Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The fire had been going for hours. There was barely any wood left. Just embers. He had not noticed the first time he was there.

The room was warm. Outside, the last of the afternoon was doing what was expected of it at that time of year, giving up earlier than expected, the light thinning at the edges and then simply deciding it was finished.

He turned a page.

It was one of his favourites. He had read it before, more than once, and he read it again not because it had more to offer him, but because the quality of the thinking made it impossible to do otherwise. She had published it five years after she left. He had written to her, when he read it, that it was the best thing she had written. She had said that was a low bar given the competition. He had disagreed.

He knew what was going to happen next.

It came. Bright, pure light. It crossed the room toward him and he was on his feet before he had decided to be, the book still in his hand. It chirped once. There was no message. There had been no time for one.

He set the book down and went.

The room suddenly shifted.

He was in the garden. Not neglected in the ordinary way, not the carelessness of someone too busy or too tired. This was something older than that. The grass had gone far beyond itself. Abandoned. He hadn't be there in some time. Months. The light was nearly gone, as the sunshine was settling. 

The door was open. He took out his wand and went in.

The hall was dark.

Lumos.

He cast a quiet light and stood very still and looked at what the light showed him. A table on its side. The mirror on the wall cracked through from a single point, fractures spreading out from it. Scorch marks on the floor, on the wall, in patterns that told him about distance and angle and the speed at which things had moved through this space. He had seen enough, in his life, to read a room like this. He knew what that silence meant. He knew it at the time, but didn't want to believe it. It was already too late.

He moved through it carefully. Each room in turn. His wand ahead of him. Complete silence. 

There was no one. He stood in the hall. Then something reached him. Faint. From further in. Not quite a sound, more the suggestion of one. He followed it.

A door at the end of the hall, nearly shut. He put the tip of his wand to it and it swung open. The room was dim. Curtains drawn, except for a gap, and through the gap the last grey light came in and lay across the bed and what was on it.

He crossed the room.

A baby, very small. Asleep, face turned to one side, hands loosely curled, holding something that wasn't there. The hair caught the light from the gap in the curtains. Ginger. Very curly. Tight little bands of it, close to the head.

Suddenly, he became aware of being watched.

The cat was in the doorway. A Birman, pale and very still, with blue eyes that had been there for some time without announcing themselves. It looked at him. Then at the child. Then at him again, with the patience of a creature that had already decided how it felt about the situation and was simply waiting for him to catch up.

He picked up the baby, who stirred but did not wake. Very light. One small sound, and then quiet.

He looked at the cat. 'I am going to come back for you,' he said. 'Once I have sorted this out.'

The cat regarded him for a moment. Then it turned and walked back into the dark of the hall with the composure of a creature that had heard him, and had made no promises about what it would think of him in the meantime.

Again, the scene shifted around him.

He was back at Godric's Hollow.

The child was awake, in the way newborns can be awake. For very small periods of time, and mostly with their eyes closed. She was a girl, he had found out. He had not put her down since arriving. He was not entirely sure why. Perhaps because the house was very quiet and she was very small and it had seemed, each time he considered setting her somewhere, the wrong thing to do. So he held her, and she slept, and the fire he had lit was doing what fires did, making itself at home without requiring acknowledgment.

'I have just been reading,' he said, quietly, 'a book written by a wonderful woman. A friend of mine.' A pause. 'She wrote the true story of Morgan Le Fay. Which is not, as it turns out, the story most people tell.' He settled her slightly. 'Miss Burke always felt that Morgan had been very much misunderstood. Powerful, certainly. Perhaps a little sassy, if you will forgive the word. But with very good intentions, underneath it all. But let's not tell Merlin our opinion on it'

The fire. The quiet house. The child breathing slowly against his chest.

'Miss Burke,' he continued, 'always preferred the sound of the Latin. Not Morgan. Morgana.' He said it quietly, as though trying the weight of it. 'She wrote the title in two languages, you see. She always felt that Welsh deserved to be taken seriously as a scholarly language, and she was right, and I told her so, and she said that was the least surprising thing I had ever said to her.'

He was quiet for a moment.

He reached into his pocket. The medallion was small and cold in his hand. He looked at it. He thought: hidden in plain sight. Then he spoke.

'Morgana,' he said. 'Morgana Hazel sound about right. You need a middle name as well, I myself have four.'

She slept on, entirely indifferent to the decision being made on her behalf, with the absolute composure of someone who had not yet learned that the world required opinions.

He held the medallion in his closed fist a moment longer. Then he put it back in his pocket.

'Morgana,' he said again. Quietly. As though it had always been her name, and he was simply the first one to say it aloud.

A swish. For the third time, the scene shifted around him.

