If Only

Chapter Three: The Lost Prophecy

Harry's feet hit solid ground again; his knees buckled a little and the golden wizard's head fell with a resounding clunk to the floor. He looked around and saw that he had arrived in Dumbledore's office.

Everything seemed to have repaired itself during the headmaster's absence. The delicate silver instruments stood again upon the spindle legged tables, puffing and whirring serenely. The portraits of the headmasters and headmistresses were snoozing in their frames, heads looking back in their armchairs or against the edge of their pictures. Harry looked through the window. There was a cool line of pale green along the horizon: Dawn was approaching.

The silence and stillness, broken only by the occasional grunt or snuffle of a sleeping portrait, was unbearable to him. If his surroundings could have reflected the feelings inside him, the pictures would have been screaming in pain. He walked around the quiet, beautiful office, breathing quickly, trying not to think. But he had to think. . . . There was no escape. . . .

It was his fault Sirius had died; it was all his fault. If he, Harry, had not been so stupid to go running to Ministry instead of stopping to think and tell Snape, if he had just let the Order do what they did best. They could have saved Sirius and he would be being healed this moment. Hermione would be conscious--no, she actually might be sleeping in bed; they all would. Ron would be sane. Voldemort had obviously realized that it was Harry that he wanted. If he'd only opened his mind to the possibility that Voldemort was, as Hermione had said, banking on Harry's love of playing the hero . . .

It was unbearable; he would not think about it, he could not stand it. . . . There was a terrible hollow inside him he did not want to feel or examine, like a dark hole where Sirius had bee, where Sirius had vanished in last whisper of "Harry . . ." He did not want to have to be alone in this great, silent space, he could not stand it--

A picture behind him gave a particularly loud grunting snore, and a cool voice said, "Ah . . . Harry Potter . . ."

Phineas Nigellus gave a long yawn, stretching his arms as he surveyed Harry out of shrewd, narrowed eyes.

"And what brings you here in the early hours of the morning?" said Phineas. "This office is supposed to be barred to all but the rightful headmaster. Or has Dumbledore sent you here? Oh, don't tell me . . ." He gave another shuddering yawn. "Another message for my worthless great-great-grandson?"

Harry could not speak. Phineas Nigellus did not know that Sirius was dead, but Harry could not tell him. To say it aloud would be to make it final, absolute, irretrievable.

A few more of the portraits had stirred now. Terror of being interrogated made Harry stride across the room and seize the doorknob.

It would not turn. He was shut in.

"I hope this means," said the corpulent, red-nosed wizard who hung on the wall behind Dumbledore's desk, "that Dumbledore will soon be back with us?"

Harry turned. The wizard was surveying him with great interest. Harry nodded. He tugged again on the doorknob behind his back, but it remained immoveable.

"Oh, good," said the wizard. "It has been very dull without him, very dull indeed."

He settled himself on the throne-like chair on which he had been painted and smiled benignly upon Harry.

"Dumbledore thinks very highly of you, as I am sure you know," he said comfortably. "Oh yes. Holds you in great esteem."

Th guilt filling the whole of Harry's chest like some monstrous, weightly parasite now writhed and squirmed. Harry could not stand this; he could not stand being Harry anymore. . . . He had never felt more trapped inside his own head and body, never wished so intensely that he could be somebody--anybody--else. . . .

The empty fireplace burst into emerald-green flame, making Harry leap away from the door, staring at the man spinning inside the grate. As Dumbledore's tall form unfolded itself from the fire, the wizards and witches jerked awake. Many of them gave cries of welcome.

"Thank you," said Dumbledore softly.

He did not look at Harry at first, but walked over to the perch beside the door and withdrew, from an inside pocket of his robes, the tiny, ugly, featherless Fawkes, whom he placed gently in on the tray of soft ashes beneath the golden post where the full-grown Fawkes usually stood.

"Well, Harry," said Dumbledore, finally turning away from the baby bird, "you will be pleased to hear that none of your fellow students are going to suffer any lasting damage from the night's events."

Harry tried to say "Good," by no sound came out. It seemed to him that Dumbledore was reminding him of the amount of damage he had caused by his actions tonight, and although Dumbledore was for once looking at him directly, and though his expression was kindly rather than accusatory, Harry could not bear to meet his eyes.

"Madam Pomfrey is patching everybody up now," said Dumbledore. "Nymphadora Tonks may need to spend a little time in St. Mungo's, but it seems that she will make a full recovery."

