Chapter Eight of 'Kairos Amid the Ruins'- Intrigues of Love
Chapter Seven.
Chapter One.
Title: Kairos Amid the Ruins (8/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Orion Black, Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald, mentions of various canon pairings
Content Notes: Time travel, heavy angst, Harry mentoring Severus, violence, gore, minor character deaths, AU
Rating: R
Summary: Harry’s attempt to time travel and fix the past went badly awry. Time shattered, and the various pieces of the universe clung to each other as best they could. Harry finds himself in 1961, with Albus Dumbledore the Minister for Magic, Gellert Grindelwald his loving husband, Voldemort newly defeated…and Severus Snape being proclaimed the Boy-Who-Lived.
Author’s Note: This is going to be a long story, focusing on Harry mentoring Severus as the Boy-Who-Lived, with flashbacks to an alternate World War II. The Harry-Severus mentorship will remain gen. However, the romantic pairings are a prominent part of the story. The word “Kairos” comes from the Greek, meaning a lucky moment, or the right moment, to act.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eight-Intrigues of Love
“You still haven’t identified the time traveler that we sensed a few years ago?”
Albus shook his head and took off his cloak with a grimace. With a hiss, it landed on the hook next to the grey one that Gellert usually wore when he went outdoors. “The only good thing I can conclude from that is it’s someone who is making such small changes that they’re undetectable.” He sat down in the chair across the kitchen table from Gellert, who had a hot pork pie in front of him. “Where did you get that?”
Gellert gave him the smug look that he wore even when asleep. “I hired a house-elf.”
Albus narrowed his eyes. “They are not often for sale.”
“No. But there was someone who thought his elves deserved a new home, since he wouldn’t be able to offer them one much longer.” Gellert turned to the side and called before Albus could question him on that. “Izzy!”
A female house-elf appeared. Albus blinked. He had never seen one dressed like this, in a spiraling confection of silver gauze that hid her waist and her breasts but left the rest of her skin bare and shining green. Nor had he seen one who regarded him with such a haughty look in her eye.
“Mr. Albus is being late for dinner,” Izzy said. She made it sound as though he had just failed to defeat an opponent in a duel.
“I didn’t know what time it was,” Albus said, and then stopped. Was he really excusing himself to a house-elf?
Apparently, he was, because Izzy gave the barest snort that indicated she was graciously allowing herself to be mollified. “Mr. Albus will be on time in the future,” she said, which she made sound like a prediction made by Professor Shadow at Hogwarts. “Now Mr. Albus will go clean his hands.”
Albus looked down. His hands looked fine, as they should when he’d been handling paperwork all day. “What’s wrong with them?”
“Washing hands for dinner is what civilized beings be doing since the dawn of time.”
Albus blinked and went into the bathroom. As he was running water over his hands, and pondering how little soap he could get away with, he heard a throat cleared behind him and glanced over his shoulder. Gellert was leaning on the wall, the definition of concerned.
“I don’t think Izzy would like it very much if you showed up to her table with wet hands that haven’t been thoroughly cleaned,” he said innocently.
Albus shook his head and reached for the soap. “You let someone flee Britain and bought his house-elf to help him escape?”
“I assure you that I didn’t have much choice in the matter. Izzy took one look at me and declared that her place was with me. And she said something that made me curious.” Gellert leaned forwards to sniff the side of Albus’s neck, and Albus sighed and dabbed soap there, too. “She said it was the nature of time that had brought her to me.”
Albus caught his breath and met his lover’s eyes in the mirror. “Then she knows something about the time traveler?”
“I wasn’t able to confirm that so far, but I wouldn’t be surprised.” Gellert considered the side of his neck for a moment and nodded. “And you know that house-elves have powerful magic of their own that some wizards disregard. It wouldn’t surprise me to know that whoever this is, he neglected to hide his activities from a house-elf.”
“That is true,” Albus murmured. He picked up the towel and dried the side of his neck, then began to wash his beard. “I will be most interested to see what happens when Izzy serves us dinner.”
*
Dinner was an exquisite turbot in a butter sauce that Albus had never eaten before, despite how many years he’d been alive. He sat back in his seat with a long sigh and nodded to Izzy when she would have Vanished the dishes. “Will you sit with us and talk for a while, Izzy? I would like to get to know the newest member of our household.”
