King and Country [Harry Potter AU | Albus Dumbledore | Historical/Military]

There were few things that could have made his situation worse, Albus Dumbledore thought as he turned down another narrow, soot-lined street in the heart of muggle London. Horse-drawn cabs jostled with omnibuses, and the stink of coal clung to everything: windowsills, jackets, skin. The city was loud like a wounded animal, lurching forward on noise and motion. Too large to die, too ugly to admire.

Albus hadn't expected to hate it so quickly. He had imagined, once, that he would be walking down streets in Cairo or Vienna by now. Not this.

His shoes were already scuffed. He'd wandered without direction for hours. The crowds pressed in from all sides, every window stuffed with promises—cigars, canned milk, bottled lightning, miracle soap. Somewhere in the distance, a brass band played something too cheerful. Somewhere closer, someone swore.

He turned again, ducking into a quieter lane where the buildings leaned together and the sky narrowed. The sounds receded enough to let his thoughts return.

"It wasn't enough," he muttered. "Of course it wasn't. First Father. Now Mother."

The words felt flat in the open air, like something rehearsed too many times.

Percival Dumbledore had been sentenced to Azkaban for attacking three muggle boys. The newspapers had never printed why. His mother, Kendra, had died just three weeks ago. An accident, the Healers had said. Ariana had been left behind with her grief and her strange, dangerous fits. Aberforth was fifteen and sullen and suspicious of everyone, most of all Albus. And he, fresh out of Hogwarts and covered in academic accolades, was expected to go home and act like a parent.

He was seventeen.

He stopped in front of a pawn shop and stared through the glass. A cracked violin sat alone among old watches and brass trinkets. The jagged seam down its body reminded him of something broken that had once been beautiful. His wand, tucked in the inner lining of his coat, felt unusually heavy.

Across the street, a bakery let out the scent of warm bread, and something in his stomach twisted. He hadn't eaten since breakfast. He had meant to leave the city today, perhaps catch a train north, maybe stop in Oxford for a few days to feel clever again. But the crowds, the sun and the noise had caught him like a net. Now the idea of traveling back to Godric's Hollow, to its silence and its ghosts, felt like a punishment.

He imagined, only half-seriously, that if he walked far enough he might find a way out of everything. That he might slip through some overlooked alley and simply vanish.

A rough shoulder shoved into him without warning. Albus stumbled sideways and hit a brick wall, jarring his arm from elbow to shoulder.

"Watch where you're going," the man snapped, already moving on.

Albus straightened slowly, pressing his fingers to the wall to steady himself. The anger flared in him sharp and sudden. His hand drifted to his wand.

One word. Just one, and the man would trip over his own shoes and land flat on his face. Or worse.

He didn't.

He let it go.

"Be more considerate, mate," someone said nearby. "You could've hurt the lad."

Albus turned. A tall man approached, offering a hand.

The man looked to be in his thirties. He had close-cropped hair, a sun-creased face, and a confident stance that didn't feel rehearsed. His coat was cut smartly, his boots scuffed from real use. His tone was more amused than angry.

"You alright?" the man asked.

Albus hesitated, then took the hand. The grip was strong.

"Yes. Thank you," he said.

"You looked a bit lost."

Albus blinked. That wasn't something people said to him. He didn't look lost. He didn't get lost.

"Do I?" he asked.

The man shrugged lightly. "I've spent enough time around new recruits and younger brothers to know the look. You've got purpose somewhere. Just not today."

Albus didn't reply.

"William Stanley," the man said easily. "How about I buy you dinner?"

"I'm alright," Albus said. "Truly."

"Didn't say you weren't. Said you looked like someone who needed a sit-down and something hot."

Albus studied him. The man had a calmness about him, a steady presence like an anchored ship. There was something appealing about it, about someone who didn't look at him like a disappointment or a problem to solve.

"Albus Dumbledore," he offered, a beat late. "And I suppose dinner wouldn't be the worst thing."

They walked a short distance in companionable silence. The streets became quieter, more residential. William seemed to know where he was going. A bicycle clattered by, its rider ringing the bell twice as if to punctuate the stillness. The sound faded quickly.

Albus glanced sideways. "Your uniform. Where's it from? I feel like I should know it."

William let out a warm, full laugh. "You must be from deep in the country if you don't recognize it. British Army."

Albus paused. "I've read about it, of course. But I've never seen one up close."

"It's not much to look at in the field," William said. "But it keeps the world in order."

That made Albus smile, faintly. "And is that your job? Keeping the world in order?"

William looked at him for a moment. "You'd be surprised how much of life is just that."

They entered a small corner pub with a meat pie smell thick enough to chew. The wood floors were warped and the paint peeling, but it felt lived in. William ordered without asking. They sat near the window, and within minutes two steaming plates arrived, each with thick slices of pie, peas, and mashed potatoes.

"You strike me," William said, "as someone on the edge of deciding something."

"That obvious?"

William didn't press. "Only familiar."

Albus didn't answer. He picked up his fork and pushed peas across the plate.

"I was going to travel," he said finally. "This summer. Across the continent. I had it all mapped out. Then my mother died."

William said nothing.

"My brother and sister…they're still young. Aberforth is still in school. There's no one else."

"You're seventeen?"

"Yes."

William nodded slowly. "And no trade. No income."

