It was easier to scare the woman than to try to outfight her stubbornness. It showed in the manner she paled in fear and flinched at the probable danger coming her grandson's way. It was better to give her that wake-up call, to remind her of the active threat a surviving Lord Voldemort could pose to her legacy, "What are you doing to stop that monster?"
"Well, there was a plan in place to capture him in his wraith form. The small trials were supposed to only slow him down, making him overconfident after passing the Cerberus. I put in place an artefact that was supposed to trap him, as it has many people. With the lure of the stone, it should have been done and over. Alas, it proved to be ineffective, be it because of your grandson's involvement or it simply did not work on whatever Voldemort has become. You can understand how I took that small risk to stop a war in the long run. A war that will inevitably come if he ever returns, and he will start by going after young Neville," Dumbledore explained.
Yes, Albus had planned on trapping the wraith of Lord Voldemort in the mirror of Erised. It was a way to eliminate Lord Voldemort without having to kill him, and still keep the prophecy alive in case of emergency. True prophecies were rare and Albus had felt its power when Sybil Trelawney had spoken hers all those years ago.
But Neville had no hand in the mirror failing. The magic was simply incompatible. The wraith was entranced by the mirror, but Voldemort had the willpower to break free of it eventually. The space inside of the mirror refused to absorb the wraith and trap it inside for some reason. It was a long shot at best, but it was a very curious phenomenon. It was why he had also let the confrontation between the possessed professor and young Neville occur. He needed to study his mother's protection.
Even if he had designed it, the protections were something new. He didn't always understand the will of the Light and just followed its guidance. It had never led him wrong. But he was very curious as to the nature of the protection itself, and how it would react with Voldemort trying to finish the job. Well, from what he could understand, the boy would be safe from the supposed dark lord for now. It made the boy practically invincible. According to the prophecy, he must die at the hand of Voldemort, and yet, the protections assured him that he wouldn't, unless something drastic happened. This was the power of the weapon he had created against Voldemort.
The headmaster's musings were interrupted by the Longbottom matriarch, "And now what?"
"Well, Voldemort is a very intelligent wizard," Albus said, "and he will not fall into the same trap again. I had hoped to do this subtly, but I will need to research the method with which he survived the killing curse. We need to counteract his immortality somehow. I will continue to do this discreetly to avoid any mass panic, or his old followers from returning, which is why I'm asking you to tell young Neville to not spread the news of Voldemort's survival to the general public. As for now, we can do nothing but wait. It will take time for him to return, time which you will need to prepare your grandson for the worst that could come."
The woman nodded, and took a deep breath to calm herself before straitening out, "But why did you make the trials this easy?"
"Well, I didn't want any student to accidentally get hurt trying to be adventurous. The Cerberus was explicitly ordered to not hurt any wizard or witch under the age of eighteen, but still target possessed students and professors. The devil's snare was bred to inject paralytics and simply knock out the intruders. The broom key was just a delaying tactic, at best. The giant chess set was enchanted to knock out the intruder, nothing more, the room the trolls were in was warded to petrify the beasts and the students in case of mortal peril, and the poisoned potions contained sleeping potions. A student who would have that gotten far would have been unharmed in my trial, as they will need to know about the stone to be trapped, even then, they could be released rather easily by myself. Everything was planned. I could not risk a student getting severely hurt under my watch."
"Tell that to the Potter boy," Augusta retorted.
Albus suppressed a flinch at that, "That was an unfortunate accident."
"That boy saved my grandson's life in that foolish detention that you allowed to happen. And he was attacked again under your watch. It's a miracle he was able to pass with all the days he missed," the Longbottom matriarch continued.
Yeah, that was a sore spot. Dumbledore's opinion of the Potter boy was mixed. Sometimes, he just looked so similar to a familiar Slytherin boy with a troubled childhood, and yet there was a kindness and gentleness to him. He was a prodigy when it came to magic. Albus had noticed the obvious signs of Occlumency training when the boy practically fed him the memories he wanted. They weren't modified, at least not in a way he could notice. The pain was too real, the emotions too wild to be fake. It was how you knew a memory was fake. A competent mind mage might be able to change how things looked, and how they sounded, but it was almost impossible to fake a feeling because you had to have felt it. Even then, the boy was eleven years of age. Even the most outlandish of prodigies did not achieve this much in just a year of magical education.
Still, the boy had been attacked under his watch, and it was his inaction and anticipation of destroying Voldemort once and for all that almost caused the death of the boy. He owed it to his father at the very least to keep him safe. James Potter had heavily supposed the war against Voldemort as a member of the Order of the Phoenix, especially financially. He had been tempted to use what remained after the man's death. Especially when dealing with the damage of the fire of Godric's Hollow, but he couldn't rob a boy of the meagre remains, that wouldn't really help on a large scale.
"I will admit that what happened to young Harry was my fault. I can't take it back, but the boy fully recovered, and I do not plan on endangering him anymore. For James and Lily's sake."
The severe looking woman nodded imperiously, "That boy was Alice's godson. See to it that he's not endangered again."
The headmaster returned her nod and the woman silently walked towards his personal floo and left. Albus sagged the moment he left. Dealing with that woman was exhausting.
"Still, as crafty as ever, aren't you, Albus?" a familiar voice spoke up behind him.
He had felt the man's presence the moment he snuck in during the conversation, but he did his best not to react, "Well, I have learnt from the best, Nicholas."
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