chapter twenty-eight : the lost prophecy
☆ ☆ ☆
When Juniper woke up, she felt significantly better. Letting her eyes get adjust to the bright light, she turned her head to see Charlie sitting on a chair next to her bed. It was a sight that was getting familiar to her.
"Hey, you," she said, smiling.
Charlie jumped up and turned to look at her. An expression of total relief. He stood up, leaned forwards and planted a firm kiss on her forehead. "I'm so happy you're all right. You got me worried for a second there."
"I'm fine," she said. "How are the others?"
"Everyone's fine," Charlie told her, taking her hand. "Though Tonks will have to stay at St Mungo's for a while, but it seems she will make a full recovery."
June sat up and looked around the hospital wing. Sirius laid on the bed next to her, still asleep. Aiden sat at the end of his bed, his head buried in a book, glancing over once in a while to see how Sirius was doing. Ginny's ankle had been mended in a trice by Madam Pomfrey and she was now resting in the bed on June's other side. Mabel laid in the bed in front of her; Neville sitting on the chair next to her, whose nose had been returned to its normal size. Hermione laid in the bed next to them and was still unconscious. Madam Pomfrey was currently trying to patch her up. Neither Ron, nor Luna seemed to be having any lasting trouble.
"Where's Harry?" June said, turning back to Charlie.
"Well — he's still in Dumbledore's of— where are you going?"
"To give Dumbledore a piece of my mind," June said, slipping into her shoes and striding out of the hospital wing.
"About what?" Charlie asked, running after her. "Hey! Take it easy! You're not fully healed yet!"
"I don't care," June said. "I've had much worse so I'm sure I can handle this."
"June, maybe you should think about this —"
Juniper suddenly stopped dead in her tracks, said nothing for a couple of moments before turning to him once more. "I thought about it, I'm still going to do it, Charlie. Due to the fact that Dumbledore didn't bother to inform any of us, someone could have died today! You could have died!"
A silence filled the hall and Charlie cupped her face with his hands. "I'll always be here, you know right, right?" he told her quietly. "Whenever you need me."
"I know," June said, placing her hands over his. "But he should have said something." She placed a kiss on his cheek. "You should go and be with Ginny and Ron. I'm sure they will appreciate it."
Charlie hesitated before nodding. "All right." He kissed her. "You know you're scary when you're angry, right?"
June smiled. "It's good that I'm furious then."
With that, she turned around and continued her way to Dumbledore's office. Upon arriving at the gargoyle, she didn't even need to say the password. It jumped aside, as if Dumbledore knew she might turn up.
Well, you can't say he's not a clever man, June thought, as she climbed the stairs.
The door swung open and she entered his office. Harry sat in a chair, looking exhausted. However, his eyes lit up at the sight of her.
"June! Are you all right?"
"I'm fine," she told Harry, patting him on the back. "How are you?"
"Tired but all right," Harry said, sighing and rubbing his eyes. "Professor Dumbledore was just about to tell me what that prophecy meant."
"Before we get into that," June said, her voice growing sharper as she turned to Dumbledore himself. "If anybody had died today, it would have been on you."
"I am aware of that," Dumbledore said calmly.
"You should have told Harry about Voldemort and their mind link — whatever it is called — at the start of the year!"
"I am aware of that."
"SOMEONE COULD HAVE DIED BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T BOTHER TELLING US ABOUT YOUR PLANS! YOUR SECRECY WILL BE THE DEATH OF US SOMEDAY!" June yelled furiously, breathing heavily. She ignored the wizards and witches on the paintings who were starting to whisper at her outburst. "HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO WORK TOGETHER TO FIGHT VOLDEMORT IF YOU DON'T TELL US ABOUT ANYTHING? HOW CAN WE BE A TEAM IF THERE ARE SECRETS ONLY YOU KNOW? HOW CAN WE EVER WIN THIS BLOODY WAR IF YOU KEEP EVERYTHING TO YOURSELF? I'M TIRED OF IT AND I'M PRETTY SURE I'M NOT THE ONLY ONE!"
A silence filled the office. The only thing you could hear were June's heavy breaths as she continued to glare at Dumbledore, who was looking at her calmly, though a bit taken aback.
Harry glanced from his cousin to the headmaster and back.
"She's right and you know it," Phineas Nigellus told Dumbledore quietly, though June could tell he was proud of her for speaking up.
"I am aware of that, Phineas," Dumbledore said calmly, though he seemed more tired now.
"So what about the prophecy?" June asked, crossing her arms. "Why Harry? Why all of this?"
