Harry Riddle || Harry potter

Chapter 8: Professor Dumbledore

"Mister Riddle," Dumbledore began in a slightly flustered tone. He fumbled to pick up a lemon drop and offered one to Harry after he had. The boy declined.

"Headmaster Dumbledore," Harry replied calmly, a bit happy to be the cause of such upset. He folded his hands in his lap and plastered a halfway-pleasant expression on his face. He wasn't sure why he should really be polite, but decided it would be more appropriate than rudeness. "It's an . . . honor . . . to finally meet you having heard . . . so much." He smiled, showing teeth.

Harry was currently sitting in front of the Headmaster's desk in a large comfy chair. Professors McGonagall, Snape, and Flitwick were crammed into the office as well, standing side by side around stacks of books, papers, and mechanisms he couldn't even begin to name.

McGonagall by far seemed the most hostile. She was staring at Harry as if he was some sort of wild animal that could viciously attack at any given moment. He noticed that her hand was poised to grab her wand quickly if the need arose. Her eyes glinted with some unidentifiable emotion - hate, maybe? Dread? Fear? Had his father done something dreadfully horrible to her at some point?

Probably. His father had apparently done something dreadfully horrible to almost everyone in the Wizarding World at some point in his life.

Meanwhile, Professor Filius Flitwick's small body was trembling uncontrollably. To get to be almost the same height as Snape and McGonagall, he'd had to stand on a wooden chair, but he had fallen out of it twice already, landing on the floor with painful sounding thumps both times. Unlike McGonagall, he tried to avoid eye contact with Harry at all cost, opting instead to rotate between staring at the floor and Dumbledore.

Severus was the only person in the room who really seemed to have no feeling one way or another towards him. Harry wasn't sure what he had or hadn't told Dumbledore over the years, but apparently he'd never mentioned Harry's existence. He fleetingly wondered how he was going to explain that and keep Dumbledore's trust . . . but the man couldn't have been a spy for twenty some odd years if he wasn't talented. He obviously had something in mind.

Albus Dumbledore himself, Light Wizard Extraordinaire, was a bit disorganized and flustered, but other than that, he was unreadable, no clear emotion on his face other than some shock.

To Harry, he looked rather like a harmless geriatric. His skin was wrinkled, his hair silver, and if his robes were any indication, he was a bit senile as well. Harry was no fashion expert, nor was he the most creative person, but even he knew that not a single of those seven colors went with any of the others, and the animated pattern just made the whole outfit impossible to look at without inducing a severe case of vertigo.

He was really at a loss to explain how his father ever could have actually feared him. Had he been more intimidating in the forties?

"You've caused quite a . . . shock to us, Mr. Riddle," said Dumbledore, scrutinizing him over half moon glasses. Harry had to admit that his gaze was rather piercing, uncomfortably so. Perhaps Draco had been right when he said Dumbledore was just wearing a mask? It would be terribly clever, wouldn't it, to make it so that everyone around you let their guard down, only for the kindly, senile exterior to just be a facade . . .

Underestimation was possibly the best weapon one could have, wasn't it?

"I, for one, didn't know that Lord Voldemort had a son. I find myself thinking that perhaps I should've looked more closely at the book that holds the names of our future students, but we did just this year make it so that the letters were written and addressed automatically and I believed I had no reason." He chuckled.

Harry pursed his lips, and for a moment wondered if he could play dumb. 'Riddle' wasn't exactly a common last name, but it wasn't entirely unheard of and it was, most definitely, muggle. He could claim to be muggleborn and that he had no idea who this 'Voldemort' person was or what they were talking about, and that he was very afraid and intimidated and just wanted to get to his common room . . .

But, they would probably see through it.

"Didn't you, now?" he asked, lacing his fingers. "Well, I assume he had his reasons for keeping my existence a secret." Probably worried you and your bloody holier-than-thou 'Order' would try to do something to me, he added silently. Truth be told, he wasn't very familiar with the Order of the Phoenix, but he'd heard it mentioned more than a few times. Dumbledore apparently headed it, Severus had somehow managed to get a membership in it (thus making him the Most Important and Valued Spy in Voldemort's ranks), and everything was very hush-hush. But, the organization's sole purpose was crystal clear: the defeat of Lord Voldemort and the Death Eaters.

Dumbledore was still looking at him with those sharp eyes. "You do . . . favor him, don't you?"

"So I've been told."

"You would've been born in . . . 1980? 1979?"

"July, 1980."

"During the thick of the War."

"I wouldn't know," he said shortly. In fact, he did know. 1980 had been the year when the Ministry of Magic had declared it legal for Aurors to use torture during Death Eater interrogations, as well as Unforgivables in general, which was just one of many various escalations made by the two sides as things grew worse. Possibly in retaliation, Death Eaters had killed the Minister of Magic's entire family and he'd resigned, leaving the Ministry in a state of upheaval as politicians fought over power.

And that was just what he'd read about in a history book. Bellatrix's (extremely graphic) war stories (which she loved to tell) usually took away his appetite.

"Tom didn't seem the fatherly type, if I remember correctly."

"Really?" Harry feigned surprise, though he decided that Dumbledore had just made the understatement of the year. "I never would have thought. I mean, what about being an evil Dark Lord says 'not-the-fatherly-type?'"

"Who is your mother?" McGonagall snapped, clearly annoyed. He noticed that her wand was actually in her hand now, but if she gripped it any more tightly it would undoubtedly snap.

"I don't know. I don't remember her. She died when I was little." The last part was true, though he did know that his mother's name had been Lily something-or-other. And, of course, that she'd been in Gryffindor and had been a mudblood. But, who really needed to know that?

"Died or was killed?" McGonagall muttered.

Harry shot her down with a glare. "I'm not really certain. But, you know, we were in the thick of the fighting, after all. Maybe an Auror tortured her to death during an interrogation?"

He turned back to the Headmaster. "Professor, as much as I enjoy talking with you, I have a big day tomorrow, what with it being the first day of classes and all. I would really like to go and get some rest." He glanced back at McGonagall, then pointedly at the wand she held. "After all, I'm sure I'll need a lot of energy to murder the entire student body, as is the mission from my Dark Master."

She quickly holstered the wand and had the grace to look a bit uncomfortable.

Dumbledore waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. "Professor Snape will take you to your common room. I'm sure young Mister Malfoy has saved a bed for you."

Relieved, Harry quickly went to get up, but Dumbledore seemed to notice something he hadn't previously seen. He stopped Harry with his voice.

"One more question, Mr. Riddle. How did you get that scar?"

Immediately knowing what he was referring to, Harry self-consciously reached up to his forehead and ghosted his fingers over the lightning bolt shaped scar that had been etched into his skin for as long as he could recall. "I don't know," he answered truthfully. "I've had it for as long as I can remember." He wasn't even sure if it was from some sort of physical injury or if it was a curse scar. He'd never even thought to ask his father, either, though in retrospect he didn't know why he hadn't.

Dumbledore nodded, a bit suspicious, but motioned for Severus to escort Harry to the dorm.

They quickly stepped out onto the moving staircase.

"Is he as senile as his choice of clothes make him out to be?" Harry asked after a long moment of silence.

"Not senile," said Severus. "Just a bit mad."