Prelude To The Dawn (obsolete?)

[Apocalypticat]

Hiya, everyone. *sigh* This requires some explanation. Long before Book 7 was released, I started drafting a Dumbledore-centred series, starting from his parents' marriage and ending at his death. As much as I love Book 7, my plans are now rather destroyed. Yet I enjoyed writing the first chapter (all I had time to write before the release) so much that I can't resist posting it. The first chapter itself, with some name changes, would not be entirely AU, but I'm unsure if I will continue with it and work my plot around the new canon. So I'm posting this, for moment, for posterity. Some of it is still a tad rough around the edges. For the curious, and idle!

Rating: 15+ ish.

PART 1


…Albus Dumbledore was conceived just as crisis flung the wizarding world into darkness.
—Dumbledore: A Biography, by Harry Potter, Chief Warlock and Hogwarts Headmaster, Order of Merlin First Class

“Miss Lucas—”

“Please—"

They stopped, and stared at each other, equally incoherent. She was moved her eyes away from the blue ones before her, casting them down past the cravat and cut robes, knowing that she did not look demure, as Mother had advised, but insolent. For some reason he had seemed to find her insolence attractive, at the ball, at the tea party—as soon as Mother had let her ‘come out’ he had been there, sharp aristocratic face turned in her direction—

Absurd, for how could one have an aristocratic face?

“Miss Lucas, I…”

His accent had slipped. Maria smiled; she had known that that his voice was softer than he had pretended, less confident—

“I… have admired you from a distance for a very long time,” he said, weakly.

She looked up and straight into the pale face. Mr Dumbledore—Ulfin, she thought shyly—had never looked so dishevelled, his brown locks displaced and his half grown beard unkempt, as though he had twisted several long fingers in it. Yet, she realised with a slight flush, there was still something solidly rigid about him; poised and refined and in control. That was what had first drawn her eye—the difference between herself and him, attracted to one another like light to darkness.

---

The session had been a long one, filled with empty speeches and pointless posturing.

Archibald watched his brother, the Chief Warlock, get to his feet, knotted hands splayed like crabs on the creaking table. Rheumy eyes met his reassuringly, and then roved over the audience.

“It is imperative…”

He heard no more of the speech, only the faint whistle that escaped past the ancient teeth with the words, and the bubbling of the narrow chest. He wondered that the others, fingering their papers and nodding agreement, did not hear it, did not see the quivering of the broken spine. Fear bit at him. He looked down, at the parchment. When had three years mattered so much? Yet he was not sure that it was the years that had caused it. He curled the edge of the parchment, heard it crackle. Yellow, bloodshot eyes turned in his direction; he willed his hands to still.

Nimrod. He could remember him outside Hogwarts on the last day, golden locks shining. More recently, he could remember him five years away from the trembling travesty of a body now in front of them: lean, quick fingers rearranging wards, dancing in the air like a pianist’s, voice booming as he lambasted the Ministry for corruption and malpractice.

His brother had never let an injustice sit still. A swell of painful pride stiffened him in his seat. No, he had always spoken out, said what he believed…

The Minister had smiled one day, three years ago. It was a slick, satisfied smile that had crawled over his face like a snake.

---

“I do.”

The church that was not a church burst open. The carriage sat beneath the steps, thestrals stamping indolently. The couple descended.

He was young, noble, alone—proud in the gaze of his in-laws, dignified to his friends, feeling the blood that wasn’t there. She was last bud of the Lucases, surrounded, envied, adored. He glided through the doors, stiff, Adam’s apple bobbing beneath his cravat, cane in a vice-grip, but she floated, flushed and excited, a present to be bundled away by a knight. Brown eyes followed blue. The family crest gleamed on the carriage doors.

“What is he?” one of them remembered her mother asking.

“He works at the Ministry.”

An icy silence.

“He’s very much respected, and of course he’s landed,” she’d said quickly.

“Landed? Income?”

“Ten thousand a year. A country manor.”

A nod of approval. “And his name?”

“Dumbledore.”

