Kevin's original plan for fifth year had been straightforward in the way that plans are straightforward before they encounter reality: pass the O.W.L.s, retrieve the prophecy orb cleanly, and let Fudge's collapse play out on its own timeline.
Voldemort had accelerated everything. The Ministry had flipped. The prophecy was already dealt with. Fudge was, improbably, now their most useful political asset.
Which left the question of Dolores Umbridge.
She didn't fit neatly into the new arrangement. The Ministry was aligned with Dumbledore in public, yes — but the Ministry was not a monolith. It was a building full of people with their own calculations, their own loyalties, their own read on which way the wind was blowing. Umbridge was there, still nominally teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts, still holding her Educational Decrees, still watching everything with those pink-rimmed eyes and that fixed, terrible smile.
Was she on their side now? Had the political landscape shifted under her feet in a way that made her harmless?
Kevin doubted it. People like Umbridge didn't recalibrate ideologically. They recalibrated tactically, which was much more dangerous, because it was invisible until it wasn't.
His working plan: manufacture a reason to have her memories altered. Convenient, deniable, easily arranged with the right intermediaries. The Death Eaters had done enough dirty work by now that one more act of creative memory modification wouldn't raise any eyebrows in their direction.
He shelved it for after Christmas.
Grimmauld Place had, somewhat against its nature, become festive.
The enchanted fairy lights hung along the portrait-lined corridor looked slightly martyred, as though they knew the walls they were attached to did not welcome them. Mrs. Black's portrait had been covered with an exceptionally large wreath. The effect was that her screaming, when it occasionally erupted, came accompanied by a faint jingling.
Kevin and Hermione had intended to stay home. The Grangers, they had reasoned, would want company after the ordeal of the previous week — and they wanted to offer it.
The Grangers had already booked a hotel. Weeks ago, in fact. A romantic Christmas break, Mr. Granger had explained, with the cheerful obliviousness of a man who has not considered that this information will be received badly.
So Kevin and Hermione arrived at Grimmauld Place on Christmas Eve with their bags and moderately wounded dignity, to the barely concealed delight of everyone already there.
Harry's laughter was extremely unbecoming of the Chosen One.
"Completely abandoned by your own family," Ron said, with great solemnity.
"We weren't abandoned—"
"Replaced by a hotel," Fred offered.
"A romantic hotel," George clarified.
Hermione sat down at the table and refused to dignify any of this.
Mrs. Weasley, who had been listening from the kitchen doorway, sighed with the weight of a woman who had not had a proper honeymoon in twenty years. She looked at the candles burning on the table and then looked away.
The evening settled into something comfortable. Sirius had found a set of self-replenishing crackers somewhere in the Black family's hoarded possessions. The food was excessive in the way Mrs. Weasley's cooking always was when she was expressing love at volume. The Death Eaters had gone quiet — a Christmas ceasefire, or simply a regrouping — and for the first time in weeks, nobody was braced for something to happen.
Kevin ate, contributed to three separate conversations simultaneously, and turned over the Horcrux situation in the back of his mind.
Four down. Diary, locket, ring, Nagini. He'd confirmed the rough count to Dumbledore — six total plus Harry — based on the vague framework of what he remembered, anchored to the seven stones visible in Voldemort's orphanage memory. Dumbledore was already working to verify through Voldemort's surviving former teachers. There was no way to rush that.
What Kevin could do was focus on Draco. The family. Getting them out before Voldemort moved his pieces again.
He was still turning this over when a small, contained burst of fire appeared above the table and dropped a folded envelope neatly beside his plate.
"Is that — Dumbledore's handwriting?" Sirius picked it up, checked the seal, and passed it across. "Why is the Headmaster sending personal post on Christmas Eve?"
Kevin sliced the envelope open.
Kevin,
I'm aware of what transpired at the Ministry. Well handled, as always.
Thank you, also, for the note regarding my travel plans — it prompted a useful revision of my approach. Since I find myself in the neighbourhood, as it were, I thought it would be pleasant if you joined me for Christmas.
I'm at the inn in Little Hangleton.
P.S. — My apologies, Hermione. I'm afraid I'm borrowing your Kevin for the evening.
A silence fell over the table.
Kevin read it twice, expression carefully neutral.
Hermione read it over his shoulder, and her expression cycled through mild amusement, recognition of Dumbledore's particular brand of whimsy, and — in a small but undeniable flicker — the ghost of a memory of several things Rita Skeeter had written during the Triwizard Tournament, none of which had been entirely professional in their implications.
She decided not to say anything about this.
Harry had already worked it out. "He found something," he said quietly. "A Horcrux. He needs you there."
"That's what it looks like."
"Go." Sirius set a hand briefly on Kevin's shoulder. "We're fine here. Go."
Hermione caught Kevin's wrist before he stood. Her grip was light, but it held for just a moment.
"Be careful."
"Always." He grinned. "Almost always."
She let go.
Kevin folded the letter, checked the map to place Little Hangleton, said his goodbyes at a pace that involved a minimum of ceremony, and Disapparated.
