”

“At least give me some time to change!”

“You can change while we talk!”

And so Lucius Malfoy finds himself standing awkwardly in his own bathroom, desperately changing into his house robes while Terracotta Boot nervously prattles on on the other side. “Well, you see,” says Boot, “there was an incident at the World Cup…”

“An incident?” Lucius calls. “Well, it has nothing to do with us, does it? We left the moment the finals were over.” Staying any longer would mean that Lucius would have to interact with the muggle campgrounds coordinator and Lucius hasn’t talked to a muggle in twenty years and has every intention of keeping it that way.

There’s an ominous silence on the other side before Boot clears his throat. “A certain…group of individuals took it upon themselves to try and make a statement.”

“Who?” asks Lucius, still not seeing what’s so urgent. “The MWA? The DMLE strikers? Oh Merlin, was it the Russians?”

“No!” squeaks Boot. “As far as anyone can tell…it was the Death Eaters!”

It is at this point that Lucius Malfoy slips and falls, cracking his head against the tile floors. Whoops.

“I should have seen it coming,” Lucius moans, still confined to his bed. “The Dark Mark has been acting up for weeks now!”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Narcissa hisses, furious. She shoves another spoonful of soup into Lucius’s mouth. It’s lukewarm and tastes strongly of cabbage and Lucius does his best to not show how awful it is, unwilling to upset his wife further. Ever since that brat of a boy had freed Dobby, Narcissa has had to take on tasks that no woman of her standing should have had to. Lucius’s search for another house-elf has been fruitless because apparently the Malfoys are infamous for their bad treatment and no being is willing to bond with the family.

So—Narcissa Malfoy is stuck making subpar soup and fumbling her way through nursing her husband.

Lucius, who loves her very much and doesn’t want to cause her any more stress, says, “I didn’t want to alarm you! The Mark has acted up before but nothing has ever come of it…” Sure, this time it’s been more active for a longer period of time, but that’s neither here nor there. “Listen,” Lucius soothes, “it’s probably nothing. Just some old friends meeting up—surely it doesn’t mean…” Well, he doesn’t have to say what it could mean.

Narcissa, on the other hand, ignores the last remark entirely. There’s a mad gleam in her eyes as she says, “Why weren’t you contacted? Of all of the Dark Lord’s supporters, aren’t we the wealthiest? The sanest? The only other ones capable of this level of organization are the Notts…” She inhales sharply. “Did that bitch Alexandra Nott help plan it? Without me?” She violently shoves another spoonful of soup into Lucius’s mouth.

Lucius struggles to not gag. “I’m sure it’s nothing, dear.” Though, that does get him thinking, as well. Why hadn’t anyone contacted him?

But then more memories start to stream across his consciousness. Memories of Theodorus Nott and Antimony Flint desperately trying to get in-person meetings with him for several weeks, only to be thwarted by an increasingly convoluted series of interferences. His own frustration had bloomed in response to how the two had downright refused to converse with him over owl post. …Yes, that was probably their attempts to recruit him for this little escapade of theirs. He wonders if anything similar had occurred with Narcissa and her associates (he hesitates to call them “friends”). Perhaps Narcissa had conveniently missed luncheons with Alexandra Nott or charity events with Gehenna Goyle and the message hadn’t reached her, either.

…Or, perhaps, they hadn’t told him on purpose. The others had always looked down on him since the fiasco in 1981—which is absolutely hypocritical, of course, because most of them escaped Azkaban the same way he had: lying his ass off and claiming he was subjected to the Imperius Curse. Sure, some families simply hadn’t done enough damage for anyone to care—like the fucking Gibbons—but that’s beside the point.

No, by all rights, Lucius should have been the darling over the former Death Eaters!

…Unfortunately, Lucius’s continued friendship with Severus has put a damper on things. Severus had just barely escaped Azkaban—everyone knew that Severus was a Death Eater, what with his whole…black and gloom aesthetic—for reasons no one knows. What everyone does know is that Severus’s trial was closed, its transcripts sealed, and that it was Albus Dumbledore who saved him in the end.

As far as most people are concerned, Severus is Dumbledore’s man. Lucius has no doubt that no one mentioned the little side-quest at the Quidditch World Cup to Severus.

Lucius, by association, has always been deemed a bit too traitor-ish. In the intervening years, Lucius hadn’t particularly cared—the Dark Lord was dead! And Severus is a witty and altogether entertaining man to have around! So what if he’s a little too sympathetic toward Dumbledore and his pet mudbloods? It’s perfectly excusable.

(Narcissa had been less forgiving and it took her a very long time to warm back up to Severus…and, even now, she’s absolutely convinced that Severus is just as loyal to the Dark Lord as ever. Lucius doesn’t have the heart to contradict her.)

If Lucius was excluded on purpose and if the Dark Lord is returning…well, that’s a problem. There’s no way Lucius will stay in the Dark Lord’s good graces at this rate and the thought of being seen as inferior to the fucking Notts has his blood boiling.

Narcissa, who seems to be having a similar realization, says, “We need to do something.”

“Yes,” Lucius says gravely.

Theodorus Nott is a bastard and Lucius returns to Malfoy Manor wanting to bash someone’s head into a wall. Usually, that would mean Dobby, but since Dobby is no longer the Malfoy family’s house-elf—and word on the street is that he’s employed at Hogwarts by Albus Dumbledore—he simply stares sullenly into the distance. He’s clutching a plate of cookies in his hands, shoved into them by a cheerful Alexandra Nott, who had apparently “baked” them “herself”.

Narcissa takes one look at the plate and snatches it out of his hands, hurling it out the window.

“Why would you do that?” asks Lucius.

“Don’t eat anything from a Nott!” cries Narcissa. “That’s almost as bad as sleeping with a Zabini and you know it!”

Lucius knows she’s right but there’s something very disheartening about being deprived of proper sugar. Narcissa, in an odd fit of “femininity” or some such rot, has decreed that the House of Malfoy shall not consume any outside food until she has mastered the art of cooking. So, the cookies that Narcissa bakes him later as an apology are half-charred and half-raw and taste faintly of coriander and he chokes them all down with a smile.

The smile he gets in response makes it worth it.

Lucius has taken to secretly ordering food from the Leaky Cauldron for Draco lest the boy lose too much weight from lack of appetite or accidently vomit in front of Narcissa. Never has his son declared that he loves his father more.

Three days before the Hogwarts term starts, a visitor comes to Malfoy Manor. Narcissa, who had previously been squinting in dismay at the growing number of dirty dishes and hissing at Lucius when he dared to offer advice or to—Merlin forbid—offer to help, looks immensely happy for the distraction.

“I’ll receive them!” she declares, shoving past him.

Lucius, who is glad that Narcissa hasn’t once again decided to vanish the dishes entirely because commissioning exact replicas of centuries-old porcelain is expensive, stays firmly in place until Narcissa summons him. She looks exceedingly pale and Lucius is dreading whatever could have caused her horror this time, considering the disaster the last time had been.

There’s a man in their sitting room. It takes a moment for Lucius to even realize how he is, but when he does, he shrieks, “Barty?”

Barty smiles at him. It’s all teeth.

The thing is, Lucius never knew Barty that well. Sure, they’d run in the same circles but the boy had started attending Hogwarts the year after Lucius graduated. Their acquaintanceship during their mutual Death Eater days hadn’t run deeper than Lucius being granted the right to call Bartemius Crouch Jr. “Barty”, which he originally had no intention of doing…only to realize that literally everyone, including the Dark Lord himself, called the man Barty. So, Barty it was.

Now, Lucius is staring at a man who is supposed to be dead, who is clutching a bundle of robes to himself. Lucius says, “What is going on?”

“It’s been a while,” Barty says exuberantly. “Say, can I crash on your couch for a bit? It’ll only be a few days—you see, I have a job lined up and it provides room and board.”

Lucius says, “Why shouldn’t I call the Aurors on you right now?”

Barty raises an eyebrow. “You’re going to let Aurors come into Malfoy Manor?”

Good point. Lucius, feeling more and more irritated, points at the bundle of robes. “What’s that?”

Then the bundle of robes speaks. “Lucius,” says a weak, raspy voice. “Come here.” Lucius recognizes the voice and it’s enough to strike terror into his bones. When he looks at Narcissa, though, she’s gone from looking pale to looking pleased.

Fucking Blacks.

Lucius walks over and peers into the bundle and—yes, that is the Dark Lord. Pale and shriveled and one cough away from withering to dust, sure, but definitely the Dark Lord. Lucius chokes out, “My Lord! It’s…it’s an honor to host you at our home!”

The shriveled baby-thing gives him an unimpressed look. “You’re just as bad of a liar as your father. You’re lucky you’re pretty.”

What?

The Dark Lord continues, “Where is Abraxas, anyway? I need to talk to someone with brain cells.”

Lucius, who doesn’t know what a “brain cell” is, says, “Father is currently on holiday in Greece.” Of course, Abraxas Malfoy has been on holiday in Greece for the last six years, having had enough of Narcissa’s “Black tom-foolery” or something like that. He’d been just as upset with their union as Narcissa’s parents had been and apparently couldn’t take it for any longer. After ensuring that Draco had enough inheritance to live off of for the next three life-times, the man had fucked off to Greece with nary a good-bye in sight.

The last post card Lucius had received alluded heavily to the fact that he may or may not be gaining a new step-mother soon. Lucius had burned the card the moment he’d finished reading it.

The Dark Lord scowls and says, “Tell him to come back.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“Now,” says the Dark Lord, “please show us to our rooms.”

And Narcissa hastens to do so, withstanding many comments about how similar she looks to Bellatrix. Narcissa bears it all with the dignity required of a woman of her stature. The moment they’re all out of view, though, Lucius races to Draco’s room and bangs on the door. “Open up this instant!” he calls.

Draco opens the door, blinking up at him blearily. The wireless is cranked up to full volume, playing the Weird Sisters’s latest hit, and Lucius doesn’t let the dulcet tones of Myron Wagtail’s screeching distract him. He says, “Turn that nonsense off!”

“Why?” Draco demands. “It’s good music!”

“It’s atrocious.”

“It’s not my fault that you can’t comprehend true art!”

Lucius hisses, “We have visitors.”

“Tell them I’m at Pansy’s house.” The Parkinson family’s estate, colloquially known as Bethesda’s Bocage, is notoriously hard to get in and out of. It would make sense for Draco to be unavailable and Lucius almost considers the lie. Then he remembers just who they’re hosting and realizes that it would be entirely unfeasible.

“We,” says Lucius, “are hosting the Dark Lord.”

Draco stares. “Isn’t he—”

“No,” says Lucius. “The Dark Lord is in our home.”

“…I bet Mother’s happy.”

“We’re all happy,” Lucius says firmly. “Now, turn the wireless off and come to the sitting room. Your mother has taken the Dark Lord and Barty Crouch Jr.—no, he’s not dead, either—to a guest room but they may come back to continue their discussion.”

“Oh,” Draco says faintly. “Yes…I’ll be down in a few minutes.” And then he slams the door in Lucius’s face.

Brilliant.

When Barty fills Lucius in on the plan, he stares at him blankly. “You’re going to impersonate an Auror? Right under Dumbledore’s nose? There’s no way this will work.”

“I bet it will,” Barty says with all the confidence in the world. “I bet I’ll get through the whole year without being found out.”

“I doubt it.”

“Are you willing to bet on it?”

Lucius’s eyes narrow. “What could you bet? You have nothing to give me.”

“I’ll bet my father’s wand,” says Barty. He promptly produces the aforementioned wand. Lucius stares at it, at the wood that has been in the Crouch family for at least seven generations, its allegiance transferring smoothly between father and son. It’s priceless. Lucius wants it on display in his Manor. His mouth is practically watering.

“Fine,” says Lucius. Dumbledore is annoyingly competent at any rate, even if he puts on a facade of being a bumbling idiot. “I’ll bet…my peacocks.” Each one is easily worth over two hundred galleons so Barty is pleased.

Lucius smirks to himself. There’s no way he could lose.

Somehow, Barty manages to make it through the first day without getting caught. Hm.

The Dark Lord summons him in the morning. “Lucius,” the shriveled baby-thing rasps, “when will Abraxas be returning?”

Lucius swallows. “Father has refused,” he says dully. “Seeing as I cannot speak of you over owl post, he sees no urgent need to return to England.”

“Then you shall go to him in person,” declares the Dark Lord. “Convince him. And while you’re in Greece, I require you to fetch me a few books…”

Two hours and one illegal portkey later, Lucius is in Greece, squinting at the address listed on the letter his father had sent him. The establishment in front of him seems bizarrely…muggle. Perhaps even alarmingly so. Still, he has faith in his father and so he steps in still wearing full Malfoy regalia.

He’s meeted with a sea of muggles who stare at him blankly.

“Are you English?” one asks.

“Yes,” says Lucius, teeth grit. He has just talked to a muggle. He will need to take a good, long shower when he gets back to the Manor.

The one behind the counter snorts and says something in Greek, which prompts a few of the muggles to laugh. Lucius, who knows very little Greek—but is fluent in Latin, thank you very much!—stares at them disparagingly. The one behind the counter says, “What do you need?”

“I need to speak with Abraxas Malfoy,” Lucius drawls.

The muggle says, “Who?”

