InsaneJournal

Current mood:

pleased

Fic: Dumbledore's Men (PG13)
Title: Dumbledore's Men
Rating: PG13 for some swear words
Word Count: 3,609
Characters/Pairings: Harry
Warnings: not beta'd
Disclaimer: Harry Potter & co belong to JKR. I make no money from this, and mean no offence by any scene depicted within this story.
Summary: When sitting down to plan his Horcrux hunt, Harry discovers a secret.
Author's Notes: So, I was reading fanfiction today. A lot. Instead of working on my job applications.

One of the fics (don’t ask me which one) was a post-HBP Snarry set several years after the war. It started off okay, but then kind of glossed over how Harry got past the Dumbledore-killing on Snape’s side. There was just one sentence – and I don’t even remember what it was, exactly. Something along the lines of “Harry got over the fact that Snape killed Dumbledore”. Admittedly, the fic was written pre-DH. But that glossing over still annoyed me enormously.

And, as often happens, I was bit by a plot bunny. It was a persistent bunny that wouldn’t leave me alone. So I had to write it. I’m actually amazed that it worked because I’ve been having trouble writing for weeks … months. But I did it.
Set after Harry returned to the Dursleys after HBP. Goes AU in chapter 2 of DH. Also, this might be the first chapter of something that has the potential to turn Snarry.



Dumbledore’s Men


Harry sat still, staring down at the round kitchen bowl in his hands. It was filled to the brim with swirling, silvery liquid, threatening now and then to spill. But Harry didn’t see the bowl or the silver swirls. He was seeing nothing as the scene he had just witnesses replayed itself in front of his inner vision. Things clicked and fell into place.

And Harry Potter felt a rage he hadn’t thought possible to feel, greater than anything he had ever felt for Malfoy or Voldemort or even Snape. A rage born of betrayed trust and shame and helpless fury.

And it was directed at the one man Harry would have sworn could never again elicit this emotion.

It was directed at Albus Dumbledore.

*

When Harry returned to the Dursleys’ for the summer – for the last time in his life – after the end of his sixth year at Hogwarts, he had been an emotional mess. Grief for Dumbledore, hatred for the murderer Snape had made him restlessly angry and lethargic by turns. Some days he felt like just packing up his stuff and disappearing, going out to start the task Dumbledore had given him. Other days he remained locked up in his room, sitting on the bed, staring at nothing, while black, heavy clouds of grief seemed to smother him.

But Harry didn’t wallow for long. After all, this was nothing entirely new. Most of his years at Hogwarts had ended like this, with Harry grieving. He had watched helplessly as Cedric was murdered, had seen Sirius fall, and now Dumbledore … Harry felt he was getting used to dealing with grief for loved ones.

And so, just like he had done a mere four weeks after Sirius’s fall through the veil, Harry forcefully dragged himself out of the emotional morass. It would help no one if he sat around and did nothing, and no matter how much he felt like just running off, he knew he couldn’t. Not least because Ron and Hermione would kill him if he did. No, wallowing wouldn’t help anyone.

And Dumbledore probably wouldn’t have wanted Harry to mourn him for too long. Hadn’t Dumbledore said about the same after Sirius had fallen? That Harry shouldn’t bury himself in grief? Well, he wasn’t.

And so, to keep himself distracted and to prevent himself from going off half-cooked on his task, Harry sat down and began planning the Horcrux hunt.

Only to find out that, despite Dumbledore’s private lessons over the course of last year, he didn’t know anything useful that would help him. He knew a lot of things about Tom Riddle before and after he had become Voldemort. He knew what to look for in forms of Horcruxes – the locket, the cup, the snake, something of Gryffindors or Ravenclaw’s still ran like a mantra through his head. But he didn’t know anything about where to start looking. Or how to destroy the damn things if he ever found them.

It made Harry pause and wonder. Dumbledore had shown him those things about Voldemort to give Harry the necessary knowledge to destroy him. All those memories the Headmaster had shown Harry … But how could they help him? They had all been about Tom Riddle and his transformation into Lord Voldemort …

But there had to have been something in them, Harry was sure. After all, Dumbledore had said he had shown Harry all he could. Slughorn’s memory was the last one that had been needed. And Dumbledore had taken Harry with him on the journey to retrieve what he believed was a Horcrux. So the Headmaster had thought Harry was ready.

Harry didn’t feel ready at all.

Besides, if they had managed to retrieve a genuine Horcrux, what would they have done with it? Had Dumbledore known how to destroy them? Probably, Harry thought. And if he hadn’t known, he would have been able to guess, and the man had said himself that his guesses were usually right. So he had had knowledge he hadn’t passed on to Harry.

