A Broken Inheritance

Chapter 85: The Price of Freedom

Dumbledore's eyes sharpened slightly. "What magic, precisely?"

James didn't answer at first. He exhaled hard, hands shaking a little.

This was it.

He looked at the man behind the desk—the man who'd given him Marchand's journal, who always knew more than he said, who played long games with people's lives—and made a choice.

"You must've heard the whispers," he said. "You wouldn't have given me that book otherwise."

Dumbledore's gaze didn't blink.

"She has it," James said quietly. "Blood magic. Real. Ancient. Powerful. And she used it that night. She erased Thalia's memory. She healed her. She saved her."

Still, Dumbledore didn't react. But the room did.

Something in the air changed—like the temperature had dropped a degree.

James pressed on. "You already suspected it. You knew the signs. Well I'm telling you she has it, and she's used it to save one of us."

Dumbledore sat back, his fingertips tapping against one another in a slow, deliberate rhythm.

James watched the candlelight flicker over the lenses of his glasses. "She didn't just use a charm, sir. She changed Thalia's mind. No wand. No incantation. Just touch. Just thought."

"Then Tom Riddle is aware."

It wasn't a question.

James nodded. "Yes."

Dumbledore's fingers stopped tapping.

Silence.

The kind that sounded like judgement.

Then—calmly, as if concluding a long equation—Dumbledore said, "Then we must act. Immediately."

James didn't breathe.

The Headmaster looked up at him fully now, and the quiet intensity behind his eyes was different. Sharper. No longer distracted. No longer indulgent.

"Thank you for telling me, Mr. Potter," he said. "This changes things."

James didn't know what to say.

She had gone from a girl caught in the middle to a piece of the board too dangerous to leave unattended.

"She's not a weapon," James said quietly.

Dumbledore looked at him for a long time.

"No," he said. "But she has the potential to become one."

He stood slowly, robe brushing the floor like a tide pulling back.

"If Tom understands what she is," he continued, "if he truly sees the depth of her capabilities... then he won't merely keep her at his side. He will shape her into a symbol. A tool. A doctrine."

James swallowed hard.

"She is no longer just his fiancee," Dumbledore said. "She is his proof. That the old magic lives. That it can be controlled. That he alone can hold it."

The words sat like lead between them.

"And you," Dumbledore added softly, "you are the proof that she can still be reached."

James looked away.

Dumbledore's tone didn't shift. "We will act, James. Quietly. With care. If she truly is what you claim—and I believe you—then we cannot allow Tom Riddle to possess her."

The words stung. Possess. As if she were something to be seized. Secured.

"What does that mean?" James asked.