“He looks like me, but older.”

The muggle brightens. “Oh! Wine Man! Yes, yes, I know him!”

Wine Man? Dear Merlin, Lucius is going to yell at him the entire way home. Calming himself, Lucius says, “Can I speak with him?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. He left this morning.”

“Where did he go?”

The muggle shrugs. “Beach, maybe? Or a restaurant. He took his bags.”

Lucius stalks out of the muggle establishment, face red.

What follows is a wild goose-chase all over the idyllic Grecian town, during which Lucius finds that he’s constantly just missing his father. Lucius talks to more muggles than he ever intended to and finds, much to his horror, that there does not seem to be a wizarding community in this place at all. What had his father been doing in such a dump?

Eventually giving in, Lucius takes a portkey to Athens and searches for the books that the Dark Lord had requested. He finds them on the black market, and he realizes that the only way to gain control of them is to either enter a gambling ring or to simply steal them.

Lucius steals them.

He returns to Malfoy Manor covered in dirt and sweat, hoping desperately he’d escaped the mafia’s men. When he presents the books to the Dark Lord, he says, “What took you so long?”

Lucius grits his teeth. “Just ran into a spot of trouble…”

The Dark Lord says, “Where is Abraxas?”

“I…do not know. He appears to have left Greece entirely.”

“Take rest—and then find him!”

And so Lucius takes a two-hour bath, fully exfoliates, and collapses in his bed. It’s midnight. He vaguely recognizes that Narcissa is not there but he’s too exhausted to think much about it. His sleep comes swiftly and feels like his mother’s blissful embrace…

…And then he’s woken up at three AM by a frantic Narcissa. “He doesn’t know!” she says, shaking him roughly. “Lucius, we have to keep up the charade!”

“What?” demands Lucius, falling out of bed and pulling out his wand to point it at whatever threat Narcissa has recognized, only to realize that there’s no threat at all. He slowly sheathes his wand and stumbles to his feet, demanding, “What are you talking about?”

“The Dark Lord!” Narcissa gasps. “He doesn’t know that we don’t have a house-elf! And he cannot know! It would shame our family! And my family!”

“Narcissa, darling, calm down,” Lucius soothes. “Let’s have some tea and talk this out—”

“Tea?” Narcissa snarls. “I’m sorry, Lucius, but who is going to make the tea? Not Dobby! It will be me!”

Lucius, who really wants tea and who also doesn’t want Narcissa to be upset, says, “I’ll make the tea!”

Narcissa blinks. Doubtfully, she asks, “Have you ever made tea before?”

“Have you?”

Narcissa’s eyes narrow as she thinks this over. She doesn’t find anything wrong with his point, however, and simply harrumphs. “Fine,” she says, “you make the tea.”

He ends up having to dig up an old cookbook but he manages to flip to the page detailing how to make a simple lemongrass tea and he sets to work. The cadence of brewing is…soothing, actually, close enough to potion-making that it reminds him of late nights spent studying under Slughorn’s gentle encouragement. As he brings a pot to a boil, he can hear Slughorn commend his delicate handling and precise timing.

If only the cookbook could talk…

Eventually, tea is ready and he serves Narcissa. She takes a sip before him, perhaps recognizing his anxiety. She blinks. Takes another sip. Blinks again. “Oh,” she says to herself. “You’re the cook of the household now, Lucius.”

“I’ve only made tea!” Lucius says but he still flushes, pleased with the compliment.

Narcissa rolls her eyes. “It’s better than my last several attempts. And I know my cooking is awful—you don’t have to lie to me.” She sighs. “I just figured if I tried hard enough…” She shakes her head. “How did you make this, anyway?”

“I followed the cookbook.”

“I follow the cookbook,” Narcissa corrects. “You just make miracles.”

“No, really, I just followed the instructions to the letter.” Now that he thinks about it, though, he remembers that Narcissa had gotten an Acceptable in her Potions OWL and had gladly not taken Advanced Potions or sat for the NEWT. Perhaps she’s not equipped for such fine skills—still, she’s always been a Charms prodigy, having a rather one-sided rivalry with Lily Evans, and she always seemed determined to be a proper lady of society so a Potions NEWT was hardly necessary…

At any rate, Lucius decides that perhaps keeping her out of the kitchen is for the best.

Lucius becomes the chef of the House of Malfoy.

He doesn’t hate it.

He intends to slowly warm Narcissa up to the idea of helping with the other chores, as well—particularly in cleaning Malfoy Manor, which is such a monumental task that Narcissa had taken to focusing only on their chambers and the sitting room—and, now, the Dark Lord’s chambers. Honestly, Lucius should have offered his help long before now but the idea that he could actually do anything hadn’t crossed his mind until he’d started doing the cooking.

Narcissa reluctantly asks for his help, seeing as a good portion of her time has now been taken up by the Dark Lord ordering her to hold ancient black magic books up for him to read.

Lucius would be able to do a lot more work if the Dark Lord didn’t keep sending him on wild goose chases, though.

After the Greece incident, the Dark Lord summons him into his chambers and rasps, “How good are you at potions without the aid of Severus?”

“I received an O in my NEWT,” Lucius responds.

“…That will have to do. I have the option of two different rituals…dear Barty wasn’t good enough to do the superior one but you may be. It will take more time but yield better results. Are you up to the task?”

“Of course,” Lucius says automatically. Then, “What task, My Lord?”

“Helping me regain a body, of course.”

Of course.

Lucius is promptly sent to Istanbul and made to meet with an old associate of the Dark Lord’s—a distant relative of his old yearmates Shukri al-Shafiq, if he remembers correctly. The woman is gaunt, hijab wrapped tightly around her head. She observes him with beady eyes as he explains the strange and mythical potion ingredient that he needs. The woman asks, “Why?”

“I’m working on a ritual.”

“There are very few rituals that require such an ingredient and I would not like the results of any of them.”

Lucius grits his teeth. “I’ve been assured that you will be delighted, actually.”

The woman—what was her name again? Azra?—snorts. “I doubt it. Please leave. My son will be coming home soon.”

This piques Lucius’s interest. “I wasn’t aware that you’d married, Ms. al-Shafiq.”

At this, Azra smiles. “It’s Erdoğan now.”

“Really? I don’t know of any magical houses named ‘Erdoğan’…”

“That’s because there aren’t any. I married a muggle.”

Lucius recoils. “Why?” he demands. “You’re of good breeding!”

“So is my husband. The only difference is that I have magic and he does not. He’s descended from the ancient Sultans, you see—and yes, they had magic, but that isn’t what makes my husband special. My husband is wealthy, intelligent, and kind. In fact, why don’t you dine in our home tonight? He would love the chance to meet you.”

Lucius hastily comes to a stand. “I really must be—”

“If you do, I’ll provide you with what you need.”

Lucius shuts up and sits back down. Looks like he’ll be eating at a muggle’s house tonight. He’ll need a very long shower afterward…

Mehmet Erdoğan is…remarkably agreeable, for a muggle. It helps that he both knows that magic exists and does not attempt to lord the so-called superiority of muggle inventions over magical ones. He’s well-informed about politics, too, both wizard and muggle. In fact, Lucius several times finds himself stumbling through his vague recollections of muggle world events while Mehmet discusses wizarding ones with ease.

It’s…humbling. The worst part is that the man is unfailingly kind, and not even in the grating way that Arthur Weasley is. No, Mehmet simply knows his place in the world along with everyone else’s and displays kindness whenever and however is most beneficial to others.

Also, Mehmet and Azra’s son, Bahadir, is adorable. Lucius has always loved young children—what with their tiny hands and huge eyes and perfectly malleable minds—and Bahadir, though he’s a half-blood, is delightfully polite.

Before Lucius leaves—with the potion ingredient in hand—Bahadir shoves a muggle toy into Lucius’s hand. “I heard you have a son, too,” the boy says haltingly. “This is my favorite toy. He will like it.”

“You don’t need to give your favorite toy—”

“I have more like it,” Bahadir says firmly.

Lucius, slightly dazed, nods and bids Azra and Mehmet goodbye before leaving. When he returns to Malfoy Manor, he places the toy—a small, wooden snake that flits its tongue when you press a button—on the bedside table in the master bedroom before approaching the library.

Narcissa is inside, staring dully at the ground as the Dark Lord orders, “Flip the page.”

Narcissa flips the page.

With sudden ferocity, Lucius’s blood boils and he feels the very real urge to give the Dark Lord a piece of his mind—but he’s a Slytherin and, like all Slytherins, he has a well-developed sense of self-preservation, so he doesn’t act on his instincts. Instead, he obediently presents the potion ingredient to the Dark Lord, who nods slowly.

“Good, Lucius,” the Dark Lord rasps. “And how is Azra doing?”

Good, thinks Lucius. She married a muggle. She has a beautiful family. She’s very happy even though she thinks her Lord is dead. What he says is, “She’s fine.”

“Wonderful.” And then, “And what news is there in regards to Abraxas?”

Lucius clenches his jaw. “He might be in Azerbaijan…”

“Then you shall go to Azerbaijan tomorrow. Take rest today—I imagine bargaining with Azra was exhausting.” The Dark Lord laughs. Lucius smiles tightly. Then, to Narcissa, “Hold the book up higher.”

Narcissa holds the book up higher. Lucius has to leave the room before he starts screaming.

He manages to cook dinner that night and get started on tomorrow’s breakfast before scrubbing the master bathroom floor. By the time he’s settled in bed, Narcissa arrives, looking haggard. “I did nothing today,” she says listlessly, “but I’m still so tired.”

“I’m sorry, darling,” Lucius soothes.

Narcissa opens her mouth to complain again but then the toy snake catches her eye. Her brows furrow. “Where did you get this?”

“Ah, from Istanbul. Azra’s son instructed me to give it to Draco.”

Narcissa’s nose wrinkles. “Lucius, it’s a muggle toy. Throw it out. Why did you bring it into our house at all?” And then with a huff, “I thought this Azra al-Shafiq character was a proper lady…”

Lucius doesn’t end up throwing the toy snake away—instead, he tucks it into Draco’s bedroom among his other toys which are more for display than play nowadays. The animated stuffed animals and figurines observe the inanimate snake with curiosity but eventually accept it as one of them.

All is sort-of well with the world.

His trip to Azerbaijan yields no results. Abraxas Malfoy is nowhere to be seen. Lucius spends the night at a bistro in Baku, enjoying fresh seafood—a luxury he hasn’t eaten in ages—and observing the strange muggle contraptions outside.

He hadn’t realized how far automobiles had progressed. He should look into them.

He brings home food for Narcissa. He doesn’t tell her that it’s from a muggle bistro. She doesn’t notice the difference.

Lucius doesn’t scrub himself as vigorously as usual when he showers that night.

The next three days follow a similar pattern—Lucius wakes up and finishes making breakfast, does his best to help with the cleaning while Narcissa is summoned to answer the whims of the Dark Lord, only to be sent on an ingredient-collecting errand by the Dark Lord himself, and then spend time in muggle areas while desperately tracking his father, then coming home and preparing dinner before collapsing in bed. He averages about three hours of sleep a night, all of which is restless, and eats a single meal a day when he’s out on the Dark Lord’s errands, if even that.

Narcissa tells him that all the glamors in the world won’t be able to cover the bags under his eyes. Lucius pointedly ignores that comment.

Then—then Severus contacts him. Lucius stares at Severus’s head in his fireplace for a few moments before saying, “Hello?”

“Lucius,” Severus says, sounding agitated. “Lucius, I need to tell you something.”

“What?” demands Lucius.

“Alastor Moody transfigured Draco into a ferret!”

Lucius stares. He, of course, knows that “Alastor Moody” is actually Barty and he nearly jumps through the Floo to tackle that bastard himself. How dare he treat Draco that way! Barty had always been bitter that Lucius had escaped Azkaban by claiming to have not been loyal to the Dark Lord and now he’s evidently taking it out on Draco!

But no—he can’t do anything. The Dark Lord would smite him.

Taking a deep breath, Lucius says, “Make sure it never happens again.”

Severus visibly falters. “That’s it? Lucius, this is enough grounds to sue him! You could get him kicked out of Hogwarts!”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

Severus stares at him before muttering wildly to himself. Then, “Fine!” The Floo connection cuts off. Lucius knows that Severus will take care of Draco as much as he can and so he lets it be.

“Lucius,” the Dark Lord says one day, “since you’ve proven your own incompetence in the simple matter of contacting your father”—as if Lucius hasn’t traveled entire continents trying to find the man—“I suppose I will have to ask you.” His shriveled body struggles but eventually does manage to lean closer. “Back before I was reduced to this unfortunate state, I left something in the care of your family—or, rather, in the care of Abraxas. I want you to get it for me.”

Lucius frowns. “Of course, My Lord,” he says. “What is it, exactly?”

“My old diary. It’s black and has the letters ‘TMR’ emblazoned on it.”

Lucius’s blood freezes. “Uh,” he says, fighting desperately to keep his voice steady, “I-I will look into it, My Lord.”

“Wonderful. Let’s hope you’re not as incompetent as I’ve begun to believe.”

Lucius races out of the room. He knows exactly where that damned diary is—in Hogwarts! With Albus Dumbledore! And more importantly, it has a hole drilled right into the center of it via a basilisk fang! Lucius doesn’t exactly know what it is but he does know that it’s important and that the Dark Lord will probably be very displeased about its current state. Merlin, it probably has a myriad of enchantments on it, as well—he can’t even make a replica!

