Amelia Bones, who had thought she’d been appointed regent over the Line of Merlin Unbroken and made the next Chief Warlock, only to find that instead the position had gone to, apparently, an eleven-year-old boy.
You will now, said the voice of Hufflepuff inside his head, you will now be polite. You will not be your usual brand of bloody idiot. Because the fate of the world might just depend on it. Or not. We don’t even know.
“I’m terribly sorry about all this,” Harry Potter said, then paused to see what effect, if any, this polite statement had produced.
“Minerva seems to think,” the old witch said, “that you will not take offense to honest words.”
Harry nodded. His Ravenclaw part wanted to include the disclaimer about that being different from people blatantly trying to push you down
while crying that you were intolerant of criticism, but Hufflepuff vetoed.
Whatever she had to say, Harry would hear.
“I do not wish to speak ill of the departed,” the old witch said. “But since time immemorial, the Line of Merlin Unbroken has passed to those who have thoroughly demonstrated themselves to be, not only good people, but wise enough to distinguish successors who are themselves both good and wise. A single break, anywhere along the chain, and the succession might go astray and never return! It was a mad act for Dumbledore to pass the Line to you at such a young age, even having made it conditional upon your defeat of You-Know-Who. A tarnish upon Dumbledore’s legacy, that is how it will be seen.” The old witch hesitated, her eyes still watching Harry. “I think it best that nobody outside this room ever learn of it.”
“Um,” Harry said. “You… don’t think very much of Dumbledore, I take it?”
“I thought…” said the old witch. “Well. Albus Dumbledore was a better wizard than I, a better person than I, in more ways than I can easily count.
But the man had his faults.”
“Because, um. I mean. Dumbledore knew everything you just said. About my being young and how the Line works. You’re acting like you think Dumbledore was unaware of those facts, or just ignoring them, when he made his decision. It’s true that sometimes stupid people, like me, make decisions that crazy. But not Dumbledore. He was not mad.” Harry swallowed, forcing a sudden moisture away from his eyes. “I think… I’m beginning to realize… Dumbledore was the only sane person, in all of this, all along. The only one who was doing the right things for anything like the right reasons…”
Madam Bones was cursing under her breath, low dire imprecations that were making Minerva McGonagall twitch.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said helplessly.
Mad-Eye was grinning, the scarred face twisting up in a smile. “Always knew Albus was up to something he never told the rest of us. Lad, you have no idea how hard it is for me not to use my Eye on that scroll.” Harry quickly shoved the scroll into his mokeskin pouch.
“Alastor,” Amelia said. The old witch’s voice was rising. “You are a man of sense, you cannot think the lad is able to fill Dumbledore’s socks!
Not today!”
“Dumbledore,” Harry said, the name tasting strange on his tongue, “did make one wrong assumption, when he made his decisions. He thought we’d be fighting Voldemort for years, all of us together. He didn’t know I’d vanquish Voldemort immediately. It was the right thing for me to do, it saved a lot of lives compared to fighting a long battle. But Dumbledore thought you would have years to learn me, trust me… and instead it was all over in an evening.” Harry inhaled. “Can’t you just pretend we’ve been fighting Voldemort for years and I earned your trust and everything? So that I’m not penalised for winning more quickly than Dumbledore expected?”
“You are still a first-year in Hogwarts!” the old witch said. “You cannot take Dumbledore’s place, whatever his intentions!”
“Right, that whole ‘looking like an eleven-year-old’ thing.” Harry’s hand came up, rubbed at his nose where his glasses lay. I suppose I could just use the Stone, change myself to look like ninety…
“I am not a fool,” the old witch said. “I know you are no ordinary child. I have seen you speak to Lucius Malfoy, watched you frighten off a Dementor, and witnessed Fawkes grant your plea. Anyone with wisdom who saw you before the Wizengamot—by which I mean myself and at most two others—could guess that you had absorbed some portion of You-Know-Who’s shredded soul on the night of his undeath, but subdued it and turned his knowledge to good ends.” There was a slight pause in the room.
“Well, yes, of course,” said Minerva McGonagall. She sighed, slumped a bit in the Headmistress’s chair. “As Albus clearly knew from the very beginning, but thoughtfully declined to warn me about in any way whatsoever.”
“Right,” Moody said. “I knew that. Yep. Perfectly obvious. Wasn’t confused at all.”
“I guess that’s close enough to the truth,” said Harry. “So, um. What’s the problem, exactly?”
“The problem,” Amelia Bones said, her voice perfectly even, “is that you are a bubbling, unstable blend of a Hogwarts first-year and YouKnow-Who.” She paused, as though waiting for something.
“I’m getting better about that,” Harry said, since she seemed to be waiting on his reply. “Quite rapidly, in fact. More importantly, it’s not something Dumbledore didn’t know.”
The old witch continued. “Giving away your fortune and going in debt to Lucius Malfoy to keep your best friend out of Azkaban, as much as it demonstrates your upstanding moral character, also demonstrates that you cannot corral the Wizengamot. I can see now that you did the right thing for yourself, the thing you had to do to maintain your lease on sanity and hold back your inner darkness. But you also did a thing that Merlin’s heir must not do. A sentimental leader can be far worse than a selfish one. Albus, master and servant of a phoenix, was barely survivable—and even he opposed you that day.” Amelia gestured in the direction of Mad-Eye Moody. “Alastor has hardness. He has cunning. He still does not have the talent for government. You, Harry Potter, do not yet have the sternness, the capacity for sacrifice, to direct even the Order of the Phoenix. And being what you are, you must not try to become that person. Not now, not at your age. Align and fuse your divided soul in your own time, if you possibly can. Do not try to be Chief Warlock while you are doing it. If Albus thought that was a good idea, he was crafting a nicer story at the expense of real-world practicality. I do think the man had a problem with that.”
Harry’s eyes were a bit wide, listening to all this. “Um… what exactly do you think is going on in here?” Harry tapped his head just above his ear.
“I imagine that inside you is the soul of a boy who remains honest and true, gathering his will to force down the fragment of Voldemort’s spirit that tries to consume him, even as it howls at him that he is sentimental and weak—did you just giggle?”
“Sorry. But seriously, it wasn’t ever that bad. More like having a lot of bad habits I needed to break.”
“Ahem,” said Headmistress McGonagall. “Mr. Potter, I think at the start of this year it was that bad.”
“Bad habits that chained into and triggered each other. Yes, those are a bit more of a problem.” Harry sighed. “And you, Madam Bones… er. Sorry if I’m wrong about this. But my guess is that you’re feeling a bit upset that the Line went to an eleven-year-old?”