Snape dismissed the class with his usual dry snap of robes and a final cutting remark about "standards that refuse to meet themselves." Cauldrons hissed into silence. Slytherins filed out first, murmuring about weekend plans; Gryffindors lingered to glare at them and mop up splashes of Shrinking Solution from scarred tables. Oliver corked his vial, wiped the lip clean, and brought it forward.
Snape took it without looking up. "Acceptable," he said, which in Snape-speak meant "good." Then his gaze flicked to Oliver's face and held there—flat, unreadable, a pane of dark glass. "Night. You will go to the headmaster's office. Now."
No explanation. No deduction of points. No sneer.
"Sir?" Oliver asked, careful, neutral.
"Do not keep him waiting."
That was all. Snape turned away to mark vials with brisk, precise motions. Oliver slid his satchel over his shoulder, and Nyx—a downy weight beneath his collar—peeked out, chirped once, and tucked herself back in, warm against his neck.
He replayed the day's events as he walked the corridor. He had brewed cleanly, no explosions, no vanishing bench legs. He hadn't tested anything risky in class. He hadn't carved runes into the underside of the table or charmed his ladle to stir itself. Nothing outstanding except…the egg. Hagrid's egg. And even that, they'd kept quiet—wards layered, fire tempered, Nyx's starlight kept hidden. No one should know.
Curiosity took the lead over worry. He cut through a shortcut staircase that only appeared when one didn't look straight at it, passed a tapestry that pretended to be asleep, and climbed. By the time he reached the familiar stone griffin, he'd decided to ask directly; it was easier that way.
He didn't have to.
The statue shifted of its own accord, grinding aside. No password. No waiting.
Oliver stilled, then took the spiraling stairs two at a time.
Dumbledore's office was quiet enough to hear quills drying. Instruments hummed softly on shelves; thin plumes of incense curled and vanished. The walls were a private museum—portraits of past headmasters pretending to nap, cabinets of strange silver devices, spindly tables with astrolabes and bowls of polished stones. Fawkes's perch stood near the window, empty for now.
Dumbledore sat behind his desk, not in his usual half-turned, conversational slant but squared to the room, hands folded with a rigidity Oliver had never seen. He looked…held together, like a structure braced against wind. The creases around his eyes were deeper. His glasses caught light and kept it.
"Oliver," he said, and the gentleness in it landed like a soft tap on a taut wire. "Thank you for coming quickly. Please—sit."
Oliver took the chair opposite. Nyx popped out now fully, toddled up his shoulder, and then, as was her habit when he needed steadying, hopped onto his head and nested in his hair. She peeped once, proprietorial. It pulled a dry half-smile from Dumbledore before the set lines of his face returned.
A long breath, in and out. The kind one takes before stepping onto ice.
"I asked Professor Snape to send you because I have come to a decision," Dumbledore said. "I owe you truths I delayed out of fear and poor judgment. Today, I will not delay them any longer."
Oliver's heartbeat, steady until now, knocked once against his throat. He nodded. "All right."
"First," Dumbledore said, "your family." He glanced toward the corner as though expecting judgment from the portraits, then back. "My brother, Aberforth, keeps the Hog's Head Inn in Hogsmeade. You may have heard rumors, none of which need concern us. What matters is that he…is your uncle. And he wishes to meet you, if you are willing."
Oliver blinked. That word loosened something inside him he hadn't even noticed he was holding tight. Uncle. The orphanage had used the word for benefactors sometimes—"Your uncle sent a tin of biscuits"—but it had never meant anything. This did. It echoed and settled and stayed.
"I'm willing," he said, immediate. He didn't dress it in careful language. "Yes."
A visible tension left Dumbledore's shoulders, small but real. "Good. He asked me to tell you that he does not care for headlines, and that only Ariana's blood matters to him. He is blunt, honest, and unvarnished. You will like him." A faint wrinkle of amusement. "And if you do not, you will at least understand him."
Ariana's blood. The phrase had a gravity Oliver could feel in his bones, like standing under a sky full of low cloud.
"Thank you," Oliver said. He meant it. "When?"
"We will arrange it quietly," Dumbledore replied. "Soon. I will not make you wait." His hands tightened once, then opened. "There is more. It is heavier."
Oliver sat a little straighter. Nyx shifted on his head, tiny claws careful, a warm crown.
Dumbledore didn't circle. "I have not told you everything about your lineage. That was my failure. In truth: your mother's blood is Ariana Dumbledore's. My sister. Your father's contribution came through Gellert Grindelwald."