He needs to lie. Something convincing enough to fool even the Dark Lord!

He’s doomed…

He manages to convince the Dark Lord that the diary is with his father, who undoubtedly understood its importance and would never dare to part with it. The Dark Lord snorts in amusement but doesn’t inquire further.

Thank fuck.

Whatever ritual the Dark Lord is planning, it seems incredibly complex. Lucius is tasked with gathering increasingly obscure ingredients, with international trips that often end up lasting several days instead of mere hours. Sleep becomes a luxury, meals only occur when he remembers they exist, though he always preps a surplus back at home. Lucius nearly gets killed by the Italian mafia, the yakuza, the FSB. He’s taken to avoiding wizarding areas entirely in order to avoid detection.

He finds that muggles are…tolerable. Knowledgeable. Kind. Everything he’d been raised to believe they were not.

Lucius very firmly does not have opinions on it.

Lucius is in Lagos, creeping in the back alleys of its wizarding district, when he spots a newspaper. It’s printed entirely in French so he can understand it clearly.

Harry Potter is the second Hogwarts champion.

…The fuck?

Well, at least it’s not Draco.

He learns from Augusta Longbottom that Dumbledore is attempting to remove Barty from his position due to his use of Unforgivables on students. Lucius is tempted to let him because not only would it help him win his bet with Barty but it would also get Barty away from Draco and draw the Dark Lord’s attention away from Narcissa.

Unfortunately, Lucius isn’t looking to get eviscerated, so he decides to put a stop to it.

If he were in his right mind, he would enter Hogwarts via the front gates—he’s not in his right mind, though, so he chooses the option most comfortable for him: stumbling through Severus’s Floo. He nearly throws up and mentally curses the Dark Lord and fucking Barty, only to realize that he’s not doing it mentally at all. Thankfully, Severus doesn’t seem to know what he’s talking about.

Lucius walks into Dumbledore’s office feeling like he’s about to pass out. Dumbledore says things and it takes Lucius a while to process what he’s saying, probably because he hasn’t slept in forty-eight hours. Eventually he manages, “You can’t fire Alastor Moody.”

“Why not?” demands Dumbledore.

“You can’t.” Words, words, how does one say words?

“I assure you, I can.”

Ah! Words! “You signed off on it. The—the Imperius was in the lesson plans. The Headmaster of Hogwarts is afforded a certain amount of leeway as far as the law is concerned. As long as Alastor Moody has solely been performing the Imperius during class time for educational purposes, you have no grounds to fire him.”

“That can’t possibly be true,” Dumbledore mutters. “The Imperius is an Unforgivable.”

If Lucius were more articulate, he would snidely comment on Dumbledore’s sometimes astoundingly childish view of magic. He’s not more articulate, though, so he just says, “This is Hogwarts.”

“I will be double-checking this.”

“By all means.” His mind floats off again. His last meal had been in Kyrgyzstan, something called beshbarmak which he didn’t catch the ingredients of but he found quite warm and filling. He’d been covered in dirt and grime and more than a little blood, shoved into a plastic chair provided by the streetside vendor, sitting between random people milling about, speaking in a language he does not understand.

Were they wizards? Were they muggles? Lucius hadn’t known. Honestly, he hadn’t cared. He had food and that was that.

Dumbledore’s voice filters into his consciousness. “Are you all right, Mr. Malfoy?”

Lucius jerks, panicking. “Perfectly all right!” he says. “Absolutely A-okay!”

“That’s a muggle phrase.”

“Oh.” Lucius looks down. “Oh no. I must be taking my leave, Headmaster.” He rises to do just that but then Dumbledore asks him about the Dark Lord and—

Lucius Malfoy has said a muggle phrase. Lucius Malfoy eats at muggle restaurants. Lucius Malfoy has discussed the results of the FIFA World Cup in Brazil and the advent of new cars in China and the Rwandan civil war in Botswana. Lucius Malfoy has done it all and he doesn’t regret it.

Is…is Lucius Malfoy a blood traitor?

…Probably.

Oh fuck. Lucius Malfoy is a blood traitor and the Dark Lord is living in his house. He needs to do something.

Luckily, he’s sitting in a room with Albus Dumbledore. Time to drop a few hints, hopefully subtle enough that the Dark Lord won’t be able to pick them out of his mind. “Barty Crouch,” he says slowly, “has always been a man with a large personality.” When Dumbledore continues to look befuddled, he turns and says, “Right, Severus?”

Severus steps out from the shadows. For a moment, Lucius is full of hope that his old friend will understand what he’s saying, but then Severus says, “I wouldn’t know—my singular encounter with him was decidedly unpleasant. Though I suppose that any politician that has managed to become the head of his department must be in possession of a certain amount of personality.”

Lucius stares at Severus, dismayed. His one hope is gone. Eventually, he mutters, “Well, I must be off—places to be, people to please, you know how it is.” And then he storms out of the room, retreating into Severus’s private chambers and Flooing back to Malfoy Manor.

That night, when he finally climbs into bed, he stares at the ceiling.

…He has betrayed the Dark Lord.

Fuck.

Lucius finally catches up with his father on a sunny Tuesday morning in Peru. He finds the man, graying but in otherwise great form, in a bar, the Andes mountains stretching wide into the distance by the windows. Abraxas Malfoy is wearing jeans and a button up.

The first thing Lucius can manage to say is, “You’ve gone native.”

Abraxas startles, nearly spilling his beer. He turns and stares at Lucius with wide eyes, only for his gaze to dip down to Lucius’s outfit—a smart suit, very sophisticated but decidedly muggle. Abraxas begins to grin. “So have you.”

Lucius sniffs. “Well, I needed to blend in while I chased you across the world.”

“You did very well,” the man soothes.

Lucius, who has never heard his father say anything like that before, stares. “Who are you and what have you done with Abraxas Malfoy?”

His father tilts his head back and lets out a bellowing laugh. Again, something Lucius has never heard before. He’s getting more and more bewildered by the second. Abraxas says, “Sit down, Lucius! Look at the view! Look at the drinks! Isn’t this paradise?”

Ignoring him, Lucius says, “You need to come home.”

Abraxas frowns. “Why?”

Lucius leans closer and hisses, “The Dark Lord has requested your presence.”

Abraxas tilts his head, considering. “The Dark Lord isn’t dead?”

“No. He is at Malfoy Manor and he instructed me to bring you home months ago. I only just managed to find you because you kept dodging me!”

Abraxas says, “Why didn’t he summon me himself with the Dark Mark?”

“He’s…not in a position to be able to use that kind of magic.”

Abraxas turns to stare out the window. He says, “I don’t care. I won’t go back.”

Lucius, who had been hinging on the hope that Abraxas would return and take some of the heat off of himself and Narcissa, stares in dismay. “Why not?”

“Tom and I were good friends, once upon a time,” says Abraxas and it takes Lucius a moment to remember that “Tom” is, in fact, the true name of the Dark Lord. “Oh, I was awful to him at first, I admit, but…he was powerful. Charismatic. Intense. He regurgitated every lie I’d been spoon-fed my entire life about muggles and mudbloods.” He pauses. “Sorry, muggleborns. I’m still working on that…”

What the FUCK?

Abraxas continues, “I was loyal to him. I was the second person to take his mark, you see. Oh sure, the first was that bastard Theodorus Nott, but don’t be mistaken—I was the one who saw it first. He came to me to ask about the design, the geometry, the arithmancy behind each curve of the skull. Theodorus was a guinea pig. I was the real deal. Once upon a time…oh, Tom and I were close.” He takes a sip of beer. “Best friends…brothers…closer than brothers…”

Oh dear. Lucius has the sneaking suspicion of where this is going… In an effort to spare himself the trauma, he says, “Why have you abandoned him now, then?”

Abraxas shrugs. “I went to Greece. I met people—met muggles. I realized that what I’d been taught, what I’d taught you, was wrong. I traveled the world and saw glorious things, the kind of things Tom had promised to show me one day. Somewhere between Madagascar and New Zealand, I realized that I don’t need Tom anymore. I’ve started a new chapter in my life. There’s nothing left for me in Britain and I have no intention of going back, even if Tom is wallowing in the Manor.”

Lucius puts his head in his hands. “Please, Father,” he says. “You don’t understand what the Dark Lord is putting Narcissa and I through. We lost our house elf so now we’re doing all the chores. Narcissa is waiting on him hand and foot. He’s been sending me to every corner of the world not just to chase you down but also to find supplies for some arcane ritual that will restore him to his full power. You—you need to do something!”

“I don’t need to do anything,” Abraxas sniffs. “I’ve never cared for Narcissa. If you have so much trouble, pull Draco from Hogwarts and the three of us can travel together. If the Dark Lord returns, then he returns.”

“You—you can’t mean that. Something needs to be done about this!”

“Well, I won’t do anything.” He glances at Lucius. “But…I think you’ll do something, won’t you?”

“What?”

“Oh, drop the theatrics. It’s clear that you’ve already made up your mind. Whatever your plan is, I wish you the best of luck.” He leans closer. “And remember, Lucius—you’re a Malfoy. You can do whatever you set your mind to.” He pokes Lucius in the chest. “A Malfoy bows to no one.”

And then he disapparates right there, in the middle of a muggle bar in Peru. Lucius stares at the place his father used to be before screeching, “You fucker!”

One of the waitresses startles. “Sir?” she asks. “Are you all right?”

Lucius sighs. “Yes,” he murmurs. Then, glancing up, “Turn up the sound on the television. I want to hear the commentary on the game.”

The girl smiles brightly. “Of course!”

And so Lucius sits back and watches a football game, trying to figure out what the fuck to do next.

Lucius Malfoy may be a blood traitor but he’s also a coward. Also, the Dark Lord is in his house and spends most of the day around his wife. Lucius can’t do anything. His only option is hoping that Dumbledore will figure out that something’s wrong.

…Still, he sends Severus a letter from Peru, doing his best to inconspicuously drop hints about Barty—just for the bet, he assures himself. He really loves his peacocks, after all.

Lucius’s missions slow down around December. The Dark Lord has instructed Narcissa to throw a Yule celebration like it’s a normal year and Lucius has been tasked with helping her. As such, the Dark Lord—who has recovered enough strength to read books on his own—spends most of his days alone in the library and Lucius and Narcissa finally have the ability to spend time with each other in the daytime.

…Somehow, that makes everything worse.

“Absolutely not,” Narcissa seethes.

“Darling,” Lucius says, “we can’t possibly clean the entire Manor in time by ourselves!”

“Lucius, we can’t be seen hiring house-elves!” Narcissa says. “That’s preposterous! Paying a house elf…what’s next, voting rights for werewolves?”

“Stop putting words in my mouth!” Lucius says, though the idea does make him pause. Should werewolves have voting rights? His instincts scream NO but, well, his instincts also try to tell him that all mudbloods—er, muggleborns—should be segregated from the rest of society, so he knows he shouldn’t be relying on his instincts for everything.

…If he is a blood traitor, does that mean he’s required to support voting rights for werewolves? He doesn’t know. It’s not like someone had given him a pamphlet or something.

Narcissa is still huffing and puffing so Lucius says, “I’ll be discreet, and it’s just for Yule. Everything will be fine.”

Eventually, Narcissa gives in.

Lucius contacts Dobby via Draco, who had been affronted by the request but had nonetheless complied. Dobby meets him under the cover of darkness wearing good-quality clothes, arms crossed, staring at Lucius with naked suspicion. “What does Mr. Malfoy be wanting?” he snaps.

Lucius has to do this carefully. “I need someone to clean Malfoy Manor on December 25th.”

Dobby looks ready to explode with rage. “Dobby is a free elf!” Dobby snarls.

Lucius puts his arms up placatingly. “I know! I’m willing to pay for your services!”

Dobby pauses. “Really?”

“Yes! You and a few other house elves! I just need the Manor cleaned before and after our Yule celebration. I am not trying to gain ownership of you. I am hiring you.”

Dobby purses his lips, eyes narrowed with calculation. It astounds Lucius how capable Dobby is. He’d never noticed it when he still owned Dobby, mainly looking at the creature as a servant. Now he’s bartering with him. Some unexplained emotion wiggles in Lucius’s chest but he doesn’t mention it.

Eventually, Dobby agrees. He and a few other elves will do the job for pay, and will be paid extra to keep it all quiet. No one needs to know that the House of Malfoy has hired house elves. And, most importantly, Narcissa will not know that more than one house elf will be at Malfoy Manor.

Dobby ends up asking about the food. “Does Mr. Malfoy be needing a chef?”

“No,” says Lucius, no small amount of pride coloring his voice, “because I will be doing the cooking.”

Dobby eyes him skeptically. “If Mr. Malfoy be saying so…”

Rude.

He keeps sending Severus letters. They keep not working.

The week following the First Task—which had apparently been an astounding display of skill from everyone but Harry Potter—Lucius Malfoy sits down and reads the Daily Prophet for the first time in a month. He immediately regrets it.

The front page screams, DARK LORD GRINDELWALD ESCAPES PRISON, CURRENT LOCATION UNKNOWN.

