"The Hall of Prophecy in the Department of Mysteries stores nearly every major prophecy ever recorded in the wizarding world. Some were delivered by well-known Seers; others… simply appeared in the Hall by themselves."
Here Dumbledore fell silent, as if lost in memory.
Seeing he'd stopped, Loren had to prompt him. "So the prophecy about Voldemort… was one of those that 'appeared by itself' in the Hall?"
Dumbledore stirred and spoke. "At the time I was still Hogwarts's Transfiguration Professor. It was then that I first met Tom Marvolo Riddle. Not long afterward, the Unspeakables from the Department of Mysteries came to see me. I had already imprisoned the first Dark Lord and was called the greatest white wizard by many, so they sought me out. From then on, I kept searching for who 'Voldemort' truly was—until I learned that Tom Marvolo Riddle liked his followers to call him Lord Voldemort. From that moment, I watched him closely."
Hearing this, Loren understood why, in the original account, Dumbledore had fixed on Tom Marvolo Riddle so early. It was because he knew of a prophecy concerning Voldemort; no wonder he'd scrutinized that brilliant student at every turn.
But another doubt rose. "If you already knew who Voldemort was, why was he still able to grow into what the prophecy foretold? And why put faith in something as nebulous as a prophecy?"
Dumbledore gave Loren a long look, then glanced at Professor Snape, who was sitting to the side with his ears pricked. His answer was deliberately hazy. "Most prophecies are of little worth—but those stored in the Hall of Prophecy in the Department of Mysteries invariably come to pass. Perhaps only you, among those here, can disregard what the Hall contains."
Loren blinked, mind racing. He turned to Snape. "Professor Snape, I need a favor. I want to verify something."
Snape—who up to now felt thoroughly in the dark—froze at Loren's request, then, almost in spite of himself, nodded.
Loren stood, laid a hand on Snape's shoulder, closed his eyes, and probed. Snape tried to shrug him off, but Loren's grip was iron; he could only sit and endure. After a moment, Loren released him and sat back, thoughtful.
Freed, Snape shot to his feet. "You'd better give me an explanation, Loren. What were you doing?"
"When did you first notice it?" Loren asked—abruptly enough that Dumbledore's face lit with a wry smile.
"The first time I sensed that force," Dumbledore said, "was because of Grindelwald. One day he sought me out and declared he meant to overturn the Ministry and set wizards over Muggles. He said other strange things as well. Not long after, we parted ways. When I at last imprisoned him, he told me he had succeeded. I didn't understand—he had lost, how could he speak of success? He told me: spend time among Muggles, and you will see. From then on I paid close attention to the Muggle world—and gradually I understood."
That was enough for Loren. "Did you ever try to cut yourself free of it?"
Dumbledore looked at Loren, helpless. "Grindelwald severed himself from that force—but at a terrible price. I have tried to control it instead, to press its harm to the minimum. Voldemort… is the product of that control."
Loren was genuinely shocked—then, thinking it through, he gave the force a working name: the Mystery-force, because it seemed to originate with the Department of Mysteries.
Grindelwald was the earliest known to Loren who discovered he was being influenced by the Mystery-force. He believed it sprang from the International Statute of Secrecy and tried to persuade Dumbledore to topple the Ministry—extinguishing the force at its source. Dumbledore didn't accept his aim; then Ariana was killed (Loren suspected the Mystery-force's hand there), and the two men fell out. Grindelwald didn't overthrow the Ministry, but somehow shed the Mystery-force's influence; and Nurmengard—the prison that held him—was, they said, of his own making. Which meant Nurmengard was no cage, but a fortress of his design, perhaps like the goblins' secret vault-realm beneath Hogwarts.
Spurred by Grindelwald, Dumbledore in turn discovered traces of the Mystery-force. He did not sever it, but sought to master it. The cost of harnessing it was entanglement: no matter how he guarded himself, its influence bled through. At last Loren understood why Voldemort had seemed so rampant and yet remained contained—kept largely within Britain and always suppressed by Dumbledore—and why, in the original tale, only after Dumbledore's death did Voldemort truly begin to push outward.
To hazard a mythic comparison, one severed the burden and walked away; the other tried to shoulder the heavens—and both, in the end, were defeated, each dying with Voldemort as the agent.
The Mystery-force seized Loren's curiosity. He had thought it tied merely to Ministry law—but now it seemed much of the wizarding world's fate lines were tangled with it. The Department of Mysteries began to look, in his mind, like the super–artificial intelligence from a science-fiction story—something that could manage, even terminate, an entire people.
The Time Room's function? To prevent and repair fractures in the timeline. The Brain Room—a bright, nearly empty chamber with a colossal glass tank of greenish fluid, white "brains" drifting within; when those things climbed from the tank, their tendrils wrapped around the intruder's thoughts—called to mind the Matrix. Rowena Ravenclaw had nearly turned herself into an artificial life… and the Ministry's ancestor, the Wizard Council, had existed since the dawn of wizardry. After millennia ruling all witches and wizards, was it so hard to imagine they fashioned a thinking system to manage them?
Loren realized he was still too weak to pry into it now. Fine—set it aside. Come summer, he'd travel to China; perhaps he'd come back with the strength he needed.
He surfaced from his thoughts to find several pairs of eyes fixed on him. He nearly struck out on reflex—then, recognizing the Heads of House and Dumbledore, checked himself in time.
Dumbledore had been watching Loren the entire time. Even when Snape wanted to shake him awake, Dumbledore held him back. The other Heads copied him and simply observed.
Seeing the Heads assembled, Loren guessed they were here to confer about the night's events. He stood, exchanged greetings, and made to take his leave—only for Dumbledore to lift a hand.
"Since you are a member of Hogwarts, Loren, you have an obligation to help us address certain matters."
Loren heard the subtext plainly: You pried important knowledge out of me; now pay a little price—put that knowledge to use. Because the Mystery-force could not touch Loren, Dumbledore plainly meant to test whether Loren could help push back against it.
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