Hadn’t had time to pass on to Harry, Harry thought with his stomach clenching with hatred. Snape had made sure of that. The bastard!

But if the destruction of Horcruxes was the only thing left that Dumbledore had not told Harry – and Harry thought it was the only thing; after all, Dumbledore hadn’t given any indication that he had had more to teach Harry – then the memories contained everything Harry needed to know.

After coming to this realisation, Harry spent days trying to remember all he could about the memories he had seen in Dumbledore’s Pensieve. He strained his own memory to try and catch the clues about the location of the Horcruxes. The Gaunts’ hovel, the orphanage, Hogwarts, Hepzibah Smith’s overstuffed living room … with the exception of Hogwarts, nothing struck Harry as a possible hiding place for a Horcrux.

But perhaps there had been other clues? Things that Harry had missed? If only he could remember! But he didn’t entirely trust his memories of the memories he had seen.

Damn, I need a Pensieve, he had thought, dispirited, after trying in vain to remember more about Hepzibah Smith’s living room.

It had been a rather off-hand thought, but afterwards, the idea wouldn’t leave Harry alone. A Pensieve would solve the problem of his own faulty memory. He would be able to watch each memory again and again until he had all the necessary knowledge.

He needed a Pensieve. The only one he knew about was Dumbledore’s. It probably belonged to Professor McGonagall know, as the new Headmistress.

For several moments, Harry thought about Owling McGonagall and asking her if he would be permitted to borrow the Pensieve. If he mentioned it was necessary for the task Dumbledore had given him, she would give her permission, Harry was sure.

And if she didn’t, Harry could take his Invisibility Cloak and go up to Hogwarts. He was able to Apparate, and once he was away from Privet Drive, no one would know he was using magic. Dumbledore had said the Ministry couldn’t pick up who, exactly, had performed a spell. That had been the problem about Dobby’s rescue attempt back before Harry’s second year, after all.

But then he thought about the locked gates to the Hogwarts’ grounds, and all the protective spells Dumbledore had to lift when they flew on broomsticks up to the Astronomy tower … Well, no. He’d be able to go up to Hogwarts but he’d never get in. So he could only Owl McGonagall.

Yet Harry hesitated to actually write a letter to his Head of House. Even if she allowed him to use the Pensieve, she would probably ask questions as to why, perhaps demand to see the memories Harry placed in it. Actually, that was most likely. After all, Harry was still not of age, and he’d probably not allowed to use a magical artefact like a Pensieve without proper supervision of an adult.

Harry huffed and crossed his arms. He’d had used plenty of magical artefacts, like the Mirror or Erised, or the Philosopher’s Stone, just to name a few, and that had been in his first year! But that had been under Dumbledore’s aegis, and he’d been lenient with a lot of things. But McGonagall was a stickler for rules. She’d insist on supervision, and then someone else would see the memories, and Dumbledore had made Harry swear to only tell Ron and Hermione.

Both of whom were of age, but Harry sincerely doubted anyone would consider them proper supervision.

No, the Pensieve was out. The Ministry probably had Pensieves, too, but if Harry applied to the Ministry, Scrimgeour would hear about it, and he’d ask even more questions than McGonagall would. And he’d never shut up even after Harry told him never mind.

Momentarily stumped, Harry tried to put the idea of the Pensieve out of his mind. He couldn’t get his hands on one, so it was better to start looking for an alternative. Perhaps if he wrote stuff down?

But after several attempts at writing his memories down, Harry gave up. It was still his own, faulty memory, after all. And written down, things made even far less sense than in his head.

He really needed a Pensieve.

And if he thought about it, what was a Pensieve but a stone basin inscribed with runes? Harry didn’t know anything about runes, but he supposed they were what made the Pensieve able to hold thoughts. So, any stone basin could be inscribed and turned into a Pensieve. Theoretically. Perhaps. It would be better if he asked Hermione. But she’s probably go off about using magic and creating magical artefacts, and she’s tell him it was impossible and he really ought to remember better anyway, and if he didn’t, well, he should have been paying better attention.

Grimacing, Harry decided he would forego asking Hermione for the moment. Besides, even though he knew nothing about runes, he had seen – and used – the Pensieve on several occasions. He had seen the runes. He could probably replicate them.

Not from memory, though. But if he had a book with runes, he’d find the right ones …

It didn’t take him long to write a letter to Hermione, asking for a book with runes. He hinted that he needed it for the task, hoping she would think his vagueness as some sort of code and not ask further questions.

To his immense relief, she didn’t. Three days after he had sent the letter, Hedwig returned with a thick dictionary of runes. Sighing, because of course Hermione had to send him the heaviest, dullest-looking book she owned, Harry went to work, looking for the runes he had seen on Dumbledore’s Pensieve.

