The end of term had always carried with it a certain quiet relief for Albus Dumbledore.
The exams were marked, trunks packed, and carriages rattled down the drive toward the waiting train.
For a few weeks, the castle would exhale, freed of the energy and mischief of its children.
Professors, too, would collapse into their well-earned respite.
But this year, as the echoes of laughter faded from the halls, Dumbledore found no rest.
He sat in his circular office, Fawkes perched above him in silence, quill hovering above parchment but never touching.
A copy of the Book of Admittance lay open on the desk, its inked entries shimmering faintly in the candlelight.
He had read the same three names over and over until the letters blurred.
Harry James Potter.
Neville Francis Longbottom.
Cassius Snape.
Three children, three storms waiting to break.
~
Sybil's prophecy haunted him still, years after the day she spoke it.
A child born as the seventh month waned, destined to confront Voldemort.
A savior—or a victim.
It should have been simple. The boy who lived, marked by his survival, bore the weight of that destiny.
Harry Potter.
And yet Dumbledore had never permitted himself the luxury of certainty.
The prophecy's wording was slippery, cruelly imprecise.
Neville Longbottom, born mere hours apart from Harry, could just as easily fit the terms.
But it was the second prophecy given right after the first that caused his heart to quake, predicting the coming of the Dark Lord after voldemort, the other child also born at the end of July, who so far as wizards were concerned could only be Neville, since Harry was the one to 'defeat' voldemort.
For years, Dumbledore had watched the other boy neville, eyes sharp looking like he was lookig at a future villan waiting to happen.
Watching to closely, perhaps.
His grandmother Augusta tolerated the scrutiny at first, but the lines around her mouth had deepened with each visit.
And when Frank and Alice—restored partially, blessedly, by experimental treatments from St. Mungo's—saw Dumbledore's fixation upon their son, they bristled openly.
"You would cause him to become what you claim by your own action if you keep this up!" Alice had said sharply.
Frank's silence had been worse—disappointed, wounded, as though Dumbledore had betrayed some unspoken trust, having found out the potters were under the greatest protection at the end of the war, while Aurors were positions not to protect the longbottoms but to be wary of neville a mere toddler at the time.
If the aurors were told the truth, they could have acted before the horrific acts had taken their toll on the couple.
And should they have never recovered could Neville have fallen to darkness if Dumbledore pressed him further?
But still, he could not shake the unease.
What if, by looking away, he condemned them all?
What if Neville—gentle, bumbling, wide-eyed Neville—was the one the prophecy intended?
What if his very caution drove the boy toward the darkness?
That was the paradox that gnawed at him most of all: in protecting, he might be corrupting.
Dumbledores belief in prophetic visions was something like an obsession, and while prophecies always came to be, something so vague as this one really shouldnt be
~
Harry was no comfort either.
The boy had been left with his aunt and uncle by necessity.
Paranoia had driven the boys mother Lily to near insanity.
The loss of James had broken her, claiming the collision was brought about and planned by the death eaters, that they would never stop until she and her son were dead!
So Dumbledore took the initiative allowing the broken woman to play her part grieving the loss of her son and husband in the crash as the young boy was sent to live with his family, protected by the ward of love lain on him by his Grandmother Euphemia, even without a magical guardian the boy would be fine so long as he grew up and lived around love, and what could be more loving than family!
Dumbledore had told himself that countless times.
Voldemort even if he managed to ressurect would fail to get to Potter there.
Report after report of the real situation piled up on his desk unread, having been filed by Mrs. Figg, but Dumbledore had bigger things to worry about, with the rapid influx of Muggle-borns into the school, and the constant clamor for reform within the Ministry and even whispers beginning to circulate in the IWC.
~
Then most troubling of all was the name that shouldnt be.
His thoughts were pulled inexorably toward the third name, the one that he had noticed upon the upcoming admission list, for the coming 1981/2 school year.
Cassius Snape.
The script shimmered as though mocking him, taunting him with secrets withheld.
Snape!
