The Plan

Slughorn examined the ladder that lead up to the Divination Tower with a dubious frown. It was made of rickety wood, and he would have been the first to admit that he was a somewhat full-figured gentleman. If he had been a less accomplished wizard, he would probably have lost some weight in the castle - with its ornately twisted and remorselessly steep staircases. But Slughorn scorned to exert himself if there was a magical alternative and, for a man of his talents, there always was.

This visit was inconvenience enough. He did not want to have anything to do with rickety ladders.

Accordingly, Slughorn cracked his knuckles, raised his wand and muttered: “Levicorpus.” As though there were a platform underneath his feet rising steadily upwards, he hovered in a dignified manner towards the entrance to the Divination classroom, idly checking his pocket-watch and noticing that it was late. If he hadn’t known that the Divination teacher was a chronic insomniac, he would have felt more than a little sheepish about this visit.  

He had seen students use the Levicorpus Charm in the school grounds, but they controlled it poorly. Well, they probably weren’t trying, Slughorn conceded fairly. Given that they were always using the charm to hurt or humiliate others, gusto mattered so much more than accuracy. He understood why Poppy Pomfrey was so world-weary. She had probably seen a thousand young spirits crushed, for no other reason than that their enemies were bored.

Slughorn, on the other hand, valued ingenuity, whether it was kind or cruel. There was no disillusioning him. He could only deplore his students’ lack of subtlety when they harmed others, because they never harmed anonymously, or by increments, the way Slughorn would have done.

He hovered through the open hatchway and found the Divination Professor next to the open window, holding a cup of tea poised before his lips, and looking fervently into the middle distance, only blinking occasionally when the rain dripped into his eyes.  

This was not an unusual pose in which to encounter Professor Caladrius. Slughorn simply assumed that he was in the grip of one of his visions, and cleared his throat awkwardly, as though loath to interrupt.

“I say, Henry, m’boy?” he asked tentatively. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About Li - about Miss Evans.”

“Yes?” Caladrius asked. His voice was quite steady, but he did not turn from his contemplation of the darkening sky.

“I’d like to help, if I may,” Slughorn mumbled.  

“You mean help me or help her?” Caladrius asked calmly.

“Well, both, of course,” Slughorn muttered uncomfortably. “But chiefly her.” His voice hardened a little as he went on: “I still think it was rather cruel of you to drag me into it, but now that I know… well, as my mother used to say, if you’re going to get wet, you might as well go swimming.”

For the first time, Caladrius looked at him - the little, round, abashed Potions master, staring disconsolately at his velvet shoes.

“I don’t want anything to happen to her,” Slughorn added wretchedly. “Mind, I don’t want you to run away with the idea that I think it’s possible to help her. You’ve never been able to alter the horrible events you foresee before.”

Caladrius waved his hand dismissively. “I’ve been able to alter the details, just not the outcome. If I interfere, they might die in a different way, but always at the same time. Its as though death won’t be cheated of its victims. But I can do it, Horace,” he said, his eyes suddenly shining. “For once in my life, I’m gong to beat him.”

“Beat death?” Slughorn enquired, frowning.

Caladrius smiled; it was wider than his usual smiles and looked oddly fixed. “I’m glad you came, Horace. I think I’ve had a break-through.”

“Oh, yes?” said Slughorn cautiously.

“Yes.” Caladrius put his arm round the Potion master’s shoulders, and steered him into a chair. “You see, all these years, I’ve been trying to change the moment of a person’s death, because that’s all I had to work with; it’s all I could see. But, now I realize, it’s little wonder you can’t divert the course of events when they’ve had an opportunity to gather so much momentum. If you try to stop a run-away train from going over a cliff, it’s still going to crash. I need to work backwards. I need to find the seeds of Lily’s fate and stop them from germinating.”

Slughorn paused. There was a look in Caladrius’ hard, yellow eyes that he had never seen there before. His face was pale and had a feverish kind of sheen.  

“But how are you going to do that?” he asked. “You’re working blind here. You can only see the result, not the causes.”

“I can work it out,” Caladrius insisted. “In the one moment I’ve got, there are clues everywhere. Besides, I’ve seen other deaths that are connected with hers - horrific little snap-shot pictures of her life, as short and full of grief as it will be. I have a few pieces of the jigsaw - at least enough to take a guess at what the picture might be.”  