"No."

"And you don't want to go home."

"No."

William cut into his pie, chewed, and swallowed before speaking again.

"The army's not a bad life. You'd travel. You'd learn discipline. Earn a pension. And if you've got the right kind of mind, you'd rise fast. We take care of our own."

Albus looked up, wary.

"I'm not trying to sell you anything," William said. "I'm just offering a way forward. You've got the kind of face that's been told too many times how clever it is. That won't help you when it's just you and your siblings and no plan."

"I can't leave them."

"You already have," William said. "You're here."

That stung. But it wasn't wrong.

"There are systems," William went on, more gently now. "Support. Schooling. You'd be doing more good there than hiding at home, pretending to be someone you're not."

They ate the rest of the meal quietly.

Albus didn't decide then. Not fully. But the city felt different when they stepped back outside. Smaller, less threatening.

And for the first time all summer, the weight in his chest eased.

The decision had not yet been made, but something had shifted. And deep down, Albus knew it.

---

The light had shifted by the time they left the pub. The sun lower. The shadows softer. The clouds hung low and gold-edged above the rooftops, and a breeze curled through the side streets, kicking up scraps of paper and the day's dust. London was gentler in the fading light. The sharp edges dulled. The buildings leaned back slightly, less hunched, less hostile.

Albus walked with his hands in his coat pockets, shoulder to shoulder with William. He was still turning over what had been said. Not in the way of someone deciding, but someone already resigned to the direction the tide was pulling.

Because William was right. With no income lined up, all the Dumbledore's had left were the savings left from before their father was sentenced to Azkaban. They'd last longer now. Enough to see Aberforth through the rest of his Hogwarts years, probably. But not forever.

They rounded a corner and stepped into a livelier street, the lamps flickering to life one by one. A woman stood on a ladder, lighting them by hand, her motions practiced and almost rhythmic. It was a scene Albus had never seen before in person. There was something pleasing about the order of it.

"Where are we going?" he asked.

William looked amused. "Not far. You'll want to see it, I think."

They passed a row of brick buildings with blue-painted doors. A bobby tipped his helmet at them as they passed, and William returned the gesture casually. Albus noticed that people seemed to move out of William's way without realizing it. He occupied space differently—like someone used to authority, not forcing it but expecting it.

At the end of the street stood a long, low building with dark windows and a single wrought iron sign hanging above the door. Recruitment Office.

Albus stopped walking.

William slowed a step ahead of him. "Something wrong?"

"I didn't say I was joining," Albus said.

"No," William agreed. "You didn't."

They stood in silence for a moment.

Albus looked at the building. The windows reflected the sky, orange and silver. A boy younger than him came out just then, hat askew, clutching a paper and grinning like he'd just passed an exam.

"His parents won't be smiling like that," William muttered. "But he'll grow up fast."

Albus looked away.

"Come on," William said. "No one's drafting you. Just come see the inside. Hear what's said."

Albus followed him, slowly. His feet felt leaden, not with dread, but with the weight of something inevitable.

Inside, the office was warmer than he expected. Two men sat at a table near the back, one writing with an ink pen and the other folding papers into neat stacks. A poster on the wall behind them declared JOIN THE LINE. SERVE YOUR KING. DEFEND THE REALM. Below it, an illustration of a cheerful young man shaking hands with a general while distant figures drilled in neat formations.

The man with the pen looked up and smiled.

"Evening. Here to enlist?"

Albus hesitated.

"He's just here to learn," William said. "I'm vouching for him."

The man nodded. "Of course."

They were offered seats. The second man brought tea, and Albus sat politely, though he didn't touch the cup. William stood beside him, hands behind his back like a parade-ground officer.

"What do you want to know?" the recruiter asked.

Albus glanced at William, who gave him a slight nod.

"What's the process?" Albus asked. His voice sounded too formal in his own ears.

"Medical exam. Aptitude testing. You'd be placed based on your strengths. We don't waste clever lads peeling potatoes, not anymore. Do you read Latin?"

"Yes."

"German?"

"Yes."

"Figures. You look the sort."

Albus wasn't sure whether to be insulted.

"There are training camps across the country," the man continued. "Six months of basic, then you're placed with a regiment. Overseas posting most likely, unless you request home service."

"And if I have... other obligations?" Albus asked, deliberately vague.

"Dependents?" the man clarified.

"Two younger siblings."

"You'd qualify for a support stipend. Not lavish, but regular. And if you advanced… . Well, officer ranks bring better housing and better pay. Assuming you're officer material."

William, behind him, snorted softly.

"Tell me," the recruiter said, "what did you do before this?"

"I was in school."

"University?"

"No. Private boarding."

"Good marks?"

Albus smiled faintly. "The best."

The man seemed to recognize the weight behind the words. He folded his hands together.

"We don't always get men like you. But when we do, they tend to go far."

Albus didn't answer. His eyes were on the posters again.

Be the man your country needs.

He had thought his country needed his mind. Or his magic. Or his silence.

Instead, perhaps it needed something simpler.

"You don't have to decide tonight," William said softly.

Albus stood. His chair made a small scraping sound on the floor.

"Thank you," he said. "I think I understand enough."

