"You have kept him alive so that he can die at the right moment?" Snape said, voice quiet and deadly.
"We have protected him because it has been essential to teach him, to raise him, to let him try his strength," Dumbledore said calmly, hands folded on the desk. "Don't be shocked, Severus. How many men and women have you watched die?"
"Lately, only those whom I could not save." Snape stood rigid, dark eyes glittering with revulsion. "Now you tell me you've been raising him like a pig for slaughter—"
"But this is touching, Severus." Dumbledore peered over his spectacles. "Have you grown to care for the boy, after all?"
"For him?" Snape spat, lip curling in disgust. "I did this for her! You swore you would protect her son, Headmaster. You gave me your word."
Dumbledore looked genuinely shocked, the calm veneer cracking for a fraction of a second. "Severus... you haven't forgotten her? After all this time?"
"Forget her?" Snape's voice tore out of him, harsh, unshielded. "She is not some distant memory! She was my world."
Dumbledore lowered his eyes. The silence in the office was heavy, broken only by the clicking of the silver instruments.
"If Voldemort is to be truly defeated, it must be Voldemort himself who kills the boy," he said quietly. "It is the only way."
Snape stared at him, the revulsion on his face settling into something cold and final. Without another word, he turned, robes billowing, and walked out of the office.
***
Down in the Great Hall, the morning post owls had just swept in. Ron reached across the table and borrowed Seamus's copy of the Daily Prophet, scanning the front page with a mouthful of bacon.
"Wow," he mumbled, chewing. "Death Eaters breaking into Gringotts. What are they even searching for in there?"
Harry stopped buttering his toast, leaning in, voice dropping low. "Ron, it wasn't them."
Ron blinked, stopped chewing, eyes flicking from the paper to Harry. Then it clicked. Last night. Harry, Hermione, and Victor.
He lowered the paper, pretending to study his plate, leaning in closer. "But it says there was a massive duel in the vaults. Did you guys really face Death Eaters?"
"Yeah," Harry said, the memory of the cavernous vaults flashing back, stomach tightening. "They're not like normal wizards, Ron. No warning, no Stunners or Disarming Charms. Straight to the Killing Curse."
"Did any of them get caught?" Harry asked.
Ron scanned further down the column, brow furrowing. "No," he said, a little sick. "Says here that when the Ministry arrived, most of the Death Eaters were half-burned to a crisp by Fiendfyre."
"Fiendfyre?"
"Yeah." Ron read straight off the page. "Official statement says the Ministry suspects infighting — one of the Death Eaters panicked, cast the curse, lost control of it, and they ended up burning each other alive."
Harry glanced at Hermione. She hadn't looked up from her tea.
They both knew there hadn't been any infighting. The Death Eaters hadn't cast that curse. Victor had.
"Blimey," Ron whispered, oblivious to the exchange. "Fiendfyre inside a Gringotts vault. You'd have to be completely mental to risk that indoors."
"You'd be surprised," Harry muttered, pushing his plate away. "Victor mastered it. He's the one who cast it in the vault."
Ron's fork clattered against his plate. "Are you mental? That's dark magic, Harry. The really bad sort. You can't just control Fiendfyre. It consumes everything."
"He did," Harry said quietly, remembering the roaring flames bowing to Victor's wand, tearing through the goblins' defenses before vanishing at a flick of his wrist. "I don't know, Ron. Sometimes I look at him and — how can that bloke even be our age?"
"He's not normal," Ron said, shaking his head. "Probably as strong as a fully qualified adult wizard."
"Stronger," Harry corrected. "Most adults can't do half of what he did last night."
***
Out in the empty third-floor corridor, Hermione had finally tracked Victor down.
She stood squarely in his path, hair practically crackling with static, arms crossed so tight her knuckles were white. She didn't look like a student — she looked like someone who'd just caught a person breaking every fundamental law of magic and wanted the math to prove it.
"So," she began, voice echoing off the stone walls, ticking the offenses off on her fingers, tone rising with each.
"Apparition. Unsupported flight. Transforming into a basilisk. And casually casting almost all known dark curses, including the Unforgivables." She stepped closer, eyes blazing with fear and exasperation.
"What else? What else haven't you bothered to tell me? Are you hiding a Time-Turner? Can you resurrect the dead? What else can you do?"
Victor stood with his hands in his coat pockets, face a mask of infuriating calm. "I can pull a rabbit out of a hat."
Hermione's hand shot out, fingers closing fiercely around his ear.
"Ow," he said, bending sideways to keep his ear attached to his head. "Hermione—"
"This is not a joke!" she hissed, refusing to let go, voice trembling with panic underneath the anger. "Do you have any idea how terrifying it is to watch you do these things?"
"I knew what I was doing," Victor said, wincing, trying to pry her fingers off.
"That is exactly the problem!" she snapped, finally releasing his ear but jabbing a finger into his chest. "Where did you even learn magic like that?"
"Books?"
*****
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