Izzy tilted her head and watched him from several different angles, then disappeared, appeared beside his chair, and looked at him from that way, too. “You be wanting to ask Izzy about the nature of time,” she said, and waved her hand. A small chair appeared next to Albus’s. Izzy climbed into it and carefully rearranged the silver gauze around herself. “Luckily, Izzy be wanting to talk with you.”
Albus gave Gellert a careful glance and saw him smiling as if everything had gone exactly the way he wanted it to. Then again, he always looked like that. Albus sipped at the dry white wine Izzy had served with the fish and nodded. “All right. Thank you, Izzy. What did you mean when you said that you had come to Gellert because of the nature of time?”
“Time be different a short while ago.” Izzy shrugged and sipped what looked to be water infused with some kind of green potion. “It be breaking and reforming. Before that, Izzy be working for Rhysling family. That family be ceasing to exist, and you be coming into existence, and Izzy be finding you.”
Albus found himself staring at Gellert across the table. For once, the smug expression had disappeared from his lover’s face. Albus swallowed and said, as calmly as he could, “Time has already broken and reformed?”
“It be breaking and reforming when a time traveler come back,” Izzy said, and enjoyed her water. “Not that it be all his fault. There be other forces at work that he not be knowing about. But before this, you were being Professor at Hogwarts, Mr. Albus, and Mr. Gellert be languishing in prison.” She frowned at Gellert. “Languishing,” she repeated, as if she thought they might not have understood her. “Izzy be liking this reality better.”
Albus closed his eyes, overwhelmed. Of course he had thought of staying at Hogwarts and teaching Transfiguration. He’d enjoyed that for a few years. But he’d seen that he was hiding, in a way. Avoiding politics and telling everyone that he was just a professor when he had the power to do something about it. Pretending he couldn’t do anything was as evil, in his eyes, as committing the crimes.
“What prison was I in?” Gellert whispered. “Azkaban?”
“No.” Izzy gave him what looked like a slightly pitying look, except there was so much exasperation mixed with it. “Nurmengard. You be not making a good decision when you build that prison, Mr. Gellert. You be making stupid decision.”
Albus controlled the impulse to laugh, especially since Gellert looked close to mortally offended. He cleared his throat. “If what you’re saying is true, Izzy, then we can’t follow the Ministry’s directives when dealing with time travelers after all.”
Gellert shot him a stare, but Izzy only shook her head, and made the turquoise earrings Albus hadn’t consciously realized she was wearing clash. “Izzy not be knowing what that directive is. Izzy be dealing with civilized wizards.”
“Right. It says that any time traveler is to be captured, neutralized, made to reverse their actions if possible, and then killed.”
Izzy drew herself up, and her ears quivered and stood straight out. “Izzy be knowing that Ministry wizards not be civilized,” she said, and then took a deep breath that seemed to use most of the air in the room. “She not be realizing that they be stupid also.”
“Doesn’t it matter that I’m the Minister for Magic?” Albus asked, intrigued despite himself with what she would make of that.
She cast him a deeply disgruntled look. “You be living in a house with Izzy. There be hope for you.”
Albus laughed despite himself, and then stopped as Gellert’s hand clamped down on his. Gellert was breathing hard enough to remind Albus of the dragon he had once wanted to turn into.
“You’re saying that we should return to the timeline where I’m imprisoned and you’re a useless professor at Hogwarts, Albus? I suppose that I know what our bond really means to you, then.”
Albus sighed. “I didn’t say that. I said that we shouldn’t do that, in fact. But it is what the Ministry protocols mandate when dealing with a time traveler. You helped me come up with some of those laws, Gellert.”
“I didn’t know that…I didn’t know time travelers had that sort of power.”
“You suspected it, or why did we outlaw the use of time travel magic and any research into it?”
Gellert took in a deep breath that he held. Then he met Albus’s eyes and released it all at once. “I always anticipated that they would seek to destroy the reality we lived in,” he murmured, leaning for a moment against Albus. “I never knew that they might have created it. Do you truly want to destroy the reality we have now because it’s not the original one?”
Albus touched Gellert’s hair, and shook his head. “No. Although we might still need to find this time traveler. What if he does it again, and shatters the timeline further, or sends us back to what we were before? What if this was an accident, and he’s seeking to restore the status quo?”
Gellert shuddered and leaned back to stare at him. “That would be the worst of all possible worlds.”
Albus nodded. “And we have this possible world, and I’m rather enamored of it.” He basked in the smile he received. “So. We need to find him, and convince him to cease and desist.” He turned to face Izzy. “Can you find him?”