Harry contented himself with nodding at the carpet, which was growing lighter as they sky outside grew paler. He was sure that all the portraits around the room were listening closely to every word Dumbledore spoke, wondering where Dumbledore and Harry had been and why there had been injuries.

Dumbledore seemed to hesitate slightly. "Sirius has been taken to Grimmauld Place," he said after a moment. "The Order are doing what they can for him."

Harry's head jerked upward. "W-what do you mean?" he croaked. "He's--he's de--I thought I saw him d--I thought he was--"

"Moments after you left, Mr. Lupin was able to get him breathing again," Dumbledore explained calmly. "Sirius is still alive. He was immediately taken to Grimmauld Place."

"Wha--what's going to happen to him?" Harry choked, his voice constricted. It sounded just like Mrs. Weasley's note to her children had so many months ago in Sirius' kitchen. Still alive . . . was Sirius, like Mr. Weasley had, hovering between life and death? But Sirius could not go to St. Mungo's. . . . He'd have to be healed without a Healer's knowledge or magic. . . .

"I do not know, Harry," Dumbledore told him, and, for the first time, he sounded gravely worried. "Harry . . ." he hesitated again. "I--I will not hide from you the fact that Sirius may not survive the night."

The bottom dropped from Harry's stomach. For a moment, a wonderful, stupendous moment, he'd thought that Sirius would be okay, that they damage was not so permanent. But then he felt a sensation he'd felt before with the disappearance of Dumbledore's solutions. Sirius was dying, and there was little anyone could do for him.

"I need to go to him!" he exclaimed.

Harry strode over to the door again and wrenched at it. There was no improvement from the last time he'd tried this. He turned back to Dumbledore.

"Let me out," he said. He was shaking from head to foot.

"No," said Dumbledore. "I must speak with you."

For a few seconds they stared at each other.

"Let me out," Harry said again.

"No," Dumbledore repeated simply.

"I've--got--to--see--him!" said Harry, pulling hard on the doorknob in a vain hope that he would pull it off its hinges.

"I will take you to him," said Dumbledore. "But not until I have had my say."

"He might be gone by then!" Harry shouted. He wheeled around to face Dumbledore as furiously as he would if he'd been facing Voldemort. "Do you--do you think I want to--do you think I give a--I'VE GOT TO GET TO SIRIUS!" Harry roared. "I don't want to hear anything you've got to say! I need to get to Sirius!"

"I will take you to him," repeated Dumbledore. "But I promised him, before he lost consciousness, that I'd tell you no matter what!"

Harry was still standing with his hand on the doorknob; he had half a mind to resume his struggling to make it turn.

"Please sit down," said Dumbledore. It was not an order; it was request.

Harry hesitated, then walked slowly across the room.

"What is wrong with my great-great-grandson?" asked Phineas Nigellus slowly from Harry's left. "Is he--he's not dead?"

"No, not quite, Phineas," said Dumbledore, looking at him. "He has been mortally wounded and . . ." he glanced at Harry. "He may not live . . ."

"So . . . he's dying?" breathed Phineas.

Dumbledore nodded slightly. "But not for certain."

"He can't . . ." whispered Phineas, and Harry could sense a hint of emotion in his voice. " . . . not . . . I--he's the la--"

Harry turned his head in time to see Phineas marching out of his portrait and knew that he had gone to visit the other painting in Grimmauld Place. Harry wished that he would come back and tell him how Sirius was.

"Harry, I owe you an explanation," said Dumbledore. "An explanation of an old man's mistakes. For I see now that what I have done, and not done, with regard to you, bears all the hallmarks of the failings of age. Youth cannot know how age thinks and feels. But old men are guilty if they forget what it was to be young . . . and I seem to have forgotten lately. . . ."

The sun was rising properly now. There was a rim of dazzling orange visible over the mountains and the sky above was colorless and bright. Harry wondered if Sirius, who must be lying on a bed in his house, could see the light and he hoped that it would help him hold on a little longer. But the light fell upon Dumbledore, upon the silver of his eyebrows and beard, upon the lines gouged deeply into his face.

"I guessed, fifteen years ago," said Dumbledore, "when I saw the scar upon your forehead, what it might mean. I guessed that it might be a sign of the connection forged between you and Voldemort."

"You've told me this before, Professor," said Harry bluntly. He did not care about being rude. All he wanted was to see Sirius.

