Clack!
The Resurrection Stone—now ringed with several fresh green halos of light clattered onto the low table where Bryan had tossed it, rolled a few turns across the wood, and finally fell still.
Dumbledore's lips moved slightly.
He'd genuinely wanted to ask Bryan whether it was worth trying—whether the two of them together might be able to unravel the binding magic Slytherin had left behind on the stone. But after a few full breaths' careful thought, he only gave a small, resigned shake of his head instead.
Like Bryan, Dumbledore lowered himself slowly back into his own seat, and as he gazed at the flickering, indistinct shape of the campfire before them both, his eyes carried an unmistakable trace of lingering sorrow.
Tonight's spoils ought to have been cause for joy. That was how it should have felt.
He and Bryan had found yet another of Tom's remaining Horcruxes, and had successfully destroyed it. He had also found the Resurrection Stone and through it, had seen Ariana again.
Ariana had forgiven him for that terrible sin he had committed. Or rather, she had never actually blamed him for it at all.
Behind Dumbledore's spectacles, something glimmered faintly in his eyes at the memory.
He had known all along, somewhere deep in his heart, that Ariana would forgive him—she had always been such a kind, gentle girl. And yet, now that he had truly received her forgiveness in person, a fresh wave of profound relief still washed through him.
Everything was, in its own way, complete tonight. If one didn't count the small surprise Salazar Slytherin had left waiting for him.
Dumbledore turned his own head slightly, glancing back at the Resurrection Stone where it lay ringed in glowing runes on the table, and a trace of bitterness crept steadily into the crease already sitting between his brows.
The Resurrection Stone could, evidently, no longer be used by anyone, sealed as it now was. By any purely rational measure, that particular outcome was genuinely a good thing.
What truly, deeply weighed on Dumbledore now was something else: Salazar Slytherin—one of the four legendary founders of Hogwarts, a great and formidable wizard in his own right—had resolved, even after a full thousand years ago, to defend his bloodline's right.
And that same bloodline, a thousand years later, was none other than Tom Riddle—the very man Dumbledore had sworn to destroy, whatever the cost.
Sealing away the Resurrection Stone didn't, in itself, stand in the way of his resolve to finish Tom off for good. After all, the small fragment of Tom's own soul that had lodged within the Stone was already gone.
What Slytherin's binding actually constrained wasn't Tom's fate at all—it was—
Hesitating for a moment, Dumbledore's hoarse voice finally rose into the surrounding trees, breaking the silence.
"Something you must accomplish requires the Resurrection Stone. Is that correct, Bryan?"
Bryan said nothing in instant response, only gave a sullen, confirming nod.
"Which is to say—"
Dumbledore sighed heavily, his own brow were furrowing deeper.
"You must keep Tom alive?"
"Keep him alive?"
Bryan gave a low, distinctly cold laugh at that.
"As it happens, what Slytherin wants of me is far more interesting than that, Headmaster. Though I'd already guessed as much myself. Hmph—I simply hadn't expected he'd go and rig up an additional safeguard on top of the arrangement."
Dumbledore's brow furrowed deeper at that.
Bryan's words remained murky throughout, wrapped in fog—Dumbledore understood well enough that Bryan had his reasons for holding certain things back, that he had no wish to speak too plainly on the matter even now. But—
A specific memory of something the two of them had once shared together surfaced in his mind, and the doubt that had been coiling in his chest eased somewhat at the recollection.
'If the Resurrection Stone was an additional safeguard—a second layer—then the first safeguard must have been—'
Bryan rose from his stool and began pacing slowly beside the low table, working through his own thoughts as he moved.
By now, he had begun to gather himself somewhat after the whole extraordinary evening's revelations.
The memory Slytherin had left behind was brief, and much of what it actually contained had seemed, on the surface, filled with matter that appeared largely meaningless to the present crisis. But the crucial information, in truth, lay hidden within that.
Slytherin had shown him a hidden, private episode between Godric Gryffindor and Rowena Ravenclaw. That particular revelation, needless to say, had been something of a deliberate diversion—a pretext to make a point.
The other thing—the thing Slytherin had actually wanted him to understand—came at the very end of the memory: he had wanted to borrow Gryffindor's sword, the same legendary sword that would go on to be passed down through the ages.
But what could Slytherin possibly want with the Sword of Gryffindor?
Compared with the considerably more direct revelations left behind by the other three founders in their respective memories, this particular message from Salazar Slytherin was far more obscure.
As if the whole thing had been deliberately constructed to test Bryan's own wits.
Having turned over Slytherin's purpose in his mind for a while, Bryan set the question aside for now—likely just another instance of Slytherin's "nasty" streak. Well. Not unlike his own.
