A Hogwarts Legend: Changing Paths [3]

Chapter Thirty Eight

Unedited

Chapter Thirty Eight - "Mr drama queen."

Harry sits down in Lupin's vacated chair, staring glumly at the floor and I sit down next to him. I hear the door close and look up. Dumbledore is still here.

"Why so miserable, Harry?" he says quietly. "You should be very proud of yourself after last night."

"It didn't make any difference," says Harry bitterly. "Pettigrew got away."

"Didn't make any difference?" says Dumbledore quietly. "It made all the difference in the world, Harry. You helped uncover the truth. You saved an innocent man from a terrible state."

Terrible. Something stirs in my memory. Greater and more terrible than ever before ... Professor Trelawney's prediction!

"Professor Dumbledore - yesterday, when Harry and I were having our Divination exam, Professor Trelawney's went very - very strange."

"Indeed?" says Dumbledore. "Er - stranger than usual, you mean?"

"Yes ... her voice went all deep and her eyes rolled and she said ... she said Voldemort's servant was going to set out to return to him before midnight ... she said the servant would help him come back to power." I stare up at Dumbledore. "And then she sort of became normal again, and she couldn't remember anything she'd said. Was it - was she making a real prediction?"

Dumbledore looks mildly impressed.

"Do you know, Emily, I think she might have been," he says thoughtfully. "Who'd have thought it? That brings her total of real predictions up to three. I should offer her a pay rise ..."

So she's not just crazy.

"But -" Harry looks at him, aghast. How can Dumbledore take this to calmly?

Because he's as cool as a cucumber.

"But - we stopped Sirius and Professor Lupin killing Pettigrew! That makes it our- my fault, if Voldemort comes back!"

Mr drama queen over there.

"It does not," says Dumbledore quietly. "Hasn't your experience with the Time-Turner taught you anything, Harry? The consequences of our actions are always so complicated, so diverse, that predicting the future is a very difficult business indeed ... Professor Trelawney, bless her, is living proof of that. You did a very noble thing, in saving Pettigrew's life."

"But if he helps Voldemort back to power -!"

"Pettigrew owes his life to you. You have sent Voldemort a deputy who is in your debt. When one wizard saves another wizard's life, it created a certain bond between them ... and I'm much mistaken if Voldemort wants his servant in the debt of Harry Potter."

"I don't want a bond with Pettigrew!" says Harry. "He betrayed my parents!"

"This is magic at its deepest, its most impenetrable, Harry. But trust me ... the time may come when you will be very glad you saved Pettigrew's life."

I can't imagine when that will be.

"I knew your father very well, both at Hogwarts and later, Harry," he says gently. "He would have saved Pettigrew too, I am sure of it."

Harry looks up at him.

"Last night ..." Harry says slowly, "I thought it was my dad who'd conjured my Patronus. I mean, when I saw myself across the lake ... I thought I was seeing him."

"An easy mistake to make," says Dumbledore softly. "I expect you're tied of hearing it, but you do look extraordinarily like James. Except for your eyes ... you have your mother's eyes."