Matryoshka Vignettes
For the Best
By Jeconais
Albus Dumbledore - Tue, March 15th, 2:15pm
Albus Dumbledore sat at his large desk, deep in thought.
He had a few problems.
His Potions professor had disappeared. There was a new chairman of the Board of Governors who didn’t like him. One of his pupils was undergoing a thorough psychological torture at the moment. And Fawkes was giving him looks he hadn’t managed to interpret yet.
And Harry Potter, alive and well, was completely out of his control.
It was the last one he was more concerned about. The last thing they needed, with Voldemort now dead, was for a new dark lord to replace him. And Harry had more than enough power to do so.
He’d been shocked when the flares had gone off, and when he’d found both Harry and Tom dead at the scene, saddened. He hadn’t wanted that to happen, and had done his very best to stop it.
It was only after Daphne’s speech at the funeral that he had become suspicious. But he couldn’t do anything at the time. He had to deal with the public fall-out of Daphne’s revelations. She hadn’t known that the Death Eater was supposed to have lived; it had been an unfortunate accident that he had died. Severus was supposed to have cast a special charm on the Death Eater — powered by Phoenix Tears — that would have changed the killing curse to a stunning curse. And he would have then buried an illusion of himself.
Unfortunately, Severus had missed. He couldn’t blame his old friend; it was a difficult shot.
He’d monitored all of Harry’s friends for a few weeks, but none of them had seen anything. And what’s more, all of them had treated him with scandalous disrespect, especially Miss Granger.
Why they couldn’t see that what he had done was for the best, he didn’t know.
While it was possible that Miss Greengrass was working alone, seeking revenge, it made his nose twitch. And the nose twitching normally meant something was up.
So, he’d paid a very late night visit to Harry’s grave, and cast a few spells which, if not illegal, where certainly not accepted by the general public.
And as he had suspected, they had buried another Death Eater. Harry had done exactly the same thing he had done, and faked his own death.
Which left him with the problem of a boy with far too much power for his own good, somewhere in the world with a Slytherin who believed that Killing Curses were something that you dished out to people who stood in your way.
They might have been Death Eaters, but there had been no need for her to have killed them, when she could have stunned them instead.
And what would happen if she decided she wanted power? Harry would support her, and it would be just like Voldemort all over again.
Power always corrupted, well, except with him; he’d resisted corruption.
So, knowing that they were alive, he’d started to try to track them down. He’d inquired with the Goblins to see if Harry had left a Will, and had been told clearly that everything had been left to Daphne, and that his account had been closed.
Convenient.
He’d almost caught up with them in New Zealand, but by the time he had arrived, they had already left.
And from there, they had vanished again.
Two children. Two huge family fortunes merged. And in Harry’s case, far too much magical power for anyone, other than himself, to have access to.
He needed to know where they were; he couldn’t allow them to go dark, not after what he had spent his life fighting.
The question was, how?
They had already proved elusive to find. Owls sent to either of them returned confused. Attempts to track Hedwig had failed somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean.
He rubbed his beard thoughtfully.
Perhaps it was time to bring in the Ministry to help him out.
He turned and threw some powder into the Floo, calling for Rufus Scrimgeour, the Minister.
"Albus?" The Minister asked.
"Good afternoon, Minister," he said respectfully, hiding his disdain with the practice of decades.
"What can I do for you?"
"I’m afraid," he lied slowly, "that I have evidence that Daphne Greengrass is behind the disappearance of Severus Snape." Much as he hated to have to lie, this was for the best.
"Really?" Rufus asked, his eyes closing slightly. "I have found out that it was she who made a pauper out of poor Lucius."
"Really?" Dumbledore asked, faking surprise.
"Indeed," Rufus said, his face turning shifty. "Someone with so much money available and an unfounded grudge against me, and you, could be dangerous."
"Absolutely," Albus agreed. He hated doing this, it always made him feel guilty, but it was for the best.
"What can we do about it?" Rufus asked, as if they were talking about the weather.
"Perhaps we could persuade the international community that she is dangerous," Albus said thoughtfully. "After all, she did use confess to using a killing curse."
"True, true," Rufus agreed. "And that sort of thing is illegal, no matter what and why it is done. Although, there might be a bit of a backlash from the public."
"I was thinking," Albus said, going off on a tangent. "That maybe a new law should be passed, one that allows the assets of convicted murderers to be seized by the Ministry."
Rufus’ face lit up, and then toned down as he instantly regained control. "Why yes," he agreed. "What a splendid law. And if we made an example out of Greengrass, I’m sure the public would protest, but a large tax cut, funded by this law, nearer the next election would ensure that any lingering disgust would be forgotten."
"Agreed," Albus said.
"I thank you for bringing this to my attention," Rufus said. "We’ll have to wait a month or two, so that it doesn’t appear that we are targeting her directly."
Dumbledore nodded, "It was a pleasure talking to you, as always, Minister."
Albus settled down in his chair. That would bring Harry back to the country, where he could be controlled.
He looked up, and met the look of Fawkes.
"It’s for the best," he explained.
Fawkes crooned once and stretched his wings, flying out the window.
He felt a little surprise. He’d have to ask the Phoenix later what was going on. But now he had one final puzzle to piece together.
Exactly how had Harry hidden from him within Hogwarts? It shouldn’t be possible. Even now, he knew where everyone and everything inside it was — from the baby Basilisk growing in the Chamber of Secrets to the elf clearing Snape’s room of all his personal belongings. Nothing happened in the school that he didn’t know about.
And yet Harry had managed to allow himself to be corrupted by that Slytherin.
There were times when he thought that he hated Daphne. He had Harry under his control before her influence. He’d neutralised all of Harry’s allies, explaining what was for the best, and at the same time, had Harry calling himself 'Dumbledore’s Man’ again.
And then that little tart, Daphne Greengrass, who had broken all the rules of Hogwarts by seducing him, had ruined everything.
If it hadn’t been for her, Harry would have defeated Voldemort under his direction, and would have died properly, as was his destiny. The world would have been safe then.
But no, she had to encourage him, lead him astray.
He took a deep breath, and forced himself to calm down. This wasn’t the way to go. It was just a coincidence. After all, she couldn’t have known.
All these years of carefully allowing Harry to have just enough danger to force him to become what he needed to be, but with just enough support — given and taken at the right times — to allow him to be unsure and confused about where he really stood.
And she had ruined it.
But how had they hidden their relationship? As Headmaster, the wards reported directly to him, as did the school herself.
He closed his eyes and concentrated, allowing his Legilimency skills to reach out, trying to contact the awareness that was Hogwarts. The school was not alive, not in any sense that could be measured, but it had a definite awareness of what was going on.
So much magic concentrated for so many years had sunk into the very stones that made up the castle.
He’d been trying for as long as he had been headmaster to access all the areas of the consciousness, but it was literally like trying to bang his head against a brick wall. There were parts of it he could not access, and it frustrated him no end.
For one last time, he tried to understand, to find out what was going on.
"I need to know," he thought.
Silence.
"Please tell me," he asked again, hating that he, the most powerful man alive, was reduced to begging.
Silence.
"It’s for the best!"
And something changed.