Chapter seven.
******
Tuesday evening found Harry poring over Charms notes from the past six years- Hermione's of course- in preparation for an impromptu practice NEWT exam the next day. Covering the pages with one hand and staring at the floor, Harry cursed freely and frequently as he attempted to recite the incantations from memory.
A flash of scarlet seen out of the corner of his eye was his only warning before the rolls of parchment were snatched out of his hands.
"Give those over!" Ron demanded, plopping down into the chair across from him. "I'm so buggered for this test. Do you know how long it's been since I've studied Charms?"
"We'll fail it together, then," Harry groaned, passing a hand over his weary eyes.
Ron snorted in agreement, skimming over the notes in a hectic rustle of paper. After a while, his eyes began to dart between the pages and Harry, sneaking furtive glances at him when he thought he wasn't looking. Harry thought he knew what was on his best friend's mind, and intentionally avoided his gaze.
"Uh, Harry?"
Harry nearly groaned out loud when he heard Ron's unusually timid voice break the silence.
"What?" he asked testily, and hoped that Ron would take it as grumpiness over their upcoming test.
"Er," Ron paused, glancing back down at the notes nervously. "Neville said that you all had to kiss your partners in Sex Magic yesterday..."
"Yes," Harry answered shortly.
"Yeah, so, how did that go? You know, with Malfoy?"
"As opposed to with someone else, you mean?" Harry asked dryly. "How do you think it went? It was horrible. I had to kiss Malfoy."
"Oh, yeah," Ron nodded enthusiastically, making a face. "Disgusting. Right. But, Harry?"
"Yes, Ron?" Harry asked through gritted teeth, snatching one of the note parchments out his hand and pretending to read it.
"You're not... I mean, the Goblet obviously made a mistake when it teamed you up with Malfoy, right? Because you're not, y'know..."
"Gay?" Harry supplied for him, glaring angrily from over the top of the scroll. "No, I'm not. The Goblet made a mistake."
"You're sure?" Ron asked quietly, crinkling the remaining parchments in his hands worriedly. Something which Hermione would later yell at him for.
Anger bubbling over, Harry threw the scroll back at Ron, feeling a bit of satisfaction when it bounced off of his forehead. Pushing himself out of the chair, he stood before his friend with clenched fists.
"I am not gay!" he shouted, drawing the attention of the entire common room. "Furthermore, I still haven't completely forgiven you and your brothers for getting me into this mess! So just shut it, will you?"
"Okay. I'm sorry," said Ron, holding up his hands defensively.
Sighing, Harry ran a hand roughly through his hair, pacing away a few steps before turning back to face his shamed roommate. "I'm sorry, Ron. I didn't mean to... I just need to go for a walk, that's all."
"But it's past hours," Ron said half-heartedly. But Harry was already on his way up the stairs to their room to get his Invisibility Cloak.
***
Neville had endured Lavender's avoidance, her cold shoulder, her silent treatment, and her outright tantrums during their Sex Magic lessons for the past two weeks. To say that he was sick of it would be putting it mildly. To say that he had reached his breaking point would be more accurate.
Tuesday night found him writing an essay for Advanced Herbology on how the restorative properties of Mandrake Root and the detoxifying properties of bezoars could be combined and used as a highly effective cure for hangovers. He'd likely receive a few curt lines from Sprout about it. He and his semi-mentor didn't quite see eye to eye on the use of the plants that they both loved. She was always pursing her lips disapprovingly at his ideas for the use of powerful herbal remedies for common ailments. He could see the message scrawled in the footnotes now... "Honestly, Neville, Mandrake and bezoars? Would you waste such highly difficult to procure ingredients on the effects of stupidity and personal vice?"
He sighed, laying down his quill and rubbing the ache out of his hand, and glanced around the room sleepily. His gaze lighted on Lavender and he watched her chew the corner of her mouth as she concentrated on her Charms textbook. He smiled. It was nice to see her at ease for the first time since school had started. When she glanced up he gave a small wave. She frowned, her eyes going distant as she froze. Then, with a sudden burst of movement, she snapped her book shut, rose from her chair, and turned to flee.
Neville clenched his jaw and hesitated only a moment before following.
She was moving quickly when he caught up with her at the base of the stairs leading up to the girls' rooms. Catching a loose bit of her robes, he tugged her to a sudden stop. She whirled around with panicked look on her face. Neville thought she looked like a caged animal, her eyes flickering, looking for potential saviors to rescue her from him. He felt another surge of anger rise in his chest. Enough was enough.
"Why are you acting like this?" he demanded.
"Like what?" Lavender evaded, hoisting her book protectively to cover her chest.
"Avoiding me. Not speaking to me. Running away from me. What did I do to you?" he asked, the tether he'd kept on his hurt questions for the past fourteen days well and truly severed.