Dumbledore. Fide et sapientia, silver, with a cross of purple, surrounded by a laurel wreath and falcons and topped with a cockatrice. Argent, a saltire purpure, cantoned with four markings of ermine sable, her brother, an expert on heraldry, had said. Falcons rampant guardant. Cockatrice's head erased purpure langued gules.

“What does it mean?” she had asked.

He had shrugged. “Just that he’s one of the old nobles. You know. From when wizards had kings.”

---

The sick-room was stifling. He choked as he left it, closing the door on the rattle from the frothing lungs.

“Archibald, is he… ?”

Fidelia was there, waiting in the hall where the House-Elves had left her, pouchy face pale with concern. He looked at her blindly, and then stepped back as the owls descended, beaks crammed with notes of good wishes from the rest of the Wizengamot. He took them limply, and let them flutter to the ground. Fidelia took another step closer. She had once been beautiful.

“Is he… getting better… ?”

Archibald gave a wild laugh. Fidelia put her hands to her face.

“They’ve killed him, they’ve killed him…” He stopped, unable to say any more. The other Elder looked at him, aged eyes welling.

“Dead?”

“Not yet.” Then he was speeding towards the hall fireplace, half-running, no longer afraid but something else… He seized a handful of Floo powder and cast it in, and had one foot in the fire before the witch caught up with him.

“Where are you going?”

“The Department of Mysteries.”

And he yelled it, and watched Fidelia’s face dissolve in flames. This was the first time he had used the Wizengamot’s privilege to Floo straight in without having to risk the muddle of the Atrium; he stumbled out of a grate confusedly, into what appeared to be pitch blackness. He stood blinking until the doors appeared out of the walls, and remained rigid as the grinding sound of a hidden revolution once again displaced his sense of geography. Merlin, what would Nimrod think, if he knew what he was about to do? But Nimrod was suffocating on his own breath, dying on the force of his own life—

The witch tumbled out of the fireplace behind him, puffing, white hair dishevelled. “Archibald—“

He let out another laugh, wild and surreal, soaring up to the ceiling. “Did you know that I used to be Dark?”

She stiffened and looked at him, aghast. The sight made him laugh again, bitterly.

“I was. My brother saved me. Now I shall save him.”

He was three paces away from her before the practicalities occurred to him. Fidelia was frozen, old face crumpled.

“Archibald—“

“Fidelia, I need you to gather the others together—get them in the Veil chamber. The Healers have said that he’ll… pass over within a few hours. We have to be ready by then. I’m going to get the books we need; what we’ll be doing is ancient magic—the Ministry have locked it up, like they lock everything up. The guardians will ask, but Nimrod’s name still has some meaning, they’ll—“

She cut across him. “What is it, what is that you will do—?”

“Save my brother as my brother saved me,” he said, heavily.

The witch looked at him, mouth a quivering line.

“Cross the Veil.”

He turned, but Fidelia’s hand was a claw, ripping at his shoulder—

“Impossible, impossible—”

“No—”

“You mad fool. I should be calling St Mungo’s—”

He whirled, and gripped her wrist, digging his fingers in so that her body curved towards him in pain. Did she not understand? Did not understand that Nimrod… Even the thought was unbearable; Fidelia momentarily fractured into a splodge of colour as his eyes heated. Brother. His voice erupted in a roar.

“Will you or will you not help me? Do you care nothing for him, hm? Will you go home and drink tea whilst the last light of this forsaken world is extinguished? Will you not help? It is impossible because you are so ready to believe it is. Do you remember nothing? Have you forgotten the oath we made to him, the vows we swore to him, the freedom he tried to keep alive? HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN—?”

“Arch—”

“—Fool that I am, do you think I have forgotten what he felt for you? Am I a fool to think you returned those feelings—”

“Please—”

“—And I thought the loyalty at least, if not the love—”

Her head was in her hands. He stopped, awkwardly, suddenly feeling that without Nimrod, Fidelia was just a diminished old woman…

[Apocalypticat]

PART 2

Dumbledore Manor was too big for her.