The room thinned. Not silent—there was still the whisper of fire, the winged tick of a device, a portrait's soft fake snore. But thinner, as if sound had to cross farther to reach him.
Gellert Grindelwald. The name lived on a different shelf in Oliver's mind—a section for things you didn't touch without gloves. He thought of rumors, of History of Magic chapters that the professor voices skimmed over fast, of a prison whose name tasted like iron. He didn't speak for several breaths.
Dumbledore filled the quiet with the rest, simple and flat as facts laid in a ledger. "He is alive. Imprisoned. He attempted a ritual long ago—unconscionable, without consent—to preserve what should never have been taken. I discovered the result only recently when I sought clarity at Gringotts. After I learned, I went to Nurmengard. I asked him, face to face. He admitted what he had done. He also asked to see you."
Dumbledore's voice didn't hitch on the last sentence, but something in it felt like a door closing.
"I told him no," he said. "I forbade it. Not because I wanted to make the choice for you, but because there are risks I will not allow to land on your shoulders unannounced. I am telling you now because I should have from the first."
Oliver's fingers had laced themselves together without permission. He unhooked them, set his palms flat on his knees, then laced them again. He searched for anger. Found a flare—brief, hot—at being decided for, at having a piece of himself exist in someone else's prison cell far away, and no one had told him. It rose, pricked his eyes, then ebbed beneath something steadier. He pictured Hagrid's careful hands around a mottled egg. He pictured Nick's measured voice when he said "trust is earned." He pictured Penny's smile when she said "family" and meant it.
"Thank you for telling me," he said at last, voice even.
Dumbledore's chin dipped. "You are upset."
"A little," Oliver answered honestly. "More at the waiting than the what. I don't like being shielded like I'm glass. But I get why you did it."
"It was misguided protection," Dumbledore said. "It will not be repeated."
Oliver nodded once. He let the name Grindelwald sit beside the word father in his head without letting them fuse. A word could be a symbol without defining the whole. People at the orphanage had used "father" for a signature on a form. It had never pointed to a person he could call or argue with or ask advice from. The emptiness around it was familiar. This didn't make it less strange. It made it differently strange.
"What do you think about him?" Oliver asked, surprising himself. "You. Not the Headmaster. You."
Dumbledore's gaze slid to the window and back. "Gellert is brilliant, charming, and capable of horrors. He changed as he aged in ways that I do not completely understand. He regrets some things deeply. He regrets others not at all. I loved him. I fought him. I defeated him. I visit him once a year, and every year I am reminded that love does not erase consequences." He paused. "He is very good at convincing others of his vision. I will not have him try that on you."
Oliver sat with that. "He wanted to see me because…?"
"Because you are his work and Ariana's blood," Dumbledore said. "Because he is curious. Because he may imagine a bridge between what he was and what he wants to believe about himself. Because a man who once thought he should reorder the world rarely loses the habit of thinking in lines and pieces." A shadow of pain crossed his face and was gone. "Also because you are remarkable, and remarkable things draw those who hunger for them."
Oliver's mouth twisted. "He doesn't get to be curious at me."
"No," Dumbledore said quietly. "He does not."
They let that settle. Nyx pecked a single hair strand into a better position, satisfied with her work.
Dumbledore steepled his fingers, then lowered them. "I ask you plainly, Oliver: what do you want? There is no answer I prefer, beyond the honest one."
Oliver stared at the grain of the desk for three breaths, then looked up. "I don't know yet," he said. The truth landed clean, not weak. "I need to think. A lot. I don't see myself meeting him anytime soon. Maybe not at all." He inhaled. "I do want to meet Aberforth."
Relief flickered so clearly in Dumbledore's eyes that he didn't bother to hide it. "Very well. I will arrange Aberforth first. We will take it slowly. As for Nurmengard, there will be no visit. Not unless—or until—you ask, and even then not without counsel."
"Okay." Oliver rubbed his thumb along his knuckles, feeling the small ridges of callus guitar strings had left. "Can I ask something else?"
"Anything."
"When you got my hair for Gringotts," Oliver said, keeping his tone neutral, "did you ask me first?"
"No," Dumbledore said. He did not soften it. "I should have. I did not. I was afraid of what I would find, and I hid behind the authority the school grants me regarding orphans under its care. That was wrong."
"Don't do it again," Oliver said.
"I won't," Dumbledore answered.