Outside, the light had dipped into the last blue shadows of evening. The woman with the lamp had finished her rounds. Albus and William stood together beneath one of the streetlamps, its glow faintly golden on their faces.

"You wouldn't be the first to join because you didn't know what else to do," William said. "But you'd be one of the first I've seen who could rise straight to the top. You don't see the ladder yet, but it's there."

Albus tilted his head back, looking at the dim stars just barely visible beyond the fog.

"I don't want power," he said quietly.

"Power's not always a choice," William replied.

Albus turned to him. "Why are you helping me?"

William shrugged. "Because someone once did the same for me. Because you're bright. And because, quite frankly, I'd rather see men like you commanding battalions than staying buried in small towns, pretending your gifts don't exist."

Albus said nothing.

William smiled. "You don't have to commit now. But if you come back tomorrow morning, I'll be here."

They shook hands, and Albus stepped away. He didn't walk quickly. The city was quieting. The windows above flickered with lamp lights, and the air smelled of bread again, tinged now with coal smoke and chimney soot.

At the corner, he paused. There was a bench beneath a gaslight, and he sat for a moment, resting his arms on his knees.

A cat padded past. Somewhere nearby, someone whistled tunelessly.

And Albus Dumbledore—brilliant, angry, uncertain—closed his eyes and breathed in the fading night, thinking not of home or obligation but of the ladder he'd never meant to climb.

---

The following morning, the city had not softened. If anything, the streets were louder, the air heavier, as though overnight some unseen furnace had been lit beneath the cobblestones. Albus had slept little, rising early and sitting in a chair for a full hour as light trickled through the curtains of his rented room. He watched it move across the floor and tried to tell himself he had not already decided.

He arrived at the recruitment office just before it opened.

William Stanley was already there, coat unbuttoned, cradling a tin cup of tea like it might whisper secrets to him. He looked up when Albus appeared and gave a short nod.

"No need for dramatics," he said. "You're not signing a blood pact."

"I didn't bring a wand," Albus said. He wasn't sure why.

William grinned. "Good. Means you're not planning to hex the medical officer if he's rude."

Inside, the office was as they'd left it: wooden walls, dust in the corners, posters that tried too hard to be stirring. The same clerk sat behind the table, this time with his sleeves rolled up. A smell of chalk and ink hung faintly in the air.

"You're back," the clerk said. "What name have we got?"

"Albus Dumbledore."

The man nodded, dipping a pen into the inkwell. "Age?"

Albus hesitated.

"Eighteen," he said.

It came easily, almost rehearsed.

William said nothing.

The man continued, asking the usual questions: place of residence, occupation, names of dependents. Albus gave answers quickly, the truth wrapped in calm tones. He listed Aberforth and Ariana as his responsibility and nodded when told he would be eligible for a stipend.

Next came the physical. Albus was directed into a smaller adjoining room where a medical officer stood in his shirtsleeves beside a scale. The man was older, indifferent, and clearly bored.

"Height," he said.

Albus stood straight. The man measured him with a wooden rod.

"Just over five foot ten. That'll do."

He was instructed to remove his coat and shirt. His heartbeat was measured, breathing checked, teeth inspected. The man grunted approvingly.

"Any prior injuries? Lung trouble? Madness in the family?"

Albus kept his face still. "No."

The man nodded and scribbled a note. "You'll do."

He dressed in silence, rejoining William near the clerk's table.

"Bright boy like you," the clerk said, looking up from the form, "might do well to take the Sandhurst exam when the time comes. Or we can start you in for direct commission. You've the look of a lieutenant about you."

"Do I?" Albus said.

"Bookish and stubborn," the man said. "That's the type they give swords to."

William snorted.

"There's a short written test we give lads like you. Just to make sure you're not bluffing. Mind sitting?"

Albus took the sheet. There were a few arithmetic problems, a translated sentence in Latin, and a short composition prompt: Describe your reasons for wishing to serve the Empire.

He wrote: To gain structure. To be useful. To leave nothing to waste.

It was enough.

The rest moved quickly. A handshake. A signature. A stamped approval and a few more instructions about his expected posting date. Training would begin within a fortnight. He would be given rail fare and a list of items to bring. A uniform fitting was scheduled for the following week.

When they stepped out onto the street, the light was sharp and clear. The morning fog had burned off. The sky was flat white, the clouds like chalk dust spread too thin.

William was quiet for a while.

Finally, he clapped Albus lightly on the shoulder.

"You did the right thing."

"I didn't do it for the Empire," Albus replied.

"No one does. Not at first."

They stood on the corner, the street vibrating quietly beneath them with the sound of hooves and early bells. A woman sold newspapers from a wooden cart, her voice low but insistent. Somewhere nearby, a child was singing something repetitive and slightly out of key.

"You'll make a fine officer," William said. "Just don't tell anyone you lied about your age."

Albus raised an eyebrow. "You knew?"

"I recruited boys younger than you in India. The clever ones always say they're eighteen."

Albus smiled. Tired, but real.

"I'll see you again," William said. "Sooner than you think."

He tipped his hat, then disappeared down the street, his footsteps measured, precise.

Albus remained standing there for a while, hands in his coat pockets, watching the faces pass. He did not feel triumphant, nor resolved. Only weightless, like someone who had stepped off a ledge and realized too late that he wasn't sure whether there was a rope below.