He and Narcissa share a glance before both tipping their gazes in the direction of the library, where the Dark Lord is still residing. Without a word, they both decide to not let him know. Lucius is quite sure that if the Dark Lord were to find out that he has a potential rival on the loose, everything is going to get much worse. With that in mind, Lucius quickly skims the article to get the key details—marveling at the sheer incompetence reeking from the whole affair—and hurls the newspaper into the fire.

He takes great satisfaction in watching the ancient picture of Grindelwald wither to ashes. After all, the House of Grindelwald had wronged the House of Malfoy ages ago and still has yet to respond so, of course, no Malfoy had ever joined hands with that upstart.

At any rate, Dumbledore took care of it once and he’ll take care of it again.

He decides to put it out of his mind.

Lucius has one last mission in Canada before Yule, which is why he’s on a highway near Toronto when he receives notice that Narcissa has summoned Draco back home from Hogwarts. The fall term is over and the entire school had been on Winter Holiday and Draco was supposed to attend the Yule Ball. Unfortunately, it seems that he’d had a bit of a mental breakdown.

When Lucius returns, he tells Narcissa, “You should have left him at Hogwarts! He would get more peace of mind there!”

Narcissa is stubborn. “Nothing is better for the mind than being at home,” she argues. “Whenever Bellatrix was ill, Mother and Father would summon her back to the Eyrie and she would be right as rain in a few days!” The Eyrie, of course, being the name of the house where Narcissa grew up—there is much contention around whether or not the Black family named it after the headquarters of the ICW or if the ICW named their headquarters after the Black family house.

Lucius is of the opinion that the Blacks are full of shit and that they stole the name and touted it as their own, but he won’t say that to Narcissa. Instead, he says, “I don’t know if you noticed, but your sister was never not ill.”

“Shut your mouth!” Narcissa snarls, just as she always does when he disparages her birth family. (On a related note: the whole Sirius Black debacle is a banned discussion topic for exactly this reason.)

Lucius throws his hands in the air. “Fine,” he says. “Draco can stay at the Manor!”

Narcissa harrumphs.

“Father,” says Draco one morning while Lucius passes by his room, “can I talk to you for a moment?”

Lucius considers him before nodding and entering. It’s the same as he remembers, with Quidditch posters and signed photos of Weird Sisters band members. The wireless is playing a standard rock song from a few years ago. Lucius wonders if there are any local stations that play jazz, the kind he’d heard in New Orleans, but decides not to mention it. The volume is turned down low, at any rate, allowing for discussion. Lucius says, “What do you need?”

Draco takes a deep breath. “Why are you warning Dumbledore about Barty?”

Lucius freezes. “What?”

“I saw the letter,” Draco says. “You can’t lie to me.”

Lucius purses his lips. He says, “I have a bet with Barty. I refuse to lose.”

Draco stares at him. “Is that all?”

“…Yes.”

Draco slumps. “Okay,” he says blankly. “You can go now.”

As Lucius leaves, Draco cranks the wireless up to full volume and changes the channel until it’s a slow, tragic melody. All sound cuts off once Lucius pulls the door shut.

…Draco definitely should have stayed at Hogwarts.

The Yule celebrations come and go. Lucius, in an effort to foster an upbeat mood, buys extravagant presents. Narcissa looks down at the diamond necklace he’d gotten her. “It’s so pretty,” she says.

Lucius smiles brightly. “I know! I saw it and it immediately reminded me of you!”

“So pretty,” Narcissa repeats, not looking up. And then she bursts into tears, leaving the necklace on the sofa chair before racing out of the room.

Draco, meanwhile, observes his pet runespoor with interest, a spark of something finally entering his eyes. “He’s brilliant,” he decides, as if his mother has not just run sobbing out of the room. “What’s his name? It should be something majestic. What about Bartholomew?”

“Er,” says Lucius, “I think the breeder named it Adam.”

Draco stares. “Can’t I just rename him?”

“Adam is the name it’s trained to respond to.”

“Oh.”

And that’s how Lucius ruins Yule…though the Dark Lord comes a close second when he says, “Did you not get me a present, Lucius?”

Ugh.

Draco goes back to Hogwarts for the Spring Term. He’s pale and drawn and silent and has finally given in to his mother’s demand that Adam remain at the Manor, but he’s not about to have another breakdown, so it’s fine.

Then the Dark Lord sends him on a three day mission to Austria.

Now, listen—the last time Lucius had eaten anything was on New Year’s Day. The last time he’d slept for more than two hours was the night before New Year’s Day. Lucius is sleep-deprived and starving and delirious when he arrives in Austria, and what does he see when he gets there? Families fleeing. Terror in the papers. Fearmongering in public areas.

Lucius doesn’t spend more time than necessary in wizarding areas but he still feels the fear. When he dares to ask, the witch he’s standing next to stares at him like he’s an idiot.

“The Dark Lord Grindelwald is on the loose,” she says slowly. “I can tell you’re an Englishman and I know that Grindelwald never touched the Isles so I will tell you this—never has Austria, has Europe, seen more devastation than during Grindelwald’s reign of terror.” And then, with disgust, “Don’t they teach you anything on that island of yours?”

Lucius puts off the mission that’s requested of him. Instead, he speaks to more people. He goes to monuments. He reads pamphlets and listens to speeches.

The House of Malfoy had always stood against Grindelwald, sure, but no one had ever been afraid of him. In fact, even the self-important purebloods had taken delight in the knowledge that Albus Dumbledore, perhaps a half-blood but still a full-blooded Englishman, had defeated Grindelwald. Suddenly, everything feels so real.

Grindelwald is not a far-off threat for Dumbledore to defeat—he’s another Dark Lord waiting to wreak havoc. Surely not even Dumbledore could handle two of them at once!

So Lucius (globe trotter, blood traitor, master chef—sleep deprived, half starving, stark raving mad) decides to finally stop being a coward and make a decision.

He needs to kill the Dark Lord.

It’s easier said than done, of course. There’s no telling what kind of powers the Dark Lord still has, what he could do to someone who wishes him harm. He doesn’t know for certain but he suspects that either he or Barty have something to do with the sudden reclusiveness of Bartemius Crouch Sr. He needs to do this carefully.

The first order of business is getting Narcissa out of the Manor. He realizes with horror that the only time Narcissa had left the Manor after the Dark Lord’s survival was when she went to pick up Draco from Hogwarts.

She deserves some time to herself to relax. Perhaps one of those spas? Actually, no, that’s a muggle thing and Narcissa would not appreciate it. Maybe just a nice trip to the beach…

At any rate, Narcissa cannot be in the Manor where she may get caught up in the backlash. He arranges it all as quickly and as subtly as he can manage, promising that he’ll take care of everything and that Narcissa doesn’t have to worry about a single thing.

Narcissa, delighted, goes on the trip.

Then comes the second step of Lucius’s plan.

The Dark Lord needs to be caught unaware. That leaves only a single time that may work—at night, when the Dark Lord is sleeping. Lucius plans very carefully, casting preliminary spells to make sure he will be silent at the hour of extermination.

Then, that night, when the clock strikes three in the morning, Lucius rises.

The trek to the Dark Lord’s room is as quiet as ever and, contrary to his belief, there aren’t too many protections layered over him. In the end, it’s like taking candy from a baby.

Then he’s carrying a tiny, shriveled up, very dead body. “Um,” says Lucius vaguely, “this…doesn’t feel right.”

He promptly turns to the side and vomits the contents of his stomach onto the floor. Ominous laughter echoes in his ears and when he looks up, the Dark Lord is still sitting on his bed. “Oh, Lucius,” the Dark Lord croons, looking absurdly similar to an actual baby rather than his usual, shriveled-up self, “you’ve betrayed me.” The baby flies closer. “Don’t worry, I have contingency plans. I would never trust someone so close to Severus Snape.” And then, “You’re lucky you’re pretty.”

The apparition of the baby Dark Lord bursts into nothingness, leaving Lucius staring at it.

Oh, he thinks vaguely, I’ve fucked up.

The worst part is that the corpse is definitely that of the Dark Lord and Lucius has definitely killed it, so he doesn’t understand. He has killed the Dark Lord. Perhaps the baby was just a hallucination? Yes, that’s it…

But just in case, he can’t let this go. What “contingency” would the Dark Lord have in place? It strikes him suddenly. Barty! That foul man probably knew the moment Lucius struck down the Dark Lord! And, more importantly, he’s in the same school as Draco!

Lucius stumbles to his feet and goes to the Floo, toppling into Severus’s chambers. Severus stares down at him with wide eyes. “Lucius?”

“Blood traitor!” gasps Lucius. “I’m a blood traitor…doomed us all…werewolves deserve voting rights!”

“What?” Severus demands, visibly confused.

Lucius is not entirely sure that his mouth is actually making words and not noises. He keeps going, anyway. “Barty! Barty the Bastard! Barty the Tricky Worm! In the castle! Close to Draco!” He grabs Severus’s arm as the man tries to lift him up. “Contingency plan!”

“Lucius, you’re not making sense!”

“Mad-Eye is not Mad-Eye!”

Finally, he must be speaking sense because Severus’s eyes widen. Then, with astounding timing as always, Dumbledore bursts in.

“What’s going on here?” Dumbledore demands.

Lucius, putting all his concentration toward speaking, says, “It’s…Barty Crouch…not Moody!”

Severus says, “We need to talk.”

And that’s when Lucius finally passes out.

The first thing he sees when he wakes up is Narcissa. The sight fills him with pleasant warmth, as always, but the look on her face is ugly.

“Lucius,” she whispers, “what have you done?”

The ensuing conversation ends up going in circles as Lucius attempts to explain himself and Narcissa attempts to tell him off, all while neither of them can actually say what they want. Then Dumbledore and Severus come in and Narcissa attempts to take him back to Malfoy Manor as if it’s not the absolute last place he wants to be.

Coming home is not enough to cure an illness!

Narcissa eventually says, “What I know is that you’re an impulsive, hot-headed, unrepentant—”

“Unrepentant?” Lucius demands. “For what should I repent?” He’s a blood traitor, dammit, and he’s not sorry about it!

Narcissa says, “Lucius Abraxas Malfoy, how dare you—”

Draco wakes up soon and Narcissa goes storming out of the room. Lucius sends Draco after her. Finally, Dumbledore says, “I think you have something to tell me.”

Lucius nods. “I do.” And then: “I killed the Dark Lord.”

…The look on their faces makes it all worth it.

“Explain,” Dumbledore says in his office.

Lucius, who has accepted a sherbet lemon because he is a blood traitor and that’s what blood traitors do (at least, he thinks so—again, he never got a pamphlet), says, “Er…it’s a long story.”

“I don’t have anywhere else to be.”

“Right,” says Lucius, calculating just how much he should tell the man. “Well, it started with Terracotta Boot bursting into my master bedroom…”

Chapter Text

About half-way through Lucius’s explanation, Severus has the man at swordpoint.

“Uh,” says Albus, “if we could all calm down and talk this out—”

“You!” snarls Severus, ignoring Albus entirely. “You were the one who stole Aladdin’s Ring from the Baghdad House of Wisdom!” He advances. “I spent six years trying to get approval to study it! And then finally, the very same day my request is granted, what do I find out? The damn thing is missing! And the entire time, it was you!”

“It’s not like I wanted to steal it!” yells Lucius, leaning sharply away from the Sword of Gryffindor but not looking particularly concerned by it. That makes sense—after all, he doesn’t know that it’s infused with one of the deadliest venoms in the world.

Albus, once again trying to diffuse the situation, says, “Severus, wasn’t the first thing you learned in swordsmanship class that you shouldn’t point a sword at someone?”

“Unless it’s self-defense.”

“You’re not—”

“I’m defending my sanity!”

Lucius says, “Oh, I’m sorry, would it have been better for your sanity if me and my family was dead?”

“Don’t put words in my mouth!”

Realizing that he can’t do anything, Albus simply sighs and pulls out some brandy. This is going to take a while…

He ends up having to kick Severus out of the room entirely, which is unfortunate, but Albus doesn’t give a fuck so. Yeah.

The thing about Lucius Malfoy—the thing that Albus has always known but has never had to truly reckon with until now—is that he’s shady. Lucius managed to weasel his way out of a one-way trip to Azkaban with a silver tongue. He managed to retain his influence on the Wizengamot. He managed to maintain his standing in society.

Lucius Malfoy is also probably running several money laundering schemes and possibly even election fraud, depending on who you ask—namely, Albus Dumbledore. At any rate, when Albus had heard Lucius’s name being spoken of disparagingly by the yakuza during his quick holiday in Japan, he’d simply assumed that it was business as usual. So what if Lucius Malfoy stole something? He’s always stealing something.

What he had not anticipated was that Lucius had actually stolen something—as in, by himself, in-person, barely escaping the wrath of the Hashimura-kai.

The list of books and ingredients that Lucius admits to having stolen for Voldemort is alarming, for obvious reasons, but it’s also bat-shit insane.

“You stole the Koh-i-noor diamond,” rasps Albus. “I—how?”

“Oh, that was actually pretty easy. I mean, the lasers were a bit tough but I met this guy from Dublin who—er, never mind.”

This is the most plebeian conversation Albus has ever had with Lucius and yet it’s still insane. “But the Koh-i-noor diamond isn’t missing.”

