“There was a boy.”

Silence hung like a thick fog between the two, human occupants of the cluttered sitting room. The woman was neither old enough in age to be classified as “elderly,” nor was she youthful enough in appearance to be considered “young.” She was old at middle-age; a bitter monster of contrasts. Her graying hair caught the firelight in the dim room, forming a halo from the frazzled, flyaway pieces. She pressed her palms against her bruised, aged eyes. The skin on her hands resembled old, thin parchment. Her slender body was bent forward at an odd angle; perhaps from age, or perhaps from grief. The overstuffed armchair in which she sat swallowed her slight frame whole, making her look absolutely tiny. Fire crackled and popped in a fireplace on the far side of the room. Upon the stone façade before it, there lay a white cat, fast asleep and absorbing the warmth. However, the light and the warmth did not reach the two figures sitting only a few feet away. The rest of the room seemed immune to the incandescence surrounding the fireplace. The sole occupants garroted the rest of the room with their murky, dismal mood.

“There is always a boy,” Albus Dumbledore eventually countered. More than just a little sadness played around the edges of his voice. He trained his keen, blue eyes on the woman’s face; she seemed far too weathered for a woman in her fifties. With abrupt, fierce sadness, he realized that she would not have the benefit of living as long as normal, healthy wizards and witches. The great and powerful magic she had once wielded no longer flowed through her veins. The academic within him found her condition fascinating, but guilt immediately flooded his system with the appropriate level of apprehension and horror. On the other hand, if what he suspected was true, her condition might not have been the result of some mutation or illness within. Albus, if he was honest with himself, always had a strong suspicion that an outside force played a role in her sudden magical deficiency.

“He was a very strange boy… He was enchanting too. But that is just scratching a single head on the Hydra when it comes to the mystery and intrigue that surrounds him, now isn’t it, Albus?” The woman seemed to realize that pushing her eyes through the back of her skull was an ineffectual solution to their mutual problem. Her hands rested in her lap, her posture straightened and she met his curious gaze dead on. She must have sensed the insatiable curiosity within him, or noticed a flaw in his normally neutral, impassive face. The wry, amused smile that ghosted across her face unearthed an overabundance of laugh lines and crow’s feet, but somehow it only made her more beautiful.

In his mind, it seemed only a wee time ago that she had been a beautiful young woman, full of energy, life and promise. She had been an extraordinary, clever witch, with an astonishing grasp of her magic. She was born of one of the oldest, finest wizarding families that had existed in Europe; of course the fate of her family was unfortunate, but the fate of many families fell along the same line. He could still remember her throaty, matured voice as it had once been: deep and steady, husky and sultry with youth. It had always seemed a pity to him, how it had gone to waste. Of course, her talent had not exactly gone to waste, and he was sure that she was about to confirm everything he had suspected, and possibly more.

“Go on.” From the tea cart before him, Albus produced two cups of steaming, rich Darjeeling tea. He placed one before her on the wobbly table between them, set one aside for himself, then flourished a tin filled with fresh, buttermilk scones. He uncovered the milk, sugar and honey, but placed them conveniently far away from his sweet tooth.

“I’ve heard, though my contacts were obviously limited,” she took a brief sip, then attacked the sugar, “that he traveled very far; over land, and across seas. Some say he went as far as South America, or the even to the Orient. There were whispers that he’d changed, too, in his travels. I’ve heard he became a monster. Heartless, selfish, corrupt with power was what they told me he’d become. They said he gave up his soul, his humanity… I can’t imagine that.” She mixed many spoons of sugar into her tea as she spoke, stirring occasionally, and sipping it, considering the flavor, and adding some more. When she was satisfied she pushed the sugar away, and gulped down the steaming cup in only moments. “Of course, they mysteriously disappeared, one by one… Perhaps there is truth in it, after all.”

“I find it hard to believe that you," he fixed her with a pointed stare, "of all people, would have a hard time imagining him as a monster. You knew him the best out of all of us. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that you knew him the best.”

