“Ms Granger! I expressly told you not to help Longbottom! Detention, Friday morning, for your disobedience. And for being an insufferable know-it-all.” Severus snarled, glaring at Neville’s perfect potion.

“Don’t call her that! Hermione didn’t help Neville: he did it by himself!” cried Ron, who was sitting next to Hermione. Harry, hearing the ruckus, hurried over from the back of the room, where he’d been forced to work with Malfoy.

“And a detention on Friday for you too, Weasley, for your dishonesty and blatant disrespect!”

“But that’s the day of our Hogsmeade visit!” exclaimed Harry.

“So it is, Potter. Now get out! Or I’ll set you all detentions for every evening this week!"

“Come on Harry, you don’t want to get detention too” muttered Neville, pulling at Harry’s arm. Harry, after sending a sharp glare at Professor Snape, followed his friends out into the corridor.

“Snape’s being a right bastard this week” grumped Ron, as they made their way to Gryffindor tower.

“I don’t know,” said Hermione thoughtfully “Up ‘till this afternoon, I thought he’s been slightly, ah, calmer than usual. He hasn’t given Harry a detention since the tournament and Harry’s scarcely lost us five points.”

“Yeah, some sort of record” snorted Ron “Bet Dumbledore told him to go easy, what with the screw-up with the Cup.” Ron nodded sagely. “That’s why Harry didn’t get one today.”

“Yeah, probably” said Harry. He couldn’t help but feel, however, that his friends had detention because someone wanted him to be alone in Hogsmeade this Friday.

OoOoO

Harry lay awake, listening to the sound of his dorm-mates snoring and gazing idly at the Marauder’s map. Snape was, yet again, absent from the Hogwarts grounds. Where was he? Who was he with? What were they planning? Harry wasn’t entirely sure about visiting Hogsmeade tomorrow. His gut told him that he was in no danger and logic backed up this conclusion: if Tom intended to harm him, he would have done it on the night of the final Challenge. And even now, Tom didn’t have to play such an intricate game if he wanted to capture Harry: anyone who knew anything about Harry would realise that a straightforward ‘meet me in the forbidden forest or the girl gets it’ note would have him running, even if the girl in question was not his Mum.

But Harry had spent his whole life as a pawn in other people’s schemes. It was pretty obvious that Barty Crouch and Snape had connived it so that he would be able to visit the Hog's Head tomorrow alone. And Harry didn’t like being manipulated. Especially when his friends were also being mucked around.

Harry turned onto his side and burrowed his cheek into his pillow. For the first time in his life, he was being offered answers. Not ‘I’ll tell you later, dear boy’, not ‘that is so and so’s business’ not ‘I’m telling you such an obvious lie that it doesn’t count as one’. Principles were all well and good but did he really dare not find out what the Hog’s Head bartender had to say?

OoOoO

The Hog's Head was strangely empty that Friday morning. A thirty-something Asian man sat at one of the outside tables, talking on a mobile phone; his long, dark hair and sword contrasting vividly with the pin-striped business suit. At the counter was a teenage boy who, from his appearance, was obviously the business-man’s younger sibling. As Harry approached the bar, the boy turned and strode back to his table with a butterbeer and a clear drink in a martini glass, sending Harry a toothy smirk as he passed.

Behind the bar was a tall, elderly man, whose snowy hair and beard cascaded around his arms in tumbling waves. Harry caught the man’s gaze and saw that forget-me-not blue eyes lay behind the grubby lenses. Oh…

“Gandalf told me that you could tell me about Saruman.” Harry heard himself say.

Those blue eyes narrowed. “He did, did he boy? Better come round the back, then.” Said the man in a voice which, although unfamiliar, had familiar cadences. The old man raised his wand and the pub’s doors and window shutters slammed and bolted themselves shut.

“Follow me.”

oOoOo

The living quarters of the Hog’s Head were somewhat more clean and comfortable than the bar but there was definitely a ‘bachelor pad’ feel to the sitting room. None of the furniture matched: worn, brown Victorian leather armchairs clashed with a red silk, oriental sofa and shabby green, velvet curtains. Books and coffee cups littered the rag-tag of side tables and one pristine, flower-shaped lamp stood by the fireplace: apart from the cutesy portrait of a golden locked girl in a navy-blue velvet dress, it was the brightest, cleanest thing in the room.

“Bacon an' egg sarnie and a butterbeer.” said the bartender, slamming a couple of plates down on the table in front of Harry and thrusting a bottle of butterbeer into the boy’s hand.

The bartender sat down in an armchair and picked up his own sandwich. “You know who Saruman is?”

