"Questions for me? Whatever for?" Albus asked in honest confusion.
"Because you've been keeping secrets from Harry, sir," Ms Granger supplied. "He doesn't think he can trust you." At Albus's shocked look, she merely shrugged an apology.
"Is that true, Mr Potter?" Albus asked. "I thought we had cleared the air about your placement with your relatives?"
"You did, professor," Harry acknowledged. "I don't like it but there it is. But you have been keeping other things from me. Like why you - or anyone - never checked on me at the Dursleys. Or what truly happened the night that my parents died."
Dumbledore sighed and absently removed his glasses. He polished them with a piece of cloth while he considered his answer.
"I did check on you several times in your first eighteen months with the Dursleys," Dumbledore confessed. "They were, as Professor McGonagall put it, the worst sort of Muggles but you were adjusting. I was concerned when I saw you were living in the cupboard under the stairs but it seemed to be by your choice. I talked to a Healer friend and he said people that suffer traumatic events where they feel powerless, such as rape or witnessing a murder, often seek sanctuary in small places that they can control. Plus I remembered Lily telling a story where you emptied out her pots and pans to spend the day hiding in the cabinet."
"I'd forgotten about that," Sirius murmured with a sad, nostalgic expression on his face. Remus simply nodded as he also remembered the incident.
"After that, I became Chief Warlock and was too busy to visit myself. I created some wards to monitor your condition and alert me if you were injured. Plus I asked Mrs Figg to move into the neighbourhood to keep an eye on things. The wards only went off once. You were six. When I arrived at the Muggle infirmary you were having your arm placed into a cast from falling out of a tree."
"I never fell out of a tree," Harry said in a quiet voice that had an angry power behind it. "Vernon lost an account and claimed his dinner was cold. He grabbed my arm and snapped the bones when he twisted it. He told the story at the hospital so he didn't get in trouble with child services. After that, Vernon and Petunia focused on verbal comments to make me feel like a freak. Dudley wasn't so restrained. He and his gang beat me regularly when we were in primary school. They called it Harry Hunting. They were the hounds and I was the fox. And you know what happens to the fox in the end. "
"Arabella - Mrs Figg - never saw anything like that," Albus responded in a pained voice. "She knew it wasn't pleasant but saw nothing abusive. Even then her concerns went away when you were nine! She said you looked well even if you were always dirty and dressed in ill-fitting clothes. It appeared to be an 'in' thing with Muggle teens so it wasn't a concern." Albus felt an odd pain in his chest as he thought about what Harry had endured. He'd known Harry wouldn't have a soft life with his mother's sister's family but never anything like this!
Harry smile in a cynical fashion. "Oh, yes. My ninth birthday. You could say after that the Durlseys and I came to… an new understanding just before then." Albus waited for Harry to explain, but instead he just asked another question.
"And the night my parents died?" Albus considered the sudden change of topics and how best to explain the unique circumstances of that night. Emotionally he was still caught up on Harry's revelations. He took a second to run through an Occlumency exercise to settle his thoughts.
"Are you familiar with what Muggles call 'The Law of Unintended Consequences, Harry?" At Harry's headshake to the negative, Dumbledore continued, "It is the understanding that sometimes our actions have a result beyond that which was expected or planned for. We don't usually understand how everything in that natural world is connected and interact. I understand that Muggles introduced rabbits in Australia for hunting purposes. Now a rabbit is a rather benign creature of no significant threat. Yet they have no natural predator in Australia and have caused substantial ecological damage there.
"Magic is a strange and wondrous thing. It can seemingly break the laws of the natural world and is impacted by the emotions and unconscious desires of those of us blessed with the ability to manipulate it. The greater, more complex the magic is, the greater the opportunity for outside influences to impact our magical workings. Some of those influences are counterintuitive and seemly illogical. In magic, 1 + 1 doesn't always equal 2. This is why astronomy is a part of our core curriculum. The positioning of the planetary bodies has a small but possibly significant influence on the power and effect of magic. But form a logical standpoint, what could the relative positioning of distant celestial bodies have on a potion being brewed here at Hogwarts. Yet it dies have a demonstrable, repeatable impact.
"The final event of the Tournament was scheduled on the Summer Solstice to provide the longest period of daylight for the task. Tom chose to act that day due to the increased life energy powers that are available on this day. Healers have long known this. In a perverse way, it also makes it a powerful day for necromantic rituals."
The room was silent as they listened to Dumbledore speak. It had been many years since Dumbledore was simply the Transfiguration Professor, but he was a gifted educator and his lectures had always been well attended. His lecture now proved he had not lost his ability to capture a classroom.
"Now, the night of Tom's attack on your parents' home was filled with unintended consequences. While today we call it Halloween, it was also once known as All Hallow's Evening or Samhain. Samhain was a Celtic holiday where the boundaries between this world and the fae are at their lowest. Tom, of course, intended to kill you. James and Lily were not his primary targets that night. Your parents intended to protect both themselves and you. Your parents knew you were the target. Theoretically, if they had simply stepped aside Tom would have let them live. This created a unique set of circumstances. Other parents had been killed protecting their families but none knowing that only their child was the target of the attack - that they would live if they merely stepped aside.
"Lily was a talented and powerful witch. Knowing that you were a target, she created a blood-based ritual to protect you from harm under certain conditions. James purposely bought her the time to enact the ritual at the cost of his own life. Her death then at Tom's hands triggered the ritual's completion. I believe it was this ritual protection that enabled you to survive the Killing Curse that was then reflected in a weaker form back to Tom. This created the first of our unintended consequences. Tom never intended to do anything but remove the obstacle that the elder Potters created. For him, killing was the most expedient choice. Instead his magical power in the Killing Curse completed a ritual that protected young Harry. But there was another unintended consequence.
"I have long wondered how Tom was able to survive the Killing Curse even in his wraith-form. It was not until after your second year that I was able to confirm his method. Without providing any unnecessary information, Tom uncovered a way of inserting parts of his soul into inanimate objects to enable to prevent his permanent death. As part of this ritual, the wizard would be required to commit a cold-blooded murder to exchange their soul for his continued existence."
"The diary," Harry breathed in disbelief.
"Indeed," Dumbledore agreed. "That was the information that I needed. Now since the diary was destroyed and Tom's wraith remained, that tells me he had more than one. This is the Darkest of Magics and the information on it has long been repressed by the world's magical governments so it is not readily available even to me. For the last two years, I have been attempting to quietly identify and track down what other objects Tom may have used to encase parts of his soul."
Dumbledore paused a moment and allowed his audience to absorb the information he had just presented. After several moments, he continued.
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