"Nothing!" she squeaked, her eyes wide with stunned disbelief. "Look, you just have to understand that I'm upset."
"Over what?" he asked, even though he knew.
"Neville, don't take this the wrong way, but I don't want to be your partner in Sex Magic," she told him.
"And that's my fault?" he asked bitterly.
"Well- yes, sort of," she said. "I know you have a crush on me. Have done for years. Maybe you influenced the Goblet in some way."
Neville did his best to keep from throttling her.
"Maybe so," he admitted, and watched her mouth drop open. She'd expected denial. "But either way, short of reaching into that goblet and tying our names together myself, I can't be expected to take the blame any more than you can. Ignoring me is not going to make it go away, and neither is having a crying fit during our lessons together. Have I told you that I'm not fond of that?"
"But I didn't want this!" she protested shrilly, her eyes going glassy with tears. "I wanted to be partnered with someone who was charming and good-looking! Who would give me flowers and sweets... Someone romantic! Who could waltz with me and sweep me off my feet. Someone like... Harry, or, I don't know, maybe even Blaise Zabini-"
Neville laughed so hard that she flinched back, glaring at him fiercely.
"Harry? Harry doesn't have a romantic bone in his body, and his waltzing abilities wouldn't make a lame mule jealous. Let's be honest here, the only reason you wanted Harry as a partner is because he's famous. And Zabini because he's rich. God, you really are as shallow as everyone thinks."
"Wha- I- How dare you?" Lavender sputtered.
"Yet despite that," Neville continued, leaning toward her.
He cut himself off. Despite the fact that he currently had Lavender Brown- the most popular girl in Gryffindor, if not in the whole of Hogwarts- backed up against a stone wall and completely in awe of him, his heart was in his throat and his stomach was near full of butterflies. His bravado had its limits, and the urge to run back to his homework was strong. Still, he stuck it out, looking down on Lavender's beautiful upturned face longingly.
"Despite what?" she asked quietly, and if she was slightly breathless she would never admit it.
Neville smiled. "I can waltz beautifully," he evaded. "My grandmum made me learn when I was eight."
He was pleased to see the shock register in her eyes, and when he turned to head back to his essay there was a smug spring to his step.
***
Harry hugged the translucent material of his cloak tighter across his chest, though his muttering made being invisible rather pointless.
"I'm not gay," he told the thin air for the sixth time. "Maybe Ron's gay. He was so interested in knowing what kissing Malfoy was like..."
Rounding the corner, he glanced briefly at the stone gargoyle guarding the Headmaster's office. He'd passed it often during his late night strolls over the past year and a half, and his eyes were always drawn to the cobwebs gathered at the base where it met the false wall behind it. They never failed to cause a brief pang in his gut- the disuse of the Headmaster's office somehow depressing to him even though he hadn't forgiven the man for the events of Fifth Year. But time eased all manner of wounds, and his bitterness towards the old man had faded considerably since then.
Tonight, however, the cobwebs were absent and a thick trail of dust extended out past the feet of the statue in a half-crescent. Harry drew up short, his sneakers scuffing loudly on the stone floor. He knew that no one could change the password but the Headmaster himself. So unless Dumbledore had returned, it would still be...
"Cockroach Cluster!" Harry shouted at the impassive face of the stone gargoyle. Tearing off his cloak when it did not move, thinking absurdly that somehow it had prevented his voice from carrying, he shouted again, "Cockroach Cluster!"
When the gargoyle still did not move, Harry shook himself out of his dazed immobility. Approaching the statue at a near run, he slammed his shoulder into its side. "Goddamnit, Cockroach Cluster!"
After several more minutes of shouted curses and inventive, painful ways of attempting to force the gargoyle aside, Harry slid, sweaty and exhausted, into a slouch at its feet. Taking off his glasses to wipe at the sweat stinging his eyes, he stared blurrily at the semicircular trail of dust and broken cobwebs before him. He knew that someone had been inside the Headmaster's office. He knew it!
"Lemon drop," a thin, reedy voice said from above him.
Harry cried out in surprise as the stone against his back moved suddenly and he fell backward. Stunned, he jerked his head up and peered at nothing. The air seemed to be swirling. He squinted at it, only succeeding in making himself dizzy. Fumbling for his glasses, Harry shoved them haphazardly onto his nose in time to see the shimmering effect of an Invisibility Cloak being removed. Tattered robes around a wizened form appeared, before a wrinkled face surrounded by wild, frizzy gray hair.
"I've lost my taste for cockroach, I'm afraid," Albus Dumbledore explained, tucking the cloak under one arm as he reached the other down to Harry. "A rather unfortunate side effect of sharing a cave with a whole colony of them."
The Headmaster made a ghasty picture, ruined as he was, and Harry hesitantly took his hand, allowing himself to be helped to his feet.
"Come with me, Harry," Dumbledore told him. "I'm sure we have much to talk about."
