“So tell me again,” Cassian said, voice flat. “And be honest.”

Dumbledore’s hands didn’t move. His eyes stayed on Cassian.

“Were you raising a Child Soldier?”

Dumbledore looked old for a moment.

“I made mistakes,” he said. “I thought they were the right decisions at the time.”

Cassian looked at him, deadpan. “Let me guess. With the greater good in mind.”

Dumbledore didn’t answer. No denial either.

“That phrase,” Cassian said, turning away again, “has done more damage than half the spells on the Ministry’s blacklist.”

He walked to the far window and looked out across the grounds. A few students still sat outside, late stragglers soaking up what was left of celebration.

“I was raising a shield.” Dumbledore said with a sigh.

Cassian frowned.

Dumbledore held his gaze. “Someone who could stand between two ends of a prophecy. Someone who might… end it.”

Cassian stared at him like he’d grown a second head. Then laughed, incredulous.

“Albus, you are so brilliant and so stupid. It’s really uncanny.”

Dumbledore’s brows lifted.

“All prophecies are self-fulfilling,” Cassian said. “There are no true prophecies. Just complex, upper-tier probability riddles. Magical statistics. You ever studied Greek tragedies? No?” He threw up a hand. “Of course not. You would’ve flunked the first week.”

“I know a real prophecy when I see one, Cassian,” Dumbledore said. “Don’t insult me.”

Cassian snorted. “Fine. Let’s walk through it. Step by step.”

He held up a hand and began pacing again.

“‘The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…'” He looked up. “That’s the opening, right?”

Dumbledore gave a nod. “Yes.”

“‘Born to those who have thrice defied him,'” Cassian went on, “‘born as the seventh month dies.'”

Another nod.

Cassian stopped pacing. “You and Voldemort both read that line and went, ‘Ah yes, literal childbirth. July birthday. Job done.'”

“There are no other reasonable explanations,” Dumbledore said.

Cassian barked a laugh. “That’s the dumbest academic sentence I’ve heard this month, and I got into an argument with Umbridge.”

Dumbledore’s lips twitched, but he didn’t smile.

Cassian kept going. “Born doesn’t always mean childbirth. Especially not in prophecy. It can mean emergence. Awakening. A change. Hell, it could mean rebirth, if you stretch it.”

“And ‘as the seventh month dies’?” Dumbledore asked. “Surely that narrows it.”

“To what? A calendar?” Cassian flicked his hand. “What if it means the seventh month of war? Or the seventh failed negotiation? Or, I don’t know, July, but not of that specific year.”

Dumbledore sighed slowly. “It referred to Harry. The timeline matches.”

“It matched,” Cassian said, stabbing a finger at the floor. “After Voldemort made it match. That’s how these things work. He heard half a prophecy, panicked, and chose a target. He made it Harry. Same as you did.”

Dumbledore shook his head, like a disappointed tutor. “You weren’t there, Cassian. When it was revealed. This was a true Prophecy.”

Cassian raked a hand through his hair.

“Gods. What if Voldemort never attacked the Potters?” he asked. “What then? Would Harry still be the chosen one? Or would the prophecy have just… picked someone else to cling to?”

Dumbledore didn’t reply.

Cassian stepped in closer. “You ever stop to think that all this might’ve been avoidable? That maybe you and Riddle both walked straight into it, because you wanted a prophecy to be neat?”

Still nothing.

Cassian sighed. “If he’d never attacked, maybe, just maybe, someone would’ve risen from the ashes later to fill that role. Someone shaped by the time, by the war, by watching it all burn. Not necessarily Potter. Not necessarily even Voldemort, if we’re being honest. But let’s say it is him. He sealed his own bloody fate by trying to stop it. Self-fulfilling prophecy, tick one.”

He flicked his fingers. “Second line. ‘And the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not.'”

He paused, raised a brow. “Vague as sin. Anyone Voldemort attacked could be the marked one. A scar in Potter’s case. If he’d picked Neville, we’d be calling Longbottom the Chosen One and Potter would’ve grown up farming cabbage in Wales.”

Dumbledore didn’t argue. He looked like he wanted to, but the words stalled somewhere in his throat.

Cassian folded his arms. “Equal, right? Except Voldemort never saw him that way. He didn’t raise him up. He tried to crush him in a cot. Equal’s not about power levels. It’s about who you place there. And Voldemort made Harry his centre, whether he meant to or not. Marked him, shaped him, and kept returning like a moth to a bonfire.”

He snorted, as he said the next line, “And the power he knows not? What’s even that?”

Dumbledore gave a small nod. “Love.”

“Love.” He took a moment. Swallowing the next few sentences with herculean will power. “Every time. I’m sick of hearing that word used like it’s a bloody cheat code.”

“Love is powerful,” Dumbledore said.

“Sure. So’s a firearm. But you don’t hand someone a magnum and tell them it’ll save them from a dragon.”

Dumbledore’s mouth twitched again, but not with humour.

Cassian kept going. “Let’s pretend love is the power he doesn’t know. Great. Who taught Harry how to use it? Did you? Did anyone? Because from what I’ve seen, he grew up in a place with the least love possible.”

Silence.

“No,” Cassian said. “You let him suffer through year after year, hoping he’d feel the right kind of grief. That he’d come out purer, stronger, kinder. You think trauma breeds clarity. It doesn’t. It breeds noise.”

Dumbledore looked down at his hands.