---

The uniform fit surprisingly well.

Albus stood in front of the mirror in the corner of the small tailor's room, still half in disbelief. The coat was dark green, sharp-shouldered, the fabric stiff but not uncomfortable. The brass buttons gleamed in the late afternoon light. A pair of polished black boots stood to the side, waiting to be broken in. The tailor adjusted the collar with a practiced tug and stepped back to survey his work.

"You'll wear it fine, sir," he said. "Looks natural on you."

Albus said nothing.

He looked at his reflection and didn't quite recognize it. Not because it was strange, but because it wasn't. There was no sense of costume, no feeling of pretense. He looked like someone who belonged somewhere, to something larger than himself.

And that frightened him more than he expected.

They boxed the uniform carefully, along with the commission papers and travel voucher. Albus carried the package under one arm as he left the shop, walking alone now. William was already gone, called away to Portsmouth. He had left a note: Train leaves Sunday. Report on Monday. You'll do well.

Albus wandered again, but not like before. The city didn't press in on him today. It kept its distance, watching. He crossed a bridge over the Thames, stopping halfway to look out over the water. Barges drifted slowly beneath him. Smoke trailed from distant chimneys.

He thought of Aberforth. Of Ariana. Of the worn path between their house and the village. He imagined returning there, explaining himself, defending his choice. Or not explaining at all.

They would call it abandonment.

But he could also imagine the future: a steady income, letters home, perhaps even visits. A structure in which to contain his impossible grief. A plan.

He sat on the edge of the bridge's low wall, balancing the box on his knees. A boy stood nearby selling roasted chestnuts. A man played a violin for coins, the melody strange and fast, like something from the Balkans. Albus listened without really hearing.

In another world, he thought, he'd be in Paris by now.

He opened the box and looked down at the uniform again. There was something final about its folded lines. Not a costume. Not a disguise. A choice, made and pressed and stitched.

His eyes caught on the papers beneath it. The commission itself, signed and dated. A small notation in the corner: Second Lieutenant, Provisionally Assigned: Royal Fusiliers.

He touched the ink with the edge of one finger.

He had imagined glory once. Abstract brilliance, admiration earned through discovery, invention, dazzling speeches in great halls. But this was something smaller and more immediate. Rank. Orders. Purpose.

And it would do.

He stood and crossed the bridge.

The recruitment office had emptied by the time he returned. A single clerk remained behind the desk, reading a small novel with the cover folded back.

"I've already filed your papers, sir," the man said without looking up.

"I know. I just…" Albus hesitated. "I wanted to make sure it was done."

"It's done," the man replied. "Transport ticket's there in your folder. King's Cross, early train Sunday. Uniform's yours now. Congratulations."

Albus nodded. The man didn't look up again.

He left the office slowly, the boxed uniform under his arm. The street outside had begun to darken. Lamps flickered to life one by one, their warm glow collecting in the puddles left by an afternoon rain he hadn't noticed.

At the corner, he stopped.

He glanced over his shoulder once, at the door he had just exited, then looked ahead.

Two paths. Two versions of the man he might become.

In one universe, he would have gone home, found a boy with brilliant eyes and wild plans, and changed the world in a different way.

In this one, he turned right.

And didn't look back.

They landed in Cape Town in early April, the sky overcast and the air thick with the brine of the harbor. From the moment Albus stepped off the gangplank, the weight of the South African heat settled onto his shoulders like a living thing. It was not like English heat, dry and fleeting. This heat clung to skin, filled the lungs, and made wool uniforms feel like punishment.

He had been given two weeks to adjust at the depot outside Stellenbosch, but in practice that meant learning the shape of dust and how it clung to everything. Dust in his teeth, in his buttons, in the folds of every letter he wrote and rarely sent. He was young and still too well-spoken to be liked by the enlisted men, but he knew when to keep quiet, which was enough.

"Keep the Boers off the rails and the supplies running," the colonel had said when he assigned Albus to the Northern Blockhouse Line. "You're educated; that means you can read maps. Don't lose any men."

His unit was little more than thirty men, a mixture of veteran regulars and Imperial Yeomanry—mounted volunteers from across the empire, some barely literate, others eager for medals. They rode out by train, then horse, to a stretch of semi-arid land dotted with thorn trees and scorched kraals. There were two blockhouses under his command, low stone-and-corrugated iron structures connected by a strip of telegraph wire and shallow trenches. One protected a narrow-gauge rail spur. The other overlooked a suspected Boer trail.

Guerrilla raids were frequent and fast. Albus saw his first skirmish within the month.

It was nothing like the drills. No uniforms, no formations, just a flash of movement from the scrubland, a volley of Mauser fire, and men scrambling to return shots in the rising dust. One of his corporals, a Yorkshireman named Dobbs, was hit in the side. Albus reached him moments after the shooting stopped.

Dobbs was shaking, pale with pain. "Reckon I've got minutes, sir," he said.

Albus looked around. No one else was nearby. The other men were shouting, checking weapons, arguing about whether the Boers had fled west.

He knelt, slipped his wand from inside his coat, and pulled Dobbs's tunic aside.

"Silencio," he murmured. The air shifted, muffling the world.

Dobbs watched him with glassy eyes. "You one of them... field surgeons?"

