The New Marauders and the Trickster God

Chapter 35: Hide and Seek

"Who are you?" Loki asked again. When he only received a smirk from Dumbledore, he scowled. Dumbledore's smirk just broadened in response.

"How about you find out on your own? Let's see how good you are, shall we? ...Gabriel?"

Loki instantly tensed up when he heard that name and was ready to leave should this situation turn against him, or at least more than it already had. Everyone else was quite confused.

"How...?", he asked weakly.

"Stop worrying you're scaring Harry," Dumbledore retorted sternly when he saw how Harry was looking at Loki with a look of fear. The boy probably thinking that he would leave him. "I'm neither here to reveal you nor to drag you back or some such tripe."

"Ah, yes?" Loki snapped, fury replacing his worry. "Then why come here and call me out? Why come here if not for me? What do you want?"

Dumbledore sighed deeply. "At the moment, I probably want the same thing as you do, hiding," he told him only to earn himself a snort. "The best will be that I tell you how it all began.

"You know, it was such a long time ago...before everything went to hell, I was free to be who I wanted to be, and I was happy. I had my family. Nothing could dampen my mood, except for your sometimes annoying pranks maybe," he told them, and everyone listened raptly.

"Then the war began, and with it came discord. I was soon forced to become someone I didn't want to be, a strong-willed warrior...a cold-hearted bastard. I became what everyone expected me to be. It wasn't who I truly was, but I didn't see any other way. Then you vanished – presumed dead – and with it any remaining happiness I had. I only worked on autopilot, did what needed to be done...so many died in the hope of keeping together what remained." Dumbledore's voice broke. Tears started to flow down his face.

Loki observed the other angel with shock and surprise. He had the nagging feeling that he knew the angel. Still, for the life of him, he couldn't say who it was. The only one that sprang to his mind was impossible, or maybe it wasn't...?

However, in the end, it didn't really matter who the other angel was if he really only was here to get away from things. How could he blame him if he did the exact same thing in the first place? He glanced at Harry and saw that his brother was right, he was frightened. So he gave him a reassuring smile and watched how the boy relaxed a bit.

"About a century ago," Dumbledore finally continued, turning Loki's attention back to him. "Zachariah then suddenly got the notion that it was time to free Lucifer and restart the fight. That was when I realised that I had to do something, but I didn't know what. I couldn't dispose of Zachariah because he had more followers in this than I thought possible. I also couldn't go against him otherwise. So I did the only thing I could by secretly trying to delay the inevitable.

"Thirty years ago, Zachariah also managed to drag some of the demons to his side. They began to plan out how to break the seals, and all I could do was watching helplessly. What caught my attention was what happened about twelve years ago. You see, one of the conditions for the demons agreeing to work with Zachariah was that he brought them the soul of Riddle. But that was where Zachariah ran into a problem. He didn't know how to locate them, so he turned to someone he knew would help him, Dumbledore. Zachariah promised him eternal fame and getting him out of his demon contract. From what I learned, he never intended to go through with the last one.

"Together, they then formulated the Prophecy that would bind a specific child Dumbledore knew would be born soon and Riddle together, solving their problem. They had planned out your entire life Harry, how you would face Riddle again and again, in the end defeating him. I couldn't let that happen. I have to admit that I blamed humanity for the war for a long time and thought very poorly of them. But I also knew that father would never have wanted a, at that time, not even born child that never did anything wrong to suffer in such a way. Not to mention that God gave humans free will, and taking that away in such a fashion... went against everything I believe in.