Dumbledore simply watched in patient silence as Bryan continued pacing before him, holding his own tongue throughout, careful not to disturb the younger man's evident train of thought.
He had long since come to understand that this remarkable young man harboured secrets of his own—ones that no one else knew.
He had already suspected, well before tonight's extraordinary events unfolded, that a secret capable of holding Bryan's attention even amid the grave, pressing, ongoing struggle against Tom could be no small or trivial matter.
The Resurrection Stone. Ariana's words tonight, filled with meaning that had clearly run considerably deeper—together, these two things had exposed, a sliver of the deeper mysteries buried somewhere within Bryan himself.
And Salazar Slytherin's memory had let Dumbledore glimpse at least one corner of the very secret Bryan had been pursuing all along.
A relic of Merlin's. Herpo the Foul—
Watching Bryan, still lost in his thought beneath the pale moon, Dumbledore felt something stir deep within his own chest.
What he carries is heavier, than I ever imagined.
Dumbledore's deep blue eyes grew faintly damp. For a moment, in a kind of unexpected daze, he thought he saw something of himself reflected in Bryan.
So many quiet, solitary nights across his life—he too had paced back and forth alone in his office at Hogwarts, weighed down by grief, racking his mind over how to resolve the rising crisis Tom had brought down upon the entire wizarding world, over how to properly guide Harry and his friends toward growth without ever letting his own guiding hand fully show in the process.
It was not until Bryan had first returned to Hogwarts that he had finally, begun to feel some measure of relief from that accumulated weight.
Bryan's arrival had given him considerably more options to work with—had spared him, in practical terms, the constant, exhausting need to steer Harry's growth with such careful, endlessly guarded hands, watching every word and gesture for its downstream effect.
Yes. That was exactly, precisely it. Steer. Manipulate, if one were being totally honest about the word.
He had no wish to interfere in Harry's own natural growth. He wanted, more than almost anything else, to let this young man live out his life with his innocent, good-hearted recklessness left intact, unshaped by too heavy a guiding hand.
And yet—all things, in the end, bow eventually to fate; not the smallest part of it ever truly lies within any single person's own hands alone, however powerful.
Harry would have to face his own destiny. Even now, today, in this quiet clearing, that truth remained just as unavoidably true as it had ever been.
But Bryan's presence in Harry's life had, without any question, made Harry's own path—one that would, without that intervention, have grown only steadily heavier and more solitary with each passing year, considerably lighter to bear in reality.
The burdens that should, by any fair accounting, have fallen wholly to himself. The burdens that should, by that same fair accounting, have fallen to Harry alone. Even, perhaps, extending further, the burdens that should have fallen to Amelia and the rest of the Ministry officials.
None of that underlying responsibility, ever truly vanished into air. If any of them felt some of it lifted from their shoulders, it was only, ever, because someone else had taken it up in their place instead, absorbing the weight themselves.
The dampness hanging in the surrounding air grew steadily heavier as the night deepened further. Wisps of pale miasma rose slowly from the rotting fallen leaves scattered beneath their feet, gathering together, drifting apart, and dispersing again around the small clearing in slow patterns.
Dumbledore reached out and turned the campfire Bryan had built up earlier into somewhat brighter flame with a small gesture, then turned his gaze back toward the Resurrection Stone where Bryan had left it resting on the low table, still giving off its own faint, residual glow beneath its ring of binding runes.
He had to admit, watching it, that he still felt a private pang of regret settle over him.
He would not disturb Ariana's rest again merely to satisfy his own remaining longing for her company. But if the Stone could still be used—just once more—
Aberforth would surely want to see Ariana too, given the chance. His brother's pain, carried all these years, was no less than his own.
Perhaps Ariana might even help make things over between the two of them—help persuade Aberforth not to stay angry with him any longer.
'Hah. What a cowardly, self-serving thought that just was.'
It seemed, on reflection, that he truly hadn't grown all that much, since his reckless youth.
"Heading back to Hogwarts now, Headmaster?"
Bryan's voice reached his ears at that moment, drawing him gently back out of his private, wandering thoughts.
Dumbledore turned to look properly at Bryan. Against the night sky behind him, the westward-tilting sliver of the waning moon sat directly above the young man's head.
The furrow that had been creasing the brow of this remarkable young man standing before him had, Dumbledore noticed, eased considerably. Clearly, whatever private doubt had been troubling him through their earlier exchange no longer did.
"Oh, that is indeed my plan—"
Dumbledore said, his tone had gone light. He rose to his feet, picked up the Resurrection Stone from the table, and held it out toward Bryan.
"And you, Bryan? What of your own plans?"
"Ah, I'm afraid that's where we part ways for tonight—"
Bryan smiled, an inscrutable smile.
"I have other matters still to see to."
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