HP: TSH — Chapter 323 - Extra: Dumbledore 2 (Patreon)

Extra: Dumbledore 2

Harry was stubborn, or perhaps his courage was so great it tipped into obstinacy. Once he made up his mind, he would not change it. Not for anything. Not for any price.

"Praeris, thank you for everything you've done." His expression left no room for doubt. "If it weren't for you, Dumbledore never would have had a chance. I... I'm going to let all that time you spent go to waste."

Reporters always described Praeris's research as "beyond imagination." Harry and her other friends said the same. But she had always felt that sometimes, Harry was the one who was truly beyond imagination.

It is not easy for a person to do the right thing. Harry was not always right. But he was always willing to do the right thing, and he always gave it everything he had.

"That time wasn't wasted." Praeris closed her eyes and shook her head. "I don't have much to say. I just hope you won't regret this. You know what people will say about you..."

"That I killed Dumbledore with my own hands. Just like Professor Snape."

"Lupin once told me that what I feared was fear itself. But I've already overcome it. I've even experienced death. There's nothing left in the world that can frighten me."

So many years had passed. Harry was long since an adult, with his own career, working through the tangled politics and relationships she had watched him grow into. But at this moment, his gaze struck Praeris as utterly pure.

Seeing through people wasn't always a good thing. Praeris found herself suddenly understanding Dumbledore, understanding why a complicated old bastard who had been through so much could still feel such deep affection for someone like Harry. She felt herself softening too, already thinking about how to make this hurt a little less for him.

She would just tell herself it was because Harry had helped her when she joined the Wizengamot... even though she had earned that on her own merits. Objectively speaking, something happening to Harry wouldn't be good for anyone. At the very least, he was always willing to support her, which meant losing an ally. Honestly, a Slytherin as soft as she'd become was truly embarrassing.

"Dumbledore once told me you are a kind person." Praeris said it hoping it would make Harry feel a little better. "He'll be grateful."

"I don't need Dumbledore to be grateful," Harry said. "I hope he can be happy... Let me say a few last words to him."

"Go ahead." Praeris said, and her voice was gentle. "I'll stand guard at the door. No one will disturb you."

She didn't tell Harry that even she couldn't be sure whether Dumbledore could hear him. Perhaps Harry's words would only reach himself. But if it could make him feel a little better, it wouldn't be for nothing.

The door to the hospital room closed.

Harry sat at Dumbledore's bedside, his voice very soft, expecting nothing back. "Dumbledore... I don't know if you can hear me... I think this is goodbye."

"This time, I was lucky." Harry turned to look at Dumbledore's peaceful face. "I finally didn't have to watch you leave without warning. I got to say a proper farewell."

"Ridiculous, isn't it? So many people have speculated about our relationship, bound us tightly together in the public eye — and yet I've never really felt that I truly knew you." Harry laughed, a faint note of self-mockery in it. "It wasn't until after you 'died' that I came to know you through other people's words. And what they told me was nothing like what I had imagined."

"I heard Praeris tell Hermione that it takes three times to truly know a person. Once to meet. Once to spend time together. Once to part. Only after separation can we really know someone. You've already left me twice, and I still don't feel like I truly know you... What a shame."

Harry went quiet. He looked Dumbledore over carefully, then spoke with a lightness that didn't quite reach his eyes. "It doesn't matter. We'll have the chance to know each other all over again."

"That's right... that's right. You can go without worry... There have been more sunny days this year than in years past. The world is growing more beautiful. Even the windows at the Ministry are full of sunlight these days." He paused. "Sorry, I've already said all of this. I've said everything already..."

Harry visited Dumbledore once every 2 weeks. He would have come once a week, but Praeris had refused. He had long since run out of good news to report. After that it had all been small things, trivial things.

This time, his silence stretched a little longer than usual. As if he were gathering some specific kind of courage, summoning it up just to say what came next.

"I just... miss you a little."

"Sometimes, when I run into a difficult problem, I still think of you, I know that's silly. I'm an adult now, aren't I?"