He was in Elmswell. When Elmswell was still a safe place. Thomas and Agnes were sitting with him in the living room.

Jack was reading on the stairs. The twins were somewhere above, their particular brand of chaos audible through the ceiling.

'I couldn't think of anyone else,' Dumbledore said.

Thomas looked at him for a moment. 'It's all right, Albus. Thank you for trusting us.'

'I would take care of her myself,' Dumbledore said. 'But she deserves a family. The best she can have.'

Agnes took the child from him with the practised ease of a woman who had held a great many babies and found each one entirely reasonable. She looked down at her. Something moved in her face, quiet and complete. She was her mother. She was in love with her already.

Jack descended two more stairs. 'Mum,' he said. 'Whose baby is that.'

'Ours,' Agnes said, without looking up.

Jack considered this. 'Oh.' A pause. 'What's his name.'

'Her,' Agnes said. 'She is a girl.' She looked up at Dumbledore then, the question in her eyes.

'Morgana,' he said. 'Morgana Hazel. A fighter. Wise. Strong like a tree.'

Agnes looked at him warmly. 'What if I add Rosalind. My mother's name. I always promised I would, if I had a girl.'

'Morgana Rosalind Hazel,' Thomas said. He tried the weight of it. 'Morgana Rosalind Hazel Prewett.' A pause. 'Sounds very good to me.'

Jack had reached the bottom of the stairs. He peered at the baby with the cautious assessment of a six year old who has just been told his family has expanded without his input. The baby opened her eyes briefly, regarded him with the mild indifference of someone who had not yet formed opinions about the world, and closed them again.

'She's quite small,' Jack said.

'She is,' Agnes agreed. 'She'll get bigger.'

Jack seemed to find this acceptable. He went back upstairs. Above them, the twins continued.

Dumbledore looked at Agnes holding the child. He looked at Thomas beside her. He looked at the house around them, warm and full of noise and entirely itself. He liked to remember it like that.

'Thank you,' he said. It was not sufficient. He said it anyway.

Thomas nodded. Agnes did not look up. She was already talking to the baby, very quietly, in the particular voice people use when they have decided something is theirs.

The old scene vanished.

But he was still in Elmswell. Three months later. Agnes was in the armchair by the window, Morgana in her arms. She was awake. She was doing what babies of three months do, which is to say she was smiling at nothing in particular, with the absolute conviction that nothing in particular was the most delightful thing she had ever encountered.

Dumbledore watched her for a moment. 'Did anyone ask questions,' he said.

'Yes,' Agnes said, not looking up from the baby. 'Obviously.' A pause. 'The Fidelius worked beautifully. I still think it was the best idea, putting it on us. We can't say she is.'

She stopped. She tried again. She stopped again.

She looked up at him. 'You see. Perfect.'

'I wished we had not needed to modify the children's memories,' Dumbledore said.

'Extra safety,' Agnes said. 'We know.' She looked back at the baby. 'And what they don't know won't hurt them. Or her.'

'What have you told people,' Dumbledore said. 'About her arrival.'

'That we wanted to make a surprise.' Agnes smiled, something private in it. 'Thankfully I never lost my shape after the twins. People believed it easily enough.'

Dumbledore looked at the baby. At the ginger curls, the small fists, the absolute unawareness of it all.

'No one can ever know,' he said. 'That she is not yours.'

Thomas opened his mouth. Agnes looked up. Neither of them managed it. A beat of silence, strange and complete.

Thomas smiled. 'You see? It works wonderfully.'

Dumbledore said nothing for a moment. He looked at the baby, who was still smiling at nothing, entirely unconcerned with the architecture of protection being built around her. 'I promise, I'll tell her. We will tell her together, when the time is right.'

At the thought of it, of having to tell Morgana the truth, alone, he could not stand the memories anymore.

Dumbledore lifted his face from the Pensieve.

The fire in the hearth was strong. The room was the same room it had always been, and entirely itself. He went to his bookshelf. The picture of Priscilla. On one side, On Continuity and Governance in the Wizarding World. On the other, De Historia Fatae Morganae.

He looked at the second one for a moment. Then he opened it. The note was inside, where he had left it. The handwriting was hurried: someone writing fast, under pressure, knowing they did not have much time. The letters were uneven, as if the hand holding the pen had not been entirely calm. Brief.

He took it out and read it, though he did not need to.

Help me keep the promise I made.

There's more but they won't tell you.

It's about 7 sherbets lemons igyd - prb

For most people, a message that made no sense at all. For him, the kind of writing that happens when you know exactly what you need to say, have very little time to say it, and you don't want everyone to know what you are saying.

He folded it again. Picked a very uninteresting book. Set the note in it.

Then he turned away.