"Yes," said Dumbledore apologetically. "Yes, but you see--it is necessary start with your scar. For it became apparent, shortly after you rejoined the magical world, that I was correct, and that your scar was giving you warnings when Voldemort was close to you, or else feeling powerful emotion.

"I know," said Harry wearily.

"And this ability of yours--to detect Voldemort's presence, even when he is disguised, and to know what he is feeling when his emotions are roused--has become more and more pronounced since Voldemort returned to his own body and his full powers.

"More recently," said Dumbledore, "I became concerned that Voldemort might realize that this connection exists. Sure enough, there came a time when you entered so far into his mind and thoughts that he sensed your presence. I am speaking, of course, of the night when you witnessed the attack on Mr. Weasley."

"Yeah, Snape told me," Harry muttered.

"Professor Snape, Harry," Dumbledore corrected him quietly. "But did you not wonder why it was not I who explained it to you? Why I did not teach you Occlumency? Why I had not so much as looked at you for months?"

Harry looked up. He could see now that Dumbledore looked sad and tired.

"Yeah," Harry mumbled. "Yeah, I wondered."

"You see," continued Dumbledore heavily, "I believed it could not be long before Voldemort attempted to force his way into your mind, to manipulate and misdirect your thoughts, and I was not eager to give him more incentives to do so. I was sure that if he realized that our relationship was--or ever had been--closer than that of headmaster and pupil, he would seize his chance to use you as a means to spy on me. I feared the uses to which he would put you, the possibility that he might try and possess you. Harry, I believe I was right to think that Voldemort would have made use of you in such a way. On those rare occasions when we had close contact, I though I saw a shadow of him stir behind your eyes. . . . I was trying, in distancing myself from you, to protect you. An old man's mistake . . ."

Harry remembered the feeling that a dormant snake had risen in him, ready to strike, on those occasions when he and Dumbledore made eye contact.

"Voldemort's aim in possessing you, as he demonstrated tonight, would not have been my destruction. It would have been yours. He hoped, when he possessed you briefly a short while ago, that I would sacrifice you in hope of killing him."

He sighed deeply. Harry was letting the words wash over him. He would have been so interested to know all of this a few months ago. But now it seemed nothing to his will to see Sirius. That was all he wanted. He wanted to see his godfather. Harry was so sure that Sirius would die before he even got another chance to say goodbye. Why was Dumbledore keeping him from him? Why couldn't he break that promise? He was sure that Sirius wouldn't care . . . what could be so important?

"Sirius told me that you felt Voldemort awake inside you the very night that you had the vision of Arthur Weasley's attack. I knew at once that my worst fears were correct: Voldemort from that point had realized that he could use you. In an attempt to arm you against Voldemort's assaults on your mind, I arranged Occlumency lessons with Professor Snape."

He paused. Harry watched the sunlight, which was sliding slowly across the polished surface of Dumbledore's desk, illuminating a silver inkpot and a handsome scarlet quill. Harry could tell that the portraits all around them were awake and listening raptly to Dumbledore's explanation. He could hear the occasional rustle of robes, the slight clearing of a throat. Phineas Nigellus had still not returned. . . .

"Professor Snape discovered," Dumbledore resumed, "that you had been dreaming about the door to the Department of Mysteries for months. Voldemort, of course, had been obsessed with the possibility of hearing the prophecy ever since he regained his body, and as he dwelled on the door, so did you, though you did not know it meant.

"Voldemort captured Sirius yesterday his Death Eaters tortured him for many hours," the headmaster paused. "And then a Death Eater who'd working in the Ministry of Magic before his arrest," Harry had a shrewd idea who this Death Eater was, but felt to hollow with dread to think anything more about it, "told him that he'd known all along--that the prophecies held in the Ministry of Magic are heavily protected. Only the people to whom they refer can lift them from the shelves without suffering madness. Voldemort knew that it was either risk revealing himself at last and enter the Ministry--or else lure you to take it for him. He used Sirius presence in the Ministry to send you his memories and convert into them dreams. You see why it was important for you to master Occlumency?"

"But I didn't," muttered Harry. He said it aloud to try and ease the dead weight of guilt inside him; a confession must surely relieve some of the terrible pressure squeezing his heart. "I didn't practice, I didn't bother; I could've stopped myself having those dreams. Hermione kept telling me to do it, if I had he'd never have been able to show me where to go, and--Sirius wouldn't--if I'd just left it to the Order--he wouldn't--"

Something was erupting inside Harry's head: a need to justify himself, to explain--

"I thought that there wasn't anyone left in the Order at school to tell," said Harry.