Lucius rolls his eyes. “It was easy enough to replace with a fake.”

“I’m pretty sure you just committed treason.”

“Against whom?”

“The Queen!”

“The entire system is archaic. The only reason it still exists is for revenue from tourism. Down with the monarchy, for all I care.”

Lucius has been spending too much time with his friend in Dublin. Albus decides to let it go, still trying and failing to wrap his mind around the logistics of stealing the fucking Koh-i-noor diamond—

“Either way, it was already stolen goods,” Lucius grumbles, defensive. “I just—shifted its ownership a bit. Now that the Dark Lord has evacuated Malfoy Manor, I fully intend to ship it back to its homeland.”

“You’re going to return the Koh-i-noor diamond to India.”

“That’s what I said.”

Money laundering, Albus reminds himself. Lucius Malfoy participates in money laundering and election fraud and is still (or, at least, used to be) a Death Eater. That will always be true no matter how many artifacts Lucius returns to their homes. Albus shuts the topic of the diamond down, moving on to more pressing matters.

“You nearly burned down what’s left of the Library of Alexandria.”

At this, Lucius honest-to-god flushes. “Okay, that was an accident. I needed to get my hands on the Blue Lotus of Nefertem—”

“You provoked the first reappearance of Cleopatra’s ghost in three hundred years.”

“Yes, she was quite upset with me, wasn’t she?”

Albus pulls out another bottle of brandy.

“Okay,” says Albus, “I understand what you’ve done. I understand why you stole the things you did. Now what I’m curious about is why you’ve come to me at all.”

Listen, Albus taught Lucius’s father and had the distinct displeasure of going to Hogwarts at the exact same time as his father, an atrocious man named Septimus Malfoy. Not that Septimus had ever spoken to him out of anything but dire necessity, of course, but Albus had once walked in on the man in a compromising (and mentally scarring) position with Louella Burke and—well, the two were engaged very soon afterward and that gave Albus more information than he’d ever wanted to know.

Also, Septimus’s father had been leading the faction against the first bill Albus had ever introduced to the Wizengamot and Albus is kind but he is not forgiving.

Yeah, he’s never liked the Malfoys and the Malfoys have never liked him.

And yet, here is Lucius Malfoy, all but declaring himself to be on Albus’s side.

He doesn’t get it.

Lucius says, “Grindelwald.”

Albus freezes, very aware that Gellert is camped out in the corner of the room. “What?”

“When I was in Austria—”

“Before or after you wrestled Perchta and stole her pebbles?”

“Before.”

“Right, continue.”

“Well, when I was in Austria, I saw the uproar caused by Grindelwald’s escape and I realized that he was a problem. I knew that, eventually, he and the Dark Lord would circle each other and tear each other to pieces, taking everyone out with them. Even you can’t take on two such enemies at once so I had to get rid of one of them and—well, the Dark Lord was a much easier target.”

Lucius isn’t telling him something but Albus suspects this is going to be one of those things he won’t budge on so Albus leaves it be. He has to keep himself from glancing at the corner where Gellert is hiding, very aware that one wrong move could ruin everything.

He says, “You tried to kill Voldemort so that I could kill Grindelwald.”

“Yes.” Lucius leans closer. “The news hasn’t mentioned anything about you in regards to the situation other than your lack of action but during the War with Grindelwald, you also seemed inactive right up until you weren’t. I know you’re looking for him—I probably interrupted you, in fact. I just wanted to take care of another problem so you could take care of this one and—well. I failed. I apologize.”

Lucius Malfoy just apologized to him. Lucius Malfoy killed (or, at least, attempted to kill) the Dark Lord. Lucius Malfoy is advocating for the death of another dark lord—

The very dark lord that Albus is providing asylum.

Fuck.

Albus pastes a grin onto his face. “Quite an impressive feat, Mr. Malfoy. You have actually helped me immensely now that Voldemort is a quantifiable variable.”

Lucius nods. “I’m glad. And—do you know what the ‘contingency’ he spoke of was? I had assumed it was Barty but the more I think about it the less sure I am.”

Albus winces. Right—the Horcruxes, which he had completely forgotten about.

“I’ll take care of it. Until then, feel free to stay at Hogwarts for as long as you need.” Merlin knows that no one should have to go home when Voldemort knows their exact address.

Lucius all but sags, the tension immediately leaving him. “Thank you,” he says. “I will, of course, be returning to the Manor to collect and redistribute some things but I would greatly appreciate it if Narcissa could—”

“Stay here? Of course.”

“Just until I’m able to guarantee the safety of one of our other homes…perhaps the one in Blackpool? No, no, maybe the one in Hogsmeade would work best…”

Albus keeps a smile pasted to his face as Lucius finally leaves the room.

Once he’s gone, Albus doesn’t even have enough time to sigh in relief before Gellert bursts out of his hiding spot and says, “Vile vermin!”

Albus stares. “What?”

“I didn’t notice with the boy, probably because he looks so much like his mother,” Gellert continues nonsensically, “and I was willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt but now that I’ve seen him—!” Gellert lets out a snarl. “Foul creature!”

“Gellert, you’re not making any sense. What’s wrong with Lucius Malfoy?”

“He’s a Malfoy!”

“…And?”

Gellert gestures wildly. “The eyes! The nose! The hair! The fucking gait! He acts just like every other vile Malfoy I’ve met. Liars and cheats, the lot of them—don’t listen to him, Albus, he’ll bring you nothing but trouble!”

Ah, right, the infamous Malfoy-Grindelwald Blood Feud. “You didn’t seem to mind young Mr. Malfoy—”

“Like I said, he looks more like his mother!”

“You’ve never met his mother.”

“Well, he certainly doesn’t look like his father—apart from that unfortunate hair…”

Albus sighs and decides not to point out that Gellert’s hair was pretty much the same color, back in the day. “Listen, I know better than to trust Lucius Malfoy but he did just betray Voldemort. Giving him a place to rest for a bit is the least—”

“He’s a thief!” says Gellert. “He literally stole one of your precious Crown Jewels!”

“I mean, it was already stolen, so—”

“You know what I mean!”

“Just—he betrayed Voldemort, Gellert. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s on our side but he’s certainly not against us.”

“You’re too trusting,” Gellert complains.

“I’m really, really not.”

Gellert harrumphs and that’s the end of that.

He finds Severus and Harry playing a card game on the floor outside of his office. “Don’t you have classes?” he demands.

“Free period,” says Harry at the same time that Snape says, “Opal Kensington created an incredibly toxic material so I’ve had to cancel class for the next two days.”

Albus ignores Harry and instead asks Severus, “Why don’t you sound upset?”

“I managed to get a sample of the potion,” Severus says and there is suddenly a manic gleam in his eyes.

“Please tell me you’ve followed proper safety procedures.”

“Sure.”

With that reassuring comment, Albus turns back to the situation at hand. “What are you two doing out here?”

“Lucius woke up,” says Severus, “and you kicked me out of the room. He wouldn’t say a word to me while he left because he wanted to go talk to Narcissa and Draco but I figured I could grill you for the details.”

Afterward, Harry says, “Well, I’m also curious about the whole Lucius Malfoy incident but I mainly showed up because Professor Doge is looking for you.”

Albus’s brows knit together. “Elphias? Why would he—”

February 14th. Valentine's Day. The fucking blind date.

“Er, are you all right?” Harry asks, concerned at Albus’s abrupt silence.

Severus snorts. “Is he ever?”

“I was just being polite—”

“As if you’re ever polite—”

“Pot, meet kettle!”

“Uh,” says Albus, “I need to go do a thing.”

“With Professor Doge?”

“Sure,” says Albus before breaking out into a run down the corridor. The thought of retreating back into the safety of his office briefly passes his mind…but Gellert is still moping inside and going to him for solace in regards to a blind date, which the man was against in the first place, is not a hit his ego can take. And he’s not entirely sure why he’s suddenly so opposed to the whole affair considering his assertions several weeks ago but giving in now is simply not an option. At any rate, his office would be the first place Elphias looked. Albus needs to go somewhere that no one would ever think of…

Several minutes later, he’s trudging through the front door of Greenhouse Six for the first time in his life. It’s entirely reserved for NEWT Herbology classes (and the occasional “field expedition” for NEWT Potions students) and, while Albus had both taken NEWT Herbology and received an O, only four of Hogwarts’s current seven greenhouses had been built. When he became a professor, he hadn’t been on good enough terms with Herbert Beery to visit his domain and by the time he became Headmaster, the greenhouses had been the least of his worries.

Now, as he falls face-first into a pile of dirt, he wishes he’d at least taken a gander beforehand…

Albus sits up and coughs harshly, glancing down at his robes in a panic. They’re aquamarine today, decorated with pretty gems that constantly rearrange themselves into different geometric patterns—inspired by traditional Islamic art, actually, and each variation is associated with different glamors and the parallel between Islamic geometry and Norse runic works has been a topic of ceaseless debate for centuries and Albus actually wrote and published an essay on the topic some thirty years ago—

“H-Headmaster Dumbledore?”

Albus’s head snaps up, absolutely mortified to be caught kneeling in the dirt. Luckily, it’s only Neville Longbottom, who Albus is sure he can cow into silence fairly easily.

…That came out wrong.

“Ah, Mr. Longbottom!” Albus says happily, coming to a stand. He twirls his wand and Vanishes the dirt on his robes, eternally grateful that there are no magical stains. “What a pleasant surprise! I didn’t expect to see you here.”

Neville looks up at him and—oh dear, he does not look very well at all. His hair is wild and tangled, his robes askew, and his eyes are bloodshot. There’s a faint tremor to his hands. He looks on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion.

Before Albus can question any of this, Neville launches himself forward and envelops the man in a hug. “You c-came!” he wails. “I thought I was done f-for!”

Albus, unused to children hugging him unless he initiates it (that also came out wrong), does his best to put on a grandfatherly persona before patting the boy on the back. “There, there—of course I came.”

Neville looks up at him with a watery smile. “Thank you, thank you! I was j-just trying to l-look at the f-fairy grass when I f-fell in and—and it’s been so l-long! I’m so h-hungry, H-Headmaster. Do you h-have any f-food?”

Albus stares down at him in horror. “Um,” he rasps, “I have some sherbet lemons.”

“I’ll take them!”

Soon, the two of them are sitting on the floor of the greenhouse—because Neville absolutely refuses to move and Albus figures he shouldn’t try to forcibly remove the boy until he’s relaxed a little bit more—and Albus watches him scarf down the endless supply of sherbet lemons. It hurts a bit—the first time someone has ever approached them with as much appreciation as Albus does and it’s only because of a magical plant that induces endless hunger!

Still, Albus needs to get the boy to slow down before he chokes. He says, “Have you really been in here for several hours?”

“I think so,” says Neville in between pieces of candy. “I came j-just after l-lunch on the f-fourteenth.”

“It has been several hours, then,” says Albus, astonished by the boy’s mental acuity even in a state of anguish. “And you’ve just been…hungry, this whole time?”

“Yes! At f-first, I tried to take my mind off of it, you know, think of other things—l-like h-helping H-Harry with the Second Task—but then it j-just became too much…”

Albus frowns. “‘Helping Harry’? Has Mr. Potter not figured the task out yet?” He thought Harry was brighter than that—not to mention the boy had gotten a major hint from Gellert.

“H-He h-has,” Neville says, “but the legality of it is…dubious. I don’t want h-him to get arrested by the literal Ministry officials who will be watching.”

“Ah. Yes, that makes sense.” He almost asks what Harry has planned—having a student arrested would undoubtedly result in numerous complaints from parents—but eventually decides that Harry has a good enough head on his shoulders (and more well-equipped adult figures standing over his shoulders) and sitting back to watch the show would be much more preferable. Instead, he asks Neville, “What were you thinking about?”

“Gillyweed,” Neville says immediately before finally—finally!—putting down the sack of endless sherbet lemons. “It’s the plant that l-lets you grow gills—not that I think you don’t know that! J-Just, I thought I could clarify!”

“That’s quite all right, Mr. Longbottom,” Albus answers warmly. “I do have another question about gillyweed, however.”

“What is it?”

“Well, I was wondering—” Before he even finishes the phrase, he pulls out his wand, points it at Neville, and declares, “Stupefy!” Neville, who may have the enhanced strength associated with fairy grass victims, is too relaxed to resist and easily falls unconscious.

“Well,” says Albus into the silence, “this still isn’t the most morally dubious thing I’ve ever done…”

He floats the boy with a Levicorpus and then casts a Disillusionment Charm to spare the boy the shame of being seen floated to the Hospital Wing by the Headmaster. He doesn’t even make it into the castle before Elphias intercepts him.

“There you are!” the man declares. “Potter told me that you’d gone off to find me but you never showed up at my office! Should have known you’d be wandering around the castle grounds. Composing poetry again?”

Albus flushes at the reminder of his ill begotten childhood hobby. “Shut it,” he groans. “And I don’t have time for this right now—I have to return to the castle and take care of a few things.” Like getting Neville Longbottom to the Hospital Wing and pondering what the fuck to do about Horcruxes and maybe even re-visiting the Horcrux situation, considering how few check-ins he’s been having with Gellert lately—

“Nope,” says Elphias. “You’ve had several weeks of notice on this. You are not skipping out on this blind date even if the castle is on fire.”

