Chapter 175: The Beginning of the End

24th January 1995, Hogwarts Earth 2

(Albus Dumbledore POV)

To say that Albus Dumbledore was nervous would be an understatement. The elder man felt like his world was falling apart, and the cause was a single woman who, as far as he could tell, destroyed everything without even breaking a single law or committing an evil act. Sayre had, in a few months, dismantled years of planning and manipulation and didn’t even give him a clear reason why she had done so.

Albus does agree that he had failed Harry, both as his guardian and as his headmaster. He did not train the poor boy; he had caused him nothing but grief when he put him in his aunt’s care. The boy never enjoyed the beauty of the magical world, nor did he experience the culture. It was for the boy’s safety, of course, but Sayre was right; Dumbledore didn’t do a good job in attaching Harry Potter to the wizarding world. It was a simple mistake, really, the aged Headmaster had assumed that Harry Potter was part of the wizarding world, that it was a forgone conclusion. The boy was already an outsider in the muggle world, and he thought that he would do anything to escape it.

Alas, this was a mistake on his part and Sayre had used it to her advantage to remove the fighting spirit from the boy. The boy will not seek out Voldemort now, so for the prophecy to be fulfilled, it has to be the other way around. Voldemort must seek a confrontation with Harry Potter, something that isn’t that difficult to arrange, since the monster longed to kill the boy who had caused his downfall, but Tom was very careful, trying to avoid falling prey to the prophecy once more.

Perhaps, in the past, Dumbledore has been too hopeful in dealing with Voldemort, hoping that Lily’s blood protection would be the power that the Dark Lord knew not, and would help Harry emerge victorious from the encounter. The problem was that the moment Harry reached his majority, he would lose the protection. Albus didn’t fully understand the protection, he didn’t even think that Lily understood what she had achieved in death, but the intent of whatever the woman did, was to ‘protect her child’, which means that the protection would fade when young Harry is no longer a child.

Even then, the offensive aspect of the spell was neutralized by Voldemort when he used Harry’s blood in his resurrection, meaning that discounting the fact that Voldemort created yet another connection with his mortal enemy, he was still safe from Harry’s touch.

If only Lily’s protection had gotten rid of the Horcruxes during the confrontation between Harry and Quirrell. It was a vain hope that it would have counteracted whatever method of immortality Voldemort used to anchor himself to the land of the living. If he had known that the monster had used Horcruxes of all things, he wouldn’t have attempted to arrange the confrontation between him and Harry, since it wouldn’t have made a difference in the long run. At least he discovered the man’s secret the following year while examining the diary. It truly was a stroke of luck that Slytherin’s monster was a basilisk whose venom was able to destroy Horcruxes. It was even more so that no one died from the beast’s gaze, although, there’s a good chance that Salazar Slytherin had issued a command long ago to not kill any students. It was a different time back then, and even if there are limited accounts of the events, the man did build a school and was a teacher. He couldn’t just want to massacre a large part of the student population, especially the children.

But now, the aged Headmaster was lost. He wasn’t sure how to proceed. Sayre had destabilized the prophecy, somehow, and even then, she was very vague about her reason to have done so. But every second he waits, the less likely the prophecy is to be true. He couldn’t accept that; he would do his best to salvage his plans and arrange a proper confrontation between a mortal Voldemort and young Harry as soon as possible and hope that Harry’s power that he knows not manifests and wins the fight.

Albus had to admit that he was being a bit naïve about the outcome of the fight, but after a century of life, he knew that there were very few things that were more powerful than hope. Adding in the chance that Voldemort had anchored himself to Harry using his blood, there was a good chance that Voldemort would never be able to kill Harry. Well, there’s a good chance he could but he would kill himself in the process.

Now, a small plan was starting to form in the Headmaster’s head. Voldemort killing Harry and killing himself in the process was technically an interpretation of the prophecy; they would both ‘die at the hand of the other’ after all. If Dumbledore could engineer a confrontation between them as soon as possible, then there’s a good chance that the nightmare that is Voldemort would end.

Albus didn’t like condemning a young boy, especially an innocent one like Harry, who had a miserable life, but the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one. A small tear fell from Dumbledore’s eye and ran down his cheek. He only hoped that Lily and James would forgive him when it’s time for him to move to the great beyond. What he was planning was a violation to everything he had ever preached and everything he had ever thought himself to be. But what greater sacrifice is there than to give up your own principles, your own morals, just for the good of the people, for the good of the magical world. Sayre was right; Voldemort was his problem, he was his creation, the entire pure blood movement was a direct reaction to his own demands after he had defeated Grindelwald. He was too arrogant and asked for too much, too soon. It’s only right that he loses himself to make things right.