"Professor Snape is a teacher that you have never seen eye to eye with," said Dumbledore.

"Snape!" Harry said angrily, his voice almost at a yell. "He didn't make anything easier. When I told him Voldemort had Sirius, he just sneered at me, as usual--"

"Harry, you know that Professor Snape had no choice but to pretend not to take you seriously in front of Dolores Umbridge," said Dumbledore steadily, "but as I have explained, he informed the Order as soon as possible about what you had said. It was he who deduced where you had gone when you did not return from the forest. It was he too who gave Professor Umbridge fake Veritaserum when she was attempting to force you to tell of Sirius' whereabouts. . . ."

Harry disregarded this; he felt a savage pleasure in blaming Snape, it seemed to easing his own sense of dreadful guilt, and he wanted to hear Dumbledore agree with him.

"Snape stopped giving me Occlumency lessons!" Harry snarled. "He threw me out of his office!"

"I am aware of it," said Dumbledore heavily. "It was a mistake for me not to teach you myself, though I was sure, at that time, that nothing could have been more dangerous than to open your mind even further to Voldemort while in my presence--"

"Snape made it worse, my scar always hurt worse after lessons with him--" Harry remembered Ron's thoughts on the subject and plunged on. "How do you know he wasn't trying to soften me up for Voldemort, make it easier for him to get inside my--"

"I trust Severus Snape," said Dumbledore simply. "But I forgot--another old man's mistake--that some wounds run to deep for the healing. I thought Professor Snape could overcome his feelings about your father--I was wrong."

Furious, Harry found the thing that angered him most about his disagreeable teacher.

"Snape--Snape g-goaded Sirius about staying in the house--he made out Sirius was a coward! Sirius might not have left Grimmauld Pl--"

"Sirius is much too old and clever to have allowed such feeble taunts hurt him," said Dumbledore. "And Sirius left the house for another reason. . . ."

"What do you mean?" Harry said more steadily than he felt.

"The house-elf Kreacher, I am afraid, has been serving more than one master for months."

"How?" said Harry blankly. His ire for Snape was fading quickly from his mind. "He hasn't been out of Grimmauld Place for years."

"Kreacher seized his opportunity shortly before Christmas," said Dumbledore, "when Sirius, apparently, shouted at him to 'get out.' He took Sirius at his word and interpreted this an order to leave the house. He went to the only Black family member for who he had any respect left. . . . Sirius' cousin Narcissa, sister of Bellatrix and wife of Lucius Malfoy."

"How do you know all this?" Harry said. His heart was beating very fast. He felt sick. He remembered worrying about Kreacher's odd absence over Christmas, remembered him turning up again in the attic. . . .

"Kreacher told me last night," said Dumbledore. "You see, when you gave Professor Snape that cryptic warning, he realized that you had had a vision of Sirius trapped in the bowels of the Department of Mysteries. He, like you, attempted to contact Sirius at once. I should explain that members of the Order of the Phoenix have more reliable methods of communicating than the fire in Dolores Umbridge's office. Professor Snape found Sirius was not there, he was lucky to find that Alastor Moody, Nymphadora Tonks, Kingsley Shacklebolt, and Remus Lupin were at headquarters when he made contact. All agreed to go your aid at once. Professor Snape meant to remain behind but left, Kreacher, bound to the house, while he, Professor Snape, searched the forest for you."

Dumbledore heaved a great sigh and then said. "And so it was that when I arrived in Grimmauld Place shortly after they had all left for the Ministry, it was the elf who told me--laughing fit to burst--where Sirius and the Order members had gone."

"He was laughing?" said Harry in a hollow voice.

"Oh yes," said Dumbledore. "You see, Kreacher was not able to betray us totally. He is not Secret-Keeper for the Order, he could not give the Malfoys our whereabouts or tell them any of the Order's confidential plans that he had been forbidden to reveal. He was bound by the enchantments of his kind, which is to say that he could not disobey a direct order from his master, Sirius. But he gave Narcissa information of the sort that is very valuable to Voldemort, yet must have seemed much too trivial for Sirius to think of banning him from revealing it."

"Like what?" said Harry.

