Chapter 196 - The Two-Person Conference at Southend-on-Sea

"Perhaps I did it so Harry would live until the moment I've planned for," Dumbledore said, still wearing that calm expression. "What if Harry drank the potion but couldn't hold on until Nagini died?"

Praeris's lips twitched. She pulled a bronze mirror from her pocket and held it up toward him. "Fine. Let's contact Professor Snape and start preparing to deal with Nagini."

A trace of genuine surprise finally crossed Dumbledore's face.

"Is that so strange?" Praeris spread her hands. "Did you think it should be in someone else's hands? Hermione's? Then you're gravely mistaken."

Indeed, before the Astronomy Tower murder, the Two-Way Mirror had been in Hermione's hands.

But after that night, if Professor Snape and Draco came through unscathed, half the people Praeris cared about would end up in Voldemort's territory. How could she be completely at ease about that?

It seemed Dumbledore's original plan had been to use Praeris and the Two-Way Mirror to help Harry leave home safely on his seventeenth birthday. But that plan had already been severed at a crucial link.

"Aren't you the one treating Harry as a tool?" Praeris asked, her voice soft and measured. "Wouldn't killing Nagini right now be the best plan?"

"The Dark Lord will not give up the chance to kill Harry with his own hands when he comes of age. If we kill Nagini first, and then he kills Harry, it's equivalent to destroying the last Horcrux himself — and then you can appear and finish Voldemort completely. Why are you making that expression?"

Dumbledore sighed. Three parts helplessness for Praeris's bluntness, seven parts for having his true thoughts laid bare. "It seems I have lost to love," he said. "There's no shame in that."

"You haven't lost to my love for Professor Snape and Draco." Praeris slipped the Two-Way Mirror back into her pocket. "You've lost to your love for Harry."

"Harry deserves to be loved." Dumbledore's voice was gentle. "We are all fighters dragged into the arena by fate. But only Harry — only he did not choose to face his destiny because he had no other choice."

All things in the world become small before life and death.

When it came to confronting Voldemort, Harry had never thought of running. Before he even fully understood what it meant, he had chosen to face a mission fate had forced upon him, a mission that far exceeded what any boy his age should have to bear, and he carried it with pride.

Even now, knowing it might cost him his life, he had stepped onto this path without flinching. Everyone believed that if Harry died for it, he would die proud of what he had done.

"His present self owes something to your guidance," Praeris said quietly. "And have you never looked at yourself? You're the one who didn't have to choose to oppose the Dark Lord. No one required it of you. Yet you still bound yourself to this train — this fight against evil that never slows, never stops, that runs straight until death with no brakes."

From Dumbledore's perspective, he was filling a hole that certain events of his youth had hollowed out in his heart.

But from Praeris's perspective, and from that of the wider world, Harry had been chosen by Voldemort. For Harry, there was no avoiding it. Dumbledore had no such obligation. No one had decreed it. And yet he had walked onto this path without a second thought.

Praeris suspected Dumbledore carried some measure of self-loathing. That he couldn't bring himself to admit he possessed genuinely admirable qualities.

"You two want to save the world." Praeris let out a short huff. "Don't you dare put me on that pedestal. I only want to live well, and for the people I love to live well. Everything else? That's someone else's responsibility."

Dumbledore and Harry Potter were noble. People like them were bound for heaven.

Praeris was different. She had never forgotten why she came to the magical world. She didn't want heaven. She wouldn't sink to hell either. She only wanted to live selfishly in the world between, to enjoy quiet happiness, the way she had in her first three years at Hogwarts.

Dumbledore shook his head. "You know I can't think that way."

Talking with Praeris was both easy and exhausting. He never needed to explain much, he could simply assume she understood and perceived most things. The difficult part was keeping careful watch over the parts of his past he wasn't willing to share.

"So you've decided to protect Harry?" Praeris asked. "What exactly do you have in mind to keep him alive against the Dark Lord?"

"Love," Dumbledore said. Gentle. Certain.

Dumbledore could be even more vague than Praeris on his best days. And here he was, saying things that made absolutely no sense to her again.

