With the Marauders' Map in my hands, I had access to the most important knowledge MacGuffin of the entire Harry Potter series. I could know the location of everyone in the castle, and as my eyes zeroed in on the part of the dungeons where I knew the Slytherins were, I saw the dotted lines of Draco's footsteps walking by himself, and Crabbe and Goyle's own footsteps elsewhere on the second floor.
I could follow them with ease now, and see where they usually went from the safety of my Hall of Shadows. Sure, I couldn't hear what they said, but I could at the very least keep track of their movements. If they went into a specific abandoned classroom, then I'd swing along later to find out what they were hiding in it.
"Son," Dumbledore spoke with a dreadful sigh, dusting himself barely off. "You should not use Peruvian Instant Darkness powder to obscure a passageway; it is a troublesome thing to get off one's robes."
"Ah, dad," I answered with a grin, glancing at the Marauder's map surface. "Usually I'm the one who comes for tea. Something the matter?"
"Quite so," Dumbledore agreed amenably, "Ah, quite the interesting charmwork," his eyes glinted with vivid interest as he came to a halt by the side of the table. "Though I fear it is the kind of object that should be best used sparingly, would you not agree?"
"It's not mine," I answered. "I asked Harry to loan it to me for a while," I continued. "He was under the effects of a Love Potion, so I threw one to the wolves and the other to the eternal shame of the infirmary."
Dumbledore shook his head, ever gently, "It is in the nature of youth to experiment with things beyond their comprehension. I am also lead to believe that many books from the Restricted Section have disappeared. Some were quite dangerous, and I felt the need to ask you first if, perhaps, you saw where they might have gone."
"I might have liberated some of them from the Restricted Section," I acquiesced. "Merely out of concern that unruly hands may grab them first and use them in poor and misguided attempts at my person, which would have then forced my hand in retaliation." I shrugged helplessly. "It's not like I wouldn't have returned them, but why give the enemy bullets, when you can steal them instead?"
"That is an interesting way of saying that you did, indeed, take books from the Restricted Section," Dumbledore exhaled. "You will find that there are punishments for doing that kind of thing, son."
"Understandable," I nodded. "Then, I will accept those punishments."
"And the books will be returned?" Dumbledore asked next.
"Only to those that I know won't use them," I answered. "Since I've been punished, it comes to term that I get to keep that which forced the punishment upon me, no?"
Dumbledore sighed, and rolled his eyes precisely once. He then quietly looked around, slightly puzzled. "Quite the good charmwork in keeping them from coming when called," he muttered. "That will be ten points for Ravenclaw, but I do fear you need to return them. They are not your property, but the school's."
"I do not want them to be my property either," I answered nonchalantly, "But I cannot risk them being free to cause harm to the school, or its students."
"Hogwarts can protect itself just fine," Dumbledore acquiesced. He then quietly extended his fingers, and a chair floated down right by his side. Another ended up gently pulling up behind me, and as we both sat down, his eyes twinkled at the sight of sherbet lemons and lemon-tea appearing in front of us. "You see, son, I understand what you are going through. It is a conversation we should have done this summer, but I never got around to it."
I blinked, and took a sip of tea.
"I have found in my considerably long life that fear is, perhaps, the greatest impairment to a wizard's good judgment," as he said that, I snorted. "Though some wizards and witches may lack common sense, fear all too easily motivates people into committing acts they believe are in their right to do for the..." his voice softened, but only ever so slightly. If I hadn't been on the lookout for a sentence like that, or for a word like that, I wouldn't have even been able to pick on to it, "Greater good, but that greater good isn't really for the benefit of everyone. It is merely for the benefit of those who are afraid, so that they may feel safe. And, if that feeling of safety comes through taking away the ability of choice from others...then you are not acting like a good man, but like a tyrant."
"But what's wrong in preventing people from choosing a bad option?" I retorted.
"It isn't, if you could guarantee me that anyone touching a specific book would end up irredeemably evil, but there is a reason books in the Restricted section are merely Restricted unless a professor writes a permission slip for them," Dumbledore replied. "Sometimes professors may make mistakes, or not properly judge the students in front of them," he continued, "However," he stressed out, "We must allow them the ability to choose, for if we do not, and pick the easy way over the right way, we risk becoming something far more horrifying; the very same thing we seek to destroy."