Wiltshire was too big for her; in some strange way she did not only feel unworthy of Dumbledore Manor’s vast rooms and its cavern of a hall, but also of the landscape surrounding them, a green expanse richer than the sparse Essex flatlands she had grown up in. There was a guilty joy about it all, from the hill that separated them from the cluster of houses that was Kneazleford to the heavy oak that towered at the bottom of the garden. At first, to Ulfin’s irritation, she had not even noticed the Manor, but had only had eyes for the purity of the sky, the wonder of nature. She had not had even a patch of grass in her home town of Magusbridge, where the upper classes jostled for position as ferociously as the hags, a lone oasis of magic in a desert of breeding Muggles.

Yet their thestral carriage had ridden freely, Muggle Repellant Charms barely necessary, skipping gaily down Merlin’s Spine, a line of magic stretching from through Cumberland straight down to Somerset. She had been stunned at how easy it was, how free it had all been—

Ulfin had laughed. “Were you really so swamped with Muggles before?”

His laughter had been the best part of the journey. Laughter was so rare from him; amusement usually appeared as a vague smile, and perhaps a raised eyebrow. She loved his dignity.

“I doubt the Minister would appreciate an incompetent fool as an Undersecretary, Maria.”

“I know,” she had whispered, and slipped her hand in his. She had sat a little straighter, knowing she was no longer ‘Miss Lucas’ but Maria Dumbledore, wife to the Undersecretary of the Minister.

Then they had arrived, swinging up the long, sweeping drive to what seemed to her nothing less than a palace, ivy-grown walls looming above rolling grounds, spires and chimneys spiking the sky. The sunlight made everything glow; the beauty of it had had her speechless and open-mouthed. Ulfin had sat up, and the sight of the Manor had unhinged his stiff, embarrassed jaw.

“Built in the time of my great-grandfather. I did not grow up here, but our family sometimes visited for the summer. I may have to check some of the wards once we are settled; these hired hands are a trifle shoddy with their wand-work—”

He had not come in with her, but gone to Kneazleford to see the solicitor, just as the sun dipped behind the clouds, and she had entered alone, still stunned. The inside was just as big as the outside, grand and overwhelming. The furniture was new, and set as they planned by the House-Elves, but ancient tapestries adorned the walls, and Ulfin’s coat of arms sat over the formidable fireplace, looking as though it had always been there. The immense hall had confronted her with a traditional oil-painting of the Dumbledore family, the late father-in-law staring disdainfully, whilst the son, her husband, looked out at her with a face that was softer, and eyes which were boyish and nervous. She had poked her tongue out at the former and smiled at the latter, and then moved on through the rooms, guessing purposes and imagining décor.

A billiards room? A drawing-room? A nursery?

That last she still thought about now, standing in their bedroom, hand unconsciously held to the flatness below the high-waisted dress. A nursery for children… She quivered, and the wind howled. He would want sons. Of course they had not spoken about it, though the subject had crept close several times. There was no point in discussing it; there was nothing to discuss. She had expected to bear Ulfin’s children, and, moreover, wanted to.

She remembered Orpha Tomlinson—little Orpha, four years her junior—walking into the drawing room at Prewetts’ dinner party, gangly frame made suddenly voluptuous by the child brewing in her belly. The chatter had ceased instantly, as if in awe, and the other women had started forward, children on their lips and in their minds and at their homes, effusive in a collective joy she was excluded from. Whilst the others offered advice and smiled at Orpha’s stomach, she had eyed bread-rolls, unable to look. She wanted to touch it—touch the skin hiding the child from view, feel its movement, stroke it through the flesh—and pretend the sensation in her own private emptiness. Less deeply had been the feeling of utter ignorance, standing single in a room full of the married. Eyes filled with secrets looked at her and seemed to laugh.

Ulfin had been ’around,’ of course. Yet he had taken so long to verbally express the interest she had detected that she had wondered if there was some overriding objection he had to her—that the potentiality would remain just that: nothing real. Months of secret fruitless glances, and Orpha had had her baby. She had seen the child as a ‘Miss Lucas’ round Mrs Tomlinson’s house, as a chubby face with large eyes set off by a red smudge of a mouth. She had excused herself, but the gurgle had followed her into the hallway.