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However, this was all a moot point if Voldemort wasn’t mortal during the encounter with young Harry. All it would do was kill Dumbledore’s final weapon against Voldemort and only cause the Dark Lord to lose his body once more. Voldemort’s Horcruxes must be destroyed before the prophecy becomes invalid. Thankfully, Sayre, as frustrating as that woman was, has destroyed most of them. She had claimed it was only because the things were abominations, but he wouldn’t put it past her to have something planned. The woman was far more cunning and devious than he imagined anyone being. Her manipulation of the fate of the world itself was enough of proof that the woman’s abilities were simply beyond what he could possibly imagine, at least the mental aspect of them. Was the woman some sort of extremely powerful seer, that is somehow able to affect the fate of the world itself?

It would explain a lot. A seer capable to seeing both the past and the future, would explain her inexplicable knowledge in ancient magics that are barely more than tales today and her being able to see the future would explain how much impact her seemingly simple actions could have, and her statement of already having achieved what she wanted means that she has already seen it happen in the future. She had already told him what would have happened if she hadn’t interfered. The idea of a battle inside the school, where children are slaughtered sickened him and the aged Headmaster was slightly glad that Sayre had stopped it, even if she had made things difficult for him. School is meant to be a safe haven for children and not a battlefield.

Truth be told, Dumbledore didn’t really care about his death; he had lived a long life. He had seen love, experienced loss and despair, experienced power, both magically and politically, and he was tired. Albus Dumbledore lived a full life and would welcome death like an old friend.

But if Dumbledore’s theory about Sayre’s abilities were true, then this woman could be the most powerful being he had ever met.

No, this line of thinking is simply too disturbing, and Voldemort was his priority, not Sayre. The woman had already achieved what she wished, at least she claimed to have, which means that she will not interfere with Dumbledore’s plans anymore which means that the Headmaster could proceed as he wished without problems.

The main goal now, was to destroy the Horcruxes. Sayre seemed to have anticipated this and destroyed most of them. Did she know from this far back how pressed for time he would be, and destroyed the ones he wouldn’t have been able to find? Albus had no idea, and he didn’t care. He will not even try to understand that woman anymore.

But what is important is that there are only two Horcruxes remaining. Sayre destroyed Hufflepuff’s cup, Slytherin’s locket, Ravenclaw’s diadem and the soul shard in Harry’s scar, and Harry destroyed the diary. Which means that there are only two left, one of them being Nagini, Voldemort’s snake and the other being the Gaunt ring that he just discovered could be a Horcrux from his research, in the last few months.

He was able to speak to Horace Slughorn to confirm the number of Horcruxes that Sayre claimed Voldemort to have made. It had taken a lot of convincing and the claim that he had already known of their existence and had destroyed a few of them, but only needed the number, for the man to give him the memory.

It had taken a lot of investigating to find memories of Voldemort’s past and he was able to confirm that the founders’ artifacts had been turned into Horcruxes, hence verifying Sayre’s claims even more so. The Grey Lady, or Helena Ravenclaw, was quite content with the knowledge that the diadem was destroyed. Now, after a while, Dumbledore was able to find the memories of the Gaunt ring and its location. It was almost certainly a Horcrux, and he needed to destroy it as soon as possible.

Nagini, on the other hand, would be difficult to kill, considering how close to Voldemort she always stayed. The only way he could see it done without a massive loss of life, was for Severus to poison her using Basilisk Venom or to hit her with a killing curse before disappearing. Dumbledore would lose his spy, but if he was planning a confrontation between Harry and Voldemort, and to use the poor boy as a trap, the war would be over before anyone would try to hunt down Severus. The man would be celebrated as a hero, Albus would be sure of it.

He only wished that things wouldn’t have come to this, that poor Harry wouldn't have to die for people he probably didn’t even care about. But he really was out of options. When the boy survived the killing curse, Albus couldn’t have known if the boy would end up a magical titan like himself or Voldemort and even then, it would take decades of training just to measure up to them in skill, far after Harry’s seventeenth birthday when the blood protection, and Harry’s biggest trump card, would expire. Dumbledore chose to prioritize the blood protection, and even if it condemned the boy to a miserable childhood, Albus was still convinced it was the better choice. Even now, the blood protection was what Albus was planning to use to kill Voldemort.

After dealing with the ring Horcrux, the aged Headmaster would have to find a way to make Harry vulnerable somehow, to give Voldemort an opportunity to send a killing curse at his enemy, killing them both in the process. Perhaps, he could release the prophecy’s content or at least an edited version without the ‘power he knew not’, which would make Voldemort think that he would become invincible should he kill Harry Potter, prompting him to hunt him down even further.

That sounded like the barebones of a plan, but none of this mattered if the prophecy becomes false, or if the Horcruxes are destroyed.

He needed to destroy them as quickly as possible. He will start with the ring this very night. It was a shame that Fawkes just had a burning day, he would have made getting through the wards easier.

The aged Headmaster steeled himself and apparated to Little Hangleton, near a certain abandoned shack.