Yggdrasil_Loki
patreon
Harry Potter In The Witcher [9]
🕑 Added 2025-05-17 14:42:42 +0000 UTC"I just didn't feel like talking or having to explain myself. Let's just drop it alright. I'm here now and that's what matters. How are your guys classes going." Harry asked
"Well, you know me," Ron said with a grin, nudging Hermione playfully. "If it wasn't for Hermione here, I probably would've failed out of Hogwarts years ago, I tell you." Hermione blushed a little at the praise, but quickly composed herself.
"You'd be perfectly fine, Ronald," she said, though there was a smile tugging at her lips, "if you actually tried to do your homework without being forced into it at the last possible second."
Ron just grinned wider. "Ahh, who has the time for all that, honestly?" he said, winking at Harry.
Harry squinted at the two of them, noticing a subtle shift in their dynamic, a comfortable ease that hadn't quite been there before he'd left. He said nothing, though. He wiped his mouth with a napkin, his breakfast finished, and stood up from the table.
"Well," he announced, "I have to go talk to Dumbledore now." He prepared to leave the noisy, still-buzzing Great Hall.
"Alright, mate," Ron said, already looking forward to it. "But come meet up with us in the common room after you're done. We've got a lot to catch up on." Hermione nodded her enthusiastic agreement with that statement. Harry gave them a single nod in return and then walked out of the hall, the eyes of hundreds of students following his every step.
~~~~
Harry's POV:
Harry pushed open the heavy oak door to the Headmaster's office without even bothering to knock. The familiar circular room looked all neat and tidy again, the various silver instruments whirring and puffing contentedly on their spindly-legged tables. Not at all like the utterly destroyed, ransacked mess he had personally turned it into all those months ago in his grief and rage.
"Dumbledore," Harry said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion as he stepped inside. "You wanted to speak to me."
Dumbledore, who had been gazing out of the large window behind his desk, turned slowly. He just stared at Harry for a few long, silent minutes, his expression unreadable.
"Harry," he finally said, his voice soft, almost fragile. "I… I want to confess my profound apologies to you."
Harry squinted his eyes in suspicion at the old man. What was this? Was he trying to win him back, to pull him back under his manipulative wing?
"I want you to know, Harry," Dumbledore continued, his voice laced with a deep weariness, "that everything I have done, every decision I have made, was to try and protect you, to try and make sure that you came out of the other end of this terrible conflict alive. I see now, with painful clarity, that I perhaps… pushed you too hard. That I did not tell you things, crucial things, that I should have told you a long, long time ago. Although many in our world think me infallible, Harry, I am far from it. There are more days now where I fully, truly feel my age, my failings, than I have ever felt before in my long life. I want you to know that I genuinely did what I thought was best, what I believed was necessary, to help you, Harry. I don't know, even now, if I was right or wrong to do so, but in the end, it doesn't truly matter, because in the end, I hurt you. I damaged your trust in me. And for that, I am so deeply sorry. I am sorry you felt the need to take such an extended, isolated leave of absence to try and right yourself. I take full, unequivocal responsibility for the trials you have gone through, my boy. I am so, so sorry."
Harry could clearly see the unshed tears glinting in Dumbledore's usually twinkling blue eyes. He truly, genuinely meant what he said. There was no manipulation there, just a deep, painful regret.
"It's fine," Harry stated simply, but truthfully. "I forgive you." And he did. He could, strangely enough, understand where Dumbledore was coming from. Sometimes, all you could do was your best, try to make the best choices with the information you had, but sometimes, your best just wasn't good enough. Sometimes, it still caused pain.
"It… it warms my old heart to hear you say that, Harry," Dumbledore said, a look of immense relief washing over his aged features. "Nevertheless, I am still deeply sorry for my part in it."
Harry shook his head. "I didn't leave because of you, Dumbledore," he clarified. "To me, you were… at most, a symptom of the problem, but not my main problem. I left because I was angry. I was frustrated. I was absolutely mad because after an entire year of the wizarding world, the Ministry, the Prophet, trying to tear me down in every conceivable way they could, after watching my godfather die, essentially for them, I just… I could no longer stand the British Wizarding populace. They treated me like utter garbage, like I was dirt on their shoes, yet they still expected me to just magically forgive their monumental stupidity and willingly throw myself in the way of a Dark Lord that they were all too bloody scared to even name, let alone go up against themselves. In a way," Harry admitted, his voice hardening, "I think I despise them more than I even despise Voldemort. And I honestly don't think that feeling will ever change."