Little Hangleton was the kind of town that existed in large numbers across the southeast of England — a cluster of buildings around a crossroads, a pub, a church, a handful of farms on the outskirts. The kind of place that got on with things. It had looked perfectly ordinary from the Muggle point of view for approximately as long as Muggles had been living near it, which was to say it had always had something underneath it that ordinary didn't quite cover.
Kevin arrived on the main road and walked to the inn.
Dumbledore was at a corner table, deep in what appeared to be an extremely good apple pie. His travelling robes were slightly dusty, but his expression was serene.
"Kevin! Right on time." He gestured at the chair across from him with evident pleasure. "The owner here has a remarkable hand with pastry. Sit down."
Kevin sat down. He looked at the pie. He took Dumbledore's fork, cut the remaining half, and ate it in three efficient bites.
Dumbledore blinked.
He looked at his plate.
He looked at Kevin.
"...Is the Order not feeding people adequately these days?"
Kevin patted his stomach and looked pleasantly around the room. "So — not just pie, I assume?"
Dumbledore regarded his empty plate for a moment longer, the expression of a man reassembling his composure. Then he folded his hands, and the warmth in his eyes settled into something more purposeful.
"Kevin," he said. "What do you know about Tom Riddle's parents?"
He told it carefully, the way Dumbledore told most things — letting the information build its own architecture, each detail placed where it would carry the most weight.
Merope Gaunt. The last daughter of a family that had spent generations watching its power and dignity dissolve into inbreeding and rot. Slytherin's direct line, reduced to a dilapidated shack and a patriarch who couldn't tell which century he was living in. She had fallen in love — or something that resembled love from the outside — with the handsome Muggle farmer who rode past her window every morning. Old Tom Riddle.
She had given him a love potion.
The wedding, the pregnancy, the moment the potion wore off — Tom Riddle discovering the truth of what had been done to him and walking away without looking back. The Gaunt family disowning her for having married a Muggle at all. Merope ending up destitute, in London, dying in a charity hospital within hours of her son's birth.
The baby was named after the father who had abandoned them both.
Kevin listened without interrupting. Across the table, Dumbledore's voice was even, but there was something in it — a very old sadness, the kind that had been examined and reexamined over decades without fully resolving.
"Both families' homes were here," Dumbledore said. "The Riddle house on the hill. The Gaunt shack in the woods. And in the shack, I believe, is what I've come to collect."
He met Kevin's eyes.
"Shall we?"Chapter 143: Dumbledore's Sneaky Christmas Invite
Kevin's original plan for fifth year had been straightforward in the way that plans are straightforward before they encounter reality: pass the O.W.L.s, retrieve the prophecy orb cleanly, and let Fudge's collapse play out on its own timeline.
Voldemort had accelerated everything. The Ministry had flipped. The prophecy was already dealt with. Fudge was, improbably, now their most useful political asset.
Which left the question of Dolores Umbridge.
She didn't fit neatly into the new arrangement. The Ministry was aligned with Dumbledore in public, yes — but the Ministry was not a monolith. It was a building full of people with their own calculations, their own loyalties, their own read on which way the wind was blowing. Umbridge was there, still nominally teaching Defence Against the Dark Arts, still holding her Educational Decrees, still watching everything with those pink-rimmed eyes and that fixed, terrible smile.
Was she on their side now? Had the political landscape shifted under her feet in a way that made her harmless?
Kevin doubted it. People like Umbridge didn't recalibrate ideologically. They recalibrated tactically, which was much more dangerous, because it was invisible until it wasn't.
His working plan: manufacture a reason to have her memories altered. Convenient, deniable, easily arranged with the right intermediaries. The Death Eaters had done enough dirty work by now that one more act of creative memory modification wouldn't raise any eyebrows in their direction.
He shelved it for after Christmas.
Grimmauld Place had, somewhat against its nature, become festive.
The enchanted fairy lights hung along the portrait-lined corridor looked slightly martyred, as though they knew the walls they were attached to did not welcome them. Mrs. Black's portrait had been covered with an exceptionally large wreath. The effect was that her screaming, when it occasionally erupted, came accompanied by a faint jingling.
Kevin and Hermione had intended to stay home. The Grangers, they had reasoned, would want company after the ordeal of the previous week — and they wanted to offer it.
The Grangers had already booked a hotel. Weeks ago, in fact. A romantic Christmas break, Mr. Granger had explained, with the cheerful obliviousness of a man who has not considered that this information will be received badly.
So Kevin and Hermione arrived at Grimmauld Place on Christmas Eve with their bags and moderately wounded dignity, to the barely concealed delight of everyone already there.
Harry's laughter was extremely unbecoming of the Chosen One.
"Completely abandoned by your own family," Ron said, with great solemnity.
"We weren't abandoned—"
"Replaced by a hotel," Fred offered.
"A romantic hotel," George clarified.
Hermione sat down at the table and refused to dignify any of this.