Albus didn't answer. Just laid the wand against the wound and whispered a spell. It wasn't perfect. It was a quick spell, a patch, but not a cure. But the bleeding stopped. The pain dulled.

He let the spell settle, cleaned away the worst of the blood with another charm, and stood. The silence broke. Dobbs blinked. "Thought I was done for."

"Not today," Albus said.

That night, when the men gathered to count supplies and eat what passed for rations, Dobbs told the others it had been a miracle. Albus let him talk. No one seriously believed Dobbs, but it was good for morale.

The next week, they found the remains of a Boer camp: half-burned papers, tins of jam, a pair of ruined boots. Albus ordered the documents collected. In the quiet of his command tent, he used a charm to restore the fire-blurred ink and traced supply lines across the veldt.

His reports were detailed, maps sharp, casualties low. When an officer from Pretoria passed through on inspection, he shook Albus's hand and told him, "You've a good head on you. Might have a future beyond this dust."

Albus smiled and nodded. He didn't say what he was thinking.

He already knew he would never stop at one war.

---

By June, the raids had slowed, but the sense of waiting had not. The veldt baked under the white hammer of the sun, and the men grew listless with idleness. They spent days repairing telegraph lines that would be cut again by nightfall, building up sandbag walls that collapsed in the next windstorm. Dust became part of their skin, part of their food. Even the scorpions seemed tired.

Albus kept a ledger. It was something to do, and he found that the act of recording gave shape to a place that otherwise resisted it. He noted rations, ammunition counts, watch rotations, the temperature at dawn. Beneath the practical entries, he wrote spells into the margins—coded in Aramaic runes or disguised as measurements. Small charms to keep rot from the rations. An alert ward if someone crossed the telegraph trench.

He received mail sporadically. Most came in bundled sacks dropped by train every few weeks. He could never be sure how long the letters had traveled or how many had been lost along the way. He opened the Ministry reports first, thin envelopes with sanitized casualty lists, written in that same bureaucratic tone he'd later come to recognize everywhere.

Among them, one bundle stood out. A half-dozen letters bound together with string, addressed in Aberforth's uneven scrawl.

The first was dated February.

Albus stared at them for a long while. Then he placed them in the bottom of his trunk, unopened.

He told himself it was a kindness. That if he didn't read the words, they would not weigh down the air between them. That his brother deserved the version of Albus who was still home, not the one casting wards on dried meat under the moon.

In late July, his unit escorted a supply caravan from Beaufort West to a station near Colesberg, a five-day trip. Along the way, they passed a scorched kraal, its fence half-collapsed and its livestock gone.

The veldt shimmered with heat. A boy of perhaps twelve watched them from behind a withered bush, barefoot and silent.

"There's a family, odd sort, out near Norvalspont," Sergeant Taylor said that night as they camped beside a dry streambed. "Half-caste, I think. Folk like that tend to disappear around here."

Albus didn't answer.

That night, he dreamt of a boy with golden hair and pale eyes who argued passionately about truth and power. Someone Albus had never met, but who felt familiar in a way that ached.

He woke before dawn and didn't speak for the rest of the day.

By the end of the year, the war was declared won.

His men were rotated out. He was reassigned to a garrison outside Bloemfontein to help with "reconstruction logistics." The work was more ink than blood, but no less exhausting. He filed reports, inspected depots, and interviewed local contacts. He learned to speak in detached terms.

One day, sorting files in a hot little office stacked with supply crates, he found a Ministry-coded folder mixed in with the army dispatches.

He opened it. Inside was a single sheet, blank but for two names and a line of text:

Dumbledore, Albus — watch for upward placement.

The familiar slanted handwriting was familiar.

He folded the paper back into the folder and left it on the desk.

He never sent a reply to the letters from home.

---

The sky above Victoria Harbour in the late summer of 1907 was the color of tarnished silver, and the air clung like gauze. Albus Dumbledore sat at a battered writing desk inside the officer's quarters, sleeves rolled to the elbow, collar open. The letter had been half-finished for an hour.

He stared at it. Reread the salutation. Scratched it out.

At last, he set down his pen, drew a small parcel from the footlocker at his side, and began wrapping it by hand. No magic. Just careful creases, a steady hand.

Inside was a slim bottle of port from a Portuguese merchant and a worn edition of The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which he had kept since his Hogwarts days. He added a note, folded twice:

For the quiet hours between celebration and contentment. May they last.

He stared at the package for a moment more before sealing it with wax and pressing a thumbprint into the still-warm sigil.

He would not be attending. Leave was impossible, and even if it was, he'd never make it in time. He dared not try to Apparate to the other side of the globe. If he made an error and splinched, they'd never find all of him.

Still, Ariana's name in Aberforth's latest letter had been a balm. Married, it said. To a kind man. A Healer, quietly clever, who adored her. They'd set up a home in the southern reaches of Wales. Albus doubted they needed anything from him.

And that, perhaps, was the greatest gift of all.

He summoned a dispatch owl, tied the parcel with quiet precision, and watched as it disappeared into the humid air. He silently wished it luck in the long journey.

A soldier knocked at his door not long after. The next briefing awaited.

He stood, fastened his collar, and turned the page.

