Chapter Text
The office was heavy with silence.
The kind that pressed against the walls, seeped into the cracks of the ancient wood, lingered in the flickering candlelight. The kind that did not invite speech but swallowed it whole, left nothing but the weight of thoughts unspoken.
Albus Dumbledore sat at his desk, hands clasped before him, staring at nothing. A glass of untouched wine rested beside his elbow, deep crimson in the dim light, a stark contrast against the pale blue veins along his aged hands. The world outside his window was grey, the sky choked with storm clouds, casting shadows over the castle towers.
He had seen many tragedies in his long life. Buried too many bright minds. Too many broken souls.
But this—this was different.
"Albus?"
McGonagall's voice was soft, hesitant, like she, too, was afraid of breaking the silence. He did not look up.
"Are you going to make the speech," she asked, voice carefully composed, "or would you like me to?"
Dumbledore exhaled slowly, steepling his fingers together. "No," he murmured at last. "I will do it."
McGonagall nodded, though she did not move. She lingered in the doorway, hands folded tightly in front of her. "I assume you know how it happened?"
A pause.
A long one.
Then, quietly, like the words ached as they left his mouth, he said, "Yes. I do."
She waited.
He inhaled sharply, then pushed back from his desk, rising to his feet and moving toward the window. Rain had begun to drizzle against the glass, small beads sliding down in uneven lines.
"Time is a fragile thing, Minerva," he said at last. "It is not meant to be tampered with. It is not meant to be rewritten." He turned slightly, his profile cast in shadows. "And yet, that is precisely what Regulus Black did."
McGonagall's brows furrowed, lips pressing into a thin line. "But how? A Time-Turner cannot allow one to go that far back. Even the most powerful Time-Turners only allow for hours—days, at most. He was eighteen, Albus. How could he have possibly—?"
"He did not use a Time-Turner." Dumbledore's voice was soft. "At least, not one sanctioned by the Ministry. What he did was... unnatural. Forbidden."
McGonagall's breath caught.
"Blood magic," she whispered.
Dumbledore nodded solemnly. "A ritual. One that demanded a great price. His life in one timeline was forfeit to secure another. His past self—" He hesitated, choosing his words carefully. "—was meant to live, unaffected, while the consciousness of the Regulus from the future took control. It was not a perfect transition. He was not whole. There were fractures. Pieces missing." He turned to face her fully now, eyes solemn. "He was not meant to exist that way for long."
McGonagall swallowed.
"And his original body?" she asked, voice barely above a whisper.
Dumbledore's gaze flickered, something unreadable passing over his expression.
"Lost to the void," he murmured. "A sacrifice to time itself."
The words sat heavy between them, thick, suffocating.
Minerva closed her eyes briefly, exhaling through her nose. "So, in the end, time corrected itself."
Dumbledore nodded. "One way or another."
McGonagall shook her head, her throat tight.
"And the girl?"
Dumbledore was quiet for a long moment. Then, in a voice laced with something like sorrow, he said,
"She was always going to follow him."
The silence stretched.
The rain fell harder.
McGonagall's fingers twitched, nails digging into the fabric of her robe.
She had seen them, after the fall.
Two broken bodies, tangled together, their blood seeping into the stone beneath them.
She had seen the way his arms had still been wrapped around her, even in death. The way her fingers had curled into his robes. As if they had known—even in their final moments—how this would end.
How it had always been meant to end.
McGonagall swallowed back the lump in her throat. "And what will you say?"
Dumbledore did not answer immediately.
Instead, he reached for his glass of wine, stared at it for a long moment, then placed it back down, untouched.
He sighed.
"I will tell them," he said quietly, "that two brilliant, broken souls were lost today."
McGonagall looked at him, waiting.
And then, Dumbledore's voice dropped to a whisper, almost as if he were speaking to himself.
"I will tell them that love is not always kind. That it does not always save us."
His fingers curled over the edge of his desk.
"And I will tell them that, sometimes, love is the thing that destroys us the most."
The End.