01195 The Shock 

The last thread of daylight had vanished entirely behind the mountains now. The newborn moon, still thin and young, was not yet strong enough to shoulder the burden of lighting the whole night sky on its own, and the heavens hung in an ominous, ashen blue. 

The flush that alcohol had brought to Horace's cheeks faded away, little by little, until his whole face had gone ghastly white. 

His bulky body sank deeper into the soft back of the sofa, seeming almost to want to disappear into the cushions, his head turned to one side as though he couldn't bear to look at it directly, but his bleary eyes kept darting back, again and again, toward the black stone on the table. 

Judging by the wary, naked fear across Horace's face, he had clearly, instantly recognized what it was the moment it touched the table. 

Dumbledore, too, let a flicker of surprise cross his face. 

He had not expected Bryan to set the Resurrection Stone down in front of Horace quite so directly. 

But after a moment's careful hesitation, weighing whether to intervene, Dumbledore decided instead to stay silent and simply watch how things unfolded from here. 

"Headmaster Dumbledore and I found it at Voldemort's family's old home. It's no longer a Horcrux now—" 

Bryan sipped at his sherry with elegant nonchalance, his tone as offhand and light as if he were merely discussing whether the afternoon tea cakes had turned out well. 

"His family's old home?" 

Horace's head turned slowly from one side to the other as he looked at Bryan for the first time since the stone had appeared, and Bryan could easily see the raw astonishment mixed in thoroughly with Horace's growing bewilderment. 

"That's right. Voldemort's mother came from the Gaunt family, one of the Sacred Twenty-Eight. His grandfather was Marvolo Gaunt. Perhaps you've heard the name before, Horace—the Gaunt bloodline traces all the way back to the great Salazar Slytherin—" 

Horace's whole body gave a sudden, visible jolt at that, his lips were moving now in a low, half-formed murmur, "Slytherin… no wonder… no wonder—" 

It was nearly ten full minutes before Horace gradually managed to gather himself back together. He still sat hunched forward on the sofa, keeping as much distance as the cushions would allow from the black stone still on the table, as though it carried some terrible, contagious curse that might reach out and touch him too. 

"It can't have been easy, finding a thing like that… however did you think to even look for it there, of all places—" 

Horace eyed Dumbledore and then Bryan in turn, warily, as though reassessing both men in light of what he'd just learned. 

"Oh, you know how it is—Headmaster Dumbledore is very nearly the wizard alive who knows Voldemort best, when it comes down to it. He knows his past inside and out, more or less, better than Voldemort would probably like—" 

Bryan smiled with modest self-deprecation, "—and as for me, well, I've simply had rather good luck with it all. One after another, they just turned up—" 

'One after another?!' 

Horace's mind went entirely blank for a moment at that phrase. What kind of clumsy, casual treasure hunt was this? Wait. 

Bryan had just said, hadn't he, that this stone was only the most recent one he and Dumbledore had destroyed. Which meant, if that was true— 

"How many have you al—already destroyed?" 

Without realizing it himself, Horace's breathing had grown ragged and shallow, catching in his throat. He looked at Bryan now with a kind of longing, as though yearning for salvation. 

If this truly was the last one—then the terrible mistake he had unwittingly, unknowingly made all those decades ago might finally, at long last, be over! 

"Oh, now that's an interesting question—" 

Bryan let out a short, thoughtful laugh, studying Horace's flustered panicked state with evident interest. "By any normal logic, shouldn't you be the one answering our questions first, dear Horace?" 

It was working. It was almost, almost working. 

Dumbledore could see, from the small way Horace's eyes flickered back and forth, just how genuinely shaken his old colleague was in that exact moment—something that had never once happened in any of their many previous patient conversations on this very subject over the years! 

"I—" 

Horace mumbled something entirely unintelligible under his breath, then fell silent again. 

"That wine was truly remarkable, Bryan. Horace is a Potions Master of real, genuine skill, and yet he noticed nothing at all amiss in it—while you only had to smell it once—" 

Dumbledore said it with sincere admiration, seeming not to fully register, or perhaps simply not choosing to dwell aloud on, the fact that the poisoned wine had been prepared specifically for him. 

"Everyone has their own specialty, that's all it comes down to. It was nothing worth remarking on." 

Bryan replied, setting the matter down. 

With just that single, brief exchange, the two of them let the whole subject drop between them. 

Who might have actually sent the wine, and who had given the order behind it—both of them already knew, in their own minds. 

"Do you think Horace will come around, Bryan?" 

The two of them wandered the convoluted, winding corridors of Hogwarts castle together now, walking with no particular destination in mind, simply moving to move. 

The torches hanging on the stone walls on either side of the passage sensed their passing and flared obligingly to life on their own, one after another, lighting their way forward in a slow, rolling wave. 

The flames quickly burned away the thin webs clinging to the torch brackets, and on those webs, spiders caught unaware in the sudden catastrophe scattered in a frantic panic, searching desperately for some new patch of darkness to make their home before the next torch found them too. 

