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Chapter Begins:
Dumbledore slumped down in his chair at the Headmaster's office.
In just one year, his wrinkles had doubled, it seemed. Despite the magical prowess he possessed now, his fake arm and leg pained him like a parasitic ghost sucking off his blood.
There was a tiredness in his old bones.
And it wasn't because of his age.
Dumbledore sighed.
He had just returned to his office after a much-needed talk with Harry, who had woken up after three days.
That talk alone had cost his old self all the cheerfulness he could muster at this moment in his life.
Albus had already questioned the other four children… brave children. Yes.
But Harry was a different matter altogether.
Dumbledore sighed again.
Suddenly, Grindelwald's face flashed in his memory like a dark thought.
And when, in this thought, Grindelwald turned around, Albus saw Voldemort's hideous smile.
Crack!
A crack ran across the table in front of Dumbledore, all the paintings shaking like leaves.
The old Headmasters within the paintings tried to talk to Albus, but no matter what or how he tried to bring himself to the present, he failed.
Lord Yellow Warlock's words kept ringing the bell of hypocrisy in his mind.
The image of himself conquering the world Albus had seen in the Mirror of Erised was chilling his spine constantly.
The Killing Curse he had cast upon his enemy…
Yellow Warlock had grabbed it. Grabbed it!
Had he been wrong all this time? Albus thought. Was Yellow Warlock right about him?
It mattered little in which direction Dumbledore directed his thoughts.
At the end of every thought, he found himself; his actions; his regrets.
Then there was the matter of these… Contestants.
After the death of one of them, Albus had received crucial information from the Order of the Immortal Lotus. He had passed it on to the remaining ones, who were acting as the guardians of these Cursed Vaults now.
However, not one of them had contacted him anymore.
It was as if something had spooked all of them, silencing their voice.
The enemy is lucky… Albus remembered one of the sentences and couldn't make sense of it.
Was it the Outer One who was lucky or the Yellow Warlock under him? What did being lucky even mean?
Everyone had their times of luck and bad luck, Albus knew. The same must be true for even these Contestants.
Or was there something in this sentence that he wasn't aware of?
Why was the Order keeping him unaware of these things?!
Why?! Why?!
WHY?!!
"Haa!" Black flames rippled across the office, scorching everything.
Cryyyyyyyy!
The cry was majestic.
It resonated with Albus' anger; anguish; helplessness.
The Headmaster lifted his head and looked at his Spirit Companion. "Fawkes…"
However, the creature reflected in his black eyes was darker than his pupils.
Perched on a stand in front of Albus was the strangest, most distorted creature any timeline must have seen in the Random World of Harry Potter.
It lacked all the colors of Fawkes as known to the Contestants.
This Phoenix donned jet black feathers, its pupilless eyes screeching nothing but evil.
Spirit Companion…
Albus seemed to look at his reflection in the Phoenix. If he still had a soul intact, it must look like Fawkes, he knew.
Dark. Evil. Corrupted.
"Fawkes…" Albus sighed. "I am… lost, my friend. I am lost."
The Dark Phoenix bobbed its neck left and right, looking at his lost Companion.
Then, with one silent flutter, it crossed the distance and landed in front of Albus Dumbledore.
The Headmaster found this sudden approach very surprising, making him let go of his thoughts for a moment.
"Fawk…"
[There's one way.]
Albus' hands shuddered. His lips went dry. The tips of his fingers throbbed. His feet felt cold.
The voice felt coming out of the Fawkes, but Albus knew, for a fact, that it wasn't the creature talking to him.
"What?" Albus asked.
There was an urgency in his old voice. It felt like a drowning man searching for a stick.
And the words that he heard next, threw Albus Dumbledore into the deepest pit of chilling silence he had ever come across in his over hundred years of life.
…
"The whole school's talking about it!" said Ron.
Ron, Hermione, Daphne, and Draco were standing around Harry in the medical ward.
With an undiscussed nod, they hadn't mentioned anything about the Notifications, Hallows, and Spells to Professor Dumbledore.
It wouldn't have mattered, they knew.
However, the rest didn't know what had occurred in the last chamber.
Like Harry, they all too had been confined to the ward while Harry was unconscious.
Only an hour before Dumbledore visited Harry, and after the interview with the Headmaster and Madam Villanelle, they were discharged.
So, when Harry told them about Quirrell and Voldemort and Brave Heart, the boys gasped and the girls almost screamed.
"Dumbledore told me that… it was all doing of The Yellow Warlock," Harry admitted. "He also took the Stone."
The name sent shivers running down the children's spines.
Lord Yellow Warlock was literally the world's darkest wizard and greatest enemy.
"There's something here that we aren't understanding," Daphne said. "It doesn't make sense. How did Yellow Warlock even infiltrate Hogwarts? How did he know we would be… you know… going for the Stone?"
Unsurprisingly, they all agreed to Daphne's words.
"But what to do?" Ron asked. "We can't… you know… tell anyone."
"Well…" Daphne drawled. "I was thinking…"
"… about me! Wow! What would people say?!"
The children's heads snapped toward the main door.
A black-haired and black-eyed boy in Gryffindor's uniform was walking towards them with a nonchalant smile on his face.
In stunned silence, they all saw him coming closer and looking at Harry.
"I heard you punched a ghost out of Quirrell…"
Black couldn't even finish the joke when all the children pounced on him.
Daphne and Hermione began crying. Ron's face had gone red in gratitude. Draco struggled with his instincts for a moment. Harry, on the other hand, had truly hugged him.
"Thank you…" they said, spilling out their hearts.
Though it was the Spells that had let them clear the traps, without the magical gloves and the shoes, they wouldn't have found even the courage to walk into the first chamber.
Arlen Black hadn't been there with them.
Still, if he had been here, he would have been the first to go for the Stone.
At this moment, neither the boys nor the girls had anything against Black but pure thankfulness.
"You saved our lives…" Harry said, blinking away the tears.
Draco nodded, making a face.
"Yeah?" Black commented. "I wish you were a Professor, Harry. I could have asked for points, then."
"Why?" Ron jumped in. "What happened?"
"You didn't hear?" Black asked, raising an eyebrow. "We lost."
"We lost what?" Draco asked, pressing his brows. "Quidditch Cup? Because I asked around and they told me we won it because you arrived in time."
"Wait!" Harry couldn't believe it. "You knew Black had come back?!"
Draco shrugged and spat, "Like I care when the Mudblood returns."
They all just gaped at him.
Black coughed.
"The House Cup," he said, looking at the girls. "We lost the House Cup to…"
"… Slytherin."
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