This was the part Albus always hated the most. He wanted to pry into her memories. He wanted to know what she knew. He wanted to learn the truth. Alas, truth had an unfortunate penchant to carve people to pieces. She had always been a very kind person. He hated to deceive or hurt someone so kind; not to mention frail. But the thing that Albus believed made him the wizard he was renowned to be, was that he believed in the ruthlessness required to achieve the greater good. At times, though, it was agonizing to be so callous to someone who held barely an inkling of malice.

“He was a million contradictions. He was a little shy in his own strange way, but a natural-born leader at the same time. He could be petulant; very possessive of the things that were his, but I suppose that was a product of his upbringing.” Her eyebrows pulled together for a moment, not in confusion or deep thought, but in an expression that could only be sympathetic pain. She felt compassion for him. “He was confident of his future. Of course I never knew why, but looking back I suppose he knew what would come, what he would become. Even so, he always had this air of utter melancholy around him.”

Albus tried not to let his incredulity show, but knew he failed on some level. The man he remembered was not someone who exuded melancholy; he emanated power and control. He was cocky, yes, but also a bit too careful around authority figures to really come off as innocent. He had his lackeys, but he also had faithful, devoted friends who looked up to him as the key figure within their school house. He did not bother hiding that he was the prince among his friends, although he played it off as though his better, more chivalrous and intellectual qualities had earned him that spot. Melancholy, at least in the eyes of Albus Dumbledore, was quite a stretch.

A single look at his failed moment of neutrality was all it took for her to backtrack; she clarified: “When we spent time alone, Albus, he would be entirely unlike his public persona. Of course, I barely knew his public persona so maybe I’m not one to speak... With the one exception of the Seventh Years’ Snow Ball after the war, he said it was safer for me, for us, to keep everything a secret. Only a few really knew that we were together like that, and I believe that they were my people, not his people. Even so, his public persona, while intimidating, was spotless. He was top of the class, he earned most of his House Points single-handedly, and he was a Prefect and then Head Boy.”

She shook her head, possibly coming to terms with the realization that the boy she had once known had so many different faces. When she spoke again, sorrow weighed heavily upon every syllable, dragging her eyes down to the floor with it. “I barely knew the boy that was infamous within his House. I saw bits and pieces of him, but never enough to put together the larger picture. Or maybe I just refused to see a larger picture. Whenever we were together it was like magic, Albus. I really cannot explain him to you. He was…

“Regardless of what people say or think he was, first and foremost he was human. He was born an innocent child, just like the rest of us!” Her voice was terribly defensive, protective; like a mother protecting a child. “All of his deepest prejudices, his defensive nature, his need for secrecy and lies: it was all learned. He was a product of nurture, or a lack thereof, Albus!” She let out a heavy, whooshing sigh that took the brief fit of temper along with it; she deflated in the process. “It was just this deep, dark sadness that went straight to his soul. It was in his eyes, you know, but he could hide it so well.

"I never understood why I, of all people, recognized it for what it was. I was no one in the grand scheme of things.” A familiar bitterness coated her words. “I was the one they tossed aside in my family, the one they forgot all about. My friends loved me well enough, they always made such a great fuss about me but I was always… I was always on the outside, somehow. I was always left out… in the end…”

“Perhaps, that is the key to what he saw in you.” Albus considered his next words carefully, for they could make or break the woman sitting before him. “Within you he saw vulnerabilities and loneliness, not unlike his own. I daresay that growing up in a place where emotions are only an unwelcome problem or a weakness, and then coming to Hogwarts, to be in Slytherin, where those same standards were upheld. I imagine he had a great deal of practice at hiding things and keeping secrets. I imagine he felt rather safe in your presence. For someone who was always guarded with his thoughts and words, who constantly hid his emotions and actions, who was always on the defense, perhaps you were the eye of the storm for him. You might have been the only quieting, relaxing presence in his entire existence. The only person he could go to when his façade could not stay together.”