"That doesn't really convince me," I muttered. "Some of those books contain nothing more than spells meant for gratuitous torture, and deadly curses that serve no purpose but to elicit fear and pain in others," I scrunched my eyebrows. "I understand they should be learned, so that they can be fought. However, I cannot understand why we should let children make that informed decision."
Dumbledore took a sip of tea. "Because we cannot keep a guiding hand over a child's back forever," he muttered. "We can but hope they have seen where we hope to lead them, and pray they reach that destination safely. Perhaps they will surprise us, perhaps they will give us something we did not think was possible, or perhaps they may indeed disappoint us, but look at me, and tell me it is not fear that motivates you." He glanced at me, a gentle smile on his old face. "Tell me it's not fear of the unknown, fear for the what-ifs and the maybe, tell me that, son, and I will accept that you speak with wisdom motivated by a long time of careful thinking."
I steepled my fingers together, and took a deep breath. They're evil because they're evil, they're evil because they've been made to be evil, two-dimensional characters without life breathed into them. They're simply fools that will end up horribly dead one way or the other. I am keeping myself on the Light side of this Wizarding society by preventing evil from striking at me, and those near me. "I...I don't have anything," I admitted, much to my shame. "I should give them a chance, but..." I shouldn't. I really shouldn't.
What if they hurt someone I cared for through the use of those books? They'd make their choice, and I'd lose the people dear, and close to me.
If they did that, I wouldn't stop at them.
I would end their bloodlines.
I would destroy their society.
I would rip, tear, and shred their precious Pureblood Twenty-Eight families. I would destroy them so utterly, they'd never be able to recover from it.
"I'm scared of what they might do to my friends," I croaked that out, a bitter chuckle escaping my throat. "The thought of something happening to them is...it's enough to-"
"I can easily forgive a child being scared of the dark," Dumbledore acquiesced, "the real tragedy would be a man afraid of the light," he continued, a small chuckle leaving his lips. "May I have the books delivered back to the Restricted library once more, son?"
I snapped the fingers of my left hand, and with a flutter, a veritable mound of books ended up neatly piled up by our side. Dumbledore looked at the titles, and then sighed. "What will poor Minerva think," he muttered.
"She doesn't have to know?" I hazarded.
"You will still be punished for taking books out of the Restricted Section," Dumbledore said, sipping peacefully his tea. "Make no mistake."
I gave a quiet nod. "That's fine," I said. "Can I ask something that's been on my mind for a while, though?"
At Dumbledore's nodding, I asked the question meant to open the can of worms in the best way possible. "What happened to Hagrid? I'm a bit worried."
"He unfortunately had a few mishaps on his way back from his summer vacation," Dumbledore acquiesced. "Since he'll probably return in February or March at the earliest, it was felt prudent to merely hire Professor Grubbly-Plank for the rest of the school year."
I groaned. "So it's actually going to be a full year of studying on books?" I hung my head low. "Fine," I muttered. "What about the Order of the Phoenix then? Why is it so important Sirius would tell Harry and friends, but you've left me in the dark about it?"
Dumbledore's expression looked, ironically enough, every bit like that of the cat having been discovered eating the canary. Though in this case, it was sprinkled with elderly amusement and also incredible surrender at Sirius Black's large mouth and inability to keep a secret.
"It is something you, and Mister Potter as well as his friends, should not concern yourselves with," he said in the end. "Thus, I am reasonably sure something extremely headache inducing will happen before the end of the year, but even so, as foolish as this elderly barmy coot can be, I will hold on hope that nothing untoward will happen."
I snickered, and rolled my eyes. "Melodramatic."
Dumbledore's eyes twinkled in reply.
My amusement was cut short, though, by the end of the week.
Slughorn's parties weren't that bad of a thing, unless you were literally relegated to preciously beautiful wallpaper.
The positive thing of being a beautiful wallpaper was that people would sometime stop by to admire you, and then move on to this or that other important character to impress. The sad thing was that Megan had tried, in her own way, to make presentations. It hadn't really worked out since Slughorn had mastered the art of sending people elsewhere while making it sound like a perfectly polite thing to do.
So there I was, by the buffet, quietly sipping a goblet of punch.
Perhaps it was the punch speaking in the back of my head, but if Slughorn wished to play the game of willfully ignoring me -and there could be no doubt there was some willfulness to it- then it was apparent I needed to get an answer out of him.
I'd put the fear of myself into his bones...
...quoth the Raven, wallpaper Nevermore!