In a duel of the highest level, it all comes down to the little things— a slightly mis-aimed spell, an ill-chosen countercurse, or the briefest hesitation.
Harry crouched on the sand, seeing everything while feeling nothing. Waves lapped the shoreline. Gulls squawked and competed in the air. Though, noticeably, none came close to this place. Animals had a good nose for dark magic. Something to do with their survival instincts.
Around Harry, patches of beach had been scorched to a frightening shade of black. Walls of metal and rock were scattered about, conjured from nothing or transfigured out of the sand. The magical ship designed to travel from Britain to the ICW had been beached. Most of its hull had collapsed, while a smattering of small fires still burned in places along its surface, a whole day after the attack.
There were craters in the beach where the sand had been scattered. Dead snakes could be spotted in places, as well as featureless yellow sheets covering human bodies; both ones who died here, and animated corpses Voldemort had brought with him. In one place, near the epicenter of the duel, an adult oak tree was growing out of the beach. A phoenix sat on one of its branches, singing a low song that threatened to make Harry cry.
He bit his tongue, standing and facing the man with him. "Where is it?"
"Here," James Potter said.
Neither of them had spoken much since they met. The loss was still too fresh, only one night old. A few Aurors could be spotted on duty around the scene, many of whom had already done their best to interpret what happened.
While following James, Harry's eyes flickered over the beach.
Sand turned to glass. Evidence of Fiendfyre. The beached ship. Lifted with levitation, used as a weapon, then shattered by a bombardment. A particularly deep crater, with a greenish hue toward the bottom. Blasting charm. Dark variation. Acidic residue. The tree that had become Fawkes' mournful perch. Advanced transfiguration. Dumbledore's specialty.
Everywhere his eyes looked painted a picture in his mind. A dusky beach, two figures dancing, trading spells most could only dream of, wielding magic like a fifth limb. He could see all of it, one step after another, except for one thing.
He couldn't see the end. Not the one that they got.
His hands clenched. At every stage, Dumbledore was ahead. Maybe the Elder Wand gave him an edge. Harry preferred to think that Dumbledore was just the better wizard. He had a creative answer for every nasty bit of magic Voldemort could muster, neutering curses with perfectly executed counters.
So where did it change?
"This one," James grunted.
He knelt next to a tarp. Harry looked the other way first, gazing to his left.
Only one body had been removed from the scene. You could still see a faint sign of its presence; the softest of indentations in the sand. If any doubts remained whose it had been, the phoenix tears raining from Fawkes' perch removed them.
Harry swept around, showing his back to the place Dumbledore fell. He crouched next to James, grabbing the tarp that was indicated, and lifted enough to see the face underneath.
Young. That was Harry's first thought. It was a girl, clearly dead long before tonight. In fact, some of the lines… Those cuts and scars… They looked added, the way an artist might paint a picture of rotten death.
She couldn't have been older than mid-teens. With her age, and her familiarity, there was no way Harry wouldn't recognize her.
Had she been a Muggle, her face would have been unrecognizable by now with how long she spent in the ground. Alas she was born a witch, in a family full of powerful magic, so cuts aside she looked as if she could have died days ago.
Harry dropped the sheet, letting it float back down on the cast-aside Inferius.
"It's her," he exhaled. "Ariana Dumbledore. The secret weapon."
He finally had the key he'd been missing. Amidst the storm of spellfire, Voldemort brought tools. Venomous snakes had lunged at Dumbledore, their fangs never coming close enough. Inferi swarmed the beach, also easily dealt with. Until one in particular had thrown herself at Dumbledore.
The light caught her face. The spell meant to eradicate her had frozen on Dumbledore's tongue, failing to breach his lips.
In a duel of the highest level, it all came down to the little things. A slightly mis-aimed spell, an ill-chosen countercurse…
Or the briefest hesitation.
"The cause of death was a killing curse." James was reading the Auror report from memory. "He died without pain, at least."
"Physical pain," Harry muttered, staring at the tarp.
"The first Aurors on the scene said Voldemort fled with his wand," James added, after a pause.
Harry just nodded. He'd known that would be the case.
"This… This didn't happen in your memories," James said.
"Not even close."
"What changed?"
James sounded desperate. Or maybe confused. Lost. Harry flexed his knuckles, digging his fingers into his palm.
"I don't know," Harry said. "There have been plenty of differences, but this… It goes beyond the rest. And I'm going to find the reason."
No matter what he had to do.
O-O-O
Harry walked the streets of London with a plant underneath his arm. Despite it being a Muggle area, the disguised hospital to his left meant that a steady stream of wizards were passing by.
All of them, to the last, kept their heads lowered and their pace quick. They refused to look at him or those around them, charging the designated Apparition point and returning home as hastily as possible.
Harry watched a portly wizard Disapparate with the tell-tale pop. He didn't take his eyes off the alleyway for at least a minute once it was empty. He himself had stood there so very recently. Somehow, a day and a half felt like a week or more.