"From the moment Horace returned to Hogwarts, the answer was already decided. Sooner or later—he simply needs a little more time to arrive at it on his own—" 

Bryan said calmly. He glanced sideways at the worry etched into Dumbledore's spare, firelit face, thought for a moment in silence, and then added, 

"I didn't expect you'd go back to Horace about this so soon, Headmaster Dumbledore. Getting him to actually say that crucial answer needs the right moment—a catalyst—" 

Bryan's words came close, close enough yp an accusation. 

"I have a feeling, Bryan—" 

Dumbledore stopped walking. He turned instead to gaze out through a tall window at the mountains and dark waters beyond, reduced now to nothing but blurred, soft-edged outlines in the deepening darkness, and let out a long, wistful sigh, 

"I fear we haven't much time left to wait for the right moment—" 

A figure stepped lightly across the boundary between the dark edge of the Forbidden Forest and the open lawn beyond it. After pausing there a moment, silhouetted against the tree line, they walked on toward the extraordinary magical tree standing some distance away, at the forest's very edge. 

Bryan's gaze followed the figure the whole way across the grass, thoughtful. 

His unusual, sudden silence pulled Dumbledore free of his own worried thoughts. He glanced over at Bryan, then followed the line of his gaze out to the Whomping Willow standing there in the moonlight. 

After a moment's careful thought, turning something over, "Severus told you everything that happened at Malfoy Manor, didn't he?" 

Bryan gave a small, confirming nod, 

"What you actually want to ask about is… the Grey Mist. Isn't it." 

"I imagine it must be some troublesome kind of power—but Tom hasn't mastered it yet, has he?" 

"That is 'Death'—" 

Bryan spoke the words softly but they left Dumbledore looking utterly astonished, 

"Death… I always thought, all these years, that Death was the very thing Tom has spent his whole life trying desperately to escape from—" 

"I can only share all of this with you properly when the time is right, Headmaster Dumbledore. As you yourself once said to me—time is the most wondrous and dangerous power there is in this world, and when we try to trifle with it, we had best exercise the very greatest possible caution—" 

Bryan said, already half-turning to go, "Now, if you'll forgive me, Headmaster Dumbledore, I must go and speak with Flomide—for the very survival of Hogwarts—" 

With that, Bryan turned cleanly and left without waiting for a reply, soon vanishing around the bend of the corridor ahead, leaving only Dumbledore behind—his silver beard stirring faintly in some draft—standing in a daze in that desolate stretch of corridor. 

'For the very survival of Hogwarts…' 

For a long while afterward, the expression on Dumbledore's face grew grave. 

Had Bryan sensed something out there? And there was more troubling him! 

'Time is the most wondrous and dangerous power there is in this world, and when we try to trifle with it, we had best exercise the very greatest possible caution.' 

It was a true enough thing to say. Except… 

When, exactly, had he ever actually said any of that to Bryan? 

"Good evening, Flomide. I hope I haven't disturbed you." 

By the time Flomide roused himself from his meditation, the warm candlelight that had been spilling out from the Great Hall into the entrance hall on the castle's ground floor had already gone dark for the night. 

The thick grass beneath his bare feet had gathered a fine film of cold evening dew by now, soaking silently into the ground, and the dim moon had climbed higher, scattering its pale light across the sleeping earth below in patches. 

"Professor Watson!" 

Flomide lowered the hand he'd had pressed against the Whomping Willow's rough trunk. He turned to see the young professor smiling at him beneath the moonlight, and a delighted smile broke across his face, 

"When did you get back? I hadn't heard." 

"Ah, sometime before evening fell—" 

Bryan said, his attention drifting to study the Whomping Willow itself, a tree that had clearly seen its fair share of years and storms. 

This particular tree had always kept strangers at a violent distance from itself—whoever came too near it, it would fly at once into a violent, thrashing rage and lash out mercilessly with its heavy branches, sending more than one careless student to the hospital wing over the years. 

Yet it treated Flomide quite differently from everyone else who'd ever approached it. Not only did it let Flomide come close without incident, it even allowed him, remarkably, to stroke its trunk as one might a horse's flank. 

"Are you having a chat with it, then?" 

The Whomping Willow bent its thick, sturdy trunk slightly in response and lowered a green branch, using the tip of it like a sensor to gently brush against Flomide's cheek. 

"Ah, that's right—" 

Flomide patted the Whomping Willow's trunk the way one might pat an old friend affectionately on the shoulder, answering happily, 

"It's told me quite a few stories from the old days lately. It says it was Headmaster Dumbledore who planted it here, nearly twenty years ago now—to give a certain wolf shelter when he transforms. 

But back then, in those early years, other creatures kept burrowing their way stubbornly into its belly too, nesting in among its roots without asking. 

Oh—and it told me the reason it's always losing its temper at everyone is that it's got a knot on its trunk that never stops bothering it, itching and aching no matter what. So, if someone's willing to actually give it a good scratch there, it'll settle right down!" 

Bryan: '…It's really that intelligent?!' 

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