"Like the fact that the person Sirius cared most about in the world was you," said Dumbledore quietly. "Like the fact that you were coming to regard Sirius as a mixture of father and brother. Voldemort knew already, of course, that Sirius was in the Order that you knew where he was--but Kreacher's information made him realize that the people the two of you would to any lengths to rescue is each other. Voldemort decided to take Sirius rather than you because he believed you to be much harder to get out from under the eyes of the Hogwarts teachers."

Harry's lips were cold and numb.

"So . . . how did he get Sirius out--out of G-Grimmauld Place?"

"Voldemort played a sequence of your screaming for help from him," said Dumbledore, his voice near a whisper. "Only he could hear them. The words that Sirius believed to be yours told the story of how you had got there. He rushed outside in his dog form and was almost immediately Stunned. When Kreacher saw that his master was captured, he closed the door and went to greet you and keep others away from the house."

There seemed to be very little air in Harry's lungs, his breathing was quick and shallow.

"And Kreacher told you all this . . . and laughed?" he croaked.

"He did not wish to tell me," said Dumbledore. "But I am a sufficiently accomplishments Legilimens myself to know when I am being lied to and I--persuaded him--to tell me the full story, before I left for the Department of Mysteries."

Something possessed Harry to look at the clock. It was five minutes until seven o'clock.

"When will you take me to Sirius?" Harry demanded.

"I have not finished," said Dumbledore.

"How long is it going to take?" Harry shouted. He leapt his feet. How could Dumbledore do this to him? What if Sirius died before he got there? What would happen to him? Who would be his godfather? If only he could tell Sirius how much he cared! He was suddenly aware of how little he'd thanked him . . . how little he'd told his godfather that he loved him . . . He was shaking, glowering at his headmaster.

"Sirius needs me . . . I must see him. . . . I can't leave him . . . he was there for me . . ."

Dumbledore closed his eyes and buried his face in his long-fingered hands. Harry watched him, but his uncharacteristic sign of exhaustion, or sadness, or whatever it was from Dumbledore, did not soften him. On the contrary, he felt even angrier that Dumbledore was showing signs of weakness. He had no business being weak when Harry wanted to rage and storm at him.

Dumbledore lowered his hands and surveyed Harry through his half-moon glasses.

"It is time," he said, "for me to tell you what I should have told you five years ago, Harry. Please sit down. I am going to tell you everything. I ask only a little patience. You will have your change to rage at me--to do whatever you like--" looked into Harry's eyes. "I will take you to Sirius--when I have finished."

Harry glared at him for a moment, then flung himself back into the chair opposite Dumbledore and waited. Dumbledore stared for a moment at the sunlit grounds outside the window, then looked back at Harry and said, "Five years ago you arrived at Hogwarts, Harry, safe and whole, as I had planned and intended. Well--not quite whole. You had suffered. I knew you would when I left you on your aunt and uncle's doorstep. I knew I was condemning you to ten dark and difficult years."

He paused. Harry said nothing.

"You might ask--and with good reason--why it had to be so. Why could some Wizarding family not have taken you in? many would have done so more than gladly, would have been honored and delighted to raise you as a son.

"My answer is that my priority was to keep you alive. You were in more danger than perhaps anyone but myself realized. Voldemort had been vanquished hours before, but his supporters--and many of them are almost as terrible as he--were still at large, angry, desperate, and violent. And I had to make decision too with regard to the years ahead. Did I believe Voldemort was gone forever? No. I knew not whether it would be ten, twenty, or fifty years before he returned, but I was sure that he would do so, and I was sure too, knowing him as I had done, that he would not rest until he killed you.

"I knew that Voldemort's knowledge of magic is perhaps more extensive than any wizard alive. I knew that even my most complex and powerful protective spells and charms were unlikely to be invincible if he ever returned to full power.

"But I knew too where Voldemort was weak. And so I made my decision. You would be protected by an ancient magic of which he knows, which he despises, and which he has always, therefore, underestimated--to his cost. I am speaking, of course, of the face that your mother died to save you. She gave you a lingering protection he never expected, a protection that flows in your veins to this day. I put my trust, therefore, in your mother's blood. I delivered you to her sister, her only remaining relative."

"She doesn't love me," said Harry at once. "She doesn't give a damn--"

"But she took you," Dumbledore cut across him. "She may have taken you grudgingly, furiously, unwillingly, bitterly, yet still she took you, and in doing so, she sealed the charm I placed upon you. Your mother's sacrifice made the bond of blood the strongest shield I could give you."