"You were a better man than me," Harry mumbled, speaking to a ghost. "I wish I told you, even if you would've disagreed."
He turned his head forward once more, walking purposefully toward the entrance to St. Mungo's.
Before reaching the door, he hung a left. He started to walk straight toward the 'department store' next to him. Between steps, a Notice-Me-Not-Charm enveloped his body, averting the gaze of the Muggles around him. The next step, a Disillusionment Charm, was applied, rendering him close to invisible.
Harry carefully lifted himself, using the flight spell he'd last employed in the Department of Mysteries on the day he hurtled through time.
He pierced the illusion that hid St. Mungo's from passing muggles. A spell forced the window open. Harry waited a beat, giving time to see if any healers had noticed, before straddling the sill and climbing inside. The potted plant with him was still under his arm.
Harry walked through the mental ward hidden by his spells. The staff was sparse, making it easy enough for him to traverse unnoticed. Barring mealtimes, most of the residents in this part of the hospital required very little care. Their health rarely got worse or better, most weren't in life-threatening states, and many were semi-catatonic.
Like Avery Junior.
Unlike the other patients, Avery's room had a guard. He looked to be a Hit Wizard. It made sense that the ministry wouldn't spare a real Auror for a minor post like this one. Avery was an afterthought at this point. He should've remained as one, just a random amnesiac to go with the rest, remembering nothing and being noticed by no one, except for Harry who knew the truth. But too many things had gone awry. Harry couldn't trust anonymity any longer.
He tapped the guard's temple with his wand. "Confundus."
A bemused look crossed the Hit Wizard's face. He was left scratching his temple as Harry opened the door and slipped behind him. The guard wouldn't remember anything amiss. Nothing to do with any unauthorized entries, anyway.
And there he was. Avery looked just as he had the day before. Vacant, drooling… Harry had pitied him then. He wouldn't say that looking at the man now filled him with pleasure. Instead, he just felt resolve.
"Look here, Avery," Harry said, grasping the hollow man's hair.
He tilted his chin up, getting a look at his eyes, and dove beneath.
Legilimency and Obliviation hold a messy relationship. To Obliviate someone is less to delete memories from their head, and more to bury them. That kind of cover-up is possible to undo. It only takes a skilled Legilimens and an utter disregard for the victim.
Harry entered Avery's mind with complete willingness to do what he had to.
But — as he suspected it might be — there was no need. Avery's memories were everywhere. They were scattered, haphazardly, his mind resembling a ransacked office strewn with evidence. Harry's grim determination grew.
It had occurred to him helplessly late that he had seen symptoms like Avery Junior's before. They aligned with a miscast Memory Charm, to be sure. But they also matched the state of poor Oscar Smith, the low ranking bureaucrat that had been the Carrows' last victim.
A boy whose memories had been wiped, then torn loose with the grace of a giant's club.
"Show me your secrets," Harry hissed through gritted teeth.
Soon, he grabbed hold of the memory he was searching for.
From Avery Junior's eyes, Harry found himself sitting in a bedroom. It was most likely meant for guests— there were no personal effects, only landscape paintings and an empty dresser. Avery's hands were linked. His leg was shaking.
"Are you in there, Lyndon?"
Harry recognized the voice coming from beyond the door. It belonged to Avery Snr. Father to the man whose head Harry was inside of, and the Unspeakable who first greeted Harry on his return to the past.
This — what Harry was seeing — shouldn't have happened. It was at odds with what James turned up. Avery Junior should have been sent straight to St. Mungo's from the Ministry, not gone for a vacation in an old family home.
Avery Junior raised his voice, though it cracked midway through. "Yes, I'm here!"
The door opened. Avery Senior was not the first to step through. It was a tall man, noseless, his skin pale with wrinkles and his eyes slitlike in the manner of a snake. Blake robes billowed around him as he walked into the room as if he owned it; as if this was his house. Unsurprising, considering that in Tom Riddle's mind, the whole world was his to toy with.
Voldemort was tossed from Harry's gaze as Avery Junior lowered his head. "My lord!"
"So you call me. Yet we have never met."
Based on the footsteps, and the shadow cast, Voldemort had crossed the room, stopping close enough to touch.
"My father told me what to say," Avery Junior admitted quietly.
"Your name is Lyndon?" the Dark Lord asked.
"My first name. Lyndon Avery. Most people I know call me Avery, but that was confusing."
Harry's vision flickered to the side, toward the feet of Avery Senior.
"And tell me, Lyndon Avery. How old might you be?" Voldemort asked.
The cadence, the softness of his speech— all of it screamed danger to Harry.
Avery looked up. He looked straight at Voldemort's face. A mistake, one that he didn't seem to recognize.
"I'm eleven, sir! I'll be going to Hogwarts soon!"