She said, with barely concealed irritation, "All right — we're saving Harry, yes? They'll be moving him on the night of the 27th. The plan stays as you decided."

"Severus told you," Dumbledore said. Not a question.

"Aside from the 'traitor' himself," Praeris said drily, "who else would trust the beloved disciple of another 'traitor'?"

She had opposed Dumbledore's faked-death plan from the beginning. She'd had no choice but to accept it anyway.

The Horcrux's curse had been eating away at Dumbledore's life force, leaving him weaker by the day. Even with the Limb-Regrowing Potion, nothing came without cost. The growth of new limbs drained him enormously, and he was forced to take 2 or more restorative draughts every day.

He could no longer sustain the toll of operating in the open.

Then there was Harry. Since entering the magical world, he had never truly experienced death up close. He understood the cruelty of war, but not deeply enough. Dumbledore had volunteered to become the person through whom Harry would learn that lesson.

It was one more reason the guilt Dumbledore felt toward Harry kept growing.

And finally, this was a mission Professor Snape was willing to shoulder. It was also Draco's only chance to come through without killing anyone.

Draco still had kindness in him. He didn't have the courage to commit murder, and as it happened, Professor Snape and Draco's mother Narcissa had made an Unbreakable Vow requiring Snape to help Draco at the critical moment.

The Seven Potters plan felt ruthless on its face. Without Dumbledore present, some Order of the Phoenix members would almost certainly be lost.

But Dumbledore only said, calmly, "Everyone has already made their peace with sacrifice."

"Wait." Praeris looked up sharply. "You mean on the 27th, we're not going to Harry's house?"

"That was the original intention," Dumbledore said. "But you gave the Two-Way Mirror to Severus. Now we have a better plan."

The Seven Potters plan was already well-constructed. Voldemort intended to kill Harry himself, so the weaker members who took on Harry's form faced no real mortal danger. The moment Voldemort realized none of them were the real Harry, he would change targets immediately, and because of their twin cores, he fundamentally couldn't kill Harry anyway. The Order members who hadn't transformed were capable of defending themselves.

As for the risks involved, that was precisely why Dumbledore had originally planned to bring Praeris along to observe.

But with the Two-Way Mirror now in Snape's hands, everything shifted. They could use the moment Voldemort's entire force poured out to hunt Harry and strike Nagini instead.

In Dumbledore's assessment, the locket had already been passed to Harry for destruction. Kill Nagini now, and the final battle moved forward, fewer casualties, less time for things to go wrong.

There were risks. But it was worth it.

Praeris's mind ran through the calculation the moment Dumbledore finished speaking.

"No." She shook her head quickly. "There was a mass breakout from Azkaban recently, but the Order doesn't know about it. The Death Eaters' current headquarters is Malfoy Manor. Even if they all go out to hunt Harry, someone will be left guarding the manor."

Which meant Dumbledore, not fully recovered, and Praeris, who had only just come of age, might not be able to successfully infiltrate Malfoy Manor and get to Nagini.

Praeris lowered her head, thinking. "And there's another problem. This would put enormous pressure on the trust Professor Snape has only just built with the Dark Lord."

The Ministry's leaked information said Harry would be moved on the 30th. Professor Snape had used the real date, the 27th, to earn that trust. If the headquarters came under attack at the exact moment the Death Eaters were out in full force, who were they going to point their wands at? Did that even need asking?

Yes, Professor Snape could argue that the other Death Eaters all knew the operation's timing. But that pushed every bit of suspicion directly onto his shoulders. Very typical Dumbledore behavior, Praeris thought, consequences considered, messy aftermath left to someone else.

At times like this, she always rolled her eyes internally. She had actually managed to forget that Dumbledore was the most Gryffindor Gryffindor who had ever lived.

Princess Dumbledore only had to give his trust. The two princes were left to figure out everything else.

Any Order member standing here would have simply done as they were told, no questions asked.

Praeris was not an Order member. The second Dumbledore put forward a plan, she pointed straight at its holes and pushed back, forcing him to refine it until it could hold up under scrutiny. She was, at this point, his only remaining partner. He had no one else to convince.