Cassian continued, “The fate of the Marked rests with the Forest-Walker. They will decide whether one dies at the hand of the other, for neither can live while the other survives…”

He stopped, staring straight at Dumbledore. “That suggests Voldemort can’t die as long as Potter’s alive, right?”

Dumbledore looked up, but waited for him to continue.

Cassian’s voice dropped. “We’ve been suspecting it for a while. And I’m damn sure you have too.”

Dumbledore’s eyes narrowed, staring.

“Potter’s a Horcrux, isn’t he?” Cassian asked. “One Voldemort created accidentally.”

Dumbledore closed his eyes.

That was answer enough.

Cassian swore under his breath. “Fucking brilliant.”

Bathsheda let out a deep breath. As they thought…

“Gods,” Cassian huffed as he paced. “So he is one. No wonder the visions, the pain, the sudden bouts of anger.”

He stopped. “How long have you known?”

Dumbledore didn’t look up. “I confirmed it at the end of his second year.”

Cassian gave a hollow laugh. “Charming. And you’ve just been… letting it stew in his skull?”

“There was no safe way to remove it.”

Cassian rounded on him. “So you decided to wait. What, until he died on schedule?”

Dumbledore’s voice was quiet. “Until the right moment.”

Cassian threw his hands up. “You can’t be serious.”

Bathsheda stopped him with a hand to the chest.

“Cass,” she said, “I think you’re in that prophecy.”

He stopped. He’d thought about it. Of course he had. The line.

The fate of the Marked rests with the Forest-Walker.

He’d wandered through many forests last summer. One of them nearly ate him. Another took his wand for three hours and made him barter it back with blood and Latin.

His jaw tightened. “Whether it’s me or not doesn’t matter,” he said. “Prophecies fulfill themselves. That’s the trick. They don’t point at a person. They point at a gap. And someone always ends up filling it.”

He met her eyes. “Longbottom and Greengrass are both from Druid lines. Forest-walkers. Could be them. Hagrid walks the forest every bloody day. Doesn’t matter.”

He turned to Dumbledore again. “What matters is this… Potter isn’t dying so your ‘greater good’ can come full circle.

“I’ll rip Voldemort’s soul out of him if I have to,” He said. “One way or another, I’ll get it out.”

Bathsheda stepped back, arms crossed. Her look said she was trusting him and would’ve his back. No matter what he decided.

Dumbledore nodded. “That’s all I hope.”

Cassian scoffed. “I can see why you were avoiding hurting Voldemort. That alone shows me you don’t want to hurt Potter. And I know you’re not some sort of Dark Lord. You don’t have evil intentions, Albus. That’s half the bloody problem. You think good ones excuse the mess.”

Dumbledore stayed quiet.

Cassian went on. “You were ready to die for that cursed locket. About to drink that cursed water to poison yourself. That sort of madness only comes from someone who thinks they’re doing the right thing. Which, sure… noble. But it also means you’ll burn half the world down if you think it saves the other half.”

He shook his head. “That doesn’t make you wise. It makes you dangerous.”

Still no argument.

“And I’m still furious,” Cassian added. “Because you didn’t just mess up with Potter. You summoned Slytherin students to testify against their families… children. Dragged them into a war they didn’t choose. For what? Honour? Leverage?”

Dumbledore’s lips pressed into a thinner line.

Cassian continued without a stop. “We were the ones who stood by them. The ones who talked to them when no one else would. We were the ones trying, actually trying, to keep them from going down that road, to make sure none of them would ever end up as a Death Eater. And yet people seem to forget something very basic: those people are still their parents.

“Yes, stepping up takes courage. It’s admirable, even noble. I’m not denying that. But courage doesn’t erase consequences. Think about tomorrow. Think about a year from now. Ten years from now. If something happens to their parents… their grandparents… what then? What will those kids carry with them for the rest of their lives?

“Because when it wasn’t absolutely necessary to pull them into this, what you did was gamble with something we have no right to gamble with, the possibility of trauma they might never be able to bear later.

“You outed me, too,” He added. “All this time, I’ve been working the Rosiers, smiling at tea, passing along half-truths just to keep the lines open. But now?” He gave a bitter laugh. “Now they won’t even look me in the eye. Their secrets are gone. Power’s cut off. That entire link is gone.”

Bathsheda sighed. Ever since four years ago, since they decided to move in together, he had postponed his happiness and his freedom to remain close to his family. Just in case there was something he could learn from them, something he could use to protect the school and his students.

Dumbledore had exposed him, but at least now he was free. Free to act as he wished, free to choose his own path.

From the beginning, Cassian had never wanted the Rosier Patriarch’s seat. Even if Regulus himself had placed it in Cassian’s hands, he would have refused it.

Lucian’s betrayal was for nothing. He had nothing to fear. A pointless, stupid act.

Not that Cassian, or she, cared.

It was good riddance.

Cassian shrugged. “It’s fine. I don’t need their intel or power anymore.”

He stepped in again, slower now, the anger had sunk into something colder.

“But just know this,” he said. “In chasing what you think is right, you’re hurting people. People who might’ve helped you if you’d only asked. You’ve left a trail of damage behind you. “

Dumbledore didn’t meet his eyes.

Cassian stepped back.

“Next time you need someone to carry the cost of your plan,” he said, “use your own name first.”

Then he turned, took Bathsheda’s hand, and walked out.

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