"I see… It's as I was told. Someone has broken you."
Voldemort reached out. Avery watched the fingers come closer. "Are you going to help me?" he asked with the innocence of a boy who hadn't yet reached Hogwarts.
Voldemort smiled. The last warning sign.
"Perhaps you'll be able to tell me that," the Dark Lord hissed. "Legilimens."
Harry's vision of the room distorted. Avery Junior thrashed, starting to scream. Voldemort held his cheeks, keeping his head straight, tearing into the head of the man who'd lost years of his life.
Voldemort tore those years out of him. Ripped them free, regardless of the damage dealt. Avery's mind disintegrated. It was audible in his screams, the way they turned from wails to gurgles.
Probe was too gentle a word. This was an assault as violent as any physical blow. In many ways, it was worse.
When Voldemort stepped away, Avery Junior was limp. His vision was still hazy, relegating the others in the room to blurs.
"This… This isn't what you told me." That was Avery Senior. "You told me you would help him."
"I have helped him," Voldemort said. "He was of use to me. That's a far greater honor than fixing his damaged mind. He traversed time to deliver a message, and now, I have that message. I have all of it."
He chuckled. The other blur, Avery Senior, came closer, his shape swimming into something resembling focus as he cupped his time-traveling son's hands.
"Listen, Lyndon. Can you hear me?"
"His mind is lost, not his ears. Of course he can hear you," Voldemort said. "Tell him what you wish to say."
Avery Junior's vision was starting to clear, bit by bit.
"I'll find a way to fix this. Your memories are loose now," Avery said. "I've worked as an Unspeakable for decades. We study the mind more than anyone. I'll put you back together. I knew from the moment I saw you that you were my blood. I risked everything to sneak you out. Transfiguring you into a bird… Confounding that Auror… I got you out. I'll fix this, too!"
There was movement behind him. Voldemort raised his arm. "Your son, the one who is truly a child, is at Hogwarts, is he not?"
"That's correct, Master," Avery Senior said.
When Avery Junior started kicking his feet, his father smiled. He thought it was a sign that he was coming back to his senses.
He didn't understand.
"That simplifies things greatly. Avada Kedavra."
The green flash was unmistakable. Avery Senior slumped forward, his face thumping into his son's stomach. Voldemort stood behind him, slowly lowering his wand.
"Your disappearance will be noticed," Voldemort mused. "A Confounded Auror… That will work nicely. A bit of late paperwork and a nice stay in Saint Mungo's. No one will notice a thing out of place."
Avery Senior slid down, landing on his face, and Voldemort rolled the body over with his foot. "One missing Unspeakable will barely be noted. I can accomplish much more while that fool Fudge is in office. I see it all now." He smiled at the man whose mind he shattered. "How helpful you and your father have been. Your sacrifices will be remembered."
All Avery Junior could do was moan. It was hard to tell if he even understood the words. Moments later, the memory broke apart, Harry having lost it inside the ruin of this mind.
Instead of diving deeper, Harry pulled back. He had seen what he needed to.
Returning to the hospital room, he stared at Avery Junior. It occurred to him that he was standing in the same position Voldemort had been.
"I should have killed you," Harry said conversationally. "And I know he would tell me that I did the best I could, and not to regret it, even though it cost him everything. But we've never been the same man. Similar, sometimes, but not the same. So I can say it— I should have killed you." Harry chuckled. "It's too little too late now, for both of us, I know. Still, I think it's better than nothing."
He set the plant he'd brought in Avery's lap. Harry stepped back, drawing his wand.
"This isn't revenge," he said. "I'm sorry that you — and all the others — thought you had to do what you did. I hope that somewhere deep inside, when you saw what you'd helped, you realized your mistake."
Harry aimed his wand. Inside, he was struck again by the similarities between this scene and the one he'd just witnessed.
"Go see your father. Stupefy."
The stunning spell sent Avery into the embrace of unconsciousness. When his body jolted, the plant in his lap shook and activated.
Much like another Unspeakable, in a different timeline, the clipping of Devil's Snare reacted, latching onto his throat. Avery's body tumbled off the cot he was laying on, and the movement of hitting the ground was enough to make the plant tighten.
The noise of the fall attracted nurses, who soon burst into the room, pulling the Confounded guard along with them.
Harry used the open door to disappear, Disillusioned once again. He headed for the window he came in from, climbing out and levitated himself to the sidewalk. The cause of death would leave them looking for who snuck such a dangerous gift in— that was much more plausible than an intruder infiltrating so deep into the hospital. The concept of someone delivering it personally would be nothing but an afterthought.
All the same, only when he had traveled ten blocks did Harry let himself stop.
He stepped into a park, settling on a cold metal bench, watching his breath appear in the air past the tip of his nose. He jammed his fists into his pockets, taking a deep breath.
"Fuck," Harry said.
Voldemort knew.