“What if it explodes?” Albus asks. He could probably engineer an explosion with minimal casualties.

“Not if you cause it.”

Damn it.

“Anyway,” Elphias continues, “I promise you’ll have a good time. It’ll get your mind off of things.”

Albus knows that, by ‘things’, Elphias means Gellert, but that’s certainly not what’s going to happen. At any rate, Neville Longbottom is still floating in mid air and Albus finally decides to come clean, sacrificing the boy’s pride in order to save his…everything else. “Listen, there’s a student I need to take to the Hospital Wing—”

“Please, you pulled the exact same trick on Professor Garlick in Fourth Year! Give it up, Albus, I know all your tricks.”

“No, Elphias, really—”

Too late. Elphias bodily drags him down to Hogsmeade, ignoring all of Albus’s protests. Albus even takes the Disillusionment Charm off of Neville. Unfortunately, Elphias simply assumes that Albus had conjured up the mirage of a student which, under any other circumstances, would be logically questionable but considering Albus had also pulled that trick on Professor Garlick, his determination that nothing was wrong made sense.

Before they reach the crowds of the village, Albus recasts the Disillusionment Charm again so that Augusta Longbottom doesn’t receive word that Albus Dumbledore has decided to take her unconscious grandson on a leisurely stroll through Hogsmeade, which would end badly for everyone involved. Elphias, meanwhile, simply drags him into the Hog’s Head. Damningly, it’s not until he’s greeted with Aberforth’s grinning face that he realizes that everything is about to go to shit.

“No!” screeches Albus. “Absolutely not!” Getting his brother involved with his love life has always gone terribly wrong and he refuses to begin dating someone in his brother’s pub.

“Why?” Aberforth mocks. “Scared to meet your true love?”

“I’m wary of allowing you anywhere near my date!”

“Already obsessed, I see.”

“Aberforth Lionel Hailwin Daniel Dumbledore, I will not be spoken to that way!”

“Tough luck.”

Albus is all but ready to pounce but Elphias simply sits him down at a table—the only table, Albus notes, covered with a white cloth and set with proper silverware. There’s even a candle set at the center and a rose spelled to dance above the table. Albus stares at it all before looking at Elphias in despair. “This is not what I had in mind, Elphias…”

Elphias says, “Trust me, it’ll be worth it.” Then, before Albus can even ask him to take Neville to the Hospital Wing himself, the man vanishes! Albus resists the urge to hit his head against the wall as he waits for his date to show up. Instead, trying to get his mind off of his impending doom (and poor Neville’s headache), Albus pulls a napkin closer to himself and summons a ballpoint pen from the pouch at his waist. Might as well begin rethinking the Horcrux situation.

Voldemort has definitely made multiple of them—the diary, the ring, and at least one more that he has yet to identify. There’s also the consideration of just how many Voldemort has decided to make, though Albus is sure that, at some point, splitting the soul so much would result in detrimental effects on his sanity—if he’d had any to begin with. Then, Albus thinks about how if Voldemort were to lose his sanity, then he could certainly make a large, perhaps even unsustainable, amount of Horcruxes. The mere thought has him trembling—

Right, off topic. Ignoring the question of how many Horcruxes, Albus decides to examine the question of what objects are Hocruxes. One of the known Horcruxes had been his schoolboy diary while the other had been a family heirloom, meaning that he hid decided to use objects of personal importance—which seems like a bad idea but, well, questionable sanity and all that.

Then, the question of mechanics comes into mind. A Horcrux can’t be prohibitively large or small, both would make it much harder to effectively complete the Horcrux creation ritual—which Albus has not studied much in-depth, though he definitely should, but he’s constantly put off by the fact that it both involves murder and eating the person who you’ve murdered—and it can’t be an object of magical or ritual purity. In other words, Albus doesn’t need to go checking buildings or grains of sand or unicorn horns or religious iconography in the fear of them being Horcruxes.

The equations involved are…complicated, to say the least, and while Albus is by no means an amateur, even these are giving him some trouble. He wonders how a young Tom Riddle had managed this or if he’d just winged it—

“My, my, quite the set of equations you’ve got there.”

Albus’s head snaps up and he’s met with a severely set face staring down at him. The man’s hair is graying but finely maintained, his beard is cropped close to his face, his eyes a striking green-gray. Judging by the wrinkles on his face, he seems even older than Albus, if that’s even possible. Most important of all, though, is that he’s incredibly familiar.

“Right,” says Albus, a few beats too late and Merlin, did his voice just squeak? He clears his throat. “I’m just, ah, trying to figure something out—”

“What is it?” asks the man. “I could help.”

What Albus should say is Why do you think you could help? because Albus is the foremost scholar for pretty much any field of study in the UK and he doesn’t even know who this man is. Instead, what comes out of his mouth is, “I’d appreciate it.”

The man finally sits across from Albus at the table and smiles at him and—Albus melts. This man has Nicolas’s eyes and Gellert’s jawline and Henry’s nose and it’s too much. The perfect amalgamation of everything Albus finds attractive.

Albus is a hundred and fourteen years old and he’s enamored. He’s too damn old to have a schoolboy crush!

The man, who is still looking over the paper napkin, hums to himself before speaking (and his voice! It could put a baby to sleep!). He says, “I can see that you’re trying to contain some formless entity—or perhaps a concept? This seems half-solved at best and some of the conclusions are baseless when compared to the original equation…”

Albus flushes in embarrassment. “I’m simply trying to recreate an equation I saw somewhere. Only some of the terms are true, the others are variables I’m messing around with…”

“Ah, I see! Well—do you have something I can write with?”

Albus silently hands over his ballpoint pen. Their fingers brush. Albus is about ready to burst.

The other man considers the napkin again before conjuring himself a—a sheet of notebook paper, Merlin, he’s perfect. He begins to scribble down equations and the handwriting is also incredibly familiar but Albus can’t tear his gaze away from the man’s fingers long enough to figure out why, enraptured by the form of them. Merlin, he wants to hold that hand. He has to physically restrain himself from reaching over—

He’s broken out of his reverie by a large thud. Albus looks around, confused as to what has caused it, only to realize that it was Neville Longbottom who is still Disillusioned but who Albus has accidentally slammed into the ceiling out of elation.

The boy is also no longer Stupefied, struggling against Albus’s magic in a panic. Cursing, Albus whips out his wand and recasts a silent Stupefy and then smiles nervously at the confused man sitting across from him.

“Are you all right?” the man asks slowly.

“Quite,” says Albus hoarsely. “Just—trying to adjust the lights.” He flicks his wand again and the light above them—the chandelier that Aberforth has specially hung for Albus’s blind date—swings and shakes until the crystals begin to move in time with the gems on his robes.

God, he hopes it looks nice.

The man smiles. “You always were a vain one, Albus.” And—it doesn’t sound annoyed, the way his brother says it. No, it sounds endeared.

But—but he’d just called him ‘Albus,’ confirming that they know each other. And the way he’d said it sounds so familiar, bringing to mind Albus’s close friends and confidants and mentors and—

Mentors.

Fuck.

Feeling the blood drain from his face, Albus demands, “Professor Perriwinkle?”

The man—Professor Perriwinkle, Albus is going to kill Elphias—frowns at him. “Now, Albus, I’m really not comfortable being referred to that way in this situation. Please, just call me Tyrian.”

As if! Professor Perriwinkle was his Arithmancy Professor when Albus was still attending Hogwarts! No wonder he could make sense of the Horcrux equation—Hell, he probably already suspects exactly what Albus is researching!

Why is this happening? What gave Elphias the impression that this was okay?

…Why is Albus still kinda into it? Like, Albus has always liked older men but he hasn’t exactly had options lately—

No! Focus!

Albus, desperate to end this situation as soon as possible, “Professor Perriwinkle, I really must—”

“I mean, I would understand if you’re into it but it’s a bit much for the first date—”

Nope, nope, nope, think of Severus threatening you with the Sword! Think of Harry insulting your passwords! Think of Aberforth laughing in your face!

Giving in a bit, Albus says, “Tyrian, this really just isn’t—”

Tyrian’s face falls and Albus immediately wants to take everything back just to see him smile again. “Oh,” Tyrian says awkwardly. “I can, uh, go—”

“No!” Albus bursts out, frantically searching for an excuse. He eventually settles on, “I still need your help with the equations!”

A spark of hope reappears on Tyrian’s face and—yeah, Albus is in too deep. Sighing, he sits himself back down and says, “Yes, I can’t figure the equations out. I’d really appreciate your help.”

“Okay,” says Tyrian eagerly. “Let’s look at these variables again…” He hands Albus the ballpoint pen and their fingers brush again and Albus is over the moon—

Another thud. This time, there’s an audible groan and Neville’s struggles are more forceful. Albus puts his face in his hands and says, “Actually, I need to do something…”

Eventually, Neville Longbottom is safe and sound in the Hospital Wing, Severus Snape grudgingly agrees to brew a cure to fairy grass poisoning, and Albus and Tyrian are discussing things in the corridor outside of Albus’s office.

“If you’re wondering about the number of containers,” Tyrian eventually says, “and you’re dealing with something as temperamental as intangible concepts, it’s always good to go back to the basics. What are the most stable numbers in Arithmancy?”

“Primes,” Albus immediately responds. “One, two, three—”

“Seven, eleven, thirteen, et cetera,” Tyrian finishes, pleased. “You remember.”

Albus smiles stupidly back. “Of course I remember. You repeated it every day in class for two years.”

“It worked, didn’t it?”

Albus laughs. Then he stops and thinks about it. For something as caustic as the Horcrux ritual, the stability of prime numbers would certainly be necessary. Thirteen, with its cultural associations to bad luck, is out of the question, and the ritual seems to have a cap of around fifteen Horcruxes before they become effectively useless, holding such a negligible portion of the soul that the primary identity would never truly resurrect. Since there are at least three Horcruxes in circulation, the numbers left are three, seven, and eleven.

…Unless Voldemort is currently between Horcrux creations, but Albus decides not to think about that right now.

To Tyrian, he says, “You’re a genius!”

Tyrian smirks. “Thank you, I try.”

And then a suit of armor spontaneously loses its grip on its ax and Albus has to yank Tyrian out of the way so that he’s not sliced in half by ancient scrap metal.

“Jesus Christ!” Tyrian wheezes. “Albus, you saved me—”

Another suit of armor suffers the same malfunction and Albus finds himself saving Tyrian again, and then again, and then another time. It’s not until Albus notices a flicker at the side of his vision that he realizes what’s happening.

Tyrian, oblivious, says, “Albus, I think your castle is trying to kill me.”

“Maybe.”

“The armor was much friendlier when I was a teaching here—”

“Listen, Tyrian, I’ll take care of it. Just…go home, okay? I’ll send you an owl soon.”

Tyrian looks crestfallen that their ‘date’ has been cut short—and Albus concurs—but he does eventually go. Albus waves him off with a smile right up until he’s out of view, at which point Albus whirls around and casts a counter-charm at the corner of the corridor.

Gellert erupts into existence, looking entirely unrepentant.

“You!” snarls Albus. “What the hell are you doing out here? You know you’re confined to my office! What do you have to say for yourself?”

Gellert has the audacity to look him in the eye and say, “He’s too old for you.”

…Yeah, it doesn’t go well.

Elphias corners him several minutes later. Albus is drinking firewhiskey and sobbing unintelligibly while the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black awkwardly attempts to comfort him. “There there,” says the man, “I’m sure he didn’t mean it—”

“No, he did!” says Albus. “He didn’t even say sorry!”

Elphias, concerned, asks, “Did the date not go well? I know Professor Perriwinkle was a gamble but I really thought—”

“No!” wails Albus. “The date was wonderful! I loved it!” And he keeps crying, unable to communicate the absolute shitshow that was his fight with Gellert.

Elphias promptly takes over comforting Albus, which has Phineas sighing in relief.

Fuck him, thinks Albus. I’m delightful.

He must have said that out loud because Phineas mutters, “Debatable.”

Stupid portraits.

“So,” Albus says hoarsely to Harry, “there’s probably three, seven, or eleven Horcruxes.” He promptly blows his nose into a handkerchief which he Vanishes into thin air. His eyes are probably red and his voice is far away.

Harry observes him critically and then says, “You know, I can’t tell if you’re sad or if you’re high and that seems problematic considering you’re my teacher.”

“I’m a Headmaster,” Albus says sourly. “That barely counts.”

“…You didn’t answer my question.”

“Anyway,” says Albus, “since you already know about the Horcruxes, I figured I should continue to keep you in the loop.”

“Thanks,” says Harry, “but where is Mr. Retired Dark Lord Grindelwald?” He points to the corner of the room that is completely bare of the books that have become a constant over the last few months.

“Not here,” Albus says darkly.

“Oh,” says Harry. “Is he not here because you kicked him out or because he escaped?”

“A little bit of both,” Albus mutters. “He escaped but I caught him and then I got upset and now he’s—elsewhere.”

“Will he still help with the Deathly Hallows?”

“If he knows what’s good for him.”

Harry looks slightly unnerved but eventually just shrugs. “All right, back to the Horcruxes, I guess. Why three, seven, and eleven specifically?”

“You never took Arithmancy, did you?”

“No, that’s more Hermione’s thing.”