The candles guttered, and the renewed light hit the bedside cabinet, drawing her eye and moving her gaze onto the bed itself, a beast cloaked in scarlet hangings, strangely obscene. The blankets were spread, warmed, civilised. Maria stared. The bed was where it generally happened, wasn’t that what her old nurse had said? She felt a twinge of frustration; her curiosity had been met only by riddles and half-whispers that were considered too ‘forward’ for a young lady’s ears, no matter how necessary it was for them to hear them. No, she had nothing but a drunken nurse’s mumblings to go by.

“The wand stirs the cauldron and makes a potion, and the potion makes a baby…”

She smiled at the pillows without seeing them. She knew what the ‘wand’ was; the Lucas family portrait artist had had a book of anatomy and had enjoyed watching her discover the ‘adult male’ page. She had been surprised, half-horrified by the idea, but deliberate in her absorption of it; she doubted that even the Black sisters knew anything about ‘wands.’ For a moment the fear left her, replaced with anticipation. Hypocrites, all of them! Mother had done something ‘carnal and improper’ more than once. Yes, all elder women in their dour robes and the men in their crisp suits, even the ancients of the Wizengamot—they had all committed sin in private…

The wind’s roar brought her back to the present. The sky was roiling with purple clouds, violent in some outrage against a violated law. Maria wondered distractedly how the weather had managed to change so abruptly, but then the sunlit ride in the carriage already seemed a world away, on the other side of her maidenhead. Ulfin had been Ulfin then, darling Ulfin, her man above the man of ‘man and woman.’ Now, in thinking of him and what was to come, he had become a Man, the bearer of something she now found impossible to see as anything other than a secret weapon. What was that one piece of knowledge next to the reality before her? The thought drained the blood from her, made her suddenly cold.

The world outside was dark, the dome of the sky pitch and interrupted only by the violet and nebulous greys of warring clouds. Night. Her heart climbed. She had been waiting, ever since they had left the wedding, ever since blue eyes had first met brown at some nonentity’s ‘coming out,’ ever since she had heard of him—perhaps even ever since she had first been aware of something ‘carnal and improper,’ as her mother put it, about the wedding night—

Ulfin.

Lightning stabbed through the windows. She jumped; made something less than Maria by the distant rupture. Where had the storm come from?

Why was she afraid?

She had a sudden vision of herself out in the darkened grounds, leading a miniature Ulfin by the hand. She felt quite sure that the non-existent son would look like him; the idea of any resemblance to her was bizarre. He would be boyish and vulnerable to her, and impressive to outsiders, and suddenly she was excited, loving a son that would exist, that must exist…

The thunder rolled. The wood behind her creaked.

Ulfin stood in the doorway, wraith-like in his outdoor cloak, brown locks beaded with moisture. Her eyes moved over the Albert chain of his pocket watch, the absurd whiteness of his kid-gloves, the sharp angle of a displaced lapel, being drawn inexorably towards his face. His expression was unreadable, and she dropped her gaze again, a blush creeping up her neck. In that short glimpse she had not been sure whether he was looking at her or through her; whether she was still Maria or a Woman. Her blush deepened; her head seemed enclosed in a bubble of warmth. The moment. Ulfin was not striding in, tracing a web of eloquence around her, but still at the doorway, dialogue crushed beneath the weight of the coming intimacy.

“Miss Lucas…”

He took a step forwards.

“I… have admired you from a distance for a very long time.”

That distance was closing, she thought, vaguely. In a moment there would be no distance between them, not even the distance afforded by layers of clothes. Her gaze eased back upwards, darted up to the face, drew away again.

Perhaps the thought was why she was staring at the clothes rather than the man: the high-necked outdoor robe, the buttoned waistcoat, the neatly-tied cravat—silver buckles, shining buttons, fastenings and clips… The number of clasps and the weight of the robes that covered her husband had never been so noticeable. For the first time she allowed herself to wonder about the body beneath the robes. It would be like the rest of him: pale, leanly masculine, sharp and dignified. Lightning suddenly seared the image on her brain, and it was as if Ulfin was already naked—

Her hands twisted together. There was a small snap as he undid the clasp of his outer robes.