"I still don't--"

"While you can still call home the place where your mother's blood dwells, there you cannot be touched or harmed by Voldemort. He shed her blood, but it lives on in you and her sister. Her blood became your refuge. You need return there only once a year, but as long as you can still call it home, there he cannot hurt you. Your aunt knows. I explained what I had done in the letter I left, with you, on her doorstep. She knows that allowing you houseroom may well have kept you alive for the past fifteen years."

"Wait," said Harry. "Wait a moment."

He sat up straighter in his chair, staring at Dumbledore.

"You sent that Howler. You told her to remember--it was your voice--"

"I thought," said Dumbledore, inclining his head slightly, "that she might need reminding of the pact she had sealed by taking you. I suspected the dementor attack might have awoken her to the dangers of having you as a surrogate son."

"It did," said Harry quietly. "Well--my uncle more than her. He wanted to chuck me out, but after the Howler came she--she said I had to stay." He stared at the floor for a moment, then said, "But what's this got to do with Sirius?"

Saying Sirius' name was surprisingly difficult.

"Five years ago, then," continued Dumbledore, as though he had not paused in his story, "you arrived at Hogwarts, neither as happy nor as well nourished as I would have liked, perhaps, yet alive and healthy. You were not a pampered little prince, but as normal a boy as I could have hoped under the circumstances. Thus far, my plan was working well.

"And then . . . well, you remember the events of your first year at Hogwarts quite as clearly as I do. You rose magnificently to the challenge that faced you, and sooner--much sooner--than I had anticipated, you found yourself face-to-face with Voldemort. You survived again. You did more. You delayed his return to full power and strength. You fought a man's fight. I was . . . prouder of you than I can say.

"Yet there was a flaw in this wonderful plan of mine," said Dumbledore. "An obvious flaw that I knew, even then, might be the undoing of it all. And yet, knowing how important it was that my should succeed, I told myself that I would not permit this flaw to ruin it. I alone could prevent this, so I alone must be strong. And here was my first test, as you lay in the hospital wing, weak from your struggle with Voldemort."

"I don't understand what you're saying," said Harry.

"Don't you remember asking me, as you laying hospital wing, why Voldemort had tried to kill you when you were a baby?"

Harry nodded.

"Ought I to have told you then?"

Harry stared into the blue eyes and said nothing, but his heart was racing again.

"You do not see the flaw in my plan yet? No . . . perhaps not. Well, as you know, I decided not to answer you. Eleven, I told myself, was much too young to know. I had never intended to tell you when you were eleven. The knowledge would be too much at such a young age.

"I should have recognized the danger signs then. I should have asked myself why I did not feel more disturbed that you had already asked me the question to which I knew, one day, I must give a terrible answer. I should have recognized that I was too happy to think that I did not have to do it on that particular day. . . . You were too young, much too young.

"And so we entered your second year at Hogwarts. And once again you met challenges even grown wizards have never faced. Once again you acquitted yourself beyond my wildest dreams. You did not ask me again, however, why Voldemort had left that mark upon you. We discussed your scar, of yes. . . . We came, very, very close to the subject. Why did I not tell you everything?

"Well, it seemed to me that twelve was, after all, hardly better than eleven to receive such information. I allowed you to leave my presence, bloodstained, exhausted but exhilarated, and if I felt a twinge of unease that I ought, perhaps, have told you then, it was swiftly silenced. You still so young, you see, and I could not find it in me to spoil that night of triumph. . . ."

"Do you see, Harry? Do you see the flaw in my brilliant plan now? I had fallen into the trap I had foreseen, that I had told myself I could avoid, that I must avoid."

"I don't--"

"I cared about you too much," said Dumbledore simply. "I cared more for your happiness than your knowing the truth, more for your peace of mind than my plan, more for your life the lives that might be lost if the plan failed. In other words, I acted exactly as Voldemort expects we fools who love act.

"Is there a defense? I defy anyone who has watched you as I have--and I have watched you more closely than you can have imagined--not to want to save you more pain than you have already suffered. What did I care if numbers of nameless and faceless people and creatures were slaughtered in the vague future, if in the here and now you were alive, and well, and happy? I never dreamed that I would have such a person on my hands.