Dumbledore looked deeply saddened to hear Harry's scathing opinion of the wizarding world, but he couldn't, in good conscience, fault him for feeling that way. He knew Harry spoke the bitter truth.
"If I may ask then, Harry," Dumbledore said after a moment of silence. "Why did you come back? I… I could not find even a single trace of you, despite my best efforts. And I know, for a fact, that Voldemort couldn't either, otherwise… well, otherwise you would most likely be dead."
Harry didn't say anything for a long second, his thoughts immediately turning to Ciri. His beautiful, fierce Ciri. A faint, almost imperceptible smile touched his lips.
"Someone I loved," he said, his voice softer now, imbued with a warmth Dumbledore hadn't heard from him in a very long time, "told me that only I had the power to change my fate. That I could run all I wanted, but in the end, I would just be a slave to it. I am here to fight against my fate, Dumbledore, because no one else can do it for me. That is all."
Dumbledore nodded slowly, a thoughtful expression on his face. "This person… she sounds very wise." he commented.
Harry couldn't help but smile, a genuine, heartfelt smile this time. "She would certainly like to think herself so, I'm sure," he said, a wave of affection washing over him as he once again thought of her. His face, however, quickly turned serious, his green eyes hardening with a new, steely resolve.
"Enough of all this sappy stuff," he said, his tone suddenly brisk, all business. "Where is the Dark Lord? I have a score to settle with him."
~~~~
Year 2021, Somewhere in the Himalayas
Daphne's POV:
Daphne Greengrass was currently, and rather unhappily, trudging through a large, ice-slicked cave that was located near one of the treacherous top peaks of the Himalayan mountain range. Not necessarily because she wanted to be there, either. In fact, if it were entirely up to her, she would never have had to set a single, elegantly booted toe in this gods-forsaken cave in the first place.
Most sane people, she mused, would stay far, far away from a place like this, especially considering the fact that it also happened to be the dead of Winter. Even wizards, with their often baffling levels of idiocy, generally knew to steer clear of places like this, if for no other reason than there wasn't a Warming Charm in the entire world powerful enough to completely stave off the bone-chilling, soul-deep cold she was currently feeling…
Well, technically speaking, there was probably one person in the world who could conjure a Warming Charm powerful enough to make this arctic cavern feel like a summer beach. And coincidentally, this was also the very person she was here, freezing her arse off, to find.
Yes, Daphne Greengrass known to many in the wizarding world as the "Hidden Snake" for her surprisingly pivotal and often morally ambiguous role in the last war, and the unexpected side her and her family had ultimately taken was now, in a rather ironic twist of fate, downgraded to the highly glamorous position of Harry Potter's unofficial, unpaid, and frequently exasperated Personal Assistant.
Daphne let out a long, weary sigh, her breath misting in the frigid air. Her unfortunate lot in life. She had often wondered, usually while performing some ridiculous, Potter-mandated errand, why she, a noble heiress turned celebrated war hero, had to be the one to constantly deal with the eccentricities and demands of Harry Potter. And it really all boiled down to the man himself, the frustrating, infuriating, and yet somehow still endearing prat.
Harry, in his infinite and often incomprehensible wisdom, had one day simply decided that he wanted, and deserved, complete and utter privacy. And that any and all questions, requests, or general annoyances intended for him should henceforth go through her first. The absolute prat hadn't even bothered to ask her permission before he’d unilaterally decided what her new, exciting lot in life was going to be!
She probably would have agreed if he had asked, she conceded grudgingly to herself. After all, she was his friend, one of the few he truly trusted, and it was well known throughout the wizarding world that she had been his unofficial, highly effective "left hand" during the chaotic, desperate final years of the war. Still, it was incredibly bloody annoying to have to take precious time away from her actual husband and her beloved child to come all the way up to one of the coldest, most inhospitable places on the fricken planet, just to wake Harry up from his self-imposed "hibernation," as he so dramatically called it.