Maria cast her eyes down, and stared at the floor as fabric rustled and buckles creaked. The thunder crashed, and she gave an involuntary shudder. The moment. Would she now be able to share in the conspiracy of pretended dignity? Ulfin’s young face from the old portrait seemed to hang before her, mouth a wavy line of nervousness. Did the boy still exist? She was suddenly back in the hallway at the Lucas house, having her hand gripped convulsively by a man with suddenly frantic blue eyes—

“I love—”

The voice had been choked off at the end, but that did not matter, what mattered was a faint pink suffusion and a knotted brow… She looked up.

His waistcoat was hanging open, revealing a rumpled undershirt. The candlelight set the growth on his chin glowing, and that made her notice it, the marble whiteness of his face—

Somehow, she smiled. After all, they were both young, and neither of them knew…

The fear and the image of a child that was half Ulfin and half herself translated themselves into movement; she walked as if in a dream, until he was inches away, until she could smell the smoke on his breath. Had he sat in the carriage and thought of the moment and pulled the fear out of him with a cigar? The long nose was blotched on the bridge, as though it had been pinched. Her body quivered. He stared through her, rigid limbs moving mechanically, pale enough to be ill.

Slowly, he unwound the cravat.

She rocked back on her heels and looked away, frightened. She was a girl, looking at a forbidden book of anatomy, and it did not matter that he was afraid too, or that they would learn together. The storm howled.

Belatedly, she wondered if she should be doing something, undressing herself. One hot hand reached round the back of her dress, but Ulfin’s eyes suddenly focussed, and blazed. His face twitched with something that could have been anger. One long-fingered hand pushed her backwards, onto the bed. Limp, she watched the undershirt slide off, and understood. Terror had made his nostrils round and snorting like a horse’s, but he was her Ulfin, and what he feared he would master…

His hand crept up beneath the white muslin.

---

Archibald’s knuckles would not loosen.

He saw Nimrod through a haze of magic and tears, an empty body already stiff with rigor mortis, lying on a table transfigured from a potted plant. A potted plant! Yet there had been nothing else, and there was not time…

He looked up, almost blind. The dais raised him and Nimrod above the others, stiff with the effort of fuelling the immense sigil that had been chalked hastily on the floor. The Veil was already a tunnel of wind, vomiting a gale that stirred the silver hair and stroked the beards. He looked round at them all—Fidelia, hunched with both horror and love, eyes fixed painfully on Nimrod, Douglas with his arm extended, unsteady from the struggle with the guards, Michael with his bubbling loyalty… All of them Nimrod’s men, all of them wanting to believe the impossible, that an ancient spell could bring him back…

Something slid down his wand-arm. Blood. They had all given it, every last one of them—

“What does this spell need, Archibald?” Douglas had asked.

“Sacrifice. Of our blood.”

But Douglas had known. He had known what the Book of Thoth said, even if he hadn’t seen it himself. There must be equal exchange. What had he been, what had his life meant? Elder Archibald, brother of Nimrod. Half the definition was gone with the Chief Warlock. The black rag of the Veil gestured like a reaching hand.

He raised his wand. “Iunctum!”

There was a collective groan, and their power roared into him, burnt through him. The Veil contorted, and the wind screamed, ripping at the purple Wizengamot robes. Part of him seemed suddenly above the Ministry, a channel of magic foamed into the world. His grief throbbed; he could feel their belief. How long had they been together, behind his brother, struggling as their rights were stripped from them? How long would they continue to do so? The answer was like a heart-beat; his nerves pounded with it, the blood fizzing with the tumult in the sky.

The pull began, the wrenching on his magical core. Douglas staggered, and Wellington was sweating, gnarling hands tracing in the air above the sigil, trying to keep it in place… Fidelia let out a cry. His vision narrowed to his brother—

There was a scream, an indescribable shout from the Veil, runes glowing red with the sacrificed blood—

The Wizengamot shuddered as one—

Now.

He filled his mind with Nimrod: Nimrod as a child, Nimrod as a teenager, Nimrod as an adult, Nimrod as the ailing Chief Warlock… The memory of the ceremony was unneeded; his knees bent of their own accord, and he beckoned towards the Veil—

“Reverto ut mihi meus cruor! Reverto ut mihi meus semen! Ego dedi ego, animus pro animus , cruor pro cruor—!”