Harry raised his voice suddenly, and a concerned call came from outside the door. "Harry? Are you all right?"

"I'm fine!" he answered, a little flustered.

He'd been interrupted. The hospital room went quiet again. Slowly, the tension left him. The eighteen-year-old Harry Potter that Dumbledore had known, still rough at the edges, not quite finished, settled back into the Auror Potter he was now, the one that a younger generation had learned to trust.

"You said you wouldn't let me walk this path alone..." There was still a trace of melancholy in his voice, but underneath it was something that couldn't be ignored: steadiness, and resolve. "But Dumbledore, you don't need to worry about me anymore. You don't need to keep hiding and following me around. I can walk the rest of the road myself. My friends will be with me. I'm not alone."

He said, with something approaching cheek: "I don't pity you, you said yourself, don't pity the dead. But you can't stop me from missing you, can you? I'll never see you again... Dumbledore, you can't refuse me this."

"I'll miss you. Always."

Harry stood up. He put on the bowler hat he'd been holding, the one he wore for missions, then took it back off and bowed. "Goodbye, Professor Dumbledore."

"Thank you, for everything you did for us —"

"No. For me. For everything you did for me."

He held the bow for several seconds. His messy black hair fell forward, casting a small shadow across his face, hiding the tears that were about to fall. An adult wizard does not let anyone see his vulnerability, even now, even in a room where no one else could "see" anymore.

In the silence, there came a sound, impossibly faint, as if carried from somewhere very far away, from a place like a distant King's Cross Station. The soft intake of breath.

Harry went still. He held his position, heart hammering, breathing nearly stopped. He didn't dare look up. He was terrified it was nothing more than his own grief conjuring sounds that weren't there.

Then a voice came. Extremely faint. Hoarse. Both unfamiliar and impossibly familiar.

"Always missing..."

"...sounds..."

"...like a rather terrible curse, Harry."

With every last scrap of courage he had, Harry slowly raised his head.

He met those bright, blue eyes.

A tear slid down his cheek. The bowler hat slipped from his hand and fell to the floor.

At the very moment he had resolved to accept losing Dumbledore. At the moment he had finished saying goodbye. At his most vulnerable, most hopeless moment, Dumbledore had woken up.

Dumbledore still lay in the hospital bed. But those blue eyes were open, gazing at Harry with calm and quiet warmth.

...

Praeris sat on the bench outside the hospital room, waiting.

Her mind was turning fast. She had already mapped out a strategy for Harry. The rest was up to him.

Honestly, this might not be such a bad thing. If it resolved smoothly, then at Harry's most controversial moment, she had shown up with something useful. That counted as an effective investment.

At an inopportune moment, she remembered a question Heidi had once asked her: "Praeris, who do you think Dumbledore cares about most, Grindelwald or Harry Potter?"

"I don't know Grindelwald well," Praeris had answered plainly. "But Dumbledore admires Harry."

"Huh?" Heidi hadn't followed. "Harry is impressive, sure, but he's still young. When Dumbledore was young, he was definitely more impressive than Harry. So why would Dumbledore admire him?"

"In Harry's eyes, Dumbledore is extraordinary," Praeris said. "In Dumbledore's eyes, Harry is extraordinary. They admire each other. You could even say they revere each other."

"What about you?" Heidi asked. "You saved them both. Do they admire you too?"

"I'm different." Praeris spoke slowly. "There are two kinds of people in this world who can be called truly great in character. Saints, and madmen. There's only a thin line between them. Succeed, and you're a saint. Fail, and you're a madman. Or perhaps they were always madmen, and success just made the world call them saints."

"And I am merely an impure person. Even when I'm doing noble things — saving them over and over, as you said — it's all in service of something very concrete: to survive, or to survive better."

Heidi's eyes went wide. "The person in the thick of it always sees it clearest! But... I still don't get it. Isn't someone like you also one of those madmen you're talking about? You're clear-headed to a frightening degree. You're definitely a madman too, aren't you?"

