Cyanide Tooth, a Drabble

[terri_testing]

Summary: Albus sometimes used his brother for the dirty work.

Comments

[oryx_leucoryx]

Does this mean Aberforth will be joining the Alliance soon? (I'm already jumping up and down, figuratively speaking).

[terri_testing]

How obvious!

And yet I had never written it.

Hmmm....

[oryx_leucoryx]

Well, you asked me about it way back when. Aberforth is a natural candidate for the Alliance, but I wasn't sure how Severus would know that. How much was he aware of the conflict between the brothers? But if a scene like this one happened in Alliance-verse then he would have an idea.

[oryx_leucoryx]

More to the point: Aberforth is the Dumbledore with the heart. The other one must have sold his on the wizarding equivalent of ebay. Albus and Tom are such reflections of each other.

[terri_testing]

He sold his heart on Ebay??? Snerk. I'm trying to imagine the price fetched by the square root of minus one.

I have asthma; it's really not a good idea to make me laugh TOO hard. Have mercy, oryx!

And yes, Albus and Tom are great mirrors for each other. it's why, so often, they understand each others' schemes.

Okay, now I've stopped laughing, and now you've got me thjinking about triads.

There's a Dumbledore who's an intellectual, said to be insanely powerful, and said to be eccentric or mad, indifferent to lesser thinkers' reasons.

There's a Dumbledore who's mute, said to be insanely powerful,and said to be uncontrollable, insane, insusceptible to any reason.

There's a Dumbledore who's illiterate, his power disregarded, who disregards reason and laws.

Um?

[condwiramurs]

Oh, this. Yes, I could see it. (Brrr.) In fact, I think you read my mind, because the other day I was playing around with different possibilities for a suicide vow like this for Severus.

[terri_testing]

Well.

It's the obvious solution to the problem.

For those possessed of logic. And desperation.

(i'm not sure I could have made it.)

[lynn_waterfall]

Creepy, but oh so plausible.

The Unbreakable Vow isn't foolproof, because it doesn't *stop* someone from doing/not doing something; it only kills them if they break it. If there was only one secret, and the vow was worded in the right (wrong) way, someone could pass the secret along at the cost of their life.

However, this wording is very good ("good"), and would probably kill Severus at the first crack in his Occlumency. Even if an actual secret was uncovered, it would be one out of many, so it would still be an effective failsafe.

Unless Severus' suddenly dying revealed something. Depends on what Voldemort might learn before the Vow could kill Severus, I guess.

[lynn_waterfall]

I was reading through some old threads on Snapedom, and I had a thought about, well, magic that results in death. (Okay, it isn't especially related, but there isn't a better place to share this idea, since the other thread is years old

[condwiramurs]

I've wondered the same thing (though I've also wondered a bit about the metaphysics of a world where a soul can actually be destroyed, by a physical, and so limited, creature no less....) I could for instance see Severus, in a certain state of despair, wanting to commit or committing suicide by Dementor, assuming he believes in that sort of afterlife. Seeing it as God's last bit of mercy for those otherwise beyond his reach, even.

On the other hand, it opens up interesting possibilities for sacrificial magic for a person who doesn't really fear that they're destined for any sort of hell. What's the difference in impact, for instance, between being willing to sacrifice your life vs being willing to sacrifice your soul?

[oryx_leucoryx]

If we are talking about dementors