“Who’s this man that Dumbledore says you saw die in the Forbidden Forest?” Slughorn asked, suddenly doubting Caladrius’ sanity and wondering why he had never doubted it before. It was because Dumbledore trusted the man, he supposed. Somehow, Slughorn had never entertained the notion that Dumbledore could be deceived in someone.  

“I don’t know,” Caladrius muttered dismissively. “Listen, will you? Lily dies trying - ,”

Slughorn held up a hand, wincing. “No details, please. Just tell me what I need to do. I don’t need to know why I’m doing it.”

“Alright,” Caladrius back-tracked a little, his eyes still shining with that worrying enthusiasm. “We’ve got to stop her from falling in love with James Potter.”

“With Potter?”

“That’s right.”

“But she hates Potter.”

Caladrius ran a hand through his wispy white hair distractedly. “Are you going to help me or not?”

Slughorn sighed heavily. “Dumbledore would not approve of this, you know.”

“He tries to prevent deaths all the time.”

“Yes, but he doesn’t have foreknowledge that they’re supposed to happen. I mean, perhaps something good comes of her death…”

“How good would it have to be to justify her loss?” Caladrius asked quickly.  

Slughorn sighed. “Pretty damned good,” he admitted.  

“Exactly. Forget about causality, Horace. As you say, we’re working blind. We can’t know what will result from our actions, so we’ve just got to do the best we can with the morality we’ve got.”

“How are we to stop her from falling in love with Potter?” Slughorn asked resignedly.  

“We’ll have to get her to marry someone else.”

“Who?”

“Someone who will keep her as far as possible from James Potter. Who does Potter hate more than anyone else in the world?”

“Severus Snape, I suppose.”

Caladrius paused. Her heard Dumbledore’s weary voice again, whispering: ‘Severus, please…’ at the top of the Astronomy Tower, right before his death. Could he really set Lily up with Dumbledore’s murderer? Well, he was desperate enough to try anything. And he needed the rift between Lily and Potter to be unbridgeable.

At any rate, if he changed Lily’s fate, perhaps Dumbledore’s would change too. How could somebody who had Lily’s gentle influence murder anyone? Perhaps everything would change. He couldn’t trust his visions anymore, only his instincts.

“Right,” he said at last, clapping his hands, as though to dispel his doubts. “Get them together somehow. Detention, or something. I’ll do the rest.”

“Detention?” Slughorn spluttered. “They’re model students!”

Caladrius put his hand on Slughorn’s shoulder. “You’ll think of something, Horace. Just make sure they’re together on Friday night.”

“What… er… what are you going to do?”

Caladrius smiled grimly. “Trust me. You don’t want to be in on this.” When he saw Slughorn continue to look dubious, he added: “It’s better than her death, Horace.”

“Lots of things are. That still doesn’t make them right.”

Caladrius blinked. “I never thought I’d meet an idealistic Slytherin.”

“Nor I a Machiavellian Gryffindor.”

“What does it matter if we get our hands a little dirty, Horace?” Caladrius asked urgently. “We’re old men. The important thing is to ensure that this young woman has a life to lead.”

Slughorn paused, his moustache ruffling pensively as he exhaled. “Very well,” he said. “Friday at eight. They’ll be in the main Potions dungeon.”  

Caladrius grinned. “You won’t regret this.”

“You’ve foreseen that, have you?” Slughorn asked irritably.  

“No.”

“Well, shut up, then.”

Caladrius just grinned at him; nothing could dispel his wild, feverish happiness. He hadn’t realised it, because it sounded crazy, but he’d always felt persecuted by a malicious universe; he’d always felt that some sadistic deity - fate, or death or God or whoever - had shown him visions of horror and then denied him the opportunity to change them. The world had taunted him with knowledge and then made that knowledge useless. But just once, just once in his life, he was going to outwit his captors; he could feel it. Even if he had to kill Lily himself, he would ensure that she didn’t suffer the way he had seen her suffer - that she didn’t feel the grief of separation from her husband and son, the terror of that dark, merciless figure standing in the bedroom doorway, the ignominy of all that pleading. He was not going to let it happen. She would live a long life or die swiftly. These were the best things that could be hoped for, as far as Caladrius was concerned.