Albus nibbled on the edge of a sugar biscuit; his eyes went to the window. Beyond the glass the Muggle suburb where she now lived was small and quiet, calm and empty. Not a single thing stirred. No cars drove by, no one was taking an evening stroll. Nosy neighbors weren’t putting their noses in other peoples’ business. The street lamps glowed faintly; he had seen no need to extinguish them, to hide in shadows. Truthfully, he only believed half of what he was saying. Only Merlin could know exactly what went through that boy’s head when he was in school. Nevertheless, Albus did not quite possess the level of cruelty required to tell this small, exhausted woman exactly what he believed. The man she once loved, the man she possibly still did love to this day, almost certainly saw her uncertainty and vulnerability coupled with her extraordinary power, and exploited the former in order to gain access to, and eventually harness, the latter. One just doesn’t go about dropping such destructive honesty into civil conversation.

“I can’t say that I always saw eye-to-eye with him. I wasn’t exactly easy to get along with at times, but he never seemed to tire of me. When I wasn’t biting his head off for some offhanded, cruel comment he made, or when he wasn’t chiding me about my lack of focus, or my attitude towards every other male at Hogwarts, or my apparent indifference towards him, we actually talked about everything under the sun, and then some. He could be very wise, at times. He knew things, understood the human condition a little too well, I’d say.” Her voice was tired, strained; her fingers picked at the frayed edges of the upholstery on the seat cushion. He did not know whether her hands were trembling out of fear of what she knew he was going to ask of her, or exhaustion.

“Bits of it, yes,” Albus agreed. “He understood pain, and suffering and the fire it could light within someone. He understood the pleasure and gratification of the praise and coddling he was given. He understood that that in order to bend people to his will he needed to bestow the correct dosage of both pain and pleasure at just the right moment. He understood loneliness and abandonment; the value of a few strong allies versus the value of being your one and only ally. It is entirely possible that you changed his perspective, changed the strategy of the game within his head, somehow. Sadly, we may never know exactly who he was, or how he felt about anything…” Her eyes, though they were guarded once again, could not hide the blatant hope and passion that she obviously had for the man in question. Albus sighed, and for just a moment, the briefest of seconds, he felt the weight of the world pressing against him. He knew that there would be difficult decisions to make, that people would suffer, good people would die, and that once again the future of the world would rest on the shoulders of a boy who would suffer so much before he truly, really suffered the way life had intended him to.

“Forgive me, please.” Her breathing was coming in uneven lurches now. “Sometimes, it is so hard to think of him as a monster, as a killer, as a cold-blooded murderer. Even now, even after everything he’s done. I—I loved him once and… I think you understand how powerful love can be. It can bend time and space, it can alter and shape memory into something else entirely.” A small sob passed her lips, but she quickly covered her mouth and took deep, shaky, rattling breaths.

“You love him still,” Albus stated, rather obviously. She looked up at him, misery written plainly across her maturing face, confirming what he knew. “It is only natural. He may have betrayed you but you did no such thing. Your love never faltered. It never wavered, even in the face of a betrayal so deep it should have killed you. It almost did kill you! You lost your entire family for him. You gave him everything. I think it is a testament to your hope and faith that you never stopped.” He understood. He empathized. Sometimes, the monsters that lived under your bed became the only companions you really ever had the in the long, lonely nighttime.

“You… speak as if you know.” She considered him for a moment. Her eyes narrowed and became uncharacteristically perceptive. “Perhaps,” she said slowly, considering her words as she spoke them, “you do know how it feels to be betrayed by the one person you trust most. To let them destroy you, to destroy yourself in the process.” Her eyes softened, and he felt momentarily uncomfortable that she knew so much about him. But again, he so easily forgot, her family was one of the older pureblood families, just as his had been; the closets had so many skeletons. “But it is not for me to say what you know or do not know. You know many things, Albus; it is why everyone admires you so much.”