---

The sea was grey all the way to the horizon, and Albus found that he didn't mind it. There was a dignity to the cold waters of the Channel that South Africa and Hong Kong had never offered him. When he returned to Britain in early 1910, the air bit through his coat, the streets were slick with coal rain, and the people on the train from Dover barely looked at one another. It was as if he had stepped back into a world more comfortable with silence than explanation.

He took temporary lodgings in Woolwich, near the Royal Military Academy, though he had no intention of returning to study. The Boer War had hardened more than just tactics—it had restructured careers. Albus had already proven himself in the field. The Ministry of Defence, still politely declining to acknowledge its arrangements with the Ministry of Magic, placed him in a logistics role overseeing communications infrastructure. For a year and half, he worked inside tall grey buildings that smelled of ink and cold iron, supervising cipher staff and re-routing telegraph systems across the Empire.

It was orderly. He liked that.

When he used magic, it was buried beneath layers of plausible deniability. He developed a system of enchantments that protected encrypted messages from duplication. He disguised rune keys as operational passphrases. Occasionally, quietly, he modified a report to erase something the magical world should not have left visible such as wand traces in a Boer prison camp, say, or unlicensed healing at a field hospital. He signed those edits with the sharp-edged initials A.P.W.B.D., as if that absurd string of initials might carry weight in this grey-brown bureaucracy.

The truth was, they did.

In mid 1911, he was seconded to a classified task force conducting studies on magical survivability under battlefield conditions. The researchers were Aurors, mostly, or the kind of Ministry personnel who only answered to names, never departments. They tested shielding charms against gunpowder. They evaluated whether magical concealment could fool modern optics. Albus observed, but rarely participated. He found their methods crude, their understanding of muggle warfare laughably outdated.

He wrote his own assessments. Sent them to no one. Saved them in a box behind his fireplace for future use. Potentially.

When William Stanley reappeared in 1912, it was with a new uniform, heavier medals, and a glass eye.

"How's the clever boy?" he asked, thumping Albus on the back. "Still turning ghosts into filing systems?"

Albus smiled faintly. "Still breathing. And you?"

"Barely. Bounced around Nigeria, then India. The empire never rests."

They had dinner at a club in Whitehall where every conversation sounded like it had been rehearsed two nights before. William still laughed like a man pretending not to be bothered by loss, but Albus noticed the stiffness in his left hand and the way he paused before touching the scotch.

"You know," William said, "they're watching you. Your name floats higher each year. One day they'll stop assigning you to projects and start assigning people to you."

"They already do."

William chuckled. "Not like this. I'm talking about real command."

Albus didn't reply.

By 1913, he was a major in the Royal Engineers. The work was quiet, mathematical, and forward-looking.

In his spare time, he wrote letters to no one.

The Ministry of Magic officially acknowledged its collaboration agreement with the British government late that year. It was a terse, double-sealed proclamation that specified protocols for magical intelligence, battlefield healing, and the containment of magical artefacts. Albus was not invited to the signing ceremony. But he was added, quietly, to the list of dual-clearance personnel.

The news reached him in a sealed envelope delivered by owl to his London office. Inside was a single parchment with four words:

You're in. Stay unseen.

He burned it in his sink.

That winter, snow fell over Sussex and northern France alike. Telegraph lines iced over. Troop formations shifted. The German Empire rattled its sabre, Austria-Hungary made threats it couldn't keep and someone in the War Office muttered a date—"August"—like a prophecy.

When the Great War began, Albus Dumbledore was already waiting for it.

He requested front-line reassignment before the first skirmish at Mons.

He told no one why.

---

The trench system outside Béthune was more a wound in the earth than a structure. It had begun as a communication ditch, hastily dug after the British retreat from Mons, but months of desperation had turned it into a permanent fixture: a zigzagging scar of duckboards, firesteps, mud walls, and sandbags already beginning to collapse under rain and rot. Men had named it the Haig Line.

Albus arrived in March of 1915, just as the snow melted into a half-frozen slurry that filled every hollow. The previous captain had died of pneumonia brought on by a mustard gas miscalculation. Albus stepped into the post with the silence of someone who had stopped expecting ceremony.

He was thirty-three.

His men called him "the Quiet Captain." Not out of fear, but because he never raised his voice. Even when issuing orders. Even when pulling a shell-shocked private out of the mud during a night barrage. He had a way of speaking that cut through the noise without volume. The veterans respected that. The new boys didn't know what to make of it.

The trench's forward position overlooked a broad patch of no man's land strewn with the remnants of earlier skirmishes—half-collapsed barbed wire, sunken helmets, the occasional forgotten corpse. Beyond it lay the German line, faint but unmistakable, and between them the flat ache of silence broken only by the occasional stutter of a Maxim gun or the distant roar of an airplane engine.

He spent his first week walking the line.

Rawley, his second-in-command, was a career sergeant with a lopsided jaw and a trench club tucked under one arm like a walking stick. He narrated the condition of the post with dry amusement.

"Rats outnumber us. Water's foul. The last batch of lads caught trench foot by day three. Food's tinned, morale's rotten, and command thinks we can hold this stretch for another month."

Albus simply nodded. He studied the angle of the sandbags, tested the duckboard slats with the heel of his boot, and examined the collapsed dugout at the eastern end.

That night, after Rawley turned in, Albus slipped out of his tent with his wand hidden beneath his coat. He waited until the pickets rotated, then descended into the ruined dugout and cast a charm to siphon out the stagnant water.