It was dull, exhausting work. After a while, the runes began blurring together, so he couldn’t be sure whether the one he was looking at in the book was actually the one he had seen on the Pensieve. And why were there so many different types of runes? Why not use only one? That would make things so much easier.

After several days, though, Harry thought he had finally discovered all the necessary runes. They were from five different sets; three or four runes from each set for each side of the Pensieve, and four from the fifth set that separated them.

Now he only had to find a stone bowl and inscribe the runes and he’d hopefully have his Pensieve.

In the end, the purloined one of Aunt Petunia’s earthenware bowls that she used on special occasions for salad or pudding. It was glazed, but Harry doubted that mattered. It made scratching in the runes easier, too.

Heart beating hard and fast with excitement, Harry finally held his own make-shift Pensieve in hands. Now he only had to figure out how to get his memories from his head into the bowl. Professor Dumbledore had managed to draw them out of his head with his wand. Did that count as magic, Harry wondered. Was there a spell to do it?

In the end, by trial and error using several less important memories – watching Dudley break his toys or gorge himself with sweets, walking along Hogwarts corridors or cutting potion ingredients during detention – he found a way to do it. It required a lot of concentration on his part, but no spell. So it probably wasn’t magic. He hadn’t got an angry letter from the Ministry about the misuse of magic, anyway.

After making sure that things worked, that he could watch the memory in the pudding bowl-come-Pensieve and return them to his head, Harry tried the memory of the first lesson with Dumbledore.

Over the next few days, he took out memory after memory, watching each of them several times, all the while looking for clues that might tell him where to go looking for Horcruxes. Riddle liked places of his former victories, Dumbledore said. He liked prestigious artefacts. Probably prestigious places, too. But what would Voldemort consider a prestigious place? Except of Hogwarts, Harry couldn’t think of anything. He would have to ask Ron and Hermione if they could think of something else.

But after six days of intensively reviewing the memories, that was all the result Harry got. Places of former victories, prestigious places. The cave had been one of the former. Perhaps the orphanage would be one as well? Borgin and Burkes? He had worked for them, had found Hepzibah Smith that way, but did that count as a victory?

With growing frustration Harry was forced to realise that Dumbledore hadn’t actually told or shown him much that was useful. What to look for, yes. But not where to look, or what to do once he found anything. And the cave Horcrux had been removed by someone else, so that one was out there, somewhere, unaccounted for.

Harry groaned and dropped his face in his hands. He was beginning to think that the task Dumbledore had given him was impossible to perform. And Dumbledore’s blithe conviction that, of course Harry would be able to perform another miracle, without being given even the least hint of how to do it, made Harry angry.

Reading Dumbledore’s obituary didn’t improve his mood. He had thought he had known Dumbledore quite well, but apparently, he didn’t know the man at all. He hadn’t even known the man had had a sister! And he’d never wasted a thought about Dumbledore beyond the silver-haired headmaster of Hogwarts. Even those few glimpses of the man in younger years he got hadn’t made him think about what Dumbledore was – and had been – beyond headmaster.

He hadn’t even asked the man about his duel with Grindelwald. And perhaps something about that, something Dumbledore had done, some spell, some tactic, might have helped Harry in his own fight against Voldemort.

It would have been impertinent to ask. Probably. But he had never even thought about doing so.

Harry was ashamed of himself.

But on the other hand, hadn’t Dumbledore projected that image? Hadn’t Dumbledore made sure he was nothing more than the silver-haired headmaster of Hogwarts? He had never told Harry anything about himself. The one personal question Harry had asked him, about what he saw in the Mirror of Erised, he hadn’t answered at all. Would he have answered any other question? Probably not. He had probably wanted to be the aloof genius. He trusted Harry without trusting him; trusted him to do the job of getting rid of Voldemort but he didn’t trust Harry with any other bit of information. Much like he had done during Harry’s fifth year. Much like he had done for most of Harry’s life.

And it made Harry angry about feeling ashamed. Why should he be ashamed about ignoring the person behind the headmaster when the same headmaster could apparently not be bothered to see the person behind the Boy Who Lived and Chosen One? Was Harry really only a pawn in Dumbledore’s game?

He’d never thought so. He’d always believed Dumbledore saw more in him than the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord. He had thought Dumbledore trusted him; after all, the man had more than once given Harry difficult tasks to perform – like the rescue of Sirius and Buckbeak in his third year.

But even then he hadn’t given Harry all the information, had he? They had talked about the incident in the Shrieking Shack, about why Snape hated Harry’s father so much, but at no point had Dumbledore ever hinted at the fact that Harry’s father was … was … not as wonderful as everyone had always made Harry believe.

