July 26th, 1995 – Hogwarts Castle, Headmaster's Office
Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts; Order of Merlin, First Class; Grand Sorcerer; Chief Warlock of the Wizengamot; Supreme Mugwump of the International Confederation of Wizards; and Champion Ten-Pin Bowler, stood at his window looking thoughtfully down on the Hogwarts grounds.
For the past four weeks he had been the busiest wizard in Britain. With the return of Voldemort and Cornelius Fudge's bullheaded insistence that such a thing simply wasn't possible, Dumbledore had been forced to put his plans into motion with utmost secrecy. He had been preparing for the Dark Lord's return for many years, but the current state of affairs had still caught him off guard.
He had expected Voldemort to return this year, but he had also expected Harry Potter to finally die at his hands.
Harry Potter. Dumbledore shook his head in bemusement at the boy. Was it impossible to kill the child? Every year he faced greater dangers and every year he was unprepared for them. And yet here he still was, seemingly indestructible. Harry's account of the duel with Voldemort had shocked him, and, if he were honest with himself, he didn't really understand what had happened after their wands locked.
The aged headmaster wondered for the thousandth time whether his current plans were truly for the greater good, but also for the thousandth time he found no other acceptable alternatives.
Dumbledore looked at the cracked ruby ring in his hands and sighed. In truth, he had no malice in his heart toward young Harry. He was even fond of the boy in his own way, despite the terrible things he had done to manipulate his life. There were certain things that simply had to be done, and it wasn't Dumbledore's fault that fate had singled out Harry for a life of suffering and sacrifice.
In Dumbledore's eyes, that was precisely what fate had done. Harry Potter had been doomed from the moment Sybill Trelawney opened her mouth to speak. The rest had simply followed logically from the seer's terrible proclamation against him.
For Dumbledore had not viewed the prophecy as welcome news: it had indicated that the wizard with the power to defeat the Dark Lord hadn't even been born yet.
That horrifying thought had shaken Dumbledore to his core. Did that mean the wizarding world would be condemned to many more years more of suffering and terror? Did that mean that he himself couldn't take down Voldemort?
When he first heard the prophecy in the autumn of 1979, Voldemort's reign of terror was at its zenith. Though strange disappearances had begun as early as 1970, only in the previous four years had the Dark Lord truly begun terrorizing the wizarding world. Dumbledore believed he could finally put an end to the madness if only the right opportunity presented itself.
The thought that he might be prevented from defeating Voldemort because of a prophecy from Sybill Trelawney had frustrated him to no end. At first he had disregarded it, as Trelawney had a reputation as a charlatan. But month after month of humbling losses to the Death Eaters forced him to take the prophecy seriously. He knew he simply could not allow the entire world to suffer for the next twenty years while Harry Potter and Neville Longbottom were trained up as warriors.
The only solution was to make sure the prophecy was fulfilled as soon as possible.
If one of the boys "must" die at the monster's hand, then so be it. Thereafter the prophecy would become invalid and he could take steps to take down the Dark Lord.
And so Dumbledore had put his plans in motion, his many months of plotting finally culminating on that Halloween night in 1981. But, of course, little Harry had surprised him for the first of many times.
Dumbledore had sent Hagrid to the Potter home expecting him to report the deaths of the entire family. Instead the half-giant had returned with a bawling, bleeding Harry Potter. He had found an enraged Sirius Black at the cottage and Black had told him to take Harry to Dumbledore while he went "hunting for rats." Bewildered by the boy's survival, Dumbledore had scanned the infant's unshielded mind with legilimency to discover what had happened.
What he discovered had sealed Harry's fate: he was destined to be both a hero and a sacrifice.
Dumbledore had watched the child's memory of the events with morbid fascination. He heard rather than saw the death of James Potter. He saw Lily Potter brutally cut down while trying to shield her baby boy. And he watched with dawning horror as he saw the Dark Lord prepare Harry for a ritual with only one purpose.
He had done enough research into dark magic to recognize the runes that Voldemort was using to mark the boy's forehead and chest. He watched the man place Harry in the center of a pentagram surrounded by black candles emitting a sinister light. He heard a guttural chant in a long dead language. This was Dumbledore's greatest fear become reality: Voldemort knew how to create a horcrux. And he was going to use Harry Potter's death to create one.
Dumbledore had watched the ritual in such dread that he forgot to breathe. He saw the Dark Lord complete his chant and level his wand at the baby's forehead. The killing curse was spat with such venom that Dumbledore shuddered.
And then the miracle. The curse reflected off the child's forehead, striking down the Dark Lord! Was this the fulfillment of the prophecy? Dumbledore had been ecstatic.
Retreating from the infant's mind, Dumbledore had examined Harry's scar closely, and he could feel the dark soul magic surrounding it. Sighing, he knew that this awful drama was not yet over. The boy was apparently a horcrux. He had somehow killed the darkest Dark Lord in recent history, but in doing so he had anchored that Dark Lord's soul to this world.
Now more than ever it meant that Harry Potter had to die for Voldemort to be finally defeated.