"We entered your third year. I watched you from afar as you struggled to repel dementors, as you found Sirius, learned what he was and rescued him. Was I to tell you then, at the moment when you had triumphantly snatched your godfather from the jaws of the Ministry? But now, at the age of thirteen, my excuses were running out. Young you might be, but you proved you were exceptional. My conscience was uneasy, Harry. I knew the time must come soon. . . .

"But you came out of the maze last year, having watched Cedric Diggory die, having escaped death so nearly yourself . . . and I did not tell you, though I knew, now that Voldemort had return, I must it soon. And now, tonight, I know you have long been ready for the knowledge I have kept from you for so long, because you have proved that I should have placed the burden upon you before this. May only defense is this: I have watched you struggling under more burdens than any student who had ever passed through this school, and I could not brink myself to add another--the greatest of all."

Harry waited, but Dumbledore did not speak.

"I still don't understand."

"Voldemort tried to kill you when you were a child because of a prophecy made shortly before your birth. He knew the prophecy had been made, through he did not know its full contents. He set out to kill you when you were still a baby, believing his was fulfilling the terms of the prophecy. He discovered, to his cost, that he was mistaken, when the curse he intended to kill you backfired. And so, since his return to his body, and particularly since your extraordinary escape from him last year, he had been determined to hear that prophecy in its entirety. This is the weapon he has been seeking so assiduously since he return: the knowledge of how to destroy you."

The sun had risen fully now. Dumbledore's office was bathed in it. The glass case in which the sword of Godric Gryffindor resided gleamed white and opaque, with the fragments of the instruments Harry had thrown to the floor glistened like raindrops, and behind him, the baby Fawkes made soft chirruping noises in his nest of ashes.

"The prophecy's smashed," Harry said blankly. "I was pulling Neville up those benches in the--the room where the archway was, and I ripped his robes and it fell. . . ."

"The thing that smashed was merely the record of the prophecy kept by the Department of Mysteries. But the prophecy was made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it perfectly."

"Who heard it?" asked Harry, though he thought he knew the answer already.

"I did," said Dumbledore. "On a cold, wet night sixteen years ago, in a room above the bar at the Hog's Head Inn. I had gone there to see an applicant for the post of Divination teacher, though it was against my inclination to allow the subject of Divination to continue at all. The applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very gifted Seer, and I thought it common politeness to meet her. I was disappointed. It seed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself. I told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for the post. I turned to leave."

Dumbledore got to his feet and walked past Harry to the black cabinet that stood beside Fawkes' perch. He bent down, slid back a catch, and took from inside it a shallow stone basin, carved with runes around the edges, in which Harry had seen his father tormenting Snape. Dumbledore walked back to the desk, placed the Pensieve upon it, and raised his wand to his own temple. From it, he withdrew silvery, gossamer-find shards of thought clinging to the wand, and deposited them in the basin. He sat back down behind his desk and watched his thoughts swirl and drift inside the Pensieve for a moment. Then, with a sigh, he raised his wand and prodded the silvery substance with its tip.

A figure rose out of it, draped in shawls, her eyes magnified to enormous size behind her glasses, and she revolved slowly, her feet in the basin. But when Sibyll Trelawney spoke, it was not in her usual ethereal, mystic voice, but in the harsh, hoarse tones Harry had heard her use once before.

"THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD APPROACHES. . . . BORN TO THOS WHO HAVE THRICE DEFIED HIM, BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES . . . AND THE DARK LORD WILL MARK HIM AS HIS EQUAL, BUT HE WILL HAVE POWER THE DARK LORD KNOWS NOT . . . AND EITHER MUST DIE AT THE HAND OF THE OTHER FOR NEITHER CAN LIVE WHILE THE OTHER SURVIVES. . . . THE ONE WITH THE POWER TO VANQUISH THE DARK LORD WILL BE BORN AS THE SEVENTH MONTH DIES. . . ."

The slowly revolving Professor Trelawney sank back into the silver mass below and vanished.

The silence within the office was absolute. Neither Dumbledore nor Harry nor any of the portraits made a sound. Even Fawkes had fallen silent.

"Professor Dumbledore?" Harry said very quietly, for Dumbledore, still staring at the Pensieve, seemed completely lost in thought. "It . . . did that mean . . . What did that mean?"

"It meant," said Dumbledore, "that the person who has the only chance of conquering Lord Voldemort for good was born at the end of July, nearly sixteen years ago. This boy would be born to parents who had already defied Voldemort three times."

Harry felt as though something was closing in upon him. His breathing seemed difficult again.