He had known Severus for decades, from the time when he was just a student, to his joining of the dark lords Death eaters, until his eventual betrayal to joining his own forces of light, a man he relied upon more than most.
The man had served faithfully, if bitterly, his loyalties sharp-edged but unwavering.
A transaction made to save the women he loved, and while she in fact managed to live, he remained bitter, grumbling about the cost of his betrayal not earning the proper reward, since in the end due to Dumbledores actions Lily was never truly at risk, instead all risk lay with the potters a family Snape could care less about should they be wiped from history completly.
Yet Severus had never once mentioned a son.
More troubling still—the Book had recorded the boy months ago, yet Dumbledore had only now thought to look.
How had he missed it?
How had the child grown beyond his reach?
The boy's mother was a question mark that throbbed like a wound.
Severus' past was littered with shadows, yes, but there had been no whisper of such a union.
Lily was impossible, of course—but even the thought, fleeting, cut like a knife, if not lily who!
That the child bore his father's name was no small thing.
The quill wrote what was given; it did not invent.
Somewhere, at some point, someone had called him Cassius Snape.
Marking his very soul as it were with the name the child himself likely was unaware of.
Which meant the boy carried Severus' blood openly, unapologetically, and entirely without notice.
And Severus himself seemed not to know.
Or if he did, he had buried the knowledge so deeply that even Dumbledore, for all his prying, had not unearthed it.
The mystery was damning.
For by the time the boy set foot in the castle, he would already be beyond Dumbledore's grasp—emancipated, seen as an adult, a genius at that in the eyes of the world, free from familial bonds he didnt even know he had.
The first conversation would not come until September.
By then, the boy would be eleven.
Practically grown, in magical terms.
Old enough to form his own opinions, his own loyalties, and likely not easily manipulated after years of harsh living within an orphanage just like Tom.
Loyalties Dumbledore had no hand in shaping.
~
McGonagall's reaction had been immediate and unrestrained.
"Severus Snape? A son? Merlin's beard, Albus, how could we not have known?"
Her lips had thinned, her eyes narrowed.
And beneath the outrage, there had been something more fragile—disappointment, perhaps even despair.
She already saw the boy cloaked in green and silver, Slytherin's banner raised higher with every step.
Hundreds of house points flowing into their coffers, their seventh consecutive victory all but assured.
For Minerva, who guarded Gryffindor's honor like a lioness, the thought was galling.
But for Albus, the concern ran deeper.
A boy raised in secrecy, revealed only now.
A boy with Severus' sharp mind, his bitter blood, and possibly his ambition.
And if not Severus' influence, then whose?
~
Albus leaned back in his chair, the book still open before him.
Three names.Three futures.
Harry Potter, the Boy Who Lived, raised in neglect but shielded by wards stronger than any fortress.
Neville Longbottom, the overlooked, the doubted, yet perhaps the very fulcrum upon which prophecy might pivot.
Cassius Snape, the unknown, the unclaimed, whose very existence unraveled what Albus thought he knew of his most trusted spy.
Already, the coming year loomed as a crucible unlike any before.
Voldemort's shade stirred in whispers, in movements too faint for proof but too dark to dismiss.
Harry would arrive at Hogwarts, wide-eyed and unprepared.
Neville would come as well, carrying Dumbledore's scrutiny like a weight around his neck.
And Cassius—Cassius was the true enigma.
Would he be ally, adversary, or something more dangerous still: a neutral force, carving his own path beyond light or dark?
Albus closed the Book of Admittance with a soft snap.
Fawkes stirred above, feathers rustling.
"Do you ever tire of mysteries, old friend?" Albus murmured.
The phoenix tilted its head, golden eyes gleaming in the dim light.
"Mysteries, after all," Dumbledore said softly, "have a habit of becoming catastrophes when left unsolved."
He pinched the bridge of his nose, weary to his bones.
"Three boys, Fawkes. Three boys and the fate of our world bound up in them. And I… I am no longer certain I know how to guide even one, let alone all three."
The bird gave no answer.
Only the faint sound of its breathing filled the room, steady and eternal, while outside the windows of the castle the night deepened, heavy with omens.