“Izzy be sensing the trail of what he did, but not the exact position he be taking now,” Izzy admitted with something that Albus thought was her own version of mortal offense. Then again, a house-elf didn’t like to have her competency doubted. “She can point you in one direction, though.”
“Please do so, Izzy.”
“He be trying to make up for some of what he done. He be worried about the children. If Mr. Albus be looking at people who hired new teachers or tutors recently…” Izzy let the words trail off suggestively.
“That is a good direction,” Albus said, and he felt a small surge of hope. Who knew? If this man was worried about the children he had harmed, then he might not be as evil or self-centered as time travelers often were. “Do you think he’s been hired at Hogwarts?”
Izzy shrugged. “It could be, Mr. Albus. The trail be running out in the middle of Diagon Alley.” She finished her water with a deep gesture and then waved her hand at the dishes, making them fly into the kitchen. A second later, she disappeared with a sharp pop, marking the end of the conversation.
“Why do you want to find him, then, if you think that this is the best of all possible worlds?” Gellert asked softly, letting his hand rest on Albus’s shoulder.
“Because he might think that he needs to repair this, if he regrets what he did.”
Gellert thought about it for a moment, then nodded with a small sigh. “You, of course, aren’t hoping to control him. You’re hoping to speak with him and convince him.”
“Yes. And I’ll tolerate no private conversations with him once we find him, Gellert.”
Gellert laughed softly, shaking his head. “You can’t still think that I hold to the same beliefs that I did when you fought me in the war? Especially now that even in a different timeline, I know I would have lost.”
Albus watched him steadily. What he didn’t want to say aloud was that he feared, in some part of himself that was always vigilant, that Gellert might want to change the timeline into a world where he had succeeded.
*
“Did you think I wouldn’t find out?”
Mariana turned away from the nursery where Severus was asleep in a regular bed, having outgrown the cot a while ago now, and nodded to Seneca. She would have been cringing in fear most of the time, but honestly, she was ready to defend herself. “Good evening, Seneca. Find out what?”
“That you have been taking the boy out of the house. For what reasons, I don’t know yet.” Seneca was smiling, his hands gripping his wand and the doorframe. He leaned towards her as if he meant to loom, although he had never been so much taller than she that that was a possibility. “You are a traitor, Mariana.”
Although it would make no difference in the end, Mariana gave in to one temptation. She laughed, and watched the lines of her husband’s face alter into shock. She shook her head a little. “I followed your lead when it came to Eileen, and what happened? She ran away from home because she couldn’t stand you. What did you think would happen with someone you mistreated so badly, Seneca? Let alone a delicate child, a high-strung one who wanted your attention so badly? You treated her exactly as you wished, and we lost her. Of course I wasn’t going to follow your lead when it came to Severus.”
“You are-” Seneca seemed at a loss for words. “You cannot be such a child, Mariana.”
“No. I am standing up for children.” Mariana still felt a tremor of fear as her husband leaned towards her with his wand visibly lifted, but the time spent with Harry and watching the way he answered uncomfortable questions and faced his fears for Severus had given her the courage to do this. “And you are the one who has mistaken your own desires for objective reality. I won’t let you ruin Severus the way you ruined Eileen.”
Seneca shook his head slowly, not absorbing the words, Mariana knew. There had never been a hope of that. “Mariana…what exactly did you hope to achieve by telling me this? You know that I am more powerful and faster and crueler than you are. And you are going to suffer for this.”
His emphasis on the word still made the sharp fluttering in her chest worse, but Mariana had one weapon she had never told him about, and wouldn’t have to now. As Seneca moved closer, she whispered, “Tempus.”
Seneca laughed. “A Time-”
And then he flung his hands up in front of his face, and screamed.
Mariana knew exactly what he was seeing, since she had been exposed to it often as a child until she learned it. It was the second wandless gift of the Peverell bloodline, besides finding time travelers: to see into the whirlwind of time and the crossing universes, a beautiful picture once one got used to it, but disorienting chaos until then.
Seneca would be seeing thousands of versions of himself at the moment, and he would see them suffering and dying as well as succeeding. His mind wouldn’t be able to process it.
But he was right that he was crueler than she. Mariana had done it only to buy time, not to really hurt him. As he flailed and screamed, Mariana stepped up to him, aimed her wand, and waited for his panicked eyes to meet hers.