“No,” replied Harry “I was just told…”

“There’s this muggle book called Lord of the Rings. Written by a mate of mine, used to come to my pub when I lived in Oxford. Saruman is a wizard, see. An old an’ powerful wizard.”

Aberforth bit into his sandwich like he had a personal grudge against it. “He’s called Saruman the White ‘cos he’s the Head of the Order but he ain’t white: heart of cogwheels an’ metal, see? Just because a bloke is called white don’t mean he’s pure as the driven snow, catch me drift?”

Harry nodded, not at all sure that he did.

“Gandalf the Grey noticed Saruman wasn’t all that he said he was” continued the bartender “and, because Gandalf ain’t as grubby as his name, he tried to do summat about it. Saruman was a right bastard and bested him for a while and Gandalf died but, because the world still needed him, see, he was sent back as Gandalf the White.”

“That sounds an interesting story” said Harry uncomfortably.

“Wouldn’t know an allegory if it danced in front of you naked, huh boy?”

“Probably not, sir.” Harry replied, blushing.

“’Sir’ is my brother, the c**t in the castle.” Snorted Aberforth Dumbledore “You can call me Abe.”

“Your brother? Are you..?”

“My last name is Dumbledore, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Harry stared.

Aberforth stood up and strode around the room.

“That’s my kid sister, Ariana.” He said suddenly, pointing up at the portrait. “She was a lovely kid, sweet as honey and such a bright thing. Brighter than me by miles. One day, she were playing in the back garden. We lived in a muggle, village, see; me, my parents, Albus and Ariana. I was sick in bed, that day: I’d taken a fall from a tree and knocked myself silly. Mum was looking after me, while Albus was supposed to be keeping an eye on Ariana.”

Aberforth rubbed his eyes “But Albus, he went to the shops for a penny’orth of sweets and left little Ariana by her lonesome. Some boys, they caught sight of her whilst passing our house. Saw her mucking around with a flower, making it grow bigger. She liked flowers, our Ariana.”

“The boys asked her the trick of it and, when she couldn’t show them, they got rough. Wanted to stop the little ‘freak’ from doing it. They did bad things to her. Terrible things. And when Albus got back and caught them at it, he killed them.”

Noting Harry's horrified expression, Aberforth shrugged. "It's all well and good, kid, saying what's right and wrong after the event. But we never blamed Albus. Not after we saw..."

Aberforth sat down abruptly and took a chug of his beer “And we were in a right pickle. See, Ariana, what happened to her damaged her badly. It didn’t take a mind-healer to see that she had gone someplace in her head. We were scared. And then Dad got home and he looked inside her mind, he was a legilimens, you see, and… he said it was like she locked all her magic tight up in a little box. But this box was cracking, it wouldn’t hold. Dad worked with her all night, trying to get her to see that she didn’t have to be scared, that it was okay to be magic. But she couldn’t understand it and wouldn’t understand it. Eventually, she got angry and her magic exploded, sent Dad flying across the room smack into the wall. When Mum’d roused him and he went back to Ariana, the magic was back in the ‘box’. But that box had more cracks then ever now.”

“My parents were really scared. They knew that we couldn’t let on about Ariana; the Aurors would ship the poor kid off to St Mungos secure ward if they knew. She was a threat to the flaming Statute of Secrecy, what with her magic compressed like that: could explode out of her any time. There was no two ways about it, they'd have taken her off us and locked her up, secure like. And that's no life for a kid.”

Aberforth looked down at his knees.

“But there were three dead boys on our lawn and, even if we hid the bodies, it’d only be a matter of time before they were missed. We couldn’t say what had happened, else we’d lose Ariana. Dad went and handed himself into the Aurors the next morning; took the blame for killing the boys. He died in Azkaban.”

Harry’s eyes were round with horror.

“We moved away, to somewhere where no one knew us. We hid Ariana, kept her away from prying eyes. She was our secret. We soon learnt the art of barefaced lying, I can tell you. Probably why Albus was sorted into Slytherin.”

“Dumbledore, I mean Professor Dumbledore was a Slytherin?” exclaimed Harry.

“Thought he was a Gryffindor? No, though the Dumbledores are a Gryffindor family, right enough. I was sorted there, when my time came, as was my father.”

“Anyway” said Aberforth “we continued on, well enough, for many years. Then, one day, just before the end of term, Ariana had one of her episodes and Mum was badly injured. So badly that she died of it. Albus had just finished his NEWTs and he decided that he should stay at home and look after Ariana. I knew it was a daft idea; Albus had nowt to do with her, even when he was at home; most of the time he was locking in his bedroom corresponding with the great and the good, cementing his reputation as the most gifted student to enter Hogwarts. It was me who looked after Ariana, me who knew how to calm her and keep her happy. I had finished my OWLs, I could have stayed at home, but he insisted I finish my education.” Aberforth spat into the fire.

