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(Enchanting Melodies) Chapter 395: Scorching Sun
🕑 Added 2024-12-21 14:00:05 +0000 UTCChapter 395: Scorching Sun
5 May 1995, Hog’s Head Inn, Hogsmeade
Alastor Moody entered the frankly smelly pub trying to do his best not to show his displeasure at being summoned in the middle of the night for some obscure reason. He looked over the bar counter and saw Aberforth Dumbledore growling at him.
He was still surprised that this place still stood, especially considering how badly the village’s economy was faring. Most of the shops relied on students to make a profit. It was somewhat of an open secret that they would easily serve students who snuck out of the castle without reporting to the staff, unless there was a serious incident of course. It was a bit of a security nightmare after the Death Eater’s escape from Azkaban, due to the prison’s destruction.
With the castle being locked down, there hadn’t been any business for a while. Most shops had closed down temporarily – a few even permanently – waiting for McGonagall to open the gates once more, given how an uneasy form of peace started to settle. That, mixed with the international tournament being hosted in less than a month, gave people hope that there might be some form of economic resurgence soon.
Other than the Lycan’s attack on Arcturus Black, and their subsequential massacre, there hadn’t been a lot of public violence out there. The expected retaliation from the Lycans never came and the ministry didn’t have the resources to deal with the beasts’ attacks, let alone go on the offensive for one of their own. It did send a bad message, in a way, showing that Magical Britain was a lawless state, which wasn’t actually far from the truth.
The last few months had crippled Britain severely. A lot of family lines ended from Lycan’s attack, funnily enough, they were also families that had historically supported Voldemort, even if they got away with it. Curiously, only Nott survived, the cockroach. He had gone into hiding the moment the attacks started and hadn’t been seen since. Honestly, Alastor would have been glad that they were dead, if it didn’t fuck with the entire country’s political landscape.
The Wizengamot had lost a large portion of its members, and the rest were still afraid of being targeted. With the attacks settling down, no one wanted to rock the boat, but that was bound to change. Fudge had agreed to host the last task of the European tournament, which meant there had to be a Wizengamot meeting soon.
Still, it was funny that one of the few shops still open in Hogsmeade was a seedy little inn that was more likely to give you some form of magical disease than an actual drink. Still, it was run by Dumbledore’s brother, even if the two didn’t get along.
He walked up to the man and spoke up, “Your brother asked to see me.”
The man rolled his eyes and grunted, his head pointed to a rickety wooden staircase on the other side of the pub. Alastor nodded and walked up the staircase, which was obviously magically reinforced.
He walked forward only for a door to open by itself. He walked forward and saw Dumbledore calmly sitting on one of the chairs, “Ah, Alastor. It’s nice to see you.”
“Did you have to send me a Patronus message in the middle of the night?”
“I apologize for the interruption, old friend, but I needed to contact you urgently. Have you come any closer to finding Lord Voldemort?”
Seriously? That was what couldn’t wait? Sometimes, he still didn’t understand how Dumbledore's thought process, “I got nothing, not a single lead.”
The former headmaster froze at that, his face hardening, “You are one of the best trackers in this country, and you couldn’t find anything.”
“Because there isn’t anything to find. All the Death Eaters are dead. No one wants to follow him with the threat of the Lycans being over their heads, and even the foolish ones haven’t been contacted in any way. He’s hidden somewhere with no contact whatsoever to the outside, and under magical protections where every single clairvoyant I found couldn’t even give me a general direction to where the man is. Believe me, I’ve done my best, but I don’t have any more to go on than that.”
“This is disappointing,” Dumbledore spoke with pure frost in his voice, “I expected more of you.”
Alastor froze at that. Dumbledore would have never said that. Sure, he had no delusions about the man being a saint, but he was diplomatic, even in the face of failure. The former Auror’s failure to find Voldemort was more than understandable, and he should have recognized it otherwise.
Something was wrong. Now that he thought about it, there was this weird magical effect around him, something that he couldn’t see through. He pushed magic into his eye, doing his best to see through it, expecting an impostor, only for him to freeze after a fraction of a second, “What have you done to yourself, Albus?”
The former headmaster’s expression slumped, “What did you see, Alastor?”
It was hard to put into words what he could have seen. For one, there was this weird white hand at the end of his arms, as well as a large gash that came from his torso, cutting off his eye into two. It wasn’t a normal cut, though. It looked cursed, for the lack of a better word, as if it cut through him, and there was some weird white light leaking slowly from it, and where his eye used to be, was a void of pure white, that looked like it peered through him.