“I hardly know that many things,” he replied, flippantly. Reaching into his inner robe pocket he pulled out a small bag of Lemon Drops. It was a habit of his when his mind wandered into the dark, forbidden places. The Lemon Drops served as a way to focus his senses on something tart and sweet; the warring sensations within his mouth took his mind off most other things. It was oddly pleasant, the sensation, and it worked each and every time. He immediately felt better. He offered her the tangy sugar candies but she declined with a polite shake of her head. He needed to turn the conversation back to her, but he knew how to wait it out. He was an expert at the silence game; he had a great deal of experience with it. He sucked on his Lemon Drop harder. The silence stretched on between them for a long while. The pleasant crackling of the fire helped them both relax, the glow finally seemed to stretch past them and spill out into the rest of the room.

“At one point in his life he was loved,” the old woman finally said. She stated it almost as a challenge, as if daring him to refute it. “Sometimes, I believe that in his own unique, strange way... Well, sometimes I really do think he loved me. He loved me to the best of his ability. I’m not saying it was a great and epic love story. I might have thought… but… no he made sure I would never feel that way again. I am just stating the facts: I loved him, and in my opinion, he loved me too, in his own, perverse way. Or maybe he coveted me; maybe I was just a prize in his weird plot. But he protected me, Albus, from danger, and from the cruelty of others, sometimes he even saved me from myself.”

“To love,” Albus said, thoroughly enjoying his Lemon Drop, “and to be loved: I think those are the greatest things we learn. Not just as wizards, but as humans; wizards and Muggles alike. Love, and the things we endure for love, it is the greatest magic we will ever know or do. It is the only magic common amongst us all. We are all capable of it, even if we think the ability is lost.” The white cat by the fireplace stretched its long, lithe feline muscles and lazily sauntered towards him. It gracefully leapt up into his lap, and instantly began to purr softly, as if to demonstrate his point.

“Tell me,” he finally asked of her, “how it all began.” For a moment she looked pained, and he wondered if, like him, she wished to hold her most precious memories close to her own heart. “I assure you, I won’t be sharing this story with anyone. I’ll even swear a Wizard’s Oath if you would like. I need to know exactly what happened, and exactly how he managed it. When he comes back,” a surge of pity swept through him as the surprise, hope and desolation played across her face, “because I don’t believe that he is actually gone, I will need to know. I will need to be prepared.”

“I know, Albus.” Grim resignation twisted the corners of her mouth downward. “I know you will have to destroy him someday. And I will do everything in my power to help you. I know he’s not the boy or the man I once knew. Love may be blind, but it is not entirely brainless.” She sighed, stood on long, thin flimsy legs and shuffled towards the kitchen. “I might as well put up another pot of tea. It’s not a short story, and I can’t really say it has a happy ending…” As a new pot bubbled away in the small adjacent kitchen, she began to speak. “Well, I suppose it all started my after sorting my first night at Hogwarts. That night was the first time I saw him…”

She told him everything; every detail, even the intimate ones. She needed him to understand that there really had been love, that she had not been fooled or duped into believing otherwise. He listened, understanding her story, and understanding the boy that had somehow, managed to slip through his fingers so easily. She finished with a long, drawn sigh, covering her face again with her aged, papery hands. He stood to leave, wanting her to have time alone, but he could not help but admire her walls. The hundreds, maybe thousands of pictures that lined every wall in the home, were surprisingly still: the laughter and the smiles, the odd expressions, the formal poses, were all frozen, non-magical. Many of the faces were familiar, her classmates or her family, people that Albus had taught, and who he now worked with and helped.

“Do you really think he’s still alive?” She didn’t bother masking her optimism. What was the point now that he knew everything? He knew all about her secret, vile yearning for one of the most notorious, dark wizards to still be alive, even as everyone else celebrated his death. He knew the story about how they met, and, there was no respectful way to put it, how he had seduced her with his beautiful angel’s face and his sincere-sounding, compassionate words. He knew all the sordid details about how she surrendered to him when he finally asked it of her. He understood exactly how she let herself love him completely and utterly, about how she gave him every, last shimmering piece of her soul. She had let him destroy her, and yet she still longed for his lips every night. Albus was not exactly a stranger to the concept. He knew she would only face more pain in the future, when the reality of destroying him once and for all would sink in.

