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A pained howl, a scream, a cry. Damp grass at your back. The trickle of a brook. Disorientation. Shake it off. You stumble to your feet. Your robes and trouser legs are soaked. CRACK.
He’s long gone. Apparated—could be halfway across the continent by now. Useless to give chase.
Fuck.
You press a hand to your temple. It throbs. Your fingers come back bloodied. Your vision swims. You force down the urge to hurl.
“Abe—Abe, you have to get help, get Bathilda—”
“But Ari—”
“Just GO!”
You hear the squish and thud of footsteps hurrying away.
The heat of the summer beats down from above. With a groan, you take in your surroundings.
To your left is a modest creekside cottage: two stories, thatched roof, age-worn masonry.
To your right is a young man kneeling distantly in the dirt: auburn-haired and sweet, he clutches at a motionless girl in his arms. Her face is pale and still against his fiery contrast. A jagged gash tears across her chest. He trembles around her, wand clutched haphazardly in his palm, his sleeves stained with spots of bright blood.
All you hear of his voice are choked gasps. His face is streaked by angry tears.
He looks up sharply as you approach; you make no effort to hide from him. And as he does, you are met with a strikingly familiar face:
Albus Dumbledore.
You’ve heard the rumours, but you never took them for the truth. Him? Dumbledore and Grindelwald? Acquaintances, friends, or more, as they would have you believe—absurd.
And yet, before you is the proof of the truth they contain.
His eyes, blue like the free sky, flicker. Streaked with devastation.
You think he’s beautiful like this, bloodied and in pain. You want to break him further; you want him at your feet. You want to elevate him; you want to lead him further afield, astray.
Push, pull.
You approach. He doesn’t move, as though frozen, or transfixed at the sight of you, for all that you are a stranger to him.
Odd, that. A fey feeling, this, to be so starkly unrecognised by the very man who was your initial contact, your very first introduction to the wizarding world.
You couldn’t ever forget him. And he shouldn’t forget you. But this version of him is so young, and it will be decades before he sets eyes on little orphan boy Tom.
Kneeling, you reach for him thoughtlessly, just wanting to touch your fingers upon this curious being, as though doing so would confirm that he is in fact real and not some strange illusion. But then, at last, he finds the will to unfreeze. His mouth falls open:
“Help her…” he breathes, “Please.”
He looks back down at the girl in his arms, breaking his gaze with you. Tears slip from his eyes to unceremoniously stain her breast.
“I can’t…”
His hand shudders, uncontrolled. Fingers spasming along the length of his wand. If he held it any tighter, he might snap it outright.
Well, when he asks so sweetly, you think.
You extract your bone-white wand, elegant heartless thing, from the holster hidden within the folds of your robes. Though your hand is a cruel thing, made to spill blood rather than to mend a bleeding wound, it is a versatile tool, capable of reversing the very damage it wrought. Just as you seize life, you must be able to return it too, or you cannot claim any domain over Death.
Though, in this case, the harm is not your doing. For once.
She doesn’t move; she doesn’t breathe. But through your delvings into Soul Magic, you’ve gained a sort of seventh sense. You can see souls—not only your own fractured one, but that of others. And you can see hers, still lingering there, floating, lost and confused. As though dazed, as though in disbelief at its own passing.
You reach out with your magic, wand pointed to the heavens, and gather her soul. Like spun yarn, and your wand the spindle. She doesn’t struggle. Not conscious enough to resist. Fresh enough to be pliable.
You press the point of your wand into her breast, against that sturdy heart-bone. Her blood stains ivory white. The wound knits back together bit by bit. The red recedes. You don’t bother mending her clothes.
She still isn’t breathing. Naturally. All you’ve done is sew a corpse shut. The next step is this: you must restore her soul to her body.
Easier said than done. But you’re experienced in these matters. It’s harder to wrangle pieces of a soul fighting to return itself back into one whole into an inanimate cell than it is to coax a stray back home.
You unravel the yarn of her soul from your wand. Slowly. With each inch, you lay a binding spell upon her, tying her soul back into her body. Weaving fibres tautly. It’s not the same as the natural bindings that keep a person alive, that anchor the soul to life. But like surgery stitches, they need only hold long enough for the soul to heal itself and seal back together. And it will.
Resilient thing, the soul. Murder may split it apart, but with time, with reflection, it will mend again. It is the natural way.
You would know. To you, it is an obstacle; to her, it is salvation.
The young man—Dumbledore, Dumbledore , for all that he isn’t the man you know—gasps. Warmth is returning to her body. With her pressed against him, he must feel it. Sprouts rising in spring. Her heart stutters, waking with a jolt, then finds its footing. Thump-thump. Thump-thump. Colour returns to her cheeks. Breath whistles lightly through her nose.
Her eyes flutter open for but a moment, piercing blue just like his, though they see naught, and then close again without a word.
But the healthy flush to her cheeks remains. She is only sleeping now, slumbering with life, and not in death.
Wonder in Dumbledore’s eyes. Light, soft yielding light. “Ari,” he gasps. Relief, disbelief, intertwined. His wand has been dropped on the ground, forgotten among the grass. His palm is pressed to her chest, where her heart beats steadily. Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
You hum, impassive. You aren’t sure why you bothered to help him.
But then he speaks again.
“Thank you,” he cries. “Thank you.”
You’ve never seen him so uncomposed.
Will he not question what you’ve done? She was clearly dead. He must have realised that, for all that he begged for your aid. He must have known the futility of pleading for a random stranger to conjure up a miracle.
And yet, you did.
Do not look a gift horse in the mouth, you suppose. Not unless you want to see gleaming teeth, and a gaping maw.
It’s an ugly thing you’ve done, bound a freed soul back to confinement. Yet that is the condition all humans live under. An affront. An abhorrence. But you’ve never cared for rights nor wrongs, not as dictated by the world. Only your own rules matter, only your values. This is your unique code of honour.
A foreign twinge of affection stirs. Something softens in your chest. You reach out your hand, and place it upon his, still resting upon the girl’s breast, newly unbroken.
“Take her home,” you say. Your voice is flat, baring nothing. “She needs her rest. So do you.”
You will follow, of course. You would see more of this, more of him, now that your original goal is out of reach.
Perhaps this isn’t such a bad trade after all.