The injury looked abnormal, to say the least. There had to be some weird form of magic involved, but he couldn’t exactly see them since he already could barely see past Dumbledore’s illusion, “Your injuries.”
“Ah, I certainly did do a good job making this eye of yours, huh.”
“What happened, Albus?” Alastor asked still shell-shocked by what he was seeing.
“Harry Potter happened. Very few times have I been surprised by my students’ ingenuity, but this… I knew the boy was dangerous, but I could have never expected this.”
“How did he do this to you? I can understand landing a hit or two, but you should have recovered. Hell, you’ve lost a hand and a bloody eye, Albus.”
The former headmaster didn’t seem concerned by his injuries, “I suppose I’ve grown rusty with age. It happens to the best of us. Nevertheless, we have far more important things to worry about than this.”
“You can’t be serious. I’m surprised you can even walk straight.”
“I will heal eventually, Alastor. Time, however, is not in our favour,” he answered with a tone that brokered no arguments.
Alastor didn’t like the look on Dumbledore’s face. Over the years, he learned to interpret the imperceptible expressions on the man’s face. He knew the tick he had when he got angry but tried to hide it. He knew the small smug smirk he got when he got one over someone he saw as an enemy. He liked to think they were friends, even if their history started with Dumbledore aiding him in his revenge against the Death Eaters that massacred his wife and child.
He had been lost then but given purpose. He was healed, given enchanted prosthetics and a magical eye, and given carte blanche to avenge his family as a way to fill the void that their absence left. There was no doubt about it that Dumbledore engineered things so that Alastor would be his subordinate, a glorified attack dog against Death Eaters, but he didn’t care. After the war, he had been the one Albus called to handle his less-than-savoury tasks. Some of them were quite disturbing but that didn’t matter. The former headmaster had the best interest of Magical Britain in mind and what else did Alastor have but to serve the man?
The undeniable truth was that he owed Albus everything, and he liked to think that after so many years of faithfulness and competence, he gained his friendship. This was why, while most would assume that Dumbledore was powering through, whatever happened to him, he knew that the man wasn’t well. What the Potter Boy did to him affected him severely, and the leader of Light did not seem to deal well with the result of the confrontation.
Alastor could understand why the man felt this way – he had been undefeated for at least half a century – but the way he acted, the way his lone pupil dilatated, the way his cheeks twitched at the mention of Potter, it was worrying. Whatever Albus was feeling, well, it was something that Alastor definitely didn’t like.
However, he knew better than to bring it up to him. What Alastor needed when he had been crippled, himself, was a distraction, a mission, so he decided to change the subject, “What about the Lycans? You said something about bringing them to the fold.”
It didn’t take long for Alastor to realise that he asked the wrong questions, given how Dumbledore’s eyebrows furrowed even further, “The ones that I recruited, the ones that saw the Light, were killed in the fighting, and Potter had done his best to taint my image in the eyes of the remaining Lycans. I’m afraid that it’s a lost cause, now.”
Alastor suppressed the urge to cringe; that had to hurt. Albus lost on two fronts in just a single encounter. The Potter boy still lived, but he also knew that Dumbledore was betting pretty heavily on taking over the Lycan with the Red Witch’s death.
The former werewolves had been the key to Dumbledore gaining a foothold back in Britain, as well as making sure that Magical Britain was stable for the duration of the tournament, where his plan would come into effect. Alastor didn’t even know what it was, only that it was extremely important for the former headmaster.
To be completely honest, Alastor didn’t like the direction Dumbledore was going, and with another setback so soon, he didn’t think it would stop anytime soon. It had been so bad that Alastor was planning on leaving after the tournament was over.
His debt to Dumbledore was paid. He gave the man over two decades – almost three – of servitude, and that should be more than enough, and it became harder and harder to keep doing it and look himself in the mirror, especially in the last couple of years.
Alastor’s assignments had always been related to destroying threats to the peace of Magical Britain. He destroyed dark cults, werewolf packs, a few Death Eater sympathizers and more than a few criminal organizations. It wasn’t pretty, but it was real work. But what Dumbledore had been doing for the better part of a year was beyond disturbing. Tracking down little girls, and stealing artefacts, but the most harrowing had to be the destruction of Mount Olympus, where Dumbledore caused the deaths of students for his ‘greater good’.
The former Auror had hoped it was a phase, a reaction to losing everything he ever worked for, that would fade over time. However, it seemed like Dumbledore was getting worse over time, not better, and Alastor was done.
No greater good would ever require the needless deaths of children, and from the looks of things, Dumbledore’s loss to the Potter boy had made him even more unstable. He should probably accelerate his retirement plans soon. It had been something that crossed his mind many times over the last few months especially.