"It means--me?"

Dumbledore surveyed him for a moment through his glasses.

"The odd thing is, Harry," he said softly, "that it may not have meant you at all. Sibyll's prophecy could have applied to two wizard boys, bother born at the end of July that year, bother of who had parents in the Order of the Phoenix, both sets of parents having narrowly escaped Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other was Neville Longbottom."

"But then . . . but then, why was it my name on the prophecy and not Neville's?"

"The official record was relabeled after Voldemort's attack on you as a child," said Dumbledore. "It seemed plain to the keeper of the Hall of Prophecy that Voldemort could only have tried to kill you because he knew you to be the one to whom Sibyll was referring."

"Then--it might not be me?" said Harry.

"I am afraid," said Dumbledore slowly, looking as though every word cost him great effort, "that there is no doubt that it is you."

"But you said--Neville was born at the end of July too--and his mum and dad--"

"You are forgetting the next part of the prophecy, the final identifying feature of the boy who could vanquish Voldemort. . . . Voldemort himself would 'mark him as his equal.' And he did so, Harry. He chose you, not Neville. He gave you the scar that has proved both a blessing and a curse."

"But he might have chosen wrong!" said Harry. "He might have marked the wrong person!"

"He chose the boy he thought most likely to be a danger to him," said Dumbledore. "And notice this, Harry. He chose, not the pureblood (which, according to his creed, is the only kind of wizard worth being or knowing), but the half-blood, like himself. He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you, and in marking you with that scar, he did not kill you, as he intended, but gave you powers, and a future, which have fitted you to escaped him not once, but four times so far--something neither your parents, nor Neville's parents, ever achieved."

"Why did he do it, then?" said Harry, who felt numb and cold. "Why did he try and kill me as a baby? He should have waited to see whether Neville or I looked more dangerous when we were older and tried to kill whoever it was then--"

"That might, indeed, have been the more practical course," said Dumbledore, "except that Voldemort's information about the prophecy was incomplete. The Hog's Head Inn, which Sibyll chose for its cheapness, has long attracted, shall we say, a more interesting clientele than the Three Broomsticks. As you and your friends found out at your cost, and I to mine that night, it is a place where it is never safe to assume you are not being overheard. Of course, I had not dreamed, when I set out to meet Sibyll Trelawney, that I would hear anything worth overhearing. My--our--one stroke of good fortune was that the eavesdropper was detected only a short way into the prophecy and thrown from the building."

"So he only heard . . .?"

"He heard only the first part, the part foretelling the birth of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort. Consequently, he not warn his master that to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you--again marking you as his equal. So Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you, that it might be wise to wait or to learn more. He did not know that you would have 'power the Dark Lord knows not'--"

"But I don't!" said Harry in a strangled voice. "I haven't any powers he hasn't got, I couldn't fight the way he did tonight, I can't possess people or--or kill them--"

"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries," interrupted Dumbledore, "that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonder and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than forces or nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. it is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."

Harry could not quite understand what this meant. He asked, "The end of the prophecy . . . it was something about . . . 'neither can live . . .'"

"' . . . while the other survives,'" said Dumbledore.

"So," said Harry, "so does that mean that . . . one of us has got to kill the other one . . . in the end?"

"Yes," said Dumbledore.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Somewhere far beyond the office walls, Harry could hear the sound of voices, students heading down to the Great Hall for an early breakfast, perhaps. It seemed impossible that there could be people in the world who still desired food, who laughed, who neither knew nor cared that Sirius Black might be dead . . . that he could leave forever in mere minutes--seconds.

"I feel I owe you another explanation, Harry," said Dumbledore hesitantly. "You may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you as a prefect? I must confess . . . that I rather thought . . . you had enough responsibility to be going on with."

Harry looked up at him and saw a tear trickling down Dumbledore's face into his long silver beard.

"As I have promised," he said, rather thickly, "I will take you to Sirius. Please go find Ginny Weasley. I think you may need someone with you."

Author's Note: Next Chapter: Healing

I didn't want to kill Sirius in this chapter, so, if I get a strange impulse to kill, I may do it in the next chapter, but probably not. You'll see a lot of Giny next chapter.

If you've got questions about this, go to Questions about If Only? For updates and other thoughts, plus bits and pieces of the fics I'm working on, go to my Live Journal, which you can also access through my signature.

Please Review! Even if you've reviewed before, I'd like another one. They make my day! REVIEW!