Same Morning.

Monday, Sept. 16

Dumbledore’s office looked as it had the last time Hermione had entered it, and while that was admittedly only a day ago, there was something about the... aura of the room that made the girl feel like it wasn’t a place that had changed much in a long time.

The Headmaster was seated at his desk when they came in, the heavy oak table covered in paperwork which the old wizard was poring over.

At their arrival however, The Headmaster’s bright, blue eyes twinkled at them over the top of his half-moon glasses.

“Ah, you’ve arrived,” the wizened wizard said, and all the paperwork on his desk floated up and away to arrange themselves neatly in the nearest shelf.

“Good morning, Headmaster,” the children chorused, then Hermione added: “You asked to see us, sir?”

“Yes. Sit,” Dumbledore said, gesturing at the chairs across the table from himself.

As the children obeyed, sinking into the comfortable chairs, Dumbledore asked: “Have you had breakfast?”

Hermione and Harry nodded.

Dumbledore’s note had specified that there was no need to hurry, in fact the note had seemed to imply that they shouldn’t hurry, so they’d taken the time to eat first before coming over.

“Excellent,” Dumbledore said at their affirmative responses. “You might be here a while, I’m afraid.”

“Sir?” Harry asked, he and Hermione looking at each other in confusion.

What more could Dumbledore still have to discuss with them that would make them need to be here for long?

They got their answer when the old wizard said; “Harry, you said yesterday that you and Voldemort are connected. I would like for you to tell me more about that.”

Harry blinked in confusion, and Hermione looked from the boy to The Headmaster, the first twinges of worry stirring in her chest.

If Dumbledore wanted to know more about Harry’s supposed connection to Voldemort, then that might be a problem. A big one. Seeing as there was no connection between Harry and Voldemort.

At least, none in the way that the boy had implied.

Still looking confused, Harry said; “I don’t understand.”

Dumbledore frowned, not in anger or irritation, but in pensiveness, like he was trying to figure out the best way to phrase his words.

Finally, The Headmaster said; “I would like to cast some spells on you, Harry. They won’t hurt you in any way; I simply want to examine you. Is that okay?”

Harry thought about it. “What are you examining for?” he asked finally, and Hermione, curious herself and a tad worried, added: “Do you think there might be something wrong with him?”

Honestly, between his clash with Voldemort when he was a baby, and then the whole Isekai business, Hermione couldn’t say if she would be at all surprised to find that there was something wrong with Harry in some way.

“I will be examining your scar for traces of dark magic, Harry,” Dumbledore said. “And no, Hermione, I think Harry is just fine; I simply want to confirm it.”

Hermione and Harry shared a look; well, what did they have to lose?

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Turning back to Dumbledore, Harry shrugged. “Sure,” he said.

Dumbledore rose and walked around to their side of the desk.

He pulled out his wand and, much like Madam Pomfrey had done yesterday, waved it in intricate patterns over Harry’s head for several seconds.

Done, The Headmaster stowed his wand back into the billowy sleeve of his light-green robes, and peered intently at Harry.

“Uh, is something wrong?” Harry asked.

“No,” Dumbledore said. “In fact, it’s quite the opposite. I just don’t understand how it’s possible.”

“How is what possible, sir?” Hermione asked.

Dumbledore didn’t answer immediately, instead he went back around the table and settled comfortably into his seat. Then he spoke.

“On the night that Voldemort attacked you and your family, Harry, the two of you became connected in some way; you already know this.

“What you likely don’t know, is that it was much more than a simple connection.”

Dumbledore stared at the children as he spoke, and Hermione and Harry stared back, both genuinely interested in what the wizard had to say.

“Voldemort intended to use you, Harry, as the sacrifice for his sixth horcrux,” Dumbledore said, and Hermione and Harry’s eyes widened in horror.

Hermione will readily admit that she didn’t know all that much about horcruxes, but she had seen one before, and she’d also been near it when it had been destroyed, the thought of her friend been used to make something that... awful, horrified her to the very depths of her bones.

From the look on his face, Harry felt the same.

“You know about the prophecy, I take it,” Dumbledore said then.

Harry nodded immediately, but it took Hermione a minute to realise that Dumbledore was talking about the prophecy that Prof. Trelawney had made concerning Harry and Voldemort; the very prophecy that had made the dark wizard target Harry in the first place.

Hermione nodded too.

“I believe that was why he did it,” Dumbledore said. “It was his attempt at defying fate; to use what he saw as an instrument for his demise as a sacrifice to his continued survival instead.”

“Wow,” Harry deadpanned, tone dripping with sarcasm, “he’s got the soul of a poet, that one.”

Dumbledore gave the boy a small, wry smile.

“But it didn’t work,” Hermione said. “Harry didn’t die.”

“Quite so,” Dumbledore agreed. “Such dark magics don’t mix well with love, you see, and Lily’s act of love for Harry must have disrupted the ritual.”

“So, instead of becoming the sacrifice for a horcrux, you think I became one,” Harry said.

Dumbledore nodded. “Your mother offered her life for yours, Harry,” he said gently. “I think she became the sacrifice in your place.”

Those words struck a chord in Harry, and the boy sat quietly for several seconds and just breathed.

Hermione took his hand in hers.

“So does this mean that when Voldemort then tried to kill Harry, that he was actually trying to destroy his own horcrux?” Hermione asked. “Is that how he blew himself up?”

“I can’t say for certain,” Dumbledore said. “Horcruxes are as strange as they are foul, and it is the greatest contradiction for a living being to be one.

“By our very nature, living things change; we age and grow. We die. Horcruxes, on the other hand, are objects of stagnation. Of staticity.”

The Headmaster took off his glasses and massaged the bridge of his crooked nose, and in that moment, before he returned those glasses to their proper place and became Hogwarts’ Headmaster again, Hermione saw a tired old man.

But then the glasses came back on, and Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts was sitting before her once again, and he spoke: “Unfortunately, I fear that there’s no one versed enough on the matter of horcruxes, not even Voldemort himself, despite his proclivity for making them, that can truly enlighten us on the intricacies of what happened that night.

“Fortunately, there is a bright side,” Dumbledore said, voice appropriately sounding much brighter to match his words. “Whatever hypothesizing we may choose to do on the matter is largely irrelevant, because Harry is no longer a horcrux.”

Hermione and Harry had both known this, since it had been mentioned in The Letter (that is the one that had been left for Harry by ROB).

Of course, they were not supposed to have known this, based on the lie that they were currently going with, but luckily for both, their lying skills seemed up to snuff to convince the unsuspicious headmaster.

“But, of course, you already knew that,” Dumbledore said watching the two, and Hermione quietly amended her estimation of her lying skills.

Surprisingly, The Headmaster chuckled softly. “Don’t look so surprised,” he said. “It was an easy guess. And after the information you’ve both shown yourselves to have, it would be folly on my part to assume that I know anything on the topic of Voldemort that you do not.

“Which, in fact, is why I’ve asked you here this morning,” Dumbledore continued, his blue eyes trained on them intently. “Voldemort is out there somewhere, and while the information you’ve given us on the horcruxes alone is invaluable, I need to know if there is anything else you can tell me that you think might help.

“Anything at all; somewhere he might go to hide perhaps, or people he might contact. Anything that you can think of.”

Hermione and Harry took a moment to think about it.

Somewhere Voldemort might go, they wondered. People he might contact.

A name jumped into both their heads at almost the same time.

“Peter Pettigrew,” they announced in unison.

The Headmaster stared at the Gryffindors for several seconds.

“Explain,” he said.