Another to reinforce the frame. Another to harden the wooden walls against weather.

He worked in silence. When he emerged, two hours later, the place was dry and secure. More importantly, normal enough to pass inspection.

In the days that followed, he did the same to the latrine trench, the storage cache, and the sentry post nearest the German line.

He never explained how the trench no longer flooded after rain. Or why the rats stayed out of the food barrels. Or why the matches always struck, even when wet.

He let the men believe what they liked.

Some thought him lucky. Others were superstitious. A few whispered he was protected.

He allowed it all.

He allowed one magical construct: a charm woven into the telegraph wire at HQ, set to flare warm against his wrist when command transmitted codewords of consequence. It was subtle, undetectable, and entirely his own invention. He had long since stopped asking the Ministry for permission to use what worked.

One evening, as the western sky dimmed to bruise-purple, a new group of reinforcements arrived. Rawley met them at the trenchhead and read names from a clipboard. Most were too young. One, Private Mullen, couldn't have been older than sixteen.

Albus approached as the last boy was assigned a dugout.

"You've all been briefed," he said. "Keep your heads down, your rifles dry, and your thoughts quieter than your boots."

The boys nodded. One muttered something about making a difference.

Rawley rolled his eyes.

That night, Albus wrote nothing. He watched the moon rise over the wire instead, listening to the soft slosh of mud against boots and the occasional cough of a man trying to stifle fear.

In the distance, a flare arced up from the German side and burned out without sound.

He traced a simple warding sigil into the corner of his tent's floor with the toe of his boot and whispered a name he hadn't spoken in years.

Then he went to sleep without dreaming.

---

The flare came at dawn, pale red against the silver fog, followed by the low groan of the telegraph relay sparking to life. The wire on Albus's wrist grew warm.

He rose from his cot without haste, tugged on his boots, and stepped out into the grey light of morning. The trench smelled of damp canvas and boiled onions. Somewhere down the line, a shovel scraped uselessly at wet clay.

Rawley stood at the message station, arms crossed. He handed over the telegram without a word.

Albus read it twice.

ORDERS FROM CORPS HQ: PREPARE FOR FORWARD ADVANCE. COORDINATED PUSH WITH FRENCH THIRD ARMY UNDER NIVELLE. OBJECTIVE: PENETRATION OF HINDENBURG LINE. TIMING TBD. AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTION.

He folded the paper slowly and tucked it into his coat. His fingers brushed the wand hidden beneath the lapel.

"Bastards are serious, then," Rawley said.

"They're always serious."

"Thought Nivelle was all smoke and speeches. 'Break the enemy in forty-eight hours,' was it?"

"So they believe."

Rawley spat into the muck. "He'll get half the front torn apart chasing ghosts."

Albus did not disagree.

By noon, the sky had cleared, and with it came the buzz of observation planes circling like vultures. The Germans responded with their usual rhythm of intermittent shelling. No damage, just a reminder. They were listening.

Albus gathered his lieutenants that afternoon under a reinforced dugout camouflaged with branches. He laid out the latest maps across a table cobbled from ammunition crates. A damp oil lamp flickered at the center.

"We won't hold this line if the French fail," one officer muttered, tracing a trench with gloved fingers. "We're exposed east and north."

"We hold, regardless," Albus said.

Another officer—Dunn, young, high-voiced—shifted. "You think they'll really send us across?"

"They will. And we'll go."

Dunn blinked. "But sir—"

"We go," Albus repeated.

The table fell quiet.

That evening, Albus met alone with Rawley and Corporal Tillman, the wire technician. He opened a canvas-wrapped scroll on the floor—something older than anyone present—and revealed a map of the surrounding countryside. The paths marked on it did not appear on any official army draft. This one shimmered faintly with a blue-silver glow, visible only in the low light of a flickering charm he'd learned in his sixth year.

"There's a dry drainage culvert beneath the eastern ridge," Albus said. "Runs to a shell crater close to the German line. If we reinforce it, we can move two platoons through undetected."

"Will it hold?" Rawley asked.

"It will," Albus said. "By tomorrow night."

He tapped the scroll. Runes flared briefly where he touched. The culvert solidified into sharp clarity, framed in protection spells keyed to blood recognition. His own.

"We'll need the engineers," Rawley said. "Quiet ones. We go in wands blasting, the Krauts will send their own. Good luck keeping the Statute if we get into that kind of fight."

"Use Gant's squad. They don't talk."

Albus closed the map. The light vanished.

Back in his quarters, he wrote a short report to HQ indicating preparations underway, omitting the method. He then turned to his personal papers and penned a letter he would never send:

Aberforth,

I don't expect you to read this. I don't expect it to survive the week. But if it does, and if you do… know that I have done what I can to spare the boys who shouldn't be here. The price will be mine. It always is.

Albus

He folded the letter into the lining of his coat.

Outside, the trench was quieter than usual. No shelling. No shouts. Just the hush of wind across wire and the nervous footfalls of men who knew something was coming.

Albus paced the length of the trench once before midnight, pausing at each post, checking weapons, supplies, faces. He offered no words of encouragement. He didn't believe in them.

Instead, as he passed the dugout where Private Mullen slept, he paused and whispered a charm against fire. Just in case.