“Arithmancy is everyone’s thing, my boy—you just need to give it a chance.” Harry rolls his eyes and simply urges Albus to continue. He acquiesces. “At any rate, those three numbers provide the most stability for a soul without exceeding the number of practically possible soul containers.”

“Okay, but what if Voldemort wasn’t being practical?” Harry asks.

“Then he would not be able to survive in even the weak state that Lucius Malfoy mentioned.”

“All right,” Harry says slowly. “But how are you going to confirm the number of Horcruxes?”

“I’m…working on it.”

Honestly, Albus isn’t sure. He has a few questions to bring to Tyrian, of course, but he suspects that he’s pushed the processes of elimination via Arithmancy as far as it can go and he should begin pursuing other leads. The problem is, he doesn’t have any other leads.

Harry, who’s staring at him, seems to understand his predicament because he says, “Why don’t you just…you know, ask around?”

“What?”

“Like—ask people Voldemort was close with if he had any items he was unusually fond of. Stuff like that.”

“Maybe,” Albus agrees. Who could he ask? Perhaps the matron of Wool’s Orphanage, if she’s still alive, or some of the original members of the Knights of Walpurgis—the ones that are left, anyway. Perhaps even the boy’s old professors…other than himself, of course. “That’s quite brilliant, actually.”

“Of course it’s brilliant—I thought it up.”

“You really need to get that ego of yours in check.”

“Nah.”

Though the knowledge that Voldemort is out there in the world, just waiting to wreak havoc, is alarming, Albus still manages to sleep it off rather easily. The day after Valentine’s Day is much less nerve-wracking, at any rate—Albus sends a note off to Tyrian, offering that the man stop by for tea during the coming weekend. He receives a letter back accepting the offer almost immediately, which is incredibly endearing.

Elphias seems absolutely delighted by this turn of events, which has the added bonus of him not inquiring about anything else in Albus’s life. Thus, he won’t be bullied into revealing the secret of the Horcruxes any time soon.

Severus shuts himself in his room. After much coaxing (and several threats from Minerva), Albus learns that, around eleven in the night, Severus had received a Valentine and had been so repulsed by it that he’d made himself sick.

Frowning, Albus asks, “Who was it from?”

“None of your business,” Severus mutters, staring into the distance.

“Are they persistent? Have they been stalking you? I could help. I could make them disappear.”

“That is a very worrisome thing to say.”

“What’s the point of having political power if I don’t abuse it for the benefit of myself and my friends?”

“Again, worrisome.”

Albus shrugs. “Do you want me to make them disappear or not?”

Severus shudders. “No,” he says, “I can handle it.”

“If you’re sure…”

Severus very much does not look sure but Albus leaves him to it.

“Well, Gellert,” says Albus, “I think it’s time the two of us had a quick chat.”

Gellert, sitting moodily in front of a dilapidated grand piano in the Shrieking Shack, glares at him. “I’ve said everything I wanted to say. You’re being childish and unreasonable.”

“You’re the one who threw a temper tantrum.”

“You’re the one who threw me in a hovel.” He slams his finger down onto a key and a discordant note rings through the room. “You could at least give me a tuned piano.”

“You’re lucky I didn’t get you one of those rainbow xylophone sets.”

“One of those what?” Gellert demands, looking incredibly intrigued. “I admit that I’m very much an amateur at the xylophone but a set made of rainbows sounds very impressive.”

Albus stares. “Right,” he says faintly. “I’ll replace your piano with one tomorrow.”

“Wonderful.”

Albus can’t wait to see his face tomorrow. Leaving that be, he returns to the pressing matter at hand: “Why on Earth did you leave the confines of my office?”

“The wards were weak,” Gellert says petulantly. “They were practically asking me to break them.”

“Those wards were originally designed by you.”

“No,” Gellert denies, aghast. “I would never! If anything, they looked like something your mind would come up with.”

“Don’t insult me!”

They devolve into bickering from there. Albus, feeling particularly vicious, ends up Vanishing the grand piano altogether and Gellert, who had been sitting on its stool, ends up crashing to the floor. “Oh!” says Gellert. “Such maturity from the great Albus Dumbledore!”

“You weren’t so concerned with maturity when sending suits of armor after Tyrian!”

“Look at you,” Gellert says in disgust. “You even call him by his first name.”

“That is, in fact, what people tend to do with their dates.”

Gellert rolls his eyes. “Listen, Albus, I’ve said this once and I’ll say it again—there is something not right with that man. He has a touch of the crazies.”

“You’re literally a mass murderer.”

“Please, I haven’t murdered anyone in ages!”

“Well, you nearly broke your streak yesterday! You know, when you tried to kill my date!”

“Again with this ‘date’ business—”

Albus lets out an irritated sigh. He should have known better than to try and reason with Gellert—it never went well, even when they were children. Instead of carrying on the useless conversation, he says, “Whatever, that’s not important.” He looks Gellert in the eye. “I’ve been giving you far too much leeway, spending weeks without checking on you. I gave you a task months ago and you’ve barely managed to finish a portion of it. From now on, you’re going to do your work here, in this rotting shack, and I will demand daily updates. If you stall, I will know.”

Gellert snarls, “The Hallows are not some unimportant item I can discover the secrets of in an afternoon! The breakthrough I have made in these months is astounding, I’ll have you know!”

“I thought you were smarter than that,” Albus sniffs. “I thought you were a genius.”

“I am!”

“Then prove it.”

Albus goes to storm out of the Shack, only for Gellert to cry, “Wait!”

Albus pauses. “What?”

Quietly, Gellert mutters, “I still want the xylophone.”

Albus rolls his eyes. “I’ll get you a rainbow one.”

Gellert’s eyes light up.

Albus can’t wait for tomorrow.

Unfortunately, Albus can’t immediately take off and begin interrogating every single one of Tom Riddle’s old acquaintances because he, you know, has a job. Several of them, in fact, all of them very time-consuming and attention-grabbing and, really, it’s a wonder Albus doesn’t have high blood pressure at this point.

The most pressing matter is that…well, Barty Crouch Sr. is still very dead and the Department of International Magical Cooperation has no leader.

“What?” Albus demands when he hears the news. “Surely there was some procedure in place—”

“There isn’t,” replies Percy Weasley, who is still the Personal Assistant of the Head of the Department of International Magical Cooperation—who does not exist. The poor boy looks ill. Albus would be, too, if he was teetering on the edge of unemployment. “I—I checked and double-checked and triple-checked. Nothing. Somehow, this is the first untimely death to ever happen to anyone in Mr. Crouch’s position.”

“That can’t be true,” says Albus. “It’s the Head of the DIMC! It’s arguably one of the most dangerous positions in the Ministry!”

“And yet!” despairs Percy.

“I…well, who has the next highest position?” Surely that’s a good place to start.

“Well,” says Percy, wringing his hands, “that’s a complicated question. Most of Mr. Crouch’s subordinates dealt more with specific foreign powers—there’s Mr. Greenfinch who deals with the Russians and Ms. Polly-Pop who deals with the Nigerians and so on and so forth. For matters involving several nations—such as the Triwizard Tournament—a committee would be formed. Anyone with important information and know-how was divided into these roles.”

“Maybe one of them, then?” Albus muses. “Tell me, Mr. Weasley, is there anyone, anyone at all, who observed Mr. Crouch long enough to understand his daily workings? To take over where he’d left off?”

“Oh, no, Headmaster! I was his personal assistant and before the whole Imperius fiasco, I was in his office every day and no one held a candle to him! And then, after the Imperius, I intercepted all of his paperwork and—well, I filled it out and filed it and…all that. I had the most contact with him. No one could do the job like he could.”

Albus looks at him. “I bet you could.”

Percy stammers, “What?”

“You held down the fort admirably well, all things considered. Managed to make up for his absence, even did some necessary work for him in those later months, if I understand correctly.”

“Well, yes, but I was his personal assistant so it was only natural—”

“There will be a Wizengamot meeting soon,” Albus says, cutting him off. “I’ll put you forward as a temporary head of the DIMC, at least until everything is smooth sailing again. The whole Triwizard Tournament business has been making everyone on-edge.” And once again, damn Fudge, the old bastard!

Percy says, “I’m honored, sir, but surely—”

“Shh. I fixed the problem. No more work. Out.”

“But—”

“Listen, I really need something to go right for me right now, so please accept gracefully and get out.”

Percy Weasley accepts gracefully and gets out.

Everything would be fine if that was the end of that, but unfortunately, that’s not how things go. No, Albus has to sit through ten days of Wizengamot proceedings, hearing everyone hemming and hawing about who should become the new head of the DIMC—putting forth people who have no business being nominated—before everyone finally sits down, shuts up, and realizes that, as always, Albus Dumbledore is right.

…Still, Albus gets the impression that the only reason that Percy ever got appointed was because everyone wanted the whole business done and dealt with before the Second Task.

Ah, yes, also: the Second Task.

Albus, who had barely been at Hogwarts long enough to sleep, is treated to stumbling into his office to find Harry Potter sitting, legs crossed, on his desk.

“I’m diving into the Lake tomorrow,” the boy starts conversationally and oh, Albus already knows that this isn’t going to be fun.

“Yes,” he says cautiously.

Harry says, “Remember when you promised me that you’d get me out of this tournament?”

“Yes…”

“And? Can you get me out yet?”

“I assure you,” Albus says dryly, “once I figure it out, you’ll be the first one to know.” He does feel bad, though—he’d forgotten about the whole ‘Harry was entered into a death tournament against his will’ thing until just now. He does still feel entitled to a bit of leeway, seeing as he’d spent over a week drowning in bureaucracy.

This seems to be cold comfort for Harry—which is fair enough, honestly—who says, “I’m starting to think you want me to be in this tournament. What, is this all part of your grand plan? Are you secretly evil and controlling my whole life?”

Phineas Black snorts, looking down on them with disdain. “Please, he can barely control his own.”

“Rude,” Albus mutters, “but accurate. I assure you, Harry, that I am not out to get you.”

“That’s exactly what someone who’s out to get me would say!”

“You’ve been spending too much time with Alastor—or, rather, Barty Crouch Jr.”

Harry sighs. “I’m sorry, I’m just getting paranoid. I haven’t slept in…” He squints. “What time is it?”

“Um—seven-thirty?”

“Right, I haven’t slept in three days.”

“Why?” asks Albus, aghast.

“I’ve been preparing.”

“What kind of preparations could possibly require seventy-two hours?” Vaguely, Albus thinks back to Neville Longbottom, who had lamented over Harry’s plan of…what was it, dubious legality? Or morality? Something like that.

Harry waves away his concern. “It’s a surprise.”

It’s a stress-inducer, actually, but Albus decides not to mention it. “Just go to bed,” he says gruffly. “The Second Task is early tomorrow morning. Don’t fall asleep before getting in the lake.”

“If I did fall asleep,” says Harry, “on accident, of course…would that be enough to disqualify me?”

“Hardly,” Albus responds, “and, at any rate, Ludo Bagman is liable to throw your body in just for the fun of it…”

“Well,” says Harry, “I suppose we’ll just stick to my plan, then.”

…The use of “we” worries Albus greatly but he’s too tired to ask and, quite frankly, suspects that Harry is too tired to answer. He sends the boy off to get some rest before climbing into bed himself.

Everything is fine.

The morning of the Second Task dawns with Fawkes screeching in his ear. Albus rolls off his bed and onto the floor with a thud and laments his existence. By the time he arrives at the Lake, he is cold and cranky and surrounded by people he hates—except for Percy Weasley, whom he actually greatly tolerates. It’s far too early for any of the spectators or champions to arrive but the administrators are there—including Ludo Bagman.

“And here is the final product!” Ludo says brightly, gesturing to the ground.

Albus looks down. Stares. “Those are students,” he says. “Unconscious, likely kidnapped students. Didn’t we agree that this is exactly not what you would do?”

“Er, I don’t think so, actually,” says Percy, poking a slumbering Ron with his shoe. “Look again.”

Albus does and—hm. Upon closer inspection, he finds that the forms are still and silent as a corpse but still flushed with life. “Are these dolls?”

“In a sense,” Ludo says cheerfully. “I went to pains to make them realistic and imbue them with the essence of the students they’re based on. Now, all that’s left is to animate them.” Pulling out his wand, he points it at one of the dolls—the one modeled after Ron Weasley—and declares, “L’chaim!”

Doll Ron gasps into wakefulness, eyes wide and frantic. “What?” he demands, voice raspy. “What’s going on?”

“Hello,” says Ludo. “You are a doll of Ronald Bilius Weasley and you will be placed at the bottom of the Great Lake in order to be retrieved by Harry James Potter during the Second Task of the Triwizard Tournament.”

Doll Ron stares at Ludo for a moment, then turns to Percy. “He’s barmy, he is. I’m no doll.”

Percy looks upon Maybe-Not-Doll Ron with horror. “Mr. Bagman,” he rasps, “are you quite sure that you know what you’re doing?”

“Yep!” Ludo says cheerfully. “Very life-like, isn’t it?”

“I’m not an it,” Probably-Not-Doll Ron snarls. “You’re mental. I am Ron Weasley!”

“All right,” says Albus. “This is unfortunate.”