The portraits had stopped pretending to sleep. A half dozen pairs of painted eyes watched, trying not to look like they were. Somewhere a kettle pinged; an instrument coughed out a polite rattle and went quiet. Outside, a cloud crossed the sun, or perhaps the sun decided to rest behind a cloud; the light shifted, thinned.
Dumbledore pushed a small tin across the desk. It was unadorned pewter, warmed by his palms. "Peppermint humbugs," he said, with a breath that sounded almost like a laugh. "A poor apology."
Oliver didn't reach for it. "Keep them. Give them to Aberforth when you tell him you told me." He caught himself, startled by the edge in his voice, and let the edge remain. It wasn't anger; it was something like a stake in the ground.
Dumbledore accepted the rebuke with a nod and drew the tin back. "Fair."
Oliver shifted forward. "When do you want me to meet him?"
"Tomorrow evening," Dumbledore said. "After dinner. Quietly, through a side passage. No passwords, I promise." The corner of his mouth moved. "He will tease me. Prepare yourself."
"I can handle teasing," Oliver said. "I grew up with the twins."
"Indeed." A glimmer of warmth. "Oliver… there is one more thing I will say and then I will let you go." He paused, weighing words. "You are not responsible for the choices of adults you never met. Not for Gellert's. Not for mine. Not for Ariana's fate. You are responsible for you. And you have done very well with that so far."
The simple praise shouldn't have mattered. It did. It loosened something leftover and tight behind Oliver's ribs. He nodded once, not trusting his throat to hold steady if he spoke.
Nyx, perhaps deciding her work here was finished, hopped down onto the desk, strutted three solemn steps, then fluttered back up to his head and nestled there, eyes blinking slow.
"May I go?" Oliver asked, standing.
"You may," Dumbledore said. "Take the long way. Walk. Think. If you want company later, Fawkes will be willing to listen and say nothing."
"He's good at that," Oliver said. "So is Nyx."
They shared a small smile that didn't try to be more than it was. Oliver turned, crossed the carpet, and reached for the door.
"Oliver," Dumbledore said softly.
He looked back.
"Thank you," Dumbledore said. "For not letting my worst habits decide what happens to you."
Oliver gave a little shrug that wasn't dismissal so much as "we'll see." Then he left.
The spiral stairs carried him down with their slow, familiar rotation. The griffin slid back into place behind him. The corridor spread out ahead—stone and tapestries and the slight draft that always smelled faintly of old parchment. He walked.
He took the long way, as instructed, past the high windows that looked toward the lake, past a suit of armor that insisted on saluting loudly at anyone who passed. He didn't think in sentences. He let pieces drift and bump: Uncle. Ariana. Grindelwald, a name that felt like frost. Hagrid's egg, warm under Nyx's breathed song. Nick's sapphire dust, Penny's hands on his shoulders when she said "ours." Aberforth's goats—he pictured them without ever having seen them, and the image made his mouth twitch. Family. A word trying out new shapes.
A few students turned their heads as he went by. He didn't meet their eyes. He didn't need company for this part. Nyx kept her place on his head, a small weight that steadied more than it should have.
He reached the second-floor landing, slid behind a portrait that hid a shortcut he'd mapped for himself, and came out near a little-used side corridor that led, eventually, to the classroom he'd claimed as home. The door knew him and unlocked at his touch. The air inside was cooler than the corridors—still, ordered, carrying the faintest scent of oil from his guitar and the herbal tang of Sprout's cuttings waiting in jars. His bed was neat. His desk held a scatter of notes, a half-finished sketch of an array for a phone crystal, a list of Sunberry grafting times in the margin.
He set his satchel down gently. Nyx hopped off his head and onto the back of his chair, puffed her chest, and gave him a steady look. He lifted a hand, brushed a fingertip under her beak. She closed her eyes and made a small content sound that felt like a string being tuned exactly right.
Oliver sat. He didn't pick up a quill. He didn't reach for the guitar. He just sat, and let the silence do the sorting.
Uncle. Soon.
Father. Not yet.
And between them, the life he was already building—roots in a suitcase forest, a team waiting on a pitch, a hatchling heartbeat pulsing beneath galaxy-fire, a book on shelves, a wand that sang in his hand, friends who had chosen him.
He let his breath find a slower rhythm. Outside the window, evening deepened. Inside, Nyx drowsed, and Oliver stared at the ceiling until the knots in his chest loosened and the restless thoughts finally, mercifully, lowered their voices.
He said nothing on the walk back. He said nothing now.
Some truths didn't need words immediately. They needed room.