The Last Lieutenant

House of Cards

"You knew."   He must have known she was coming, because when she blasts open the door to his office so hard that it makes everything on his room shake, Dumbledore doesn't even look up, just taps his quill on the piece of parchment he was reading and rubs at the bridge of his nose.  "You knew they were going to kill you, and that's why you have me there."  Audra crosses the room to the desk, footsteps heavy on the floor.  "To save you."

She was so proud of herself for figuring it out.  So relieved that she finally has a plan, a course of action, a reason for doing all the things she had done.  An excuse, because here, finally, was proof that she was doing it all on Dumbledore's orders.  All of it for the greater good.

(He talks about the greater good a lot.  Like, you kill two nameless, faceless people to save the face of your revolution.  You snap the neck of your pet bird to keep your cover, though you don't understand how not killing it would have blown it.  You pretend that you are something horrible even though you are only trying to make the right side come out on top.)

(But, that voice keeps whispering, are you really on the right side if they make you do such awful things?)

"Not exactly."  He finally looks up from the paper and gives her his full attention, folding his hands into a steeple underneath his chin.  His eyes, normally sparkling over the tops of his half-moon spectacles, are somber.  "They're going to try to kill me.  And you're not going to stop them."

"You're just going to die?"  Audra knew he was old, and she wasn't young enough to think that the people you care about are going to be around forever.  She knew that someday, eventually, there would come a time where they did not have a Dumbledore there to lead them.  It was just that until now, that time had seemed so far off into the future that they didn't have to think about it.  "And you expect me to just step back and let them kill you?"

She won't.  She's followed orders from everyone- from Mr. Weasley, from McGonagall and Fred and Harry, she's listened to the Dark Lord and grit her teeth through whatever he had asked her to do, played along with Emmeline and Bellatrix and lied to Clary through her teeth, all the way back from when she was little and did whatever Mom and Dad told her without complaint, believed in everything they said just because she didn't know better.

Audra knew better now.  And she wasn't going to let someone like Dumbledore die, not when she's there to stop it.

"Give me some credit, Audra."  There's a flash of pride in hearing him say her first name, the respect enclosed in those small syllables, like he might address one of his colleagues or a family friend.  "I am harder to kill than that."

"But that wasn't it."  She sunk down into the chair, sinking into the cushions like an invisible hand had shoved her down.  "That's not the thing I'm waiting for."

"No."  He looks weary.  Weary and old, and sick, but maybe that's just because she knows what is hiding underneath the sleeve of his robes, how his arms has blackened and withered, the curse rotting away at every part of him.  She and Snape had slowed it down, but they could not contain it.  "That's not it."

"And when's that going to happen?"  She stuck her hands under her thighs and pressed her weight onto them, tried to give herself something to focus on, some way to be grounded and not spiral off into a thousand what ifs.  "A week from now?  A month?  This year, next year?"  She dug her nails into her skin.  "You expect me to keep doing this for that long?  Just killing people, and hurting people, and lying?"

"You're quite good at it."  His normally gentle expression became stern.  "I've heard about the fight club."

"It's voluntary."  Not that I have to defend myself.  "They aren't doing anything they don't want to."

"It's vicious."

"It's fun."  

They both sit there for a moment, staring across the desk at one another.  Dumbledore's the first to look away, turning back to his papers.  "You worry me, Ms. Stanton."  He ruffles through the pages, and she catches sight of Molly's handwriting, a report on something or another.  She wants to tell him that he should commit it to memory and then burn it, hide any evidence that it may have existed.  That the only one that anybody can trust is themselves.  "About what will become of you.  How do you think you're going to live when this war is over?"

Could you exist without a war?  Would you know what to do with yourself when there is nothing to fight against, no dying light to rage at, nothing to hang onto with this white knuckle grip that you've got on everything that you love?

"How long?"  She notices she is grinding her teeth and stops.  "When do I get to stop?"

"You don't get to stop.  No one like you ever gets to stop.  Do you know why?"  Audra shakes her head no, but she can't focus.  She is still thinking about how she cannot speak freely, about everything she is hiding, and how people are always, always listening.  "Because you're the best.  Because you've got power pouring out of you, and you need to use it, even when you aren't sure it's the right thing."

"It's not the right thing."  There's a space on his desk that is lighter than the rest of it, and Audra is certain that had she come only months earlier, there would have been some instrument sitting there.  Harry probably smashed it.  "You know this, what I'm doing, could never be the right thing."

She wanted to tell him everything that she had done in order to prove herself worthy, the people she had hurt in the name of the greater good.  Wanted to hold her hands out to him, make him look down at her palms and see if he can find the blood lining the cracks, to absolve her of her sins once and for all.  She wants something to fight, something to punch, needs that dying light to rage again even when it is inevitable, and she's not going to lose, damn it, she has gone too far and risked too much to have it all been for nothing.

"We're doing what we have to.  Not what's right."   He smiles at her, but he does not look kind anymore.  "Despite what everyone told you, there is nothing righteous about playing the hero."

Don't call me that, she thinks, but it is an argument she does not want to start.  "How do you get through it?

"Day by day."  He spreads out his hands, and when the sleeves trail on the desk, she can see that the rot has spread halfway to his elbow.  It's going faster than they had expected, and he had not told them it had worsened.

"Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow," she adds, quoting something that Clary used to say all the time, and that reminder hurt, because she has not seen Clary since that night she ran from her parents.  She wants to see her.  It might make her feel better.

Dumbledore smiles like she had said something insightful, steeples his fingers again, and this time, he watches her all the way out.