"The Ocean loved the Moon but the Moon loved the stars. The Ocean cried in pain after watching the Moon and Stars together, and its tears took away its pure waters and muddled them with salt forever. Even after this, the Moon would still be reflected in the Ocean every night for as long as the Ocean did not dry up."
Cormac smiled at the lines he had written on the parchment. A week had passed since he had been reborn and in that week he had done a lot of self-reflection. He had wondered about what he wanted to do in his life.
His knowledge of the future put him in a unique position. He could help the people of Magical Britain end Lord Voldemort with expediency. The point of contention for Cormac had been: Did he really want to help uphold a society that was so morally corrupted? Yes Voldemort was an evil man and the common, innocent people did not deserve to suffer his monstrous nature and power, but did that hold true for the Ministry of Magic as well?
The part of him that was Liam, born and brought up with ideals of Liberty and Equality, was disgusted by the Ministry while the part of him that was Cormac felt indignant at the idea. The Ministry Of Magic was necessary for the survival of magicals within Britain. It was the ministry that cloaked the presence of wizards from the tyrannical eyes of the muggles.
The amalgam of their personalities had arrived, after much thinking, at the conclusion that the Ministry was a necessary evil that would have to be dealt with later and that Voldemort needed to be dealt with as an immediate concern. He just didn't like the bastard and his pureblood rhetoric. Of course, himself, Liam and Cormac enjoyed the idea of bringing the Darkest Wizard of all time low. Cormac and Liam fantasized after it for things like glory and vanity. And the amalgam while much more than a combination of the two was still a mesh of their personalities and thus did so for the dare and excitement.
And so they decided that they were going to fight a war to revolutionize the power structure of Magical Britain into a society that was the best they could envision for the single greatest reason that most wars in human history have occurred: The Male Ego and its need to have the largest dick. Or at least it was what the amalgam told itself. The thing about objectivity was that a person couldn't ever be objective about themselves. This was true even more for a being made of the egos of Liam and Cormac.
*-*-*-*-*-*
What had he been been doing for the past week that brought Cormac to writing broody lines in the Gryffindor Common room?
He had been reading and doing some magic. Nothing grand and only some transfiguration to see if the nature of his rebirth changed anything about himself. It had changed a lot. Of course, he hadn't gone from a barely capable fifteen year old wizard to Albus Dumbledore, but there were some interesting changes that Cormac could see immediately.
Cormac had been a competent enough wizard, he was no Hermione Granger but he could be considered above-average.
Initially he had planned on analyzing his magic relentlessly, his instincts as Liam had been bubbling with curiosity but Cormac's early childhood tutoring about the dangers of reckless wielding of magic stayed his hand. He decided to first focus on the one branch of magic that he believed himself to be already good enough in to experiment with safely: Transfiguration.
It was a field that Cormac really excelled in. The boy he had once been loved the art of transfiguration. It reminded him of his deceased mother. She had been a seamstress that had made bespoke clothing for rich clients as a hobby.
Cormac's father had tried very hard to fill the gap left by his wife and Cormac had been spoiled as a result.
'Spoiled would be an understatement. I was a criminal in the making.' – The boy was very messed up and had touched a few of his babysitters inappropriately. The young women had not called out the boy about his behaviour but that had only emboldened him. It honestly disgusted him a little that a part of himself was not-at-all ashamed of his own despicable actions.
'A pity that I did not get a slap for my behaviour. At least I wouldn't have to deal with my currently broken and disgusting reputation if my disgusting behaviour had been corrected.'– And what poor reputation it was. Nobody liked Cormac. He did not make a single respectable friend throughout his years at Hogwarts, only thriving with scummy company.
'What a waste', Cormac could have used his talent in transfiguration and joined the transfiguration club but he had not done so because some of the seventh year students had already told him off for his overbearing and condescending habit of giving 'advice' to people that clearly did not want it.
Even now, in the time that Cormac had not gone out of his way to talk to anybody at the school. Not one person had approached him to ask him about his damned well-being, not even his dormmates, even after his violent and painful sickness.