“Whilst I was at school, Baghilda Bagshot- she lived in Godric’s Hollow, just across the way from us- her nephew came over from Austria.”

“Godric’s Hollow!” gasped Harry.

“Yeah, we lived in the same village as Lily and James Potter, bet my brother never told you that.”

“No” said Harry, mortified.

“Gellert Grindelwald was the boys name and, by all accounts, Albus hung on him like a cheap set of robes pretty much from first sight. He was beautiful, was Grindelwald: long, flowing flaxen hair, violet eyes, good cheekbones. Caught Albus’s fancy from the get go. And he wasn’t just a pretty face; Grindelwald was no less brilliant than Albus and silver-tongued with it- could talk the birds from the trees if he chose to.”

“Grindelwald… Do you mean THE Grindelwald” asked Harry, appalled.

“Oh yes.” Snarled Aberforth “and Albus fell right under his spell. Neglected Ariana, couldn’t give a fig about the poor girl as long as he could sit and discuss world domination with handsome Gellert. Albus Dumbledore might have styled himself as the champion of muggles but, back then, he lapped up Grindelwald’s fascist claptrap. They were to overthrow the government, crush the statute of secrecy and rule as the glorious young leaders of the revolution.”

“Of course, when I came home at end of term and found out what they were planning, I told them straight- daft Gryffindork that I was- that I wasn’t having any of it. Ariana was in no state to be carted around the country like a bag of spuds. She needed care and attention, the likes of which she hadn’t been getting. I could tell.”

Aberforth bit his lip. “He didn’t like that, Grindelwald. He had a temper on him, that boy, which wasn’t pretty. He drew his wand and I drew mine, then Albus drew his to stop us fighting and Ariana, well, she got upset. She meant to help, poor kid but it went wrong. When I came round, Ariana was dead and Grindelwald had scarpered. Never saw him again.”

“I was in a state, what with my little sister dead." Aberforth said, his shoulders hunched. "I told Albus what I thought of him and his sense of priorities. He changed after that day, not that I would accept it for a long while, but he did. He was still arrogant and vain, still saw himself as one of the greatest minds and most powerful wizards ever to walk the earth, but he hated himself. He hated his selfishness, his ambition, his lack of integrity. He saw himself as the epitome of all things Slytherin.”

Aberforth sighed. “He decided to go into education. As a Hogwarts Professor, he thought himself safely out of the way of temptation. Of course, he didn’t realise that, being in charge of so many young minds, he had a shitload of power. Or maybe he did. I don’t know.”

“Anyhow, it was all fine ‘till Tom came along. It seemed to Albus that they were cut from the same cloth; Tom was smart, charming and ambitious. Like many minds of his quality, Tom flirted with the dark but he wasn’t a bad kid, from all accounts. Whereas the rest of the teachers thought butter wouldn’t melt, Albus could see no good in him.”

“It got worse after Tom had left school. He disappeared for a while, see, and when Tom came back, he had a beautiful bloke in tow. Japanese, he was but as milk and honey in complexion as Grindelwald. He wasn’t human, see, but one of their magical folk. Abraxus, he called himself: he took an English name because no-one could remember all the syllables of his real one.”

“Where Abraxus came from, muggles and magic lived together sweetly enough. Magic folk would train as priests and priestesses and it’s be their duty to look after the muggles; they’d heal their wounds, cure their diseases and protect them from those who would do them harm. Tom, he wanted to change things. He had fire in his belly. Only Albus couldn’t see that Tom was just an idealistic young mutt. He thought the boy was another Grindelwald. It got pretty nasty, near the end. Albus was so convinced that Tom had gone to the dark that he… well I think he framed Tom and his crew for a number of things.” Aberforth said bitterly.

“It’s been over an hour, boy, so you’d better get going. You don’t want to be missed.” Aberforth said suddenly, standing up. “I’ll show you out the back way.”

He led Harry out of the room and down a set of creaking stairs to a narrow door.

“Do… do you really think that Dumbledore, I mean Albus, I mean Professor Dumbledore would really do that? That he would really hurt people to get someone he thought was dangerous imprisoned?”

Aberforth looked at him, a pained crease forming between his eyes. “Harry, Al wrote Grindelwald’s slogan, the one which he used to justify his atrocities: ‘For the Greater Good’.”