By morning, the orders came down in full: they would advance within thirty-six hours.

Albus nodded as was expected of him.

Then began to plan how to disobey them. Just enough to survive.

The next day was spent in motion. Gant's engineers, briefed with care and equipped with half-truths, set to work on the culvert. Albus checked in hourly. He recalibrated the reinforcement spells himself when no one was looking, balancing structural integrity against magical concealment. The entrance was disguised with loose stone and a small netting of thorns. From above, it looked like nothing.

By dusk, the final preparations began. Ammunition was redistributed. Medics were briefed. A quiet service was held behind the forward dugout. The chaplain, a pale man with bad teeth, read from Psalms while a few boys cried softly into their sleeves.

Albus stood apart.

At moonrise, two platoons began their crawl through the culvert. Albus went with them.

The air grew tight and wet as they moved single-file through the dark. Boots slipped on moss-slick stone. No one spoke. Every cough was swallowed. Every scrape winced at.

They emerged into a crater half-sheltered by earth and ruin. Albus took point, wand concealed behind his sleeve, eyes scanning for glint or motion.

The German trench was less than forty yards ahead. Shadows moved behind their parapet.

He tapped his wand once to his side—an illusion ripple masked their breath. Another charm dampened the sound of their movement. The soldiers did not notice. They simply found the air oddly still, their limbs oddly light.

Then came the signal: two sharp bursts of distant artillery. French shells.

The Germans responded immediately. Their line opened with machine-gun fire—at the French flank.

Albus raised his hand. A single word.

"Advance."

The charge began, not with a shout, but with motion. The platoons surged out of the crater and toward the enemy trench in silence.

Grenades were thrown. Rifles barked. Albus moved through the chaos like a fixed point.

Private Mullen was hit first. A chest wound. Albus caught him before he fell fully. He performed the charm even as they moved, even as bullets snapped overhead. It stabilized him, barely.

They reached the trench. Close combat. Scream, clash, fall. Albus cast no spells visible to the eye, but where he stepped, men seemed to find footing, blades missed their marks, bullets bent off-target.

Rawley appeared beside him, blood across one side of his face.

"We have it," he said. "They're pulling back."

Albus didn't smile. He only nodded.

By dawn, the position was theirs. The losses were fewer than anyone expected. Rawley was wounded, but walking. Mullen lived. Sixteen men dead.

That morning, a courier arrived from command.

Field commendation. Promotion.

And a second message, sealed in violet wax:

You're being watched. Well done.

No signature. Only a rune pressed into the paper—a Ministry cipher.

Albus stared at it for a long time. Then folded it into his coat beside the letter to Aberforth.

He stood at the lip of the trench, looking toward the rising sun. The field was quiet.

They had won. And it meant nothing.

---

The Hall of Mirrors was too bright.

Sunlight poured through the windows in sharp white columns, reflecting off polished marble and chandeliers with ruthless precision. The air smelled of wax and sweat, and the voices were low, tense, too numerous to sort. Every language of Europe echoed off the walls, each syllable wrapped in diplomacy, but none of it meant peace.

Albus stood near the back, not quite at the wall but far from the table. His uniform was pressed and his medals properly arrayed, but his position was symbolic, not participatory. He was there to watch, to represent some quietly acknowledged collaboration between two governments that pretended not to know each other's terms.

He was thirty-seven, though the white at his temples made him look older. He wore no visible wand. His gloves were buttoned, his boots gleamed, and his eyes never left the central table where the treaty documents lay.

To his left stood a Ministry man, likely someone from the Office of Magical Liaison, though Albus had never been introduced. The man had the stiff posture of someone trained to be unimpressive. To his right stood a Belgian colonel with hollow eyes and a tremor in his hand. No one spoke.

The French looked triumphant, the Americans detached, the British exhausted. The Germans, seated last and with ceremony, looked resigned.

As the papers were signed, the scratching of pens seemed louder than any shell Albus had heard in Flanders. Each stroke sounded final in the way that most lies do.

He watched the expressions, some tight with victory, others sagging with unease. He noted the weight of what was missing: no binding oversight, no real enforcement, only punishments. Reparations that could not be paid. Borders that contradicted the terrain. Clauses written by committee.

He watched Clemenceau sign, and Wilson after him. Lloyd George looked tired. When Müller stepped forward to sign for Germany, Albus studied his hands. They didn't shake. They moved like a man doing his duty and nothing more.

He thought of the boys he had led across the culvert. Of Rawley's blunt laughter, of Mullen's pale face in the firelight, of the German officer who'd tried to surrender in perfect English and been shot before he finished his sentence.

It was too much. And not enough.

Too tight where it would chafe. Too loose where it would fray.

This would not hold. Not forever.

Afterward, as the diplomats exchanged brief handshakes and the translators began their hurried repackaging of meaning, Albus stepped out onto the long gallery that overlooked the gardens. The sky was clean and cold. The fountains were running again. Soldiers—some real, some ceremonial—stood at intervals along the terrace.

He took off his gloves, flexed his fingers, and leaned both hands against the stone railing. The world felt lighter here, above it all, but it wasn't. It was only quieter.

Behind him, the treaty would be declared a success.

In front of him, the wind carried birdsong and the distant sound of trains.

He did not smile.