“Obliviate,” she whispered, gently.
*
“And you are sure that divorcing your wife is the best choice you can make for the Family?”
Orion lifted his chin. The capital letter when his father spoke of the Family had never been more audible. He nodded. “Yes, Father. Walburga embarrassed the Blacks in a public place. She cast an Unforgivable. She could have hit Sirius or Regulus. She would have ended an alliance relationship with the Potter family that I’ve been working on for years. Or she might have been arrested by the Aurors, and we would have had to spend political power and money on getting her out of prison that she wouldn’t even repent having cost us. It’s time.”
Arcturus turned so that he was watching Walburga. His father had been confined to a chair for the past two years, ever since one of the Black family’s ancient enemies had managed to ambush him and hit his legs with a Pulsating Bone Curse that meant the bones would only shatter when regrown. But that didn’t affect the power of the dark stare that he was leveling Walburga with. “Why did you do this, Walburga?”
“I hate him.”
“Orion?”
“Who else do you think I mean, you senile old man?” Walburga leaned forwards out of the chair Orion had placed her in, a massive black one nearly as big as Arcturus’s, with a low back. “Of course I mean Orion! I expected a husband who would do what I wanted, that’s what Father promised me, and instead I got this bastard!”
Orion drew in his breath, but hid his gladness. Well. That had settled the matter in his favor without a further word.
“Pollux promised you that, did he?” Arcturus smiled, just a little, but it was enough for Walburga’s eyes to widen and for her to shrink back in the chair, as if she had suddenly remembered the kind of man Arcturus was. “I am more than glad, dear daughter-in-law, to tell you that I have granted Orion’s petition. And then you can go and find yourself a husband more to your liking.”
“You-you can’t forbid me from using the name Black!” Walburga yelped, straining against the ropes as Arcturus drew his wand. “That’s the name I was born with!”
“Oh, of course,” Arcturus drawled in a silken voice that brought back a moment of Orion’s childhood, hearing his father speaking like that the morning before one of their enemies “committed suicide.” “But I can take away all access to the vaults belonging to my branch of the family. Your access to your sons. Your access to Orion’s bed and house. And your marriage tie.” He gestured sharply with his wand.
Orion gasped as he felt the marriage between them dissolving. The wedding vows unbound themselves from his magic, and his body felt cleansed and hit and deepened. He sagged a little, but managed to stand upright as Walburga began to wail.
“Tell your father that he should find you something to do,” Arcturus said, as he undid the ropes Orion had used. Walburga staggered to her feet, looking murderous enough to attack, but Orion knew she wouldn’t. The dissolving of the marriage, as the party who had committed the wrong, would weaken her for at least a month. “Something that will not make you cross paths with the senior branch of the Black family again. I should never have permitted this marriage. I can only hope that your weakness has not affected Orion’s sons.”
Walburga walked over to the Floo and departed without a word, which surprised Orion a little. He supposed she had finally learned what the limits were.
He turned back to his father, to find Arcturus studying him with a narrow, skeptical eye. “And how are you planning to reward the man our family has a debt to?” he asked.
Orion straightened his shoulders. “I used the Potential-Sensing Spell on him, Father. If he had attended Hogwarts, he would have been a long-standing ally of the Blacks by now. Or married into the clan.”
Arcturus stared at him. “A half-blood. You think one of us would have willingly married a half-blood?”
Orion stared back steadily. “We do it often, Father.” He hesitated, then added, “I know the truth about Mother’s blood status.”
For a long moment, the air around him literally crackled with ice, the manifestation of his father’s anger. Then Arcturus grunted and looked away, drawing his hand in front of his eyes.
“It is true that she was not the daughter of her mother’s husband,” he said quietly. “Well. And you were clever enough to figure it out.” He glanced back at Orion, and there was the approval Orion had craved and dared to reveal his knowledge for. He continued to stand steady, and Arcturus nodded.
“Then draw this Evanson in however you can, so that we will have to pay less,” he commanded. “And see if you can figure out the pure-blood side of his family, so that we might draw them in as well, or else perhaps put them in our debt for not revealing the existence of an illegitimate child.”
“Father.” Orion bobbed his head and stalked out of his room, more than pleased with how the afternoon had gone.
Will Evanson be?
Orion shrugged a little, smiling to himself. That was for him to know and Evanson to rage futilely against.
Chapter Nine.
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