Why had Dumbledore never told him the truth? About Harry’s parents, about the prophecy, about the Horcruxes, hell about the fucking Mirror of Erised? Dumbledore never told him everything he needed to know! Just enough to enable Harry to do what he wanted Harry to do.

Thinking about how little Dumbledore had apparently trusted him made Harry furious. Furious enough to brave the one memory he had not yet looked at. The memory of that last evening, of the cave, and the green potion.

Watching himself force-feed Dumbledore the poisonous potion, watching the man suffer, was hard. Harry’s fury dimmed to a low simmering, but didn’t disappear completely. Dumbledore had been in that cave before. He had known about the potion. He had known what it would do to him. Why hadn’t he brought some antidote? Or taken one before had drank the poison? Harry was sure he’d never forget the Prince’s sarcastic note, Just shove a bezoar down their throat, if only because it had saved Ron, and if he could remember that, why hadn’t Dumbledore used one?

He’d only sent Harry to go and get Snape afterwards. But the bastard had turned traitor and murdered Dumbledore. Yet the headmaster had been dying already, hadn’t he? Harry remembered all too clearly how Dumbledore had sagged against the wall of the Astronomy Tower, how weak he had been. His weakness had been the reason that Draco had so easily managed to overpower him. Harry himself had seen Dumbledore duel Voldemort! He should have been able to take down Draco without problem.

But he had been weak. Weak from the poison he’d drunk. From the poison he had known would make him weak.

What had Dumbledore been doing? Harry thought, shaking, as he left the memory. What had he been thinking? Had he been trying to kill himself?

The thought chilled Harry to the bone and he froze, staring down at the swirling memory. He had never considered it before. Of course not. Why would Dumbledore want to kill himself? But Harry had never considered a lot of things. So…

Dumbledore’s hand had been cursed since last summer. He had said that Snape had stopped the curse from spreading, but apparently there hadn’t been anything to heal the hand. Was that it? Had Dumbledore been dying from the curse and had meant to make use of the poison to maybe speed his death? But why had he told Harry to go and bring Snape if not for the man to heal him?

And he’d never told Harry about what had happened to his hand, either, Harry realised and it rankled. He’d always said he’d tell him later. Had not trusted Harry with this bit of information.

With trembling fingers, Harry retrieved the memory and put it back in his head. Then, after only a short hesitation, he concentrated again, withdrew the memory of the Astronomy Tower, and put it in his pudding bowl. Breathing hard, he looked down, watched it swirl. Then he took a deep breath and plunged.

*

Harry sat still, gazing down at the memory swirl. From seemingly far away he realised he was shaking. The bowl in his hands wobbled, and the memory threatened to spill. Moving slowly, Harry set the bowl down beside himself, then pulled his knees up and curled into a tight ball.

The shaking intensified until the bed under him was vibrating as well. Harry bit his lip to stop himself from screaming. He wanted to scream, howl, pace, run, kick the wall, smash the window, anything to find an outlet for the shaking. Yet at the same time, he was numb. Chilled. Empty. The shaking, the rage, were very far away.

He had watched the memory four times. Once from where he knew he was standing, invisible, and once from directly in front of first Dumbledore, facing the man, then once facing Draco, and once, though it had cost him, facing Snape. He had been watching the expression on their faces and in their eyes.

There had been no fear in Dumbledore’s eyes. Of course, the man was capable of controlling his expression, even weakened from the potion. But not that well. While he had been speaking to Draco, there had been only calmness, and perhaps a faint worry in his blue eyes.

But no fear. Not even when Snape had burst through the door, when Dumbledore had looked at the man and whispered his last words, Severus … please …, had there been fear. Exhaustion, pleading, but no fear.

Yet there had been something in Snape’s eyes. When he’d stepped close to Dumbledore and looked down at him, before his face had contorted with revulsion and hatred, there had been a glimmer of some other emotion in Snape’s dark, usually so expressionless eyes.

Harry didn’t know what it had been. He had never before paid attention to the subtle expression of Snape’s emotions. It had never been necessary. Snape was the opposite of subtle when it came to his feelings towards Harry.

But Harry had seen it. And he knew he had only seen it because he had never seen it before. If McGonagall had one day decided to wear lipstick, he’d have noted as well, because it was so completely incongruous, something that had never before been there, something he had never thought to see there.

He couldn’t name it. The glimmer might have been fear, or resignation, or weariness, or wariness. But it hadn’t been joy, or triumph, or excitement. Harry thought he’d have recognised one of those; he’d seen them often enough on Snape’s face when Harry had been in deep trouble.

No, Snape had not been happy about seeing Dumbledore weak and brought to his knees.

And Harry remembered the expression of revulsion on his own face as he had force-fed Dumbledore the green potion.

And Dumbledore had not been pleading for his life.