The arcane words were meaningless; it was their translation which had him straining towards the Veil, offering, asking, begging… Return to me my blood. Return to me my kin. I offer myself, soul for soul, blood for blood…Fidelia’s scream of horrified realisation was also meaningless; he crawled towards Nimrod like a dog—

The power bloomed, and the storm above broke. He was with it, raging and pleading, screaming brother—

—And something took hold him, creeping down his bones and twisting them like a puppet’s; he was staggering towards the Veil, and it was too soon, much too soon, and oblivion stood before him, sucking him into a vacuum—

“ARCHIBALD!”

Fidelia was hoarse, wrinkled face slack and bleeding tears, eyes on him instead of on the sigil—

Her wand flamed. His stomach, distant now, lurched in horror. Fidelia, once so beautiful, was engulfed, skin blackening and charring, arms dwindling to sticks—

“NO!”

He died with her; the death was like a knife entering between the ribs—

Douglas staggered, and Archibald wondered how long it was that he had loved her, for now he suddenly remembered the picnic and Douglas’s fixed eyes and Fidelia’s giggles—

The Veil gaped like a maw. There were stars beyond, an ecstasy of stars—

“NIMROD!”

The body was motionless.

Douglas’s core collapsed, snuffed with his life, reducing him to a pile of limbs. Wellington was suddenly gone, but he couldn’t see for magic and the awful shroud flapping before him. The others were falling away, stripped, souls crumbling and bodies dissolving, sucking screaming into death—

His windpipe turned to lava. Blood bubbled, and there was nothing but Nimrod’s death, and Fidelia’s, and Douglas’s, and Wellington’s… This was the end, and there were no thoughts except for a face now decaying, and one repeating concept, the certainty of damnation: I have done this. I have committed this. The storm was a hurricane, a breach in the horizon and he was above, in the clouds, watching something white and vast, too soon released, too powerful, come bursting both from the heavens and the archway, winged and splitting, divided by the law he had broken…

---

Far away, Ulfin and Maria rocked together, in a fervent paroxysm. At the moment the Veil blew back and the last purple robes fluttered to the ground, an unheard music began, tripping over the blue-white of disturbed sheets, a melody deepening and yet flying like a phoenix, succeeding the cessation of the storm, and building and building, like the cells would in Maria’s womb, into a symphony of light.

A/N: What do you reckon? :s I'm not sure how the backstory would fit with Ulfin's and Maria's personalities... I also not certain whether I have the time to continue anything of a 5-part musically-titled epic!

[Apocalypticat]

Oh, and just to randomly amuse you—some of the quotes I planned to put at the start of some chapters.

…An intolerable rebel, an insolent brat.
—Cassius Lestrange, Hogwarts Headmaster of the time

…He always had such a lack of respect for me.
—Cornelius Fudge: The Memoirs

…He wasn’t close-minded; he saw a Wrackspurt in his garden.
—Luna Lovegood to an unknown acquaintance

… We all thought that the sherbet lemons were stuffed with drugs.
—Wings of a Dragon, Charlie Weasley

…Really weird.
—The Lost Diaries of Sirius Black

.. Dumbledore was the lone voice of reason in a sea of stupidity.
—All Fudged Up: A Critique of the Ministry, Hermione Granger

… I think it was the beard that scared me. I mean, I always found Father Christmas scary.
—Peter Pettigrew, Wizengamot Trial Records

“He was a free love kinda man…”
—Bill Weasley, at the funeral

“People just didn’t get him. But I said, it was love and humanity, not promiscuity…”
—The Words of a Non-Writing Man, Aberforth Dumbledore, with help from Hermione Granger

[Drake]

Darling, you have to finish this! You've sold me on the quotes alone! And I've always harped on how much I want a DD backstory now that JKR's done with Harry.

[Apocalypticat]

Thanks for the kind words! I'll have a think about it, and see how things go after I've finished Him Again (another long fic would just about kill me right now!).