“I do not doubt it, my dear,” Albus said gravely. “I daresay you may see him again someday.”

“He won’t be the man I knew, Albus. He ceased being that man a long time ago.” She used her sleeve to wipe her face, and stood. Although she was petite, a bit wiry and frail, she still had an odd presence about her.

“Am I correct in saying that you will be joining our cause?” He could not force her into it, but if she was willing to join, he would not stop her. Her insight was invaluable.

“I can’t say I’ll be much help, but I’m in. Anything you need me to do, Albus, I’ll do it.” Her old, fierce smile flitted across her face.

Albus smiled back, his eyes twinkling in the darkness like a cat’s. “Oh, I expect we’ll find something for you to do, my dear. I already have a few things in mind...”

When she was sure that he was gone, the woman began to straighten her small, tidy home. She cleaned up the teacups and saucers, fed her cats, checked all the doors and windows and made sure that they were locked and secure. All without magic, as she had done for the past thirty years. Finally, slowly, she made her way up the stairs towards her small bedroom. She washed and dressed for sleep, turned down her bed, and lay in the darkness for a long time. Insomnia was not uncommon for her, but she knew that this was not the insomnia that came with age or interrupted cellular chemical reactions. She did not want to sleep because she did not want to dream. She knew that her dreams would taunt her, tantalize her with memories from times past.

She had been young, and stupid, and in love. She allowed a boy with such moving beauty and endless cunning to seduce her into believing in a rose-colored fairy tale. She knew now that fairy tales were sugarcoated stories told to little girls to skew their perspective on life, love and happiness. In the original stories the prince was not always so charming or guileless, the princess was not always so lucky, and the monsters and evil creatures were not always on the outside, but instead they came from within. Sometimes a princess was better off in a long, ageless sleep or safe in a tall tower with a witch than in the arms of some strange prince.

The woman sighed, and watched the shadows of leaves dance on the wall opposite the window. She still believed, with her entire being, that he loved her, in some weird, sick, twisted way. Perhaps his idea of love had been so perverse that it seemed only natural to do what he had done. Or perhaps she was still holding on to the rosy ideals because it was simply too hard to face the betrayal. Perhaps it was too hard to believe that she had trusted him so implicitly, trusted him with her heart, and then her body, and finally her soul, while he exploited and benefited from her. Perhaps it was too hard to accept that he probably laughed to himself, or smirked in that infuriating, superior manner, all while destroying the very essence of her being. Perhaps she should stop dwelling upon it over and over again and simply sleep.

Dumbledore had plans for her, and whatever they were, she would do them willingly. She would not lie to herself about why she would do them either: she wanted to be there, if he ever came back, she wanted to be there, to be in the know, and to see him. Perhaps she wanted to confront the man who had destroyed her so easily, the man she essentially helped create. Or perhaps she really just wanted to fall into his arms and die in that same moment, to never confront him but to simply die without knowing either way, holding onto her crazy beliefs. Either way, she would be entrenching herself into the world that had rejected her so many years ago. Perhaps she would find out the exact fate of her mother and father, or her brothers, and friends. There was so little she knew, and so much had happened.

Unable to find a peaceful sleep, the woman lifted herself out of bed, aiming to get more work done in the hopes of exhausting herself. She wrapped herself in her tartan dressing gown, threw on some slippers, and padded down the stairs. A flash of color caught her eye as she passed a window in her sitting room. Her pulse raced for a moment, but she immediately brushed it off as an animal, or some color reflected from a passing car. Once in her kitchen she went about cracking eggs and mixing flour in order to make brioche for the morning. The white cat, a kitten really, weaved between her legs restlessly as she worked to make the dough. When it was done she placed it in a bowl, covered it and shoved a few things around to make room for it in her refrigerator. The dough would rise and in the morning she would bake it. It was as simple as that, and yet complex enough to keep her mind occupied. She cleaned the small kitchen quickly, but could not yet feel the grip of exhaustion pulling her towards the bed. She decided to try again, regardless of the outcome.