Percy, meanwhile, pulls his wand out and advances on Ludo Bagman. “What the bloody hell have you done—”

Probably-Not-Doll Ron abruptly begins snickering. “You’re all too easy,” he croons, coming to a stand and dusting off his robes. “Willing to believe everything that comes out of an animate object’s mouth—that’s going to get you into trouble.”

“See!” says Ludo. “Doll!”

“Doll,” Actually-Doll Ron agrees. “You’re a pretty shit person, though—probably would have tried to go through with it even if I wasn’t actually a doll.” He turns to Albus. “I’ve got the real Ron Weasley’s memories, you see—for the job, of course, kind of like method acting—and I can safely say this man is a menace. Managed to creep Ron out completely…and Merlin, you really ought to start explaining yourself, Bagman. Cornering teenage boys in abandoned corridors and going on about their ‘essence’ isn’t a very good look.”

Albus puts his face in his hands while Percy looks moments away from saying something regrettable. Ludo, the bastard, seems entirely unbothered.

They eventually animate the other three—a lazy Doll Hermione Granger who fakes that the spell didn’t work just so she could go to sleep, a vicious Doll Gabrielle Delacour who nearly punches Ludo in the groin because the man had thought cornering a twelve-year-old girl was a good idea, and a pensive Doll Cho Chang who waxes poetic about the nature of existence and the inevitability of death—and finally get them in the lake before the spectators arrive.

Igor and Olympe arrive quickly.

“I thought your Minister would at least show his face for this,” Igor says gruffly. “What, are we not good enough for the British Ministry?”

“Alas, I fear our dear Cornelius is otherwise preoccupied,” Albus says. Preoccupied with therapy, that is.

Olympe, who also seems peeved, huffs.

And that’s that.

It takes Harry twelve minutes longer to show up than the other champions, and when he does, he’s accompanied by a levitating sack of questionable contents. Neville, poor boy, attempts to shove several sprigs of gillyweed into his hands but Harry waves him off. Neville marches away, resigned, as Harry goes to the diving area with glee.

“Um,” says Cedric Diggory, “what have you got there, Potter?”

Harry grins madly before dropping the sack to the floor, unzipping it, and revealing—

…Yes, that is, in fact, scuba diving equipment. “Latest technology,” Harry brags. “Got it from London and spelled it to have never-ending oxygen! Made the suit water-repellent, too…”

Oh no.

“That’s illegal,” Percy hisses to Albus under his breath. “Like, honest to Merlin illegal. Spelling muggle equipment…my father has arrested people for less!” Really, as if Arthur didn’t have a fully-spelled muggle car in his home…

Then, Harry looks over and makes eye-contact with Albus. “Don’t worry, I have the permit right here.”

“Permit?” demands Percy, voice still low. “Permits for these kinds of things don’t exist—”

But Harry pulls out fine pieces of parchment, unrolls them, and—yes, that is, in fact, a very official-looking permit, signed by Arthur Weasley (Head of the Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Office), Albus Dumbledore (Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot), and Cornelius Fudge (Minister for Magic).

Three problems: Arthur doesn’t have the authority to permit this, Albus is quite sure that Cornelius Fudge is currently sulking in Ireland, far away from Harry Potter…oh, and Albus never signed that thing.

Looks like Harry wasn’t kidding when he said “we” last night.

Pasting a smile onto his face, Albus nods. “You do, indeed, have a permit.”

“You signed that?” Percy hisses.

“I guess?” responds Albus.

“What do you mean you guess—”

Ludo Bagman clears his throat. “It certainly doesn’t go against the rules of the Tournament!” he says cheerfully. “I’ll allow you a moment to get situated in your scooby-suit, Mr. Potter.”

“Scuba,” Harry corrects.

“Sure.”

Finally, once Harry has the suit on and Ludo has given the instructions, the man declares, “Go!”

Cedric Diggory, Viktor Krum, and Fleur Delacour immediately dive in. Harry, meanwhile, sits with his back to the edge of the platform and tilts backward, hurtling into the waters.

“That scooby-suit really is something,” Ludo says cheerfully to Albus.

Albus sighs.

Eventually, Viktor Krum emerges with Doll Hermione (who flops around like a rag doll—pun intended—and doesn’t give Krum anything more than a quick “Congrats, I guess” before poofing out of existence) and Cedric Diggory drags out Doll Cho (who makes a valiant attempt at pretending to be the actual Cho Chang before giving up, commenting some nonsense about the human ego, and also poofing away). Cedric seems to have understood what she was saying, at least, for the boy looks shaken to his core, staring blankly into the distance as his friends and the real Cho Chang rush to congratulate him.

When Fleur Delacour emerges, though, she’s injured and distinctly doll-less.

“Oh,” she says hazily once she collapses on the platform. “Oops.”

“It’s all right,” Olympe says kindly. “You did your best.”

“I should have tried harder,” Fleur says miserably. “I’m sorry, Madam!”

“Oh, none of that!”

Albus, meanwhile, is glad that he won’t have to deal with the foul-mouthed Doll Gabrielle again. He simply waits patiently for Harry to emerge.

He waits.

And waits.

…And waits.

“Should it be taking this long?” Percy asks, worried.

“Well, the scooby-suit did look rather bulky…” Ludo responds.

Albus just watches on in dread.

It’s all for nothing, though, because Harry does emerge with Doll Ron in tow. Doll Ron pulls Harry’s scuba mask off his face once they break the surface and Harry declares, “Ascendio!”

When they finally land on the platform, Harry stands with a grin. “How’d I do?” he asks brightly. “I was last, wasn’t I?”

“Last out, perhaps,” Fleur says despondently. “I didn’t get my doll at all…”

“I’m sure you’ll do better in the next task,” Harry assures her.

Viktor, though, is staring down at Doll Ron curiously. “Why are you still here?” he asks. “Her-my-own-nee vanished instantly.”

Doll Ron, coming to a stand, ignores him entirely, instead searching through the crowd. His eyes zero in on…yes, that’s real Ron. Then Doll Ron smirks, grasps the front of Harry’s suit, and pulls him into a kiss.

Gasps sound throughout the area as Harry stumbles backward from the force of it, arms coming up to clutch at Doll Ron’s shoulders. Then Doll Ron pulls back, throws real Ron a wink, and finally goes up in a puff of smoke.

“Well,” Albus says blankly, “that was certainly something.”

Harry flees the scene before the scores can be doled out—Ron follows him, Hermione cheering him on—but Albus still gives him a ten for style. Ludo also gives him a ten, delighted by the drama.

Percy says, “Mum will be happy, at least.”

And that’s that.

“Shameless!” Severus snarls, pacing around Albus’s office. “Vile, absolutely disgusting—”

“Aren’t you being a bit harsh?” Albus asks, double-checking to make sure that Harry isn’t in or about to enter his office. It would be quite disheartening for the poor boy to hear his own professor say such things.

“I’m being entirely reasonable! Who would dare to…” With a wordless scream of frustration, he kicks Albus’s desks.

Albus has to pounce to keep his disco globes from falling off. “I will not tolerate such behavior!” he finally snaps, clutching his disco balls close.

Severus blinks in surprise. “Are you…scolding me?”

“Yes!”

“Huh,” says Severus. “I don’t think you’ve ever done that before…”

“I can scold people,” Albus says indignantly.

“Sure you can.”

Albus huffs, “No, listen—don’t talk about your students like that.”

Severus looks at him with bewilderment. “Students? What students?”

“Mr. Potter and Mr. Weasley? The ones you were calling vile?”

“I wasn’t talking about them,” Severus responds, exasperated. “I was talking about my…my…” He goes red. “You know?”

“…No, I can’t say that I do.”

“My admirer!” Severus spits. “It’s been a week since Valentine's Day and they haven’t let up!”

“Really? Who is it?”

“That’s none of your concern!”

“You came to my office to complain about it. I’d argue that it’s very much my concern.”

“I was just venting! How was I supposed to know that you’d actually listen to me? You usually don’t…”

Albus sighs. “Fine, be like that,” he mutters. “See if I give you any advice now.”

“I said I came here to vent, not to ruin my life.”

“All right, time to get out.”

“I—”

“Out.”

“Albus—”

“Leave.”

Severus does. Good riddance.

When Albus visits the Shack again that night, Gellert is sitting, legs crossed, on the floor, morosely playing his rainbow xylophone set.

Albus says, “I know I haven’t been here in a few days—”

“A week,” says Gellert. “I’ve spent a week in a dirty shack with no furniture and three meals of gruel a day. You’ve even spelled the windows shut. I hear the children walk by sometimes, they say this place is haunted. Is that what you want? Me to become a ghost? It’ll certainly draw some tourism.” He begins to play Twinkle Twinkle on the xylophone.

“I’m sorry,” says Albus, feeling a bit guilty. “I was stuck in London dealing with some politics.”

“Ah, yes, because you’re the Chief Warlock,” says Gellert. “And the Supreme Mugwump of the ICW, and the Headmaster of the only school in the Isles, which is arguably the most prominent nations of the western magical world. Why don’t you just round out that resume of yours and become the Minister for Magic, too?”

“Gellert—”

“Ah, no, I apologize—I forgot that you don’t like power. I forgot that you think it’s irresponsible to be a single ruler. Too scared of your own ambition to do what needs to be done…how successful you’ve been. Not a lick of ambition in you, is there, Mr. Chief-Warlock-Supreme-Mugwump-Headmaster-Sir?”

“Now, that’s just rude—”

“Of course. It’s impolite to speak of such things. What else have you been doing in the meantime? Spending romantic evenings with that Verrückte of yours?”

And Albus is suddenly reminded of Tyrian, who he’d never remembered to send a letter to, who he’d never invited to tea time. He feels guilty all over again, realizing that he hadn’t thought of the man even once over the last week, not even between Wizengamot sessions. He’d thought of Gellert plenty, of course, thought of how upset he’d been with the man—but nothing for Tyrian.

Albus says, “That’s none of your business.”

Gellert scowls at him. “Well,” he says, “I have no updates on the Hallows. I believe Lord Catterclaw’s works on the Veil of Worlds might give a hint as to the Resurrection Stone’s connection to our reality, but we shall have to wait and see. That is all, good day.”

“Gellert—”

“Good day, I said.”

Albus walks out of the Shack, feeling severely upset for reasons he can’t comprehend.

Abus is lying in bed, wide awake and unable to sleep, when one of the portraits in the other room calls, “Albus! Wake up, you layabout!”

“Huh?” Albus asks, stumbling to his feet and approaching the portrait. It’s a talking unicorn that’s staring down at him, looking severely unimpressed. “Yes, Mare?”

“That’s My Mare to you,” My Mare says pompously.

“Yes, my apologies. What do you need, My Mare?”

“Better,” My Mare sniffs—though it comes out sounding more like a snort. “I have a message from the seventh floor. There’s a student out and about!”

Albus blinks. “Oh.” Then, “Why did you come to me?” This is more Filch’s thing, after all—or perhaps something for the patrolling professors and prefects. Albus had done a great deal of patrolling when he was a prefect and then Head Boy and then a professor and he’s very happy to no longer have to do it, thank you very much. (The things he saw…awful, horrible things…)

My Mare does what is probably the unicorn equivalent of a shrug. “Apparently the portrait who reported it was very insistent you be called.”

Hm.

Naturally, Albus goes to investigate. The other portraits helpfully direct him to what is an empty corridor in a corner of Hogwarts that Dumbledore had never before been to. He observes it all with interest, picking his way through the pseudo-labyrinth until he finally arrives at his destination: a large tapestry.

“Hello?” he asks politely, holding his wand close to it. He has his Lumos on nice and bright but he still can’t see much of it.

A man in Renaissance clothing stumbles into view. “Ah!” he says, nearly tripping over a brown patch of cloth meant to represent a tree root. “You must be Headmaster Dumbledore! I’ve heard a great deal about you, sir!”

“All of it good, I hope?”

“Of course, of course,” says the man, not looking sincere in the slightest. “Thank you for coming.”

“Well, I heard a student was out of bed…”

“Yes!” agrees the man. “There was a student here!”

Albus nods. “And where are they now?”

“I don’t know. He’s left.”

“…Do you happen to know his name?”

“No.”

“Do you have a description?”

“I’m afraid not. It was much too dark to make anything out, you see. But there was definitely a student here.”

Albus sighs. “Well, if he’s no longer here and you don’t know who he is and cannot even describe him then I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do, Mr…”

“Barnabas Bumblewitch,” the man offers.

“Right, Mr. Bumblewitch.” Then, a bit irritated, “Why did you call me for something so minor?”

Barnabas, affronted, says, “I’ll have you know that this is a very important corridor! Students shouldn’t be wandering around here after hours!”

Important corridor? The place is empty! Albus sighs and bids Barnabas farewell before turning and…wait, which way had he come from? He chooses what he’s reasonably sure is the right direction and begins walking, only to realize that he has no idea where he is. There are no portraits here to guide him, either. Worst of all, Albus desperately needs to go to the bathroom.

“Come on!” he mutters, going through several twists and turns…only to arrive back at the tapestry. “Mr. Bumblewitch!” he calls, but the man doesn’t reappear. Frustrated and frantic, Albus goes off again, taking turn after turn, stumbling back to the tapestry twice more before finally stumbling upon a door.

Albus wrenches it open, desperate and—

Success! A room of chamber pots!

Just what he’d required.