elaborate. He was gazing straight ahead, and James realized that he was looking past him, at something on the rear wall. James turned and looked over his shoulder. The portrait of Albus Dumbledore was meeting Merlin's gaze. He smiled slightly and nodded. Then, barely noticeable, Dumbledore winked at James. James frowned and turned back to Merlin.
'I've been advised,' Merlin said sardonically, 'to avoid the temptation to keep secrets or tell halftruths. Your Albus Dumbledore and I have discussed the topic at great length, and I admit that, until recently, I did not much agree with him. Regardless, recent events have shown the validity of his argument. James Potter, in the presence of your father, I will tell you the whole of the truth.' Merlin sighed again, and then stood. He moved from behind his desk, passing in front of Harry.
'It is true,' he explained. 'I was well aware of the possibility that the entity called the Gatekeeper might follow me back from my long journey outside of time. Salazar Slytherin made it very clear to me. He hoped and planned for it, and my heart was in such a state that I did not much care. 'Damn the world,' I thought. 'If the Doombringer is to come, then fate will save mankind or it will not.' I washed my hands of it. Last year, when I returned to the world of men, I despised this age. I determined that if the Gatekeeper had indeed followed me, I would not even use the small power at my disposal to keep it at bay.' Merlin held up a hand, displaying the glinting black ring. 'And then I discovered the presence of the Borleys. Nuisances, really, the magical equivalent of cockroaches, and yet it proved to me that things had indeed followed me from the Void. If the Borleys were here, then surely the Gatekeeper was as well. I determined to capture the Borleys using the best tool for such a task: the Darkbag, which, as you know, contains the last earthly shred of pure darkness from the Void. I imprisoned the Borleys inside it, dozens of them, although at the time I could not say why I chose to do so; it seemed merely right and responsible. The truth is that I was coming to know this age, and while there was—and still is—much of it that I find wretched, I discovered I did not hate it as much as I'd thought. More important, I had come to care for some of the people in this age. Chiefly, you, Mr. Potter, and your rambunctious, irreverent friends.
'As I realized this, I knew I had but one choice: I must do what I could to rid the world of the Gatekeeper, whose very presence in this sphere was my responsibility. Having decided that, I came to know that there were those in this world who knew of the Gatekeeper, and wished to
Harry visibly shivered. 'I remember that,' he said in a low, wondering voice. 'I was in the Auror offices at the Ministry, talking to Kirkham Wood. All of a sudden, it was like I was outside myself, looking down on my body as if I'd been shoved aside while something else shuffled through the contents of my brain. It only lasted a few seconds, and then suddenly, it was over. Kirkham hadn't noticed a thing. I decided I'd imagined it, or that I was just a bit overstressed. But it must have been that… thing… examining me.'
Merlin nodded. 'It would take a powerful wizard to sense it. The Gatekeeper numbs its prey so that few ever remember its passing. Surely, that fact alone was part of why it knew it could never claim you, Harry. So it moved on. Even as that demented Lucius Malfoy spoke to it, beckoning for it to join them, telling it that they had prepared a Bloodline to be its host, I sensed it moving on, past you, Harry, looking further… looking for you, James.'
'Me?' James exclaimed, shocked. 'Why?'
'It makes perfect sense if you think about it from the Gatekeeper's view. The prophecies all claim that the host of the Gatekeeper would be a child of great loss, or an orphan. It sought out Voldemort, the orphan who most represented the Gatekeeper's aims, and found him a corpse. Thus, it logically sought out the one powerful enough to have bested Voldemort, and found yet another orphan: Harry Potter. He, however, was too strong, and therefore of no more use to the Gatekeeper than the dead Voldemort. So it looked just a bit further, to the first-born son of Harry Potter. And it found, interestingly, that that very boy had recently experienced his own tragedy, the sudden loss of your grandfather. Further, it sensed that you were in attendance on the very night that the Gatekeeper had arrived in the earth, and that you, James Potter, had even helped facilitate its descent.'
'But I didn't mean to!' James blurted. 'I was trying to stop it!'
Merlin held up a hand. 'It matters not to the Gatekeeper. I sensed it homing in on you, learning of you, all in that moment in the graveyard, even as Lucius Malfoy was speaking to it. I sensed you in its thoughts, James, and that is when I stepped out into the open, to distract it. I called to the Gatekeeper, identifying myself as the bearer of the Beacon Stone. It remembered me from my time in the Void. The first thing it did was ask for you, James. I told it as sternly as I could that you knew nothing of it, that you would never consent to be its host. But it laughed. It told me that you had already sought it out, and that you were watching at that very moment. Lucius Malfoy looked and saw you, reflected in the window of an abandoned shack nearby. He pointed at you, and the Gatekeeper smiled. It had known you'd been watching from the moment it turned its attention to finding you, James. I turned and saw your reflection for myself. I knew I had to get back, to warn you, but you closed the Focusing Book, shutting me out. It took me much of a day to get back to the castle by other methods, and by then, I had determined a rather different opinion of you, I am afraid.'
'You'd decided I was on the Gatekeeper's side?' James asked, perplexed.
'Not consciously,' Merlin answered. 'No more than Petra Morganstern was on the Gatekeeper's side. I decided you were being manipulated by it, and by your own desires. I regret to admit this, James, but I feared that your desire to be like your father was being exploited, used by the Gatekeeper and the forces of chaos. When your mother's Howler went off, telling us all that she believed you'd stolen the Invisibility Cloak and the Marauder's Map, it further convinced me that you were, in fact, working toward the Gatekeeper's ends. I decided to watch and to wait, hoping that I was wrong about you. And then, when your own sister went missing on the night of the play, I knew that it was the moment of truth. I could scarcely believe you'd harm her, but those in the thrall of deception have done even worse things than murder their sisters. I planned to take you away from the school, removing you from whatever plan the Gatekeeper had for you. You foiled me, of course, by the simple expedient of being young and quick. Even then, I could have taken you had I truly wished to. In my deepest heart, however, I had decided to trust you—and fate. It was my own trial of the cord, much like your test, James, in the cave of my cache. You chose to hold onto the golden cord even though letting go would have been far easier. Thus, I chose to hold onto the one thin cord of trust in you as well. If I did so foolishly, then the world would not last long enough to blame me. As it turns out, however, that moment of trust was indeed wise. In fact, I believe it saved us all.'
James blew out a sigh. 'Wow. So that was why you were so secretive and scary that day in your office.'
'The portrait told me it was a mistake,' Merlin admitted, glancing aside. 'Dumbledore did not approve of my attitude toward you, and told me so upon your departure.'
From the wall behind James, Dumbledore's voice spoke. 'I was nothing if not respectful, Merlinus. But yes, I did warn you that you doubted the boy at your own peril.'
Merlin nodded. 'Yes, you made your point quite clear, as I recall.'
'I am cursed with the burden of helping those who've succeeded me to not make the same mistakes I did,' Dumbledore said, looking at Merlin, then Harry. 'I myself only learned these lessons mere days before my death. Too late to make much of a difference, although I did what little I could.'
Harry nodded, unsmiling. 'So what is to be done with Petra Morganstern, then?'