"Voldemort tried to kill Harry when he was just a child because of a prophecy made shortly before his birth. Voldemort knew the prophecy had been made, though he did not know its full contents. He set out to kill Harry when he was still a baby, believing he was fullfilling the terms of the prophecy. Voldemort discovered, to his cost, that he was mistaken, when the curse intended to kill Harry backfired. And so, since Voldemort's return to his body, and particularly since Harry's extraordinary escape from him last year, he has been determined to hear that prophecy in its entirety. This is the weapon he had been seeking so assiduously since his return: the knowledge of how to destroy Harry."
Juniper did not reply. She simple fell down on the chair next to Harry's.
"The prophecy's smashed," Harry said blankly. "I was pulling Neville and Mabel up those benches in the — the room where the archway was, and I ripped Neville's robes and it fell . . ."
"The thing that smashed was merely the record of the prophecy kept by the Department of Mysteries. But the prophecy was made to somebody, and that person has the means of recalling it perfectly."
"Who heard it?" Harry asked.
"I did," Dumbledore said. "On a cold, wet night sixteen years ago, in a room above the bar at the Hog's Head inn. I had gone there to see an applicant for the post of Divination teacher, though it was against my inclination to allow the subject of Divination to continue at all. The applicant, however, was the great-great-granddaughter of a very famous, very gifted Seer and I thought it common politeness to meet her. I was disappointed. It seemed to me that she had not a trace of the gift herself. I told her, courteously I hope, that I did not think she would be suitable for the post. I turned to leave."
Dumbledore got to his feet and walked past Harry and June to the black cabinet that stood besides Fawkes's perch. He bent down, slid back a catch and took from inside it the shallow stone basin, carved with runes around the edge that June recognized as a Pensieve. Dumbledore walked back to the desk, placed the Pensieve upon it, and raised his wand to his own temple. From it, he withdrew silvery, gossamer-fine stands of thought clinging to the wand and deposited them into the basin. He saw back down behind his desk and watched his thoughts swirl and drift inside the Pensieve for a moment. Then, with a sigh, he raised his wand and prodded the silvery substance with its tip.
A figure rose out of it, draped in shawls, her eyes magnified to enormous size behind her glasses, and she revolved slowly, her feet in the basin. But when Sybill Trelaweney spoke, it was not in her usual ethereal, mystic voice, but in harsh, hoarse tones June had never heard her use before:
"The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches . . . born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies . . . and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not . . . and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives . . . the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies . . ."
The slowly revolving Professor Trelawney sank back into the silver mass below and vanished.
The silence within the office was absolute. Neither Dumbledore nor Harry nor June nor any of the portraits made a sound. Even Fawkes had fallen silent.
"Professor Dumbledore?" Harry said very quietly, for Dumbledore, still staring at the Pensieve, seemed completely lost in thoughts. "It . . . did that mean . . . what did that mean?"
"It meant," Dumbledore said, "that the person who has the only chance of conquering Lord Voldemort for good was born at the end of July, nearly sixteen years ago. This boy would be born to parents who had already defied Voldemort three times."
Juniper's eyes darted from Dumbledore to Harry and back.
"It means — me?"
Dumbledore took a deep breath.
"The odd thing, Harry," he said softly, "is that it may not have meant you at all. Sybill's prophecy could have applied to two wizard boys, both born at the end of July that year, both of whom had parents in the Order of the Phoenix, both sets of parents having narrowly escaped Voldemort three times. One, of course, was you. The other was Neville Longbottom . . ."
"But then . . . but then, why was it my name on the prophecy and not Neville's?"
"The official record was labeled after Voldemort's attack on you as a child," Dumbledore said. "It seemed plain to the keeper of the Hall of Prophecy that Voldemort could only have tried to kill you because he knew you to be the one to whom Sybill was referring."
"Then — it might not be me?" Harry said.
"I am afraid," Dumbledore said slowly, looking as though every word cost him a great effort, "that there is no doubt that it is you."
"But you said — Neville was born at the end of July, too — and his mum and dad —"
"You are forgetting the next part of the prophecy, the final identifying feature of the boy who could vanquish Voldemort . . . Voldemort himself would mark him as his equal. And so he did, Harry. He chose you, not Neville. He gave you the scar that has proved both blessing and curse."
"But he might have chosen wrong!" Harry said. "He might have marked the wrong person!"