It wasn’t just about Albus’ erratic behaviour; Alastor’s crusade started to feel meaningless for a while. The Death Eaters were gone, as did most of the people who ever supported their agenda. Killing Voldemort would have been nice, but the man had basically disappeared, and Dumbledore obviously had something planned for the monster. Without them feeding his rage, Alastor realized just how hollow he felt, that his only friend was a man who had used him at his lowest moment. He didn’t mind that last part, not really, but he minded the fact that his life revolved around Albus Dumbledore, that he hadn’t moved on from what happened to his family even decades after.
Truth be told, he could understand why he was so taken with Dumbledore. There was something freeing in being part of something bigger, of serving a grand purpose. But being consumed by it, making your life revolve around it, around a single man, was wrong. Especially given the path this leader was taking.
Alastor needed to live whatever was left of his life on his own terms, away from the fight, from the rage, from the death, to finally understand his place in the world. He knew that he had to act fast before Dumbledore sucked him back in with another speech, with another mission for the ‘greater good’ of the world.
He already spoke to a Roman artificer to make him new prosthetics, instead of whatever Dumbledore made him, and he could live without the eye, even if he would miss the constant vigilance, it offered him. Perhaps he would have some peace for a while.
Seeing that he had nothing to add, he asked, “So, what now?”
“The Potter Boy’s intervention in Greece disrupted a lot of planning and messed with the balance of a very delicate ritual. This will have some very significant repercussions if it’s not managed properly.”
Alastor hesitated and Dumbledore pounced on it, “Don’t worry, it’s just a small ritual that I need to perform. I only need you to buy some time in case the Potter boy tries to stop me again. It’s why I decided to summon you so suddenly in the middle of the night. The faster we act, the less likely he’ll be able to react, and the safer it will be. It shouldn’t take more than a few hours at best.”
From the look in Dumbledore’s eyes, Alastor knew that he wouldn’t budge on this. The man really needed, and what was one last mission? He took a deep breath and answered, “Where are we going?”
“To one of the oldest magical locations in history, Stonehenge.”
AN: Also, not sure about this one. I wanted to use Moody to somehow show how losing to Harry affected Dumbledore, that an outsider’s perspective would be a bit more valuable than just a Dumbledore POV, while also showing the dichotomy of his opinion of Dumbledore (sort of important but I'll try not to spoil anything). I sort of wrote it in a rush, so I don’t know if I pulled it off. As usual, I don’t mind rewriting it, so, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
Comments
DoodleBopCheese
If the plot follows cannon, Neville should have the map now. I was just thinking how Harry would respond to being called Harold Smith. Also, I’m curious as to what his greatest fear is.
athass_prkr
I had something planned about it in the earlier parts of the story, somewhere in the second year I think, but I scrapped it since a lot of people thought that the cat-and-mouse chase between Harry and Riddle was taking too long and that he shouldn't be distracted about it. The plan was to have a bit of a chase to find the map, and after getting it, it would have a few clues from Lily hidden inside, which would get Harry to accidentally do something that sent a signal to Lupin, which would get him to come to Hogwarts the following year. Tbh, it wasn't a massive part of the story, and any needs I had for it, plot-wise, were pretty easily filled with other stuff. There's a lot of stuff that I ended up scrapping, like the whole thing with the Titans, which I planned on using instead of broken prophecies in the tournament. I had an alternate plotline about Harry going to the past (instead of Earth 2), but I didn't like it. There was a plotline about Arcturus' old guard that I removed since it would have made the story go in too many directions at once. To be honest, every small bit of world-building I wrote into the story had a small arc ready behind it. I think I have my old notes somewhere with most of the stuff, but there are a lot of things that I decided not to do, either because of the pacing of the story, becoming side stories at once, or because I just didn't like them.
DoodleBopCheese
I’ve been curious for a while now. Where is the Marauder’s Map? Does it not exist in this world? I was also thinking about a boggart.
Chris Cyrus
Bro…albus if you destroy Stonehenge imma be seriously pissed…Harry stop this demented old man
athass_prkr
Thanks for letting me know. It should be fixed now.
Afterdark230
I think you covered what you wanted to with Dumbles. You are showing that he is not thinking clearly and is acting rashly. This will lead either to a hell of a screwup or an explosion of epic proportions. I like how you do take the time and set the tone. Keep it up!
Afterdark230
“The ones that I recruited, the saw the Light” should be they?
Callum Runchman
Shame moody will likely die from dumbles manipulations. I always liked his character despite the relatively small role he played overall. Always seen him as a skilled powerful warrior that tried to always fight for good, regardless of how violent he may need to be, unlike most others who fight for the light
