The fire was gone.
Only smoke remained, curling low across the stone floor like a ghost unsure of its welcome. It licked around shattered wood and singed feathers, weaving through broken chair legs, lamp stands, and the smoldering remains of what might once have been an IKEA shelving unit.
I didn't speak.
Neither did Dumbledore.
It wasn't awkward.
It was pressure—like the air before a storm. The kind of silence that pressed down on your ribs and curled around your lungs, heavy with what hadn't been said.
I shifted my weight, one hand in my coat pocket, thumb brushing the cool, sharp edge of the mirror shard I'd pocketed earlier. My coat smelled like fire and lemon. My hair was a mess. My boots left soft crunching sounds in the ash and scorched stone as I moved.
Dumbledore, by contrast, looked like he'd just walked out of a Renaissance painting. Robes unburned, posture perfect, eyes like he'd already seen five futures and none of them amused him.
He crouched first, which was weird. Picked up a feather. Turned it in his fingers like it might whisper secrets.
Then, without looking at me, he said: "You were never supposed to be there."
I shrugged. "Technically, I wasn't. I'm still behind the fire. Emotionally."
The feather drifted from his fingers. It hit the floor like a snowflake made of judgment.
"You interfered."
"Guilty," I said. "Although I think history will look kindly on the world's first documented case of arson-by-upholstery."
He turned slowly.
"You risked everything."
I raised an eyebrow. "He tried to kill Harry. I just… encouraged a dramatic exit. And I warned you, should Harry be in danger I would interfere. Voldemort appearing seems to fit that bill quite nicely, don't you think?"
"That wasn't what I meant."
"Then you'll have to be more specific, Professor. I've done a lot of things I wasn't meant to. Hypothetically, of course."
He stepped forward. Wand at his side. Not raised, but... aware. I could feel it like a heartbeat.
"Voldemort fled you," he said. "He screamed. That is not a thing he does."
I almost flinched.
Because I didn't know. Not really. Not completely. The screaming, the retreat—Voldemort's panic—it hadn't been part of any plan. I wasn't bluffing him. I wasn't shielding some inner weapon. Whatever he'd found inside me, I didn't put it there. And that scared me more than I wanted to admit.
Instead, I smiled thinly. "Maybe he's allergic to dramatic irony."
"I am not amused."
"That's tragic. I'm very amusing."
I bent down and picked up a bent spoon from the floor. Not even magical. Just a regular, slightly melted spoon. My reflection twisted in its bowl.
"You know something," he said, stepping closer. "You are something. I want to know what it is."
"Well I want a Peppermint Mocha Frappacinno right now but you don't see me whining about it."
His eyes narrowed. Just a bit.
"I do not fear Tom Riddle," he said. "I fear what I do not understand. I fear power without clarity. And I fear what that power might become, if left unanchored."
I looked up.
He didn't flinch.
I tossed the spoon over my shoulder. It clattered somewhere behind me.
"Then you're either right to worry," I said, "or wrong to try and control it."
"I don't want to control you."
I turned to him fully.
"No? Just categorize me? Predict me? File me under 'existential threat—monitor with twinkly eyes'?"
He didn't respond.
"Thought so."
I started pacing. Not aimlessly. Just enough to keep him slightly off-balance.
"I didn't ask for this," I said.
"No," he agreed. "But the moment you stepped in—chose to take part—you accepted a piece of the responsibility. Whether or not this began with you, it ends with your choices. That makes it yours."
I stopped.
"I chose... not to let someone else die because I hesitated."
A pause.
"Again?" he asked.
I didn't answer.
Just remembering those dead unicorns by Hagrid's hut was a haunting sight in itself.
Seriously, who leave a small mountain of dead unicorn bodies out in the open for everyone to see.
He stepped forward slowly, as if the air between us might crack.
"The Stone," he said.
I blinked.
Then laughed. Not a big laugh. Not a theatrical one. Just a small, dry chuckle that didn't quite reach my ribs.
"You know that Stone wasn't real," I said. "That Mirror? The whole 'only someone who wants to find the Stone but not use it' bit? Please."
His expression didn't change—at first. But then something flickered. A twitch at the corner of his mouth, a tightening around the eyes. He was shocked—not just by what I'd said, but by how I knew. How I understood the enchantment. The silent logic behind the mirror's trap. The exact philosophical riddle he'd designed to protect the Stone. He hadn't expected anyone, let alone me, to see through it.
"That mirror was a decoy," I continued, reaching into my coat—not for the Stone, because it wasn't there, and never had been. Instead, I pulled out the jagged shard I'd grabbed when the Mirror of Erised shattered. "This is all that was left. The real Stone was never inside. You know that."
He said nothing.
"I'm not going to use it for eternal life," I added. "If that's what you're worried about."
"I don't know what I'm worried about," he admitted. "And that's the problem."
I snorted. "Welcome to my Tuesday."
I let the mirror shard drop beside the spoon.
"I'm not your enemy," I said. "But I'm also not your soldier."
"I would never ask you to be."
"You don't have to. You're Dumbledore. You don't ask. You just... expect."
He studied me. Really studied me. Like I was a book he hadn't written.
"Well," he said at last, "I suppose we'll have to make sure you don't strike the wrong thing."
I grinned.
"Too late."
He actually laughed.
Which terrified me more than anything else.
Like seriously, I've heard him chuckle but laugh? *shiver*