Chapter 242 - The Trinity!

{15th July 1992}

{Dumbledore's POV}

Fawkes's fire folded us out of Scotland's wet, cool air and into a warm air that gently glided along my body. Delhi glimmered in the near distance—glass and shining lights pricking the night like a spilled constellation—while here, at the edge of the plain, the air held still and waited.

We were not alone.

Three figures stood as if they had always been here and I had simply taken too long to notice. One wore a plain indigo shawl and a thread of rudrākṣa beads around his neck. His skin carried a deep blue cast as proof of his strength and heritage. Another had skin like struck gold and a copper tablet tucked beneath his arm, etched to the edges with script so fine and mana so powerful it quietly hummed. The third kept his hair bound high, and the slit along his brow marked where a third eye would open if he chose to be less polite.

"I suppose," the one with the brow-slit observed, voice dry as winter grass as he locked onto my frame, "the time has come."

He regarded me without slight hostility. Then, with a tilt of his head, "Come. Let us go where words will not harm others' destiny."

The blue-skinned man lifted a hand, a single finger extended. The beads along his throat glowed one by one, and the air tightened around my ribs with the unfamiliar pressure of powerful, contained transit. Mana pulsed—once, twice, thrice—and Delhi fell away.

We stood in a high valley scoured by old winds. The moonlight picked out pale grass, a ribbon of river threading black between boulders, and far walls of stone that remembered glaciers. No one was around. No witnesses to bear forth this unnatural audience. 

Fawkes shifted on my shoulder and clicked his beak once, soft as a match being struck.

"It seems," I said, and did not quite smile, "the Old Ones were waiting for me."

"Old Ones is a storyteller's convenience," said the golden man, and though his mouth barely moved, the sound seemed to come from three places at once. "We are households with long ledgers and stored memories."

The blue-skinned man's beads dimmed. "You arrive for a fire no one else can keep," he said. "It would have been unkind to make you wander."

The man with the brow-slit regarded the moon. "You are not here with intentions as a raider," he said, as if tasting the truth of it. "Good. It would have gone poorly for everyone."

"I came to retrieve a boy," I answered. "Nothing more."

"You cannot," said the golden one. His gaze did not strike me so much as lay over the world with equal pressure everywhere. "Not yet. Not until the karma has been sown."

I let the silence stand long enough to make it a question. "Why?"

"Because," he said, and there was no triumph in it, only the patience of someone reading a ledger aloud, "the boy is touched by Fate. His presence has begun to even warp our foresight. Lines that were cleanly drawn now wave in heat. Old divinations made centuries ago are wilting. Your island has already experienced this sensation with another child, though it was weaker. Now there are two."

Harry, I thought, without letting the thought tip my face thought I expect them to know who it was. And now Rigel. If one prophecy can distort a continent, two can destroy the world.

"You have not noticed?" the golden man asked, eyes far away. "The easiest omens growing contradictory? The prophecies fading away?"

"I have not," I said. "I just came to take back the boy. It is why I am here."

"The Right of Tongue," said the blue-skinned man, almost gently. "If a true inheritor greets the ward, the door does not contradict our law, and from an old promise, the inheritor must be granted passage."

"You would prefer," I said, "that I wait until he is harmed."

"We would prefer," the golden man corrected, "that you not trigger a story where we must be seen to act against you. Some tales take centuries to unwrite."

Fawkes made a low sound in his chest that was neither quite a note nor quite a warning. I lifted a hand and felt the old wood of my wand warm under my palm, steady as an oar.

"I cannot agree to stand idle," I said, "if harm befalls the child."

"Then let us define some thresholds," the blue-skinned man replied. "We are not without mercy."

The golden man unrolled his copper tablet with the care of a surgeon opening a chest. Script—pelgru, if my eye did not fail me—glittered like frost in moonlight. "A small vow," he said. "Narrow enough to thread a needle, but sharp enough to do the job."

The brow-slit man stepped a fraction closer. When he spoke, the river's noise sorted itself into a cadence that made truth easier to hear. "Say what you will and will not do, Albus Dumbledore. I will listen for lies. He will write the sentence. And he—" he nodded to the blue one "—will bind it to the threshold."

"I will not strike first. I will not attempt to carry the boy if the ward judges his entry lawful and uncoerced. I will extract him only if the situation deems it harmful—if he is held against his will, if any violence is done to his mind."

The brow-slit man watched the air above my head as if my words left behind vapors for him to dissect. "He believes it," he said. "He will keep it."

I went on. "I will stand at the edge and prepare. I will carry only my friend." I touched Fawkes's breast and felt him preen, preening being a phoenix's way of agreeing. "He," I added, "will bear witness."

"Witness by fire," the blue-skinned man murmured, and for the first time I saw amusement touch his mouth. "Agni's children will be pleased. They like to pretend the phoenix is one of theirs."

"You will receive our word," said the brow-slit man, "that if coercion crosses the line you named, we will not stand between you and the boy. If the Patils break the guest right or the law, we will remove them ourselves. If they do not, nothing will come to pass as you promised to be."

"Done," I said.

"Third?" he asked his companion.

The brow-slit man watched me for two steady breaths and then let his lids fall. "He is as he said," he murmured. "And he carries enough sorrow to keep him honest."

The blue-skinned man touched one bead. The valley's air pushed against my skin like water. "Then the sentence threads," he said. "Go to the edge, Albus Dumbledore. Do not step past it unless the situation itself warrants rescue."

'Dealing with them was as troublesome as stated,' Dumbledore took it all in: the three major lineages of the Old ones, the Vaishnav-line, the Shaiv-line, and the Brahm-line. They say they each govern over some unique magic in itself, with the Vaishnav-line having the ability to create 10 avatars, each as strong as the original. The Shaiv-line has access to magic seeped in destruction itself, along with the Third-eye that is able to predict all moves. And the Brahm-line can seal even infinity into itself to power their magic.

'Hopefully it doesn't come to blows.' I thought before my mind went back to their words, 'I need to check if the prophecy has changed or not.'

AN: I've noticed that I've been inputting the year incorrectly for the past 50 chapters... oops.