This amount of social isolation had been mind-numbing especially with the lack of a smartphone. He had tried reading books but hours of reading had made him numb. And he did not want to practise magic for more than a few hours daily. At least until he had a few milestones that he could focus on achieving.
His boredom had led to him feeling creative and broody. He ended up conjuring a few pieces of parchment and started writing poems and short sappy stories that his mind could remember or come up with as he sat in front of the fireplace late at night.
It was late in the night so the common room was mostly empty except for a few people– a few seventh years who seemed to be doing their assignments.
Cormac checked his watch and found that it was quarter to one, making him sigh. He had a meeting to attend and he might be late for it if he did not move away from the warm, cozy covers and the fireplace.
So he pushed himself off the couch and pulled out his wand from his wrist holster that he had created himself after using a few simple charms and a transfigured leather belt. The inspiration of course being the multitude of fanfiction he had read as Liam.
Quickly leaving through the common room door, he walked through the shortcuts of Hogwarts he was aware of, not at all bothering to cover his traces as he broke curfew.
[Albus Dumbledore]
A small coin floated in front of him. Forged from soft, dull and gray lead the thing was plain on one side while on the other a symbol well known to an alchemist like Dumbledore was engraved with precision all but impossible to most wizards. The coin was a nifty creation of his, a trinket from when he had been obsessed with the idea of mastering Death and understanding Fate. An instrument with one sole purpose– to guide its master to where they would face the end. Nothing more. Nothing less.
The coin had always guided Albus to this place. To this balcony at the top of the Astronomy Tower. Albus had always believed that his creation was accurate, it was his after all, that he would die at the top of this tower as he overlooked at the beloved, incredible school that he had spent his life in, as student, as teacher and as headmaster. The eleven years of peace after Lord Voldemort's first fall had made him hopeful that perhaps the wraith would be a problem for some other poor unlucky man to solve.
He had been wrong. Perhaps it was destiny in the form of the Prophecy or the Elder Wand not wanting to allow its master a peaceful end but Lord Voldemort had dragged himself away temporarily from the eternal unlife that Tom Riddle had chained him to by using Horcruxes.
He had been wrong again. 'Things have changed.'– He did not know what had happened a week ago that had caused such a massive and unforeseen change but Albus Dumbledore was surprised to note that he would not be dying on the Astronomy Tower. His destiny had changed and he was not sure how to feel about it.
On one hand Hogshead Inn, was not his ideal choice for place of death. On the other hand as he was currently banned from the establishment, him dying there might be a sign of finally finding his brother's understanding. Not forgiveness. Never forgiveness. His sin had been too wretched for him to ever find forgiveness.
Albus was shaken away from his thoughts when he felt the enchantment he had placed at the door at the base of the tower going off.
"A visitor? I hope it is a curious one rather than a sad one," Albus murmured even as he placed a disillusionment charm upon himself. Many came to the astronomy tower, it was an isolated place that the first years that were homesick often came to cry in.
Albus had often been a counsellor to the young ones and tried helping in whatever way he could. It was another thing that he felt conflicted about. The Founders had made their reasons for making a boarding school rather than a day school very clear in the books held within the Headmaster's personal library.
The world was an unstable place during the times of the Founders. Both magically and politically. Wars between wizarding clans and families were common. The formal understanding of magic was very underdeveloped, counter-curses were all but impossible to find for most family magic. Hogwarts had been created as a sanctuary to protect and nurture wizards, and it being a boarding school helped it function better.
Things had changed now, and Albus had at one point thought about allowing students to go home for weekends. Any such thoughts had vanished when he had realized how poorly some parents were equipped to deal with their own children.
He heard the student who had decided to wander start to climb the stairs and slowly placed himself in a corner, watching patiently. It was always amusing when students found out that they had been caught wandering the castle at night by the Headmaster himself.
---------------------------------------
/Author Notes/
Hope you all like the chapter. My take on magic will be a little different than canon. Not a total rewrite of the magical system but some changes.
Become a patron at pa***n.com/PaxOctavian and get early access to chapters of all my fics.