Nodding mutely, Harry followed him up the winding staircase to his office, which was as oddly quaint as always. Harry had to turn away when Dumbledore took a seat behind his desk, so out of place did the frail, gray old man look amidst the clicking, sighing shiny objects and colorful portraits around him. He might have been a pile of ash against the bright red leather of his chair.
He heard Dumbledore take a deep breath and winced, not knowing if he was prepared to hear the sound of his sickly voice again- or what it would say.
"I imagine my appearance shocks you?"
"Yes," Harry responded, swallowing against a dry throat.
A silence fell and grew between them, heavy and unsettling. Harry kicked at the carpet with the toe of his shoe, suddenly unsure of why he'd wanted to see Dumbledore so badly in the first place. A year and a half of distance, as well as the betrayal of Fifth Year lay between them, and the longer the pause stretched the greater that gulf seemed. Harry wasn't entirely sure it could be breached after all this time, but the quiet was worse, and so he would try.
He cleared his throat. "You mentioned a cave."
"Ah, yes," Dumbledore smiled grimly. "My home away from home these long six months. Before then I'd been tracking Voldemort across the entire U.K. There were many reports, of course, but only a handful of them sounded promising. Due to Voldemort's terrible cleverness, however, those that were genuine were sketchy at best, and morsels of real information were difficult to pick out amongst the gossip. When I found him at last in early spring, I had to be careful to disguise my presence. The cloak helped."
Harry's head reeled at everything he'd just been told. So much information after a year and a half of nothing. Dumbledore knew where Voldemort was, what he was doing... He knew, and once again, he'd kept Harry in the dark.
Sensing his train of thought, the Headmaster quickly added, "I think you know, Harry, that if correspondence had been possible, you would have received news."
"Do I?" Harry asked coldly, the unspoken thing between them now laid out in the open.
Dumbledore sighed, settling deeper into his chair with a look of utter exhaustion.
"I regret nothing more than keeping so many secrets from you when you were younger, Harry," he began, his voice weary and heavy with guilt. "I've given my reasons, but I admit, they did not seem so valid when spoken as they felt to me at the time. I am sorry."
Harry looked away, his jaw clenching as he glared at Fawkes, sleeping peacefully on his perch. When he looked back at Dumbledore with the question that he had to ask on his tongue, his voice wavered.
"What is he doing?"
"Gathering forces, allies," said Dumbledore. "His army is nearly complete, all of his old comrades found and amassed."
"When?" Harry asked, knowing that he would be understood.
"Soon, I think," Dumbledore answered. "Harry..."
He paused, looking grave as he formed his next words. His eyes met Harry's and the younger man felt something inside of him recoil at the grim solemnness in the once twinkling gaze.
"You want me to treat you as an adult, and not a child. I think you have earned it, and so I shall give you honesty at its most complete and ugly." The Headmaster stared at his shriveled hands folded on the desktop. "War is coming. Many will die, and among their numbers will be those within these walls. Teachers, classmates, friends... Some of their deaths you will not be able to prevent, and some you will be responsible for."
Harry stared at Dumbledore, stubbornly refusing to listen to the weakness in his knees suggesting that he sit down. Refusing to entertain the image that wanted to make itself known, of Ron and Hermione, bloody and unmoving, with Harry standing above them, wand hanging limp and useless in his fingers.
"Harry," Dumbledore continued. "Turn him."
When Harry stared blankly, Dumbledore shook his head and turned his face away. "Turn him... if you don't want to have to kill him."
Understanding dawned slowly, and when it did Harry drew a sharp, shaky breath. Draco.
Only then did Harry give in to the demand in his knees, and sat. Dumbledore turned back round to face him and Harry forced himself to look, to see the damage done to the man in front of him, and to feel grateful for it.
"The password will be changed upon my leaving. In case you have need of it, it will be 'Love'. The one force on this earth that our enemy can't bring himself to face." Dumbledore told him, smiling wryly. "See? I have not lost my sense of irony, at least."
Harry snorted a quiet laugh and watched as the Headmaster rose slowly, wincing at a pain that Harry could only guess at, and made his way around the desk to stand before him.
"I shall be on my way. Feel free to remain here for as long as you like," he said, and Harry felt a strong urge to say no; to grab onto him and force him to stay. Instead he nodded, and the Headmaster slipped around his chair and out of his sight. "Goodbye."
Harry remained alone in the not-quite-silence of the Headmaster's office, surrounded by the snores and sleepy murmurings of the portraits and Fawkes and the whistling, clicking noises of Dumbledore's toys. Dawn broke slowly, gray and then pink and then gold, filling the tower room with a warm glow. Taking one last look around, he left, descending the stairs with a heavy heart and more questions than he'd went in with.
His friends didn't ask questions when he arrived at breakfast with red eyes.
******
Next chapter.