It was an assessment that even surprised Praeris, coming from the most devoted foodie on Diagon Alley.

"No, Heidi, I think you've got it wrong." Praeris shook her head. "People like them live inside what they believe in. That belief is what lets them push past fear that would stop anyone else."

"But I don't believe." She said it simply. "I don't believe that positive faith alone can save the world, and I don't believe that mad faith — delusion — can rule everything. I only believe in tangible things. What must be done. Meticulous planning. That is how you reach your goals."

"Though perhaps this absolute non-belief is itself a kind of belief. Yes... perhaps that too is a kind of madness. They are madmen of 'belief.' I am a madman of 'non-belief.' To hold onto 'non-belief' in the face of 'belief' madmen, I suppose only the fact that I'm a madman myself can explain it, can't it?"

Praeris turned and glanced back at the hospital room.

The truth was... today she had placed a bet. She had chosen to believe.

Just as during the war against Voldemort, she had done everything within her power, she had given Dumbledore the choice to live. What happened after that was beyond her reach.

If there was one person in the world who could wake up Dumbledore, this madman of belief, it could only be another madman of belief. Harry.

In any case, just as she had always kept a contingency in reserve during the war, ready to land the finishing blow, she had kept a contingency for Harry's defense too. In her world, there was no such thing as a true dead end.

Time moved. Seconds became minutes. The hospital room door finally opened.

It was like Pandora's box. Until the very last moment, you could never be certain whether a single hope still waited inside, not yet flown free.

"Praeris." Harry's voice was unsteady.

Had her plan failed? It didn't matter. She already had a fallback.

Harry said quietly: "Come in... come in first."

"All right," Praeris said. "Coming."

She stepped into the hospital room, closed the door behind her, and found herself looking into Dumbledore's blue eyes, bright and playful, unmistakably awake. She cast a spell on the door.

"It seems your journey has come to an end," Praeris said, her tone even. "Welcome home. Let's run some checks."

Dumbledore had awakened, but the press didn't know it yet. Praeris worked the gap. She examined Dumbledore that same night, and early the next morning, with crisp efficiency, she rounded up every senior Healer who had just arrived for their shift, including Alexander Shafiq.

Treatment records, medication logs, cutting-edge research reviews, regulatory files. Everything prepared, everything in order. She presented it all to the senior Healers at once for review and signature.

"Any questions?" Praeris asked, in the tone of someone who was not asking. "Healer Shafiq?"

Alexander said nothing. He signed every document, including the consent form.

Only after Dumbledore was discharged, and Praeris had submitted the full documentation to the newly established Cutting-Edge Potion Research Regulatory Committee, did word finally reach the public. The Daily Prophet was reduced to watching from the sidelines this time.

Both Praeris and Harry had taken leave. Harry had never once taken leave since starting his job. No one could bring themselves to say no.

"You finally deigned to wake up?" Praeris teased. "Truly, no level of extraordinary ability compares to the power of deep feeling."

As if Dumbledore didn't know exactly what she meant.

He had written Four Founders fanfiction himself.

"You've both done wonderfully." Dumbledore's blue eyes sparkled behind his spectacles. "Better than I ever imagined. A pity, though, I had promised Harry I would walk the final journey with him."

"He has severe post-war trauma." Praeris glanced back at Harry, who was coming out of the kitchen with a plate of pastries. "He seems much better now."

"That," Dumbledore said, "is something Harry will have to overcome himself."

Praeris thought, with some private scorn: that's what he said.

But he woke up for Harry.

"No regrets?" Praeris asked. "My abilities have limits. You're an ordinary old wizard now, with little power to speak of. You'll have to live as an ordinary person."

"Ordinary person." Dumbledore smiled. "No, I have to thank you, Praeris. Those days when I could feel myself fading, clearly, slowly, those were the most peaceful days of my life. You gave me the chance to close out all the noise and simply be alone with myself. I've lost something that once seemed important, power. But I've gained other things, things that matter far more. Things power could never have given me."

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