"Praeris, are you worried about the Sword of Gryffindor being recognized?" Dumbledore's blue eyes were bright and sharp. "But you mentioned that you just saved Bill with the Limb-Regrowing Potion — you have Basilisk venom."

A dagger soaked in Basilisk venom. Any blade would do. That could kill Nagini just as well. And once the Basilisk venom mixed with the great snake's own blood, it would be like a needle dropped into the ocean, impossible to trace, impossible to distinguish.

After that, Dumbledore spent some time urging Praeris to trust her own capabilities, and let it be known that he was not, in fact, as weak as she seemed to think.

Praeris had still more to weigh.

Breaking into Malfoy Manor to kill Nagini would be as good as announcing openly that they knew about the Horcruxes and were actively destroying them. Voldemort would move immediately. Ravenclaw's Diadem was somewhere in Hogwarts, no way to reach it. But Voldemort would go straight to Gringotts, the cave, and wherever he had hidden the ring. There was no concealing this.

"Wait." Praeris's eyes went wide. "The Diadem. The Room of Requirement. Sir, we still haven't dealt with the Vanishing Cabinet."

Hogwarts was still a sieve. A leaking, wide-open sieve.

Dumbledore paused, as though the thought had only just returned to him. "Ah, yes, there is that."

Praeris felt a slow, grinding frustration settle in. Dumbledore oscillated between meticulous precision and plans with gaping holes, held together by a single operating principle: patch it where it breaks.

"Are all your other plans like this?" She pressed a hand to her forehead.

"Praeris." Dumbledore's tone was reassuring. "Don't panic when problems arise. There's no such thing as a perfect plan. My planning for Harry was also something I gradually adjusted and shaped over several years."

Harry had once told Praeris he couldn't imagine what Dumbledore was like when he was young. From where Praeris was standing, it was completely easy to imagine.

Her expression was flat. The corner of her mouth twitched twice. "So that plan is also riddled with holes."

Dumbledore burst out laughing, bright, unhurried, completely delighted.

Praeris found herself thinking of the books Heidi had on the four Founders. Some of those descriptions, she realized, were more accurate than she'd ever given them credit for. Godric Gryffindor had probably been the one charging ahead, holding the big picture together by force of will. And Salazar Slytherin had probably been walking behind him, quietly finding every crack and filling it.

History was repeating itself in the strangest way. The old partnership between Gryffindor and Slytherin, reconstructed across a gap of decades, as teammates with forty years between them.

The night raid on Malfoy Manor was shelved for now, to be revisited closer to July 27th. What the two of them needed to deal with first was the Vanishing Cabinet.

Getting into Hogwarts during the summer holidays without revealing that Dumbledore was still alive was not simple, it had been less than a month since his "murder." So they moved their priority to the Vanishing Cabinet at Borgin and Burkes.

Knockturn Alley.

With Death Eater activity growing more rampant by the day, Knockturn Alley was now far livelier than Diagon Alley. Dumbledore's "death" had only poured more disorder into a wizarding society that was already fraying at the edges.

Every few steps, Praeris passed another tightly wrapped wizard, head down, brushing past without a word.

She and Dumbledore looked no different.

"Honestly," Dumbledore murmured, "I preferred the last disguise."

Praeris had transformed him into a curly-haired, dark-skinned man, an American tourist from Southend-on-Sea. That Muggle had almost certainly left England by now, which made the appearance safe to reuse.

Praeris kept her voice flat. "Mr. Wald, we don't have the luxury of choice."

"Very well, Miss William." Dumbledore shrugged. "At your disposal."

Between them, they were currently North William and Brian Wald.

CREAK!

Praeris pushed open the door of 13B Knockturn Alley, Borgin and Burkes.

"What are you looking for?" The shopkeeper gave them a quick, practiced look, sizing them up as two more wizards in search of protection. "Defensive items? Something with offensive capability?"

Praeris lowered her voice. "We'd like to look around first."

➤ Next: Let Me Weep