Mrs. Weasley, who had been listening from the kitchen doorway, sighed with the weight of a woman who had not had a proper honeymoon in twenty years. She looked at the candles burning on the table and then looked away.
The evening settled into something comfortable. Sirius had found a set of self-replenishing crackers somewhere in the Black family's hoarded possessions. The food was excessive in the way Mrs. Weasley's cooking always was when she was expressing love at volume. The Death Eaters had gone quiet — a Christmas ceasefire, or simply a regrouping — and for the first time in weeks, nobody was braced for something to happen.
Kevin ate, contributed to three separate conversations simultaneously, and turned over the Horcrux situation in the back of his mind.
Four down. Diary, locket, ring, Nagini. He'd confirmed the rough count to Dumbledore — six total plus Harry — based on the vague framework of what he remembered, anchored to the seven stones visible in Voldemort's orphanage memory. Dumbledore was already working to verify through Voldemort's surviving former teachers. There was no way to rush that.
What Kevin could do was focus on Draco. The family. Getting them out before Voldemort moved his pieces again.
He was still turning this over when a small, contained burst of fire appeared above the table and dropped a folded envelope neatly beside his plate.
"Is that — Dumbledore's handwriting?" Sirius picked it up, checked the seal, and passed it across. "Why is the Headmaster sending personal post on Christmas Eve?"
Kevin sliced the envelope open.
Kevin,
I'm aware of what transpired at the Ministry. Well handled, as always.
Thank you, also, for the note regarding my travel plans — it prompted a useful revision of my approach. Since I find myself in the neighbourhood, as it were, I thought it would be pleasant if you joined me for Christmas.
I'm at the inn in Little Hangleton.
P.S. — My apologies, Hermione. I'm afraid I'm borrowing your Kevin for the evening.
A silence fell over the table.
Kevin read it twice, expression carefully neutral.
Hermione read it over his shoulder, and her expression cycled through mild amusement, recognition of Dumbledore's particular brand of whimsy, and — in a small but undeniable flicker — the ghost of a memory of several things Rita Skeeter had written during the Triwizard Tournament, none of which had been entirely professional in their implications.
She decided not to say anything about this.
Harry had already worked it out. "He found something," he said quietly. "A Horcrux. He needs you there."
"That's what it looks like."
"Go." Sirius set a hand briefly on Kevin's shoulder. "We're fine here. Go."
Hermione caught Kevin's wrist before he stood. Her grip was light, but it held for just a moment.
"Be careful."
"Always." He grinned. "Almost always."
She let go.
Kevin folded the letter, checked the map to place Little Hangleton, said his goodbyes at a pace that involved a minimum of ceremony, and Disapparated.
Little Hangleton was the kind of town that existed in large numbers across the southeast of England — a cluster of buildings around a crossroads, a pub, a church, a handful of farms on the outskirts. The kind of place that got on with things. It had looked perfectly ordinary from the Muggle point of view for approximately as long as Muggles had been living near it, which was to say it had always had something underneath it that ordinary didn't quite cover.
Kevin arrived on the main road and walked to the inn.
Dumbledore was at a corner table, deep in what appeared to be an extremely good apple pie. His travelling robes were slightly dusty, but his expression was serene.
"Kevin! Right on time." He gestured at the chair across from him with evident pleasure. "The owner here has a remarkable hand with pastry. Sit down."
Kevin sat down. He looked at the pie. He took Dumbledore's fork, cut the remaining half, and ate it in three efficient bites.
Dumbledore blinked.
He looked at his plate.
He looked at Kevin.
"...Is the Order not feeding people adequately these days?"
Kevin patted his stomach and looked pleasantly around the room. "So — not just pie, I assume?"
Dumbledore regarded his empty plate for a moment longer, the expression of a man reassembling his composure. Then he folded his hands, and the warmth in his eyes settled into something more purposeful.
"Kevin," he said. "What do you know about Tom Riddle's parents?"
He told it carefully, the way Dumbledore told most things — letting the information build its own architecture, each detail placed where it would carry the most weight.
Merope Gaunt. The last daughter of a family that had spent generations watching its power and dignity dissolve into inbreeding and rot. Slytherin's direct line, reduced to a dilapidated shack and a patriarch who couldn't tell which century he was living in. She had fallen in love — or something that resembled love from the outside — with the handsome Muggle farmer who rode past her window every morning. Old Tom Riddle.
She had given him a love potion.
The wedding, the pregnancy, the moment the potion wore off — Tom Riddle discovering the truth of what had been done to him and walking away without looking back. The Gaunt family disowning her for having married a Muggle at all. Merope ending up destitute, in London, dying in a charity hospital within hours of her son's birth.
The baby was named after the father who had abandoned them both.
Kevin listened without interrupting. Across the table, Dumbledore's voice was even, but there was something in it — a very old sadness, the kind that had been examined and reexamined over decades without fully resolving.
"Both families' homes were here," Dumbledore said. "The Riddle house on the hill. The Gaunt shack in the woods. And in the shack, I believe, is what I've come to collect."
He met Kevin's eyes.
"Shall we?"