The same flash of color caught her attention once more as she passed through the sitting room. She froze, and stared beyond the window. Her street was completely empty; absolutely devoid of life. Moving closer to the window, she wished, for the first time in many years, that she still had a wand. She dimmed the solitary lamp that was lit as she passed it. Beyond the glass she saw nothing. Except for the patches lit by golden-orange street lamps, the rest of the neighborhood was painted silver by the almost-full moon. Nothing matched the color she saw. Looking both left, and right, she could see nothing moving; not a single suspicious shadow, or a traitorous looking bush. She relaxed again, realizing that she was imagining horrors in her mind.

Her attention then snapped away from the world beyond the window, and instead focused on the glass itself. A bubble of horror pushed its way up the woman’s abdomen as she took in the reflection. She stared down at her hands, papery thin and old. Something didn’t seem right. One of these perceptions was incorrect…

Red hair, creamy skin, freckles smattering every inch of available skin…

Graying hair, papery skin, liver spots and wrinkles…

She stared at her reflection in the window, her mouth hung open in horror. She stared at her hands again, feeling the weakness, the fragility of the bones. Then she stared at her utterly horrified reflection in the window, and then looked back at her hands. Her hands were all wrong. Staring again at the face in the window, the face that should have been her own, Ginny Weasley opened her mouth to scream. Her reflection mirrored this, and the horror burst forth in a single, deafening, high-pitched scream.

With a cry of horror Ginny Weasley threw herself out of her bed, immediately vaulted across her room towards her vanity mirror, and stared at her reflection for a long, hard moment. Her pounding heart slowed as she saw herself, just she was supposed to be: red hair, creamy skin, freckles smattering every inch of available skin. A cursory glance at her hands produced neither papery skin, nor did she have have liver spots or wrinkles. Everything was normal, and looked exactly the same as the night before, when she was going to bed. She focused on taking deep, even breaths while waiting for her pulse to return to a normal rate.

The dream was already fading from her mind with alarming speed. She tried to hold on to it, knowing that it was important. She immediately tapped a secret compartment built into her little, vintage vanity and pulled out a small, black diary. It did not write back to her, she had tested this many times. She tried to write the things she wanted to remember: she had been old, Dumbledore had been there, and she told him a story about… about something very important. It had been about a boy. The contents of her dream were gone. Frustrated, she wrote a little note about the brioche and the cat, and the reflection, then shut her diary and slipped it back where it belonged. Something in the back of her mind nibbled away at her subconscious but Ginny gave up trying to figure it out after about ten minutes of headache-inducing thought. The dream, or memory, or whatever it was, eluded her for the time being and there was no point beating herself over the head about it when she had a million other things to do.

Ginny grimaced in horror as she checked the calendar. It was the first of July. Harry would be arriving that day if everything went smoothly. Hermione had arrived only a few days after term let out. Apparently she had stopped at home long enough to do something to hide her parents, and gather her things. She and Ron spent most of their time having clandestine meetings in the attic, probably discussing how much they wanted to snog one another but how they couldn’t possibly do it since they had the mating habits of Horklumps (complete with spiny bristles). It drove Ginny completely round the bend, having to live in a cloud of their awkward, unfulfilled, teenage hormones. Add in a dash of Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived to Tease Her with his useless chivalry and mixed emotions and suddenly you have a Ginny-specific cloud of Garroting Gas made from the fresh and awkward fumes of teenage desire and total failure.

Whether her general displeasure was brought on by her inability to cope with the idiots around her, or just eerie, perfect premonition, Ginny Weasley suddenly knew, with almost perfect clarity, that she was not going to enjoy the rest of her summer. For that reason, she opted to crawl back under her covers for a few more hours. She decided, right as she fell into easy, dreamless sleep, that she might as well enjoy it while she could get it, right?