"He chose the boy he thought most likely to be a danger to him," Dumbledore said. "And notice this, Harry: he chose, not the pure-blood (which, according to his creed, is the only kind of wizard worth being or knowing) but the half-blood, like himself. He saw himself in you before he had ever seen you, and in marking you with that scar, he did not kill you, as he intended, but gave you powers, and a future, which have fitted you to escape him not once, but four times so far — something that neither your parents, nor Neville's parents, ever achieved."
"Why did he do it, then?" Harry said. "Why did he try and kill me as a baby? He should have waited to see whether Neville or I looked more dangerous when we were older and tried to kill whoever it was then —"
"That might, indeed, have been the more practical course," Dumbledore said, "except that Voldemort's information about the prophecy was incomplete. The Hog's Head inn, which Sybill chose for its cheapness, has long attracted, shall we say, a more interesting clientele than the Three Broomsticks. As you and your friends found out to your cost, and I to mine that might, it is a place where it is never safe to assume you are not being overheard. Of course, I had not dreamed, when I set out to meet Sybill Trelawney, that I would hear anything worth overhearing. My — our — one stroke of good fortune was that the eavesdropper was detected only a short way into the prophecy and thrown from the building."
"So he only heard —?"
"He heard only the beginning, the part foretelling the birth of a boy in July to parents who had thrice defied Voldemort. Consequently, he could not warn his master that to attack you would be to risk transferring power to you, and marking you as his equal. So Voldemort never knew that there might be danger in attacking you, that it might be wise to wait, to learn more. He did not know that you would have the power the Dark Lord knows not —"
"But I don't!" Harry said, in a strangled voice. "I haven't any powers he hasn't got, I couldn't fight the way he did tonight, I can't possess people or — or kill them —"
"There is a room in the Department of Mysteries," Dumbledore interrupted, "that is kept locked at all times. It contains a force that is at once more wonderful and more terrible than death, than human intelligence, than the force of nature. It is also, perhaps, the most mysterious of the many subjects for study that reside there. It is the power held within that room that you possess in such quantities and which Voldemort has not at all. That power took you to save Sirius tonight. That power also saved you from possession by Voldemort, because he could not bear to reside in a body so full of the force he detests. In the end, it mattered not that you could not close your mind. It was your heart that saved you."
Juniper went with her hand over her face, sighing.
"The end of the prophecy . . . it was something about . . . neither can live . . ." Harry said.
". . . while the other survives," Dumbledore said.
"So," Harry said, "so does that mean that . . . that one of us has got to kill the other one . . . in the end?"
"Yes," Dumbledore said.
For a long time, silence filled the room. Somewhere far beyond the office walls, June could hear the sound of voices, students heading down to the Great Hall for an early breakfast, perhaps.
"I feel I owe you another explanation, Harry," Dumbledore said hesitantly. "You may, perhaps, have wondered why I never chose you as a prefect? I must confess . . . that I rather thought . . . you had enough responsibility to be going on with."
June and Harry looked up at him and saw a tear trickling down Dumbledore's face into his long silver bear. Almost immediately, her fury disappeared and she had to fight the urge to give him a comforting hug.
Instead, she buried her head into her hands and sighed, knowing that this would be the start of another war. Now that the ministry knew Voldemort was back, sure they would act?
Juniper stood up. "Come on, Harry. Let's get you fixed up. Professor," she turned to look at Dumbledore, "I'll officially join the order once I graduate from Hogwarts. With your permission, I would like to approach some very good and trusted friends to ask whether they are interested in joining, too."
Dumbledore dipped his head. "You have my permission."
"Good," June said, placing a hand on Harry's shoulders and guiding him towards the door. "Have a good day, Professor."
☆ ☆ ☆
"Sirius!" Harry exclaimed, once the cousins arrived in the hospital wing. "How are you? Are you all right?"
Sirius, who had woken up by the time they got back, sat up and grinned. "All fine, Harry. There's nothing I can't take."
Harry let out a relieved sigh and leaned in to give him a hug. Juniper sat down on a chair next to Aiden, giving him a smile in the process.
"So what did you talk about with Dumbledore?" Sirius asked her. "Charlie told me you'd have a word with him."
June and Harry exchanged a glance. Harry had asked her to say nothing to the others, not wanting to worry them more than they already did.
"It's all fixed now," was all June said. "Nothing to worry about."
If only that had been true.
☆ ☆ ☆
Published 22.07.2021
I hope you enjoyed it & tell me what you think of it!
There will only be only one more chapter and then act three will be finished!! :)
Also I love the fact that June gave Dumbledore a piece of her mind :)